Role Model

Well, November is here, and as usual it has brought out my melancholy side.  I miss my mom with sharper focus in November, the month of both her birth and her death. But this November in particular, I've been thinking a lot about my fabulous mother-in-law, whose birthday was also in November. I wish you could have known her as well as I did.

She was an excellent grandmother, a breast cancer survivor, a fiercely independent widowed single woman, a terrific friend, the best mother-in-law, and an adventurous soul who was up for anything.

She tap danced. She swam. She shepherded tourists around the Smithsonian as a docent at the National Postal Museum. She read The Washington Post from front to back every single day. She hated to drive, but had the Washington, D.C. bus and subway schedules memorized; she used them as she attended theater productions and baseball games and art exhibits throughout the city. She looked forward to and excelled at the competitive sport of bargain-hunting.

More than this, after her retirement from the U.S. Foreign Service and a career during which she and her husband raised three children -- while stationed in places like Cambodia, Libya, Bangladesh -- she traveled the world all over again. She took cruises throughout Europe, Northern Africa, and Canada. She rode a zip line over the Costa Rican rain forest. She went on a safari in Tanzania -- sleeping in the most glamorous tents I've ever seen. 

And then she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, almost two years ago. She was told she had a "glioblastoma multiforme." Your Google search will give you all the bad news about this kind of tumor. And you've probably been hearing about this particularly shitty brand of cancer in the news recently. 

I want to say so many things. But mostly:

First -- my religion (which was my mother-in-law's  religion too) teaches me that God's ways are not our ways. This is sometimes (but not always) comforting when I consider the ways cancer attacks us. I watched it take control of my own mother, and then of my dear mother-in-law. And to tell you the truth, both times it took control of my life, too. 

But second, this sucky disease gave me a great and good gift, too. My beloved mother-in-law's illness allowed me to take care of her. It allowed me to be with her at her most vulnerable, and it let me take the most intimate care of her. Ultimately, this brave woman let me and her other children be with her as she approached that ultimate journey -- her greatest adventure yet! It's funny -- nineteen years ago, when my own mother went through a similar ordeal with similar grace, my friend Susan said to me, "her suffering is a gift." Which totally pissed me off. Who would want this kind of present?! It certainly has never been on my Christmas wish list. But she was right (as she usually is). I am grateful that I was able to love them in this particular way, in addition to all the other kinds of love I had and have for both of them.

This is a thing I've come to embrace partly because of my religious beliefs -- but I think that my non-religious friends might have experienced a similar gift. I consider myself devout, but I don't think this thankfulness really has to do entirely with faith. It also has to do with our deepest connections to those we love. And, while I have the deepest sympathy for those who think that this is not a death they should have to experience, I look to both of my cherished mothers as my examples and role models. There are many ways to die with dignity.

Finally, as is often my way, I would recommend a book -- for anyone whose family has gone through something like this, or is in the middle of it right now. Shrinkage, by Bryan Bishop, is a wonderful memoir of his (so far) successful battle against an inoperable brain tumor. I first learned of his story through his fiercely wonderful wife's blog, and have cheered him on ever since. He writes with honesty, grit, and humor, and anyone fighting cancer will find inspiration and hope in his story.

My mother's dishes: NOT a love story

So this Thanksgiving, as we do every year, my sister and I each pulled out our vintage and oh-so-collectible "Jewel Tea" dishes. Her meal was served in Roanoke, while I filled the gravy boat up here in the southern part of northern Virginia -- but we both used these Depression era dishes, because, I mean really. Look at them. They're perfect for Thanksgiving. That and because our mother would haunt us if we didn't.

See, Carolyn and I have what you might call a love-hate relationship with these dishes (their official name is "Hall China Autumn Leaf," but they were always called "Jewel Tea" in our family, because in the 1930s they were given to housewives -- like my grandmother -- as premiums when the ladies bought tea and spices from the door-to-door reps from the Jewel Tea Company). We do love them, because they were our mother's. And while their beauty and aesthetic loveliness frankly kind of escape us, we both realize that Mom cherished them. How do we know this? We know this because by the time she died she had:

• redecorated her kitchen to feature them, to include commissioning a friend to create a matching stencil pattern;
• purchased a shockingly expensive, custom-made-to-match-her-dishes, Tiffany-style lamp to hang over the breakfast table;
• hung the dessert plates interspersed with orange and yellow baskets around the kitchen on the wall space above the cabinets (cunningly connected by the stencil pattern);
• joined the "Hall China 'Autumn Leaf' Collectors' Club" (that's where she found the guy who made the lamp);
• owned a linen tablecloth and twelve napkins that had been stenciled by the same friend (see above), so that when she entertained her table was all Jewel Tea, all the time;
• spent way more money than my dad ever knew, tracking down and purchasing the rarer pieces of the pattern: a "one-armed bean pot;" the coveted "2 lb. butter dish" (I mean, it's a butter dish that will hold eight sticks of butter, people); not only the formal and everyday salt and pepper shakers, but the "cook's salt and pepper shakers" as well;
• amassed enough place settings of these fricking dishes that my sister and I each have a complete set. And by complete, I mean we each own twelve place settings. Twelve, y'all. Plus serving bowls, platters, pie plates, iced tea glasses, coffee mugs, tea pots . . . . Plus some other shit I can't even remember.

But see, we really don't think they're as lovely as she did. We both have white dishes for every day, and we both chose fancy china patterns when we got married because our mother made us. She made us choose a silver pattern, too -- and we both very cleverly chose her silver pattern. So one thing I love, love, love is that I have my silver and my mother's, mingling all together. The other pattern in this picture is my grandmother's, which I adore but which is no longer made. I always, always use the two patterns together.

Last year about this time, my sister and I were reminiscing about our mom and we got to laughing our asses off, yet again, about all that "damned Jewel Tea" (that's how we have always talked about it). I regret to inform you that we were not kind about these dishes. Well, fifteen minutes later, my sister texted me; here is our "conversation:

HER: Right after I hung up a damned Jewel Tea bowl fell and broke. I'm freaking out.
ME: Mom must be pissed.
HER: Now I'm crying.
ME: And I'm laughing. Don't cry! They're ugly. The world is a better place.
HER: OK, now I'm laughing.

We have considered selling the damned things on eBay, or Craigslist; I really do think that the entire collection could pay for at least a year of someone's college expenses. But we never get around to it. So most of it lives in multiple, multiple boxes in my attic. And a few pieces live in our kitchens, so we can use them at Thanksgiving.

Because they're perfect.

+++

And hey! Today begins our second annual Book Lovers' Advent Calendar! This year I am sampling books that have been recommended to me by friends who said last year, "How could you possibly leave out our family's favorite??" I am discovering a whole new collection of storybooks to love!

As we open the first door of the Advent calendar, we find The Snowman, which is a lovely little book with no words (I love those!). My family is actually familiar with this story as an animated film, but -- as is always the case -- the book is better. Thanks, Kathy!

Snapshot: Marianne

This weekend I will be thinking about my mom, who died of breast cancer fifteen years ago tomorrow. Wasn't she pretty when she was a girl?

Consider the following for a minute, people. And then see if you still need to ask me why I am not ever particularly jazzed about Thanksgiving . . . .

Fifteen years ago our family celebrated a singularly bizarre series of life passages in one week: we lost my mom on a Monday, attended her wake on Wednesday, celebrated Thanksgiving and the tall boy's fourth birthday on Thursday (he got a bike!), eulogized Mom at her funeral on Friday, and ate birthday cake with my wonderful mother-in-law on Sunday. I hope you can see why I am always a little ambivalent about this time of year!

The month of November is always a jumble of emotions for me, but if right now I had to pick just one feeling I would describe myself as melancholy. I find it interesting that our family's month of remembrance (we have lost more than one family member in November) parallels the wider cultural and religious annual traditions of Veterans' or Remembrance Day, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. I swear it sometimes feels like the whole world misses my mom in November.

I miss her all the time.