Happy Strawberry Shortcake and Nothing Else Day!

 

Don't worry if it snuck up on you. As a movable feast, it tends to do that. The good news is, you can celebrate Strawberry Shortcake and Nothing Else Day any time it gets too hot to cook or strawberries are on sale for cheap. I actually ended up making these because I got a Too Good to Go bag that included some pre-made shortcakes, so all I had to do was prep the berries and add some whipped cream. Super simple and delicious!

I'll always miss my mom. This is one of the small reasons why -- she chose to do a few spur-of-the-moment things that became regular occurrences every year. (Including making nothing but strawberry shortcake for dinner on a summer night when it was just too hot to cook.)

Staycations and epiphanies

"Time for a staycation!" said the bearded shopper behind me.

I turned. "Sorry?"

"We were planning to go off somewhere this weekend, but now we're just going to have a little staycation instead," he said convivially, looking over the beef jerky. "Getting all kinds of goodies for the family." He surveyed his cart. "Actually, there's almost no junk food in here," he added. "They're gonna be disappointed."

After we exchanged a few pleasantries about needing to have flexible plans these days, I wished him a happy staycation and continued looking for salad fixings. (Tonight I'm making ham and beans and a big green salad with goodies in it.) And as I was looking through the canned beans, a sudden memory swept over me.

The word "staycation" has been around longer than I thought -- Merriam-Webster says it was first coined in 1944 -- but it really took hold in American popular culture during the early days of the pandemic. But the concept of staying in while doing something different certainly isn't new. And the memory I had was an amalgam of several different memories, something my mom would do occasionally when I was growing up, especially my years in middle school.

"Tonight, let's see what it was like to live in colonial times," she'd say. And for that evening, we'd turn off all the lights, unplug the appliances and clocks (except the battery-powered ones), and turn off the ringer on the phone. Instead of cooking on the stove, Mom would fire up the kerosene heater in front of the fireplace and cook a bubbling stew on its flat, trapezoidal top. We'd light kerosene lanterns at the kitchen table and put candles above the fireplace, and we'd do our homework by lantern light while Mom, who had been a history teacher before she married and had six children, would tell us about the era before video games and electrical power and refrigerators and lightbulbs: how people in those days lit their homes and kept their food safe to eat, how they'd cook over the kitchen hearth and bake in earthen ovens, how they'd entertain themselves in the long, cold winters. Sometimes during these colonial-times evenings, we'd get our sleeping bags and all sleep together in the front room, cozy and safe in the residual warmth of the kerosene heater.

"Lantern" by Chuck Grimmett. Public domain image.

I was smiling a little at the thought of it -- and then, for the first time, it really hit me.

"Oh," I said aloud, right in the canned-food aisle. "She didn't have enough money to pay PG&E."

We lived well below the poverty line even before my dad died, and while I think we kids all knew there wasn't much money, my mother tended to focus on things that were freely available to us -- the library, the public parks, city museums, walks and hikes in local green spaces, imaginative play -- rather than things we couldn't afford. There must have been times when she had very little money to pay the gas and electric bill, but she'd done such a skillful job of making "colonial times" into a purposeful adventure that up to that moment, it had never occurred to me that she was doing it out of financial necessity.

"She made necessity into an adventure." If I had to sum up my mom's parenting style in six words, I think that would be it.

The art of the Kari Sue special

This never fails to make me giggle (stolen from Twitter with attribution, but not permission):

I love it because it reminds me of my mom (both the baking AND the cooking part). If you were at my mom's funeral service, you might remember my mentioning that my mother was a talented cook and baker. She was especially good at freestyle cooking from whatever was available. Mom had the uncanny ability to concoct a tasty dinner, somehow, from a patchwork of pantry scraps, miscellaneous stuff from the crisper bin, and that one lonely olive floating in a jar of brine in the back of the fridge. These were usually dubbed "Kari Sue specials" and served up with the comment, "Enjoy! I don't remember what went into it, so I'm never making it again." Most of the time they were at least tasty; occasionally they were inspired.

There was a time when I thought I'd never be able to cook like my mom, just making it up without a recipe. I could make recipes competently from a cookbook, but I was scared to try anything else. But here's the interesting thing about cooking regularly, even straight from the cookbook -- as you cook many kinds of recipes, you start to take in some of the rules of cooking alchemy. You begin to notice the similarities between recipes, how many start with "in a saucepan, sauté onion and garlic over medium heat." You notice that "eating your colors" isn't just healthier, but makes a plate of food look more attractive and appetizing. You know how particular foodstuffs have to be prepared if you want them to turn out a certain way. And you start mentally timing how long different foods need to cook, and at what temperature, so that they'll all be ready at the same time. (This is one I still struggle with, for what it's worth).

Then one day you may take your first step away from the cookbook. It'll probably be on a day when you're pressed for time, and halfway through cooking the recipe you realize that someone finished off the potatoes. No mashed potatoes to serve with your main course. So in desperation you boil some pasta instead, toss it with a little butter and serve it. Or you might cook up some grits, or broil some bread with garlic butter, or come up with some other kind of alternate starch on the go. And it's delicious. Maybe better than what you'd planned. Congratulations; you've just stepped into the larger world of cooking by the seat of your pants.

All this came to mind because tonight I'm kinda making a Kari Sue special. I had an actual recipe in mind, a three-ingredient sweet-and-sour meatball thing made in the slow cooker. It called for two pounds of meatballs, 1 1/2 cups of grape jelly, and 12 ounces of chili sauce.

I'd waited a little longer than I should have to start dinner in the slow cooker, so I grabbed a bag of frozen IKEA meatballs (1 kilo or 2.2 pounds, close enough) and threw them in the crock. Immediately set the crock to high heat to make up for lost time. I then threw in as much grape jelly as we had left, a bit less than a cup, then poured a bit of hot water into the jelly jar, screwed on the lid, shake shake shake for about a minute, then tossed the jelly-infused liquid into the crock.

Still not quite enough jelly. What else, what else? I shuffled through the fridge and came across some of the marionberry syrup my friend Tara (hi Tara!) made for me last Christmas. In it went.

Now for the chili sauce. I didn't have any. I didn't want to go to the store. What could I use instead? Well, from past experience I know chili sauce tastes a lot like spicy ketchup. Did we have ketchup? Yes we did, but not quite enough. Well, time to use up what we have. I squeezed in the dregs of two bottles of ketchup, did the ketchup-water thing to get every last bit out, and started thinking about how to add the "spicy" part of the equation. Well, hello there, sriracha sauce! A few healthy zig-zags across the crock should do it. Oh, and a quarter of a bottle of bibimbap sauce left over from my latest Korean food experiment -- it's sorta ketchuppy and definitely spicy. In went the rest of that, plus the hot water treatment to flush out every bit of flavor.

Heat. Stir. Taste.

Oh. That's GOOD. Better than it has any right to be, honestly.

The meatballs have been burbling away for a while now. I'd probably throw chopped green onions over the top, if I had any, but I used them all up the other day. I could use chives instead if I had some, or a sautéed leek if I had one, or even a regular ol' yellow onion cut up small and cooked for a while with the meatballs. The point of this meal is to use what's on hand. So I think what I'll do is sprinkle it with sesame seeds at the finish, serve it over rustic mashed potatoes ("rustic" = don't bother to peel the skins), with a side of cooked carrots and peas tossed with a little butter. I'd prefer broccoli or bok choy as a side, but again, I'm working with what's on hand.

Inspired? Ehh, not s'much. Tasty? Probably. Would Kari Sue approve? Dunno, but I'm avoiding food waste, so she'd probably be pleased. Plus we're not throwing in the towel and buying fast food instead. And hey, I've now gotten rid of four almost-empty bottles of condiments/preserves that have been hanging around the fridge for months!

(Note to self: buy more ketchup.)

ETA: after perusing the fridge, I've changed my mind again. The carrots will keep for a while; this cucumber in the crisper bin won't. So we're having a simple cucumber and tomato salad with ripe San Marzano tomatoes from Julia's garden (hi Julia!) and a good sprinkle of Montreal steak seasoning. AND some peas, because yum, peas.

ETA2: nom! Potatoes and peas, both excellent. Salad was tasty. Captain Midnight tasted the meatball sauce and added a leeetle balsamic vinegar to give it a bit more of a sour note. Approved.

Live a little

The other day I was out and about, shopping for sundries (as you do). It was a pleasant late spring day in the Puget Sound region -- that is to say, cold, grey and drizzly -- but I was Getting Stuff Done, so it was all good.

And then I came across this, and it pulled me up short.

It's just a bag of soft black licorice candies shaped like Scottie dogs. You can find them at lots of drugstores across the United States. No big thing.

But.

I first found a bag of these Scotties at the end of 2019, and thinking they were kind of cute, I bought them as a stocking stuffer for my mom for Christmas. I knew Mom loved all kinds of black licorice, but especially the soft kind, so I figured she'd probably like these.

When Mom saw the bag, though, her eyes lit up with delight. "Oh, these take me back to childhood!" she exclaimed. "My grandpa used to buy these Scottie dogs for me and my sisters when I was a little girl!" And she ate several with obvious relish. Very pleased with the reception they'd gotten, I made a mental note to buy some more Scottie dog licorice for Mom next Christmas.

Only there was no "next Christmas" for Mom. In early August 2020, she slipped and fell hard against the white wooden chest she used as a coffee table, breaking at least one rib and puncturing one of her lungs. She was rushed to the hospital and intubated, but she promptly went into cardiac arrest. By the time my siblings finally got hold of me to break the news, she was already dead.

It's been almost two years. On most days, I can get things done. I can run errands. I can do dishes and fold laundry. I can cook meals. I can scoop out the cat box. I can change the bedsheets. It's all normal, everyday household stuff that requires little or no thought to accomplish. I can function. It's fine. I can do this.

And every now and then I come across an object like this, something that tears at the edges of the ragged hole in the center of my heart that won't heal and won't go away.

The pandemic is still a danger, although more and more people are pretending it's over. I don't want to encourage anyone to throw caution to the wind, especially when people are still actively dying of this plague, and when many others are struggling with long-haul damage to their bodies after being infected. Nonetheless, I want to encourage you to embrace the slogan at the top of this bag.

You never know what life is going to throw at you next.

Live a little.

If Mom were still alive, I'm sure she'd agree.

The house on Oakmont Lane

Our family moved into a rental house in Provo, Utah in the last hot days of August, 1983. I can remember that specifically because one day after we finished unloading the moving van into our new temporary home, I started the school year as a freshman at Provo High. I literally didn't know a single soul there, and my mother said that when she dropped me off at the front of the school campus on the first day, I was shaking like a leaf. But despite my fears, the kids at Provo High turned out to be kinder and significantly more welcoming to a shy, awkward teenage nerd-girl than the kids in the middle school I'd left behind in Northern California. I found my feet relatively quickly.

The rental house was a prefab home with an unfinished basement and a back yard full of boulders and little else. But it was at the lower elevations of Y Mountain, in an area known as the East Bench of the Oak Hills neighborhood, and the west-facing windows offered a gorgeous view of the city and BYU nestled into the valley, Utah Lake out beyond that, and the Oquirrh Mountains framing the sunsets. Even on days where "inversions" made the air khaki-colored and gritty and the Geneva Steel Mill did its best to give everyone in the valley lung cancer, the view was still striking.

And then there was the allure of the house right next door.

Looking up from the cul-de-sac, 2021

It was an imposing-looking place, two stories of red brick and an unfinished partial daylight basement, built in 1979 (so only four years old when we moved into the neighborhood). There was a minor tragedy about the place; the original owners had built it from the ground up, sparing no expense to create their dream home. It turned out that "sparing no expense" was their downfall, as they ran out of money and lost the house to a bank repossession. Hoping to get it back some day, they had placed a lien on the property that made it difficult for prospective buyers to purchase it. It was a gorgeous home, but we assumed we'd never have the finances to buy it, let alone the ability to navigate the legal thicket associated with the lien.

As circumstances would have it, the original owners still lived in the area when we moved in, and they attended the same church congregation we did. We'd been living in Provo for about a year when they discovered Mom was interested in buying their house, and by that point they had largely given up on ever getting it back. They liked Mom, and they liked our family, so they decided to remove one of the roadblocks to purchase by taking the lien off the property. Further, because it was bank-owned and had some plumbing issues from having stood vacant for a few years, it was offered at a very good price. In the summer of 1984, Mom bought the house on Oakmont Lane and we made what was probably the simplest move ever -- we just picked everything up and trotted it next door.

The house, like all houses, had its quirks. The huge room over the garage was originally meant to be an open-air deck, the solar panels on the side of the house didn't work properly, the roof leaked, the plumbing needed several repairs, and there was one particular section of the water pipes that tended to freeze solid in the Utah winters. But it didn't matter. We owned a home again, and it was ours.

When we first moved in, the house had three bedrooms, all on the top floor. With six kids in the family, we really wanted one more bedroom. See that little window at the bottom of the house, in the daylight part of the basement? That was the area where one of our neighbors, a contractor, framed in and finished a bedroom for my sister Julie and me. We shared that room from the time we moved in until I began a series of moving-aways -- first to a college dorm, then to a shared apartment, then to a year spent working in California with extended family, and then finally when I got married and moved out "for good" in 1993 (Captain Midnight and I did return to live in the basement for a couple of years in the early 2000s).

This place has been our family home for 37 years.

We sold it today.

None of us could afford to keep the place, and in any case Mom specified in her will that we should sell it and divide the proceeds between the six of us. We all knew it would happen eventually. Personally, I haven't lived there since late 2004; there are other places I've called home since. And in all honesty, it was only home because Mom made it that way. Since she died, the sense of "home" has slowly leaked out of the house, diminishing by degrees as the little treasures and furnishings and keepsakes were taken away. Now it's just a place.

But. It was a place where I practiced the piano over and over again, where Dan practiced his trombone, where Julie tried her hand at playing the drums and Tim worked on his practice chanter for bagpipes. It was a place where we sang together, where we told each other dumb jokes and family stories and laughed uproariously at them. It was a place where fights and family tragedies unfolded, too. It was a place where I'd often sneak our long-haired kitty Chamomile, who was supposed to be an outdoor-only cat, into the basement room for a warm, comfortable snooze. It was also the place where I returned with Chamomile's body in a cardboard box after her final visit to the vet, to bury her in the side yard. It was a place where Mom cooked homemade doughnuts at Halloween and oliebollen at New Year's, a place where the whole family (and many friends) congregated for Christmas julbords every year. It was a place where I went out onto the front balcony one winter night, looked down into the cul-de-sac and caught sight of one of my neighbors, a teenage boy, delightedly dancing in the falling snow. It was the place where I graduated from high school, where I spent most of my years in college. It was the place where I first got into dialing up BBSes, became a co-sysop and started meeting users, including a guy who called himself Captain Midnight. It was the place we held the murder mystery dinner party, when Mom first noticed CM and strongly encouraged me to date him. It was the place I first announced to my family that CM and I were engaged. It was the place where Miss V was born and where she spent most of the first decade of her life being, as my mom called it, "grandma's little sidekick." It was the place we came back to when CM lost his job and we needed somewhere to regroup. It was the place where my siblings and I helped Mom recuperate from the many, many surgeries and other medical procedures she went through during the last twenty years of her life. And it was the place where Mom had the catastrophic fall that ended up taking her away forever.

I know it isn't what it was. But it was home once, the shell of the place that used to contain our family. In many ways, it was the last vestige of Mom's presence on earth.

Maybe that's why it hurts more than I thought it would to let it go.

I just hope the new family that moves in will love the house on Oakmont Lane as much as we did. I hope they'll enjoy the million-dollar view of the valley, and I hope they'll learn how to accelerate into the cul-de-sac in winter so they can make it up into the garage without their car slipping down the icy driveway. I hope they'll enjoy taking a bath in the walk-in bathtub downstairs, and that they'll always have enough hot water. I hope they'll relish eating the apples and grapes that grow in the back yard, and that they'll become good friends with the neighbors (who are some of the most awesome people ever). I hope it will be cozy for them around the fireplace on the main floor, especially on January nights. Maybe they'll even choose to keep Mom's "Mexican restaurant yellow" color scheme in the dining room, because they'll find it as joyful and sunny a color as she did.

I hope it'll become home for them the way it was home for us.

And I hope they'll fill their home with memories to replace the ones we took away with us.

Reaching out

OR years, my mom had this recurring desire to start a charity. Not just any old kind, but something specific.

"I'd love to match up families with each other," she'd say. "Then one family could help the other one get through tough times, kind of the way an extended family does. I just think it would work."

Mom would have been thrilled to discover that someone else had the same idea -- and, further, acted on that idea and started a charitable organization. Family-to-Family provides the link through which one family can help another get through tough times. If you have enough for your needs and a little left over, I urge you to contribute. Should you decide to participate, you can choose to help a struggling family, a veteran, a Holocaust survivor or a refugee family get through the pandemic. There's more information at the website.

It's what Kari Sue would do! After all the kind and selfless things people did for her and her family, she would have been so excited to help someone else. I only wish I'd discovered this place a long time ago and could have shared the news with her before she died.

Pandemic: ugh

How's this past week been for the Laundry Faerie, you ask?

Public domain Cyclone image by Mark Houtzager

Well, to sum up: it's been a roller-coaster. First elated. Then nervous. Then terrified that this nation will experience a full-on coup d'état, with the tacit approval of about a third of the population. Plus, this last week -- due either to nerves or some kind of brand-new food allergy -- I've been continually breaking out in hives. 2020, you truly are the gift that keeps on giving. I had a televisit with the doctor, who prescribed an anti-steroid medication, loratadine and an antacid, but the thing that's kept me out of continual scratchy hell is Benadryl. Trouble is, Benadryl completely knocks me out. So I can either be awake and blazingly itchy from the back of my scalp all the way down to my knees, or I can have some temporary relief and stay zonked out in bed all day long.

Let's just say this week hasn't been very productive.

Fortunately, Captain Midnight came to my aid on days when I couldn't leave the house, picking up aforementioned Benadryl and emergency groceries (gotta have Mountain Dew, he says), and other stellar behaviors. He's a keeper.

Miss V has been busy working at a local business, walking a lot, getting trim and making some big life choices. But since they're her life choices, not mine, I'll let her discuss them elsewhere at her discretion.

Charlie-cat is being a furry little mendicant, as usual. It's a good thing he's so cute, or we'd have turned him into gumbo by now. He's also discovered that if anyone leaves the pantry doors open, he can sneak inside and hide out in the kitty-cat clubhouse area behind the food. We have accidentally shut him in there on more than one occasion, and only found his super-secret hiding place when he started knocking stuff over in the pantry and we looked at each other and said, "PA! DID YOU HEAR THAT SUSPICIOUS THUUUD?"

At the moment our biggest challenge as a family is staying 'rona-free until we can get vaccinated... which, realistically, won't happen until spring 2021, but it's a lifeline all the same. I've been trying to avoid risk whenever I can, but I realize we've just been lucky up to this point -- it's very easy to catch, and it's extremely difficult to tell who has it. I've got five siblings, and at this writing three out of the six of us have caught a case of the stuff. Soooooooooooooo that's fun.

I miss my mom. But I guess that goes without saying. I try to focus on the memories of her love for me; she and Dad always made sure we knew we were loved, and I'll need that knowledge to sustain me for the rest of my life.

Mr. Pollak

Can you remember a certain person from your past who entered your life and forever changed it for the better?

My mother did. His name was Mr. Pollak.

There are a couple of things you need to know about Karin, my mom. She was accidentally dropped on her head as an infant (no, really), and for many years she was convinced that this incident had caused some kind of brain damage, because she couldn't learn to read. While all the kids around her were working their way through "See Jane run. Run, Jane, run," little Karin was just trying to figure out how the marks on paper were connected to the words people were saying, and failing miserably. As she struggled through early grade school, still trying and failing to understand the mechanics of reading, she became more and more certain she was too dumb to learn anything. And her fourth-grade teacher didn't help matters; she too was convinced Karin was stupid, and actually told Karin's parents not to expect very much from their daughter, as she simply didn't have the mental capacity to succeed in school. By the end of fourth grade, after having been mocked and neglected in class all year, Karin had actually lost ground in her education.

Then came fifth grade. That year, Karin got a teacher who was brand new to her school, a young man who was friendly and kind and played the guitar. His name was Mr. Pollak, and it didn't take him very long to notice that Karin was struggling. One day, early in the school year, he asked her to stay after class. I imagine Karin was terrified. But this time, she wasn't put through another round of being told she was stupid, of having her textbooks taken away and given to another child, as she had in fourth grade.

"Karin," said Mr. Pollak. "You can't read, can you." It was a statement, not a question.

Karin burst into tears. Not only was she stupid, she'd been found out -- and by the teacher she liked the most. But Mr. Pollak insisted that Karin wasn't stupid, and that she could learn to read. In fact, he would teach her himself.

And for many after-school sessions running, that's just what he did. The standard reading method being taught in mid-1950s California wasn't working for Karin, so Mr. Pollak chose other methods. Since phonics made no sense to her, he taught her different word attack skills, how to recognize short, recurring words first, and how to move straight to sight reading (some 95% of adult reading is sight reading, not phonetic -- we only use phonic attack skills to conquer unfamiliar words).

By the time Karin finished fifth grade, she was reading at grade level -- and it's not an overstatement to say that finally learning to read changed the course of her life. Not only could she read capably, but when one of her younger sisters also showed signs of struggle with reading comprehension, Karin created a "play school" over the summer and taught her little sister the same word attack skills Mr. Pollak had taught her. It was the first time Karin realized she was good at teaching.

It would still take a good part of the next decade for Karin to realize that she really was intelligent and capable -- but by then she'd graduated from high school and made it into college, where she developed a passion for history and geography. She went on to teach high school history, geography and general music, then got married and had a family of children who all learned to love reading. (We were the kids who were constantly trying to check out our own weights in books at the local library.) Later, when her husband died and Karin went back to teaching school, she certified to teach special education. For the rest of her working life, she specialized in teaching kids who struggled just as she had in school -- kids with learning disabilities, kids whose teachers were convinced they were nothing but trouble, but also kids who just needed the right kind of nurturing to learn and improve. I'm convinced Karin was such an effective teacher in part because she empathized so strongly with her kids. (I remember she told me that one of the first kids who came to her for one-on-one reading assistance had dyslexia and struggled to sound out every word. "At first I had to sit behind her every time she read out loud," Mom said, "because I'd start remembering just what it was like to struggle so hard and still not understand and feel stupid, and I'd tear up. I didn't want to have to explain to this girl why I was crying.")

Mom also developed a personal, lifelong passion for reading. Her love of history led her to discover all kinds of first-person histories and historical novels, but she also loved children's literature -- whether it was the classic books she hadn't been able to read in childhood, the more recent Newbery Medal winners, or the hugely popular Harry Potter series, she'd gladly devour them all. Diabetes ravaged her eyes, but Mom had surgeries to fix the damage and carried on reading with the help of large-print books and audiobooks. She was a member of a local book club that met once a month for spirited discussion, and although near the end of her life she was often ill and homebound, she rarely missed a meeting. (This month the group is reading a book Mom loved and recommended: Before We Were Yours, a historical novel by Lisa Wingate.)

Last year, after decades of reflection and gratitude, Mom decided that if Mr. Pollak were still alive, she would write to thank him. We searched online and found someone with the right name, who was about the right age, living in another state, and Mom wrote a letter thanking him profusely and letting him know how the course of her life was changed by his efforts. But then she never sent it. I'm not sure if she was worried she might have the wrong Mr. Pollak, or that this letter out of the blue might seem too forward or too gushy, or if she simply got cold feet, but the letter was still there, dated late 2019, atop her writing desk when she died last month.

My sister and I read the letter and, after getting a bit verklempt over it, decided we'd send it to Mr. Pollak anyway. We weren't sure whether he would remember Karin from so many years ago, or even whether it was the right Mr. Pollak, but we sent it off with a little note indicating that Karin had passed away, but had always wanted Mr. Pollak to know how he'd changed her life for good.

About a week later, a handwritten letter arrived in Mom's mailbox. Turns out it was the right Mr. Pollak. After I opened and read it, it took me a while to stop sniffling and transcribe the letter so the rest of my siblings could read it. I haven't gotten his permission, so I hope he'll forgive me for sharing this transcription:

Dear Ms. [Soozcat],

I fear that I might not be able to fully express my gratitude to you for forwarding your mother's letter to me. The effect was like standing beneath a waterfall of sunshine.

I want to express my heartfelt sympathy to you upon the untimely loss of your mother. I hope that you have the support of many loving people who will nurture you during this time of grief and mourning.

Perhaps it was because it was my first year of teaching (age 21) that I have a clear memory of a number of students in that class, Karin among them. Now, at age 87, after a 40 year career in the profession, much of the time is spent looking into the rear view mirror of memory. You can't imagine how gratifying it is to know that I was of some help to your mother. Whatever it is that I may have contributed, it is your mother who deserves the credit for all that she has accomplished during her lifetime for it was she who did the hard work that made the many gifts she bestowed during the years she was on this Earth. Please take comfort in knowing that she did indeed leave the world a better place than it was when she entered it.

Thank you for your very thoughtful gift. My prayers go out to you and your family.

All the best,
Ken Pollak

Thank you, Mr. Pollak. You might not believe your contribution was significant, but it meant the world to Mom and to everyone who learned from her. And like her, you have left the world a better place than it was when you entered it.

The minefield

I don't know what your experiences have been or if you've dealt with grief in your life, but if you haven't, let me say this: grief is probably not what you think it is.

In the first world, almost every event runs on some kind of timeline. There's even a timeline in the way we handle the mechanics of death and burial: the time of the memorial service, the interment or cremation, the paperwork to be filled out, the people to inform, all fit a kind of macabre schedule. But grief doesn't work like that. It's not something that can be scheduled, like a vacation or a work meeting. It's not something that runs like a season, ending promptly at an equinox. It doesn't hew to any particular time frame. It is a force unto itself.

Grief is like being forced to march through a minefield. The mines are randomly scattered everywhere, just under the soil, and there's no way to tell by looking whether an open stretch of ground is safe or strewn with mines. The only way to find out is to move across it. Whenever you step on a mine -- because you will -- and it goes off, a blast of grief overwhelms you and shuts you down. And at first, this happens a lot. At first, the ground is particularly treacherous and any patch of ground could be harboring a mine. But as you continue to traverse the minefield, more and more of the mines are gone because you've already blown them up. Still, the greater the love you had, the more intense the grief is, and the more likely it is that you'll step on another mine, even long after you think the field is empty.

Right now I'm dealing with a lot of land mines. I went into QFC today intending to buy a few things, but I saw something in there that made me leave almost immediately. I didn't want the other shoppers to think I was crazy for standing in front of a display of Australian licorice, bawling like an infant under my disposable mask. I didn't want to explain to strangers what was going through my mind ("Ooh, I should get some of those for M--") just before the mine went off. So I went and sat in my car for a while, and cried until I was hollow.

It'll be a while before I can look at soft black licorice without thinking of Mom. It'll be a while before I can catch the scent of rose perfume without feeling that hollow emptiness of loss. It'll be a while before I can sing the hymn "How Great Thou Art" without thinking of my brother Dan, who hates to cry, choking up on the final verse as he sang it at Mom's funeral. I think most people know this instinctively, even if they haven't gone through grief themselves, and that's why they often give those who are grieving a wide berth. It's uncomfortable, not knowing what to say or how to deal with people who might break down at any moment over some little thing that reminds them the grief isn't done with them yet.

If you see this behavior coming from me or any of my family, please be patient with us. We're trying to work our way through a minefield, and it might take a while.

Kari Sue says hi

If you missed my mom's funeral service, you can see it here. (Don't worry, it's closed-casket.)

[Posted to social media; worth preserving here.]

HERE are lots of things you can do to memorialize someone. People with money buy buildings and put the loved one's name on them (e.g., "the George Q. Zannini Wing of Memorial Hospital"), or start some kind of trust fund or scholarship in the person's name. And that's all very well and good, but such memorials don't give anyone else an idea of what the person was really like. The same holds true with book dedications, works of art, etc.

I don't have a bazillion dollars, and even if I did, I wouldn't want to create a meaningless memorial to my mom. She was the kind of person who would have been horribly embarrassed if anyone commissioned a statue of her, and I don't think she would have been impressed to have her name on a building.

But Mom loved people. She was constantly looking for ways to help others, even when she lost most of her mobility and became home-bound. And if there was something she could do to help someone else and make that person's day a little brighter, she would do it.

So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to start actively looking for ways to show kindness to the people with whom I come in contact each day. I'll help wherever I see a need. And if people ask, as they sometimes do, "What can I do in return?" I'll say, "When you do something kind for someone else, be sure to tell them 'Kari Sue says hi.' My mom would have liked that."

That will be Karin Buck's viral memorial. And through it, people who never knew my mom will get a little glimpse of what she was like, and how the world was a better place with her in it.

You're more than welcome to join me in doing little kind things and telling people "Kari Sue says hi" if you like. Mom would have liked that too.

Let me help you

My sister-in-law and I drove together to the mortuary. I talked nervously most of the way there, trying to keep my mind busy with trivia so I wouldn't think about what was coming. I'd been successfully dodging that mental boulder for several days, ever since Tuesday evening when my brother called to tell me Mom didn't make it. Even staying at my mom's house, looking through her photos and papers, sleeping in her bed, I could defer the dread by pretending she was just in the hospital again. She'd been so close to death on so many other occasions, and she'd pulled through each time. It was easier to imagine this was just another one of those times. Even standing in the mortuary foyer, talking to the mortician, walking down the hall, I was fine.

But then we turned left and went into the room, and there was her body.

If you've never seen a dead person, let me destroy a common trope for you. A dead person does not look asleep. A dead person looks dead. There's no gentle rise and fall of breathing, no soft muscular movement in the arms or legs, no subtle changes of expression in the face. Everything is completely, impossibly still. The shock of it is realizing that this person who once moved and thought and talked and laughed and loved is now a still, cold object, like a figure made of wax, and she will never move again.

I didn't want to touch her at first. But that was why we were there: to dress her body and prepare her for burial.

It was easier to touch the top of her head, her hair, first. That felt pretty much the same as it always did. Someone had parted her short, straight hair on one side and brushed it back, the way she might have done it herself, and there was something calming about that detail.

Her feet were the kind of cold you don't usually experience with living people, unless they have hypothermia. We started there, working carefully -- "Her skin is very fragile," warned the mortician -- to clothe her. It was oddly like trying to dress a very large doll; we needed help moving her to one side or the other, carefully raising limbs that would not yield, pulling articles of clothing up and around and otherwise into place.

And then I was pulling up the long sleeve of her dress. There was nothing special about that sleeve; it had a simple, straight cuff on the end. I just had to pull it up around her fingers to her wrist. But as I got it into place and smoothed it down, I could hear my own four-year-old voice saying,

"Tighter, Mama! Make them really tight!"

My mama was bent over one of my shoes, trying to tie the shoelaces as tightly as she could. I was already in kindergarten, already reading, already able to do a lot of things on my own, but I couldn't tie my own shoes. And I lived in dread of them coming loose on the playground because I wouldn't be able to tie them again, and I didn't want my classmates to know.

"If I tie these any tighter," Mama said, "I'm going to cut off your circulation." But she pulled them a little tighter, made the knot a little firmer. She was 30 years old, after all, and had boundless energy. "There you go," she said. "I need to teach you how to do this yourself--"

--and then I was suddenly back in the room with the body, with those hands that had tied my shoes, lying so still. And the grief hit me full force, with no way to hold it back -- and I sobbed so hysterically that it must have sounded like laughter.

Those hands that willingly tied my shoelaces so tightly, that changed my diapers, that fed me and washed me and cared for me when I was a tiny infant incapable of doing anything for myself, that did countless loads of laundry and sinks of dishes, that made thousands of meals, cleaned scraped knees and dried tears and patted cheeks, dialed my phone number and wrote loving letters and did a myriad other clever and wonderful things -- couldn't move.

She could do nothing for herself. She couldn't sit up. She couldn't ask for help. She couldn't even make sure her body would be treated with care or dressed with dignity for her own burial.

But she had taught me through years of example how to care for other people, and now I could do this one final thing for her.

It's all right, Mama. I'm here. Let me help you.

Mom

My mother, Karin Suzanne Eriksson Buck, died this evening. She was 76 years old.

I don't have much else to say about this right now.

Not the best news to report today.

I posted this to Facebook earlier, but it's been wonky all day, so.

Mom called me this morning. I guess a while ago she hurt her right foot, and although her podiatrist (who is excellent) cleaned things up and was monitoring her closely, two of her toes have gone necrotic all the way to the bone. They will be amputating the second and third toes of her right foot on Friday morning.

It's not just that amputation is a scary word. Mom's podiatrist feels that her balance and ability to walk should not be significantly affected by this surgery. It's that this very thing happened to my aunt Kathie as her health began to decline significantly.

If you pray, won't you pray for my mom? Her name is Karin Buck. (I know I ask for this a lot. It means so much to me when people are willing to keep loved ones in their prayers.) If you'll also pray for the surgeons who will be working on her, that they'll operate to the best of their ability so they can successfully excise all the necrotic tissue, I'd appreciate that as well.

ETA (15 March 2019): Mom reports that she is home again, minus two toes. They think it went pretty well, but she's being referred to a vascular specialist for the underlying circulation issues that caused this to happen. Thanks to all who prayed for Mom and for her surgeons today.

It's always something, isn't it?

Yesterday I got a text from my sister Jenny. It read, "Mom's in the hospital again."

After open-heart surgery, there's usually quite a bit of fluid that drains from the patient's lungs and chest cavity. This usually clears up some 7 to 10 days after surgery, but Mom's system has been merrily draining fluid for weeks. Over the weekend, her lungs began to fill and she was having trouble breathing, so Jenny (wisely) took her to the hospital. Fortunately Mom doesn't have sepsis, as her doctor first feared, but she will need followup surgery tomorrow (Monday) to fix her lungs.

As always, if you pray, I'd appreciate prayers for my mom's recovery, and for the doctors in charge of her surgery to perform to the best of their skills and abilities. If you don't pray, you could remember my mom by spreading positivity to other people -- my mother is one of the most relentlessly positive and practically optimistic people I know, and there's a strong need for that kind of energy in the world right now.

Thanks.

Springing Mom from the clink

No, it didn't really look like this. It was rehab, not prison.

Well, Mom is finally home. This doesn't mean she's finished convalescing, only that her doctors and physical therapists feel it's safe for her to be at home now, as long as there's someone to watch over her at all times. Yesterday I went over to the rehab center where she'd been staying and, after she signed some paperwork, promptly busted her out the joint. Her immediate request was to be taken to Trader Joe's, because PRIORITIES. (Hey, I guarantee that her priorities would be yours too if you'd just eaten some three weeks' worth of institutional food.) After a minor purchasing bacchanalia, we returned home, put the goodies away, ate brie and baguettes for lunch (because of course we did) and Mom went on a Poldark binge for most of the rest of the day. After evening meds and such she ended up falling asleep in the recliner, and she seemed too comfortable to move, so there she remained for the rest of the night.

No recliner sleeping for Mom tonight, though; she's asleep in her own bed for the first time in weeks. Today was a dialysis day, and dialysis always leaves her spent, but we still managed to get in three meals, all basic meds, some post-op maintenance activities, a doctor's appointment and a whole lotta episodes of The Waltons. (I'm so full of wholesome '70s programming I might burst!)

Now, with Mom safely in bed, I can do a little of my usual duties (la la la, laundry fairy!) and otherwise perform some minor cleaning around the apartment. Also I'll write down the things to be done tomorrow in my bullet journal, which has been a lifesaver on this trip. Mom has a number of daily needs (mostly the timing of medications) that would be tough for my little ADHD-riddled brain to keep track of if I hadn't brought it along.

Oh, and guess what. Mom has another surgery scheduled for the 25th. Her latest fistula revision didn't take properly, so they get to fiddle around with her arm some more. yay.

Da momz

Well, Mom is recuperating very well from surgery. She's hit all her physical therapy targets and then some, her appetite is starting to return, she's doing more and more things for herself and she's feeling better each day. Her goal is to be checked out of the rehab center and home by Tuesday.

I still have a few concerns. Because her depth perception is off (and probably always will be, thanks to some old surgeries on her eyes), she is a potential fall risk and I can't pick her up. Her bed at home is also pretty high off the ground and can't be lowered, unless we dismantle the bed frame and put the box spring and mattress right on the floor. But at this point, I think she'll be relatively safe at home. That said, she's going to need someone with her for at least another few weeks -- I think her surgeon said six weeks is the average time needed to recuperate from surgery.

Thanks so much to those who sent prayers and kind thoughts to Mom. She's gotten better much faster than I anticipated, and it's a huge blessing.

The final Mom update of the month

I don't dislike the rehab center where Mom is staying, but they don't have enough staff members to take care of everyone on the weekends. I found out that on Saturday Mom was left to fend for herself for about an hour, and no amount of her pressing the call button seemed to bring help. That's really not acceptable hang time for a recuperating heart patient. On several occasions while I was there, I tried using the call button myself and got no response; the only thing that worked was to trot down to the nurses' station and ask for what we needed in person. They are going to be sick of me doing this by the time Mom's ready to go home, but if showing up and pointedly asking gets the desired results, that's what I'll do.

Today I got Mom cleaned up and dressed for an outing, put her in a wheelchair and sprung her from the clink for a few hours. She enjoyed the drive and getting some sun on her face, and I took her home for a few hours, where she spent some time with Miss V, binge-watched episodes of The Waltons and ate a homemade hot lunch. However, by the time she was ready to go back to the rehab center, she was close to exhausted -- she hadn't sat upright for that many hours since her surgery, and she said the experience made her realize that she really wasn't strong enough to be at home full-time yet. As soon as she got back, she changed into her nightgown and got straight into bed.

The good news is that Mom is improving day by day. She doesn't need any pain medication to sleep through the night, she goes to physical therapy every day, and although she's still weak, she's much stronger than she was just a week ago. She is positive and in good spirits, and determined to do what it takes to go home.

Another day, another update

So yesterday Mom was discharged from the hospital. And there was much rejoicing. *yay* She went directly to the same rehab center where she stayed when she got her hip replacement, so most of the people there remembered her and greeted her like an old friend. She had something to eat, watched the Kavanaugh hearings (no, don't ask. I've got my opinions, but this isn't the appropriate place to vent them) and went to bed.

Today I was kept pretty busy getting everything ready for Miss V's 22nd birthday. It was a small but happy gathering. V went over to visit Mom and brought presents so she could open them in front of her grandma. We were also all wearing purple "Happy Birthday" tiaras and blowing into noisemakers, so I think we kept the nurses entertained. My sister and I stayed late and helped Mom get ready for bed. We left her listening to the Audible version of Nothing to Envy, about life in North Korea.

Later, back at the house, we sang V the birthday song, had ice cream cake, V's mom rolled some sushi, that kinda thing. I am slightly overfull right now, but not dangerously so. Hoping to keep it that way. I hope it was a good birthday for V.

Today's update (plus a sidebar on eating after DS surgery)

So, here's how things went with Mom today.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are dialysis days for Mom, so around 10:30 they wheeled her off to the mysterious place in the hospital where dialysis happens (I was not allowed to accompany her, so I ran errands, cleaned house, etc. for the next four hours). Dialysis always takes a lot out of Mom, both literally and figuratively. When she came back, she was exhausted. She'd also missed lunch, so she got a small snack to tide her over to the next meal. Unfortunately, her blood pressure dipped low again during dialysis and they weren't able to bring it up sufficiently, so they didn't take much liquid off her today. This likely means that Friday's dialysis session will be rough on her.

Despite being tired and having difficulty standing for even short periods of time, Mom underwent two different rounds of physical therapy today. She walked further than she ever has before. Go Mom!

Mom's heart surgeon stopped by in the late afternoon to check her vitals and see how she was feeling. She's still draining from a couple of tubes attached to her chest cavity, but I guess that's well within normal parameters a week after surgery. The surgeon didn't seem to believe Mom when she told him her typical dialysis dry weight, which was a little frustrating to her. Mom may be physically frail, but she's very mentally sharp and she knows her own dialysis stats. At any rate, if things go well she should be released to the rehab facility some time tomorrow. We've planned ahead by bringing her a change of clothing, so she doesn't have to be sent off in a hospital gown.

We ordered dinner so it would arrive at a reasonable hour, and Mom ate most of it, not having had much else to eat today. She watched a little TV, mostly Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. (Apparently there's this one show on Animal Planet that's all about these guys who build treehouses, and she's fascinated by it.) Nurses and respiratory therapists stopped by to do their thing. Everyone at this hospital has been very kind, solicitous and gentle with Mom, which I appreciate. A few hours after dinner I took my leave to pick up a few things, as Miss V's birthday is on Friday and I want to make sure I've gotten as much done as I can in advance to prep for her party.

* * *

And now, a little something about eating after DS surgery.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've had a tough time getting used to how much -- or, to be more precise, how little -- I can eat after surgery. It does help to visualize my new stomach as about the size of a banana to determine what will fit, but it's not precise. Liquid foods, for instance, go down easily and I can eat almost as much broth-based soup now as I did before surgery. Dense foods, on the other hand, fill me up so quickly that I can make myself dangerously overfull before I know it. Plus I'm fighting a lifetime of mental experience about how much I'm capable of eating at once; none of that information is accurate any more, but it will take a while until my brain and body sync up properly.

And today I figured out something else: if I dole out my own servings of food, I err on the side of caution and rarely end up eating too much, but if I let someone else determine my serving size (looking at you, takeout food), I try to finish it all and end up overfilling my tum. This has led to a couple of *blorp* incidents while I've been in Utah.

Not. Good.

I don't have much time to cook for myself since I've been spending most of the day in the hospital, but in future I think I'll be better off picking up items from the deli or Trader Joe's, portioning them out sanely and eating slowly, rather than snarfing down something from a drive-thru window. (Tempting and yummy as that option may be, it's not worth the unpleasant aftereffects. Barfing is not an entertaining activity.)

Even more stuff about Mom

So today, as every Monday, Mom had dialysis (Dialysis: ICU Edition!). Afterward we talked pretty seriously about what she should do after her hospital stay. Mom was all in favor of going straight home, but my sister and I talked to her very seriously about spending some time in a rehabilitation center to get stronger. (Here's my reasoning: during at least part of her convalescence, I will be the only one of my siblings on Mom-watch. Mom is a strong fall risk; she's still weak after surgery and unsteady on her feet, and had a spectacular fall at home the week before surgery happened. Even at the best of times, I don't have the upper body strength to pick up my mom when she falls or to support her when she faints. And I just underwent abdominal surgery last month, so picking a person off the floor is RIGHT OUT according to my surgeon. We really, really don't want Mom to fall and break open her sternum. Plus, if she goes to rehab they'll put her through physical therapy to help her gain strength and better balance. Seemed like a win-win, really.) After giving it some thought, Mom agreed that our ideas had some merit. Rehab is not her favorite place to be (and really, who could blame her?) but she does want to be stronger, so that's the plan.

Mom was also moved back to the cardiac care unit of the hospital. The rooms in this area are affectionately known as "the closets" due to their dinky size, but at least Mom has the room all to herself. She has some good nurses and technicians who are looking after her. Mom usually gets along well with the nurses who come in to see her; she's pleasant and friendly, asks them about their lives and experiences, where they went to school, etc., and always thanks them for their help, so they are usually more than willing to help her with anything she needs.

The last few days Mom has had plenty of visitors, both family and friends. I think she's appreciated the visits. It's nice to see a familiar face when you're stuck in a hospital bed for most of the day. I think she's also looking forward to something other than hospital food; at this point she's eaten nearly everything on the room service menu.

Mmmm, hospital food.

Right now Mom's surgeon is thinking about discharging her on Wednesday, but that's only if she's well enough. So we'll see. From there we'll take her over to the rehab center, I'll bring her changes of clothes and other comfort items from home, and will stay with her every day.

Also also wik: Miss V's birthday is coming up. I'm going to try to coordinate everything so it comes together. Also, making funeral potatoes because c'mon, it wouldn't be V's birthday without funeral potatoes.