And the Subject Was Ashes

Sonny has the unnerving ability of bringing up tricky and sticky subject matter at the wrong time. I can remember a tuna casserole supper as a child when he started explaining how whale blubber is extracted from the carcass. Once during a Village Inn breakfast of runny eggs he graphically described a pig tumor dissection he had seen on the Discovery channel the night before. And then there was the time I was eating a ham sandwich in my parents' living room while he excitedly related to my grandsons the new scat collection at the museum and what was embedded in each of the specimens. So it was no surprise as I bit into my stringy turkey at the St. Rose fall festival that he wanted to talk about corpses and cremation.

I don't eat much meat anymore. And I can point to several reasons for this. I have a dyed-in-the-wool 37-year-old vegan son, a chef in a Boulder vegetarian restaurant who tsks-tsks me about the amount of paper products I use. I'd like to see him care for toddlers without paper towels. My youngest son is swerving in that same meatless direction now that his life is becoming more settled. He had strong inclinations towards the philosophy as a younger man but then med school and all that hell would not allow him the time and concentration needed to maintain the diet. But he is making vegan noises again and ordering portabello sandwiches so I am curious what his visit at Thanksgiving will bring.

In Jim's first year of medical school he was required to take the make'em or break'em class of human anatomy. At this particular university there was an interesting miniature museum of sorts housed in the anatomy lab and when we first visited he wanted us to see it. It included all kinds of human abnormalities swimming in formaldehyde behind the glass doors. We would need to walk past the cadavers lying open and dissected on the trannies. I glanced furtively at the strange bodies, their innards exposed and blooming. My six-month-old grandson whimpered in his carriage - he knew something was amiss in this place, not natural. I was glad to leave this room behind, the strong chemical smell like covered-up death. But it had been interesting and the flesh of those slabs of former humanity resembled, well, turkey.

So when turkey is spooned onto my plate, these memories come back and when I cook a Thanksgiving turkey I feel like a first year med student slivering off sections of grey-beige tissue and the smell of the cooked meat is unpleasant.

I avoid meats that remind me of tissue and feel like tissue in my mouth, beef, pork and poultry. But I continue to enjoy the processed meat - sausage, braunshweiger, baloney, and did I say sausage? I would be better off with the lean cuts but when it comes to food I don't need to make sense.

My father may appear conservative for all the usual purposes but underneath beats the heart of a true rebel and he also has disdain for any society tradition that has no productive purpose. And one of these would be the practice of using perfectly good land to bury boxes full of preserved bodies. He and my mother wanted cremation. They wanted their ashes combined and then thrown to the wind over a beautiful portion of the driftless land, the Mines of Spain. These are old lead mines south of town, at one time dominated by five different European powers, Spain being the most prominent.

But now he's suggesting he only wants half of those mixed ashes to fly freely with the wind and the other half to be buried in the Protestant cemetery in an urn. His thoughts have turned now that my mother is gone and he wants a place where we can visit and meditate. I could plant geraniums and I like that. Heck with the 'using up the good land' theory.

Wild pictures race through my head. I see myself standing at my kitchen counter with my largest mixing bowl and wooden spoon. There are two small boxes postmarked University of Iowa Medical School. Do I really need to stir? My overly animated mind tells me, yes, I should probably stir. And then what? Do I put the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher? Some of my parents' dust is still attached and will go down the sink and that doesn't feel right. Do I bury the dishes near a peaceful steam? I really like my metal mixing bowl. My father's sister and I had talked about this and she asked, "Does all of this bother you?" I was about to answer to the contrary, brave daughter that I am, but then sanity and honesty swept into my psyche and I answered, well, yes.

This same subject came to task when my son Jason was visiting and he used my lap top to peruse the laws on cremation. Cowboy Dave was in the background sputtering about the illegality of the situation but c'mon . . . At my age you get to argue the fine point on laws that make no sense and in this case no harm is being done. The environment is gaining when ashes are added to the mix as they are loaded with nutrients. We humans dwell too much inside our craniums forgetting that in the scheme of things we are just another animal body. Anyway, Jason only found one reference to the illegality of scattering ashes - the area could not be a proposed shopping center site. Chuckle, chuckle. God forbid we do anything to take the shine off the favorite American past time, buying useless stuff.

And now Sonny is talking about a third resting spot for the ashes. I give him the scalding look I gave my teenager years ago when he suggested an unlikely time to return home from a party. It was a bit rusty but the power was still there and that was enough, no more discussion, done deal.

Just We Women

I had lunch with Leona and Irene and Sandy, Irene's daughter.
I liked listening to their conversation, the familiar cadence of my aunts' voices, so much like my mother's.
I brought her name up frequently in the conversation. I was hungry for information.

My mother was the second youngest of nine children. Leona said she was shy as a child. If company came to the door Marie would hide. My grandmother joked that she actually had only eight children. Marie made herself scarce when strange faces were around. I'm thinking, I know that feeling. A solitary person myself all my life, other people drain me. Leona says that when my mother and Sonny met he liked her immediately. Well, what able-bodied fellow would not. Jet black thick curly hair, teasing black eyes, an hour glass figure. As her son David told his father when viewing a picture of my mother in her twenties, "I can see why you made so many trips to Cascade."

Leona and Irene talked about how witty and sarcastic her nature had been. Lord, she had a caustic perspective on the world. No one and nothing was safe from her pick-it-apart critiquing. I have seen my mother walk into the kitchens of restaurants and tell the chef how the meal should have been prepared. My mother and I were not always polite to each other during my teen-aged years. I was that moody adolescant, a crappy daughter. I preferred my father, he seemed more sophisticated and cosmopolitan, a reader of history and non-fiction. My mother was moored in romance paperbacks and ladies' magazines. At a city-sponsored event for parents and honor students in my senior year of high school the subject of reading came up at the table. I worried what she might say. She said I used my "college vocabulary" to out talk her in arguments. Whatever her opinion may be I would take the exact opposite stance. Not until I was in my advanced 30's did I realize her tremendous worth in my life.

I look at these women, their well worn-faces, their stories of hard work and obligation. My grandmother took in laundry from the town's well-to-do class and the creases needed to be ironed straight and perfectly. My mother remembers bringing in the frozen white shirts in the winter, their hands raw and red. All the girls hated the hours at the ironing board. Irene had calloused ridges on her palms from gripping the heavy irons. It was years before they went away. They talk about present day duties, using home-grown strawberries in their jam and whose fields yielded the best fruit. Days of cutting vegetables and quarts of preserved green beans on the pantry shelves. Hills planted in potatoes and dozens of harvests through the years, some good and some scanty. I am glad to be in their company. It is the first time since my mother's death that I feel safe. They are kind and introspective women. They talk of their neighborhoods, whose baby is sick, who will have hip surgery, what needs to be done. Bake sales for the nursing home, fund raisers for the library, they are the silent and necessary people in the community.

I think my mother purposely looked for a city boy when it was time to marry. She was quick to move to an urban setting and take an apartment a few blocks from the tavern where she would meet my father. She worked a job at the packing plant slicing bacon on the line. She had enough of farm life, the dependence on soil and weather for survival, the inconsistency and irregularity of a life based on the whims of nature. After scouring hundreds of jars every season, she vowed never to put up a jar of preserved food and she kept that promise to herself. The next day my aunt Leona drops off a box of Ball instant fruit pectin at my house. They're trying to convert me.

In the years of my childhood we spent most of our holidays and summer vacations with my father's family. They had had an easier time during the Depression years, continuing to work in the family paint and wallpaper business on Main Street and living in a mansion-like house on the hill. My grandfather kept his car and put it up on wooden blocks in the garage. He knew he would be able to afford gasoline again when the economy improved. My father's sisters were artists and muscians, college educated and riding around town with the local boys and playing nightly euchre games at the family home, brown beer bottles on every flat surface. A stark contrast to my maternal grandma's situation, Elizabeth never having enough money, enough food, enough coal and wood to warm the house. I assumed that my father wanted to spend time with his more frivolous, party-loving sisters and brothers instead of that serious, hard-working family in Cascade. It was the 60's, the season of the alpha male, husbands got their way. I was wrong, it was my mother who chose to keep her family at a distance. I'm not sure why. Perhaps she did not like people in general, her children understand this, all of us, but one, are loners. I will continue to study this.

Wanderlust Has Found My Son

Wanderlust has found my son Jason and he has given notice at the vegetarian restaurant in Boulder where he is employed as executive chef. He has always scoffed at the label executive as well as his name printed at the bottom of the menu. A noble yet humble man, this one.
He will be leaving in January and this trip should take a year. He and friends will visit southeast Asia, India, and then back to Central America. This will be his third international journey although he has camped and travelled numerous places in America including Alaska. They will stay in hostels, most of them researched online ahead of time and they will take only what can be carried on their backs. They will camp when the natural setting is appealing and will buy and prepare food only when it is cheaper than eating out which surprisingly is not frequent. Jason's employer owns five restaurants and a young waiter working in the Latin America cafe will join him for six months of the trip. Kate, Jason's associate manager and friend, is also going and will hopefully be able to make the entire trip. Plans are flexible and changeable when one travels in this fashion. Jason and Kate have given two and a half months notice to their employer and if necessary, will postpone their departure so as not to leave the boss in a predicament, they being important to the running of the restaurant. A fair and generous guy, this one, too.

Jason's trip to South America a year and a half ago caused me some trepidation. Jason had done the backpack-across-Europe thing after college but somehow the knowledge that he was visiting a continent of politically unstable countries who any day of the week would suddenly announce that all Americans had to leave their borders NOW was unsettling. I pictured Jason hog-tied with a dirty bandanna stuffed in his mouth thrown in the back of a jeep driven by desperadoes holding machine guns and smoking Cuban cigars. Or he would be chased from the jungle by a giant anaconda hissing angrily as he gained on my terrified son. There was the thought that maybe he would survive all these prementioned calamities and come back safely to his own people but months later while shaving he would notice a small worm crawling across the inside of his eyeball. I actually saw this on a parasite show on a science channel.
This is what mothers do when their children leave the country. There are enough frightening occurrences from the moment the child rises, steps into the slippery shower, chews undercooked bacon, and drives the freeway to the job. But send him to a foreign country and the possibilities multiply by the thousands.
And when he travelled to South America, one of those things did occur. A little over a day after his departure from New York I came home to a message on the machine. Jason in his usual slow spoken manner said something like," He-e-e-e-e-ey, guys, it's Jason. Uh, I have something I needed to ask you but I guess I will need to talk to you later. Okay, uh-h-h-h, by-y-y-y-ye." Just a hair and a half rose up on the back of my neck. He sounded calm. But I semi-joked to David, did you hear any guard dogs barking in the background. Next day on the phone he tells me in an even voice that on his arrival in Lima he traveled to the hostel, deposited some of his stuff in the room and then asked the proprietor for a map. He went out into the city and crossed a bridge unknowingly entering one of the worst neighborhoods that slimy side of Peru had to offer. Before reaching the end of the bridge he felt two arms encircling his neck and when he instinctively reached up he realized the arms were the size of tree trunks and to fight back may bring an even worse result. He was left unconscious on the street - his money belt and new camera gone. When he awoke the two policemen he found could not understand this gringo's gesturing and Jason had not begun the Spanish lessons that would start next week. He was unhurt, a sore neck, yes, and he did not blame the forgetful proprietor who had neglected to mention this area on the map. "I should have known," he said.

My mind was leaping towards hysteria, silly emotional human, and I had to command my brain not to race towards those useless feelings and instead listen to the instructions he was giving me. I grabbed a legal pad and numbered each item trying to question anything that I didn't understand and having him repeat and then I would repeat. The cell phone would have been an expensive item to bring south so it was back in the car at the airport. I wouldn't be able to reach him by phone should I need help. He gave me an 800 number for further assistance. Reluctantly, I hung up the phone, aching for my son.

I was going to set up an account at the embassy in Lima and wire $500 cash, thanks to the generosity of David. I took my legal pad covered with underlined phrases and I drove to the transfer office . The young woman at the desk said she had done this many times but she hesitated and studied the forms, obviously not understanding. I decided to try the 800 number just to make certain we were not making mistakes with these complicated instructions. The robot voice on the line identified the office and then said, "If you are calling about an American citizen traveling abroad and this is an emergency situation, please press 1." Not an emergency, a damn sad and scary situation, but not an emergency. "If you are calling about an American citizen traveling abroad and that person is missing or has been kidnapped, please press 2." If I had been calling with that hellish situation, I'd be damn well pressing 1. What the hell was an emergency then? Death? How could it be? That traveling citizen is dead and nothing can be done so you better not be pressing 1. My stomach felt sick as I realized the tremendous scope this situation was developing into. So much evil out there past the Iowa cornfields.

Jason went on to have a remarkable adventure and to meet many interesting people. He took surfing lessons, tracked through jungles, sat at the tops of mountains, climbed ancient Inca ruins and stood breathless at the bottom of great waterfalls. I admire his courage to continue the trip. Others would have returned home but his strength of character is not to be reckoned with.

I tell this story not as a reflection on Jason's judgment. He is one of the most intelligent people I know, continuing his education like my father, reading, traveling, meeting all kinds of people. It is to say, be careful, children, all children. Go forth, your lives are not here with your parents. Your life is out there. Go find it, live it. Just, be careful.

"It liberates the vandal to travel - you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born."
Mark Twain, 1868

My Story, at least a chapter

I bullied my parents into sending me to an all-girls' convent school because that's where my two best friends were going. It was a mistake, the school was inadequate. The nuns had us shelling corn during classroom hours. I graduated fifth in a class of 126 but that was easy, the curriculum far from challenging. I played first violin in the orchestra and volunteered for the yearbook. We were the last class at this old outdated place, the time had passed for convent schools and the state had lots of problems with our physical education program. I was glad to leave high school. There wasn't much about it I liked.

And then all of a sudden there was college. I needed to go to college. But I wasn't interested, I didn't feel like going. I think I was tired and just wanted to coast for awhile, sit by a stream or something. It was the 70's and I wanted to retire from my overly achieved but short life. The culture was changing quickly and my younger sister by four years was wearing halter tops and smoking joints and I was still my mother's daughter. A large part of me was true blue to her values but the new society looked beautiful and seductive. My father watched the news every night that summer and would announce that there was no way I would be attending the university with all those war protests going on. But in the end I got in the car and he drove me a hundred miles to the campus and within six months I got drunk for the first time, smoked my first joint and lost that overrated virtue, virginity.

My art major roommate and I hitchhiked to her home town many times that winter and once I had undetected mononucleosis, falling asleep in a snow drift. My roommate's mother sterilized the towels after I left. Moria was my roommate's name and she hid joints in her paint box and she never could get high. I didn't seem to have that problem. Did I say I lost my virginity? I did, to a 6'4" gymnast with orange hair from Little Turkey, Iowa. I first learned about sex from a seventh grade teacher, Sister Mary Paschal, a permanently unhappy woman with the proverbial corn cob up her ass. I always scored very high in the archdiocesan music tests having studied piano from age five. I was learning the letters of the scale at the same time I was learning the alphabet at school. But that year I pulled a lowly 86 and Sister Paschal berated me in front of the whole class. She was also in charge of the altar boys so a friend and I snuck into the altar boy locker room and dressed in their vestments. Sex? I can still see the nuns ranting, shaking their fingers at us, don't do it, girls, don't do it - keep those zippers zipped. With this kind of limited information and my natural sense of curiosity there seemed to be only one solution.


Fast forward, I went home that summer and hooked up with the man who would become my husband. I was sitting at a friend's house and two guys knocked at the door. Kathy had a "rep"so I figured they were here to score and I drifted off, not interested in their conversation. The short moustached fellow asked me what grade school I attended because he remembered me from said school. I looked at him closely and ran his name over in my mind and then I saw him, a kid in plaid flannel shirts and corduroy pants that went swish-swish-swish when he walked past my desk. He had blue-black hair, white skin and very pink cheeks, blue eyes and freckles. Yeah, Irish. He told me he had a crush on me back in the day and I was the kid with the pixie haircut, black pointy glasses, socks and grey hush puppies. Who would find that worth a second look? I was the only girl, except for Laurie Farlan, at the eighth grade Christmas party who did not get to wear nylons. My mother said I had to wait until I was 16. Laurie came out after college but I remember once she and some friends and I started a club in the walk-in closet at my house and she put a red plastic bowl on her head and did an impersonation of the bishop and God, she was so funny.
Anyway, long story short, I got pregnant in my sophomore year in college - I had talked that same boy into joining me at my school - his father had wanted him to study engineering but this is not what the man was about. My school had an experimental music department that drew his interest, he was a jazz guitarist. When I realized I was pregnant my first impulse was to run. I thought about joining Moria who was moving to Seattle, but in the end I would need to let the boy know and it was the right decision. It was 3 o'clock in the morning and Joe became very quiet. "I know I should be scared, but I feel really happy." Corny, but my 20-year-old self felt good with it.
Jason had very naive and simplistic parents. We were thrust into a serious situation with very little forethought. We did all right. We loved our baby and those years were peaceful and comfortable. We came back to our hometown and lived in my father-in-law's apartment house. I would leave signs on every body's door knob when Jason was sleeping. He had the best of us. This may account for the calmness in his center.

A Tale of Two Cooks

Not so long ago I came upon a realization that must have been buried deep in my psyche and never revealed to my conscious mind. And it is this, I don't like to cook. I was raised by a 50's housewife who grew up on a Depression-era farm with inadequate food supplies for the widow and her nine children. Food was a sacred product for my mother and the cooking process a holy ritual. Until the last day my mother was able to sit upright she had a stack of cooking magazines next to her and she read these like Danielle Steele's latest novel (I, myself, am not a fan of Ms. Steele but let's face it, she owns the numbers.) My mother served three homemade squares a day, a meat roast and fruit pie on Sundays, and her freezer was full of muffins, cookies, walnuts, leftover vegetables for the soup pot. In short, food was everywhere.

I am the eldest Catholic daughter in the family so I was trained as the back-up person should my mother choose to take to her bed or whatever. Myself and other women who share this birth order position go on to be great leaders, planners, acceptors of responsibility as well as micro managers, know-it-alls, and basically, pains in the ass.

One would assume being raised in this household, so full of food and gender-biased roles I would put on the pink ruffly apron and become Miss Just-Like-Her-Mom girl hero. All these years I thought I had done this although the fit never felt right.

That was until my moment of clarity on cooking occurred. This is what it is: I like reading the food magazines, I have several shelves full of cook books and I continue to add more volumes and I absolutely ate up Julia and Julie. I bought Mastering the Art of French Cooking and flirted with the idea of copying Julie Powell's culinary adventure. I started with Julia's Boeuf a la Bourguignonne not realizing until deep into the two-page recipe that there were references to other parts of the cookbook for additions to the dish like caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms and it was hours before I got out of my kitchen and it would take days to clean up all the pots.

I realize I am in love with the idea of cooking, and not cooking itself. I want to go to chefs' cooking demonstrations, eat all kinds of exotic stuff at food shows, browse the cooking aisles in small book shops. I just don't want to be in the kitchen chopping onions.

Too add to this calamity, I am somewhat of a good cook. Not excellent, not even creative, just good. Always a craftsman, never the artist. After 38 years a few things have clicked like add small amounts of milk to mashed potatoes unless you want potato soup and really good scrambled eggs need to be stirred a lot. I can go outside the recipe, but I'd rather not. I don't want to have to think about what might be missing in the sauce, or ponder what combination of recipes would taste better, or get a little sassy and use sesame oil or cumin when none is stated. Just give me the tried and true recipe and get out of my way.

My German father was far too picky and would not allow a teen-aged daughter to cook for him so my mother did all that and I was kicked down to chief baker, a position I loved because it is much harder to screw up cookies than a beef roast and at that age sugar was my passion.

So when I got married and moved a hundred miles away, I made a panicky call to my mother. "How do I cook?" I asked, "what do I do? I don't know how to cook!" A couple of days later I received a copy of Betty Crocker's latest cookbook in the mail, courtesy of that wise woman.

Karma Chameleon

We are firing up the convertible again and this time we are headed into Wisconsin, home of cheese and cheeseheads, those Green Bay Packer fans. Now I love cheese but that other group makes me want to lock myself in a closet. They are an elitist group and like cyclists and vegans, they believe they are superior to the rest of us based on, well, nobody seems to know. I thought when Brett Farve left the pack they might find some semblance of sanity and decency in their ranks but this was not to be. My own family must mask the fact that one of our own adheres to just such a philosophy. My youngest brother Albert would send out his Christmas greeting postcards with the whole family including the dog wearing the green and gold jersey.

From thirty miles away we can see our goal.

The natural mound called Sinsinawa rises three hundred feet above the Wisconsin landscape. The Mesquakie Native Americans named this area Manitmouie - "the land where the Great Spirit dwells." And the mound itself, Sinsinawa - "the young eagle." Here now is the mother house of the Dominican sisters and the Catholic parish of St. Joseph.
Sonny worries that Dave will be chilled in the back seat of the convertible. "Is he cool with that?" he asks. I stop midway while blowing my nose. "I have never heard you use that word," I tell my father. Unless he is describing a drop in temperature. The old guy's showing some friskiness - I like that. When the wind blows cold Sonny just jacks up the car heater. Dave sits in the back content it is not his gasoline bill being eaten up. The rolling hills of dried corn and grazing animals lull me into a lazy state of mind.




And here is our reward - so to speak - a bowl of mulligan stew at the church festival. Mulligan is another word for Irishman and the stew was a staple of the Irish hobos in America around the turn of the century. Into the pot went whatever was available by hobo standards but fortunately today for our recipe we have Midwestern fare: three kinds of meat (I know, I know - but this is the farm belt and we need animal flesh to build up stamina for the wicked winter ahead,) plenty of root vegetables and secret seasonings. There is a makeshift bar of plywood and barrels set up in the middle of the gymnasium. And a huge blue and gold eagle painted on the wall, thanks to the class of '95. Volunteers are selling raffle tickets for cash prizes, kids with crew cuts are playing the homemade festival games, good Christian women are offering chances on a quilt. I want to sit here for awhile and soak up the small town atmosphere. I buy a jar of raspberry jam for a dollar.

The school is small enough that every graduating class is pictured on the wall. Look at this innocent group. All shining faces and well scrubbed nails. Where are they now? Are they farming the valleys like their great grandparents or have they journeyed to foreign ports? The young fellow standing next to the priest looks especially pleased with himself. Why, I believe it's a young Boy George.

"I don't dread autumn's slide toward winter. It's not the coming cold and snow that I dread; it's knowing that the earth will be brown for months on end. Snow in this globally-warmed region is intermittent, softening the landscape when it falls, but winter thaws bring back a deadly beige. Green won't return until April."
Kevin Koch

Pretty Things

My mother's birthday was a week ago, and in her honor, I dressed in bright colors. My own wardrobe leans towards anonymous - khakis and white t-shirts, navy blue and grey and brown, a Catholic student's closet. I want to fade into the background, not attract attention. My mother would throw together orangy pinks and purple berry and forest green. And it worked for her. Her Capri's were ironed with a sharp crease and she wore delicate chains of pink pearls and turquoise. Her last purse had crocheted pictures of women's faces from the flapper generation. She found this at a flea market while visiting my son in Ann Arbor. My mother loved clothes. Marie was raised in flour sack dresses and castoffs from charity contributions. My talented older aunt would rip open the seams and redesign the fabric into new outfits. Irene would not allow the children to be seen in the original clothes.


Mom squirreled away money for clothing purchases. Dad would cluck-cluck his tongue. He wore forty year old shoes that needed resoling every few years. He took pride in his purchases from second hand stores, even the corduroy pants, shiny seats from too much wear. My mother especially loved coats. She bought a new coat every year but would bring it out of the closet a day here, a day there. Slowly, so my father would not notice. After her death my sister and I looked at the closets and dressers and numerous Rubbermaid tubs full of all that clothing. Check the pockets, I said to Amy. We found approximately $7000 at the bottom of boxes, tucked away in purses, Social Security envelopes and, yes, pockets . My father would shake his head thinking why this strange, unnecessary behavior. I knew she needed to spend money on what she was denied for so many years.

Pretty things.

I took my mother shopping. She needed a dress for her grandson's wedding. I came out of the dressing room to see her wearing a hot pink teddy. "I want to buy that dress over there, but look at the cleavage. Your brother will never allow that." That day I bought a jacket of orange and red panels with grape purple lining. Never would I have bought this thing if it had not been for her influence that day. It seemed the right and authentic thing to do. The jacket hung in my closet for a year and then was donated.

As the days lengthen I am beginning to realize the awful loss. She was the best of friends. She lived up the lane and I could stop in numerous times a day with stories and jokes. Now those moments are stilled and I fill them with other things, I just don't know what those will be yet.

So, I wore the wine-colored blouse and the sky blue earrings and the mother-of-pearl shell necklace. I find the pink Birkenstock slip-ons I bought the day after her death. I wanted something new and brilliant for the upcoming wake. I was drawn to the soft coral orange but knew my mother would buy the pink and that is what I chose.

Today is another perfect autumn poem and my oak tree outside the french doors is nude of leaves. A few tough maples are still holding out with their dressy autumn colors but harsh wintry winds are starting to blow and I hold my own on my daily walks. Once again prolonged exercise helps to staunch the feelings of loss. In one day and night's time I have exercised four hours. My legs and arms are telling me this is too much. I am obsessed these days.