Triangles

I haven't written here in over a week, and I haven't visited many of your blogs. I have, mainly, been out of sight. I was helping to take care of my uncle who had a bad fall and was recuperating in rehab and then my house. I was glad to do it as he's family and has been very good to us, but man oh man. Caregiver central. Fortunately, my father and cousin Philip came out this past week and helped me with all things caregiving, so I'm feeling a tad more sane. Here's my cousin Philip getting all the love from me. He is really more of a brother to me than cousin as he lived with my family for a number of years when his parents, my aunt and uncle died, and my parents became his guardians.

I sure do love him. I didn't get a good picture of me and my dad together, although I did get a good picture of my dad wearing a man purse, but I won't post it here. I'll tell you this much -- he looks good even in a bright orange cable sweater AND a man purse.

I went to Portland a week ago with my dear writer friend, Tanya Ward Goodman. She sprang me from the confines of home and caregiving, got us a fabulous hotel room and coaxed me to not only do some writing of the goddamn book but to walk over 12,000 steps on both days we were there! We went to see the glorious Pam Houston, Lidia Yuknavitch and Cheryl Strayed celebrate the recent publication of Pam's new memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country. I haven't yet read it, but I heard her read parts of it, and it sounds beyond beautiful.

I was called up on stage that night with Pam, not because I'm a writer or because I am about to finish my goddamn book, or even because she knows me, but because she was playing Truth or Dare with Cheryl and Lidia, and one of the truths was that she was in a sorority, and one of the dares was for her to sing a sorority song. She was up on stage and turned to the audience to ask whether anyone else was in this particular sorority, and I don't know what came over me, but I revealed that I was (Reader, you might not be aware that I was in a sorority, and it's not something that I talk about nor will I, but even though it's sort of embarrassing in this day and age, I actually found beautiful lifelong friendships and had a smattering of fun back in the day -- plus, you know, Pam Houston was one, too), and there was an enormous roar in the place and I fainted dead away. Just kidding. I raised my hand, and because this was in PORTLAND and everyone there was a Lidia, Pam or Cheryl acolyte, no one else in the entire place (and there were hundreds of women in there) owned up to being in this particular sorority, EXCEPT FOR YOURS TRULY. So, yeah. Pam called me up on stage, and everyone around me yelled at me to GO! so I went. Pam sang and I pretended to sing one of our sorority's stupid songs, and it was actually kind of fun if you like singing with a famous author in front of two other famous authors and an auditorium full of Portlanders. Here's the still photo from the video that Tanya took:

And here I've gone and revealed it to more people. Holy shitoly. Now you know everything about me. Just so you won't hate me, here's a photo of me back in the day at a party. I was not drunk but I was wearing a wig for some reason, and that blue shirt is actually a dress that I tucked into a pair of tuxedo pants. It was 1983, for god's sake, and I was thin.

Sigh.

Here's another one.

How about that clown collar? Underneath was a black velvet dress with a jewel neck. The collar buttoned on. A few drinks later, here I am:

So, there you go, Reader. I showed you what I was doing back last week and then way, way back to when.

What's happening with you?

Parenting, No. 785

I went to visit Henry this afternoon at his new job. He's a server at a funky little place in Venice. Maybe I shouldn't use the word funky anymore since very recently, like yesterday, Oliver told me that it was embarrassing. Maybe he didn't use the word embarrassing, but he repeated the word funky in a voice that I guess is mine, at least the voice that both sons use when they imitate me, and while I imagine there's fondness in the teasing, it still takes me by surprise that I'm considered painfully uncool and old. Both brothers have jobs this summer (Oliver actually works nearly full-time all year round, recently opened a Charles Schwab trading account and has bought stocks -- no joke), and I'm very proud of them. It's been a long time since I've included them on the old blog, and just now I was looking for past posts in a kind of nostalgic way, and boy -- some of those posts were damn funny. I sat down at the bar of this little restaurant where Henry works, next to a younger woman who was drinking a glass of wine and eating a salad. Since I'm the chattiest person on the planet and the proudest, most embarrassing mother, I introduced myself to the woman and told her that Henry was my son. She told me that she had a four year old son, and that he was in a challenging stage. I told her that I remember well those challenging stages, but I found those times to be more physically challenging and the teenaged and young adult years more emotionally challenging. I didn't tell her this story, but Reader, I 'll tell you. Just the other night, we were sitting at the table eating dinner -- takeout Vietnamese because making dinner in the summer is just not my thing -- and the usual conversation between The Brothers began, and this entailed arguing about whether LeBron James or Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time and then something about the baseball player Mike Trout and Teslas and Elon Musk and then you're an idiot and you're an asshole and you don't know what you're talking about, and just when I was wishing that one day we would have a conversation about -- let's say -- the greatest living poet or how much better a film-maker Fellini is than Tarantino, Sophie had a large seizure that I just know was a result of the anger in the air and maybe even how boring her brothers' arguments can be (Sophie and I are the same about these things, I am certain, but she seizes instead of dying a little inside at the general clusterfuckery). I probably said as much, because now that they're 17 and nearly 20, I don't bite my tongue as often as I might have when they were younger. Enough is enough.

But here's the thing. Those boys jumped up and into action helping me to help Sophie, and I realized that I am, perhaps, the luckiest mother in the world.

Identity Hyperbole

I just said good-bye to my heart brothers. Henry and Oliver are off to Switzerland with their father, and while I'm excited for them I also feel -- well -- unhinged. I cried a bit after they left, certain that my life means nearly nothing when they're not around. I wondered what the hell I'd do when they leave for real one day, and I cried a bit harder for my lost identity. I wish I could say this was mostly dramatics or even hyperbole, except that it's sort of, kind of not. I mean, it's the truth. Who am I without these people? Sophie and I sat in the very quiet kitchen, and I fed her some beans and rice. I ate some whole grain crackers that I've recently become addicted to, spread with a thick layer of butter. I might have eaten 1/3rd of a stick of butter, but maybe that's hyperbole. I also ate a tomato from my garden like an apple and sprinkled crazy salt over it before each bite. I sipped some red wine that's been sitting on my counter since my last book salon. I'm not a big drinker, but I figure a tiny buzz might cut the angst a bit. In less than 24 hours, I went from feeling nearly orgasmic with joy and freedom (not hyperbole) after a sunset swim in the Pacific to feeling bereft and abandoned (ok, hyperbole).

Here are some pictures from the weekend.

I was in San Diego County with Henry, attending a lacrosse tournament. When he took off with his buddies for the whole day yesterday, I lay on the hotel bed wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself, but eventually I got up and walked miles, went shopping and bought myself a funky outfit and then went down to the beach in my bathing suit and actually went into the water and swam for at least a half an hour. I submerged myself -- dove into waves and paddled around -- and then dried off, sat on a towel and watched the sun set.

Here I am coming out of the water:

Oops.

Sorry. That was another woman. That woman lives in the Caribbean Ocean and walks out of it occasionally. She has no idea what's coming around the corner. Tell her to turn around and dive back in!

Here I am:

And here's the sun setting over the glorious Pacific ocean:

Remember Me?

So, I've been absent for a while and just like exercising, once you miss a day and then another and another, you're back to being grotesquely inactive and have gained a thousand pounds.

I was quite literally on the road last week, touring a few possible colleges for Henry. We had an amazing time, driving through the beautiful country-side of North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. Henry is a joy -- always cheerful, relaxed and so very funny. I feel incredibly blessed to have had the opportunity to hang with him, nearly 24/7 for a week.

What else is new? Things good that I won't blog about yet and things bad that concern the great job that I've had for the past couple of months. I won't blog about that either but would appreciate words of wisdom, jokes, some anti-corporate America ranting or whatever you hold in your dear minds and hearts.

Here are some pictures from my trip.

My beautiful friend Louise and I at her river house in Virginia

Gorgeous burst of forsythia yellow at the river

East Coast sunset at the river

Henry and I at The Old Well, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC

Henry on his device and me saying "grrrrrrr" in front of my beloved Wilson library
Chapel Hill, NC

Henry looking over Fetzer Field, home of UNC lacrosse

Henry running up stairs of beloved Wilson Library, UNC

Henry posing with the Salisbury University seagull mascot

The spectacularly beautiful, but way too conservative and country clubbish Washington and Lee University

Right after I snapped this picture of my adorable son, he picked up the tab on our fancy dinner. 

Robert E. Lee, rightfully overshadowed by Henry

Road fare, along with filling up the tank of the car for only $20!

Can I tell you that Henry was overwhelmed mainly by the amount of road kill that we saw along the way? I am not certain why there isn't nearly as much road kill in California, but I will admit to you that I actually peed my pants a tiny bit laughing at Henry counting the numbers of carcasses he had seen. Along with the usual squirrels, rodents, cats, dogs and possums, we counted two deer -- one being gutted by a bunch of buzzards and another being heaved into the back of a pick-up truck. Holy southern schmoley.

Here are some pretty road pics:

And here are some photos of our last day when we strolled the campus of UNC, again.

The main quad of UNC, whose trees originally made me fall in love with the school

The beloved Wilson Library Reading Room where I spent many an hour studying and mooning over the boy I loved

I would caption this "where my orgasmic pleasure in the Wilson Library Reading Room was misunderstood by my son" but that sounds inappropriate. His disinterest was entirely appropriate

A William Wadsworth collection in Wilson Library. I lovingly gazed at everything, much to Henry's horror

Seriously, how did thirty years pass because I could have taken this in 1985

A great demonstration against the bullshit law recently passed in North Carolina legislature

Add caption

a moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Don't forget to send me your wisdom and jokes as I'm feeling beyond anxious, like the carpet's been ripped out from my feet (cliches come in handy when you're blown away).

Nostalgia

The other day I unearthed a box that was underneath my bed -- yes, it was buried under my bed, covered in dust. My father had sent it to me some years ago, and I don't think I had ever opened it or really looked at the contents. I unfolded my white eyelet high school graduation dress from 1981, my cream-colored (perhaps it was once white) First Holy Communion dress from 1970, a white pinafore that I believe I wore as part of my Dorothy costume from my starring role in the school play in fourth grade, 1972, my Brownie uniform, my Girl Scout uniform and the above accessories. Other than a surreal horror at how tiny , truly tiny I was, not just in second and fourth grades but in my last year of high school (honestly, I swear that I could no more pull that thing over my THIGH much less pull it over my breasts and shoulders and zip it up), I was cast back into intense nostalgia for childhood. On throw-back Thursday last week, I posted a photo of myself from sometime in the late 1980s on Facebook, and more than a hundred people "liked" it. Comments included many exclamations of wonder -- Wow! -- which inevitably made me think have I changed that much? As evidenced by that tiny white dress, well, yes. But when I peer closely at the photo, looking for the me that is myself, I see her, despite the superficial changes. I've mused with girlfriends about unsnarling our identities from our children as we and they age -- how difficult it is to figure out and find, reclaim that me that was before the me that is today. Sometimes it takes peering into photos to find ourselves, not so much to remind ourselves of that youthful beauty but to remind ourselves that life, while transformative, has not irrevocably changed who we are in the most essential sense. I do this with photos of my children, too -- flipping through photo books that I lovingly made when they were babies and toddlers, scrolling through the thousands I have stored on my computer -- Sophie, Henry, Oliver are still there, in the eyes, in the smiles, in the people they've become.

But what do we do with all this stuff? Do I dry-clean the dresses and uniforms, go to The Container Store and buy that preservation tissue and boxes in which to place it lovingly for my progeny? It's hard to imagine either Henry or Oliver will take along this box, open it and feel anything, really, about it other than oh, god, more of Mom's crap. And even though it seems as if all things eventually go there, I am struck by the fact that Sophie, my only daughter, the obvious person to receive these things, will obviously have no need for them or awareness of their "value," if she even lives longer than me. After all, despite the fact that I've saved many bits and pieces of her own life -- darling baby clothes, my favorite of her many beautiful shoes and outfits that I splurged on over the years, some of her "artwork" from early years in preschool and kindergarten when I had no idea how things would turn out -- they really please and mean nothing to anybody but me. Perhaps there's a lesson in that, but I'm not sure. I won't throw any of it right now, though, heavy as it is, invested still with emotion and longing and reminders.

The Things I Carry

In a small zippered leather purse that looks like the old-time New York City coffee cups, I carry the following items everywhere I go:

1. a cut-out photo of Sophie when she was recently diagnosed with infantile spasms and puffed up due to steroids
2. a silk and silver pacifier clip that someone gave me when Sophie was born and is emblematic of that brief time before when sucking on a pacifier was enough to calm her crying
3. a New York City subway token -- because I loved living there for the almost nine years I did so
4. a dirtied, softened piece of paper with a note from my father that accompanied a check he sent to me for a treatment we wanted to try when Sophie was a baby. This is going to work, it said.
5. Several angel charms
6. A LOVE charm
7. A Flow charm
8. A MIRACLE stone
9. A bug encased in a marble that I forgot to give one of my boys and decided to keep myself

Reader, what things do you carry?