a poem I wrote for my sister, Maridell, on New Years Eve, 1994.
On just another new year's eve,
my sister and I,
talk about god and psychics
on the phone.
From her end I hear her let out
a puff of smoke from the cigarette she's just
inhaled--her last for the year
And I take a sip of sweet red wine, while
the dog on my lap nuzzles her
cold wet nose under my hand
for just a little more love...
Alone, in the wee small hours
we wake to quiet ghosts that watch us sleep,
echoing voices of endless chatter.
But on the line we are together,
my sister and me,
on just another new years eve...
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tiny Foreigners
I take compliments. I take them in whatever form they come. I take them even if they are likely a ploy to get something from me and even if they are insincere. I take them even if they are insane.
Today I took a walk to a coffee shop by my house. Just before crossing the street, a small framed man with a cigarette stopped me and said, “You are so beautiful.” I didn’t wait around to see if he said this to the next woman passing by, but instead looked into his eyes and said, “Thank you.” I meant it too.
One day I was riding the train into work and this young man said that I looked really nice that day. I was a little taken aback…after all, I was wearing my sensible shoes and had my hair pulled up into a knot to keep it from getting in the way of my computer bag strap. I sheepishly thanked him, and he went on to tell me that he was new to the area and was looking to make friends. I wished him luck and got off at my stop. A week or so later I saw him again, this time talking to another middle-aged woman. He told her that she looked really nice that day and that he was new to town… Since then I take the compliment and run. I don’t need to know if it’s not unique to me.
Last summer I was in line at a McDonald’s and a man told me he loved the red nail polish on my toes. I was wearing flip-flops, no makeup, and my hair was a mess. I figured that might just be the only thing he could find to compliment, but it was no less sweet.
At 47, kind words are not taken for granted. I’ve lived on the planet long enough to know how many words are spoken unkindly. I have been around long enough to understand the fight, and while I now know that I can’t take the negative all that personally, I am not willing to give up taking the positive words straight to heart.
I texted my daughter this afternoon right after my latest brush with appreciation.
Me: Walking on Grand. Tiny foreigner smoking a cigarette says, “You’re so beautiful” out of nowhere. It’s always the tiny foreigners.
Daughter: You have a gift. Very lucky.
Today I took a walk to a coffee shop by my house. Just before crossing the street, a small framed man with a cigarette stopped me and said, “You are so beautiful.” I didn’t wait around to see if he said this to the next woman passing by, but instead looked into his eyes and said, “Thank you.” I meant it too.
One day I was riding the train into work and this young man said that I looked really nice that day. I was a little taken aback…after all, I was wearing my sensible shoes and had my hair pulled up into a knot to keep it from getting in the way of my computer bag strap. I sheepishly thanked him, and he went on to tell me that he was new to the area and was looking to make friends. I wished him luck and got off at my stop. A week or so later I saw him again, this time talking to another middle-aged woman. He told her that she looked really nice that day and that he was new to town… Since then I take the compliment and run. I don’t need to know if it’s not unique to me.
Last summer I was in line at a McDonald’s and a man told me he loved the red nail polish on my toes. I was wearing flip-flops, no makeup, and my hair was a mess. I figured that might just be the only thing he could find to compliment, but it was no less sweet.
At 47, kind words are not taken for granted. I’ve lived on the planet long enough to know how many words are spoken unkindly. I have been around long enough to understand the fight, and while I now know that I can’t take the negative all that personally, I am not willing to give up taking the positive words straight to heart.
I texted my daughter this afternoon right after my latest brush with appreciation.
Me: Walking on Grand. Tiny foreigner smoking a cigarette says, “You’re so beautiful” out of nowhere. It’s always the tiny foreigners.
Daughter: You have a gift. Very lucky.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Remembering Tom
The father of my only child died this year. He died in March, the day after my birthday. The same disease that took Lou Gehrig almost 70 years ago had taken my first husband. In those last months before he passed, I believed that the day he died I would write these words. But that day left me empty of words and it has taken me nine months, the same amount of time as it took to grow his daughter inside my body 27 years ago, to finally find the voice to speak of Tom.
I saw him for the last time one year ago, just before Christmas. Although we had been divorced for many years, and by then he had been married to his third wife, Rosaria, longer than he was married to me, our bond remained strong over the years. It is perhaps the making of a child together that sealed the deal for us all those years ago. Or perhaps it was the fact that I lived with him for 8 years and that I had given him the majority of the decade of my twenties. He was sixteen years my senior. He told me what I liked, what I was afraid of, and who I was. And for a very long time, I believed him.
Nonetheless, while we hadn’t stayed in constant contact in the last decade of his life, there remained a friendship and a history, and most importantly, a lovely child who had grown into a beautiful, strong, amazing young woman. Jourdan and I went to see her father on a Friday. We called his oldest daughter, Cristina, to meet us there, but we beat her by about a half an hour. The three of were prepared to say goodbye based on an email I received from Tom’s best friend, telling us it was time. Jourdan and I got there first, and what we found was that Tom seemed hunkered down, determined to stay. His body had all but betrayed him. Six months earlier he could use a laminated card with the alphabet and numbers to spell out sentences to us. Now he could no longer move his arms or wrists. The movement of his fingers was unsteady, and his head had to be supported by braces so that he no longer nodded in agreement or negation at us. Only his eyes moved, yet somehow they told a story of someone not at all ready to go.
There were no decorations in his house, a Southern California tract home that had been purchased in happier times but now seemed ridiculously large for two people, one of whom was actively dying and the other who had already checked out on some level. Rosaria spent as much time as she could working in the hair salon they had built together. She was trying to keep it all together financially, I’m sure, and who am I to judge her for not being able to stand seeing her partner waste away the way Tom had. She made sure he had good care through the VA, and she tried to maintain a positive appearance for the world. She and my daughter’s relationship was never what Tom would have liked for it to be, and they had gone to blows a few months before during Tom’s recent stay in the VA hospital.
This visit we came armed with only our willingness to put that behind us. When we arrived she pulled Jourdan aside to try to either confront her or talk through their disagreement, and I was left alone with Tom. I watched as my daughter and Rosaria talked in the backyard, and from what I could tell it looked like Jourdan had decided to take the high road and make peace. I turned back to Tom. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, before our eyes met. And then it was just us, Tom and Claudia, as we had been for almost three decades. I told him I was sorry this had happened to him, that I wanted him to know how much his daughter loved him, that her heart had been broken a month before by a breakup, but that she hadn’t wanted to burden him with it and that she needed his support, she needed her dad. His dark brown eye looked worried for her, and he was there, being a parent to our daughter. I told him that she spoke at large 12 step meetings, that she was brilliant and funny and that she reminded me of him all those years ago. I told him I was once again sober. His eyes smiled, and the sliding glass door opened to Jourdan and Rosaria coming back in from the backyard. They had resolved their issue.
Later when Cristina arrived she just looked sheepishly at her father. They had more than a decade of distance between them, and had only forged a reconciliation over the last few months during that same hospital stay in the VA hospital. Jourdan and I had encouraged Cristina to come. When we entered the room, his eyes lit up. He motioned frantically for Jourdan to hand him the laminated card of alphabets and his fingers moved quickly as Jourdan and I articulated what he had to say to his oldest daughter, “I a-m s-o s-o-r-r-y” Cristina broke down, the tears springing from her lovely light brown eyes. They were the words she had waited a decade to hear, and even though her ears heard her sister and I speaking them, they were no less sweet. Her father had been given the gift of making amends for being a shitty dad to his first child. In four words he said he was sorry he left her mother when she was still a baby, that he had been absent for most of her childhood, and that his shame at not supporting her better financially had made him appear not to care for her. He said that he should know his grandson, now twelve years old, and he should have been there for her during her divorce and after when she’d barely been able to support herself. He said he should have cared for her, nurtured her, loved her better.
By Christmas she had accepted his apology, and was left with the emptiness of knowing that apology was the last real interaction she would ever get from him. He had nothing left to give. She sat next to me, determined not to give Rosaria a chance to build even a fraction of what I had with Cristina since the first time I laid eyes on her. I was nineteen when I met Cristina for the first time. She was nine. It was the night before my wedding to her father, and he dropped her at my parents’ house to spend my last night single with my new stepchild. We slept next to each other on the sofa bed in my parent’s TV room. Cristina had long light brown hair. She was timid and sweet, and I loved her instantly. On the day of the wedding she got up early with me. A girlfriend of mine had sent a breakfast service with a handsome waiter who came to my parent’s house to deliver room service. Cristina sat at the table with me, and we at croissants with butter and jam and drank orange juice. After breakfast we walked, holding hands, to the park where the ceremony would be. We talked easily. She told me about her mother, her new little sister. She told me that she was happy her dad was with me.
Over the years we walked together through childhood, adolescence teenage years, and her courtship and wedding to Karlos. We had our challenges, but always there was a bond between Cristina and me. I remember being in the room when her son was born and knowing the pain of each contraction as if it were my own. I loved her from that first moment when she was a little girl meeting her stepmother, and that has never changed. But the years passed and geography and our own personal paths caused us to drift apart.
We came together with the knowledge of Tom’s illness. Jourdan sought her sister out on the Internet, finally found her on MySpace. I let the two of them find a way to one another. We came together after years of losing touch that day at the Veteran’s Hospital.
That day at Tom’s house last year, I saw with his two children. We watched as his male caretaker maneuvered his body, trying to make him more comfortable. The television was on, and he occasionally looked beyond us at whatever was on the screen. Above the TV there was a photo of the two of Tom and Rosaria doing what had brought them together more than a decade before, dancing. While it was a beautiful moment, captured in a happy time, I wondered if it made Tom sad to see the image of his former self. Maybe it gave him peace. I’ll never know. Rosaria tried to be gracious, and I attempted to bridge the Grand Canyon sized gap between her and her two stepchildren—a task that I don’t think I succeeded in.
When I remember Tom, I remember the man I married who was funny and smart. I have more nuggets of Tom-isms—small pieces of advice that he would offer that were genially useful in maturing during my path here on Planet Earth. I also have memories of his sadness, his feeling that he was never enough. He passed some of that on to his girls who seem to question themselves more often than they should in my mind. They both have a lot of him in them, but I believe Cristina and Jourdan got the best of their dad.
As for me, I loved Tom—maybe too much. For most of our romantic relationship, he wasn’t ready the kind of love I felt for him, and by the time he understood it, after several flirtations with affairs and one that developed enough that I gave him an ultimatum that it was either her or me and Jourdan, Tom committed to our marriage. By that time I was done. I was still so young and I wanted to experience the world. I wanted to go back to school. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do the things that a 27 year old does.
What I remember about Tom is the laughter, the friendship. This Christmas Jourdan and I have pretended that the holiday didn’t exist. No tree. No presents. No turkey. Both of us felt that it just wouldn’t feel right celebrating her father’s favorite holiday this year. Tom loved to buy gifts for his girls. For many years, even after our divorce, Tom did Christmas morning breakfast at his house. Jourdan and I would open our gifts to one another, and then pack up with her dad’s presents and head over to his house. We can smell the coffee brewing from the street and hear Christmas music blasting from his stereo from one of the local radio stations. He would have orange juice poured, and wine glasses—their only use in truth since Tom had been sober for many years by then—filled with strawberry yogurt. We would eat pastries and open presents. Sometimes Cristina came, or my mother. He was thrilled on those Christmas mornings to have his home filled with love. He felt validated somehow on those mornings…like he was normal—something that was so important to our Tom. Having been born into a Mexican Pentecostal family in South Chula Vista, California, he had struggled with the idea that somehow he didn’t fit in the world for most of his life. But on Christmas mornings, he was just Tom. Generous, funny, dancing Tom.
On the day Tom died his nurse had opened a window. The nurse said that Tom looked out the window with those expressive eyes, and he was gone. I liked to envision that window freeing Tom’s soul. I like to think of him looking down on that body that no longer supported him, and finding new feet to run, to dance, to celebrate. I like to think of him looking at his daughter Cristina and the kind of mother she is to her son, and being proud. I like to think of him sitting in AA meetings listening as Jourdan speaks, hearing her mention him often, and laughing at how funny our little girl is.
And so, this Christmas there is no tree. There is only the realization that it’s Planet Earth’s first year in more than 60 without a Tom Lopez.
Here’s to you, Tom Lopez…
I saw him for the last time one year ago, just before Christmas. Although we had been divorced for many years, and by then he had been married to his third wife, Rosaria, longer than he was married to me, our bond remained strong over the years. It is perhaps the making of a child together that sealed the deal for us all those years ago. Or perhaps it was the fact that I lived with him for 8 years and that I had given him the majority of the decade of my twenties. He was sixteen years my senior. He told me what I liked, what I was afraid of, and who I was. And for a very long time, I believed him.
Nonetheless, while we hadn’t stayed in constant contact in the last decade of his life, there remained a friendship and a history, and most importantly, a lovely child who had grown into a beautiful, strong, amazing young woman. Jourdan and I went to see her father on a Friday. We called his oldest daughter, Cristina, to meet us there, but we beat her by about a half an hour. The three of were prepared to say goodbye based on an email I received from Tom’s best friend, telling us it was time. Jourdan and I got there first, and what we found was that Tom seemed hunkered down, determined to stay. His body had all but betrayed him. Six months earlier he could use a laminated card with the alphabet and numbers to spell out sentences to us. Now he could no longer move his arms or wrists. The movement of his fingers was unsteady, and his head had to be supported by braces so that he no longer nodded in agreement or negation at us. Only his eyes moved, yet somehow they told a story of someone not at all ready to go.
There were no decorations in his house, a Southern California tract home that had been purchased in happier times but now seemed ridiculously large for two people, one of whom was actively dying and the other who had already checked out on some level. Rosaria spent as much time as she could working in the hair salon they had built together. She was trying to keep it all together financially, I’m sure, and who am I to judge her for not being able to stand seeing her partner waste away the way Tom had. She made sure he had good care through the VA, and she tried to maintain a positive appearance for the world. She and my daughter’s relationship was never what Tom would have liked for it to be, and they had gone to blows a few months before during Tom’s recent stay in the VA hospital.
This visit we came armed with only our willingness to put that behind us. When we arrived she pulled Jourdan aside to try to either confront her or talk through their disagreement, and I was left alone with Tom. I watched as my daughter and Rosaria talked in the backyard, and from what I could tell it looked like Jourdan had decided to take the high road and make peace. I turned back to Tom. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, before our eyes met. And then it was just us, Tom and Claudia, as we had been for almost three decades. I told him I was sorry this had happened to him, that I wanted him to know how much his daughter loved him, that her heart had been broken a month before by a breakup, but that she hadn’t wanted to burden him with it and that she needed his support, she needed her dad. His dark brown eye looked worried for her, and he was there, being a parent to our daughter. I told him that she spoke at large 12 step meetings, that she was brilliant and funny and that she reminded me of him all those years ago. I told him I was once again sober. His eyes smiled, and the sliding glass door opened to Jourdan and Rosaria coming back in from the backyard. They had resolved their issue.
Later when Cristina arrived she just looked sheepishly at her father. They had more than a decade of distance between them, and had only forged a reconciliation over the last few months during that same hospital stay in the VA hospital. Jourdan and I had encouraged Cristina to come. When we entered the room, his eyes lit up. He motioned frantically for Jourdan to hand him the laminated card of alphabets and his fingers moved quickly as Jourdan and I articulated what he had to say to his oldest daughter, “I a-m s-o s-o-r-r-y” Cristina broke down, the tears springing from her lovely light brown eyes. They were the words she had waited a decade to hear, and even though her ears heard her sister and I speaking them, they were no less sweet. Her father had been given the gift of making amends for being a shitty dad to his first child. In four words he said he was sorry he left her mother when she was still a baby, that he had been absent for most of her childhood, and that his shame at not supporting her better financially had made him appear not to care for her. He said that he should know his grandson, now twelve years old, and he should have been there for her during her divorce and after when she’d barely been able to support herself. He said he should have cared for her, nurtured her, loved her better.
By Christmas she had accepted his apology, and was left with the emptiness of knowing that apology was the last real interaction she would ever get from him. He had nothing left to give. She sat next to me, determined not to give Rosaria a chance to build even a fraction of what I had with Cristina since the first time I laid eyes on her. I was nineteen when I met Cristina for the first time. She was nine. It was the night before my wedding to her father, and he dropped her at my parents’ house to spend my last night single with my new stepchild. We slept next to each other on the sofa bed in my parent’s TV room. Cristina had long light brown hair. She was timid and sweet, and I loved her instantly. On the day of the wedding she got up early with me. A girlfriend of mine had sent a breakfast service with a handsome waiter who came to my parent’s house to deliver room service. Cristina sat at the table with me, and we at croissants with butter and jam and drank orange juice. After breakfast we walked, holding hands, to the park where the ceremony would be. We talked easily. She told me about her mother, her new little sister. She told me that she was happy her dad was with me.
Over the years we walked together through childhood, adolescence teenage years, and her courtship and wedding to Karlos. We had our challenges, but always there was a bond between Cristina and me. I remember being in the room when her son was born and knowing the pain of each contraction as if it were my own. I loved her from that first moment when she was a little girl meeting her stepmother, and that has never changed. But the years passed and geography and our own personal paths caused us to drift apart.
We came together with the knowledge of Tom’s illness. Jourdan sought her sister out on the Internet, finally found her on MySpace. I let the two of them find a way to one another. We came together after years of losing touch that day at the Veteran’s Hospital.
That day at Tom’s house last year, I saw with his two children. We watched as his male caretaker maneuvered his body, trying to make him more comfortable. The television was on, and he occasionally looked beyond us at whatever was on the screen. Above the TV there was a photo of the two of Tom and Rosaria doing what had brought them together more than a decade before, dancing. While it was a beautiful moment, captured in a happy time, I wondered if it made Tom sad to see the image of his former self. Maybe it gave him peace. I’ll never know. Rosaria tried to be gracious, and I attempted to bridge the Grand Canyon sized gap between her and her two stepchildren—a task that I don’t think I succeeded in.
When I remember Tom, I remember the man I married who was funny and smart. I have more nuggets of Tom-isms—small pieces of advice that he would offer that were genially useful in maturing during my path here on Planet Earth. I also have memories of his sadness, his feeling that he was never enough. He passed some of that on to his girls who seem to question themselves more often than they should in my mind. They both have a lot of him in them, but I believe Cristina and Jourdan got the best of their dad.
As for me, I loved Tom—maybe too much. For most of our romantic relationship, he wasn’t ready the kind of love I felt for him, and by the time he understood it, after several flirtations with affairs and one that developed enough that I gave him an ultimatum that it was either her or me and Jourdan, Tom committed to our marriage. By that time I was done. I was still so young and I wanted to experience the world. I wanted to go back to school. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do the things that a 27 year old does.
What I remember about Tom is the laughter, the friendship. This Christmas Jourdan and I have pretended that the holiday didn’t exist. No tree. No presents. No turkey. Both of us felt that it just wouldn’t feel right celebrating her father’s favorite holiday this year. Tom loved to buy gifts for his girls. For many years, even after our divorce, Tom did Christmas morning breakfast at his house. Jourdan and I would open our gifts to one another, and then pack up with her dad’s presents and head over to his house. We can smell the coffee brewing from the street and hear Christmas music blasting from his stereo from one of the local radio stations. He would have orange juice poured, and wine glasses—their only use in truth since Tom had been sober for many years by then—filled with strawberry yogurt. We would eat pastries and open presents. Sometimes Cristina came, or my mother. He was thrilled on those Christmas mornings to have his home filled with love. He felt validated somehow on those mornings…like he was normal—something that was so important to our Tom. Having been born into a Mexican Pentecostal family in South Chula Vista, California, he had struggled with the idea that somehow he didn’t fit in the world for most of his life. But on Christmas mornings, he was just Tom. Generous, funny, dancing Tom.
On the day Tom died his nurse had opened a window. The nurse said that Tom looked out the window with those expressive eyes, and he was gone. I liked to envision that window freeing Tom’s soul. I like to think of him looking down on that body that no longer supported him, and finding new feet to run, to dance, to celebrate. I like to think of him looking at his daughter Cristina and the kind of mother she is to her son, and being proud. I like to think of him sitting in AA meetings listening as Jourdan speaks, hearing her mention him often, and laughing at how funny our little girl is.
And so, this Christmas there is no tree. There is only the realization that it’s Planet Earth’s first year in more than 60 without a Tom Lopez.
Here’s to you, Tom Lopez…
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, May 25, 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
