Happy National Whatever Day

Well, I always like to know what I'm dealing with, so I thought I'd check out just what National Whatever Day we're celebrating on April 10th. 

Turns out it's National Alcohol Screening Day. There sure may have been days in my past when I could have used an alcohol screening, but today my consumption is pretty much limited to a couple of glasses of wine (mostly prosecco) a month. Unless I'm on vacation, when I'm likely to have a couple of glasses of wine (mostly prosecco) every day. In any case, I think I'd pass any alcohol screening test with flying, no problema colors. Now if it were National Chocolate Overdoing It Screening Day, that would be another story. But today I will be working a shift at the homeless shelter where I volunteer, and there are plenty of folks there who struggle with alcohol and other substance abuse issues. And I love it when someone tells me they're in recovery. Which I hope will happen today.

It's also National Erase Self-Negativity Day. Well, I've never heard of this day, and really don't know anything about it other than what seems like the obvious. I'm all for being honest with your self-appraisals - once a Catholic, you never, ever, ever lose that "examine your conscience" mentality - but never, ever, ever to the point of not keeping your honest self-positivity in mind. And pretty much every day should be one dedicated in at least some small art to erasing negative self-image. Life's too short to spend it wallowing in self-abasement.

One way to shake out of self-negativity would be celebrating National Farm Animals Day. Go cows! Go pigs! Go hens! Go roosters! Go goats! Go sheep! Go ducks! Thanks for all you give us. I'll celebrate you all without dwelling on the fact that a lot of what you give us leads to loss of life. Your life. I could never be a vegan, but I could be a vegetarian (or at least a pescatarian). So why aren't I? If only there were a reasonable substitute for bacon. 

Not that I indulge in bacon all that often. Just once in a while. But instead of bacon for breakfast today, which I wasn't going to have anyway, maybe I'll take advantage of National Cinnamon Crescent Day. Or maybe not. Because I really don't feel like baking cinnamon crescent rolls, even if they pop into the oven straight out of the shiny blue Pillsbury can. Is a chocolate honey dip donut an okay substitute?

And Happy National Siblings Day to Kath, Tom/Gus, Rich/Stick, and Trish/Po! (Kath and Moe didn't get cool nicknames like the others.) I can't say it's always been a 100% pleasure cruise, but I love you guys. That's us last fall at Kath's - the first time we'd all been together in years. A bit blurry, and not the best photo ever taken. I mean, why is Tom's head growing out of Kath's??? But thar be us! 

Finally, it's National Encourage a Young Writer Day. Not that I begrudge any young writers any encouragement, but where the hell was a day dedicated to encouraging young writers when I could have used it? Note to self: BOLO National Encourage an Old Writer Day.

Who knows where the time goes?

This is a picture of my husband, taken in Rome in April 2012. He was in treatment for cancer at the time - chemo? radiation? I've forgotten the details, but it was pre-surgery, which came in May. He was tired, but we'd promised our nieces Molly and Caroline a trip to Rome, so there we were. A couple of times he hung in the apartment we'd rented near the Spanish Steps and rested while we toured. (He wasn't all that keen on visiting St. Peter's - been there, done that - and the last thing he needed was the mob pushing their way to get in.)

But mostly he was game for wandering around at night eating gelati, dining out - especially when we discovered that Italy is a very good place to dine out if you have celiac disease, which, in the course of my husband's cancer diagnosis, he found out he had - and visiting touristy spots like the Roman Forum, which is where this picture was snapped.

It was a wonderful trip, but sad. Our last European trip - one of many, many that Jim and I had taken over the years. 

We did end up having a couple more trips to NYC - Jim's favorite place on earth - but the Rome trip was our last major jaunt.

Anyway, today is the eleventh anniversary of Jim's death. 

Eleven years? Sometimes I still shake my head in disbelief. 

Who knows where the time goes? 

Political landscape aside, I have a very good life, great even. Great family. Great friends. Great volunteer work. Great home. Good - maybe even great, if that's possible at 75 - health. (Knock on wood.)

And speaking of wood, funny, as I look around the living room, much of the furniture is new since Jim's death. But the credenza, one of the mirrors, a couple of the lamps, the little desk, the cabinet used for CD's, the claw-foot table, and some of the pictures on the walls are the same. Just in different places. But the table where I'm writing this is new. 

During covid, I just got sick of the mahogany 1920's behemoth we'd gotten at an antique store in Brookline a million years ago. I'd never polished it, and the wood had dried out. If you leaned back at all in one of the chairs, you risked cracking the wood. Anyway, I just got sick of living with its dark and gloomy presence. So I put my mask on, marched over to Circle Furniture, and bought a new table and chairs. The credenza I kept.

The big change to the living room is that there's no longer a TV there.

We used to go back and forth about what we'd do if the other one died first. Jim's plan was to get rid of the kitchen clock which, for some reason, he hated. (I, of course, loved it: a very cute little clock with ceramic fruits and veggies for the hour markers.) Me? I was going to retire that big-arse TV. 

Which I did when I reno'ed our condo the year after Jim died.

The cute little kitchen clock stopped working on its own, but I still have it here somewhere, along with the replacement battery clockworks I got on Amazon. Maybe some day I'll get around to it...

What's missing from the living room is, of course, the presence of Diggy, as Jim was known within the fam.

And, yes, after all these years, I still miss him.

Sometimes I wake up, weirdly sensing his presence. Sometimes I walk into our home and weirdly expect him to be there. 

Of course, I miss him. (And for the record, I still miss my father, dead now over 50 years, and my mother, gone for over 20.)

You never stop missing someone you love. It's just that the missing is less acute, not quite continuous. (And, I have to admit, I don't miss the non-stop yacking, the awful jokes, the rag-bag clothing he refused to part with. Most of the time, anyway. I'd be happy to put up with it all if he were still around...)

I've traveled plenty of times without Jim, and it's not the same. Fun, but never as much fun as with him. (And, of course, I miss that he planned all of our trips. Sometimes overplanned. I thought that on Thursday in Paris, we'd eat at Café de l'Esplanade. I'm thinking of having the sole. You liked the veal chop last time we ate there. This would be six months before we were going actually to be in Paris. So, yeah, overplanning. But I miss that Jim did the planning.)

Molly and Caroline are both big travelers, by the way. I'd like to think that the trip to Rome, and an earlier trip we'd taken to Paris, helped set them on their adventurous ways. Both the "girls" (now young women) have been back to Rome, and a couple of years ago they went together to the Amalfi Coast.

Arriverderci, Diggy...

Bottom of the barrel at Cracker Barrel

Although I've been to a Cracker Barrel a couple of times, I'll never be a regular. 

1. There aren't many around here
2. The calories
3. I'm way too much of a snob

But what's not to like (other than the calories) about those biscuits, those fried apples? And I will say that when I've been to a Cracker Barrel (last time, over 20 years ago while on a business trip to South Carolina) the service was fine (although probably a bit too chirpy for my liking).

But the service wasn't so fine for a group of Maryland special ed students - kiddos with severe cognitive disabilities and/or autism - who were snubbed, denied service, treated poorly, while on a field trip. 

On Tuesday [December 3rd], a group of 11 students and seven staff members from Maryland's Charles County Public Schools District were "refused service" at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Waldorf, Maryland, Superintendent Maria Navarro said in a statement. The outing was a part of community-based instruction for students at the district's Dr. James Craik Elementary School. The instruction allows students in special education programs to perform practical skills and socialize with the public. (Source: USA Today)

The school had called ahead and got the okay that they wouldn't need a reservation for their party, despite its size; had informed the Cracker Barrel people of the purpose of the visit; and had also told them that they were willing to split up if needed. 

But, no. When the group showed up - after doing some Christmas shopping at a Dollar Store - the teachers were told not only that they couldn't be seated, but that Cracker Barrel should be taken off the list of restaurants approved "for community-based instruction."

Cracker Barrel? Wouldn't you think that an informal, inexpensive, family-friendly, nothing fancy restaurant - especially one that specializes in exuding real fake cornpone charm - would be an ideal venue for a bunch of kids who might be messy, make funny noises, act weird. Hmmm. When I look at it at this way, wouldn't this describe most groups of kids?

The staff and students were allowed to place a take out order, but taking out and eating back at school is not the same experience as sitting down in a restaurant and being waited on. So Cracker Barrel was willing to deprive the crew of their money - feel free to pay for takeout! - and their experience. Shameful!

Both servers and management, the school staff said, were rude and ignored the kids. Althought the place wasn't busy, it took what seemed like forever for the takeout meals to be prepared, so the kids ended up waiting on the bus. (By the way, it's not like the 11 students were free-ranging in the restaurant. There were 7 staff members to support those 11 students.)

The parents - naturally furious - threatened a protest and, as news of the incident spread, the Cracker Barrel was flooded with negative Yelp reviews. (Served them right.)

Cracker Barrel apologized, claiming blah-di-blah. The store's general manager and two servers were fired. (And, yes, I do have a scintilla of sympathy for anyone getting fired from what has to be a pretty crummy, bottom of the barrel job to begin with, especially around the holidays. But they really should have known better.)

And just how awful is awful? I can only imagine how much those kids were anticipating their big day out. I can only imagine how the staff prepped them for it. How very awful.

If I were a patron of Cracker Barrel, I'd sure be boycotting. But, as I said, there are none nearby and I'm way, way, way too much of a snob. 

People of the Stuff

My cousin Barbara and her husband have spent the last several months downsizing and preparing to move into senior living. Which has meant going through an awful lot of stuff: the accumulation of nearly sixty years of marriage, plus some of the accumulated stuff of her mother (my Aunt Margaret), our grandmother (Nanny), and our great-grandmother (Bridget Trainor). Then there's the extra-added attraction of the accumulated stuff of her mother-in-law (Eva).

Twenty years ago, when Barbara and Dick moved out of the the single-family home where they'd raised their kids and went into a townhouse community, we were all delighted that the storage space in their new digs was so capacious. I swear that the storage room off of the finished part of the townhouse basement is at least half the size of my full condo. So lots of room to hang on to all sorts of stuff.

And then, all of a sudden, the day of reckoning was nigh.

Their new place is lovely. But it's a lot smaller than what they're used to, and there's a lot less space for stuff.

So, along with their sons, daughters-in-law, eldest granddaughter, and another cousin, I've been helping them go through things to figure out what to take, what to give to someone in the family, what to donate, and what to trash. If it takes a village to raise a child, let me tell you it takes an equally sized village to help empty out a house - even if it's a townhouse.

When I say I have been helping "them," I really mean my cousin Barbara. Dick's aesthetic has always inclined more towards Zen monatery. He's been packing up and schlepping off to the Salvation Army with a vim and vigor that belies his age (87). But Barbara wants to go through her things - most of which, by the way, are lovely, interesting, and/or have sentimental meaning. Reverse curation, I guess. 

As I have explained to Dick (i.e., yelled at him) each time he's about to grab some teacups, vases, whatnots that Barbara hasn't yet gone through, so he can make yet another run to the Sally: Back off! This is in Barbara's DNA! She comes from a long line of People of the Stuff!

Nanny, our grandmother, was the OG stuff person in our family. 

Every available bit of space - tabletop, desktop, bookcase, dresser - was crammed with stuff: curios, knicknacks, whatnots. I have plenty of it, including Nanny's cookie jar, which takes center stage on my living room mantel. (Among the stuff flanking it, you can see one of my father's anchor bookends, a souvenir from his Navy days during WWII. And next to that, you can see a bit of a very pretty green and blue glass vase that Barbara gave me for my birthday a few years back - when we were still both in accumulation mode.)

Even before Barbara started adding to my Nanny mix, I already had acquired the steerhorns that hung over the bar in Rogers' Brothers Saloon; a mirror; two lamps; a clawfoot table; a rickety desk and chair; what had been my father's childhood dresser; and an ugly-ass grey and blue pitcher that had broken and been crudely patched together by Nanny. But now that Barbara is deaccessioning, I've acquired even more of Nanny's stuff. 

Like this hot chocolate set. From the vintage - early twentieth century - I'm guessing it was a wedding present. I'm sure Nanny got a ton of use out of it, given that within four years of her wedding day, she had three kiddos. Anyway, it's now in my downstairs' bathroom. (I'm not planning on hosting any more hot chocoloate parties than Nanny did.)

I took a few of the serving pieces from Nanny's very pretty China set - 1930-ish handpainted Noritake - but then my niece Molly decided she wanted Nanny's china. I may use that one covered bowl on Thanksgiving, but the full set - where full means that half the coffee cups are missing - is packed and ready for Molly. 

I took the two two-toned little brown vingegar jugs that had been Bridget Trainor's, and gave one each to my nieces Molly and Caroline. 

God help me, I'm eyeing that little ice chest of Nanny's - or maybe it was Bridget Trainors's - and the one side chair on wheels - items I most decidedly don't need and decidedly have no room for. But, hey, I'm a bona fide person of the stuff.

So was my Aunt Margaret. I already had one of her dining room chairs, a few paperweights (which she collected), a very nice tray and two sweet little dishes - one with lillies of the valley, the other with violets - that sit on what had been my father's dresser holding, well, small stuff. But I haven't left Barbara's empty handed of Peg's stuff: I've taken a few trinkets. 

My mother was also a colossal person of the stuff, and I've lost all track of how much of her stuff I have around here: vases, decorative plates, her mixing bowl, the aluminum pan she used for brownies and barmbrack, a side chair, and two lovely water colors her artist friend Ann Curtain gave her as a wedding gift. Her silver. The nice date book from some museum in which she kept track of birthdays. The entry for her birthday, November 8th, just says Me. (Tell me you could part with that.) Some  of her OG Christmas ornaments. (And a couple that were Nanny's. Because why not.)

Anyway, I've got People of the Stuff from both sides. My sisters are both the same way. 

My sister Kath is in the process of preparing to move out of their big place in Brookline, and find a place that's more manageable (i.e., isn't on four floors with steep staircases). Her place is packed with fabulosity - both her own and some family gems. (I am about the inherit the sweet little wood-framed Madonna and Child that was on the wall in our childhood bedroom.) Kath has not, of course, wanted to take anything from Barbara's downsizing, much as she might actually want it. But I did find the one thing I just knew she would cherish: a gold catechism medal that Nanny was awarded in 1894, when she was twelve years old. Kath is thrilled to have it. 

My sister Trish is also the beneficiary of some of Barbara's downsizing: table, chairs, some Roseville pottery.

Fortunately, although their new place will be far smaller than what they're used to, Barbara will be able to take enough of her stuff with her to make the new place feel like home. 

The process of going through all of Barbara's stuff with her has been bittersweet. Every item - and there are plenty of them - has a memory, some meaning, associated with it. We probably took longer to sort through her stuff than we technically needed to take, but there have been so many good stories. That Noritake china set that Molly's taking? (That creamer, btw, shows the pattern. This is the pic I texted to Molly to see if she wanted the set.) Apparently, when Aunt Margaret became engaged, Nanny wanted to invite Uncle Ralph's family over to dinner and didn't feel she had decent enough china. So off she went - I suspect to Coghlin's in downtown Worcester - to buy the Noritake. I don't know who Nanny was so all-fired in need of impressing. It's not like Uncle Ralph's family were some sort of grandees. His mother had died when he and his brothers were still pretty young, and his father was a Worcester cop. 

Anyway Nanny was a notoriously dreadful cook. Perhaps she felt that having nice, new china would detract from the awfulness of the meal. 

I am happy that I was able to go through all of Barbara's stuff with her. It was a way of remembering, a way of honoring her possessions, a way of recognizing our kinship as People of the Stuff. And of the joy we take in both acquiring new stuff, and hanging on to the stuff of our family members. (I could write another chapter on going through Barbara's wonderful - mostly very arty - costume jewelry, and collection of gorgeous scarves. But that's a story for another day.)

A few years from now, I'll be doing the same thing here. Going through my stuff, reminiscing about where I got it, about whose it once was. I'll be hauling stuff to Goodwill, I'll be tossing stuff in the trash, but there's lot of stuff I'll want to find a good home for. 

There are plenty of People of the Stuff out there that might be delighted to have that hot chocolate set. 

The Golden Memoir Society? As if...

I have no idea how or why it appeared, but a month or so ago, an ad popped up promising the Gift of Your Parent's Voice. The gift was going to come from something called the Golden Memoir Society. And what popped up was actually a schedule. You pick a time and date and then you spend $199 - the only payment option is PayPal - and someone from the "society" will spend 45 minutes talking to your parents.

We record interviews with mothers and fathers, telling the story of their family's life - in their voice - so everyone can listen to them again and again! You will receive the completed MP3 within 24 hours after the call is conducted. (Source: Calendly)

Although he's been dead from over 50 years, I'd give anything to have 45 minutes worth of my father's voice telling stories. He was an excellent, colorful story teller with a wonderful sense of humor. Even after all these years, I can still conjure up his voice in my head, and it never fails to put a smile on my face. 

I'd love to hear some of his funny stories. Or some of the funny stories told by his best friend, Spike, who was a professional-level raconteur. One of the saddest moments of my life was at my father's funeral when I heard someone sobbing a few pews back. I turned and saw that it was Spike. This was before friends and family told stories at Catholic funerals, but I know if it had been the custom back then, Spike would have rallied and told some good ones. 

One of my favorites was the one about the time when the two of them went to a recruitment event, held at a downtown Worcester hotel, for a job selling vacuum cleaners door to door. This was during the Depression. They were just kids. But they were laughing so hard at the demonstration of the vacuum cleaner's power - which including running the vac up and down a giant fake thermometer and showing how well the vac suctioned the red liquid - that they ended up trying to bolt out of the room, only to find the door locked. Needless to say, they didn't get the job, but they did get another one going door to door giving out baked bean samples. 

Anyway, I'd love hearing my father tell 45 minutes worth of stories. 

And there are some questions I'd like to ask him, maybe even some serious ones, about the death of his father when he was eleven, about meeting my mother, about what he would rather have done for work than what he ended up doing. (He was promoted from the shop floor of a fine wire factory to become a salesman.) There are other things I wish I'd asked him when I had the chance. 

But what did I know? I was just a kid (14) when he first developed kidney disease, and not much more than a kid (a few weeks past 21) when he died.

I don't have the same desire to hear my mother's voice, which I can conjure up as easily as I can my father's. 

Part of this is the cold hard fact that my mother was nowhere near the storyteller that my father was. But mostly it's because I knew my mother as an adult. I was 51 when she died, and we were pretty close. I'd had 30 years more conversations with her than I had with my father. There wasn't all that much that I needed to know. 

Still, there are some questions I wish I knew the answer to, but they're so painful, I don't think I ever would have asked them. (Most of them are around the death of my newborn, perfectly healthy sister Margaret, my parents' first child. This event haunted my mother; it haunted our family. I would have liked to know more about her feelings, about my father's, too. About how they both coped. Interesting, I spent the night with her before she went for a heart procedure, and I almost brought up the topic then, but something held me back. Why inflict pain by asking what my grandmother's reaction was to Margaret's death? I'm pretty sure she would have blamed my mother. Everything bad that happened to anyone in the family had to be someone's fault, and my poor mother - the oldest in her family - was the frequent repository of Grandma's need to blame. Anyway, I was with her in the doctor's office reviewing the results of her procedure when she had a major heart attack. She spent the final two weeks of her life in the ICU. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time strolling down any memory lanes that weren't upbeat ones.)

But I digress.

To get back to the Golden Memoir Society. 

I have two major questions.

1. Who wants to outsource the task of talking to your parents, or grandparents, or sibs, or other relations, or friends? Isn't this something you should be doing on your own? Why miss out on this opportunity? And, since this is your loved one, there won't be a time limit. No paltry 45 minutes. Plus, if you've ever interviewed someone, you know that an answer can always open up a new line of questioning. And these off-script meanders always make the interview more valuable. Is the Golden Memoir Society interviewer going to know what's worth exploring and what's a dead end? I think not.
2. Then there's the mystery element to this enterprise. I couldn't find any info anywhere on them. No website, no social media, no reviews. No names. (Is the interviewer a human or an AI?) Just an ask to fork over $199 via PayPal, and give up your loved one's phone number. Oh, yeah, and please share anything that will help prepare for our meeting. Even if for some reason you decide to outsource the interview with your loved one, do you want to blindly give out their phone number and provide a few helpful details? I'm absolutely the suspicious type, and this one screams SCAM to me. All that glitters isn't necessarily golden, and that includes memoir societies.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't mind having 45 minutes worth of my father's voice...That would be a real gift. Just wish there was some way for someone to give it to me.

MOLST

MOLST.

I'd never heard of it. 

MOLST.

Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment.

A few weeks ago, the call came from Long Island, where my friend Mary Beth was hospitalized. Her second hospitalization since February. She's been sick, very sick, for many years. Although I'm not local, I'm first on her list of healthcare proxies.

We are old friends, from college. So 50 year+ friends. She is one of the wittiest and more brilliant people I've ever known. She can also be a prima donna, high maintenance. But she always - whatever the circumstance - had the gift of making me laugh. Or, at minimum, smile.

I love her.

The call came from a case manager and a nurse. Deb, Mary Beth's second on the list, was also on the phone. Deb is local, and has been the one keeping an eye on Mary Beth.

More than an eye.

Mary Beth - like me a widow without children; unlike me, no close relatives around - has amazing friends/neighbors who live across the street.

When MB is in the hospital or a rehab facility - and she's been in and out of both for the past four years; pretty much ever since her husband died suddenly - it is Deb who visits most regularly, talks to the doctors and nurses. When MB is home, Deb manages the home health aides, who have been there 24/7 since last July. She does the grocery shopping. Runs errands. She pops over to see MB whenever she can.

I've told Deb that, if Mother Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi had a child, she'd be it. 

Deb is kindness personified.

Then there are Lori and Andrew. I can't even begin to get into everything that the two of them have done to help Mary Beth. Manage her finances, and all the other paperwork that comes along with just plain life. Take care of home repair and maintenance. Provide IT support. 

When MB was in her first major rehab stint, Lori and Andrew had MB's bathroom rehabbed, swapping out the tub for a walk in shower, getting a handicapped toilet put in. 

And lots of other stuff that I can't even begin to get into.

Plus, along with Deb, Lori is a regular visitor, and, along with Deb, make sure that holidays are observed, birthdays are celebrated.

It's this amazing trio who have enabled Mary Beth to stay in her home and out of a permanent facility. A nursing home.

MOLST.

Mary Beth was out of it. The hospital needed us to sign off on the MOLST.

MOLST is a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on steroids. It includes a DNR, but also whether the patient should be intubated, or have a feeding tube put in, if and when to use antibiotics. There there's the biggie: Treatment Guidelines. Deb and I checked with each other. We knew Mary Beth's wishes: comfort measures only. Return to the hospital only if pain control isn't working. 

We were signing our friend into hospice.

Home hospice. 

Home.

That's where she wanted to go. That's where she wanted to die.

So Mary Beth came home.

Without getting into the complexity of Mary Beth's health problems, she's had a cascade of them over the past two decades, many of them stemming from successful but ghastly treatment to cure her mesothelioma. Mesothelioma. 

The doctors at Sloan-Kettering once told her that, on the inside, she looked like an asbestos miner. 

Mary Beth had been a librarian. But she worked in some very old buildings, where the pipes in the basement were wrapped in asbestos. So, mesothelioma due to being a librarian.

At least that's the theory of the case.

Anyway, what with one thing and another, MB developed substantial mobility issues, alongside a raft of other problems. Things have gotten worse as time goes by, and all of a sudden she was a total mess, health-wise. She has been 100% bedridden since July.

Home hospice in Mary Beth's case meant not just a continuation of the 24/7 health aides, but also the addition of an overnight aide to help move her when the pain got too bad.

Sometimes when I called, she was too tired to talk.

Mary Beth had never in her life been too tired to talk.

Last Monday, I flew down to JFK, and Uber'd out to Long Island to visit her.

I hadn't seen MB since last August. She looked frail, but was 100% with it. 

I told here that, when she'd been out of it, I'd signed the MOLST. I asked whether she wanted to revisit it. She didn't. 

Our conversation was, as usual, free ranging: politics, families, movies, books, college memories. We talked about the royal family. She's team Will-Kate; I'm strictly Harry-Meghan.

One thing we have in common is that, although we both come from staunchly Catholic families and spent 16 years in Catholic schools, we're atheists.

I told her it was pretty ironic that she ended up in a Catholic hospice. 

Her response: good thing she wasn't going to need an abortion. 

Deb, Lori, and I had dinner. We talked - of course - MB. 

That afternoon, the hospice nurse stopped in and he told me that, while you really can't predict these things, Mary Beth's vitals were strong, and she was obviously still 100% with it. This would be the best she'd ever be, but she could linger awhile. 

That afternoon, Mary Beth started on morphine for her pain. 

On Tuesday, MB told me she'd been craving a corn muffin, so I walked over the nearby Stop & Shop and got her one - plus an extra for the next day. I made it just the way she likes it: cut in half, buttered, stabbed through in a few places so the butter could melt in, heated up. She picked up and licked every last crumb off her fingers.

We watched the arraignment. 

She told me that she wanted to die in her sleep.

I told her I'd be back down in a few weeks, and would bring her some homemade corn muffins.

I told a picture and texted it off to our friend Joyce, who lives in Dallas. 

I gave MB the proxy hug and kiss that Joyce sent her way. I gave her a hug and a kiss of my own. As we always ended our phone conversations, we both said "I love you."

On Friday, Deb called to let me know that the health aide had called to say that she thought Mary Beth had died. Deb sped over from work. Lori sped over from work. MB's body was still warm, but they couldn't detect any pulse, or any breathing. They called hospice to come and declare. Then they called the funeral home for the removal. 

Once MB had gone into hospice, I'd been in touch with the funeral home about the arrangements: cremation now, we'll do a celebration of her life later, hopefully when her brother Bill (whose been having his own health issues) and his wife can come up from NJ). 

While they all waited for the funeral folks to arrive, I spoke with Deb, Lori, and Andrew. We were all a bit crazy. After all this time, Mary Beth's death had come so fast...

I called Joyce, and we shared a little phone cry. 

On Saturday, I got my signature on the request for cremation form notarized and overnighted it off to the funeral home. I emailed MB's lawyer to let her know the news, and ask her what the next steps are. I'm the executor. (Last year, Mary Beth told me that she needed to redo her will. I found a lawyer and helped MB get her thoughts organized, etc. When we met - phone meeting - with the lawyer, she asked MB who the executor would be. Mary Beth told them me. So I guess I was...)

Yesterday, I thought about Mary Beth and our long friendship. 

She's the second 50-year friend I've lost. The first was my beloved high school friend Marie, who died a couple of months after my husband did in 2014. This is one of the main downsides of aging...

Mary Beth's life has been pretty miserable for the last few years. She may not be in a better place - remember, we're atheists - but she is no longer in pain. So there's that.

Still, I'm sad. Very sad. 

As we learned in Girl Scouts, "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold." 

True, true, true...

Goodbye, my golden friend.

Hope I'm not called upon to fill in another MOLST anytime soon.

Home Opener

Later today, I'll be watching the Red Sox Home Opener. I've been watching at least a couple of innings of each game so far. Mixed results so far, but that's the Red Sox. That's baseball. You definitely can't win 'em all.

For whatever reason, I've been thinking about watching the Home Opener in 2014.

April 4, 2014.

Less than two months after my husband's death, I took the train down to Providence to watch the game with my wonderful friend Marie. Marie was dying.

During their illnesses - both had cancer - Jim would often tell me, "Marie has it worse than I do." And Marie would often say, "Jim has it worse than I do."

Turns out they were both right.

Marie and I met our freshman year in high school, so by 2014, we'd been friends for 50 years.

We shared a love of politics, books, history, talking, and sports. Especially baseball. Especially the Red Sox.

For our Home Opener, I brought lunch: hot dogs, Cracker Jack, and Hood Sports Bars (chocolate covered vanilla ice cream). I even bought a little cooler to carry those Sports Bars in.

Marie was dying.

She managed to get part of a hot dog down, and a Sports Bar. She managed to make it through most of the game.

We talked Red Sox. In 2013, they'd won the World Series. So opening day was a big deal. Over the years, we'd gone to an occasional game together, and, during the season, when we talked we usually covered the Red Sox in our conversations. 

Marie was dying. She hadn't yet been declared terminal. No one had said that 'this is it.' Yet. Marie was (clearly) dying.

I stayed for dinner. Chinese take out. Marie was so tired, so weak. She kept drifting off. Marie was dying.

Marie's husband drove me to the train, and we talked around things. Later that evening, we exchanged emails, where we didn't talk around things.

Did I see Marie two more times? Three? I'm pretty sure I went down to Providence at least twice during those last couple of weeks. 

The week after the home opener, Marie was admitted to hospice.

The last time I saw her was Saturday, April 19th. Holy Saturday. Easter was late that year. Even later than this year. 

We talked about families. Her kids, mostly. About friends. About dying. 

Marie told me it wasn't scary. But that she was waiting. Waiting to hear something from her parents, both of them long dead. (Her mother died in 1999, her father in 2001, a few months before my mother. My father - the person who gave me my love of baseball - was long, long dead. He'd died in 1971. When Marie's parents came to the wake, they gave my mother a Mass card with $15 in it. There was some tradition of giving the widow cash - was it Irish? Marie's parents were both the children of immigrants - and my mother got cash from some others, as well. I remember wondering whether the people who gave money thought we were so destitute that we needed help with groceries. My mother just told me it was something that some people do. For all the wakes my father went to - and he was a true, Irish sports page devouring wake-goer - and I went to a few with him, I don't remember him giving anyone an envelope with any money in it. But, of course, it's not something he would have mentioned.)

While I was visiting Marie in hospice, she drifted in and out. People drifted in and out, too. Marie had a large extended family, and a ton of friends. (Her particular genius was the gift of friendship.)

I was wearing a pink challis scarf, and Marie said, "You've had that scarf a long time."

"You're right," I told her. "Maybe ten years. Fifteen maybe."

"No," she insisted. "Longer."

When I left, late afternoon, I kissed her goodbye and told her that I loved her. That our friendship had been one of the best things in my life. When I left, she was wearing the pink challis scarf draped over her shoulders.

That night she was put under palliative sedation. No visitors, other than her husband, her kids, and her sister.

That night, when I got home, I noticed the picture taken at my mother's 65th birthday party, in 1984. I was wearing the scarf. Damned if I hadn't had the scarf for at least 30 years. Damned if Marie wasn't right.

On the day Marie died, I spoke with another friend from high school.

Kim had been into see Marie on that Saturday, too. An hour or so after I left. She told me that Marie had asked Kim if she (Kim) thought she (Marie) would be well enough to go with me to Ireland to bring some of Jim's ashes there.

What do you make of a friend who, on her death bed, is worried about whether she's going to be able to help take care of you?

I was most fortunate to call Marie a friend. Most fortunate for her to call me one, too. 

I miss her. I always will.

When I'm watching the Home Opener this afternoon, I'll be wearing the pink challis scarf, which Marie's daughter returned to me - dry-cleaned: definitely her mother's daughter - on the day of her funeral. I'll be wearing the pink challis scart, and I'll be thinking of Marie. 

DP's

My German grandparents, toddler (my mother) in tow, immigrated in the 1920's.

A lot of their landsmann also came over. One of my grandfather's brothers (he had a raft of them) sponsored my mother's family, bringing them over to join him in Chicago. My grandmother also had family in the "new world," but I think most of them were in Canada. The only one of my great-aunts and great-uncles I remember is my grandmother's sister Tante Teresa, who lived in Windsor, Ontario, and would come down to Chicago when we visited there. She also came to Worcester once, with my grandmother. I remember dancing with Teresa at my Aunt Kay's wedding in 1963. 

There was a lot of family in Canada - cousin this, cousin that - who would also sometimes show up in Chicago, including the infamous Kissing Cousin Joe, who, Euro-style, liked to greet men by kissing them. My father and my Uncle Ted - two staunch Irischers - wanted nothing to do with men kissing each other. Ted and Al perfected a stiff arm handshake so that Kissing Cousin Joe couldn't swoop in for a smacker.

Cousin Joe was also famous for his appearance in Chicago for my grandfather's funeral. As the story went, some relatives took it upon themselves to raid my grandfather's closet, and gifted Joe with his overcoat. Cousin Joe was a slight fellow, and was swimming in the coat as he modeled it for the family, back at my grandmother's post burial. "Doesn't Joe look good in Jake's coat?" someone asked. Not!

My grandparents were more prosperous than some other parts of the family, and I'm sure that Jake's coat was a nice one. Still...My grandfather had died suddenly and young, leaving my grandmother a widow at 52, with two young kids still in the house, Kay who was 7 and my Uncle Bob, who was 11. Imagine rifling through my grandfather's closet before my grandfather's body was cold...

I don't know whether Joe actually made off with the coat, but supposedly, Joe et al. also stopped by my grandfather's grocery store to stock up on food before they went back to Windsor, charging their supplies to my grandfather's account. 

Unless I was napping, I would have been a witness, but I wasn't even two and have no recall of this at all. And I have no way of knowing whether any of this actually happened IRL. You know how stories take on a life of their own...

But, Canadian relations aside, I do know there were plenty of cousins around the Chicago area, and they were always part of the scene when we were visiting. One cousin, a youngish guy named George, lived with my grandmother for a while. I can remember what he looked like, but not why he was living with Grandma.

Once when we were at my grandmother's summer house on the lake in the country up towards the Wisconsin boarder, Pete, a youngish cousin who was considered kind of a punk, showed up with some friends and wanted to take my sister Kathleen, my cousin Ellen, and I out for a ride. We were all in our early teens. These guys were 19 or 20. My father and my Uncle Ted chased them off. That was pretty exciting.

And then there were the DPs...

While some of my grandparents' large multitude of siblings had come over, others stayed behind in the old country.

My German family had been pioneers, leaving Swabia (part of what is now Germany) for the outer reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where they farmed in entirely German towns. After the first World War, the borders shifted and, while my mother was born in the same village as her parents had been, she was born in a different country: Romania.

After World War II, it should come as no surprise that the Romanians wanted the Germans out of their country. And so, a lot of my family members became Displaced Persons. I believe that those who had married Romanians were welcome to stay in Romania, and some of them did. But those who had stayed in the tribe and married ethnic Germans were booted out.

Some went back to Germany. (My mother had a cousin she corresponded with.) Some came to the United States. And some of those were sponsored by my grandparents and came to Chicago, where my grandparents, and later my grandmother on her own, put them up in property they owned, and even, temporarily, in their home, a prairie-style bungalow at 4455 North Mozart.

So throughout the 1950s, DP's were in the picture.

Do I actually remember some guy - a cousin? Caspar? - in a Wehrmacht greatcoat with the swastika buttons cut off and replaced with something neutral? Probably not. Other than for my grandfather's funeral (October) we only went to Chicago in the summer, and there ain't no one wearing a greatcoat in Chicago in July. So this may not be a real memory.

But the memory of the cousin with the French wife and the two little French daughters is definitely real. I don't recall his name, or the names of the two little girls in their stiff nylon dresses, but her name was Madeleine. What was their story? Was he stationed in France during the war? Had she consorted with the enemy? Was her head shaved for being a collaborator? Did he somehow stay in France during the war? 

Who knows...

In 1965, bizarrely on the anniversary of her marriage to my grandfather, my mother remarried: a widowed DP. He was from their home town, had served in the German army during the war - he was in his forties; he worked as a surveyor, I believe - and was part of the horde kicked out of Romania. I only met him a few times, but found him to be thoroughly unpleasant. But he was a companion to my grandmother and gave her someone to cook for and squabble with. (He outlived my grandmother, and don't get me going on what rotten, venal a-holes his children turned out to be...)

DPs. 

Do they even use that term anymore? Is there a difference between a refugee and a displaced person?

I look at all the pictures of the Ukrainian refugees.

America is taking 100,000 of them in. Yay, us, I guess. Most European countries are also welcoming Ukrainian refugees, and a lot more proportionately than we are. The stories of Polish and German citizens showing up at train stations with signs indicating how many refugees they can take into their homes is so touching. I cried the other day just reading about a woman in Berlin who had taken a woman, her two kids, and a cat into her home. A flat that had housed a family of 5 a few weeks ago, now had 8 people (plus the cat) living there. The Berlin woman had also reached out to her network and found homes for a number of other refugee families. 

Reminds me of my grandmother...

There's some chat around and about that Americans are more sympathetic to refugees from Ukraine than they are to, say, Syrian or other brown- and black-skinned refugees. There's probably something to that. (There always is.) But I think it's as much that Ukraine (rather than "just" its people) looks like us. Ukraine is a democracy. The streets, the shops, the clothing people wear. It all looks pretty American. Kyiv looks more like an American city than Aleppo does. (Or did before Aleppo was smashed to smithereens.)

And I do have to confess that, when I see pictures of Ukrainian refugees, I think that this is what my extended family - minus the puffer coats and smart phones - looked like, what they went through, what they survived, in Europe in the 1940's.

That's just the way it goes, I suppose.  

Trunk, Part II (Refugees)

Yesterday, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I wrote about my four Irish great-grandparents. They were young Irish men and women who came to America as immigrants, not as refugees. They weren't driven out of Ireland, fearing for their lives. They were driven out of Ireland by the poverty of the land, which could only support so many members of any large family. The rest had to leave. Mine left for America. 

One of my great-grandmothers, Bridget Trainor, brought everything she possessed with her in a small trunk, a trunk - now 150 years old give or take - that my sister Trish still uses. 

The other side of my family, the German immigrants, weren't refugees either. They came for the same reason the Irischers did: economic opportunity that wasn't available to them in their large families in their small farming communities.

But they were closer to being refugees than my Irish antecedents were.  

My German grandparents, Magdalena (Folker) and Jacob Wolf, my mother a toddler in tow, emigrated from Romania in the 1920's. My grandfather, a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had survived trench warfare in World War I. Several of his brothers - he came from a large family, mostly boys - weren't so lucky.

Strapped to the undercarriage of a train using his heavy belt, he made his way back to the little town of Neue Banat, which was an entirely German-ethnic own, only to find it was now, with the divvying up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of Romania, and now called something else. (I can't find the spelling. It's something like Penata Nou.)

So my grandparents saved up, packed up everything they had, and left the once and future war-torn Europe for Chicago, by way of Ellis Island.

They took everything they had with them in a large, sturdy trunk that my grandfather had made by hand and painted battle-ship gray. I knew that trunk quite well. For years, it sat in the basement of our family house, repository for cartons full of Christmas decorations. Opening the lid each December, and there was a delightful smell of balsam and must. 

What did they bring with them? Their clothing, and whatever portable possessions they had in the small farm house they were leaving. I'm guessing that there were probably feather pillows and a duvet stuffed in there. Maybe a couple of pots and pans. My grandfather became a butcher. Did they bring some knives along with them? They also brought with them the sampler my grandmother embroidered when she was 12. (It hangs in my bedroom.) And a poster with the picture of all the young men, tot und lebendig, from the town of Neue Banat who'd fought on the losing side in der weltkrieg. The dead are in one section, the living (including Jacob Wolf) are grouped in another. 

I never questioned why and how the emigration trunk ended up in my family's basement, but I'm guessing it accompanied my parents when they moved, just after World War II, from Chicago, where my mother grew up, to my father's hometown of Worcester. (They met when my father was stationed at Chicago's Navy Pier. They married in November 1945, and came to Worcester in March 1946 when my father was discharged after four years in the Navy.)

What was in that trunk? My mother's clothing, including her wedding dress and her mouton fur coat. My father's Navy uniforms, frugally saved for later use. My father wore the khakis to do yard work; my mother cut down the dress whites and blues to make clothing for me and my sister Kathleen. One Easter, we wore Navy blue coats, lined with a spritely red taffeta with white polka dots, that she'd made for us.

All of the contents of my mother's hope chest - including pillow cases my grandmother had embroidered for her, and some tea towels may mother had embroidered for herself (tea towels? what was she thinking?) - were in that trunk. Her engagement and wedding presents would have been in that trunk, too, but this was back in the day when an engagement present was a dishtowel, and a wedding present was a serving fork. So the gifts wouldn't have taken up all that much room.

One of her friends painted two sweet New England-scene water colors for my parents as a wedding gift. They were no doubt in that trunk. They're now in my bedroom. 

What else was in the trunk? My mother's year book from Alvernia High School - I have it in my living room - and her scrapbooks, including one dedicated to Nelson Eddy, which we as kids managed to destroy. We did find a picture of Shirley Temple on one of the pictures of Nelson Eddy, which we liked a lot better than the prissy and effete Nelson Eddy. 

Lots of family pictures. My grandparents were picture-takers supreme, and one of our favorite family activities was, once or twice a year, taking out the carton of old black and whites photos from the thirties and forties and trying to figure who was in them.

Watching the refugees flee Ukraine, I've been thinking about that big old trunk. It was a trunk that my grandparents, who didn't have all that much, had plenty of time to pack. They weren't fleeing, they were emigrating. That's why I have my grandmother's sampler hanging on my wall.

My mother had time, too, to pack up her things for the move to Worcester. That's why I have those charming little water colors, and the Alvernia High Class of 1937 yearbook.

The Ukrainians are fleeing with next to nothing (other than their kids and their lives). A backpack or roller bag stuffed with essentials. Some of them just have a small carrier bag, or a plastic bag from the grocery store. Some have nothing. Don't look back. The place you lived, and everything you ever owned, may have already been bombed to smithereens by the Russians. Or it may be in the sites of Russian artillery any day now.

What do you grab when you've got to grab it quick and stuff it in a backpack? Your smartphone charger. A change of clothing. Your baby's ear medicine. Maybe a picture, a small memento or two.

Your life is at stake. Your kids' life. 

Stuff doesn't matter. Lives do. And for most of the recipe, the lives they are fleeing with mean that they're leaving not just home behind, but family. Men between the ages of 16 and 60 aren't allowed to leave. They have to stay and fight. So the women and children, the elderly, who are making their way to safety are leaving behind husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, friends. Imagine kissing your husband, son, father, brother, uncle, friend goodbye, knowing you may never see him again. Knowing that life for you and your children may well go on without the love, caring, support and companionship of these men in their lives. In your lives.

The refugees have lost their homes, their jobs, their communities, their churches, their clubs. The shops they stopped in each day. Their favorite restaurant, the corner bar. All that is familiar. Their day to day.

Immigrants like my Irish great grandparents and German grandparents make the deliberate decision - whatever duress they were under to make that decision - to leave all this behind and start anew. They left knowing that, if the ever went back to visit - which most of my antecedents didn't - the old hearth and home would still be there. Refugees have no such choice, and if and when they go back it may be to nothing.

Beyond terrible. 

Given all this, stuff doesn't matter. And yet it does.

What do you take with you? Probably not the sampler your grandmother embroidered when she was 12, or the Alvernia High School Class of 1937 yearbook. 

My heart aches for those Ukrainian refugees. 

Maybe things will turn out okay. Maybe they have already. (I'm writing this on March 7th. Here's hoping.) Maybe someone will toss Putin over and the generals will withdraw. Maybe afterwards there'll be a 21st century Marshall Plan to rebuild the cities and towns that the Russians are so insanely and mercilessly destroying. Maybe people will be able to go home again. Or, like my non-refugee family, Irish and German, forge new lives for themselves elsewhere. 

But something will be missing. Sure, it's only stuff. Just one more thing to be sad about during this incredibly scary and sad time. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

When I saw the sunflowers at the grocery stor, I bought them. Then, on Sunday March 6th, I ran into some friends at the rally in support of Ukraine, and they gave me the little flag, which I put with the sunflowers.

On my way to the rally on the Boston Common, I walked through the Public Garden, where I saw that someone had made a little Ukraine-themed sweater for one of the Make Way for Ducklings statues. That made me smile.

While I was walking, I heard the bells from the Arlington Street Church chiming out Mussorgsky's "Great Gate of Kiev (Kyiv)". That made me tear up.

There were a lot of people at the rally. That made me proud.

Slava Ukraini.  

Trunk. (St. Patrick's Day, 2022)

It's Saint Patrick's Day. So of course, I'm thinking of my Irish roots.

My Irish great-grandparents all "came over" around 1870. 

Bridget Trainor of Ballymascanlon, Co Louth. Matthew Trainor of Ballymascanlon, Co. Louth. Margaret Joyce of Ballintubber, Co. Mayo. John Rogers of Ballintober, Co. Roscommon. 

I don't know a ton about any on them.

Did Bridget and Matt, who surely knew each other back in the pokey little town of Ballymascanlon, marry in Ireland, or in Amerikay? (And just how close were these cousins, anyway? Or did everyone in Ballymascanlon share the last name Trainor? ) Did Matt come over first and send for Bridget? Or what? 

All four of my paternal great-grandparents came over around 1870, so they weren't famine Irish, fleeing starvation on coffin ships, with nothing more than their grass-stained mouths and the rags on their back. And when they got here, they didn't live in hovels, in teeming slums, at bare subsistence level. 

But just what did Matthew Trainor do when he got here? I know that, as  a lad, he'd been a stable boy in the big Protestant manor house in Balllymascanlon. He had family in the Worcester area - cousins? brothers? sisters? - which is how he ended up there. Eventually, he became a foreman in a mill, where most of the workers were Irish immigrant girls. But what was his first job?

No one left to ask. The last of my father's first cousins on the Trainor side - and there were a ton of them - was Ned McKeon, who died about five years ago. 

My grandmother Rogers, Nanny - born Mary Jane Trainor - had a few stories about her parents. I got the sense that she got along better with her father than she did with her mother. But for a family of talkers, there were things she never spoke about. It was only when I went poking around on Ancestry a few years back that I found out that my grandmother was one of eight children, not one of six. With the exception of Mag, who died before I was born, I knew all of my grandmother's siblings, at least the ones who still existed. Roseanne. Pat. Alice. Arthur. No mention of Delia and Matthew, who had died as children. Oh. They were never mentioned by my grandmother. Never. One died in infancy, but the other was five. (I've forgotten which was which.) Can you imagine having a brother or sister who died as a little kid, who you knew, and never acknowledging their existence?

My father's cousins on the Trainor side - first, second, third, distant - were all around, and popping in and out of my awareness throughout my childhood. A lot of them lived in the parish. We'd run into people related to my father all the time. How were we related to the Trainors on Eureka Terrace? What were they? Third cousins once removed? Neil Hanlon? What was he to us? And the McDermott brothers - who were the only vocations in the history of our family - what were we to them?

I could probably figure out all of the above if I resubscribed to ancestry.com. But it wouldn't tell me the stories I wish I'd asked my grandmother, or my great-uncle Arthur, or my great-aunt Alice, who were the sibs closest to Nanny, and who I saw on occasion throughout my childhood. (Arthur was a retired cop who moonlighted as a hearse driver for O'Connor Brothers Funeral Parlor. When he had a funeral at Our Lady of the Angels, he'd swing by my grandmother's (where we lived until I was six) for a cup of tea. Timing things so that he'd be back to the church by the time the funeral Mass ended. In his shiny black shoes and formal garb - did they really wear cutaways? - I thought he was rich. In any case, he was always good for a nickel for a popsicle, so we'd scrounge around when Arthur was at Nanny's. 

Since I didn't ask Alice or Arthur - I was way too young. And since I didn't ask my grandmother, who died when I was in my late twenties, so I should have, I should have asked my father's cousin Ellen, the baby of Alice's large family. Thanks to my cousin Barbara, I saw her on occasion over the years. Or I should have pumped another cousin, daffy Mary Hanratty, when I saw her at wakes.

Instead, I'm left knowing precious little about my great-grandparents. 

I can fill in some blanks. They were all country people, from large Irish families. They were all, if not famine poor, then still poor enough. There was little choice, when it came to emigrating. Someone in the family led the way, and most of the rest followed. American Wake. And, boom, you're gone.

Who brought Matthew Trainor over, or was he the pioneer? Or did Bridget Trainor get here first?

And what about Margaret Joyce? And John Rogers?

How in god's name did they end up with their dairy farm Barre, Massachusetts, the back-arse of nowhere?

What did John Rogers do when he first arrived? Did he work in a mill to save enough up to buy that farm in an area that looks an awful lot like Ireland, by the way? 

I believe Margaret Joyce had some brothers over here.

Coming to Worcester I can understand. A large city, full of immigrants, many of them Irish, and full of mills. But what brought anyone to god-forsaken Barre? 

While there were Trainor relatives galore, there were fewer relations on the Rogers side to begin with. Two of the sons of John Rogers and Margaret Joyce, my grandfather and his brother Jim (Ann's grandfather) both fled Barre, moving to Worcester, where they owned a saloon. They both died young. The other brother, John, had "absconded with the milk money" to Hammond, Indiana. (Thus, from a young age, I knew the word absconded.) I.e., he had stolen the proceeds from the dairy farm and taken off, seen only when he came back for his mother's funeral. According to my grandmother, he arrived with a suitcase that contained a clean collar and donuts. Who knows what to believe.

The one to ask there is my cousin (second cousin) Ann, who I think has the Rogers' history down. 

But she wouldn't have much more first-hand knowledge than I would, other than that she's a bit older than I am so may have met the one Rogers sibling who lived beyond their forties. 

That would be the only Rogers sister, Lizzie, who never married and who died before I was born. Lizzie ended up living with Ann's family. Ann would have been a very little girl at the time, but there may have been stories she heard, from Lizzie or from her own mother. 

My grandmother, Lizzie's sister-in-law, had nothing to do with Lizzie, even after Lizzie decamped from Barre to live with the Kellys, just down the hill (in the same parish) as my grandmother. They didn't get along. I suspect they were both strong-willed, opinionated, tart-tongued. Both were "career women" in an era when most women didn't work outside the home. Nanny was a school teacher; Lizzie was, I believe, a bookkeeper. 

Back to my great-grandmothers. 

Bridget Trainor may or may not have worked as a maid in someone's big house when she got to the new world. Margaret Joyce may or may not have worked as a maid in someone's big house when she got to the new world. At least one of them did. Thanks to cousin Ann, I have a copy of the reference letter that Father Brown, the parish priest in Ballintubber, County Mayo (not to be confused with Ballintober, County Roscommon) wrote to recommend Margaret Joyce for what sounds like domestic work.

There was some talk about Margaret - or was it Bridget? - working as a maid in the house of some lace curtain Irish relations, who were either Hagans or Whites, putting us in relational proximity to the late, great mayor of Boston, Kevin Hagan White. 

It's Saint Patrick's Day, so of course I'm thinking about my Irish forebears. 

This is Bridget Trainor's trunk, the trunk she took with her. It contained everything she took with her when she left home. Not a lot, but not nothing either.

It's a pretty little trunk, lined with pretty little wallpaper. Was it wallpapered in Ireland, or later on? And those decals? Did they have decals in Ireland in 1870, or were these added by my grandmother or my Aunt Margaret (who had the trunk before my sister Trish got it)?

It's also pretty fancy, so someone had a few punts to spend on it. 

What could you fit in the trunk? A few changes of clothing, a second pair of shoes, a coat, a hat. A pillow, a blanket, a sewing kit, a mirror a comb? Did the leprechaun doll that my sister Trish inherited come over with Bridget, or was that sent to her by her own mother. My grandmother did tell us that her grandmother - something-or-other Trainor - would send a clump of shamrocks, kept alive for the journey across the pond wrapped in damp newspaper, each St. Patrick's Day when Nanny was a girl.  

Although I'm half German, I grew up Irish. 

My neighborhood was largely Irish American. Virtually all the nuns and priests who staffed the parish were Irish American. We sang corny Irish songs in school, and were taught that the very best ethnic group was - ta-da - the Irish. 

My German family, my mother's side, was back in Chicago. We saw them once a year. There were no Germans in Worcester. Plus this was the 1950's, not long after the end of World War II. If you were going to pick a side to identify with, it sure wasn't going to be the Germans, who in most people's minds were equated with Nazis.

So Kiss Me, I'm Irish. 

And a glorious Paddy's Day to you. 

Just wish I knew a bit more about Bridget, Matthew, Margaret, and John, those four young souls who packed their trunks and ventured off to America. 

 

 

A good idea. Just not for this golden girl.

When my mother was 80, she moved into congregate living.

We would kid her, telling her that she now had her first "single gal" apartment. (She lived with her parents until she was married.) 

Mostly, we were all - my mother and her kids - relieved that we no longer had to worry about her getting shoveled out, getting the leaves raked, making her way up and down the steep cellar steps to do the laundry, etc.

Her set up was great. She had a very nice one-bedroom apartment, with plenty of storage, a small but full kitchen, and a balcony overlooking a pond. She had friends there, and it was just across the street from her parish church, where she went to Mass everyday and was involved in all sorts of activities. Her congregate living place

provided breakfast and dinner, changed her sheets, did the heavy laundry (sheets and towels), and did the cleaning. There was always something going on - movie night, a sing-along, a day trip, an event for families. 

Sure, there was a bit of bittersweet hanging over everything. Moving to congregate living meant that my mother was leaving the home where she'd spent her married life, where she'd raised her kids. Where she had all the stuff she'd accumulated. We all knew - my mother included - that this might well be the last stop. But we all loved it - my mother included. 

Sadly, less than a year later, my mother died. We all so wished she'd had more time in her 'single gal' apartment.

Well before she'd moved into congregate, once the last of her kids had moved out and my long-widowed mother was an empty nester, she experimented with sharing her home with a roommate.

She wasn't looking for extra income. Mostly, although she was still working and very active, with a lot of friends, my mother didn't like rattling around the house by herself. 

The house I grew up in wasn't all the big. But, in its prime, it was full and bustling. Even after its fully-loaded prime, until the last kid left for college, there was always someone around.

My mother was a secretary at Clark University, and her first roommate was a grad student - a young, very pleasant woman from Iran. My mother loved her, and we thought she was great. As was the fact that my mother had company.

Her second (and final) roommate was less of a winner. Michael, who was South African, was also a grad student at Clark. But he was something of an oddball. 

Maybe it was because he was a man, maybe it was just the weirdo vibe, or the South African accent, but Michael made my mother uncomfortable. 

So my mother, who was one of the most honest people I've ever known, told Michael that one of my brothers was moving back in, so she needed the "boys' bedroom" back.

We were all relieved when he moved on.

After that, my mother pretty much flew solo. Until she moved into her congregate living apartment.

I'm sure that there were times she was lonely, and when it woruld have been helpful to have someone around to take out the trash or shovel the walk. But mostly she did fine. She had a lot of friends, traveled, took classes, volunteered, and lived a full and active life. 

When she was considering congregate living, we talked about her moving to the Boston area to be closer to her children, but she had too much of a life going in Worcester and wasn't interested in uprooting.

I'm still a few years - probably a decade or so - away from having to think about my next living arrangement.

I love my condo, but there may come a point when I need to upstakes and move to a place where there's some level of assistance - breakfast and dinner, doing the sheets and towels - and some level of company. 

I'm pretty much a loner, so I'm good for now. But if there comes a point where I can't get out for my daily walks or my volunteer work, when I want to be around people.

But I don't believe that, even if I had a bigger place, I'd want to share my digs with someone else.

Which is not to say that it doesn't make perfect sense for someone who wants to stay in their home, wants/needs someone to help defray costs, and maybe just wants someone to be there to share a cup of tea, to - like my mother - welcome a roommate in. 

Which was the subject of a recent Washington Post article that highlighted some Baby Boomers who are going the Golden Girls route and finding roomies.

Sometimes, it's a matter of financial necesssity. Jodi Raffa has a large - 3 bedroom, 2 bath - home in Florida. Which became a lot less affordable when her husband died and her income plummeted. Jodi wants to stay in her home, so at 76 she's looking for a job. And a roommate. Or as they've now been dubbed, a boommate. 

“With the boomers aging, you see higher and higher numbers in shared housing,” said Rodney Harrell, vice president of family, home and community at AARP, pointing out that boomers are more open than previous generations to trying alternative solutions to the traditional aging trajectory.

The article found anecdotal evidence that the biggest driver for boom-mating is economic. 

As boomers live longer and retire without the financial safety net of employer-sponsored pensions, covering the rising costs of food, housing and insurance become major considerations. 

Debbi Campbell and Loretta Halter share Campbell's "rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village." They're not a couple. They were brought together by Halter's economic necessity, and Campbell's loneliness. (Her partner of 20 years had recently died.) Campbell had, thanks to the pandemic, retired a couple of years earlier than she'd planned on, so the extra money comes in handy. But mostly she was lonely. 

Before the pandemic, the two lived somewhat separate lives. Campbell lived mostly in the bedroom and Halter lived mostly in the living room. But when the city shut down, they developed a strong friendship.

“First, we started with the crossword and the jigsaw puzzles, and the TV, and it turned out well,” Campbell said. The ease of the later-in-life roommate-as-friend experience surprised her. “I mean, I’m one of those people who’s spent a good time of my life in therapy, mostly complaining about people I knew.”

..."I had not been desperate over money, but having a pandemic come, suddenly you have company where you wouldn’t have. And suddenly there is extra money for you from home sharing, which I wouldn’t have had. It was just a bonanza. I feel like the luckiest person of the pandemic,” she said.

Good on them, but I can't imagine sharing a 1 BR with anyone I wasn't sharing a bed with. Even then, I like a little elbow room. (I live by myself with two bedrooms - ones a den - and two bathrooms.) With a boommate, I would feel like a prisoner in my own home - because I'm pretty sure I would have kept hanging out in my bedroom. 

Most folks are open to the idea of sharing space:

In 2021, 70 percent of adults over 50 reported being open to sharing their home with a family member who was not a spouse, 51 percent said they would be willing to share with a friend and 6 percent would share a home with a stranger, according to a survey from AARP. Of those who reported they would not share their home at all, 23 percent said they would change their mind if they needed extra income.

To support all this, services are popping up to matchmake boomers - mostly with age peers, but sometimes with younger folks. 

Never say never. I can imagine sharing a home with one of my siblings - but we'd need to have our own bedrooms. Bonus points for own bath. I have a few friends I can imagine living with. Ditto for bedroom and bath. 

But the mode I'd prefer would be a separate apartment in the same facility. Like what my mother had with congregate living. 

As for sharing with a stranger? Ugh, no! Maybe you luck out and get a Mina. Maybe you don't luck out and get a Michael. NFW.

Still, I think boommating is a good idea. Just not for this golden girl. Maybe I'm just not golden enough. Yet.