Listening to Natalia Paruz in the subway

Last Thursday (April 29) I went on a Subway Music Tour with the energetic fabulous entertaining interesting artist/illustrator Zina Saunders as a part of the Gel conference (on of my favorite conferences).  The Gel conference is basically a 2day summer camp for adults, only it’s in spring.  This year it was a combination of technology, design, community, social consciousness, military, religion, art, music, politics, robots,  inspiration, joy, whimsy, and some friends I hadn’t seen since last year’s Gel conference.

The conference is just 2 days, with choices of activities on the first day (this year I chose the music tour, and last year I went on an underground tunnel tour in Brooklyn) and an intriguing day of live music and presentations on the second day.

Everyone we talked with who plays in the subway mentioned that it’s a good place to rehearse/practice and, hopefully, make money too, though some of the musicians commented on how much they are ignored by all of the people who walk by.  The Ebony Hillbillies performed at the conference on the second day of the conference and said that they use their subway performance times as rehearsal time/space.

Natalia Paruz

Natalia Paruz was studying to be a dancer when she was in an accident that stopped her dance career.  She saw someone playing the musical saw when she was in Austria and asked how to learn to play it.  She was told to buy a saw at a hardware store and figure it out.  She figured it out!  She straps an iPod to her leg which plays backup music through an amp and a speaker while she plays her saw.  Often people think she’s singing and she has to show them that it’s the saw, not her voice.

One of the musicians we chatted with and listened to was Luke Ryan at grand central station.  He pointed to all of the people who walked by without looking at him and diagnosed and identified and stereotyped them and then mused about the commonalities and correlations between people who listen or stop or talk with subway musicians and those who don’t.  Can Hunch figure out what inspires or motivates someone to listen or stop or talk or give money to a subway musician?  Luke mentioned that he’d like to gather together the 30 or so people who pay attention to him every day and have a banquet — figuring that if they could all sit at a table together, he’d easily figure out what they all have in common. That’d be a fantastic dinner party!

While I was on the plane, flying to NYC for this conference, I received an email that my grandma (my dad’s mom) had died.  Within the next day the funeral had been set for Sunday.  I had plans for Saturday and Sunday in NYC with friends.  By Friday I had decided I’d change my plans, change my plane ticket, buy a new plane ticket, reserve a rental car, and go to my grandma’s funeral.

I hadn’t seen her in a long time (I wasn’t as close to her as I was to my other grandma who died last year).  We exchanged cards and photos at Christmas every year.  She was always kind and gentle.  She made a sock monkey for me as a child that I still have and that my 5 1/2 year old daughter now claims as her own.  She spent almost all of her adult life as a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and finally, before she died, a great-great-grandmother.  I loved the huge family gatherings with my dad’s family when I was a kid, with so many cousins and aunts and uncles and chaos and noise and diversity.

Me in tux/ruffles

So I flew home to San Francisco on Saturday (instead of Sunday).  My wife had tickets for the NCLR party that night and left a ticket for me on the counter.  I changed into a tux and a ruffly shirt (in solidarity with Constance McMillen and Ceara Sturgis who were at the party and had suffered discrimination at their high schools due to wearing or wanting to wear a tux).  I checked my wild einstein-curly hair in a mirror and went to find Moya at the party.

My siblings and their spouses and kids

The next morning I put on a black suit and went back to the airport to fly to Portland, Oregon, get a rental car, and drive to the church for the funeral.  All of my aunts and uncles and cousins were there, but my parents weren’t there.  My younger brother read a letter from my dad recanting some sweet stories about my grandma (my dad’s mom).  When my dad was a child, my grandma made him 3 shirts all from the same fabric, so people thought he was always wearing the same shirt, not 3 different shirts that were exactly the same.  After the funeral at the church, there was a drive to a cemetary to bury my grandma, and then a drive back to the church for a meal with everyone.  While sitting at a table with all of my siblings, with relatives and other people stopping by to chat with us, I remembered Luke Ryan’s comment that he’d like to have a banquet table for the 30+ people who stop by every day.  Those 30+ people might not have as much in common as he hopes, or they might.  In a large room in a church with most of my relatives, who I rarely see, I realized we all have our humanity in common, and that’s enough to treat people with graciousness even if they’re nervous around me or ignore me for whatever reason.

Kindergarten

Many of those adults now would barely speak to me because I’m a lesbian.  That one word moves me from a sweet lovely adored person included in a community to a shunned “sinner” not worthy of human acknowledgement.

Many of those adults apparently also stopped talking to and including my parents.

I grew up in a very strict lutheran church that is closely related to Laestadian churches.  Women were not allowed to be pastors or ministers.  They participated in discussions at bible studies but they never stood up in the pulpit and spoke to the congregation.  We were required to always wear dresses to church (something my younger sister hated).  Most of the women were housewives and stay at home parents (though that wasn’t my mom or grandma).  Dancing and watching movies/TV were strictly forbidden.  The only music ever played was religious music and hymns.  I was taught that other religions were strictly wrong and that we held the one true truth/faith and were the only people going to heaven.  When friends of my parents divorced, when I was a child, I noticed that the divorced couple did not seem welcome any longer in our church.   Most men smoked heavily, but most women didn’t.  Alcohol was never drunk.

Any wonder I distrust religion?

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.

I dropped Lucy off at school and picked up some instant coffee from Starbucks.  Then I walked down to Bi-Rite Market to get some pastured eggs – they are the only store I know around the neighborhoods I walk (Mission, SOMA, FiDi, Castro) that regularly have pastured eggs in stock.  I expected to find eggs from Eatwell or Clark Summit or Soul Food Farm or Marin Sun Farm, and then was pleased to find pasture raised eggs from farms I’d never heard of: Lazy 69 Ranch and Sinclair Family Farm.

I picked up a bottle of Bushmill’s whiskey which reminded me of meeting Moya in 1997 and of marrying her for the 3rd time in 2008.

Irish tradition (I married an Irish gal)

I got another can of sweetened condensed milk which always reminds me of my fabulously missed late grandma.  And some Recchiuti extra bitter chocolate sauce which is probably heavier than the recipe requires, but it looked so much more delicious than the bottle of plain chocolate syrup.  Why skimp when the ingredients list is already so decadent?!

I dumped all of the ingredients in the mixing bowl. It’s a simple recipe – you just whip together fresh eggs, almond extract, vanilla extract, chocolate syrup, instant coffee granules, sweetened condensed milk, whiskey, and whipping cream.

While I was scraping out the cans of sweetened condensed milk I was reminded of my grandma’s voice telling the story of how her mom would always use every last drop of sweetened condensed milk from a can by pouring coffee in the can and dissolving the last bits of sweet milk with the coffee.

every last drop of sweet

I don’t like milk in my coffee but I’ll drink coffee out of the remains in a can like this.

Here’s the finished product ready for a label:

Store in the fridge, not by the tree

Posted in cocktail, happiness, storytelling Tagged: inspired ]]> http://leannewaldal.com/2009/12/15/serendipity/feed/ 2 lwaldal http://leannewaldal.com/2009/12/11/look-at-thi/ http://leannewaldal.com/2009/12/11/look-at-thi/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:23:43 +0000 Leanne Waldal http://leannewaldal.com/?p=352 Continue reading →]]> I’m not the person in our family who usually has insomnia – that’s my wife.  But for the past few weeks I’ve been awake in the wee hours of the morning.  I wake up with the task of my dream still at hand.

One early morning I was dreaming that I was trying to clean ants out of our house (those hardworking persistent non-native San Francisco ants that we haven’t had in our house in years, but I still fear their return) and I woke up and went to look for a sponge to use to wipe/clean them up.

This morning it was 4:10am when I woke up convinced that I was holding a mouse I had just found and I needed to find a box for it.  I could feel the tiny scared animal’s heart beating in my fingers and I could see the nest of paper bits it had made in a corner of the room. I put my glasses on and realized there was no mouse.  I’d seen a tiny mouse on our patio a few days ago.  Now it’s in my dream house.

Since it was just after 4am and we try to all get up around 7am on weekday mornings I decided to stay awake and get things done.  I started to make lunch for Lucy’s school lunchbox but I was pacing around and being too noisy.  I decided to sit. in. one. place. and look over our 2008 Christmas card address spreadsheet and make updates for 2009.  I was anticipating updating addresses of friends who have moved and adding addresses for some new friends.

Then I saw a line in the spreadsheet with my grandma’s name and address.  I was casually organizing the list and thought, “she’s not around anymore, so remove the row,” and then I just fell apart dripping big huge tears all over the cat and the laptop keyboard.

Since she died in March I have grieved her loss the most when I think of calling her or sending her a letter or visiting her or telling her about something.  When Lucy’s official Kindergarten portrait was delivered, I wanted to send one to my grandma because I knew she would love it.  When Lucy announced that she wants to be a “bug scientist” when she grows up, I wanted to tell my grandma because she loved to encourage women to be scientists.  When I have an interesting project at work I like to write to my grandma about it because I know she likes to hear about it.

She was my “look at this!” go-to person who would almost always respond with love and support and attention. I always wanted to show her things or share things with her and I always wanted to impress her.

I have a file drawer full of photos from her collection and I’ve been scanning them and hope to create and print a book of her photos for my siblings and parents. One of my favorites was probably taken while she was at Wesleyan in the late 1920′s or early 1930′s – such dashing women:

Harriet, Queenie, Evelyn, Margaret, Frances - early 1930's or late 1920's

Sometimes when she tells stories about some of her friends it’s not clear if the story happened in the near or distant past.  She’s super sharp and she tells all stories about events in her life with fresh clarity and details as though it just happened.  We were talking about her friends, most of whom who have passed on, and she mentioned a friend who had 11 children and one of the younger ones (3 or 4 years old) died in a horrifying accident.  I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.  The children were playing with cardboard boxes and the younger girl put her box out in the street and climbed in it and a car ran over her and she died and, as my grandma told it, her mother was quite shaken for a long time – it’s hard to watch over 11 children at once.  That was more than 50 years ago.  I can’t even imagine what it must be like to lose a child that way.  It makes my stomach fall apart.