Merry Christmas

FFP poses with a stuffed Santa at a party at the Headliners Club.

The Visible Woman...celebrates.

There are no more presents to open. I got my present earlier and I love it. FFP liked his new muffler and umbrella (or so he said). It's not the one in this picture because I didn't let him open until Christmas Eve and this was the day before. 

We got up around 7:30. At that moment when a hot coffee from the Capresso machine sounded better than staying in bed. I sorted the ads to throw away out of the paper. Just glanced at a couple. I have no intention of shopping after Christmas, but I like to see what they are pushing.

Yesterday we walked down to SoCo and ate at a favorite spot, Snack Bar. I had a salad of avocado, pineapple and quinoa and FFP had the same and we shared an order of crispy Brussels sprouts although I ate most of them. There were lots of people down there, presumably getting last minute gifts. We only went in to Off the Wall, Tesoros Trading Company and South Congress Books. At South Congress Books we bought a book of jazz essays by Phillip Larkin called All What Jazz: A Record Diary  Who knew he wrote about jazz? And a biography of Peggy Lee. I guess you could say we bought ourselves some presents. We refused the gift bags offered however. FFP came home and immediately started reading the Peggy Lee book. I wanted to take up the Phillip Larkin book because I'd started one essay in the store and it sounded great. But I'm going to finish Kansas City Lightning by Stanley Crouch first. It's my bedside book. (I read papers in my chair in front of the TV and while eating.) I finish books, but slowly, since that's usually my only book reading time.

We came home and finally decided to stay in for the evening. We watched Le Notti Bianche on a disk rented from Netflix. We listened to an extra on the disk which was a reading of the Dostoevsky story it was based on. (I love this movie. The way it looks. The way they film flashbacks. The atmosphere of the streets.) I read papers all the while, missing this and that in the film and reading I'm sure. We ate a dinner of what was in the refrigerator. And we had drinks. I had two lovely Manhattans on the rocks, mixed by FFP. On Monday at our club party they had Bloody Marys and I had two and they were delicious. I think FFP even had one. (We did walk to the party!) FFP started thinking about mixing one and had to run around the neighborhood and find some mix. He tried the store in the building but it was closed early for the holiday and so he went about four blocks to a liquor store he called to see if they had it.

So we celebrated with cocktails and an old movie and reading. Happy Christmas Eve to us. It was nice, actually.

Early in the evening I called my Aunt Cappy on the phone. She lives near Dallas and my cousin and his wife and one of their daughters and her family live not too far away. However, I think everyone was in Taos for Christmas. My cousin in Houston has a wife and mother-in-law not doing that well. We don't like to drive IH35 this time of year. So there she was, alone. (Her husband died in January. She couldn't attend his memorial in February because she was in the hospital with pneumonia. I helped her return his ashes to his native state of Maine in the summer and she did quite well on the trip.) She said she'd saved our gift for Christmas morning. It wasn't much: some ballpoint pens in a retro style and a package of note cards with a typewriter as decoration. (She still has a typewriter and uses it occasionally!) She said, yes, she was alone. Then: "I spent lots of time alone in the barracks before I was married." (She was a career Navy woman. She married a Marine within a few years of both of their retirements.)

I thought of a Christmas I spent alone, before I was married. My parents went to Colorado where they had grandchildren. My aunts who lived nearby (the older sisters of my Aunt Cappy who never married) had gone to West Texas where there were two other sisters, married with children. I didn't get an invitation from anyone I worked with. It was a sort of wonderful experience, actually. I had presents from my parents and sister and probably some from my aunts and I saved them for Christmas morning. I opened them and then later called Colorado to thank them for the presents (and hear the chaos of the kids and their presents in the background). I don't remember any of my gifsts except one. It was a pencil sharpener. A crank-style one, heavy duty. Instead of having to be screwed to a shelf like in our schools at that time it had a lever that activated a powerful suction cup to stabilize it. That was back when I dreamed of writing a book on yellow pads with Number 2 pencils. Back before computers for the home. (I programmed computers at the time, having my code typed onto punch cards for the compiler by a room full of ladies. Yes they were all ladies.) I never wrote a book on yellow pads with pencils. I never wrote a book, period. I kept the pencil sharpener for a long time, however.

That Christmas I made myself some coffee, maybe a little breakfast of bacon and eggs. I got the Dallas Morning News and I turned on my stereo and listened to the Beatles or something while reading every single page and section of the paper. If I'm not mistaken, I may not have owned a TV at that time.

Like my Aunt Cappy, I can deal with being alone. Even on the holiday when it seems most people gather in large groups. But I almost never am alone and I almost never was at Christmas before I married either.

Today we are relaxing with coffee and papers. We may have a walk this morning. Probably have some chicken and veggie tacos for lunch. Then we join a family gathering for dinner and drinking. 

Where's the Spirit?

West Sixth Street Shop Window Reflection

The Visible Woman...opines.

This time of year was filled with glee when I was a kid. Even if Christmas didn't always bring all the things I hoped for (and it usually didn't given the money my parents had) it brought this precious time off from school. Mom taught school from the time I was ten or so and she would be off from work, too. We would see relatives. We would wrap packages and anticipate. We'd sing carols. My sister and I may have even devised our own live nativity or other production. My grandmother's homemade rolls and cinnamon rolls and her giblet gravy can make my mouth water from the distance of many years. I especially liked the time when we were eating leftovers and the table was cleared for a board game (or a card or domino game) or a jigsaw puzzle. I'd wake up each morning of the school break feeling the great anticipation of another lazy day playing with new things or reading a book or playing with friends or family.

I didn't pay much attention to the impending new year as a kid. 

After college there wasn't as much time off but there was always a day or two. We kept the excitement, my mom and I, with visits from my young nieces and my cousins' kids. I had a little money since I had a job and I enjoyed buying many, many gifts. At least one year I tried for a gift for every kid we'd see and my cousins were, at that time, in their child-bearing years. 

The after Christmas time became even more fun. I enjoyed the steaming cups of coffee (I became a coffee drinker in college) and the leftover pie around the table playing games or putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. 

I didn't pay much attention to the new year that loomed. I'd forget the date on the checks for a while. I'd file my ultra simple tax return. EZ form? Probably. Maybe I'd find a New Year's Eve celebration.

My mom has been dead for eleven years and her love of Christmas is fading from my mind. Although I do remember one Christmas Eve. My sister was visiting with the two little nieces. My cousin and his wife were coming over for Christmas with three little ones. She made me arrange Santa Claus gifts. She sent me to Sears at the mall on Christmas Eve to get a new needle for her sewing machine because she was stitching up stockings for each person with their name on them. I believe I drove the little ones around to see Christmas lights while Santa did his thing. If Mom were still around I'm betting she'd make us get in the spirit of the day, kids or no kids. Some wrapped presents, some decor, a puzzle or game.

Now I'm older. There are no young kids in my family nearby. I rely on my nieces in Colorado and my sister to create Christmas excitement for their kids. Cousins' children are grown and some have kids but I don't see them. Their grandparents, my cousins, are hopefully getting involved in those celebrations like our parents did. Hopefully the jigsaw puzzle and non-video games are part of it. And I don't know if I'd be up for that chaos. We will have a Christmas dinner with some friends who have the wife's parents and sister in for the holidays. We'll probably watch sports and eat and drink too much. I've already unwrapped my present from Forrest because he wanted to be sure I liked it. (It's a small collage object by Lance Letscher. A book. I do like it.) He just asked when we could open our presents. But only he still has one to open. One of our old family traditions is giving hints about presents. I told him his present was two things and one he could use today and one he couldn't. The present is a nice umbrella and a muffler. It's cold today (thirties) here but no rain forecast. 

And now Christmas brings the depressing thought of the New Year. My taxes are complicated. I owe tax forms right away to the government for business stuff and to people I've provided with mortgages. The arduous process of collecting things for our own 1040 begins. And, honestly, another year has disappeared? I haven't learned enough, written enough, I haven't organized my life enough. I haven't traveled to all those places I'm interested in seeing. Door shuts on the year and on possibilities for me. Oh sure one can hopefully make New Year's resolutions and see the new year as this wonderful stream of time to accomplish things. I've done that. See here. Or going back really far: here or here are some I made for other people, for society at large. I'm sure there are old paper journals with scrawled promises to myself in the archives, too. But the hope is pretty much extinguished now. Time marches on and you just hope you'll be in the parade and glad to be there.

Looking into the past...

[Photo is shot through a nice glass of white wine at the MOMA sculpture garden in New York City. That's Picasso's goat you can see. If some outdoor furniture weren't in the way you could see the, um, backside. Something like this, shot when having a fine meal at a restaurant, with the atmosphere of this view, the wine drinking in the middle of the day, is a moment that can be recalled easily by the fuzzy photo.]

I read in the NY Times today about apps that package up your prior social media posts and return them to you some time later. Studying one's past in this way is interesting. I was reminded of my occasional forays into old online blogs, written journals, souvenirs, letters or piles of photos. Even old receipts and budgets and checks can dredge up the memory machine. Back you go...to another place and time that often seems familiar but sometimes seems strange.

I picked a little notebook out of my piles today. Inside are notes from 2003 and 2006. There's the description of a day with Dad when we go to someone's memorial service (I don't know whose it was) and then travel to Dallas to visit his relatives. There's the description of a dream where my dad and I plummet off a cliff in his van and I wake up before we hit bottom. (I don't remember this dream or even writing it down.) There are notes from the anniversary trip FFP and I took to Paris. It seems to be about me and yet it's so distant, so separate. I read about visits I barely remember and encounters that I don't remember. (Do the others remember them?) This time is also covered by online entries. The 2006 ones are in the transition to Blogger. A lot is there but it's all very confusing. I'm glad I have the records, but they also overwhelm me. Things happen faster than I can absorb them. But what if I took it all to heart? Our forgetting is part of our mental health. The time I explored today included a friend's death and the diagnosis of another friend with a serious cancer. Time is supposed to make things easier. But perhaps only if you don't remember...or read your old journals.

So, no, I don't think I'll sign up to be automatically reminded of my social media posts. I think I'll make myself make an effort to dredge that stuff up.

Speak, Memory

One of my ongoing agonies is a lack of an accurate record of where I've been, what I've done, how far I've walked and what I ate. A blog is one way to keep up with stuff like that. I haven't posted here since May. So, yeah, that's not working. Oh I've tweeted. Posted pictures of Austin daily. And perhaps scribbled in a notebook or private little logging app. But my life and my history and the history of our time here is essentially getting lost faster than I care to ponder. Not that my life that important. No, it's really not.

But as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches you wonder what you were thinking then. In ten years, I might wonder what I was doing as Texas tried to burn down around me.

I used to organize a daily journal. Online. And I spent considerable time scribbling in notebooks. Notebooks I still have somewhere or have transcribed into (probably lost) files on the computer.

Given all the disasters that abound these days and my good luck (so far) at dodging them, it is interesting what I wrote on 9/13/2001:

Either the molds or the cumulative feeling of helplessness, is making me sick. I take some Dimetapp, drink Sleepy Time Tea and eschew alcohol and caffeine and try to get a good night's sleep. I'm such a wimp. What if something had actually happened to me?

I'm happy to be able to look at my situation and see how lucky I really am. That nothing really significant has touched me. My planes stayed in the air, the 1981 flood didn't reach the house and when I've stumbled on paths near precipices I've been spared the short acceleration to the rocks at the bottom.

But the memory thing. Where was I with that?

What sparks memory anyway? Why do I forget what happened in a tennis game just seconds before and then suddenly say "oh, yeah, passed down the line" or "sailed my overhead volley out." Or never remember at all. Why do pictures evoke an experience for us, even come to represent it totally? Why is everything happening so fast that we can't really record it? Does it help or hurt that all our social media contacts are out there connecting us to people, places, events and ideas we can't embrace ourselves?

I started thinking about writing this ramble one day when I was thinking about things I saw on the hike and bike trail. I heard these two guys talking. One said something like "Do your kids spend a lot of time at your house?" I was going to write it down or tweet it later and then I thought: were they running or riding bikes? Weird. Absent that detail from memory it stopped me in my tracks. On subsequent trail walks, I tried to remember a few encounters more accurately. But still they were missing pieces. Today I saw a pair of small poodles. But I don't remember who was running with them. I saw the Indian chief (a bronzed, bare-chested guy with his gray hair in braids) but I couldn't tell you what kind of shorts he wore. I saw an Old English sheepdog but don't remember the person with him (or was it a she dog?). I do think the owner was female. I heard a guy say into his phone: "Do you know how valuable that is?" It was a man, looked like a businessman, tall. But I don't remember much else about hin. Things are remembered but many more things are lost.

In yesterday's NY Times Science Times there was an article on the development of the memory process. It shows that children develop memories but have trouble retrieving the source of the memory. I empathized with the children in this test. I know I saw something, but when??? Maybe this is why I can't play Bridge well. You have to remember the bidding, the hand being played. It's a blur for me with all the other hands, other times. Maybe I have a child brain. I wonder if I can develop a way to remember things in a better way in my twilight years?

Clearly, it's not possible to make an adequate record of things external to oneself and use that as a crutch. Sure I saved some info from 9/11/2001 but by that very act it almost becomes everything I remember.

I cadged the title for today's piece from a memoir collection by Vladimir Nabokov. And I will use a quote from him to address my final worry about memory and its incompleteness and usefulness. I worry that if I use real things in fiction (which I, of course, never write or at least never complete) that it will rob the thing of some truthfulness. Here's my parting quote:

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist.

And so it goes. Another reason not to write 'my' fiction: I would lose even more of my real past!

We may discuss this memory thing, further, lads and lasses, but I've decided to hit publish. Shocking, I know. Perhaps it will not be another three months.

Anger, Grudges, Euphoria and Memory

I am sitting here with a cup of coffee, typing on my blue tooth keyboard on my iMac (a physically pretty computer that hasn't lived up to its beauty). I'm leaning back in my chair. I usually use the wired USB keyboard because I'm usually doing numbers and it has a number pad. The blue tooth one doesn't have one. This little keyboard is light and magical. There is that great cup of coffee nearby. Maybe I'm 'just typing' but it is always a euphoric moment for me, using a computer that is working at the moment to write something to store forever (or while blogger archives it) and sipping good black coffee. My life is full of these moments. Moments of reading or visiting with friends. Completion of a task. Just walking my friend's dog this morning on a dreary, damp day felt good. Toasting with friends with some great live music playing gives me a rush of well-being.

Lately I've had lingering anger and attendant grudges to deal with. The good news is that the euphoria of moments of reading, writing, visiting with friends or listening to music stick with me. A sip of coffee takes me there and makes me happy.

But my memory for other things grows vague. Rude comments and slights, behavior that I found offensive, someone taking advantage of me? I hold onto it but then it slips away, a victim of the vagaries of memory. Perhaps because these things are inspired by the memory alone and not, like my moments of euphoria, fueled by the smell of coffee or the clink of ice cubes in a Manhattan or a sight of a red wine twinkling in candlelight.

I'm not sure how it came to be that good memories were associated with these readily available triggers, but I'm glad it's so and that my grudges and anger are more easily put aside, having to maintain themselves out of brain stuff alone.

[Today's photo is an untitled shop window reflection portrait of FFP taken with an iPhone at Let's Dish on South Lamar.]

Days Slip Away

Days slip away, but some little mementos yank us back to another time and place. Today's Holidailies writing prompt is "Tell us a story behind that thing hanging on your wall over there."

I glanced to my right and there was a little memento box with three things framed and matted: a picture, set of three business check book receipts and a hand-written receipt.

The picture shows yours truly in 1977 along with my husband of less than a year (FFP). We both have long hair. We're posing lugging a box up the steps of a house where we lived together for over a year (he'd owned it since '72) and where he started a little advertising business called Good Right Arm. The box? It is a brand new electric typewriter. The check stubs record checks 101 through 103 and are for purchases of stationery (second sheets), business letterhead and an initial deposit on a phone answering service. The receipt is for the typewriter which used fancy ribbon cartridges and for a supply of the cartridges. That was the beginning of the business. FFP ramped it up to a full-service agency and ran it until 2005 when he eased back to a copy writing service like when he began. Only now he does only what he wants to do, writing articles for local publications.

I would have exhibited the memento here instead of yet another shop window reflection self portrait but I think the glare would spoil the fun of describing it. We used a tiny bedroom in that first house for an office for the first few months and then we moved a block away on the other side of the street and lived there for 31 years.

I'm not sure what made us decide to frame the stuff. Probably at some point, winnowing records we decided to save these first things and we had the picture, shot by a friend visiting us from Dallas sitting around in another frame for years on the mantle. FFP decided to preserve it this way. Just now, unaware of what I was writing over here, he was beside it, disconnecting his iPhone from the charger and he said something about what young kids we were. Indeed, we were 28 and 30. Amazing.

Where Were You?

Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California. I happened to notice a news story today in my news feed (I probably subscribe to too many feeds because I'm always behind...just like the newspapers). Anyway, this is the earthquake that collapsed a double-deck portion of a freeway in Oakland. I was nowhere near the earthquake. I was, in fact, about 6000 miles away in the south part of France. Nevertheless, I remember it well. I walked from a little country inn perched near Mougins Village in France to the village to buy newspapers. Both the International Herald Tribune (in English) and the French paper had huge headlines about the earthquake. My friends and I crowded into a public lounge at the inn (the only place with a TV) and watched coverage. We were frustrated when they cut off the voice of someone they were interviewing to dub in the French translation. I read the French newspaper (with the aid of my pocket electronic translator) and they described the freeway scene with the collapsed deck on the cars below as 'coffins of concrete.'

Thinking back to that time twenty years ago, made me realize how we connect to big events and disasters based on where we are and what we are doing...even if it's far away from the site.

I finished listening to cassettes in my car about British Kings and Queens. I still can't remember all the Georges and all the hanky-panky and wars. But, of course, I remember when Princess Di was killed. I was home for that one and I think FFP woke me up to tell me the news. A short time later I was in Paris and there was a memorial near the underpass where the wreck occurred.

We all remember where we were when Kennedy was assassinated (if we were alive). I was in History class.

And, of course, 9/11. I saw the first report of the plane flying into the WTC on a tiny 5inch B&W TV we kept in the bathroom at the Shoal Creek house. I think I also heard about the 1994 Northridge earthquake on this TV. I called my Northridge friend. The phones were out. I called my friend in San Dimas and my Northridge friend was there (thankfully).

In 1981 we had a big flood in Austin. Thirteen people died in and around Shoal Creek. I remember the party in the unfinished penthouse of a bank building on 15th Street, watching the storm develop. And leaving early because we were in black tie and sunburned and uncomfortable and, after we got home and changed, deciding not to go out again because it was raining so hard. And waking the next morning incredulous at the destruction and amazed at the debris line in our backyard.

I don't remember when I first heard about August 1, 1966, the day Charles Whitman mounted the UT tower to bring down people with a high-powered rifle. I was in Sacramento, California on a trip with my sister. So I wasn't even in Texas. Little did I know how close Whitman came to changing my future, though, gunning down someone a few scant feet from my future husband, someone I didn't even know at the time.

I think the message is this: if there is going to be a disaster, you should be close to me. I'll be far away or, at least, oblivious and safe. But we always remember a lot about the time, don't we? And where we were.

I Am So Forgetful

[Wiggy's Wine and Liquor seems to have the Elephant as a mascot of sorts and this is a reflection of their window. Elephants are supposed to have good memories, right? 'Remember to pick up booze on the way home....']

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and forget what I did last night. No, not blackouts or anything. Days just run together. When did this happen? That? What's on the schedule for today?

Which is why I should keep a detailed journal. Lately I haven't been doing it. I haven't been revealing all here on the blog nor writing a journal document on my computer every day. I wish I would. Otherwise I may forget doing some things, thinking some things completely. And that would be a shame. Or would it?

A lot of times I remember that I have been somewhere before, seen someone before. But the circumstances elude me. And the time frames? Forget it. This morning my dad felt like making conversation during my morning call to him.

"I was going through my pocket knife drawer. I found the one you bought me on that first trip to Europe, the Swiss Army Knife."

"That was 1972." I do remember momentous years in my life and therefore 1972, the year I quit a good job and tramped around Europe, sticks in my mind.

"I thought I'd give it to Forrest, but I thought...he probably doesn't carry a knife."

"No, Dad. I always pack one in the checked luggage when we travel. Then he asks me, 'Do you have any scissors?' or 'Do you have a knife?'"

The only reason I don't forget to pack the knife is that it is on a master list that I maintain and modify for each trip.

Well, I'm off to play tennis. During tennis I will forget, occasionally, what happened on the points that have just been played. This forgetting is sometimes a blessing.

Stories from Before My Memory

"I'm sure your mother told you this dozen of times," he said this morning. Well not that I remembered. "We went to a party at the Russell's over near the old highway at Wilson Creek. They were having kind of a rodeo party, people were riding their horses. Someone [he actually named the woman but I have forgotten it in the last hour] saw your mother and said, 'Dixie you should have brought a basket.' We got home and about two in the morning [he hesitated here and I thought he was going to say her water broke or something but he continued] we went to the hospital." I knew I was born around four in the morning. I never remember hearing about the party ala rodeo or the basket comment. And I guess I didn't realize my mom hadn't been at the hospital very long when I was born. That's me above, ten months old, in a picture my maternal granddad carried around in his wallet apparently.

When I call my dad, we have discussions that ramble on. Since I call every morning we have to talk about something. Somehow this morning we drifted onto his father. And onward from there to family and the fact that he only had two sisters left of five sisters and a brother. "My father served the purpose of a father. He loved his girls, but didn't give a damn for us boys. He thought he should retire at 55."

"He should have retired at 55 if we was going to get a retirement." My paternal granddad died a few months before I was born at 67.

"Yeah. He was out running the combine the week before he died. He never really did retire."

Family history. We think things are momentous. Historic. We snap pictures of our children. Of graduations and weddings. And then gradually things fade. I often riffle through old pictures for sale in junk shops and wonder at the people whose precious memories are now just another bit of detritus.

Memory Fault

In the computer biz you can get a memory fault when some bad memory has an incorrect check digit which means some other bits that are on should be off or vice versa. I think anyway. I worked with computers (rather than using one as now) years ago. Well six years. And when I retired I'd gotten too far from things such as memory faults. Except for my own, of course.

Anyway, Jette gave us a Holidailies writing prompt for today and it is "Your most vivid memory from last year's holiday season." I remembered next to nothing about Christmas last year. So...I resorted to my blog to reset some check bits. I was being daily with the Holidailies last year so there were some of my memories there, forgotten by me. Actually it is more like getting an archive that was pushed off to tape than correcting memory, but that is old school. Disk space is SO cheap now. Whatever.

Last year I wasn't in a festive mood, I don't guess. I'm not one to decorate for Christmas anyway, and I hadn't done a thing. A friend of mine who has been going through an extreme health crisis since early spring 2006 wanted to come over and have a short visit and drink coffee and 'put together a jigsaw puzzle.' (Something my mom used to like to do and she'd join in on when she came over.) So...I cleaned out a storage area under the (one) staircase in our old house and pulled out Christmas stuff. Mostly I have bendable posable Christmas theme figures. (See above for my favorites, Jack Skellington from "Nightmare Before Christmas.") I scrambled around, decorating the big meda room in our old house. For the last time as it turns out. I found a pretty simple 500-piece jigsaw with a Christmas theme and made a place to work on it. My friend came over and we put together a lot of it, sipped coffee and talked about old times until she was tired.

If I could remember things, this would be my most vivid holiday memory from last season. My friend is doing some better these days. She had a checkup over the week of Thanksgiving and I have to find out about that. This year, the condo is devoid of decoration, save a small pile of holiday cards we've already received. But there is still time. Also, if I could remember things, I would have finished this post and got it recorded on Holidailies yesterday when I started it. Visiting with three elderly relatives and my dad made me forgetful. So I guess my perfect holiday attendance is already spoiled although I know there are some rules rattling around the venerable Holidailies allowing 'catch ups' as long as they are some hours apart.

Reading, Writing, Words, Memory

A while back I wrote about my unwritten books and called out a book by George Steiner that I wanted to buy with that very title. (But didn't because the unread around here is threatening enough already.)

Last night we were headed out to watch the UT Women's Basketball team take on an early, hapless opponent at Erwin Center and, as we were planning to walk, I looked around for a small, intense bit of reading material. What should I find but Marcel Bénabou's Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books, translated from the French by David Kornacker. (Have I mentioned that, if only I knew a foreign language well and wasn't ADD, that I think I would make a great translator?) But, yeah, digression...that's why it's in parentheses. I didn't remember owning this book, let alone reading it. (I'm pretty sure I hadn't cracked the cover.) Plus, for a moment I thought it might be the book that I was talking about in that other entry. That's hard to admit. I write and research stuff and then forget it. (I forget my own life in this way, in large measure. I've recently been rereading online journal entries from September 2001. There are many things in there I forgot I did and felt. Sadly I linked to places that were interesting that are gone from the Internet. I did not, by the way, go back to these entries because of 9/11. No I was looking for something else that, it turns out, occurred around that time.) But I really digress.

So I found Bénabou's book and took it to the basketball game and read some of it while keeping an eye on the action. You know, the downtime of time outs, half time, etc. Anyway. It's a very interesting book. Unfortunately I was reading it away from computer or dictionary, though, because there were words I didn't know. I like reading books with words I don't know, but I am frustrated if I'm dictionary-less at the moment of reading. For example, prolegomenon. Geez, one guesses it's like a prologue in spite of looking like a word for a person favoring certain Danish toy bricks.

It's funny but certain books I own I sort of remember reading while not watching basketball. (Even if I remember none of the contents.)

Is this forgetting of the particular in favor of some other kind of memory? Does it support remembering definitions of words in books, general knowledge of behavior and assumptions? I don't know. As I attack the NY Times Magazine puzzle this morning, I wonder. Where is all this stuff kept in my pitiful head? And why is some of it gone or impossible to access? And, if I wrote a book, would I forget it to an extent that I could read it (like the books of others) and have it feel fresh all over again.

In that vein, I'm going to type another bit of my unwritten novel here, assuming I can find the scrap I wrote it on in a book I'm not reading.

The harried woman scurried away as they emerged from the jetway. He was loitering, staying to the right of other rushed travelers. The woman was now chatting into one of the two phones she'd retrieved from her bag while they stood, unavoidably touching, in the crush of the aisle a few minutes ago. He paused by three newspaper boxes, one each for the Austin, Houston and Dallas papers. The Austin paper said in large type "Two Austin Men Dead in Berlin Attack."

I reread the paragraph I blogged before prior to typing this in. And I wondered about changing a word. The paragraph above I typed faithfully from the scrap I wrote in on in the coffee shop on Wednesday. (Did I mention I in this entry that I did that? Anyway. Somewhere I thought I mentioned it.)

What's the point of this entry then? I think to give you a chance to see inside my brain on a Sunday morning. It's a mess, isn't it?

Overheated Nostalgia

The picture is from last June which, it seems to me, was not as hot. In any case, it was provided by a junk shop on South Lamar.

I have spent the last twenty-four hours or so at the old house, Shoal Creek manor, the burbs. It reminds me of my younger days of drifting around, making lots of use of other people's couches and spare rooms and hospitality; of sometimes being left alone in a space not exactly mine (maybe the parents' house, an aunt's, my sister's, maybe a friend's place) and being welcomed to use, consume, read anything I liked. Last night Forrest and I sorted through some food that was left here and found an unopened package of mild cheddar and some Saltines. I made coffee with the one cup French press, boiling water in the tea kettle I retrieved from the condo. When I flipped on the flame, I thought, "pretty soon you won't be cooking with gas." We found a couple of frozen entrées in the old refrigerator's freezer and had them for dinner. I found a bit of small batch bourbon in the bottom of a bottle to go with mine.

Today I'm goofing off around two areas of the house while the floor guy works diligently on the old 1951 floors. I should be doing something useful. I took a box labeled 'sort!' into the big room at the back of the house. I watched some Wimbledon, snacked on some Boursin I found in the frig unopened (barely beyond its 'best by' date) and got interested in an article in an old New Yorker that was in that box. Also in the box was an abacus I bought in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1966 along with the crudely translated guide to using it. (The latter still had its price tag: twenty-five cents. "You can be sure...........if you've got ABACUS You don't need a paper or pencil. It releives you of intricacy of tedious ciphering.) The summer of 1966 my sister and I took a languid trip west to Sacramento where she left me with some people who were parents of a friend of hers and took my VW Beetle off to visit with her husband at his temporary duty station at some Air Force Base. I welcomed the solitude, really. The couple seemed lonely as their daughter was grown. They went to work each day, but left lots of snacks and they treated us to that trip to San Francisco, I think. I would go out in the backyard and 'work on my tan' for a while, reading. Then I'd sit in the AC and watch TV and eat snacks. (Those little Goldfish crackers were a favorite that summer.) I taught myself to add long columns of numbers on the abacus. I never bothered to master multiplication but I could fly through adding up a big sum. I walked around the neighborhood and took what I thought were artsy pictures of houses and cars. I wrote long letters to my friends and, if I remember correctly, got some answers while I stayed there.

That staying around my own house of thirty years now gives me this feeling of scrounging, of life put on hold but full of possibility, is, I think, amusing.

I worked out today in the gym at my club. Back to the house to check on things, I pondered which place to take a shower in. I feel dislocated, distant and yet wonderfully able to concentrate on my old abacus and remember that old self, seeking adventures in the junk of a Chinese souvenir shop. It was impossibly exciting in its own way.

The guy doing the floors has been marveling at the accumulated gunk that has built up in fifty-seven years (we don't think they've EVER been refinished). There is some of that gunk in my brain, too, and I keep hoping that cycling through the junk again and again will finally sand it down and I'll find the person I'm supposed to be in my seventh decade on earth. It won't be a moment too soon to figure this out.

What We Notice

In this shop window reflection I think I'm perfectly recognizable. Just the shape of the head, the glimpse of glasses, the unruly hair. I was exploring a little strip of North Loop yesterday where there are some weird shops. I can always find something to post here but I quickly run out of current material for Austin Daily Photo.

It's amazing what people notice. For example: I almost always wear black shoes. They tend to go with black and gray, after all, and those are my favorite colors. I always felt I should own brown shoes, however. So I've ended up with several pairs, not often worn. A couple of times in the last few weeks, I've worn brown shoes. Yesterday, I put on a sort of brownish shirt and greenish khakis and it seemed that the brown loafers would look good. I've been trying to wear stuff in my closet to see if I really, really should be keeping each article of clothing and pair of shoes for the new, simpler life. As it happens, I saw my dad both times that I was wearing these loafers.

Dad remarked on the brown shoes the first time I wore them. Yesterday he said as soon as I saw him, "She's wearing the brown shoes again."

You wouldn't think he would notice.

It's funny what I notice, too, among all the things I'm 'processing' in this downsizing. Yesterday I realized as I sorted books that the early nineties was an era when we bought books with abandon. I was trying to get rid of some books, but found myself having trouble putting down a story collection copyrighted 1993. Later I found myself walking around with a receipt from 1993 destined for the shredder (even though the credit card number was not even valid any longer). I had some current receipts for logging into the budget in my hand, too. What are the odds?

A couple of days ago I was cleaning out some storage containers I'd been through a couple of times. I found some posters I'd kept over the years but never framed. There were a couple I remembered having, but would probably not have remembered where I put them: a poster from the 1972 Oktoberfest and one of the Berlin Wall commemorating its fall in 1989. But there was another tube mailed to me from a friend who lived in California in 1988. And inside was a poster from a winery her relatives had at the time in Sonoma Valley. As it happens I was having lunch with her yesterday. I took her the poster and in the twenty years since she'd sent it both of us had completely forgotten it. She seemed happy to have it, though, and said she didn't have one like it.

It's funny what we notice. And what we overlook in every minute of our existence. Never mind what we forget after we take notice.

A Story Worth Telling

This is a popular thing to do in the digital age, I know. Taking pictures of people taking pictures with their little screens just visible. This is another picture from MOMA. I like taking pictures in museums but not just of the art and objects. I like to have people interacting with the art. It makes my story of the museum one alive with the other patrons. I've shown a few others in recent days from the MOMA visit. One of my favorite in this genre is from the Musée d'Orsay and is shown here.

Are my pictures worthwhile? Worth looking at? Is my story worth telling?

This has been a topic I've batted around in the last few days. Here and here. I even had a conversation with one loyal reader on the topic. [Ed. Note: The rest of them are loyal, too. Just, um, respectfully quiet.]

This inspired me to look back at my old journal where I had topics like Who, What, When, Why and Where. The Who is a little bio. It is a place to start with a story that is really sort of boring. [Ed. Note: You had to revise it before you wanted to point people to it. A life story keeps changing until (and perhaps after) death.] My story is a mixture of the true and the false, the well-remembered and distorted and, of course, the completely forgotten. Like every story.

Anyway, it's something to do, pondering a memoir, to distract me from other things. Downsizing has reached a gut-wrenching point that I might discuss tomorrow. And I'm also thinking about writing about how blogs and memoirs in books differ. Writing about writing. The dodge of the blocked writer? Talk among yourselves.

From Too Little to Too Much

I had written about it before but I spent twenty minutes searching for the words. Amazingly, although I wrote the words over ten years ago for WEB posting, I did find them. One day, way back then, I was feeling pressure to enjoy all the books, magazines, newspapers, movies, TV and such that was readily available to me. Not unlike, um, now.

Today some Holidailies participants are donating to First Book, an organization that gets books into the hands of children who would not otherwise have them. As I teeter (on a stack of books) at the other end of the scale, it isn't that I don't remember being on the other end of that spectrum. I do. I never want to be without words, pictures and tunes. Without input. I especially don't want to be without books.

But I still wonder when it went from too little to too much.

Here's what I wrote in 1997:

MEDIA ASSAULT

It's a media-rich world. There's never been more to read, to see, to hear. Or is it an assault, a river that is roaring by with no time for us to grab something and understand how to stay afloat?

I keep trying to decide when the input went from not enough to too much. I still remember when I was a kid, hungry for input. We never had enough books to suit me and I even 'played school' with some ancient school books that had the scribbles left there by my own mother and aunt. When we went to the State Fair in Dallas, we'd collect a sack full of automobile, agricultural and kitchen appliance brochures. We'd carefully review the bright pictures and fill our dreams with them. Once the Sears catalog had been put to use by my mother, I made paper dolls out of the clothing ads and gave my cutout kids the latest toys. (One of those thirty- or forty-year-old catalogs or a sack of those brochures would be an interesting view of my world at the time.) In those days, my mother bought a few magazine subscriptions with our meager budget. It was usually LIFE or LOOK, but once she tried to order Harper's but got, instead, Harper's Bazaar and our lower middle class household (where we mostly wore clothes made from Simplicity patterns) suddenly had a monthly view of the fashion world. A handsome high school boy delivered the 'Sherman Democrat' on foot. It was a skinny paper, but it was the only one we usually saw. I remember sitting on the porch waiting for his arrival. I can't remember, however, if I wanted to read the paper or was interested in how to get a paper route when I got old enough. (I don't think they ever let girls do it in my time, though.)

The TV signed off at midnight or so, I think. We did have all the major networks, but that's it. No remotes and how much fun is surfing three channels anyway? When we got our first TV we still lived on the farm. Mother bought it with bingo winnings at the American Legion hall. My favorite show was 'Sky King.' Hit Parade or something like that had settings and singers do the top songs each week and had to try to keep 'Davy, Davy Crockett' fresh for most of a year. (I got the girl's version of the coonskin hat which was a more feminine rabbit fur and happily the decidedly unfeminine pocket knife.)

In college (North Texas State, now U of NT), I worked in the campus bookstore. Suddenly there were plenty of books and magazines around, the huge library was close by on campus. I was pretty broke, but money wasn't necessary to get input. We had some lulls in the textbook department where I worked. When there was no one to wait on for long periods of time, we could read books and magazines and then put them back on the shelf. It was during this time that I became addicted to 'The New Yorker'--an addiction that I haven't been able to shake to this day. Often, I had to actually pay the quarter of fifty cents (I know it was less than a dollar then) so I could take the magazine home and finish it. Doesn't sound like much, but I think I only got seventy cents an hour. Fortunately, they let us run up a bill and charge everything until payday.

A little over twenty years ago, I was still watching a few channels on a black and white TV, and still couldn't really afford as many books as I would have liked to have around, if unread. At this time computing wasn't exploding and changing so fast either and I thought I might one day feel masterful in my work. I could only dream of having my own computer. An independent San Antonio station picked up a nightly soap opera about this time called 'All That Glitters.' Norman Lear had followed his 'All in The Family' success with 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.' Less successful and very edge, this was followed by 'All That Glitters.' It never even got aired by a network, I don't think. I bring it up because we watched it every night, enthralled at its radical concept: women were powerful in society and men were weak. From this premise, it was easy to put episodes together, the most everyday thing becoming twisted. I bring it up because we had so little to choose from compared to the late '90s, but here was this gem, too radical for its time. Actress Linda Gray was there, pre-Dallas, playing a woman who used to be a man in an upside down world. Sometimes we think we dreamed this TV show since so few people saw it. In fact, I recently spent a half hour or so on the WEB looking for something else on this show. Found a wonderful story about the making of 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.' But 'All That Glitters' seems to have vanished from consciousness. In contrast, I have seen one 'X Files' from beginning to end and no complete 'Ellen' shows. But I saw many episodes of a TV show that seems to have never existed.

One day in 1977 we bought a color TV. It was small, but had a good picture. Tennis was starting to be televised more widely (i.e. not just on public television) and Wimbledon was on. I could actually almost see the ball on this TV. I carefully planned to be in front of the TV for tennis events then. In 1997, I did not manage to see more than a couple of shots of the French Open. This in spite of having a color TV in almost every room. As I write this, a tiny Sony with a two-inch screen is showing a crisp picture of this year's Wimbledon. I imagine I'll soon be distracted from watching rain delays and tapes of the week's matches, I'm sure, by some other activity like this WEB page, or doing my real work---my work machine is sitting nearby as an affront. In fact, we have several dozen channels of cable, mostly unwatched and mostly deserving it, I guess. When we surf, we end up on 'The Simpsons,' an old black and white movie or the history channel; sometimes the sound track is a selection of jazz and classical CDs. Late at night, we might be taking in British sit-coms or old episodes of 'Perry Mason.' We are, however, usually asleep in our chairs as they play. We've recently discovered the Mike Judge cartoon, 'King of the Hill' but funny as it is, it's hard to get in front of the TV at the appointed hour.

Today I own unlistened to CDs, unread books and the unread papers and magazines are piling up. Meanwhile there is information on the WEB that I'm dying to read and study. I simply don't know where to start. I think people who aren't readers, who aren't naturally curious, are happier today than I am because they aren't torn about what information to consume next. Sure maybe surfing channels is getting more confusing, but as an input hungry person, I'm truly overwhelmed. It reminds me of a robot in some movie without, for me, a name (because I've watched it in randomly ordered fifteen minute increments from cable and missed the title). 'Input!' says Johnny Five in a pleading voice. Then he consumes every book in the house and sits up all night consuming TV. I want to do that, but I keep falling asleep or daydreaming. I don't have the robot's stamina.

Well, off to read a book or a magazine or surf the WEB or look at that great shot Venus just made!

Is that funny? I still feel this way, overwhelmed by books and magazines and media. Things once precious to me, still precious to me that I have so much of that I literally can't consume them. Books still call out to me and, when I listen, satisfy something deep inside me. I feel for people who don't desire books and information. And I feel for kids who don't have enough books! Once I was that kid. Somewhere along the line, I reached a tipping point. I'm not sorry either. My worst fear is to be trapped somewhere without words. Even without Internet access or TV, I could be happy if there were enough books and magazines. Better too many than too few.

Why I 'Diblog'

I just coined this word, 'diblog', as a combination of 'diary' and 'blog.' (I'm sure someone else already coined a word for this or thinks blog is sufficient or thinks, as I once did, that you should just call it a journal and journaling.)

You see, I want to write. I do. But all I do is write journals, diaries, scribbles, blogs, online journals, whatever. As it says in the blurb to the right: "Pretending to write but really just blogging."

But what I do isn't exactly blogging. Depending on what you mean by blogging. Sure I provide links and take the occasional stand on the issues of the day or write what would pass for an essay now and then. But mostly this venue is really personal. Sometimes it is very much in the spirit of 'what I did today.' Like a diary. My writing outside this venue, offline, in notebooks and Word documents on my computer is very much in that diary vein. I do have what I consider a real blog (The Journal Of Unintended Consequences) but it doesn't get updated nearly as often as this space. I have a picture blog, too, that gets updated every day (Austin, Texas Daily Photo) but the writing is secondary if often voluminous. It's about the pictures or is supposed to be.

Visible Woman and my writing offline has always been diary-like for the most part. Or it's a journal if you will. I cannot seem to complete a book, article, essay. I have completed a few (unpublished) short stories. And yet this year I have written thousands of words of 'diblog' here and over two hundred pages in offline Word documents.

Why do I do whatever you call this? Well, I think I know.

One of the main reasons is that everything is more easily dealt with once it's translated into words and put down on paper or in pixels.

Another reason is because I want to have my say and not really be edited by anyone. I get comments, but I can moderate them. I can accept edits sent in although they rarely are. FFP will point out typos and mistakes and I can edit them if I wish. No editor is trying to keep me on point, trying to puff things up or slim them down.

And yet I love to edit myself. With my online musings and my Word docs I can edit anything at any time. I was just pondering writing this and I went back and looked at an almost eight-year-old entry on my old WEB site and I wanted to remove a single period. So I did. What power! Once you write a book it's nice to see the permanence of it...but wouldn't you be itching to edit it?

And finally I 'diblog' because I want to remember what I did today and yesterday and I seriously will completely forget if I don't write or type it down somewhere. See those old paper journals above? I was glancing through one of them and I was writing about having our Old English Sheepdog put down. In 1991. Of course, this is something I remember doing and even the approximate time. But the other things going on at the same time, forgotten. Except I wrote in that book.

So yeah that's why I'm here (or over there or inside my own computer) writing what I do. Because I want to deal with my demons, be heard, avoid editors but always be able to edit and, years from now, remember where I was and what I was thinking. I'm not here trying to influence anyone else or become famous. I'm not seeking readers. So, no I'm not sure why I join things like Holidailies because I'm not really seeking readers which is one purpose of portals. Fact is, for a long time I purposely did NOT join portals. I even went to a conference for online journal writers (JournalCon they called it) one year before the word was 'blog' and listed my name in the program without a WEB site!

By the way...I spent my morning at my club playing tennis and then working out a little. I drank an espresso smoothie at the club. This afternoon I ate a chicken sandwich. I changed the filter on my coffee machine. We considered going to a movie but decided to stay home and watch the bowl game with the Texas Longhorns playing. I plan to read, do some things on my 'to do' list and maybe watch a DVD. Just in case I forget later what was up with me on December 27, 2007.

That Was Then

The year is 1962. My sister was graduating from High School. My mom was receiving her Master's Degree in Education from Austin College in Sherman. She is holding two bound copies of her thesis about the effect of ability grouping on elementary children's test scores. We were kids. (I was fourteen or fifteen.) Still we helped type drafts of that tome. Because, after all, this was a couple of decades before personal computers.

Mom was proud to get that degree. It allowed her to keep teaching in her school system. Yes, teachers with five years experience had to have an advanced degree for those low-paying jobs! I have never understood the sacrifices teachers made then. Or now.

Notice that the wall is pretty bare. It was in my sister's room. She had that lamp and a little shelf with some tiny things on it. It looks like she has quite a few books, but I think that shelf had a lot of the books the family owned. My sister did have a little record player and some '45s and albums. Our life was simple. That record player, a black and white TV in another room and the simple camera that took this picture was the extent of our technology. I think my mother was driving a 1958 Oldsmobile then. It was pink and black and something to see.

Before I get lost in nostalgia...I promise to come back to Christmas 2007 tomorrow.

Nothing Taboo Today

I'm going to talk about whatever I want to today, particularly the briefly banished subjects of holiday spirit and downsizing. Because I make the rules after all. I also have a rule that the picture doesn't have to have too much to do with the words! But I'll reach for a tie-in.

I went through an album of pictures, mostly ones rescued from aging cheap albums my mother had kept, that I have in those inert plastic sheets in a sturdy storage case. Eventually I hope to sort through all the photos, getting some scanned in, some discarded (hmmm...what landscape is this?) and consolidating them as much as possible. This is tedious at best, but is an ongoing thing that I have worked on at least. This is the type of downsizing that is most tedious. Really personal things are hard to deal with. In other downsizing news, we have gotten pickups of several loads of 'stuff' and taken two car loads to the thrift store.

This particular picture was actually taken on a holiday. Thanksgiving 1967. And yes I have on shorts. Because we are in Florida. That is my aunt, Dad's youngest sister next to me. She was still in the Navy then, stationed in Pensacola. I am not yet twenty which means she is in her late thirties. My dad and mom are there. Mom is writing a letter to my sister. I know this because I wrote on the back of the picture. Dad looks tired. Maybe he did most of the driving to get us to Pensacola.

I loved holidays at this age. And I adored this aunt who was in the Navy and had adventures (or so I thought) when I was a kid. She was married at this point, but for less than two years, to a Marine.

What is so odd to me about this trip is that I remember almost nothing about it and have had to be reminded that I was ever there. I know I would have been excited to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt. I think two of my dad's other sisters went along. Those two aunts (one younger than my dad, one older) never married and I adored them because they doted on me and all the other nieces and nephews. I loved being with them. This picture was taken with my Polaroid camera. But I don't know who took it.

This trip is in a mist for some reason. A trip I took to Pensacola in the summer of '66 is vivid. I got to fly for the first time. My friend and I drove my aunt's car around while she was at work on the base.

I wish I remembered more about this time. I guess we had a turkey dinner. Why can't I find more pictures? [Ed. Note: You might find more pictures from this trip if you weren't blogging all the time.]

What about those other banished topics? I'm reserving the right to talk about teeth at a later time. But my holiday spirit has probably been raised as far as it's going to get. I opened a few boxes of decor and put them around our big room. I found the video fireplace with the Christmas music. And a good friend is going to come over for coffee or tea tomorrow and we are going to work for a little while on a jigsaw puzzle. My friend wants to capture that sort of Christmas feeling. It reminds me of my mother. Sadly, my friend has the same cancer my mother did. Happily she's in remission but she has many health problems from the treatment. My mother loved to stare at jigsaw pieces and sip a cup of black coffee. While wearing a Christmas sweater or something, of course. (And hey...look at the blouse in this picture. I told you she liked bright colors!)

Reaching for the Past

I was looking through some old pictures, looking for things to inspire writing this blog for my daily Holidailies experience. I'm looking for something that doesn't touch on the current forbidden topics.

Pictures from my childhood are strange to me. I don't really seem to fathom the child I was. There are only children in this one, but when there are adults in the picture I can't get over how young they are. I'll say "My aunt is over twenty years younger than I am now when this picture was taken." Or "My Dad and Mom are younger in this picture than I am now." I also sometimes linger on one person, thinking "they are dead."

The settings for all these old pictures are generally familiar yet strange especially those before college because when I graduated from high school we pretty much abandoned all the old spots for a set of new ones. (With a few exceptions I may talk about one day.)

The setting of today's picture is strange, too, but in a different way. My sister and I are with my mom and dad's good friends' boys, standing on a picnic table on Mt. Bonnell. I swear the table is still there. There would be more tall buildings poking up behind us than there were in 1955, but I could go to this spot when driving from my club to my house. It's very disconcerting to see my tiny self there. I don't remember much about the trip to Austin. There are pictures of us on Mt. Bonnell and at the Capitol. At the Capitol I have an even more stupid-looking dress if that is possible. One thing I do know: I would have preferred the jeans and T-Shirt look on the boys. (I remember pining to wear jeans my whole life.) And I remember being jealous of the boys' toys. Maybe it wasn't this trip but on one trip I was so jealous because the younger boy had a fort that had this plastic log wall and all these toy frontier soldiers and it took up an entire card table.

And, yes, I know who the boys are and they both still live in Austin I think.

Remembering Mom

You know the topics I'm avoiding? Yeah, those. Well, it's hard to stay true to that because those things have really been occupying my bandwidth and my thoughts. It will even be hard to write about my mother without touching on those topics. But I'll try by going back to a time when everyone was younger, we had lots less stuff and plenty of excitement about Christmas.

I found this picture on my computer. I scanned it at least four years ago because it was in files I transported from desktop computer minus one. I'm guessing 1960's, early. Definitely in the back yard of the house in Sherman. The house we all left in the summer of 1966. By 1966, my sister was already married and I was off to college and this place we'd called home since '58 or so was sold and my parents moved to Mesquite where they would stay until 2000 when they moved to Austin.

Observations: (1) It doesn't usually snow this much in Texas, not even near the Oklahoma border, but we have assembled a credible snow man; (2) my mother looks young and beautiful to me (she was only early forties if not still thirties); (3) she is warmly dressed and the coat might be a few years old but she has an eye to fashion; (4) I have no idea where we got that scarf and hat for the snow man. I don't remember anything about the making of the snow man or the day but the picture makes me think about Mom.

In her later years, we tagged Mom as a hypochondriac. But you know that sad joke? Just because you are a hypochondriac doesn't mean you can't get sick? I'm not all that sure now that she inflated her troubles. She just had the bad luck to have confounding and frustrating illnesses that dealt her big blows without getting the solid diagnoses that garner sympathy from doctors and family and friends.

Actually, Mom soldiered on when she was young and healthy, largely ignoring how hard physically and emotionally her life really was. She cooked for us, got an education and taught school to help support us, labored around the house, drove us places, nursed us, made clothes for us, cleaned those clothes. And she made sure that we had fun times. She let us give parties. She decorated for holidays and found money for Santa and then surprises from her as we got older. We didn't have a lot of stuff. I have pictures from this era that amaze me because the walls of the house are so bare. We didn't have a lot of paintings or things to hang on the wall. Mom had grown up poor and started her marriage in a house with no electricity and a propane heater. She treasured things she managed to get and she loved that house which we bought new in the late fifties in a little subdivision in a small town. The small town was big to us because we came from a smaller town and we lived on a farm outside town at that.

My mother always made my young life better although she also made me do chores and enforced her rules. She cherished us. She loved having us at home and she would tolerate our friends much more than other parents.

Mom loved the holidays and there was never a question of decorating. We had ornaments collected over her life time. We put up an artificial or real tree, carefully got everything out of boxes and scattered those aluminum icicles around. We fought with lights that ran in series and whose cords were tangled from our inexpert packing the year before. When the tree was up, it collected brightly-wrapped surprises and we could hardly wait to see what was inside. As we got older we tried to have surprises for others, too. One year I bought my mom a punch bowl and cups. I'm sure I had the idea that it would serve my purposes, too, for the little parties she let me give. We loved to give each other obtuse clues about gifts. I told her that her gift was a fire extinguisher. I thought I was hilarious. The thing is, she always went along and laughed at my jokes.

Mom and her mother made homemade rolls and cinnamon rolls at holidays. They made this giblet gravy for the turkey that I crave to this day. As Mom grew older she sometimes simplified the recipes but she still tried to make great family meals. The house in Mesquite sometimes had several dozen people at Thanksgiving or Christmas. She juggled huge turkeys and vats of food and multiple pies, no problem.

Mom loved dressing for the holidays, as she got older, in silly Santa socks, Christmas-themed clothing and Santa jewelry. She loved bright clothes, all the more as she got older.

As Mom's health faded I became the one trying to take her places, buy her things, nurse her. It's easy to forget how vibrant and unflappable she was when this picture was taken and, also, before that on the farm. I remember sitting on the stairs to the basement watching my mother lift two gallon buckets of milk from the high window to her work table where she strained some for bottles and churned some for butter. She would give me a little half pint bottle, the milk still warm from the cow my dad had just milked. I'd sip it and watch her strong arms squeezing the water out of butter and making it into a neat block. My parents were all-powerful then. And they played their roles well. It's easy to forget that when they grow old and infirm. I need to remember my strong Dad, too, outside that basement window handling the farm chores before he went to his job as a hospital attendant. Life was such a struggle, but we were so protected. And Mom especially so embraced the things that excited us like holidays and birthdays and trips somewhere off that dirt road into the world.

Thanks, Mom. And great snow man!