Month: September 2012

  • Get Well Banyuls

     

  • I'm Back

    Hi everyone. Sorry. I've been away for a spell. 


    This last weekend was the culmination of organizing a much delayed celebration for surviving family and friends for both my Mother and Father. I was also very busy at work, then took two weeks off and kinda collapsed for the first week- not medically (I'm quite all right if a bit more overweight than I would like right now) but just sort of vegetated 'cause I could for awhile.  The second week became consumed with the celebration and Saturday was the celebration and the day before what would've been my parents' 62nd anniversary on Sunday, September 23rd.
    Along with this I must also confess that the owner of a site I had vacated some months ago asked if I would come back specifically because he enjoyed having someone to talk sports about and I did because I missed having something lighter to quibble and get silly over. 

    So....... Work, Mom and Dad, Sports, Silly. 
    The Four Horseman of my A-Blog-E-Clipse.

    My oldest sister and her daughter actually did all the organizing and found a wonderful place to have the celebration and she and especially her daughter really did 90+ percent of the work. The place they found happened to be across the bay in South San Francisco where we first lived in a house with a true neighborhood. It was the kind of neighborhood that the neighbors actually knew each other in and though I had bullies to deal with from school and issues with them I also had a lot of freewheeling fun and fond memories with my sibs and our friends.
    My sister and I agree that within this "celebration" town was the place we both remember as the last true neighborhood we really were fond of. Not that our home in Hayward wasn't good- it was. But there was a level of intimacy that no longer remained. Some of this may simply be the perspective of childhood and some of it may be the trick of selective memory. I can't say for sure but I will say that the loss of contact with neighbors does appear to be one of the more striking realities of anyplace I've lived since those days. It seems a trend that I've had friends newly arrived to California note as well. But California was arguably the biggest "boom" area in all of Boomerdom after WWII and our childhood was planted in the heart of where many families had relocated to recently from the US midwest, back east, and points north and south. And California still is, even as it's slowed along with the economic belt tightening of recent years. But there was the remnant of a national pulling-together back then after a depression and a major war that created a different ethic than the later incarnations of "California Dreaming".


    Anyway, I worked on a music selection that I hoped would represent my parents' tastes and pleasures and also wrote an opening remarks speech of sorts for the event. It was about 15 minutes long or so I think and went over pretty well though I guess no one's gonna come up to me and say -"Gee your Mom and Dad were really great but your speech sucked."
    Actually I was very pleased with the reception my remarks received and I'd hoped to provide a basis for an event that had been delayed almost a year and a half after my Dad's passing and a half year after my Mom's that would be a real story about who I thought they were to me and how I thought they impacted other people's lives around them. I wanted to avoid anything maudlin obviously and they wouldn't have wanted that anyway. It needed to be wistful due to the circumstances and yet celebratory.

    So for me this has been an important life project. It accounts for an increasing amount of time on a daily basis that has been ratcheting up over the last few months. One irony of my blogging about sports things at this other site is that my site here at Xanga is the natural place for me to really talk about the more personal concerns in my life but I was finding it too hard to split time between our celebration and this blog. 

    But having done this it's also truly a relief to have done this celebration for me and my family and PLC and other friends and to feel it worked out so well.

    PLC worked on a series of photos most of them older and some in need of repair and did a great job but we didn't get much help from the store we went to that specializes in helping us display the photos. To make a long story short we got a large cardboard triptych display and needed a suitable adhesive to afix the photos with. Unfortunately the two adhesives we got both failed  and he had to try repeatedly to get them to work but we finally had to give up and they were put on a table with other photos and objects of sentimental and humorous value.

    Some of the items my niece put together were just wonderfully evocative and often very, very funny such as a pack of playing cards  because they liked to go to Reno and Tahoe and a bottle of whiskey for my Dad's table and a bottle of Vodka for my Mom's with a few shot glasses for people to take a sip or nip as a toast totem of sorts.
     My father's and mother's reading glasses were there and my dad's 49er voodoo doll to poke needles into to provoke other teams' misfortunes was present as well as a large collection of a much larger one my Mom had of various Santas representing different interpretations from around the world. My Mom had the big gathering on that holiday as her Mom had before her. It was a very crowded and often silly event but Mom was superb at keeping everyone amused and entertained. She looked forward to it all year.
    We found out from high school friends who knew my Dad and Mom things we'd had no idea about including copies of their high school yearbook with my father in renaissance costume in a play devilishly handsome and smiling at a young female classmate. We had no notion he'd been in plays. Both of my parents had unknown aspects.
    One of the most touching things were family members that made it clear my mom was THE confidante of many in my family. They knew whatever they told her would never travel to the ears of others. Both of my folks knew how to listen but my mom's depth of compassion became clear this day though it came as no surprise to us, her children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews, it was a powerful reaffirmation that brought tears to our eyes.
    The next day PLC and I went over to my brother's house to watch the 49ers lose to the Minnesota Vikings. My brother had been distant from me in the days following my Mom's death and we have all been grieving in our own ways. My brother's had a lot of big brother (me)/ little brother animosity issues I'd imagined as part of this which can be seen as intellectually absurd but it is still a real fact of life that emerges in troubling times.  He has had some real health issues and it overworked at a job in which he seems under appreciated. I am unhappy and frankly concerned for him for this but I am definitely on his side and I definitely love my brother. But Saturday and Sunday it seemed clear that this is now healed and I am so happy about it. Believe me, watching our parent's and our favorite team lose on their anniversary day and taking it with equanimity and good humor just confirms our parents did a pretty good job. 

    PLC and I have been keeping up with the political stuff  a lot of "Colbert Reports" and "Daily Shows" as well as attending news of the Internets.
    I think it's becoming clearer that Obama should win re-election but Congress and the Senate will be concerns. More on that later but for now I just wanted to say "hi!"