Jacqui...

My sister died 33 years ago today. She was 27 years old.

What is there to say about Jacqueline? That she was funny and smart. Quick witted and irreverent. That she loved The Beatles and Elvis Presley and the Kennedys. That her moods could turn dark on a dime and just as quickly make you laugh like no one else could.

Jacqui was a skinny kid. Boyish almost as a little girl, and flat-chested and awkward as a teenager. By the time she hit 20 she was striking and elegant. She was taller than the rest of us, with blond streaks in her hair and a peace sign around her neck--a sign of rebellion in the South in the 70s.

Jacqui died a violent death. For that, perhaps, every member of our family, even the ones who were born after her death in 1976, remember her with regret and sadness.

Today as I rode the train into work I tried to imagine her life had she survived. Jacqui's life ended with a single gunshot to her chest from a hunting rifle that was used to end her life. I thought of the bullet that entered just below her left breast and exited out her left shoulder, leaving behind a gaping hole that the coroner said measured some six inches in diameter. I mourned the children she might have had. The moments holding a newborn child that was her own. I wondered about the man she might have finally found who would have loved only her, intensely and without hesitation.

This year is the first in which my mother hasn't remembered what day it is. My sisters and I agreed not to remind her--for once a blessing in the confusion that has been eating away at our mother's mind these last couple of years.

Of my nieces and nephews, only one of them was born before Jacqui's death. The others, however, recall her as if they had known her as we did. Each of them, the girls in particular, have something of her in them.

Aleksandra got her spirit. Her fuck-you attitude. The first time I saw my oldest niece when she was no more than a couple of months old, I looked into her cracked-ice deep blue eyes, and I saw Jacqui's spirit.

Mary Elizabeth looks so much like Jacqui that at times I have to look away so that she doesn't see me wanting to hold on to her, beg her not to stray too far away from those of us who love her. She is the same age as Jacqui was at her death. Her personality is similar in some ways too, which, I think, may scare her mother, my sister, at times. But what M.E., as we call her, lacks of her aunt's is a sense of tragedy that was all around Jacqui by the time she was M.E.'s age.

Then there's my Jourdan who loves music the way her aunt did. Jacqui would have loved my daughter. She would have appreciated that Jourdan does nothing like everyone else, and that she does it with her own style and grace that is truly remarkable.

So another year has passed. For me, what breaks my heart into a million pieces, is that what is left of Jacqui is in our memories...nothing more. She didn't live long enough to leave anything tangible behind. Her belonginga are dispersed between her siblings, but her energy has faded from the "things" that belonged to her.

What happens when we are gone? When Jourdan's children have children, and the stories have faded, will it be as though Jacqui never lived?

That thought is scarier than death.

A Note for Virginia…

There is nothing quite so lonely as a house just after death. The hole that is left by someone’s passing is bigger than life.

I woke to a text message this morning “My dad died this am @ 3:30 as I held his hand in mine. Thx for all ur support. I’ll call later.”

Such simple words, but so full of a lifetime of emotion.

Virginia’s father was so like my own, that the flood of memories came pouring into my mind. Her father, like mine, was a strong figure in his girls’ lives. Virginia’s dad, like my own, was a father to females. My dad used to say he felt like he lived in a girls’ dormitory. Both of them put up a good fight to the end, and they both went out fearlessly.

When I remember my father’s passing, I’m proud to be his daughter. He chose to live life on his own terms. He wasn’t a cookie-cutter version of some Leave It to Beaver model of parenting. He smoked cigarettes and drank more than he should have. When I was younger I found fault with my dad’s brand of fatherhood, but I was fortunate enough to develop an understanding of him before he died, and by then I had grown to love the kind of father I had. He was the father I got, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Like me, Virginia is the youngest child in her family. Left to pick up the pieces left behind by our older siblings, we are kindred spirits. I was present at the birth of both her children. She took my only daughter to her first rock concert.

We used to sit in lecture halls together, scribbling notes to one another as our professor lectured on topics I can’t quite remember. Our scribbled notes though, I will never forget. We would write to one another about a hacienda in Mexico where we would live. We would drop out, have only people we loved there, and spend the rest of our days being our authentic selves. As the lectures grew more dry, the images of our haven evolved. We decorated it in bright colors and the scent of roasting onion and chiles and corn tortillas filled the air as we danced to Latin rhythms that only the two of us could hear.

Our hacienda became our code for freedom, and it was as real to us then as any dream could be.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Virginia that said “Hey do you think that
somewhere in time our hacienda exists?”

I do, Virginia, and I think both our papis are waiting for us there.

A Squirrel Named Amy

The images out of Iran are etched in my mind night and day as I've spent the last week glued to Twitter postings and CNN. I've seen a mother screaming at government thugs after they beat her seven-year-old son on the streets. I've watched the images of young women "confessing" on Iranian TV to crimes of being influenced by Western media, and bloodied students being dragged away to God knows where. I cannot help asking the question, "Where is our humanity?" How can humans exhibit such cruelty to one another?

Yesterday I waited in front of the Marriott for my colleagues to come down to ride to work. As I sat there by a fountain that seemed entirely too loud, feeling a gray fog over my heart from all that was going on a world away in Iran, I saw a very persistent squirrel standing by the front doors. As people came through the revolving glass panels, she darted in front of them, almost making one woman in heels trip to avoid stepping on her.

Then the squirrel saw a familiar face, a particular doorman dressed in a blue button-down who motioned to her to wait. He disappeared for a couple of minutes and came out with a handful of peanuts. He walked several feet away from the front door, and the squirrel followed. The first nut he offered, she took right from his hand, then scurried off to a grassy area where she enjoyed shelling it and eating the tasty treat inside. She, like me, sat watching passersby. We were people-watching together. Unlike me, she didn't have such grizzly images in her mind, and so I shifted my thoughts to her, watched her contentment, and let some of it be part of my own morning.

After a few minutes she walked over to the pile left by the doorman, grabbed another shell, and went back to her grassy perch to enjoy yet another nut. I went inside the hotel to ask the doorman about her. "Oh, you mean Amy. She comes here every morning for breakfast."

This morning I got downstairs early, ordered a coffee, and headed outside. I waited this time for Amy. Within minutes she showed again, eager for her doorman to bring her breakfast. We sat a few feet away from one another. In truth, I don't think she found me nearly as interesting to watch, as I did her.

I called to tell my daughter about Iran, the student protesters, rallies going on locally, and my experience with Amy. She listened intently, and finally said, "It's squirrels like Amy who make the world a better place." How true, I thought. Amy had reminded me of my own humanity.

The Art of Un-Friending

I resisted Facebook for at least a year after I signed up for an account. Sure, I'd respond to an occasional friend request or an email that got forwarded to my regular mailbox, but for the most part I couldn't be bothered. I really wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, and I also wondered if, in my 40s, it wasn't stupid to get all involved in an online network. Then one friend request at a time, I started seeing my contemporaries, women like me, friends of mine, who used it to stay on top of what was going on with one another, and I got hooked.

Next thing I know, my daughter and I are exchanging Facebook banter--smart exchanges that crack us both up. Then I get back in touch with a friend I'd lost touch with, and then another, and another... it was old home week.

On occasion I'd accept a friend request, but then regret adding the person. They were usually friends of friends, or friends of my daughter's. They might post stupid quizzes too much, or just stupid words. They might tell the world what they were doing at the granular level until I just couldn't take it anymore. I mentioned it to my daughter and she said, "So un-friend them."

Now I'm not going to lie. There's great power in being able to dispose of irritants so easily. It started with a couple of my daughter's friends I'd known since they were in middle school. Later I started getting rid of people I had befriended that I didn't know that well and didn't really care to know better.

The process was pretty straightforward, but Facebook is fairly clear that once you hit that little "x" next to someone's name, you better mean it. Before someone is un-friended you are asked, point blank, if you really want to delete that friend, and once you hit that "yes" button, there's no going back. They are un-friended. What I didn't know in the beginning, but later found out is, once you remove someone from your friend list, you are removed from theirs as well. In truth it's only fair. If I'm not forced to read their posts anymore, they shouldn't have to read mine.

But here's where un-friending can get tricky. If someone happens to notice that you are no longer on their friend list, the message you've sent is pretty clear. You have no desire to have Facebook contact with them. But really, it's even bigger than that. If you take someone off your friend list, that's it. You're done. You're not even invested enough to give them a heads-up.

So I got pretty cocky with that unfriending feature until I went to re-read a post a new acquaintance had put up the night before, and when I couldn't find it clicked his name in my inbox. To my surprise I got a pop-up that said to view his profile I "must" be friends with him. I had been unfriended.

The initial response was disbelief, but after clicking that link a half dozen more times I realized there had been no mistake. Let's face it, there is no real way for even a halfway conscious person to un-friend someone by mistake. It's intentional. So a half hour or so later after having gotten over a slightly bruised ego mixed with a few hurt feelings, I started dialing. To hell with even the online media. I wanted validation, and I needed it from my fellow-Facebook-friends.

Sure enough, each of them was horrified, but more than that, every one of them had their own story about someone who had waged an un-friending insult against them. One friend had been un-friended twice by the same person. Another told me she had been unfriended in the middle of a chat.

Whatever the story, we all agreed that there's something final about the "un-friend" that is different from even a breakup. I remember when Carrie Bradshaw got dumped via a Post-It note, and I can at least say that it took the intention of scribbling a few words that were specifically meant for her on a yellow pad, in that case. To be un-friended is more insulting than that.

For someone to un-friend you means you aren't even worth the effort of saying goodbye.

Measuring Mother

a post for Mothers Day, 2009

My sisters and I are watching her.

We gauge every conversation, then report back on how our mother is doing. She's been slipping over the last year, and now she has our attention. She has become small, frail, and forgetful. She sometimes looks lost and irritated when we ask her questions to which she knows she should have answers. Her gate that used to leave even me, the youngest, in the dust has grown hesitant and small. We compare stories, how she has reacted or not reacted to what we say to her.

Our mother is a rock for her girls. Her sense of humor and a sometimes batty personality might have thrown someone off unless they ever did business with Little Mary. When it came to money she was savvy in her younger years. In old age that became thrifty. Now she seems to deprive herself of things like a full refrigerator or a hearing aid that any one of her children would gladly pay for if she would agree to have her ears checked.

So we wait. We wait for a sign that we must move in some direction, though not one of us knows what that action would be. Sometimes I feel she's fading, like a veil of fog is surrounding her, and then in an instant the sun shines through and there she is, being Little Mary, being herself, being my mother, and me being her daughter.

Memories of a last chance

I woke in in the fall of my 43rd year, pregnant. How it had happened was through a battle of odds far beyond my mathematical ability as my husband at the time had relegated me to the spare bedroom for eighteen months by then. Still, sometimes he snuck into my room, and me, hoping to somehow win his affection, would quietly agree to whatever small intimacy he might offer.

It was September, and I was carrying his child. For me it was a mix of confusion and sheer joy at the idea of being a mother one more time. My daughter was 24 by then, and I had been so young when she was small that I missed so many of the wonders of having a baby out of my own fear of ruining her. I can remember thinking with every mistake I made she would someday be reclining on a therapist's couch somewhere saying, "and then my mother..." My paranoia and poverty had made her childhood a mix of fear and self doubt for me.

But well into my 40s and with enough stability to bring someone new in, the idea of a child sounded intriguing somehow. I had been madly in love with my husband at one time, and that memory lingered with images of a baby. I imagined a boy who looked like him. I imagined us being in love with this child, and the miracle of it all pulling us back together. I pathetically even imagined my lonely little guest room becoming a nursery, and me being invited back to sleep in my husband's room.

His reaction was somewhat less than what I would have hoped for. Once he congratulated himself on having living sperm capable of making a pregnancy happen, he started naming all the reasons why we couldn't. He wasn't sure. He hadn't planned for this. It wasn't the "right" time. Not once did he ask what I wanted, but it has taken me almost three years to realize this fact.

Much to his relief, the bleeding came. It started as a spot or two, and in a couple of days it became a flood. I drove myself to my gynecologist who thought I was being dramatic when I had called in. Once in the examining room he lifted the paper sheet and literally screamed. My doctor who was in his late 60s and had delivered hundreds of babies whose pictures lined the walls of the hallways in his office, screamed like a girl. "Why did you come here? You should have gone straight to emergency." He gasped. I said nothing as he called for an ambulance to take me to the hospital down the street from his office.

That night I wandered from my bedroom where I had slept most of the afternoon, out into the living room where my husband watched television. He had picked me up from the hospital and we had driven home in silence with the exception of one question from him...had I been afraid. I said I hadn't. What I didn't say was that I had been sad. That I still was, and that I would be for some time to come, maybe forever.

I sat on the love seat adjacent to the couch where he watched the screen. He asked how I was and I answered that I was okay. We sat together for a few minutes before he said quietly, "I've found an apartment. I'm moving out next week."

Thoughts on the body...

This morning in my yoga class I stood next to a girl 20 years my junior, and I couldn't help admiring her confidence. She wore next to nothing, but she wore it very well. Her brown skin was so smooth, and though she carried a bit of weight on her belly and had heavy legs, she was stunning. She even went so far as to wear one of those naval piercings that seem to dance with every movement of her body, a tiny jewel dangling over her tummy.

What I loved was her confidence. She looked at herself in the mirror with complete satisfaction. Every inch of her was pleasing to her own eye.

I never felt that at her age. At her age I would have come to class wearing baggy shorts and a big T-Shirt with the neck cut out--my silent tribute to Pat Benatar. I would have critiqued my body miserably, never appreciating that it was 26 years old and lovely.

Today at 46 I wear tiny shorts and a sports bra. It isn't out of showing a perfect body off, but out of necessity since the room is heated to 105 degrees and any more clothing would likely kill me.

But what I learned from the girl standing next to me was that showing off was perfectly fine. I worked at having that same attitude staring back at me in the mirror. The legs are good, I thought...not bad at all. No negatives, I heard in my mind, dying to point out that my breasts are falling and that my tummy is no longer flat...but no. I glanced sideways at my neighbor who looked out of the side of her eyes in the mirror at her perfect breasts, and almost winked at herself, I swear.

I looked back at me, and there I was. For an instant I did that side glance, happening to actually look at my profile in the mirror along the side wall. The ass has not completely fallen, I thought. In truth, it's not so shabby.

Throughout the class she was my inspiration. I loved the love she felt for herself, and it reflected right onto me. We did 26 poses in a steaming hot room, and at the end I lay quiet, grateful, and lovely in my own right.

Thoughts on writing...

What is it that makes us choose a life of creative endeavor? I would answer that often it isn't a choice. It is a calling that we answer at some point along the way, and it is a path that has as many twists and turns as the most mountainous journey.

Often I am asked how to become a writer. There is no secret to this. Writers write. It's just that simple. The process can be invigorating. It can also be painful. But if you are a writer, you will put pen to paper. You have no other option, if you truly are a writer.

In my life I have often thought how other paths would have been easier. I have even considered heading down one or two of them, but in the end I am left with the knowledge that what I have been given is a gift, and to not treasure it, to avoid it, to turn my back on it as if it never existed, is an insult to whomever out there is in charge. It is a gift like an unruly puppy that must be trained and groomed and loved and disciplined. Without all of these we have a barking mongrel.

So I write.