the cassandra pages

Happy 100, Dad - You Almost Made It!

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A few days after my mother died, a month shy of her 83rd birthday, my father and I were raking the front lawn in preparation for the gathering after her funeral. He stood up straight, leaned on his rake, and said, “Your mother accepted that she was going to die. She said she’d had a good life, and it was fine.”

I waited, certain he was going to say more. Our eyes met.

“I don’t feel that way at all!” he exclaimed. “I want to live to be 100!”

 

My parents, late 1940s.

At the time he was 82, and although neither of us knew it, he would have 15 more years of life -- most of it in remarkably good health— before dying at 97, several months after his second partner. I wish he had made it to 100, but how fortunate he was to have so many good years late in life.

 

My father and his second partner, Barbara, around 2022.

I know exactly what he attributed his good health to: exercise. After quitting smoking in the late 1050s, a habit acquired during his service in Europe in WWII, he became obsessed with physical fitness. He’d always been a good athlete, particularly as a baseball player and runner, and was one of the first people to take up jogging in our small town. He kept running until his knees simply wouldn’t let him. Every morning he did the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises - and kept that up until a year or so before he died. His other sport was table tennis, which he practiced incessantly, playing any challenger, and having a regular weekly game with a series of well-matched players. He competed regionally, at the state level, and many times in the national Senior Games, where he won first place in his age class, one of the years when he was over 90. He denied being competitive, but that claim was disingenuous - he never let me win at anything, even when I was little! I do agree that his drive was less about winning than about continual self-improvement. It could be difficult to be around someone like that, but I also admired it.

 

Dad and me, early 1970s

He ate a lot of sugar, red meat, and had a cocktail every night, but stayed thin, and never took statins or blood pressure medications. Maybe when you exercise as much as he did, both in an athletic sense, and in building and taking care of a house and property, it mitigates the effects of diet. Certainly he had a high metabolism! On the other hand, we’ve also had people in our families who never exercised, were overweight, and took plenty of medication, and also lived well into their 90s. I think my father was lucky in his genetic makeup, courageous and strong in spirit, as well as having two women who loved him and many friends through his life. The greatest challenge he faced was surviving the war — and he had several very close calls. After that, I think he was determined to build a life and live it fully — and he did. I will always miss him, and be grateful for the qualities we shared and the things he taught me.

 

Subscribed

Simplicity, in life and in death

 

 

Landscape on I-88 near Nineveh, NY. Pencil drawing in sketchbook.

 

On Monday, we drove down to Binghamton, New York, to attend a family funeral the following morning. My Aunt Doris was the wife of my father’s eldest brother, the Rev. F. Porter Adams. Porter died suddenly in his early 60s, forty years ago, and yet Doris continued in good health, living independently until she was 94, and dying last week at 98. Like his father, my paternal grandfather, Porter was a Methodist minister, and so is his daughter Nancy. He and Doris were married in 1952. I remember her as a devoted mother to her children and the embodiment of the perfect minister’s wife, always at her husband’s side and involved with their church communities. After he died she was an equally caring mother and helper for her adult children and grand daughters. She was a homemaker, a good baker, cook, and seamstress, with a strong Christian faith; she was always kind to me, and I never remember her being annoyed, complaining, or saying a cross word to anyone. I realized, sitting at the service, that -- outside of these roles, which were also the subject of the sermon and the family reminiscences — I had barely known her at all.

Or then again, perhaps I had. Perhaps the way she was remembered and described at the funeral was exactly who she was, and that her choice had been just that: to live a simple, modest, selfless life, expressing her faith through devotedly caring for her family and community. It must have been terrible to lose her husband so suddenly and unexpectedly, just when he was looking forward to retirement, but somehow she managed not only to go on, but to find meaning and purpose in the many decades that remained. Not only had she been loving and faithful, she must have also been quite strong, and have had the support of good friends in addition to her children and her siblings.

The funeral was simple, straightforward, and heartfelt. Old favorite Methodist hymns played on a piano, stories shared by her family and the chaplain at the nursing home where she had lived for the past four years, a brief eulogy by the pastor of the church, a duet sung by those two women - the chaplain and pastor - followed by prayers of commendation. I was glad there was a lot of music, because it’s a tradition on my father’s side of the family. When they were young, my dad, his sister, and his two brothers had often sung as a quartet at church services led by their own father, and later on my grandmother always insisted that we all stand around the piano and sing together at family gatherings. I grew up playing those Methodist hymns at the piano while my father sang, in his clear tenor voice, and I could hear him next to me, in my mind, on Tuesday morning.

In addition to being there for my cousins, who have always supported me at such events, I’d wanted to acknowledge the passing of my aunt as the last of my parents’ generation. The eldest on both sides of my family is now...me. It’s a sobering thought, and it has come late, mainly because many of them lived very long lives.

 

Landscape on I-88 near Nineveh, NY. Pencil drawing in sketchbook.

The drive back to Montreal was long -- more than six hours, not counting stops — but the weather was good and we took turns driving. The first stretch, on I-88 from Binghamton to Oneonta and then to Albany, passes through what feels like home terrain to me, and near towns where my grandparents and father, and later, friends of my own once lived: Nimmonsburg, Afton, Bainbridge, Sydney Center, Nineveh, Otego.

Jonathan drove the first stretch, and I looked out the window, taking photos of the landscape I love and making these two fast pencil sketches, while I thought about my aunt’s life, so different from my own. I also replayed the service we’d attended, fixing it in my memory. Such simplicity! It couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the grand liturgical events at the Anglican Cathedral we attend and where, as a choir member, I was part of the presentation for so many years. I had loved this very Protestant service, though, and felt comfortable in it — partly because it reminded me of where I came from, and mainly because it was utterly sincere. Anglican liturgy gives structure, dignity, solemnity, and a progression of mood and intention throughout a service; the language is poetic, and music provides meditation, participatory moments, and enhances the mood of the readings, the time of year, the occasion. The words and service used at a royal funeral are almost the same as those for the funeral of any Anglican, anywhere in the world. But there is a lot to be said for the directness, familiarity, sincerity, and simplicity of what we had just witnessed. It suited my aunt perfectly, and perhaps some of that feeling came across in the simple drawings I did later that day.

 

Near Unadilla, NY. Watercolor, 5.5” x 8” in sketchbook.

Today, though, I’m back in my own home. That peaceful landscape of fields and gently rolling hills continues to call to me, so I did a quick watercolor in my sketchbook, hopefully bringing the muted colors of November to life for you. There will be more to come.

Happy Birthday

My mother would have been 100 years old today, June 9, 2024. I'm sitting in her dining room at the moment, looking out the windows of her house at the lake she loved, with my computer on the adjustable pine drafting table my father made for her in the early years of their marriage. Some of her own paintings hang on the walls here, along with mine.

How fortunate I was to have had the mother I did. 

She's been gone for eighteen years now, and I still think of her every day. I wish I could celebrate this day with her, but at least I can celebrate her life and her continued presence in mine.

1955. My cousin Bucky, my mother, me, and my maternal grandmother. (The photos above were all taken by my father.)

2024. The same view today.

 

Drawing Manon

Lately I've been working harder on trying to draw Manon from life. In spite of the fact that I've been drawing cats since the mid-1980s, I've never found it easy. There's something about their anatomy that's hard to capture; maybe there's so much fluff covering their skinny little bodies and skeletons that it's hard to see the underlying structure, and you end up with something that looks like a lumpy bag of fur. They move a lot, even when asleep. I also used to get the proportions wrong. A cat's head is actually quite small compared to their body, and I often drew it too large. Manon is a small cat, only 8 pounds. The fact that she's three-colored also complicates things when working in black-and-white.

It's been going better lately, especially when she's asleep. Above is the most recent effort, from the past weekend. Here's a detail:

And here are two other recent drawings:

Here are a couple of much older drawings, from a sketchbook in 2011, not long after she came to live with us. Doing quick gesture drawings of animals, as well as people, is a big help -- I should do more of that now.

Manon is at least 15 now, and a year ago in March we almost lost her. She bounced back, with the help of our brilliant vet, Julie*, who prescribed tiny doses of prednisone every other day. She's regained all the weight she had lost, and has had a good year. It seems like she wants to be around us all the time, even more than before, and is very affectionate while also maintaining her feline independence - as much as possible for an indoor cat. She's still pretty playful and energetic, even though she sleeps more, and she continues to be more vocal in her attempts to communicate. I never tire of watching her - to me, cats embody beauty and grace, as well as having the appeal of all their inherent quirkiness. We cherish every day with her, and I'm sure that's motivating my desire to draw and paint her while she's still with us. I must admit that photographs do a better job of showing her true personality, though -- this is a cat with a big presence! How fortunate we were to have ended up with such a companion, totally by chance.

*our vet is Dr Julie Bereza at Baker Animal Hospital in Montreal - I can't recommend this clinic enough

Summer's End, New Beginnings

We're back in Montreal after two weeks in central New York working on the lake house. It needs a new roof -- this time I went up there with J. to take a look, after we peered into the attic crawlspace and saw some water damage, which we had suspected -- so we arranged for that to happen next month. The main task was to finish sorting many of my parents' collections and other possessions. At the end of last week an antique dealer's crew and truck arrived, and we all packed and carried what had been designated to leave. At the end of that long day, I was proud of myself for not getting emotional; I was exhausted; and, as much as I had liked many of those things, I was stunned to see how good the house looked and felt in a much simpler and less crowded state.

If any of you have done this, for yourselves or for your family or friends, you will probably recognize these feelings. For us, it was the third major move/downsizing in 14 months, and we're certainly not done with the work on that house. But as we sat on the front porch that evening, we had a real sense of accomplishment, both for the sheer physical work we'd done, and because, a year ago, I couldn't imagined being able to handle the emotional demands of the task.

I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing, but I am able to remember a lot of my past in detail. Nearly every object in that house and every inch of space is weighted with specific memories of the people who once handled those things, or moved through those rooms, or used the same objects in different houses that I also remember vividly. Because I loved all of those people, and miss them now that they are gone, and because they were all collectors and storytellers who liked history, as well as being makers who restored or created many of the things in the house, there are a lot of complex layers.

Today is the first anniversary of my father's death. Although I dealt with the clothes and personal items shortly after he died, it took a full year for me to get to the point where I could say, all right, it's time for many of these things carefully collected by my parents, grandparents, great aunt and even great-grandparents to move on to new people who will also appreciate them. It finally feels ok for us to change the house and make it more our own, for the time in which we have it, and to do so without guilt. Part of getting there is the process of mourning and letting go, but I think it's also difficult and complicated to accept, and then acknowledge, the fact that we are now the elders: we have taken our parents' place.

My father had a clear conception of what he wanted the house to be when he designed and built it, with my mother's help. It's a real mid-century aesthetic, but for all these years, I don't think that could really be sensed during the several decades it took to finish the house. Later, there were so many interesting things in the house competing for visual attention that you didn't really see the space itself. When the shelves and surfaces were cleared, and some of the furniture removed, we could suddenly see and appreciate the integrity of what my parents had planned. I wondered if maybe they would have liked it too, in some sort of alternate universe. All in all, I'm grateful for the memories I have, and during these recent days I was glad to be able to talk about all them with my cousin next door, and to friends whose relationship with our family goes back three generations. 

As I wrote last winter, in a long essay that will be published this year along with my series of winter landscape drawings, the land and nature of central New York are also a consolation for me. The fields that had been covered with snow were now filled with towering rows of bright green, tasseled corn, or with freshly mown hay; the skies were't grey but bright blue with lazy summer clouds; deer grazed all over the countryside, along with turkeys and rabbits and other small mammals; hawks swept over the meadows; rising fish made circles on the water and swallows skimmed over the surface chasing insects; and a noisy flock of Canada geese arrived each evening to sleep on the lake, leaving again after the sun had chased away the wispy morning fog. The rhythm of rural life continued, both on the farms, and independently in nature, and there was comfort in that in spite of the changes in the climate.

During the past four weeks, I haven't touched my sketchbook, haven't read or written much at all, and certainly haven't written here - this may be the longest period I've gone without writing on the blog.  Today felt like a time to try to put some of this into words, and I also spent the afternoon doing an oil pastel of Chenango County hills -- the first work in color that has come out of this time.

I'd rather not see this moment as an ending, because so much of what has been remains inside of me. Let's call it a continuation that's also morphing into something new.

Unparallel Lives

My father died at 97, a month ago tomorrow. Queen Elizabeth II died at 96, two weeks ago. Charles and Diana were married three days before Jonathan and I were married, at the end of July, 1981. Their marriage ended unhappily, ours has endured for over 40 years, but I don't think it's because we made our own wedding cake, or because I sewed my own dress, but rather because we were free to follow our own hearts in ways that they were not. I would never have wanted to change places.

My father, too, was free after WWII to build his own life in ways that Queen Elizabeth could have never acted upon; her entire life was turned over to duty and service, constrained by rules and tradition that contemporary society has long ago discarded. How many jewels and Arabian horses and gilded coaches does it take to make up for that? For her sister, her uncle, or some of her own children and grandchildren, the tradeoff was clearly not worth it. Yet we watch this family drama, which is actually a tragedy, with fascination and even envy.

Just as our weddings were in stark contrast, so were the funerals. But given the traditional Anglican liturgy that formed the basis of both services, they shared a similar structure and many of the same words. I was grateful for that structure when I was planning dad's service, and the familiar words were a comfort to me. When I heard them again, during our cathedral's commemoration for the Queen last Sunday afternoon, and again during the televised services the next day, it was harder to keep myself together than it had been during my father's service. Out of the public eye, and without a eulogy to deliver, I was more able to grieve, and if I shed some tears, they were more for my father than for the Queen.

However, there was much to admire in Queen Elizabeth, even for this American who has never quite understood why Canada remained in the Commonwealth, and so devoted to the monarchy. She became queen in 1952, the year I was born, so in addition to being the same age as my father, she ruled for 70 years, which is the age I turned the day after her funeral. And, we share a name. Elizabeth I has been a constant presence of whom I was aware from the beginning. Regardless of what one thinks of the institution of the monarchy, and their immense wealth and privilege, it was always significant to me that there was a woman in that role, and that she held the respect of other world leaders with a quiet, dignified, and unquestioned authority. She may not have had real political power, but she led in other ways that people seemed to need, and to respect. The majority of people who watched her funeral, or tried to see her coffin lying in state, or left flowers in remembrance, were not doing so out of voyeurism or celebrity worship; something real was going on there, whether we agree with it and share it, or not.

And these were historical moments; for anyone who has studied history, religion, and ancient cultures, one has to notice the power of symbolism and ritual that, in all cultures, attempts to unite us to our ancient forebears, connect us to the earth and the heavens, and make sense of the greatest mystery of all. As I stood in a crowd of Canadians on Sunday, at the conclusion of the service, and the organ moved from the final hymn and blessing to the opening bars of "God Save the King", sung to those words for the first time in 70 years, I could feel the emotion around me. Likewise, who could remain completely unmoved by the final minutes of the Windsor committal service, when the crown and other symbols of Elizabeth's earthly and historical power were removed from the coffin before it sank beneath the floor?

Under the September sun, thirty friends and family members stood around my father's grave in the old village cemetery where I played as a young child. At the conclusion of the brief committal service, we placed the paper box containing his ashes into the same grave where my mother's remains had been buried sixteen years before. Then I took a shovel into my hands and put the first earth into the grave, passed the shovel to my husband, who did the same, and then, slowly, silently, nearly all of the people present took a turn, and we buried my father together and then strewed red roses on the grave.

People can despise the monarchy, but can't we find it interesting and significant that human beings have tried to find meaning in death, and mark this great transition with dignity and respect, since time immemorial? And in the aftermath of Elizabeth's death, can't we summon enough charity to hold our criticisms and judgements until she is at least buried? This was a woman who shouldered her unchosen and unwanted role with selflessness, and all these years later, seems to have grieved her partner's death and met her own with stoic, private courage. She was not blameless, but there is no way that all the crimes of colonialism and empire can be laid at her feet; these things go back very far indeed, and are shared by many other countries. If it is time now for some commonwealth nations to change their systems of government, so be it.

There's nothing like writing a eulogy to confront the sobering thought: what will someone have to say about me, someday? For, in fact, none of us are blameless, and I think we all hope that when our own time comes, people will be charitable,a nd remember us for our good qualities more than for our failings.

For death, I think, is the great leveler: it comes to us all, we all go down to the dust, and no one can take their earthly goods or power with them. When those deaths occur which stop us in our tracks and cause a shudder or even an earthquake in our own lives, it is a time to look in the mirror. What can we learn from the life of this person who is with us no longer? What lasts, what remains? What do we want to do with the unknowable balance of time that remains to us, and with the friends who surround us in those moments, surely far more precious than gold?

 

My Father. December 15, 1924 - August 22, 2022

My father died today: the end of a very long, mostly happy, vigorous life. We were with him. I'm grateful for so much, relieved that his suffering was short, and yet still feel like a tree has fallen in the forest: it's hard to imagine life without him being in it too. But of course, as long as I am alive, he will live in me.

Portraits by Jonathan Sa'adah, 1981 and 2021

What Lasts, What Sustains

A rainy evening in the clouds, the first sustained weather like this we’ve had since moving here. I like the different feeling in the apartment: quiet and closed-in, with the nearby all we can see and therefore much more prominent.

We stopped at the Jean-Talon market on our way home from my annual check-up in the eastern part of the city -- the first time I’ve seen my GP in person in more than two years -- and bought tomatoes, strawberries, a big bunch of basil, and pots of thyme and small hot peppers. Jonathan made pizza for dinner with the tomatoes and basil, and the pots are out on the balcony, getting slowly soaked with warm rain.

Coming back from central New York this time, I’ve finally realized that I always have a day or two of adjustment in each direction when I feel emotionally ragged, tearful, even angry. Arriving there, I feel overwhelmed by the house and tasks that have, suddenly, become my responsibility; I feel burdened with obligations and other people’s expectations and demands, and worried that I will fall short or be criticized -- and at first all I want to do is escape. Then the natural surroundings start to work on me; I get used to going to sleep after walking around the lake, looking at the stars, hearing the croaks of frogs, intermittent conversations of geese, and the distant lowing of cows. I get used to waking in the fresh air of early morning, fog blowing across the water, before making coffee and drinking it out on the porch or on the bench down by the shore as fish begin to rise -- and the negative feelings start to calm down. The longer I spend there, the more people I’ve come into contact with, and the more I realize we share a web of interconnections that have somehow persisted despite my long absence. Because my family’s roots there run so deep, it’s not hard for me to find ways of connecting, and when the mechanic or the truck rental guy or the clerk at the supermarket hear my name or my parents’ names, the suspicion caused by my Quebec license plate seems to be replaced by their own natural sociability, because people there tend to be very warm, friendly, and chatty. And this feels not only familiar, but refreshingly natural to me, after spending fifty years in New England and a French-speaking major city where there has been, frankly, not much of that, and seldom a ready response to my own overtures of warmth or friendliness to strangers.

Coming back here, to Montreal, the reaction tends to be a kind of wrenching sadness and grief, mainly about my father but also my attachment to that place juxtaposed with my fulfilling and happy life here, and an awareness that both marriage and family ties mean compromise -- I cannot do whatever I might want on a given day or in a given year, but have to -- if I’m to remain true to myself the values that I hold dear -- act responsibly on behalf of the people I love. And this, unfortunately, divides me. I don’t want to live in central New York full-time, nor do I want to live primarily in America again, but I do want to see and care for my father, I do feel a responsibility and love for the land that we own, I respect and care about the hardworking and straightforward people I’m meeting back where I grew up, and (perhaps this is the most significant revelation) I see much more clearly how embedded that culture and place has always been in me. Here, in my adopted country, province, and city, I am able to live more fully and freely as the person I’ve become over the years, and this is where my husband and I have built our life together and want to remain. As for community and friendship, these exist here, there, and everywhere we have lived -- and sometimes just as strongly in the strange place of online interconnection that has arisen over the past two decades, and is independent of addresses, borders, or time zones.

As I look out over the city from this high place, the clouds have risen and thinned, and lights begin to flicker on and shine in the deepening blue distance. I feel my solitude keenly and comfortably tonight, and I know that this is a quality I carry with me wherever I am, along with a natural desire for making connections, and an ease in doing so. There’s relief in recognizing that it doesn’t matter so much where I am, physically, because I’ll always be myself -- a child who grew up loving and being consoled by the solitude of nature, books, art, and music, and also learned sociability and a love of people from her father and others in a rural society that valued family, and caring about each other, above everything else.

Those qualities saved me when I left my small town and went off to find my own way in a large university, and I see them now in my father as he navigates the incredibly difficult transition from independence to a nursing home, impaired by deafness and mobility issues that would doom many people to isolation and despair. But several staff people told me how much they liked him, and I could see his efforts to connect with people, to find ways of communicating his identity and his sense of humor in spite of his frustration at his body’s failings, at finding himself stuck in that place, his grief at the loss of his partner, and all the other challenges of extreme old age.

At first I thought, “This is terrible, how difficult this is for him,” but now that I’ve thought through this last visit more deeply, it actually gives me hope that even in extreme circumstances, one’s humanity and love of others can still be expressed, and consolation found in recognized places of solace. “I can’t sing anymore,” my father said to me as he listened to a woman play the guitar and sing familiar songs -- but I saw his toe tapping, and watched his hand beat time to the rhythm -- and he had found his way to the circle of residents at the appointed time for the musical event that week. Whatever is deepest in us remains, I think, and we must not give up on it -- not now, not ever.

 

Desk, Domain

I'm sitting at my grandmother's antique slant-top desk. It's a gorgeous piece of cabinetry, larger than my own desk, with detailed inlays and dovetail joinery, drawers for pens and supplies, vertical pull-out holders for writing papers, and a locking cabinet in the center. I feel a bit dwarfed, a sensation which isn’t helped by the fact that all the chairs in the house are too low for it.

When we lived in the big house in town, this desk was always in the front room downstairs, its rich brown wood contrasting with the Victorian floral wallpaper behind it. The desk was directly across from the upholstered chair where my grandmother read and knitted and embroidered, drank martinis in the evening, and played canasta. Its right side touched the wooden frame of the wide doorway between the living room and the dining room -- and on that frame were scratched the heights of my cousins and myself each year as we grew.

My grandmother used the desk when she sat down to do her daily correspondence, and I think also to pay bills -- but I never remember my grandfather sitting at it. The top held various curios, most of which have now disappeared, but were fascinating to me as a child: a heavy, dark purple glass bear whose head came off to reveal a container inside; two Chinese brass vases and an ivory elephant: gifts from faraway from my mother's high school sweetheart who was beloved by the family and had gone down with his Navy ship in the Pacific in WWII; a little oval wooden box filled with tiny South American figures -- no more than half an inch high -- dressed in colorful costumes made of bits of fabric and wrapped, colored thread; and many other things that I might be allowed to play with and dream about on a special day. It was clear, though, that I was never to open the drawers or look at any letters or writing: this was her private domain.

After my grandparents died, in their nineties, my parents built a large living room addition on their own house here at the lake, and moved some of the furniture they had inherited. The desk was placed against the back wall of the new living room, fitting perfectly into the center of the white-painted paneling my father had carefully constructed. The four big drawers below held maps and stamp collections, papers and scrapbooks, but if my mother or father ever used the desk itself, I didn’t know about it; they did their paperwork on a modern desk downstairs, or on the round oak table where we ate, near the kitchen. For them I think it was mostly a decorative, formal showpiece that offered convenient, out-of-sight storage, and they kept the slant-top closed. Three Wedgwood vases stood on the top, along with a pair of candlesticks, and above them hung an airbrush painting of mine from the 1980s that is a closeup of a purple pansy, rather Georgia O’Keefe-esque. In the thirty years since they built the addition, this arrangement never changed.

During our current stay at the lake house, since we are now alone here and likely to remain so, I’ve taken a few tentative steps toward moving a few things around: a decision that feels both illicit and liberating. We had already moved a few pieces of furniture to my father’s room in his assisted-living home, so that was the beginning, and my father’s presence during that process seemed to give permission. The other night I removed several other things from the bedroom, cleared off the top of the dresser and replaced figurines and photographs with a single modern ceramic vase I’d given my mother years ago. I think the urge to do this came from the radical cleaning of our apartment we’d done before putting it on the market, but it had barely occurred to me before that I could do any such thing in this overcrowded house. I continued by clearing the counter at the top of the stairs; I stripped the kitchen countertops bare and polished the white formica before replacing only the barest essentials and stowing everything else in cupboards; we bought a mop and scrubbed the tile floor. Outdoors, I picked up a decade’s worth of fallen branches, raked leaves, pruned overgrown bushes, swept the railroad-tie steps going down to the lake, got out the outdoor furniture and put it in a different spot, and with my husband’s help, dragged a bench down to my favorite place just above the shoreline. All of this took place at a slow rate of one project every day or two.

Tonight, tired and worried about my father, I came into this room, which we seldom use, and stretched out on the couch. I did my Duolingo lesson and the Times mini crossword and Spelling Bee on the free phone app which always kicks me out after a certain point. Then I pulled a knitted afghan over myself, thinking I might take a little nap, accompanied by the contemplative robin that’s nesting in the light fixture just outside the terrace door...but my eyes kept opening and gazing across the room at the desk. After a few minutes I had gotten up, opened the top, and set to work sorting the incongruous things I found inside: a strange, heavy antique brass writing stand with two glass inkwells; bottles of disk cleaner for LP records; three old letter openers, an intricate silver one that looked Turkish and quite lethal, and two that are clearly African; a collection of DVDs; a Silva compass with a leather case; a collection of old brass drafting equipment and a velvet snap-top jewelry box filled with old Schaeffer and Parker graphite leads; a handwritten wiring map for my father’s cabinet of turntables, tape decks and DVD players. As I did this, slowly, the thought began to form: could I actually use this desk? Could I write something here? When all the surfaces and pigeonholes were empty, I removed the vases and candlesticks to the piano, and wiped the wood with a barely-damp cloth. My sketchbook and watercolor palette went on the left side, some pens on the right. Then I ascertained that, yes, there was an outlet on the wall in fairly close proximity, set my laptop, mousepad and mouse in the center of the open desk, noticing for the first time the reassuring dents and scratches in the old mahogany -- and turned the computer on.

It felt like... a moment. Like introducing your close but perhaps slightly questionable young friend to a beloved elderly grandparent. But the hinges didn’t give way, the marquetry didn’t fall out: in fact, the wood felt warm and beckoning and somehow personal, and I began immediately to write.

 

Changes

Dear Readers,

This is probably the longest I've ever gone between two posts: a lot has been going on. Thank you for checking back here.

On the morning of March 23, my father's partner Barbara suffered a massive stroke and was taken to hospital. We left Montreal almost immediately to be with him, and ended up staying for the next three weeks as we tried to help him through the death of his partner a week later (she never regained consciousness), moved him out of the home they had shared for 12 years into our own family home at the lake, and then explored options for him to stay there with help, or to move into assisted living: the latter was the choice he finally made. This would have been a huge upheaval of grief, loss, and change for anyone, and he is 97, living in a rural area that doesn't have robust, reliable social services or any transportation to speak of: almost everyone relies on their own car, even at an advanced age. The options are very limited.

Snow squalls on the way to Cooperstown.

After a lifetime of athleticism and self-motivated attention to physical fitness, including a new hip and two knee replacements, he's had increasing trouble with arthritis and declining mobility and balance over the past two years. Although we're all hopeful that physical therapy may help him regain some strength and greater comfort, it became clear that he couldn't stay in his own house safely, so he chose a facility in the small city where he and Barbara had lived, where he will be close to his friends, his partner's family who have been so kind to him, and where life will be as familiar as possible. My father is a courageous and stoic person, and although these events were wrenching and extremely difficult, I'm proud of how the three of us navigated them together, and glad I had the privilege of spending so much time with him. It wasn't all care-giving, either; we played chess and cards, he taught me tricks for solving Sudokus, and I learned a lot about antique clock repair. More significantly, the three of us had long conversations over each meal about everything from life and death, to how my father began building this house, back in the 1950s. I think he learned quite a bit more about the two of us as well.

The swamp on the back side of the lake was full of spring peepers.

We've now returned home to Montreal and are preparing for a major life-change ourselves: a move to a larger condominium that we had bought shortly before all of this happened. Our own apartment will go on the market soon, and we'll move in mid-June to our new home, in a different part of the city, and close our studio at the end of October. We plan to go back to central New York to see my father, and attend Barbara's memorial service, in the middle of May. She was a kind, generous, sociable, cheerful and optimistic person, devoted to her extended family; she and my father played golf and bridge together, did some traveling, enjoyed going out to eat, and had an active social life. The two of them were excellent companions and a lovely couple: I'm so grateful for all the good years they spent together and the joy they brought to each other's lives, so unusual in their length of years and the good health they both managed to enjoy. We will miss her.

While we were staying at the lake, another close friend of our family also died. Ray lived a few houses away, and was in his late 80s; the friendships between our families span three generations. We were able to see his children; we all tried to help each other and talked about the strange feeling of watching our parents' generation, who have been such strong and constant figures of our childhoods and the long subsequent years, now pass the torch to us when we're all getting on in age ourselves. 

The late spring weather was pretty wretched -- grey and rainy, with days of windy snow squalls -- but the lake was a reassuring presence. Every morning when I got up, I'd spend some time looking out at the water and its changing moods, and every evening when it was possible, my husband and I took a walk around the lake at sunset, looking out at the fields as the farmers began to plow, watching the migrating geese and a group of mergansers that had stopped at the lake for a while, and, to our great excitement, observing a bald eagle nest with vigilant adult birds, at the top of a tall pine tree.

Skunk cabbage.

We arrived when the days were still snowy, and by the time we left, a loud chorus of spring peepers could be heard each evening, skunk cabbages had unfurled in the swamp, and I spotted the first mayflowers in bloom at the foot of an old beech tree near the house. During our drives in the countryside, through the Chenango and Unadilla Valleys to Cooperstown and Binghamton, and up over the Madison County hills to Cazenovia and Syracuse, I was comforted and enchanted once again by the beauty of the pastoral landscape that's been imprinted on me since childhood. It's no wonder, I thought to myself, that I became a landscape painter, with deep emotional ties to the land, the light, the plants and trees, and the form of the hills and valleys that were shaped by glaciers that deposited the round cobblestones -- still seen in old barn foundations -- on top of sedimentary rock layers rich with marine fossils. All these daily sights, combined with a long personal history, became my daily consolations.