meant to post this link to my story on three cool artists -- katie hall, right; j.d. koth and lisa tuttle -- and their work last week (argh) but hey, pix look as fresh as ever and art is up through october. if you live in (or near atlanta), the Art on the Beltline exhibit is most definitely worth a visit.
This is the day, 83 years ago, when M. Eileen Connolly Drennen was born.
Had my mother lived past Feb. 9, 2002, we would have had one hellacious party. Every year after 75, certainly.
As it was, the one big blowout we managed to have was for her 70th, and we made it as grand as the nursing home where she spent her last years would allow. Took over the dining room, brought in balloons and food and cake and music, and invited every relative who could make it -- including a brother she hadn't seen in 20 years.
Thank heavens for that.
I was thinking of her even more than usual today because I saw her everywhere this weekend, at another birthday celebration in Philadelphia, where my brother and his children threw a surprise party for my sister-in-law on the occasion of her 50th.
She was clearly present, in looks and spirit, in so many of the descendants who traveled far and wide just to yell SURPRISE and see Debbie's face erupt in shocked joy.
My mother's smile, dimples, great wheezy laugh; her love of song and singing, all live on in the lives she made and the lives she made possible.
So tonight I raise a glass in her honor, for all she was, and all she helped us to be; for all the stories she told us and all the ones she never found a way to tell.
it's been a week of living in the s.l.o.w. lane. took a spill last sunday while exploring an urban trail near the house. as i was breathing in the joy of morning and ideas and lazy conversation with my sweetie, a rusty wire hanger with nothing better to do reached out and bit my foot. maybe it was just trying to get my attention? it so did. i've been replaying the wild upendedness on my internal movie screen every day since. all of a sudden, the bluesky traded places with the gravelly trail and down went up and i went down. arms that had been swinging happily forward pitched low to soften the crash. time didn't slow down, as it seems to do in movies. everything happened in the space of a breath. thankfully nothing broke (hence the post-crash photo at right) though the wrist on the right got sprained and the rotator cuff on the left got torn and the knee got away with just a scratch. so i've had a week of life -- more of the deep stuff; less of the fluff -- at a much lower mph. (literally. since it took 5 days to be able to wash hair in the shower with both hands -- !!! -- the car hasn't gotten so much as a glance.) it's been enough to give even a biology freak like me (who finally made it to philly's mutter museum this spring and if you haven't gone yet, do) a new respect for the symphony of unsung muscles and tendons that whir away behind the scenes. so maybe that's the freebie. limited distractions equals deeper focus and even more gratitude for the whole schmear. so i guess i owe that old rusty hanger a note of thanks: i'm sore -- but not at you.
i'm so happy to welcome koji michael to the world! my beautiful grandson arrived sunday afternoon, on his own schedule, weeks before doctors predicted. his smart dad, also a doctor, had a hunch he'd catch an earlier flight and turned out to be exactly right. seeing the beautiful pictures of his just-born face is a thrill -- hard to describe to anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of waiting for the next generation and maybe impossible to explain to anyone who has. though he will certainly bloom into his own unique self, it's amazing to see, from the start, such dear traces of his many-branched family tree. blessings and congratulations to his dad, mom and big brother jake (and all the rest of the branches). you make such a beautiful family!
it was old and battered, a pentax k-1000. my sister passed it along when she upgraded to something sleeker. it was manual everything, no automatic anything. i was in my early 20s, newly enthralled by the magic of darkrooms and images and the power to save what i loved enough to capture. looking through that lens was how i came to understand what it means to truly focus. the rest of the world fell away as my eye tumbled into the object it had found. all that mattered was the conversation we had without words: its beauty beamed like a lamp into my brain. my eye registered and clicked YES and zoomed in, closer and closer, then back a little, from fuzzy to sharp, distant to intimate, until it was framed just so. then and only then did i press the shutter to save it. the memory returned yesterday, when i was working on a short story i'd looked at too long to see properly -- so put away -- and only recently took out to try again. it worked. but only after i turned off all distractions and looked deep into the thing through the lens of focus. when i let the rest of the world fall away, i heard the tiny click of a new door opening inward.
i got up this morning wanting to write about this day and then got a juicy bolt of deja vu when i remembered i already had (two years ago on myspace). reprinting here 'cos it says what i wanted to say.
Current mood: thoughtful
it's about to be mother's day, which for most folks is the day to take your mom out to brunch, or bring /send her flowers or a card. you can't escape it with the relentless onslaught of commercials on the radio or TV, the massive card displays in stores, the general hype. if your mom's still with you, that's probably not a bad thing -- it's easy to forget to send things on time, and who doesn't like a reminder for something you actually want to do? if your mom has passed on, it comes with a bit of a sting. you think of all the things you wish you could bring her, even cards that would be just right for this year, if you could figure out what address would actually get them there. i know a lot of folks who plain hate the day and think it's just one more commercialized excuse to make money off people's guilt or love or willingness to spend. some folks don't even notice, or care. but if you think of all the ways the very idea of MOTHERING runs through women's lives -- whether they are women who raised kids who surround them each year, or kids who live far away and don't get home much, or kids who just don't keep in touch as much as their moms wished; or women who didn't raise children because they weren't able to have any, or waited too long and missed the window, or lost what children they carried to miscarriage, abortion, adoption or divorce -- perhaps you get a larger sense of all the things the very word encompasses. now i think of it as MOTHERS Day, without the apostrophe, as a celebration of the plural rather than the single. it's an opportunity to salute all the women, still here or passed on, who loved unconditionally, as best they could, whatever young person was in their life, for whatever length of time -- whether a child they bore, or one they raised or a kid they just happened to love. that includes grandmothers, aunts, teachers, other people's moms, sisters, friends, colleagues and strangers. on mothers' days past, my church used to hand out flowers to all women, young and old, which struck me as both insightful and kind, since it hinted at past and future and the fact that many women's stories of MOTHERING aren't as easy to know, unless they tell you, but the simple odds are that most women have, or one day will, give of themselves to a child or children they love. i'm glad there's a day that people remember, and tell the women in their lives THANK YOU, or i noticed / remembered / and wanted to make sure i told you so. cheers to all the women who have mothered, whether it's something they are honored for or not; to all those who are mothering now, as well as those who have yet to mother but consider it something they will one day do. sweetness and honor be yours, in memory and gratitude.
meant to post this link to my story on three cool artists -- katie hall, right; j.d. koth and lisa tuttle -- and their work last week (argh) but hey, pix look as fresh as ever and art is up through october. if you live in (or near atlanta), the Art on the Beltline exhibit is most definitely worth a visit.
thoughtful