Category: family

re-jiggering part 3 – or 547?

One of the running themes of this blog – and my life – has been my constant need to adjust my plans. The last post that I titled re-jiggering was actually my second by that name, so this is part 3 in terms of blog titles, but some much larger number in terms of reality.

As my more frequent visitors know, we have been dealing with health issues with my mom, known here as Nana. On August 31st, she finally had the long-awaited diagnostic heart catheterization, which confirmed that she has two heart valves that are severely compromised. They need to be replaced using a technique called TAVR, which involves working through the blood vessels to get to the heart rather than cutting through the chest as in open heart surgery. Our local hospital is not equipped to replace multiple valves in this way, so we are in the process of referral to Columbia in New York City.

One of my sisters lives in NYC and the other has already offered to go the City to help Nana and Paco, so the current plan is that I will stay here to hold down the fort at their apartment in a nearby senior living community.

Timeline to be determined, but we are hoping it will be a matter of weeks. I hope that readers will send out a prayer, healing thoughts, and/or positive energy for Nana.

In the post I linked above, the other re-jiggering that was going on had to do with my writing. True to form, I wound up re-jiggering that, too.

I had expected to spend time working on my poetry collection, but, instead, diverted to a secret poetry mission. Excitement! Mystery! Or, at the very least, poetic license. All will be revealed sometime in the last third of September. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I have revised my plans for the Boiler House Poets reunion residency at MASS MoCA, which begins September 30. I had hoped to have a working manuscript of my collection assembled by then, but it isn’t going to happen. My new plan is to use the residency to get feedback and do revisions on some of the poems that have not yet been workshopped, write some poems that I have been planning, and be on the lookout for new inspirations, including the new works that will be on display at MoCA. In those periods when I am too exhausted/tired/frazzled to be creative, I can do further work on ordering the collection and drafting a forward and notes. My local poets feel that some of the ekphrastic poems, which is the fancy term for poems that are about a work of art, could benefit from a note about the the art piece on which they are based.

Meanwhile, in Tibet…

Sorry, a bit of Boiler House inside baseball there…

Meanwhile, I will transcribe some poems that are still only scrawled in various journals, notepads, and pamphlets into my google docs and buy a new Chromebook, as my current one is getting a bit unreliable and I need it working well for the residency. I also hope to get a few half completed blog posts out to the world. (I am not even bothering to project a timeframe to get back to my reading/commenting routine. Circumstances have pushed that even further into the realm of nebulous “someday”.)

And, of course, fulfilling my secret poetry mission…

 

 

 

Fourteen years

In July 2002, we bought a 2003 silver Toyota Corolla.

It’s been a good car and we drove it. A lot. Over 134,000 miles.

Last week, we had it at the dealership and found out that the gas tank is corroding. It’s not leaking yet, but will soon. The cost of the repair is expensive enough that we have decided to retire the car.

We have decided to donate the car to charity. We have begun to make the arrangements and will probably be able to turn over the car by the end of the week.

Daughter T has graciously given us permission to use the car she inherited from Grandma as a second car for now, so we are holding off on getting a replacement.

My dream is to replace it with a fully electric, plug-in vehicle. I am very interested in the Chevy Bolt, which will appear late this year or early next.  We’ll have to see if we like it when it becomes available to test-drive and what it would take for us to install a charging station at our home.

Meanwhile, we say good-bye to our car of fourteen years, longer than we have ever owned a car. Thanks for your service and for getting us safely and economically from there to there. Many, many, many times over.

SoCS: three dates

My mother – known as Nana here at Top of JC’s Mind – needs a diagnostic heart catheterization as follow-up to this fainting episode and likely prelude to heart valve replacement surgery.

The date of the heart cath was supposed to be June 28.

The week before, she had to have blood work done and the cardiologist didn’t like some of the numbers, so he cancelled it.

After weeks of doctor visits and tests, she was cleared to proceed.

The next date was August 17.

Unfortunately, the day she had to have the pre-procedure blood draw, she developed shortness of breath and wound up in the hospital overnight with a new diagnosis of congestive heart failure. She was discharged from the hospital and sent home to rest, waiting for the planned procedure on the 17th.

Except that the doctor’s office, looking at the pre-hospital rather than post-hospital blood work, cancelled it again.

I was very, very, very, very, very upset. After consulting with her primary care, the cardiologist promised to fit her in next week.

And then proceeded to give us the date of August 31st.

Which is not next week.

I’m still pretty upset, especially because the delay is what I feel got her into the diagnostic category of heart failure.

But, deep breath, and all that…

Fortunately, she is doing quite well now, although she has to take it very easy.

We are waiting for August 31st.

Third time’s the charm.

At least it better be.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “date.” Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2016/08/19/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-2016/

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SoCS: What’s Next?

Given how things have been going lately – well, honestly, for years now – it is tempting fate to say I have any clue of what’s happening next.

A few things are relatively safe to say.

As in, today we will pick up my sister and niece at the bus station and meet up with Nana and Paco and my other sister and her husband for dinner. The four of them will be visiting for the weekend, which is a treat because we three sisters are only together a couple of times a year.

Early in the morning on Wednesday, daughter T will be heading to the airport to fly to Honolulu to visit daughter E and her spouse L for three weeks. August is turning into sister-togetherness month!

Other things that I think are coming up next are a bit murkier.

On August 17, we think Nana will be have a procedure as part of the continuing saga of the errant CPR/fainting spell.  While we hope it will go forward, it’s been delayed and re-scheduled once already, so fingers crossed. Results from this test will help us move on to what’s next for her treatment.

As for me, part of what’s next is working on my poetry collection. I did a revision of a poem this morning. Yay, me! If my desktop computer and printer co-operate – not a given at this point – I hope to print hard copies of poems to better arrange and re-arrange and re-arrange the poems. I may have pages to represent poems that I plan to write but that aren’t yet written. Then, I can look for holes so that I know how many more poems I need to write.

Meanwhile, I will continue to workshop poems in the collection. Eventually, I’ll have to make a stab at a table of contents and probably a forward and some notes here and there.

And maybe put a call out for some readers…

Oh, and try to have it finished before the Boiler House Poets reunion at MASS MoCA which starts September 30.

Are you laughing yet?

I have my work cut out for me, but, as always, what’s next is not totally in my control.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is to base the post on a word that contains “ex”. Come join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2016/08/05/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-616/

SoCS badge 2015

 

the return of a local institution

For many years, a favorite destination in our area has been the Cider Mill. Every year, from August sixteenth through December first, they make doughnuts and cider for sale. On weekends, they make plain, powdered sugar, and cinnamon doughnuts, and on weekdays, they add chocolate frosted with or without chopped peanuts, maple frosted with or without chopped walnuts, and vanilla frosted with or without shredded coconut. They also sell pies, cookies, jams and jellies, and, once they are in season locally, candy apples, winter squash, and many varieties of apples.

When they are pressing cider, you can walk back and observe them prepping, crushing, and pressing the apples to extract the cider. There is a chalkboard telling which types of apples and in which proportion that day’s cider contains.

In a bit of a strange twist, the Cider Mill is also home to a local professional theater company. The former apple storage space has been transformed into a cabaret-style performance space which mounts a seven-play season with each play running for three to four weeks.(People especially love concessions at the fall plays because they can get fresh cider, hot or cold.)

While the opening day is supposed to be August 16, most years the owners try to get ready and open earlier.

Daughter E, who, mind you, is five thousand miles away in Hawai’i, told daughter T yesterday that Cider Mill was opening today. Note: she is much more attuned to social media than her mother.

So, today, for the first time ever, T and I went to the opening day at Cider Mill. It was amazingly busy with long lines and separate areas for ordering and checking out.

Of course, we bought fresh cider and doughnuts.

Because they were so busy and because it is quite warm and humid, the doughnuts were being frosted and sugared when they were still quite warm. I put our doughnuts out on a rack in the kitchen so that they can finish cooling and so that the frosting didn’t adhere to its neighbor.

Once they are throughly cool, I’ll put them back in their waxed bakery bag to await tomorrow’s breakfast.

Although chocolate or maple frosted doughnuts also make a mighty fine dessert…

Happy Birthday, Harry!

Today is Harry Potter’s 36th birthday. Happy birthday to his creator, Joanne Rowling, whose birthday is also today!

Today is also the release date for the script of a new play about the grown-up Harry and his family, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The premiere performance was last night. There were midnight launch parties in bookstores and other trappings of Harry Potter book launches, not seen since the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows ten years ago.

And it is happening without me.

I do still love Harry Potter and will probably read the script at some point, but the urgency is absent now.

When our daughters E and T were younger and both still living at home, Harry Potter book releases were major events, which began marathon family read-alouds. The books and the connections they engendered were woven into the fabric of our lives. You can read more about why and how in this post.

I have been enjoying the continued unfolding of the world of Harry Potter. Through Pottermore, I know that I am in Ravenclaw at Hogwarts and in Pukwudgie at Ilvermorny, located atop Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, not far from where I grew up. I am looking forward to seeing the new film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, when it comes out in November. Someday, I hope to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida or go on a studio tour in London.

Meanwhile, today will unfold like a normal summer Sunday…

 

Finding Dory, family, and memory

I love Pixar.

I love that they have a short before the feature film. Before Finding Dory, there is Piper, the wordless story of a young sandpiper learning to find food on its own. The animation is so stunning that in the first moments I thought it was photographed rather than animated. The story is also incredibly endearing, which is another Pixar trademark.

I love that there are bonuses, like references to other Pixar films and little final scenes after the credits. It was a shame we were the only ones left in the theater to see the special Finding Nemo flashback scene at the end of Finding Dory.

What I love most, though, is the richness of the storytelling. All Pixar movies work on multiple levels. They certainly appeal to children and impart life lessons as all worthy tales do, but they also appeal to adults across the age spectrum with further layers of meaning.

Finding Dory is about finding family, both in the sense of family of origin and the family that we can make for ourselves through deep friendship. The resilience of family bonds in the face of great challenge is on full display.

For me, there was an additional family connection. One of the key elements of Dory’s character is that she suffers from short term memory loss.  In this film, there is an added element of vivid distant memories that re-surface.  It reminded me of the stage of Alzheimer’s disease where the person can’t remember what happened a minute ago but can remember what happened many years before.

It was especially poignant because my 91-year-old dad just lost his last sibling, who like their father and two other siblings, had suffered with Alzheimer’s disease. We have also known other people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia and are familiar with the frustrations, fears, and dangers it causes, both to the persons with memory loss and the people around them.

There isn’t a cure, just ways of compensating and adjusting as best one can, moment to moment, trusting that , somehow, the bonds of family will be strong enough to draw us together and back to ourselves.

 

Strawberries!

The Algonquins who were native to my region named the full moon this time of year the strawberry moon.

Usually at this time of year, we are enjoying plentiful local strawberries. For many years, I would go to a local farm to pick quarts and quarts of berries. We would share some with family and then I would put the kitchen in full-blown strawberry mode. Strawberries on cereal or with yogurt for breakfast. Strawberries on fresh leaf lettuce or baby spinach with pecans and goat cheese. Strawberry shortcake. Fresh strawberry pie. Strawberry rhubarb soup. Strawberries on ice cream. Strawberry-rhubarb pie, crisp, or cobbler. Just eating them and enjoying their sweet fragrance.

The last few years, I haven’t been picking myself, but buying them from the local farmstands. We don’t often buy strawberries other than when they are local. Supermarket strawberries from hundreds or thousands of miles away just don’t compare to what our local berries taste like.

I know that the farms will have berries when the wild strawberries that grow in our yard ripen.

This year, the berries are late.

After a mild winter, the spring was chilly. While we had some wet weather in the earlier part of the spring, we are now in a dry spell. It’s all combined to make the local berries late to ripen.

Last week, I was able to find some berries from a farm about sixty miles from here and, yesterday, I finally found some from Broome-Tioga.

There is a fresh strawberry pie setting in the refrigerator. After supper, we will bring it up to Nana and Paco’s to share with them.

It’s best to eat it the day it is made.

It won’t be a hardship for the five of us to finish it.

 

“Fifty-four” in Eunoia Review

I am pleased to share the this link:  https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/fifty-four/ to my poem “Fifty-four” in Eunoia Review. It is a reprint of the poem which first appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review. Before that, it was a finalist in a Binghamton Poetry Project contest. It was written about me and my friend Angie.

I usually write squealing posts when a poem is accepted, but this was different. It was a very sober time in our lives, as we were dealing with the continuing process of grieving Grandma’s death. By sad coincidence, in January, Eunoia had published “The Last Night“, a poem I wrote about the death of my father-in-law. It felt surreal that they accepted another poem of mine that involves a death at a time when we were again mourning. This feeling has only multiplied as the losses have continued to mount this spring.

I do hope that you will take a moment to visit Eunoia Review and read my work. I would love to hear from you, either through comments here or at Eunoia.

Peace,
Joanne

adding up

This has been a spring of losses and endings and changes.

It’s getting to be a lot to handle at once.

The most difficult was Grandma’s death on March 22nd, just as spring began. We have been grateful for the support of family and friends and are especially grateful for the committal service that we were able to celebrate last week. There will continue to be a lot of work in the coming months – emotional work, certainly, but also physical work as we deal with the rest of the things she left behind and with decisions and paperwork that come with settling her financial affairs.

The week before Grandma’s committal, T and I were singing at the funeral of Father James,  a loss that brings echoes of the loss of our parish years ago.

And just after we returned from the committal, we received news of the death of Paco’s only remaining sibling after years of decline with Alzheimer’s disease. He was the third of Paco’s siblings to die from Alzheimer’s as their father had; three other siblings died too young to have developed it. At 91, with no symptoms, Paco is well beyond the age when any of his affected family members developed them. Still, it is bittersweet to have lost all of his brothers and sisters.

There are other changes happening, too, with T moving home to job search after finishing her master’s degree and with continuing family medical issues.

Although it is difficult and stressful, I am okay.

Most of the time.

I do rely on family and friends for support. Recently, when I was feeling overwhelmed, I called my college roommate, just to talk things through. It helps so much. Another thing for which to be grateful.

Eleven years ago, I experienced another spring of loss – the death of my friend Angie, the loss of our long-time parish, and the final months of my father-in-law’s battle with cancer. The aftermath of these losses has continued through the following years and this spring’s losses echo and intensify them in complex ways.

I know that, despite the pain and difficulties, there is the opportunity to grow in wisdom, compassion, and strength in response.

I hope to do that.

Meanwhile, I am trying to be supportive of others and gentle with myself. I am trying not to feel guilty about all the things I am not doing as I would like, including blogging and poetry.

Personal growth can only help my poetry.

It’s possible that my blogging practice may evolve, too. I am spending nearly all my blogging time for now on writing. It feels strange not to be spending hours reading and commenting, but limits of time and brainpower make that the way things have to be. I had thought this would be a short-term mode of operation, but am discovering that this constellation of losses and new responsibilities is likely to cause some lasting re-organization of time, effort, and priorities.

I don’t know where the path will lead or how many other detours or derailments are in store. I remain profoundly grateful to all who are accompanying me along the way, whether personally or digitally.

I would be adrift without you.