After losing Dad in September 2005, summer rolls around again, and I start having flashbacks and memories of those last days of caring for him at home and then at the hospital.
One of the last days he was at home was the day all those people were in the huge traffic jam heading north out of New Orleans away from Hurricane Katrina. I was at the house with Dad -- he sat in the family room and looked out the window where he could see me outside pulling crabgrass out of the flower beds. I remember when I came back in he took my hand and whispered to me -- "Thanks, I've been wanting to do that and somehow I just haven't been able to." That was SO Dad.
I've still got Dad stuff in bags and bins and suitcases and file boxes, going on nine years after the fact. I've got chairs in the garage that won't fit in my house. I've got a few of his clothes -- one of
his sport coats and a shirt and tie ... and none of it gets sorted, nothing gets
done.
"I've been wanting to do that and somehow I just haven't been able to."
I've got piles of grief baggage in my blood, in my brain, in my soul -- and somehow
none of it gets sorted, none of it gets done.
"Somehow I just haven't been able to."
Showing posts with label anamnesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anamnesis. Show all posts
6/06/2014
5/23/2014
Point of View
When Dad was going through his final fight with cancer, I was able to spend some time with him.
The last few times, he was in a morphine coma because what the pain in his body was taking from him was just too much. Every movement, too much. Every procedure, too much. Beyond capability to express, or even to let him cry out.
Those hours are etched in the hardest stone of my memory.
In that room I could hold his hand, or wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes, without him feeling embarrassed and self-conscious.
In that tiny room I talked a lot. Out loud. Even though he couldn't respond. Talked to him about things we used to do, about happy memories. Talked to him about what a great job he had always done, often against terrible odds, such as when the company cut his career out from under him and he had to start over.
In that final room I read to him. The Gospels. Every one of the Psalms. "They have pierced my hands and my feet, I can count all my bones." -- Oh, that was him, that was my Dad, with the tubes coming out of the backs of his hands, and wasting away to bones.
I have dreams of that room. I dream those hours that were, now, most of a decade ago.
Some of the dreams are mere remembering. As it was, where it was, all the sounds and sensations.
But some of the dreams go vertical. In my dream the room is the bottom of a rectilinear shaft hundreds of feet deep. I am looking down on the room, the bed with the cancer-crucified man who loved me so much he acted all my life for my good rather than his own pleasure. I am looking down on the both of us, me in the armchair drawn up to his final bed, all of it oddly lit from above and between like looking down on a stage through one rack of theater lights while more lights shine from higher up. The scene changes in my dreams, as the observer-I moves farther up the shaft, and the sick man and his son get smaller and smaller below.
In the vertical dream the observer-I tries to protest: No, don't take me out of this room! Let me stay! Don't let it diminish! I don't want to go away! I don't want to have it all go away! Let me go back down and be the son who watched and prayed. Let me go back down to then and even farther back to before the conversation became all one-sided. Let me go back and back and back -- into a time and place where I can pick it up and enter it and live it again and maybe get something right this time, something that might save us both.
But then I wake, and I know: that was then and there, while this is most of a decade down the road, and there is no fixing it now. At best there may come a time when, in the vertical dream, I cease to scream. Perhaps some day I can ascend to the next rack of theater lights, turn my gaze from the sick man on the tiny bed far below, and say hello to the man who loved me so much -- no longer in pain, but whole.
The last few times, he was in a morphine coma because what the pain in his body was taking from him was just too much. Every movement, too much. Every procedure, too much. Beyond capability to express, or even to let him cry out.
Those hours are etched in the hardest stone of my memory.
In that room I could hold his hand, or wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes, without him feeling embarrassed and self-conscious.
In that tiny room I talked a lot. Out loud. Even though he couldn't respond. Talked to him about things we used to do, about happy memories. Talked to him about what a great job he had always done, often against terrible odds, such as when the company cut his career out from under him and he had to start over.
In that final room I read to him. The Gospels. Every one of the Psalms. "They have pierced my hands and my feet, I can count all my bones." -- Oh, that was him, that was my Dad, with the tubes coming out of the backs of his hands, and wasting away to bones.
I have dreams of that room. I dream those hours that were, now, most of a decade ago.
Some of the dreams are mere remembering. As it was, where it was, all the sounds and sensations.
But some of the dreams go vertical. In my dream the room is the bottom of a rectilinear shaft hundreds of feet deep. I am looking down on the room, the bed with the cancer-crucified man who loved me so much he acted all my life for my good rather than his own pleasure. I am looking down on the both of us, me in the armchair drawn up to his final bed, all of it oddly lit from above and between like looking down on a stage through one rack of theater lights while more lights shine from higher up. The scene changes in my dreams, as the observer-I moves farther up the shaft, and the sick man and his son get smaller and smaller below.
In the vertical dream the observer-I tries to protest: No, don't take me out of this room! Let me stay! Don't let it diminish! I don't want to go away! I don't want to have it all go away! Let me go back down and be the son who watched and prayed. Let me go back down to then and even farther back to before the conversation became all one-sided. Let me go back and back and back -- into a time and place where I can pick it up and enter it and live it again and maybe get something right this time, something that might save us both.
But then I wake, and I know: that was then and there, while this is most of a decade down the road, and there is no fixing it now. At best there may come a time when, in the vertical dream, I cease to scream. Perhaps some day I can ascend to the next rack of theater lights, turn my gaze from the sick man on the tiny bed far below, and say hello to the man who loved me so much -- no longer in pain, but whole.
1/24/2014
Glimpses on the road
There are memories that form for me a kind of mind-Tumblr.
In dreams I may see half a second of a real place -- a place I have seen but never visited. The memory places I am thinking of are places seen while on a family trip long ago.
A donkey in a back lot along California Highway 99...
A pool in the Silver Fork of the American River seen from U.S. Highway 50...
A clump of blue chicory blossoms along a fence line way out Jackson Road...
A grouping of granite and pines somewhere up route 41 toward Fish Camp...
Countless mental snapshots of places we never stopped. These can be the beginning or the end of a meandering, morphing dream terrain, or they can be background images flashing by.
Lying on my stomach on a warm boulder watching beautiful graceful Japanese fish dancing in the clear water below... Best. Dream. Evah.
In dreams I may see half a second of a real place -- a place I have seen but never visited. The memory places I am thinking of are places seen while on a family trip long ago.
A donkey in a back lot along California Highway 99...
A pool in the Silver Fork of the American River seen from U.S. Highway 50...
A clump of blue chicory blossoms along a fence line way out Jackson Road...
A grouping of granite and pines somewhere up route 41 toward Fish Camp...
Countless mental snapshots of places we never stopped. These can be the beginning or the end of a meandering, morphing dream terrain, or they can be background images flashing by.
Lying on my stomach on a warm boulder watching beautiful graceful Japanese fish dancing in the clear water below... Best. Dream. Evah.
12/24/2013
Comfort Food
Seventeen years in schools.
It could have been worse. I almost talked myself into grad school. Halfway through taking the GRE, the clouds parted and a beam of light smote my desk. A voice from heaven spoke inside my consciousness, clearly and distinctly: "You don't have to do this. Just get a job and marry the girl." After some bumps, I did. And it's a good thing, too.
Kindergarten wasn't so bad. Half a day. Baby boom, so the school was overcrowded, so they had half of us go in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. We morning kids liked to think that the morning group were the smart ones.
First grade was the start of Gone All Day.
Even though the first day of first grade was a half day, Mom packed me a snack. Just in case. In a little brown paper bag was a banana and a Hershey's milk chocolate bar. Eating that snack during morning break, I received a valuable blood-sugar adjustment, and felt a little more connected to Mom and home.
Tastes, like aromas, can be powerfully evocative of memories.
Banana and chocolate. The most powerful comfort food in my comfort food arsenal.
Mom was born on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve dinner was always Chinese take-out so she wouldn't have to cook, and the kitchen was incongruously decorated with Japanese parasols after the paper lanterns disintegrated.
That's why I am thinking about banana and chocolate today.
My mother died suddenly during the summer of the year 2000.
It could have been worse. I almost talked myself into grad school. Halfway through taking the GRE, the clouds parted and a beam of light smote my desk. A voice from heaven spoke inside my consciousness, clearly and distinctly: "You don't have to do this. Just get a job and marry the girl." After some bumps, I did. And it's a good thing, too.
Kindergarten wasn't so bad. Half a day. Baby boom, so the school was overcrowded, so they had half of us go in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. We morning kids liked to think that the morning group were the smart ones.
First grade was the start of Gone All Day.
Even though the first day of first grade was a half day, Mom packed me a snack. Just in case. In a little brown paper bag was a banana and a Hershey's milk chocolate bar. Eating that snack during morning break, I received a valuable blood-sugar adjustment, and felt a little more connected to Mom and home.
Tastes, like aromas, can be powerfully evocative of memories.
Banana and chocolate. The most powerful comfort food in my comfort food arsenal.
 |
| Banana and dark chocolate, with coffee in my penguin mug. |
Mom was born on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve dinner was always Chinese take-out so she wouldn't have to cook, and the kitchen was incongruously decorated with Japanese parasols after the paper lanterns disintegrated.
That's why I am thinking about banana and chocolate today.
My mother died suddenly during the summer of the year 2000.
11/15/2013
A father's heart
However it is that we store up memories from the past, the result of the process (if not the process itself) seems as unique as each individual doing the remembering.
I have seen articles about brain research that describe connections among neurons in the brain. One thing that seems to be coming to light is that repeated patterns of thought create wider and more interconnected neural pathways.
In the quiet of the rocking chair a nursing mother may have time to "store up all these things in her heart" in a way that fathers never do. During the ensuing years, does the mother have time to revisit and keep strong these treasures of the heart? Probably depends on the mother, doesn't it?
The way a father experiences his child is different. Think cinema: mother and child is soft lighting and a camera slowly panning around from a discrete distance with romantic musical score; dad and kid is stroboscopic short cuts from an action movie with heavy metal. That's the way it gets engraved in the brain.
The way a father revisits his memories is different. Fewer repetitions perhaps. Less time per visit. Mixing in of current circumstances.
There is / were probably good evolutionary reasons for these differences, and given enough time I could probably come up with a story. But that's not what I want to talk about. (This is the part where your curmudgeonly host reveals his hidden nature. Aw...)
My memories of my children are less visual ("I remember just how he looked..."), less verbal ("I remember thinking..."), than they are other-sensory. I remember the feel of the muscles on my first son's back; I remember the feel of number two son's curly hair -- and the impossibly fine feel of my daughter's hair. And I remember (and recognize to this day) the smell of the crowns of their heads. I am confident I could have picked out my babies in the dark by scent alone.
Recently I was given a scanned picture of my daughter, age four, in a smocked dress. I honestly can't say I remember the day the picture was taken. I remember the picture. But what I want to point out is what the picture evokes: a scent (calling it "apples and some kind of spice" hints at but does not define it). I have -- stored up and treasured in my heart -- the texture, the sense-print, and I hope I will never lose it.
I believe in the resurrection of the dead. In the body. A new body. Not disembodied spirit. Calling the dead "souls" is a euphemism only; if they don't have some kind of body, they're pretty much out of business. I trust I will be able to recognize my children, by sense data, in the next life. That is my hope.
I have seen articles about brain research that describe connections among neurons in the brain. One thing that seems to be coming to light is that repeated patterns of thought create wider and more interconnected neural pathways.
In the quiet of the rocking chair a nursing mother may have time to "store up all these things in her heart" in a way that fathers never do. During the ensuing years, does the mother have time to revisit and keep strong these treasures of the heart? Probably depends on the mother, doesn't it?
The way a father experiences his child is different. Think cinema: mother and child is soft lighting and a camera slowly panning around from a discrete distance with romantic musical score; dad and kid is stroboscopic short cuts from an action movie with heavy metal. That's the way it gets engraved in the brain.
The way a father revisits his memories is different. Fewer repetitions perhaps. Less time per visit. Mixing in of current circumstances.
There is / were probably good evolutionary reasons for these differences, and given enough time I could probably come up with a story. But that's not what I want to talk about. (This is the part where your curmudgeonly host reveals his hidden nature. Aw...)
My memories of my children are less visual ("I remember just how he looked..."), less verbal ("I remember thinking..."), than they are other-sensory. I remember the feel of the muscles on my first son's back; I remember the feel of number two son's curly hair -- and the impossibly fine feel of my daughter's hair. And I remember (and recognize to this day) the smell of the crowns of their heads. I am confident I could have picked out my babies in the dark by scent alone.
Recently I was given a scanned picture of my daughter, age four, in a smocked dress. I honestly can't say I remember the day the picture was taken. I remember the picture. But what I want to point out is what the picture evokes: a scent (calling it "apples and some kind of spice" hints at but does not define it). I have -- stored up and treasured in my heart -- the texture, the sense-print, and I hope I will never lose it.
I believe in the resurrection of the dead. In the body. A new body. Not disembodied spirit. Calling the dead "souls" is a euphemism only; if they don't have some kind of body, they're pretty much out of business. I trust I will be able to recognize my children, by sense data, in the next life. That is my hope.
6/20/2013
Lo-o-o-ong Distance Phone Call
I had seen the movie "The Matrix" the weekend of 17 June 2000. The idea of phones ringing might have been percolating around my brain.
I was having a midsummer night dream.
I am at a cafe in a downtown high-rise. Looking out the window, I can see the glass front of another high-rise. In that other building across a narrow street -- hey, I can see my Mom! She is standing there with HER mom (my grandmother, who died in 1981), and they are all dressed up. My mom is holding a telephone, but she is not speaking. Instead she is smiling, waving at me, and pointing. Not pointing at ME but at something BEHIND me. I turn around, and see a pay phone on the wall. I turn back to my mom, and I gesture toward the phone, as though to say, "What? You want me to make a phone call?" Mom nods, and she and Grammie smile and wave. My Mom is still holding the phone, and she's pointing again. Just then the phone rings.
The phone rings.
I wake up. I can still hear the phone ringing. "That's strange," I think, "I can still hear that phone." Then I get it. It's my REAL phone ringing. I rise and pick up the phone, but I don't say anything.
It's 1:20 AM on 21 June 2000.
Finally, I say, "Hello?"
On the phone is my Dad, telling me Mom has been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He says slowly, "The prognosis not good."
Well, Mom had died very suddenly of a massive heart attack, and was perhaps dead by the time the ambulance showed up, but her pacemaker restarted part of her heart, so there was some question to the paramedics. I know sometimes dreams can create a context for a noise that is about to wake us up. But I think that the dream was a real call from my Mom. Lo-o-o-ong Distance and not only "Person to Person" but Soul to Soul. Calling to give me one last hug, as it were. It was my Mom, with my Grammie. There they were, on the "other side" -- and happy. To me, that is too much for coincidence. That dream continues to be a source of some comfort, and of great hope.
I was having a midsummer night dream.
I am at a cafe in a downtown high-rise. Looking out the window, I can see the glass front of another high-rise. In that other building across a narrow street -- hey, I can see my Mom! She is standing there with HER mom (my grandmother, who died in 1981), and they are all dressed up. My mom is holding a telephone, but she is not speaking. Instead she is smiling, waving at me, and pointing. Not pointing at ME but at something BEHIND me. I turn around, and see a pay phone on the wall. I turn back to my mom, and I gesture toward the phone, as though to say, "What? You want me to make a phone call?" Mom nods, and she and Grammie smile and wave. My Mom is still holding the phone, and she's pointing again. Just then the phone rings.
The phone rings.
I wake up. I can still hear the phone ringing. "That's strange," I think, "I can still hear that phone." Then I get it. It's my REAL phone ringing. I rise and pick up the phone, but I don't say anything.
It's 1:20 AM on 21 June 2000.
Finally, I say, "Hello?"
On the phone is my Dad, telling me Mom has been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He says slowly, "The prognosis not good."
Well, Mom had died very suddenly of a massive heart attack, and was perhaps dead by the time the ambulance showed up, but her pacemaker restarted part of her heart, so there was some question to the paramedics. I know sometimes dreams can create a context for a noise that is about to wake us up. But I think that the dream was a real call from my Mom. Lo-o-o-ong Distance and not only "Person to Person" but Soul to Soul. Calling to give me one last hug, as it were. It was my Mom, with my Grammie. There they were, on the "other side" -- and happy. To me, that is too much for coincidence. That dream continues to be a source of some comfort, and of great hope.
5/27/2013
The best man I knew
My high school classmate Ed had a great laugh. And frequently he was laughing at me. I was a liberal at age 16, and he ridiculed my go-out-and-save-the-world enthusiasm. At the time I thought I wanted to be a journalist, so I could fight for the right and bring down the establishment.
Ed was going to be the establishment. He wanted to fly. He was going to join the Navy, become a pilot, stay a few years, and then go work for an airline.
I did not become a journalist. I read the Great Books, fell in love. Changed my politics (the Carter economy had a lot to do with that). Got a job. Got married. Got so busy I lost contact with pretty much everybody.
Ed did join the Navy. And damn if he didn't have the smarts and the guts to become a Navy pilot after all.
I heard about his death around Christmas in 1983. Ed was pilot of a U.S. Navy aircraft on a taxiway at a stateside base. Something went wrong with another plane and it came over and hit his aircraft. Four men killed, as I recall. But the only one I cared about was Ed. I can't find any information now. It has gotten to where if I can't find it on the internet, I start to doubt my memory. Plus I'm getting old.
Anyway. Damn. He was a good man.
His death makes as little sense to me now thirty years later as it did at the time. Those deaths "in the line of duty" don't always make "sense" and they are not always Hollywood material.
We used to tease each other mercilessly in high school.
Thinking of you today, Ed.
Ed was going to be the establishment. He wanted to fly. He was going to join the Navy, become a pilot, stay a few years, and then go work for an airline.
I did not become a journalist. I read the Great Books, fell in love. Changed my politics (the Carter economy had a lot to do with that). Got a job. Got married. Got so busy I lost contact with pretty much everybody.
Ed did join the Navy. And damn if he didn't have the smarts and the guts to become a Navy pilot after all.
I heard about his death around Christmas in 1983. Ed was pilot of a U.S. Navy aircraft on a taxiway at a stateside base. Something went wrong with another plane and it came over and hit his aircraft. Four men killed, as I recall. But the only one I cared about was Ed. I can't find any information now. It has gotten to where if I can't find it on the internet, I start to doubt my memory. Plus I'm getting old.
Anyway. Damn. He was a good man.
His death makes as little sense to me now thirty years later as it did at the time. Those deaths "in the line of duty" don't always make "sense" and they are not always Hollywood material.
We used to tease each other mercilessly in high school.
Thinking of you today, Ed.
4/05/2013
Advanced Degrees
When my dad was mad he would do a dressing-down that he sometimes called "Reading you the Riot Act". This was also known as "Giving you What For" and "Giving you the Third Degree". I was (still am) sort of a slow learner when it comes to picking up social cues, so I never really figured out the difference between those processes. I did learn that my father leads with his right hand. Ouch.
The modern marvel of Wikipedia sheds some light on the Riot Act. In my mind the Third Degree is associated both with flesh-charring burns and with being banished from the society of men and forced to do tedious work -- much like Doctoral Candidates must do.
My mother, on the other hand, generally got her meaning through to me more efficiently. Corporal punishment was largely symbolic with her, incorporating backside-whacks with a large kitchen wooden spoon. Ouch. "Do you want me to get the wooden spoon?" That was enough. Usually.
Mom's warnings were set in various audible "fonts". I could note the seriousness of the situation escalating to the extent to which she started to resort to her childhood North Dakota German upbringing -- the warnings set first in light Alte Schwabacher, then boldface, then dripping blood. All without raising the volume level very much.
Mom's other verbal clue was forms of address. Calling me: "Cro-own! ... Crowndot! ... Crowndot Blogspot, you come here! ... Ach now, Crowndot Blogspot Dotcom Junior, you come here this instant!!!"
In lighter moments, after I had been teasing her, the appellation might include not the Third Degree, but Advanced Degrees: "Oh get out of here you old Crowndotty XYZ, PDQ, The Third, Incorporated, PhD. ... Shoo!"
The modern marvel of Wikipedia sheds some light on the Riot Act. In my mind the Third Degree is associated both with flesh-charring burns and with being banished from the society of men and forced to do tedious work -- much like Doctoral Candidates must do.
My mother, on the other hand, generally got her meaning through to me more efficiently. Corporal punishment was largely symbolic with her, incorporating backside-whacks with a large kitchen wooden spoon. Ouch. "Do you want me to get the wooden spoon?" That was enough. Usually.
Mom's warnings were set in various audible "fonts". I could note the seriousness of the situation escalating to the extent to which she started to resort to her childhood North Dakota German upbringing -- the warnings set first in light Alte Schwabacher, then boldface, then dripping blood. All without raising the volume level very much.
Mom's other verbal clue was forms of address. Calling me: "Cro-own! ... Crowndot! ... Crowndot Blogspot, you come here! ... Ach now, Crowndot Blogspot Dotcom Junior, you come here this instant!!!"
In lighter moments, after I had been teasing her, the appellation might include not the Third Degree, but Advanced Degrees: "Oh get out of here you old Crowndotty XYZ, PDQ, The Third, Incorporated, PhD. ... Shoo!"
3/16/2013
Steadying myself
When my children were babies, the crib was in our room for our convenience. When I got up dark and early in the morning, trying to be quiet lest I wake Mom and Baby, I would often reach out a hand to the corner of the crib to steady myself and locate myself in the dark room before heading toward the door.
My youngest is 17 years old. The crib days were a long time ago.
All this week, as I rise for work dark and early in the morning, I find my hand reaching out for the crib that is not there, to steady myself on something that turns out to be only in my memories.
My youngest is 17 years old. The crib days were a long time ago.
All this week, as I rise for work dark and early in the morning, I find my hand reaching out for the crib that is not there, to steady myself on something that turns out to be only in my memories.
2/14/2013
Valentine Cake
When I was growing up, the center of the house and the center of family life was the kitchen. My mother's spotless kitchen held many secrets. Under the oven, in the back of the cupboard, behind the electric griddle that hardly ever got used, there used to be a clean tin from a canned ham.
The canned ham tin was used twice a year from about 1965 through 1975. One use was as a cake pan for the Easter Egg Cake. Wow. Well, it's just that shape. But it also served to make two halves of the Valentine's Day Cake.
The Valentine Cake required two bakings of a size that would have fit into a normal round 9" cake pan. Thinking of the project with the big ends of the resulting cakes in the up position, and a section having been cut by means of a straight line off of the lower right of the left-hand one and the lower left of the right hand one, the two cakes could be joined into one at that straight line to create a passable Valentine shape.
Chocolate with pink vanilla frosting. (That's the answer to the question I know you were about to ask.)
What's that you say? What happens to the parts that were cut off?
Those are for the cook, of course (and once or twice, shared with her helper)!
The canned ham tin was used twice a year from about 1965 through 1975. One use was as a cake pan for the Easter Egg Cake. Wow. Well, it's just that shape. But it also served to make two halves of the Valentine's Day Cake.
The Valentine Cake required two bakings of a size that would have fit into a normal round 9" cake pan. Thinking of the project with the big ends of the resulting cakes in the up position, and a section having been cut by means of a straight line off of the lower right of the left-hand one and the lower left of the right hand one, the two cakes could be joined into one at that straight line to create a passable Valentine shape.
Chocolate with pink vanilla frosting. (That's the answer to the question I know you were about to ask.)
What's that you say? What happens to the parts that were cut off?
Those are for the cook, of course (and once or twice, shared with her helper)!
1/08/2013
Along with Col. Jackson
We call it the War of 1812.
The Johnny Horton song says,
But it was on this day, 8 January 1815, that the Battle of New Orleans was joined. And Jackson was Major General at the time. Details, details.
I think we had the Royal Guardsmen album when I was younger, the one with "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" on it. "Long Playing"! Monaural. We played it over and over on a phonograph with a heavy tone arm. Ah, the history brings back the history.
The Johnny Horton song says,
In eighteen fourteen we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip'.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans,
And we fought the bloody British near the town of New Orleans.
But it was on this day, 8 January 1815, that the Battle of New Orleans was joined. And Jackson was Major General at the time. Details, details.
I think we had the Royal Guardsmen album when I was younger, the one with "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" on it. "Long Playing"! Monaural. We played it over and over on a phonograph with a heavy tone arm. Ah, the history brings back the history.
We fired our guns but the British kept a comin'.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began a runnin',
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
12/24/2012
Christmas Birthday
This is a verse from a birthday card my mother used to recite on the anniversary of her natal day, Christmas Eve.
When I was growing up, most of the day was dedicated to Mom's birthday. After a dinner of (always!) take-out Chinese, decorated incongruously with Japanese paper lanterns and tiny parasols; after the opening of birthday presents; after the birthday cake and ice cream -- only then did the day transform into Christmas Eve.
We had a cheap vinyl tablecloth that was printed in birthday motif on one side and Christmas motif on the other. The annual turning of the tablecloth was the Big Deal I remember as a Christmas tradition at our house.
Mom passed away in June of 2000.
I still feel like I need to give her a phone call to wish her a happy birthday.
Happy birthday, Mom!
Mother's Bouquet, Jeffrey T. Larson
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