Today was cooler walking, and I think I walked about 2 miles. That's about right for 45-50 minutes. Lots of dog walkers out today, and one dog in a baby stroller. She was taken out of the stroller by her "mom", and was no doubt the fattest dachshund I have ever seen! Her belly was only a fraction of an inch off the ground! I suppose she could have been very pregnant, but I've seen pregnant dogs, and they look a bit different.
Another lovely Scottie dog was being walked by a "dog sitter", and I began to think maybe I could hire myself out as a dog walker! I'll think more on that.
For some reason, I remembered all the lyrics to a nonsense song that my ex used to sing to the kids:
"The horses run around, their feet are on the ground,
Who'll wind the clock when I'm away, away?
Go get the axe, there's a hair on baby's chest,
Oh, a boy's best friend is his mother, his mother.
Peekin' through a knot hole, on father's wooden leg,
Who put the shore so near the ocean, the ocean?
A snake's belt always slips because he has no hips.
The onion is a husky vegetable, ta-bull."
There are variations on the lyrics, but those are the ones that John sang, and today was the first time I have remembered them in order. Walking must be good!
March 5, 2011
March 3, 2011
Hello Again, Muse!
I felt a brief but satisfying glimpse of my muse today while out for a walk, and many random thoughts passed through my cobwebby head. You can either indulge me and read on, or go on about your business, for this undoubtedly involves a bit of navel gazing.
I have retired from the job I'd held for over 11 years. There were several factors involved, not the least of which is that I'll turn 70 in October and I'm at the point where I'd like to not work full time. Whether I'm up to part time is yet to be determined, but I've not actively searched the options.
Never have a deluded myself about my personality type (aside from the Meyers-Briggs pronouncement that I'm a ENFP); I am not merely a B personality, I'm more like a B-. That's a little better than a C, which I consider a total couch potato, one beyond redemption, and God bless them, because they keep Doritos in business. I don't sit in front of the TV during the day, or at night, come to that, but I confess to being a computer junkie. Email, Facebook, Spider Solitaire, Googling all manner of things.
But I am a night person, just as my mother was. I like to sleep late and go to bed late. This is not conducive to normal working hours in America, and I always said that getting up was the hardest thing I did every day. But lots of things can be done at night time. Organizing one's desk, files, bookcases, for example, or cleaning bathrooms. OK, that takes care of maybe two nights a month...hmmm, what else? Well, reading of course; night time is the best time to read. Why waste daylight hours with your nose inside a book? Besides, the glare of the sun can be rather bothersome!
Oh, just get on with it, please!
Today is the loveliest day in weeks in San Jose; sunny sky, close to 70 degrees, so I thought today would be a good day to start my 2011 resolution: a daily walk! Several years ago, I'd walk nearly every day, at least an hour if from home, and half that during my lunch hour at work. I felt great! Rejuvenated, thinner, healthy, mentally alert, etc.! I stopped because of a really painful neuroma in my right foot, and never quite got back in the habit. I bought an iPod so that I could listen to books while I walked, but I realized that as much as I enjoyed the iPod, it wasn't right for walking. I walk on a creek trail near my house, and I enjoy the sounds of the birds, the sometimes rushing water on its journey to San Francisco Bay, and I get to hear the warnings of cyclists, lest they run into me. It has occurred to me that the best place for iPod indulgence is while driving the car. Good during a long commute or a long drive, especially once you're out of range of the nearest NPR station!
So, I'm going to make this public, so I have all of you to answer to, but even more important, I have myself to account to. Today was the first day back to a regular routine of walking. Half an hour today, and upwards from here. Walking is a time to meditate, to experience the sights and sounds around you, even if it's skyscrapers, airplanes, sirens, or jackhammers. It's a time to review whatever your head needs to review. It's spring cleaning for the mental and physical cobwebs.
Stay tuned, if you dare. My muse is bound to make more appearances as I walk more.
I have retired from the job I'd held for over 11 years. There were several factors involved, not the least of which is that I'll turn 70 in October and I'm at the point where I'd like to not work full time. Whether I'm up to part time is yet to be determined, but I've not actively searched the options.
Never have a deluded myself about my personality type (aside from the Meyers-Briggs pronouncement that I'm a ENFP); I am not merely a B personality, I'm more like a B-. That's a little better than a C, which I consider a total couch potato, one beyond redemption, and God bless them, because they keep Doritos in business. I don't sit in front of the TV during the day, or at night, come to that, but I confess to being a computer junkie. Email, Facebook, Spider Solitaire, Googling all manner of things.
But I am a night person, just as my mother was. I like to sleep late and go to bed late. This is not conducive to normal working hours in America, and I always said that getting up was the hardest thing I did every day. But lots of things can be done at night time. Organizing one's desk, files, bookcases, for example, or cleaning bathrooms. OK, that takes care of maybe two nights a month...hmmm, what else? Well, reading of course; night time is the best time to read. Why waste daylight hours with your nose inside a book? Besides, the glare of the sun can be rather bothersome!
Oh, just get on with it, please!
Today is the loveliest day in weeks in San Jose; sunny sky, close to 70 degrees, so I thought today would be a good day to start my 2011 resolution: a daily walk! Several years ago, I'd walk nearly every day, at least an hour if from home, and half that during my lunch hour at work. I felt great! Rejuvenated, thinner, healthy, mentally alert, etc.! I stopped because of a really painful neuroma in my right foot, and never quite got back in the habit. I bought an iPod so that I could listen to books while I walked, but I realized that as much as I enjoyed the iPod, it wasn't right for walking. I walk on a creek trail near my house, and I enjoy the sounds of the birds, the sometimes rushing water on its journey to San Francisco Bay, and I get to hear the warnings of cyclists, lest they run into me. It has occurred to me that the best place for iPod indulgence is while driving the car. Good during a long commute or a long drive, especially once you're out of range of the nearest NPR station!
So, I'm going to make this public, so I have all of you to answer to, but even more important, I have myself to account to. Today was the first day back to a regular routine of walking. Half an hour today, and upwards from here. Walking is a time to meditate, to experience the sights and sounds around you, even if it's skyscrapers, airplanes, sirens, or jackhammers. It's a time to review whatever your head needs to review. It's spring cleaning for the mental and physical cobwebs.
Stay tuned, if you dare. My muse is bound to make more appearances as I walk more.
January 18, 2010
Up the Down Fire Escape
I had just moved to a great new third floor apartment on the West Side. It was a newly remodeled attic; delightfully open and bright, and had the equivalent of a new car smell. The house was on the corner of a fairly major thoroughfare and a sleepy little street used only by its residents. The dining room window overlooked the fire escape. I couldn’t get the piano through the window, and there was no elevator in the old house. I didn’t like the idea of having to wrestle with a window to get out in case of fire, either. Thankfully, my new landlord agreed to replace the window with a door, and gave the guy on the first floor a break on his rent to do the job. The piano was lifted by crane and carefully guided into the house.
Only one more hurdle remained. My big orange cat Pouncer was accustomed to being an indoor/outdoor cat, and whereas there were probably not as many mice in the city as had been in the fields he used to roam, I wanted him to be able to go out. I couldn’t see the front door from my apartment. I couldn’t hear him from three flights up, or through walls and doors. I loved my cat, but no way could I see myself running up and down stairs several times to see if he was ready to come in. Aha! The fire escape!
I put Pouncer on the top step, actually a little landing. He looked around, looked at me, looked at the ridiculously steep fire escape, especially from the second floor to my new doorway. Finally, he cautiously put front paws on the step below, calibrating the wisdom of fitting the rest of his body on the narrow step. In slow motion, he managed to get his rear half on the step at the same time his front half began its descent to the next step. I could not hold back my laughter as he negotiated that tier in that same slow motion, about 12 steps. The rest of the descent to the ground went a little faster, as the steps were less steep and wider, so his whole body could fit on each step if he wanted to pause.
The first flight of steps was up against the garage on the left, and on the right it was open to the little street that posed little hazard to a pet. Once Pouncer disappeared behind the garage, I left my post at the door and puttered about my lovely new home.
After a short while, I opened the door to the fire escape, and called Pouncer. He appeared on the other side of the garage, spoke to me, and started to jump up to the garage. He made a few attempts at jumping, then sat on his haunches and looked at me. He looked right and left. He looked at me. Suddenly, he took off with certainty and determination, ran around the garage to the fire escape and sped up the steps into the apartment.
Pouncer went out at least once a day for the nearly three years I lived in that apartment. He never showed any hesitation again, and I could hear his meow on the little fire escape landing when he wanted to come in. He still took that first flight down somewhat gingerly, but faster than the first time. I continued to laugh as I watched him descend that narrow flight, hoping I’d never have to walk down it myself.
No one can tell me that Pouncer didn’t think/reason/remember about how to get back to his new home. He saw the goal, but there was no path that he could see on that side of the garage. I realize that my words “certainty and determination” are anthropomorphic, but I swear I could almost see the light bulb, the aha! moment just before he took off to the fire escape.
Pouncer was about 5 years old then; seven years later he moved with me from Buffalo to San Jose and lived to be 14. I still miss him.
Only one more hurdle remained. My big orange cat Pouncer was accustomed to being an indoor/outdoor cat, and whereas there were probably not as many mice in the city as had been in the fields he used to roam, I wanted him to be able to go out. I couldn’t see the front door from my apartment. I couldn’t hear him from three flights up, or through walls and doors. I loved my cat, but no way could I see myself running up and down stairs several times to see if he was ready to come in. Aha! The fire escape!
I put Pouncer on the top step, actually a little landing. He looked around, looked at me, looked at the ridiculously steep fire escape, especially from the second floor to my new doorway. Finally, he cautiously put front paws on the step below, calibrating the wisdom of fitting the rest of his body on the narrow step. In slow motion, he managed to get his rear half on the step at the same time his front half began its descent to the next step. I could not hold back my laughter as he negotiated that tier in that same slow motion, about 12 steps. The rest of the descent to the ground went a little faster, as the steps were less steep and wider, so his whole body could fit on each step if he wanted to pause.
The first flight of steps was up against the garage on the left, and on the right it was open to the little street that posed little hazard to a pet. Once Pouncer disappeared behind the garage, I left my post at the door and puttered about my lovely new home.
After a short while, I opened the door to the fire escape, and called Pouncer. He appeared on the other side of the garage, spoke to me, and started to jump up to the garage. He made a few attempts at jumping, then sat on his haunches and looked at me. He looked right and left. He looked at me. Suddenly, he took off with certainty and determination, ran around the garage to the fire escape and sped up the steps into the apartment.
Pouncer went out at least once a day for the nearly three years I lived in that apartment. He never showed any hesitation again, and I could hear his meow on the little fire escape landing when he wanted to come in. He still took that first flight down somewhat gingerly, but faster than the first time. I continued to laugh as I watched him descend that narrow flight, hoping I’d never have to walk down it myself.
No one can tell me that Pouncer didn’t think/reason/remember about how to get back to his new home. He saw the goal, but there was no path that he could see on that side of the garage. I realize that my words “certainty and determination” are anthropomorphic, but I swear I could almost see the light bulb, the aha! moment just before he took off to the fire escape.
Pouncer was about 5 years old then; seven years later he moved with me from Buffalo to San Jose and lived to be 14. I still miss him.
December 28, 2009
Goodbye, Max
Max is my granddog. Max must be 14 years old, maybe 15. I don’t remember exactly when Brian called me to tell me he was going to get a dog, but it was around the time he became Artistic Director at American Blues Theatre in Chicago in 1997. Brian and his first wife had divorced, and he was living alone. Brian missed having a dog, but he worked long hours some days, and couldn’t afford to hire a regular pet care giver. Once settled in at ABT, he could take a dog with him to work. So he went to the Humane Society and after a couple of visits, Brian met Max, a chow/Australian shepherd mix about a year old. To be truthful, I hadn’t really taken to the two dogs Brian and his first wife had; there was nothing wrong with them, but I’m finicky about dogs. Sometimes it’s the smell, sometimes it’s the look, or it could be that they slobber, or something I can’t explain. But when Brian described Max to me, I knew I’d like him. When I met him several months later, I knew the minute I saw him, at the theatre, behind a half-door, as he ran to meet me and stood with two hind legs on the floor and two paws on the top of the half-door, that I‘d already fallen in love with Max. He was just the right size--not too big, not too small. He looked the way a dog should look, with bright dark eyes and a pointy-ish nose, like a German Shepherd or Siberian Husky. He didn’t smell, he didn’t slobber, he just looked at me and knew who I was. Brian said, “Of course he knows you. I’ve told him all about you and that you were coming to town today. He knew it was you.”
Whenever I’d visit Chicago, Max would meet me at the door with his tug rope toy. You know, the rope knotted at both ends, and the dog pulls one end and you pull the other. [Turns out, Max met just about everyone at the door with the tug rope; it wasn’t just me.] I’d take Max for walks when I visited, giving Brian a bit of a break, and Max showed me all about the neighborhood Brian lived in. I learned the places where other dogs lived, and the good-smelling trees, and the best places for a dog to go. I loved it.
Brian drove with Max to San Jose in ‘98 to celebrate his (Brian’s) grandfather’s 90th birthday, with stops in Colorado to visit a theatre friend, and in Oklahoma to visit his father. Max’s first trip to the ocean was delightful, and he managed to get a good romp on the beach and dug a few holes almost to China before a disembodied voice told us to leash the dog. Well, we’d had our fun; time to go back home.
When Brian met his wife Gloria, their love of dogs was just one of the many things they had in common. Not just both of them liking dogs, but what their respective dogs had meant to them at difficult times in their lives. When Glo’s dog Buddy and Max met, they got along from the beginning, and were great friends until Buddy died in 2007. When Brian and Glo brought Beau, a beautiful Sheltie, home a few months later, Max accepted him as if he’d known him forever.
The last couple of years have been difficult for Max. At his human age of almost 100, Max has been slowing down. He had surgery for a leg problem. Going up the stairs to Brian and Glo’s bedroom has become so difficult for him that Brian has had to make a sling to support Max, particularly as he descends the stairs. Brian told me today the same leg problem is now affecting Max’s other hind leg.
“It’s time to let Max go”, Brian said yesterday, and I could tell he was choking up. Hey, I was choking up! They know a vet who will come to the dog’s house, to lessen the trauma for dog and parents. Tonight, by 5:00 pm my time, Max will be gone.
I needed to write this now, because tonight I will be too sad. I love Max, and I wish I’d been able to hold him and tell him myself. But Brian will tell him and Max will know. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Goodbye, Max, my first real granddog, my friend. Thank God Brian had you for the last 13 years. We shall all miss you.
Whenever I’d visit Chicago, Max would meet me at the door with his tug rope toy. You know, the rope knotted at both ends, and the dog pulls one end and you pull the other. [Turns out, Max met just about everyone at the door with the tug rope; it wasn’t just me.] I’d take Max for walks when I visited, giving Brian a bit of a break, and Max showed me all about the neighborhood Brian lived in. I learned the places where other dogs lived, and the good-smelling trees, and the best places for a dog to go. I loved it.
Brian drove with Max to San Jose in ‘98 to celebrate his (Brian’s) grandfather’s 90th birthday, with stops in Colorado to visit a theatre friend, and in Oklahoma to visit his father. Max’s first trip to the ocean was delightful, and he managed to get a good romp on the beach and dug a few holes almost to China before a disembodied voice told us to leash the dog. Well, we’d had our fun; time to go back home.
When Brian met his wife Gloria, their love of dogs was just one of the many things they had in common. Not just both of them liking dogs, but what their respective dogs had meant to them at difficult times in their lives. When Glo’s dog Buddy and Max met, they got along from the beginning, and were great friends until Buddy died in 2007. When Brian and Glo brought Beau, a beautiful Sheltie, home a few months later, Max accepted him as if he’d known him forever.
The last couple of years have been difficult for Max. At his human age of almost 100, Max has been slowing down. He had surgery for a leg problem. Going up the stairs to Brian and Glo’s bedroom has become so difficult for him that Brian has had to make a sling to support Max, particularly as he descends the stairs. Brian told me today the same leg problem is now affecting Max’s other hind leg.
“It’s time to let Max go”, Brian said yesterday, and I could tell he was choking up. Hey, I was choking up! They know a vet who will come to the dog’s house, to lessen the trauma for dog and parents. Tonight, by 5:00 pm my time, Max will be gone.
I needed to write this now, because tonight I will be too sad. I love Max, and I wish I’d been able to hold him and tell him myself. But Brian will tell him and Max will know. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Goodbye, Max, my first real granddog, my friend. Thank God Brian had you for the last 13 years. We shall all miss you.
November 11, 2009
Being a Veteran
For two years 1979-1981 I worked as a “staffing specialist” at a major hospital in Buffalo. My job was to make sure all of the nursing units had adequate staffing on their unit, and if they didn’t, I had to assign a “float” nurse and/or aide to that unit. Over the two years, I got to know all of the “floats” and most of the nurses, and I loved it. One of the float aides and a couple of the nurses were in the U.S. Army Reserves; I don’t remember whether or not they’d been active soldiers, but their serving as “weekend warriors” added to their income and they had paid leave while doing their annual 2-week active duty training.
The idea became quite attractive to me. Not only was I living on a shoestring, but since my marriage ended I’d worked in a profession in which I met mostly women. I was single, and didn’t have many opportunities to meet men. I also despaired of ever being able to travel, since I had no money. The three things bothering me the most had an answer! The Reserves! I had a soft spot for the Navy, so I called the U.S. Navy Recruiting Center in Buffalo, and they were perplexed at this woman who’d never been in the Armed Forces, but they were willing to talk with me. I had an interview, took a battery of tests, and they gave me numerous forms to fill out. I sent in all the required information and waited…and waited…and waited. Over a year later I called and somehow they’d misplaced everything, but eventually found the file so I didn’t have to do it all over again. I did have to go in and sign papers, and when I did, the Commanding Officer of the Security Group at the Reserve Center saw this young middle-aged woman signing up and became curious. He came over, told the soldier taking my information that I spoke fluent Russian (untrue!) and would be needed in the Security Group. So, once the F.B.I. ran a top secret security check on me, I was sworn in as a Seaman First Class of the U.S. Navy Reserve. I was issued a full set of appropriate uniforms, including combat boots, that arrived in a huge seabag a month or so later. That was in February 1983, and my enlistment was for 6 years.
In summer of 1984, my two-week active duty training sent me to a base in Scotland, where there’s a huge security facility to monitor activity in the North Sea. I was posted, not to the Security Group, but to the Public Affairs Office, where I answered the phone calls of local Scottish dignitaries who had questions about the upcoming Changing of the Guard on the base. And I had a weekend off in Edinburgh, where I attended the famous Edinburgh Tattoo and got most of my Christmas shopping done. So much for “training”.
There was a single man a few years younger than I in my Reserve unit, and we had a very nice relationship for several months, so all but one of my reasons for joining the Navy Reserves was fulfilled. In the early 80’s there were ‘hot spots’ around the world, and my sons at that time were at the right age. Brian had registered as a conscientious objector, but Scott would have been willing to enlist if there had been a need. I figured that if my kids were going to serve their country, I would too.
As it turned out, some time after I began a position with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, I had to work every weekend, and it became difficult to be absent from work even once a month for my weekend drills, so after 2 years of Active Reserve Status, I became part of the Standby Inactive Reserve. No drill, no pay, but if there was ever a general callup of the Armed Forces, I’d become an Active Reservist. I only hoped they wouldn’t expect me to speak Russian! I received my Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1989.
Every year at St. Mark’s on the Sunday before Veteran’s Day, there is a breakfast for all the Veterans. I went two years ago, made creamed chipped beef (S.O.S.), took in a couple of pictures of me in my summer uniform, but felt uneasy and didn’t attend the breakfast last year. Linda, the priest at St. Mark’s, asked me a week or so ago if I planned to bring S.O.S. for the breakfast again. I said no, and I wouldn’t attend. I told her I don’t feel like a veteran, I hardly did anything, I was inactive for 6 years, etc. She said “We need your S.O.S. at the breakfast, so please come.”
I did, and after the breakfast (not only S.O.S., but pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage), Linda’s sermon spoke of a person she’d talked to who didn’t consider himself a veteran because he was never in harm’s way, and she told him what was important. “You showed up.”, she said she told him. That’s all that’s necessary. You showed up, you signed up with the knowledge that you could be required to go where they send you. You showed up.
I am a veteran. I showed up—no matter my selfish reasons at the time. One of them wasn’t so selfish. If there was a problem that my country was involved in, especially if any of my children were involved, I wanted to do my part. So on this day, November 11, I am proud that I did my little bit to serve my country. I showed up.
The idea became quite attractive to me. Not only was I living on a shoestring, but since my marriage ended I’d worked in a profession in which I met mostly women. I was single, and didn’t have many opportunities to meet men. I also despaired of ever being able to travel, since I had no money. The three things bothering me the most had an answer! The Reserves! I had a soft spot for the Navy, so I called the U.S. Navy Recruiting Center in Buffalo, and they were perplexed at this woman who’d never been in the Armed Forces, but they were willing to talk with me. I had an interview, took a battery of tests, and they gave me numerous forms to fill out. I sent in all the required information and waited…and waited…and waited. Over a year later I called and somehow they’d misplaced everything, but eventually found the file so I didn’t have to do it all over again. I did have to go in and sign papers, and when I did, the Commanding Officer of the Security Group at the Reserve Center saw this young middle-aged woman signing up and became curious. He came over, told the soldier taking my information that I spoke fluent Russian (untrue!) and would be needed in the Security Group. So, once the F.B.I. ran a top secret security check on me, I was sworn in as a Seaman First Class of the U.S. Navy Reserve. I was issued a full set of appropriate uniforms, including combat boots, that arrived in a huge seabag a month or so later. That was in February 1983, and my enlistment was for 6 years.
In summer of 1984, my two-week active duty training sent me to a base in Scotland, where there’s a huge security facility to monitor activity in the North Sea. I was posted, not to the Security Group, but to the Public Affairs Office, where I answered the phone calls of local Scottish dignitaries who had questions about the upcoming Changing of the Guard on the base. And I had a weekend off in Edinburgh, where I attended the famous Edinburgh Tattoo and got most of my Christmas shopping done. So much for “training”.
There was a single man a few years younger than I in my Reserve unit, and we had a very nice relationship for several months, so all but one of my reasons for joining the Navy Reserves was fulfilled. In the early 80’s there were ‘hot spots’ around the world, and my sons at that time were at the right age. Brian had registered as a conscientious objector, but Scott would have been willing to enlist if there had been a need. I figured that if my kids were going to serve their country, I would too.
As it turned out, some time after I began a position with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, I had to work every weekend, and it became difficult to be absent from work even once a month for my weekend drills, so after 2 years of Active Reserve Status, I became part of the Standby Inactive Reserve. No drill, no pay, but if there was ever a general callup of the Armed Forces, I’d become an Active Reservist. I only hoped they wouldn’t expect me to speak Russian! I received my Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1989.
Every year at St. Mark’s on the Sunday before Veteran’s Day, there is a breakfast for all the Veterans. I went two years ago, made creamed chipped beef (S.O.S.), took in a couple of pictures of me in my summer uniform, but felt uneasy and didn’t attend the breakfast last year. Linda, the priest at St. Mark’s, asked me a week or so ago if I planned to bring S.O.S. for the breakfast again. I said no, and I wouldn’t attend. I told her I don’t feel like a veteran, I hardly did anything, I was inactive for 6 years, etc. She said “We need your S.O.S. at the breakfast, so please come.”
I did, and after the breakfast (not only S.O.S., but pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage), Linda’s sermon spoke of a person she’d talked to who didn’t consider himself a veteran because he was never in harm’s way, and she told him what was important. “You showed up.”, she said she told him. That’s all that’s necessary. You showed up, you signed up with the knowledge that you could be required to go where they send you. You showed up.
I am a veteran. I showed up—no matter my selfish reasons at the time. One of them wasn’t so selfish. If there was a problem that my country was involved in, especially if any of my children were involved, I wanted to do my part. So on this day, November 11, I am proud that I did my little bit to serve my country. I showed up.
October 29, 2009
Remembering Mom
Sunday, November 1 is All Saints Day, and at St. Mark’s and at all Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and many other Protestant churches, we remember and honor all those who have passed on from this Earthly life. Passed on into what we do not know, but I take comfort in the belief that this life isn’t all there is. I don’t pretend to know what’s coming; I’m pretty sure it doesn’t include St. Peter and pearly gates and angels with harps and halos. But I believe this conscious life is as much a phase as the gestation period we all spent in our mother’s womb.
Today I remember my mother, who died on October 29, 1961, 10 days after my 20th birthday and 24 days before what would have been her 50th birthday.
Beatrice Yardley Spicer Woodward was born November 22, 1911 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., the only child of Myrtus Randolph Spicer and Gertrude Brown Dooley Spicer. She attended high school in Brooklyn, the Packer Collegiate Institute, and Mount Holyoke College. My mother was an educated woman in a time when few women attended college. She majored in English Literature and minored in French. One of her college friends had a friend who had a brother, Benjamin Weston Woodward II, and he married my lovely mother and fathered my brother Ben and myself.
I don’t know whether my Mom and Dad had a happy marriage. I assumed so, but then what children experience is their norm until they grow enough to know that each family is different from their own in a variety of ways. My mother was, as many women were in the 50’s, a stay-at-home Mom. She said it was her choice, not my father’s demands or expectations, because she wanted to be there when her children came home from school. And she was. Near the end of first grade, I fell off a seesaw and broke my arm. My seesaw partner was in the down position when the recess bell rang, and she jumped off while I was in the air. The break was not bad, but the nurse called my mother, who didn’t drive. Someone drove me home, and as soon as I saw my mother, I finally cried. The arm didn’t hurt, but I was afraid of what the “sling” was that I was told my arm would be “put in”.
Mom was always there when I got home from school, and I'd jabber away at what happened, who did what, what the teacher said and did. My mother was always there.
Once Mom had viral pneumonia and was in bed for several days. I don’t remember anyone being worried; she was simply sick. Mom had surgery for varicose veins. Mom had all of her teeth pulled a few years later, and they waited until the gums healed before they fitted for dentures. I got so used to the way she looked toothless that when she had the dentures put in, she looked like she had way too much in her mouth! But no matter what, Mom continued to smoke her Kools, at least two packs a day. She coughed, she had bad breath, and I hated that she smoked.
Mom was a voracious reader; my parents belonged to the Book-of-the-Month club, and she read periodicals and newspapers from cover to cover. Mom did the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzles every week while Sunday dinner was cooking—a roast beef, roast leg of lamb, pot roast, fried chicken. [In those days the Sunday Times puzzles were considerably more difficult than those now. I know, because I am still working my way through a book of 100 NY Times crosswords from years past, when Eugene Maleska and others were the editors. Will Shortz is a good editor, but the puzzles are easier. I can finish them now most every week, but if I’ve completed 5 of the 60 or so I’ve done in the book of 100, I’d be surprised.]
My mother and father were both political junkies, Mom even more than Dad, very right wing Republicans with a visceral hatred (it seemed to me) of Democrats in general and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in particular. Harry Truman fared just as badly, especially when he fired General Douglas MacArthur, who my parents thought sat on the right hand of God. Conversations around the dinner table, especially with dessert and coffee, centered on politics, and voices rose as Dad’s fist pounded the table. There was never any swearing in my familial home, save for “hell” and “damn”, and I heard plenty of those when the grownups discussed Democrats. The conservatism that my parents embraced cannot be compared to today’s conservatism. The religious right might have been conservatives then as well, but the issues were not at all religious in the 50’s and early 60’s.
My mother was home all day but we had a cleaning lady for years. Myrtle would hug me, smelling of furniture polish, when I told her I got an A on my spelling test, and she’d give me a nickel. Mom would eat lunch with Myrtle, but the meal was shared in the kitchen, not the dining room, where we always ate breakfast and dinner, and lunch on the weekends. Myrtle was a Negro. I think my Mom cared a lot for this woman who came weekly and cleaned our house and shared lunch.
Mom did laundry every Monday, and hung clothes on the line and put Dad’s trousers on pant stretchers. She ironed everything, and one of my visual memories is Mom standing at the ironing board, my brother sitting on the stove, and myself sitting on the kitchen table—the three of us talking about all manner of things while Dad puttered in his basement electronics retreat. My brother joined my mother and me maybe only once a week, often on a Saturday night, and both of us were so pleased—almost honored that he deigned to be with us.
Mom participated in, and perhaps chaired, the annual March of Dimes, which at that time was fighting polio. A neighbor on the street had a little boy with polio, and my mother, as many mothers in the late 40’s and early 50’s, had a terrible fear one of her children would contract polio. She was indefatigable in whatever effort she pursued. She joined a group called the Minute Women, and here is a Wikipedia introduction to that subject:
“The Minute Women of the U.S.A. was one of the largest of a number of militant anti-communist women's groups that were active during the 1950s and early 1960s. Such groups, which organized American suburban housewives into anti-communist study groups, political activism and letter-writing campaigns, were a bedrock of support for McCarthyism.
The primary concerns of the Minute Women and other similar groups were the exposure of communist subversion, the defense of constitutional limits, opposition to atheism, socialism and social welfare provisions such as the New Deal; and rejection of internationalism, particularly in the form of the United Nations. They campaigned to expose supposedly Communist individuals, focusing particularly on school and university administrators.”
Yes, this was my mother. She all but worshiped radio commentator Paul Harvey, and had her picture taken with him at a Minute Women convention in Cincinnati the year I was 11. That both my parents were proponents of Joseph McCarthy is a source of anguish for me, but hindsight is 20-20 and for my mother especially, the Communist threat was very real. How many times I’ve wished I’d had the opportunity to discuss politics with her as an adult!
My mother gave me mixed messages about being a woman. She told me that it was more important to educate my brother Ben than to educate me because I would get married and be taken care of. Ben had to be the breadwinner for a family. Yet I knew she greatly valued her education, and I remember her telling me how important it was for a woman to be educated for her children’s sake. I sensed that had she lived, she would have embraced Women’s Lib. After my grandparents, who lived with us for several years, passed away, my mother immersed herself in politics. We lived in a township in Western New York, and she was a committeewoman for the township. It was the equivalent of being on a city council, and she reveled in her new life with an energy we hadn’t seen in several years. Unfortunately, the damage to her physical health had been done.
My grandfather died in late 1954, which was a blow to both my mother and my grandmother. He had not been sick, and he and my mother had always been close. They would sit at the dinner table long after Grammie had retired to her crocheting (not very interested in politics was she), Dad had escaped to his basement retreat, and Ben and I had fled to our rooms for homework or relief from politics. My grandmother went downhill quickly, and by March ’55 was put in a nursing home. Since Mom didn’t drive, she took the bus to the nursing home downtown one day a week, and then on Sunday Dad or Ben or I drove her and picked her up. I believe that dealing with Grammie in the nursing home was the beginning of her long depression. When Ben left in ’57 to attend Cornell, Mom missed him terribly, and her depression deepened. Grammie finally gave up the ghost in late ’58. Mom was finally free! She was 47. Mom had hypertension and still she smoked at least two packs a day. She was thin, and she probably had emphysema. She coughed a lot and didn’t have a lot of physical energy.
Somewhere around my junior year in high school, I began to separate myself from my mother. I stopped telling her every single thing as I had for years. I also felt betrayed by her when I learned she had read a letter from my boyfriend (I had opened and read it and left it downstairs) and later I was awake when she came into my room one night and read part of my diary. The betrayal hurt me deeply. I confronted her with both of these incidents, and she admitted she was curious because I wasn’t talking with her as much as I used to.
I left home in early 1960, having graduated high school and dropped out of college after 3 months. I moved to Ithaca, where my boyfriend and brother were students at Cornell, and found a job at the University. After boyfriend left Cornell (without graduating) due to illness, we got married and lived in Buffalo, so we saw my parents regularly. The four of us played Bridge on into the night at times, and I saw my mother happy to have one child back in the fold. When my husband enlisted in the Army, I went back to my familial home because we couldn’t afford to keep up an apartment without his income. For three weeks in October, my mother and I began the process of finding one another again.
One of the friends I’d worked with in Ithaca was getting married on Saturday, October 28th that year, 1961, and I wanted to go. I came home from work on Friday, planning to pack and leave that evening. But Dad was cooking, not Mom, and he said she was sick and in bed. I found her in bed, smoking, having trouble finding her mouth with the cigarette. I should have been alarmed, but she said the doctor had been there (imagine—a doctor making house calls!) and I wasn’t to worry. But she said she’d appreciate it if I didn’t leave for Ithaca until Saturday morning. I, being a petulant, barely 20 year old, agreed, but wasn’t happy. Saturday when I got up, she wasn’t any better, but she said I should go, have a good time, Dad was there to watch over her.
I had a good stay with dear friends and enjoyed my friend’s wedding. Sunday, just before I left Ithaca at 6 p.m., I called and spoke to Dad, telling him I was leaving and to expect me around 9 or so. I asked after Mom, and he said she was better; she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom.
The drive was uneventful; I had done it several times. What I didn’t expect was that when I turned the corner into my street, there was a large black vehicle in front of my parents’ house. I recognized a hearse as I pulled into the driveway, and the look on my father’s face as I came in the door is one I will never forget. My mother was dead. I turned 20 on October 19th and on the 29th my mother was dead.
The older I get, the more I miss my mother. I miss her in retrospect—when I had my babies, when I was divorced the first time, when I married again, and when I divorced again. I miss her when I have big decisions to make. I miss her when I have so many questions I can’t ask her. What did she think and why about this or that? How could she believe this or that? What did she regret? What was she proud of? What had been her dreams?
Most of all, I recently realized that what I miss most of all is the knowing and feeling all my adult life that my mother loves me and that home is where my mother is. I have felt incomplete (and somewhat abandoned) for so many years. I don’t know how to be a mother to adult children. I do my best, which often isn’t good enough.
Mother, today I honor you, today I miss you so very much, and I credit you with so much of who I am. Thank you, and Mom, continue your peaceful rest. You deserve it.
Today I remember my mother, who died on October 29, 1961, 10 days after my 20th birthday and 24 days before what would have been her 50th birthday.
Beatrice Yardley Spicer Woodward was born November 22, 1911 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., the only child of Myrtus Randolph Spicer and Gertrude Brown Dooley Spicer. She attended high school in Brooklyn, the Packer Collegiate Institute, and Mount Holyoke College. My mother was an educated woman in a time when few women attended college. She majored in English Literature and minored in French. One of her college friends had a friend who had a brother, Benjamin Weston Woodward II, and he married my lovely mother and fathered my brother Ben and myself.
I don’t know whether my Mom and Dad had a happy marriage. I assumed so, but then what children experience is their norm until they grow enough to know that each family is different from their own in a variety of ways. My mother was, as many women were in the 50’s, a stay-at-home Mom. She said it was her choice, not my father’s demands or expectations, because she wanted to be there when her children came home from school. And she was. Near the end of first grade, I fell off a seesaw and broke my arm. My seesaw partner was in the down position when the recess bell rang, and she jumped off while I was in the air. The break was not bad, but the nurse called my mother, who didn’t drive. Someone drove me home, and as soon as I saw my mother, I finally cried. The arm didn’t hurt, but I was afraid of what the “sling” was that I was told my arm would be “put in”.
Mom was always there when I got home from school, and I'd jabber away at what happened, who did what, what the teacher said and did. My mother was always there.
Once Mom had viral pneumonia and was in bed for several days. I don’t remember anyone being worried; she was simply sick. Mom had surgery for varicose veins. Mom had all of her teeth pulled a few years later, and they waited until the gums healed before they fitted for dentures. I got so used to the way she looked toothless that when she had the dentures put in, she looked like she had way too much in her mouth! But no matter what, Mom continued to smoke her Kools, at least two packs a day. She coughed, she had bad breath, and I hated that she smoked.
Mom was a voracious reader; my parents belonged to the Book-of-the-Month club, and she read periodicals and newspapers from cover to cover. Mom did the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzles every week while Sunday dinner was cooking—a roast beef, roast leg of lamb, pot roast, fried chicken. [In those days the Sunday Times puzzles were considerably more difficult than those now. I know, because I am still working my way through a book of 100 NY Times crosswords from years past, when Eugene Maleska and others were the editors. Will Shortz is a good editor, but the puzzles are easier. I can finish them now most every week, but if I’ve completed 5 of the 60 or so I’ve done in the book of 100, I’d be surprised.]
My mother and father were both political junkies, Mom even more than Dad, very right wing Republicans with a visceral hatred (it seemed to me) of Democrats in general and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in particular. Harry Truman fared just as badly, especially when he fired General Douglas MacArthur, who my parents thought sat on the right hand of God. Conversations around the dinner table, especially with dessert and coffee, centered on politics, and voices rose as Dad’s fist pounded the table. There was never any swearing in my familial home, save for “hell” and “damn”, and I heard plenty of those when the grownups discussed Democrats. The conservatism that my parents embraced cannot be compared to today’s conservatism. The religious right might have been conservatives then as well, but the issues were not at all religious in the 50’s and early 60’s.
My mother was home all day but we had a cleaning lady for years. Myrtle would hug me, smelling of furniture polish, when I told her I got an A on my spelling test, and she’d give me a nickel. Mom would eat lunch with Myrtle, but the meal was shared in the kitchen, not the dining room, where we always ate breakfast and dinner, and lunch on the weekends. Myrtle was a Negro. I think my Mom cared a lot for this woman who came weekly and cleaned our house and shared lunch.
Mom did laundry every Monday, and hung clothes on the line and put Dad’s trousers on pant stretchers. She ironed everything, and one of my visual memories is Mom standing at the ironing board, my brother sitting on the stove, and myself sitting on the kitchen table—the three of us talking about all manner of things while Dad puttered in his basement electronics retreat. My brother joined my mother and me maybe only once a week, often on a Saturday night, and both of us were so pleased—almost honored that he deigned to be with us.
Mom participated in, and perhaps chaired, the annual March of Dimes, which at that time was fighting polio. A neighbor on the street had a little boy with polio, and my mother, as many mothers in the late 40’s and early 50’s, had a terrible fear one of her children would contract polio. She was indefatigable in whatever effort she pursued. She joined a group called the Minute Women, and here is a Wikipedia introduction to that subject:
“The Minute Women of the U.S.A. was one of the largest of a number of militant anti-communist women's groups that were active during the 1950s and early 1960s. Such groups, which organized American suburban housewives into anti-communist study groups, political activism and letter-writing campaigns, were a bedrock of support for McCarthyism.
The primary concerns of the Minute Women and other similar groups were the exposure of communist subversion, the defense of constitutional limits, opposition to atheism, socialism and social welfare provisions such as the New Deal; and rejection of internationalism, particularly in the form of the United Nations. They campaigned to expose supposedly Communist individuals, focusing particularly on school and university administrators.”
Yes, this was my mother. She all but worshiped radio commentator Paul Harvey, and had her picture taken with him at a Minute Women convention in Cincinnati the year I was 11. That both my parents were proponents of Joseph McCarthy is a source of anguish for me, but hindsight is 20-20 and for my mother especially, the Communist threat was very real. How many times I’ve wished I’d had the opportunity to discuss politics with her as an adult!
My mother gave me mixed messages about being a woman. She told me that it was more important to educate my brother Ben than to educate me because I would get married and be taken care of. Ben had to be the breadwinner for a family. Yet I knew she greatly valued her education, and I remember her telling me how important it was for a woman to be educated for her children’s sake. I sensed that had she lived, she would have embraced Women’s Lib. After my grandparents, who lived with us for several years, passed away, my mother immersed herself in politics. We lived in a township in Western New York, and she was a committeewoman for the township. It was the equivalent of being on a city council, and she reveled in her new life with an energy we hadn’t seen in several years. Unfortunately, the damage to her physical health had been done.
My grandfather died in late 1954, which was a blow to both my mother and my grandmother. He had not been sick, and he and my mother had always been close. They would sit at the dinner table long after Grammie had retired to her crocheting (not very interested in politics was she), Dad had escaped to his basement retreat, and Ben and I had fled to our rooms for homework or relief from politics. My grandmother went downhill quickly, and by March ’55 was put in a nursing home. Since Mom didn’t drive, she took the bus to the nursing home downtown one day a week, and then on Sunday Dad or Ben or I drove her and picked her up. I believe that dealing with Grammie in the nursing home was the beginning of her long depression. When Ben left in ’57 to attend Cornell, Mom missed him terribly, and her depression deepened. Grammie finally gave up the ghost in late ’58. Mom was finally free! She was 47. Mom had hypertension and still she smoked at least two packs a day. She was thin, and she probably had emphysema. She coughed a lot and didn’t have a lot of physical energy.
Somewhere around my junior year in high school, I began to separate myself from my mother. I stopped telling her every single thing as I had for years. I also felt betrayed by her when I learned she had read a letter from my boyfriend (I had opened and read it and left it downstairs) and later I was awake when she came into my room one night and read part of my diary. The betrayal hurt me deeply. I confronted her with both of these incidents, and she admitted she was curious because I wasn’t talking with her as much as I used to.
I left home in early 1960, having graduated high school and dropped out of college after 3 months. I moved to Ithaca, where my boyfriend and brother were students at Cornell, and found a job at the University. After boyfriend left Cornell (without graduating) due to illness, we got married and lived in Buffalo, so we saw my parents regularly. The four of us played Bridge on into the night at times, and I saw my mother happy to have one child back in the fold. When my husband enlisted in the Army, I went back to my familial home because we couldn’t afford to keep up an apartment without his income. For three weeks in October, my mother and I began the process of finding one another again.
One of the friends I’d worked with in Ithaca was getting married on Saturday, October 28th that year, 1961, and I wanted to go. I came home from work on Friday, planning to pack and leave that evening. But Dad was cooking, not Mom, and he said she was sick and in bed. I found her in bed, smoking, having trouble finding her mouth with the cigarette. I should have been alarmed, but she said the doctor had been there (imagine—a doctor making house calls!) and I wasn’t to worry. But she said she’d appreciate it if I didn’t leave for Ithaca until Saturday morning. I, being a petulant, barely 20 year old, agreed, but wasn’t happy. Saturday when I got up, she wasn’t any better, but she said I should go, have a good time, Dad was there to watch over her.
I had a good stay with dear friends and enjoyed my friend’s wedding. Sunday, just before I left Ithaca at 6 p.m., I called and spoke to Dad, telling him I was leaving and to expect me around 9 or so. I asked after Mom, and he said she was better; she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom.
The drive was uneventful; I had done it several times. What I didn’t expect was that when I turned the corner into my street, there was a large black vehicle in front of my parents’ house. I recognized a hearse as I pulled into the driveway, and the look on my father’s face as I came in the door is one I will never forget. My mother was dead. I turned 20 on October 19th and on the 29th my mother was dead.
The older I get, the more I miss my mother. I miss her in retrospect—when I had my babies, when I was divorced the first time, when I married again, and when I divorced again. I miss her when I have big decisions to make. I miss her when I have so many questions I can’t ask her. What did she think and why about this or that? How could she believe this or that? What did she regret? What was she proud of? What had been her dreams?
Most of all, I recently realized that what I miss most of all is the knowing and feeling all my adult life that my mother loves me and that home is where my mother is. I have felt incomplete (and somewhat abandoned) for so many years. I don’t know how to be a mother to adult children. I do my best, which often isn’t good enough.
Mother, today I honor you, today I miss you so very much, and I credit you with so much of who I am. Thank you, and Mom, continue your peaceful rest. You deserve it.
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