Tentative Upcoming European Vacation List

If I had my way…

1. Land in London. Alaina wants to spend time here, but Dad just wants to get his picture taken on Abbey Road and move on to…

2. Scotland. Visit Edinburgh and stay the night in St. Andrews so Dad can play golf and the rest of us can wander around the town.

3. Chunnel over to France and up to the Netherlands so Dad can visit the street where he once lived in The Hague. Stay with cousins? M.C. Escher museum? Keukenhof, Kinderdijk, bicycling around. Canal boat ride through Amsterdam. Dinner at one of the lavish, historic Indonesian restaurants. Van Gogh museum? Drink jenever and eat haring from a cart on the street.

4. Back down to France and into Paris. Visit the Louvre. Stay in the 5th Arrondissement? Have to see Père Lachaise. Move south and possibly through…

5. Strasbourg. Wander around some.

6. Pass through the French Riviera and into the Italian. Stay in Cinque Terre or thereabouts. Cross fingers that Vernazza has repaired itself after landslides.

7. Rome. Lots to see in Rome. I have to start learning Italian soon.

“It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure — in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.”

from Trevanian’s Shibumi

Non-fiction reading list

As if I don’t already have enough to read, I made this list of additional non-fiction — and one book of poetry — to check out, because I can’t seem to concentrate enough to actually read something today. (It doesn’t help that Alaina is always watching TV in the next room.)

1. The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds — Marilyn Yalom

2. A Coney Island of the Mind — Lawrence Ferlenghetti

3. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured and Allied Victory — Ben Macintyre

4. The English Castle — John Goodall

5. Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company — Ray Morris Jr.

6. Bad Land: An American Romance — Jonathan Raban

7. Beyond the 100th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West — Wallace Stegner

8. The Snow Leopard — Peter Matthiessen

9. Roughing It — Mark Twain

10. We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance — David Howarth

11. Oscar Wilde — Richard Ellmann

A problem of mine: I’m always seeking someone to tell me my worth and if and when they do, I never believe them.

Actions really do speak louder than a handful of nice adjectives tossed your way.

Instead of staying mad at the inability of most others to feel articulately, I cultivate a terrific sense of self-importance.

My unhealthy behavior looks like this:

Baring my soul <–> Lashing out (when I don’t like the response or lack of one) <–> Shutting everyone out.

I say often that I dislike people who know what their problems are and don’t bother trying to fix them. I also say that it’s not a good idea to deal in extremes, constantly switching poles and courting cataclysm in the process.

I am such a hypocrite.

To Elisa, When you’re older

Dec. 21, 1988

To Elisa

I’m writing this for you to read when you are older — partly because I need an outlet and partly because I want you to know what you and I were like during this time. I always wondered about my mother’s and my relationship when I was small but my mother doesn’t go into detail much or probably doesn’t remember her little frustrations with me. I know over time I’ll forget too.

You are a very smart little girl with a mind of your own. You aren’t always difficult, in fact compared to others you are probably a very good little girl. It’s just those few times a day, a week, a month, that I just don’t know what to do, or I feel bad about the way I handled a situation. I have found myself yelling a lot, swatting your bottom a lot, doing things like that on impulse that make me not like myself very much afterwards. But a parent usually gets trapped into doing things that have worked in the past. It hurts me lately to see you escape from being punished by running away with your little hands protecting your behind. That’s what makes me think I’ve been swatting you too much. I feel as though I have to threaten you all the time to get you to do the smallest of things. The incident that has brought me to do this writing happened a little while ago. All I wanted you to do is go to the bathroom. I knew it must be about the time you’d have to “go.” I lead you to the bathroom and asked you to put your step stool next to the toilet so you could get up and sit on it. All of a sudden you put on your “weakness routine.”  “I can’t! It’s too hard!”

Now, Elisa, I’ve seen you do that simple task hundreds of times. I told you I know you can do it, but you insist you can’t. I get frustrated and yell, you get upset and cry. The more I say you can do it the more you insist you can’t. You pee on the floor. I don’t yell anymore. You are upset at yourself and me. I try to comfort you a little because I know you’re upset at the accident. But still I’m frustrated. Many times I try to explain to you why I am upset. I’m not sure you listen. Now I know you’re probably thinking, hey mom, I’m not even 3 years old at the time of this story. But, Elisa, your intellectual age is, or seems much older. You are a smart little girl. I can just imagine the times I’ll have with you when you get older. But beneath it all I am very proud of you and love you very much. I’m glad you have a mind of your own. I don’t want you to be a puppet. I just want to be a good mother. I know I’ll make mistakes. I know you’ll be naughty sometimes. I just hope what I do will help you to be the best “you” you can be.

You just came to the table with a Sesame Street magazine to read, saying you are going to do your “homework” too. That’s your favorite thing to do — read. You make up the best stories with some of the biggest words I’ve ever heard come out of a toddler’s mouth. We go to the library every two weeks to check out 10 books at a time. I usually only have to read each book to you one time and then you can entertain yourself for hours afterward, telling yourself the stories.

Well, I feel a little better now and will laugh about this later, thinking How could I get so upset about such trivial things compared to the things I’d face in the future?

I hope you enjoy this.

Love,

Mom

It’s New Years…

It’s New Years Eve, and every time I go upstairs and walk past my parents’ darkened bedroom I can hear my mom call out to me, asking me to bring her a water bottle on my way up again. The autonomy of memory astounds me. At first you don’t think you will be able to remember anything, then you turn a corner and see that the place has done the remembering for you.

Favorites list no. 1

1. My perfume that smells like snow

2. Rachel Grimes’ Book of Leaves, Pizzicato 5’s “Kimono” from Çà et là du Japon, and Takako Minekawa’s “Fancy Work Funk” from Fun 9

3. Graham crackers with cream cheese (one of mom’s favorite snacks)

4. New pajamas

5. The mountain dulcimer that is headed my way from Indiana

6. My 79 item “to read” list

7. Lou Reed lyrics

8. Afternoon tea in the company of others

The War; good cheer; Wallace Stegner on old age

I’ve started watching the Ken Burns documentary mini-series The War and even though it visibly perturbs me, I feel extremely drawn to it. I feel I’m on the verge of crying the entire time, but this doesn’t bother me. I feel human in the best possible way. I think my dad probably wonders why I spend any time watching something so dark, but I’m sure if I explained to him that it was somehow “cathartic” (his new favorite word) that he would understand a bit better. I’ve never been a cheerful person. Most of my masochistic tendencies have been left behind with my teenage years, but I feel vaguely uncomfortable exposing myself to all-things-positive when I’m sad, at least when media is concerned. I like vibrant colors and laughing and keeping good company as much as the next person, but forcing them down my own gullet doesn’t feel anything but false. Anyway, I don’t watch The War because I want to keep up a consistently sad feeling. I’ve never liked blood n’ guts. I watch because I’m interested. In fact, this might be my first real taste of “human interest” that wasn’t bland or saccharine. (Bitter, yes.) It makes me long for a bonus set of grandparents, ones who take pride and pleasure in telling me all about their lives.

Speaking of which, some Wallace Stegner on old age from The Spectator Bird:

“He says that when asked if he feels like an old man he replies that he does not, he feels like a young man with something the matter with him.”

and

“Getting old is like standing in a long, slow line. You wake up out of the shuffle and torpor only at those moments when the line moves you one step closer to the window.”

New page

I haven’t been able to write anything lately because there is such a distinct, chasm-like division between diary entries composed before my mom’s death and the blank pages that follow. I’m torn between feeling like the notebook I am using should be hidden away in a box or on a shelf, or bravely continued for the sake of, well, continuity. I’ve never been able to finish writing in a journal, front to back and this isn’t helping. The computer is slightly more kind. And less real.

I’m probably the most sensitive, irritable and impatient I’ve ever been.

I applied for community college again a few weeks ago and now the idea seems extremely unappealing. I applied for a bookstore job last night and hope they can’t smell the desperation coming off me in waves and are repelled by it. I still don’t know how these things work. I am always too much or never enough for someone.

I feel an often overwhelming need to get clean. I assume this is a common reaction, perhaps a bonus stage of grief.