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.

You be the judge

Who can tell me what's hilarious about this picture? No, It's not that my Christmas wrapping paper is still at the ready as we all turn to face the sun, wearing our traditional and festive Vernal Equinox garb. That's just sad.

But look a little more closely. As I was shoving a pile of laundry out of the way so the vacuum could have a path, I glanced down at the cover story of this magazine (which I think was slipped into my bags as I was leaving the fabulous mother-in-law's place one night -- because she is never one to drop a hint when she can roll it up in a magazine and swat your behind with it).  People, I almost fell over laughing.  Or maybe it was crying.  I can't remember which.

Dinner date!

Well, so -- much of the reason I have been away from blogging this fall has been that I have been spending a lot of time with my mother-in-law.  She has been battling illness, so has needed some extra help.  This is lucky for me, because I love her so much -- and always enjoy the time I get to spend with her.

Take Tuesday night, for example -- she and I had a fabulous dinner together: pork tenderloin, roasted potatoes, sauteed snow peas, and sliced tomatoes.  And we split a bottle of wine while she told me hilarious stories about the husband's childhood.

It was a great date!

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Today's book selection for Advent is lovely to look at -- and has a lovely story to go with it as well. Christmas Tapestry, by Patricia Polacco, is about a pastor's family who move to a new town and a new church community.  After the church is damaged in a storm, Jonathan and his father worry that Christmas Eve services will have to be ruined.  Luckily they find a beautiful old tapestry that will cover the damage perfectly.  Then the miracle part happens!

Such a great story -- and so gorgeous, too!

Nostalgia in advance

 

So we're getting ready to do some painting around here. 

It should come as no surprise that "getting ready" has a very sketchy meaning for the husband and me.  We "get ready" for household projects by daydreaming about what we want, and then going out for a cup of coffee, and then maybe a month or two later wondering how much it will cost, and then cracking open another bottle of wine, and then stumbling across a paint sample or two, and then going away on a business trip . . . .

 

The girl in charge figured us out a long time ago, and thus is the only member of the family whose room has been painted to her specifications.  And it was a lot of work for both her and me -- work that involved geometry, y'all.

This summer I plan to paint my bedroom, the sunny girl's new(ish) bedroom, and the little roomlet she used to sleep in when she was not yet a 5'10 ballerina.  The roomlet will become an place for me to stash my work-related stuff (part-time faculty have no office privileges where I work).  Right now I keep all my crap in the back of my car.   I'm excited to make a little office for myself, and as usual I have all kinds of unrealistic expectations about how fabulously perfect it will be.  But at the same time, I will be sad to see the sunny girl's little roomlet go.  It means saying good-bye to some of her "little girl"-ness -- and: the room is so stinkin' cute!

 

The four-year-old sunny girl's roomlet was decorated for her by Grandma Carol, right after we moved into our house in 2001.  Grandma Carol has a great eye for what a little girl will like, and she and Grandpa have the motivational oomph to actually get a project done instead of just dreaming about it.  So the sunny girl's little room was a tiny ballerina's dream come true!

Check it out:  the flowers all over the walls were created by first using a big rubber stamp and some craft paint (that's the lavender colored basic flower).  Then Grandma went back over each flower several times freestyle, adding the pink detail, the white outline, and the swirly yellow center.  The random blue swirlies were "to give it a little color pop."  Just as I was oohing and ahhing about how cute the room was, Grandma got out her glue gun and attached flat pink glass marbles to the centers of all the flowers.  I mean . . . .  And you see how she instructed Grandpa to paint the walls flat pink, and then add a stripe of glossy pink of the same shade, right?  Grandma Carol created a lovely little room for my sunny girl that could be out of a magazine.

The kicker for the four-year-old, though, was the chandelier.

Hot date with my mother-in-law

I have the world's most fabulous mother-in-law.  It's true!  And here is just the most recent evidence:  Due to the state of our construction project, watching television at our house is not a possibility right now.  And while we are not the biggest TV-watching family out there, I do love me some Oscars!  One year I even flew to Florida to catch the broadcast with my pal, Danielle.  True story. 

So -- Oscar night:  what to do??

And here is where my mother-in-law Donna came to the rescue.  She invited me up to her place. OK --  I invited myself up to her place, put she was pretty darned gracious and enthusiastic about saying yes.  And when I got there (bringing a love offering of Chinese food), I discovered that she had set the table with her fancy china, and had planned out an appetizer of shrimp cocktail and a delicious pineapple dessert.  She plied me with wine and snacks throughout the Oscars show, while we mocked some dresses and oohed and aahed over others.  And I just need to say:  Angelina Jolie -- eat something, for the love of God!

These were our two favorite dresses of the night:

Penelope Cruz looked like Old Hollywood, in every good way.  She didn't feel the need to thrust her boobage in our faces (we appreciated that, Penelope!) and the woman has a little sexy meat on her bones.  This is a good thing.

And look how lovely Octavia Spencer was on her Big Night!  Gorgeous!

But nobody on the red carpet can hold a candle to Donna -- the queen of adventure and the most gracious hostess in the world.  I am a lucky daughter-in-law!