The Two Faces of Lady Luck

At nearly four months since my father's passing, the hold I had put on decisions about his condo has begun to lift. Initially, my uncle, my friends and I did a purge of personal items, but until I could decide, rent, live there (too small at 725 feet, even smaller than my current locale), or sell, I did not want to do anything with larger items. And anyway, I felt a certain level of comfort at going there and feeling as if he will be back any minute.

But I have made a decision now. And that decision requires me to deal with the furniture. A few things I will keep, in whatever of my own space I can find. Other things I wanted to give to charity. Therein lies a part of this tale. Charities want you to donate large items, but you better have an elevator. I wonder if any of the things I had were antiques (they are not) there would be less reluctance. Anyway, I called two charities, St. Vincent de Paul and Out of the Closet, and both, hearing that it was an old, non-elevator building said, "Oh, you'll have to get the stuff downstairs." I am very strong. But not that strong. And somehow it seemed rather beside the point to hire third parties to take furniture downstairs to donate (assuming it wouldn't be stolen before the charity arrived). I called a third, the Salvation Army. They asked me when I wanted the items picked up and I said, "Wait, first, I need to know whether you'll pick the items" and I said what they were "in a building with stairs and no elevator." "Yes", they said. "Yes!" I said to myself. Appointment made for today between the narrow window of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. My friends know I am not a morning person. One of the perks of my job in a manager's position is that I can flex, coming in later and leaving later. Early for me is 9:30. So I decided to sleep over at my father's house last night to assure that I would be there and available, if not awake, when the representatives came. The feeling of his presence was strong. Trying to sleep on the couch (no mattress any longer on his bed), where I had stayed the night before his procedure and the day of and the night until he was rushed to the hospital, I found myself sporadically replaying his sleepless night before and his child-like reluctance to be taken out by the paramedics in his altered fevered state. I was not depressed, just sad, and surprised at just how much time has already passed since these events which remain fresh in my mind. I couldn't sleep. I turned on the airconditioner thinking if I cooled down, that might somehow induce it. I went to the lounger. I went to the floor. As I got up to re-situate myself yet again, I noticed a strong smell of smoke. About two weeks before my father died, a downstairs neighbor had left a pot on the stove and this caused a near catastrophe. I thought maybe it had happened again. But outside, no smell. I sniffed around trying to locate the source of the burn, reminding myself of one of my cats. I had just located the intensifying smell, seeing no flame, behind the refrigerator, when there was a loud and bright pop from the outlet behind the nearly hidden outlet. The refrigerator is big, but when I began to pull it out I could tell it had wheels, that though heavy, I could move it. There was water on the floor and Ihoped that my rubber souled slippers would ground me as I yanked the cord. I pushed the hardware back and retired to the couch having opened the sliding doors to the terrace, deciding to risk intrusion in favor of clean air. 

I don't know when I fell asleep, but I awoke at 8:30, of my own accord. Coffee. AARP Magazine with an article about how doctors don't listen to their patients. Flashback on what happened to dad and my still easily generated anger at his two main "care" givers. Not. About 11 the Salvation Army arrives. I'll have one more thing out of the way. Delightful. Two tall and brawny fellows greeted me a the curb. I had a bad feeling as I watched them watching me go up the outside steps, then the inside steps to the second floor. I did not want to hear it. "It's our policy that we don't take furniture if there's no elevator. Do you have some bags of clothes or something?" But, though it can be my wont, I did not yell. I calmly recounted my initial conversation with the Salvation Army "desk" if that is what one would call it, and noted, with controlled irritation, that I had wasted a half a day. They left the list of items uncollected with a "Sorry ma'am" and they were gone. I went home. I showered. I went to work.

The moral of this admittedly tedious story? Lady Luck gives even as she takes, and what she gave in this case probably was lot more than she took away. She took away my opportunity to have the Salvation Army "take away" my dad's stuff. But she made sure I was in that apartment all last night, a stay I have not repeated since the night I followed the ambulance to Cedars and down dad's final road in life. Had I not been there, I I believe the evidence is to a reasonable certainty (in legal terms) that dad's apartment and perhaps lives would have been lost in that condo building. Had I been able to sleep, one of those lives might have been mine since I had initially closed all the windows and several doors so the air conditioner would keep the room cool. I don't know of course. Lady Luck. Providence. A mustached little angel named Constantine perhaps?

 

Get On Do-wn the-e (Nostalgic) Road

 Yes, that is one of the tunes Lady Supreme sang last night at the Bowl, Get On Down the Road, from a movie I never saw, (I could not take the idea of any form of remake of the Wizard of Oz; resister of change that I am) but a song that was everywhere at the time of the movie and soaked into my psyche. And she wore the very dress pictured and four or five after that one. She carried it off at however close to or over 70 she must be at this point. She looked good, my binoculars can attest.

The last two visits to the Bowl have been a nostalgic travelog. Last week, it was Julie Andrews, with a deep voiced Do-Re-Me  (the loss of range apparently courtesy of a botched surgery some 12 years ago), joined by a soprano and tenor supporting cast, that nonetheless brought me back to the Rivoli Theatre in New York watching her do it on screen. I got to be one of Von Trapp kids last week, 'cause yes, we were all singing along! Who'd a thunk it, certainly not me, that one day I'd be across the country, and connect with part of my American childhood so definitively? I wasn't running in the Vienna streets, but pretty close, running in place at the Hollywood Bowl. La, Te, Da!

And then Ms. Ain't No Mountain High Enough Ross asking "Do You Know Where You're Going To?" in her still full bodied voice, among other musical questions and statements. I know. Don't I know, Ms. Ross, my head nodding, "You Can't Hurry Love!" I just gotta wait. Thanks for reminding me.

I have noticed in my last several concert attendances of the comeback, or never left, acts, from days gone by, that they seem to corral a wide age group, from what appear to be those old enough to be my mother (and that is getting harder :) to those young enough to be my grand (gulp) kids. Len Speaks spied a number of gyrating elders and opined that there would be few aching hips in the morning. More than a few.

I like the variety of the crowd. I like the bridge across the River Generations.

We were higher up in that crowd last night, for it was a sell out, as we could tell from the wildly strewn cars in the overstacked lot. It took a lot longer to get out than usual. But that was ok, the people watching was good. I particularly liked the white and straggly long haired old guy with a soft crushed pork pie like hat and several strings of pearls. Not sure what time period exactly he was harking back to, but can't deny his quiet joy as he strolled toward wherever his car was trapped. Somebody in the arthritis section asked if anyone had "weed".

I love it every week, as I have said, ad nauseum, in this blog. A couple of weeks will be passing before the next foray to the benches in the mountain Bowl. Can't wait. Donna Summer, here we come!

 

 

The Near Occasion of Sin

 

 

I think a great deal about sin. I think a great deal about my sins. Not that I sin any less because I think about it. Nope. Nope. Nope. You know the St. Paul lament, something like, as I promise that I will not sin anymore, I find myself sinning. That's my summary of St. Paul, and far less poetic.

I also go to Confession. Oops. I forget. We call it the Sacrament of Reconciliation now. I am Old School Catholic so I still tend to use the old titles and concepts. Well, actually the concept hasn't changed, the idea that by confessing our sins through the mediator, in the line of St. Peter, to whom the power to bind and loose was given by Christ, and in true contrition, we receive absolution and the Grace to sin no more. But I guess the emphasis is different. Kids used to fear being yelled at by the priest. Adults too for that matter. It had the feeling of "OK, what did you do now?" coming straight from the Lord but that isn't what was intended. That was a human misinterpretation passed down from the Middle Ages maybe and then right into my Church and girls' school in the middle of the Bronx. Really, Confession is the first part only. It's the Reconciliation that makes it worthwhile to humble oneself before God with an admission of frequent frailty. Reconciliation with who? With God, by acknowledging our need for His Help and seeking His Friendship. Yeah, I know, if you're not Catholic you figure that this seems largely unnecessary. You can talk right to God. Anytime. No intermediary necessary. True, and I am not here to proselytize. Just to offer my sense of it. Because, as I said, I think about sin all the time. I guess I also think about restoration of friendship with God all the time and it just seems that the Catholic process, the sacrament, which means a visible sign of God's Presence, really brings home what you are doing, what I am doing. I am laying myself, wide open. This is serious. This you don't do lightly as I might when I am just chatting with God. It requires a real preparation. A real examination, and a real action, to go to a specific place, at a specific time and say, yes, I did this, and I know it was wrong, and I pray for the Grace, Lord, Your Most Amazing Grace, not to do that again. It darkens me. It sullies. It turns my face from You.

Something like that. Today I am thinking about it again, sin, and Reconciliation, because I just went last weekend, to a Church down the block and gave one of my usual litanies. Before I go, I am a little despairing that it makes any difference. But every time, thereafter, I sense a lightness of soul and yes, even possibility that this time I can truly avoid the near occasion of sin to which I so readily succumb the moment I step out my apartment door. Sometimes before I get out of the door, when I think about it. But it is always there, the room, the reconciliation, the Grace, Him. A cleansed feeling within and without. Big stuff.

 

An Absence Still Felt Here

 

 

It has been over three months since my father's death.

The world goes on inexorably after someone dies. We have all heard  this saw of truth. No one is indispensable. We are dust in the wind. Remember man, thou art dust. But, someone we love should be necessary to the world, no matter the mantras we have learned unto cliche. We want it to be otherwise than as it is.

And today, as I sat in the area of the altar, in my role as lector at the Church which my father, a late in life Catholic, attended with me for over five years, I was relieved to see that he had not been replaced here yet, in his small ministry.

When first he came to our little parish (in full communion-he had been a fixture for years as my non-Catholic but well liked father), he was a substitute usher, when Paco or Peter were not around on a Sunday. When Paco died, too young, my father simply eased into the role regularly. I watched him every week come down the aisle with Peter, basket in hand, making a partial, but fairly distinct for a man of his age in his mid 80s, genuflection to begin his walk of collection down the pew line. His confident walk provided evidence of the soundness of his health at a time when so many others of his age depended on canes and walkers. Sometimes he'd forget to go around the side aisles to make his pick up, then realizing, caught up to Peter. I'd smile and he'd ask me later if I noticed his mistake. Of course, from my perch I could see every parishioner, snoozing, or reading or paying spiritually intense attention, so yes, I had to admit to dad that I saw his mistake, while assuring him no one else did. He was very serious about his job as usher. He worried about being there to help Peter, and he rarely, if ever missed a 12:15 in all five years.

And he has been gone for over three months. And I have to say that it has made me somewhat content to see he has not been replaced. Every week they seem to struggle to find someone to join Peter in his stroll down the aisle. Worse, if there is going to be a second collection to find three or four to cover. The women of the congregation seem more responsive to the request du Sunday jour than the men. It has always amazed me, and I wonder if it is a problem at other parishes, how people, in a Church no less, refuse to help. But no regular has filled the place. I may be a little ashamed at the lack of Christian volunteers for this ordinary task, but I am also glad to see that my father has not been so readily replaceable. It makes it easier for me somehow to still imagine him moving down the aisles and carefully stepping up to pour the money into the collection basket and back down again with the second partial genuflection to close out the task. Today it brought tears to think of it. Happy-ish tears. Because he is still there, still somehow performing the role when no one has taken it over officially.

 

 

 

Trying to Capture Something Not Capturable?

Today, a colleague, with whom I hadn't spoken in a long while, called me at work. Her nearly first question was, "How's your father?" There are a fairly substantial number of people among friends and colleagues who knew him, met him, often at social gatherings at which he joined me. He charmed anyone he met, particularly the ladies, for whom he always had an appreciation, right to the very end. Perhaps it was one, perhaps it was the thing that gave him longevity, a passion for the female mind and form.

She hadn't heard and I told her that he died some few months ago. Her question and my response had the effect of making it seem as if he were still here. He couldn't be gone if someone is asking after him. And on the way home, as I passed his favorite restaurant, Chao Krung, on Fairfax, I remembered how much he enjoyed our dishes with a glass of wine brought by one of the pretty waitresses in traditional Thai garb. He'd always compliment them with a smile of approval. What I can't quite capture is that moment of his tasting the wine, I see it, but now, the hand that put the glass to his lips is ash in a container in a wall, but for the moment of seeing it, he is as present as he ever was, still enjoying that moment. Always enjoying that moment. And now, in the present thinking of that moment, I enjoy watching him, more in a way than I did when it happened.

Because it can never happen again it has a preciousness more than in its original playing out. In that moment, he had no sense of not being here. When he trusted the doctors he had no sense of not being here. Just as I have no sense of not being here.

I am trying to express something I can't quite grasp, not for him, not for me. I am not sad. I think it's a searching. I think it's a reaction to watching the movie Frequency, one I really enjoy for the connection of two lives in a way that could never happen in reality. Funny I just realized that I came home and had to watch it after these thoughts about my father, as if somehow there could be some re-connection for us, despite the reality of where things stand now. A kind of mutual, "I know", "I understand" that could never have happened in linear time.

One person's fantasy of quantum mechanics in passing. The multiple paths that can happen, might happen, do happen. And for a moment, Dad and I are at Chao Krung in the present and he is asking for another glass of wine after asking me if I am in a hurry. I am not.     

 

Tags: memory, time, what if

Summertime! and the Living is Easy

The loss of my father has had me considering things that I could heretofore ignore because, among the other things a parent is for a child, she or he is a barrier to mortality. As long as a parent is there, in the wings, assuming of course a reasonably good relationship, the sense of safety, of a tad of immortality persists, however illogical the feeling.

Experiencing the intimations of mortality (rather than the poet's immortality), I have been taking care of various personal business matters. Today involved one such matter, in addition to the dry cleaner, getting gas (ouch!), picking up necessaries at Target.

There was peculiar sense of unreality in my task, generated by talking about myself, after my death, in relationship to others still alive. It oddly wasn't morbid. There was a relief in the process, a release in a way from fear. Whether that will be permanent or not I cannot tell. I was well away from home for my task, and on my way back, I decided to stop at Claire's On the Beach in the Long Beach Museum of Art. I know I have mentioned this cafe eatery along the ocean in at least one or two entries. Like the Hollywood Bowl (and another performance tonight there) it is a favorite place.

I got my table overlooking the bike path and the water's shimmer and the length of sand. Above is Claire's, you would see where I sat if I had a pointer. The picture doesn't do justice. Usually I bring something to read when I am alone, but I noticed that my senses were heightened and I needed rather to listen and look and see and feel rather than to read. The waiters were moving at a relaxed pace. That was fine. I was in no rush. I closed my eyes. Breeze. The smell of sun, sand and water. Music, not usual in my prior trips here, coming from speakers, kind of a Euro Jazz at first, then a traditional but particularly tactile jazz. Voices of the diners. Breakfast was eggs, over medium, bacon, fruit and an English muffin, which I ate with deliberation to extend my stay in a space suspending fear, care,and mortality itself. A man in a peculiar, white large, Cat in the Hat head covering was repeatedly careening down the bike path hill, going down smoothly, and walking up to do it again. The modern art fountain's water tinkling complemened theocean whoosh. I heard the singer's languid, "Summertime. . . .and the living is easy. . ."   Deep cleansing breath. And I return to the world. Until tonight and the caress of the hills at the Bowl. Life is hard, but in between, glorious moments.

July 4th at the Bowl

Music! Food! Baseball! Fireworks!

It was July 4th at the Hollywood Bowl, our first, my friends and I, and with the "Gibby at the Bat" version of "Casey at the Bat" by a pre recorded Vin Scully, we were in Los Angeles' version of heaven.

Larry brought 2 bottles of a lovely grapefruit infused wine. and bite sized Babybells. I brought some goodies and a bottle of Mumm California sparkling. Len Speaks brought the butt comforting seating pads. Anonymous of the Barbara Judith Apartments kvelled over his Patina packaged dinner. The heat of the day abated as the light faded and the mountains became shadows againt the soon to be night sky. Randy Newman reminded us all how much we, transplants all, loved LA.

Tommy LaSorda told an old joke I never heard before, and exhorted us to our patriotism, too often hidden beneath our media induced cynicism.

Yup, I love summer in LA. I particularly love summer at the Hollywood Bowl in LA. Thank you Len Speaks for my seasonal birthday gift. Couldn't be better.

Ladies in Lavender

I was in the supermarket and the moment I saw the DVD, I had to have it. I don't know why exactly. I remember when it was in theatres a couple of years ago, and I had merely a passing interest, which was forgotten until I saw it. I am not given to buying my movies at the supermarket. I don't think it even got great reviews when it was in its original release. Another in that series of movies for which the review is less than sterling, but for me, it becomes a treasure.

 

The story is somewhat implausible. A young man from Poland washes up, with no explanation, onto an English seaside village's rock strewn shore, where two older women, Ursula (Judi Dench) and Janet (Maggie Smith), sisters, reside in a cottage. It is just pre-World War II. Janet once had, and knew, a love, who perished in WWI. Ursula, it appears, is an untouched spinster. She has no past memory. And of a certain age, there is no future hope of the romantic life missed. The young man recuperates in their home. The doctor who provides his care (David Warner) distrusts him--he speaks German, though he learns halting English with the help of his hostesses. Seeking to entertain him in his rehabilitation, they bring in a village violinist. The man is earnest but not good. The young man, Andrea, takes the violin. The sound of his strokes of the strings is sublime. His impromptu performance is heard by a woman, a vacation visitor and al fresco painter, staying in a nearby cottage who shows immediate interest in the young man. She is the sister of a well known conductor. She writes the sisters a note telling them of her relationship to this conductor, and of her thought that Andrea is an extraordinary talent. But Janet hides the note from him, to protect her sister, who has developed an impassioned, though chaste, attachment to the young man, to keep him there, for as much time as is possible. There can be no real life happy ending, the chasm is simply too much and the young man doesn't even know about Ursula's feeling. But Andrea and the visitor meet again at a social gathering, and she asks to paint him with his violin. The doctor's suspicions are enhanced when he sees the young man leave her home. He thinks of conspiracy, not art, or even love. And one cannot blame him, I suppose, given the times. Andrea for his part is angry to find out that the sisters have not told him of the conductor, Daniloff. In his anger he snaps at Ursula. Janet explains her sister's tender state. Andrea finds Ursula on the beach and apologizes in fragmented English. Ursula regrets her elderly foolishness. Andrea is only to be with them for a short while longer. On a last afternoon in the garden Janet cuts Andrea's hair. As they return to the cottage, Ursula picks up a lock of his hair that has fallen to the grass and keeps it. She will never have more than this piece of a young man, a relationship with whom she can only imagine.

Andrea arrives at Ms. Daniloff's cottage and she spirits him, without prior notice, to London to meet her brother. Andrea is loath to leave without a word to the sisters, but there is truly no time, as probably Ms. Daniloff has planned it. The window of opportunity for the young man has opened to the career of a violinist.

The sisters wait for him to return for dinner that evening. He does not come. Worried, they call about and hear that the woman and Andrea took the train to London. Ursula is devastated. She cries against Janet from the depths. She consoles herself by sleeping on the bedspread of the bed on which Andrea recuperated and slept as their lodger.

A package comes from London, some non-specific time thereafter. And a note with it, both from Andrea. He apologizes for the sudden leaving, but explains its purpose and asks them to listen to the radio for a performance, his first as a soloist.

The villagers arrive at the cottage herded in by the housekeeper of Janet and Ursula. The performance begins. We see the faces of the villagers, of Ursula and Janet. We see Andrea doing that for which he is meant with full orchestra behind him.

We see a moment, before or after this concert, when Ursula stands outside near the cliff by her home, letting the lock of hair fly away. And with it, her last dream.

Then we realize that Ursula and Janet have gone to the performance in London. They surprise Andrea at the reception. In moments, he is intercepted to meet someone important. Ursula and Janet leave.

When we see them last, they are, as they were in the beginning of the movie, two maiden sisters walking the rocky beach together, but each alone, Ladies in Lavender.

It might be too personal for me to detail why this movie touched me so. I can say only that once, not so terribly long ago, I ran across someone that made me feel the possibility of love not yet had, of love avoided. I had no illusions about its prospects. It too was chaste, but intense, and as with Ursula, only for me. But for me (I was then in my 40s) there was still time. I was not yet a lady in lavender. I felt that I might finally take emotional flight and take the lessons learned from the not possible and find the possible. But I didn't and I haven't. And the time is passing quickly. I felt for Ursula because I may well be her in quick time, as the years that have passed and are passing remind me. But maybe it isn't all over for me, not yet. I hear a familiar voice in my head, asking me, "So what are you going to do?" Ultimately, it is all up to me, whether I think so or not. I am choosing the road and I am, in large part, responsible for where it has taken me so far, and where it will take me. Much of it has been good. Very good. That which has been less so, well, there is no one to whom to look but myself.