Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Johnson Brothers Dishes

My grandmother turned ninety years old. We gathered to celebrate her birthday and shared stories of family dogs and ballet recitals and vacation cabins and dresses sewn and events attended and meals eaten. On and on and on. Four generations of family together for a weekend. The memories flowed. Even as the weekend went on we wondered aloud what the kids would remember of the weekend and of their great grandmother.

Memory, not what happens, but what we remember happens, fascinates me. I think about it nearly every day.

I took a class called "Philosophy of History" once where we discussed this phenomenon. How can you be completely neutral? Even a camera captures moments and a video is boring unless it is edited.

I think of a friend who lost her boyfriend in a tragic accident this summer. They knew each other a finite amount of time. She remembers the moment they met and she remembers the moment he died. It seems that with a more manageable amount of time you can recreate your time with that person. And yet even then, are you creating your experience of them? Does it matter? Why are you doing it in the first place?

I shared with my friend an idea that I think a character in one of my novels with experiment with. In my book, a mother kills her 8 year old son in a car accident. She creates logs of every day of his life and tries to recall a memory for each of those days. It seems doable and overwhelming at the same time. Of course she can't do it. Some days have many memories and others are blank and some have events with question marks because she doesn't recall the exact date.

In a book I just read, the main character does something similar. He creates a museum filled with the memories of a relationship - cigarette butts and jewelry and cologne and salt shakers and quince graters. He desperately tries to make something important to everyone because it was important to him.

It reminds me of Pioneer Village, which reminds me of my grandmother in so many ways.

She took me there repeatedly as a child. It's close to her house and we would go wander through the exhibits of a compulsive collector. The entire development of the phone, for example - captured in a wall display that you can walk past and see the entire history. Grams would share stories of her own childhood in Omaha in the Depression and we once found the car that she remembered from her childhood with roll down plastic shades to keep out the rain. So I remember what she remembered and told me about. I remembered a story about a childhood birthday party of hers that I got wrong. It was the Omaha Athletic Club, we both remembered that, and she ate a great delicacy that she did not order, but enjoyed a great deal. We agreed about the basics, but not the details. I remembered her story slightly incorrectly. Like a version of the Telephone Game.

History and memory are complicated.

My mother recently took my Fiestaware dishes in exchange for her dishes. She worried that I regretted the decision. I do not. I love the Johnson Brothers stoneware with the familiar blue flower. I know the plates and canisters and bowls. They are my childhood.

The existentialist in me scoffs at the idea that stoneware is important. Maybe it is not important per se, but it is an anchor to memory and feeling. Just ask my daughter who was distraught that I traded the dishes of her childhood for the dishes of my childhood!

I won't get it right, but I will keep trying. And dishes? Mean something. Just ask my Grams. She made me go through the dishes display at Pioneer Village every time we went!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Cat Woman

I swore that I would not be That Kind of Pet owner. Not just not the kind who talks baby talk and refers to myself as "mommy" to my "baby," but not the kind of pet owner who took extreme measures to preserve the life of an animal which has a short life span and is easily replaceable. I don't mean that cavalierly, but in reality, there are millions of unwanted cats and dogs put to sleep every year, so part of my pet health philosophy has been that I will give my pets a happy and healthy life (without letting them sleep with me or lick my plate or get called 'baby') and when their health declines, I will have them put to sleep humanely, and replace them with what would be an unwanted pet so I can repeat the cycle.

And then Jake got diabetes. And Jake isn't really my cat, he's Mary's cat.

I once had a vet (who I stopped seeing after this particular visit) who tried to talk me into getting some procedure done for my ancient shih tzu Maggie. "She can't advocate for herself, so I have to," he said. That really pissed me off. Who loved Maggie more than me? No one. I paid my bill, left his office, and never went back. Maggie lived another seven years without his stupid procedure.

Unlike having a greedy little vet advocate for him, Jake enlisted Mary's help. And hers are not hollow pleas of mercy, hers are research about the cost of insulin and pledges to help with his twice daily insulin shots. She recruited the neighbor, who is our usual cat sitter. Between them they convinced me that they, that we, could and should treat Jake's diabetes with insulin.

He's lost almost six pounds in the last two months. His bony hips sway as he makes his way to the extra water dish we set out. His litter box use is out of control and affecting the other cat's use of the litter box. Jake's meows pitifully as he hangs slackly in Mary's arms as she frets about his weight.

We tried modifying his diet, but he has continued to lose weight. His dandruff, aggravated by the diabetes, became too much for him to handle and Mary groomed him regularly.

So I found myself at the vet's office with Mary and her friend the cat sitter. The cat sitter is essential, because with this decision, we now have a cat who needs medical treatment every twelve hours. So we all learned how to inject insulin into the cat. We practiced with saline. Jake lay mutely on the table as we stuck him over and over. (He is the sweetest and most patient cat I have ever known - another point in his favor. I would not consider sticking Paco the Cat with a needle twice a day.) The practice and information became too much for the cat sitter and she had to go lie down because she felt faint.

"Are you going to be ok doing this when we're out of town?" I asked.

"I will if I have to to help Jake," the little fourteen year old girl said earnestly.

I am surrounded by advocates for this cat and somehow I have convinced myself that twelve hour insulin injections for a cat somehow make sense.

The vet is ok with any decision that I make. She made that clear when she diagnosed him. That's why I trust her and why I continue to take the pets there.

The receptionist referred to me as "Jake's Mommy" when we checked in and I did not correct her. I think that's ok as long as I don't refer to myself as mommy, right? Sigh.

Good grief. There's cat insulin and a syringe in my frig. Who am I if not Cat Woman?

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Gratuity Added

I remember the first time I ever ordered room service. I was pregnant. I was on a business trip with Anna who was three years old. I had hearings that day in North Platte and I brought Anna along with me for the trip. (She was going to a daycare while I went to work.)

So I was in a hotel room with a toddler and hungry and needing to get ready and get her ready. I saw the room service menu, immediately dismissed it, and then returned to the menu again. I stayed in hotels with my parents as a child and always read the room service menu but knew that it was too expensive and not necessary. I made a different decision that morning in North Platte. I picked up the phone, I ordered french toast and eggs, which were absolutely perfect. I remember the wonder of the crispy bacon and perfectly cooked french toast and little bitty syrup pitcher. It was like we were at home in that we did not have to deal with a restaurant first thing in the morning. I could drink my coffee and do my hair. Anna could watch "Arthur" and eat eggs with her fingers.

My love affair with room service began.

It's not like I get it every time, but I try to have room service at least once on a business trip and at least once on a trip with Bill. I have had room service dinners when I am traveling by myself, and I have to say that I think room service is at its best at breakfast. Eggs, toast and bacon. I pay extra for orange juice. I splurge on the large pot of coffee.

We had a weekend to ourselves and got a hotel room in Omaha and went out to eat and played Scrabble in a coffee shop and went to a movie. We also, at my great pleasure, ordered room service breakfast. It was not a break from the snow and ice (Omaha seemed to have it worse than us), but it was a break from our house and the kids and the pets and the stuff you do or feel like you have to do when you are home.

My talisman from this trip is a wee little Tabasco bottle that came on the room service tray as a potential condiment for my eggs. I cooed and put it in my purse. It is sitting next to me on my bedside table at home and reminding me that good things sometimes come in small packages as compliments to overpriced food with automatically added gratutity and service fees.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Happiness is a Warm Pie

On today, the Second Snow Day, we hauled the Christmas tree out of the dining room. I emailed my office and canceled appointments. The kids and I hauled the garbage bags of moldy things from the basement storage space (the mold I discovered when I got the Christmas decorations out) to the alley. We had marching bands, ski jumping and tight rope walking in the living room. (We got a Wii Fit for Christmas. The trash hauling is not yet a balance board activity.).

On tonight, the Second Snow Night, the kids repeatedly checked the LPS website for a Friday cancellation, and my nerves frayed.

I can't tell you what it is about them exactly. They have actually been model children. Kind of helpful. No real fights. Part of it is no doubt my own cabin fever that has no outlet but for Wii Fit Kung Fu (which is actually really fun). But the voices are elevated - the shrieking and chasing and the giggling are making me nuts.

LPS ends its semester in January. Each of the kids has a big project that was due this week. They've been on the phone with their project partners. There has actually been much sighing and concern expressed about how all of this is going to work with all these snow days. More on Anna's mind is that it's the Nebraska Thespian Convention tomorrow. Anna, the child happiest about staying home from school, was anxious for school to stay open Friday so that I could call her in as excused, so she could go to her convention.

The kids know the drill at this point. By 7pm they are poised, waiting for the phone to ring and the automated LPS Voice to tell me that due to weather conditions that school is canceled. The Drama Queen was distraught when The Call came, but there were squeals soon after when she confirmed that yes, the convention will go on, and most importantly, she will get to deliver her monologue in the competition.

The kids piled into bed with me to watch "Mad Men." It's probably not child appropriate, but it's what I wanted/needed to watch on this night before the Third Snow Day, and the kids wanted to hang out with me. "There's no naked people, are there?" Frank asked with concern. "No. No deliberately naked people," I assured him.

The timer went off and I pulled the apple pie from the oven. We ate warm pie snuggled beneath afghans.

Tomorrow is the Third Snow Day.