Where she used to sit, what she used to see

Remembering my mom on the anniversary of her passing. She's been gone three years, and she's always with me.

On Joy and Sorrow   Kahlil Gibran

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.      And he answered:      Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.      And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.      And how else can it be?      The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.      Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?      And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?      When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.      When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.          Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”      But I say unto you, they are inseparable.      Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.      Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.      Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.      When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

The Kitchen Sink's Best Time of Day

I walked into the house an hour ago and found the kitchen sink ready for its glamour shot.

It made me think of the pictures my friend Elizabeth has posted of her bathroom on her blog.

http://elizabethaquino.blogspot.com/2015/03/three-pictures.html.

I guess we all have our moments.

My window ledge is full of beach treasures, fortunes from fortune cookies, and plastic musical instruments. If you zoom in you can see a metal tag that I picked up off the sand. It says "Joy Equipment Protection." Joy definitely needs to be protected. So protect yours, okay?

Friday Morning Beach Report

Today's Ocean

Green and cross-hatched with waves, frothy fireworks explode over the breakwater.

Gulls fly drunk while I search for treasure.

I pocket beach glass and covet pieces of driftwood too heavy to carry.

I cheat the great Pacific garage patch out of two toy shovels, one blue and one green, matching the clothes I'm wearing.

I might look ridiculous. 

Trudging into the wind, I think:

It's the walk itself that is the treasure.

And this very breath, and the next one

and the next.

Thank You for all the Birthday Wishes

Tonight's sunset

Some say that the soul leaves the body at the moment of death. That it rises up to heaven. Or that it descends to receive its eternal punishment. Others say that the soul wanders around for a while or that the spirit of the dead person can return for an earthly visit, or that death is simply the end. Having held a person in my arms at the moment of his death, I still cannot say for certain.

It was my birthday today, and how can one help but ponder death on the anniversary of one's birth? Birth and death are life's bookends. So, yes, Happy Birthday to me and someday my soul will go somewhere even if that somewhere turns out to be nowhere. Meanwhile, I'm full of joy and gratitude for this life. For love, friends, family, food, drink, music, theatre, art, my good health, beauty in all of its incarnations--clouds, birds, rocks, a finely crafted sentence, a pretty scarf, and for birthday wishes.

Yesterday I read about Einstein in the New York times. THIS INFO GRAPHIC blew my 63-year-old mind. And there was this quote: "In 1907, Albert Einstein had his “happiest thought” — people in free fall do not feel their own weight. This simple idea laid the foundation for his general theory of relativity, which Einstein presented 100 years ago this month." 

If I woke up in a box, completely weightless, I wouldn't know if I were falling or floating. Maybe that's how the soul feels.

And before the sunset's color drained from the sky, the full moon appeared from behind the clouds.

The Joy

This is what I saw at the spot where I walked onto the sand this morning.

Do you ever feel like goodness and joy and comfort are there just waiting for you? That you didn't really do anything, but all that abundance drops at your feet anyway?

And when someone says "Hi," do you say hello back?

Report from Pillville: The Vascular Surgeon and A Gift from a Stranger

The vascular surgeon is tied with the neurologist as my favorite doctor. (The neurologist always asks about me. What I'm doing to take care of myself. If I'm getting two full days off every week. He means 48 hours. I'm not, but I'm close if you add up all the things I do for myself.) The vascular surgeon is the doctor who told my mom to quit smoking. You've already smoked your last cigarette is how he put it. My mom had 2 vascular procedures in the first year of living with me. She's been stable for a long while. Yes, there are still blockages, but not so severe as to require surgery.

Yesterday while we were waiting in the reception area at the doctor's office, my mom told another woman how much she liked her jacket. It was a denim jacket with embroidered butterflies, the neck and the sleeves bordered by beads. The two of them were chatting when I stepped out to go to the restroom. When I came back my mom was already in the exam room. I was ushered back and then a minute later a nurse came in with the jacket, neatly folded. She told my mom that the woman in the waiting room wanted her to have it. My mom literally squealed with delight and hugged the jacket to her like it was a teddy bear. We were both speechless. Of course medical privacy and all that means we can't get the woman's name and address. But the nurse told me that I could bring a note to her at the office, and she'd see that the mysterious benefactor gets it. We're going to enclose a couple of my mom's hand crocheted snowflakes with the card. I've schedule it as my Thursday errand.

Life feels full of gifts and beautiful surprises right now. I know it won't always be thus. But this is how it is in Pillville these days. Butterflies, birds singing, sweet voices, surprises.

Grief/Joy Syndrome

If there is such a thing as grief/joy syndrome, we have it bad here in Margaritaville. My mom told me at least half-a-dozen times how delicious dinner was last night. I baked a delicata squash, poached a piece of salmon in my usual manner--in dry vermouth, seasoned with dill, and dabbed with butter (my aunt's recipe,) and steamed a bag of Trader Joes's super greens with absolutely nothing to jazz them up. My mom ate like she was thrilled to be alive, and I have to say I'm taking particular delight in the end of season yellow plums from the farmer's market. Each and every one tastes like the best plum ever. Saturday's left over black bean and sweet potato soup might have been the most delicious breakfast I've ever consumed, and the water and the sky here are a blue beyond reproach right now. There are butterflies and dragon flies on the beach and on our patio, and they are an orange so bright I expect they might combust spontaneously. This year's pelicans dive into the ocean ever so much more dramatically than last year's, and the sand has gone from, well, sand-colored to almost white. We are drunk on life here in Margaritaville.

Get Wet. Get In. Ride the Wave. Get Frosting on Your Clothes.

I've wanted to live by the ocean, I said, probably ever since I first saw the ocean in a movie.
And you just got here, she said. After all those years. Well, a person just can't do everything.
But you, I said, managed to live in Baltimore during the 40s. There are people who'd pay a million dollars to hear the music you heard.
Oh, yeah, she said.
Ever see Cab Calloway? I asked.
Sure, she said.
Louis Armstrong?
Oh, yeah.
And on we went. From the Inkspots to Glen Miller. The Dorsey Brothers. Bennie Goodman.
I heard about the clubs where she and her sister worked. The Club Charles. The Band Box and the Chanticleer.
And she told me about a crazy Martha Raye act. After she sang her set, she threw a cake at the audience.
People loved it, she said. They didn't care if they got frosting on their clothes.

Lemons: Real and Fake or Do you know what you are drinking?

Last night I dreamed I drank dish soap. For some reason I thought the bottle of "Joy" contained water. I was very thirsty so I tipped the bottle up and guzzled. My hand fit  nicely in the curve of the plastic bottle, and it felt so good when the parched feeling was gone. Then the soapy burn hit the back of my tongue and my throat. Omygod, I just drank dish soap. No wait, I think it was a dream. I dreamed I drank dish soap. Wasn't it? No, really, I drank dish soap and I have to get up right now and drink a whole lot of water because that's important if you drink dish soap, right? Rinse it down. But I was tired, oh so tired, and I couldn't get up no matter how much I tried to talk myself into it, and it wasn't until this morning at dawn (no pun intended) when I woke and was finally sure that the dish soap had been a dream. 

I don't know why I dreamed what I did. I don't even have dish soap sitting on my kitchen counter because my sink came with a built in soap pump and the dish soap is in there. I never had my mouth washed out with soap as a kid. I don't think I went to bed particularly thirsty.

I remember this though--back when I was newly married a little sample of dish soap arrived in our mailbox in a package shaped like a lemon, or a package with a lemon pictured on it. There was no question in my mind that it was dish soap--and yay! it was freeeee! A week or so later I read in the L.A. Times that there had been several cases of kids bringing the stuff to school in their lunches because their non-English speaking parents thought it was a beverage. The company agreed to repackage their samples. I had grown up in a place so homogenous that nothing of the sort could have happened, and the newspaper article made me think about how strange it must be to begin life in a new culture, a new country, and how we stumble and struggle when there is so much we don't know about our new lives.

Apricots, Sadness & Joy

Yesterday I flew from L.A. to Baltimore. I remembered making the same trip in August of '08 when I came to deliver the sad tidings of the demise of my marriage to my mother in person."No, No,No!" She said, crying and stamping her feet. We were about to go out to dinner, and I decided to just blurt it out while we were gathering everyone together in my cousin David's kitchen before getting into our cars. My mother's twin, my Aunt Millie, was in her wheel chair by the door and hadn't quite heard what I'd said, but she burst into tears at the sight of my mother crying. "What's wrong? What's wrong?" she kept asking. "E. & Denise are getting a divorce," my cousin said. But with all of the commotion, she still didn't hear. "E. & Denise are getting a divorce," my cousin's girlfriend shouted. There we were, the five of us crammed in a  narrow kitchen in a squall of tears and shouts. But after a few minutes my mother rummaged a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose. "I hope his mother shoots him," she said.
My mother is somewhat less feisty these days. She almost died from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her lung last August and has had to give up the apartment she once shared with my aunt. She has a room at my brother's place now. My aunt lives in a nursing home with both of her legs amputated--lost to peripheral arterial disease. My cousin is old enough to have begun collecting social security.
And I am stunned at all the calamity and sadness that has visited my family since my marriage ended. Or maybe I'm stunned that I feel the pain of those hurts more than the happier things--an enagement, a wedding, the birth of a baby, the headlong falls into love, my own graduation.
I am laden with joys, but still wearing the veil of an unfinished sadness.
And what I picture as I write this is my apricot tree back home on my patio in L.A. Determined to reap its crop of lucious fruit for myself and spare it from an invading army of squirrels, I wrapped it in three layers of bird netting a couple of weeks ago. It looks sad to me--like a widow in a black veil. And I worry that it's not getting enough sunshine to ripen its fruit.

Addendum: After reading Allegra's comment, I have to post this picture I took in an apple orchard in southwest France last fall. The contrast in these 2 images--bride and widow--has made me re-imagine the imagery I must try to employ in my future as I re-invent my life.