Member of the Club

Today I watched It's a Wonderful Life. I remember watching it for the first time in high school with my friend Heather. I loved James Stewart in Rear Window, so when I saw another one of his movies for sale at Kmart on VHS for $3, I had to get it.

The next morning, my mom came downstairs all excited and asked how I liked the movie.

"It sucked," I said. "It was the most depressing thing I had even seen. The guy gives up all of his dreams to take care of other people? We got to the part where he was going to jump off the bridge and we stopped. We couldn't finish it."

My mom looked at me dumbfounded. 

"You need to watch the end," she said. "You need to watch the end."

That was probably the best advice my mother ever gave me, strange as it sounds, telling me to watch the end of It's a Wonderful Life, but it is true. The ending makes all of the difference, the difference between hope and despair.

My mom died two days ago as a result of Alzheimer's, which she battled for ten years. My dad called me a week ago Saturday to tell me she lost her ability to swallow, which meant her body was shutting down. For the following week, it was wait and see, wait and see. Friday morning, she passed.

About twenty percent of my friends have lost a parent, and now I am a member of that club.

When I first heard the news that my mother had died, I was relieved her suffering had ended, that both her soul and her body were both at peace. Now, relief is slowly being replaced with quiet grief. 

Build a Fire

My mother is dying.

For real this time. 

We think.

She's had a decade with Alzheimer's. Her conscious mind left her body years ago, but her heart still beats.

Now she can no longer swallow, eat or drink. She is effectively in a coma, sleeping all day, not responsive. In this state, she can feel no pain. I spoke with Rhonda today, the nurse who has been caring for my mother--and my father--for years.

"She could have a week," she said. I was surprised that anyone could live that long without water, but I guess it takes a while for the body to shut down. Plus, she is expending almost no energy. It doesn't make much fuel to keep what is left working.

I have a hard time believing my mother is going to die this time because we've had close calls before and she rallied and pulled through. My mother is a tough cookie. She survived Covid in June of 2020, early in the pandemic when it was slaughtering its way through nursing homes. In my mother's memory care unit that season, more than eighty percent of the residents died of covid. It was brutal.

And my mother lived. I think one of my Chicago aunts has a vicious prayer circle going for my mom 24/7. I am not sure what else would explain this and other medical miracles.

Yet, no one lives forever. This is her time, and her death is on her time. No one knows when she will pass. We can't plan or predict, which is so contrary to our modern lives, when we get upset when the planes, trains and the rains don't arrive on time. Death makes fools us all, making us wait and wonder without schedule. I am learning patience, waiting without worrying about logistics. When the time comes, I will figure it out.

My mother loved to build fires. Let me emphasize "build," not "start." "Starting" a fire means you light something up and let it go. "Building" a fire means you start the fire and keep it going. You maintain, tend and care to the fire.

When we would go camping as a family when I was a kid, we'd arrive at the site and my brother and I would first hit the woods and look for kindling while my parents set up the camper. Friday night, she'd start a fire that would last the weekend. To my mother, building a fire was an art form, with several factors. It needed to look good and burn hot with minimal smoke.

She passed her love of fire on to me. Pedro is a third generation pyro, learning to build fires from sticks and rocks in the wilderness.

Tonight I was talking to Pedro about his grandmother, among other things. He had a busy day, and I spent the whole day talking on the phone with family and friends, plus dealing with a flat tire. It is a quiet and cold and snowy night in Seattle. When I told him I was tired and debating between going to bed and starting a fire, he said without hesitation 

"Build a fire."

So I did. He must have known in some deep, spiritual place, that was exactly what I needed. 

A fire.

Pictures of Costa Rica

My dad wants to see pictures from my trip. Here ya go! (I'm too tired to caption them all and put them in order.)

View from our hotel.

"The Damned United" and AITA?

[Spoilers ahead, but the movie has been out for more than ten years, so yeah.]

Flying back from Costa Rica, I had a seven hour flight from Miami to Seattle. 

It was a long flight. 

Since it is World Cup season, the airline had a bunch of soccer movies, including Fever Pitch starring Colin Firth and Bend It Like Beckham. (As much as I love Colin Firth and Nick Hornby, I couldn't get into Fever Pitch.) After Bend It Like Beckham, I watched The Damned United starring Michael Sheen about the soccer manager Brian Clough, considered the greatest manager in England. It was crazy good, probably one of the top ten movies I've ever seen. I don't know how true the movie is, but it is a good story of a guy before he became a legend.

Brian and assistant manager take an obscure, last place team and raise it to the top of the field. Along the way, Brian gets ignored by the legendary coach Don Revie of the Leeds United, the best team in the England football league in the 1960's and 1970's. When Revie is asked to lead England's national team, Brain is asked to coach Leeds United. He thinks Revie was a dirty coach, and he vows to clean up Leeds, so they can win but win honestly without cheating. As Brian's success grows, he becomes more confident, cocky and arrogant. You know the expression you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar? Brian didn't. He ultimately gets fired after forty-four days as coach of Leeds.

There is a scene at the end where Don Revie and Brian Clough are interviewed on television together after Brian has been sacked. It is a tense interview where Don asks Brian if he treated the members of the Leeds team like family, was he kind? Brian looks perplexed, dumbfounded, but was the interview goes on, seems to realize the answer to the question "Am I the asshole?" is yes. Brian is being called out by his nemesis for his miserable behavior.

Brian got the point, and groveled back to his assistant manager to work with him again, going on to become a successful and beloved coach. Revie's career ended in scandal.

So often the point of movies is watching people change, grow and develop into better human beings. So often, the protagonist has a eureka moment, the lightening strikes and voila! the person is changed, enlightened. This rarely happens in life.

Both men were called out by each other, but one of them took it to heart, and the other did not. Everyone at some point of their life is a jerk, a schmuck, an asshole. The question is what do we do with that information? Do we say, yeah, I know, but so what? I was born this way. I can't change.

Or, can we face our weaknesses, admit we were at fault, and then try to be better. The failure of Brian wasn't getting fired after forty-four days at Leeds. The failure would have been if he learned nothing from the experience.

Beetles

Beetles have poor evolutionary design. Last night on the balcony at my hotel in Costa Rica, a beetle flew against the wall and landed on its back. This morning when I woke up, it was still on its back, scrambling its legs to right itself, which wasn’t going to happen.

I found a piece of paper and flipped the bug right side up. It was stunned for a bit then then flew away.

I just remembered beetles have wings under their shell. Why don’t they just open the shell and use their wings to flip themselves up properly?

Strawberry

I remember an old zen story about an enlightened man who was being chased off a cliff by a tiger. He could either get eaten by the tiger or fall to his death. As he is falling, his life stops for a moment and he sees a strawberry. He grabs the strawberry and eats it, savoring every sweet bite. 

This is the extreme of living in the moment.

Today Claire-Adele and I went zip lining in Costa Rica. It was billed as a cloud canopy tour, but instead it was an adrenaline junkie fix, with a giant swing, zip lines and repelling down a 40 meter platform. After getting zipped down the platform, we had to climb back up. Part of the 40 m climb was in a hollow tree trunk. The last twenty meters was up a rickety and uneven ladder. The tree trunk was cozy or claustrophobic, which I preferred. The open air ladder was freaky. We were clipped into a guide rope which would slow down the fall but probably not stop it. Anyway, I met every step up the ladder with my mini-mantra “I can do this.” I took one step at a time and never looked down. It was amazing what I could do when I broke it into small bits.

I am writing this from the warmth of my room in the B&B, so you know I survived. The riskiest part of the trip was the lightening. We had to stop the ziplining two zips from the end because they didn’t want anyone to get electrocuted while hanging from a metal wire in a tree canopy.

Claire-Adele had a blast and looks good in all of the pictures which she will post on Instagram and her dating profiles. “Guys will know I’m up for adventure,” she said. Or maybe it was down with adventure, as if adventure has a direction.

I did not look nearly as charming as Claire-Adele did in my pictures. I couldn’t fix a joyful expression as I was coming down. I looked terrified or bewildered or amped up on drugs or whatever. I did not look good.

I am not a big fan of the adrenaline junkie vacation where a death waiver needs to be signed, but I relented. As I jumped off the platform for each of the half dozen times, I kept thinking of the zen strawberry. Thought the ride on the zip line lasts only a few seconds, this is the closest thing I’ll ever get to feel like I’m flying. When fear was gripping me, I thought I might as well enjoy the ride.

In the pictures, on the other hand, I looked more like I was getting chased by a tiger instead of enjoying a strawberry. 

A Tale of Two Men, and Frozen

I was talking to some friends the other day when one of them said,

"When you are no longer afraid of getting hurt by someone, you can start to see who they really are."

I was blown away by this idea, and I've been thinking about it ever since. When I am afraid of losing someone or when I am clinging to them after all hope is lost, I lose perspective. Once I give up that fear of abandonment, I see more clearly. In the past few months, my fear is decreasing, and my clarity is increasing.

Hold this thought.

A Tale of Two Men

Once upon a time back in 2010, I had a carpenter and a mortgage broker. Both were phenomenal at what they did, best in class. When I needed to refinance my mortgage, I'd automatically call Robert without needed to get second or third quotes from other mortgage brokers. I'd leave a message for Robert saying I wanted a new rate, and he'd call me back within two hours having already talked a bank and gotten me a rate better than I expected. When something in my house needed to be fixed, I'd call Carl without getting bids from other carpenters. Why? They did a great job and I trusted them. Wasn't that enough? Why look around when I already had what I needed? 

A few years ago, I was trying to refi my mortgage and I called Robert and I couldn't find him. He had switched firms a few times, and he eventually started his own mortgage brokerage business. So I googled him. 

It turns out he was in prison for a year.

Not for ripping off his mortgage clients. Not from stealing from banks.

He was arrested for kidnapping a woman on a boat to smuggle pot from British Columbia to Washington.

This was shocking. Why would he be a drug smuggler as a side hustle when he was a damn good and very successful (and presumably rich) mortgage broker? I can see someone who has few other job skills getting in the drug business, but this guy was a rock star at what he did. I didn't understand this. What is self-sabotage? Why risk losing a successful legal endeavor for something that could land him in the clink? Let's compare Robert to Carl. Carl just replaced Jack's deck at the house a few months ago and presumably, has never been in prison.

Robert made a choice. He chose to blow up his life. Sure, he thought he was smart enough not to get caught, but he did. When people do wrong, they might blame all of the forces of the universe, but that is bullshit. People have a choice in how they behave.

• Being an asshole is a choice.
• Being a raging lunatic is a choice
• ("Oh but they started it so I had to yell back," is bullshit. Being civilized in the face of an asshole is also a choice.)
• Being a grumpy and misanthropic curmudgeon is a choice.
• Neglecting your family is a choice.

Some of these maybe subconscious choices, but they still are choices. People may not be trying to be malicious, but the effect of whether they are trying or not, is that people get hurt.

Frozen

I was driving last night when the song "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from the movie Frozen can on my playlist. For those who haven't seen the movie, this song is in the beginning when the youngest sister, Anna, is reaching out to her older sister, Elsa, making a "bid for connection," as marriage expert John Gottman would say. The older sister rejects the young sister, and the younger sister doesn't understand why.

I thought back to the comment my friend made the other day:

"When you are no longer afraid of getting hurt by someone, you can start to see who they really are."

That statement goes both ways. When we stop being afraid, we can see everything about the person, the good as well as the bad. We see the whole rainbow, not just black and white. Also, when we are afraid like the older sister in Frozen was, we can't see when people love us, when they are making a bids for connection. Elsa's heart was closed. She couldn't get hurt, but she also didn't let the love in, a love that could have healed and helped her.

What I am afraid of?

I am planning a trip with my daughter, and I have been nervous about it for the usual travel related reasons, like driving along dirt roads in a place I've never been. But that wasn't entirely it. I am afraid of getting my heart broken by my daughter, and not for rational reasons. My first daughter, Ada, died. While Claire-Adele is strong, brave and a fighter, I don't see anything bad happening to her. Yet, I am afraid. 

I had a challenging relationship with my mom, and I don't want that with my daughter. I want a peaceful, easy-going and respectful relationship, where we can have fun and laugh, where was can talk about our jobs and our dreams. Claire-Adele is smart and thoughtful and doesn't need my advice (unless she asks for it). Yet, if I fear having turbulent relationship with my kid, I will fail to see her for who she really is, which is missing the point. The point of a relationship is to see someone in their whole humanity and accept them, warts and farts and all. When we unfreeze our hearts, we risk getting hurt. When we close our hearts, we can't feel love. 

I am making a lioness doll. This is what I have so far. 

Somedays I feel how mid-production lioness looks.

Text from a friend today...

I am going to embroider this on a pillow and give it to her for Christmas.

Where I am I Supposed to Be, and Creative

Last Sunday, I had no plans except for a yoga class and to finish a project for the Eileen Fischer Renew Chop Challenge where we take scraps of old clothes and make them into something new. I had been working on my project for a few weeks, and I needed to add the final touches.

I was kind of depressed because I had "nothing to do," nothing formally scheduled or planned. Claire-Adele and I were working on our upcoming trip, which was fun, but otherwise I was feeling sluggish and uncomfortable because of my lack of plans. I was antsy.

I was talking to one of my friends who is in the same boat I am in: getting a divorce and having an empty nest.

"We never had to think of what to do before because there always was so much to do. We were at the mercy of other people's schedules," she said. "And hanging out with out kids because they were home was something to do. We didn't need to make plans."

I wish I had practiced doing my own thing more when I my kids were still in the house, carving out time and space for myself -- doing what do I want to do, not just tackling at the pile of stuff that needed to be done.

Sunday morning, I kept looking at my scrap project, knowing I needed to finish it. I'd look at it, and I'd look at the pile of remaining scraps. I'd add a stitch here, and then do the dishes. I'd come back to the couch where I was sewing, and add a few more stitches. I'd read a little bit of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, and then I'd add a few more stitches to balance it out.

What I thought was going to be a miserable and depressing day because I had "nothing to do" ended up being wildly creatively productive. I needed that down time and space to ponder.

There is an expression for people recovering from challenges: "You are exactly where you are supposed to be." I had always thought that was bullshit. There have been some amazingly awful times in my life and I can't reconcile the concept of "That was exactly where I was supposed to be" with death and disaster, or cleaning up the aftermath. Yet, now I find it to be true. The harder part is when we run away from where we are supposed to be, whether by actively avoiding it or numbing out. "Grief waits" is a phrase I vividly remember after Ada died. When I felt sad and was in mourning, I felt sad, but I wasn't sad about being sad. I knew I needed to grieve, and that grieving, while painful, is actually healthy. I now think that "being where we are supposed to be means" that we feel the way we feel, and we don't feel bad about it or avoid it.

Last Sunday was uncomfortable, but it I was exactly where I needed to be. I needed to sit with the discomfort. Now, I can have a day with not much planned, and feel okay. I see it as an opportunity to chose what I want to do, not as a burden for me to slog through. 

Bunny's dress is made out of the cuff of a dress shirt. 

I never would have thought of this without spare time. :)

Sauna

I read 

somewhere

that 

sitting in a sauna

four times a week 

will prevent

dementia.

So I go to the sauna

Downstairs

in my health club

telling myself

"this is good for me."

Why can't I just go

because it is fun

and warm

and relaxing, 

making me happy 

and bringing me peace?

Why can't 

that 

be enough?

Or is it 

the other way 

around?

Maybe the sauna is good for me

because it is good for me

like reading a book

or tending a garden

or calling a friend

or holding a dog

or sunshine.

Maybe it is good

because it is good.

"Dog Sitting on Newspapers"

Hoarding

I took a few art history classes in college and I loved them. My modern art class was perhaps my favorite class I took in college. My dad gently nudged me away from art history into something more practical, like math. Which was fine. I loved math, too.

Paul Allen died in 2018, and left behind a most impressive art collection. It was all put on the auction block last week at Christie's. The collection sold for more than $1.6 billion.

So the guy is dead. And he had great taste in art, or he had enough money that he could afford great taste in art.

Before the art was sold, it was put on display. Thousands of people lined up to see it. I never would thought that people would go see art that is up for sale, but they did because they might not ever get a chance to see these masterpieces again. After the sale, the art will likely go to private homes instead of to museums.

I wish Allen would have donated the art to a museum, even if he made his own museum. He already did with MoPop, a museum that celebrates pop culture. He could have given the art to the SAM, or multiple museums. The Met takes art collections from single donors, as it did from Robert Lehman, scion of Lehman Brothers.

I have another question -- is it really great art if no one sees it? The paintings aren't famous--they are the opposite: they are private. No one knows the names of these paintings. They won't be studied in art history classes, which I think is tragic. I can understand that people want to own masterpieces, and I don't want to discourage that. Yet, I think there is a point where some art should be on public display and shared with community.

Recycled Advice

I was talking to Claire-Adele about this painting class I am taking. Each week we work on a new exercise, like painting in different tones, or making a color chart. Some of the people in it have a decent amount experience and talent. I've never painted with oils before, and it is obvious I am a beginner.

"You have a unique drawing language," the teacher said to me. The poor woman was stretching for something kind and interesting to say about my work. I wanted to reply that last time I took a drawing class was in middle school. My teacher's comment reminded me of when I took a watercolors class in my twenties with my friend H. H was painting pearls (super hard in watercolors) and I was painting a pumpkin (super easy in watercolors.) The teacher walked by and commented on the beautiful shade of orange I created, which is the easiest color to mix. It is impossible to make a bad shade of orange. Did I mention my friend was painting pearls? She was making the color "iridescent" which is way harder than orange.

I was grumbling to Claire-Adele that everyone in the class was better than me and I sucked and blah blah blah. I was having my very own private pity party.

"You aren't there to compete with other people," she said. "You are there to learn and become better than you were before."

I wasn't thrilled with her response, as I wanted empathy, not advice. Nevertheless, she was right. The strange thing was that what she said sounded exactly like something I would have said to her. Here is my daughter, giving me advice, echoing what I have probably told her a thousand times.

So then I called my dad looking for sympathy. Maybe he'd have a story about a time when he was bad at something and he overcame and triumphed.

Nope.

"You aren't there to complete with other people," he said. "You are there to learn and become better than you were before."

I am not kidding Claire-Adele and my dad said the exact same thing to me, probably verbatim. There must magic code that has been culturally imprinted in my family, that is getting passed down. It was interesting to see it so directly passed down within a week.