A life in days and weeks

In the annals of transgressive behavior, this task feels surpassingly noteworthy. I have been designated to skim through more than fifty years of my mother’s daily calendars. No, not designated. I volunteered, but only because my brothers would have simply thrown them away, and my sister needed a break, after having repeatedly risked Hanta virus and finding new homes for lace bonnets, a 19th century sleigh, an antique organ and bark paintings from Guam. And silk and kidskin gloves, so many gloves. I volunteered, also, because I didn’t trust any of the others to detect what I believed I could detect.
The old house is almost empty now, almost ready to be handed over to another family, a family we don’t know and can only imagine. (The young mother has grown prize-winning pumpkins. This reassures me.) The 437 framed paintings, drawings and photographs have been distributed to offspring, given away to friends, and tossed into dumpsters. The silver and china have been parceled out to grandchildren as yet unaware of their need for such things. New homes have been found for the furniture, most of it. More than a hundred boxes of books were given to the local library, in small increments, because they limit the number of donations they will accept each day. In the barn the bullpen has been emptied of 80 years of business records. The pigeoncote no longer houses decades of office machinery: adding machines, typewriters, devices to measure the humidity content in cotton samples. Thirteen steamer trunks have been donated to local stage companies, along with dozens of hats in hat boxes, wigs, gloves, 1950’s cocktail dresses, and mod fashions of the sixties. In the time of our family, five residents of the house have died, but not a single thing they ever owned was ever discarded. Not until now. We found but did not entirely read every school paper written by my father and his brother, dating back to their less than stellar performance at Brush Hill Academy. We’ve kept the wartime correspondence, scanned it and made digital files. We are all of us traumatized by the amount of stuff. I have the antique ink blotter collection and a mission to find an ink blotter collector who will want them.* Of the five complete punch bowl sets, I gave two away as wedding presents, to young couples who are sophisticated foodies and actually think punch bowls are a good idea. We still don’t know what to do with the trunk filled with antique lace, so my sister will store it.
By tomorrow the only thing left in the house will be the model of a two-masted schooner, fully rigged, built by our grandmother’s shipbuilding ancestors in Normandy. Next week it will travel to its new home in my brother’s landlocked farm in New Hampshire.
Photo by BMLK.

Every year my mother used the same appointment book, a standard weekly calendar, Monday through Wednesday on the verso, Thursday through Sunday on the recto. It had a brown plastic cover on which was embossed: Season’s Greetings from your friends at Leigh Textile. Dozens of these were annually presented to customers and business associates, and my mother. She disliked the plain brown cover and so each year she neatly recovered her book with decorative wrapping paper, paper featuring the designs of William Morris, oriental carpets, Islamic tiles, Rococo fabric, Pompeian frescoes, more William Morris, Toile de Jouy, kimono patterns and so on. In 50 years she never repeated.
And then she kept them, year after year. As I read I see the pattern of her life: dentist and doctor appointments, times five; school meetings, times five; cello lessons; board meetings; lectures delivered and attended; textile manufacturers conventions attended; ski trips and Caribbean trips, travels to Europe and Asia and South America; endless dinner parties for family, friends and foreign visitors. (The guest lists and menus are included.) The house hosted a cataract of foreign visitors, business associates and friends from the cotton-growing swath of the planet: India, Pakistan, Egypt, El Salvador; as well as the cotton-processing swath: Germany, France, Belgium, England, Japan. In the early decades, at the end of each year’s book I discovered a single page accounting which elderly family members were hosted at what holidays. I suspect that this was intended to document what my mother perceived as a certain in-law inequity; while her husband and his brother were equal partners in the business, my mother did 100% of the business entertaining, and 90% of the elderly relative entertaining.
As the years progress, there are no longer medical appointments for her children, but many more for herself and her mother. There are annual visits from her furrier. There are biweekly appointments with Giovanni, her hairdresser. There are weddings and graduations, and christenings. There are meetings of the Society of Architectural Historians. There are meetings with historical commissions all over New England. At the end of each year is a list of friends and associates who died in the past 12 months. Often copies of the obituaries are included.
There are, written in plain ink, evidence of disputed facts. For years my mother has asserted that she put her mother in a nursing home a scant one or two years before her death. We used to contradict her and were glared down; now we no longer correct anything she says. Even though it is right there in my mother’s 1991 book: six years before Bonne Maman’s death they moved her to the nursing home. Reading this was a bit of a revelation, but it has already been for quite a while that my mother has recreated history to suit her intention of the moment.
In one of the books from the early years of this century, there is a list at the back of “Favorite sayings of Philip”: He’s a scholar and a gentleman. It won’t be good for breakfast. Life in the tropics.
Any personal notes are few. One year, I found, written in Sharpie next to the flight information for a Belgian relative, “Finally.” On another occasion, after the entry for a dinner party including an aged maiden aunt ad a certain elderly rector she wrote: “Never again.” But such notes stand out because of their rarity.
What made me consider this perusal as transgressive behavior? This is nothing. We’ve found much weirder things in the Orchard. The calendars we have here are ordinary, banal. They are the life of a lady of a certain era. And yet they are peculiarly my mother’s.

The most interesting parts are what is missing. In each years’ books there are carefully scissored out sections, sometimes the top third, something the top fourth of a page. Never ripped, always scissored. These are the black holes, the places with the gravitational pull to absorb all that surrounds it. The scissored out bits are the event horizon from which there is no escape.

*If anyone reading this knows of an ink blotter collector, please oh please let me know.

Happy Birthday Maman

Today is my mother’s birthday, and as with so many things, her attitude toward her birthday is not what it was 10 or 20 years ago. Back then, back when she was the mother I knew, she hated drawing attention to her birthday and adamantly told her children that she didn’t want any gifts. She is not that person any more. She craves the small attentions.
Two days ago she could not recall the name of the son with whom she had just spend three days. Of course, she insisted she was very tired; I assured her that travel was exhausting and told her his name. I try to imagine what a tenebrous chaos must be engulfing her brain, such that she could forget the name of a beloved child. I try to imagine how it will be when I forget every detail of my children’s histories except for the face in front of me, but I cannot. Not yet.

So I am spending some time today recalling the mother who wrote this letter, in 1999. The mother who, as a foreigner and naturalized citizen, knew more about American vernacular architecture than any American I’ve ever met; the mother who never missed an opportunity to correct the spelling of Olmsted’s name; the mother for whom proper fenestration was a religious conviction; the mother who never once graced a Historic House Tour* without - politely, but firmly - correcting some historically incorrect label or pointing out an unfortunate solecism. That mother delighted in and could recount the life stories of Palladio, Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones. That mother chided her own mother when, in the early stages of her own Alzheimer’s, she repeated her stories. ** . That mother taught her first granddaughter the meaning of fenestration before she entered kindergarten.

So here she is, in all her glory.

(Just click on the letter to enlarge it.)
If you read the above letter carefully, you will note typos of its own. Also, it is unfinished and unsigned. In fact, we don't even know if it was ever sent. But we assume that this was the draft for her files, and the final copy was sent out, flawless.


*As her frequent companion on these house tours, in various states and countries, I followed in her wake, simmering with trepidation. She was always correct, but not always tactful.

**Only sea snakes, scorpions, Boy #1, and tiger whiskers. No fenestration. Possible defenestration.

Happy Birthday Maman

Today is my mother’s birthday, and as with so many things, her attitude toward her birthday is not what it was 10 or 20 years ago. Back then, back when she was the mother I knew, she hated drawing attention to her birthday and adamantly told her children that she didn’t want any gifts. She is not that person any more. She craves the small attentions.
Two days ago she could not recall the name of the son with whom she had just spend three days. Of course, she insisted she was very tired; I assured her that travel was exhausting and told her his name. I try to imagine what a tenebrous chaos must be engulfing her brain, such that she could forget the name of a beloved child. I try to imagine how it will be when I forget every detail of my children’s histories except for the face in front of me, but I cannot. Not yet.

So I am spending some time today recalling the mother who wrote this letter, in 1999. The mother who, as a foreigner and naturalized citizen, knew more about American vernacular architecture than any American I’ve ever met; the mother who never missed an opportunity to correct the spelling of Olmsted’s name; the mother for whom proper fenestration was a religious conviction; the mother who never once graced a Historic House Tour* without - politely, but firmly - correcting some historically incorrect label or pointing out an unfortunate solecism. That mother delighted in and could recount the life stories of Palladio, Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones. That mother chided her own mother when, in the early stages of her own Alzheimer’s, she repeated her stories. ** . That mother taught her first granddaughter the meaning of fenestration before she entered kindergarten.

So here she is, in all her glory.


If you read the above letter carefully, you will note typos of its own. Also, it is unfinished and unsigned. In fact, we don't even know if it was ever sent. But we assume that this was the draft for her files, and the final copy was sent out, flawless.


*As her frequent companion on these house tours, in various states and countries, I followed in her wake, simmering with trepidation. She was always correct, but not always tactful.

**Only sea snakes, scorpions, Boy #1, and tiger whiskers. No fenestration. Possible defenestration.

Another Nothing-in-Common Road Trip.

Once again we got in the car and headed south, and then west. This time it was mostly west to Kansas, specifically to Lawrence, Kansas, a delightful college town replete with excellent diners, Prairie and Craftsman architecture, and transplanted Easterners.
Historians know that Lawrence was settled in 1854 by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, originally 29 men intent on promoting the abolition of slavery and ensuring that Kansas would enter the Union as a Free State. All did not go smoothly. On August 18, 1863, a certain William Quantrill led a group of pro-slavery Missourians (Bushwhackers) against the anti-slavery residents of Lawrence (Jayhawkers) and slaughtered everyone they could find. At the end of the day there were 85 widows and 250 fatherless children. These days you can take a self-guided driving tour of Quantrill’s Raid. It takes about one and a half hours.

But I get ahead of myself. We meandered our way to Kansas, stopping to bathe in mineral springs in West Virginia, lunch in Harmony and unsuccessfully seek Economy, Pennsylvania.

One thing that strikes the insular New Yorker in the course of visiting other states is the prevalence of signs prohibiting guns. These signs are necessary because, so I learned, guns are otherwise legal and carried everywhere. Absent such a sign, you can assume that the diners at the next table in Indiana, or the passengers on a Mississippi river boat, or the lady in the stall next to you in the rest room, are all carrying concealed weapons.

Here is the home of James Thurber, beloved humorist and creator of Walter Mitty.

And here is the home of Abraham Lincoln. Yes, even at Lincoln’s home it is necessary to tell gun-toters to leave their weapons at home.

And here is the Dana Thompson House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Springfield, Illinois.

This sign is outside the wonderful Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

You get the idea.

We drove straight home Sunday and Monday,with no more stops at historical sites or museums (Well, yes there was one. We visited the Kent State University Memorial in Ohio.)and the one story on the radio, on every radio station from Kansas to New York,was the shocking massacre of 49 people in Orlando, Florida by a man who was allowed to legally to buy automatic weapons that have no other function than to slaughter people, lots of people.

I walk downtown to the jewelers to get the clasp fixed on a bracelet that Mom gave me years ago. I worry about our jewelers because they are not young, and when they no longer are downtown I have no idea who will fix my watch or find my necklace a clasp that is friendlier to my arthritic fingers, or make my wedding ring, though thankfully I don’t anticipate ever needing another one. I don’t know how old they there, but I know that when Darius retired – he was a professor of chemical engineering – he realized that retirement was a bad idea, so he apprenticed to a jeweler and jewelry-repairer and learned the trade. Since then, at least 20 years ago, he and his wife Fenu, have kept their weird and lovely shop in Hastings. It is filled with estate jewelry and odd bits of porcelain, crystal and silver, and has always been filled with those same dusty pieces. I don’t think anyone ever buys anything in the shop. We go there for repairs, lengthy repairs and conversations. Darius and Fenu are both from Bombay, when it was still Bombay. They are Parsees, or Zoroastrians – fire worshippers - which may perhaps be the most ancient religion in the world.

In the back of the store, Fenu sits behind her desk, piled with papers, pads and the cashbox. Beside her, just about four feet away, is Darius’ work table where he repairs. It is covered with the tools of his trade. On the wall above him are four clocks, but only one has ever told the correct time. I tell them I have come for my bracelet, and this means that Darius pulls from under his table a large cardboard box filled with items repaired or to-be-repaired, each in a separate plastic bag. He looks through everything in the box, and whatever I have come for is always the last one he examines. We are in no rush. The bracelet still needs to have its clasp fixed.

I mention that I saw this wonderful movie about an Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Darius says that for some reason there have been many great Indian mathematicians. He tells me about a student back in Bombay who had no shoes but was uncannily brilliant. Meanwhile, WQXR is on the radio, as it always is in their small shop, and now they are playing the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco. I am pleased because it is one of the few pieces of music that I can actually identify. Darius says to me, “Do you know how the Jewish people ever recovered from the war? I always ask my friends that, because it was such a terrible thing to recover from. Are you Jewish?” I say I am not, and then I think, what if I say Yes? I could be Jewish. Ever since Reine tested positive for the Tay-Sachs gene, I have assumed that there is some Jewish strain in there. Theoretically, the recessive gene could come from her father’s family, the Über-Waspy-Hewitts, as shocked as some of them would be to discovered such a thing; but honestly I prefer that it comes from the Euro-mélange that is my side of the family.

Meanwhile, we all concur that Nabucco is a beautiful opera, one of Verdi’s finest.
While he is welding a tiny lobster clasp to the bracelet, Darius recalls in incident when he was doing his BSc at the university in Bombay. There was a chemistry conference that brought in scientists from all over the world, including Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband. Darius was an undergrad then, and his department head asked him to walk Madame Joliet-Curie back to her hotel so that she could freshen up for the evening’s events. Of course he did. He escorted her to the hotel and watched her go up the elevator; her hair was wild, and her clothing rumpled. When she emerged from the elevator a while later, she looked exactly the same: wild hair, rumpled clothes. Of course he said nothing to the eminent Nobelist, but it caused him to ponder the idiosyncratic nature of genius. As he tells me this, Darius is almost weeping with quiet laughter. Fenu, his wife, is also laughing, though I assume she has heard this story dozens of times. From the Panasonic transistor radio, the exiled Hebrew slaves were singing,
Golden harp of the prophetic wise men,
why hang so silently from the willows?
Rekindle the memories in our hearts,
tell us about the times gone by!
Remembering the fate of Jerusalem
play us a sad lament
or else be inspired by the Lord
to fortify us to endure our suffering!

Apparently Irene Joliot-Curie was not the only eccentric member of the family. Darius relates an incident when Frédéric Joliot-Curie was lecturing and writing formulas on the blackboard with one, and erasing previously written formulas with the other. In the audience was another scientist, a Finn and a fellow Nobel prize winner. Seeing his colleague’s dilemma, he jumped up, grabbed the eraser and said that he would hereafter erase the board for Professor Joliot-Curie, whenever needed. Again, Fenu laughs heartily as if for the first time.
Darius has fixed my bracelet, and it is time to go. “Thank you for the story about the Curies,” I say.
“They were two stories,” he corrects me.

All the S.W.A.G. You can Forget

What person in her right mind takes her mother to the Second Annual Hudson Valley Dementia Conference?
What is wrong with the above sentence? How many things are wrong with the above sentence?

And yes, I was the one who thought it was a good idea. After all, there was a special reduced rate for “Persons with Dementia”.
I actually thought my mother might glean something from the lectures, and might find comfort in the company of other likewise impaired persons. I had not figured on the ubiquity of SWAG.*

The conference got off to a slow start because of an accident on the Tappan Zee Bridge. An enormous tractor-trailer full of scrap metal tipped over and blocked several lanes; the entire bridge was closed for four hours, trapping speakers and attendees on the western shores of the Hudson. But remarkably, this did not make the evening news: Dozens of Dementia Professionals Stranded on the Wrong Side of the River.

Meanwhile, Mom and I were walking the halls of the DoubleTree at a pre-climate-change-glacial speed, stopping at every exhibitor table to admire and collect the pens, hand cleaners and pill boxes. My sister, back at the Orchard in her ongoing project to empty the house, texted to inform me that my mother had apparently kept every hospital bracelet of hers and my father’s, in a box in the top drawer of a bureau. And there were a lot of hospital visits in Dad’s final years.

At one table Mom was quasi-ecstatic to receive a Memory Boost package of tea bags and two purple ballpoint pens, purple being the signature color of Alzheimer’s. I have no idea idea why.

My sister texted a photograph of a pile of small crucifixes. A week ago she believed she had found all the crucifixes, rosaries, holy cards and religious bric-a-brac, and delivered them to her favorite monk at Glastonbury Abbey. So she was rather perturbed to realize that there were several more crucifixes and holy medals still lurking in the house. Perturbed on many levels. Obviously, there is the question of why there had to be so many crosses and stuff, even if you take into account the fact of nothing ever having been thrown away in all the years my grandparents, great-aunt, parents and other grandmother lived in the house. There still remains the question: just how religious were they? I didn’t think of my parents as religious; I would have said they were more pro-forma than anything else. So why the plethora of paraphernalia?

At the exhibit table for the Jewish Home for the Aged, Mom examines and then collects several brochures; she tells the lady sitting there that she is not taking this for herself, no, she taking this for her friend.

It is, of course, too late now to learn the whys and wherefores of our ancestors' religiosity; those that remain with wits are only my heathen generation and the youngsters.

Just in case you are wondering, or considering joining us for the Third Annual Dementia Conference, here is a partial list of the swag collected by my mother:
2 Collapsible water bottle (Somers Manor)
Multicolored 7-day pill box (Marquis Home Care)
3 Squeeze balls (Osborn Rehab)
8 hand sanitizers (Crystal Run Health; Somers Manor; First Light Home Care; Hamaspik Choice)
Magnifying glass w/Light (Somers Manor)
2 Silicone pedometer bracelets (Jewish Home Family)
Red plastic case with band aids (Putnam Ridge
Pill cutter (Osborn Home Care)
Stain remover (Centers Health Care)
First aid kit in green plastic (Jewish Home at Home)
Memory boast pack of tea bags (Home Instead Senior Care)
Gum (Centers Home care)
Lens cleaner (Hamaspik Choice)
Emery board (Interim Healthcare)
2 Lip balm (crystal Run Health)
Post it Pads (Centers Health Care; Hamaspik Choice; Life House; Interim Healthcare; Atria; United Hebrew)
Spiral notebook and pen (Willow Gardens)
11 Ballpoint pens (Alzheimer’s Association; VNA; United Hebrew; Home Instead Senior Care; Interim; Hamaspik choice)
2 Long shaped purple pencils (Bristal Assisted Living)
Neon green card holder to stick onto cell phone (Marquis Home Care)
Several carry bags (Somers Manor, Alzheimer’s Association)

*SWAG. An Acronym for Stuff We All Get. I thought that was the only thing it was an acronym for. I was very very wrong. There are so many others, including: Secretly We're All Gay, and Scientific Wild Ass Guess.

A day off. Oh Happy Days.

Because sometimes it is important to sneak away from the Land of Lost Memory and Poison Ivy, the other day I went to New Haven. An obvious choice. The original plan was to meet my friends, Becky and Wagon, and see Happy Days at Yale Rep, but then the plan expanded.
It turned out my niece, Eliza at the law school, had a few free minutes before plunging into the subtleties of Military Justice, so I was able meet her and then wander through the quad (Do they call it a quad there? Or a yard? Or a commons?) to evidence and high heels, while eating ice cream made from the milk of very happy grass fed Connecticut cows.
Actually, I had first suggested to Eliza that we meet at the Yale Art Museum and see the Dada exhibit, because I am fond of Dada, which frankly seems less absurd every time I see it. Or absurdity seems less farfetched. Saner. But once I arrived Eliza quickly switched our plan to ice cream and a walk (she has benefitted enormously from law school). We nodded in the direction of the New Haven Green, erstwhile home to an Occupy Wall Street encampment until a three-day old dead body was discovered in one of the tents.
Then Eliza went off to study Evidence and I ambled over to see Dada at the Yale Art Museum. And it was fine. I am still intrigued by Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau. May Ray’s spectrographs used to amaze me. I would have liked more Beatrice Wood.
But it was two stories down, among the old European Masters, that I stopped moving. Side by side were two - two among the hundreds in the world - paintings of the Temptation of St Anthony. I have been fond of Brueghel since I stopped teething, so I first checked out Brueghel the Elder’s version. Then came David Teniers the Younger, and it magnificently encompasses so much of the appeal and mystery of hagiography. There we have St Anthony, the 3rd century Egyptian anchorite, holed up in his cave praying, and the Satan sends him temptations in myriad forms. Why? Do we really thinks Anthony will abandon his cozy cave for these satanic enticements?This scene has been a favorite of painters for centuries. Teniers painted at least five versions, that I could locate. The Temptation at Yale features: Bats and flying fish, a lady in a black gown and a lacy white shawl, trailing a soggy handkerchief in one hand and holding aloft a dry Martini in the other; dueling flying creatures: a fish with legs and a beaky fox; a devil with butterfly wings wielding a backscratcher; and an owl. The owl is particular. It is hard to tell for sure, but in the lower right corner I think that is a deformed or tailless chicken standing atop a water pitcher, preparing to defecate. That same possibly defecating chicken is also in the version currently hanging in Ponce, Puerto Rico. In St Petersburg, Dallas, and in Amsterdam, St Anthony is eternally resisting the temptations of a lady dressed in red and black robes; a skeletal bird in a hoodie playing a bugle; Satanic imps riding flying reptiles; an horned old lady; gnarled chimerical creatures tugging at his robes and spitting; a dog with a funnel hat playing a horn; a bibulous frog astride a robed antediluvian anteater-type creature; beaky rodents; a birdman wearing a funnel-hat riding a flying reptile, dueling with an ugly frog astride a flying fish; a crone with hyena legs; a Tasmanian devil; snakes; and a gnomish man with a felt hat, pointing to way to perdition. (It has been suggested that I stop now enumerating the temptations of poor Saint Anthony. I will try.)

I know. All of that and still we have not arrived at the main event. The museum closed at 5 and I had to leave my contemplation of St Anthony’s stalwart determination in the face of such blandishments. I crossed the street and met Becky and Wagon, and we went to dinner at yet another restaurant that boasts of its relationship with farmers and their farms.
Then to poor Winnie and Willie, in Happy Days. But Winnie doesn’t complain. Winnie is not even tempted. Winnie is buried up to her waist in an immoveable mound of dirt. She is not tempted. In her bag (nearby, just) she has a toothbrush, toothpaste, a magnifying glass, an umbrella, a gun, lipstick. If Winnie were not already so delighted with her situation, she might envy St Anthony in his cave, still unencumbered, still capable of free will. She might be tempted by mobility and by a desert serenity unmarked by the piercing bell for waking and sleeping. She might witness the flying reptilian devils, and think, “Flight! Freedom! Autonomy!”
Winnie has not been canonized. She will never be canonized.
You may find this helpful: when, upon examining a small moving creature through her magnifying glass, and upon hearing from Willie that the white stuff being transported by the small moving creature are “Eggs!”, Winnie exclaims, “Formication.”
Sitting in the audience, you may think you are hearing the word fornication; a word appearing not infrequently in general usage, a word whose definition we know well. But that is not the word Winnie speaks. I was pleased (smug, delighted) that I knew right away the word was formication, not because I knew exactly what formication meant (a sensation like insects crawling over the skin) but because I knew very well that the word in French for ants is fourmis, and in Latin it is formica (Not the laminate, invented in 1912, made of composite materials that is heat-resistant and wipe-clean, not the branded product.). And had not Winnie been just then peering through her glass at the ant?
All of which makes it abundantly clear why the noun, formication, is the only one that makes sense.
In the second act, Winnie is buried up to her neck in the mound. The set looks very much like a termite or ant hill in the tropics. Or the desert.