First of Seven

Resurrecting the blog

2008-08-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

It's not that I really forgot about this blog, I just doubted it was worth the effort. I wish personal blogs were interesting, but they almost never are.

In the 4 1/2 years since my last post, it almost seems as if the whole world has been upturned. You'd still find me fat and outwardly awkward as before, but in that time, I learned a new line of work. I did well enough for a while to buy the south Philly house I wanted so much, and had nearly despaired of ever having on my own. My father lived long enough to see the pictures when I moved in last spring. This has been the second summer without him. It's a little painful to realize that it's gotten easier since last summer, our minds filling up with new routines and interests. And then I was laid off from the job earlier this year. I'll say more about Dad in later posts.

Anyway, I sometimes read blogs by people I know who write about their personal lives. And I read others by people in my line of work. The personal ones are boring. A few professional ones are good sources of information. I've occasionally read some op-ed or literary blogs, and I can't stay interested for long. Once in a while I'll check in with decorating blogs, or the Ikea hacker. Guilty pleasures.

But seriously, don't expect much from this. It's just me and the old "black dog", as they say, hanging onto my little patch until I figure out where I'm going.

Waking up, wondering

2004-02-08T10:52:00.000-08:00

In the four days since my mother and I visited her brother Joe in the rehab facility, we attended a funeral for the wife of her oldest cousin, and had a short day of shopping and eating before I took her to the train station for the 5-hour trip home, and I had two days to think about the visit.

I'm going to have to get used to going to funerals, I think. There's just no other way to keep or make contact with the relatives that are more distant that 1st cousin. I think I must have met 4 or 5 second cousins at this one that I'd never heard of before. All were interested in the genealogy project, some had even made a stab at their own research at some time. For most of them, they're more interested in their origins than their parents or grandparents were. Mom introduced me to these people, but there will come a time when I'll have to go alone. I wonder how a family I don't personally know will react to someone like me turning up at a funeral? What do you say?

The next morning, I found mom cleaning my bathroom. I went to the kitchen and started coffee and toasted some scones. As we had breakfast, mom laughed as she told me about waking up there, in my apartment, and for a minute or two not knowing where she was, being worried about where to find the bathroom when she needed it, which is often. I worry about things like that because she seems disoriented for short periods more and more often, but I also wonder about being over-concerned, and about whether my obvious frustration with her only makes her more flustered.

The long-term care insurance information package came yesterday, but I only had time to look at it today. They don't cover parents of employees, but it was useful to see the premium rates for people around their age. It appears that a 75 year old would pay nearly $500 per month for a plan that would provide $300,000 worth of benefits over a 5-year period limit. My parents are nearing 77. I am concerned that they will both need care eventually, my father before my mother. Is $500+ a month now better than serious financial hardship in a few years? Probably, yes. But who the hell has an extra $500 a month?

The Things You Learn

2004-02-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

Mom arrived on the train early in the afternoon. She was already waiting outside when I drove up, not near the taxi area, but past it, at exactly the right spot for me to see her and pull up easily, yet we really never talked about this spot beforehand. I'll have to remember this the next time I get frustrated when she seems confused or disoriented.

The plan was to visit her brother today. In a small rehab facility attached to a big hospital. Crummy part of town. He's doing badly, cries when he is reminded of the old days, or when he thinks about the visits he gets from his family. And yet, he's not all that old.

I pushed his wheelchair around the hospital floor, taking him to the lounge so he could bum a cigarette from someone. I watched he and my mom talk. It was painfully awkward--it was as much of an effort to understand him as it probably was for him to speak at all. Mom is hard of hearing, so I pitched in occasionally to relay what her brother said. We mentioned going to the store to buy a lottery ticket for that night's drawing, and that reminded the both of them of their own father's favorite number. 742. We sat with him as he had supper, ground chicken, ground up noodles ground up vegetables. He really doesn't want to be there, but his choices are very limited. I left before Mom so I could bring the car around for her. He cried again for some reason, and I stupidly told him it "would all work out". He needs so much more than I, Mom, or most people have the power to give him.

Tomorrow is the funeral for mom's cousin's wife. I'll accompany her there, along with her sister Nancy. The visits, the funerals--they're the things we do together now. I go to meet the relatives I don't know, and to hear the old stories.

An unexpected visit

2004-02-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

Mom lost another friend yesterday. Her cousin's wife Claire, who died from bone cancer. I met Claire at another funeral, for another of mom's cousins, almost 2 years ago to the day. We talked about travel, genealogy, old maps, and ebay. I liked her, and had hopes we'd get to talk again.

Claire was married to mom's oldest cousin. He struck me as sarcastic when I met him, but so many of this gang is sarcastic, I never know how seriously to take him. He stonewalled nearly every question I had for him related to genealogy. At the time, I assumed he was monumentally disinterested. Now I can see he probably was very occupied with his wife's illness.

So, mom is taking the train up here tomorrow, the funeral will be the day after. We'll have a little time to do a bit of visiting ourselves, and I can drive her around to see her brother, who is very ill.

You would think she'd be saddened by all these deaths and troubles, yet she's really very matter-of-fact. It doesn't surprise me at all, to outward appearances, her attitude towards these kinds of things has always seemed sympathetic, caring but distant, as though these deaths were a routine of life. There isn't the sense that she feels the gravity or finality of it. I suppose that may be due to her religious beliefs, some personal version of the afterlife of Catholic doctrine. Or perhaps it's not that at all--maybe she just denies it, pretends it's not what it is.

I think about how we'll be when her own time comes. A little too much, too.

Is this enough?

2004-02-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

Less than a week, and it's already a bit of an effort to write something. Something in the established train of thought, that is. Agh, so what?

I spent the better part of the day doing anything but the database work I'd agreed to do. Poking around the Net, I'm floored to discover how much long term care insurance could be to buy for my parents. Is it really $5,000 a year? If we could afford that, we could nearly afford to buy them care a la carte when it's needed.

An inadequate plan of action is better than no plan of action, right? The more thought I gave the Sew Kids project, the more I saw that it may be possible to get a grant for the sewing machines themselves. But would vendors and manufacturers step up to provide the consumables like patterns, fabric and other supplies? No way of telling until I contact them. In any case, it appears things would have to fall into place in this order:
- A community center agrees to provide the space and security.
- A grant is obtained to purchase sewing machines that remain with the program.
- Donations for suppies are solicited.
- Sign up participants
I wrote to a local teen community service organization asking for someone to point me in the right direction in starting such program. It's the first time I've really written about it outside of this blog. When I wrote the letter, I was surprised at how easily all the good-reasons-to-do-this parts came to me. It'll be a gas to have them respond, won't it?

It'll work. It will

2004-01-31T22:57:00.000-08:00

Two days later, and I still think the sewing class is a good idea. It might not necessarily work at the community center in the projects themselves, but it might work at the Y. Could be sewing club, rather than a class. Rolling admission, me minding the store, fixing, helping, giving advice. I'm open to variations on the central idea. Among those girls hanging on the street at 9 at night, you figure at least one or two of them would like to make her own damn hot pants.

Where the hell am I gonna get a bunch of sewing machines? Ones that work. Will the Y, or whoever, let us commandeer some room permanently to keep them? And what if it actually works out? Ha, what then?

A little scolding

2004-01-30T23:57:00.000-08:00

What they call it is an "initial warning", but what it really means is that you're on notice--get up to speed or you're out of here in 60 days.

I started as a part-time check encoder at the bank because I needed a safety net until I got more database and web freelance business. What was supposed to be a 25-hour a week job turned into pretty much a full-time second shift one, since they couldn't get enough trainees to come in and stay. A lot of the old hands left when their bonus plans were taken away. For a while we were working til after 1 a.m. every night, sometimes til 3.

But now, things have eased up. I never got to be fast, in fact I never got up to "quota" speed. No complaints while they were so shorthanded. But the old hands, who had left months ago, asked to come back. They missed their benefits. And now, we've served our purpose.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing at all. Being on notice gets me the privilege of applying for another job at the company--from the inside, as a current employee. Not bad. Best thing the world would be to get out of that department.

Sew Kids

2004-01-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine a world in which a 12-year old girl rushes home from school to cut out a dress pattern? I wonder ...

I think I've dreamt of this for years--teach an afternoon or weekend sewing class for kids. I learned myself, at about 12 or 13, when I took a class at the Sears store in the mall. It didn't start out that way--a friend told me about a knitting class starting up at the mall, and asked me if I wanted to sign up. I think I bailed when I saw what all that yarn would cost. But they had a sewing class, with sewing machines in the classroom. I had to buy a pattern and some material, which didn't cost that much. I still remember the teacher, Mrs. Parry. "I don't like sloppy sewing!", she used to say when she walked around the room evaluating our work. When I completed the class, I had made a simple peasant-style dress out of light yellow cotton leno with a gathered elasticized neckline and sleeves. My mother had helped me pick out the pattern, steering me away from something with pleats, as I recall. The fabric was my own choice. I did a respectable job of it, for a beginner, and wore the dress that summer and the next. I still have it.

My mother still had an old White machine at home. She rarely used it after her first couple kids were born, although I do remember her making me a simple dress when I was about 9 or 10. I made many more things after the yellow dress, using Mom's White for several years until I was able to buy a newer machine at the Singer store when I was about 16. I still use it.

The kid sewing project will be a huge undertaking, and I've never done anything like it before. I'm not sure where to start, but I'm going to talk to someone at the community center in one of the apartment projects I know. I've seen a lot of kids hanging out in the streets after dark in that neighborhood, some of them groups of young girls. Some of them might like to sew, I don't know. We shall see.

Mom's friend Evelyn

2004-01-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, mom called me to say that her old friend Evelyn had died. It had happened more than a week before she found out, when Evelyn's niece found her name and number among her aunt's things. I rarely look at the obituaries in our paper, so I wouldn't have been able to tell Mom about the funeral. She missed it.

Evelyn was in her 80s, Mom said, I don't know how old exactly. She was several years older than my mother. The two of them met when they worked together as secretaries in the 1950s. The last time Mom saw Evelyn was when I drove her up to her house for a visit, almost 2 years ago. Mom was in town partly for a dinner & opera birthday evening I'd planned for her, partly to see a couple of her old friends, and partly to accompany me doing some genealogical research--we visited all the old houses she lived in when her family was still here. In the last week or so, Mom and I had been planning her next trip up here in mid-February, mostly to see Evelyn.

Now both of her old friends, the ones she and I drove around to see over a day or two in early March of 2002, are gone. One died later that year, in November. And now Evelyn, just a couple weeks ago. I have pictures of those visits back in March 2002, somewhere. They're still on the disposable camera I was carrying around that day, still undeveloped. I need to find it.

Tug of War

2004-01-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

I talked to my mom today, again about Dad. I tried to convince her to talk to his doctor, get him to prescribe some specific physical therapy for him, in hopes this would force him into some strengthening exercises for his legs. Her reaction seems so negative, passive, and it is so frustrating to me. I know I must be a pain to her sometimes when I get so determined to make a point. She often agrees at the end, probably just to change the subject. It's always an uncomfortable phone call, the old guilt returns--me harassing my mother, me being so ungrateful, me making her feel like crap.

I think Dad is in a real slide downwards, physically, and he seems so depressed, uninterested. It's not just that he can't get out of a chair easily, or that it hurts to move his leg from the gas pedal to the brake. It's those, too, but it's also that he doesn't answer my email anymore, and doesn't get me on the phone anymore with questions about the genealogical project I'm working on. He didn't sound right on the phone a few days ago. I know he is 76 years old, but he does not need to be doing this badly. I'm thrashing around, looking for some way to make it better, to get him a few more good years.

And all my mother has ever done is complain about him. He could be a bully, she could be a doormat. They argued violently when they were younger, they bicker and snipe in lower tones now. I suspect they were both disappointed pretty quickly after they got married. But, Mom's attitude...what it is, I can't quite put my finger on it. She really must not think I'm that smart--I suggest things that might be worth trying to improve his physical or mental condition. Instead, she tries to explain to me why his condition is the way it is. And it's a mixture of real causes and damning character flaws, as usual. He has diabetes II, and cheats on his diet. He's led a life of relative inactivity. He sits downstairs listening to the stereo all night, or upstairs on the computer all night. His mother never got up out of her chair, either.

I try not to sigh, try not cut her off. I really am trying. She sees the problem, but can't imagine doing anything to make it better. Whatever I suggest, she has some reason why it is pointless. And I cannot imagine how someone can give up like this. I almost think she doesn't care.