helplessly loving my daughter, from too far away. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
I can have the shittiest day, the worst run of things happen to me, the direst disasters befall me, and while I will stumble and bemoan my fate and all that, NONE of it is as bad as when something happens to my kid. Period. And it doesn’t matter how old said kid may be — I have a feeling that if something bad befalls my kid when she’s, oh, 70 years old (and I am 93), it’ll still be the worst thing ever, much worse than if it happened to me.
A string of bad things came into my daughter’s life today, bam bam, two in a row, and I feel kind of inconsolable. I feel every one of the 1,744 miles between us. She is suddenly the little 4-year-old girl in my heart, the one who’d crawl into my lap, the one who would cry into my shoulder, the one whose trouble I could solve, and I wish I could solve the things that came to her today. She’s strong, and kind, and she loves her family, and she always tries her very best. Always.
She’s the one who has made special little treats every day this month and put them in her husband’s lunch, for a 2-week stretch of Valentine’s Day love. Sweet little things, treats that took time and heart. Just because. She is the one who makes sure our family traditions are carried on, because they mean so much to her. She is the one who always makes me laugh with her dry and wry sense of humor. She is the one who wants to be our family’s solid, strong anchor. She is also the one who came to NYC last year (a year ago, yesterday) and brought her brother back into our lives. She is the one who is obstinate, and stubborn. She is amazing, my first child, and I never wanted any bad thing to happen to her, ever. Of course she’s a human in this world and so bad things have happened to her from the beginning, and I’ve hated the guts of every single bad thing.
So in my impotence, I share this terribly alone feeling with you, other parents, who certainly know what I mean.
having stuff to look forward to helps so much!
I hate dates. I enjoy prunes, but hate dates. So there.
But that’s not what I meant to write about, that’s not the meaning of “dates” that brought me here; I get so distracted by words I dare not dip into the dictionary to look up a word, because one leads to the next and then a good hour is gone. Ditto encyclopedias, or what passes for them now.
Good grief, digressions! DATES, Lori, what were you going to say about dates? Oh, right. So I didn’t get to go on my date with Will a couple of days ago because I was felled by a mighty migraine. I get them irregularly, and they’re usually handled quite easily with a sumatriptan inhaler (god bless you, GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Imitrex). Back in the 1980s, when the only delivery method was an Imitrex injection, I took those but they inevitably left me with a different kind of crushing headache. The inhalers were an improvement in many ways — no need to inject yourself (a biggie), no crushing chest pain as the medication moved up the body, and no injection headache. The worst thing about the inhalers is the extremely nasty taste as the remnants of the spray drip down the back of your throat. Still, now and then I get a migraine that requires two inhalers and that does leave me with a very bad rebound headache, and that’s what happened this go-round. I completely lost yesterday to the weird strangeness of the post-migraine / post-too-much-migraine-medicine fog.
I’m hoping Will and I can recreate our date this coming Thursday; that’s our plan, if he isn’t scheduled to work. But tonight I have a dinner date with my friend Temma, at a Thai restaurant she introduced me to in our neighborhood. That’ll be fun, and I know I’ll leave feeling much better. Sunday I’m going to see Richard III at BAM, and the following Friday my husband and I are going to see the Cloud Gate 2 performance. Lots of great dates coming up in my immediate future — also, youngest daughter’s 21st birthday, the anniversary of getting engaged to my husband, Valentine’s Day, and lots of other shows and performances in my calendar. It’s been a kind of hard slog the last couple of weeks, so having these wonderful dates to look forward to really helps.
Today I made an official declaration (to myself) that the pity party is now over! Enough already. It’s so easy to indulge self-pity — at least it is for me — but that just keeps it going rather than exhausting the well. So I open the blinds (figuratively), let in the sun, make a big cup of tea, and turn my eyes outward. The view is much sunnier, even in winter. 
oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day — i have a wonderful feeling, everything’s going my way [today, anyway!]
Merry Christmas, if you celebrate! I had an absolutely lovely day, beginning with gifts and a sumptuous breakfast, then a videochat with all but one of my kids, who is on her way home from Israel today. So me plus 5 on the videochat, so very wonderful. I’ve spent the rest of the day knitting and watching movies, and I baked a batch of snickerdoodles and two loaves of cranberry-orange nutbread. It’s been a happy, good-smelling, good-eating, good-moments day. Here is a variety of images from the day:
TEXANS: SIT DOWN. Pecans for $18/pound. I KNOW. That's insane. They're supposed to be free, on the ground in your backyard. I never dreamed I'd pay $18/lb, but I did today, for the cranberry-orange nutbread. And it was good.
beautiful yarn from Katie, my knitter daughter. 50% alpaca, 50% wool. Aran weight, three skeins. What to make?
The tree outside my window; how are those two branches still green, on an otherwise barren tree?
along with other gifts, my husband surprised me with a bowl filled with my favorite fruits -- strawberries, cherries, red grapes, and clementines. LOVE (him and the fruit).
the shetland lace bib on my audrey sweater -- hauling butt now!
So that was my lovely day. I have a new external hard drive to fix up, several new prints courtesy of Marnie to get framed, a bunch of great food to eat, and all while wearing my new waiting-for-Santa flannel pajama pants from Katie. I have another post I’ll write tomorrow about traveling a long way from one Christmas Eve to another, but that’ll wait. Tonight’s dinner is shrimp crusted with buttery garlicky breadcrumbs and a giant gorgeous salad. Me happy, and me hope you happy too.
xo
Lori
i’m dreaming of a white Christmas….
a mid-chat screen grab
We couldn’t all be in the same place this year, though we’re twosies: my daughters and their husbands are together in Austin, and my son and I are here in Manhattan. We have big plans to all be together in Austin in 2013, but this is the 21st century and different ways of doing things are possible. So we had a Christmas Eve chat, all together, and we’ll do it again in the morning, after all the presents are opened.
That expression is SO ME, I’ve learned. I frown more than I ever realized, but I usually do it while I’m grinning. Try that! The frown is about listening so hard, but I’m usually pretty happy, and when I’m looking at and talking to all my kids at once? PURE-DEE JOY, y’all.
Watching White Christmas, smelling the delicious pork ropa vieja my husband’s making for our dinner (along with mashed potatoes and green beans), and planning to dash over to St John the Divine at 10pm to listen to a little music and smell the incense. Happy happy Christmas Eve, y’all.
happy birthday to my dad.
Today my father would’ve turned 75 years old; he died when he was 45, so old[er] age and him don’t go easily together in my mind. I was 23 when he died, so he was almost twice my age, which seemed old to me, then.
I didn’t know him, really; plenty of people don’t know their parents as human beings, as people other than ‘parent.’ I didn’t grow up with him; I didn’t live with him after I was 10, we didn’t see each other at all after I was 14, and I had just met him again when I was 23. I had a few months to get to know him then, but knowing him was not possible, no matter how much I may have wanted it, because he was drunk every waking moment.
When he was a tiny little tow-headed boy, he loved to play behind the couch, quietly, with his little cars. His mother told me that story once; he kept to himself and was quiet as a mouse because his father was a rampaging, furious, out-of-his-mind alcoholic who beat the shit out of him and everyone else in the house. Just as my father would grow up to do, and to be. He was sickly as a child, with what they then called Bright’s Disease – inflammation of his kidneys. The bad thing about this was that it meant he couldn’t eat beans, which were the staple of their diet because they were so terribly poor. When he was a teenager, he and his friends would run through the corn fields, imagining themselves robbing the Sinton, Texas banks on horseback. He longed to escape.
the man on the far right is my step-grandfather, who was a sweet man. my dad on the far left, his mother holding me
And he did escape, but it was from the frying pan and into the fire; he married my mother, who was still a high school student (though not for long…she dropped out and ran off with him). And presto, 9 months later, I was part of the scene. They were too young and too troubled, and too ill-prepared for the real life they found, and the rest of his life was terrible – magnified, I imagine, by how terrible he made the lives of his kids.
the newlyweds, plus me. they'd been married a year -- they both look kind of stunned and dazed. She's 18.
He fancied himself a Tragic Figure – initial caps, important –and he was. He was not much more than the next tragic embodiment of rage in a long line of such men, and he couldn’t escape the generations behind him. But he loved books, and reading, and he was smart. He worked as a draftsman at an architectural firm, where he was valued, even when he was too reliably drunk to keep his job. He had a child’s style of romantic notions; he loved his dogs so much, and bought an old Chevy pickup truck just to drive them around, because he thought they loved riding in the back of an old beat-up truck.
that's me, draped in his hands. he was just barely 22
Although I suffered greatly at his hands, I loved him so much, and thought he was beautiful and elegant, and I was his. He called me Scout after we watched To Kill a Mockingbird (and he probably considered himself as Atticus, which is a mighty funny stretch); he also called me Pete and Dawn Ann. Ours was a nicknaming family, obviously. I don’t remember what I called him when I was a child – daddy, probably – but usually I referred to him as Frank….though not to his face. So now I stumble when I think of him, not knowing what to call him in my thoughts.
he was 25, she was 21 -- that's me on his lap. don't they look older than they were?
I’m not writing to talk about his death, but since he is dead, his life is complete now, start to finish, so it’s part of the story. He didn’t live long, only 45 years, and he didn’t fulfill what he might’ve, and he didn’t leave any kind of positive legacy behind (well, my life does continue, and it has great value). He kind of fulfilled the circumstances of his birth, to a young mean woman who hated him and hated that he’d been born, to a young mean man who hated him as much as he hated himself, to a life of poverty and cotton gins and liquor and misery. His birthday is usually a haunted day for me, but this year it’s not; this year, I just think of who he was, what his life was like, and I wonder who he’d be if he were alive. When I try to think about that part, I get stuck because I have to imagine a very different person than he was. My poor dad.
near the end of his life -- probably 2 months before he killed himself. he's in the dark blue shirt.
No one was ever glad he was born, and it’s kind of complicated to be grateful that he was born, but I am. I’m sorry his life was so sad and hard, and I’m sorry he made mine so sad and hard, but I’m so glad to be here, and I couldn’t be, without him. So on my dad’s birthday, I wish a happy birthday. I wish a happier birthday than he ever had. And I reaffirm my joy and gratitude at being in this world, filled with everything.
sisters, sisters / there were never such devoted sisters ~ irving berlin, ‘white christmas’ (1954)
I grew up with a sister, though I haven’t really seen her all that much (or known her, for that matter) since I was in high school, and I graduated in 1977. Once every several years she’ll reappear with a bang, we’ll speak for a couple weeks, and it’ll be all over again. When we were very very little, we were quite close, as is often the case in a troubled household. She was my refuge when I had nightmares, which was often; even though she’s 2 years younger than me, I’d run to her room and climb in bed with her for comfort. I was born in 1958, and she was born in 1960, so this movie was part of our childhood and we sang this song over and over, with our arms around each other, singing to each other.
From the movie White Christmas, of course. For two tiny little girls from scrubby old Texas, the idea of snow and Christmas and holiday cheer was as far away as the moon; farther, maybe, because we could see the moon out our bedroom windows.
here we are, sitting on VERY hot rocks in our front yard -- junior girl scout (me) and brownie (her). sisters, sisters, devoted sisters at that time, anyway
Memory lane. A nice place to visit now and then. And now….I’m sure the bathroom floor is dry, so I can resume my housecleaning. Yay?
thank you for helping me have such a wonderful birthday!
I had perhaps the best birthday of my life yesterday. Honestly. And since I love my birthday so much, there’s a lot of competition for the “best birthday so far” title. Here’s a rundown:
We were off to the subway at 9:45, to go downtown to City Winery in Soho for my klezmer brunch. There was a jazz guitar player at our station, playing my song (Somewhere Over the Rainbow). It was so beautiful, resonating and echoing in the subway, it made me cry and feel like it was a serendipitous start to my day. Oh — and the day itself was stunningly beautiful, bright blue skies and sun. Then on the way downtown, at one stop a band got in the train. . . mariachi!! I love the mariachi bands, they’re my favorite. They were wonderful, my cheeks were hurting from grinning so hard. Two for two, my favorites, oh what a day.
At the restaurant, the receptionist was downright mean — who cares, it’s my birthday. We arrived at 10:30, and the music was to start at 11, so we ordered our food. Despite what the menu said, our sour waitress said they don’t serve espresso drinks, just plain coffee (maybe she was tired of disappointing everyone since all around me people were trying to order cappuccino). Who cares. Coffee is fine! I ordered a frittata with onions and goat cheese; my husband can’t stand goat cheese, so I get it when I’m out. Score! My song, mariachi, and goat cheese. Winning, what a birthday!
The food arrived just before the music was to start, which made me so happy. The trouble was that the band didn’t seem to be ready. One guy would be on the stage, occasionally two, rarely the same two, and never the whole gang. The restaurant had loud music playing on the big speakers and the band members would do warm-up runs at the same time, and there was a huge group of very loud people off to the side, all shouting at the same time. Cacophony. 11:10, no music. 11:15, 11:20, 11:25, 11:30. No music. And still, the entire band was never on the stage at the same time. Finally, at 11:40, they all gathered on the stage (music was to begin at 11, remember!) but they couldn’t get the sound system set up. The sour waitress came to refill my cup and I guess she was just as startled as I was to see the whole band on the stage, because she poured coffee all over the table and on my elbow.
Still. My birthday. The band finally started playing at 11:45. Here’s what I have to say to the leader of the band: DUDE. Just because you play the clarinet, that does not mean you’re playing klezmer music. It was jazz, and not just jazz, but the kind of jazz where everyone is playing their own thing, whatever they want, and the bongo drums were too loud on top of it. And also, dude? Klezmer bands don’t have bongos.
But I didn’t care too much. Breakfast is my favorite meal to go out for, and it was a gorgeous day. When the 3rd song still wasn’t klezmer, we cut our losses and headed out for a walk to Chinatown, to buy shrimp. Such a beautiful day.
I got emails and facebook posts from friends all over the world, several friends sent me patterns through Ravelry (more on those in coming posts!), all three of my daughters called me and touched my heart, I saw my son after dinner and he touched my heart, and my husband just made the whole day very loving and special. I had an incredible dinner, orange shrimp, my mouth still smiles remembering it. AND I got a funny story out of the klezmer brunch debacle.
So I begin my 53rd year honoring my commitments to myself. I woke up and wrote my morning pages, 750 words more or less; I ate breakfast, and then wrote for an hour and a half and finished a scene for my novel; I did my strength training routine (yay, back in that saddle!); and at noon I’m heading out for a very fast walk in the sunshine, and to drop off a couple packages at the post office.
Lots to say, still, but lots to do! Gotta dash.
put the lime in the coconut and you feel better / put the lime in the coconut drink ‘em both up / put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning (listening to this with Katie right now!)
So life goes up, and things seem mostly good or even great, and life goes down, and things seem to be falling apart — nothing new there. I happen to be in an upswing right now, and it’s occurring to me how subtle the details can be, but how important they are to the overall temperature. Right now, the big things that contribute to my feeling that things are right in the world are travel-related. My vacation to Vietnam definitely helped, and now my time in Texas is a big contributor (of which more in a minute). But I woke up to two small-ish communications this morning that were much more boosting than their word count might’ve suggested.
I’m in a book group and a poetry group, and I just love them both for different reasons. My book group is filled with such interesting, wonderful women — the book is often secondary, and while I regret that a lot, the women are just so wonderful I don’t usually mind not talking about the book. I do mind, but gee they’re so great and I only get to see them once a month and I inevitably come away from the night’s meeting feeling kind of high and happy. My poetry group is also filled with interesting, wonderful women (and one similar man), but we stay tightly focused on discussing poetry, which thrills me. Really, how often in your life do you get to sit and talk about something like that — whatever it is that you particularly love? We actually talk about the poems we bring or write, we deconstruct them, plumb their meaning, see them differently. The poetry group members are very very smart (as are the book group members) so it’s high-wire fun. I brought the woman who organized the poetry group into the book club and last night was her first meeting — unfortunately, I didn’t get to be there, since I am here in Austin, but she wrote me and her note was one of the boosting things for me this morning. Her appreciation of the women in the book group, and her thanks for bringing her in, made me feel so great. My life is so rich with all these wonderful people, women (and one man) whose lives and intellect I get to share so easily.
The other communication that gave me such a boost was a comment left on a previous post. The commenter’s blog-related point spoke to her pleasure in reading my writing, which she characterized as genuine. Well! For anyone who writes, is there a better thing to hear? I love to write and have writing-related dreams that I constantly pull off the shelf, gaze at, and then put back on the shelf. The idea that someone takes pleasure in my words is so thrilling, it’s like an energy boost that shoots my little rocket into the higher levels of space. Her comment reminds me too that we are all kinds of things, big and small, to others and we’re not even aware of it. I mean something to my friends that I’m not all that aware of — you do, too. And you mean more to me than you know, you who read and also you who read and comment.
Now, to Texas. Yee-ha! As always, when I got off the plane at the Austin airport, everything in me settled down and relaxed as I walked through the terminal. The people look SO familiar. I did’t know any of them, but I might have! There is a Texas look, familiar at least to Texans. In New York, the general look (big old over-generalization coming) is Italian or Jewish. I’m neither. But I do look like the people here, and it’s more than bone structure in the face. And then they sound like me, too, double great! Not many have accents as thick as mine, but Texas shows up in certain words pretty reliably. Also, if you’ve never flown into Austin, you should know this so you can quickly plan a trip: LIVE MUSIC in the airport. There’s a stage set up and the band that was playing when I arrived was pretty great! Also, the food in the airport is not the normal airport fare. No Chili’s or Cinnabon or that pretzel place. Instead, it’s local restaurants, really good Mexican food, barbecue, Schlotzsky’s (a local sandwich place with uniquely great bread), a local ice cream joint. You step off the plane directly into Austin sounds and Austin smells.
The flight from Chicago to Austin was kind of neat. You know there’s that very friendly, midwest, Chicago way of being — people just seem not to be guarded, and to smile easily? Well, combine that with Texas and you have friendly squared (y’all do know that Texans are very friendly, right? DO NOT go by our politicians, please, who are assholes). There was so much laughter in the airplane, loud friendly joking by the flight attendants, it helped my weary bones, I’ve got to tell you. And then when we started our descent into the Austin area, it was shocking to see how dry and brown everything was. Nothing green to be seen anywhere, so sad and tragic. So much heat and fire, so little rain, so much loss.
The best thing of all, of course, was my daughter and her husband waiting for me. I ran to them and just felt such overwhelming joy. It sucks not seeing your kid very often. You spend all those years knowing nearly everything about them (though boy can you be surprised to learn the things you *didn’t* know!), being able to look at their faces every day and have a sense of how they’re doing, being able to care for them when they’re sick or tired or blue, playing games with them, laughing or fighting with them…..and then suddenly you see them a time or two a year. I can’t stop staring at Katie, and I don’t want to do anything more than be near her, look at her, listen to her, live in the midst of the life she lives while I’m here. Katie and Trey took me directly to Chuy’s for some delicious TexMex (which you cannot get in New York. No TexMex, delicious or otherwise), and then we came home, to their beautiful and comfortable home filled with Katie’s cozy touches. I’m a happy mama right now. Life is good.
these are two of my favorite people in the whole wide world: Katie and Marnie, my girls.
This is the whole point with this daily gratitude thing, I guess. Sometimes you have to make a hard effort to find something to be grateful for, and that’s the very time it means the most. On easy days, on happy days, gratitude abounds but it’s just part of the scene, like the lamp on the table. But on the other days, remembering (seeking, searching, finding) something to be grateful for, those days it makes a difference.
Today I am grateful for my beautiful daughters. OK, so that made me start crying and feeling grateful, not just for them but for being in the world no matter what else happens, despite whatever small rocks may be in the path. They are in the world, they are my daughters, we love each other, we watch out for each other, we have each others’ backs. They make me smile, nothing delights me like seeing their faces, seeing their names in my email inbox, hearing their voices, hearing about their lives.
One of my dear dear friends has one child, a son. He’s grown, he’s everything to her, she adores him and delights in him and her life is infinitely richer because of him. One day I was talking about my daughters — one was coming to visit, maybe, I don’t remember — and she said that she doesn’t know what it’s like to have a daughter, she wishes she had one. And of course I absolutely positively adore my son, he may be the sweetest gift of my life, I’m not sure how to say it. Daughters and sons are both wonderful, obviously, and they’re different — at least mine are. In a lot of ways the relationship is identical; there’s the same delight, the same preciousness, the same connection and closeness, but still, something is different — for me, anyway.
So thank you God / universe / great wheel / blind luck / good fortune / whatever for giving me these two wonderful human beings. Fine human beings they are, and they’re my daughters.
Dec 2004, here in NYC. Marnie always thinks it makes a more interesting photo when one person is doing something different. Since this picture was taken, the three of us have gotten married.
love is all you need. really, that’s true.
The most wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, eloquent women in the world.
How did I get so lucky.
all you need is love / all you need is love / all you need is love / love is all you need. that, and a big enough bandwidth for streaming.
Since I was coming home from Turkey on Actual Mother’s Day, my kids and I pre-arranged a deal where we’d celebrate Mother’s Day today. So I thought that meant I’d chat on the phone with the girls, as usual, and this year (unusually) I’d also get to talk to Will. I was overjoyed.
Despite our arrangement to wait, the girls did a variety of things on the actual day: facebook posts, emails, phone messages, etc. Of course that made me so happy, the bonusness of it.
Turns out, my very sneaky kids had something else up their collective sleeves. When I saw Will for his birthday yesterday, he was somewhat strangely insistent about seeing me for breakfast this morning. I had made plans for a day full of errands; still, Will was really wanting to see me, even 5 minutes, he said. So I said OK, let’s meet at 8am, and I went home and rearranged my plans. No big deal.
Yesterday afternoon my doorbell rang, and these were delivered, from my kids:
in addition to all the lovey stuff, the card said they hoped the flowers made my day a little sunshiney. THEY DID!
So, OK. My daughters live a time zone earlier than me, and typically sleep in on the weekend. My son didn’t get to bed until 3:30 am, and sleeps in on his days off. That’s the context.
I got to Starbucks this morning at 8am, where Will and I were meeting to figure out where to go for breakfast, and he was on the phone, and on his laptop. He held up his finger and asked me to hang on. No problem: mahjong. I love mahjong, and any opportunity to wait is an opportunity to play mahjong guilt-free. After a few minutes, I learned what was going on. Since all I really want is for all 4 of us to be together in the same place, they had planned to all be on video chat, so we could at least be together virtually. It didn’t work, I think because Starbucks has bandwidth limitations on their free wifi, but what an amazing gift. Of course it meant my daughters were up before 7am, and my son was up early enough to get to Starbucks 30 minutes early, to get the whole thing set up.
my sleepy sleepy daughters a screenshot from Marnie's computer.
Of course it would’ve been brilliant for us all 4 to be together like that, with me sitting next to Will, but this plan was the huge gift in itself. We’ll do it, we’ll work it out and do a 4-way video chat, and I really look forward to that.
This was my best Mother’s Day, ever, and I’ve had some very nice ones. One year, when they were little, I woke up to “All You Need is Love.” Remember how it opens with a fanfare? Well, my kids were walking into my bedroom, Katie holding a pillow with a little tiara on it, and they had breakfast in bed for me. All you need is love. That’s right.
one of the top 5 weekends of my LIFE
My little idea for “weekend’s best” was to post one or two photos, but I indulge myself this week because it was one of the best weekends of my entire life. Why?
- Marnie came to visit.
- She and Will saw each other for the first time since July 2008. And it was good.
- I got to have dinner with two of my kids at the same time — now I just need to get us all together at the same time….hard, since we’re so far-flung. But I’m going to do it, somehow.
- Marnie and I went shopping and I got this very cute little style going, now.
- Marnie helped set my life on a different course with a strength training routine, and lots of conversation about it. I get it now. I’m ready to go.
So here are some photos that capture some of the above (all photos courtesy of Marnie; click to enlarge any of them). It was wonderful.
-
- will, smiling at marnie
-
- always with their heads together. always.
-
- will at highline park, wearing the hat Katie knitted for him
-
- another cute outfit! me happy, facing 2 of my kids and missing the 3rd really badly.
-
- bad Easter candy debauchery. you can’t see the Peeps because I already ate them.
-
- heads together. again. always. i love this one.
-
- marnie at highline park
-
- one cute outfit!
-
- sib play
-
- smiling at her brother — she has such a great smile!
Weekend’s best, of the best weekend.
oh happy, sunny day. oh how i’ve missed you.
I had breakfast with Will this morning, which made me so so happy. We see each other every week (he only lives a couple blocks away from me), and it’s usually over a meal or a beer. Starting my day with him was especially wonderful. And you mothers out there, you’ll get this: he still smells like my boy.
Will refuses to have a straight photo made; I have literally hundreds of photos he took at arm’s length with every possible facial expression you could imagine. Plus extreme close-ups, some of which freak me out if I accidentally run across them, like his nostril. So I asked him if I could take his picture, and at the very last second he copped this sneer. Too bad, because his smile is gorgeous.
bagels & lox, a cafe au lait, and my son. sneering. c'mon, will, show me your beautiful smile.
And then, not to make so damn much out of the simplest hat in the whole world, here’s the finished hat, on my head. It’s the dreaded “shot in the bathroom mirror” pose. And this will officially end my discussion of Marnie’s hat.
so slouchy! i love it. marnie wanted it because she has long hair and often wears braids, pinned up like katie davies (needled) does. this should cover her.
adorable, fast, fun, and well, adorable. not me, the hat. though i am fun.
I have loads of work to do so this is quick. I decided not to do the Knit Crochet Blog week, though i did it last year and had a blast with it. I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it this year. But I do look forward to reading everyone else’s posts!
Happy Monday y’all. I hope it’s as sunny where you are as it is in NYC today. Glory. Bliss. Sun.
forget your troubles, c’mon get happy…
Light’s coming, spring is coming, happier days are coming, it’s all just right there. I can see it, and I can tell that it’s just beyond the shadow of tomorrow, and you know? That’s enough! Here are some things that are making me very happy right now:
- Marnie’s husband Tom knocked it out of the park yesterday, in celebrating her birthday: yesterday he made her breakfast in bed, and mid-morning he showed up at her office with a tissue-wrapped mystery birthday box and a tulip and a box of gluten-free cookies. When she got off work at 12:30, he took her to the butterfly sanctuary to give her summer warmth (they live in Chicago), then to private ballroom dancing lessons, then to the movies for the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, followed by a sushi dinner, ending with a night at the Belden-Stratford hotel, a historic place. Nice way to celebrate my daughter, sweet son!
- Tomorrow I’m heading out to the Delaware Water Gap for a day trip, to help me not sit around dwelling on the historical details of the date for me. I also bought two pots of daffodils, which have always made me so happy — who can be too sad when they see daffodils! What amazing things they are.
- My daughter Katie is hilarious. She keeps a blog but it’s private, so I can’t just give you a link but I’ll paste her most recent post here, to give you a laugh too:
Dear Adele,
I hate you. My husband and I were watching you on Letterman earlier this week performing “Rolling in the Deep” from your new album, 21. He asked, “Why is it called that? Is she 21 or something?” To which I replied, “No way! She’s much older than that.” I looked it up. You’re not. You’re 22 now. I hate you. You’ve won 2 Grammys and are widely accepted as being awesome, and you’re only 22. Your videos seem to be saying, “Hi Katie, I’m Adele and I’m 6 years younger than you. What have you done with your life?” Well, Adele, I organized my files yesterday and today I’m going to clean the kitchen.
I hate you. Stop being so good.
Sincerely,
Katie
I can’t read that without cracking up, no matter how many times I read it.
- Ongoing scheduled and spontaneous meetings with Will — twice this week already, including last night’s spontaneous get-together at a neighborhood pub. Very sweet.
my frequently-worn handknit sweaters: Dark & Stormy, Peasy, and Mondo Cable Cardi. Unending love and adoration and disbelief, my hands made all that fabric, one little stitch at a time
ignore the fact that this photo looks like a catfish, this is the current state of Will's black socks. I stupidly just tossed it in my bag and a bunch of the stitches fell of the needles. OOPS. Not happy making, but the picture makes me giggle.
So what’s one difficult little day in the midst of all this? Tomorrow will come and go, and it’s embedded in all kinds of things, all kinds of life all around it. I always know this, it just sometimes gets kind of dark in here.
happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear sweet marnie, happy birthday to you!
She’s 26 years old, today (exactly half my age!). She’s an artist / weight lifter / thoughtful smart loving funny creative sweet tough genuine amazing authentic person. Marnie has been special from the moment of her birth (and I’m not just kidding here, or using hyperbole or just being her mom) (though I am her mom) (and real proud of it) (and of her too) (because she is a fine, fine human being). If she loves you you’re a very lucky person. I’m a very lucky person. Happy birthday, Marnie my love.
she loves photobooths
she loves nature (though she prefers ants to turtles)
she used to LOVE being fancy and adorable
she loves irony -- (as in, wearing this pink fuzzy sweater ironically)
she loves Tom (me too)
she's one of the smartest people I know (Smith 2006), and i happen to know a bunch of very smart people so that's saying something
and she's freaking aDORable on top of it all
she loves cows
y'all remember this one.
and she loves me.
i’m exotic, are you exotic? exotic exotic exotic. what a bizarre word.
When I was younger, I was always envious of nearly everyone else — it seemed like other people had interesting heritage (not me), interesting cultures (not me), or interesting places of origin (not me). I felt like the antithesis of exotic: a plain old white girl from Texas, mutt heritage, store brand white bread and bologna. With Miracle Whip.
But every place is exotic to someone from another place; it’s just hard to see one’s own exotic context, because kind of by definition exotic means otherness. When you’re the default – a plain old white girl – very little feels otherly. Some time in my last decade, I realized that I may not be Moroccan (pick your exotic other of exotic choice), but I do actually have an interesting heritage that’s exotic to other people. Meet Molly.
molly lisle ribble, my great-great grandmother
Her name was Molly, but of course she was just known as Mrs. Sam Ribble. Anyway. This photo accompanied her obituary, and you notice how she seems to be wearing a nightgown? I’ll get to that.
Molly was one of Young County’s oldest pioneer citizens, according to her obituary in the Graham Leader. She was the daughter of a pioneer family, born June 9, 1866 in Nebraska. She married Sam Ribble when she was 16, in a small church in Gooseneck, just outside Graham. They rented land for several years before Sam bought 160 acres of school land, and acquired 160 more that he traded for a wagon and horse and a six-shooter. They built a log cabin on the land — the lumber came by wagon train. When she died, she was survived by 4 daughters, 4 sons, 23 grandchildren, 39 great grandchildren, and 13 great great grandchildren.
So here’s the funny thing about the nightgown. Sam always wanted to have a baby in the house (as you see, they had 8 kids). I don’t think Molly was as keen on always having a baby in the house, but I also don’t think she had much say-so. The last baby, Etheline, had down’s syndrome (that’s how I’m referring to it; the family always just called her a mongoloid). So Molly delivered Etheline, handed her to Sam, and said “there you go, now you’ll always have a baby in the house. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”
Molly stayed in bed for 50 years. She was just fine, perfect health (she lived to be 94, after all), I think she was just making a point and boy she stuck with it. She’d sit up if a visitor would take her picture — “a polaroid,” as she’d say — but otherwise she couldn’t be bothered. If any little thing happened to fluster her, she’d pat her chest over her heart, in a kind of circle, and say “get me an aspereen I’m having a heart attack.” She never did have a heart attack, of course, and she finally just died in her sleep of being 94 years old.
My mother’s real mother was a full Cherokee who gave her up because she was a girl; she’d only wanted a boy, to live with her in the woods. My great-aunt shot her husband as he was crawling through the kitchen window to kill her. My other great-aunt’s husband went to the store for smokes and never came home. I have a relative named Homer who was a hermit who lived in a hollow near the river outside of town; he’d be spotted now and then, skulking around the edges. That’s all pretty exotic.
It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more. ~herman hesse
It’s all really old news, because there aren’t photos for the past few years that have Will in them. The photos below are bittersweet, and serve to simultaneously make me happy in remembering those times, and make my heart ache for all that came after. Until this happened, my kids were very very close. When they were together, there was always hugging and laughing. Marnie and Will were especially camera-happy, so I have literally hundreds of photos of them, heads together, making faces. And literally hundreds more of just Will making faces.
We all went through a lot together — their dad’s years-long absence, our eventual divorce, the devastation and wreckage of that heartbreak, my being immersed in 9 years of school in the midst of their school years, the hard hard work of making it all happen, the sacrifices and depending on each other, the tough things that happened that caused us to cling to each other in various combinations, the hurts that are best understand by us within this little family, the too-frequent moves. The sense that the only roots we had were within each other, no roots to places or wider family, really, just us.
Hard memories, sad memories, happy memories, dancing memories, sweet memories, just regular old family stuff, you know. Ours was not one of those easy families, and our relative poverty meant there were no busy schedules rushing to this lesson and that, and summer camps, and sports. As a consequence, my kids learned independence and hard life lessons, and they’ve told me since (with a real kindness) that it was hard but they’re grateful for it all and they feel like they got important things from our lives. When I look at the array of photos, I see an awful lot of deep love and affection and care.
I have no idea what I’m doing, still to this day. I don’t know what family means, what “bonds” mean, how tightly they hold, how far they should stretch, what is too far, is there such a thing as too far. I’m making it all up as I go along. My childhood taught me What Not To DoTM but it turns out that knowing what not to do doesn’t really inform you very much about what to do. Hmm. I’m on a highwire and there’s no net and I just have no idea. I look at the way we are managing our way through this, the way we’re fighting so hard to not let that bond with Will go, and I think we somehow got it right, even as it went so terribly wrong.
3.5 hours until Scrabble.
-
- i LOVE this one! look at Will’s expression, enlarge this one. katie’s holding her newest baby cousin
-
- i adore this picture of him, sun on his beautiful face
-
- long ago and far away — texas, ~2002
-
- ready to be a WheatThins model
-
- rocking the bikini
-
- goofballs.
-
- marnie and will helping out the family jugband
-
- marnie and will laughing, thanksgiving 2004
-
- LOVE
-
- christmas 2003. marnie was getting ready to leave for India.
-
- ALWAYS with the goofy faces, those two!
-
- will hearts boys, according to his t-shirt. :)
-
- will and me, visiting NYC 12/04 – i had no idea i’d ever live here
-
- marnie and katie
if you lie like a rug, and you don’t give a damn / you’re never gonna be as happy as a clam
Katie is on her way back to Austin, having done what she came to do. Tomorrow night I have a date with Will, my son, for coffee and Scrabble (at which time he will kick my ass, as he always does. Last night he texted me with this warning: “doldrum = my opening bingo when I destroy you at Scrabble.). Two weeks ago, this wild dream would’ve been too wild to dream.
Today, I opened my tiny NYC mailbox and inside was a puffy envelope — unexpected, what?! Tammy, my friend from Connecticut, mentioned and photographed in the pages of this blog, sent me an adorable little project bag she made, in bright spring colors. The sweet note commented on how she knew the winter had been getting me down. What a thoughtful and sweet friend, sending a thoughtful and sweet surprise.
It is indeed a big old goofy world. It’s one way for a while, then it’s the opposite way for a while. If you don’t already know John Prine, you might enjoy this little video of him singing the song he wrote that gave this post its title. He said his mother liked the little sayings — eat like a bird, quiet as a mouse, etc., so he strung them all together into this song.
If the rollercoaster is flying you down right now and you’re squealing whee!!, enjoy it! If it’s slowly and painfully climbing you up a hill that’s so steep you can’t even see the top, hang on. I’ve thrown my hands in the air and tipped my head back to yell WHEEEEEEE!
will i wait a lonely lifetime, if you want me to, i will.
will and katie, 6 years ago
Strictly speaking, of course, that photo is not from this past weekend, but it summarizes my weekend in the best way possible. Katie is my oldest daughter (she lives in Austin), and Will is my only son (he lives here in Manhattan). The story is long and terrible and makes me prone to hours of tears, but Will has been hiding himself away from our family for the past 5 years. He hasn’t spoken to any of us since he appeared at Katie’s wedding, 2.5 years ago. Estrangements are always complicated and this one certainly is, but I promise that you can’t imagine the pain of it, unless your child does such a thing. The only thing worse is death.
Katie came to town Saturday in order to find Will and do a kind of intervention; she had letters to read that we’d all written, and she made a big photo album. She was not going to let him keep doing this without being forced to hear just how much it hurt us. I thought it was a mission doomed to fail…..find him? Here in NYC? Even that seemed impossible.
But find him, she did (she’s a force of nature, that one). And talk to him, she did. And listen, he did. And last night I got to see him, and sit next to him, and touch his face. We cried and laughed and cried, and it was awful and terrible and wonderful. Katie’s here until Wednesday, and they’re spending much of tomorrow together. Will and I will make a date to see each other again. It’s too much to hope without caution; we’ve all been so hurt, we’re all taking care of our hearts, but I’m the mother so I’m in all the way, no matter what happens. O happy happy day….
how far could you go, if you really really REALLY had to?
I was going to include “cutting off your arm” in the post title but thought better of it. Last night I watched the movie 127 Hours, with James Franco. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. I always think I don’t like him, but every time I watch him I really really do like him; maybe one of these days my automatic opinion will match my learned opinion. Anyway, it’s the movie that’s about that real-life guy who was climbing all by himself and his arm got crushed by a giant rock, and he eventually had to cut off his own arm to save himself and get out of there. GRIM, right? I had little to no interest in seeing it — (a) I had my automatic opinion about James Franco, and (b) I thought who wants to watch a guy cutting his own arm off, not me sister.
It was amazing. It was just amazing. I couldn’t speak when it was over, for quite a while. It’s a visually stunning movie, with wonderful editing and sound editing, but the thing is that it is really about what it’s really about. I mean, it’s not about a guy cutting his arm off (though he does). It’s really about facing yourself, facing life, facing it all, in a very real and rare existential moment. I get extremely irritated by people’s whining about “but what does it mean, it has no meaning, blah blah blah” the luxury problems of spoiled wealthy people. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t true existential moments, moments of facing the abyss of what it really all means, and what it means to be here, and that in some fundamental way it’s just you and that moment, alone. And that’s what the movie is brilliantly about, and it’s brilliant. James Franco is brilliant. The soundtrack is brilliant. Everything, I completely loved it. It’ll take a while before I can watch it again, and I hope it stands up to a second viewing. You’ll want to have your knitting with you so you can look away and concentrate on something else during some of the more difficult scenes, but you shouldn’t let them make you miss seeing the movie.
So what’s the sweater part of the post title? Two unpleasant things:
- I’m frogging my Eve’s Rib Shrug. It’s just been such a pain in my ass the whole time, and it’s not going to look the way I thought it would in the wholly misrepresentative photos (i.e., it won’t be as long as it seemed and the actual shape isn’t flattering to my (*cough cough stomach*) figure. I love the yarn too much to let it languish. So yay to making a decision but damn to all that time wasted. I’ve learned that Carol Sunday’s way of writing patterns simply doesn’t work for me, and it’s not worth it. It’s a shame, because her designs are often truly gorgeous.
- I’ve also decided with regret that I’m just not young enough to pull off the Laar sweater. There’s the ample bosom situation, but more importantly there’s the fact that I’m just too “mature” for the style. And I’m tired (see above) of putting in so much time and ending up with something I don’t like. So now I’m considering my sweater queue and yarn I already have in my stash, and as I promised myself, I’m taking my time with the decision. No more leaping without looking. My regret isn’t that I’m too old for that particular style, it’s just that it really is a beautiful little sweater and I have such lovely yarn for it. But one thing ravelry teaches us is that there’s always another sweater.
My precious oldest daughter Katie arrives in NYC this evening, and she’ll be staying with me until Wednesday. She’s on a family mission of import and urgency and probable sorrow, but it’ll be so good to have her here. I don’t get to see her….or any of my precious kids….nearly often enough. Intermingled with the moments of difficulty that bring her here will be lots of love and laughter, plenty of knitting and stash-pawing, some movie watching and card playing, probably, and lots of good food.
OH! Also, just to feed any schadenfreude out there about the high life in NYC: this morning I woke up and went to the bathroom only to find brown water dripping [again] from the ceiling, running down the pipes, dripping down the wall, splashing in the windowsill, bulging the ceiling. The guy who lives upstairs has bad plumbing and we always have to pay the very icky price. So happy waking up, Lori! Just in time for company, too. NYC, you’re such a charmer.
katie’s a knitter! she really, really is.
Maybe it’s because I think knitting is hard to learn; I learned to crochet when I was 5 and it was so very simple, but knitting was awkward and scary. Took me a long time to learn how to relax with it. Or maybe it’s because I’m a really crappy teacher-of-knitting, who knows. Whichever, I haven’t had a lot of success teaching people to knit – although Marnie picked it up very easily, as she does with all creative endeavors.
So I was a little anxious about teaching Katie to knit, since I’m not historically very good at it, or something. But y’all? She picked it up from the get-go. I should’ve had more confidence in the fact that (a) she’s very creative, (b) she’s my kid, and (c) her paternal grandmother was a great knitter, and Katie’s a lot like her Mama G.
doesn't she look like an old pro????
the yarn is Bearfoot, by Mountain Colors, apple green (Katie's color!)
garter and stockinette - her first-ever knitting!
I’m just blown away by her speed of picking it up. We got the yarn at Hill Country Weavers – Bearfoot, by Mountain Colors. It’s her learning swatch, so she’s getting her knitting and purling down, and I’m about to teach her how to kfb and bind off, and then she’ll start her first project, the Gathered Scarf. I’m just amazed at her; I came out of the shower this morning and looked down into the living room and saw her sitting in a chair with her feet up, just knitting away like an old pro.
I’ll have a huge wrap-up post when I get home, full of pictures and stuff. For now though, I’ll close with a picture of one of my dear ravelry friends, Kelly. We met for coffee yesterday morning and it was just wonderful. Only the first meeting of many to come, that’s my plan:
me and Kelly - look at her fantastic cardigan!!! she wore it because she knew how much i love it. hi kelly!
We’re making bread and chili today, and hanging out and knitting. Tonight, handing out candy to little tricksters, and tomorrow morning, I fly home. It sure went by too fast.
wedding-eve happiness.
This is the detail that transformed this wedding from a great wedding to a great wedding with a hilarious story. Coleman, the owner of Maplewood Lodge, wrote Marnie on Wednesday and told her that the Lodge would still be great for the wedding, but there were baby bats in the Lodge (it’s a bumper bat season, apparently) and the bat removal guy kind of disappeared, so they should not sleep at the Lodge. Coleman rented a number of hotel rooms at his own expense for Marnie and Tom and a couple of their guests who might have been planning to sleep in the Lodge.
Well. As you can imagine, Marnie was kind of crushed. She didn’t want to spend her wedding night at the Super 8 (or wherever…any place would be a letdown compared to the gorgeous Lodge). Coleman spent the night there Tuesday night, just checking, and sure enough, around 4am, a little bat flew within inches of his face.
Instead of the hotel, when we arrived Coleman said that he’d rented a house in town – a very old house, huge, just for them. At his expense. Well, that’s very sweet, right?! So we went over there last night and *cue the organ* (which happened to be in the living room) it was ca-reep-y. Like, very very VERY creepy. It had that very old grandmother smell (not the rosewater or talcum powder smell), and I just expected Norman Bates’ mother to be in that top bedroom at the top of the stairs. There were random stairwells in random odd places, going up and down. There was a full scary basement – empty, except for a small child’s wooden WHEELCHAIR. I was totally creeped out, but Tom and Marnie and I stayed there last night. During my hot and sleepless night, I was sure I kept hearing music, but I think it was my imagination.
Tonight Marnie and Tom are just going to take their chances with the bats.
We got to the Lodge this morning and started the decorating. I sewed the buttons on Marnie’s dress after doing the final fitting….it’s really beautiful on her, the dress. Really. I can’t wait to see it on her tomorrow evening.
the tent, pre-decorating
Marnie and her little twinkly lights
Marnie & Tom, Katie & Trey, setting things up
For weeks, Marnie sewed these muslin banners. There are ~52 of them, each approximately 5 feet long. I threaded a length of heavy twine through the top of each one, so they can be hung from the rafters of the tent, along with the twinkly lights.
this is a LOT of muslin, i'm telling you
When I left, the kids were finishing up hanging the banners; they’d hung the lights; they painted the table numbers on the mason jars, which they’ll fill with wild flowers tomorrow. We’ll all gather tomorrow morning and spend the day together, hanging out, playing games – bocce ball, croquet, tether ball, volleyball, kickball maybe, frisbee, board games, a little hammock-lying-about, a bit of swinging, some forest-wandering, and a lot of talking. Around 4:30 or so, Tom and Marnie will head into the Lodge to get ready, and around 5:30 or so we’ll gather for photos. Then we’ll all walk over to the prairie — pip, yes, it’s something like a huge meadow, filled with flowers — for the wedding ceremony.
Then a wonderful dinner under the tent, speeches of love about family and these great kids, a bit of dancing under the stars, some marshmallow-roasting over the firepit, and the end of a happy, happy day.
There are moments where it’s all worth it. Where everything that led up to it, all worth it. All the hard stuff forgotten, the tough spots valued and let go of, the love and cherishing at the front of your mind, and you know. It’s all been worth every second.
in which the world turns in mysterious ways.
OK: So I was born in a very small town in Texas (Graham, population 7,477 when I was born). I later went to high school in a slightly larger town in Texas, Wichita Falls. Outside of Texas, no one has heard of these places. (I just learned that Bud McFarlane, Reagan’s National Security Advisor, is from Graham. Not that that’s anything to brag about.) So that’s the background.
I’ve been talking with one of my authors who lives in Australia. One thing led to another, and …. get this. He grew up in Graham. He graduated from high school in Wichita Falls. And we share an uncle. His uncle is my great-uncle, so I don’t get the whole cousin structure, but maybe we’re 2nd cousins once removed?
I stood with my mouth open, reading his email on my Blackberry this morning on the subway platform. We knew the same people. We’ve been in the same living room – Jim Vernon’s living room, right across the street from my grandfather’s house. In Graham Texas. My author got a scholarship to Stanford, and off he went – B.A. from Stanford, PhD from U Minnesota, then off to Australia for a professorship. But he and I both know that living room on the corner of Colorado Street in Graham Texas, because it belonged to our shared uncle.
This has left me shaking my head today at the wonder and mystery of life.
Also, I’ve arranged to trade my madelinetosh jodhpur for a skein of the same yarn, but in a blue-green called cousteau:
madelinetosh eyre light - cousteau colorway
I’ll mail mine to her, and she’ll mail hers to me, tomorrow. I liked the jodphur well enough, but think I can do more with the cousteau. Pretty, right?
in which I hurt my toe. like, real bad.
My daughter Marnie came to town this past weekend, and except for the toe problem and the canceled flight, it was wonderful. She had a bit of trouble with her flight being delayed by an hour or so coming in from Chicago, but she arrived late Friday night tired and happy….and I was deliriously happy to see her. Our primary mission: fit the wedding dress.
Sunday was supposed to be bad weather, so we thought we’d do a bit of downtown prowling Saturday morning, then come home and do the wedding dress business. So off we went to the Village, more or less, planning to wander semi-aimlessly and enjoy each other, and the beautiful day. We got out of the subway and into the sun, and headed a block away, to the Maypole party. This post is photo-heavy, so I’ll put in a jump to save you, if you want to skip the scene. Lots more, after the jump.
CLICK to continue reading if it weren’t for the toe... Continue reading »
Popular posts: