Monthly Archives: March 2010

Remembering

Posted on March 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

She, the 5 1/2 year old, is shuffling across the floor wearing one of my slippers (I’m wearing the other slipper) and her nightgown. She’s holding a tiny cat on a tiny bag with a large pink plastic ring on her thumb. Her long curly hair is a twisty mess. She’s talking talking talking. I’m wondering how long I’ll remember this charming moment and how long it will be before it becomes a part of the aggregate charming moments (the antidote to the tantrum moments). I’m pretty sure Evernote (where I store all sorts of ideas and stories) won’t exist in 20+ years. Servers and companies and technologies die, become obsolete, so I’m pretty sure it’s all up to my biology to hold onto bits of stories to recant for Lucy when she’s an adult. I don’t want to remember everything. Just a good mixtape for her. I try to focus all of my attention on some moments to help remember it later. One of my parents once told a story about me-as-a-child, in recent years, at a dinner party. It was a story about my sister, not me. I’ve been so perfectly unacknowledged (we have our own don’t ask don’t tell in our family) for so many years that I didn’t correct the story. Moya and Lucy have sharp memories, so between the three of us, SOMEONE will remember.

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Birthday Do-over

Posted on March 22, 2010 | 3 Comments

After last year I often feel like I never want to celebrate my birthday again because the day after my birthday was my grandma’s funeral which involved plenty of grief and humor and rude behavior from some people and surprising new connections and getting lost and crossing a narrow stretch of water on a raft and then ending the day with sushi and magellan gin with fever tree bitter lemon soda while recanting the day’s stories in a hotel suite with my sister.

I had a nice enough birthday with my favorite (only) sister and her wife and kids in Seattle but it was looming before the day we buried my grandma.

There were people at my grandma’s funeral who would not look me in the eye, who turned away from me when I said hi to them, who were people I grew up with in a conservative church, and, now, I’m sure because I’m a lesbian, will not even acknowledge that I exist.  I sweated a lot when I stood up in front of those people and faced them and memorialized my grandma, the kindest most welcoming person I’ve ever known.  She was the opposite of some of the people who were her friends.  I spent most of my time, while speaking, staring at the white wall in the back of the room.

My grandma, as a young girl, on the left. Me, as a young girl, on the right.

I love people’s quirks and openness and closedness and rude and kind behaviors even though some of the closedness and rudeness really stings.  There were some people at the funeral who had grown up with me.  We lost touch long ago and they all still belong to the church we all grew up in.  I wasn’t sure if they would ignore me, too, like some people  had earlier in the day, and they clearly hesitated a bit when I introduced Moya and Lucy, but they stuck around for more conversation and muddled through with smiles on their faces.  I so appreciate the effort of people who are surprised by what they’re told (“your …. wife?”) and remain courteous and chatty even if they’re thinking I’m going straight to hell.

My grandma was buried in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere farm country in Oregon.  We got lost trying to find our way back to Portland after the burial and potluck, and we ended up taking this tiny raft ferry across a river somewhere.

I still don't know where we were when we waited for this ferry - somewhere in farm country, Oregon

When we finally got back home to San Francisco, Christine and Moya threw me a birthday do-over with oysters and champagne.

My shucking wife

This year I’m taking the day off work with Moya for a long city hike and whatever happens.  Maybe we’ll walk by the house where my grandma lived here in San Francisco in the 1930′s.  Then, big sigh, NEXT year it won’t have been just a year and time will have healed more of my grief and I’ll start looking forward to my birthdays again.

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Crowdsourcing parenting tips

Posted on March 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

Yesterday marked a year since my grandma died.  After she died, we talked with Lucy about how we keep dead people in our lives by remembering them, telling stories about them, looking at pictures of them, and sometimes seeing them in our dreams.  Lucy was a big fan of her great-grandma.  We took a vacation with my grandma when Lucy was 2 years old — an adventure in balancing the quick (Lucy constantly running) and the slow (grandma) — and Lucy loved the undivided attention that my grandma always devoted to her.

Lucy near her great-grandma's grave in Hopewell, Oregon (March 2009)

After Martin Luther King day this year, Lucy talked about death and how we communicate with and remember dead people.  She wanted to know why a dead person’s birthday is celebrated (MLK) if the dead person isn’t around to eat cake and blow out candles.  Then she wanted to know if we could celebrate her great-grandma’s birthday (since we celebrate MLK’s birthday) and asked if she could send her a letter telling her that she loves her and misses her.  I was stumped — have her write a letter and send it to the cemetary?

I asked for suggestions on Twitter and Facebook (because everyone knows that the answer to any question is on the internet).  I got some great ideas from my brilliant friends (who I didn’t identify here to protect privacy, but if anyone wants attribution for their idea, just poke/ping me):

  • Write the letter and save it. I kept a journal as a kid to keep my neighbor up to date when he died suddenly.
  • Since she’s already felt it in her heart, she’s already sent it
  • The cemetery might work, and you can call first and let them know it’s coming so it wouldn’t be returned to sender. If Lucy’s already ok with the concept that greatgrandma is “dead”, you could address it to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_letter_office
  • Maybe you could say that when her greatgrandma died, her body went away but she’s still around in spirit because of how much she loved her family, kind of like how Lucy can feel your love for her even if you’re not in the same room. Since she doesn’t get mail any more, the way to send her a letter is to write it out and then burn it and when the smoke rises up, Lucy’s message will be carried to that place where her greatgrandma can read it.
  • 1. Mail it to her with no return address. Greatgrandma c/o The AFTERLIFE 2. Go to the beach or some place special and read the letter out loud to her and then burn it or bury it
  • Be pragmatic and tell her the truth — that life is without meaning and there is no point in anything…just kidding :-)
  • Oh Lucy I wish we could write to the dead but they are gone so they cannot get mail, but we can always keep them in our thoughts and deeds, like Dr King. And in a way they are always with us.
  • Ask her if she remembers what it was like before she was born. Tell her that’s where Grandma is.
  • I like the idea of her writing an actual letter. Maybe you could find a place meaningful to share it? My mom and stepdad have two trees (one for his mother, one for one of his daughters) and my mom has a birdbath as their spots. Maybe Lucy can find something that becomes a sharing spot and a box she/you can make that is her mailbox. That way, she can write the letter, she knows her grandmother won’t literally receive it, but if she can symbolically send it.
  • I also like the idea of her writing the letter. But I’d hold onto it in case she wants to see it later. No point lying about doing that either. Perhaps you can say “You should write the letter and when you are happy with the words, we’ll put it in a special place and if the letter can get to her, it will. Someday you can go back and look at them too. The important thing is what you want to say and how you feel because even if your great grandma gets the letter, she can’t just write back.”
  • It’s a lovely idea to write the letter and then save it for her to read later. If she really wants to send it……then I guess you have to be honest and tell her that nobody really knows where people go after they die. It’s one of the great mysteries of life.

As of today the letter hasn’t been written and she hasn’t brought it up again, but Lucy remembers everything and I know she’ll ask about it again soon.

I get the best advice from the internet.

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