memories – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement

The Life Cycle Of A Flower- Part 1

Flowers have always been a part of my life. It is not that I am a gardener or anything. In fact, I do Mother Nature a favor by not gardening. Still, many of the milestones and memories in my life have a floral undertone.

The first time I remember flowers was when I was four or five years old. I was taking dance lessons. I do not remember anything about those dance lessons except that I wore a leotard and had two distinct kinds of shoes. We played Farmer in the Dell and Hokey Pokey. Why I needed two distinct kinds of shoes for these activities, I don’t know. We had a recital. I am not sure how playing Farmer in the Dell or Hokey Pokey prepared us in any way to perform at a recital, nor can I remember specifically what we did at the recital. The point is that there was a recital. At the conclusion of the performance, little Kathleen Murray, who lived across the street from us, got flowers from her parents. I remember the little bouquet tied up with ribbons and lace. My parents missed the memo about the flowers. I had no flowers. And I was crushed. I am sure I was overtired and overstimulated. I started to howl, which was extremely uncharacteristic of me. I was always an easygoing, amenable child. I rarely asked for anything. I certainly never threw a tantrum. I do not know if I was exactly throwing a flowerless tantrum exactly. I was just very, very devastated and sad that I did not have flowers. I was inconsolable. No one could make me see reason until my Grandpa Goodness (yes, that was his name) said I could come over to his house the next day and pick all the flowers I wanted for a bouquet from his beautiful, lush garden. I initially objected because my bouquet would not have ribbons like Kathleen Murray’s. Grandpa said he would find me some ribbon and I finally calmed down.

The next day, I went to visit Grandpa and he took me around the garden, patiently clipping anything I wanted. We ended up with not one but two bouquets. He wrapped the stems together with aluminum foil. He found some black grosgrain ribbon and tied it around the bouquets. It was not white lace and satin ribbons, but I was fine with what we created. I spent time with Grandpa and had lots of colorful, aromatic blooms. Besides, a full night of sleep undoubtedly improved my mood and temperament. I was much easier to appease after a night’s rest. My grandparents had six grown children, all but one of whom lived in the same general area. When I was born, I came somewhere in the middle of my grandparents’ twenty-two grandchildren. I think the novelty had pretty much worn off by the time I was born. I think grandchildren were a bit of a fungible commodity to my grandparents. For me to get Grandpa to myself for a whole morning was a wonderful treat that I remember nearly 60 years later.

I always felt bad about my behavior over the recital flower fiasco. Yes, I know I was just a small, overtired child and small, overtired children sometimes act out. Still, I was always a sensitive kid. I knew that my reaction was out of control and probably hurtful to my parents. Years and years later, I brought the incident up to my mother to apologize. She blurted out that she had always continued to feel bad about the incident as well. She thought she had scarred me for life by not getting me flowers at my first recital. What actually scarred me for life was my throwing a fit about it. I think the incident scarred my mother for life, too. This was not only my first dance recital; it was my last. Even though I asked if I could go back to dance lessons when we moved to California, my mother refused on the grounds that she thought I was just asking because a friend of mine was taking the lessons. I think she refused because she could not bear the idea of a repeat of the dance recital flower fiasco.

It was not that my parents had anything against flowers. When I turned nine, they gave me a corsage to wear to school on my birthday. They even matched it to the outfit I wore. I loved it that first year. The next year, I went to school with my yellow carnation corsage pinned to my green and yellow jumper. I was beaming. It was my birthday. I had flowers. My family would give me presents and celebrate that evening. Unfortunately, soon after I got to school, the children started to tease me. I do not know how many kids got involved, but it seemed like hundreds were pushing into my personal space chiding me and giving me “birthday” spankings. This crowd did not feel like a bunch of ten-year-olds in a space together. It felt like a monolithic evil force that was capable of much more damage than the sum of its parts. I felt overwhelmed and trapped. I swear that the crush of kids around me actually lifted me off the ground. Between the words and the blows, I panicked and began to sob. My teacher, who was known as a bit of a holy terror, rescued me. She channeled the “holy” part and rushed in like an avenging angel. Scattering hordes of children in her wake, she pulled me into her substantial, cozy bosom. She hugged me and dried my tears.

At recess, I went into the girls’ bathroom. From inside the stall, I heard other girls discussing the birthday spanking incident. They were angry at the teacher for interrupting the fun. One of the girls commented that I should have known what was coming because I thought I was so great wearing flowers to school. I listened to them talk unkindly about me for a few minutes before they left the bathroom. I cried again, then composed myself and went back to class.

That night I told my mother I did not want her to get me flowers anymore. I did not tell her why. I think her feelings were hurt. Mine were, too.

Stay tuned next week for more flower petals from the garden of my life! As I thought about the role flowers have played in my life, I was amazed at how many incidents I recalled. There were too many for one blog post, so I decided to create a part 2!

Have a blooming day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

Smuggling And Other Homemaking Skills… Wayback Wednesday

This is one of my “Wayback Wednesday” articles I discussed in my post of 10/14/20 (Wayback Wednesday – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement.)

I was never domestic. God knows I wanted to be. I tried to be. It was my fantasy of me. Still, when striving to develop certain talents, one must consider the raw materials. I came from a home where the “good china” meant heavy-duty paper plates and cleaning house meant company was coming. Most people have a junk drawer in their homes. We had a whole junk room. It was supposed to be a den or spare bedroom, but nobody ever ventured in there except to dispose of something we could not find a place to put. Every now and then, an overnight guest would come to stay. This spurred a massive campaign to clean out the den. It was not a pretty sight. My mother served Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner. When it came to sewing, hemming a skirt was only about as far as things got. I suspect they only got that far because everyone in my family was below normal height and above normal girth, so clothes were always too long. Occasionally, my mother did attempt to sew a simple outfit for me when I was a child. I thought they were wonderful, but my mother would rarely let me out in public wearing one.

Our somewhat less than Ozzie and Harriet life did not bother any of us. It might have been somewhat chaotic and unorthodox to the uneducated eye, but it was our life and we loved it. Unfortunately, as children always learn, the world does not stop at the door to our homes. My time of revelation came when I was forced to take 7^th grade Homemaking.

Seventh grade Homemaking did not initially appear to be the devil’s work. The curriculum ignited my burgeoning domestic desires. We would learn everything that all twelve-year-old girls need to know- cooking, babysitting, and sewing. I had big plans. I would cook elaborate meals for my family that did not come out of a box. Never mind that I was an incredibly picky eater who drew the line at “chunky” peanut butter. I would learn skills I could use to be a well-qualified babysitter. It did occur tome that every other little seventh grade girl would have the same intensive course of study under her belt, but I was going to be different. I was going to pay attention. As for sewing, I was going to reverse a trauma I suffered in grade school. My school held a mother-daughter fashion show each year. We always attended, but I nursed a secret desire to be in the show. This was not to be because the fashions had to be handmade and nobody in my family would be handmaking anything. Now, things were going to be different. I was going to be able to make a dress myself! Even though I was doubtful that I could still appear in the grade school fashion show, I knew I would feel somehow vindicated.

We started with cooking and I soon learned that something out of a box invariably tasted better than anything I could make. After much practice at home, I finally produced some decent baking powder biscuits. Pillsbury far surpassed me efforts, however. The rest of my attempts were even less successful. The final straw occurred when our teacher insisted we make “golden nugget scrambled eggs.” This was a bizarre concoction of eggs and orange juice scrambled together. Even for someone with a strong stomach who actually LIKED eggs, this was a stretch. As usual, the teacher insisted we eat what we made. I tried to explain that I could not abide eggs, but she was having none of it. She adamantly insisted that I at least taste the finished product. Taking a deep breath, I took a gulp. Unfortunately, the mouth was willing, but the stomach rebelled and up came the golden nugget scrambled eggs. The teacher, who decided that this was an obvious ploy to express my rebellious nature, took a strong dislike to me from that moment on.

I was delighted to see the end of the cooking segment of our Homemaking class. The next unit was babysitting. I was chagrined to learn that most of the babysitting segment consisted of decorating and filling a “babysitting box.” I used wallpaper samples to cover a cardboard box that I filled all kinds of treasures- a sock puppet, picture books, blocks, and other fun things little children might enjoy. Strange though it may sound, the existence of this babysitting box did nothing to improve my earning capacity that I could see. In my older and wiser days, I questioned why my babysitting box did not include band-aids, bactine, and snakebite anti-venom. Still, the babysitting segment of the class was a benign respite in my pre-pubescent hell of 7^th grade Homemaking.

The final straw in my homemaking career was the sewing unit. It was during this unit that I first discovered my difficulty with visual reasoning. Let me digress a moment while I rail about the misunderstandings people have about gender stereotyping. Some people think that when a girl-type person says she isn’t mechanical, she is succumbing to sexism and is just not mechanical because society has determined that mechanical jobs are “men’s work.” Not so. Mechanical things can also be “women’s work.” Take, for example, sewing. Please. Take sewing and throw it in a river. The basic skill necessary to “being mechanical” is good visual reasoning. The mind must be able to get around the concept of what stuff is supposed to look like and how it compares to pictures and what might happen if this piece is shifted from here to there. Laying out pattern pieces on fabric is definitely a mechanical activity. Try as I might, I could not figure out what to do with these diaphanous pieces of tissue to recreate the pictures on the pattern instructions. Heck, forget laying out the pieces of the pattern. I could not get past how to fold the material. People demonstrating and telling me to “do it like this” were of no use to me. I stared miserably as my hands, as if they were somehow divorced from the rest of me and I had no power to manipulate them. It was as if someone were to ask me how to read Shakespeare in Portuguese.

Somehow, I eventually got the cloth folded, the pattern laid out, and the pieces cut for the mandatory gathered skirt with the elastic waist. I suspect there was Divine Intervention. The next challenge was negotiating the actual use of a sewing machine. Four little twelve-year-old girls were assigned to each sewing machine. It strikes me that twelve-year-old girls are not known for their ability to work cooperatively to the mutual good. While twelve-year-old girls tend to run in packs, their loyalty is to the pack, not to any Miss Nobody the teacher tries to incorporate into the pack. The concept that four little girls would each get a chance to operate the sewing machine during a 45-minute class period just was not realistic. If you figure that there was a five-minute timeframe to start the class and a five-minute period to wind down the class, that left 35 minutes to actually sew, or 8.75 minutes per girl. It might have been an opportunity to teach the beauty of teamwork and collaboration, but instead it was an opportunity to teach outright bitchiness. Not being a very assertive child, I did not often get the opportunity to use the machine at all. Also, I do not mean to come across as a conspiracy theorist, but it seems suspicious to me that the bobbin always needed to be threaded when I finagled a turn on the sewing machine.

Day after day passed excruciatingly and unproductively. My skirt remained two fragments of neon green cloth, printed with happy faces that stared up at me accusingly (in was, after all, the ‘70s!) in mute reproach. Every morning, I would tell myself that this was to be the day that I would succeed in sewing the pieces together. Every afternoon, I left school in a deflated and dejected state. As the due date for the project approached, I became more and more morose. I was positive my entire academic career would be ended right there in seventh grade. I could see myself being denied college admission for failing Homemaking. I considered throwing myself on the teacher’s mercy, but I was quite sure that, after the golden nugget scrambled egg incident, she would not be likely to cut me any slack.

At home, I was overcome with what a disappointment I was to my family. I was sure I would be inflicting massive humiliation on my parents. After all, who wants to tell people that your daughter flunked out of school because she could not sew a gathered skirt with an elastic waist? I fussed and worried each night about how I was going to break the shameful news of my imminent failure.

One night, my mother heard me crying in my room. She asked what could possibly be so wrong. In my own dramatic fashion, I blurted out the whole story. Curiously, my mother did not seem to understand the gravity of the situation. She suggested I bring the skirt home and let her help me with it. When I explained we were not allowed to take the project out of the classroom, my brilliant mother came up with another idea. She suggested we go to the store, buy some more of the hideous happy face fabric, and make a whole new skirt. For the first time in weeks, I thought I had a prayer of making it through the seventh grade.

The next night, we bought the new fabric and began work on the skirt. After only a few moments, my mother saw how impossible the situation was. While she was too kind to scream in frustration or hint at her dismay, she was a very bright woman and I have to believe she recognized that the skirt would never be completed if she allowed me to keep working on it. She took over the project. She is a woman of conscience, so felt compelled to explain every step to me. I nodded a lot and gratefully tried to look like I was learning something.

The next hurdle was to decide how to get the skirt into class the next day. As I was not supposed to take the unfinished garment out of the classroom, how was I going to get the finished garment into the classroom? My mother stuffed the skirt into a brown paper bag and told me to just take it to class. The next day, I contemplated how to do this surreptitiously. I ended up wrapping the skirt and my jacket around each other into a ball and furtively separated them when I got to my seat. No one paid any attention. Now, I realize my mother was much wiser than I. She knew no one else would either notice or care. She suspected, quite correctly, that even the teacher would be relieved and grateful that the problem was solved.

Even though I did not learn to sew in seventh grade Homemaking, I learned many other lessons. First, I learned how to smuggle. Secondly, I learned that there are many ways to approach problems and that there is more virtue in succeeding with someone else’s help than failing on your own. Thirdly, I learned that it is okay that there are tasks that some of just are not cut out to do and we rarely rise or fall in life based on the ability to do one thing. Lastly, and most importantly, I learned that my mother loved me very much. I never did learn to learn to sew in the years of my life, but I have never forgotten how much my mother loved me.

So how do you like Wayback Wednesdays? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a wistfully wonderful Wednesday!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Silver Moments

Today marks 25 years since I met Max. This week, we are celebrating a milestone- our silver anniversary. As most people do, we have been through a wide variety of experiences and emotions and relationship wrinkles since we met 25 years ago. While I would not have imagined the life I have now with him at the time I met him, I knew there was something special and fated between us from the first time we met. The past 25 years have been precious. He is one of the greatest gifts and blessings of my life.

Twenty-five years are made up of many, many moments that weave together to create a shared life. There are so many moments that shine like silver in my heart that I cannot possibly relate all of them. In honor of our 25^th anniversary, however, I would like to share 25 “especially special” moments. They are our silver moments.

The night I met Max, I was doing homework assigned by my dating coach. Yes, I was so determined to find a healthy relationship, I actually paid for private dating lessons. My coach suggested that I attend what I lovingly call the “pudgy people’s dance.” A local organization dedicated to chubby chicks and chub-chasing men offered regular dance parties to allow those of us with a few (okay, maybe more than a few) extra pounds to mix and mingle. Now, I was not at the weight class that would interest reality television, but I certainly was (and still am) more to love. For the first time in my life, I was extremely popular that night. When Max first asked me to dance, there was an immediate, organic attraction on every level. I never experienced anything like it. In retrospect, it was like some part of me knew that there was something wonderful and lasting between us. I remember how he looked. I remember what I wore. I remember how his arms and chest felt when he danced with me. I remember how he made me feel.

When Max first came to my home, my dog, Luci, was extremely excited. Truthfully, she was not the most discerning of creatures. She pretty much loved everyone. However, the way Max reacted to her showed me how special he is. Every time he visited, he brought her treats. When we sat snuggled together on the couch, Luci would often jump up and squeeze herself in between us. Max was never annoyed. He laughed. I think he found it charming.

About a month after we met, I asked Max to come over for Christmas Eve dinner. He brought a boy teddy bear and a girl teddy bear. He told me their names were MaxBear and TerriBear. In the years that followed, Max bought me many beautiful gifts. Many were much more expensive than MaxBear and TerriBear, but none are more valuable. They moved with us to Florida and still snuggle up together every day.

Max took me to meet his family a week or so after our first Christmas together. This was significant because his father was struggling through his last days of life. He would lose his battle with cancer just a few days later. Max thanked me for supporting him during this time. I thanked him for doing me the honor of including me in his family circle. He told me that he remembered me saying at one point that it bothered me that my last boyfriend never introduced me to his family, even after several years of dating. He did not want to hurt me in that way.

Max and I went dancing often in the first few years of our relationship. He flew me around the dance floor with skill and passion. Dancing was important to him and he created a partnership with me. People even applauded when we danced together.

Max and I would often snuggle together with the lights off, watching old movies on the second floor of his house. It was always cool, if not cold, in his house. It felt intimate and cozy to share the space- filling it with our warm hearts.

It took Max a long time to decide to cohabitate. He was sure that he would do something to undermine the relationship if we were together all the time. Even once we did agree to move in together, he tested the waters to make sure that it was going to be okay. About two weeks before he was supposed to move in, he got angry over something to do with the tv remote control and threw it across the room. It seemed so transparently a contrived act to see how I would react, I almost laughed. Since then, I believe he has only thrown one other thing across the room- his work cell phone. I was also ready to pitch the darn thing.

Max introduced me to luxury. Neither of us has a lot of money. Both of us have lived through hard financial times. Neither of us are spendthrifts. Max introduced me, however, to the idea of up-spending for the sake of getting something more lush or upscale than necessary. He buys me nice handbags. He buys me blankets made of luxury fabrics. We stay in large, comfortable, upscale lodgings when we travel. He bought me some Chanel #5. All of these are occasional treats. They do not interfere with our financial stability or charitable giving. I do not think I ever would have gone beyond Walmart handbags, cotton throws, value resort rooms, or Bath and Body Works scent except for him.

From the day Max moved in, we were living in a different vibe. It was instant family.

Max indulged me by going to Disney World with me for the first time in 2003. He was a real trouper all throughout our six-day forced march through the humidity across the World. He made several more trips with me. He understood the importance of being close to Disney when deciding where to move in retirement. When asked what his favorite thing about Disney is, he says that he enjoys it, but that his very favorite thing is how happy it makes me.

The night my father had his sudden fatal heart attack, Max stayed on the phone with me throughout my 70-mile drive to go see him before he died.

Max wrote me a love poem once.

Max picks beautiful, sentimental greeting cards for all occasions and he remembers all our milestone dates.

When my Luci went to doggie heaven, Max took care of the process after she slipped away and, when it was all over, spooned next to me on the bed and held me while I cried out my grief.

Max paid storage fees for years while we were living together in California because he did not want me to feel like I had to get rid of anything I wanted to keep just to make room for him. Several times, I suggested we would not need the storage or the amount of storage if I just tossed the things I had not touched for months or years. Every time, Max demurred, insisted he wanted me to be comfortable.

Max was first in line to buy the debut copy of each book I published.

For years, Max lugged boxes upon boxes of Christmas decorations from and to the storage building, up and down two flights of stairs, just because he knew I loved Christmas.

Max constantly tells me I am perfect. I know I am not perfect, but he makes me believe I am perfect for him.

During our first trip to Hawaii together, Max strove to provide a romantic experience for me. The first time I ever went to Hawaii, I went by myself. I remember thinking it was the most beautiful place in the world, the most romantic place in the world, and the loneliest place in the world if one was without a mate. Our real version of the romantic Hawaii experience was not the same as my fantasy, but it was still very romantic. We laughed and relaxed and shed our adult personas. My favorite bracelet is still the Hawaiian heirloom gold bracelet he bought me on that trip to commemorate our romance.

While I was journeying with my mother during the last, broken year of her life, Max made a concerted effort every day, all the time, to say and do the right things to help and support me. He did not find the right thing every time. In fact, there were times when there was no right thing. Most of the time, he did find the right note. It was the fact that he was trying so hard and so consistently that made the moments silver for me.

We converse in movie quotes (“You people don’t deserve a good king like me”), inside jokes (how old are you? I’m free), pet names (Little Bear), and little rituals (playing elf on the shelf, bouncing on beds) as part of our everyday life together. These are things that make sense to only the two of us and they are things that enrich our couplehood.

On one of the rare occasions when Max and I disagreed over a big issue, I was uncomfortable and sad that we were on different pages. When I expressed to him that I felt so awkward and awful about the state of affairs that it was hard for me to even talk about it, he reassured me, saying that disagreement did not discount love and the fact that we disagreed did not mean that he did not love me.

Max regularly cuddles me, rubs my back, and scratches my neck until I purr like a kitten.

Max often looks at me with a warmth and awe that seems to say, “I cannot believe I am lucky enough to see you every day.”

Max and I read devotionals and pray together daily. We worship together in online services and he has started attending my church with me once a month.

There are many, many more moments like these. Even these “moments” really represent more than moments; they constitute whole galaxies of instances that weave together to support our love. These are just some of our silver moments. In fact, they are not just silver moments. They are silver moments trimmed with gold, wrapped up with a platinum ribbon.

Happy Anniversary, my love…

From the luckiest bear in the world!

Wayback Wednesday

One of the benefits of staying at home during the COVID-19 quarantine was that it gave me time to reassess the “stuff” I have acquired over the years. I did a merciless, no-holds-barred purge of my closets and bedroom drawers, throwing out or donating all the clothes that don’t fit, are too worn and threadbare to be respectable, are not suitable for my current life (as evidenced by the fact that I can’t remember the last time I wore them), or make me feel dumpy or like I am trying too hard. This process was traumatic, but I stuffed my feelings along with the rejected garments. I ate some chocolate and plunged ahead. I also trashed some of the souvenirs from my working life. I did not get rid of everything, but I did discard items that no longer sparked joy. I cannot imagine why I ever thought it necessary to move across the country with a list of emergency contact numbers for people I temporarily managed two years before I left the workforce.

As I conducted my shock and awe purge of joyless articles of uselessness, I ran across some writing I did over the years. As some of you know, I always wanted to write, but the business of making a living pretty much dominated my life for 30 plus years. I forgot that I had, in fact, been writing during that 30 years. I tended to write a bit or piece of something and stuff it in a drawer. I am beginning to think that my reason for not pursuing my writing was only partially about time. I think a big part of it was about fear- fear of failure, fear of exposure, fear of myself. I do not have a lot of the material I wrote in my prime, but I do have a few things. These pieces, strangely enough, seem to be remarkably like what I would call “blog posts” today. Most of them were written long before anyone had ever heard of a “blog post.”

As I was reading these relics of the me I used to know, I found myself chuckling. They reminded me of a time in my life when my priorities, self-image, and outlook were different than they are today. I remember the me who suffered way more than her life conditions merited. I remember the me who did not believe in her own worth. I enjoyed knowing her. I enjoyed maturing her into someone more settled, more joyful, and more confident. As I read these older writings, I remember I liked the girl who wrote them. She was kind. She was funny. She had a great sense of life’s absurdities. She was introspective. She was committed to becoming the best person she could be. She had a catchy turn of phrase. She believed in the beauty of the soul.

I realize all those qualities I admire in the girl who wrote the articles I found stuffed into drawers are still me. They are simply better and more polished and more well-integrated now. That makes me happy.

I have now written over 500 words now to give you the backstory for my main reason for today’s blog post. I think I am going to share some of that early me with you over the next few months. Every now and again, I am going to post something I wrote years ago as a “Wayback Wednesday” blog piece. I hope you will enjoy them and that you like the girl who wrote them as much as I have come to like her.

Do you ever come across a picture or letter or some other souvenir of another time in your life? How does it make you feel? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a wayback wonderful day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Mourning Backwards

I thought that grief was supposed to lessen over time. I could swear I missed my mom more this past holiday season than previous Christmases. Despite having an overall holly jolly time, I hit a rough patch the last week or so before Christmas. I felt like I crammed a lot of riotous, rollicking activities into the time between mid-November and mid-December. Once I found myself past the flurry of events, I realized I had cleared a wide, fresh pathway to feeling sad. One day, I got it into my head to go to a mall and the Christmas Tree decoration store my mother and I frequented several times. I would normally never consider going shopping so close to Christmas, but I had a few errands that I thought I could knock out quickly. Of course, I didn’t knock them out quickly. It was a bit of a hard slog made even harder because of my mother’s absence.

I have many happy memories of my mother associated with Christmas. Most people would say that they love Christmas. Why else do songsters keep belting out “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year?” To my mother, though, Christmas was an art form. It wasn’t like she was one of those crazy Christmas light folks on television, but there was something intensely special about the way she threw herself into the season. There are so many holiday moments that she engraved permanently into my brain with love. It makes me so happy that I have these memories. Without a doubt, those memories enrich my experience of Christmas, even since her death. There is also a sadness tied up in those memories that breaks through every year at the holidays.

Every year since I can remember, my mother used to take me Christmas shopping on a special day. She did the same for my brother. Ostensibly, the trip was for each of us to buy a Christmas present for the other sibling. In truth, there was another agenda that I did not perceive until well into my teen years. My mom would take us on these outings to buy a present for our sibling… and so she could see what delighted the kid on the shopping expedition with her. She explained to someone once that she would watch what caught my eye and what I “oohed and awed over” as I wandered the stores looking for a present for my brother. I was never very good at telling anyone what I wanted, so she would watch my reaction to items in the store for ideas about what might enchant me on Christmas morning. She always did great.

My shopping day with my mother continued until the December before her stroke. As she aged and became frailer, we had to adapt what we did and for how long, but we always had a wonderful time. We’d look at Christmas decorations, listen to Christmas music, buy stuff we didn’t need, and revel in being together. This shared annual experience was so much a part of who we were together, I even tried to arrange a special transport to take her to the tiny mall in our town that last December of her life. Unfortunately, before I could get the authorization and organize everything, she started to let go of her hold on her “regular” world and began to head down her journey towards the next life.

My shopping trip right before Christmas this past holiday screamed “mom” at me. It just felt so much like something she should have shared with me, as she had so many other pre-Christmas shopping trips. Suddenly, I missed her with a physical fierce coldness that seemed to simultaneously freeze my respiratory system and melt my digestive system. My knees wobbled alarmingly. For a few moments, my brain seemed to spin around inside my skull and I thought I might faint. I was standing in a depressingly long line at JC Penney’s. I grabbed a shelf on one side of the line and waited for the feeling to pass. The intensity of the pain did pass, but left some emotional havoc in its wake.

Someone once told me that one key to managing depression is to HALT. Don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. I realized that I was all four of these “halts.” I couldn’t do much about being hungry or tired while standing in line, unless I called out for pizza and a sleeping bag. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being lonely for my momma. I could, however, choose to stop feeling angry and frustrated with the massive line at Penney’s. I used the rest of my time standing in line observing the shoppers around me and the clerks at the cash registers. For the most part, the shoppers were pretty disgruntled and the sales clerks were serene and polite. I decided I would try to flip the script. When it was my turn to pay, I made a special effort to be pleasant and grateful.

I transacted my business at Penney’s and moved on to Macy’s. Some weeks ago, I bought a wonderfully warm, fluffy robe at Macy’s. The weather finally cooled off enough by the middle of December for me to wear it to water aerobics class. That is when I discovered that the Macy’s sales associate had neglected to remove the security tag. Macy’s is about 40 miles from my house, so I originally decided to just live with a grey plastic device flopping at the side of my robe. When people started looking at me funny at the pool, clearly wondering if I had embarked on a life of crime, I thought better of that tactic. That was my motivation for going to the mall less than a week before Christmas. I brought the robe to get the Macy’s people to untag me.

When I got to Macy’s, it seemed that people were even nastier than they were at Penney’s. I purposely let several people go ahead of me because they were unhinged and I thought it would be helpful for the sales clerk if she didn’t have to balance her priorities between Miss Christmas Crazy Person 2019 and me, who had been waiting in line ahead of her (to say nothing of the fact that I would not have had to drive 40 miles and stand in line at all if the first sales clerk had removed the tag in the first place.) I smiled at the clerks supportively and even suggested that they take care of another timebomb of a shopper before they waited on me. I found it strangely serene and comforting to engage in these small acts of kindness. I said a little prayer to thank God for His blessing in helping me find this little coping mechanism.

I was pretty proud of myself until I left the mall and realized I was still very hungry and… lonely. I drove to a nearby McDonald’s. McDonald’s was also a holiday tradition in my home. For some unknown and clearly irrational reason, I didn’t like McDonald’s hamburgers as a child. I did, however, love the French fries. On Christmas Eve, my mother would fry hamburgers at home and my father would go to McDonald’s and buy French fries. When I got older (and over my antipathy to McDonald’s hamburgers), it was a special treat during Christmas vacation for my brother and me to ride our bikes to McDonald’s alone and have lunch. So, as weird as it sounds, McDonald’s has a sentimental attraction for me.

At McDonald’s, I found they converted to a customer-driven electronic ordering system. I stared at the huge monitor and began pushing buttons, trying to follow the directions. Something about the electronic ordering system baffled me. I kept getting to a place in the process that thwarted me. I felt more and more defeated as I kept trying. I felt confused and despondent. After trying several times, I surrendered. I still had enough of my wits about me to know that I should not get back in the car and drive without something to eat. I went up and tried to explain my dilemma to the nice young lady at the counter. For some reason, I was also having trouble finding words to explain what was wrong. I kept apologizing. She never skipped a beat or appeared impatient. She was sincerely kind. Ultimately, we completed the ordering process. I took my number and went off to find a table, embarrassed at the fuss I was making. Once I sat down, I even started to cry softly and discreetly. Another employee, who was cleaning up around the lobby, came over to ask if I was okay and if she could do anything for me.

After I ate my lunch and nourished my psyche with some perspective, I thought about how thankful I was for the kindness of the McDonald’s employees. A fast food restaurant is about the last place one would expect workers to rise above the madness and inject a little humanity into the day. Fast food restaurants are loud, crowded, and thrive on doing things quickly and efficiently. These McDonald’s employees were not only efficient using their hands and heads, they went a step further and used their hearts.

I wanted to do something to thank them. They deserved it. Plus, I had been reminded by my experiences at the department stores that it makes me feel better to do something nice for someone else. I went over to the lobby employee, thanked her, and gave her a hug. I also thanked the lady at the counter. They were both over the moon. I also told the manager how grateful I was to both the employees. I told her that being nice is a superpower. People don’t always realize how much difference it can make to just be nice.

When my mother was shrinking through her last year of life, I often found myself being the kind of person I didn’t want to be. I was impatient, snappish, and cranky all too frequently. I felt like I was losing the best parts of me- the gentleness, the peace, the playfulness, the affection. I was ashamed. I blamed myself… and I also blamed the grief. I believed the mourning was destroying the me I had always been.

In the last year or so, I rejoice because I feel some of those shinier sides of me returning. I notice myself behaving as I would have behaved years ago. It makes me so happy. I also notice that, like on my pre-Christmas shopping day, I am finding more tiny ways to nurture happiness in the world.

For me… and maybe for everybody… mourning is not a linear process. There is no forward or backward. There is ebb and flow. There are zigs and zags. There are swirls and spirals. Mourning gains and loses momentum, depending on external circumstances and internal conditions… like hunger, anger, loneliness, and tiredness. The most important thing, though, is that mourning does not have to destroy. Mourning can also create.

I consider the shot of grief that often accompanies my memories of my mother to be the “price of admission” to being able to re-experience the happy times with her. I think it is worth it to have the odd meltdown now and then in order to access the sweet memories. What do you think? Is it worth being sad sometimes over the death of a loved one to also remember the joyful times and connections? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a sweetly memorable day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Memory Superbloom

Last week, I talked about the beauty of the spring superbloom in Southern California this year. During my recent trip back to visit my old homeland, I realized that I forgot how uniquely beautiful the desert can be when the wildflowers carpet the terrain. It was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. However, I also realized it was heart-stoppingly dangerous, as the flowers will soon fade and die and become fuel for the wildfires we so dread in Southern California.

The flowers were not the only thing that bloomed on my trip. Nor were they the only things that can be dangerous. As I prepared for the trip, I subconsciously steeled myself for the impact of a superbloom of memories. The southwest is where I grew up. It is where I lived most of my life. It is where most of my conscious memories were born. My family lived together in New York until I was almost six, but I was so young that most of those memories are lost. The only home where my immediate family formed memories together was California. My schooling was there. My career was there. The crucible of maturity that was my marriage and divorce was there. I raised my fur child there. I met Max there and we built a together life there.

Most of these memories are happy ones. Still, I have learned, over several trips back to California after moving to Florida, that exposure to the site of my memory banks is not necessarily a completely pleasant sensation. I’ve found that sticking my toe in the California memory banks can be a complicated, confusing experience. I’ve enjoyed my time visiting California in the past. It has been wonderful to spend time with my friends and do activities that were part of my entertainment life when I lived there. Still, there has always been this sort of nagging gray haze hanging over me when I was there. I put it down to the idea that everything is so familiar to me that it doesn’t really feel like an adventure or an exotic vacation, but nothing is still familiar enough to me to make it feel like home. It is very disorienting. I don’t let it impede my enjoyment of the trip. I just kind of go with it, but it is a weird feeling.

I was more hesitant about this trip than about other ones, oddly enough. It was not that I didn’t want to go, but I did feel a certain apprehension. This time would be my first trip back after my mother passed away, except for last January when I went back to scatter her ashes. That trip was kind of all about her, even though she wasn’t with us in this life any more. This time, the trip was about Max and me. In my anticipation, though, I was more afraid of the memories than I have ever been.

It might have been because we were going to Laughlin during this trip. Although Max and I used to go to Laughlin now and then when we lived in California, it was more a place that was part of my history with my mother. We made several girls’ trips there. We would pack up the car, head east, and spend a few days just hanging out. We would eat, sit by the pool, go to an occasional show, shop, ride the water taxi on the river, and just bask in some “us” time. My mother enjoyed Laughlin and she enjoyed being with me. I think a lot of the reason she enjoyed our trips to Laughlin so much, though, was a real “mom” reason.

You see, my mom always thought I worked too hard, became too tightly wound, and lived at a pace that was much too rapid. She was probably right, but I’m not sure there was any alternative to any of that while I was still employed. She was wise enough to know that nothing she could say was going to change any of it. She had a sneaky little plan to lure me away from that fast-paced world once a year or so. She would simply suggest a trip to Laughlin. She knew I would agree to take her because I loved her and wanted to make her happy. In her mind, if I took her to Laughlin, I’d be forced to slow down and ease up. Manipulating me into spending two or three days with her by the river, living at the much slower pace required by her age and infirmities, was her strategy for nurturing me. Truth? It worked.

Laughlin reminds me how much I was loved. I was afraid that going back to Laughlin would remind me that the love is gone.

The trip turned out to be great. For the first time, I did not get that sense of disorientation that I’ve had every other time. The gray haze was gone. Nothing felt sinister or wounded. I remembered the happy times with real pleasure. For the first time, I felt like I could be part of the California world and the Florida world without experiencing a psychotic break. Max had a lot to do with that. He is always good to me, but he seemed to be making it his particular mission to take care of me during this trip… to find ways of delighting me and making the time special.

And Laughlin was wonderful. I thought often of my mother. I re-experienced the warmth and joy of our memories together at the river. As I looked out of our hotel window at the river, I could feel her smiling at me. I cried once or twice, but I was so happy. I felt such overwhelming gratitude to have had those times with my mother and to be able to relive them in my mind and heart. I learned there is nothing to fear from my memories of being loved so much. That love is not gone, after all.

Is there a particular place that spurs memories for you of a deceased loved one? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a memorable day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Second Christmas

I woke up this morning with a heart so heavy it felt like it was dangling lethargically somewhere in the vicinity of my left kidney.

Everyone says that the first year after losing a loved one is the hardest. I can certainly understand that. All through the tail end of 2017 and 2018, the “firsts” bombarded me. I experienced my first birthday without my mother. I experienced my first Christmas holiday season without my mother. I experienced my first Mother’s Day without my mother. I experienced August 22, which was my mother’s birthday, for the first time without her. I experienced the first anniversary of her death.

In addition, there were many challenging activities related to her death that I had to plow my way through in that first year. I told friends and relatives of her passing. I arranged for her cremation. I packed up her personal items from the nursing facility. I scattered her ashes. I applied for life insurance proceeds. I closed out her affairs.

Now that I am in the second year of orphanhood, I expected life to get a little easier to bear. For the most part, I think it has. It has been a year filled with a certain harshness that has been hard to overlook. On the other hand, it has been a year of great satisfaction in some ways. I’ll be writing more about that next week.

However, the Christmas season this year has been much harder on my psyche than I thought it would be. At first, the sadness surprised me, but I came to realize it makes perfect sense.

Last Christmas, I expected to miss my mother bitterly. I knew I would feel bereft and broken. In a world where most people love Christmas, my mother was a uniquely committed Yule-a-phile. She never met a Christmas decoration she didn’t like. She purchased truckloads of presents. She gathered her family to her heart like toys in Santa’s sleigh and draped us with holly. She let her wacky side run wild, embracing oddball traditions and creating serendipitous surprises.

People who know me would say that description sounds a lot like me. Trust me, the angel doesn’t fall far from the Christmas tree. I am only a faded carbon copy of my mother and her addiction to all things ho-ho-holiday.

Strangely, I floated through the holiday season last year without unbearable pain. There certainly were times when I was sad, but, for the most part, I managed well. I was easy on myself, anticipated moments of grief, and allowed my Christmas season to be gentler and more peaceful than usual. I cocooned myself in the warmth of that gentleness and enjoyed that kind of Christmas. It wasn’t that I tried to avoid celebrating Christmas because the whole holiday thing reminded me too much of my loss. I just settled into enjoying simplicity and doing whatever felt appealing in the moment.

Last year, my mother’s death was still so fresh. I felt shell shocked. I was processing my grief through a veil of relief that my mother wasn’t suffering anymore and that the job of accompanying her as she died little by little was finally done. I think my psyche was more wrapped up in the close of that painful chapter than in the close of the entire book of my mother’s life. I was so glad to turn the page that I didn’t fully experience the sinister finality of slamming of the book’s cover.

This year, the finality of the loss has had time to resurface in my brain. I am no longer as vague and relieved as I was last year. I just miss my mom being with me and doing the things we used to do. As a result, this holiday season has felt much sadder. And I think that is a good thing.

One of my biggest fears when my mother was ill was that all the difficult times and suffering were overlaying the lifetime of joyful memories I had with my mother. I felt like I was not only losing my mother in death, but that I was losing who she had always been in life because I could no longer fully experience the joyful memories. If you’d like to read more about that fear, you can visit my blog post I Miss My Momma. You can access that post by clicking this link:

I Miss My Momma

I think my sadness in this holiday season has to do with the joyful memories returning to take their rightful place in my mind and heart. You can’t miss what you don’t know, right? I think the fact that I am sad that my mother isn’t here to “do Christmas” with me means that I am remembering and cherishing the times we had when we were together. I’m okay with that. There is nothing that can change the fact that my mother died. There is nothing that can change the fact that most everyone will go through the death of one or more parents in their life. There is nothing that can change the fact that it is sad when we miss the people we love. Since there is nothing we can do to change any of that, I’d much rather be sad sometimes than forgo the joy of remembering and re-experiencing the happy times!

To all of you are experiencing loss this Christmas, may you be blessed with peace, hope, and joy. That is what Christmas really means. In a Christian perspective, it is about the beginning of our redemption by Jesus. In a secular perspective, it is about allowing the warmth and love of this world to fill your heart and comfort you. Please allow my warmth and love for you travel through cyberspace to fill your heart and comfort you.

Terri/Dorry 🙂

I Miss My Momma

My mother was born on August 22, 1931. She was my beautiful, love-illuminating mother for almost 58 years until her death last year. She spent her life loving and laughing and playing and working and bringing joy to everyone who knew her. As many of you know, she spent the last year of her life stumbling around in the rubble of her collapsing brain before she found her way home to our great God.

The time I spent walking with my mother towards the end of her life was the most difficult time of my life. When she died, I was sad to my essence. Every cell in my body mourned her. I was also relieved that she had finally escaped that half-world where everything she knew was disintegrating around her.

When she died, I had to look for a new way to live. Learning how to grow towards my joy after keeping vigil at the edge of her darkness for over a year has been difficult. For the most part, I’ve done pretty well. I think that is largely due to the huge amount of anticipatory grief I processed during my mother’s illness. Still, there is so much I am missing in this world without my mother.

The hardest part of mourning for me has been my fear that I would never remember my happy times with my mother when she was as she was in what I refer to as her “real life.” Yes, my brain could remember those warm, loving, joyful, funny memories. I could even point towards times during her illness that brought me deep peace, love, and happiness. The scary part was that it was only my brain that could remember. My heart couldn’t seem to connect with those times anymore. I could tell those memories to someone else, but it always felt like I was talking about something I read or about someone else’s memories. I couldn’t feel those happy moments anymore. Before my mother’s illness, I could deftly enter my brain’s library and find a richly beautifully shelved memory. I could re-live that moment and actually feel all the same feelings again. After my mom’s stroke, all the happy memories seemed to be cloaked with the heavy, uncomfortable, dark sadness. I couldn’t struggle my way out from under that cloak and refeel the happiness.

The hospice grief counselor assured me that the time would come when I would be able to connect with those jewels of joy again. I was skeptical, but it turns out she was correct. It happened for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I was in my car backing out of the garage. Max was waving good-bye to me. He made some funny, exaggerated motions with his hands and, immediately, I was brought back to a time when I was a teenager. My mother came into my bedroom to wake me. She began singing:

The Lord told Noah to build him an ark-y, ark-y.

He made it of hickory barky, barky… children of the Lord.

So, rise and shine and give God your glory, glory.

Rise and shine and give God your glory, glory.

Rise and shine and give God your glory, glory. Children of the Lord!”

She sang at the top of her lungs and her performance came complete with jazz hands, which is why Max’s motion triggered the memory. I physically felt my mood soar. I began to giggle. I know my whole face beamed.

That wasn’t my last “re-feeling” moment. They are coming back to me spontaneously, like beautiful little surprises. I think my mother is sending them from Heaven.

I was thinking about how much I enjoyed teaching leadership classes when I was working. I remembered the year I won my employer’s highest award for training. I was going to Washington DC to accept the award and participate in a videoconference about teaching techniques. I asked my mother if she wanted to go, even though I knew she probably wasn’t physically up to the trip. She asked if all the other award winners would have guests with them because she “would crawl there on her knees before she would let me be the only one there alone.” She had my back, every day in every way.

I saw something the other day that mentioned how many weekends were left before Christmas and remembered my mother’s intense adoration of all things holiday. I could feel her contagious excitement in the pit of my stomach. I was watching “Countdown to Christmas” on QVC the other day and I kept wanting to text her when I saw something cute.

That’s the thing, though. I am thrilled to find these joy jewels coming back to me. I love being able to relive the emotions. I feel love. I feel pride. I feel fulfillment. I feel silliness. I feel nurtured. I feel mothered. On the other hand, just as suddenly as these waves of warm, joyful, happy feelings crest, they crash down on the reality that there will be no new moments like those to remember.

I am happy that my mother is living a new, joyful, eternal life in Heaven. I am happy that she is waiting there to share it with me when my turn comes. I am also happy that my heart is now receiving glimpses of all the good she lavished on me in our life together. I know she is no longer with me in my world, but she will always be with me in my life.

Yes, these heart memories and the wistfulness that follows them remind me that I have a hole in my heart that will always be empty. Still, I’d rather feel that hole in my heart than not feel my heart at all.

What are some of your favorite memories of a lost loved one? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a joyful day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

The Terri Bear

Many years ago, I started a tradition of giving my mother a present on my birthday. I figured she was the one who did all the work. I just showed up. One of the first of these gifts was a teddy bear dressed in a pink sweater. My name and date of birth were embroidered on the sweater. It was the perfect “It’s A Girl” present for a new mother. The “girl” in question was in her late thirties at the time.

My mom kept that bear safe for many a year. She moved the bear from travel trailer home to mobile home. The bear also made the trip from California to Florida. I think my mom got a kick out of my furry little avatar. She would sometimes play whimsical little tricks on me, featuring the Terri Bear. I’d sometimes find her in unexpected places, accompanied by notes from my mom telling me to have a good day or to remember to eat. Once, when I walked into my mom’s house, she had the bear wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket, snuggled in the corner of an overstuffed chair. When I laughed and pointed at the bear, my mother exclaimed, “well, it was freezing last night- I didn’t want her to get cold!” Heaven forbid.

When my mom moved to the rehab facility after her initial hospitalization, I brought some things from home. I brought her a blanket and some clothes and her wheelchair cushion. I also brought her the Terri Bear. I told her that, when I wasn’t with her, the bear could keep an eye on her and report back. We both enjoyed that idea. The bear was also a good conversation starter for anyone who came into her room.

As my mother transferred around to different medical facilities, we did manage to retain the blanket. Everything else ended up staying at the rehab place. There seemed to be many more important things to worry about than retrieving a bunch of stuff from a place where she would no longer reside. Basically, we were just talking about a bunch of old blouses and slacks. She had plenty of them and I could get her more, if need be. Somehow, the little Terri Bear got lost in the shuffle. It took a couple of months for me to realize it.

Once Terri Bear meandered back onto my mental radar screen, I felt sad that she was gone. I knew that I could probably make phone calls to the rehab facility or go over there and see if someone could look for her. The idea of actually talking to anyone there just seemed overwhelming to me. Actually, it seemed pretty impossible to me. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn’t important enough to force myself to deal with the issue. Every time I thought about the bear, which was often, I felt sad, though. On the other hand, I just couldn’t seem to muster the energy to contact the rehab facility.

Why did it seem so hard for me to resolve the issue? I told myself that I have been spending so much time and energy doing things that are actually required to take care of my mother, the idea of taking on a task that was not absolutely necessary was just masochistic. I told myself that it would likely be an insurmountable chore to convince the rehab staff to search for the bear, especially given the length of time that had passed. I could foresee having to have multiple conversations, meeting with resistance, and finally being told that the rehab facility could not be responsible for items left unclaimed for so long. None of these stories that I told myself felt completely truthful, however.

Despite my arguments with myself, I could not bear to let the bear go. My brother had asked several times during my mother’s illness if there was anything he could do to help from California. My brother has a big heart and wants to do whatever he can, but he is not always able to follow through. He has struggled with that propensity frequently during this difficult journey. The other day when he asked again if there was anything he could do, I thought about the bear and decided to take him up on his offer. I explained that I really wanted the bear, but just couldn’t seem to make myself call the rehab facility or go into the building. I asked him if he could contact them and have them mail Terri Bear to me.

Bless him… he did contact the facility. Somehow, he ended up talking to the owner and she found Terri Bear right away. She wouldn’t agree to mail her to me, but did offer to keep her safe until I could pick her up. That would still entail me having to actually go into their building, but my brother worked with her so that I could simply go to the reception desk and pick up the bear without having to get into conversations and explanations.

Today, I felt a surge of emotional strength when I awoke and decided to try to retrieve my bear. After visiting my mother in the nursing home, I drove to the rehab facility. I sat in the car for a while, marshalling the necessary fortitude to get me inside the door. Finally, I took a deep breath and marched into the entrance. I saw the Terri Bear sitting behind the receptionist and said, “Oh, good…. You have my bear.” After looking at my identification (because of course there would be tons of other people who would want a twenty-something year old teddy bear wearing a sweater emblazoned with “Terri 09-30-59), she gave me the bear and I bolted to the door.

It turned out to be not quite so easy. I must have arrived at the end of a shift. As I walked back out into the parking lot, several different nursing aides who cared for my mother approached me to ask how she was doing and where she was. It was incredibly nice that they remembered my mother and recognized me, but these were still difficult conversations.

When I finally got back into my car, safe from further questions and explanations, I broke into sobs for the first time in a while. I think I finally understood what it was that I dreaded so much about facing the rehab facility again. The rehab facility was the first place where the spotlight shone on the reality of my mother’s condition. It was where both she and I most acutely and painfully mourned the loss of the kind of life she cherished. The rehab facility was also the last place we had hope that she would be able to recover enough physical and mental ability to live a new kind of life she could learn to love. In retrospect, I think the rehab facility was probably the place my mother decided not to try to prolong her life although it took me longer to come to understand that she had made that decision.

I think I’ve stabilized my grief about my mother’s illness. I am more able to handle myself and live life without being debilitated by sadness. My encounter at the rehab today showed me, though, that I still have a reservoir of pain dammed up in an area of my gut. It was suddenly so tangible. I could actually feel that pocket of pain on the right side of my abdomen, just about at my waist. It is kind of like an inflamed appendix that bursts, releasing lethal toxins into the body cavity. That reservoir of pain overflowed because of my encounter at the rehab facility, causing a kind of emotional peritonitis.

I really do appreciate that folks at the rehab facility still remember and think fondly of my mother, even months after she left there. It touched me when they asked about her. It reassured me that the people there did truly care for her while she lived there. On the other hand, the rehab facility does not hold happy associations for me and never will.

Still, I am happy to be reunited with Terri Bear and I am grateful to my brother for easing the way.

It’s your turn now. Do you have anything so wrapped up in emotions and memories that it has become more than just a piece of stuff? Have you ever lost that item? Please tell us about it! Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. in the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a wonderful day!

Terri 🙂

The First Man I Remember

I have many warm memories of my father. Most of them are as vivid and dimensional as if they happened just yesterday.

I remember waiting in line to go on the Matterhorn at Disneyland with my father when I was a little girl. I was the only one who would join him on this first Disney thrill ride. Thinking back, I can almost feel the anticipation and adrenaline building as we got closer and closer to the front of the line. I usually had enough time to get good and scared by the time it was our turn. I always came very close to backing out at the last minute, but I always boarded the ride… and loved it. I knew, if I was with my Daddy, it was going to be okay. The ride was always wild and frenetic and absolutely entrancing to my young self…. partly because it was an experience that was special for just the two of us to share. My father was brave.

I remember my brother and I waiting in the car with my father while my mother visited my dying grandmother in the hospital. It seemed like we were in that parking lot for hours and hours at a time, night after night. I’m not sure what all we did during that time, but I have a very clear memory of my father entertaining us by singing navy drinking singing songs. My father was funny.

I remember visiting the Kern River when I was about nine or ten. I was a little fish as a child and loved being in the water. Little fish can get carried away with the current and survive. Little girls, not so much. I have a picture of my father sitting on a flat rock on the river’s edge. He is holding three lengths of rope. One is attached to me, one is attached to my brother, and one is attached to Baron, our dachshund-ish puppy, as our squirmy little bodies whooshed down the river with the current. It still gives my mother fits that all that stood between her little darlings and certain death were the ropes my father tied around our tummies. Since I lived to tell the tale, it is proof that my father passed basic seamanship. He could tie sound knots and haul small bodies out of the brink. I’m not sure anyone in the navy quite envisioned him using these skills to keep his children and dog from meeting a brutal end crashing against the rocky banks of the Kern River. My father was innovative.

I remember camping out in the backyard in a teepee my father made out of bedsheets he dyed the color of buckskin. He decorated it by having each member of the family make a handprint with a different color paint on the fabric. My father, for some completely unknown reason, just decided he was part Native American sometime in the late 1960s. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this assertion was true, but my father willed it so. I think he felt his interest and passion for Native American culture should have been enough to entitle him to at least some connection. Even if there was no true bloodline connection, he loved his way into the tribe. He and my little brother became extremely active in Indian Guides. My father tooled leather and created war bonnets with feathered trains longer than he was. He did intricate beadwork designs on moccasins. He read everything he could find about Native American history and culture. Long into his retirement, he and my mother rarely took a vacation that did not involve travel to some ancient Native American tribal location. When my brother “aged out” of Indian Guides, my parents actually came very, very close to adopting or fostering another child so my father could continue. When they decided that action might be a little too extreme, my father just continued his exploration of Native American lore, culture, craft, and history on his own…. a sort of independent study version of Indian Guides. My father was passionate.

I remember being honored at an academic awards ceremony in high school. In my time, mothers were usually the ones who attended these kind of things. By the time high school rolled around, it was even rare to glimpse a mother watching the principal award her offspring with yet another certificate indicating “big fish in a small pond” excellence in something or other. In my family, my mother and father both held jobs outside the home by the time I was in high school. My father had more vacation time. My father was the one who always came to school to watch me receive awards. He was always freshly showered and shaved and wearing his “good” clothes. I remember the lime green velour pullover shirt with thin violet and turquoise pinstripes (remember, it was the 70s!) that he wore to “dress up.” I wore that shirt for years after he abandoned it. My father was never a demonstrative man or lavish with praise. In fact, some would say that he was too critical. However, I knew how proud he was and how happy he was with his family, especially on those award ceremony days. I could see the huge smile that came from the very core of his being. It was one of the moments that occurred from time to time that made me certain that my father believed that the best and most important touchpoints about his whole life were his wife and children. It defined him. My father was loving.

I remember moving into the condo I purchased on my own. My father came and stayed with me for about a week when I first moved in. While I was at work during the day, my father painted things and replaced things and fixed things in the condo. When I came home, I could hear him whistling and humming as I came up the stairs. He was busy and active, truly shaping the home where I would live for the next 23 years. At night, we would go out to dinner, talk about things that we had never talked about, laugh together, and watch television. My father was a fixer.

I remember standing by my father’s bed in intensive care as he was dying twenty years ago. He was only 72 years old. He had been fine when my mother went to work in the morning. He was fine when she came home at lunch. He was laying on the floor in pain from a sudden heart attack when she got home in the early evening. At the time, I lived about 70 miles away from my parents. By the time I arrived to say good-bye, he had been unconscious for some time and I don’t know if he knew I was there. My mother said that he was waiting for the priest and for me before he left us. When I got to the hospital, the priest was in his room. I went in and told him I loved him and didn’t want him to go. While I was there, he passed away. My father was gone.

I’ve always said that my father could fix anything. I believe that, had he been conscious enough to open his own chest and wrestle his heart from his body, he could have jerry-rigged some way of keeping it going. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

When my father died, my life changed forever. That was one of the pivotal moments of my life when I could literally see my world transforming as it happened. It was the end of being a child. I was in my thirties. One could certainly argue that I had not really been a child for a long time. I had graduated college, married, supported myself, advanced significantly in a career, gotten divorced, and bought a home on my own. Still, as long as my father was alive, part of me was his little girl. My parents were a safe place to land if things did not go well. They were the safe haven to protect me when being a grown-up got too difficult. Once my father was gone, I not only lost his protection, but I also became the one who had to protect. My mother has always been a strong, capable person. Still, her loss of her life’s partner was even greater than my loss of my father. It was now my role in the parent/child relationship to let her feel her loss, absorb as much of it as I could, and provide her with the safe haven she and my father always provided me.

It has been a lifetime since my father’s lifetime ended. I have continued to grow and change. The way I look at life and death and joy and grief and protection and support continues to evolve. That is as it should be. Still, some part of me still mourns for that last bit of childhood I lost the day my father died. I hope, even in Heaven, Daddy sees a part of me that is still his little girl.

Happy Fathers’ Day to all the fathers out there! This Sunday is a dedicated time for us to thank “the first men we remember” for being our dads. What are your best memories of your father? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can send me an email at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a wonderful day!

Terri 🙂