First and Normal

02/20/2025 /

This month I arrived at the end of First.  I have traveled for a little more than a year–my birthday was my first ‘without,’ then to Valentine’s Day [One of Tom’s favorites..he’d make me coupon books of promises] to Easter, then summer–all of it! Our wedding anniversary. His birthday. Halloween. [Another favorite] Thanksgiving. Christmas, New Year’s.  Through January, right up to the day he left. The only time he ever left.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross opined there are five stages of  grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When her book came out in ’69 I understood this to be more for the dying, than the ones left behind.  Still, there I was, plodding along First. Denial was not a question, it was all very obvious, of the two, I was the pragmatist.  And I was experiencing some anger, mainly because Tom always said he would out live me, and frankly, I was …well, angry.  I had no time for depression during,  so why have it after? And, just who was I going to bargain with? I learned long ago, in first grade, from Mother Govinina, that bargaining could exact a difficult price. I had, years before the actual day, understood we were traveling the same road, but not always ‘with’,  so I could tick off acceptance.

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The Boy…

02/03/2024 /

I first saw Tom at a corporate training program in Princeton New Jersey. The newly enacted ERISA, the 1974 Employment Retirement Income Security Act,  written by lawyers and regulated by bureaucrats was a tome of egregious government speak.  Tom was delegated with parsing and translating its application to regular folks like us in the divisions.

Yes, I thought he was cute with his sideburns and mustache, his three piece suit and the way he put his thumb in his vest pocket and lightly turned on his heel. He was continually glancing back in my direction, but not at me. The woman next to me apparently had great legs.

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ENGAGE

05/21/2023 /

“Grandmommy,” one of my baby grands would say when telling me a story while playing with my dollhouse.  “Grandmommy, the girl goes in the front door. And then she goes to the kitchen and makes breakfast. And then she goes to the office upstairs to work.” And the story can continue to each room in the dollhouse, even the roof.

The ‘and then’ [which was clearly emphasized]  always got to me.  The ‘and then’ wasn’t passive. She made choices which advanced the story. The character moved to other rooms and did stuff.  The ‘girl’ did not hit many obstacles, internal or external, nor did we discuss ‘needs and wants’. Who does when you are seven? The grand was fully engaged in telling a story, and in her imagination the girl was the hero.

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THE GETAWAY POSITION

04/20/2023 /

Craig Breedlove recently died. He was 86.  I was kinda surprised, hadn’t thought about him in years. Brought back memories of the Mojave Desert, and the Bonneville Salt Flats.  He studied aeronautics, was a race car driver, and was called the King of Speed…clocking 600 mph in 1964, never quite making his 800 mph target years later. His vehicle [cause it certainly wasn’t a car] was like something out of SciFi, a long lean silver bullet I always expected to take off heavenward and land on the nearest planet.

Those were the days when the Salt Flats were the ‘testing’ track for so many cars. It was a very out-of-this-world landscape, desolate, flat, hot, big, craigy misty-hued mountains in the background. That was when I started backing into parking spaces or finding a ‘pull through’ in a parking lot. The ‘getaway position’ meant fast.

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THE MISSIONS

03/19/2023 /

We are well past my birthday. As a kid I was teased a lot for Phil sticking his nose out of his burrow and commenting on the weather.  So Mom and I went to mass for my day, which was a feast day, The Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Forty days after Christmas, it is also called Candlemas.

I always liked feast days, although the only ones I remember are mine, of course, and my dad’s. Or, what Mom always referred to as Dad’s feast day, St. Joseph’s Feast Day, although Dad’s name was not Joseph.

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