In Memory of Mat

My cousin Matilda was 8 years older than me. Growing up she was an exciting, awesome figure in my life. I didn't get to see her but every couple of years, but each encounter was fraught with significance. She was smart, funny and sassy and I admired her enormously.

I have a number of extremely vivid memories of Mat from childhood.

One summer when we were all together in our parents' childhood home of Troutdale, Virginia, Mat (then a young teen) took a whole troop of children including me and my little brother Charlie as well as several local children on a hike down to the creek and the swimming hole, without telling the parents where we were going. We came back hours later, hot, sweaty, sunburnt, our legs scratched from the brambles, and deliriously happy with great memories of water striders, newts, crawdads, and wading in the cold stream. I think the grownups yelled at Mat for scaring them.

A couple of years later, also in Troutdale, I remember Mat showing me how the neighbor's baby goats like to climb on things by getting down on the ground and letting the goats climb on her back.

When Mat was 18 (and I was 10), she had a VW Beetle - a convertible VW Beetle! This was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. This was about the same time that I learned that Troutdale a little town I knew and loved was in located in "Appalachia" - a place that took on mythical proportions in the early 1960's. I made a vow about that time in my life that when I grew up, I was going to be a school teacher in Appalachia and have a VW Beetle (maybe even a convertible!).  It was by no means an accident that my first car (in 1975) was a VW Beetle, and I drove it all over Appalachia while I researched my Masters Thesis and Dissertation.

One of my best Mat memories is from when I was 18 (Mat was 26) and I graduated from high school. I had my very first trip on my own as an "adult" to visit Mat in San Diego where she was a Navy nurse. She took me all over San Diego, to all the tourist spots (Marine World, the San Diego Zoo, etc.), in her sporty little MG convertible. The best part of the trip was the party she and her roommate threw: they invited not only their nurse friends but a whole bunch of young Navy men! Men, dancing and beer! How could one not idolize a cousin like Mat.

As we got older the age difference mattered less. We became friends, who wrote, called, and visited. Mat's the reason I got on Facebook, she kept bugging me because she wanted to share pictures. Another way that we were able to keep touch with each other.  I will miss my cousin Mat. May she rest in peace.

The questions of HONY

One of my daily addictions these days, along with millions of other people around the world is "Humans of New York" (fondly known among fans as HONY) the photography and interview project of Brandon Stanton. Brandon is a genius at capturing people both visually and through their words. You can view his work on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork or his blog at http://www.humansofnewyork.com/. Brandon also has a top selling book of his photographs interviews available everywhere. 

Brandon has developed a series of stock questions that he has found help unlock the interesting stories of people's lives. Among them are:

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"
"What was the saddest moment of your life?"
"What was the most frightened you've ever been?"
"What's your greatest struggle right now?"
and finally "If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people what would it be?"

Spending time reading the life stories that Brandon elicits, has gotten me to thinking about my own answers to those questions. I woke up this morning about 4:30 AM and spent the next ninety minutes thinking about those questions. Here's what I concluded:

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"

The summer of 2009 when I got to paint a mural for my college. Everything about my life was good, my parents were still alive, my husband and I were happy and healthy, and I got to spent an entire summer rediscovering the art that I loved so much (and getting paid!). It had been years since I'd done any painting, but it all came back to me, and I created something of beauty that will endure for years and be appreciated by many. 

"What was the saddest moment of your life?"

March 2012 when my mother and my dog Rosie died exactly one week apart. My mother was 89, had severe dementia and she frequently expressed the wish to die, so there was some sense of relief but still of course sadness, then when our beautiful, young dog suddenly became very ill two days later and died exactly a week after my mom the sadness simply overwhelmed me for weeks. 

"What was the most frightened you've ever been?" 

This is actually a toss up between two things. The first was in May 1982 on a Tuesday morning when I was told I had melanoma and that I had to report to the emergency room for surgery within two hours. The trauma of the diagnosis and immediate surgery was multiplied by the emergency room setting, where while I was being operated on with a local anesthesia an older woman in cardiac arrest was brought in to the cot next to mine, and I was totally aware of the doctors' unsuccessful efforts to revive her; she was declared dead and removed all while I was still being operated on. I was never more aware of my own mortality.

The second was probably a more sustained terror. In May 1980 in fear of my life, I had to move out of my apartment in the middle of the night (with the full cooperation of my landlords) to escape an alcoholic boyfriend who had suddenly turned violent. For several weeks I lived in fear that he would find my new apartment. He never did and life settled down.

"What's your greatest struggle right now?"

This is the easiest answer: making the changes in diet and activity to get a handle on my diabetes and improve my health so that I can look forward to enjoying the rest of my life and actually do all the things I've been planning for my retirement. 

and finally "If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people what would it be?"

It's the same advice I give myself every single day: Each day is a gift, even the most difficult days. Do not pray for the day to end, do not wish your life away. Pray instead for the strength, patience and wisdom to live fully in each moment." 

 So now, even though its unlikely I'll be going to New York City any time soon, or even less likely encountering Brandon Stanton, I have my answers ready!

"I Remember Mama"

That was the title of one of my mother's favorite play/movie/TV shows - and the books on which those were based. I hadn't thought of these in years. There was actually two books in the fictionalized memoir by Kathryn Forbes about her Norwegian immigrant grandmother.

My mother is the one who taught me to love reading. She read to us almost every night. Unlike the photograph which my father staged, normally she would sit on a stool or in a chair in the hallway between my room and my brothers' room. We would lie in bed in the dark and she would read out-loud to us. She would read one or two chapters and leave us waiting for more the next night.

Among the books that I remember her reading to us are every single one of P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins books. The Mary Poppins of the books was nothing at all like Disney and Julie Andrews' Poppins. She was crotchety and plain and difficult, but also magical and wonderful as well. She also read us the 1950's classic Beverly Cleary series about Henry, Ramona and Beezus.

The book that my brothers and I loved the most, and the book that really transformed my life was Robert Heinlein's Red Planet. My brothers and I loved the alien "Willis" the Martian "bouncer." The book was so enchanting, that I started reading ahead of my mother during the day time (although I still enjoyed hearing her read it out-loud). That lead me to the "harder stuff" of science fiction, which I began to devour.

Before I was old enough to have an "adult" library card, I would go into the main part of the old San Mateo Library (one of those built by Carnegie of stone, marble and lots of steel), and pull down Galaxy Readers, and the Years Best Science Fiction, and read story after story in the reading room while my parents did their Saturday shopping in town.

With her nightly story time, my mother made reading a wonderful, delightful, guilty pleasure that I could not wait to embrace for myself. She initiated me into that magic world that so stimulated my intellect and imagination.

One of the saddest things about the dementia that took over my mother's life in the past three years is that it robbed her of the ability to read. She could not concentrate enough to follow the thread of even a short story. She could read the words - she'd read complicated documents out-loud to me on the phone having no trouble with any of the words, but she could not follow what she read.

plumes of dust

Every time I go over Pine Mountain towards Harlan County (as I did this past Friday April 16) there's a point, just over the ridge of the mountain when it feels like the bottom has fallen out of the world, and there is a sick feeling in my stomach.



The cause that sense of impending doom is the huge strip mine cutting into the side of the mountains on the border between Kentucky and Virginia show in the photos above. Friday, the view was less obscured by the clouds of dust in the air. Dry conditions and stiff winds were filling the air with dust with every passage of the drag lines across the mine surface.

One the Google map below, you can see the great gray scar on the landscape that the mine makes. The photos I took (above) were taken when my car was at a point on US 119 just above the "SAT" and "TER" buttons (where you see the 119)in the upper right corner of the map. I was looking southward.

As you can see on the map, this enormous strip mine that runs for nearly two miles, is within the boundaries of the Jefferson National Forest, and there is an even larger mine to the south west.


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