Mother's Birthday

Mother would have been ninety-five yesterday. The last rose of summer,  she died on the first day of spring. The memory of  her tiny, frail, withered end looms large.  She wore out at ninety.  All that fire doused by age, pills, and dementia, Mother's passing came in time.  A full life - her story is one of survival and fierceness in the face of some of life's greatest tragedies. Her last chapter was difficult for both of us but looking back five years, I now see that it was full of grace.  Her death was relatively peaceful - a liberation for both mother and daughter.
I was lucky to have such a mother.  It is her strength that I look to now. Her ability to fight. Her optimism. Her practical nature formed out of necessity.  Mother was ready for anything and could handle everything.

My father showed up in a dream I had the other night.  He seemed so distant. A long-ago memory of a figure from my childhood, he seemed for the first time in my life, insignificant. I've lived more than thirty  years of my life without him.  Life's real challenges started after his death so it is Mother whom I look to now as the model for living.  Self reliance is something I am only now learning.

Work has always been at the center of my life.  As a child, it was my parent's work in their business that was the dinner table talk. Work and home were intertwined.  My father sitting up late at night hunched over papers, writing furiously in his large scrawl, taught me sales.  My mother, up every morning to go into the office, taught me a work ethic and never to leave my desk messy at the end of the day.

Perspective is everything.

Thank God for my work.

Right now, my work is home.  It is my salvation.  It gives me purpose and meaning.  It gives me security.

And if work is home then I know I will always have a place to live.

Mother worked all her life.  Even after there was no office to go to,  she worked at being Ga Ga.  She was in the parking lot of my children's school waiting to drive them home every single day.

To the day she died, she worked at being my Mother.  "Do  you need anything?" she would ask from her wheel chair clutching an empty purse stuffed with Kleenex. "Do you need money?" she would ask.  "There's nothing we can't handle," she would say while pointing her arthritic finger at me.

Right. That's right.

Her fierce, fighting spirit burns within me.  Yes.  There's nothing we can't handle.

Thanks, Mom.  Happy Birthday.

Moving Day

Wow. Been here before.  Phew. Yikes.  I wish somebody had a "how to manual" for this.  Hmm...there's an idea. Maybe I will write it.
How to get through the day your kids move across the country.
The thing is, I've been doing this since 2003 when my daughter left for college in Washington State. You'd think I'd be used to it by now!  I know the drill.  The duffel filled with clothes.  The boxes stacked in the hallway waiting to be shipped.  The bedroom looking .... still...museum-like.  All the stuff of their childhood staring back at me - as if to say, "Yes, it went fast. They told you it would. And it did."
This time is easier by a degree.  The difference is, my son is not going off to school - he's moving to Chicago
for a job.
That sounds so.... so grown up!
Helloooo!!!
He is.
So I must behave myself.  No big emotional scenes.
Be helpful but not overbearing.
Walk that line.
Not too much mothering.
Breathe.
I mean he is going to Chicago not Afghanistan.  Keep this in perspective.
And I love Chicago.
I mean, hey, one kid in New York. One in Chicago.
Just keep those frequent flyer points coming.
I've spent a lot of time booking flights over the years for my kids.
For her
Four years back and forth
Off to college at UW
Long Beach to Seattle
Seattle to Long Beach
Study Abroad
LAX to Prague
Prague to LAX
LAX to Paris
Paris to LAX
Back to UW
LAX to Seattle
Seattle to Long Beach.
Home for two years
Off to NYU
Back and forth
Long Beach to JFK
JFK to Long Beach.
Long Beach to JFK

For him
Off to college at Villanova
OC to Philly
Philly to OC
OC to Philly
Philly to USC - I mean OC
Today, a new route.
LAX to Chicago.

So the nest will officially be empty as of today.
Their rooms are here for when they come "back to California" for a visit.
Thanks, Steve Jobs, for face time.
Right now at this juncture, I realize how important it is to marry the right person and have a life of your own!

When the child-rearing, college -commuting, twenty-something -gypsy-parent-stage is over -
it's back to where you started - only a little older, grayer, rounder, and wiser.

So tonight, we head off to a party with some friends from college.
Misery loves company.

California Here She Comes

Yesterday, I closed my daughter's door to keep the cats out to spare her cozy, pink throw from becoming a blanket of white fur until she arrived on Jet Blue for her Thanksgiving visit to California. Yes, I said "California." Not "home." That's how she put it to me.

I'm coming to "California."
When I get to "California."
While I'm in "California."
Upon landing, I texted her "Welcome to California."

I guess that means she's a "New Yorker" now.
And I'm chopped liver.

I'm wondering if that means I can clean out her room. You know the one in California with all her stuffed animals, scrap books, mementos from childhood, high school, and college?

Do you suppose it would be OK to convert it to a sewing room? I guess it's a moot point since I don't sew. But you get my drift.

Of course she was wearing black. And boots. She looked quite sophisticated and as I watched her approach the car at Long Beach Airport I thought, "Well she really is all grown up."
After all, she has been living in New York for almost two years. She really is an Editorial Assistant and she really does ride the subway every single day. She really does have her very own apartment for which she recently purchased a chair that is more expensive than any chair in my house.

She has a nonchalance about her that can only come from living in the most frenetic city in the world.

Gillian left home.
I never did.
Mother left home. And came to California.
Where I still am.

It's an interesting phenomenon - leaving home - going to the big city - taking a risk - uprooting.

I'm still adjusting to having moved from North Orange County to Long Beach! Every time I go back to Anaheim, it feels like home.

Maybe that's why my daughter is just coming back to California. Maybe it's because we moved away from her childhood home a long time ago. Maybe Long Beach will never be home to her.

Well, never the less, as they say, "Home is where the heart is." I'm glad my girl feels secure enough and independent enough to live out her dream and adventure in New York City. And if New York is home then she knows she can visit California any time she wants to. I'll be here waiting with open arms to greet her - but not to hold on to her. No clinging allowed. I'm a big believer in letting go - no matter how hard it is.

It's Thanksgiving. My girl is snuggled into her pink blanket. Soon, the aroma of the turkey cooking in the oven will fill the house. The table will be covered in linens of gold, orange, brown, and green to match the fall leaves on the ground around my one deciduous tree. It may not be Central Park. But it's home.

Worried Mother

The ultimate anticipatory anxiety - waiting for Hurricane Irene to hit New York City.
The ultimate letting go - I can't do a darned thing for my daughter except to send her annoying text messages about getting batteries, peanut butter, water, and flashlights. As if she couldn't figure that out for herself!
She is in an evacuation zone so after battling her way through the little hardware store down the street in the east village, she has headed to the upper east side to hunker down with a couple of friends from NYU.

I had a conversation with my mother. If there was ever a time for her to intervene, it is now. I do that. Whenever I have to perform, I talk to my brother, Bob. When I'm worried about Steve, I talk to my Dad. But this one is for Mom. Her practicality, sense, and preparedness all of my life is definitely what we need now. "You never know when you might be invaded," she would say - thus our cabinets were always full of canned goods and her gas tank was never lower than a quarter of a tank.
Driving home last night from school, I noticed that our tank was lower than half and I nearly pulled into the Mobile station until I remembered that I live in Long Beach, California, not Long Beach, New York and that the hurricane was hitting the east coast not here. (I do plan on sorting our our emergency supplies again, though. I'm almost scared to look at that food I put into those plastic containers a couple of years ago. It's time to rotate the stuff and reorganize. Now that I'm commuting, our trunk needs to be ready with more supplies than our home.)

Not only am I worried about Gillian. There are a lot of people I know in New York and on the east coast! Our friends Teri and Darcy with whom we just spent a few days snorkeling in Hawaii have just taken their daughter Emma to Washington DC for college. They managed to fly right into the middle of this. The week started with an earthquake! What a beginning to Emma's college experience! And then there is my cousin Erin who is in North Carolina. I have a lot of former students in the New York and New Jersey area.

What did we do before the weather channel, Facebook, CNN, and twitter? Here I am sitting in my den in California, experiencing this event moment to moment. The great thing about social media and cable TV is that when you want the information it is right there waiting for you.

News alert: The trains, busses, and subways in New York are going to shut down in an hour. I'm sitting in California, but my anxiety about this news and that the city will essentially come to a stand still until the wind and rain hit is a visceral experience for me. There is a strange sense of isolation that I feel thinking of my girl in the middle of this. I've never had to ride out a hurricane in my life.
I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not riding this one out either.
Gillian is.

Mom - I'm counting on you! Take care of our girl!

Labor

I am thinking about the death of mothers today.

I am thinking about how long they go on
without
their men.

The old women
who once wore heels.
Glamorous
with cocktails and the occasional cigarette
who remember
for more years
than they can remember
what it was like
back then.

And their men
who escaped
the frailty
of old age
who live on
youthful and vigorous
as the day they dropped.
I am thinking about the death of mothers today.
And the love affair that lasts well beyond till death do you part.

I am thinking about the death of mothers today.
How their minds go.
And their looks.
And their heels.
And their control.

And how the daughters
are there when the morphine drip
starts
and the breath slows
and the hand grows cold
and the head falls to the side.

How the daughters
usher them out
hold the memory
preserve the dignity
honor the legacy
remember the love affair
tell the story.