Update

Well, I don't know what to make of this.

I saw an oncologist today, who read over all the paperwork -- and there was a lot of it -- then said the pathology report was "inconclusive," and he wanted to send the tissue samples to a lab he preferred in the middle of the state. (NH is not all that big a state.) As I was leaving the oncology unit (the most horrible place I've ever been), he rode down in the elevator with me and said that he had called the path. lab, and they had admitted to "hedging."

Meanwhile, I have a friend who's a nurse, who had offered to interpret the pathology report for me. Having acquired a copy of said report, I scanned it and sent it on to her. Her opinion: This does not look good, have the thing out.

Yes, I'm a trifle upset, to put it mildly. Those of you who are on the OrthWomen's list may remember my posting, last year, about my lack of trust in doctors generally. I was thrilled to have found a gynecologist whom I thought I could talk to. But she's the one who called in this oncologist, and I'm not sure now if she will abide by his opinion, or if she will listen to me (and my friend), and take the thing out. Let me make this as plain as possible: I do not want to mess around with even the suspicion of cancer.

But how hard do I push???

And the Answer Is....

For a variety of reasons -- mostly because whenever I'm out and about, I've been feeling a tad dizzy -- I went to see my doctor today (I also wanted to update my list of people to keep informed about my medical condition). As it happened, she had had a cancellation for an appointment, so I got right in to see her. As it also happened, she had just received the pathology report on my surgery. And the answer is...

(you gotta love this)...

they don't know.

There are more cells than there should be, which is indicative of cancer. But the cells themselves look normal, and not remotely cancerous. So the official diagnosis is "hyperplasia," meaning, hunh???

See why I love modern medicine?!

Holy Cow

Much to my amazement, I have actually survived. Yeah, OK, a biopsy isn't life-or-death surgery. But do remember, I have no faith in hospitals whatsoever, so I plan to enjoy my feeling of amazement for at least the next 24 hours.

The first thing we established was the First Name thing. My first name isn't Margaret -- it's something I loathe with all my being -- and when people use it, I generally go for the jugular. Which is what I told folks at the hospital. It got a laugh, and I got what I wanted: people calling me Margaret, which is my middle name.

Then, I think I set records for post-op discharge. I woke up at 10:02, and by 10:45 I was out the door. I had been insisting, from the moment I learned I'd have to have this procedure, that I should have been able to drive myself there and back, and they kept insisting that no, I had to have someone drive me; and the logical Someone was my husband. That isn't gonna happen again. You know the expression, "Nervous as a cat"? He makes cats look calm and placid. And yes, despite dire predictions of loopiness once I was out in the fresh air, I could have driven home with no trouble whatever.

Right now, I have sent him off to obtain some fish. I have a blessing to eat fish on fast days, since I really really need to lose weight and finally found a doctor who doesn't think a low-carb diet is a recipe for trouble. And when I finish this post, and send thank-you notes to all my other friends who promised to pray for me, I do plan to take a nap -- not only am I post-op, but I've also been up since 4:30 a.m.

I'm glad this is over with. For now, anyway. Results in 2-3 weeks. Many thanks to all who read this blog, for the prayers you have offered on my behalf; I'm very sure that they were largely responsible for my being this together and coherent! ;-)

Slice 'n' Dice!

I understand that that's how biopsy is referred to. Which is what I'm having done tomorrow.

I hate doctors. The ones I have, I trust marginally, because they haven't done anything radically stupid -- yet -- but by and large, I strongly suspect there isn't an entire functioning brain among the entire medical community. I think they each possess a zygote of a brain cell.

And I really hate hospitals. That damn johnny, for one thing. (Everybody hates that thing. And the fact that they keep using it, despite knowing that everyone hates it, tells you everything you need to know about customer relations from the hospital's point of view.) But then, they insist on calling you by your first name. I wonder how the anesthesiologist would like it if I kept referring to her as "Debs." And when they're putting in an IV, if they can't find a vein, they keep sticking you in an effort to find one. For crying out loud, just get a damn phlebotomist up there to find it! To say nothing of the fact that the IV keeps you tied down until they say you can go. I mean, who's gonna risk taking it out himself?! You could rupture a vein or something!

But what I really hate is that you are not only helpless, you are clueless. I mean, what the heck are they putting into that drip bag, anyways?! It could be anything. How would you know? I was watching a TV interview while we were visiting our son in Philadelphia, and this guy said his wife went into the hospital for a routine procedure, and while she was there her entire lower body turned purple, and she was in excruciating pain for a month. Turns out it was something they put in the IV.

Then there's the woman I was reading this morning, on my cross-stitch board -- so this isn't tabloid stuff -- who said she had no anesthesia for the first twelve minutes of her surgery, and the only way they found out she wasn't anesthetized was that she coughed.

The thing is, why should an Orthodox Christian fear death (apart, of course, from an acute awareness that you actually have to stand before the Throne of God and account for yourself)? And when I think about it, I find that that's not what I fear. What I really fear is them screwing up so badly that I will need medical care for the rest of my life. I don't want to do that to my family.

So, much to my husband's distress, I have put all my affairs in order. I have a book with all my final instructions printed out, and I plan to leave it on the kitchen table. I plan to take icons fo St. Marina and St. John of San Francisco with me. Meanwhile, prayers would be appreciated.

Epitaph

Sixty, I read recently, is the "new forty," so I guess that means it's time to start being nervous about one's age when one hits sixty?? I dunno. What I do know is that I become that magic number later this year, and I find myself -- not exactly dwelling on death, but considering it. Making a will, arranging for a plot in my parish cemetery, all that depressing but necessary stuff. I must admit, it was a little startling to receive a card with my plot number and an illustration of where my grave is!! =:0

Oh, and I've written my epitaph. This is not the official obituary, which I'm sure someone will compose either in boring one-liners ("She was born in Brooklyn, NY. She went to school here. She lived there. She was a member of xxx parish," etc.) or hysterically funny purple prose ("On xx/xx/xx, our beloved Meg went to be with her Lord and Savior Jesus," etc.). Reading the obits in the local paper is entertaining as well as, um, enlightening.

No, this one is how I want to be remembered:

When I look back on the hopes I've held,
the plans and the dreams that Time has felled....

No one will ever read the book
I wrote, nor give a second look
at art created by my hands,
nor speak in hushed tones of the lands
my strategies and wealth amassed;
and though in pleasure life has passed
with love for friends and family,
all they, like me, will cease to be,
unmarked, unsung.

Yet this remains:
The melodies and sweet refrains
of Orthodox Church music, learned
and chanted daily, till it burned
and purified my heart and soul,
refined the gift to shining gold.

So let this sum up all my days:
"She lifted up her voice in praise."

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

Well, no, not really, of course not. It's just -- two consecutive posts, on two consecutive days?! The sky falling in is more likely than that!

But I wanted to respond to the several positive comments I got about my cross stitch. It is a complicated pattern, but made much simpler by two nifty little tricks I learned from a cross-stitch group I joined online: parking threads, and gridding.

Some people grid their fabric conscientiously, every ten or twenty stitches, using ordinary sewing thread, and the whole fabric looks like a giant checkerboard until they start stitching. I don't have the patience for that; so on a pattern like this, I work it in blocks of 10 x 10. (My pattern is gridded.)

Then there's parking: Once I've finished a sequence of stitches in one color, I find where it next occurs within that 10 x 10 grid, and bring up the thread in that space, and leave it there. Then I pick up the next color and work with that in the same way. When I've finished with the color in that row, I park it in the next place where it will occur. Looks something like this:

x = brown
~ = red
$ = green (all examples -- this whole piece takes a total of 87 colors!)

xxxx~~xx$$
$$~~~~$$$x
x ~ $

Now, it will occur to you that the last little tongue on the piece I put up yesterday looks like a heck of a lot more than a 10 x 10 grid. That's because I was down to the last 40 rows, and decided to work that bit straight down to the end, just to make sure I wasn't going to run out of room at the end -- yes, I had checked and double-checked innumerable times, but "paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep" (OK, Blast from the Past out of my system now). I had to be sure. Now that I am sure, I've gone back to a regular 10 x 10 grid.

And once this page is done, my pattern will be 20% complete. The next part takes me back up to the sky, and to stitching the word "Hope" in the sky -- the idea is to have "New Hope and Ivyland" arcing across the sky, and the word "Railroad" appearing in a straight line beneath those words. It's a present for my son, who has seen it, and, for an almost-27-year-old bachelor male, is quite excited about it!

Sleepers -- Go Back to Sleep

I suspect that only a classical-music lover will get the full import of that title, so I will explain that it's from Bach's beautiful cantata for the First Sunday of Advent, "Sleepers Awake." "Wake, O wake, for night is flying, the watchmen on the heights are crying, Awake, awake, Jerusalem."

Now that I have that out of my system -- someone whose blog I subscribe to was bemoaning her slacker status, and promising a whole bunch of us to respond to our posts. I told her, No problem, and besides, there's a nasty little flu bug making the rounds of these he-ah pahts, which I know because it bit me yesterday and I'm still recovering (nicely, thank you). It's pretty sad when a little old flu bug can thumb its nose at flu shots and leave you shivering under a pile of blankets while burning up with fever, and every muscle feeling as if it's just been under the rack.

My point to her was that slacking is *good,* if it means you're getting lots of sleep, because sleep is necessary to keep up one's immune system so these nasty little bugs don't find their way in the back door. Can I make up excuses for slacking, or WHAT? Dang, I'm good.

Last week was my 37th wedding anniversary. We have survived travel 1/4 of the way round the world and back, seven moves, two children, in-laws (by far the hardest part), my changing religions -- twice -- the ins and outs of the public-school system, which I thank God I will never have to deal with again, AND the federal government, which is what has put bread and water on our table for all of these 37 years. I'm at an age where I hope I'll see my 38th wedding anniversary, but at least, that's not because I fear divorce; I'm just at That Age. I see people younger than me in the Obit columns all the time. And since I'm rather fond of the person with whom I have shared more than half my life, I'd like to continue sharing my life with him awhile longer.

Oh, and just for -- how does it go? fits and grins? -- I'm uploading a picture of my latest effort, Maryland Mountain Express, a painting by James Lee, translated for cross stitch by Candamar Designs. I hope to heaven that Mr. Lee does not mind the liberties I'm taking with his beautiful painting, which really is exquisite, but Candamar did note that they printed this design in the expectation that people would "embellish" it as they pleased. Obviously, I can think of quite a lot of "embellishment."

OK, all you sleepers -- you can go back to sleep now. ;-)

Amos Pottroff: 1925-1949

My daughter, who is a writer (her fiction is as yet unpublished, although she's a contributing editor for a number of special-interest publications), recently penned a bizarre short-short that was published on the internet -- since I don't know if internet publishing counts, for the time being I'll say she's unpublished, though after having read this mini-horror, I can't think why. Baldly put, it's about a two-year-old who discovers his mother's murdered body, and the whole 700-word tale is told from the toddler's point of view. She says she got the idea from a combination of wondering how her son would react if they were home alone and she were hurt and unresponsive, and the way I brought her up, with tales -- all of them true -- about kids who were struck by lightning while watching TV, or were snatched off the streets while walking to or from school alone.

Her tale is unfortunately not entirely fiction, either, since a classmate of mine was murdered while home alone with her four-month-old. Sometimes I wonder about that child, if he has any memory at all of his mother, if he grew up knowing that something big was missing from his life. Frankly, I can't conceive that he doesn't remember something, because -- I remember something. Every time I fell seriously in love, it was with a brown-eyed man, and my father had brown eyes.

People always think that when you lose a parent at a very young age, it's not such a big deal, because how much do you remember, anyway? And it's true that you don't remember much, if anything at all; but I can tell you from experience, you know that something is gone that can never be recovered, and it colors your whole life. For one thing, death doesn't hold the same horror that it does for others, because hey, you've lived with it all your life, like that uncle who keeps popping up at family parties and offering you candy, and you wish he would just go away, like to another galaxy. But he's there, and you learn to deal with him early on.

So -- what do you call someone who's been dead almost your whole life, but without whom you wouldn't exist? I don't know. I grew up calling him My Father. These days I call him Amos, if I have occasion to refer to him, since everybody in my family knows who I mean by that, since who in the heck names their kid Amos, anyway?! (And the worst part of that is that that was his father's name, so he grew up being called Junior. Junior! "Jun-YER!" Gosh, I hope his mother never called him home like that.)

We never talked about him, if my mother could help it. I used to ask all the normal questions a kid would who knew she was adopted, and my mother would always skate away gracefully. Finally, when I was ten and asked yet another question -- I think it was about their marriage -- she snapped, "We were both young and stupid." Oh-kay,drop that one real fast. As an adult, I finally learned that the marriage was not happy, and he walked out on her when I was 18 months old. Sometimes, knowing my mother and her family, I don't blame him.

What strikes me as bizarre now is that all the years I was a Catholic, 30, to be exact, it never once occurred to me to pray for his soul. I mean, Catholics are always praying for dead people. We prayed for my great-grandmother's soul, for crying out loud. But it never once occurred to me to pray for him, not till I was in my 40s and already Orthodox and I had a dream about him: I dreamed he was wandering in a trackless, featureless desert landscape, looking terrified, moaning soundlessly. Not hell, but certainly not heaven; and not too long after that, I came across a description of Tartarus, a place in eternity occupied by souls that never knew God. That would be my father, who was only nominally Christian. These days, I pray for his soul.

Thanks for listening.

Stabat Mater

When I was a girl, a popular feature of Catholic Good Friday was the Stabat Mater. I copied this one from a website devoted to the Stabat Mater -- the owner has over 200 recordings of music created for this piece -- and she offers multiple translations, so I selected the ones that seemed to reflect the text most accurately:

At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing, all his bitter anguish bearing, Lo! the piercing sword had passed.
Oh how sad and sore distressed was that mother highly blessed, of the sole-begotten One!
O that silent, ceaseless mourning, O those dim eyes, never turning from that wondrous, suffering Son
Who on Christ's dear Mother gazing, in her trouble so amazing, born of woman, would not weep?
Who on Christ's dear Mother thinking, Such a cup of sorrow drinking, Would not share Her sorrow deep?
For the sins of His own nation saw Him hang in desolation, all with bloody scourges rent.
Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled, she beheld her tender child, till His Spirit forth he sent.
O, thou Mother, fount of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with thine accord.
Make my heart to glow within me for the God who came to win me, burn with love for Christ, my Lord
Those Five Wounds on Jesus smitten, Mother! in my heart be written, Deep as in your own they be.
Thou thy Savior's Cross didst bear; thou thy Son's rebuke didst share: Let me share them both with thee.
Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning Him Who mourned for me, all the days that I may live.
By the cross with thee to stay, there with thee to weep and pray, this of thee I ask to give.
Virgin, of all virgins blest, O refuse not my request: let me in thy weeping share
Make me after thine own fashion Christ's companion in His Passion all His pain and dying bear
Wound me with thy Son's affliction, kindle through his crucifixion zealous love within my soul
Thus aflame with fire of love, shield me, Virgin, from above, when I hear the Judgement call
Christ, when thou shalt call me hence, be Thy mother my defense, be Thy cross my victory.
While my body here decays, may my soul Thy goodness praise, safe in Paradise with Thee. Amen.

So what is this Catholic thing doing on an Orthodox Christian's blog? I think of it every year, when I read this, from the Matins for Holy and Great Friday:

Seeing her own Lamb led to the slaughter, Mary His Mother followed Him with the other women, and in her grief she cried: "Whither goest Thou, O my Child? Why dost Thou run so swiftly? Is there another wedding in Cana, and art Thou hastening there, to turn the water into wine? Shall I go with Thee, O my Child, or shall I wait for Thee? O Word, do Thou speak some word to me; pass me not by in silence. Thou hast preserved me in virginity, and Thou art my Son and my God."
--Ikos following Canticle Five, from the Canon by St. Kosmas

Well, no, it doesn't have quite the same rhythmic elegance of the Stabat Mater. But I like it better, for two reasons: one, it doesn't focus on me at all, and two, I think it's much more realistic. I mean, think what is happening. Think what it is to see your own child suffering horribly for something he didn't do. All parents witness this at one time or another, but none of us has to watch our kid being put to death for the crime of loving too much. This is what she's witnessing; and, with an exquisitely human grief, she simply -- blocks it out. Goes into denial, on a scale none of us can fully comprehend. This can't be happening to my Son, so He must be doing something else, like going to another wedding.

For a few years now, I've been able to read a number of canons written specifically for Great Lent, and the Theotokia of all of them focus on the agony of the Mother of God. And I find, with each succeeding year, that I enter more and more deeply into her pain; more and more of a sense of what she felt wounds my soul. Last year, I even found myself addressing Christ, "How could You do that to Your Mother?" And this year came the answer: He went to Hades, so she wouldn't have to. If He hadn't come, if He hadn't died, it wouldn't have mattered at all how good she was, how devoted to God she was; she would have suffered the same fate as everyone else, up to Holy Saturday. Of course He went through that for all of us, but I bet His Mom was at the top of His list.

Somebody -- I think it was Louis Evely -- once wrote that it was just great that she said Yes at the Annunciation, but this one, at the foot of the Cross -- this was the Yes that mattered. What a thing to have to say Yes to. What a thing to have to forgive. And so great is her love for her Son that -- she does it.

Most holy Theotokos, save us!

Who's in Your Corner?

Well, yeah, I cribbed that from the Capital One ad, "What's in your wallet?" Just like I'm cribbing this entry from St. Rebekah's site, where she was writing about her personal synaxis of saints. I have my list of favorites, too.

When it finally became obvious that I needed to be Orthodox, regardless of how convenient it was (it wasn't), I also knew I needed a patron saint. I would have liked to be named Sergia, or Serena, after St. Sergius of Radonezh, still my favorite; but the subject of a name never came up, and on my chrismation day, my priest just chrismated me "the servant of God, Margaret." Yes, I was disappointed, the more so because I couldn't really find a Margaret among the Synaxarion. (Russians tell me it's St. Marina of Antioch, but that particular priest said they were two different saints. There is a St. Margaret among the 40 Holy Virgins who were martyred on September 1, but nothing else is known about her. I like to know the people who come into my house, KWIM??)

How I came by the name Margaret is its own story. I was baptized with Mary as my middle name, and a completely unChristian first name, which I have always hated. As my husband and I began to move different places, it developed that nobody could remember my first name -- not that I care, but it was a terrific embarrassment for people who had to confess, "I just can't remember your name," until, by about the fifth move, I would just say, "That's all right, I must not look like an x." And they would say, "No, you really don't." To which I would reply, "What do look like?" Try that for a conversation stopper! Finally, one kindly soul answered, "Margaret," and since it began with the same letter of the alphabet as my middle name, I went to court and had my name changed so that my middle name is Margaret. And no one has trouble calling me Meg, except, naturally enough, my mother, who, being dead, doesn't call anyone anything anymore.

So! That said, our personal synaxarion, including, of course, our Lord and His Mother:

My favorite icon of Christ is Christ the Teacher. You'd think it would be the Good Shepherd, but I have never found a Good Shepherd icon I liked.

My favorite icon of His Mother is the Mother of God Vladimir. I just love the expression on her face. But I also have a strong devotion to the Kursk Root icon, since it once healed a broken wrist, and the one where Christ is wrestling His Mom to get out of her arms, and she's hanging on for dear life. I like the look on her face there, too! (Sort of, "God, give me patience with this Child!")

The patron of our household is St. Sergius of Radonezh. Why, is because he is the first Orthodox saint who cropped up in my life, and periodically thereafter I would run into various references to "Sergei Somebody." Why he keeps popping up like this is a mystery to me, but I understand that when this happens, it means a saint has decided to make himself part of your life, and this one really helped my son when he was in middle school.

My husband's patron saint is St. Demetrios. We were a little surprised to find that in the Greek culture, the name James is considered an anglicization of "Demetrios," but it makes sense -- more sense than James being related to Jacob!! That St. Demetrios was one of the warrior saints is especially important to a guy who works in the Dept. of Defense.

Our daughter's patron saint is St. Michael the Archangel. She chose him because she was, at the time, interested in becoming a cop, and St. Michael is the patron saint of cops.

Our son's patron saint is St. Christopher, which is what we named him at birth, and who has proven to be a particularly apropos saint, since (at least in the West) he is the patron saint of travellers. I understand that in this East, this honor is accorded to St. Nicholas, but St. Christopher seems to have done well by our Chris. What amazes me is that although I am 5' zip and my husband 5'10", our Chris is 6'4" -- just like his patron saint! And they seem to have had the same gentle nature, too, as well as the same interest in getting people from Here to There.

We also have hanging on our wall St. Xenia of St. Petersburg. For a time, we were members of St. Xenia's parish in Methuen, MA, till the drive proved to be too much. But she is another of those saints, like St. Sergius, who keeps sticking her head in the door to say Hi, so she stays in the icon corner.

The last icon we have in our icon corner is the Holy Royal Martyrs. I like them because they were so devoted to each other as a family, and Nicholas and Alexandra were pretty darn good parents, as well as madly in love with each other. It's nice to have some married saints around the place, too.

However, I also have an icon of St. John of San Francisco, which occupies our back office. I like all the stories about him, and he's the third in our synaxarion who keeps popping up from time to time. Whenever I get completely frustrated with Russian, I glower at my icons of him, St. Xenia, and St. Sergius and say, "Come on, guys! Help me get a handle on this cockamamie language of yours!" And they always do.

I am still looking for icons of St. Vasilios and St. Benjamin that would fit into the icon corner (Vasilios for my son-in-law, and Benjamin for our grandson). You'd think that with all the Basils running around the Greek Church, they would have every size imaginable -- apparently not. And finding any of the Old Testament saints is an exercise in perseverance.

Sheep May Safely Graze

From the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete:

Spare, O Savior, Thine own creation, and seek as Shepherd Thy lost sheep; snatch the stray from the wolf, and make me a pet lamb in Thy sheep pasture. (Psalm 118:176; John 10:11-16)

Anybody who knows me well, knows that I just love sheep. As a knitter, how could I not fall in love with those fluffy little creatures who provide me with one of my favorite pastimes? Plus, they are so funny in their odd little habits (unless you happen to be a shepherd, in which case, those odd little habits are downright annoying. My daughter once had a teacher who kept sheep, till summer vacation, when the little dears came up to her window at 5:30 a.m. baa-ing because they missed her company. The sheep disappeared in short order).

Who, loving sheep, could not love an image like this? The Great Canon is, as I'm sure you all know, pretty heavy-duty stuff, and, at least in my case, all of it depressingly accurate. But this -- this says it all.

This time I got tagged by Athanasia: How many Bibles are in your home? She has an impressive 20! So, without further ado:

1. How many Bibles are in your home?
We have 5: The original Jerusalem Bible (not the new one that's floating around out there -- my husband bought this one in 1967); the annotated Oxford Study Bible; the Third Millennium Bible; the Luther Bible, which is in German; and, believe it or not, a Scottish New Testament which is a riot to read, since it's written in Scottish dialect. Then there's an on-line King James Version that I have for when I have to put together something called Choir Cues; the Orthodox Study Bible, New Testament (and I most certainly do plan to get the Old Testament when it comes out next year!); and a "Boston Psalter," the Psalter according to the Septuagint, put out by Holy Transfiguration in Brookline, MA.

2. What rooms are they in?
The Jerusalem Bible, the Third Millennium Bible, the German Bible, and the Scottish New Testament are all in the living room. The Oxford Study Bible, the Orthodox Study Bible, and the Boston Psalter are in the office -- sometimes I have to look up concordance notes for Protestants who ask, "Well, what about THIS?!" when I'm on line.

3. What translations do you have?
NKJV (that's the Orthodox Study Bible), whatever the Jerusalem Bible is considered, KJV, Oxford Annotated, German, and Scottish. I'm considering asking my daughter for her Russian Bible, since she isn't reading Russian anymore.

4. Do you have a preference?
For daily devotions, either the Third Millennium Bible -- it has the style of English that I like best -- or the Orthodox Study Bible, which has better notes. My favorite used to be the German Bible, till I found out it used the Masoretic text, and I really prefer the Septuagint.

5. Nominate an interesting verse:
Now, this does say "interesting," so here goes: It's in the Scottish New Testament, when Mary Magdalene sees the risen Christ and thinks He's the gardener, then realizes Who He is and reaches out for Him, and what does He say? Well, in Scots: "Quit grabbin' at me, woman!"

A Music Meme! A Music Meme!

Over on Trudy's blog http://philippaalan.blogspot.com, she posted a meme that is irresistible for me: Your top ten musical rushes, those pieces of music that make you want to crank it whenever you hear them. Although I haven't been tagged, my brain immediately exploded with ideas. Genre mixing is encouraged, but that's a problem for me, since nearly all my "rushes" are classical. Oh well.

1. Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, especially that glorious final movement.
1. (Yes, there are two #1s.) Bach's Violin Partita, of which there must be dozens, but I've only ever heard this one introduced in this way. It was discovered wrapped around a piece of butter in a dairy in St. Petersburg. The criminal waste of this man's music after his death is enough to make my blood boil.
2. The Hallelujah Chorus, from Handel's Messiah. Isn't that on everyone's list?!
3. Vivaldi's The Four Seasons: Winter. Final movement. Muted passion in every note.
4. Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus.
5. George Butterworth's music. Virtually anything by Butterworth, since his musical career was cut so tragically short by WWI -- there just isn't that much of it.
6. Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) by Pablo de Sarasate. There's a relatively new recording out by violinist Gil Shaham that just smokes.
7. Romanian Rhapsody #1 by Georges Enescu. There is also a Romanian Rhapsody #2 with some nifty airs in it, but it sounds as if he cut it short before he could complete it. But in the first one, you can practically see the Turks coming over the hill, straight into an ambush by Romanian peasants. Of course the peasants won! ;-)
8. The Greek version of Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance. Sung in Greek Tone 1, it really sounds like a fight song.
9. And my #1 fight song: The Russian version of the Paschal Hymn, Christ is risen from the dead. Talk about spitting in the devil's eye!

No #10 -- I had two #1's, remember?

Mary McCann: 1921-2005

Today is the first anniversary of one of the most important people in my life: my mother's only sister, Mary McCann, the oldest of the six children in the Paige family.

Everybody should have an Aunt Mary in his life. Aunt Mary was the person who would walk into a room, and faces all over it would light up: "Mary's here!" Instant party! No matter what the subject, she always had a tart, and extremely funny, rejoinder (none of which, naturally, I can recall at the moment). After World War II, when housing was so tight, a succession of relatives lived with her and her family, often for a year or two. Her house was shabby, and never very well furnished, but that never seemed to matter: The meals she turned out were masterpieces, not of haute cuisine, but of down-home cooking. Anyone who thinks that Irish cooking is bland and tasteless, never ate one of Aunt Mary's pot roasts. Nearly all of my fondest memories of her home take place in either the dining room or the tiny kitchenette.

Speaking of Irish, she was fiercely Irish and fiercely Catholic. The fact that her husband was a Scot was explained, "The family was really Irish, but they had to live in Glasgow." (Not according to my uncle.) The fact that one of her grandmothers had been (gasp) German, was simply never mentioned. She attended Mass daily, but she wasn't one of those Sweet, Genteel Irish Ladies, not by a long shot. If there was a battle to be engaged, her head would rise up and her eyes would flash; you could tell she was enjoying every second of the conflict.

She was, according to herself, one of the first feminists, and that's probably true: She worked all the years I knew her, and in the 1950s and 1960s, it was highly unusual for a woman to work outside the home who wasn't a widow. She was the mainstay of the New York State American Legion -- organized all their conventions for nearly forty years, kept all the statistics in her head, did all the bookkeeping, and did it all on a part-time basis: She only worked 9:00-3:00. My mother watched her two sons between the time school let out, and the time their mother came to collect them, usually around 4:00 (the train from Manhattan to our part of Queens took 45 minutes, then there was a bus ride and a longish walk to our house).

There were downsides to her life. Her mother died when she was eleven years old, and the only other person in the house to oversee its care and upkeep was a 67-year-old grandmother. Consequently, she spent far too much of her childhood working and trying to chivvy her brothers and sister into doing their fair share of housework (I have the impression she was never successful at that). Her marriage was forged in World War II, and I'm not referring to the date. She was married for over 40 years, and of them, maybe the first three were somewhat happy: Two people who grew up motherless are not a match made in heaven. She was a shocking housekeeper: While her house was always clean, it was never tidy, and considering that my family consisted of seven people in four rooms, while hers consisted of four people in a six-room house, that's not a very high standard of tidiness on my part. Housekeeping wasn't her thing; numbers were. She had the house paid off in ten years, and how many of us can say that, these days?

Towards the end of her life, it all told. After retirement, she had literally nothing with which to occupy herself, and as she turned inward, she became suspicious of nearly everyone in her life. The last two years of her life, she lived in New Hampshire, where two nieces and a nephew could keep an eye on her; of her two sons, one had moved to the West Coast, and the other was someone she just couldn't get along with. She was not happy about that move, and let us all know it, every day. Eventually we had her evaluated by a social worker; it was clear that she could stand to live in an assisted living facility, since she made a habit of calling on people for help in the wee hours of the morning, and didn't always know where she was. At one point, the social worker asked if she had any living brothers or sisters, and Aunt Mary replied, "One brother." Since I knew what the social worker was getting at -- a brother's wishes for her care would always be considered over nieces and nephews -- I quickly noted that her one surviving brother was an alcoholic, and not really capable of informed judgement. After the social worker left, Aunt Mary turned on me: "Uncle Richie is not an alcoholic, and how you could say such a thing to a complete stranger is beyond me." Characteristic of the Irish: Let's not admit that there are Problems in the family, What Will the Neighbors Think.

Yet her death was peaceful -- and typical: She had hung on all day, although we all knew the end was near, and we couldn't figure out why. Around 3:00 p.m., to our surprise, my nephew Richard showed up, and we all turned to him with exclamations of, "Rich, hi!" with evident surprise in our voices -- and she expired. Not five minutes later, her brother, also Richard, called to say hello to her (he lives in Tennessee), and we had to break the news to him that she was gone. We thought that perhaps she had been holding on until her brother could arrive, and when we all exclaimed, "Rich!" she thought it was her brother. Then her oldest son, with his mother's characteristic sharp wit, added, "Unless she knew he was going to call, and she didn't want to talk to him."

She was brought back to her hometown for burial, and buried from the church where she had been baptized and married. When I think of her, I always have the two Aunt Marys in mind, the one I always knew and admired, and the shrivelled, suspicious old lady she had become. In retrospect, I wish I had never met that old lady; the other memories are the better ones.

Yeah, right.

Yesterday, the New Hampshire Senate voted against allowing pharmacies to inform parents that their daughters had purchased the morning-after pill. (It also voted against allowing pharmacists to opt out of selling this pill according to their consciences.) So what do I read in this morning's news??

http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/8082400/detail.html?taf=orl

Heaven forfend we should Trample on the Rights of Young Women. Yeah, but when they croak because they took a medication that was unsafe for them, who's going to be left with the blame? Not to mention the grief. Who's going to care? Not Planned Parenthood.

Freight Train on Signal Street

Yes, there really is a Signal Street in downtown Rochester, and stopped at a gated crossing, I thought of the inevitable.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
rumblin' down the railroad track,
loaded cars with screeching wheels,
round the bend on roads of steel.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
We used to stand by the railroad track,
hand in hand, my boy and me,
and watch as far as the eye could see.

My boy's a railroad man these days,
with a railman's build, and a railman's ways,
an eagle eye on every gauge --
earning a railman's honest wage.

I'm proud of what my boy's become;
I'm glad his dream never came undone.
But now, when I hear that clickety-clack,
I wonder if he'll ever come back,

And standing hand in hand with me,
look ahead as far as the eye can see.
So I sit and watch the train go slow,
and remember those days of long ago --
hand in hand, my boy and me,
watching as far as the eye could see.

copyright 2006 by Meg Lark

How Irish Am I, Anyway??

You're not Irish. Not even a wee bit. Not even on St. Patrick's Day!

How Irish Are You?

That's a relief.

Actually, I'm half Irish, on my mother's side -- probably not even half, if you count the fact that one of my great-grandmothers was German -- but it's not something I brag about, particularly. In my experience, never a truer word was spoke than, "The Irish: They'd rather fight than feed," and I have no excuse for debate-for-the-sake-of-debate.

But this was a fun test, and I bet most people test more Irish than I did!

Clara Brunck: 1915? - 1968

"Dutch uncles" seem to have gone out of style these days, those men who weren't really relatives, but were such close friends of the family that children were encouraged to call them "Uncle So-and-So." Well, Aunt Clara would have been a "Dutch aunt." She lived next door to us when I was a kid, she and her husband and her father-in-law. She had two sons, too, but one was in high school when we moved there, and one was in the Navy; and shortly after, the younger son left to do his two years in the Army (there was a draft back then). So she and "Uncle Pete," her husband, and "Old Mr. Brunck," her father-in-law, were left to themselves.

In other words, she was full in the throes of the Empty Nest Syndrome.

I never really liked going over to her house; it was always a mess, very untidy, probably because she spent so much time outside of it. She went shopping a very great deal, and while I don't think any of her purchases were ever extravagant, they certainly kept her from having to confront that empty, quiet house, in a time when women didn't work outside the home, especially German women -- and Aunt Clara and Uncle Pete were emphatically German. I can recall walking into her house on a Sunday morning and smelling Sauerbraten, and it almost made me sick to my stomach -- now, I love Sauerbraten, and German cooking in general.

One of the things Aunt Clara did to try to fill up her time was to start a Girls' Club for the neighborhood girls. There were four of us -- a classmate, two cousins of mine, and me -- and she taught us all how to cross stitch. I don't know if it ever stuck with any of the others, but as for me, every time I pick up a piece of cross stitch, I give thanks to her and for her. She has helped me fill my own empty nest with an activity a lot more productive than shopping.

She did more for me than that, though. I never fully understood her relationship with my mother, or with me for that matter, until one day when the three of us were going shopping, probably for Easter dresses. I was someone who could never do anything right, as far as my mother was concerned, and on this particular occasion she lit into me as soon as the car was in motion -- something about my stockings, or my coat, or some trivial idiocy having to do with my general disregard for haute couture. Suddenly Aunt Clara said, "Eileen," in that tone of voice you use when you're warning someone of something. And my mother stopped cold. Was I floored?! I was sixteen, and that was the first inkling I ever had that anyone actually noticed what a misery my life was, and would actually dare to say something to the chief cause of that misery. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had hope. (And now you know why I didn't post anything about my mother on the anniversary of her death in December -- still working on that one.)

As time went on, and her sons came home and got married, Aunt Clara seemed to grow more and more discontent. She would often visit my mother, and while I have no idea what they talked about, it was pretty obvious than Aunt Clara was vastly unhappy. I know that a considerable portion of her time was devoted to complaining about her daughters-in-law! Then Uncle Pete died quite suddenly -- he developed lung cancer, and this being in the days before chemotherapy, he was gone within six months. I remember her saying that at night, she would just pretend that he was away on a fishing trip with his friends, but how far can that take you? Gradually she sank further and further into herself, and one day, after she had stopped answering her telephone, my mother and her sister got in touch with her son and got into the house. They found her still alive, but with a bottle of pills next to her, and she said to my mother, "Eileen, I took Pete's pills"; and a day or so after, she died.

Only a year after that, I was married and living in Germany, and how often I wished she had hung on just a little longer -- it would have been so much fun to write to her and describe what I was seeing, and trade recipes, maybe even speak a little German with her, though I don't know how much she knew. I know that as a staunch Lutheran, she would have appreciated hearing about our visits to Worms and Augsburg, site of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession.

She's someone I keep in my prayers. She was so much more important to me than she ever knew.

John Walter Paige: 1899-1981

I did think I would get back here before now, especially since last Saturday was an important day to mark, the repose of both my grandfather and an important family friend. Blood is thicker than water, so I'll start with Grandpa.

If I have just one regret in life, and of course I have many, but if I could have just one, it would be that I never really got to know my grandfather. It wasn't till I was grown that I understood why my mother and aunt had gone to such pains to keep their kids from him: Evidently, when they were small, he was one of these very harsh fathers who would beat them for the slightest infraction, and they didn't want their kids to come under his disapproval. When I knew him, though, he had mellowed considerably, and I always liked him.

It helps to know that he was widowed with six young children when he was just 33 years old, and that the only reason he got to keep his kids was that his mother-in-law lived in the house -- otherwise, the family would have been broken up, and all the kids sent to orphanages, as was common in the 1930s. It also helps to know that when he was 10, his mother died, and his father fell apart completely, so that his family actually was broken up, and he was the only one left to live with his father -- who fell to drink, got behind on the rent, and was evicted, so that the two of them ended up sleeping on park benches. All this I learned from my mother only in the last few years of her life, and it explained so much to me about why my grandfather was so disciplined in himself -- that was his key to keeping his life from ever falling apart like that again. And then, with the death of his wife, it almost did, anyway.

By the time I really got to know him, he was living in a very nice apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He never learned to drive, so every day he walked a mile to his parish church for daily Mass; and when he wanted to visit his daughters, either my aunt or my stepfather had to drive to Bay Ridge to pick him up and take him back home. We never minded, we enjoyed the ride, and we enjoyed Grandpa, too.

When I was a teenager, he began to let me borrow his records. He had a very eclectic collection, but what stands out in my mind now was how much of it was classical, and I wish, now, that I had grasped how much he and I had in common. I bet he would have loved to go to concerts with me, and I could have learned so much about the music he enjoyed from talking to him. He even suggested to my mother, often, that I take the train into Brooklyn to have dinner with him. But that would have been like travelling to a foreign country for me! I could handle the train into Brooklyn all right, but how I would get home from there, was a complete mystery to me (I've always been a little slow on the uptake). So I never went, and that's my biggest regret of all.

When I did actually go to a foreign country, it turned out that my grandfather, who never called anybody that I was aware of, called me for my birthday, and my mother had to tell him that I was in Germany. "GERMANY!" he exploded. "What's she doing in Germany?!" (It must be remembered that he fought in World War I!) When my mother explained that I was visiting my boyfriend, whom I hoped to marry -- we got engaged that Christmas -- he responded, "Well, that's what I always liked about her, she's got a mind of her own!" And even then -- it just didn't occur to me how very much we had in common.

Not making that connection is my single biggest regret.

The Fear Factor

Has it really been over a month since I last posted?!?! Sigh....

Losing a parent at a very young age, as I did, has curious consequences throughout the course of one's life. F'rinstance, today, the Sunday of the Last Judgement. If you read all the liturgical texts, Vespers and Matins as well as Liturgy, the predominant word is "fear" (well, "fear and trembling"), and rightly so, when one considers that this is It -- there are no more chances to make good whatever we so skillfully screw up. You're either a sheep or a goat, and no in between.

This awareness does absolutely nothing to me.

Back in the Stone Ages, when I attended school, the nuns of St. Margaret's were constantly harping on this theme of Living Each Day as Though It Were Your Last. Maybe it scared the living daylights out of every other kid in the class, I don't know. What I felt, in a seven-year-old, 1952 kind of way, was, "Well, that's a no-brainer." I had that down cold by the time I was three years old, having lost my father at age two. Of course every day could be your last day. How could you ever be sure of anything? How brain-dead did you have to be, not to get that notion squared away?

Then there is the awareness of being condemned to hell for eternity. Well, yes, this is not something I would want to happen, but it still doesn't terrify me as it probably should. God is God, He can do whatever He wants. If despite all my good efforts He still decides that my sins cancel out everything I've tried to please Him, what're you gonna do? So there's no point worrying about that.

However...it grieves me, in this present life, that despite my best intentions, I still sin. I still drop the ball. I still choose other things over God. Terror over not spending eternity in heaven, or even with God, doesn't bother me; grief does. I would like to spend just one day of my life, before I die, not grieving God, and the knowledge that this is probably not ever gonna happen really pains me. I will still keep trying, of course. I will still keep worshipping God, since even the worst sinner still has that obligation, so being the chief of sinners doesn't let me off that hook. Nor would I want it to; that's not a hook I intend ever to let go. I will still make the very best effort I can to live a Christ-like life, because that's what I'm all about; and if, at the end, it wasn't enough, then so be it.

At least when I die, I will lose the ability to sin. And that's a relief.

The Surikov Diaries: I

It occurs to me that it might be worthwhile to keep a sort of journal about the Boyarina Morozova, which I just started on Sunday. Nothing too grand, just my impressions of the project while I stitch it. Things like when I finish page 1, page 2, all the way down to page 75 -- oh, BTW, I realized after my last post that the reason it has 75 pages is that it has a lot of white space, and clear gridding every single page, which the program I have at home doesn't have -- if it did, the cross stitch I'm doing for my son might be 30 pages, not just 15.

With that in mind, I began, as stated, on Sunday, January 22. Never mind the fact that I've had this pattern since December 2004. It takes courage to start something this big. As of today, I have 200 stitches on it, which sounds impressive till you realize that the thing is almost 200,000 stitches, and takes up the better part of a 3' x 5' piece of linen. So far, it's very green. Green is not a color I normally associate with winter, but as I look at what I've done, it occurs to me that despite such undeniably summery names as Ivy Green and Thyme Green, it's all actually very cold-looking -- and Arctic ice often appears greenish. I'm in the upper-left-hand corner, by the way, and what I've been stitching is very dark sky. I'm hoping that as I add more greys, the sky will look less greenish and more like a lowering storm sky that threatens snow. As if there weren't already enough in this painting.

Something this size is best worked on a large, large frame -- or sideways. I've opted for the latter. I have it rolled up on a 36" stretcher bar, and plan to progress down one complete side before moving back to the top to stitch the next 8 sections (8 pages of pattern compose a side). So the pattern will go from top to bottom, but not show very much of the subject matter at first -- once the first 8 pages are done, you should be able to see most of the young lady on the far left who's gasping in sympathetic horror, but not much else. I do plan to update this blog with photos, but since I don't have a digital camera (and wouldn't know how to link it up to my computer if I did), I plan just to take a series of pictures with a disposable camera, then post the best to each blog. So there will be a whole lot of updates at once, I'm afraid -- but it's the best way I can think of to handle this. My first pictures are of the first 100 stitches in the frame, and shows something of my work set-up (if it all comes out -- I haven't had too much luck with photographing my needlework. The light's always either too much or too little).

More to come.... /insane cackling, as organ music swells, then fades out....

Tagged: Foursquare Meme

I knew that eventually, I'd get tagged with this. Well, it's one way of getting people to post when nothing else is going on in life. ;-)

Foursquare Meme
I've been tagged by Philippa. So here goes....

4 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
1. You've Got Mail
2. A Man for All Seasons
3. Becket
4. Men in Black (I and II)

4 Places You Have Lived
1. New York, New York
2. Moerfelden, Hesse, Germany
3. Waltham, Massachusetts
4. Rochester, New Hampshire

4 TV Shows You Love To Watch
1. Law & Order
2. JAG
3. Old movies
4. NCIS

4 Places You Have Been On Vacation
1. Milton, New Hampshire
2. Schillerslage, Germany
3. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
4. Northwestern Connecticut

4 Websites You Visit Daily (other than blogs)
1. ROCOR website
2. WMUR (local news)
3. Blogline.com
4. Yahoo.com

4 Of Your Favorite Foods
1. pascha (Russian Easter Cheese)
2. kulich (Russian Easter cake)
3. homemade chicken soup
4. anything German

4 Places You Would Rather Be Right Now
1. Church
2. Moerfelden, Germany
3. Lansdale, Pennsylvania, with our second kid
4. Home, because it's close to our first kid, and because it's home

4 Bloggers You are Tagging
1. Christa
2. Alana Juliana
3. Christopher
4. Emily

Art for the Masses

Owing to Philippa's comment about not knowing about cross-stitch programs, I thought I'd expand on that a little.

There are a number of computer programs written for cross-stitchers. Mine is called Stitch Crafts Gold. There's another called PC Stitch. You scan whatever you want into your computer, and the program has a "grab" utility that "grabs" your photo and converts it into cross stitch. Where you have to be careful is that some of the colors are so similar that you have two stitches in one color and one in a second, maybe three in a third -- over the whole piece. Those you would want to combine into a single color, whatever came closest to your original photo (or your idea of how the colors should blend).

You can crop unwanted details. You can decide on the symbols you want to use. If the computer-generated symbols are too confusing for you, you can "swap" symbols with an unused symbol. Stitch Crafts Gold allows up to 120 colors/symbols in any one picture, which frankly is way more than most of us would want to deal with -- the picture in my last post has 87 colors, and that's more than enough. ;-)

The picture above is a copy of my latest insanity. About a year ago, I thought it would be nice to do a cross-stitch of Something Russian to give to the Russian Dept. at the University, and I contacted a woman who specialized in converting Russian art to ask about this picture (Boyarina Morozova, by Surikov). Next thing I knew, she had converted the entire picture, and the cost was only $20 -- how could I say no? It uses, I think, 93 colors -- but consists of *73* pages of graph (my Train picture "only" has 15). I'm figuring on maybe the rest of my life to finish this one....

But the Russian Dept. has to share space with a lot of Classics snobs, and I figure, this image ought to give those Classics people something to think about. Or at least subdue them.

It Hasn't All Been About Russian

Back in September, after I finished a gift embroidery for my sister, I spotted this in a cross-stitch catalogue. You can imagine who came to mind, and I thought, "What a nifty Christmas present this would make!" and ordered it. When it came, I was massively disappointed: The thing is an "embellished cross stitch," which means it was screen-printed on 14-count Aida cloth, and you only stitch certain parts of it, leaving a stitchery with a whole lot of holes to be filled in.

I checked with my cross-stitch group, who agreed with me: If I went with the original design, it would bother me every time I looked at it. So I scanned the photo into my computer and ran it through a program I have that creates cross stitch out of any picture you care to reproduce, and since October I've been working on this picture called, "Maryland Mountain Express."

Needless to say, it wasn't done in time for Christmas. It may not even be done in time for Chris's birthday, in June. But I am much happier with the results.

Slowing me down has been, not just the trip to Pennsylvania (this was way too big to tote along on a train!), but another project I foolishly got involved in: The World Trade Center Quilt. Some woman in Kentucky conceived the idea of piecing together a quilt made up of black Aida-cloth rectangles, each cross-stitched with 18 names of people who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Sounds like a great idea, right? One problem: Working with that black cloth. I really have to pace myself so I don't get eye strain. It will be some time before I ever work with black cloth again, I can tell you!

And there is one last project I promised to start this year. The woman who sold me the pattern has since had second thoughts about it, since she isn't sure how it will work up as a cross stitch, and I told her I would "model-stitch" it for her, which means I'm committed to getting something done with it. I just tried uploading it, and it's not coming up, so you'll have to look it up: Google images, then enter "Boyarina Morozova."

Some people would just say I should be committed, period. And I'm beginning to agree.

Sleeping What?!?!

How about this handsome young fellow? See below....

I'd say something about Sleeping Beauty awakening, but since I will turn 60 this year, I think we can forget the "Beauty" part. More like Rip van Winkle.

In the crush of finishing up yet another semester of Russian (still asking myself why I'm doing this), I slipped several anniversaries of people's passing, including my own mother's -- probably just as well, considering how conflicted I still feel about her. In fact, today is an anniversary, but not of someone I knew well -- a high-school friend of my cousin's whom I had a crush on, till he undertook to let me know in no uncertain terms that he was "gay." Today marks the 12th anniversary of his passing, which means he was far too young to die -- I don't believe he reached his 50th birthday. Memory eternal, Kevin.

With Russian finally out of my hair for another month, I had all the usual Christmas prep to get into, except that this year, it included a trip to Pennsylvania -- yep, we visited our son! And what a lovely time we had! I must admit, it rather reminded me of one of those MasterCard ads: "Train tickets for two on the Acela Express: $xxx. Six nights at Comfort Inn: $xxx. Cost of rented car: $xxx. Look on son's face when we met at Union Station: priceless." We got lots of good pix of him running the locomotive, too. The one up top is just one. I must say, he works darned hard for his $10/hour.

On Sunday, we got to attend church at his new parish -- after attending one parish in the Philly area for 18 months, with only one or two people ever talking to him, and neither of them was the priest, he finally decided to pack it in there, and began attending a Greek parish in Elkins Park, which is only about another five miles for him to drive. What a lovely church! I wanted to see if I could get a postcard with pictures, but didn't have a chance to Explore. But he has already made a couple of friends there -- in fact, one lady said she and her husband had planned to invite him to dinner for Christmas Day -- and at least they have a Young Adult League, if he can ever find the time to get into it. My only concern is that it looks like there's a lot of money in that parish, and obviously, Chris isn't wealthy, or likely to be. However, in fairness, I must say that I've never found Greeks to be the type to turn up their noses at hard work. Anyway, it was a beautiful place, the choir loft was to die for -- up front, off to the side, graduated stands for the different parts, an organ behind all, and everyone facing towards the altar and the choir director -- and the singing was heavenly, although we didn't hear the choir -- they had sung at the Vesperal Liturgy the night before. Instead, there were three cantors, all with exquisite voices. I can't help hoping that Chris finds a real parish home here.

Needless to say, this trip was my only Christmas present, and my only birthday present. But it was all I wanted, anyway, and what better present could a mom get than a week without having to cook, clean, or wash clothes?

We have been back for almost a week, settling into the groove of getting back into those tasks, and me coping with a back that twisted into a pretzel the morning after we got home -- dratted bus ride from Boston to NH -- and dh fighting with a cold he picked up in a bar on our last night (the restaurant was packed, so we sat at the bar so the Working Stiffs could have a beer, at least. That was a mistake -- ciggie smoke everywhere, and that's how dh came down with his cold).

And I thought, well, it's about time I posted something. At least I had something to write about, for a change.

TAGGED!

I have been tagged by PhilippaAlan to name the top ten people who have influenced me, but they can't include God and family members. Since I once told an investigator that "Polaks don't have friends, they have relatives" (my stepfather is Polish, and I actually grew up thinking that the word "Polak" was a compliment), this promises to be a tough one. But we'll have to try.

1. Fr. Dean Panagos. In addition to being the kind of person who actually can do six impossible things before breakfast (one reason he doesn't drink coffee is that even without it, he's a bundle of nervous energy), he's the man who actually made me a choir director, and gave me my first real taste of spiritual direction. Sort of a modern-day St. John Chrysostom, not that he had a "golden tongue," but he's one of those people who just can't stand to see anyone hurting - and it galls him when someone can help, but doesn't. A real example of Christian living.

2. An anonymous cantor at the Lutheran Church in Kingston, NY. We were on vacation in upstate NY eons ago, when I was still Lutheran, and visited this church one Sunday. Because it was summer, there was no choir, but a female cantor sang all the responses with a voice as pure as a mountain stream. I listened to her, captivated, and thought, "Oh, if only I could sing like that!" - then went home and worked at it until I had something that sounded, to my ears, like what I had heard that Sunday. People always tell me I have a beautiful voice, and I can come up with half a dozen excuses as to why it sounds better than it is; but this lady is the real reason it sounds better than it is.

3. Aunt Clara. No, she doesn't count as a relative, because she was an "aunt" in the same sense that Uncle Tony was an "uncle" -- a close friend of the family. She was middle-aged, with two grown sons, and very lonely, when she started a club for the neighborhood girls, where she taught us to embroider and crochet. These days I still embroider and crochet, as well as knitting, and every time I pick up a needle I think of her.

4. Aunt Catherine. Same kind of "aunt." She was Aunt Clara's tenant, and if Aunt Clara taught me skills that stayed with me a lifetime, Aunt Catherine, with her bovine placidity, provided me with the kind of mothering I so desperately needed: milk and cookies, and someone to talk to about nothing much. I don't know it for a fact, but I suspect that my childhood would have been far worse than it was, if these two ladies hadn't ridden herd on my mother from time to time.

5. Helga Schultz, my best friend in Germany. I wouldn't be able to speak German if she hadn't made friends with me. I drank more coffee at her house, and learned all the figures of speech you don't learn in class, including a little ditty about all the "apes in Aschaffenburg" (it rhymes better in German).

6. Peter Bochow, the man who taught German at the University of Maryland Rhein/Main campus. One day I went to the German consulate in Boston to inquire about German legal procedures, and got talking with an attache who said, after about an hour, "So, you too are living here. Where are you from?" You should have seen his eyes when I said, "New York" -- he thought I was a native German! That's due to the man I knew as Herr Bochow. I still speak it fluently, more than 30 years later.

7. Elizabeth Zimmermann, the knitting guru, author of Knitting Without Tears and a number of other books on the craft of knitting. Up until reading her books I was, like so many other women, enslaved to printed patterns. "EZ" freed us from all that, from knitting in back-and-forth rows, from having to sew up seams, and best of all, from knitting with acrylics, whose charm fades the first time you wash a hand-knitted garment in the machine and see what a felted mess it comes out. I owe my identity as a sheep (long story), and my predilection for wool, to EZ.

8. Fr. Andrei Papkov and his wife, Natasha. Fr. Andrei is the director of the Summer School for Liturgical Music in Jordanville, NY, and his wife is the cook/secretary/surrogate Mom of the place. That I kept coming back for four summers of gruelling study says more about the dedication, patience, and sense of humor of these two people, than about anything musical I might have going for me.

9. John Livio, accordion teacher. It's only as I've grown older that I've come to appreciate what a wretched way to earn a living it is to travel to people's homes and teach their little monsters a musical instrument. In our neighborhood, accordions were a popular instrument, and in my family, about as close as I would ever get to a piano, until I was grown. That I can read music at all is due entirely to Mr. Livio.

OK, OK, scraping the bottom of the barrel here.... I know I can find just one more.... Wait, wait....

10. Sr. Rose Gabriel, who taught floundering high-school graduates the basics of business practice. All of us who attended her school, the Kaupert Secretarial Institute, were graduates of various high schools with an exclusively academic track, but for one reason or another we hadn't gone on to college, and were completely unemployable without it. Sr. Rose Gabriel taught us typing, shorthand, and business English; how to write a business letter; how to file, and generally how to run an office like a well-oiled machine. And to my astonishment, I discovered something I was good at. I think it was the first time in my life I ever felt good at anything, which, considering I had a Regents' diploma in languages from the New York State Board of Regents, should tell you something about my self-image -- they don't hand out Regents' diplomas on the strength of how well you bat your eyelashes (if they did, I still wouldn't have gotten one).

A good exercise in contemplating gratitude, in this month of Thanksgiving. Now, whom can I tag?.... Well, considering I don't know who else reads this blog, that leaves Mimi and Catherine! Sorry, girls, you're It!

I Can See Clearly with the Windows Washed

I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that can't go on [I think]:
'S gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiney day.

Today I finished washing my porch windows. There are ten of them, and frankly, if it had been up to me, I would never have enclosed the porch in the first place; but it was already enclosed when we bought the place, and the windows were heavy aluminum things that took me two days to wash, and I would always cut my fingers on them. So, shortly after we moved in, we had them replaced with vinyl windows that tilt in for cleaning, which is a very nice feature indeed.

Except that those suckers are heavy. I hadn't realized, when we signed the contract, just how heavy they are, and they haven't gotten any lighter as I've grown older. So it still takes me two days to wash all ten windows, but at least that's 2-3 hours of work in the morning, not the entire day, as it used to be with those dratted aluminum things.

Now...the other thing about this particular entry is that it has been (ahem) three years since I last washed those windows. To be fair, the porch faces west, which means that in the Summer, it's beastly hot out there, and I shut down for the Summer anyway; my Summer existence, best described as "aestating" (since how can you hibernate in the Summer?), consists of sitting in any available chair, drinking large quantities of water and moaning, "I wish it would cool off." Laundry is about all I'm capable of, in the Summer. (It's wet, and therefore cool.) So to wash windows on a west-facing porch at that time of year counts as Cruel and Unusual Punishment for me.

So the only times of the year those windows can possibly be washed are Spring and Autumn. And for the past three years, both Spring and Autumn have been unremittingly wet, the only odd sunny day falling, naturally, on a Sunday, which is not supposed to be spent washing windows. In theory, that's what the rest of the week is for, something I have reminded the Almighty of every Spring and Fall for the past three years.

This year, He rewarded my patience with the usual unconscionably wet Autumn; but this year, He has gifted us with an unusually warm November. I never look askance at gifts from the Almighty. So yesterday, I was out there with rags and Windex; a brush for cleaning off the screens and windowsills, and a bottle of all-purpose cleanser; a can of silicone spray because after three years, it was a given that those windows would stick (and they did); and a watering can, a small one with a long spout. First I brushed down the screens, and then I took them out; then I tilted in the window and washed it, sprayed the sides with the silicone, then washed the insides; then I raised the bottom window, sprayed the sills with the cleanser, and wiped them down; and lastly, I poured hot water from the watering can into the little pockets on the sides of the window that supposedly make it airtight, and that are THE most colossal pain to clean. That watering can was sheer genius, let me tell you.

While I was doing this, I had the curtains washing, and when they were done, I hung them back up -- still damp -- and let them air-dry on the porch. The smell is incredibly sweet, and the house gets humidified that way.

I did that ten times, once for each window, and I'm telling you, that was a full-body workout. The next time my doctor dares mention "heart attack" to me, I'm going to make her a proposition: "Listen, Toots, tell you what. You write this down and put in a Safe Place, and take it out when you're one year shy of sixty. And if you can climb up and down a step ladder fifty times, wash ten heavy windows, batten down the locks that seal them shut for the winter, and hang up wet curtains -- then you can bellyache to your patients about heart disease. But I don't wanna hear it."

Uncle Tony: 1922? - 1997

Uncle Tony. I never think of the man, or speak about him, without a smile coming to my lips. Uncle Tony was a "Dutch uncle," not really a blood relative but such a close friend of the family that you referred to him as your uncle, and we had a lot of those when I was growing up. He went to school with my Uncle Buddy, so I'm pretty sure he was born in 1922 or 1923, and although he never married, I think he was half in love with my mother -- he certainly spent enough time at our house. Heaven alone knows why he didn't ask my mother to marry him, when she was available.

Every Saturday night he'd come for a visit, along with his friend, Bill Roach, who was from Ireland; and he and my parents would talk about everything under the sun, politics, religion, baseball -- football wasn't nearly as popular as baseball back then -- oddly enough, I don't recall anyone ever talking about the job. I'm not even sure what Uncle Tony did for a living, though I think it was something to do with the Parks Dept. of NYC. But what a character he was! I almost never saw him serious, I don't believe I ever saw him angry, unless his anger took the form of biting humor; and the most serious thing he ever said to me was, "Whatever you do, don't grow up like your Aunt Mary." Since I idolized Aunt Mary, I was shocked he would say such a thing; now, I understand all too well what he meant. (More about her on the anniversary of her death.)

When I began working, for reasons I will never understand, he began "dating" me. I never thought of our excursions as dates -- after all, he was 25 years my senior -- but I don't know what else to call them. Namely, he would take me to dinner and a Broadway show. I saw more Broadway shows than any young woman has a right to claim she saw: Cabaret, Auntie Mame, Butterflies Are Free, Barefoot in the Park -- gosh, I've forgotten more than I can remember. We went out about once every two months. He was always very careful of my safety, and I appreciated that, though probably not as much as I should have.... Thinking back, I have to say he was one of the best people I have ever known, one of the most ethical, one of the most moral. I can only think of maybe five other people I could say that about.

Unless you got him on the subject of politics, or the Catholic Church. Like most of us in our part of town, Uncle Tony had grown up a staunch Catholic, never missed Mass, and as his parents aged -- he lived all his life with them, till they died -- he'd take them to daily Mass before going to work. Vatican II was a catastrophe for him. There was nothing he liked about any of the changes, and he was very voluble on each one of them (and there were a lot of them). His friend Bill Roach finally joined a radical sect of Irish monks whose order stood in complete defiance of any kind of changes. I'm a little surprised Uncle Tony didn't go along with him.

And politics. We were all Democrats in our part of town, since "the Democratic Party was the Party of the working man," and as a secretary, I was about as white-collar as it got in our part of town. But what most of us distrusted about John V. Lindsay was not that he was a Republican, but that he had such liberal ideas -- expansion of welfare took place in his administration, police power was radically curtailed, and it seemed to all of us that the City began to deteriorate while he was mayor. And no one was more voluble on the subject of that deterioration than Uncle Tony. To be fair, he and all his generation could remember a time when you could ride the subway system at 3:00 in the morning and never fear being molested, and gradually it got so you couldn't set foot outside your door without risking your life or at least your wallet.

Anyway, Uncle Tony was one of the first to break with the Democratic mold, when he supported Bill Buckley for mayor, who ran on the Conservative ticket. Between that and Vatican II, it suddenly seemed as if anything was possible! He became very well read, and despite never having gone above high school -- in our neighborhood, completing high school was an achievement -- he could discuss any and all of the great philosophers and theologians, dissect the downfall of New York with a knowledge that could at least have matched Buckley's, and demolish the arguments of pundits with a wealth of a lifetime's experience.

As he grew older, though, he became a bit strange. He took to holing up in his apartment, especially after his father died, and reading more and more extreme right-wing publications. At one point, well after I was married, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't seen him in quite some time, so I asked my mother how he was doing -- and she didn't know. After his retirement, he simply became a recluse. Very occasionally he'd call my mother, but the only person he really saw from day to day was his cousin Joe.

And it was his cousin Joe who, having called for a few days without Uncle Tony's picking up the phone, found him dead in his apartment. It's a sad thing to say about anybody that it isn't known exactly when he died, but worse nowadays, when we know so much about everything, and everyone. Yet, that's what happened to Uncle Tony; all we can say is that he passed on sometime between October 28 and October 31. It seems such a sad end for someone who was so large a part of my life, and my brothers' and sister's, as well. I wonder what he would have made of my becoming Orthodox; I think this faith would have suited him very well, if he had been able to break out of his firm belief in the rightness of the rule of the Pope. I don't know if he could ever have managed that; but I think of him at this time every year, and today I'll be able to light a candle for him. It's the least I can do; my life would be so much poorer without his influence.

Tag! You're It!

PhilippaAlan tagged me (I know I should enter her bloglink, but I have no idea how to do that)! I've never been tagged before:

Five things I plan or hope to do before I die:
1. Speak Russian at least passably
2. Finish all my cross-stitch projects
3. Get through my stash of knitting wool
4. Learn the basics of painting and sketching, so I can design my own cross stitch
5. Figure out what I want to be when I grow up ;-)

Five things I can do:
1. Speak, read and write German fluently
2. Accounting/Bookkeeping
3. Cross stitch and knit
4. Secretarial stuff (which I love)
5. Chant the Church offices

Five things I cannot do:
1. Rollerblade, ski
2. Speak Spanish, nor do I want to
3. Find my way around Boston
4. Travel on high mountain roads
5. Really clean a house

Five things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Intelligence
2. Piety
3. Patience
4. Humor
5. Compassion

Five things I say most often:
1. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner
2. Oh for cryin' out loud....
3. If I had a nickel for every time I saw/did/thought [whatever], I'd be rich by now.
4. See that lady running down the street? That's me, racing to [buy new product/do latest thing -- neither of which I would dream of doing in this lifetime].
5. I wish [one kid or the other] would call.

Five Celebrity Crushes:
1. Sean Connery
2. Mel Gibson
3. Pierce Brosnan
4. George & Laura Bush (together -- I think they're so cute)
5. Hey, I'm lucky I could scrounge up four!!

Tag! You’re it!
Mimi
Elizabeth
Christa

The Things We Do for Love...

"Like walkin' in the rain and the snow, when there's nowhere to go,
And it's feelin' like a part of you is dyin',
And you're searchin' for the answer in her eyes.
You think you're gonna break up, then she says she wants to make up...
The things we do for love!"

I like to listen to Oldies in the car, "great music from the 60s and 70s," is how this particular station bills itself. I was pretty much out of rock 'n' roll by the 70s, so a lot of this stuff is new to me; but I like the way it addresses modern life, even if I don't agree with much of what it says.

For the past weekend, I've had this particular song rattling around in my head. It reminds me of so many things: "Walking in the rain and the snow" reminds me of how my son must have felt when his girlfriend broke up with him, with very little warning, it seems. I think he's recovering now, but at the time, I think he felt sandbagged. And then, of course, there's this past weekend, when the whole family is "walking in the rain and the snow when there's nowhere to go," muddling around in an emotional fog, trying to come to grips with something that should never have happened -- but it seems it happens to quite a few folks. I'm talking, of course, about the miscarriage. Knowing that there's a whole army of women out there who cherish the memory of someone they knew for all too short a time, doesn't help at all.

But "the things we do for love...." The hardest part of these past several months, going back to when Ruth and Chris broke up, has been not saying anything about it. Well, yeah, I did vent a bit here, thinking, in my naivete, that it was a "safe place," since neither of them (as far as I knew) knew about this blog -- still don't know how they found out about it, but I take no responsibility for the flap that ensued. They weren't *supposed* to know about it, and as far as I'm concerned, I did my best to keep my feelings from them.

But I'm finding that this isn't going away, any more than the loss of my prospective grandchild will go away. I find myself working at my embroidery and thinking about Ruth, and how much I looked forward to sharing this skill with her, since she professed herself interested in embroidery and knitting. I was really looking forward to sharing a lot of things with her, and now, that's out of the picture. But I still find myself thinking about it, and gradually I'm coming to realize: I lost something, too, when that relationship went south. I really liked this girl; there was a lot to like.

And now, with the loss of the baby, I'm being asked to put a lid on myself again, not to share in my daughter's grief, just because I've never had a miscarriage. That's not the point. The point is, this is my child who is suffering, and I wish she'd let me close enough just to cry with her. Then again, this being my daughter, she's not someone who shares grief easily; when she broke up with her last serious boyfriend before her husband, it was six months before I found out that he had dumped her. She has someone to share her grief with, the most appropriate person of all: her husband.

But I'd at least like to note that she isn't the only one grieving over the loss of her baby. Chris isn't the only one grieving over the loss of Ruth. Oh, drat the things we do for love!

George: 1944-2000

This should actually have been posted yesterday, since he passed on October 7. But this has been a thoroughly stupid week, with all kinds of stupid, pointless running around, and yesterday was no exception.

George and my husband were in high school together, and somehow, improbably, became friends. George was from Brooklyn; Jim is from Queens. (Each borough regards the other as a foreign country.) George's background was Polish; Jim's is German and Irish. George majored in physics in college; Jim majored in English. George loved art; Jim loves music. George was a Francophile; Jim is a Germanophile. They used to razz each other mercilessly about George's predilection for Impressionist art (Jim called it "fuzzy"), and Jim's sartorial gaffes (I still remember George telling Jim that his orange socks were "so autumnal, they'll start falling down any second"). George was an anti-war hippie; Jim served in the Air Force.

Improbably, the two became friends in high school, and the friendship lasted -- with all its jagged edges and hard places -- until the incredible phone call came from George's wife that he had died. They were out shopping when he said, "I feel a little strange." Then asked her to take him to the hospital. Then died in the car seat next to her. Turned out he had had a massive heart attack. Yet, just four months previously, he had had a thorough physical and been pronounced in excellent health.

We had last seen him and his wife just a year previously, at our daughter's wedding. We hadn't really expected them to come, and were so pleased that they did; we hadn't seen them for five years previously, though we had kept in touch all that time. When they left to go back home, they promised us the next time wouldn't be so long, that they'd be up on a fall foliage tour the following year. On our daughter's first anniversary, we were attending George's wake.

When he died, he had just retired from New York University and was teaching at a small community college in Queens. At his wake, all his students came to pay their respects, and I heard so many comments about what a truly excellent and caring teacher he had been; and that was new to me too -- I had always known George only as a research scientist. On the way to the cemetery, his wife told us about the trip they had taken to Poland to see George's grandparents' village, and how George had taught himself Polish so he could communicate with his relatives. My stepfather is Polish, and let me tell you -- that is a tough language to learn. But George managed it.

Typical for a Francophile and a scientist of Polish background, his relationship with God was ambiguous: he was an "A&P" Catholic ("ashes and palms"), but his music collection ran to several settings of Masses and Liturgies, many of them Orthodox. He probably subscribed to the "Timekeeper" theory of God, the God Who set everything in motion and then sat back to watch it all spin itself out. I don't think he ever disbelieved in God; I've never met a successful Polish atheist. I sometimes wonder how he's making out now, but there's one conversation I would love to have heard:

George once said to Jim that the Italian baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi had written the same concerto 400 times (there are 400 works ascribed to Vivaldi, and they do all sound as if they were written to a fixed formula). I'd love to know what George said to Vivaldi when he actually met him. ;-)

Glory to God for all things!

Our daughter usually telephones us on Sunday nights. She's missed the last few weeks while her son goes through a "sleep adjustment," basically growing out of his afternoon nap, at the ripe old age of two. When I was a kid, it was a rare child who didn't need an afternoon nap even in kindergarten.

However, she had momentous news: Her home pregnancy test confirmed that she is expecting her second in June. For me, the strangest part of grandmotherhood is seeing my daughter -- the fruit of my own womb -- being fruitful in her turn. When she had her first, I cried all the way through her shower -- I just couldn't overcome that sense of a long, long, long history, stretching all the way back to Eve, with who knows how many of Eve's daughters in between, most of them by now nameless. The farthest back I can trace any kind of ancestry is my great-grandmother Catherine Dunphy, born in 1865. There were a lotta Dunphys before her, whose names I'll never know this side of eternity. And in 500 years -- who will even remember Christa, let alone me? It's not that I mind, it's just that it's so mind-boggling.

And now it begins again. This time they're hoping for a girl, and they like the name Sophia. No idea what they'll do if it's another boy, but at least I can count on his not being named Barsanuphius. ;-) In any event, I have begun saying a round on my prayer rope for "Baby Sophia," as well as for the whole rest of the family, while I try to get my head around this whole circle-of-life thing.

Uncle Stanley: 1918-1993

Oh, dear. What is there to say about an Uncle Stanley? It was the biggest shock of our lives when we learned that he had cancer, and something like three weeks later, he was gone. He was just one of those people who was larger than life, and who influenced everyone who came into contact with him -- for good or ill.

My first memory of him is not a happy one. I don't know if I was even four yet, but I recall sitting in the big kitchen of my step-grandmother, on my stepfather's lap, and in walked Uncle Stanley with his partner, both in the heavy blue-serge winter uniforms of the New York City Police Dept., and Uncle Stanley roared (he never spoke), "Hup, there he is, there's Frinky-Dink! Come on, Frank, you're under arrest, we're gonna lock you up!"

Now, Mom and Dad weren't even married a year, and I think I must still have been trying to cope with my own father's death. At any rate, I burst into tears, and I remember Grandma scolding him, "Stanley, don't, you scared her," and Dad saying, "He's just joking." Let me tell you, it wasn't funny to think I was going to lose someone else! I never cared for Uncle Stanley after that, and he cordially returned the favor -- he hated crybabies.

Extrovert that he was, he was the one who hosted all the family parties, and there were dozens a year: birthday parties (for his kids), weddings and showers and christenings and First Communions, all accompanied by yards of Grandma's homemade kielbasa and salads (macaroni, potato, cucumber, and beet) and kegs of beer on tap -- heaven alone knows how he acquired those, and I don't think I want to know -- he was probably the most corrupt cop on the Force. He knew everyone, and he knew who was "touchable" and who wasn't. He probably felt it was the only way he could feed and clothe his nine kids -- his wife wasn't going out to work! (Ironically, after he died, she did just that, and as far as I know, is still at it, at age 75.)

His kids adored him. Some of them were quiet, and some extroverted, just like him, but they all had his blue eyes and flashing smile, and his competitive spirit. Why he was so competitive, I'll never know; Dad, the oldest of his parents' five children, is the most mild-mannered guy I know, and his other two brothers are equally low-key. But Stanley and his sister, Millie -- both had to have the best of everything in life, nothing was too good for them or for their kids, and both would do whatever they had to, to get it.

Whatever the cause, when he died, his kids were devastated. And maybe that's his greatest legacy, that despite all his faults (and who among us has none?), his kids were enormously proud of him and of the job he had done raising them. Which is not a bad way to be remembered at all.

Uncle Jack: 1898(?)-1918

Still trying to figure out how to get my "picture" (I give you fair warning, it's a sheep!) on my settings page. The directions given by Blogspot aren't working. Phooey.

Anyway, it occurs to me that my blog would be a good place to post about various people in my life who have passed on, and why they seem memorable to me. Today is the anniversary of my Great-Great-Uncle Jack's death in the "Great War" (1914-1918), a.k.a. World War I.

Folks in Kentucky who are familiar with the Veterans Hospital in, I think, Lexington, may have heard of a great psychiatrist named Spafford Ackerly. Dr. Ackerly did a lot of research into what was called "shell shock," now "post-traumatic stress disorder," that was particularly prevalent in veterans whose combat experience left them mentally ill. I'm told he was known and loved for his great compassion for these veterans.

What isn't so well known is that Dr. Ackerly almost wasn't Dr. Ackerly -- he almost died in World War I. That he didn't -- well, that's Uncle Jack's contribution.

My mother's mother died when she was six, in 1932, as the result of complications of childbirth. The six children she left behind were raised by their grandmother, who had lost six children of her own in childbirth -- only two survived to adulthood, my grandmother (the one who died in 1932), and Uncle Jack. To us, growing up, my mother's Uncle Jack loomed larger than life, so even though we never knew him, every year around this time, my mother would take out Dr. Ackerly's letter to her grandmother and read it aloud to us kids; it made those boring history books of ours seem so much more real, hearing about the strange connection between a college graduate and a Brooklyn streetcar conductor.

In those days, when you went to war, you went with guys from your own neighborhood. Uncle Jack's regiment, therefore, was made up exclusively of young men from Brooklyn, mostly Irish Catholics. In those days, officers were drawn exclusively from West Point, so whether or not you had a college degree, if you weren't a career officer, you were enlisted. That's how Spafford Ackerly came to be serving alongside this streetcar conductor in the trenches of France.

Somehow, these two men got cut off from their unit -- I have a copy of Dr. Ackerly's letter somewhere, in which he details how that occurred -- and were hunkered down in a trench, taking a lot of enemy flak. Dr. Ackerly had gotten wounded, and stood no chance of wriggling back to safety; he was virtually a goner. According to that letter, Uncle Jack said to him, "'Ack, I can't take ya back, but I'll stick with ya till the end.' The end soon came, for as that big Irishman peered over the trench to scout for help, he took a bullet to the head. I sat cradling his head in my lap, calling his name over and over, when suddenly a leering Hun loomed over us in that trench. I fully expected to join Jack in the Promised Land, but for reasons I'll never know, that Hun just turned and walked away." At nightfall, members of that Brooklyn regiment found Dr. Ackerly and the body of my uncle, and carried them to safety. Dr. Ackerly wrote his letter to his parents, copy to my great-grandmother, from a hospital bed in France.

I guess his combat experience, and all he had witnessed, were the inspiration for his becoming a doctor and then a psychiatrist. But interestingly, he never forgot my uncle's family; every year, he sent my great-grandmother a Christmas card, and I believe corresponded regularly with her, and after her death in 1952, he continued to write to the oldest girl in the family, my Aunt Mary. That was a generation that didn't forget its debts.

Wars come, and wars go. We grew up believing in "just" wars; as an Orthodox Christian, I now understand that there is no such thing. War is always evil, but when it is fought to repress a greater evil and to defend those who can't defend themselves, it's a necessary evil. I can't imagine how my great-grandmother felt, losing her only son on a foreign battlefield, and I can't imagine how she felt losing her only surviving child, fourteen years later. But at least she knew her son's death wasn't for nothing. A great man made sure she always knew that.