Tag: my mom

2011 Revisited

The zoo that is the Republican Presidential race. Quite entertaining.

One of those year in review quizzes from Jaquandor.

Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Technically, I didn’t make any, in that I didn’t write any down. But probably not. Haven’t figured how to do more exercise without it feel like exercise. Probably played racquetball a half dozen times in 2011; used to play 200 times a year before the local Y closed, but dropping off the daughter at school then needing two buses (or a bike and a bus, if the weather’s decent) to get to work has made getting to play at Siena College difficult.

I keep threatening myself to stop blogging; what I HAVE done is to blog (slightly) shorter, especially in December.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Actually, yes. My co-worker/fellow librarian Amelia and her husband Brian had baby Charlie on October 9. I won the office pool. Charlie was due October 8. I picked the 9th day of the 10th month of the 11th year at 12:13 pm; Charlie arrived at 12:51 pm. My pick REALLY ticked off the guy who picked 12 noon. “Who picks 12:13?”

Did anyone close to you die?

Well, yes. There was this guy named Chris Ringwald. We weren’t close, I suppose, but his death affected me deeply.

Robin Ashley was a guy whose house we’d go to every Christmas and sing carols. He developed ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) two or three years ago. One of the rather neat things is that he had this machine that would type words by him looking at the particular letters. It was slow, and exhausting for him, but it was a way for him to communicate when he otherwise could not.
And then there was my mom.

What countries did you visit?

O Canada! (see several posts in September.)

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

More massages, more patience – might be a relationship there.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I reached out to the alumni at my library school, and they invited me to participate in some workshop.

What was your biggest failure?

I did a couple of webinars on Census’ American Factfinder for work and had techno difficulties each time. I realize that I HATE doing webinars. I prefer doing things where I can look at people’s faces.

What was the best thing you bought?

I bought a couple of older Hess trucks from my friend Mary that used to belong to her late husband Tom. It was a nice connection with him for both of us.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Arab Spring people. The fuzzily focused, but necessary Occupy people, who at least drew attention to the disparity of income.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Congress generally. I mean they can’t pass a budget, hardly ever, just a series of continuing resolutions.
Birthers, climate change deniers, any number of conspiracy theorists.

Where did most of your money go?

The house, in repairing the roof, insulating the attic, fixing the foundation. Jaquandor: are you SURE you want to buy a house?

What did you get really excited about?

The zoo that is the Republican Presidential race. Quite entertaining. And, speaking of zoos, the trip to Canada, including the Toronto Zoo.

What song will always remind you of 2011?

The Afterlife by Paul Simon

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sadder. I’m an adult orphan.

Thinner or fatter?

More or less the same.

Richer or poorer?

Slightly poorer because the Wife is working fewer extra hours, which is good, and because of the aforementioned house and my mother’s funeral, which is not.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Going to movies, for sure.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Thinking. Melancholy. Insomnia.

How did you spend Christmas?

Went to church, bifurcating the gift thing.

Did you fall in love in 2011?

Yes. One of the best things that happened on Thanksgiving is that the Wife and I stayed in bed, TALKING, for over an hour, with no interruptions; what a luxury. Grandma had fed the Daughter and her cousins, and she could hang with them.

How many one-night stands?

As many as last year.

What was your favorite TV program?

The Good Wife, The Closer, CBS Sunday Morning, The Daily Show.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No, but I have a lot of contempt for Newt “let’s get rid of child labor laws” Gingrich, Herman “which one is Libya” Cain, and Rick “the third department is…” Perry, greater than last year at this time.

What was the best book you read?

Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Adele. OK, so I’m behind the curve; so sue me.

What did you want and get?

I wanted music, both singing and buying recordings.

What did you want and not get?

Some dedicated time to blog. It’s still catch as catch can.

What were your favorite films of this year?

The Muppets; and Midnight in Paris; and Crazy, Stupid Love.

What did you do on your birthday?

Not work. Went to an Indian buffet.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

“Fashion” is silly.

What kept you sane?

Writing; singing; listening to music; learning new stuff; and then I suddenly realized that the question ASSUMES that I AM sane, which may or may not be the case.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Gabrielle Giffords; Jon Stewart; the CBS Sunday Morning reporters; Scott Pelley of CBS News.

What political issue stirred you the most?

The gay marriage vote in New York. Actually watched the end of that vote in real time on TV.

Who did you miss?

I miss my mother.

Who was the best new person you met?

I “met” a few interesting folks online this year.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:

Do what you think is right; the rest of the world might catch up, or not.
Democracy may work, eventually.
Libraries are wonderful.
I have better relationships with some people I’ve never met face-to-face than I do with people I see nearly daily; that is fascinating to me.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest

-American Tune, Paul Simon

Legendary albums from a world dominated by kittens…Photo recreations by Alfra Martini of aymvisuals.
infoATaymvisualsDOTcom

N is for Normal

My biology/homeroom teacher told me straight out that my father was “CRAZY” for leaving his job at IBM.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, it was NORMAL for the mom to be home with the kids. My family wasn’t normal. My mother worked outside the home for as long as I can remember until she retired a decade and a half ago.

First, she was in the bookkeeping department at McLean’s department store in downtown Binghamton. Then she moved less than a block to Columbia Gas, where she was reportedly the first black person to work as a customer service rep. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she was a bank teller for First Union bank.

No one has ever suggested that my father was anything like “normal.” In fact, my biology/homeroom teacher told me straight out that my father was “CRAZY” for leaving his job at IBM of six years (that he hated), especially for a position with Opportunities for Broome, an OEO government job (where he thought he was making a difference). Government jobs come and go, but once you’re in the IBM family, you were set for life. (IBM decided it actually DID start having to lay off people in the 1990s.)

So, normalcy isn’t always that appealing. It’s been used as a cudgel to block all sorts of individual and collective rights.

Conversely, I AM sympathetic, as I watch the trauma over the worldwide economic crisis when I hear people ask, “When will things get back to NORMAL?” Likewise, the “crazy” weather generates a similar response. People are desperately looking for a sense of stability/sanity.

I have to wonder if “normal” is coming, or, as I suspect, we’ve come to a “new normal” of stormy weather, fiscally and meteorologically.

As Bruce Cockburn sang: The trouble with normal is it always gets worse – LISTEN.

Maybe Normal is just a town in Illinois.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

(Great Grand)Father

She saw him as this pillar of virtue, who crumbled as an icon for her.

There was a recent news story that reminded me of my family.

My dad’s maternal grandfather was a man everyone simply called Father. He wasn’t a Catholic priest, of course, but he was a deeply religious, pious man. I actually remember him; he died in the early 1960s when he was over 90. He was always decent to me, and my father adored him. But Father’s children clearly feared him. It was strange to me; he was a little old man, but my grandmother and her siblings, who were in their 50s and 60s were in terror of this diminutive fellow.

After he died, his house was cleaned out. And what do you suppose the relatives found? What they used to call “girlie magazines”. And booze. This was especially terrible for my mother, who had been married a dozen years or more to my Dad. She saw him as this pillar of virtue, who crumbled as an icon for her.

I’m not sure when I first heard this story – certainly not at the time – though I suspect I was a teenager. I DO know that my mother told of her disappointment of this man periodically for the next 40 years or more. I think this revelation really shook her sense of faith for a number of years.

Of course, the recent story that prompted this recollection was the stash of pornography found in the residence of Usama bin Laden. Or was it porn ‘stache? As more than one comic has remarked, USL’s off to meet his 72 vegans (David Letterman’s joke), or 72 Virginians, or 72 pick-your-word-starting-with-the-letter-V.

The new Mother’s Day reality

The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son.


Someone sent me this picture some months ago. I thought it was rather funny. Specifically, it reminded me of the Paul Simon song Mother and Child Reunion, which is based on a chicken and egg dish that Simon had at a Chinese restaurant.

Then my mom died, and it’s my first Mother’s Day without her. The visual is still funny but in a more melancholy way. Melancholy humor.

I’ve discovered that Mother’s Day ads REALLY irritate me lately, more than Father’s Day ads did 10 years ago. Maybe it was because it was longer between when my father died until the next holiday (August to June) than it is for my mom (February to May). But probably it’s because I get more e-mail solicitations than I did a decade ago, and they are more difficult to ignore.

The picture above is of my mother with her favorite son many years ago in front of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY USA; the house and the trim, BTW, were green. The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son. She was generally polite enough not to mention that I was her ONLY son.

Last Sunday, there was a Mass for Mom at the Mission San Diego Basilica de Alcala in San Diego. As my sister Leslie reported, it was “beautiful. It was the regular Noon Mass, but it was announced at the beginning that this Mass was for Trudy Green, mother of Leslie Green, who is a member of the Mission Choir.” I will be getting a copy of the event. “It was a packed house on a beautiful day.”

The bottom picture is of my daughter with her favorite mother. Carol is, among other things, a good mom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers, and all of you who have or had mothers.

 

Grief

You’d like to know following my own mother’s death, we have had a great healing.

I must say that my friends have been most helpful to me in dealing with grief. Apparently, I had said something useful to a friend when her father died, which was at some point after my father died: “Just so you know, I often think of (and quote) your message to me after my dad died, that grief is a non-linear thing. Still happens, in the most unexpected places.”

Well, THAT’S right. Besides the situations already mentioned in this blog, in the past couple of months, I’ve cried at:
* sad songs that have nothing to do with my mother, or death
* the mournful sound of train whistles
* an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”, where a young father dies before he can take his son to the big game; I believe he had a stroke, which might be a factor for me

Of course, the other thing that’s in play is that this is my LAST parent who is gone. As another friend in the same position noted: “Now there’s no one ‘above’ you. That’s pretty weird, huh? We miss our parents as individuals, but also for the roles they played.” And since both of my parents were only children, I NEVER had aunts, uncles, first cousins. I mean, my PARENTS had aunts and uncles and cousins, but my sisters and I never did. And I’m the oldest of my generation.

A doctor of one of my sisters recommended the book Orphaned Adult: Understanding and Coping With Grief and Change After the Death of Our Parents by Alexander Levy, printed by Perseus Publishing, ISBN 0-7362-0361-0. It shows up on this list of resources to help one deal with grief. The book is at a library affiliated with the Albany Public Library, and I’ve just received it on interlibrary loan.

Another friend wrote: “You’d like to know following my own mother’s death, we have had a great healing. And it has brought our family closer with annual holiday gatherings.” Well, maybe. Certainly, the pathologies of my family were less evident this time than after my father died.

I had forgotten how many of my Albany friends had met my mother at some point when she came up to visit. They all used terms such as “delightful”, “a lovely woman”. One of my old Binghamton friends wrote: “I always liked your mom. She was very down to earth and unpretentious. I loved her smile and how it always warmed up the room.”

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial