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Pat, rats, stones and story time

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As another ride around the sun rolled by, it’s March again. Not just March, but the day that I will always associate with the greats, Caesar and Pat. The Ides of March have come (but not gone), and so my mother’s birthday.

Even if it weren’t her birthday, I woke up thinking of Pat any way, a sign maybe in the universe’s kink of sending signs. Here’s the story.

The other night, I was toddling off to bed. It was later than it should have been, and like my mother before me I had fallen asleep on the couch. The wind and rain howled outside.

I saw a little ball on the floor, which I thought was loose yarn I had dropped from my crochet/knitting bag. I stooped to pick it up.

It wasn’t yarn. It was warm and moved a little. I yelped and took my hand back.

Apparently, a little critter in the order rodentia was living its final hours in a fetal ball. I assisted it down the road to the final roundup, off this mortal coil, and into a plastic bag, triple tied.

The next day, traps were set. Then, at 2:47 a.m. March 15, 2023, the same day Pat was born in the auspicious year of 1929, while banks are failing again, I heard a snap from another room. I buried my head deeper under my blankets and pillows and slept uneasily.

In the light of day, I woke to Pat’s birthday and found the snapped mouse trap and its little victim.

But that’s not the story. It’s the spark.

Around this time of year back east in the wild lands of Braintree, winter is trying to decide whether to let the crocuses poke through or continue to shit white cold piles of snow.

Pat’s house sat next to a small swath of woods. Winter sent rodent-shaped refuges seeking shelter from its storms to terrorize Pat.

Pat became unglued. Agitated. Beside herself, Petrified. Absolutely batshit-around-the-bend-crazy-scared-out-of-her-mind at any little field mouse that might poke a whiskered nose out or scurry across the linoleum. She’d practically levitate to the ceiling climbing on chairs and cabinets and counters away from real and imagined threats and call me to come over to save her.

Side note. Pat didn’t call me much. It was a Mountain not coming to Mohamed, Mohamed going to the mountain kind of thing. I called her, she did not call me.

But fear of mice tossed protocol out the door. She would call for emergency help.

I would come by and set traps. Then, I would have to come back, check the traps, and clear away the dead.

Truth be told, inside I may only be a step or two away from Pat’s terror. I’ve felt on edge for days. Corners are all full of potential enemies lurking and watching. The mice feel my fear and are waiting to attack. I hear them breathing.

I can gird my loins and battle, if I must. My rational brain struggles with my irrational revulsion and fear, but I can do what must be done.

One winter, I went to Pat’s house to check the trap I set.

She wouldn’t enter the room. She pointed and shouted at me to do something from another room. She yelled orders from the other side of the house, telling me where the broom and dustpan were and a paper bag and the garbage bags and maybe some Lysol and napalm for good measure.

I braced myself and swept the former beast into the paper bag. I rolled up the bag. I put that paper bag into a garbage bag and tied the garbage back tightly shut.

With my morbid package, I walked to the kitchen toward Pat for my disposal orders.

Pat lost her mind!

She leapt. Leapt like the best leaping thing. Gazelle or hare or cheetah?

Pat leapt onto the kitchen counter, hugging the side of the refrigerator and cabinets for balance, and screaming bloody murder. She accused me of trying to terrorize her. She accused me of threatening her. She accused me of trying to kill her.

She banished me from the kitchen, from the living room, onto the porch, into the yard, onto the street. I could not return without proof my hands were empty and the dead mouse was removed.

(I can’t remember if I got away with putting it in an outside garbage can or if I had to put it in my trunk and drive away with it eventually.)

Back to today.

I have so much more to say, but I’ve hit the midnight hour and just missed hitting publish on Pat’s day. This story is one of many that still resonate inside my head like they just happened.

She’s been gone now 21 years this January. I can now say the year with conviction, because my brother Danny finally took care of unfinished business that all of her children had neglected.

Pat is buried next to her Earl under the gravestone she erected for Earl with spare room on the stone’s face to add her name. For the last couple of decades, though, like the tomb of the unknown soldier, her name wasn’t there above her head. Danny fixed that. If you find yourself at Braintree Cemetery, you can find Pat and Earl together.

I imagine you could also visit the family that also is there as a mystery incantation from my childhood, grave markers in a row that say “Father,” “Mother,” “Sister,” “Charlie.” I will always wonder about Charlie.

Patty’s Day: Happy birthday, Pat

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Another March has rolled around on the calendar, after a March last year that I thought would be the March to end all Marches.

Here we are, still sheltering, as the world scrambles to get vaccinated now. The speed of the vaccine is an improvement. You can’t not think of pandemics and health emergencies past, and how they were handled. We now have new president, Old Joe, at the very least asking the country to behave. I don’t know that people had to be begged to be conscientious and careful for polio.

I still think of Pat, my mother all the time. Especially when I do things like buy a roll of green burlap and try to convince M. that I can make something with it for his holiday decorating. Crafting with bits and bobs and junk and trash and bailing wires and whatever else you have on hand, and visualizing that something might be possible in a pile of rubbish, was Pat every damn day.

Today, she would have been 92. She would have been a 92 full of so much to say about the past year.

I’m certain she would have hated Donald Trump almost as much as she hated Cardinal Bernie Law. Although, she’d always hate Law more for his role in letting little kids get hurt. Repeatedly. For years. Horribly. In Pat’s judgement there can’t be a hell big enough for the priest scandal and any child molester or person who looked away from the molester but did nothing.

I’m sure, if Pat were here, I’d be getting an earful on not working. Whenever I’m between jobs, I hear her worrying voice. Will I end up in some Dickensian debtors’ prison, if I don’t get a J. O. B.?

At exactly the same time, she’d be telling my husband that it’s a poor family that can’t take care of one bum. (The immortal words of her uncle Joe, opining on the unemployed.)

She’d have to admit that between the extended unemployment from the government, the craziness of COVID19 and the fact that M. is working, we’ll be fine.

I have to give equal space in my head for Pat’s worry about work with her equal conviction that you can’t let the bastards of any workplace bring you down. From everything she ever said behind your back, you’d find out that Pat was actually pro-fun and doing your own thing.

All of the above is pretty dull. It’s not a fitting way to honor her birthday. Let’s try some chestnuts from way back when, when Pat was alive and kicking. Really kicking.

One of the things that I definitely inherited in my DNA from Pat (although rumor has it my dad Earl probably had a dollop, too) is a willingness to add a little kookiness to any workplace. Sometimes begrudgingly, but always with gusto, she’d take on decorations or gifts or ceremonies, and throw in some straight out of her head crazy touch. Pat’s head contained Pinterest well before Pinterest was born.

She also was doing Pinterest fails before they were born.

When I left my old job, my first California job, my first job in a long time with a healthy run and leaving with goodwill, I left the familiarity to do wacky things. A group of friends, among the coworkers with whom I still try to stay in touch, we held impromptu contests and challenges and mini events. They weren’t official company events, but they were sufficiently goofy to not get stopped by management.

This time of year, it would be all about Peeps. Peeps are wads of sugar, ostensibly marshmallow, shaped like bunnies and chicks with all sorts of radioactive food coloring. Given their hardy, some would say inedible, structure, they lend themselves to construction projects.

The Washington Post had a famous diorama contest for 10 years. They killed it, coincidentally or not, with the beginning of the Trump Administration. At my old job, we maintained the tradition.

In the heady days of Trump’s first 100 days, I knitted pussy hats and handed them out alongside my sister and aunt and cousins and some of their families and friends in the streets of Washington, DC, while marching with thousands of angry women.pussy hat

I also contributed to tiny little Peeps-sized hats, along with my coworkers, who also marched. We made an epic, historically accurate diorama, based on our lived experiences as marchers in despair at Trump’s ascendency. Peeps march
Had Pat been around, I believe she would have marched along with her sister, too.

If Pat had been around, I believe she would have found the source of Peeps with the ultimate discount, bargain, cheap (pun intended) rate. She probably would find a Peeps coupon.

And, she would have spitballed diorama ideas like no other. She’d probably pitch me ideas to use for future pranks and challenges at work.

I do miss that between my unemployment and the pandemic, there’s no place to pointlessly entertain yourself while earning your daily pay.

Pat would also embrace the pandemic. Not only would she not mind being forced to stay away from people — kind of a utopia for some of us — she would have figured out some angles for fun. I am certain, if you were Pat’s friend or family, she’d anonymously be sending you packages or leaving suspicious bundles with old shopping bags on your porch with something fun or tasty inside or maybe just something she bought on sale.

If anyone reads this post, try to carry on the goofiness that is still possible. Wear a hat on your next Zoom call, maybe even a balloon hat. Or change your zoom background to something out of the ordinary — not the Golden Gate Bridge or a tasteful Apartment Therapy interior — try a ball pit or bar or Chucky Cheese’s or PeeWee’s Playhouse.

Make something. Even if it’s lopsided or imperfect. Use a milk carton as a vase. Bring a treat to work, if you go to work, or send a treat to a coworker, if you don’t. Send an anonymous package or leave something on someone’s porch.

Fun is something you can make. Make something for Pat the Maker.

Pat Day 2020

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Social distancing

Every year, well actually a lot more than that, I think of Pat, the champion mother and unsung iconoclast, not that one usually sings about iconoclasts. March 15, her birthday, she would have been 91, it’s a day I will always mark, a day I will hold in high regard.

This year, this crazy fucking year, I cannot not think of Pat. She would still be getting newspapers delivered, probably. But, she’d also subscribe to Apple News or something else. Not just surfing news websites, she’d be swimming in news sites. There would be too much news to risk missing it.

Her hatred of Donald Trump would be full of righteous rage. She wouldn’t stop pointing out all of the pasty smug faces of evangelists selling their souls within Trump’s orbit. The whitest of white, holier than holiest roller Pence, I think she’d just mock his weasel face and feel bad for his wife.

Pat would remind us all of the decades of Trump horribleness. She’d remember the ugly divorces in detail, and remind us all of the things that Marla and Ivana said back in the day.

Morons were never safe in her laser sights. But this, the president, I’m not sure there would be enough words in the language for her. In short, in one of her favorite words, she’d be livid.

All of the news and politics and questioning the sanity of the voting population and railing at the GOP aside, and the grumpy old men vying for the Democratic Party nomination also aside, there would be the pandemic. I really wish I could talk to Pat about COVID 19.

As a teacher, at various times with middle schoolers and little, little kids in elementary school, Pat was a hand washer extraordinaire. She packed hand sanitizer before it was ubiquitous and certainly before it became a target for price gouging.

Many of Pat’s extracurricular contributions to the classroom were straight up common sense with a soupçon of ancient crone wisdom. Some kids came to class without basic lessons like hand washing or shirt tucking, and Pat marched them to the sink and the mirror for lessons. She had tissues and wipes as her personal arsenal against kids who came to school sick.

Over the years, she had a lot of colds and at least one case of pinkeye. I’m certain she fought off mountains of contagions, though, more often than she succumbed. Sick days were for wimps.

But, what I truly miss from Pat’s not being here for all of the news headlines of today, the voice I would love to hear, the missing wry observations would be her total embrace (and she was not one for embracing), her enthusiasm for social distance.

I can hear inside my head that phone call. The glee in which she pointedly would tell me (and anyone else who called) to stay away. With books, crosswords, the TV and news, Pat would be just fine all alone, at least until the coffee ran out.

So, for Pat and to spite the president for whom she absolutely would not have voted, wash your GD hands. And stay home.

Pat’s Day 2018, keep your mouth shut edition

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I’m a day or three late. Maybe more. Blame Comcast their lack of faith that our internet truly shit the bed. After begging and weeping and prayer, the tech came and left a new modem and cables behind.

Late I may be, but it was worth being late, or at least I tell myself that my lateness is good lateness. It’s better than telling myself I’m tardy.

The Ides of March have come and gone. The day I think of my mother, since she would have been 89 on March 15, had she not decided to not be. I think of her all the time really, not just on her birthday, and she left about 17 years now. Maybe 17. Time flies, and she’s remembered.

Every year since she died, though, I like to remember how they broke the Pat mold and haven’t built another one like it. I remember to not let the bastards grind me down (which I wish was illegitimi non carborundum).

Because of Pat, I remember that non-creative small minded people kind of suck. I remember that there’s both honor and wobbly steps (I edited that from treacherous steps) in not conforming, following, acquiescing, going gently into that good night. Most of all, I remember that like Pat, I am a square peg in a world of round holes, and so it is.

But, that’s not today’s adventure.

Today’s adventure is about work, the thing I have to do. We sell our skills and brains on the open market to live.

I have the shoulder to the wheel thing down, but sometimes I outstay my welcome, or that’s what the authorities at past workplaces have told me. I outstayed my welcome, when a director was boning two women in the office and they all hated me for my non-office-boning knowledge, and they told me I just had to go. Or the time when after about 5 reorgs, the jackass above me was minutes away from being unmasked as a doer of nothing who couldn’t balance a bake sale, and I was shown the door to go.

I’ve always thought of my working as having a shelf life, and my expiration date would come soon enough.

Through all of the trials of the workaday world, Pat’s voice in my head says, “Just keep your mouth shut.” She knew I ultimately wouldn’t keep my mouth shut. And, she’d worry as I lost another job. Albeit lost a job and gained a great story.

I also suspect she was a bit proud of my inability to keep my mouth shut and dodge a fight. Sure, I need to work, and she always needed to work, but she respected that I have some fight in me.

Friday, despite her having been gone so long, her voice was loud and clear in my head, “Just keep your mouth shut.” Here in California, the strange land where I work, in a company that is more earnest than ironic, I’m doing alright with a big mouth and ingrained, East Coast bred sarcasm.

Pat’s head would be blown.

She would say “keep your mouth shut,” but she’d be confused by the work company I’m keeping. I’m working among lawyers, the kind that read and talk about the law not hang out in courts. Until now, the only mix of work and lawyering was when I hired a labor lawyer to help me out of my last employment jam.

On Friday, I was parrying wits with someone who used to be the head of one of the top schools in the country and clerked for a justice from the SCOTUS, while in the company of a double Ivy grad from Yale Law. Magically for Pat’s daughter, they asked me to speak up and no one’s getting fired.

So, I marvel at what a fucking crazy world it is. That I’m me, that she was she, and of all of the things she taught me to worry about or be cautious of and the kind of authority she feared. I’ve ignored her lessons of fear and aversion, and I live on to tell the story.

Here’s the Hemingway version of the story:

People who give away money for a living and run an organization for the purpose of giving away money are asking my opinion on how to make that workplace work better. They are paying me to not keep my mouth shut.

And for two hours, the day after Pat’s day, I got to share openly with the authority figures I was taught to avoid, and I’ve only just begun.

She would have been suspicious and recommended cautious. But, still and all, I think she’d be proud that I have a voice. For her, speak up, speak out and don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Pat Day 2017

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I think I fucked up last year, and didn’t write.  But every year on dear old Pat’s anniversary, the anniversary of when she was born, the legendary Ides of March, I think of the old gal.  In this episode of remembrance of things past I mostly am thinking about the conversations I would have had if she were to still wander around planet earth. (I think I just subjunctived the shit out of that sentence.)

The first conversation is all about crafts.  I ridiculously bought myself a button maker to make little pins like thes
I suspect the desire for this little gadget was straight up recapture of the 1970s I never had.  I always wanted whatever the toy version was back in the olden days.  I think it might have been this Button Factory. Although, circa 1978 seems past my peaked pique interest.

Getting back to Pat and crafts more generally, though. Kindred spirits to crafty Pat stroll the hallways of my work. The knitters among my colleagues have of late left the shadows. We gather during the workday and create knitting circles during lunches.

(Completely tangentially, I should disclose that Pat’s own crafty daughter, the person typing this sentence, may have held a little sway in bringing the crafters into the sunshine. )

One knitter spouted a surprising reflection of Pat to me.  She said that there is value in using your hands, having a hobby, an outlet that wasn’t the thought-heavy essence of our daily work. Not everything can be reading and thinking and computers and communication and using your brainiest bits of brain.

Instead, things were solvable by not dwelling on them.  The best of a good hobby is that it takes you out of whatever the thing that you might be doing or might supposed to be doing and puts you somewhere else.  If your hands are busy for a little while that’s all that matters.  Then, while making something homey and crafty, your brain gets to rest and fight another day.

Pat would have nodded in agreement.  One of my favorite Pat quotes in reference to someone going through a bad patch of depression and struggle and maybe a soupçon of intoxicating substance — “She thinks too much.  She needs a hobby.”  It was that simple.

Given half a chance, Pat would have tried to bring a junkie to Jo-Ann Fabrics or Michael’s and had them pick out something to do with their hands.

Which brings me to thing number two that I’d be talking with Pat about if she were here — The scourge that is Donald J. Trump.  The knitting circle at my work and the pussy hat phenomenon, doubtless come from the same place — Scores of woman with hands and a need to do something, anything to make something, create something, build something in the face of the nihilist president.

My aunt and my sister and I have each and all wondered: What the hell would Pat say about Trump?

She’d probably throw herself deeply into doll house making, maybe making the Capitol dome, the real one already miniaturized in moral authority, wee little unethical congress.  Maybe a miniature Capitol dome would be too redundant.  Or, maybe a  White House, tiny and to scale of what real grown up governing looks like, something in line with Trump’s tiny vision, one-inch scale.

And as she built, she’d be ranting.  Each shingle on the miniature roof would be another grumble. Kellyanne Conway would be angrily painted furniture and wrapping paper cum wallpaper.  Betsy DeVos might warrant her own wing or maybe a wall.  She’d build a wall, little bricks glued together to ease the pain of a woman ignorant of how education works being in charge of the whole enchilada.  Schoolteacher Pat would be, in her word, livid.

Maybe this year’s Pat day is about Pat the ultimate maker.  And, now, in the dark days of the most fucked up presidency, the maker spirit is living.  When protests arise out of nowhere.  When knit stocking caps, and really the homespun warmth of DIY, are the cultural fashion gracing the New Yorker magazine.  When everyone is not sure what to do, but they just start doing, because to do nothing is worse.  When strangers speak up, band together, share, write postcards together, share congressional phone numbers on Facebook, march, walk, make signs, rally, write words in the sand on the beach, that’s DIY, that’s maker, that’s crafts.

The best of making shit with your hands is knowing that you can. We can all build a movement.  My next pussy hat will be made for my mother.

I’m pretty sure Donald J. Trump has never built anything with his own tiny digits.  And maybe for just that alone, Pat would never have trusted him.