DONE so far
GRAY ANATOMY
Since I began weaving in earnest, I’ve been rewatching television online, shows I’ve already seen, or tried to see, when they first aired. Monk. Psych.
Just now, it’s Grey’s Anatomy.
But I’m not really all that interested in these shows or even in telling about the weaving I am getting done, though that will surely be part of my post today. I’m interested to see what else…
Continue readingTOWARD JUSTICE
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King.
It’s raining. I made chili for our lunch. We ate chocolate chip cookies from the freezer. I got the April warp through the reed while watching the ninth season of Grey’s Anatomy, which means I haven’t seen any of these episodes. The mist over the ocean has turned the world evenly pale.
OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
Before the oncologist spoke to my family, the nurse had already requested that certain procedures be stopped. Daily vitals and turning to prevent bedsores. “We don’t want to keep calling him back if he is trying to leave us,” she said. I sat beside his bed pretending to myself that I was studying for a History final while my brother and mother sat in the waiting room.
I was not studying anything but my father’s breaths. They came further and further apart. I could not help looking up when the pause seemed to go on for minutes. Sometimes I would say softly after a long intake of air, “It’s okay, Daddy, you can go.” He had already been in a coma for days when they chose to let him go.
Continue readingMAJOR AWARD
Seriously.
In case no one else has shared, the come-back of the year:
Continue readingYEAR THREE
I think of March 9th as the start of the pandemic because 9 March 2020 was the day I stopped seeing people, the day I began taking precautions. Gary or the news might tell me we started on another day, in my head it was the 9th. I had shopped in Portland, played Scrabble with a friend, entered stores unmasked. And I stopped doing those things. I stopped hugging. We did not see our family for almost a year.
I know people who considered the pandemic restrictions mere inconvenience. They continued to hold family parties, go on cruises, fly for work and vacations. My husband and I didn’t do most of those things. We invited our sons and their families to visit once we were all vaccinated and boosted and tested. At other times we wore our masks indoors except at home unless we could keep yards away from anyone. We have eaten at an indoor restaurant four times in two years, and while I can’t say I regret taking that risk, and am very, very grateful to be healthy. I won’t be doing it again.
I am retired. I have more choices than most.
This winter I began putting monthly warps on my loom. Above is February. March is below. At twenty skeins each, I hope weaving monthly warps will work through my stash. (But you know I still order yarn, so… )
It is useful work and also avoidance, because I do not want to think too much about avoiding disease or missing people.
Continue readingSMALL
I was often the smallest person in any group, often the youngest too. That age difference changed decades ago, but I am still surprised to discover I am the oldest in a group. I am still often the smallest (my friend Madora is smaller than me, but she’s the only one).
I have fantasized about living in a smaller space at least since our sons became teenagers. Our home requires work and money to remain healthy. Retirement and not having pets has allowed us the time and money to do that upkeep, but it requires more attention than I will be able to spare. I could copy and paste the list of all the upkeep expenses coming for our beach house, but I’m pretty sure that’s a bad idea. Suffice to say that as I watched my father die of cancer and my mother age, I considered how best to handle my own aging.
Continue readingGOOD CRY
My mouth fell open the first time someone asked if my newborn was a “good baby.” How do I answer that? Of course he was good, but people really weren’t asking about goodness. On any scale of goodness, all babies are good.
What they really wanted to know was whether my baby cried or slept. I got the same question when my second baby was born. By then I knew to answer simply: Oh, yes!
My mentor during the final term of my MFA program warned that he didn’t much care for crying in stories. No tears, please.
I have generally been what people call a “good student” because I will almost always do what is asked. So I cut tears from my stories in 2007. I literally went through my fiction and delete, delete, delete.
COLOR
I think about color. I think about color often.
I am sitting up in bed as I write, and before me is an abstract expressionist painting by a friend of my aunt Marcie (Marcia Smith Aron). Marked 1959 and “Floral Growth” on the back, it is tied to memories from my aunt’s house in Berkeley when I was a young child, and later to her San Francisco house. Bright with egg yolk yellows and intense pastels. Mom said the painting had been held by her sister for safe keeping. After my aunt died and the painting came to me, I traced the artist. By then, she lived just a few blocks away from where Gary and I first lived in Big Pink in the U District of Seattle. She had turned to calligraphy, become famous for it. Midori Kono Thiel was sorry to hear my aunt had died, delighted her painting was still alive, but no, she didn’t want it back. So that colorful oil, flush with memory, hangs across from our bed in Portland.
How art travels when we are having fun.
Continue readingLOSS
Blue skies and pouring rain have alternated all day today so we did not get our walk. We were too busy yesterday and needed a break that not involve wind-driven rain. It was meant to be a peaceful day. Driving rain and sunshine pouring past my window at the same time. And then… the news.
Dr. Paul Farmer, the subject of Pulitzer-Prize winning author Tracy Kidder’s most famous book Mountains Beyond Mountains, has died. I taught that book for years, linking it to the Pacifica Projects that all students at my high school were required to complete for graduation. Service and research were significant aspects of that project.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 