nudle

State of me today.

There is a wall of noise in my head, and outside my head. Guys whose names I do not know are sanding the floors directly above me as part of a major remodel that kicks us out of the house today. And it is Monday, and it's raining, raining, raining, the first real rain we have had in a while. Plus I yelled at the kids this morning as I tried to get Iona to school early. Her teacher, for whom I have a lot of respect, suggested it's beneficial for them to be there fifteen minutes before school starts so they can "transition." If only all of life was so gentle. Of course it is, most change is gradual, but we fail to identify those transitions. "Here YOU, this is the transition from youth to middle age. It's happening now." Or maybe, "Time to transition to a surge of joy from just sitting at the beach watching Ewan play in the surf with the kids, here it comes…now! Okay, get ready, 1, 2, 3...it's gone."

I had intense dreams last night about male friends from high school. Two friends in particular -- one is someone with whom I'm very close now, and the other was my first real love, I guess. Like many high school relationships, our love was blissful for maybe two or three weeks before Other Girls started to complicate things. Maybe there were Other Boys too, but my memory says that happened later, after he kissed that first Other Girl when he was supposed to be kissing only me. In the parking lot of his church, by a chain link fence. Or so I heard from a friend who was Catholic. I was fifteen. There should be a book of rules that states it's okay to kiss ANYONE when you're fifteen and sixteen, and maybe even when you're seventeen and eighteen. But my book has always had as rule #1: IF YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING BUT ME I WILL BE RABIDLY JEALOUS.

But ANYWAY. This near-comical first relationship was something I tucked in the past around year one into college and gazed upon with slightly bitter amusement from time to time -- until this first love was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor in 2008. He passed away in the first days of 2011, leaving behind a big family and a community that loved them.

I regret that I never could be casual and easy and affectionate with this guy after our fun three weeks. I'm paying for that now, in my dreams, because he shows up frequently. In my dreams he is sick, but I have another chance to show him the pure affection that was part of that early time, and the only part of our interactions that he ever deserved. In my dream last night I took the opportunity to show him that by holding him and trying to comfort him.

Maybe the message is that it's time to get rid of my rule #1. It still gets in my way today.

The noise and the rain and gloom and aftermath of a dream about jealousy and death makes me a little bleak in the soul.

Nothing I can do.

Surely I am not the first person to feel like standing up and yelling expletives because my friend is dying. I am sure others have felt like walking around the house screaming bad words. I feel like yelling. I feel like bellowing! Hey Death, you DICK! Eat shit, you fucker! I am full of rage that makes me cry. I want a drink, but I get myself one and that doesn't do any good.

I'm sorry. I am sorry.

 

Epitaph.

She considered an alternative hair color, uselessly and constantly. She read novels for ninety minutes at a time. She gazed at the untidy kitchen while eating Hershey's Chocolate Kisses. She listened to the telephone ring without even looking to see who called. She was a snob. She used adverbs without compunction. But she did love her children.

Addendum: My mom just called. I'm fine. This was a bit of tossed-off goofiness. The joke is that I read a book yesterday, for an hour. That was fun. I did eat chocolate, and sometimes I don't answer the phone when it rings. And okay, I think about my hair color too much for the brown that it is. But in no way is 'epitaph' accurate or appropriate (it was a last-minute addition). I'm healthy and almost always happy (what is happiness, anyway -- the word is probably a lot of words, some of them might even be swear words, but we use 'happy' to sum it all up, don't we, when the correct term is 'satisfied,' but that implies a certain unattractive smugness, but anyway) with my lot. 

Being a mom, I should have known it would alarm mine. Sorry, Mom. I love you.

So I've been head down, trying to get a handle on life 2.0, or Life With Two Kids, and it's going mostly okay. Some days, not as okay. I remind myself that I am lucky, and I try not to try to do too much, which seems to be my downfall. Because nothing is worth losing my cool. My new mantra! Anyway, another thing I'm trying to do is find time to write and draw, since those are things that feed my soul. A little bit, every day that I can. Also my new mantra. Today, this is what I got down, a sketch of my little characters.

 

The older woman who was our next-door neighbor in Chicago is dying in her nursing home. She has been in hospice care for a couple months now. Her memory is gone, erased. We went to see her for a brief visit in late December when we were there for the weekend, and I left being less afraid of death, because Eva showed me the alternative. Still, it makes me sad, and I don't know what to do. I can't imagine a trip to Chicago right now, but I'm her person. Kind of her only person. Shouldn't someone show up?

Today Iona spent time in a school we're considering for next year. I think it was the first time I've ever heard her say, "I'm a little nervous." It was hard for me to leave her there, though the big gift of today is that I know her, and I know she will be fine and even have a great time, and will probably say, "I love it there! Can I go there?" Though I know she also loves her current school (so do I, most things about it, that is, and therein lies the rub).

Han continues to be cute and say words like "please," and "up." We've turned a corner, I think, Han and I. He seems more confident and I am, too, with him. 

I just have to not get overwhelmed. Macaroni with peas, it's good enough for dinner. A little bit of a day. It's good enough. My new mantra.

Getting to know someone after they're gone.

Gary was our janitor at school. He was the first person Iona and I met on our first day. I didn't know him well, but I liked him. I came to respect how handy he was and appreciated the fact that he was always there. When he dressed in drag (and changed his costume multiple times) during our school auction and goofed around on stage I realized there was something special about him.

But it was only after he died a two weeks ago that I started to learn who he really was. At morning sing this morning, we sang a song honoring him.
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Obituary

Man of literature and history felt most at home with working people

By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times transportation reporter

Gary Greaves had just moved into a home on Seattle's Capitol Hill when he noticed a crowd of people arriving for free lunch at a nearby church.

He walked over and offered to help. He washed dishes, gathered surplus food from grocery stores, chopped vegetables. Standing 6 feet, 3 inches tall with a "spirit of calm," he would defuse the occasional argument or fight, said the Rev. Jon Nelson, of Central Lutheran Church.

That was 1997, and Mr. Greaves never quit serving neighbors who were hungry.

He died Feb. 12 at age 57, of a heart aneurysm, while practicing basketball on an outdoor court in Morocco. He was overseas with his wife, writer Frances McCue, a University of Washington professor who is teaching on a Fulbright fellowship, and their 13-year-old daughter, Madeleine.

Mr. Greaves led a monthly book club inside the Monroe Reformatory. Inmates serving 20 years to life would discuss literature, and their own writings, on Sundays. Mr. Greaves brought authors, including National Book Award winner Sherman Alexie.

He befriended Seattle-area veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, communist-affiliated Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War against fascism in the 1930s. He introduced Monroe prisoners to veteran Abe Osheroff, who died last year.

"It was such a privilege to witness, so up-close, the temerity they had, to never give up," Greaves wrote in the literary journal "Raven Chronicles."

Mr. Greaves was born in Michigan and took many jobs, including apple picker, bicycle messenger and janitor. He had only a high-school education, but immersed himself in history and literature. Mr. Greaves was working in a San Francisco bookstore when he met McCue, a customer who soon took a job there. The pair replaced pulp novels with literature by monkeying with the inventory system, she said.

They adopted Madeleine from a Romanian orphanage when she was a year old, and later moved to Seattle and into the Richard Hugo House, a Capitol Hill haven for writers that McCue co-founded in 1997.

Mr. Greaves worked nights as a janitor at Giddens School, where his daughter was a student. He took such jobs because they allowed time for literary and political interests, but mainly because he identified with working people, friends said.

"He believed in God, but he didn't believe in religion. He thought religion was a useful social tool if it got people to actually live their values," his wife wrote a few days ago. "He was never mean. Everything he wore, everything he did was about humility, thrift and kindness. And music. And history."

Mr. Greaves "was really, really goofy with his family," and sometimes let nephews and nieces wash his hair in mustard, his wife said.

"A man with the child in his eyes," is how Mr. Greaves described himself.

In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by brothers Greg Greaves, of Denver, and Fred Greaves of Kalamazoo, Mich.; and sister Carol Liskiewitz, of Grand Rapids, Mich.

A memorial service was held Friday at Central Lutheran Church.

David Foster Wallace: transcription of the Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

More fodder for my obsession with the late David Foster Wallace.

McSweeney's.

I woke up to bad news today.

But this is a fascinating article about David Foster Wallace.

Addendum: here's another.

Farewell, Madeleine.

Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday. She's been one of my favorite authors since I was a child. I wish I had met her.

Verna.

When I learned, two years ago, that my friend Verna had died, I felt cheated. Then I felt stupid for feeling cheated, but there the feeling remains still. Death has cheated me.