Category Archives: family

Killing the Buddha at Christmas

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I am watching the evolution of the third generation of our family’s non-believers. He’s 7 years old now, asking questions like “if everyone has a mother, than shouldn’t the first mother have had a mother.” And so he learns about evolution.

He doesn’t ask about god or the first Christmas. He knows the stories. The various creation stories. The various winter celebration stories. He knows that different people believe different things when it comes to all things “god.”

He’s never been to an actual church service, although he might when my 94 year old Catholic mother finally passes away. He understands death as the final human event, and he participated in our ritual when we sent his grandfather’s ashes into the sea. He understands the power of ritual, apart from its religious associations.

What causes him to wonder, to experience awe, are the questions of science. What makes him feel secure are the roots of family. What sparks his creativity is the vitality of this planet’s various mythologies.

I brought up two compassionate, ethical, moral children (now adults) without a belief in in god. If they feel the awesomeness of the divine around them, it is through the natural world and their connection to it. And through their example and teaching, my grandson is sensing that divine as well.

Some people find comfort in faith. That’s OK. It’s just not us.

But we do find comfort in some cultural traditions. Christmas, for example.

It’s Christmas Eve.

For dinner tonight, we will have beet barszcz and three different kinds of pierogi. My daughter has kept part of the family’s Polish food tradition.

We will open family presents tonight in front of the lit Christmas tree, and Santa will come when we are all asleep and fill our stockings. For us it’s a cultural thing, not a religious. After all, stories of virgin births are a part of almost every cultural mythology.

We will set a place for the absent member of our family, way out in Portland, Oregon, who, we hope, will enjoy the box of gifts we sent out to him.

On Christmas Day, we will go to my son-in-law’s family to continue the feast.

Christmas, Xmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Solstice. We celebrate our family and hope for a future in which we all will thrive.

Merry Christmas.

extended-family living

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I am blogging from a Daily Grind coffee shop above the community room where my daughter and grandson are enjoying a Home School Co-op Thanksgiving party. My daughter is still on a crutch as a result of knee surgery and can’t drive yet. So I chauffeur.

For the first time in a long time, I feel that I am living a real life, part of a busy family. I mean REALLY part of a family. We do things together, and we do things separately. We take walks, we play games, we cook, and I continue to learn science and history facts that I never knew as I my grandson shares with me his Home Schooling learning adventures,

Over a year ago, as I made plans to move in with my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, friends expressed some skepticism about the wisdom of my doing such.

Granted, it was a risk. But the risk was lessened by my adding space to the house so that I could have my own couple of rooms and by the fact that my son-in-law is unusually easy-going.

And so, for the first time in a busy while, I’m taking a few minutes to blog, sitting here by the window of the Daily Grind, since there always seems to be so many more fun and interesting things to do with my life these days other than blogging.

Including making slippers for various family members and playing baseball on my new wii with my grandson.

For every thing there is a season, and a time.

And I’m enjoying this time of solitude. And blogging. And now I will knit for a while as I wait for my family downstairs to let me know that they are ready to leave.

sold gold

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My 1950s charm bracelets and the charms from it. Rings I never wear any more. A chain from which a locket once dangled. None were more than 14K. We took them to a jeweler who buys gold.

If we weren’t in a depression, perhaps someone at an estate sale might have bought the bracelets, and we would have gotten a lot more money for them. The styles of the jewelry were none that my daughter would wear. If I had a granddaughter, she might (or might not) one day want the stuff. But the price of gold is at its highest in a long time. And there won’t be a Medicare COLA coming up, and the cash will come in handy.

I have never had an affinity for gold, except for a ring I bought for myself after I got divorced and stopped wearing my wedding ring. It’s a one-of-a-kind organic design, made with the melted wax method. It’s set with a gold moonstone and has meaning for me on many levels.

Otherwise, I wear silver or copper.

And so we sold the gold.

accepting adjustments

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I’m beginning to realize that this part of my life is going to be require a constant acceptance of adjustments. These days I’m making adjustments to articles of clothing that I made, specifically this, which originally blogged about here
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I need to add pieces down the front so that I can button in. I’ve gotten a little wider. Heh. And I am almost finished lining it so that the ugly yellow sweatshirt-base inside is hidden, finally.

There are other adjustments too — medications and expectations. I just don’t have the energy and stamina to do what I used to do. That’s the downside of aging, unless you are wealthy enough to afford massages and personal trainers and hot tubs.

And now I have to adjust my budget to adjust to the fact that I’ve spent whatever cushion I’ve had for fun stuff for me and my family. Many college classmates of mine, as well as relatives my age, have homes both here in the Northeast and in the South, and they enjoy the best of both worlds with plenty of resources to spare. I’m envious. But then again, there are college classmates and relatives of mine who are no longer alive.

I guess I fall somewhere in the middle, and that has to be OK; I will keep adjusting to a simpler life.

Although if we add a puppy to this family, life will not be that simple for a while — but it will be more fun and more work. My grandson, an only and often lonely child, needs a dog who will be more than a pet — more like another sibling.

I like the idea of having a dog. Maybe she (I want to get a female) will encourage me to get out and walk more.

writings from a workshop #2

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(the writing prompt was an acorn)

She is walking today — short stumbling steps — her chipped cane prodding the gravel choked weeds along the length of driveway.

We are walking today because she can, because it’s a mild early-fall morning, because the pains of her age are not so bad, because I am here to help her if she stumbles.

We walk along the property line, a slow unsteady march through light and shadow. The unkempt ground is littered with the leavings of the season — withered crabgrass and dandelion stalks, weathered leaves, and an early harvest of acorns.

I hold her free arm while she beats the ground with her cane, grunting angry words that I can’t understand.

A sharp white stone catches her attention, and she prods it with her toe, strikes it with her cane, sends it out of her limited sight.

She stops before a scattering of acorns, a barrier to her shuffling gait. Grunting, again, she swings the tip of her cane, stabbing at the offending shells, missing more than she hits, the cane tip knocking aside small stones and sending too few acorns rolling into the underbrush.

She is shaking now, from fear or frustration or just plain tiredness. I can’t tell.

I lead her back inside to her chair by the kitchen table, where a doughnut and coffee will take her mind off the recalcitrant acorns.

She will forget her battle with the acorns in the driveway.

But I can’t.

(the prompt was a memory of a piece a jewelry)

How sweet it is to be sixteen. At least it’s supposed to be. I know that I am not nearly as sweet as my parents want the world to think I am.

So they give ma a heart. A 24 carat solid gold heart, heavy with considerations.

A prominent diamond chip marks the day of my birth on the calendar etched into the center of the heart’s face, and lines like rays of the sun streak from the edges of the month of March to the edges of the shiny heart.

I am sweet sixteen, and my wrist is shackled with a heavy heart on a heavy gold charm bracelet. Look, Look, the clanking metal announces: Look how much my parents love me.

Walking york

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The shoreline is in a mist, and there is talk of the tide coming in so high tomorrow that the street might have to be closed. But we are glad to be by the sea — especially after a lobster dinner.

I’m thinking of smells

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One of my brother’s college-days girlfriends is staying in my old living space here for a few days. They were out at the Woodstock “Roots of Woodstock” concert last night and are out somewhere this afternoon doing whatever she felt like doing during this her brief vacation.

When I went upstairs to get something out of the refrigerator that’s still there, I caught a scent of what must be her perfume. I liked it. It freshened up the whole area.

I haven’t worn perfume since I started wearing hairspray and the scents conflicted.

I remember finding the cologne I used to wear in my teens and twenties (maybe even 30s?) as making me feel light and airy — a feeling I wouldn’t mind having again.

You might remember that scent: Windsong. “I can’t seem to forget you. Your Windsong stays on my mind,” the commercial sang.

I don’t know about him, but it certainly stayed on my mind, and I’m having the desire to smell it again.

Maybe that’s because it smells a little sulphury around here due to the well water, which needs to be run through the softener — which can’t be done until my brother cleans out the residue and puts in more softening and deodorizing agent.

It just smelled so darn nice up there where my brother’s friend has hung up her clothes for a few days.

I have somewhat solved the cat litter box odor in my two-room personal quarters back home by strategically placing bags of zeolyte around the premises. But that doesn’t make the air smell “nice.”

I don’t like the strong scents of air fresheners, so I’ve just ordered a bottle of Windsong cologne to spray on my sheets and in my closet.

I wonder if it will smell the same to me as it did a half-century ago.

Woodstock, tonight

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Not Bethel, where the original Woodstock festival was held, but rather the town of Woodstock, where the planning for the original festival took place and where, for decades, the town served as a magnet for the most talented artists and musicians..

That’s where my brother is tonight, to hear and rendezvous with his old pals from the original Blues Magoos, who are performing tonight at the Bearsville Theater.

Forty years ago, when the original Woodstock was happening, I was the mother of a 6 year old and 7 months pregnant with the son who has become theonetruebix. The Woodstock Festival was a far cry from my interests at the time.

Family lore has it that my cousins (then teenagers) all piled into a car to drive up to Woodstock Festival from where they lived in lower New York State. They never made it, having got stuck in the long line of cars heading for Bethel who never made it either.

I never missed missing Woodstock. I don’t miss missing the Roots of Woodstock concert tonight.

Tonight I am missing my home in Massachusetts and I will miss going to the beach with everyone there tomorrow.

an open letter to pharmacology professionals

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I need your help. Or rather my mother does. She is 94 and living in a personal demented hell where she is constantly besieged by overwhelming fears and anxieties. She lives with my brother, and their local family doctor is not very knowledgeable about dementia issues like my mother’s. None of the meds that he has prescribed have helped at all.

An acquaintance who trains nursing home staff told me that nursing homes bring in a pharmacologist to do an assessment and suggest a pharmacological treatment plan for dementia patients. Often it is a combination of drugs, and the process is carefully monitored and the drugs adjusted as needed.

Where can I find a pharmacologist who will come into a home and do a similar assessment??

After this weekend I will begin calling local nursing homes to see if they can recommend a pharmacologist that they use. I also have emailed national pharmacological organizations and associations to see if there might be a list somewhere of pharmacologists who specialize in doing those kinds of assessments.

No one should have to spend her last days in the kind of agony that my mother is in. I don’t know where else to go for help. Please leave a comment if you have any advice.