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A Shot Mind

July 13, 2016 by mountainmornings

Ageism. It’s hard to avoid these days since many of us will live for nearly a century. Each “woman of a certain age” knows what I mean when I say there comes a time when we become invisible. Young people, after all, are walking around chasing invisible fictional characters on their ‘dumb’ phones. We, otoh, are trying to find ours!

So it came as no surprise that the Donald would malign my hero, the Notorious RBG, by saying on Twitter of course, “Her mind is shot – resign.” Not the best use of “shot” as a noun, the day after that Dallas Police memorial service. Still, 83 year old Justice Ginsburg said in an interview she thought the GOP front-runner was a “faker.”

“At first I thought it was funny,” she said of Trump’s early candidacy. “To think that there’s a possibility that he could be president … ” Her voice trailed off gloomily.
“I think he has gotten so much free publicity,” she added, drawing a contrast between what she believes is tougher media treatment of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and returning to an overriding complaint: “Every other presidential candidate has turned over tax returns.”  http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/politics/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-donald-trump-faker/

There’s something radical about a woman who speaks her mind. But a woman in a black robe, how dare she?

Bob has seen many a nursing home patient with little to no mind left, and it’s not pretty or something to hurl at a Supreme Court Justice. In fact, he once saw a woman who had forgotten how to cook. I asked him if that could ever happen to me; then I thought, would it be such a bad thing? Never to cook again?

But let’s leave women out of the kitchen for a minute and think about the GOP platform for 2016, it’s as if they are playing a game of one step forward, five steps back. They don’t want to play “identity politics” by ensuring the rights of the LGBT community, but the fetus still has an identity. “Personhood” should be protected. Oh, and just when women won the right to equal pay and to serve in the front lines of the armed forces, the GOP thought it better if we ladies stayed out of combat. Better yet, back in the kitchen. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/republican-platform-continues-move-right-day-two-n608031

Since we are still without air conditioning, this is the fifth day, my mind is starting to melt. I left the house one day without my dumb/smart phone AND my glasses! I’ve been trying not to cook for the simple reason that 83 degrees is too hot to play with fire. Supposedly, the part will be in and the tech will fix our AC unit tomorrow…sometime tomorrow. Meanwhile the humidity has returned and today should see us nearing 90. Fingers crossed.

But back to the shot mind. I love following Glenn Greenwald on Twitter @gggreenwald. He is a reporter without an agenda. Here is what he had to say about the latest kerfuffle:

“Hard to take seriously court impartiality/Ginsburg furor after 5 GOP-appointed judges stopped vote-counting & made George W. Bush president”

Now that says it all! Yessiree, I will be voting this November with a mind to keep the Supreme Court on the right side of history. I think Bernie’s revolution has just begun, and it will start with our first woman President. And just so you know, I will be forgoing Snapchat and Pokemon Now. My mind can only tech so much.

Here we are at the Apple Genius Bar, trying to catch up. And ps, Bob actually installed 16 RAMs of memory in my MacBook Pro, so my hot messy mind has a fast laptop. Take that young’uns!!  IMG_4808

 

 

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#MondayMotivation

July 11, 2016 by mountainmornings

“We are now so interdependent that it is in our own interest to take the whole of humanity into account.” Dalai Lama

This week was enough to make all of us cry. First in Baton Rouge, a man selling CDs on a sidewalk named Alton Sterling was thrown to the ground and shot point blank by a policeman. His crime? Carrying a gun while Black. It is all on YouTube thanks to a cell phone video. Then in my brothers’ home state of MN, another Black man was killed by a cop, and another cell phone video went live, so people on Facebook could watch Philandro Castile take his last breath while his girlfriend tells the officer, “You shot four bullets into him sir!” His crime was a broken tail light, and the audacity to tell the police he was licensed to carry a gun, while reaching for his wallet.

When a Black sniper in Dallas, an Army veteran,  decided to take vengeance into his own hands, we all thought this is it. Something has got to give, we cannot sustain our country by buying guns and living behind gates, by living in fear of the “Other.” And for a split second it did seem as if the Red and Blue was weaving itself back together again. But it didn’t last.

When I met a woman from Dallas at a memorial service on Friday, we touched on the troubles. I was truly grieving, so much senseless loss. And she said, “What about Black on Black crime?” and her daughter took her elbow, cautioning her to be careful what she said….I wasn’t sure where she was going. But from the younger woman’s reaction I knew it would be bad.

When White people talk about “Black on Black crime,” it’s like saying all Mexicans are rapists. It’s code for an underlying bigotry; don’t trust them, they’re gangsta. When I taught Head Start in the projects of Jersey City, I remember people calling it a ghetto. The word ghetto actually comes from the pogroms in Russia – it is Yiddish and means: an organized persecution or extermination of an ethnic group, esp of Jews.

When White people say, “Castile was doing everything right,” what that means is he was licensed to carry a gun, he had a good job, he wasn’t selling cigarettes or CDs on the street. He bought the American Dream, he didn’t have to hustle, he worked at a Montessori school for f-sake. And he had a fiancee and a baby girl in the back seat. He lived in a fairly progressive part of the country, but that couldn’t save him from a terrified cop with a gun. And the underlying message?

Since Castile was doing right, all those other unarmed Black men must have been doing something wrong!

safe_image.phpWhen the President compared the Black Dallas shooter to the Neo-Nazi White shooter in Charleston he was making a valid point. There is not much we can do to predict which mentally ill young man will wake up one day and decide to take out a number of people based on race or ridiculous ideology. Why is the gunman of one crime a lone wolf, while another morphs into a terrorist?

Today, social media is turning the tide around these issues. We can no longer ignore a militarized police force. We must witness the mass murder of police in the middle of a non-violent protest march. We are teaching our children to shelter in closets in our schools, because the right to bear arms is so precious to us.

We will always have a few bad cops. And we will always have the mentally ill. The flint to this combustible mixture is the gun, and God help us, if our legislators cannot regulate guns in this country, we may run out of hope. Because racism can be cured; racism needs to be taught, and we as a people can decide to stop teaching hate to our children.

The whole world is watching.IMG_4812

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If It’s Wednesday

July 6, 2016 by mountainmornings

It must be Barilla lasagne day. Never mind that temperatures will most likely hit the high 90s, I will be baking my vegetarian offering for a friend who unexpectedly lost her husband last week. The shock of this loss still gnaws at my consciousness, and don’t ask me why but cooking helps. One night Henry was fine, just a little indigestion, and the next morning he was gone, dying peacefully in his sleep. He was my age.

His wife, because I just cannot call her a widow yet, my friend Tammy is a member of the Ivy Farms Book Club. She is also a brilliant lawyer, a loving mother, a friend and much more. She was my neighbor when we first moved to Cville, welcoming this Yankee with open arms. We shared a love of big, white polar bear-type dogs! I’ve often said I could live in Tammy’s kitchen, it is a warm Tuscan cave of a room, with long windows at one end and a round, welcoming table in the center. Many a night we women would sit and discuss books, and everything else under the moon, with a kind of truth and candor one rarely expects.

All of my readers from the old Rumson Book Club know what I mean.

Our husbands were always in the periphery. Some would show up towards the end of our evenings, and some didn’t. If Henry was in town, he would show up. His hugs were real, not the fake, half in/half out type. He was the kind of gentle man who had a spark, who could make you think you were the only two people in a large gathering. His laughter was contagious. He was an international lawyer, who traveled extensively to poorer countries all over the world as an advocate for the poor and disenfranchised. If lawyers had a “Doctors Without Borders” association, he would be its director. If big companies were exploiting their workers anywhere on the planet, Henry was there. To Tammy, he was her Prince.

One of his colleagues, Mark Sparks, wrote an exceptional tribute to Henry:

Today we lost a wonderful friend of mine–Henry Dahl. Henry was one of the kindest, humblest, most intelligent lawyers I’ve ever known. Henry, I didn’t even know you spoke Russian (your sixth language) until we ran into Miss Russia at the Miss Universe pageant in Quito—you made her laugh and I never asked why. Henry, I didn’t know you were President of the Inter-American Bar Association until I happened upon it online—you never boasted about it once. Henry, I didn’t know you played tennis until we started for the first time in northern Nicaragua—at some desolate place most people wouldn’t even consider visiting. What I do know, Henry, is that armed with your keen mind and my ability to claim credit for that brilliance, we traveled for years throughout Central America working on foreign cases together. There, you did what you did best–used your intelligence and kindness to try and make this world a better place for those who need it most. We emailed each other yesterday, and I should have told you how much better I was for knowing you. I didn’t. Henry, I am so much better for knowing you—and this world needs more of you, not less.

Yes, the world needs more of Henry’s kindness and compassion, his fighting spirit. And we are all better for knowing him, and for our community of women friends. Tammy’s daughter is currently applying to medical school. The Bride had given her a tour of the UVA Med School while she was in high school, before she went off to Dartmouth. It would only be right if Olivia followed in the Bride’s footsteps, choosing Emergency Medicine as a means to help the most marginalized among us.

This circle of friends is our constant harbor.

And today is my day to deliver a hug, along with two pans of lasagne. It is a small thing, but I believe food feeds the soul. And I know I need to work on finding a great recipe for Argentinian empanadas, the soul food of his culture. Rest in Peace Henry.     23598_310013910731_4491126_n

http://www.dailyprogress.com/obituaries/dahl-henry-saint/article_15725de0-8e73-51b7-947e-8a3f55764d91.html

 

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Elie Wiesel

July 3, 2016 by mountainmornings

Today a great teacher, writer and survivor of the Holocaust Elie Wiesel has died. He was 87 years old  and will be remembered as a beacon of peace by leaders all over the world. When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 he said,

“Whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, take sides…Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”         http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36696420

Silence and indifference is the constant evil for every culture. Remember this if you are thinking of not voting in November – and remember what a certain GOP candidate had to say about John McCain, being captured, in another war.

I didn’t know Wiesel was just 15 when his family was torn from their home in Romania (now Hungary) and shipped to Auschwitz. But after our Danube tour, I must confess I was torn between the Baroque beauty of the countries we visited, and the underlying horror of WWII. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/travel/tracing-jewish-heritage-along-the-danube.html?_r=0

As we walked over the pebbled courtyard into the majestic Benedictine Abbey in Melk, Austria, I thought about the Jewish people being herded through this very same entryway in transit to death camps. I thought how my children would have been treated, my husband, my family. Me. The sound of our 21st Century shoes crunching on the stones made me close my eyes to the blinding sun.

We began our tour with Sixty Shoes in Budapest, and we ended in the beautiful city of Prague. But at Melk, we learned that the abbey was saved under Emperor Joseph II in the 1700s because it was a flourishing school. A student of the Enlightenment, Joseph tried to limit the influence of the church over the state, shuttering and demolishing many mansions and abbeys, and ushered in an era of peace where all religions were accepted: “Joseph’s reforms included abolishing serfdom, ending press censorship and limiting the power of the Catholic Church. And with his Edict of Toleration, Joseph gave minority religions, such as Protestants, Greek Orthodox and Jews, the ability to live and worship more freely. “

Imagine that, an Era of Enlightenment (1685-1815) was happening in Europe while our new country was evolving, grappling with its native inhabitants, a constitution and slavery.

Today students are still studying at the Abbey amid majestic artwork and architecture. But we must never forget what Elie Wiesel has taught us, and his words from his first book, “Night.”

“Never shall I forget that night that first night in camp that turned my life into one long night. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever, those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never.”  

This is the second largest synagogue in the world, and it is in Budapest.

IMG_4504

 

 

 

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#Almostdone

July 1, 2016 by mountainmornings

It’s been three weeks. The new laundry room door just went up, the vents and smoke detectors are going up as I type, and the painters are touching up all over the place. It will be good to get our house back, but to be honest Ms Bean will miss the constant company. Granted she barks initially, but then she warms up and keeps track of everyone. My little, lazy, adorable mutt transforms into a real watchdog! She wakes every morning with a sense of purpose; sitting in front of the front hall windows and listening for the sound of trucks.

Poor baby, the contractors will be done today, just in time for the Fourth of July Fireworks. Anyone with a pup knows the sounds of summer can drive them to distraction – to hiding in bath tubs and even sometimes running away given half the chance. Great Grandma Ada told me about this article, which I had to read on my phone since I couldn’t find my computer.

By some estimates, at least 40 percent of dogs experience noise anxiety, which is most pronounced in the summer. Animal shelters report that their busiest day for taking in runaway dogs is July 5. Veterinarians tell of dogs who took refuge in hiding places so tight that they got stuck, who gnawed on door handles, who crashed through windows or raced into traffic — all desperate efforts to escape inexplicable collisions of noise and flashing light.                                          http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/why-thunder-and-fireworks-make-dogs-anxious/?_r=0

It was a rainy, stormy day when the Bride and Groom graduated from medical school. We had a few people staying in our newly built house, and the last one out must not have latched the door. Because when we returned several hours later, the kitchen door was wide open and Buddha Bear came strolling around the corner with an accusatory look in his eyes. As if he was saying, “Where have you guys been?”

He also managed to lock himself in our guest bathroom during a storm. I returned home and called his name so many times my throat was hoarse. Buddha wasn’t a barker. Before I started to panic and jump in my car thinking he must be able to walk through walls, I noticed the bathroom door was shut. He was so big, when he tried getting into the tub he must have accidentally shut the door and he was just waiting patiently for me to free him!

Ms Bean wasn’t anxious in thunderstorms before she watched Buddha’s behavior. Now, she becomes a twitchy, shaking mess stuck permanently to my knee. We stroll into the laundry room and I pull out a dryer sheet, the kind without any perfume. She looks at me longingly and submits to my hand stroking her whole body, head to tail, with the little piece of paper as her body relaxes. Long ago I read that a rubdown with a Bounce sheet would reduce the static electricity on her fur; and now I’m a believer.

I’m not a pill person, but of course in the NYTimes article above there is a new medicine for dog anxiety during storms and fireworks. I’d rather just go into a windowless room with my dryer sheet and comfort Ms Bean. After all, she’s been through alot these past three weeks. She already has to take a pill in order to ride in a car, so I don’t want a loopy puppy in the house all summer. Vets say it’s best to desensitize your dog to noise.

But carpenters hammering the basement ceiling under the floor of our living room was pretty strange, and not soon to be repeated. All the building noises are almost done, so relax Ms Bean for a little while. Your world is safe and secure. Time to get back to lying on the deck and watching for deer and vermin!

Hope y’all have a safe and Happy Fourth and a strees-free summer time with your fur babies! Here is Ms Bean in the Zen shade garden.IMG_4763

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Moving Day

June 27, 2016 by mountainmornings

Today the Bride and Groom are moving into their new home. After years of renting, they found a house to call their very own. Congratulations, it seems the American dream is alive and well in Nashville!

As for me, except for the plaster dust, I’m in heaven. The drywallers went down to the basement to join the painters, and the main construction crew was outside the laundry room repairing the stone patio. For a few minutes, I found myself alone. Since my aviary is under plastic, I decided to sit down and write in front of CNN on silent; but Elizabeth Warren was introducing Hillary Clinton and I just had to listen.

Together, they make a dream team for this old feminist. Is it too much to ask Sen Warren to join Hillary’s ticket? I would start a new hashtag #Nanasfornanas – and to top off my exceptional (but my eyes feel like sandpaper) morning, SCOTUS just overturned the harsh Texas TRAP laws in a 5 to 3 ruling! The Justices said those restrictions are an “undue burden” for women seeking an abortion. It’s a victory for women’s/human rights. In 2016 let’s all agree a woman’s right to a safe legal abortion shall not be infringed.

Hillary just called Trump, “Temperamentally unfit,” for the Office of President. She said we need to write a new chapter in the American Dream, and it can’t be Chapter 11! I admit that I gagged when I heard Trump, standing out on his Scottish gold course, rave about how the devaluation of the British pound would be good for HIS business. What an obnoxious, elitist a$$hole!

I hope that next year, Hillary and Bill will be moving back into the White House. So I thought, with moving on my mind and flying text messages from Nashville on my cell, I’d list a few tricks to a stress-free move.

  • Movers don’t move candles!? So throw them out or put them in your car.
  • Pack all your sheets and towels in a separate box, along with soap and toilet paper. Pack another box with cleaning supplies They should be last in the truck – first out – or carry them in your car.
  • Hire a babysitter if Nanas and Granddads are not around.
  • Also, and this is important, put someone in charge of the dog! I can’t tell you how many people I know who have lost their dog while moving. They are amazing escape artists.
  • Buy a pizza for the moving people for lunch – it will be unexpected and highly appreciated. Oh, and tip them well when they are done, especially if they have put bed frames and cribs back together for you.

I’m wishing my daughter’s family lots of love and happiness in their new home! I stopped helping my kids move years ago, but I’ll drive down later to help them decorate! This is the first big move for our adult children, one where they didn’t pack the UHaul themselves with their friends. Wish I could help her unpack the kitchen.

Don’t forget to throw some salt over your left shoulder for luck! I’ll see you soon with the rocking chair Great Grandpa Hudson made for the baby’s room.        IMG_4747

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Solitary 

June 24, 2016 by mountainmornings

It was a deep sigh that greeted me this morning post-Keurig. Bob is home and switched on CNN, the news on Brexit is stunning and all the talking heads swirled around mine before the caffeine had set in. 

But should we be surprised? Yesterday, amid plaster dust and paint decisions, SCOTUS tied on the President’s immigration scheme to let parents of children born here, stay here. Nationalism, a far right Tumpattania (thanks Michael Moore) has infected our country too. There is a move afoot to stay separate, to isolate ourselves from the world. 

Fear of immigrants translates to FEAR period. Fear of Eastern Europeans taking away jobs, fear of Mexicans and Muslims and anyone not in the same tribe. 

We heard rumblings of such far-right thought throughout our river cruise. Recent elections in Slovakia saw a millionaire political outsider win office. People in Hungary were losing out on the economic rise of the EU. 

But a very sweet Slovakian tour guide told us she would be attending law school in Edinburgh in the fall. For free! Because if you passed the test, students could travel anywhere in the EU to pursue their education. Now I wonder what will happen to her. 

Lightening took out our modem yet again so I had to stop at Starbucks today to connect with y’all. Now I can share this painting of Saint Angela Merkel we saw in a Vienna coffee shop. She is calling the Brexit vote a watershed moment. Remember the EU was formed not just for economic reasons, but to prevent bloodshed and a future world war. 

Let’s all offer up prayers to Saint Angela today. May we not find ourselves in a similar solitary state in this world. Prayers to sustain the EU and to get out our Democratic voters in November! 

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A Version of Myself

June 21, 2016 by mountainmornings

After touching on a woman’s anger in the book “Fates and Furies,” I thought long and hard about my own PDAs (public displays of anger). Remember I went to Catholic school, where any display of emotion was well squelched out of us. The nuns wanted us to walk humbly before God, in our little plaid uniforms. Good advice, except all the boys didn’t seem to care what the nuns wanted.

In the 1970s women’s liberation caught up with me. I had found my voice, and like most newbies it needed refining. I couldn’t wait for some unsuspecting vacuum cleaner salesman to ring my door bell so I could practice saying, “NO!” After all, Meghan Trainor wasn’t even born yet; can you tell I love her new song. NO?

My name is NO my sign is NO my number is NO

When did we lose that stubborn two year old temper? This morning it seemed like fate (Ha) when my Lenny email arrived – “Women Have Anger” by Casey Wilson.

I’ve realized that anger doesn’t seem to be as palatable on a woman as it is on a man. And I’m angry about that. I’m angry at women who can’t access their anger, or who cover it by masquerading as little sweeties, or those who display it and are off-putting. Which are all versions of myself I have spent my life trying to wrangle and negotiate.

Even as I acknowledged that there’s a degree of sexism in the way the world treats an angry woman, as I got older, I started realizing my outbursts were causing real problems. For starters, I lost a lot of phones. Whenever I would feel a flash of white-hot rage overtake me, my first impulse was always the same. To throw my phone. My phone! My very lifeblood! No available slab of drywall was safe.

I never threw my phone, I was more about throwing a well-placed F bomb at someone. But speaking of drywall, I currently have between three and six guys running around my house finishing the basement and fixing drywall tears, and spackling and hammering and vacuuming. The noise is enough to make you weep. That is, when I’m not all super angry bird about the four gun violence bills that were (excuse the pun) shot down in the Senate yesterday. I am pretty hot under my collar at the moment. The good thing is we may have reached a tipping point, so strike while the iron is hot ladies. How could the Senate decide terrorists deserve to have their guns, while they don’t allow any guns or knitting needles on the floor of their esteemed body? Nope, not even if you have a concealed carry license…or an unfinished sweater sleeve.

Call. Text. Write. Walk on Washington. Do anything to get your legislators’ attention. Get angry people.This is righteous anger. Nobody needs an assault weapon to hunt, everybody wants to expand background checks so terrorists and maniacs can’t get their hands on a gun. The American people are mad as hell, and come November I would be very surprised to see those GOP members who voted against sanity yesterday return to the Hill.

This afternoon, two women Senators got together to put forward a bipartisan proposal to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. They held a news conference and they had a tag line – “No Fly? No Buy.” Our very own VA Senator, Democrat Tim Kaine was a part of the new bill and may be considered as a running mate for Hillary. Will they be able to reach a compromise before November? Or is this system as broken as I think it is?

Remind me to tell you the story of my knitting needles in Heathrow Airpot. Maybe I should keep a pair of needles in my glove compartment, after all, we ladies don’t wear gloves anymore. It’s time for a new generation to come out and vote, to just say NO and take up the gauntlet, to repair democracy. The days are getting shorter.   IMG_4727

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Bashert

June 19, 2016 by mountainmornings

Do you believe in fate? Bashert is the Yiddish word for destiny, and since I was just visiting Great Grandma Ada and Hudson, I was the happy recipient of a certain cultural recap (or comeuppance). Acceptance of our fate, our place in this world is the touchstone of religious thought and certain ideologies. Why suffer and struggle? Remember that famous theologian’s prayer; “God grant us the serenity to accept the things I cannot change….”

Well Ada is reading “Fates and Furies,” by Lauren Groff – her book club assigned this book to her. She must report on it at their next meeting and believe me, it’s a long and complicated piece of fiction. Full of sub-plots and interesting characters. The protagonist, Mathilde’s husband Lancelot (Lotto), grows up in Florida – a place someone on our Viking ship said is for “Golfers and Alcoholics” to retire, and he said this lovingly since he was from FL!  I read the book many months ago and suggested she watch this video – https://charlierose.com/videos/23139

The author is writing about love, friendship and marriage. Since Ada has been a marriage counselor most of her adult life, I get why the group picked her! But she hasn’t finished the book yet and I remember how it ends. The long denouement of Mathilde, her tragic backstory, her isolation and abandonment. Should I tell Ada? I kept this to myself, and just told her that Groff is a feminist. An author who is taking us deep inside a woman’s rage. An author who writes in longhand from 5 am to 3 pm every day when she picks up her children from school. What a good husband!

The novel tells the story of Lotto and Mathilde Satterwhite. He is the darling of a prosperous Florida family – “Lotto was special. Golden”. She, an apparent “ice princess”, is the survivor of a past about which her husband has only the fuzziest idea beyond it being “sad and dark”, and above all “blank behind her”. The first half of the book offers Lotto’s view of their life together as he rises from charming but failed actor to celebrated playwright, thanks in no small part to Mathilde’s editorial finesse. The second half reveals that Mathilde has, through implacable willpower, transcended circumstances that read like a hotchpotch of Greek tragedy, fable and detective novel. Much of what Lotto takes for granted in his good fortune, it turns out, is due to Mathilde’s ruthless machination, right down to their marriage itself. She genuinely loves him, but she initially set out to win him for mercenary reasons.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/24/why-the-fates-and-furies-this-years-most-talked-about-novel

Groff tells us that any good marriage must retain an air of mystery. I love that idea, but I could see that Ada wasn’t quite buying it. After all, therapy is about laying your heart out on the rug and trampling all over it, right?

Spending a few days back in NJ, to attend cousin Harriet’s funeral and the shiva calls that are part of this world, I learned more about her life. Harriet, like Mathilde, was slightly mysterious. She once sang on the radio, and she went para-sailing with a grandson at the age of 80! I loved learning new things about her; she and Perry once owned a condo in Boca. Who knew?

But navigating the maddening crowds at Shop Rite and Bob’s family has taught me one thing. You really can’t go home again. My old Queen Anne house on Orchard Street is now a duplex, and the Jewish Center across the street is a Baptist Church. Was it really fate that led Bob to meet me there, in front of my old house, one summer day in 1962?

I’m not a great believer in destiny.

We make our own luck, and if we don’t like where we are, we have the freedom in this country to change it. There is a semi-opaque membrane between our young selves and our future. Some people get stuck along the way. They define themselves as a certain type of person, and they settle into that role. I would not want to look back on my life, and wonder how I got there. IMG_4698

 

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Harriet

June 15, 2016 by mountainmornings

Her jello mold, filled with every color of the rainbow

Her smile, only half-given like Mona Lisa, appreciated all the more

Her friendship, loyal and nourishing for body and soul

Her bridge club, a weekly religious convocation

Her impeccable style and capacity for optimism

Her children, my friends

Her grands and great grands, are her loving legacy

Her patience and kindness, gifts to us all in a storm

Another loss for Great Grandma Ada. Harriet was our cousin who married Perry and constructed a bridge to this extended family’s heart. And she worked tirelessly to maintain our family’s health and happiness!

She was my dear cousin, always there, always gracious and giving. Ada’s friend who was like a sister. She lived for 92 years and died peacefully in her sleep. The Angels are trumpeting her passing today as we say goodbye and inscribe her name on the walls of our hearts. 

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