I Am This Woman

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Forgive me for just a moment, for not being fluffy, funny or pointless. This is a particularly important day for me, historically, as an American and as an Air Force brat.

Today is June 6. On a pretty day in summer, 64 years ago, a whole lot of men, young and old, landed in France for an invasion that turned the tide and eventually ended WWII. In the following months, American, British, French, Canadian, German, Italian, Spanish, etc. men and women died. Some survived and told us their stories, lest we forget.

However you feel about war, one cannot forget those hoardes of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who were cut down, some even before they were on dry land. Some of them were fathers and have children and grandchildren who remember. Some were childless, some married, some unmarried. There are some men who died, whose loved ones are now also dead 64 years later. They have no one to remember them.

But I remember. I was raised to honor their service and sacrifice, and to support the men and women and families serving in the military currently, regardless of my political and emotional feelings. My parents never missed any news coverage or speeches about this day. They watched with quiet tears in their eyes. They had lost friends, classmates, colleagues, neighbors; nearly everyone in their generation knew someone who had died there. They knew the magnitude of the day and taught us kids its importance. I remember. My brother remembers.

Remember them. Thank them. But really, just remember them.

Lap Dog, originally uploaded by tigerwillow.

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My 40 lb. lap dog, Miss Lucy. She is not allowed on the couch unless in a lap, so it works out for her. Tonight, I held her and scratched her chest until she fell asleep. Then she started snoring and did so for about 15 minutes. She missed most of House.

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I lost my mama in 2003. So for her, I will try to remember the good times, even though there was thousands of bad times to try and forget. As I sit here today, I think I would withstand some bad times just to have her back for a few hours, to chat with, to giggle over stupid things with. I miss her voice and her encyclopedic knowledge of film. I would probably have to ask her about “Now, Voyager” (which I saw again yesterday, which makes me laugh and cry because it is probably the highest form of camp art EVER).

The missing her never ends. It just gets easier to live with, and even becomes comfortable after a while. My gift to her today is to remember her with love and fondness, something that was more complicated when she was alive. Something that I know was/is just as difficult for my brothers to do.

My dear child is 12, and knows full well it’s Mother’s Day… and is enjoying cartoons and getting himself breakfast.

We are ok with what our day holds, if we don’t listen to the world. In our little world, a loving gift for Mother’s Day is a hug, a joke, a plan to go see a movie together. But the world out there is screaming at us that flowers, cards, breakfast in bed, chocolates, resentment, duty, coercion and guilt are part of the day (spend money! make her blow her diet! she’ll get mad if you don’t!).

I hope I never ever become a mother who has to nag remind her son, or whine to be recognized. I can understand how it happens. But since I get a year-round appreciation, today is really just a pretty spring day which we will enjoy together. That right there is a pretty nice gift.

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms, anyone with a mom and especially those without!

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I just need a small space here to grieve publically over something that has been lost to me. I thought I would get over it by now, but I haven’t. Writing might help.

Starting just after I separated from my husband, I started making a patchwork quilt for my son. I hoped to have it done for his 10th birthday. Time being what it is and all, it was shortly before his 11th bday I finally got the top and back done. Then I got a bat and pin basted the whole thing. About that time, my dad and brother had died, and I lost momentum. I was starting to pack up for a move, and lamented the quilt to some friends.

One of them made me an offer, which was most gracious. A quilter owed her a favor, and so she would just take care of the quilting. It involved sending the box across the country, and that was one of my Things To Do in the rush to pack and move.

Hoping to give it to my son for his 12th birthday, I aniticipated getting the quilt for Christmas, just after? in time for birthday? but was told that it wasn’t quite ready. So, patiently I wait. Finally, “it’s in the mail”! YAY! I make arrangements for someone to watch for its delivery while I was out of town….

No quilt. No box. No nothing. No word.

I inquire. The PO lost it? That’s all I have heard. Not sure if there was insurance or delivery confirmation. There are no good answers, no answers really. This entry is not to say anything about my friend – but to simply mourn this loss. And I’m heartbroken. All the love and energy I put into that… all the memories in the fabrics I used. Perhaps it is my fault that I loaded it up with too much memory. I am having a hard time getting over losing the thing. I have a fairly detailed tactile and sensory memory, and I can feel the fabric in my fingers still…

There are a few leftover squares, and I’m going to locate those today, and start over on something for him. Maybe that will help - replace the thing, transfer the love to a new thing. Maybe I have enough for a body pillow cover. My son understands the loss, but I think it is a greater loss for me than for him. That’s a good thing.

Here is the Flickr set for the quilt, perdu.

I wrote some letters today. Here are snippets for public viewing.

1.

February is bittersweet for me. January is a snowplow - all
the leftover pent-up energy and procrastinated chores, the Boy’s
birthday (which of course must be a standalone event, not at all like
Christmas), and then the annual convention for my company. We were in
Reno for a week of snow and cold and passive smoking. I returned with
a lungful and am still coughing.

But February is bittersweet. My dad died on Jan. 30, just a year ago.
I had a renewed concern that he has no shoes. I considered buying a
pair of men’s shoes and putting them in the closet where his coat (an
elegant Harris Tweed overcoat, purchased in Britain in the 50s), scarf
(a Burberry fleece) and safari jacket hang. If he shows up, he’ll be
well-dressed and he’ll have shoes. I can’t even get my mind around
missing him. The loss is still too gaspingly fresh.

And today is my mother’s birthday. I miss her profoundly. A year ago
today, I was driving out of Austin with a truck full of memories and
furniture. I spoke to my brother on the phone, and he brought up our
mother’s birthday to me. I knew it, but I didn’t want to seem
obsessively memorial. But he was. And it was one of the last best
conversations I had with him.

And here comes March and his death. But I have no idea what I would
say to them if they all showed up today for cake. We’d probably cut a
slice, and then watch CNN or the People’s Court. If I were in control
of these ghosts, I’d at least hope we would watch Nova or something on
the Science Channel.

2.

Some days, the grief is like moving through concrete. Not quite set-up
concrete. Some days, I hit patches of molasses, honey, drilling mud.
Some days, I hit chunks and icebergs. Occasionally, I can ski on top
and marvel at the view.

….

Today is Nancy’s birthday. She would be 87. And there’s a
part of me that thinks it would be so cool to have her around at 87,
IF (the longest word in the universe) she were a healthy person. Not
an alcoholic. In my mind, she is becoming more the pistol that I
always knew her to be, not the drunken bitter old lady. There’s a part
of me that likes the fact that my mom was such a character. I told
someone the story about her DUI. “She gave herself a DUI for her 78th
birthday.” Jaws drop. Heh. How many PTA moms claim that? In the south,
it’s called “colorful” when it’s not in your family. I think I will
claim “colorful.”

I have learned to walk. Twice.

Once as a baby, like everyone else.

Once as a six-year-old. I had to relearn to walk because the paralysis that came with polio erased my muscle memory. It’s harder the second time, trust me.

But because I got up again and walked, ran, skipped, danced, rode, jogged, tramped, hiked and otherwise ambulated, I know both the utter necessity of doing this, and the steel required. After a devastating loss, it’s the only choice that ever made sense to me. Rise up and walk.

A number of factors are at work right now, in my heart, in my week - and my answer has been “learn to walk. Again.” It’s my way of hitting Reset. But mind you, this is not the self-castigating “pick yourself up and walk, you big fat baby.” No, this is the tentative one-foot-in-front-of-the-other toddling. This is venturing forth into new territory - a place where I have no experience. Never before has the buck stopped here. But it does. People, plants and pets are counting on me. (And maybe a few pipes too.)

Look for me to be buying new shoes, hitting the gym, practicing my walking all alone on this path.

One of my bloggy friends - a woman I know only because I like her writing - is a walking miracle. And I love a good story.

Read her latest story, in her words, in chronological order, with apologies for perhaps plagiarizing too much of her blog into mine:

Boxes

Frightened

News

Questions

Memo

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Dan Fogelberg died yesterday. And I am sad.

This article gives a briefing. His official website has a link to The Living Legacy, a fan site I believe.

I saw him in concert with a girlfriend in 1979. We swooned - it was an acoustic solo concert. Piano and guitar. For two hours, he enthralled us. We were two girls at the stage door, waiting with the 30-some others. Then we saw his limo pull out from another door. Oh well… only years later, after living with a musician, would I understand why he ducked us.

I listened to his songs in college, those angsty years. I gazed at his beautiful face on the album cover. I fell in love with a Dan who looked a lot like him (though he couldn’t sing). I shed many cathartic tears, and was completely astonished at just how apt so many of his lyrics were to situations in my life. Surely no one else had EVER felt what I felt! and here was a song that described the feelings to a T! amazing! (Sketches and Same Auld Lang Syne, to be exact.)

One time, I went home with a date after a truly fantastic dinner out… he sat down at his piano and played one of Fogelberg’s songs… it must have been his best “line” because it worked. I fell for him right then and there. Music is so powerful, and as cheesy as some find his work to be, it was significant to me for a good long period of my life.

I think I’ll trot out the LPs and play them on my record player tonight (yes, I still have one!)

Go in beauty, Dan. Your creativity, work and music are here to remind us of your gentle spirit.

It’s all around us all the time. But this time of year, the matters of life and death are on our minds more poignantly, and I have to wonder why. Both in a shake my fist at the sky kind of way, and a tender headtilt “there, there” kind of way.

Death. A car ran a red light last Monday and could have killed me, had I not been distracted as my light turned green. I finally putt-putted out into the intersection, only to see a silver streak of sedan go zooming in front of my car with six feet to spare. Another two seconds either way, and someone would be dead. I drop off the Kid at school, and then get dead. Not a great way to start the week, in thought or in actuality. (more…)

Thanks, Jette, Chip and esteemed panel. This entry is a Holidailies “Best of…”

I miss my dad. I miss him more than I miss my mom. I’m not sure why. It’s not because I favored one over the other. I’m sure I do but it might be more about that gender identification thing. I *am* my mother in many ways, some really cringingly bad ways. I see her looking at me in the mirror, so she is with me most of the time. I do miss our phone calls the most.

But my dad - it’s very odd. What I miss about him is not so much his personality, the memories, the jokes… what I miss is the very oldness of him. He lived long enough to begin having dementia. It’s understandable, and it alters my feelings and memories of him NOT ONE WHIT. It added something to him, I think. He often had that Old Man Mona Lisa smile. I saw that face on a tv show tonight - some movie with a very very old man dancing with his daughter in the nursing home he lived in.

I recognized the look. The relaxed lips caught in a pleasant line, the uncomplicated brow, the slightly glassy but sweet eyes that sometimes look at you in polite vacancy through the ever-thickening lenses, rather than having that inner light of recognition. I could watch my dad go in and out of recognition of his surroundings. Sometimes he was there, in his tv room, watching the news; and sometimes, he was sitting in some generic house waiting for a ride home. (more…)