Double nickle

That's right. 55. I turned 55.

My mother was never this old, in fact I actually noted the day, November 21, that I lived longer than my mother. So from here, I'm making it all up.

I went out to dinner with my old friends Holly and Chris. We always share birthdays, and have been doing this for years. They started this right out of college. I used to make it a bigger deal and invited other friends too, until Chris, bless her heart, asked if she and Holly and I could do it just among ourselves, because my other friends were either boring, arrogant, annoying, or all three.

Sadly, I realized she was right, so we started doing it with just us, and occasionally our friend Maggie.

Well, 55 was one for the record books. I decided I needed to write it down because birthday parties don't really get much worse than this. (Okay, there was the time Bill gave me a surprise party even though I begged him not to, and I spent the entire party locked in the bedroom, crying.)

First, I decided to walk to the restaurant since it wasn't very far (a little more than a mile). Five blocks short I tried to step off the sidewalk to get around this lumbering idiot who was slowly making his way along, and put my foot into a pothole, nicely breaking my ankle. Then I couldn't get a bus to stop for me, and had to walk the rest of the way.

The restaurant gave me ice, but refused to ask someone for ibuprofen, in case I sued them, so my friend had to go to the nearest store, several blocks away, to get me some. We get seated, right next to an unsealed door behind which is a very raucous wedding, playing music so loud that conversation was pretty much impossible. The waiter wouldn't move us, so we simply moved our selves, one 2-top over so there was a little more distance between us and the door.

At which point the hostess comes over and explains to us that the table we've moved to will actually need to be added to a large group scheduled to come in 45 minutes, so we're going to have to be done in 45 minutes so they can be seated. At this point I finally started to cry.

Happy Birthday. You're old, injured, and a pain in the neck.

It all worked out. The restaurant found a way to set up the needed table without ousting us; the other party didn't show up anyway. The wedding finally started dinner and turned the music off, and my friends more or less carried me home and made me tea.

No way Holly (June 4) and Chris (September 14) can top that.

Remembrance, Life, Earth, and Faith.

I have a huge family. On my side, 9 aunts and uncles and 29 first cousins; on my husband’s 26 aunts and uncles and god knows how many cousins.

We know almost none of them.

Growing up, both families kept in better touch, but I lost track of all of my own relatives more than a decade ago, through neglect, poor sibling relations in the older generation, my own poor relationship with my father and a family culture that never emphasized togetherness. We’re better with my husband’s family, where we at least know everyone’s name, but as they all live out West (and by “out West” I mean anywhere from San Francisco to LA to China to Thailand), we see each other in spurts when some branch of the family vacations near another.

Or when someone dies.

My husband’s cousin June, daughter of his eldest aunt, died the day before the Solstice this year. We knew June rather well, and her children, who are my age. Therefore, this Solstice Sowing is for her; I hope to be able to plant some of them in my own garden in the spring, and get some to her family in San Francisco.

Solstice Sowing is a tradition among gardeners, to plant something for the spring on the darkest day of the year, to honor the return of the sun and the promise of next year's garden. Four types of seeds are planted.

The first set of seeds are seeds of remembrance and should be seeds of flowers that remind us of someone we knew and loved but who is now gone from our lives forever. I’ve planted Angelonia, for the Angel in the name.

The second set of seeds represent seeds of life and should be for plants that will make fruit or nectar and invite birds and butterflies to our gardens. I’ve planted sunflowers, which were a gift from Renee’s Garden.

The third set of seeds should be tree seeds. We can honor Mother Nature by growing trees that will help clean the air we breathe, reduce excess sun on the soil, and provide shade for our heads on a hot summer’s day. I took a cutting from my Magnolia; despite the cold and the date, the wood was green and pliable.

The fourth set of seeds are seeds of faith, for which I have chosen Anemone. The plant you sow for “faith” should be a zone that is beyond ours in warmth. It will help us to remember that we accept the “Leap of Faith” in our hearts and know that Mother Nature is capable of miracles. Anemone is a flower filled with meaning, both mythical, traditional and personal. They represent everlasting love in the language of flowers. These are also the flower of the god, whose blood renews the earth in the spring. As a flower of the Greek highlands, they represent my own Greek heritage.

Finally, these seeds showed up in my mailbox one day, with several others. I have never been able to determine who sent them, so perhaps they’re a gift of the goddess, who will be honored to have them planted as she welcomes June back to her heart for eternity.

If I wrote holiday greetings

Here is what happened this year:

Seng Lim left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. Nga left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. I don't think they're done.Seng Lim's off again in March, and Nga for the summer.

Nga discovered that she's smart. Our fault I suppose--parents tell their daughters one of two things: that they are pretty or that they are smart. Then the pretty ones think they aren't smart, and the smart ones think they aren't pretty. We told Nga she was pretty; I guess we assumed she knew she was smart. It's best anyway, to learn yourself that you can be both.

Seng Lim discovered that he's good-looking. Apparently women check him out when his hair is short. (He was the smart one. Sigh.)

We continue to make an oddly comfortable living despite our somewhat unconventional job situations. The count in April for our income taxes was seven W2 forms and nine 1099s. Are there really households that have only two? We seem to be managing to pay cash for Nora's freshman and sophomore years at the city college and have enough left to help her with housing. I am completely enamored with writing $1,400 checks instead of $14,000 checks, like we did for Seng. Hooray for community college.

My life changed (it was due-- if you care to check, you will see me reinventing myself about every 5 years). With yet another hours/pay cut from Light Opera Works (where I have made less each year that I have worked there-I think they are doing it wrong) they took themselves down to a level where I now work fewer hours and make a lower hourly wage there than at any of my other numerous gigs. So they got relegated to their relative status and I went looking for new things to do. I found clients for my mythical "Juno Consulting" business, discovered Chicago's sustainability community, and decided to go for my Master Gardener certification. Classes start in January 2011. I've made dozens of new friends who have re-energized me and reminded me that there's life beyond not-for-profit arts.

Yes, I invited people I met on line into my home. And lived to tell the tale.

Contemporary Art Workshop closed, leaving a huge gap in my life.

Wei signed on to sing in the Chicago Symphony for one more 3-year stint, possibly his last. In two years, it will be 40 since he first sang with the Symphony back in high school. Even though it wasn't a continual gig, that has to be some kind of record. He continues to be a star in Oak Park, with his church, concert series and children's choir. This last gig has major benefits, such as getting to meet Rick Bayless at an Oak Park cocktail party (and to eat the guacamole and ceviche that he made).

The recession cost Wei the regular monthly choir gig directing at Anshe Emet, but he continues to direct the High Holidays choir. Our dear friend and Wei's mentor Richard Proulx died, which I suppose in some sense moves Wei into line for the Chicago choral scene's eminence grise. How strange.

And so it goes.

Blessed be in 2011.

Gifts

My mother died when I was 22.

This is the single defining fact of my life. It defines me more than my children, my profession, my home, my garden, my spouse, or my acts. As Anna Quindlan once put it, you could describe me by saying "my eyes are green, my hair is brown, and my mother died when I was 22."

I have missed her, searingly, every day since that day. I noted the date that I had known my husband longer than I had known my mother. I know the date on which I will be exactly her age the day she died. I noted the date, long past, when I had lived half my life without her.

I have had to navigate adulthood on my own. I had no model from my mother's generation. There are things I will never do because I had no mother to check with, trivial, everday things like baking a roast or a pie. Family stories lost, family stories that never happened. Because my mother died when I was 22.

So when your mother dies, when you are 45, or 50 or 62, when your mother dies after your children or grown, or after your children have children, I will understand your pain, but I will not sympathize. That is when your mother is supposed to die. You have known all your life that you grow old with your partner, but lay your parents to rest as your own hair turns gray. Don't weep in my arms, at 50, because your mother has died. You cannot even imagine the gift the universe gave you, to have had her so long.

21

My daughter is 21 today.

My greatgrandmother was born in 1857 with England at war in India, and turned 21 in 1877 while her homeland of Turkey was at war with Russia.

My grandmother was born in 1897, while her homeland of Turkey was at war with Greece. The anti-Christian pogroms in the aftermath led eventually to her emigration to America. She turned 21 in 1918 at the end of the Great War, and emigrated, pregnant, to America five years later.

My mother was born in 1923 in a blessed moment of peace, but turned 21 in 1944, in uniform, working for the American war machine that purportedly saved the world.

I was born in 1956, hard on the heels of the Korean conflict, and turned 21 in 1977, 100 years and countless wars after my greatgrandmother.

My daughter was born in 1989, a few weeks before the Tienanmen massacre. She turns 21 while we are at war in two countries for reasons which escape me.

So here is my birthday prayer for my daughter: May your daughter turn 21 into a world with no war.

Decorations

View on flickr

I think of winter as the god’s domain. The goddess and her daughter mourn or sleep, while the god tries his hand at giving life, and gets it wrong.

I went for a dawn walkabout this morning. In summer and fall it’s a ritual, but I always forget the peace and joy this brings in the cold weather as well. The light snow drifts down, just an inch or two deep.

Walking around a cold bare garden in winter, you feel the earth as stone and see the plants as dead, the garden is a grey monotone without form or function. But walking around a cold and snowy garden you see the shapes— of a low stone wall, or of the pond, yin in the water, yang in the stone edging. The plants become plants again with each twig or berry capped by a tiny drift of white.

Seeing the garden in such stark contrast recalls for me the volume and edge that define it. The eye follows the line of luminaries that mirrors the wall, and lands on the metal bird nestled between the sedum (so glad I remembered not to cut back the sedum). Even the trite statement of Italian lights becomes magic in the bluegrey dawn. You remember why a thing becomes trite— because it’s so wonderful that everyone does it.

I think I will decorate for the holidays after all, and bring some of the god’s magic inside.

You're not getting the security deposit back

Having finally acknowledged that my son moved out more than five years ago, really, my daughter (who also doesn't really live here, but whatever) took over his larger room, leaving the small front room for another use.

And until there are grandchildren sleeping over, that means, for me. So I turned it into a trash-novel library and seed-starting station, since it's got the only window in the house that gets anything approaching direct sunlight.

We've made a pact that any rehab-type projects will be done right, since when we moved in decades ago we basically just slapped paint on everything and now it's all falling apart. But looking at Nga's old room now, with all her bits and pieces, photos and BFF paraphernalia stripped away, I really don't want to have to do it right. I also have a bone deep sympathy for landlords.

What A Mess. At some point, one of them wrote all over one wall with that glow-in-the-dark puffy glue.Nga  liked sticking photos to the wall, and apparently at one point used glue, which left not just residue but bits of paper stuck there until, I suppose the second coming, because it would not come off with just a knife. Apparently not liking the glue, she switched to scotch tape, which has become one with the wall. I'm going to have to heat strip it. Rather than pulling unused nails out of the wall, she just banged them all the way in, sometimes leaving holes in the plaster.

I've said it before. They leave, but little pieces stay behind.