Basically Betty

I forgot to bring Mom and Daddy's ashes to Europe with me.

I suppose the good news is I remembered all the essentials and all the essentials, especially in light of a one month stay, fit into one checked underweight bag but I almost fell down when I realized I forgot to put the ashes into my carry on.  

More good news would be that I will be back another 3 times next year and then, will probably have John or Jimmy with me so I'll not only have more opportunities in the relatively near future but I'll also have the added emotional enhancement of having someone Mom loved and adored with me to share the experience.

On all trips to Italy, I end up seeing at least one guy who looks just like Daddy and this trip was no exception.  My host here, a tiny feisty Italian beauty, was born and raised in Piacenza and knows not only seemingly every single one of its inhabitants but also every nook and cranny of its many small and winding roads.  I told her I needed to find a walking trail that was away from the city center, hopefully where there were wide open spaces and hopefully pretty scenery and hopefully distances such that I could walk for a good 2 hours without having to triple and quadruple back in order to get the miles.  

There's a river about 1.5 miles away and there's a river trail that's about 2-1/2 miles long, so everyday that I've been in Piacenza I've walked to the river trail, walked an out and back on it, then walked back to my apartment and I think all that adds up to about 8 miles a day of fast walking.  

I've been here for the change in weather, from summer to fall, and the super hot still days of early in my trip have given way to cool mornings and evenings, some fantastically violent storms, a few days of steady rain.  

On the trail two days in a row, when it was cooler and a little drizzly, I saw Daddy.  

About a 70 year old Daddy.

And he was riding a bike.

And he was wearing his denim jacket.

And he even smelled just like I remember.

I saw him coming and was able to fully appreciate his approach and when he pedaled past, I turned to watch him ride away from me, smiling and feeling more strongly connected.

Also this trip, I had dinner with Pete Paisley.

Pete Paisley was my Mom's very favorite "nephew" and not only was Pete just about as outrageous as they come, he was a dear and gentle soul, full of life and love and exhuberance and, not surprisingly, the current Pete Paisley was my neigbor as I lived for the past month in an apartment in a 400 year old palace, still owned by the matriarchal family of record, and inhabited mostly by family members.  Pete, the real Pete, was not only one of Mom and Daddy's most treasured family members he also served Mom and Daddy like a good neighbor, helping with various home remodeling projects and odd jobs around Mom and Daddy's house.  

The stories of these various home remodeling projects and odd jobs are the stuff of legend in our family.  Suffice to say that Mom and her mother, Cora, were difficult, unpredictable and demanding and poor Petie paid the price by moving walls, then putting them back up again only to move them again.  

During dining room round tables, when stories would be told and retold and we'd all laugh until we cried, Mom would blame her mother for all the confusion and now, with both Mom and her mother  dead, in fact, with all of them dead, I'm able to spread the blame equally around among them all .  

So my Pete Paisely is named Carlo and he used to live in my tiny apartment until about a year ago when he moved next door into a very large 2 story flat.  When my hot water, refridgerator and various other necessities didn't work, the palace owner told me to call Carlo for help.

Carlo solved all my problems when I first moved in and when, over 2 weeks later I had a break in my work schedule and had some free nights, I slipped a note under his door asking if he wanted to go to dinner.  I left my email address on the note and that day, I got an email saying that he'd love to go to dinner, any night for would be fine for his schedule but that he was the man and I am the woman and he would need to ask me.  

I told him that it was too late for that, I'd already asked him, but he insisted that we erase time and go back so that it would be his idea.  What IS IT with these Italian men?

So, Carlo who looks exactly like Pete and is exactly the kind of neighbor/helper/friend that Pete was to Mom and Dad, and I went to dinner 2 nights.  

In an email giving me an idea of what to expect for our first night out, he told me not to eat anything all day long, that he was taking me to a place where the quality and quantity of food served is unlike anything he's ever seen in all of Italy.  

Suffice to say that it was an experience like none other for me, the place was packed with young Italians and they were being served the most massive quantities of pasta I've ever seen.  Easily, a pound of pasta on their plates.  And they were eating every last bite.

And the "chef" would routinely come into the dining room and bellow "where the wrestler?" or "where's the skiier?" and the wrestler and the skier would identify themselves, and a brief conversation would ensue which had to do with the wrestler and skier acknowledging that they'd received even more gargantuan portions than the rest of us, and then the "chef" would disappear back into the kitchen to make more kilos of pasta. 

Everyone got tiny glasses of grappa and lemoncello after dinner, nobody spoke English and, all in all, it was just about the most fun night of my trip.  But the food was awful.  There was a ton of it but it was awful.  I only ate a teeny bit, just enough to be polite.

Yesterday, on my last river trail hike, I saw both Mom and Daddy.  They were tiny white butterflies, dancing with each other right out in front of me for about 10 feet, and when I passed them, I turned around and started walking backward so I could watch them for a bit longer, and they'd separated, with the Daddy butterfly waundering off down the slope of the trail toward the river but with the Mom butterfly perching on a weed and flapping her wings at me as if to say "HI BECKY HI HI HI HI!"  

I laughed out loud, turned back around and kept on going.

Because that is, after all, what we all have to do.

I fly home tomorrow, am taking a cab the 90 minutes from Piacenza to Malpensa, the airport outside Milano, I leave at 4 am, my flight's at 7, Lord willing I'll be in Seattle by noon PST.  

It's been a fantastic adventure, a good preview of what it will be like for me to be on the road for 2 months next year when I'll go all the way around the world, but I must admit, I'm ready for the American convenience of living, the comforts I've becomed accustomed to but can easily do without for extended periods, and for the soulful connection to my friends and family in Seattle that are actually still alive.

Life is good, it's for the living and although I see the past in my present, it feels good, it makes me happier than not and I'm glad to feel and believe and trust that Mom and Daddy are dancing together on the soft breezes of fall as it comes to northern Italy.

Ciao bella, I will be in touch again soon.

Love and Prayers from Here to There.

Yes, I'm going to teach.  Yes, I'm going to work every day.  So, when I tell you that I'm going to be in Italy and Switzerland for the next 4-1/2 weeks, I don't want you to think it's going to be ALL play and no work.

I've got a long list of things I've been aching to do for myself - long walks, long runs, hours of stretching, catching up on my reading and writing - and this long trip to Europe will be the perfect time to make great progress in all of that.

It was always Mom and Dad's plan for their ashes to be mixed and spread.  I've already spread some of Daddy's in Italy; in Milan in the grass under a tree on the grounds of the cathedral and in Florence on the stone steps of the church by the Central Market.  I have pictures of that but I don't seem to be in the good graces of the technology Gods right now so I'm unable, after 3 attempts, to upload them into this piece for you.  

Last December around the time of Mom's funeral in St. Pete, I sprinkled some of her ashes in the breaking waves at Pass-a-grille beach, where we went for years, with Mom sitting on a blanket while Joann & I played the day away.  I also sprinkled some of Mom's ashes in the stream at the Chattaway, a restaurant we grew up visiting, where we've known the owners for decades, where Mom was treated like the most important customer they'd ever had and where Mom absolutely loved their grouper sandwich.  It was poetic justice that the night I sprinkled her ashes there, with owner Greg Kitto at my side, they had a Rays logo painted on their roof, it covered the whole thing, you could have seen it from SPACE!  Well, maybe not from space, but you could have seen it from Delta to Miami, that's for sure.

So now I'm off to sprinkle the bulk of the mix of Mom and Dad's ashes, and both of wanted and knew I'd be carting them onboard airplanes and making little ceremonies all around the world, in their honor.  For people who didn't travel often, they're sure getting around now.  

Next year, I go around the world, starting in Australia, then the Seychelles, Greece, Switzerland and ending in Italy before returning to Seattle.  I'll save a little bit of the M\D mix for that trip, too.

I'm not ready to sprinkle all their ashes quite yet.  I'm so comforted by having them here, with me in my Seattle office, where I spend the majority of my time when I'm in the States.  Daddy used to say we should put his ashes in the hub cap of our car so we could hear him clanging and banging as we went through our days.  He wanted to stick around, at least in that way, and I'm happy that he's still with me, at least in that way.

So, internet connectivity is still a huge problem in Italy - they've got us beat in fashion, transportation, design, preservation of heritage, social services, and many other categories like that but they are light years behind us and other first world countries when it comes to internet access.  I hope to post from there but if I don't, I'll be back in the US at the end of September and will put up what I've written while gone.  Thanks for your patience.

Love and Prayers from Here to There.  

Tomorrow I end a 5 day workshop at noon and by 1 pm, I'll be joining John, Jimmy, Heidi and a dear friend and visiting teacher named Kim at Safeco Field where Mom's Rays will play the Mariners in the last of a 3 game visit.  I've checked online for the scores of the past two games and it appears as tho the Rays lost last night and won in extra innings tonight.  We'll be sitting behind home plate with a sign that says "Baseball Betty: The Rays #1 Fan in Heaven."  Watch for us and I'll be back soon to tell you about my next trip. 

I've returned to Seattle from a grueling 2 weeks on the road, have unpacked, put out the administrative fires that spark up while I'm gone and have settled back into my Seattle routine just in time to welcome another group of teachers from around the world who are arriving in a few days for a 5 day workshop with me in my home studio.  

On this past trip, I was in Chattanooga for a week and it was a remarkable time in many ways; the town is simply gorgeous, the people are pure and kind and open, I was graciously housed by the German neighbor of the studio owner who was hosting my workshops and I saw a firefly.  

A single firefly.

Although we only lived in Steubenville for a few years after I was born, that was enough time for two important things to happen in my life.  It was long enough for me to contract histoplasmosis and it was long enough for me to establish a relationship with fireflies.  

I remember chasing them through the air, jumping to the rhythm of their flight as I would catch them in my grasping hands.  I can remember how they felt crawling around in my gently closed hands and I can also remember pulling off their lights and squishing the glowing orb onto my ring finger and pretending I was wearing an illuminated yellow diamond ring.  But that would only last for just a moment or two until the light would go out.

I could never join PETA, of this I'm certain.

There are no fireflies in Florida and when, as a kid, we'd return to Steubenville for vacations, especially long ones over the summer, not only would I fall right back into the firefly frolic as if I'd never left but we'd also try to bring some back on the plane or in the car with us by putting them in jars, holes punched into the lids with some grass thrown in, as if that was the perfect environment to sustain them.  I don't recall that the adults on the trip, Mom or Papa, would mount a particularly forceful argument against this.  I do recall watching the fireflies die in the jar.    

So in Tennessee 2 weeks ago and after seeing absolutely no fireflies anywhere, on the very day that Mom's Steubenville funeral was held I had taught for 11 hours of my 15 hour day and was bone tired as I traipsed around the heavily wooded back side of my host's large home to let myself in the back door.  

As I stepped along the garden path, carrying heavy bags and some left over pizza, I made my way up the back steps by the light of my cell phone and as I put down my bags so I could unlock the door, there it was.

A single firefly.

Hovering at about knee height, silently gliding along the thermals, gorgeous.0

When Daddy died back in 1993 and just a few hours after he passed, a black crow came and sat on the hedge outside Mom's front windows and the thing began cawing and squaking and making a dramatic racket.  Mom and I decided it was Daddy.

I've decided the firefly was Mom.  And it was so good to see her.

She's like a Rolling Stones tour, she's had 3 funerals in 3 different states and I think she's finally put to rest as far as the necessary saying goodbye.  

When I leave in late August for a month of teaching in Europe and the UK, I'll be taking a bunch of her ashes, mixed with Daddy's, and spreading them in northern Italy and in the highlands of Scotland.  Mom and I talked about me doing that, she loved the idea of being everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time, and I can't wait to give her what she wanted.  

Firefly.  Crow.  The wind.  I see my parents everywhere, I feel them always and I love them more than ever.

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

Daddy traveled a ton when he was young.  He played ball all over the pacific northwest, when I first moved out west he used to tell me all the towns he'd been through, many of which I was just then learning about.  He hopped freight trains.  He was adventure personified.

Mom traveled with her folks and Margaret and Sandy on vacations, they went to Niagra Falls and other interesting places they could get to by train.  

While I was in high school and for either Christmas or my birthday, Mom and Dad got me luggage for a gift.  I took it to heart.

I've been on the road a lot since then and I'm on the road now.  Again.

What if the road is your home?  What does that make my actual physical home, the place where all my stuff is, in Seattle.  

I feel more at home in St. Pete than I do anywhere else.  I feel more at home in Oregon than I do in Seattle.  I feel most at home when I'm on the road.  

I take a mini-version of my larger life with me.  Every computer convenience.  I'm perpetually packed so there's not much to throw together in the days before departure.  I'm way more productive while on the road than I am when I'm in Seattle and I just love meeting all these marvelous people who don't live in Seattle.  I love seeing different parts of the world and realizing, all over again, that it's all really the same, but different.  

So, here I am, in Chattanooga, staying in the basement apartment of the neighbor of the studio owner who hired me to teach workshops at her studio this week.  The host family, a lovely family of 4 from Germany, said, sure, she can stay with us.  The mom and kids are in Germany for the summer so other than hearing the occasional early morning footfall of Arndt, I feel alone, safe and quite hidden from anyone who might be looking for me.  

After 6 long hard days of teaching here, I'm off to Charlottesville Virginia where I hope to see Monticello before working 4 hard days of teaching there.  I fly back to Seattle 2 hours after I'm done with my last session and before I know it, I'll be back "home."  

But not for long.  Never for long.

I see an Airstream in my future.  Didn't Margaret Ann & Don have one of those a long time ago?

Love and Prayers from Here to There.

A marathon 12 days of company (I house teachers in town to attend my workshops), a marathon of intense teaching 9 long days straight, a marathon of cleaning up and digging out once the workshop ended, and I must say, I am just about the happiest person on the planet.  

Was it really just in May, just a few short weeks ago, that I was so very sad about Mom being dead?  It seems crazy, like it wasn't me who was feeling that way, like it didn't happen.  But I know that it did and I also know that it might happen again, where I feel sad and lost without her so much that I cry at the mere thought of her.  

But now, with those couple of blue May days seemingly gone from my psyche, I can say that I feel great about everything having to do with Mom and I'm even great about the fact that she's going to be dead forever.

When I was so exhausted I had to fall down, I watched a movie the other night, Starting out in the Evening, and it was fabulous for all sorts of reasons but there was a line in it, spoken by a caring daughter, who said "I can handle him dying, I just can't handle him being dead forever" and when I heard that, I thought "that's it!" That's exactly my problem from May.  

I've never had any problems whatsoever with Mom being taken by cancer.  No problems accepting that the battle was short and horribly one-sided.  No issues at all with her decision not to seek treatment and not to go into hospice care.  No concerns at the time nor since about how she handled the run up to her death.  

But really, when those couple of days in May came crashing down it seemed as though 1) I finally had time to let myself grieve and 2) I felt horribly sad that she'll be gone forever.  

At least for MY ever.  Which, really, if we're honest, is the only forever I know and your forever is the only forever you'll know.  Forever is our forever.   

So, from the lofty perspective of June 29th, I can ask in all seriousness, was that me? And if that May me, that sad, I miss my Mom me, ever returns, I'll be a bit more comforted knowing she'll pass, as all things do, and that when she does she'll leave me happy and strong and on top of my world.

Life is good, life is for the living, and Mom more than anything wanted me to fly.  

Love and Prayers From Here to There. 

Could it really have been the best week of my life?

I flew to Palm Beach on the 4^th to present at an educational conference and as soon as I was finished teaching on Sunday, I was going to pick up a rental car and drive across Alligator Alley to St. Pete to visit friends for a week. 

Best laid plans.

I got to the car rental desk and gave the guy my driver’s license and credit card and he began processing my reservation and then said a short sentence that took a while to sink in.

My driver’s license had expired a week before, on my birthday, and was no longer valid and he said he couldn’t rent me a car.

I said “can you sell me crack?” and he said “yes.”

I said “can you sell me pot?” and he said “yes.”

I said “can you sell me some hash?” and he said “yes.”

I said “can you rent me a car?” and he said “no.”

And with that, I walked out into the 90+ degree heat and made my way back the couple of blocks to the hotel where the bellman was holding my bags.  I had the concierge check direct flights but the next one wasn’t for another 5 hours and cost over $600.  Then I had the concierge check into bus schedules and the next bus to St. Pete was leaving in less than an hour and would cost $62.  There is no business or first class on a bus, it’s all steerage.

I called a couple of St. Pete friends who were expecting me to arrive late that afternoon and told them what was happening.  My girlfriend Corrin kept saying “this is my worst nightmare, I couldn’t survive!” and after about the 20^th time of her saying it I had to crisis manage her by assuring her about 20 times that fortunately, it’s wasn’t happening to her, it was, without a doubt, happening to me! 

A whole bunch of folks who I know and love were at the conference and several had rental cars and a sense of adventure so it was easy to get a ride to the bus station.  Two wrong turns and a tour of the ghetto later, they dropped me at the bus station with 8 minutes to spare until my scheduled departure. 

I ran to the ticket office yelling at anyone who would listen that I would dearly appreciate it if they would make sure the 1:15 didn’t leave without me. 

Scenes of The 3:10 to Yuma filled my head.

I got my ticket, I checked my bags, I got on the bus, there were passengers filling about half the seats and there was passenger luggage filling the other half of the seats.  There wasn’t a truly empty seat until the back row ­just across the aisle from the rest room.  Without hesitation I asked the gentleman sitting in the window seat if the empty aisle seat was taken and he didn’t hesitate to say that it wasn’t. 

I sat down.

And as soon as I did, from 4 rows up Central Casting sent in a hoochie mamma complete with a bobbing head, bruises all over her shoulders and arms and glazed over eyes and she said to my seat mate “where Old School gonna sit, huh?”

I said “who’s Old School? Is this seat taken?” and my seatmate quickly and calmly assured me that my seat did not belong to Old School and that I should stay put. 

The white guy across the aisle woke from his heroin nod, leered in my direction and said “you should come sit with me” but my seatmate said “she’s staying here.” 

And I did.

From 2 rows up an Amy Winehouse impersonator turned in her seat, looked at me and said “Ole School” and sucked her teeth.

The white heroin guy was looking more attractive to me with every passing second.

My seatmate noticed some tattoos on my arm and began showing me his, which he’d gotten in prison. 

So, to recap, I was sitting in the back row of a Greyhound bus in Old School’s seat, my seatmate was an ex-con, the stench of the toilet a mere 2 feet away was enough to choke a pig, the floor of the bus was covered with a sticky liquid, there were peanut shells, food containers and all manner of other trash all over the place. 

Did I mention it’s a 10 hour ride to St. Pete?  250 miles.  Ten hours.   

Leave the Driving to Us & Welcome Aboard!

And then came Old School.

An old white guy who smelled 5 days dead came weaving, squinting and grasping seat backs and shoulders of strangers as he shuffled down the aisle.  He was just coherent enough to realize that his former seat was no longer available and there ensued an extended period of confusion that I began to think might kill him. 

No such luck.

My seatmate, a soulful armed robber with the names of several old girlfriends scratched out, permanently, on his forearms, turned out to be a gentleman after all.

He handled Old School beautifully.  He talked him into a seat by the Amy Winehouse impersonator and other than a few trips into the rest room (no toilet, just a hole in the floor, no sink, no garbage can – am I in Mumbai?)  where it sounded like Old School might be coughing up what was left of his lungs, the trip turned into a lesson in meditation.

I’m only half joking when I say that I have complete confidence that should I be taken hostage and tortured.  I feel I can do anything, take anything, survive and thrive anything.  True dat.

After a 30 minute dinner break in Punta Gorda during which the driver  - a yellow toothed 60-something tiny man but with an authoritarian streak a mile wide, “NO DRINKING ON THE BUS, NO DRUGS ON THE BUS, IF YOU DRINK OR USE DRUGS ON MY BUS I WILL PUT YOU OUT WITHOUT APPEAL AND I WILL LEAVE YOU ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD” – asked me out, we straddled the lane lines over the Sunshine Skyway (my favorite way to cross it) and truly, before I knew what had hit me, we pulled into the station on 9^th Street in St. Pete where my dear old friend Leslie was waiting for me.

I’m allergic to mosquitoes and every single bite turns into a red festered welt the size of a oreo and much of my anticipation whenever I come to Florida is spent planning my mosquito strategy.  This time, as hell fire was burning all around me, at least I was ready for the skeetas. 

I sprayed all exposed flesh with Deep Woods Off before getting off the bus but somehow, in the 3 minutes it took for me to claim my luggage and load it into Leslie’s car, approximately 1400 mosquitoes had chewed through my pants and bitten my butt. 

Did I mention I was sick? 

I’d gotten a lung infection up in Canada in late May, was on my second round of antibiotics for it, had minor surgery to get that benign breast lump removed 6 days before leaving on the trip and when I got to the conference I got a bad cold with a lot of snot and a super sore throat.

The bus ride helped put things into perspective.

Corinn, the lifesaving rule breaker that she is, rented a car for me in her name for the week so I could have transportation.  She wanted me to borrow her Escalade but I’m petrified to drive such a big rig – I’m certain I’d hit something so she rented me a sporty little Mazda.  A friend will go with you to a movie but a true friend will rent a car and let you drive it with an expired license. 

While in St. Pete I saw my oldest, dearest friends.  Corinn, in addition to saving my life by getting me a car, also had her massage/facial girl work me over for 3 hours one afternoon, I eventually felt well enough to walk my favorite 7 mile stretch of Pass-a-Grille beach, the love of my life since first grade, Larry Sacco, took me out on his boat for a personal canal and seawall tour of all our old haunts, fishing and party spots.  A total bonus was that my friends Joe and Marina were in town – they also live in Barcelona – and I got to see them both, their beautiful boys and get all caught up on their jet set lives.  I went to Rays games every night from Tuesday through Saturday. 

That was the best part.

And I promise it’s not just me who thinks this but Baseball Betty is alive and kicking in the Trop.  I’ve never felt so close to Mom as I did watching her Rays.  One night with Leslie, her husband and son, we got to our seats – and you will not believe this – and who was sitting next to me but Gray Dunlap, another of our neighborhood friends who Leslie and I went all through school with from first grade on.  What, I ask you, are the odds of that?  Priceless.

Unlike my last trip to St. Pete, I did not put on 10 pounds.

Cheesy grits at the Sea Horse.  Chicken Valencia at Peppin.  Wings – tons of Wings – at Ferg’s.  24 ounce beers bought in the aisles from another classmate Desmond Ballard.  It’s like I never left.

As Larry was taking us hydroplaning across the bay back to his gorgeous house after our boat tour, I turned to him and said that I thought it had been the best week of my life.  He told me he thought it was because so much of it was unplanned, just spontaneously unfolding.  Larry’s almost always right.

Another super fun and healing time for me was the day Leslie, her daughter Casey and her mom Marcia and I all went to the Body Worlds anatomy exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry in Tampa.  Marcia is Mom’s age and we grew up just down the street from Leslie’s family – they’ve known me since I was 4 and it was the absolute best feeling being with 3 generations of a family that I have known and loved all my life.  For those of you who are close to your own families, you get to do that all the time.  It was nice for me to be in the middle of it and even though it was only for a short while, I’ll never forget it.

It was great.

And I checked with my friends about what they think about my crying spells those couple of days in May over Mom and they all said it’s fine, it’s expected, they’re not worried about me and they are all surprised I’m doing as well as I am because of how much work I had booked when Mom died and I’ve not had hardly any down time.  That felt good to hear because I have virtually no experience with feeling anything other than fabulous and I was worried about feeling so sad. 

Anyway, in spite of the bus ride, bites so big and bad that they’re leaving scars and being sick, it really was the best week of my life.  Mom would be so happy for me and she would have absolutely loved the adventure of the bus ride.  So did I.

I’m heading into a 2 week workshop in my Seattle studio so I won’t be able to post again until the end of June.  Thanks for being patient.

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

May 10th?  Really?  It's been since May 10th since I posted to Mom's blog?

That doesn't seem possible and yet, the computer date stamp doesn't lie.

Of the ensuing days, here's what I recall.

8 days, I went to Vancouver, British Columbia to take a 6 day workshop which was exhausting, body-wise, and put me so far behind in work that it's now for certain, I'll never catch up. This, I've accepted.  For the thousandth time.

12 days, I've puttered, muttered, putzed and plodded through all manner of seemingless endless administrative tasks and interacting with teachers in Australia, Switzerland, Scotland, Italy and England.  

4 days, but not all in  row, I couldn't stop crying.

2 days, taught at a big human resources/compensation convention.

1 day, I had surgery - a breast lump removed - benign, as we knew it would be but too dense to tell from images so out it must come.  I had an allergic reaction to the disinfectant they use to spray you down with, 4 times in the 2 days prior to the procedure, and have lost an additional

2 days to being red, itchy, blotchy, scratchy & welty.  I feel so pretty!

1 day, nursery trip to buy the plant material to set up my garden.  This is terribly late for Seattle gardening season and it's already half over but there simply was no time before this so, I'm finally green with spots of bright color and enjoying the task of watering.  

And however many "lost days" are in there, between May 10th and June 2nd, apparently I cannot account for.  

And about the crying days, they are most definitely Mom-based.  My grieving seems to come in waves, I can usually spot them on the horizon and I just let them wash over me, crashing me down and my plan has been to simply stay afloat and ride it out.  That's worked so far.  

John said the other night when he was over to cook dinner for he, Jimmy and I, that he thinks I should give it a year and if I'm still having crashing episodes of grief, at that point I should seek some help in getting me the rest of the way through the setting up of my life, my self, my psyche as it must be without Mom on the planet. 

When John was helping me with the garden, one of my strawberry pots has a sculpture of a woman's head in it, as a decoration.  It's not just any head, it's the head of Frank Lloyd Wright's Garden Sprite sculpture.  I bought about 20 heads from my favorite recycled garden junk store, they'd gotten a huge shipment of them in from Japan after the Kobe earthquake a million years ago, and I loved the heads.  All slightly different but all with the same vacant stare.  I like the serenity of them, espcially in light of having survived, albeit just the heads, that huge quake.  I had heads everywhere.  

I used to think that, as I lose my own mind as I often do, I'd have extras! 

I began giving them as gifts and apparently, I've given all of them away except for one, the one that remains in the top of one of my strawberry pots.  

Jimmy has about 5 heads.  John has 2.  I have 1.  

And when John helped me bring the "head" strawberry pot up the 4 flights of stairs to my rooftop garden, the face on the head crumbled and I thought, I know just how she feels.  

That was one of the 4 days of uncontrollable crying.  

John said, as he tried to put the pieces of her crumbling concrete face back together, that it didn't symbolize anything other than the 2 weeks of sub-freezing temperatures we had here in Seattle last December.  That occurred while I was in St. Pete for Mom's funeral and Christmas.  

Anyway, my remaining Garden Sprite is crumbling and I've certainly had days where I felt like I'm crumbling.

I called my dear friend Neil DeGroot, he knows me really well and has known my whole family since I was a kid, and I talked to him about how he's handled the death of his mother.  He said that most of my life, I've been extremely happy and that there's a law of averages in this world and that they're kicking in and he thinks I just might be unhappy for the rest of my life to offset how happy I've been in the past but that if I end up at 51% happy, my life will have been happy.  

This did not make me feel better!

I'm shooting for more than 51%.  

I'm shooting for 100% happy and will settle for whatever I get.   

1 day, I turned 52.  That was a good day.

Mom would absolutely hate it that I have bad Mom days.  She told me in September, and this is a direct quote, verbatim, "Becky, I can take this, you should be able to take this, buck up, stay busy and don't be sad."

I'm beginning to think that my Mom was always right.

I leave Thursday for a teaching gig in Palm Beach then I'm heading to St. Pete for a Rays homestand, returning to Seattle on June 14th.  I host a workshop in my Seattle studio from June 18th - 27th.  I hope to post while in St. Pete but once I'm back in Seattle, it will be until late June before I'm back at Basically Betty.  

If you wonder what I'm doing besides keeping up with Mom's blog, hour by hour, day by day, follow me on Twitter.  Big surprise, look for me as rebeccaleone.  Sneaky!

Missing her, thinking of you, getting through the days.

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

Here's hoping all Mothers everywhere have a beautiful, family-filled Mother's Day.  

In honor of my Mom, I'll be going with Jimmy to the Sounders game (Seattle's professional soccer team) at noon and that will be an extra treat because it's sunny today.  We're walking and it's about 4.5 miles one way.  I especially love days when I can get it over 8 miles of hiking and never leave the city.  

After the game, Jimmy and I will watch the Red Sox Rays game at his apartment.  

Thoughts of Mom fill my head, comfort my heart and make me smile.  Happy Mother's Day Mom! 

From April 20th through the 24th, a whole bunch of fabulous teachers from all over the world came to work with me in my Seattle studio and on Wednesday of that week, I took them all into the cadaver lab at a local medical school so they could see and feel the muscles and bones that we work with in our teaching of Pilates. 

I took the course about 4 years ago and absolutely loved it, it has been the single most influential aspect of my education and although contracting with the school was a time consuming hurculean effort, I was delighted to make a cadaver study available to other teachers like me; non-medical, non-scientific, non-everything.  We are lucky in the Seattle area to have a naturopathic school that believes if you have a body, you should be able to study a body.

And with the enormous success of Body Worlds and Bodies, the traveling anatomy shows that have been to a city near you, or are soon to come to one, it's easy to see that most folks are curious about what's inside.

Mom was never curious about what's inside.

She not only was repulsed by the natural workings of our bodies, she tried valiantly to remain ignorant of all such things.  This was one of the most adorable things about her.  She had a gag reflex that would fire if someone in the next country threw up.  Yet, I can remember puking my guts out and her standing behind me, holding my tummy with one hand and with the other, keeping my hair out of my face.  I guess with your own kids, everything's different. 

When I told Mom I took the cadaver class those several years ago, she thought I was nuts.  Which I am, but that's beside the point.

So with Mom's fatal illness being liver and gall bladder cancer, I went into the lab this time with a personal agenda to see as many livers and gall bladders as possible.  We saw 5 of each.

When I did the class the first time, I was especially fascinated by a set of lungs filled with cancer, they'd  caused the death of the gentleman on the table and he was right around the same age Daddy was when he died of lung cancer and it helped me tremendously to be able to see and feel what a cancerous tumor in the lungs is like.  Daddy was full of those; this helped me understand that much more what it must have been like for him to have that illness.

Did you know that the liver is the largest organ in the body if you don't count the skin which we should but hardly anybody does.

Those livers are huge and they weigh a ton!  

In a healthy liver, the edges are crisp.  In a diseased liver (cancer, cirrhosis, etc.) the edges round and become blobby.  I'm pretty sure "blobby" is not a medical term; it should be but it's not.

So after just 6 hours in the lab fronting my own issues at every opportunity, I'm struck by just how heroic Mom was as her metabolic organs were slowly shutting down.  Poogee with her trusty assistant Bill took care of Mom, all by themselves, for the last 10 days of Mom's life and as Mom's pain ramped up, they did a great job of controlling it.  

As you may recall, Mom ended up on morphine every 30 minutes for the last couple of days of her life.  

If you ever get a chance to see inside and to learn a little bit, first person, about what the liver and gall bladder do for us, I hope you'll agree that it's a miracle Mom wasn't in more pain.  I credit not only her stubborn will but also the loving care she was gifted for decades by my sister and her family.

And that definitely does not include me.  I moved away over 30 years ago, have never looked back and have phoned in my life as the primary means of sharing.  Now, I don't even call anymore.  I use this blog.  Which is good enough, at least for me and for Pooge.  

So the message, if there is one - is there? perhaps not! - is to take care of your liver, eat as if you yourself had to pick apart your food and make sense of it, move like you did when you were young so your systems can remain invigorated, you can get back a tremendous amount of what you've lost in terms of health, vitality and vigor.  If there's more of you, much more of you, than there used to be, get busy and change right this very instant.  Leave a few spoonfulls of ice cream in the dish (or if you're me & my family, in the carton!) - little changes matter most.  Big changes are a lie, a set up, a trick.  

When you have bloodwork next time, ask your doctor to run a liver panel just to find out more about how it's going in there.  Ridding the body of toxins is a hell of a job - give your liver a fighting chance!  

You can do anything you want, you can be anything you want, you can change anything you want.  All you need is desire, determination, dedication and of course, the most important thing, to make the decision to do it.  

I believe if Mom could live her life over, she would have eaten a healthier diet and she would have moved more.  She's lost her chance to be a better steward of her health but we're still here andwe have everything to say about such things.  Choose well, dear readers.  It's a sobering thought but the reality is, everything really does matter and it matters a lot.

Love and Prayers From Here to There

After about 10 days of relatively frantic preparation, living through and recovering from a 5 day workshop I hosted at my Seattle studio, all the visiting teachers are gone, I'm halfway through the mountains of laundry my 3 houseguests generated, my fridge is empty and I seem to be rather sluggish.  I'm tired.  Or at least I was until I took a nap which was surprisingly soon after having wakened this morning.  I guess some days I need to sleep in successive shifts.

The magnolias are in bloom in Seattle.  The apple and cherry trees, too.  Daffodils have come and gone and we're still heavy into tulips.  The city looks so gorgeous with so much color.  I think we appreciate it more than folks who live in places with a more balanced climate.  After such long dark and dreary winters, the color of spring blossoms seems almost like neon, almost unreal.  

The windows are open all night now, we have in fact survived another winter and although John's still snow skiing, it's supposed to be a beautiful spring down here at sea level.  

My own garden, such as it is, is coming to life and I'm especially excited about having two quite opposite climates in which to work, both on my tiny postage stamp piece of land.  

The kitchen garden is shady, really small but with a steep slope, sort of private and intimate.  I'm not sure I have enough sunlight there to grow herbs but I imagine myself harvesting basil, then dashing into the kitchen mere steps away to mix up some pesto.  There's room for a table for one and a super small umbrella.  

The roof top garden is much bigger, it sits on top of the master bedroom and the thing really heats up even though you would think that Seattle wouldn't be able to muster a true, southern-style bake.  No trees provide shade or a wind break and the deck material is a rolled on membrane that doesn't feel hot under your bare feet but sure does provide a sort of warming-tray effect.  I've got a teak bench and table, a fancy chaise, a fabulous French metal Deauville chair and a 10 foot offset umbrella, brand name Southern Butterfly.  So far, that's all I've got going on the roof.  

As budget provides, I'll get one of those propane heaters so I can be out there a few of the non-summer months of the year. 

Mom didn't really garden in any formal, daily up keep, weekly weeding type of way.  I think the best attempt she ever mounted was when she lived at Five Towns and had that perfectly-sized screened in back porch.  We'd made her planters for either her birthday or Mother's Day and filled them up with something pretty with a long bloom cycle.  She also was a genius at pothos, the plant that is irresistably attractive to all gardening under-achievers.  

Mom loved Ivy and for as long as I can remember, she had a couple little 4 or 6 inch pots of it stashed around the house.  Varigated, solid, small leafed and big.  She was a big fan of Ivy and they always did really well for her.  

When Mom moved to North Carolina, she was amazed at the difference in color, the different flowers and shrubs that she was seeing there that hadn't been in Florida.  She had an appreciation for these types of characteristics unique to a place and because she hardly went anywhere, everything about someplace new seemed to hold an exaggerated significance.  Mom was downright thrilled by the simple visit of a bird to the feeder right outside her door.  

I think it's good to be moved by the simple.  Wonder abounds but hardly anybody takes the time to notice.  Mom did, though.  I loved that about her.

I wonder what Pooge has done with the ones Mom had up until she died.  I have some chicks and hens from my friend Kristin's garden.  We search for connections and find them in all sorts of ways.

I don't know how I came by my interest in gardening and, believe me, Jimmy and Heidi are none too thrilled when maintenance falls to them when I travel.  In the heat of the summer, which for us is August, daily watering is required. I'll be gone for the last half of August and the first week of September.  I expect a revolt.  

But for now, I'm excited to see so many big beautiful blossoms all along my walks thru town.  I'm off for one now, I'm meeting Jimmy at the studio so we can watch the Blazers on my big 9' x 14' screen.  

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

In their opening series Mom's Rays took 2 of 3 from those evil Red Sox but beyond that, I'm not too sure what's going on in this very new baseball season.  I had hoped to go to the Mariner's opening day yesterday but somehow let it slip by.

Next week, the Rays are in Seattle for a 3 game stand and you'd think I'd have tickets but I don't.

I definitely have a motivation problem where baseball is concerned and I know exactly what's causing it.

Basketball season is just getting good.

If Mom was Baseball Betty, I'm Basketball Becky.

I think basketball was just too fast and too physical of a sport for Mom to embrace.  Mom and I watched the winter Olympics together one year and during the ski jump competition, Mom would actually scream as the skiiers would leave the jump and become airborne.  They'd do flips and twists in the air and she'd be screaming the whole time.  I'd say, "Mom, they're supposed to be doing that, they're trying to do that" but something inside her just couldn't prepare for the sight of it.  A human being airborne.  I think that has a lot to do with why Mom never really got into Basketball - it's brutally rough wth lots of unexpected physcal feats - but it's always been my favorite. 

I have a voice mail message saved from Mom, she'd been channel surfing late one night, not ready to go to bed but her baseball game as over and she was flipping through the numbers looking for something to pass the time.  She clicked across a Sonics game, we were playing New Jersey and she was, as usual, a riot.  She said "boy, those New Jersey guys are good, they almost never miss!"  She also said that she didn't even like basketball but she was going to watch the game just for me.  She asked if perhaps I was at the game; I had season tickets for years.

Well here we are in this cross-over time of year, with Baseball under way but Basketball playoffs just about to begin. 

Right now, as I type, I'm being bashed about on Amtrak (we're speeding, trying to make up lost time and the ride is really rough!) on my way to Portland to see a Blazer game tonight.  On Monday, I drove to Portland for a game and drove right back home after it was over.  It's 3 hours, one way.  I would have stayed in Portland in between but I had a mammogram yesterday in Seattle so that messed everything up.

I have a lump that needs to come out, I've had two others out and both were nothing but because my breast tissue is so "dense" they can't see it well enough to be sure it's nothing so they take it out as a precaution.  Just to be sure.

I'm sure my sister could handle this minor procedure but she's not here and I'm not there so I'll have to go to a proper surgeon and I did make sure to schedule it for after Basketball playoffs have ended in mid-June.  I don't want anything to mess up my viewing schedule!

On Saturday, teachers begin flying in to work with me in my Seattle studio next week and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be working every night next week while the Rays are here.  I'm taking them all into the cadaver lab for a 5 hour anatomy class at a local medical school on Wednesday, I think that's going to wipe them out such that hopefully I can sneak away Wednesday night for the Rays game and they won't even miss me.  I've got my eye on 3rd baseline seats.  I'm also in workshop when the Rays are back here in August - what awful timing - but at least I know I'll see them down in St. Pete a couple times this season and that's what's really important. 

I do have Mom's Rays cowbell and I will surely take it with me if I go next Wednesday.  I'll be ringing it just like she did during that magical run up to the World Series last year.  And I'll be singing and stomping and yelling enough for her and for me. 

I miss her terribly but what can I do.  Everything marches forward, nothing goes backward and we only have what's real to deal with. 

All in all, life is good in Seattle, on the train, on the way to a game.

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

Just before I left March 25th for the north of England to teach for a week, I received another couple of boxes of Mom's stuff from Pooge.  Packing for the England trip while unpacking a bunch more Mom stuff was a bit confusing because although I was excited to go to York, an ancient and beautifully preserved walled town, I also wanted to stay put here in Seattle and have the time to go slowly through all the treasures newly arrived.

Among the goodies were scarves she knitted, the mink stole - feet, head and tail still on - that either triggers derision, revulsion or delight (delight), some of Mom's everyday dishes that she loved eating from right up until her last meal, candles, jumble/brain teaser books, her high school class ring which slipped easily onto my middle finger and went with me, and some shorty nighties.

There was also a small pillow Mom made from tea towels, it features hydrangeas and the word "Alaska" so I'm assuming the hydrangea is Alaska's state flower but that's a guess.

Pooge sent Mom's bed pillow a while back, the one her head was on when she died, and it's been on my bed ever since.  I keep it in a special pillow case with psychedellic colors and wild patterns and it's on my bed, day and night.  I've now added this little tea towel pillow to the mix. 

My first night back, Wednesday night April 1st, was the first time I slept with both on my bed.

I stack them up, little on top of big, on the edge of the bed and I didn't think much about it until I returned to bed in the middle of the night after a visit to the potty and realized that I've arranged Mom's pillows so that it looks like she might be sleeping in the bed with me, right by my side, but has gotten up for her own middle of the night venture to the bathroom, kitchen or to stargaze. 

Mom and I shared many traits and one of them was our love of sleep.  We not only loved to sleep and never considered it a waste of time but we loved to take naps at any point during the day and when we were together, we loved to take naps at the same time.  We loved to sleep in until the whole morning was gone and we both loved beds, couches, Lazy Boys, divans, sofas, chaises, lounges, ottomans and anything else you could push together, rearrange or somehow lay down on. 

I was with Mom on her birthday last August and I loved it, absolutely loved it, that the morning of the day she turned 86 (87 really, because, you know, we don't count One until One is gone - we're really older than we think!) we both slept in, we both woke up at the same time (almost noon) and we had a lovely day together. 

With this 2-stack of pillows, I feel like I'm still sleeping with Mom and it feels good. 

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

Time's a funny thing.

We all know how slowly time seemed to have gone when we were young.  It took, or at least it seemed like it took, ages to get out of elementary school.  We had junior high (not middle schoole) when I was a kid and the 3 years spent in junior high were insufferably long.  Then came high school, another 3 years, and again, time seemed to drag. 

The pace quickened when I got into my twenties, my thirties are completely unaccounted for, my forties a blur and so far, my fifties are at warp speed. 

I remember the first time I flew coast to coast, I couldn't believe I'd be on a plane for 6 whole hours in a single leg of my routing and yet, I was and yet, I have been countless times as I've continued several trips "home" to St. Pete a year, each of these almost 30 years I've been living on the West Coast. 

I remember the first time I went to Europe and I couldn't believe I'd be on a plane for 8 whole hours in a single leg of my routing and yet, I was and yet, I've been countless times since as I've continued vacationing and working in Europe and the UK these past 16 years.

I remember the only time I flew to New Zealand and I couldn't believe I'd be on a plane for 13 whole hours in a single leg of my routing and yet, I was and though I've only been once, it was the easiest time zone change I've ever experienced - it's tomorrow minus 4 hours.  How civilized

Not like going to the UK or Europe where I gain 9 hours, eat like a starving pig at breakfast and as the workday begins at 8 am, local time, I stare at the room full of teachers whose lives I'm committed to changing and I wonder if they can hear my body clock as it shreiks "it's time for bed, it's eleven pm, it's actually past your bedtime, you're too old to be up this late, you must go to sleep, you must sleep NOW!"  Shut up, body clock. 

I've been behind before.  I've neglected accounting, I've let the weeds overtake the flowers, I've not vacuumed, I've skipped bleaching the whites, I went to Europe once with one pair of underwear and a box of mini pads.  I'm a scrimper, I'm a negotiator, I'm a sacrificer.  I know I can pull anything off and I can do it under extreme stress and I can do it well. 

But Mom died and it threw everything off. 

Just now, as in yesterday, as in earlier today, am I getting caught up on things that I let go in order to be with her.  And I was only there for 4 visits, and the visits were relatively short, certainly shorter than I'd have liked. 

But while I was with her, I wasn't tending to studio matters and things piled up.  I don't have any administrative help so every single accounting task, every single planning, organizing, arranging, corresponding, responding, itemizing, initiating type task went either completely untended or grossly under worked. 

In the past week, I've balanced over 20 checking account statements, I've compiled year end reports for my accountant who has been patiently waiting for them since early January and I've finally, with confidence and accuracy, been able to determine that I hardly have any money.  This, I suspected but wasn't completely positive about.  Now I'm completely positive.

It seems like Mom's been dead a long time, but it's really only been a few months.

It seems like I'm still 14 but I'm really almost 52.

It seems like, now that she's gone, nothing could possibly happen that would throw me off like this again.

It seems like Mom's been dead a long time, but it's really only been a few months. 

Only a few. 

I head to the UK on Wednesday for a week of teaching, I'll try to post next Monday night (they're 6 hours ahead of EST so you might not see it til your Tuesday morning, all you east coasters) but if I can't know that I'll get back to you as soon as I can after I return on April 1st. 

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

I hope you won't find this alarming but weeks and weeks go by without my sister Joann and I talking.  Or even emailing.  Or texting. 

This doesn't diminish our closeness, which may sound odd, but we were never based in frequency of contact; we've always been based in intensity of contact and with that as our fuel, we have enough in the tank to last several lifetimes. 

In many ways I think my sister's life, as it is mirroring Mom's, is just beginning.  Probably everyone who reads Mom's blog knows her well enough to know that when Mom married Daddy, the eloped to Baltimore and when they returned to Steubenville to announce the news, Daddy moved right in with Mom and her folks. 

There was no separateness. 

There was no "go off and begin your lives together."

There was no independence.

And for Mom and Daddy, that worked pretty darn well.

Pooge and Bill have never had anything nearly as, well, comingled as that unless you count the time Mom and Daddy moved in with them in their house on Coral Way down in the Pink Streets in South St. Pete.  I think that gave them a taste of what was to come, with all of us just being certain in the way that family members are, without having to discuss it, that Mom and Dad would eventually move in with Pooge and Bill when the time came that they needed that certain amount of help. 

Mom and Dad gave me a set of luggage for my 16th birthday; I was not the chosen one.  58th Avenue was mine, the neighborhood was mine and beyond that, they also gave me the world. 

Joann had luggage - strawberry red Samsonite - but they wouldn't let her actually go anywhere.  Go figure. 

But Pooge never wanted the world and I'm not sure she even wanted all of 58th. 

She has always been very very content in her own yard.  I'm content in someone else's yard. 

See the difference?

Mom lived with Pooge and Bill for the last couple of years of her life, and although that amount of time pales in comparison with the decades Mom and Dad lived with Mom's folks, there comes, after a time, an equivalency that is difficult to explain.

It's like Dog years, only different.

The effort, the worry, the angst, the tracking of pills, the following of doctor instructions, the managing of care; all of that dominated Pooge's life for years before the time came that Mom actually moved in with Pooge and Bill. 

Pooge said that it might well be easier to take care of Mom once she finally did move in, and I think that proved to be true.

Mom's life didn't really start to unfold before her with a road long enough and of her own design that she could finally be independent, her own person, until her parents, one by one, died.  Mom always said she didn't mourn her folks' passing, that she'd spent all the time and done all the deeds she felt she could, or anyone could. 

Her service to them was the very thing that freed her in the end.

So with Mom gone, Pooge is as busy as can be, figuring out what she'll do and how she'll do it.  She's too busy and so am I for us to spend a bunch of time on the phone.  I know when she needs me, she'll call.  She knows if I need her, I'll call.  We're on a "need to know" basis and it works great. 

In fact, that's exactly how we've run it for a really long time, since well before I opened the studio in 2001, but with Mom as a factor we talked more than our own needs dictated. 

Pooge always did a fantastic job of keeping me informed and helping me feel included in Mom's life and with her care once she became ill. 

Joann's "to do" list has always lengthy and very interesting and I'm so glad she's finally got time to pursue her own interests and that she doesn't have to worry about Mom anymore.  I'm not sure I can truly appreciate what a relief that must be.

Anyway, in addition to all that, tonight I'm also thinking how at some point after I posted to Mom's blog last week (I'm getting pretty regular with these Monday posts, have you noticed?) Pooge texted that she had some things that still smell like Mom and asked if I wanted her to send them.

Yes, I do.

So, BasicallyBetty.com keeps me connected to you, Mom's readers who she willed to me as her most treasured possession, but it also keep me connected to my sister.

I like that about the internet.  So did Mom.

It all just goes to show you, there is immense truth and honor in what our dear and deeply loved cousin Ruth Jean always said . . . "nobody said we all have to be alike."

Right on, 441, right on!

Love and Prayers From Here to There