Tag Archives: Pat

Idle hands and common sense

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I cannot let this day pass without noting it. Attention must be paid.

I’m starting this under the wire of March 15 (but willl finish after midnight). Today would be Pat’s 95th birthday.

I’d have to look back to see if I managed to honor the Ides of March, the birthday of Pat, ever since she left this plane in 2002. I think so. I hope so.

This week was one of those weeks where I thought of her a lot. I thought a lot about common sense and New England and the Massachusetts attitude that won’t stand for mollycoddling. Pat would have opinions, no doubt, about modern workplaces with the discussions of life/work balance and all of the stress and anxiety work and life seem to bring to the millenials and Gen Z.

She’d maybe remark that there is nothing about work that is actually promised to be anything but a pain in the ass.

She’d maybe contradict that thought a moment later to reflect on how things are easier and maybe better now and how the olden ways were too harsh.

She’d maybe say that she wished she could have had life/work balance.

Or, maybe she’d laugh and come up with a funny line about how the new generations have fewer skills to survive and thrive.

Here’s the Pat wisdom that I kept hearing over and over in my head this week — You just need a hobby. An inveterate crafter, she always had some project or another. As kids we had hand-knitted mittens all winter. In later years, she constructed a village of dollhouses, decorated and jammed with miniattures she also built. 

She also read two newspapers a day, kept mystery and other novels at hand, did crossword puzzles in ink, cooked, ocassionally baked, and had some time to browse discount stores for treasures. 

The solution to all feelings of stress and anxiety was to stay busy. Or, maybe the solution to all feelings.

Pat could be eccentric and all sorts of kooky, but making something really does have salutory effects. Creation is therapy. Some days after toil that feels like nothing got done and work is futile, I whip up a crocheted dish cloth. Then the day isn’t a total sinkhole.

I wanted to hear Pat’s sense of humor this week. Nay, I wanted to be Pat and tell an overworking colleague they need a hobby. It was a day where their bad day at work was becoming emotional. I wanted to will them into having a creative activity in hand to prevent them burning out. I wanted to blurt out, do something fun.

Problem after problem cropped up all week. Mostly just misunderstandings born from the ginned up sense of urgency that revs Silicon Valley combined with inexperienced people fumbling.

I work tech adjacent with a young workforce that wants to change the world. Using bleeding edge new tech and old-timey scientific research, if all goes well everythig biological about us meatbags will be understood, diseases will end, and there will be dancing in the street.

Meanwhile, though, I help out, because someone needs to push papers around, make spreadsheets, figure out what checks to write and pay the bills. I’m an A#1 paper pusher.

To some in the virtual corridors of my largely remote workplace, I shine on Zoom screens, regaling people with campfire stories from when work was done on paper and stored in manila folders. I used the ancient tools, faxing, typing,copying, using phones (connected to the wall or desk) to talk words out loud without text. 

Emojis looked like this : – )

A wrinkled shaman, I have seen things. I draw on a lifetime of experience and the wisdom of those who came before me and through the ether people arrive inside my computer screen. I listen. And the youngsters ask me for help. Lost in the office wilderness.

For them, I summon the holy gods and mystical fairies and occasionally ask people to breathe with me. From a dark space — one could say that is pulled from the vicinity of my ass — I solve problems with suggestions like, “let’s ask the person who manages that, and see if they’ll help.”

Twice this week I heard that I’m repping some kind of magical problem solving.

My magic is only magical to the kids these days who never got sworn at in an office by the office bully or were forced to repeat boring ass shit over and over to “pay dues” before you were ever allowed a task that was vaguely interesting. Hammered into my head the hard way are 1,012 tricks to get work done.

But that’s not at all why I wish I could pick up the phone and talk to Pat. It’s really about resiliency.

A lot of what people tell me about stress. Some of my conversations are rooted in people coming to me when they want both a neutral point of view and maybe a sense of humor. I get asked a crazy tapestry of random things from a wild assortment of workers. 

Some of my advice is basically “buck up.” Or maybe, “what’s the worst thing that could happen.” Inside my head, and then jumping through the computer, I hear Pat’s voice essentially coming out of my mouth. One day, I’ll convince all the kids to find a hobby.

In the end, I will honor her legacy. I’ll keep crafting. Also, now that I’m 60, I want to live what she announced when she hit a milestone age — Now that I’m old, I won’t be holding back.

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.

I prefer au revoir not goodbye

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January 2017, Washington, DC
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The only person I consistently write about here is Pat. There’s an archive of Pat stories and reflections. Pat was my mom.

In the tapestry of all of the relationships, if Pat was once my center, directly adjacent was her sister, Nancy. Anne L. is her actual name, and for my whole life, and I guess her whole life, she flipped between the names Nancy and Anne, Anne and Nancy. For the family, it was Nancy.

Then, Nancy got married. Pretty sure it was 1970, but being around 5 or 6 years old, I may not be the best chronicler. From then on, there was another name change. The family ran everything together — NancyandRon.

I feel like it was every Friday night, but maybe it was Sunday. Let’s say every weekend. For every week of of my life as a kid, Nancy and then NancyandRon came over our house for a meal. During the week there was more often than not other visits and activities and meals and all sorts of things. My childhood memories all include them alongside Pat and my brothers and sister.

I can’t for the life of me figure out one memory in line with the historical record. A thing that never happens when you are the youngest of five kids happened. I got adult attention all to myself, and NancyandRon took me into the city of Boston to see the movie Doctor Doolittle.

If you had a gun to my head, I would swear the year was 1972, and I’d also claim that after the movie they took me to the Museum of Science, walked me through an exhibit on reproduction, explained all the things no one had ever told me about babies, and then shared the news that my cousin Ted was on his way.

Only thing is Doctor Doolittle came out in 1967. Back in ’67, my own father would have still been alive. I would have been only three.

The important part is Nancy did indeed tell me where babies come from. Nancy equipped me with so many things everyone needs to know. In my childhood, she was a colossus. She was a second mother. She was just so many things.

Pat had gaps in parenting. And, Pat’s precocious youngest child — the one clicking on a keyboard with these very words — had all her formative years overlaid with Pat’s toughest years. When I was 4, the world changed. My dad died, and buried with him was a part of Pat. Deep inside, she wore sadness that stayed for the rest of her life.

She soldiered on and raised us kids and did everything she could in a world not really welcoming of single moms. My school life coincided with Pat’s getting a teaching certificate and becoming a teacher.

Whenever Pat was too tired, or overwhelmed, or sad, or busy, or just not able to answer all of my questions, she turfed me over to Nancy. Nancy always had answers for me.

Nancy taught me about books and how to process real from imagined. When I began voraciously reading any book in front of me, which included The Exorcist around age 12, she explained adult themes and horror.

I learned about art, philosophy, travel, theater, museums, and culture at her knee.

Nancy told me stories about my dad that no one else did. My mother couldn’t talk about him. I think it hurt too much. But Nancy told me about fun trips and how she, 12 years younger than Pat, loved hanging out with my mom and dad when they were dating. She told me one of my favorite things to hear about my dad — That he always loved novelty, trying gadgets when they came out or new foods. I see my DNA in that memory.

Nancy also taught me about love and family. As a pre-teen or teen or whatever hormonal nightmare age, I did something wrong. In my apology to her, I made it about myself and said something about it being OK if she hated me. In her anger at my shitty apology, she taught me two things, how to apologize empathetically and sincerely and that she loved me and you can make mistakes and still be loved.

As an adult, Nancy was a co-conspirator in wrangling my adult relationship with my mom. We checked in with each other, Nancy would call me when my mom was pissed off at me, and we’d strategize. Late in her life, Pat wasn’t doing great at taking care of herself, and so then we could strategize on keeping her going.

I learned from Nancy a great strategy of managing Pat that always worked. Pretend you needed her help, even if you didn’t.

I suspect that ALL of my childhood years when Nancy was there visiting, and the prevailing narrative was that my mother was making sure Nancy had a good meal or help with whatever, it was a sham. Nancy let my mother take care of her, and then take care of her and Ron, and then take care of her and her family, because Pat needed it, as much or more than Nancy needed the help.

They both had death and overwhelming loss in common. My mother’s husband, and my aunt’s son, Tommy, left wounds that never fully healed. They also both hid their wounds and soldiered on.

Yet, in the worst times and the best, they were a pretty hilarious and awesome duo. I recently told my cousin Ted about when our grandfather, their father, was in a nursing home. Nancy hated the ritual of signing in and signing out and thought it was particularly stupid, when week after week the people at the home recognized all visitors. You couldn’t leave unless you signed out, apparently a gesture to keep the residents in.

So, she would make up fake names.

One day, she and Pat visited, and she signed them in as Charlotte and Emily Brontë. But, then, she had to leave before my mother, running out without telling my mother their fake names.

In the end, after a lot of frustration, my mother had to beg to see the sign in sheet. They were able to verify that the Brontë sisters had not, in fact, visited anyone that day.

One of my favorite weeks since moving to California was when Nancy came to visit. Her presence and everything she shared was for me the closest thing to M. meeting my mother.

It was incredible to hear Nancy’s views on San Francisco — A Mecca she had read about and wanted to visit. We took her to City Lights, and walked around North Beach talking about the Beats. She bought a “Howl” cap and I think a Ferlinghetti book. We ate fresh strawberries that she declared the best she had ever had. We cruised by the Berkeley campus, where she quoted Mario Savio and talked about how much his speeches from the steps of Sproul Hall meant back in the day. And, bonus of bonuses, a naked man tipped his cap to us while we crossed Castro Street.

With some of my cousins, my sister, a friend, and me, Nancy marched on the Whitehouse in January 2017, alongside an army of pissed off women.

I write all of this down, because as a co-worker said to me this week, “aunts can be important and weirdly influential.” And, yes, this aunt to me is very very important and was weirdly and enormously influential.

Nancy called me today. She called from hospice back in Massachusetts thousands of miles away. She called to say goodbye. We shared words of love and an awkward conversation that no one is ever prepared to have. And then we hung up.

I really wish it was not goodbye. I really wish it was au revoir. I hope for peace in the end.

Coincidence, convergence, luck o’ the Irish and what would Pat think

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This story is the kind of random that is so random it creates its own pattern. This story just makes me wonder if life it orderly or purely chaotic.

Today is also Captain’s Log, 2022, the Ides of March. Had Pat the Champion hung onto the terrestrial plane, she’d have been a ripe or seasoned or well-aged 93. But, she’s been gone for 20 years instead.

Today I got my first pay check from my new job that’s doing new philanthropy in the new millennium with new money from one of the younger of the world’s billionaires.

I wrote about what happened that got me to this point last May. The career next, if next means 20 years later.

The TL;dr – I got knocked off the career ladder of blazers and blouses and budgets, writing memos back in 2004, coincidentally around Independence Day. A bit shy of two decades later, I get hired as a temp by a friend who was a front row viewer of the 2004 flameout.

I always wonder whether Pat’s dying was a catalyst, a lever that proved the center could not hold. My status quo for so long included her, so change was a-gonna come, when she died. And it did.

When I moved to California, I didn’t just avoid a career ladder, I worked 14 years at a place that brags about having a “flat” structure. No where to go and certainly not up.

I switched it up in 2019 and tried a stint in the local industry of tech. It was fun while it lasted, decked out in all the cliches. I wore a branded hoodie, drank cold brew and kombucha on tap and sat in an SF open office. And, I eventually got waylaid like the rest of the world in the fallout from COVID19.

I’m pretty sure Pat and I would have bonded on the international mandate to stay the fuck home.

About a year into the global pandemic, I lived through an epic employment drama that lasted a perfect 7 days. On the 7th day, February 22, 2021, I quit.

I onboarded to my new, new job, no longer a temp on contract, on 2/22/2022, a year to the day from my last, non-temp job.

So this month it all converges. I get to use a lot from my bag of job tricks from a pretty big bag. Who knew I’d find something where having worked in grants management for science research, at a philanthropy, and for a CTO at a tech company would all come together. In one day, I defined PR in software development to a lawyer, explained charitable purposes to an engineer and processed a grant award to support an International research center.

Today, to remember Pat, my mother, perhaps the strongest influencer in my life, I celebrate all of the coincidences and wrinkles that got me here. My coworker from the beginning of the century who is my boss now. The date 2/2/22, when I marked a funny anniversary, and I created a new milestone, And a very nice paycheck on Pat’s birthday.

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.

Happy Pat’s Day 2019

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IMG_1104

It’s not unusual for me to think of my mother.  She was a force to be reckoned with and from feminism and progressive politics to arts, crafts and approaching the mundane with a creative flair to just wanting to be a contrarian, she formed a lot of who I am today.

With the hot fucking mess that is Donald Trump in the Whitehouse and the latest wave of Catholic scandals, she’d be on fire.  Her acid wit would burn holes in the atmosphere as she would undoubtedly be glued to CNN fueling an internal flame of discontent.  “Me too” would likely create rants of how is it that men have stayed in power this long and why not give women a chance?

Lately, though, there’s a restlessness that has me thinking, “What would Pat do?”

I keep wondering if I’ve stayed too long at the fair in terms of employment.  She’d totally understand my simmering thoughts about appreciation.  Much more basically, she’d probably remark casually that the longer you stay anywhere the easier it is for your contribution to become the status quo, and everyone forgets how hard you work. You know, she’d say laughing, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

But, at the same time, she’d be the worrying voice that tells you to keep a good job and not take any chances.  My worrying voice about money, work, the mortgage, all of it is her voice.

Yet, we both know, she knew when she was here on earth, that I probably shouldn’t let myself become too complacent.  We’d fight, of course, and she’d find many, many ways to tell me that I’m crazy.  And, she’d be absofuckinglutely right.

But, yet, there would be a glint of appreciation. Some pride.  And, she would agree,

“Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum.”

And, for you, Pat.  For everything you’ve taught me, I still tilt at windmills to mix a literary metaphor.  I still fight the power.  And, I always just laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Finally, for the tulips at the top, a friend–who also remembers and needs herself to be reminded sometimes to never allow yourself to be ground down–shared them for the ides of March and esprit to guerre.  Maybe somewhere in the infinite space the spirits of those who make this date important to each of us are sharing a joke.

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.

Mother’s Day, Pat and life is so damned tough

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I completely fucked up and didn’t write my annual tribute you on Pat’s Day, March 15, her erstwhile birthday. So, on the hallmark-iest of days, I’ll write about Pat and how much I particularly wish she were here today, right now, this week of all weeks. And, I will provide a tribute in a pic of her favorite meal.

In the way, way, way back days, Pat taught “special needs” kids. In those days of the 60s, 70s and 80s, that euphemism was used for students who had things like dyslexia or couldn’t sit still. They were normal kids with learning disabilities and rode the regular long bus not the short variety. Instead, the short bus riders were called mentally deficient or most often retarded.

Now it’s a slur, and then it was an adjective.

So, back in those dark days, my town, the same one in which Pat taught, was actually not bad in handling kids who were developmentally delayed or had an intellectual disability. I’m not sure of the best words to use. Anyway, according to what my mother and her friends told me, and my own experience, there were students from nearby towns joining our schools,nand for a few hours a day or week, the handicapped kids were “mainstreamed” into our classes. Pat was besties with Debbie, who taught, or in some cases just managed, the classroom in their school where these kids were the rest of the time, and Pat would help that class, too.

She affectionately and without a shred of malice–seriously it was a different fucking decade–called them her “retreads.”

Because I was me–a dorky, lumpen, possibly doughy little girl, who far, far preferred reading and writing to actually talking with people, and because I was for better or worse Pat’s baby and shadow in so much of her teaching life, which chronologically coincided with my schooling life, my mom had a plan. She put the word out to her teacher friends to use me in classrooms, as peer and friend to the kids getting their mainstream swerve on when I was in class.

Doubtlessly if asked, my mother would have said wryly that I actually belonged with the intellectually disabled.

It would have been a crime of capital proportions if I was anything but friendly and respectful to these other kids. I think one disparagement would have pushed Pat over the line from threatening a physical beating to actually doing it. So I was on a first name basis with kids with all sorts of issues — cerebral palsy, what was probably autism, Tourette’s Syndrome, Down’s, Fragile X–all of the things that could get them beaten up by the bullies.

I also learned from Pat and her friend Debbie some pretty horrible tales of mistreatment for these kids. Teacher Debbie, for example, reported physical abuse, then fostered, then adopted a friendly little boy whose dad (or step dad) would daily try to beat some sense into him. When we became adults, my mother long retired, he would great my mother by name in the local grocery store where he worked with a big smile and wave.

I was taught to just not be an asshole, and (mostly) I kept my mortification of being in with these kids in check and genuinely tried to tutor and be a friend.
Pat championed these kids. She really championed any kid who had it rough. Broken-heartedly, she also helped abused kids, including testifying in court for a poor little dude who came to her for help, which led to the revelation that he was being sexually abused.

As a side visual — there was a lot about Pat that was more grandmotherly than motherly in appearance. With her cap of sometimes untamed curly hair, big glasses and panty hose, standing all of 5-foot-2, she was not a MILF. She was kindly and comfortable to the kids, and undoubtedly they cried in her soft arms more than I ever did. I never really talked with her about sex, since that seemed so out of her area of expertise, so I can only imagine how desperate the little boy was who came to her with a health issue involving the most private of his parts.

Why am I thinking of all of this on Mother’s Day? Because this week, more than many a week, maybe ever a week, I would love to hear what Pat would say. 
In my daily life, because I am still the little girl who Pat made befriend developmentally disadvantaged folks, I chatted with a guy around my age who could only handle minimal tasks and mostly talked about baseball. He has been a fixture of my morning routine for years, greeting me with a smile and “Good Morning, Sunshine,” and I talked to him like I was taught normally to people with intellectual disabilities in a place where some people ignored him.

He was arrested this week, accused of child molestation, and then his home was searched, and they say they found child porn. After the news broke, I found out through people who knew him better than me, that at least on paper, he was not actually one of Debbie’s “retreads.” Because of the labeling and terrible situations years ago (and probably still), his mom never wanted him to be one of those short-bus kids.

So who knows what has happened, and whether anything is true. Innocent until proven otherwise. In the newspaper, he’s a grown man. But assuredly he wasn’t on the same page intellectually with most men his age. He’s sitting in jail, where certainly he will be broken if only because of his own stubborn adherence to his own daily routine.

But, he may have done one of the worst crimes you can commit.

So I wish I could hear from Pat. I wish I could hear her heart, the ferocious defender of the less fortunate. I wish I could hear her professionally, the teacher for decades of so many kids with so many problems. Where would her feelings fall? What would she say? I need her help to understand a fucked up, monstrous, horrible, bad thing. I want my mommy.