Goodbye to a Lady I Never Knew

My friend's mom has passed away. I guess I'm at that age, as it's happening more and more, of late. I don't have a photo with this post because I didn't really know my friend's mom. I met her only once and when I did she had a puff of white hair,  perfectly coiffed to companion a crinkly, grandmotherly face. A secret, pale pink smile flashed and then retreated as we spoke and I couldn't help but notice how this woman who'd held so many burdens carried herself with such a delicate step. Her years should have weighed her down, as I feel mine do me, and yet she floated.

She wore the comfortable cottons of a person who valued practicality and she had the working hands of a woman who'd raised nearly a dozen children over the course of a lifetime. She was tired when I met her and on her way, although it took these many years since our meeting for her to find her rest.

I've known two of her daughters, eight of her grandchildren, two of her sons-in-law, and heard endless stories about the dozens who complete this woman's legacy. Every year her children, now spread across the country and abroad, gather for a "cousin's camp" at one family member's home on the West Coast, a tradition so fine my children have longed to be a cousin so they could join in the fun.

The ties that bind stretch and fray among hers, as they do in all families, but I marvel at the strength of values she must have imparted which keeps these disparate beings so closely connected. They love one another, still and truly.

Her children are professionals, artists, laborers and writers. They have marriages and children and homes and books and flowers in their gardens. She created a living tapestry of all the things she valued and some things she never tried. Her children and grandchildren have played music and laughed and hugged and slept deeply from a good tire.

No one but a relative few will even know she is gone, really, and the world kept going on the day she died. But for some quiet moments when I learned the news, I noticed her. I sat and thanked her spirit for the friendship her daughters have gifted me, for the memories I get to keep filled with her grandchildren, for the example she extended to me though she never knew.

Her children were relieved to know she passed in peace, accepting and knowing. I was glad, too, and said goodbye to a lady I never knew.

Am I Getting Old?

As you age do you become more absolute or more flexible? More judgmental or more accepting? I feel like I'm surrounded by very bold behavior, attitudes, politics and the more surrounded I get by noise, the duller the sound, to the point where I can't hear anything except the thoughts in my own head, and they make no sense.

'TIF money for education? Why, hell yes! ((Psst... What is a TIF?))'

'Shoes? Yes, you need schools for shoes. No, wait, that's not right.'

It's all white noise. I may think any one thing is completely insane and develop a mental manifesto on all things crazy about it, but by the time I open my mouth to express myself, ten new nutty things happen. It's gotten so that even though I have strong opinions generally, the force of multiple convictions tested all at once leaves me exhausted before I do anything about them.

Also, now that I've lived some bit of this life I realize I've gotten awfully heated over the years over some pretty petty stuff. My life is still a mess, still wonderful, still hard and tiring, still blessed and beautiful. So was it necessary to get so heated? Or could I have remained calm and been more measured and still moved forward.

Am I absolutely right? Or is someone else also right? Could we both have a point?

The vigor and attention span of the forces outside of me also seem to be in direct opposition to one another, and to what's really important. Martin Luther King-like indignity is applied to the outcome of The Bachelor, while we offer the conviction of a sun-soaked ice cube to real issues of pain, suffering and injustice. I've begun to realize it's foolish to get all worked up over nonsense only to be the last man standing with a mic and a poster when everyone's moved on to something else.

It's my experience with retrospective assessment that gives me pause - or maybe it's the fact that I'm pausing to gain retrospective vision. I think I'm getting old.

I Could Never Leave Home

I was born here, in a room facing the lake, a fall bluster pushing hard against pale blue tiles that decorate the exterior of an implausible building. She is stark amid parks and landmarks, except when she blends into the sky languishing behind her. A playable card. So me.

I have the same uncommon heritage that is common among all Chicagoans. My parents were children of immigrants, immigrants themselves, factory workers who found rodent tails in their peanut butter and who smelled fresh of morning soap at an un-Godly hour because work did not wait for their tire to be relieved.

I've worn uniforms and smelled the dank and rank of the subway, felt its familiar warm breeze on me, closed my eyes on the city and listened. Chicago dreams waft through a window worn from too many tugs on that rope, always ripe and wistful. I remember hearing the game pouring out of every creak and crevice I passed, knowing summer.

I fell in love with Chicago boys who delivered newspapers and wore thin jackets in the winter and had broad hands, red from cold. I nurtured strong and fair friendships with girls who wore Chicago-sized burdens and still kissed softly and smiled sweetly. They could carry you if you were weak, but we never were.

Is it the smell of the city, or the stone and strength? I can't say. She vibrates. She embraces, envelops, wraps you heartily. You know she is injured but she walks stoutly, like her bungalows and bricks, braced for whatever may come. I do love that about her.

I learned to read here, listened to words, felt their force. My mother was fired by the man who would be mayor and I strained to hate him but he loved my city, loves it, so I can't. We are kindred.

What could your story be here that would not include steel and rigor, fight and sense, a pot of steaming soup on a bitter day while the sun stubbornly presses on? She doesn't know she shouldn't be here.

I have friends who have moved here from Michigan. They are among us, welcomed and claimed, but not us.

We know why Marshall Fields was important, why we pull to the side when a police car whines by, why we bow our heads in church even if we haven't been in years. We've been brushed by an unshaven cheek, tucked into a wool scarf so tightly we could barely breath, we can sing.

We know the burn of shame, still know there is dignity in feeling it rather than pretending it shouldn't matter. We cry when our children fall, but not so you can see the tears. Outside we are rare.

I love that she can show porcelain and fine design to the lowest among us and insist it is for all of us. Don't be afraid to touch here. Linger. You belong.

How could I tell you about my city? I've wondered about other places, wanting to stretch beyond my place because that's what living is, isn't it? But every time I think too long on this idea I'm brought to a cringe.

Never. I could never leave home. I love it too much.

They Were Right: Lessons on Clinton, Scandal and News

They were right. All the nutjob conservatives (not to be confused with rational conservatives) were right about the effects of Clinton's scandal during the Lewinsky mess. They opined, chimed and whined at the time about how the acceptance of the scandal would taint our future and they were right. We have come to nearly expect the scandals, personal and professional, of our elected officials and public figures to such a degree that it has become boring to hear about them or read about them in the 'news'.

Like a game of tic-tac-toe, we know the outcome all too well as soon as an X is placed in a box. The scandal will blow, the affected individual will claim illness or loss of self during an episode in life that he/she must work through, the news will boast and blare about it for a few days, and then quiet. Some time thereafter, the same individual will step forward, claim redemption and seek out public glory again. And we, the unwitting (by choice) suppliers of this banal buffet will belly up and eat. How pathetic.

I'll say, not for the first time, that men and women having sex, talking about sex, engaging in sex outside of solemnized relationships, is not 'new' and so it is not 'news'. Can we please move on?

JFK was a swell fellow in many respects, but I'm certain most folks will acknowledge he was a scoundrel in his marriage. His brother was not much better. The much revered, and rightly so, MLK was also known to be a bit of a player, to put it nicely. Eleanor Roosevelt had some business outside the confines of her role as First Lady that many today would point to as early evidence that same-sex relationships have been around our public arenas for some time - or at least those are the whispers. These remained private details of their lives, not because the media was not aware, but because they exercised judgement in terms of the newsworthiness of this information as opposed to these figures' policies and public personas.

So where JFK and MLK and Eleanor have the benefit of being judged mostly on their work, modern-day public officials are often regarded as composites of their personal and professional lives, not just by people who know them intimately, but by any soul with eyes and ears in a checkout stand. Why? Why? If you saw me in my pajamas having just woken from a sound sleep would you suggest I was not qualified to do my work? I don't look half as shiny in flannel as I do in linen. If someone saw you pitch a fit with your spouse, saying God-only-knows what in the heat of a moment, would they trust you to handle your job? How about in your intimate life? Would your penchant for kisses behind the ear be newsworthy to your clients? I should hope not.

And so I'm tired of it. I don't care what Mr. Weiner does with his parts. I leave that to him and, to the extent she's interested, his wife. If he is a moral mess in his personal life, I'm sorry for him. If I never get to hear another detail of his personal business, I'll be quite satisfied.

Can he be an effective mayor of New York? That's the question before voters - and only New York voters. Was Clinton an effective President? The polls answered that question.

So why must we keep suffering this nonsense? News media must return to its earlier stance on the issue of reporting personal peccadillos. It's not news.

Not My Plan

It's hard to stay focused on the grand theme of things. I often have to remind myself, sometimes quietly, sometimes more loudly, 'Not my plan, His plan'. It's hard.

I've been to two funerals in the past week, one for the mother of a friend from my childhood, the other for a lost friend of my own. Both were bittersweet for their obvious and not-so reasons.

My friend's mother was a single mom, like my own, he an only child, like me. As I saw him, again and again, resting his brow in the hand his mother made, I could feel trying to grasp and then wipe away his loneliness. It's something only an only child can understand. He has a lovely wife, beautiful children, loyal friends. But he is alone. His mother is gone and she was all that was left of him before he was a dad or a husband or a friend. He is alone and gone are the chances to reconcile what was awkward or failing in their love so they could find peace and linger only in its comfort, no longer in pain.

There stood the stallions of our childhood - then boys, now men, who had towered through the halls of our elementary school, brave and unknowing - carrying one of our mothers to her final rest. They stood there with him, for him, still strong but now wiser for the years that have taken them through their own troubles. There was his wife, graceful, loving, strong. She was there for him, with him, too. And his beautiful children, his daughter a whisper of his mom but new in her own aura, leaned against him not for strength but to offer comfort.

I wished with all my might I could reassure him that he was anything but alone, knowing full well that in my own heart, my ache for him was one that I will feel for myself some day. And it was hard to step away from the moment and see that in the grand scheme of things, according to His plan, all was right.

The friend lost to me - and I to her - spent her days in the time we were apart busy with her own living. And then, not because any of us planned it, she spent too many days busy with pain and illness. We had broken off over disappointment - hers that I could not spend more time together tending to our friendship - mine that she could not understand my constant state of tire and overwhelm. I was too busy, or so I thought.

I sat against the hard back of a church pew for the second time in a week. All around me friends and family who had kept her close, smiled softly at me in recognition, hugging me at service's end, not knowing, or perhaps, worse, they did. That I - for my stubborn refusal to let go of my own plan - failed to be a friend when most needed.

During the service her sister offered this story about their mother's prayers as her daughter neared her final days: having lost her oldest daughter to illness several years ago their mother called out to that daughter in prayer, not for relief from pain or cure from illness for her youngest. She called her to reach out her hands to her sister and bring her safely into the next life. And I thought that's something I might do, as a mother. 'Come get your baby sister,' I might call out to my oldest. And the very fleeting presence of that thought in my head made me gasp with the pain and horror of it and I hurried to God, pleading Him to take that thought away from me, to never let me feel that pain. Again, I found myself selfish, and then regretful for my own greed.

I hope and pray that I have the days before me to see my children grow, to find them happy and fulfilled, to rest after my work, to hold my mother in full and love without judgement or delay. I pray for mercy. Still, I know.

Not my plan. His plan.

It's hard.

Stop Everything and Clap

Yesterday my neighborhood elementary school had their 8th grade graduation. There's a new thing now in primary, middle, and even secondary education circles where they call the event a 'promotion' ceremony instead of a graduation. The thinking behind this is that some folks don't want children to think that 8th grade is an end-game accomplishment. So they try to downplay the significance of things like kindergarten 'graduation' or 8th grade 'graduation' by reducing the amount of pomp and circumstance around it. Our school has its share of edu-speak parents, administrators and teachers on this bandwagon. I'm decidedly not on that wagon.

So, as I do every year, I cried tears of joy as I watched the children march down the halls in their caps and gowns, uncomfortably trodding along in too-tight shoes and make-up they don't know how to apply yet, fresh hair-cuts and pressed shirts, all grins and pent-up emotions. I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with some other PTA moms, the building engineer, the cafeteria supervisor. I stood across from giggly, wriggly 1st graders, awed into jaw-slack as they watched their, now-former, classmates march away into the unknown nethers of life after Peterson. The little ones, like we did, clapped and cheered, along with their teachers and every single other person in the building - all of us lining the halls to bid the Class of 2013 adieu, farewell, and good luck.

That's because at Peterson it is a (fine, spectacular, heart-warming, inspiring, bittersweet) tradition to have everyone stand in celebration as the 8th grade graduates proceed to their 'promotion' ceremony. There's an announcement over the loudspeaker a few minutes before they leave. "It's time..." you can hear the school clerk grinning into the overhead, "teachers, please line up your students." And all throughout the building, some 800+ children and adults stop everything they are doing, head into the hallways, stand together and clap. We clap loudly, enthusiastically and with emotion. And it is awesome.

I hope that tradition lasts. I hope all the graduates at Peterson get to feel that joy, that pride and thrill that comes from having their community stop to notice them, appreciate them and cheer for them.  I think we ought to do more of that, not just there but in other places. Everyone should get that some time in their life, and everyone should get the joy that comes from giving that pleasure to someone else. Every once in a while, we all ought to stop everything and clap.

It's Who You Know, When You Play

"I love playing baseball with Theo and Jim," my son smiled at me.

"Me too," I smiled back.

As a point of clarification, I don't actually play - and neither does Jim, really. Jim coaches his son's team, one that my son had been on since he started Little League. This year, my son is on another team so now the boys occasionally play opposite one another. No matter. We all hug when we arrive, same when we leave, and our family can't help but root for Jim's son, Theo, when he's up to bat or on the mound. (This makes for some funny looks from the parents on our side of the field, especially when our Sam is batting against Theo, but we're o.k. with that.)

After the last game we had together I asked Sam what he and Theo were talking about during the game. Sam plays third and Theo had reached on a steal so they had a few moments to chat. I'd admonished Sam for what I suspected was some friendly trash-talking but he corrected me and said that both he and Theo's dad, Jim, were joking around, teasing Theo for some thing or another.

Jim's actually good for a few editorial comments during a game and most of them make me smile ear-to-ear. In this last game, one of our players made a gravity-defying play at 1st after which Jim remarked loudly to his team, "OK, you saw that, so when you get up there don't hit to R." I'm sure the kids wondered whether he was being serious or silly. He was being both.

That's because Jim totally gets it. He totally, completely, entirely gets baseball. He gets it and he loves it. You can feel that love coming right off of him and spreading out onto the field and running over the bases with the kind of glee only sticky-fingered toddlers understand. When Jim plays catcher to his son's pitches during warm-ups you can tell his son is feeling his dad's love for him. It's in the touch of leather against leather and the smell of dust and the pale of waning sunshine. If he doesn't get it then he must during the game. I think Jim levitates sometimes when Theo makes a great play or throws a screamer past an unsuspecting batter. The joy they're sharing with one another on the field tingles in the air around them and you can't help but smile at it and at them. And he's not selfish about it. Jim is just as giddy to see another player have his day, and he's terrible at hiding his thrill. That's what makes it so fun, after all.

By the same token, when Theo - or any player - needs a bit of encouragement or a mild correction, Jim is there with a quiet word or a plain-spoken suggestion. He's not soft, by any means, but you could never say he was hard either. He's just what you would need your dad or your coach to be when you needed him to be just that thing. And Theo's growing into his young man-hood with this dad by his side, stretching and reaching - sometimes away, I'm sure - but showing that good humor, a spirit of fair play and love of the game run deep in this family.

They do in mine, too. And that's why we love playing baseball with Jim and Theo.