Neverlasting spring

Soon it will be too late to tiptoe
and too early to wake the sleeper
who continues to press meaning off the edge
of neverlasting springtime
content to see the irises curl up and dry
never daring to mature with the live oak
as it sends new shoots from gnarled branches
and leathery leaves open onto a straw hillside
overlooking still another vast ocean.
Who will gather fruit but the
bushy tailed squirrel who jumps
from limb to limb gnawing on acorns
and burrowing in the shadows of her crown.

Meine mutter

Whether or not my creative energy has contributed to mother Anne’s comfort and well-being remains to be seen, but it has certainly contributed to my own peace of mind.

A close friend wrote to me just last week saying that he found it interesting that one must come from overseas to find a solution to a problem – like where and how mother Anne should be cared for at the end of her life – and that the energy required to solve the problem appears to be directly proportional to one’s distance. Love, peace, and tie dye, brother.


”I love sitting on a bench by some old person, for now I no longer fear the old, but wait for when they trust me enough to tell me their tales, so full of history.”
excerpt from The Diaries of Jane Somers p. 174 by Doris Lessing

My Alma mater

Swedes, relative to their total population, travel abroad more than any other national language group, though they are neither economic (not any longer, though everything is relative), religious or political refugees.
If you go down to the basement of the UC Berkeley (my Alma mater) student union bookstore, you will find one long bookcase (the largest single bookcase in the English language department) devoted especially to Swedish-speaking people wishing to learn English as a foreign language.
There are less than 10 million Swedish-speaking people in the world. No other language group - not even the Spanish or Chinese-speaking populations in the USA, which are both considerably larger than the Swedish population in Sweden - has so many textbooks for learning English in their native language. And this is after 10 years of mandatory public school education in English. Why this special treatment of Swedes wishing to learn English as a foreign language?
I often ask people whom I meet this question. Their answers have become the start of a new book. Perhaps you too have some thoughts on the subject. If so, don’t hesitate to comment.

Breathe in Scandinavian air

Breathe in, even if the air is an evaporated, dry mixture of jet fuel exhaust fumes. Though I managed to get a bottle of water through security in Chicago, it was confiscated and emptied by a blond chicklet chewer as I passed through Danish security yesterday. Nearly missed my last flight due to the latter delay, coupled by passport control at Castrup as they conducted a long interview with the black man ahead of me in line. And then Scandinavian Airlines couldn’t even offer a glass of tap water on the last leg of a long trip to Stockholm, however tired and thirsty any passenger is likely to be after nearly 24 hours of travel. So much for SAS and its "Star Alliance - the airline network for Earth, the first truly global airline alliance to offer customers worldwide reach and a smooth travel experience". The stewardess said something about budget airlines being responsible. I told her that I didn’t know that SAS was a budget airline and how long I had been travelling. ”Sorry” she said, ”you can buy a new bottle for 25 crowns". ”No thanks,” I said, ”I’ll wait until I get home where I can recycle my own empty bottle.”

Breathe out

”The breakfast this morning was good,” said mother Anne her first day in her new home. The first thing I did was to lengthen the oxygen tubing from the compressor to give her more mobility. She seemed relieved. We went through the day’s deliveries and I attended her evening meal. Exhausted by the move and the imminence of my departure, mother Anne was in pain and breathing with difficulty. Having prepared her for the night, pulled her nightgown over head and helped her into bed, I pottered about while she lay still struggling to catch her breath. As regularity of breathing gradually returned, we could talk until I had to say: ”I have to go now mom.”
”We all have to go dear,” she said.

Fog in Tilden

Had a wonderful breakfast in Berkeley and a midday walk with Stephen in Tilden Park on Saturday, with a lookout high above the East Bay. Martha’s Bernese mountain dog Baci was also great company. Like us, Baci was happy to be out, loose and friendly with everyone and all that we met on the trail, despite the fog and intermittent rain. Our visit with mother Anne in the later afternoon was curtailed by my fear that I was coming down with something. A little sugar in my blood and a good night’s sleep, however, managed to bring me back.
Today we transported medical supplies to the new home (which Stephen saw for the first time). And because mother Anne was able to express gratefulness for our presence, the visits this afternoon and evening were especially good.
Tomorrow, while Stephen is meeting with clients in San Francisco, I’ll be meeting with her (discharging) physician, mother Anne’s former caretaker, and run various errands associated with the move which we have been unable to do over the weekend. I pray that mother Anne can be discharged on Tuesday, so that I won’t be left alone with the move, since Stephen returns to Boston on Tuesday night.

The reservoir

Friday the 13th
Mother Anne was particularly demanding today. I could feel the tension stifling my own vitality and peace of mind. No sweet moments, just dirty laundry, anger and frustration. Stephen, who arrived last night from Boston to help out, and I took her out in the afternoon to the Lafayette Reservoir, her first excursion in months, and then drove past the board and care home that I have selected so that she could at least see it from the outside. Back at the nursing facility, there were new phone calls to be made to her physician and to Estrellita, likewise talks with the wound care specialist and her current nurse. Mother Anne will not be discharged by her physician to the new board and care home as planned. Our plans are foiled for the time being.
Martha left this evening to visit Laura in Senegal for a couple of weeks. She was packed to the gills, the epitome of a heartfelt desire to fulfil her daughter's every wish. Brother Mike came to take her to the ariport. He had on a new shirt and a new pair of brown plaid tennis shoes. He looked great. Gonna miss Martha. Look forward to her visit in Sweden this summer.

Between places

Because mother Anne has developed a new infection, it is doubtful whether she can be moved this week. I'm heading out to the nursing home again now, somewhat fraught between a rock and a hard place.

Eureka!

One mission accomplished. It appears as though we’ve found a board and care place that mother Anne not only appears to accept, but can even look forward to. It’s a home run by Estrellita Cruz, the little star of the cross, a nurse from the Philippines. The California State motto - Eureka - made sense for missionaries as well as miners. Hopefully we will be able to make a move that works this coming weekend.

Low tide

The ebb at Point Isabel Regional Park (the single suspension of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge can be seen on the horizon) on Easter Sunday morning, 2007. Click on photo to enlarge.

Dear Mago,
The tide was low when Martha and I went out to Point Isabel yesterday morning. Sandpipers and egrets were picking at the crustacea, stranded, stuck in the East Bay mud. Time and tide wait for no one, just the attraction of the sun and the moon.

Point Isabel is the most civilized dog park ever, on the shores of the San Francisco East Bay, it includes a dog wash and an expresso bar. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, it was full of dog owners and their every breed of canine companionship, most of whom were let loose to sniff up two and four-footed visitors, swim in the bay, chase birds, balls and frisbees.

Eastertidings I bring: delivered more flowers and an Easter basket to mother Anne. We reviewed again photos of the seven board and care homes that I have visited to date. Left mother Anne for Easter dinner with sister Carolyn and her extended family in Aptos.

After countless morning phone calls and little sleep, this is hopefully the last day of board and care home reconnaissance, before reporting back to mother Anne in the afternoon.

Your devoted granddaughter

Good Friday

San Francisco Bay Area, California

Dear Mago,
Moving closer to you.
Rested as could be after the long journey, I woke in a panic yesterday, convinced that I had missed my flight. Where would I be today but for the goodness and hospitality of Martha? The human body can certainly not be transported alive within a matter of hours from one time zone to another - to where day is night and night is day - without repercussions.

Headed straight through the Caldecott Tunnel, and on out through the hills along Mt. Diablo Boulevard, I note that the hills are much greener and the live oak darker than usual . Recalling a poem that Martha’s brother Mike wrote when we were kids, I think that this winter must have been especially wet and that California poppies must bloom forever:

Golden poppies
spread your apricot kisses
across straw fields
crisp and dry
and we’ll kindle our love
to a blue flaming sky.

All is in bloom - from cherry trees to plum blossoms, tulips and irises, camellias, wisteria, princess trees, rhododendrons, azaleas, birds of paradise, callalillies, fuchsias, nastursiums, marigolds, golden poppies, freesias, monkey flowers, crepe myrtle, and potatoe vines – the skies are blue and the air is balmy. Drove past mother Anne’s home to pick up the mail and a vase for the daffodils. I found her hunched over a big white terry cloth bib in her wheelchair at the convalescent home. Though she took note of me as though I always walk in at meal times, the fragile feel of her bones during our long embrace said something different: "You can’t sit on my lap, dear,” she said. ”I’m doing my best,” I said and proceeded to pull up a chair.

Today will be filled with a meeting with mother Anne’s case manager this morning, then appointments to visit various assisted living and board and care accommodations in the afternoon, and then a visit again with mother Anne in the evening.

Your devoted granddaughter

Dead reckoning

Dear Mago,
As I turn off the lights this evening, and gaze out my window, I can see the three stars of Orion’s belt. They offer my vessel a source of orientation, and reassure me that you are out there too, anchored in the same mythology.
The site of Orion’s belt also reminds me of a new navigational concept that I learned just this last week in my work for the Swedish Maritime Museums: dead reckoning. The human being has apparently long estimated her current position relative to her previously determined position, known speed, elapsed time, and course. While dead reckoning is thought to be a misunderstanding of deduced reckoning, historical (Elizabethan) documents tell us that navigation is ”live” when it takes into account the regular movements of the stars and the orbit of mother Earth, but ”dead ” when it does not. Regardless of our (b)logs, compasses and clocks , without our bright and familiar celestial references – such as Orion, Leo, Scorpius and Crux – our reckoning is ”dead”.
Thanks for being with me in the darkness of this night.

Your devoted granddaughter

ps. 4.46 a.m. CET. Unfortunately, I didn't reckon with a full moon and the threat of lunacy that is circling o'er head in cyberspace. Reading well-crafted tales is my solace. May I soon be succored by the daylight.