Role Model

Well, November is here, and as usual it has brought out my melancholy side.  I miss my mom with sharper focus in November, the month of both her birth and her death. But this November in particular, I've been thinking a lot about my fabulous mother-in-law, whose birthday was also in November. I wish you could have known her as well as I did.

She was an excellent grandmother, a breast cancer survivor, a fiercely independent widowed single woman, a terrific friend, the best mother-in-law, and an adventurous soul who was up for anything.

She tap danced. She swam. She shepherded tourists around the Smithsonian as a docent at the National Postal Museum. She read The Washington Post from front to back every single day. She hated to drive, but had the Washington, D.C. bus and subway schedules memorized; she used them as she attended theater productions and baseball games and art exhibits throughout the city. She looked forward to and excelled at the competitive sport of bargain-hunting.

More than this, after her retirement from the U.S. Foreign Service and a career during which she and her husband raised three children -- while stationed in places like Cambodia, Libya, Bangladesh -- she traveled the world all over again. She took cruises throughout Europe, Northern Africa, and Canada. She rode a zip line over the Costa Rican rain forest. She went on a safari in Tanzania -- sleeping in the most glamorous tents I've ever seen. 

And then she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, almost two years ago. She was told she had a "glioblastoma multiforme." Your Google search will give you all the bad news about this kind of tumor. And you've probably been hearing about this particularly shitty brand of cancer in the news recently. 

I want to say so many things. But mostly:

First -- my religion (which was my mother-in-law's  religion too) teaches me that God's ways are not our ways. This is sometimes (but not always) comforting when I consider the ways cancer attacks us. I watched it take control of my own mother, and then of my dear mother-in-law. And to tell you the truth, both times it took control of my life, too. 

But second, this sucky disease gave me a great and good gift, too. My beloved mother-in-law's illness allowed me to take care of her. It allowed me to be with her at her most vulnerable, and it let me take the most intimate care of her. Ultimately, this brave woman let me and her other children be with her as she approached that ultimate journey -- her greatest adventure yet! It's funny -- nineteen years ago, when my own mother went through a similar ordeal with similar grace, my friend Susan said to me, "her suffering is a gift." Which totally pissed me off. Who would want this kind of present?! It certainly has never been on my Christmas wish list. But she was right (as she usually is). I am grateful that I was able to love them in this particular way, in addition to all the other kinds of love I had and have for both of them.

This is a thing I've come to embrace partly because of my religious beliefs -- but I think that my non-religious friends might have experienced a similar gift. I consider myself devout, but I don't think this thankfulness really has to do entirely with faith. It also has to do with our deepest connections to those we love. And, while I have the deepest sympathy for those who think that this is not a death they should have to experience, I look to both of my cherished mothers as my examples and role models. There are many ways to die with dignity.

Finally, as is often my way, I would recommend a book -- for anyone whose family has gone through something like this, or is in the middle of it right now. Shrinkage, by Bryan Bishop, is a wonderful memoir of his (so far) successful battle against an inoperable brain tumor. I first learned of his story through his fiercely wonderful wife's blog, and have cheered him on ever since. He writes with honesty, grit, and humor, and anyone fighting cancer will find inspiration and hope in his story.

You be the judge

Who can tell me what's hilarious about this picture? No, It's not that my Christmas wrapping paper is still at the ready as we all turn to face the sun, wearing our traditional and festive Vernal Equinox garb. That's just sad.

But look a little more closely. As I was shoving a pile of laundry out of the way so the vacuum could have a path, I glanced down at the cover story of this magazine (which I think was slipped into my bags as I was leaving the fabulous mother-in-law's place one night -- because she is never one to drop a hint when she can roll it up in a magazine and swat your behind with it).  People, I almost fell over laughing.  Or maybe it was crying.  I can't remember which.

Dinner date!

Well, so -- much of the reason I have been away from blogging this fall has been that I have been spending a lot of time with my mother-in-law.  She has been battling illness, so has needed some extra help.  This is lucky for me, because I love her so much -- and always enjoy the time I get to spend with her.

Take Tuesday night, for example -- she and I had a fabulous dinner together: pork tenderloin, roasted potatoes, sauteed snow peas, and sliced tomatoes.  And we split a bottle of wine while she told me hilarious stories about the husband's childhood.

It was a great date!

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Today's book selection for Advent is lovely to look at -- and has a lovely story to go with it as well. Christmas Tapestry, by Patricia Polacco, is about a pastor's family who move to a new town and a new church community.  After the church is damaged in a storm, Jonathan and his father worry that Christmas Eve services will have to be ruined.  Luckily they find a beautiful old tapestry that will cover the damage perfectly.  Then the miracle part happens!

Such a great story -- and so gorgeous, too!

Nostalgia in advance

 

So we're getting ready to do some painting around here. 

It should come as no surprise that "getting ready" has a very sketchy meaning for the husband and me.  We "get ready" for household projects by daydreaming about what we want, and then going out for a cup of coffee, and then maybe a month or two later wondering how much it will cost, and then cracking open another bottle of wine, and then stumbling across a paint sample or two, and then going away on a business trip . . . .

 

The girl in charge figured us out a long time ago, and thus is the only member of the family whose room has been painted to her specifications.  And it was a lot of work for both her and me -- work that involved geometry, y'all.

This summer I plan to paint my bedroom, the sunny girl's new(ish) bedroom, and the little roomlet she used to sleep in when she was not yet a 5'10 ballerina.  The roomlet will become an place for me to stash my work-related stuff (part-time faculty have no office privileges where I work).  Right now I keep all my crap in the back of my car.   I'm excited to make a little office for myself, and as usual I have all kinds of unrealistic expectations about how fabulously perfect it will be.  But at the same time, I will be sad to see the sunny girl's little roomlet go.  It means saying good-bye to some of her "little girl"-ness -- and: the room is so stinkin' cute!

 

The four-year-old sunny girl's roomlet was decorated for her by Grandma Carol, right after we moved into our house in 2001.  Grandma Carol has a great eye for what a little girl will like, and she and Grandpa have the motivational oomph to actually get a project done instead of just dreaming about it.  So the sunny girl's little room was a tiny ballerina's dream come true!

Check it out:  the flowers all over the walls were created by first using a big rubber stamp and some craft paint (that's the lavender colored basic flower).  Then Grandma went back over each flower several times freestyle, adding the pink detail, the white outline, and the swirly yellow center.  The random blue swirlies were "to give it a little color pop."  Just as I was oohing and ahhing about how cute the room was, Grandma got out her glue gun and attached flat pink glass marbles to the centers of all the flowers.  I mean . . . .  And you see how she instructed Grandpa to paint the walls flat pink, and then add a stripe of glossy pink of the same shade, right?  Grandma Carol created a lovely little room for my sunny girl that could be out of a magazine.

The kicker for the four-year-old, though, was the chandelier.

Hot date with my mother-in-law

I have the world's most fabulous mother-in-law.  It's true!  And here is just the most recent evidence:  Due to the state of our construction project, watching television at our house is not a possibility right now.  And while we are not the biggest TV-watching family out there, I do love me some Oscars!  One year I even flew to Florida to catch the broadcast with my pal, Danielle.  True story. 

So -- Oscar night:  what to do??

And here is where my mother-in-law Donna came to the rescue.  She invited me up to her place. OK --  I invited myself up to her place, put she was pretty darned gracious and enthusiastic about saying yes.  And when I got there (bringing a love offering of Chinese food), I discovered that she had set the table with her fancy china, and had planned out an appetizer of shrimp cocktail and a delicious pineapple dessert.  She plied me with wine and snacks throughout the Oscars show, while we mocked some dresses and oohed and aahed over others.  And I just need to say:  Angelina Jolie -- eat something, for the love of God!

These were our two favorite dresses of the night:

Penelope Cruz looked like Old Hollywood, in every good way.  She didn't feel the need to thrust her boobage in our faces (we appreciated that, Penelope!) and the woman has a little sexy meat on her bones.  This is a good thing.

And look how lovely Octavia Spencer was on her Big Night!  Gorgeous!

But nobody on the red carpet can hold a candle to Donna -- the queen of adventure and the most gracious hostess in the world.  I am a lucky daughter-in-law!

A Book Lovers' Advent Calendar: Day Nine

Today behind the Advent calendar door we find The Birds' Christmas Carol, which was given to the urchins by Grandma Carol (born on Christmas Day, just like the Carol in this story). This little book (not quite a novel, but longer than a storybook) was one of the first gifts the urchins received from their new grandmother, soon after she and Grandpa got married. So it's "recommended" by Grandma Carol, but it is very dear to us as well.

Carol Bird is a cherished Christmas gift to her family; born on Christmas Day, her name describes her perfectly, since she sings all the time. Frail and often ill, she nevertheless brings joy and hope to everyone as she plans a special Christmas celebration for the nine young Ruggles children who live nearby.

I owned this version of the little story when I was in elementary school; I spent sixty cents of my own money to buy it from the Scholastic Book flier that came home from school. Isn't it strange? I totally remember it being called The Birds' Christmas Carol -- I distinctly remember thinking that her name was such a clever pun. But look: this edition has a different (more straightforward, more boring) title. Memory is such a strange thing . . . .

Thanks, Grandma Carol, for bringing this sweet story back into my life!

Snapshot: What do they have in common?

I can tell you what these three soldiers
have in common in just one word:

AIRBORNE!

Beach memories . . . .

So while we were at the beach we absolutely did all our favorite things -- things we do every year. For my sister and me, this involved books. And maybe a magazine or two but mostly books. And we weren't the only ones -- we are clearly raising our urchins right, because this is a picture that could have been captured most beach days. Every urchin there was deep into something -- from Stardust, to Pillars of the Earth, to Game of Thrones, to a re-reading of the Harry Potter books in preparation for the big movie release, the books were piled up all over our beach house. I personally read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and loved it!

For the sunny girl and her cousins the beach tradition also involved boogie boards, except for the days when they reported that the water was . . . let's see, what was the phrase they used? "W-a-a-y too freakin' cold."

My tall boy wasn't able to make it to the beach this year (he was stuck in a cubicle), so the soldier brought along one of his soldier pals to fill the void. While he's no tall boy, he is cuter than [think of something really cute and he's cuter than that], and funny, and willing to roll with the punches -- even when one of the girl cousins (who might be the sunny girl, not that I'm blaming or anything) spilled lemonade all over him. And dig this: dude wore a different bow tie to dinner every night. Swear to God.

And we had lots to celebrate! A room full of fathers received their Father's Day loot . . .

-- don't judge me because I

used duct tape to wrap my gifts --

. . . and this up-and-coming Wahoo was the man of the hour, since he just graduated from high school.

A new thing we did this year was that we all sat down together one night and read the script of the play, "Dinner at Eight." More about that is coming because it was awesome!

Mostly we stuck to our main family tradition, which is to spend as much time together as possible with the people we love most in the world.

Tall Boy Sighting

So we celebrated the tall boy's nineteenth birthday last week -- along with Thanksgiving. His actual big day was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He arrived home from Catholic University that day; after a steak dinner with the family followed by the requested birthday apple pie, he was kidnapped by Coleen's tall boy, and I didn't see him until the next morning.

What kind of party games did they play? Well, let's just say that the two tall boys' motto is, "what happens at the sleepover stays at the sleepover."

Because Thanksgiving intruded, we didn't have our big family birthday celebration until the weekend, when my folks took us out to lunch. We love these family dinners!

The tall boy loves his grandmothers . . .

. . . .the fantastically funny, quirky, and adventurous Grandma Donna . . .

. . . and the elegant but photo-phobic Grandma Carol, who is my mom's emissary to ensure that their grandchildren are spoiled and adored properly.

But the tall boy will tell anyone who asks that his all-time absolute hero is his Grandpa.

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And behind door number three of our Advent calendar is this lovely little carousel book, which displays images that illustrate the lyrics to the Christmas carol, "Away in a Manger." Have you seen these carousel books? You display them so that they look like a series of diaramas -- but way prettier than the ones we used to make out of shoe boxes! The actual title of this book is Away in a Manger: A Christmas Carousel Book.

Here's how it looks when it's set up. We love this song, and we love this book -- still part of our Christmas decorating tradition!

And the best news is November is almost over!

So we had a lovely Thanksgiving this year -- as we always do. I'm telling you, there is something about a table decorated with pretties that have special meaning, filled to the point of collapse with comfort food, and surrounded by your dear ones, that brightens the melancholy soul. As you know, I find November to be a very tricky month, but these last few days have been filled with fabulous.

We had so many loved ones celebrating with us that we had to take two pictures to get 'em all captured for the scrapbooks. By loved ones I am of course including the fabulous neighbors as well as the fabulous green beans.

Also at our table were two grandmas and two kinds of cranberry sauce.

The husband's sister was with us, which was a special treat. Since she lives on the other side of the country, we don't get to see her nearly as often as we would like to. I love her for many reasons, but one is that she and I both love to slum it among the gossip magazines.

And our festive occasions are always better when the fabulous neighbors are around. Talk about dear ones!

tangent: I think it's a shame that the word neighbor does not convey the depth of love I feel for these wonderful friends. It is true that they live right next door, and that we can count on them to feed the cats and check our mail while we're away. But I also rely on them for advice, sympathy, rocking good fun, and so much more! How lucky are we to know them?!

The tall boy -- home for the holiday -- received some birthday loot as well. He is a truly good sport about the fact that his birthday is often collapsed into our Thanksgiving celebrating. Sometimes his actual birthday is on actual Thanksgiving. He could make this one more thing for me to feel guilty about, but he is mellow about it, as he is about so many other things. He even makes life easier by not particularly liking cake. He always requests birthday pie -- which is easy to come by at Thanksgiving!

And here is a gorgeous sight -- the ceremonial pot of turkey soup! The husband -- the master of the kitchen at our house -- started this bad boy simmering almost before we had finished eating. I think he might have taken a turkey leg out of the sunny girl's hand so he could add it to the pot.

I hope that, as it did for me, your Thanksgiving reminded you of how lucky and loved you are. When all is said and done, I feel so blessed!