a moment in the day: decision

I'm driving Stephen to work, and we're making a decision, even though we're not saying so. Noni's funeral in Arlington. Maybe I made my decision earlier, sitting in front of the computer, looking at prices for flights, doing the theoretical math in my head of airfare plus hotel plus transportation plus eating out plus eating out, but a decision isn't really a decision until you say it out loud.

Stephen and I drive in silence under pink and white blossom trees. Once when I was a kid, visiting Noni and Coco in Virginia, we went to Winchester for their famous Apple Blossom Festival. Beautiful old, Colonial buildings and block after block of flowering trees. That's all I remember from that time. That, and the continuing notion that all things lovely and exotic could happen in the company of Noni and Coco.

My memory of that time - and all those wonderful childhood times - is more like a picture postcard than a movie in my head, now. A picture of a moment. Or rather, it's just a picture of a picture of a picture of a moment, and even though I know that every time you remember something, you're only remembering the last memory of the memory before it, I make my memory take another picture of Noni and Coco and all those flowers, for safe keeping.

It's not really just about Noni, of course. Going out for the funeral would be a chance to be with these people I rarely see - Mom and Dad, aunts and uncles, cousins. A decision isn't really a decision until you say it out loud, and so, driving under the pink and white blossom trees, I make my decision: I'm going to let Stephen say it.

He gives a little sigh. "I guess people who are maybe thinking about buying a house should be careful with their money."

I just say, "Yeah."

We pull up at the curb and I let him out. I tell him to have a good day. I head to the grocery store.

On the radio, the classical station is playing that show where they examine the music of the cinema, and today's topic is leitmotif. Recurring musical phrases that embody certain characters or themes in a film (or opera, for that matter). They're playing a piece from Star Wars. An ominous repeat of a single note, then a trio of notes - big John Williams orchestra with the march of an Imperial army underneath. Darth Vader's theme. Just the thought of the great battle of the Rebel forces against the evil Galactic Empire makes me start to cry.

a moment in the day: dream

I wake up before the alarm goes off, and the last bit of dream sits here, on my pillow. I've dreamed it almost every night for the last month, in some way or other. Dreamed it for the few weeks before I flew to California and I've been dreaming it since I came home. Always the way with one of these California visits. In the dream, it's my last night there and I'm going to have to leave again.

It's weird to me how hard I grieve for that part of my life that's far away. Not weird that I miss my family, but how much. With how good I have it here. A good and interesting man as my husband, a good job, my friends, my endless, beloved projects. My doggie. It's not like before, when every time I left my family in California, I was heading off to an existence that felt crushingly boring and distinctly not mine. But no matter what I have here in this lovely Portland life-after, there's that one deep hole I can't fill.

A week and a half ago, the Saturday of Noni's memorial, stepping up to Mom and Dad's door, me with my good shoes in one hand, Frank and I were talking about death. Partly because of Noni, yes, but also, I think, partly because Frank has a daughter now, and children are the markers of the swift and endless passage of time.

"I think about how I won't exist," he said, "and I think about how I won't exist forever. All that time going on forever and ever..."

He was freaking himself out just thinking about thinking about it.

Though I believe, like my brother, that after I die, my consciousness won't continue, won't go to some heaven or into some new body, death isn't the forever that obsesses me. Walking up to Mom and Dad's house with my good shoes in my hand, I was thinking about my life - all that time - how little of it will be spent with this handful of the people I love most.

The other night, back here in Portland, Stephen and I sat up in bed doing what we love to do, watching an old movie. It was The Merry Widow, with Jeanette MacDonald shrouded in black tulle and Maurice Chevalier singing, "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

Late, ten thirty at least, and I started to doze, just a moment. Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier were embracing, and then my eyes closed and I started to dream. Dreaming about that same hug, but instead of MacDonald and Chevalier, it was Mom and me.

fifteen facts about noni

She used to sing on the tops of pianos while my grandfather played. Her songs of choice were about philandering house cats and houses of ill repute. 

She was a great lover of food. I remember she'd be in my mom and dad's kitchen, visiting, Noni at one end of the counter and Mom at the other. As they chatted, Noni would idly eat six or seven chocolates out of a box there on the counter and then complain that, "I don't know why I don't lose weight. I'm never hungry."

We share first names (Eugenia). Whereas my nickname is Gigi, hers is Jeanie. Genie? I never knew how she spelled it, actually. Coco called her Euge. Which always sounded to me like he was calling her Huge.

When I was a kid, we'd fly to Virginia where Noni and Coco lived on a lake. Coco and we kids would be in the water all the time, skiing, floating, swimming. When we tried to get Noni to swim, she'd say, "Oh no, I don't go in the water." Then at some point during the month-long visit (we all knew it would happen and were waiting for it) we'd be on the boat and whoosh, Noni would go over the side, into the water, and come up laughing.

A consummate story-teller, always a great holder of court at any party, she was the best teller of jokes that I know of. Especially dirty ones.

She made homemade peach ice cream and blackberry pie.

In the hospital on the last day she was feeling chipper, she said she'd been sitting with her memories and told us the story of how my grandfather proposed to her. I'll try to remember and paraphrase. He said, "Eugenia? I think I'm in love with you. What do you think of that?" She said, "I think I'm in love with you, too." He said, "Well, then! I think we should get married." Then stood up and fell down the porch steps.

She lived all over the world, from Holland to Japan, and she loved to travel, particularly to France, where she and Coco would rent a house and shop for local ingredients and Noni would cook gourmet meals. She and Coco both spoke French. When we were kids, visiting them at Lake Holiday, they'd go into French anytime they wanted to say something children shouldn't hear.

For ten years, she lived in a retirement community called Park Plaza. She was so friendly and energetic that she was pretty much the poster child for the place. In fact, pretty much literally. -->

That's a vanilla shake she's drinking there. On one of her last days, the director of Park Plaza offered to go get her one, but she wasn't much interested in food anymore. She was just interested in lying peacefully with her memories, with her loved ones holding her hand, and waiting to go join Coco.

Her dogs, Lady Sassafrass and Elsa, were the start of our family's short-lived tradition of owning miniature dachshunds. Elsa was larger and loved sleeping in the sunshine, often on the floor of their float boat. Because of the resemblance, Noni and Coco lovingly called her the Fat Pig in the Sun. Sassy lived a very long time and was the kind of lap dog who would jump up and down, chairside to Noni, scratching at Noni's leg with her front paws until Noni let her up onto her lap. Noni was a doggy pushover almost as much as I am. I remember evenings at Lake Holiday, Noni, Coco and us kids having vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, and when she was done, Noni always put her dish down for them to lick. 

Friendly to a fault, always wanting to talk to everyone, she was known to chat with folks in stores and casually explain to them (and reveal) the password to all her bank accounts.

I said she was a great lover of food - I really think of her as a great lover of life. Equal parts spunk and refined lady of the world. Summers at Lake Holiday were some of the most wonderful days of my childhood. Highlights were the so-named Moonlight Cruises on the boat with Pavarotti playing on the tape deck. And the one night each year when we'd sleep on the boat. Crabs for dinner, packed by Noni into a picnic basket. The bucket on the bow for if you needed to pee in the middle of the night. We'd anchor in the Beaver Finger, where the beaver house was, so that, early in the morning, we could wake up in the chill and watch the smooth water for signs of beavers. Usually Edina would see one first. I'd look and look but only catch the slap of a beaver's tail hitting the water as he warned us to keep away from his house, and then he was gone.

Highlights of family parties were always when Coco sat down at the piano and played our family songs, by ear, with everyone singing along. "Egyptian Ella." "Rickety Tickety Tin." "With Her Head Tucked Underneath her Arm." Noni's solo came late in the proceedings. You always knew she'd have to be coaxed to get up there and perform, but you always knew that, in the end, she'd do it.

On the last day of Noni's life, I was already back in Portland, having said my goodbyes. She went as she'd wanted to. At home and at peace. And on that last day, when she was asked if she wanted anything to eat, she said, "Chocolate."

a moment in the day: awaiting the needle

I sit in the tiny room with the curtain down the middle and the countertop covered with color-coded vials, where you give blood so they can check your cholesterol and your kidneys and your liver. The pleasant nurse with the mustache is tapping at the vulnerable underside of my elbow, looking for the best vein. I’ve just come from a different little room where I was given a tetanus shot, and I’m feeling like a badass for being brave and getting poked, even though, to tell the truth, I actually hardly felt the needle go in. Another needle’s about to go in, and I’m not great with needles, but I’m pretending I’m not anxious about this one since the tetanus was so easy.

Last week in the hospital, Noni had had so many different IVs that her arms were bruised all up and down. Masses of dark purple and bright red just below her paper-thin skin. When she got her wish and was sent home to die in peace, one of the things I was glad for was that she’d never get poked and prodded again. That for a little while, her body belonged completely to her again.

The pleasant nurse with the mustache hikes the tourniquet around my arm tight. “Happy day,” she says to me, “whatever this day is.”

a moment in the day: noni

I hold Noni's hand, standing by the hospital bed in her living room, where she's come home to die. It's warm, and I worry that I'm making her warmer by holding her hand, but she doesn't ask me to let go. She lies on her back, slightly propped up, eyes closed, breathing in the oxygen that comes from the small tube set just under her nose. Mostly sleeping. The hospice nurse says Noni asked for, and was given, a pill to help her sleep about an hour ago, which means my grandmother's pretty out of it for my goodbye, my maybe - probably - undoubtedly final goodbye.

It's seven-thirty on Sunday, my last morning here before I fly back to Portland. When I arrived a week ago, Noni was still in the hospital. My mom, dad, Stephen and I ran back and forth for visits, then over to her apartment to move the furniture and knicknacks around to make room for the hospital bed. We bought and fluffed sheets and pillow cases, and long, soft t-shirts we could cut down the back so she could be helped in and out of them more easily. She was brought home from the hospital mid-trip, and then it was back and forth to her apartment, just quick visits so as not to exhaust her. My sister and niece standing bedside, Noni too weak to give much response. No need for conversation. Just being near and holding her hand was enough.

Yesterday, Saturday, was Ragnarok. The Norse apocalypse. Flood, destruction, death of the gods. Apparently, somebody predicted it would take place on February 22, 2014. Midday, my brother and I took his nearly two year old daughter to the park to play. On a wide field of grass, Abby ran that way toddlers run, like a weightless, wobbling, joyful maniac, and Frank and I followed. Abby picking up sticks: "Stick!" Abby picking up pine cones: "Cone!" Abby running through clouds of bubbles, Frank with one hand working the bubble gun and one hand taking pictures with his camera.

photo courtesy of frank little

When we visited with Noni that day, she said, "It takes so long to die."

It's getting to be time to leave for the airport, now. I lean in and say, "Noni? I have to go. I just wanted to say I love you and I'm glad I had a chance to spend this time with you." Or something. I don't know what I say. Something clumsy and inadequate, but Noni, eyes closed, doesn't move. She may be asleep. I bend myself over the metal bars at the side of the bed for one more kiss.

Kisses are strange, here, at the end of things. She doesn't kiss back - too much effort to move - and you're kind of afraid you'll hurt her, and you're not sure where to kiss her, cheek, lips, forehead. Your lips find her forehead, the smooth of it, the slightly clammy, slightly cool of it, and you leave a little touch on her skin, and all it feels is not enough.

essay

Try to write an essay. Think about your past. Try to make connections between the person you are now and the person you were then, but the person you were then is lost inside the blind blank of your memory.

Read your diary. Try to find the part of your past that will serve the essay you're trying to write.

Get lost. Get cushy in the lostness of all the details behind the blind blank of your memory.

You're sixteen. You just got a haircut and a perm. You're bursting with the bigness of your life.

A direct quote, errors intact:

I'm getting my braces off, on Tuesday. Noni and Coco are here, but they're going to be going home to the Summit before Tuesday. Noni loves my hair. She says I look like a cross between Brooke Shields and Audry Hepburn. I wonder what Audry Hepburn looks like.

a moment in the day: claro que si

Stephen is speaking Spanish to Nicholas.  Holding him close, up to his face and purring Spanish against his furry  neck.

"Claro," Stephen tells him.

"Claro que si," I say. And then, "What does claro que si mean?"

Not what does it mean but what does it literally translate to. Because I know que and I know si and I know what the phrase means, but I don't think I've ever looked up the literal translation of the phrase. When I was a kid, we had a live-in housekeeper named Carmen, and we picked up some Spanish from her. To reinforce this, Mom sent us to a Spanish class for a while. But when I got around to learning languages in school, I chose French since we were ancestrally French and my name was French and Noni and Coco used to speak French at the dinner table when they wanted to say things the grand kids couldn't understand, and sacré bleu, how romantic would it be to speak French as a secret language.

Sadly, French pushed Spanish out of my brain and then jumped out behind it.

"Claro means clear," Stephen says. "So: clear - that - yes."

Which, when it comes down to it, does mean what I picked up as a meaning when Carmen used the phrase all the time when I was a kid. Strange to realize that I knew, really knew, what this expression meant, without having been told and without knowing the translation. Just from the context of her use.

Language is a remarkable thing.

euge

Been trying to get familiar with the Latin text Stephen and I got in rehearsal last night, which we'll be reciting tonight and Sunday in performances of Ordo Virtutum. When we sing, we'll be "souls imprisoned in our bodies," and when we recite (intone, whisper, shout) we will be the Devil.

One of the cue sheets for the Devil's lines:



First thing I thought when I saw the first two words was how Coco used to call Noni "Euge." Of course, he pronounced it differently — like Yooj. And in a way it sounded like he was calling her Huge all the time. But it was a special nickname because it was only used by my grandfather to my grandmother. That word belonged to them. Always felt strange to hear it, in a way, since Eugenia was my name too. Although, I wasn’t sure I'd want anyone to call me something that sounded like Huge. Now looking back, seeing that word on the page, it’s an instant lovely memory. Of the way Coco would say it — that bit of vaudeville in his voice — and always with the sound of matter-of-fact love for her. And here, I come to find out it’s also a word in Latin. Although it’s pronounced with three syllables. E-oo-je. And look. It means bravo!