Letters of contrition

Dear Mom, Where do I start in asking absolution for the many times I just did not take the time to listen and understand. Leaving your home. Dad had the easy way out and you were left with the unbelievable hard part. Choosing what to take and what to leave. So many layers of memories, trivial things that hand no actual value, except to you. Things you so wanted us to value and treasure. Things we should ask to keep. Not so much to go to the remainder man or worse the landfill. I am sorry I was not there, that as usual a project was more important than sifting through the accumulation of 50 years and dispositioning every treasure. As so often you said someday I will be in your shoes. I did not understand or listen.

I am moving. Not a new thing. I have moved more times than I ever planned. This has been the longest I have ever lived anywhere and I brought everything with me from the last move. But, this time I have to cull down the everything. I was working on a box of miscellaneous photos. Just photos dumped in a box waiting for the day I had time to sort them out. I found pictures that included the big uncomfortable rocker in at least 4 houses. No one ever sits in it. It just balances out a corner. The dining room set and the same pictures in multiple houses in Canada, and Roanoke and Ashburn x3, Charlottesville and Charlotte. It looks better now that it is lighter. And the two eagle mirrors are gone, damaged in one of the moves. But the ladies and fruit sellers persist. I am not sure I even like them. I think they own me not the other way around. I just keep packing and moving them afraid that if I let it all go somehow I really will be without any past, I will be found to be shallow without substance.

I know I lamented the old worn end tables and the blond dresser and so much more, but I know now that it was for you proof that you had been a person of substance. Someone who had a family. Someone who mattered. I am so so sorry. Mea culpa, Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa. Your daughter.

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Mystery solved to garnet bracelet

A few years before Mom died she gave me a garnet bracelet. She said she never wore it. I had the crab claw catch changed out and added a chain. It was a mystery why she had the bracelet. Her birthday is November and that was topaz. She had several pieces of topaz jewelry. I asked her if she was sure since it was a pretty bracelet, and she said she just wanted me to have it. Today I was reading the National Geographic Christmas catalog and what should I behold - a handcrafted garnet bracelet from India. Slightly different design but close. Aunt Jane was a catalog shopper, she loved museum catalogs. Mom gave me the bracelet after Aunt Jane died and we discovered she had changed her will and insulted Mom. Ever frugal Mom couldn't just throw it in the trash. Why me? Maybe because Aunt Jane had added injury to insult to injury by leaving Lee and I as executors to her estate left to our other cousins. I have no idea why me, maybe I was in the room when she found it. But mystery solved that it was not a treasured item, but something despised but frugality kept her from throwing it out. Probably a good lesson for me to take to heart as I declutter and downsize this month.

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Deja vue again or conspiracy

I follow the news, read two newspapers in the morning, try to find some balance in the crazy news cycle and I worry. The insatiable 24 hour news cycle has taken on a life of its own. In the world is there enough news to fill 24 hours - yes. Does 24 hours of world news actually come over the airwaves? No. What becomes fodder for the talk is one scandal after the other, real or imagined. Add on top of that an FBI director channeling J Edgar and it is a potentially explosive mix. Exactly why today does the FBI think it is necessary to release 17 yr old files on Bill Clinton's pardons. Hmm let me think. Is it the same reason a Director thought it was Critical to release a fuzzy letter that email on Anthony Weiner's laptop might possiby be critical to be released in the midst of a contentious election cycle with less than 10 days to go? Years ago, when I still believed in Public Service as a higher calling and the good of the people worth fighting for, J Edgar had other Ideas.

I am a child of that era. When disagreement with a war no one understood, and a war where for the first time there were semi real reports "live" from Saigon in our living rooms in black and white that made my generation question what we were doing. When showing up at protest marches or supporting the cause put you on a secret watch list that resulted in your vehicle being called in for a rigorous inspection if you moved and registered in a "red state". The FBI or Homeland Security or NSA or any of the Alphabets are under a lot of pressure to keep America Safe from danger, home grown or imported. But I worry that the Director has crossed the invisible line between protecting US (a la Pogo) and playing Politics in a very dangerous way. There are no innocent actions, no Oops, at the Director level. You don't get to that position accidently without a great deal of savvy. Any person who thinks they can manage or own the Donald and he would be a more malleable leader is ultimately a fool.

 

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Apartment Living

Zena and I are doing airbnb this week. Location is good. Maintenance not so much but it is clean. Zena is on guard for people walking up the steps and the footsteps in the apartment above. Good news is she will walk up and down the stairs to the second floor apartment. Big surprise was no coffee maker but a drive through less than a mile away. Wish me luck tomorrow my first big day on the route. Coffee first, drop Zena off for her first day at new school, then to shuttle parking lot to the office. In the afternoon reverse course. Sounds so easy until you stir in traffic. Wish me luck. One week at a time.

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A dilemma

Once again I am caught by my own idle talk. Fifteen months ago I said I needed to go back to work, tongue in cheek, in repsonse to the acknowledgement that what I wanted to do with my free time took $ and for the first time since 1984 I didn't have a job and I had not won the lottery. So I put my name in for a project management job thinking, who would hire me, it was turning 68. And they did, and here I am. It is a time limited gig, ending at at Thanksgiving because of business rules that it is 18 months and you are our or convert to and FTE. I have been looking forward to Thanksgiving. I planned to start looking in mid November for something that would carry me to December 2017. My official retirement target date. When what should appear but a jolly old man and, no, no, no. A project Bruce has been working on lost a PM and is preparing to let the other one go. It is an opportunity for him to bring in his own team. Ray, a great guy I have worked with before is taking PM 1 job and I just interviewed for PM 2. The job is something I like doing and am good at, it pays way better and will be based in Atlanta and next fall in NJ, where hubby is now AND Ashby will be. So what is the dilemma.

My need to please. My current boss appeals to my smartest girl on the block drive. Please don't leave, she is marketing me to everyone on the team who may have an FTE opening in the fall. I am loved. How can I leave. Oh vanity you are my Achilles heel.

The other true worry is Miss Zena. For the first two months I will be in Atlanta a lot. Not full time but 4 days a week for several weeks while I build a team.

I think I answered my own question. I talked to my $ guy who recommended working until Dec 2017 and some downsizing so I can retire the way I want to. This gig is better than the projected so I can start a new furniture fund for the new abode. I am lucky to have options. I am grateful to be asked. So one more interview tomorrow and see if they actually offer me the job.

 

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Wednesday October 5

Wednesday is Jason's birthday.  It is a big milestone - 16.  Except we won't be celebrating it with him and his Mom and brother, he will not be blowing out the candles or ordering his favorite meal, dessert first.  He will be a hole in our hearts that we can never fill.  In My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult writes, In the English Language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parent who loses a child.  Through her character Kate, There should be a statute of limitation on grief.  A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after forty-two days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call your name.  That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork form the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it.  That it is okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.  See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it.  And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded.  

I wonder how he keeps tabs on us.  Was he sad that he missed us and sorry for the hurt he brought to his Mom and brother? Was he happy to see us talking to each other? Does he check up on us? Or has he taken on a new role of looking after other children who are hurt and afraid, children who feel that no one hears them.  If there are better angels, wings that brush against the faces of people so they instinctively know something or someone is there, I would gladly mourn him without any comforting breeze if I thought he had moved on as another of the better angels to comfort a child at risk so that one less mother or brother counts the days he has been gone like they used to count his birthdays.

Jason, in your honor I will eat dessert first on your birthday.  I will wish that you would wrap your Mom and brother in the shelter of your wings and when they laugh and feel guilty, remind them that you would have thought it was funny too.

Birthdays

Over the years I have discovered how differently people treat birthdays. Sadly it has only been the past few years that I gave it any serious thought. I grew up thinking that birthdays were special days but for me were also dangerous territory. To be "puffed up" or demanding attention because it was all about me were characteristics bound to land me in trouble. The correct answer to "is there something you want" was no, really I have everything I want, just come share my cake. So after almost 70 years of that answer I truly don't want anything. It is not a skill I have.

I know people who have birthday months. A woman I know is on a month long trip with her hubby celebrating a milestone birthday that features Mimosas for breakfast at a series of inns and B&Bs. Several people I know always take their birthday or birthday week off work. My Catholic WASP background cringes. For years I have worked on my birthday, for heavens sake it isn't a national holiday.

So now at 69, a year from the next big one what do I think. Mom said not to waste my 70's, she thought I had not taken advantage of my 60's, that these would be the last years I could physically do some of the things on my wish list and that when I was in my last days I would not look back with happiness remembering I always said, oh we can do what you want, I really don't have anything I want.

Dad always said a birthday isn't about you, it is about being thankful that you had the time and the love of the people you shared your life with. I never really understood what he was saying until he was gone. For me his birthday was one of the high holy days, no matter the distance or the effort you had to go home. Now I miss that call to come home, to put aside angers or frustrations for that one time. I miss him every birthday and I am sad that I have never been able to create that neutral zone that draws my children for one day to be together. Unlike my Dad who despite his flaws created a free zone that said his life had been well lived because he had loved each of us to his utmost, and that was enough. Every year when we came together I think it was because we didn't want to disappoint him, because we knew he loved us best.

So where does this all leave me? This is the big count down to 70. I believe i will live to see all of my grandchildren launched into adulthood. I will hopefully see my great grandchildren. Mom shared the unexplainable loss of Ashley's sister but never the heart wrenching loss of an older grandchild. I will have to answer for my part in failing Jason. I am the third generation if a dysfunctional family. Of sons and daughters who are separated by old angers. My grandmother was the Iron Madam who demanded, or cajoled a family to stay together. My Dad was the force that kept us together. But neither of them knew how to grow it in to the fabric of their off-springs fabric of being. For both of them it only lasted while they willed it in to being. I am not that strong. My greatest sadness is that the legacy I will leave is mine, of only children with other people who intersected with their lives.

So maybe my challenge is to break that chain, or at least to have each of my children know I loved them best. That every time I mark the passing of another year I am thankful for them and that they are my greatest accomplishments and my greatest mysteries.

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