legacy writing – Page 16 – beckycochrane.com

Legacy Writing 365:273

Whenever I see this photo of Lynne’s mom in their kitchen, I think of a Sunday I called over there when Lynne and I were still junior high age. Elnora answered the phone, and I asked for Lynne.

“Dammit, Becky, I can’t talk to you right now! The house is on fire!”

Then she hung up. Meanwhile, Liz was driving Lynne back from their aunt’s house when a firetruck raced past them. They wondered where the fire might be, only to arrive home to say, “It’s HERE!”

Apparently, the homebuilder hadn’t vented the exhaust fan above the stove. Elnora was frying chicken with the fan running, and when a small grease fire broke out, the flames were sucked right through the fan and ignited some insulation covering the opening where the vent should have been. Fortunately, the firefighters were able to contain the flames to the roof over the kitchen.

From my perspective, the story was all in her mother shrieking on the phone and hanging up, which somehow eventually became very funny to me. Of course, I didn’t have to live with the smoke damage, the hole in the roof, or the annoyance of home repairs.

Rob E spoke of “The September Song” in a post on his blog, and I mentioned how that and “Try To Remember” are both beautiful songs about September. They were originally from two different Broadway shows decades apart, and they share a wistful sadness. Lynne’s mother died in September of 1978, and for a couple of reasons, “Try To Remember” will always be linked to that sad occasion for me. But most of the stories that make me think of Elnora are full of laughter. She was my second mother, and she taught me so many things (including how to make buttonholes on my Home Ec project!).

She was also the first working mom I really knew in an era when that was uncommon.

I learned a lot from her example in how she conducted herself as a career woman, supported organizations of women in the building industry, and maintained great professional and personal relationships with other working women. I wish we’d had more time with her. I especially wish she could have known her grandson and great-granddaughter, and they could have known her.

…it’s nice to remember, although you know the snow will follow…it’s nice to remember, without a hurt the heart is hollow…

Photos from Lynne’s collection.

Legacy Writing 365:272

Tom and I were recalling one of the houses we rented in Houston that had glass panes the full length of one side of the front door. I think there was a curtain there when we moved in, but we didn’t like the curtain and took it down. That meant anyone who walked up to our front door could see inside the house, and we didn’t like that, either. Finally, in my crafty way, I used one of Tom’s mother’s stained glass pattern books to create the Poor Chick’s Stained Glass. I cut and painted heavy plastic panels to stick on those windows. Of course, there was glitter.

The odd thing was, they didn’t look too bad when the sunlight shone through them. And they did give us the privacy we wanted.

The odder thing is, I just found them in the bottom of a drawer. I don’t know why I kept them: sentimental reasons, I guess.

Legacy Writing 365:271

When I cook, I tend to wash all the food prep dishes, pots, and pans as I go along so that after we eat, there are just plates, our utensils, any serving dishes, and glasses left to wash. My mother SAID she did this, too, and I suppose she did. However, my sister and I also figured out that when it was Debby’s turn or mine to do the dishes after dinner, That Old Woman NEVER washed up as she went along. Here you see proof of how she turned me into a scullery maid at a tender age.

Sort of related, my mother, like me, had a keen sense of smell, and one time she vowed that she could smell a dead mouse in the kitchen. She took everything out of all the cabinets, searched behind every appliance, and continued to complain even though my father swore he couldn’t smell a thing.

See that amber glass pitcher to my left in the photo? Mother took it out one night to use it for tea and found a tiny mouse skeleton in it. “SEE?!?” she demanded of my father, her victory complete.

Then she threw the pitcher away, thank goodness.

Legacy Writing 365:270

Since I mentioned the Renaissance Festival in Tuesday’s post about “dragon eggs,” I thought I’d share another memory of a different year when we went to the Renaissance Festival. We’ve gone with Lynne several times. One year Tom and I went and tried to meet up with Amy and Richard, but we never seemed to be in the same place at the same time. Then in 2008, when Debby was here on a visit in late fall–after a hard year emotionally for all of us–we decided the Renaissance Festival would be a fun diversion. So Tom, Debby, Lindsey, Rhonda, and I took off on a gorgeous, sunny Sunday to enjoy the costumes, the jousting, the corn on the cob, and lots of people watching and crystal shopping.

It was exactly the kind of relaxing day we hoped for, and I remember at one point, when everyone was winding down, that I hurried up a hill to see what new event was about to start. And it struck me that I was moving pain free. For an entire year, I’d struggled with nerve and muscle pain caused by a herniated disc and two fractured vertebrae. I’d gone to physical therapy, learned a lot of new ways to move and to develop core strength, and taken lots of medication. The pain had been such a constant that I had to stop letting it dominate my life. I guess the improvement was so gradual that I didn’t know it was really gone until I realized that while everyone else was thinking it was time to leave, my body was all, LET’S GO HAVE MORE FUN!

Four years later, when I get an occasional backache, I’m grateful all over again for the cessation of that pain. Chronic pain can make you CRAZY. And I remember that with all the help from friends and family, the compassion, and the medical care I received, it was Jeff F who took the time to give me good information and advice about how to stop the pain from making me live a life of fear. I will always be grateful to him for that.

So that was a great day. Also: FOX!

Legacy Writing 365:269

The last place my mother lived before she went to hospice was a twenty-four-hour-a-day care home. We had toured and checked out all kinds of facilities, nursing homes, and full-care assisted living before deciding on this place. It was small and not at all institutional. It wasn’t perfect. But somehow I felt like she’d be okay there. I went almost every day to visit her. Once I had to miss a couple of days and I got a scorching phone call from her. But it had been her choice to go into a full-time care facility. What her kids wanted was to rent an apartment near The Compound. My sister–who is a hospice nurse–was going to take family medical leave and stay with Mother full time until the end. But Mother was adamant that she didn’t want the couple who owned the apartment (they lived on the top floor) to have a sick person living there, and she really didn’t want them to have someone die there. And though she could get annoyed with her kids if she felt we weren’t giving her the right amount of attention, she never wanted to live with any of us. Every time she tried that, she couldn’t get out fast enough. She was an odd mixture of independence and need, and it could be challenging to figure out what she wanted from us at any given time.

Looking back, it’s difficult to know if she adjusted well to the care home, resigned herself to enduring it, or simply had a lot of occasions when she was unaware of where she was or who we were. Not long after she was settled in there, Debby arrived in Houston. We visited Mother and then returned to The Compound to eat and rest. It was probably around nine p.m. when Debby said, “Let’s go back. I just need to know she’s okay.” So we drove back to the home, but Mother wasn’t in her bedroom. We found her sitting on the living room couch with one of the staff. Apparently she’d had a dream or some kind of episode, because she’d been agitated. Instead of trying to make her stay in bed, the aide got her a glass of milk and some Oreos and sat with her, listening to Mother tell a rambling tale that she continued after Debby and I arrived. We had no idea what she was talking about, but occasionally in her narrative, she’d raise her hand and say that she’d told someone, “I’m going to slap the shit out of you!” She was cracking us all up.

Tonight, going through photos, I found an old one of Debby. I think she’ll totally agree after she sees it that it could be titled, “I’m going to slap the shit out of you.” SAME facial expression and gesture, Debby!

Legacy Writing 365:268

Lynne’s sister Liz was a scientist. Her interests were many and varied; she once took a trip to the Galapagos Islands as scientists and naturalists are wont to do. She loved entomology and could often be found at night chasing down insects and moths. She was my go-to person for a long time on questions relating to all kinds of science and medicine. She was a gifted teacher whose enthusiasm was informative and inspiring.

After she died, when Lynne and I were going through her things and trying to figure out what to keep, what should be thrown away, what needed to be donated or returned to friends, I plucked this book off a shelf.

“Can I have this? Please? Huh? Can I have it? Is that okay? I want it. Do you mind?” I babbled, as if there were a pack of Petrologist Wolves outside Liz’s rural Pennsylvania door howling, “We must get our paws on that 1992 Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals RIGHT NOW, whatever the cost! With it, we can rule the planet!”

Lynne said something like, “Calm down. Take it.”

I think of Liz every time I consult this field guide, which is often, because I love rocks and crystals. I love their composition and their age and their sources. I know I’d be bored if I tried to study rocks in a classroom, but still, I’m a rock fangirl.

Along with their science, I also love the metaphysical qualities that have come to be attributed to stones and crystals through their centuries of use in healing, transmitting energy, and adorning us in worship, war, and fashion (if you are Vogue editor Anna Wintour, those last three are the same).

I have a ton of books on crystals, but I find that these are the ones I consult over and over–authored by another scientist known only as Melody.

If you look hard at the illustration on the book in the upper left, you can spot a wolf.

SEE?!? I knew it.

Legacy Writing 365:267

I was watching the Emmy awards tonight and thinking about trophies. I believe I have one somewhere, for nothing special. But I guess because trophies were on my mind, these photos caught my eye as I was looking through one of my mother’s photo albums.

Gina and Sarah with trophies they got for playing T-Ball. I never got to see them play, but my parents did, and they loved it! I think they saw Daniel, Josh, and the twins play one sport or another as kids. I’m sure I have photos of all of them, including Aaron, in their uniforms.

I think my nieces look utterly adorable here as Cubs. I’m including a second photo for their Aunt Terri to see, because if I’m not mistaken, this could be a Fido sighting. If that really is Daniel’s old horse Fido, we have now traced him as far as Kentucky. Maybe he ended up on one of the beautiful horse farms outside Lexington and enjoyed a long and happy retirement.

Legacy Writing 365:266

When Amy, Tom, and I went to Washington, D.C., in 1996 as volunteers and panelmakers for the AIDS Quilt exhibit, we also took the opportunity to see a lot of the capital’s sites and visit art museums. I think the first museum we went to on that trip was the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden which we all enjoyed very much. I have a lot of photos from there; here’s one of Amy standing next to Clyfford Still’s 1950-M No.1.

We also went together to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. I saw so many great paintings and sculptures that my head was reeling from it all, but I still couldn’t wait to go to the National Gallery of Art because I knew they had a lot of Mark Rothko’s works. If you are a frequenter of museums, however, you’ve probably had the sad experience I did. Permanent works are often in storage because of temporary installations, or maybe the collections are on loan. My Rothkos were nowhere to be seen.

Amy bought me a few postcards of the works that I should have been seeing, and those are still framed and hanging in my office today. She also secretly bought something in the gift shop to be shipped to her. When it came, she had it framed. And then on Christmas–voila! A gift for me that managed to pull together the love Steve R and I shared for Rothko, my friendship with Amy, and all the experiences of that trip to Washington and our AIDS/HIV awareness and activism. I look at it every single day in my living room.

As for all those other paintings I didn’t get to see on that trip, a few years ago Tom gave me this Rothko retrospective published in 1998 by Jeffrey S. Weiss, John Gage, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. It’s HUGE and has over a hundred illustrations of Rothko’s paintings. Nothing can replace seeing art in person, but this volume’s large reproductions remind me why Mark Rothko’s paintings always offer me new perspectives and nourish my soul.

Legacy Writing 365:265

It’s kind of funny what people think it’s okay to ask you. I guess in the New Century of There Is No Privacy, strangers think it’s appropriate to respond to, “I don’t drink” with “Are you an alcoholic?” Geez. The reason I don’t drink is neither for health nor moral reasons. Alcohol just started giving me headaches whenever I drank it. Though for a time, I’d occasionally put something in my coffee on a winter’s eve, it wasn’t really a big sacrifice just to stop drinking. I don’t have a bad history with drinking–I mean, I went away to college, of course I have bar stories–and I’ve seen alcohol abuse destroy or at least temporarily hijack some lives, but it’s something I rarely have a reason to think about.

I didn’t grow up in one of those 1960s TV homes where Mom and Dad had cocktails in the evenings, with shakers and jiggers and strainers and ice buckets and shot glasses. My parents both drank beer, especially after they worked hard in the yard. I’ve heard that when my father was with the guys, he could throw a few back, but I never saw that side of him. I did see my mother get a little buzzed from time to time, but she could do that after one drink, and I suspect most of her buzz was put on so she could be the life of the party. She LOVED that. She had some beautiful crystal decanters–filled with colored water. I think that was a 60s thing, too.

Then there’s wine. Wine connoisseurs should just stop here, because I’m about to recount what will be, for you, tales of the bottom shelf, or as one online sommelier said, “the scariest wines ever.”

I love grapes. Don’t these look all dewy and tasty?

And I remember, from my youth, eating Muscadines right off the vine. I think my parents and some of their friends and maybe my uncle even tried to ferment their own Muscadine wine. That could be one of those stories I’ve invented; I don’t know. But I do remember the first time I tasted wine.

My Uncle Gerald occasionally had a glass of Mogen David. I adored him, and I’d never seen wine before, so I asked if I could taste it. I have no idea what age I was–maybe twelve? He exchanged a glance with my mother, handed me his glass, and I took a sip. Of course, I loved it. It’s a very sweet dessert wine and my palate was geared toward Kool-Aid. From then on, I was always allowed one sip from his glass on the rare occasion that he poured one.

Here’s Uncle Gerald, sans wine but with a cigarette. I actually remember what he smoked: Kent. And I remember their jingle, part of which is: Happiness is the taste of Kent–great taste, fine tobacco–that’s what happiness is. Huh. Maybe they were right to take those ads off the air because of us impressionable children.

The next wine I drank was Lynne’s fault. She got a wine bottle from her cousin that had been autographed by teen idol Mark Lindsay. The wine was Mateus Rosé, and she talked her parents into buying a bottle for us. The taste was vile to this Kool-Aid drinker. Of course, I pretended I loved it. Peer pressure at its finest!

Then it was prom time, Boone’s Farm. etc. etc. Everyone of a certain age (35) has memories of Annie Green Springs and Strawberry Hill.

For a time, my parents bought a wine that was white and very sweet. It’s possible it was Manischewitz Cream White Concord. It was their “we’re having people over” wine.

Then came the 1980s and the onslaught of the blush wines. We’re not holding wine here–I’m sure that’s apple juice!–but Kathy and I were known to have a glass of White Zinfandel after a day at work. Or a day at whatever.

Does this photo look all blurry to you? Probably whoever took it was drinking apple juice, too.

Legacy Writing 365:264

When I was returning the photos of Margot and Guinness from yesterday’s post to their photo album, I idly continued to look through it. It’s one of the albums with photos from 2001. I came to a page with a card that Timmy sent me, and he said it was okay if I shared it. It was postmarked September 5, 2001. Reading it, I’m sure what prompted Timmy to send it was that we became friends in September 1997.

My dearest Becky,
Just taking a break at work to write on one of the cards I bought in Provincetown. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be relaxed. Can you believe that four years have gone by so quickly? And what fantastic years they’ve been. I just want you to know what you mean to me, how dear our friendship is to me. I feel honored to have shared life on this planet with you. All right, enough of that emotional stuff. Here are the sunflowers on our roof–please disregard the dying palm in the background– Love you much, Timothy

I went to Timmy’s Manhattan apartment once. I remember the narrow, steep stairs that led to the rooftop garden. Like Timmy, Tim just bounded up and down those stairs as if they were nothing. I, on the other hand, have taken two hard falls down stairs, one that broke my arm. I’m cautious. Overly so. It’s a lack of confidence in my own balance. Sometimes, I am an old woman. So when I came down those stairs, I said, “You know, I’m just gonna sit and scoot down these stairs on my butt. DON’T WATCH.” And the boys didn’t make fun of me, just another of a million reasons why I love them. When they went up again later, probably to smoke, I said, “No, thanks! I’ll just sit down here and remember the view.”

In Timmy’s Polaroid, I can see the latticework that encloses his rooftop garden. A building of about the same height close by, and a residential high-rise in the distance. Clear skies. Timmy’s sky.

Six days after that card was mailed, Timmy walked to work. He knew a plane had hit the first tower, but he followed his routine. When he arrived–about six blocks from the World Trade Center site, he realized some of his coworkers were freaking out, unsure whether they should be there or not. They decided to close and go home. He walked to his apartment. He and Jean-Marc stood on the street and looked south. Jean-Marc, as always, had his camera. I don’t know how many photos J-M took; if I extrapolate information from some of the poetry Timmy has sent me (it’s always risky to assume a voice in any piece of writing is the same as its author’s), there is this:

…you have brought light to the darkest hour
(this of course, no ordinary event)
somehow capturing a high spirit
while the world crumbled one morning
you caught the immediate reaction of everyone running to help, to comfort…

While they watched, the first tower fell, and people, many of them in business suits, began emerging from the smoke, covered in ash and dust. Timmy told me the rest of that day is a blank.

Today, talking to him on the phone, I asked, “Jean-Marc’s photo: Was that taken with a cell phone?” “His camera,” Timmy answered and reminded me that in 2001, we weren’t all armed with smart phones or even cell phones able to take photos.

In another phone conversation recently, this one with Jim and Bill, Bill spoke of how important it is for people who are gifted with words to record that time. He worried that because people now do capture everything with their cell phones then put it online before moving to the next story, we are forgetting the measured, reflective nature of writing our history.