Aunt Florence

 

Aunt Florence, mid 1930s

At our most recent family reunion, Cousin Carol Jane told Catbird, "My goodness, I never noticed it before but you look so much like my mother."   Then Carol Jane unpacked a grocery bag of old photos many of us had never seen and the stories commenced.  When she showed Catbird the above picture of her mother, Catbird's Aunt Florence, Catbird was humbled, honored and impressed.  Aunt Florence had been a looker.

Of course, after Catbird thought about it, she realized that--except in photographs--Carol Jane had never seen her mother looking as young as the above picture.  Almost certainly Carol remembered her mother with gray curls, which, thanks to a good perm from Rudy, Catbird now sports.  Hence the sudden realization of the remarkable similarity between Catbird and Aunt Florence.

Well, Okay, so Catbird looks more like Aunt Florence at a certain age.  Catbird can live with that.

Because, despite our best efforts to ignore, hide or downright expunge some of our previous life experiences, aren't we still made up of the people we've been?  Whatever choices Catbird makes now, whatever she looks like now, Catbird is also still also a young mother, a nurse, a lover, an adolescent, a dreamer, a fool, an achiever, a drunk, a honeymooner, an ice skater, etc.  When Catbird gathers with her sisters or her old friends, we don't see just the current incarnation,  but a composite of all the years and bad haircuts and skinny knees and mini skirts and gogo boots and broken hearts and marriages layered like translucent pages over each other, shining as one.  So, while others may only see Catbird's top layer,  as a gray-haired and aging woman, they would be overlooking a lot. 

Now Catbird can look at Aunt Florence pictured below and see the layers below the quiet gray-haired woman whose rheumatic heart condition would take her out early. Catbird can see the depression-era adolescent, sassy sister, the young mother, and even the fiery young nursing student pictured above.  Catbird looks like Aunt Florence?  Catbird can live with that.  Yes.

 

Aunt Florence, 1961 

A Poem by Catbird

WHAT WE LEARN FROM DOGS

Where the dog park dips away

into the secluded section beyond the stand of mesquite,

Sam and I ran across a gray-muzzled Newfoundland

with a pink bandage around her front right leg,

her owner taking pictures with a cell phone.

“Daisy.” 

Sam made as if to play, and Daisy hopped

once, then stopped and wagged her tail

apologetically.  I could see movement was hard

 for her and asked,  How did she get injured?

A hesitation, then, She isn’t injured.

It’s an IV.

We are putting her down this afternoon.

The red-eyed husband stood apart from us

speaking solemnly into a cell phone of his own.

Sam trotted on.  Before I followed him,

 I put my hands behind Daisy’s ears,

scratching, massaging,  feeling the age

and bony frailty beneath her deep, deep coat.

Doesn’t she have the softest fur?

her owner said. 

Later, we saw them climb the hill:

the woman, keys in hand, followed by her husband,

Daisy in his arms, her enormous gray head

in absolute trust against his shoulder. 

If I formed a prayer before this solemn processional,

it might have been a plea for many more of these green and golden days; 

to come to the dog park long past my ability to run;

to die quickly and on a beautiful day;

to be carried out with tenderness and respect by someone who loves me.

Instead, in the language of dogs, and the Rinpoche,

Sam and I sniffed the sharp December air

as the gate clanged open, then closed.

And after a beat, we shook ourselves

and moved on.

 

Sam at the blessing of the animals, October 2010

Wonders of the World

Back when Catbird was a skinny adolescent and toodled the flute, her high school band spent a week at band camp every summer, preparing for the annual Indiana State Fair Band Day Competition.  In a school of fewer than 500 students, total band enrollment (including pompom girls, majorettes and flag carriers) was between 125 and 150.  Additionally, this was before Title Nine, so except for the five ultra-popular cheerleaders, students of the female persuasion had few other sanctioned physical outlets.   In this farming community, band wasn't just for fat kids who couldn't play basketball; it was the center of our social dynamic.  Even the quarterback of the football team marched in the band.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but Band was a Very Big Deal.

In 1969, Catbird's first year of high school band, Backwoods HS had a new band director with a new idea: Band Camp.  Band Boosters raised some bucks, someone did some research and the kids each ponied up a little cash of our own and we were off.

 

Vintage postcard from the golden age of West Baden Springs

In French Lick (a town which sounds far more fun and interesting that it actually is) the derelict resort hotel of West Baden provided broad fields for marching, enough isolation from the town that our repeated riffs and drumbeats would not disturb,  and a great deal on rooms long past their heyday. 

From the tree-lined brick drive with ancient statuary gracing the hills, we 50s-era children of tiny box houses knew we were in the presence of something special even before we spied the enormous atrium.  So what that much of the mosaic floor was gone to concrete, that the glass ceiling of the atrium was so broken that rain poured into giant pools too large and numerous to contain?  Who worried that the friezes and balconies were crumbling before our eyes? That whole sections of the old hotel were barricaded against entry because they were unsafe.  We were staying at "the eighth wonder of the world," at the "Carlsbad of Indiana." 

She had lovely bones, the old West Baden Springs Hotel, and even in her great decline we could see it. 

Indeed, testaments to her history scattered through the hallways.  In the 20's trains brought folks directly from Chicago to take the waters and gamble.  The circle at the top of the atrium was said to have been a platform that held an orchestra that was lowered (or raised) during special events.  Presidents and royalty had enjoyed the hotel's luxury.

When economic declines began, the hotel experienced an abrupt personality change as it was sold to the Jesuits and went from decadent gambling mecca to spiritual retreat and monastery.  By the time Backwoods High School summered there, West Baden hosted some kind of minor institute but was mostly just plummeting through the economic skids.

We loved it though.  We were kids who had no expectation of luxury and felt lucky just to be in the presence of luxury lost.

When it rained too much to march on the grounds, we practiced our routine on the big, covered wraparound porch that circled the south half of the building.  We were a large band and the porch was big enough to accommodate us, though the front row could not see the back row.  It was glorious.

Nightly excursions took us to saintly statues tucked up in the hills.  Imagine what went on there.  The atrium, though, was our greatest joy.  Strains of Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida laced out from Nick's stereo (sure, didn't every school designate at least ONE person to bring a stereo to band camp?) across the great interior.  If one was lucky enough to have an interior room, one sat in the window and scanned the vast space to the people in the windows of the opposite interior rooms.  We watched all the comings and goings below.  At 10 p.m. Titus stood in the center and blew taps that echoed its melancholy off the crumbling walls, through the broken windows and into the night.

Of course, we did not sleep.  We were adolescents at camp.  Our pheromones (which we experienced keenly even if we had no knowledge of them at that time),  our restless excitement for being somewhere other than home, our nascent awareness that we outnumbered adult chaperons by a ratio of 25 to 1, and the ticklish notion becoming conviction that we could not be controlled--these things were a heady brew.

A favorite late night occupation, when the endless talking talking talking and slumber party pranks were no longer enough, was to toss pennies out into the atrium and listen to the echoing ping on the concrete.  The chaperons sat at tables in the dark with a fierce spotlight they'd flame up and aim in an attempt to catch--or at least intimidate--the coin tossers.  It didn't work; we just saw it as the next level in a game we were destined to win. 

One night, Catbird herself collected empty soda cans and crawled stealthily on her belly to the stairway (an area openly vulnerable to the spotlight).  Making trip after trip, and stacking oh-so-carefully, Catbird constructed a wall of empty soda cans that completely blocked the stairway.  In the morning, when breakfast rolled around, kids coming down from above had to knock the wall down.  The noise was tremendous and echoed deliciously.  And that was glorious, too.

Backwoods HS and Catbird went to West Baden three years in a row; sometimes the band got better, but always the hotel got worse.


***

Twenty years later Catbird and a friend climbed over the hurricane fencing, past the no trespassing signs, through the badly overgrown lawns to peek into the old abandoned hotel.  The old porch listed away, the ceiling above it caved in.  We pushed through a broken window to see only darkness and destruction inside; vines, leaves, the incessant collapse as the earth began to retake what humankind had claimed briefly for ourselves.  Catbird had always hoped--no: believed--that somehow, someone would rescue and restore this beautiful old treasure.  On that last visit, though, Catbird became painfully aware that saving the old West Baden Springs was no longer a possibility.  That was a sad, sad day.

West Baden Institute Dome

Currently Catbird is in Indiana looking after her BF (since age 12) LP as LP recovers from gall bladder surgery.  For an outing as she recoups, Catbird drove LP through the familiar hills of southern Indiana.  The day was stunning as only Indiana autumn can be, even though the leaves are not so brilliant this year due to the summer drought.  Our outing became a pilgrimage to French Lick, to the miraculously restored West Baden Springs Hotel.  


Catbird had followed the story from her sweet home in Texas as Indiana entrepreneur Bill Cook  bankrolled the massive project to restore the hotel to her former glory.  Catbird had heard, and had even seen pictures...but had not seen for herself.  

Staff at the hotel say that everyone--EVERYONE--stops and stares when they first step into the new atrium.  Catbird was no different.  But for Catbird the experience was not one of architectural or aesthetic awe, but of personal emotion.  The ghost of Catbird at 15  jostled with the ghosts of her lost young, beautiful friends and Catbird swears she heard echoes of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.  

What Catbird found most interesting:  Despite immaculate carpets, pristine mosaics, perfectly intact statuary, friezes and murals; despite the upscale restaurants, the well-appointed plants, the sunlight warming through the clean glass ceiling, it was not so different from the way it had been 43 years ago.  It looked the same to Catbird because when she was at West Baden as a kid, she didn't see the crumbling dysfunctional mess; she saw it as it could have been, as it once had been, as it is today. This ability to see beyond the immediate muck to the potential in a condemned situation--this trick of magical thinking--got Catbird through some pretty ugly adolescent situations.  

And, just as Catbird had once viewed the derelict hotel through a lens of potential and beauty, this time Catbird stood in the atrium and tried to see a 5-star wonder as it had been when Catbird was young and 150 Backwoods kids burrowed in for a week.  She remembered how dismal it all seemed when she climbed past the no trespassing signs two decades ago and faced the reality of one more permanent loss.  Memory and imagination are like that: layer on layer on layer.

 Well from the magical thinking of adolescence, to the once-burned pragmatism of middle age, Catbird has arrived at a new stage in life.  Happily, happily, in Catbird's current stage we are reminded:  sometimes what has to happen does happen, even if it takes a miracle.

 

http://www.frenchlick.com/aboutUs/history/wbsh.jsp 

The Spherical Cow

If you live with a physicist, as Catbird does, or if you are a devoted fan of the television show Big Bang Theory, the chances are that you already know the joke about the spherical cow.  For the rest of you, here it is: 


A farmer's cows stopped giving milk.  He called his neighbor, a physicist and the smartest man the farmer knew, to see what advice the physicist might have.  The physicist looked at the cows; he looked at their food; he looked at the milking machines and the stanchions, then he went home to think about it.


The next day the physicist arrived at the farm and said, "I can help you."
Oh, good, thought the farmer.
"But first," said the physicist, "You've got to have a spherical cow."


That's it. That's the whole joke and please believe Catbird, it is not substantially better as a recitation.  


Catbird must confess, though,  she laughed when she heard it, because it was so arcane and not-funny funny; she was really laughing at the physicist's sense of humor.  Now she sees it is funny because it is also spot on for physicist's home handyman behavior (e.g. he might be able to conceptualize a plan but the practical application--well, not so much).   Catbird has learned this joke is so common that the "spherical cow" is physicist-speak for research which is too constrained by unrealistic parameters to be of applicable value.  (Catbird's words; not my physicist's.)


Ok, enough not-funny funny.


***
Last week Catbird got a phone call from the Women's Imaging Center saying there had been a problem with her mammogram and she needed to return tout de suite for additional imaging and untrasound.  The next morning Catbird found herself bent forward 30 degrees, standing at a cold mammography device, with her right arm extended around the machine, her left arm over her head, her feet turned 90 degrees to the right,  while the technician worked to push enough of Catbird's armpit onto the cold plastic plate to be squished and photographed.  



When the tech said, "Don't breathe," Catbird thought: I couldn't if I wanted to.

 

Okay, sure...Yeah.  This is Catbird.

(Yeah, and this is an accurate picture of how a woman stands for her mammogram, too.  

Sure, honey, you bet.)

Usually Catbird doesn't complain about the mammogram and accepts it as a minor discomfort of modern healthcare.  But this was crazy.  While the breast may fit--however painfully-- between those plastic plates, the armpit--excuse me: the axillary space--does not.  No way;  ain't gonna happen; not no-how.  How the original mammogram turned up an errant lump from the axillary area is beyond Catbird's imagining; trying to recapture that moment unreasonable.  


To distract herself from her own contortions, Catbird thought about the person who invented mammography, which is a helpful tool (though only one of many necessary) to help women identify breast cancer in the early treatable phases. (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_103607.html)  Many women have sworn it was designed by a man who has no idea how brutal it is to women's breasts, though Catbird has not been able to confirm much about the history of mammography.

"Let us put their testicles between two plates and squeeze to look for testicular cancer and see how they like THAT," is a not-uncommon refrain.

And standing there, Catbird thought: there is a point to be made that historically male-dominated medical care has often overlooked special issues of women.  But, mostly, Catbird held her breath and  practiced a very strange medical version of Twister as the technician attempted to flatten Catbird's armpit between two plastic plates.  And then Catbird had an epiphany.   Catbird was the cow, not spherical, but trying to fit into a machine designed for the spherical cow. 

Catbird did not attempt to explain her sudden laughter to the technician.  Catbird wasn't sure if the technician had ever seen Big Bang Theory, or spent long nights in conversation with a physicist.


***
P. S.  Ultrasound and follow-up evaluation with Catbird's doctor showed no problems with Catbird, thank you very much.  Maybe someone spilled pico di gallo on the original image?

Somebody Stole My Pants!

Back in the early days of our marriage, my physicist and I were impressed with a very, very old couple who began showing up at our gym. They often looked a little dazed and it seemed like just getting there was plenty of workout.  Catbird mentioned how she admired their grit to my physicist as we were gathering to leave one day and the staff person nearby gave an "Ah." and sort of shrugged, indicating there was more to the story.  We pressed for details.

"They are so confused, and he's forgotten she was with him and gone home without her more than once."  

Oh.  We felt appropriately sympathetic, both to the forgetful couple and to staff persons who had to deal with their extra needs.  And just as we stood there making our cooing sounds of commiseration, the old man came out of the locker room with his fist in the air, indignant, shouting:

"SOMEbody STOLE my PANTS!"

The staff person rolled his eyes and said, "This happens all the time.  He can't remember which locker he put his street-clothes in."

As the staff person put on his game face and began to coax the old man back into the locker room to help him find his clothes, my physicist and I cracked up.  

Since then, whenever we can't find the car keys, or have forgotten where we parked the car, or any of a thousand other indications we aren't as sharp as we'd like to pretend we are,  we raise our fists in the air and shout: 

"SOMEbody STOLE my PANTS!"

Last week, as Hermine blessed our fair city with a surfeit of rain, my physicist walked down to our neighborhood gym.  We have many barely-functional umbrellas, including one we bought in Italy with a lovely Botticelli print which seems to be constructed of chewing gum and tissue paper.  So when Catbird saw my physicist go out the door with the one and only good umbrella, she was concerned. 

The rains had stopped when my physicist arrived home an hour later, so the brolly wasn't readily apparent.  Anticipating forgetfulness (What is easier to forget than an umbrella once the rain stops?), Catbird asked, "You didn't leave the umbrella at the gym, did you?"  

"Actually," my physicist said, "I left it in the locker room while I worked out, and when I went back to get it, it wasn't there."

Crap.  Our one fully functional umbrella.  "Did you report it missing?"

"Yup.  I talked to them at the front desk but no one had seen it or turned it in."

Catbird said,  
"SOMEbody STOLE my umBRELLa!"
and we had a consoling, if grudging, chuckle.

That evening, after dinner, my physicist took Catbird's hand and said sheepishly, "I have a confession to make."

Pause...
"I found the umbrella.  

It was in my gym bag all along."

Oh, dear:  "SOMEbody STOLE my PANTS! "

Zen and the Art of Sanding

Ways in Which Sanding is a Lot Like Therapy:

1. It is difficult to know where to start.  This keeps a lot of people from starting.
2. Once you start,  you pretty much have to keep going.   This, too, keeps a lot of people from starting.
3. Much of the work is repetitive and tedious, and--not to put too fine a point on it: boring.
4. It is often difficult to see that you are making progress, especially at the beginning.
5. You can lay down plastic, and crank up fans, but no matter how hard you try, the detritus of the work will spill over into other areas.
6. Friends and family members may not understand what the hell you are doing.
7. It can get very ugly for awhile.
8. Some of what comes off may be toxic; it is good to take precautions that you don't breath any of that crap back into your body.  
9. The old stuff you peel off served a purpose, once upon a time; it is okay to salute it as it goes.
10. The more layers of stuff you have to work through, the longer it will take.
11. The older the stuff, the harder to get shed of it.
12. The reclaimed wood/self under all that gunk is really amazing, and is a good motivator to keep going. 
13. You can scream, sing out, talk to yourself  or make guttural piggy noises and it won't matter.  In therapy, it is expected; in sanding no one can hear you scream.
14. You can only work a session for so long before you need a break.
15. Be satisfied in the day's work, no matter how far it seems from your goal.
16. It is better to focus on what you have done and keep working to clean that up, than to look at the work stretched out ahead of you whose surface has yet to be scratched.
17. Alcohol and other mind-altering chemicals do not mix well with either sanding or therapy.
18. Once you get the old stuff off, you will want to put new stuff in its place.
19. Sanding, like therapy, is a process.  
20. Trust the process. 

Ways in which Sanding is NOT Like Therapy:

1. No one will ever, not in a million-jillion years, ask you to journal about sanding.

Dress for Success

Although the taping, prep and clean-up can get tedious, Catbird loves to put color on walls.  She keeps a shirt and pants, well-seasoned from previous paint jobs, clean and stowed in the back of the closet.  So earlier in the summer, when friends were preparing to move into a new house, Catbird was ready with brushes, drop cloth, and funked out shoes.  She loaded her ipod with Selected Shorts and This American Life, ditched her watch and rings, changed into older glasses, and tucked her hair into a splattered gimme cap.

On the way to the site, Catbird stopped at the local Stop and Rob for a large diet soda, and was entertained when the woman from the red Miata stopped her at the check out and asked Catbird if she "did exteriors."  

"No, ma'am," Catbird replied, conjuring her best blue-collar demeanor,  "I only do interior work."

Catbird chuckled about that through several coats of paint.
***

Then earlier this week, Catbird began a project of her own.  Without bothering to bathe or apply make-up, Catbird pulled on bleach-spattered capris and a blouse with holes worn clean through.  She removed the door from her spice rack, and set off to buy supplies to begin painting the utility room.  First stop took to her favorite DIY shop for a consult and to evaluate the door for (duh - duh- DUH)  evil-devil oil-based paint.  

It seems Monday is a busy morning for the paint department; not only was there a bit of a wait, there were also plenty of  opinions as to how Catbird should proceed with the project.  The test for oil was unclear, but all the men standing around waiting for their paint to be mixed agreed that a 75-year-old wall meant at least one or two of those layers were likely to be oil-based.   

While Catbird looked at sanders and considered her options, the crowd around the paint counter thinned.  One fellow who had finished his paint purchase made a point to come back and ask Catbird what she decided to do.   Catbird conceded the trim will need to be sanded AND primed before any new colors can be applied.  Fellow painter commiserated and agreed she had made the right choice.

Then he asked her if she'd like to go Honky-Tonkin' tonight.  "You know: two-steppin'.  Everybody can two-step."

When Catbird politely declined, he ratcheted up his game.  "At my age, it's not fore-play," he joked, "It's seven and eight play." 

Catbird wasn't sure she followed that fully, but she did get the general drift.  She laughed and thanked him for the invitation and, thinking only of her dear sweet physicist, declined once again.

Only 24 hours earlier Catbird had been encouraged to lose 30 pounds (yes that particular amount was named) by someone she loves, so her ego appreciated the invitation for a night out.  It is always nice to be asked.

She wonders, though, if those long lonely single days might have been improved by spending less time at the Clinique counter and more time in baggy jeans looking at strap-on tools.  She might, at least, have supplemented her income doing interiors.