Category Archives: Personals

(Scroll to to bottom for a clip from the great Nina Simon, today's featured artist in honor of Black History Month.)

   Since I have the world’s lightest case of Multiple Sclerosis, it took me a while to figure out what the incredible fatigue that hit Wednesday morning reminded me of—not the flu, because there was no achiness, no pain with movement—just the fatigue. It was sort of like one of the blizzards in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Hard Winter: clear sky and then whump, whirling snow, screaming winds, but that analogy was not going to help me identify what was going on now.
   One minute you’re doing your morning exercises, and the next you get up to find one of your thighs going brrrrrr-r-r-r-r-r, not just shaking but actually quivering, and as the morning continues through the breakfast that you eat and the tea that you drink because it seems smartest to do what you usually do, and you finally make the phone-calls to husband and doctor, the fatigue mounts from legs through the body until you’re drowning in it, there’s nothing left to do but lie down and surrender.

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Elizabeth dancing with Abdoulaye, ~2006, when she was 74. She loved to dance.

I plan to go here at some length about things that have nothing to do with gardens, so feel free to bail. We almost lost husband Steve’s mother just after Christmas, though, and I wanted to say more than a word or two about her here.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Elizabeth before, but I’ve got more than one half-finished post on the topic. She has Alzheimer’s, and moved here to Bozeman (after major prodding and pleading) maybe four and a half years ago. For several years she was in her own house just two blocks away, with increasing amounts of outside help, plus lots from us. We would garden together at her house, she and I, though I learned to store new plants at my house; they tended to disappear when they were at hers.

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Well, that didn't go quite as planned. I'll take a day or two off from the blog, I thought, and polish off this article; no biggie. Right. That was what, two or three weeks ago? And why is this? I'll tell you: I'm constitutionally incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. Walk and chew gum? Are you kidding? I'd either fall on my head or swallow the gum. But not both. That would require too much co-ordination.

Once I really focused on the compost article–as in, really focused–everything else sort of dropped away, including the blog. It's a good thing it was Christmas time, or I might have forgotten I had a family. As it is, we did all the normal things, including a tree and presents and skating and our own family traditions, which include lots of pastries on Christmas morning.

This is a hangover from the days when the kids couldn't possibly wait until after breakfast to open presents, so we'd just make a pot of coffee, warm up some home-made goodies, and start handing round the presents. This year, even the pastry list got short shrift: orange rolls, pecan rolls, and madeleines, and husband Steve made the madeleines.

After the prolonged absence, there was the perceived need to return with something particularly wise–something deep and incisive and apt and timeless and, of course, quiet and concise. This led to late nights pacing the floor, a dangerous undertaking, as the floor was covered with discarded drafts, broken pens, empty coffee cups, and as time went on, empty wine bottles as well as the occasional banana peel and apple core. The clutter barely obtruded upon my consciousness when it was merely knee-high, but plowing through it once it reached my waist became an arduous task, and at length I said, to hell with it.

Just get back in the saddle and type something. You can be wise tomorrow.

All this reminds me of that first kiss in Annie Hall when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are walking along the street and Woody Allen says, Let's kiss now, so it's done, and the nerve-wracking anticipation can dissipate. Nothing special, nothing heavy; just a recognition of the intimacy to come, and a way to make all things possible. Wisdom can wait.

A couple of days ago my sister died. Suddenly.

I have been wondering what to say about this here, if anything. Then this morning, just catching up on some other blogs, I saw James’ letter to his dead brother on Double Danger, and Victoria’s post about the return of her husband’s cancer on her blog Victoria’s Backyard. Not to mention Zoë’s struggles with her own cancer, mentioned on Garden Hopping, and recorded in detail on her amazing journal, The Journey. And I thought, all right then. I’ll just do this.

So there it is: my younger sister died Tuesday afternoon, and we don’t know why.

I did not even know she was sick.

Well—she was an alcoholic who drank nonstop for weeks at a time, so she was not healthy. She was so stubborn she managed to carry her habit through three or four rounds of rehab, knocking the best programs in the country flat.

I didn’t get a chance to ask what she thought of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” I didn’t get a chance to hear her play the guitar since she took it up again several years ago. I didn’t have a chance to see her garden, or to show her mine. I didn’t get the chance to see the batiks she started making again this spring, though I have one she made years ago on my wall.

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