Mom in 2008: "You think I'm as interesting as Dana?"

Since Dana was here so recently--and rarely has anything good to say about Mom because she doesn't think Mom thought much of her--I wanted to include this entry from my Just the Facts diary from 2008.  Kathy was going to visit (read take care of ) her aunt in Pasadena, so I was going to stay with Mom for a week--a length of time she thought was just too much to ask of me.  (I hope she wasn't thinking it was asking too much of her to be with me that long!)

Sunday, June 1, 2008  Mom called and we talked about our upcoming week together, which she thought was asking too much until she realized that I could go home during the day.  (She would pay for the gas.)  “But, Mom, you go to see Dana, and sometimes you stay more than a week.”  She said, “You think I’m as interesting as Dana?”  I said yes, though nobody is as interesting as Dana. 

Pills after Memory Loss to the Tune of "Frere Jacques"

I did do some of the things on the To Do list, and I went through my "library" of politically-charged DVDs.  My mother had said she wanted to have a collection to lend or show to whoever was interested.  I liked her idea and started a collection. I'll give it to you tomorrow.

But today, in keeping wit the subject posted, here's something from July 2009--four years ago.  I wrote it when Kathy was away in Ireland for a much-needed trip, and I was staying with Mom during the day but also working on an English as a Singing Language for some Korean teachers. 

My sister Susan took over one night, and I came into SF to go to the Y and print out some pictures for my mother and prepare for the workshop.  Mom was in a state of confusion, having lost her short-term memory, and we had conversations that could be sung in rounds, maybe to the tune of "Frere Jacques."

                White, pink, red pill.

                One, two, three pills.

                Here you are.

                                Where's the fourth?

                There's no fourth.  There're just three.

                                Yes, that's what Kath tells me

                                Every day.  We will say,

                White, pink, red pill.

                One, two, three pills.

                Here you are.

                                Where's the fourth?

                There's no fourth.  There're just three.

                                Yes, that's what Kath tells me

                                Every day.  We will say.

To Do

I'm back from a wonderful party in Marin, and now things are slowing down and won't speed up until next weekend, when I'll have a session with Efren, have the supporting KAST get-together here on Saturday, go to View and Chew on Sunday morning and go to an engagement reception (meet the daughter's fiance) on Sunday afternoon.  So...it occurs to me that a to-do list might be a good thing to post on my Mostly-Mom blog:

Write about Dana's visit and what we saw and talked about.
Write about toxicity--Dana and mine and mother's absence of it.
Contact Luz so we can work together a day that's not tomorrow. 
Contact both Jana and Robert about a day to get together to take Robert to Chapeau.
Listen to all of Caroline or Change while reading the libretto & notes.
Try to order Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind’ translated by Jonathan Franzen.
Send Betsy and Sal the pages on Jonathan Franzen's interview with New York State.
Send Kathleen and Gerhardt my Santa Fe Karl My pictures.
Tell Kathleen and Gerhard about Alex Capus latest--send CD?
Start A partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer Dubois.
Move plays from living room to dining room.
Move novels from dining room to living room.
Send CCSF students the link to our web site.
Take back tacky robe and tee shirt.

Find out why I can't  get two songs “Desert Song” & …available only on iCloud into my iTunes Library.

Find out why my CCSF web site doesn't come up through Google.

Add to website:  http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MD5VRA908BUG  (review of book about CCSF)

Finish ordering reprints online at Walgreens for ESL Scholarship winners and retirees.

Contact Ron about a financial advisory session.

 Send photos from Dropbox to ESLCredit

 Finish Joshua Costeel's Letters from Abu Ghraib.

Contact  Ulysses about Joshua Costeel’s  Letters form Abu Ghraib.

Look at what Mother sent me from Paris!  Paris!

Write about “The Girl that I Mary,” “I Enjoy Being a Girl,”  “I  Feel Pretty,” “All for Him” (from Paint Your Wagon)  

Frame Rosa and baby, Mexico 1967?

Teapot for Javier

Milk pitcher for his house

Collage of Clouds?  Bougainvilleas?

Send Blast from the Past to Diana.

 Watch the video on the debated space near Ocean and Great Highway and send the link to Edward.

Scandinavian Design sofa?

Write up session with Efren:  Couldn’t get the Seagate to work, Yahoo to import.

Contact Geary about Seagate

Plan a party for retirees?

 Take a look at notes from Harvest of Empire.

Send Will Manfred's column at the Dutch.  

Write Manfred about conversation centering on his writing.

Order Ru for David Berger or send him my copy.

Write to Yoshiko--about Santa Fe.

Ask Audio (Jill) about remote control device for closed caption.

Read Winnetou.

Read Something's Coming, Something Good, WSS.

Copy Annie's Letters.

Copy Jonathans Letter's.

Copy Club T-M lettters.

Chew on This.

Visit Bill and Vilma.

Review Old Skool Cafe.

See Much Ado about Nothing.

List countries I've spent the night in for Sal.

 

Daddy's "awful" for the novel Suzy wrote

Dana brought up how she was sure Daddy thought the novel Suzy was writing at age eight was awful, but after sharing that with Suzy, she realized that she, Dana, had probably just perceived it that way out of jealousy.  Unfortunately, before realizing that Daddy was very admiring of Suzy's childhood undertaking, she told Suzy that Daddy had belittled her writing attempt and called it awful. 

"Oh, Dana, please don't help Suzy build a case against Daddy.  She really loved him when she was a child, and he was a wonderful father to her--not like he was with us.  He thought she was wonderful, and if he called her novel awful, it was in 'Isn't this awful?' about the fact that she killed the mother off in the first paragraph."

Suzy's novel went something like this.  "Her mother is no longer living, and the father blames himself because he was driving when she was killed."

Daddy was impressed that an eight year old would start writing a novel--a novel with chapters instead of an idea for a novel recopied and recopied, providing excuses for sharpening pencils.  Suzy just kept going.  And Daddy was very admiring. 

I wish we still had the pages Suzy wrote, but I think some of them blew away, and then she just stopped writing.

But I worry that she's re-written a really warm and loving relationship into one that wasn't that way at all.

Repressed memory is when you remember disturbing things that never happened and forget things that could reassure you now.

Remembering the Best of Parents: Why It Matters

While Dana was here, she asked me just why it mattered to me so much that we remember good things about our parents.  (I'd already acknowledged the importance of remembering not-so-good things.)  It's because there were good things, and they were struggling through all the bad to come out with the good, so remembering the good was only fair to them and their struggle,  and it should help us, too, to focus on something other than our wounds and blame-putting and finding ways to excuse our own bad behavior as we both push 70 (thought blame-putting and excusing our own bad behavior are good too). 

I also got around to telling Dana what I thought were some good things about her--a few of them:  She says the unexpected and avoids platitudes.  As she got dressed in my bedroom, putting on her flat slippers to replace the shoes on stilts, I told her how impressed I was by her back in 1966, when she arrived in California and responding to my comment that we should take a stand on issues said, "No.  I want to move!" 

We walked to West Portal (which she thought was uphill), and I treated her to breakfast at the Village Grill after she had bought her daily supply of cosmetics:

Dana's really beautiful and doesn't need the "enhancement" of 6 more masara wands, six pairs of eye lashes, pencil eyeliner, eyelash curler, and whatever else was in the $112.00 of cosmetics she bought along with the hair spray and panty hose.

We sat and had a nice talk at the Village Grill, and I told her more of why she was wonderful and what was wonderful about our parents.

To be continued.

A Visit from the Sister I've Known Longest

Dana, the sister I've known longest, just left with Karl, who took his final exams at Touru University in Vallejo yesterday, to go to the Mission Garage, where they'll get replaced the window someone broke to get into Karl's car sometime in the past two days.  His car was all packed before his exams so that he could take off the morning after his exams.  I'm going to call in an hour to see if everything went fine with the window because Karl was surprised that they were willing to fix it on the spot when other garages said they'd have to order the window.  We're bracing for disappointment but hoping that this garage can really do what they promised when they promised. 

I shared with Karl the realization that I made in time to share it with Dana:  That I listen carefully to what people say but tend to respond in a questioning way more than an affirming way.  I also shared Manfred's column on the Dutch and said that once I saw it, I realized that I was Dutch.  

Dana said, "Maybe that's competitive.  Because someone's come up with a good insight and you don't want them to get credit for the good insight if you could get points for discrediting it."

I'd say that coming up with such an interpretation shows a competitive nature.

But I thought our discussion overall was warm and stimulating.

We did talk about the 1986-1987 (New Year's Eve to early January) family reunion we had in Chicago, and she listened to parts of the CD and said, "It never occurred to me that Jonathan was looking forward to this."  We talked about how our memories differed from what we hear on the cassette.  She and I both remember her 30-40 minute monologue on the staircase--not recorded on the cassette that Efren converted to a CD.  But the big surprise was that what I remember her saying about me and Suzy's agreeing with is something she remembers Suzy saying about both of us.  Tomorrow I'll tell you what that was, but right now I need to clean up the house to Jonathan Franzen's Farther Away, and then I'll bathe, dress, rush to Chasing Lions Cafe, rush back home, and be ready with Javier for Jeanne and Ken, who are picking us up at 5:00.  I'm treating them to a 5:30 dinner at Old Skool Cafe, and the segment on their cafe that was pre-empted yesterday will be shown on ABC with Diane Sawyers just at the moment we're to be taken to our seats!

Other things for tomorrow:  Video of The How to Cook Video for Missy followed by the album after her death.

Video of Mom and Jonathan on his 16th birthday followed by Suzy's beautiful singing as she prepared to try out for the Lesbian-Gay Chorus.

Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, and Disney

Daddy was credited by a black psychologist who spoke at Daddy's memorial service for having integrated the University of South Carolina back in the early 1960's when he invited black psychologists at the "colored" state hospital to meet with his graduate students, who were all white.  Integration and civil rights were one area in which Mom and Daddy agreed. So I wonder what they would think of the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.  It seems very strange to me that Zimmerman, who was told by the police not to run after Trayvon, was exonerated when by doing so he wound up unnecessarily killing Trayvon.  Self-defense sounds ludicrous even if Trayvon had turned on Zimmerman to defend himself.  Even someone as conservative as Chip Johnson agrees that it was a travesty.  There was a picture in the SF Chronicle of a black man with a bicycle walking by and looking at the giant poster advertising the movie Fruitvale Station, which came out the very weekend of the verdict on the Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case.  There were protests attacking the wrong people, and an Oakland firefighter commented on that irony after seeing the movie with his wife.  He pointed out that the people in Oakland are the "good guys" and said it was cowardly to take it out on them.  He suggested, instead, that Florida be targeted with boycotts and economic sanctions.  He suggested visit Disneyland instead of Disney World, and I smiled to think that it was understood that we had to visit Disney somewhere.


Photo by Brant Ward