How I Spent My Mother Vacation and.....Waffles.

I've done a lot of things since I dropped my mom off at my brother's house in Maryland. Mostly, I feared that these two months would be filled with procrastination for the real life tasks I'd planned, and that I'd spend way too much time curled into a fetal position with the occasional foray into the kitchen to make popcorn which I would then return to bed to eat. I feared I might walk in circles around and around my house, wailing and tearing my clothes, or burrowing into Dan's ashes, begging for an answer to the unanswerable why. Okay, I did some of that.

But I also road-tripped to a niece's wedding with my daughter C. I flew to Hawaii for two 50th birthday parties on two different islands, and visited one of Dan's friends on a third island. I went to a T'ai Chi Chih retreat in New Mexico, and spent a week getting accredited as a T'ai Chi Chi teacher in Santa Barbara. I drove north 5 hours to my godson's wedding and drank a barrel of wine with two of my oldest friends. I've had lunch with friends, drinks with friends, dinner with friends, long talks with friends, gone to various plays with daughter M, proving, I guess, that an introvert can socialize when  it's a matter of life and death.

The domestic-doer me threw it into high gear. Kitchen and patio deep-cleaned. Bedroom decluttered--which involved shredding seven or eight bags of paper. (Didn't I just do that before I moved two and a half years ago? Why, yes I did. And yes ,I still have the six document boxes of divorce documents in my garage, thank you.) I got a new book shelf so all my T'ai Chi Chih books and Dan's T'ai Chi Ch'uan books can get cozy together in an organized sort of way. I cleaned out my closet. Again. Honest to god, I'm at one of those mid-life (Ha--why do we say that?-- Last quarter of life) junctures where I loathe all of my clothes.

I shopped. This is big. I bought two nice dresses and a pair of shoes that are not flip-flops. I bought a red toaster/toaster-oven combo that I hope my mom will love because the previous toaster was a pain in the ass and I'm not sure why she or any of my house guests put up with it. I bought this: supposedly handmade by a local artist. I hope it is.

And in my never-ending quest to make my house brighter and more colorful, I've ordered fabric to have my dining room chairs recovered.

Because, well....this is what my living room looks like after I went berserk in there a couple months back--except now the tray is bright turquoise. Stay out of my way; I still have some of that paint left. Didn't Monet paint everything redder and redder as he aged and began to lose his sight? I want everything to be orange.

Oh, and I wrote stuff. And stuff got published. And well, I wanted to write about waffles and about what the yoga teacher said this morning, but I have to go now. Tomorrow. Waffles. I promise. 

Namasté.

Waving, Not Drowning

We all managed to stay afloat during this weird New Year's visit that involved keeping the child recuping from the chicken-pox away from her great-grandmother--and the other children as well just in case they were incubating it. It involved a lot of waving and smiling through patio windows, evening get-aways with glasses of wine in hotel rooms, children sequestered briefly in my garage, and on my boat dock (thanks to C) and explaining and re-explaining about chicken-pox and shingles to my mother. Having had shingles once before, her eyes grew huge every time we talked about it. Absolutely not--she didn't want to go through that again. It was inconvenient and wonderful, this visit. Four generations got together--sort of--for some of the time with some of us actually in the same room. C traveled from Minnesota by plane and bus and train to get here. My son drove his mini-van stuffed full of family from Arizona. M worked us into to her impossibly busy schedule, coming and going. We laughed and talked. Planned and reminisced. And if I were quizzed, I could not tell you how much time all of us actually spent together. My son and his family were the last to leave, and when five people pull out of your driveway your house is instantly very empty.

But I did what I had resolved to do: I began. I ordered the fall detector button for my mom. Of course a fall preventer button would be better. I imagine it would work something like THIS. I called the Ventura County Area Agency on Aging and had a 47-minute conversation about everything with a wonderful woman who took her time answering all of my questions. Tomorrow my mom and I will go to see two adult day care places whose emphasis is more social than medical. I have familiarized myself with the spend-down rules for Medi-Cal. I have a list of resources for home care and caregiver support. I called a friend of a friend who has been taking care of her father, who has Alzheimers, for 7 years without much of a break. I have no idea how one does that. The four of us plan to get together. 

My mother did not seem enthusiastic when I first broached the idea of day care and in-home care, but she's on board now. I actually think she's looking forward to it. Honestly, I would look forward to getting out of the house away from me because I am introverted and boring. I like to read, write, and putter around with various home improvement/organizing/cleaning projects. Today's projects included moving all of my sewing stuff from the garage to the upstairs and all of the single bed linens from the upstairs (where there are no single beds) to the garage (which is where the grandchildren camp out on air-beds during a normal non-chicken-pox visit.) I also cleaned and organized the cabinet under my kitchen sink. That's how interesting I am.

I also finished cleaning out my closet (see previous post) which involved going through a bin of stuff that included a notebook titled "NYC Summer 1984." That was the summer I left my husband behind in L.A. (by mutual agreement) and moved to New York and took classes at HB Studios because it was something I had wanted to do for quite a while. In addition to a wonderful acting class with Bill Hickey, I took a play analysis class with a man named David Fittleson, and the notebook, which I at first  thought was empty and had retitled "Mom" still had notes in it on a bunch of plays including Chekov's "The Cherry Orchard" which is a play that seems to keep popping up with an uncanny amount of relevance for me. This is how my notes on that play begin:

Inaction??!! Bah.

In lieu of the Christmas letter, I give you one day.

If you're going to try on every piece of clothing in your closet and decide if it stays or goes, this is the person you want to advise you.

Age 8

 "Absolutely not," said the person (who once believed she was cat) when I tried on a long narrow skirt

and matching top. "It looks like a nightgown from a Victorian insane asylum." She explained that the pieces were nice enough--good even, if worn separately, but together were too matchy, drab, and shapeless. Another matching outfit made me look like a nun from some remote country in the Far East, she said. With C's advice, I mixed and matched things that hadn't occurred to me, and they looked great. Of course, I never go anywhere these days, and given the state of affairs around here, what I probably need is an insane asylum nightgown.

Earlier that day C also helped me by impersonating her sister over the phone. "Hmmm," she said when I asked her if she would. "I've impersonated you a lot," she said, (I didn't ask) "but I've never pretended to be M." Who, by the way, has always been able to rock a good outfit herself.

age 5

After a brief review for fluency in uttering M's birthdate and phone number as her own, I got Triple A on the line and had C (pretending to be M) cancel M's membership so I could add her to mine since she lives here. A $70 savings! Triple A had previously refused to cancel M's membership without speaking to her personally despite the fact that it is my credit card that has always paid for the membership. I suppose that maybe ex-spouses go around canceling one another's Triple A memberships right and left, perhaps just after inducing a slow leak in a tire. I live in Margaritaville now--not Divorceville, so I don't know anything about that.

C and I also had some quality time by spending an hour or so going through the box of Barbie dolls my mom trash-picked a few years back (a former favorite hobby of hers--and yes, I am aware that I have a weird family.) My mom had always meant to clean them and wash their clothes, but never did, so C anti-bacterial wiped and shampooed while I washed clothes. There was also a bit of Barbie surgery which invloved a switching around of heads. C is nearly done with her surgical technician training, and I'm proud to say that she handled the needle-nosed pliers and matte knife expertly. We plan to outfit two Barbies for each of my granddaughters if we can successfully remove the taint of years spent in a a cardboard box in a home fogged with cigarette smoke. Why in the hell are we doing this? Because my mom grew up during the Depression wearing church rummage sale shoes, and she can't stand to see anything usable go to waste. There was a talking Barbie in the box, too. We have to buy a battery, and we're hoping she's one of those Barbies that made the news a few years back for saying, "Math is hard," and "Let's bake some cookies for the boys." I'm not sure what we'll do with her if that turns out to be the case. Hire a hacker to re-program her? Sell her on e-Bay? Post her photo on a Barbie shaming site?

C and I also spent a good chunk of time researching chicken pox and shingles while calling back and forth with my daughter-in-law, and one of my mom's doctors. My oldest grandchild has chicken pox (despite having been vaccinated.) The verdict is that the sick child cannot be in the same house with her great-grandmother. So in lieu of buying a new wardrobe ( I would never even entertain the idea of buying a new wardrobe, really) I am putting my son and his family up in a motel so we can visit with them. C has not seen them since her wedding two years ago, and this trip of hers from Minnesota was meant to coincide with theirs from Arizona. So now my mother and her great grand children will smile and wave and talk a bit through the patio windows, and all of my children can get together. And me, too, because after viewing my Kaiser records online, which took about one minute, I see that I was vaccinated for shingles in the most efficacious time window. Really, can't we just merge Kaiser and the ACA and call it O-Kaiser care?

C's wedding two years ago

Oh--and yesterday, there was a one-hour beach walk as well, during which time we left my mom home alone with instructions to be very careful. When I get all my ducks in a row, there will be no more of that. The leaving her home alone, I mean. There will be walking or I will be donning that Victorian insane asylum nightgown. 

And during the beach walk I took a moment out of the here and now and made a vet appointment for our 20-year-old cat so she could get a rabies shot (even though she is an entirely indoor cat) so that she may get her license renewed (her license for catting, C calls it). Last year Piper was caught up in the City of Oxnard door-to-door dragnet and cited for catting without a license.

And I should mention how the day began. T'ai Chi Chih. I even got to student teach a mini-lesson. T'ai Chih Chih, I'm certain, is making a substantial contribution to my well-being. Immediately after I came home, I found my mom's glasses, which she'd lost behind her recliner, and I'm happy to say that she did not try to get them, thereby propelling us back to the ER with another fall. 

 And then at 6:00 p.m. with the closet purged of this: 

C began boiling water and chopping onions while I ran out for a zucchini and some mushrooms. We made spaghetti with vegetarian sauce. My mother proclaimed it delicious and went to bed early. M came home from work at some late hour. C and M and I gathered in the kitchen and found something to laugh and talk about, but I don't remember what. Then I put some of M's laundry away. (She is in grad school, has a job, and an internship with a 100-mile trip one-way from my house to the farthest point in this busy routine--so I assist in a little thing or two. She calls me an angel when I do these things.) 

And somewhere in here, I spoke to the man who loves me. He was doped on the pills to kill his pain. Someday soon his surgery will be scheduled. And maybe, if I'm lucky, things will line up so he can come here to recuperate. Actually, I would be happy to have him recuperating on the moon or anywhere he chooses as long as he's well-cared for and not alone.

So there was a nice symmetry to the day. A box of things out of my closet with help from C, and clean laundry into M's closet with help from me. 

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. That's one day here in Margaritaville. 

May your 2014 be filled with love.

The Clothes on Our Backs

I've been thinking about clothes. Dreaming about dresses, shirts, skirts and pants. Shoes with mates, and without. Boots, tall and short. Sandals, socks, scarves, shawls. All of these things were in my head when I woke at 3:30 this morning. When I was a waitress, I served Surf 'n Turf all night long. Now that I've been volunteering to sort donations at The Downtown Women's Center, mountains of clothing rise taller and taller until I open my eyes to verify that I am in my bed--and not about to be buried beneath an avalanche of clothes.

When sorting through the donations received by the DWC, it's easy to figure out, sometimes, that two or three Hefty bags have come from the same person. Did that person die, I wonder--or is this just the result of a closet-cleaning extravaganza--and is there twice as much that she's kept? I have a childhood memory of an old man on our front porch calling, "Rags, rags," but maybe it's a scene from a fairy tale. One thing I know for sure, there wasn't much wear left in anything by the time it was removed from its drawer or hanger. Things didn't go to Goodwill or any other charity. They went to a cousin if they had any life at all left in them, and if not, they were cut up for doll clothes or dust rags--or perhaps given to my possibly mythical rag man.

My daughter C. is a sailor. She works on historic tall ships, moving from boat to boat with no permanent address. She travels with a sea bag and often has only one hook and a drawer or two to stow her belongings while she is at sea. Her regular clothes live on dry land at my place. A half-dozen shirts, five skirts, five dresses, three jackets, three sweaters, a coat, a couple pairs of pants, and a surprising 15 pairs of shoes which may not include her steel-toed work boots. There are a few pieces of jewelry too, some scarves, a short stack of work clothes, and the accessories of her trade--knives and a marlin spike. A tool box. There's a second tool box of make-up and grooming products. Some bulky foul weather sailing gear. But I'd wager that, with her top-notch packing skills, everything mentioned above could fit into the trunk of her car.

My clothes would not fit into my car. My rule about clothes is that they have to fit in my closet--and I finagle that a bit. I have a modern double-sliding-door closet with an organizer system, not a closet like the one in the house I grew up in, which probably would have held a third of what I currently call my wardrobe. Isn't it weird that we have so much clothing in an era when, for most of us, washing them has become so simple? I have vague memories of my grandma or my aunt or someone doing the wash on an old hand-wringer machine. It would have been great to have some extra outfits in those days because washing them and hanging them on the line to dry required actual participation.

In 1973 I worked as an au pair in Paris. Monsieur was a doctor, and Madame was a med student. They and their darling seven-month-old daughter lived in a beautiful old building a couple of blocks from Parc Monceau. They had a nice car and a summer house on the beach in Montpelier. Their flat was comfortably furnished, but they had almost no clothes. Madame wore the same outfit to her classes nearly every day--red overalls in a thin velvet-soft fabric than she accessorized in a variety of ways. A navy t-shirt, a white man-tailored shirt, scarves, a little jacket. Monsieur had a couple of suits, a half-dozen shirts. His white t-shirts, worn as underwear shirts, were so much nicer than the Fruit of the Loom I was familiar with, that, I confess,  I pilfered one when I left my job to travel with friends. I wore it for a decade or more.

When did quantity win the fist fight with quality?

And if one would have the misfortune to be buried by an avalanche of clothes--from my own closet or elsewhere, it would be possible to dig out, right?