New Years Day in Vienna…then and now 1/1/19 for my mother Emily

                                                                                               My mother and grandmothers favorite Opera.

                                                                                                     "Tosca" one they heard often in Vienna.

       This New Year’s Day morning is terribly cold. My car shudders and barely wants to start. The engine clatters reluctantly and I wonder if it will make it. I dash off because Josh is being released today after a week in Cardio Renal. On Christmas night I called the ambulance because he had shortness of breath…kind of another wild week…but we held on …Now insights pave the path ahead and I trust he can find some stability for his health for a while.

     The moment I turn on the reluctant car New Year’s Day music from Vienna fills the cold sunny air. A soft German voice tells the selection and I hear my mother’s voice with her ever present Viennese inflection. Her youth in Vienna shaped her life and she brought to the pedantic Midwest her European culture, love of music and grace in entertaining.

    As I near the hospital a particularly beautiful piece lingers.  I park and listen. Amid the harsh pragmatic buildings delicate music all the way from Vienna fills the air coloring it with nuance, feeling and ethereal emotions.

     I ride the elevator with a woman in a wheelchair wearing a beautiful scarf. These 20 seconds with a stranger reveal so much. She frustrated with not getting in the door. Still elated from the music I bend low and comfort her for a moment. My mothers empathy in my DNA making the moment easy.

     Josh is sleeping and on oxygen when I arrive. His room mate moans. All of a sudden I realize I forgot to bring the green pants he wanted to wear home. I know he will be irritated and he is when he awakes. For a moment I look down at my brown velvet pants thinking they “might”fit. He is impatient and frustrated. I decide to go home and get the green pants. I am mad at myself and then I am not…as a silver lining glints in the harsh winter sunlight. I realize that driving back and forth will allow me to hear this special Viennese New Year’s Day concert.

   Driving south on ordinary Hwy 55 the music from Vienna lifts me.   Then January 1^st 2011 comes into view. I have hurried over to see my parents. My mother has been visibly and slowly declining for a while. Everything feels tenuous and anxious as we sit on the couch. I can tell it’s time to change her diaper. Life has been fraught for a while and I feel a deep foreboding. Old friends come by and we have a kind of sort of New Years Day party. So unlike other years when the old table from Vienna would be pushed against the wall and my mother would have the silverware laid out in that particular way of hers. She would have made a yellow box cake and proud of her efforts it would be front and center on the table. Her lack of cooking plainly evident. There would be those funny little round boxes of cheese with cows faces on them. Emily presided and we were all welcomed in.  But January 1, 2011 was bleak. Death sat sulking in a corner…waiting. I wept as I drove recalling that last New Years for her with the silvery Viennese music weaving a net of memory in the air.

      I got home, found the green pants and the fuzzy brown ones too. I drove back to the hospital on the same ordinary Hwy 55. But now my mothers youth opened up before me as I heard Strauss’s “Artist Life”. She led a full life of painting, poetry, and Jungian insights. Somehow I could see my mother walking to school in Vienna past magnificent marble statues of composers. It was easy to imagine her at the Opera with her parents and then playing the piano with ease. Her Viennese life opened up as I drove along. She grew up  surrounded by music, art and culture as my father picked cotton on an East Texas farm listening to his sister tell stories of Scarlet O’Hara from “Gone with the Wind.”

    I drove along  in my old 1995 purple Saturn car filled with the flotsam and jetsam of my busy life. But my car and that little radio took me on a journey past the sad memory of my mother’s death to wander the streets of Vienna with my mother in her youth.. before life changed. before the Anschluss happened. Just waltzing in the carefree life of her youth in Vienna.

    I lingered with the music when I got to the hospital. Once again the silvery notes held me. I did not see the metal and stone structure before me but looked up to see my mother in her heavenly realm gazing down at me as the waltz played reminding me that beauty, music and harmony endure despite the hardships that life brings.

I brought Josh home. We resumed our complex life together as the temperature hovered about zero. The radiator thumped to life and we were warmed.

The Letter . November 2, 1946

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 The Letter…November 2, 1946 from my Dad to his his mother in Texas.

   This morning as usual I went out to get the paper..reluctant to read todays bad news about incendiary speech and devices…. I brought the paper back to read in bed and noticed a letter on the floor…dated 1946 it was a letter written by my father James White to his mother back in Waco,Texas…describing what he saw in Olympia, Washington as he was in military training…(later stationed in Japan)

“at sunset I was alone on top of their Capitol building and never saw a more beautiful outlay of forms in my life..Mt Rainier could be seen to the east just a pinnacle of sow and mist..the moon with its half orb of soft tints and glows to the South and the Sun settling down into its bed of rosy hues in the west..their legislative building was of streaked granite and white limestone-with a touch of white marble as cornices..Such beauty-by man and the Architect of the Universe is not understandable to me.It is an unfinished desire which seems to have no answer: a mere long for which I must ever conjure up faulty reasons as final answers”…..later on in the letter he speaks of trips planned to Seattle and Vancouver…”I get so saturated with the present that I forget too much of the past Good Life I shared with family, friends and those whose aspirations I shared. This world was not made just to to be probed into and ogled at: Friendship and Home Life are the true aim. I will not cheat myself by passing lightly over these things: they are everthing!”Love JC

Ps This leaf is an elm whose descendents George Washington stood under and took command of US Army July 3, 1775) (actual leaf long crumbled and gone now)

So thank you Dad for reaching out to me over 72 years. Once again I know where I got my search for beauty and connection to others…I got it from you. Thanks for  reminding me to always affirm beauty in this world and to build rich relationships with others. Thanks Dad

Once again...Memory

      That day 9/11 so long ago.... now 17 years ago.
I remember I was on my way to work and stopped at the Post Office to mail a birthday package to my brother. The postal clerk told me a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I felt slightly off balance hearing that news and had not heard about the first plane. Our electricity was off that morning as the huge tree (probably dating back to the mid 1800's) was being cut down that morning. It was all eerie and strange and upsetting.
    I made it to work at the Jewish school where I taught and wondered about our vulnerability. The day was thick with questions, fear and uncertainties.
    The day got worse and later I watched those people jumping from the buildings.
    Today as I write it is a brilliant sunny day. It was sunny back then too, but soon clouded by smoke and heartbreak. I came home that day to a wide open expanse of sky that was oddly eerie and symbolic of what had happened in NYC that day.

      Years pass. Memory remains. I recall how the NYT carefully and compassionately printed obituaries pairing maintenance people with high executives. Death had been a level ground after all. Grief saturated those months going into fall and winter. I lit candles on that tree stump for months even as the snow began to fall. Grief remained...

The Jewish Peddler and The Baptist Preacher

   

And so I row my leaky boat ...there on the vast and rocky seas of memory...I row and row...

hoping to set anchor

this densely packed holiday weekend began with opening a box of clay pieces made by me

and my students long ago at the Jewish Day School I worked at...

oh the labors....the sweat....the tears...

 the kiln opened when it was cool enough to reveal treasures that would

grace numerous Seder tables including my own

for decades....

the salt water dishes, the haroset dishes, the Seder plate, and Elijahs cup.

and always the Chaise Lounge Charoset Dish that occupies a place of honor.

I set out the dishes and the memories...

I carefully take the photo of my Jewish ancestors off the wall and prop it on boxes of matzah 

on a chair adjacent to the place setting for Elijahs Cup

for all these moments are mysteries.

years pass, but the ancestors remain..

I remember what I do not remember and know that my great great grandfather was

a seltzer water in nothern Romania.

I could not find a trace of him when I visited the graveyard in 1998

but allowed the mystical light flowing in the window in the middle of the night

to direct my gaze of wonder..

He appeared in dreams and in my imagination as I began the long road backwards and forwards

to this moment of holding a small Seder with friends..

******

when I take the train of memory back to Texas it is hot and almost summer.

I am arriving with my family after 3 days on the train. The salami sandwiches are now tasteless

and we are weary.

My grandfather C.H. White is there to pick us up and

we head to the small house in Waco where we will spend the week.

He was once a farmer who got the call to preach and so he rallied forth from his pulpit

and later circled round and round about Jacob.

On Easter Sunday we drive out to hear him preach with fury and brimstone in the 

small church 

so simple with just a wooden cross.

so simple it is hard to recall the Greek Orthodox majestry and mystery that  holds me 

up north.

where we are not Greek, but we fit in...almost

after church the family gathers

and I feel my sense of tribe

the South held and fascinated me...it was a part of me

just as part of me never gets used to these long northern winters

as I yearn for the sun and warmth

we had Fried chicken, beans, mashed potatoes and iced tea

if you look at the family picture of us all standing outside the old house

you'd see me in my homemade dress and specially curled hair.

*******

yesterday I went to Easter with my neighbors and remembered

my long ago Baptist past 

the service could not have been more different

but the ardent faith remained.

the fried chicken for lunch took me all the way back to Texas

*****

sometimes it is easy to dwell in the house of memory.

when I lived on that small island I wove belt for a living.

the warp and the weft holding each other 

to make a long weaving of color and strength

 the weft and warp of memory hold me now.

**

i row and row

finally landing on the small island of memory

there I weave in my old stone cottage

creating

my warp and weft of moments

from the past and future

of ancestors known and unknown 

on my simple square loom

remembered and mused upon

**

A Cake for What would have been my Mother's 97th Birthday

A Cake for my Mother

        Pity she didn't live longer. The opera "Rigoletta" was on last night and she would have been listening right along. Opening her thick Opera book and noting it again. Remembering when she had listened to it last in Vienna and the last time she had heard it on a Saturday day afternoon straight from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

         I can see her now laying on the couch on a Saturday afternoon. Stretched out somewhere between Minneapolis and Vienna, the cares of the week, the day and the moment vanished for a few short hours. My dad would be off to a movie or typing upstairs. She sighed thinking of the emotional terrain she navigated daily with this temperamental brilliant Texan who didn't like opera. Sighing she remembered her days at the Opera House in Vienna and how she went to Demel's afterwards for a Viennese pastry delight topped with whipped cream.  Sighing perhaps she sketched one of her enigmatic mystical faces in the back of her Opera book.

     Sighing I open the old Opera book. The cover is falling off, but the sentiments remain. If I open it at just the right spot the music swells out lapping out over the pages and those last desperate moments of La Boehme ring out as Rudolpho cries out "Mimi! Mimi!" over her dead body... or I turn the page and Tosca jumps over the parapet. Drama, turbulence, passion and drama. Nothing sedate or politely midwestern about this. And thus my parents dramas matched these operatic ones as well.

     What a couple. My mother Emily with her European manners, education and warm Viennese empathy. Her psychological insights remain and no matter what her own inner challenges were she always saw through to the core of a problem revealed in intimate conversation. Saying to me as we sat in the backyard on that hot August day precisely six months before she died. "Have the expectation of Goodness!" And there was my father from east Texas. The rambuctious intellectual who left the south, who loved Japan, who flourished in Kyoto, who read 1000's of books. Poetry bonded them, but it was a tempestuous union. They were so different. It took me years to realize that we were not midwestern. I popped my head up from within the family, looked around and realized we had no farm ties after all and not a bit of Scandinavian blood. We flourished none the less and my parents gift of entertaining kept their friendship circle warm and nourishing as dad tossed another log into the fireplace as he read another poem to a rapt audience gathered in the living room

          The opera remains. My dads books are piled up in the back room. I open at least one a week and share the poems he loved in my weekly poetry group. Their deaths have been just a blip after all as they float above me...somewhere in the ether...supporting me..nurturing me...commanding me to do this or that and most of all to remember them and hold on to their values.

                              In two days my mother would have been 97. I can see how she would have popped up after that long illness that almost took her out...and how we would  have celebrated despite her ensuing frailty with a cake, a handmade card and a small puppet show made at the last minute. Laughing she would have opened her presents and we would eat cake amid the bouquets she had been given..... but she's gone.

      Now I peruse the recipe for gugglehopf cake. It needs time. Yeast must be dissolved, almonds chopped, flour sifted and there are two risings. I anticipate making it just the right way and serving it with lots of whipped cream. Perhaps a side of jello would complete the honoring and the offering.

Happy birthday Emily. Your memory remains a blessing.

   

An Aria for my brother       Traversing the Inner Labyrinth        July 20, 2017

      As we circle the block again looking for a parking space the opera singers aria on the radio is full  rich and deep. I am singing my aria for my brother as we ease into the space and I bring him home.The singer who sings the aria doesn't get bogged down or tired. She just sings and so do I.


     We are just returned home from HCMC where my brother was almost admitted into the psychiactric  unit. But notthis time. I sing the aria of all the times I have been with him before and accompanied him on the long labryrinthian journey through his psyche back to feeling good again.


      As I look into his face I look past the generations and see our gran pa shuffling and obsessed, speaking of Jacob in the bible... I see my father with his brilliant wit, determined to be right.. I see our mother laying on the couch in one of her disabled depressive modes.


      My aria becomes tender, passionate and compassionate in turns as I hold onto my brother. Knowing I am here at this moment to bear witness to his suffering and to try to comfort him and guide him through.


    There are no easy answers, but singing this internal aria and drawing help me feel that I am not falling apart too.


     We keep moving through time. The ghosts of our familys troubled past lead the way.
I keep singing. I keep holding onto my brother. I keep drawing... He leads the way and I hold onto him...wishing him safe passage back to a better place.

Healing Heart Hamsa for Josh

Healing Heart Hamsa for Josh

    This morning it rained and I awoke Late. I painted two healing images for Josh. He has been in the hospital since Friday when I rode in the ambulance back to HCMC again.....this time shortness of breath and fluid build up from his atrial fibulation.....time..heart beat...thumpety thump thump....time and so many heart beats ago

that  the last time I posted was in November...back when the election was bad enough and it is so much worse now...back when we were just consulting with the surgeon about Josh's upcoming knee replacement...back when it was before the long winter and the bad election was about all the bad weather I thought we would be contending with...but the winter was long and fraught and there have been so many set backs for Josh...hospitalizations..and ER and one thing after another after another...

     drawing remains..and now I look back on all those moments recorded...and now there is just the next piece of paper and this healing moment of drawing and the next..and holding onto Josh in his moments of pain and suffering...wishing there was more space and healing in between these moments.

     So I drew him today...the fluid build up on his heart leaving and the oxygen of Divine breath in and out and in and out and in and out...holding and healing him...I drew that and then drew this healing image of his heart...

    The phone rang and he was in pain again...so I rushed to his side..The allergic reaction to the cleaning chemicals in his room caused him once again..pain and an unneccesary set back...

I held him. He sneezed and sneezed again. eyes watering and stressed.

        I put up the healing heart hamsa on his wall and then painted in the other painting of him with fluid leaving and the Divine breath in and out and in out. They are now on his wall holding him....giving out the healing energy that art can give....

      Then we watched TV which was a nice sedative, especially the Home building shows where all the pieces fit and look really good. No swear words or mishaps. Its how you'd like a life to be. The pieces fitting just so......and our pieces fit just so..in their own way..despite the challenges and difficulties along the way.

    As I left I held him and he said "Just love me the way I am.".

I held him close.

    A Viennese waltz played as I drove home in the rain..and I knew my mother was bending in close to me from her heavenly realm..giving me courage and strength to deal with Josh's Oh So Many Health Challenges and Crisis....I sat and listened to every note of the music when I pulled into the driveway..... feeling my mother leaning in and holding me.... as I hold onto Josh and

Love him just the way he is.....