My Uncle John

 My cousin John called me last night to tell me that his father, also named John, had died.  Here is what he wrote on Facebook:

My dad passed away tonight at his home, just like he wanted to do. He was 93years old. He was the best dad I could ever ask for. He would do anything for anyone. He was kind to all. As he was in bed having a heart attack he was still asking about a pet of mine that isn't doing well. Thinking about everyone and everything, but himself. He lost the love of his life, my mom on January 9th of this year after 71 years of marriage. I truly think he died of a broken heart. He died hearing how much we all loved him as we held him. I miss you dad!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mind plays tricks

 As I was falling asleep last night, I told Nick that I need to call my mom in the morning because I have not spoken to her in a long time.   It is true that we have not spoken for a long time.  She died in 2004, almost 20 years ago,

It's weird and normal at the same time.   You cry when you get the news of a loved one's death. You cry at their funeral. You actively grieve for a long time.     But your life goes on.  And there's an empty space where once there was none.

The first time I was aware of a person's death was when my grandmother was visiting us and she got word that her brother had died.  None of it made much sense to me.   Grandma was old (though probably not ant older than I am now).   The concept of her having siblings and my mother having aunts and uncles did not really register in my child brain.

And then you are all grown up and have your family.  Your own children,  And for the most part you feel like an adult with responsibilities,  Even if it is just making sure everyone has clean clothes.  

I think that for Nick and I, being married for almost 6 years when we had our first baby gave us a step up as far as being committed and secure.    She was so wanted and welcomed into our lives.

We used to go stand next to Courtney's crib at night just to be sure that she was still breathing.  Mortality is awesome but frightening as well.  Having the new human totally dependent on you for everything.

And now she is all grown up and taking care of herself and her responsibilities.  She, and our other kids, now all adults, don't really need us anymore.  Not in the ways that they did for a while.    They have all moved out and are on their own.  Some in couples some not.  All of them.

And I think of the people we have lost.  My brother.   Our parents. And now more frequently friends and family members.

I wonder, we wonder, Nick and I, when will our kids realize that we are mortal and won't always be around?   When the buffer of parents is no longer here and they are bumped up into being the older generation.  Then will they have a glimpse of what we have had and felt for so long?  

Among my mother's last words, as my sister and I held her hands, were "I'm going to miss you".  And then she was gone.  A last breath, we thought and then another as the breaths came further apart and then they stopped.

I miss her.

My mom and her grandfather, who is holding my sister

My mother with her first grandchild and first great grandchild

 

 

Crazy blog

 I am looking at my previous recent posts and don't know what happened.  They all had pictures, but now all I see are squares where the pictures are supposed to be.

What happened?

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate

 

A special birthday

 When Chance was born on December 6, 1990, I was not sure if he would be born alive, or would survive.  A 32 week pregnancy is two months too early.

But he did survive and thrive.  And now he is 33 years old.  It takes my breath away to think about it all.

The glasses are for scale

Chance in front of his house.  Martinsburg, West Virginia

Sixty Years ago today the world changed

 I was nine years old when President Kennedy was assassinated.  It was one of those moments that you remember- where you were and what you were doing.   My dad and I were both sick.  He stayed home from work and I stayed home from school.  We were watching TV when Walter Cronkite came on the air, holding back tears as he announced that President Kennedy had died.   

Even as young as I was, I knew immediately the feelings of shock, disbelief and horror.

Living in the Washington, DC area, my family and I went Downtown to witness the funeral parade.

A Nation of Eyewitnesses to J.F.K.’s Assassination

How it feels—and what it means—to watch a President slain on TV.

By John Updike

November 29, 1963

Photograph by Carl Mydans / The LIFE Picture Collection / Shutterstock

It was as if we slept from Friday to Monday and dreamed an oppressive, unsearchably significant dream, which, we discovered on awaking, millions of others had dreamed also. Furniture, family, the streets, and the sky dissolved; only the dream on television was real. The faces of the world’s great mingled with the faces of landladies who had happened to house an unhappy ex-Marine; cathedrals alternated with warehouses, temples of government with suburban garages; anonymous men tugged at a casket in a glaring airport; a murder was committed before our eyes; a Dallas strip-tease artist drawled amiably of her employer’s quick temper; the heads of state of the Western world strode down a sunlit street like a grim village rabble; and Jacqueline Kennedy became Persephone, the Queen of Hades and the beautiful bride of grief. All human possibilities, of magnificence and courage, of meanness and confusion, seemed to find an image in this long montage, and a stack of cardboard boxes in Dallas, a tawdry movie house, a tiny rented room where some shaving cream still clung to the underside of a washbasin, a row of parking meters that had witnessed a panicked flight all acquired the opaque and dreadful importance that innocent objects acquire in nightmares.

What did it mean? Can we hope for a meaning? “It’s the fashion to hate people in the United States.” This quotation might be from one of a hundred admonitory sermons delivered after President Kennedy’s death. In actuality, it occurs in an interview granted in 1959 to a United Press reporter, Aline Mosby, by a young American defector then living in Moscow, Lee Harvey Oswald. The presumed assassin did not seem to be a violent man. “He was too quiet, too reserved,” his ex-landlord told reporters. “He certainly had the intelligence and he looked like he could be efficient at doing almost anything.” In his room, the police found a map on which was marked the precise path that three bullets in fact took. The mind that might have unlocked this puzzle of perfectly aimed, perfectly aimless murder has been itself forever sealed by murder. The second assassination augmented the first, expanded our sense of floating on a dark sea of potential violence. In these cruel events, democracy seemed caricatured; a gun voted, and a drab Dallas neighborhood was hoisted into history. None of our country’s four slain Presidents were victims of any distinct idea of opposition or hope of gain; they were sacrificed, rather, to the blind tides of criminality and insanity that make civilization precarious. Between Friday and Monday, three men died: a President, a policeman, and a prisoner. May their deaths be symbols, clues to our deep unease, and omens we heed.

The dream began to lift at the sight, on television, of President Johnson giving his broad and friendly handshake, with exquisite modulations of political warmth, to the line of foreign dignitaries who had come to Washington as mourners. Reality was knitting itself together. The sanity of daylight has returned, but the dissipated dream should not be forgotten; it must be memorized and analyzed. We pray we do not fall into such a sleep again. ♦

It's almost Thanksgiving

 So many thoughts going through my mind that I seem to just skip writing because I don't know where to start.

The other day, when I got up and took Buddy outside, it was cool and windy and I thought about how beautiful the fall leaves are.  Even as they are blowing off the trees, they are something to admire and enjoy.

It's the time of the year when I get all confused about what I feel.  I have dreaded this time of year.  Not because of the shorter days and the cold weather.  But because there are so many events to figure out. Obligations to family and self.   

None of the kids live with us any more.  They live all over the place.  None of them are coming home to our house for Thanksgiving this year.  we are driving to North Carolina (with Buddy) to have Thanksgiving with Darcy and Jody and much of Jody's family.   I am taking along some gluten free things- stuffing and pies.  

We have had so many Thanksgivings together, Nick and I.   We usually would go to Nick's parent's house, or my mom's place.  And later we had family to our house.  In laws, parents, kids, cousins (the kid's cousins not mine).   It could be busy, messy and chaotic.  And I loved it!

Christmas has always been more complicated.  What to get for who.  There were the years when we were in the States, and Nick would go to Toys R Us for some midnight shopping.  He would get some fun stuff for the kids.  I was more practical, giving underwear and socks.  Some clothes and books.   Our Christmas mornings were fun.  

We have a system that stared I guess when the kids were old enough to understand and occasionally take directions.  The gifts were opened one and a time. from the youngest to the oldest.   Then the kids (and maybe me) would throw the wrapping paper at Nick- as he held the big trash bag.

I like to think that our kids enjoyed their Christmases growing up.   I often tell people that our best holiday seasons were when we were overseas.   Depending on where we lived and what the social life was, we didn't feel the rush to visit this and that grandparent.  No hurt feelings.  

I guess a lot of these feeling I have start with Halloween.  I have written about this before.  I always made the kids' Halloween costumes.  Every year.  I was so busy sewing and first getting idea from the kids of what they wanted to be.  It was so much work.  But so much love went into all of that sewing.   I know at times I felt overwhelmed, but I never resented it.

The relationships with adult children are so different and complicated than when they were younger.  We had to have enough food in the house for lunches and for all the meals we ate at the kitchen table.  I don't really remember a lot of complaining at the table .  We tried to have a system in which each kid got to choose the dinner meal for one days of the week.  I remember having a calendar on the refrigerator door with the meals for the week or month.  I don't remember.   

And Nick and I.  I somehow don't think of us as "old".  But then I look at pictures of us with the kids when they were young and we were sure a lot younger then too.

I feel more fragile than I once did.  The other day I saw a young person running down a staircase, almost hopping from one step to the next.  And I thought about how I used to be able to do that.   now I hold tight to the banister and go slow.  And I know I will get more fragile and feel more fragile.

We have an under the bed storage box with wrapping paper in it.   I tried to bend down to see if it was there.  I kind of thought I could see it.  So I got down on my knees (ouch) and then flattened myself even further down so I could reach under the bed to pull it out.   And as I lay on the floor, fishing the box of wrapping paper out from under the bed, I wondered how I was going to get back up.  Or if I would even be able to.  Nick was out and I was home alone.  And I did not have a phone near me.

Obviously I did get up off the floor and eventually a standing position.  But wow, if you had told me 20 or 30 years ago that this would be how I am doing now, I don't think I would have paid attention.  I probably would have just let the words fly through the air not even touching my consciousness.

So now to bed.   Baking in a couple of days.  And sharing a meal and giving thanks for the people we love and care about.

 

 

 

Voting

 Nick and I voted today.  We voted for state and regional people and it looks like there have been some good outcomes.   It always feels good to vote.   Austin voted in Maine as well which makes me happy.  He sent me a picture of his "I voted" sticker.

I have never figured out how to space the pictures I post here and my writing.  Oh well!

Austin and Chance were both here for a few days.  Austin longer than Chance.  Both of their cats were here too, enjoying being cared for by their "grandparents".

Both boys left yesterday.  Chance left after Austin did and got home earlier.  Of course Chance lives pretty close and Austin lives way far away.  I love that both of them texted me to let me know that they got home safely.   

Austin said that Molly was really happy to be home in her own house!

I started the Mayo Clinic Diet plan.  It's a great plan, but I am finding it a bit challenging. I have to shop for the foods that I need in order to eat exactly what is on the plan.  It was almost impossible when the boys were here, but it's easier now.  I am really trying!

This morning, Austin texted me from Maine to tell me that his CO (carbon monoxide) alarm had gone off and he was not able to find Molly (his cat).   In a while he let me know that he had found the cat and he and Molly were sitting in the car.  The windows in the house were all opened in case there was a gas leak.   I was able to find a non-emergency phone number for the Warren, Maine fire department.   They sent someone to Austin's  house. It was determined that the alarm was defective.  Austin went out and bought a couple of new alarms for his house.  Phew!

 Tomorrow I plan to visit my dear friend Shannon.  I have not visited her for way too long. She is bedridden due to her cancer causing damage to her spine.    I wish she lived closer!

 

Happy News

 Darcy and Jody have been working up to having a baby VIA IVF.     It looks like it "took", so if all goes well we will have a grandchild sometime in the summer of 2024

Friends

 The other day I went to help a mom with breastfeeding.  Somehow it made me melancholy.  Not the mom and her baby.  It just got me feeling lonely and feeling like I don't have any friends.

I have friends of course, but, aside from my sister and husband I don't do much fun stuff with friends.  Not sure if that even makes sense.  When the kids were little and dependent on me, we did things with other moms who also had little kids.   I had playgroups in many of the places we lived overseas.   

I miss that.  Not so much the chasing little kid part, although it was pretty nice most of the time.  I just mean sitting around with other women and solving the world's problems.

When we lived in Perth, all of the kids were school aged and I was not so up to my neck kids all the time.  But I did have women friends.  I was a room mum.  We had a weekly stitch and bitch.  I was in the Ladies Auxiliary at the kid's school.   I felt like I had a social life.

Now, we are retired.  The women who raised their kids side by side with me are all  off doing their thing.   Many if not most are grandmothers now.   I am feel left out and lonely.   

I spend too much time online.  Facebook mostly and emails.    (not sure what constitutes too much time).  

Then a lovely thing happened the other day.  I shared a post about parenting.  I cannot remember exactly - something about how we have made it through the hard part and now we re parents to these neat adults.

Well, a long time friend commented this: 

"you were mom mentor way back in the day. After I had one too many psycho moments in a day you suggested just start a journal and sell it to your kids when they are adults. Tell them it will save them the cost of therapy ( and help fund my retirement - my addition!) Seriously though you helped remind me that motherhood is hard work and we aren't going to proud of every step but we have years to work on the overall result. Thanks so much for mentoring and encouraging me"

 That made my day and reminded me that I am still a friend to many and I have many friends.   

My life has intersected with so many people.  Moms and babies who have been friends, or just someone that I was able to help and encourage about mothering and breastfeeding.

Yeah, that's what's important.

Decades

 

This orchid was given to me in 2014 for my first brain surgery

 

 When I turned 50, my mother had died just a few weeks earlier.   I graduated from college at 50.  And I celebrated 25 years as a La Leche League Leader

 As I approached my 60th birthday, I pondered what being in my 60s wold be like.  Then I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  When I was 60, I had brain surgery.

Now I am pondering my next birthday.  It's not for another seven months, but, in May I will be 70.  I never considered that one day I would be 70.    I know, considering the alternative I am doing well.   But I see mortality looming.   Who knows, I could live another 30 years.  But I doubt it.  Thirty years ago when I was 40, I had a houseful of kids and a busy life and schedule.    And now I have a fairly empty house.  Two of us and Buddy our dog and for the moment, Molly, Austin's cat.

The calendar used to be so full of all of the activities.  Even up until the pandemic I think I was relatively active.  Not as much as when we had a houseful of kids, but busy enough. Then the pandemic came and our calendar on the wall was empty.  Vacant.   We isolated ourselves.

And now, the calendar is filling up with medical appointments.  I guess that's what happens.  

 

 

So busy with a full house!

In honor of the wonder of life and death

 

A child said, What is the grass?

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

 

Walt WHitman

The agony of the teeth

 

I do not like pain.   I have had many instances of pain in my life.  Birthing babies.   Various surgeries including the worse one- knee replacement surgery.  But this dental stuff just seems to go on and on and on.

 This is what I wrote- partly for myself to put it into perspective, but also so share with my various dentists, periodontists and oral surgeons, all of whom seem to have some responsibility for my dental if not mental health.

I am currently in pain which is moderately controlled by drugs.  I am pissed off that it took so long and so many dentists to believe me when I told them that I had an infection.   If I had not insisted on my current oral surgeon pushing on my gums with a Q-tip, to see the pus, I would still have the infection and who knows what other damage would have been done to my teeth and my overall health.   

I am really usually a pretty happy, nice person.  But pain changes that.

 

***********************************************************

My bottom tooth, #30, had an old filling in it.  I had a dentist persuade me to have the tooth crowned.  First he did a root canal.  

 

This is what I wrote on my blog January 6, 2013:

https://nancy-motheroffive.blogspot.com/search?q=teeth

 

“My jaw is hurting me.  I had a root canal a while back and it got abscessed and I had to have an awful thing called an apicoectomy.  Look it up if you are interested- it is too yucky for even me to explain.  I got my teeth cleaned last week (great hygiene by the way) and complained about the jaw/ tooth pain.  Looks like the root canal is infected again- which is not supposed to happen.  So I am a bit depressed about that.  I am on antibiotics and hope that will clear it up.  But I really doubt it.  I am not sure I can go through another apicoectomy.  Oh my.  Whatever.”

 

Now, fast forward a bit.   That tooth that had the root canal ended up coming out and I got an implant on the bottom.   The implant was sore and had pus, but the oral surgeon who saw it (I think it was Dr Theberge) took ex-rays and said it was fine.

 

About a year ago I went to my regular dentist who also said that it was fine.

 

Only when I went to Dr Han, and had him press on it with a cotton swab, was I believed.  Pus came out.  Apparently pus does not show up in ex rays.

 

The crown on the implant was removed and Dr Han did some bone grafting in hopes of re applying the implant and crown.

 

There’s more, but the rest is all information that Dr Han is familiar with.

 

Ultimately the implant post was removed and I have been in a lot of pain since then.   

 

At my latest visit to Dr Han he discovered that the teeth on both sides of where the implant was are loose.  Probably too loose for me to have a bridge made.

 

I am convinced that the buccal tie that can be seen in this picture is the cause of the loose teeth.  The tie exerts a lot of pressure on my gums and teeth.   

 

 

 

 

Hugging your mom (lifted from Facebook)

 

Burning Man as writen by a Burner (my daughter)

 

from left to right- friend, Morgan (my son), Kim (my daughter in law), 2 friends, Austin (my son) and Courtney (my daughter)

Courtney Sherwood

  ·

Burning Man: It was fun.

An (admittedly unenforceable) condition of attending: Participants are required to read the survival guide, bring all the food and water they need for the duration of their stay, and prepare for extreme weather. For a number of years now, organizers have been encouraging people to have emergency toilets too. This is an event where vending of anything other than ice is a misdemeanor offense under the terms of the permit with the Bureau of Land Management, with some minor exceptions (for example, large-scale camps can arrange delivery of water rather than requiring every camp member to bring their own water). In short, Burning Man is not a typical festival or a "Fire Festival" type event. "Radical self-reliance" is a core principle people are expected to adhere to -- as is "civic responsibility."

This year, it rained a lot. It got messy and some people got scared.

From what I saw, nearly everyone who actually engaged in the event honestly and on its own terms was fine, with exceptions for people who had child care, pet care or employment situations that were very inflexible back at home, or for whom unanticipated medical challenges arose. Generally, when people in these situations went through proper channels (ie, contacting volunteer rangers, law enforcement or medical personnel), they were able to get some level of assistance to triage their circumstances.

But some of the people who panicked were not given the help they wanted: A man asking to be let out Sunday when it was not safe because he needed to be back in civilization by Wednesday to get to work, when work was less than a day's drive away; a woman asking to be allowed to drive out on Saturday because her husband was 75, with no further explanation -- even though he had also been 75 when it was not raining outside and he did not have any medical needs or issues at home that needed attention; etc.

Some people did have things go wrong - a tent flooded, they ran out of socks, etc. And every time I saw that, I saw other people step up. On the street where I was camped, numerous people walked from campsite to campsite checking in on each other, offering water, socks, etc. One large camp that had a lot of extra space set up a dry secure lounge for anybody whose tent and lodgings were not dry. I ran out of coffee because the closed gate kept me there longer than planned, and within ten minutes of mentioning this fact, somebody had put out the word about my shortage and coffee brewing methods and tracked down somebody who could offer me fresh ground beans out of his supply.

The porto potties were definitely gross, but they did not get to "cholera/health risk" level. The clay-like mud generated by the rain built up and made them disgusting to look at, and because the vehicles were not able to service them for several days event organizers asked people who were able to use jars or jugs to pee in to hold on to piss for a couple days instead of peeing in the boxes to reserve space for poop. (This sounds gross but probably 1/4-1/3 of participants have some kind of piss jar because it sucks to have to walk a quarter mile if you wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, it's just that most people empty them every morning and instead they did not empty them out.) Some toilets really did get full to the brim, but in every bank of toilets there were always enough available to meet demand, even if it was icky. Next year I will have an emergency toilet instead of just a piss jug to prepare myself.

The people who really suffered were the ones who violated the principles and explicit requirements of Burning Man by failing to prepare, did not ask for or accept help, and then panicked and tried to leave when the roads were completely unsafe. I think a couple hundred folks probably fall into this category, out of the 70,000-80,000 who attended. The suffering they experienced was mostly damage to their vehicles, scorn from other people at the event, and hefty towing fees. And even then, more people got out than got stuck in the mud. But their departures messed things up for the rest of us, because the ruts their tires made in the muddy road caused puddles to pool and compacted the clay so that it took longer for the water to dry up and the roads to be passable.

Since the "roads" we are talking about are all part of the collective consensus reality we create at Burning Man -- places on a vast flat clay plain that was a lake bed in ancient times, designated by cones and flag lines, not pavement -- volunteers were able to plat out a new Gate Road lanes for people to depart on, in order to circumvent the mess made by the folks who panicked.

Burning Man is big enough that it does have a small year-round staff, as well as seasonal paid staff who provide guidance and support in key areas. But the vast, vast majority of the event is put on and managed by volunteers. And every day that it was rainy and chaotic, more volunteers stepped forward to help, both in unofficial and official capacities. I felt an enormous amount of camaraderie and enjoyed the ways we begrudgingly worked together to make, have and find fun in the muck and mud while we were stuck.

In the end, people were actually able to start departing on Monday, the scheduled end date for the festival, although everyone who was able was asked to stay until Tuesday to give the ground more time to dry and to make the lines shorter for those who really needed to go. I had planned to leave on Sunday and drive halfway home, then get the rest of the way to Portland Monday around noon so I'd have a day and a half to do laundry and unpack before returning to work today. Instead, I left Tuesday and drove all the way home, getting in a bit after midnight (ie, 1 a.m. Wednesday morning), and taking a few hours of unplanned time off to sleep this morning before starting work today. I guess I will unpack this weekend.

It will be fine.

Most of what I have seen reported in the media is factually accurate. But it's hard to represent the nuances of an unfamiliar subculture in an accessible way for a mass audience, and most media did not get right the resilience of nearly every participant I met. As a journalist myself, I know that I have failed to represent the experiential realities of others at times even when I have gotten the facts right. It's probably healthy for me to be on this other side of that experience; I hope I remember it and learn from it and maybe even get better at my work as a result.

I've been to Burning Man 11 or 12 times now, and it's often an extreme and uncomfortable event. My first year, temperatures dropped into the 30s at night and I did not have adequate warm clothes. In 2013 or '14, opening day arrivals were on hold for 12 hours because of rain. A year or two later we had high winds with gusts topping 70 miles per hour that tore up tents and knocked over porta potties. Another year in the twenty-teens, the daily high reached 117 one day -- and remember that almost nobody at this event can seek refuge in air conditioning. Last year we had so many days hotter than 100 that overnight lows didn't get below 80 and I spent at least six hours in a medic's tent with dehydration and heat exhaustion. And this year it rained a lot.

Burning Man is in a remote, extreme and inhospitable environment where people are expected to both plan to take care of themselves and also to give generously to others.

Burning Man is also a place where grown-ups go to remember how to play. A little rain cannot stop that. And it did not. It rained. We sheltered, rallied, took care of each other, and we played. Here are some photos and videos from my experiences after the rain fell.

This year was the best time I've had at the event in a long time. It didn't go how I hoped or planned, but what really does in this world? I am so glad that I was there.