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Lately Lucycat has been expressing more and more interest in the door I go through when I do laundry.  So one day recently I decided not to shut the door behind me.  I got to the basement and was sorting through what could be dried in the dryer and what I needed to hang in the bathroom when I saw her tentative paws and giant eyes at the top of the last set of steps.  Since I didn’t want to frighten her any more than she already was, I let it play out and waited for her to reach the bottom.

Soon as she did I turned around and asked her what was up, as I am wont to do.  She started heading for the real basement and I made an attempt to grab her, but she took off into the depths of the mounds of storage my landlords have stacked down there.   “Eh, fuck it,” I said. “You’re an old gal and if this will make you happy, so be it.  I’ll leave the door upstairs open for you.”

Ten minutes later she was back in the apartment and a little dirty, which was understandable.  I was excited for her that she got to have an adventure.  Within five minutes she was mrowling loudly at the basement door clearly wanting more.  So I let her down again and she was gone for 15-20 minutes.  “Wow!” I said as I cleaned her cobweb-strewn whiskers when she finally returned.  “Who’d ever believe you’re a 15 year-old kitty?”

Right?!  In two months she’ll be 16.  Sweet Sixteen!!!  I want to have a party for her and she’s totally getting that bitchin’ Camaro.  She’s been asking for years….

Now it’s part of our routine; I let her down whenever she gets itchy for it and she always comes back.  She’s my girl.

Over Mother’s Day weekend we held my dad’s memorial in Nashville.  Having been brought up Quaker, he wanted his ceremony to be organized like a simple Quaker meeting where everyone is in a room together - Vanderbilt’s Benton Chapel - and if/when someone feels moved to speak, they stand up and speak.  Beautiful.  Simple.

There were friends, colleagues, students, family and neighbors represented.  Once we’d all settled into the standing-room-only chapel, my brother, Michael, opened the “meeting” explaining how it would work and sat down.  It got quiet, but not uncomfortably so.  It was peaceful.  Dad didn’t have many shy friends so the first person stood up to speak before even two minutes had passed.

Every story told was simultaneously personal and universal.

Even my beau, Chris, who never got to meet my dad in person said something.  He wasn’t sure he ought to or not, but I told him he was moved to do so and should.  So he told the room about the phone call they had discussing his blues band’s CD.  Chris was used to dealing with girlfriend’s fathers who were… I don’t know, normal?  boring?  My dad had clearly listened to the disc more than twice and spoke knowledgeably about the influences he heard.  Chris just nodded dumbstruck at the speaker phone and pushed out a “yeah, yes, that’s all true.”  Then dad asked about another group, but Chris admitted he hadn’t heard of them.  Dad replied, “You don’t know anything about music.”

Staying true to the spirit of the gathering I didn’t plan what I’d say, but I knew I’d say something.  I am my father’s daughter, after all.  (Boy did he love to talk.)

I’ve never lost anyone so close before.  Relatives, even friends, have passed away and it hurt to lose them, but this is different.  Dad and I talked a lot, at times more than once a week and, as with mom, we’ve always been incredibly open and honest.  I relied on getting his voice at the other end of the phone at even random moments.  Like the time in the middle of a dinner party I had a question about Charles Shaw brand wine I knew he could answer. ~ He and mom would definitely have been my “lifelines” on whatever game show I might be on. ~

Feeling the way I do now, I have empathy for people who believe in the persistence of spirits.  It’s hard to come to grips with the idea that I’ll never, ever see him again.  And it’s a comfort to think he’s still with me, with all of us, enjoying the experience of life without the hassle of a physical body that was so consistently in pain.  For those who die especially young I imagine it’s important to hope they’ve moved on to someplace better and we don’t like to think that their short life was all they got.

Just after he died I had a dream where we were chatting like usual and he was sympathizing with some rant I was on.  It was just like old times and felt so real.  I marveled at this saying to him, “I didn’t think we’d ever get to talk again after you died.”  He responded saying, “Yeah, that’s a common misconception.”  Awesome.  I still dream about him at least once a week, and think of him every single day.

But much as I love, love, love  horror films and ghost stories and I dig the camp of Ghost Whisperer and the visions on Medium, and much as I enjoy the pleasant comfort of thinking dad is in “heaven” or something now, I don’t actually believe in those things.  Again, I am my father’s daughter.  He called himself an agnostic and true to being an educator, he was a realist.  I am right there alongside him.    He lived an amazing life and now he’s gone.

All that said, and whatever you may or may not believe, I think you’ll agree that we live on in the memories of those who loved us.   And he has a lot of those.

It’s taking me a long time to deal with losing my dad.  In the midst of editing a post about the memorial service we had for dad last month I remembered an email I wrote to  John Ryan, one of dad’s ex-students and a close friend.  John and I always had a good rapport and I consider him a friend, too.  He was with dad at a sociology conference in Boston and came to see me and my band over that visit.

First, John’s email to me:

Dear Ruth,

I am so at a loss for words.  Where would I have ended up without Pete?  I am so sorry for your loss.

Best,

John

I wrote this reply sitting at dad’s computer in his office at home.

John,

It is so nice to hear from you.

More than likely we all would have ended up “in a van, down by the river!” without dad.  I, too, am beyond sad, but feeling incredibly grateful for the few days with him at the hospital in late January to say goodbye.

Frankly, it’s all still a little surreal right now.  Things, literally his things, are sort of frozen in time.  It feels as though he merely got up from his desk to feed Nino and maybe take a nap, but he’ll be back at the keyboard any minute to continue whatever he was working on.  The many things he was working on.  The many things that, I believe, kept him going.  There was always a project in the works and another on the horizon.  His work ethic, his unbelievable intellectual curiosity, and his concerns and worries about his family members’ futures pushed his heart to continue beating.

As you know, he felt a constant thrum of pain somewhere in his body at pretty much every minute of the day for the past, oh, at least 5 years.  He was quite the trouper and didn’t complain much outside the family, but I feel comforted knowing he no longer feels pain.

I love him dearly, am more like him than I sometimes care to admit, and I will miss him forever.

I’m using this theme for now.  It’s a default wordpress theme that exists in my system.  Soon I’ll get some hand-held help and change to the theme I really want.  This should work for the time being - I was interested in something simple and clean.

And while I’m here I’ll say how funny it is to me that every June 8 I think of Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran because it’s his birthday.  Sheesh, some facts just won’t leave one’s head once they’re there, eh?

xoxo

I’m definitely not as hip or “with it” as I’d like to be.  Been trying for a while now to update the look of this blog, to upload a new “theme” and I seem to be completely incapable.  It’s driving me nuts!   What is wrong with me that I can’t do this?  I’ve chosen the theme I’d like to use and I “downloaded” it, but the instructions say to upload the theme.  Where?  Where do I do this?

Jeebus I’m frustrated.

Some improper word-use annoyances:

You don’t wet your appetite, you whet it.

No one can wind their way to work, you wend your way.

The further I see into the future, the farther my stomach sticks out, not the other way ’round.

Flesh out a rough or “skeletal” idea, not flush it out.  Flush it and you lose it.

Impact - we’ve gone there before, I’ll let it go for now.

Yeah, yay and yea.  - Yeah is casual agreement, yay is an expression of happiness, and yea means yes, as in the opposite of nay.  These get confused even more than there, their and they’re if you ask me.

A few phrases I’m currently sick to death of:

“It is what it is.”

“Long story short…”

“At the end of the day, …”

“… and whatnot”

“it was literally mind-blowing” - or “literally [fill in the blank] because they meant “figuratively” and I want to kill when I hear this.

“Whatever, I’m over it.”  Clearly you aren’t if you’re bringing it up.

“Ah-ha moment”  Do I need to explain?

A few phrases I will never tire of:

“Here’s what really sticks in my craw”

“Wanna hear something funny?”

“Come look at these adorable kitty cats!”

Some words I love:     ostensibly, sycophant, slapdash, ubiquitous, lucid/cogent, visceral, exacerbate, schadenfraude, obsequious, jackass, mothertrucker (which I learned from the edited-for-TV version of The 40 Year-Old Virgin.  Cracks me up every single time), honky-tonk.

I may have visited this topic before, but I’d like to address it just the same.

I type faster than I write.  Most people, I imagine, who know how to type, do.  The editing process involved in word processing is convenient and makes things so much simpler than ever before.  And you must know how I love to edit.   The fact that computers can contain and maintain what could be reams of work in a small space is also pretty amazing and awesome.

That said, I love love love paper and pens.  I love all the different fun pads of paper that exist, the variety of journals to choose from, the innumerable pens of all colors and styles and ink.  Not to mention the satisfying feel of pen in hand, making your mark on the page - instantaneously glorious.  I guess it’s really a feel thing.

Books are the same; there’s nothing like the feel of a book in my hands.  It’s a great feeling to break the spine of a new paperback, showing how much you love it.   I do prefer paperbacks, but I do like hardcovers when they’re books I consider reference books.

I’m also a big gadget fan, so the convenience of the Kindle definitely intrigues me.   More and more of my fellow commuters on the T in the morning have them.   At first I thought the iPad looked ridiculous, like a giant iPhone.  But the more I explore it, the more I want one.  Go figure.

We were in Nashville last weekend for my dad’s memorial and Chris asked my mom if she knew where my love, nay obsession, for pens and paper came from.  She said the fact that she and dad were both intellectuals they both had a lot of pens and paper.  We went up in my dad’s office and I opened the top drawer of his desk revealing what must have been about 80 pens.  “Does this answer your question?”

I have no qualms about killing bugs. Flies, gnats, roaches, creepy-crawlies of most varieties. I was the passenger in my friend Melissa Greenwald’s car one day when a bug landed on her dash. Unconsciously and mid-sentence my hand flew down with a killer blow. She laughed about how Southern I was and put on an accent and mocked me. It was pretty funny.

And there was one morning at work when someone spotted a roach in the hallway. Everyone was scared (!!!). They called for my help so I rounded the corner and saw it down the hall. Jay was throwing paper plates at it with results that you can imagine were less than satisfactory. “Excuse me, Jay, let me take care of this,” I said taking off my sandal. One swift slam and we scooped up the ex-roach with one of the paper plates and tossed it in the garbage.

Spiders, however, command my respect and I won’t kill them. When I see them in my apartment I say “Hello there, Mr. Spider, what’s shakin? Where’s yer web? Thank you for eating my bugs.” We’ve had so many sightings recently of the same spider that I am considering naming him. Last week I opened the curtain after my shower and saw him hanging less than a foot away from my face. I blew on him a little hoping he’d move up or down, but he was stubborn. Since I needed to use the room I got a piece of tissue for him to climb on and placed him on the floor behind the toilet.

Next day Chris and I saw him on the wall in the living room. Last night he was spotted on the floor under the coffee table. I followed him around on my hands and knees for a bit trying to get him to climb on my hand. Chris told me to be careful because he might bite, but I don’t believe that.  We’re taking good care of him - why would he bite me?  But he wouldn’t crawl on my hand, either, so I directed him to crawl under the TV stand.  I certainly don’t want anyone to accidentally step on him.

I hate to complain about days with “nice” weather, but can’t we just have a sweet, slow progression into Spring without jumping to Summer?  What happened to days and days in a row where the highs are in the low 60s?  Am I the only person in the world who doesn’t crave the heat?

Left the house at 9:30 this morning and walked to the gym.  It’s only a 10-15 minute walk and when I got there I was sweating.  No.  I do not like this.  9:30am and already 65 degrees?  On April 3rd?   And these cloudless skies are killing me.   My walk back home was worse than the walk there because there was zero shade on either side of the street.   After a 2 and a half hour workout I need time to cool down and that just didn’t help matters at all.  Gah!

Winter or Summer, I choose winter.  Never thought I’d feel that way, but there it is.

Davis Square is a great place to live.  The Boston Globe’s online site boston.com did a survey recently of readers’ favorite square and Davis won, running against Kendall (I think), Central, Porter and Harvard.  Yes, it beat Harvard Square.

Davis is perfect because it’s Somerville surrounded by Cambridge on two sides, so it’s artsy, forward thinking and yet has its feet on the ground.  It’s not touristy, it’s got a real “center,” tons of restaurants and bars and shops and the population is a nice mix of locals, Tufts runoff,  mature professionals, families and artists.  I wouldn’t be surprised if all of Somerville contained more musicians than any other part of Massachusetts.

All that said, there is something in Davis that scares me.  It’s a restaurant/nightclub called Sagra.

As I sit here at my desk in my bedroom, which faces Highland Avenue, I hear the effects of this blight on my neighborhood.  Sagra attracts a crowd that simply does not belong here and which is embodied clearly by MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”  Club-going partiers,  girls almost-wearing clothes and stumbling around in heels trying to balance their cleavage and guys who are more Axe body spray and hair gel than man.  All of them are loud loud loud and have so much misdirected or unchanneled energy in them that I’m frightened to even walk past on weekend evenings.  With good reason, too.

When Chris and first started dating he was up late and I was asleep (what else is new?) and he heard a commotion on the street.  He went outside to check it out and witnessed a fight.  Not only did he see some punches thrown, but he saw a guy get hit and then fall backward so hard and so solid that he could hear his head crack on the sidewalk.  For months he said that sound haunted him, it was so visceral and disturbing.

Davis Square isn’t for melees and testosterone-filled macho “who you talkin’ to” fist-fights.  It’s also not for hoochie mamas and “like, ohmigod” spouting bimbos.  Begone foul pestilence!  Stay in the ‘burbs or Faneuil Hall and the clubs near North Station, please!   I moved here because you were not here.   If I had to choose I’d keep my white trash local yobbo neighbors (the ones who were up at 10am last July 4th starting a giant fire in their hibachi and drinking quarts of beer.  The ones who never did any actual barbeque’ing and who turned in for the night at 2pm) over this unsavory element any day of the week.  My WT neighbors may be ignorant or uneducated, but they keep to themselves and don’t stir shit up.  I appreciate that.