Happy 26th Birthday, Sophie!

 

She was born on a cold New York City winter night and made me a mother. She has shaped me, taught me nearly everything of significance that I know, has never spoken a word, her eyes dark pools darkness and light a tree-lover a mermaid a powerful powerful woman.

Happy Two Days After Christmas

 

There's been a lot of sweetness.

And a lot of Dumb and Dumber.

Reader, what's happening?

It's Not Funny

Huntington Beach, CA
Yesterday

In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.”

Albert Camus, The Plague 

It's a privilege to be able to stay inside, quarantined, with enough food and supplies for weeks, a virtual job, a pretty backyard and neighborhood in which to walk and a pile of masks that an industrious friend has given me. Not once have I thought my rights and freedom have been infringed upon, and this, too, is a privilege. My heart goes out toward those who are truly suffering from the virus, from economic hardship, from uncertainty and fear about the future. Most of all, though, it's a privilege to do something for others, to have the capacity to quell panic and anxiety in myself and in others, to know that what I am doing is actually something. It's a privilege to meditate, to laugh at silly cartoons, to bake a chocolate cake for a beloved friend's birthday and to bring it to her doorstep, to stand outside her house with other beloveds, at a "safe" distance from one another and to sing her birth. It's a privilege to coach my son through a new dinner recipe that he's trying by himself, thousands of miles away, to see his beautiful face. It's a privilege to follow the counsel of those wiser and more knowledgeable and experienced than myself, and it's a privilege to be openly derisive and contemptuous toward the leader of this country and the idiots that support him.

I had to write all those things to quell my anger and make sense of my contempt. I would like to be positive or not too angry or even optimistic, but I am not. I am angry and feel contempt toward the zeitgeist of this country and the insatiable greed of the powerful. The inadequacies and injustices that have always been present laid bare and yet, and yet. Still. Always the transactional. I am not optimistic and don't believe optimism is a virtue which means I am not a good American. I don't know what I am, actually, but it's not about me, and that, too, is a privilege. I wish for a sea change, or as the great Seamus Heaney said... On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore. Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles. And cures and healing wells.

The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness. 

Albert Camus, The Plague 

I appreciate the sentiments expressed here, written by a New Yorker and posted on Facebook:

Dear protestors, 

Y’all realize that people in NYC have been holed up in tiny ass apartments the size of your car garage for twice as long as you guys have? They don’t have any beaches and most of them don’t know what a “porch” is. Restaurants being shut down means most of them have to cook in kitchens that are built for instant ramen at best. Almost nobody has a car so they can’t hoard toilet paper like you fuckers or escape to a nearby town to take a walk in a park by a lake. 

Yet they’re all making silly videos on FB, shouting thanks to healthcare workers at 7pm every day while you motherfuckers block the paths to hospitals, and they’re coming together like a community to defeat this thing despite going through hell. You know why? 

Cuz you guys are a bunch of fucking pussies. You snowflake ass Motherfucking pieces of shit need to whine about your rights getting trampled on cuz the government is telling you what to do with your bodies?! Seriously. Fucking puke in my mouth. And all those guns and ammo vests n shit? Who the fuck are you gonna shoot? The virus?! Doctors?! Put the fucking guns away, you psychopathic, insecure, ass hats. Go the fuck inside and stay there and stop fucking protesting. 

Bye.

It's really, really not funny.

Since Last Week

Where do I start? I got home from the hospital with Sophie last week on Thursday night and left at 4:30 on Friday morning for my first trip to New York City in about eight years, I think. I got a killer deal on two flights -- took Oliver along because he's just a kick-ass kid with a full-time job, finishing high school early and on to University of Arizona in the fall! Here we are bleary-eyed in the plane just before take-off.

We arrived in Newark and were picked up at the airport by my cousin Paula's husband Jim. We spent Friday night with them and their dear daughter Faith, and the next morning they drove us up to my cousin Philip's house so we could finally join all the other cousins and aunts and uncles for the annual Pittule Day celebration. Pittule is a Calabrian specialty -- basically, fried dough that is either sprinkled with sugar or stuffed with anchovies. Both are pictured above.

Here's me taking a stint at the fryer with my cousin Mary:

Here's a few more pictures from the afternoon:

My mom, 80 years old, Aunt Dorothy, 90 years old and Aunt Mary, 87 years old

My cousins Frances and Mary

The whole Famiglia

Matriarchs and Patriarch

Me and my cousin Philip

That's a lot of beautiful family, and I'm grateful for every single one of them and for the opportunity to get together with them, talk and bond and eat delicious food. I'm so glad that Oliver got to experience it as well.

I should end this post here, but you must know that I also went into the city and stayed with two of my oldest friends, Jane and Phil, in their beautiful home on the Upper West Side. They lit candles for the first night of Hanukkah. I also got to see my very oldest friend -- not biologically but from my junior high years and onward -- Audrey.

Friends for 42 years!

On Sunday morning I took a Lyft uptown to visit Sandra, a woman and fellow caregiver whom I've been close friends with for at least six years -- yet have never met. I could have wept when I finally did get to hug her -- and her son and husband. For any of you social media naysayers, I reiterate that these online friendships have proved to be some of the most deep and profound of my life in every single way.

Speaking of profound connections, I also had the pleasure and nearly unspeakable joy of finally getting to meet Rosemarie. I held on to her for an extra beat as well, just so grateful to find this person as beautiful and graceful in real life as she's been to me online.

I think I'll save the rest of my New York City photos for another post. We flew home on Monday night and on Tuesday I started feeling chills and a general lousiness that ballooned into some kind of horrible flu-like thing -- no fever or congestion but damn, I feel like crap. I haven't been sick in so many years, I guess I was due for something or another, so I'm not complaining.

See ya'll later.

A Sense of Humor

My Dad with Henry and my niece Mary
2006 and 2017

Humor keeps us sane. I’m in Hilton Head for the annual family “vacation.” It’s a whole lot of “fun” and a whole lot of family. Need I say more?

Speaking of humor, don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode of Who Lives Like This?! Jason and I have a great discussion with Sandra Stein about humor in caregiving — how to nurture it and how it can help in even the most challenging situations. Here’s the link

https://www.wholiveslikethispodcast.com/single-post/2018/07/31/Sandra-Stein

"A good practical sort of immortality"

Just a couple of hours outside of Los Angeles, you pass through the most incredible landscape of farms and hills and endless road. It's where most of your produce is grown, folks, and last I heard, a lot of California farmland is filled with rotting produce because of that goon in office and his henchmen, busy Making America Great. They've cracked down on brown immigrants who work the fields, and the Real Americans are not stepping up to do the work. You can read about that here.

That isn't fake news either. But this isn't a post about the Pussy Grabber in Chief or his racist Attorney General Keebler Elf, so let's move on.

We stopped in the town of Earlimart to get gas and victuals.

The gas station had the best moniker I've ever seen yet was in direct sight of the Earlimart Market for World Peace.

Doesn't she make you want to pile the Bud into the trunk of your car and drive backward to when America was truly great?

Bless her heart.

Cast my memory back there Lord, sometimes I'm overcome --

Despite the Goon in Chief and his Band of Billionaires, you can pass through a lot of California now and see only a few "white" faces. This evidently terrifies a lot of people.

I find it thrilling that boundaries are blurry.

You can drive approximately five hours from Los Angeles, the sprawling home to over 8 million humans of every color, creed and culture and reach the south entrance of Yosemite National Park. My friend Cara, her two girls and my two boys have been numerous times together, and this year we stayed in a little cabin in the woods inside the park in an area called Wawona. We largely avoid the crowds in the valley and stay up and around the secret places near the park entrance.

We don't do much of anything, really, but wander around and look up and down, float on the river and lay on our backs on sun-warmed rocks. We laugh a lot, mostly at Oliver who can imitate anything and anyone. We all have riotous senses of humor. The girls balance the boys, while Cara and I eschew exercise and adopt the life patterns of marmots for the most part. Oliver did not let us forget our general "cringiness." If you need a translation, let me know.

We do this kind of thing:

and a little of this kind of thing:

and some of this kind of thing:

We even had a roadside "adventure" this year. Cara's car had an electrical short, we think, so we were mysteriously locked out of her car in the middle of Nowhere just after finishing up a roadside picnic. Our purses and phones were locked inside the car, and the teenagers, despite their phone appendages, were not connected to the world wide webs or the vast cell satellites arcing overhead, so we basically did one of those survival kind of things and put our privileged heads together to try to figure out WHAT TO DO.

I can tell you that everyone has an idea or opinion on how to break into a car.

You know what? We city slickers now marvel at just how hard it is to break into a car. Given how many of ours have been broken into in the big shitty, who knew that the windows are virtually indestructible, the locks un-pickable, the whole American metal machine invulnerable?

A few tourists did try to help, offering hangers and various tools. I have actually quite successfully broken into several of my cars, during days of yore, but my tried and true techniques just didn't hack it. I'm a woman of twentieth century crime, I guess. Other tourists just stared at us and took videos. Stupide americaines.  Our favorite samaritans were two women with blue hair and heavy Eastern Europeanish/Russian accents (think female versions, just barely, of what you might imagine our goon-in-chief's best Russian buddy sounds like)who walked over with crow bars from their rental and said, in what became a sort of anthem that Oliver repeated, over and over for the rest of the trip: Let me help you break open car.

Henry, who had otherwise made the women, men and children of Yosemite swoon everywhere we went, had no luck with a rock and muscle, and neither did the rest of us. I thought, in my optimistic way, that a solution would come to us, eventually, that we wouldn't perish with so much cheese and crackers and cans of limonata in the cooler and surely two marmots and a passel of teenagers wouldn't be attacked by any animal or human should it get dark.

Eventually, though, a couple of rangers pulled up on the scene, hammered a few wedges in the doors and saved us. To be fair, it did take them at least twenty minutes, and they were armed. We secretly hoped they'd shoot the car open, but that didn't happen.

We also did some more of this:

Oh yeah, and this:

I know. I know. It's almost ridiculous, except it's not. It is respite and wildness, air and water and earth and fire. I honestly think Yosemite is one, if not the holiest places on the planet, and my gratitude both for its proximity and my privilege to visit it, over and over, is boundless.

Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality. 

John Muir,  My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911