Michigan Women

Here they are; three generations: Tina, Nikki, Emma. Mother, daughter and granddaughter. Flanked by helpers Ewa and Gina at Nathan’s Place. Their skill and capabilities are amazing. They create the Thanksgiving holiday for their adult foster care residents, an extended family come together in the frailty and desperation of old age. They produce a community out of American traditions. It is the Michigan women’s first Thanksgiving as an adult foster care home.

Wikipedia’s history of Thanksgiving shows how constructed this American holiday is, created out of relief at having survived, having had enough to eat or having escaped being killed, having found dry land, or being able to stop trudging and rest. For Anglos, the Virginia colony and Plymouth plantation; for Spaniards, St. Augustine, Florida, and San Elizario, Texas. They were all just glad to be here and be in one piece and not too hungry. All stories of desperation.

Of course, Thanksgiving isn’t the only holiday of deliverance, of being spared by the Almighty; Passover precedes it by millennia. But in addition to its etiology shared with ancient religions, Thanksgiving has had a special national utility. Witness the Wikipedia-cited proclamations from Washington and the Continental Congress, through Lincoln and the Civil War, FDR and the Depression, to Truman and the turkey pardon. No American president can omit Thanksgiving which enjoins even the most dysfunctional family or nation to practice an hour or so of mealtime civility.

And so here we are, my Mom and I, along with several other adult children and their spouses and elderly parents. We have been desperate too. Trying to find good care for a surviving parent. And now the Michigan women have put together a Thanksgiving meal that rivals most I had growing up or helped prepare myself. My mother (in her younger years critical and demanding) would have been impressed. Food is laid out artfully in the small kitchen, plates and silverware all to hand. Tina serves the residents who cannot fed themselves; a system for everything. One resident has snoozed off, another claps and sings, my Mom periodically calls out with the involuntary cries that result from stroke. Bonnie, the violinist, plays carols and Bach. The most alert resident smiles in enjoyment at the grandchildren who move so effortlessly among in this collection of humanity.

Several weeks later when I was packing Mom’s things after her death, I had to bid Tina a temporary farewell. Her words as I left were, “thank you for trusting us with your Mom.” I thought, thank you for the nicest Thanksgiving of my Mom’s life. My life too.

First in line

Some weeks ago a student in class mentioned to me that his daughter was disappointed about school being cancelled because of snow. Why? That day was her day to be first in line. Cupcakes were involved as well. I can recall grade school life and these “firsts.” The elation of leading everyone else, of being called by name and moving to the front of the line.

Now that my Mom passed away the idea being first in line seems entirely different.

I now realize how close to death my Mom was in the last weeks. Seeing her often, I noted small degrees of decline, but somehow thought she was really as she had been, only diminished. The hospice physician listed coronary heart disease as cause of death. My mother suffered from chronic hypertension, a symptom of cardiovascular disease. Medication helped keep her blood pressure down. After she’d retired, she sold her house in Mill Valley, California, the 1980s. She returned to the city where she grew up, Portland, Oregon, where as Virginia van Hyning she graduated from Washington High in 1934. She moved into an apartment with a panoramic view of the city and the river. Life was good.

Then suddenly she learned that the new owner in California was suing her over damage from cypress trees on the property during a storm. Mom was beside herself; she went to court and during the hearing suffered a stroke. Mom recovered and the case settled, but damage was done. Chronic hypertension remained and became her nemesis. No longer able to live on her own by 1998, she moved to Michigan---and so began ten years of life with Virginia for me and my son Chris.

Calling elderly friends proved difficult. I have to speak loudly into the phone, repeat my phrases. Then the phrases have to be abbreviated. No modifiers, nuances. Details of my Mother’s decline are lost. The conversation is too simplified to satisfy my need to convey to Virginia’s old friends how it was for her. The elderly high school classmate in Portland sounds both philosophic and forlorn. She too is unable to share shades of feeling. It’s unsatisfying.

The days since Mom’s death vary. Small stabs of grief or loss or loneliness unpredictably puncture the last days of the semester. Just get through; I know that Christmas is coming. It seems like a custom from another culture. More importantly, Dennis arrives December 17. The initial disorientation is passed. People remind me that a new life is beginning. I am first in line.

Green tomato relish and an unexpected anniversary: November 14

It is five years this November since Dennis and I met, or more accurately collided, through the efforts of good friends, Jan and Ted. Each of them liked each of us; why not put us together and then there would be four where there had only been two? This idea which I had last encountered as a high school senior now seemed---at late middle age---wise and sophisticated. There might be some hesitancy and humor at the beginning, but the underlying logic would carry the day. There we would be, Dennis and I, compatible together as two with our compatible friends which makes four.

Not so. I was deputized by Jan to pick up Ted and Dennis at the Flint airport; the guys were arriving in late afternoon from Los Angeles, flying in for a long weekend to celebrate Jan’s birthday cum housewarming party. Unlike their grade school counterparts, grown-up birthday parties can be attached to mature events (buying a house). They are still attended, however, by 90 percent friends and 10 percent people your mother made you invite (former spouses, difficult co-workers, people whose party you attended). Useful too for social engineering.

Having driven the men to Jan’s house (which is also Ted’s Flint home), I returned home to change clothes, check on my mother, and then re-appear at the party. By the time I arrived, the birthday revelers were in full swing, warming the house from wall to wall. People sitting on the stairs, smokers banished to the basement, Motown and ZZ Top in the living room, university administrators and deans amid younger faculty dressed in their grad school best. Dennis found me, we talked a bit, and then not knowing anymore what to do than I had in high school, I dived into shop talk with favorite colleagues while Dennis made time with a beautiful woman sitting on the stairs.

The rest of the evening is lost to legend. Dennis needed to buy a bottle of Bushmills as a birthday gift; we left the party to shop, decided to go by my house for him to meet my mother, and finally return to the party. The conclusion of the evening has now merged with a dinner later that weekend and a long talk at The Torch (Flint’s oldest and smokiest hangout). Dennis won me over with his total ease, his humor and funny stories of his family’s past, his courtesy and kindness. We communicated daily on email for the next four months until I arrived with Jan in Los Angeles in February of 2004. A new life had begun; it’s now the only one I know and it’s full of amazing joy. Like Dennis here in our Michigan kitchen. He is making tomato relish out of the last green tomatoes left on the vines before winter of 2008. We should label the bottles “Happy Anniversary.”

Moon over Obama

Election night, Dennis and I sat on the front porch waiting for east coast returns to come in. Dennis had voted absentee; panicked by forecasts of long lines, I had gone down to the City Clerk’s office and voted at 8 am Wednesday, October 29th. Here is the moon over Flint, Michigan, just before 8 pm November 4, 2008.
It’s November 6 now and still warm. Unseasonably balmy weather in the 70s began just before Halloween and continued through Election Day until now. The weather pundits have forecast a return to normal by tomorrow, Friday, and certainly by the weekend. It will drop twenty degrees and we'll return to rain and the general ramp up to winter. For friends in the Flint community the warmth seems to be an additional sign of grace at the close of this election season. My neighborhood election efforts began in August when my neighbors James and Sharon hosted an Obama open house. A slender field worker named Erin, no more than 20 years old, energetically hit her talking points; she had taken a semester off from college in New Hampshire to work for the campaign. We signed in and provided our phone numbers and emails on a list that evening of not more than 10 names. Later, in October, I found my way to the downtown headquarters. A vacant building in defunct Windmill Place, a 1980s center of shops and eateries that had failed by 1990, provided space for “Campaign for Change.” Beneath homemade signs “We are the Change” and oblivious to the dusty cement floor and dirty windows, they worked at laptops and phones, doing data entry late at night. Fed and housed by local Democrats from August to November, they worked in one of the ruins of the local Flint economy. They had answered a call like the one I remember with first with John Kennedy and then with the anti-war movement. Erin must have returned east now; her cell phone number here no longer works. I'll call Sharon to see if there's an address for Erin, some destination for my thanks to her and everyone who gave part of their lives to this campaign.

Going to see my Mother

My Mom is now 90 years old. After a stroke or strokes in May 2008, she can no longer live in assisted living, so she is here out in the country in an adult foster care home. "Assisted living," "adult foster care" ---today's descriptions of ways to live when we are no longer living on our own. In the distant future they may sound as strange as asylum sounds today. There is an Asylum street in Flint which makes me wonder what once was there. So I drive every few days to the countryside. First the highway, then a two-lane road, and finally unpaved county roads; out here people know their bearings by what county they are in. It feels good to make the left turn and feel the oiled and gravel ground beneath the tires. Now in early fall some trees are spotted with red apples, trees and fruit not tended by anyone, remnants of orchards now gone.

In summer the green trees provided shade and breezes came across the green fields. My Mom and I even sat outside on the lawn, she in a wheelchair and anxious, no longer able to enjoy the summer air. That season is over now and I wonder if she will live to see it next year. This week Christopher and Kristin came with me to see Mom. We brought her absentee ballot and she voted in the 2008 presidential election. She opened her eyes and smiled, happy to see her family and to make her mark for their future.

Roses

It's August, so this is the second blooming of the three roses in the back yard. They are small, weaker than in June when they first appear. The smell is still wondrous, that old fashioned smell that is just rose. It's taken several years for the bushes to get strong and I spray their leaves with soapy water to keep bugs off. In winter they are covered with styrofoam cones to survive. Such labor in comparison to southern California where, around Torrance, the roses just bloom in canopies and seemingly without attention.

May in the backyard

Each year after the tulips these poppies arise, tall and brazen, tilting in different directions on their fuzzy stems. A surprise after the compact and organized tulips which even in scattered spots seem under control. The poppies here are redder than the photo shows and a brief web search on poppies reveals how many varieties and colors exist. They get a bad rap from the opium trade but websites suggest that poppies have a devoted following among gardeners. My poppies have come back for nearly ten years now and probably before that when another family lived here. Their many-branched and fuzzy leaves creep into the cracks of concrete wall, ready to expand on the level below. They collapse when cut and do not survive in a vase. After blooming a bulbous pod remains. It is a long wait until next year.

Home since 1997

This corner Cape Cod-style house enabled 3 generations---my mother, myself, and my son--to live together for several years. Basement, ground floor and upstairs provided just barely enough space for us, our border collie mix Snoopy, and briefly Doberman Ajax, to manage elderly, midlife, and teenaged needs. Despite its economic and social woes, Flint has extensive housing stock. In the inner city much is abandoned or gone to the Land Bank or demolished. But in its neighborhoods like Mott Park many houses testify to how much a traditional family home from the early or mid-20th century can help with life changes. Mott Park celebrates 90 years of existence in 2008. The neighborhood was developed to house GM workers who lived in tents in the early days of the auto boom in Flint.