Day 6

When I was a little girl, my dad used to call me "my little pasta fagioli" (pronounced "fazool" or "fazhool"). It wasn't until years later, after his death, that I learned he was actually calling me his "little pasta and beans."

Here's the recipe I just threw together with what was on hand at the retreat house for a hearty, late lunch:

Ms. Bizarro's Pasta Fagioli - vegetarian protein and carbs fest with the colors of the Italian flag: green, white and red.

• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 can pinto beans (you can use any bean, but I think black beans would give it a tex-mex flava)
• a handful of orzo pasta (you can use any small pasta)
• 1/2 - 1 green pepper, diced
• 2-3 spring onions, diced
• a plop or two of honey
• sea salt & ground black pepper to taste
• pinch of coriander
• oregeno & basil to taste
  

Throw it all together in a pot, add roughly a cup or cup 1/2 of water, let simmer for 20 minutes, at least, to give the orzo and green peppers a chance to cook. As with any tomato-based dish, the longer it sets, the more delicious it will be. Makes 2-4 servings.


Make sure you have a piece of good bread on hand to mop up the sauce at the end. Dad used to say that Grandpa would get mad at my youngest uncle for leaving all the sauce at the end of a meal. Don't incur the wrath of Grandpa Pete! (Also, please don't drink milk with your pasta; that's just plain wrong).

Stick a needle in me!

Went to my first of 6 acupuncture treatments today and got my batch of Chinese herbs. It really was a relief, to know what's going on and why and to know that something is being done.

I have to say that post-flu, I've been feeling much more centered, emotionally and mentally. It's like being down for that week and a half pushed the re-set button. I also think a lot of the introspection and EFT I did while I was down had an effect. My head feels lighter and clearer, and I don't feel quite the same heaviness that I was dragging around with me for months.

I am optimistic that the holiday season won't be as bad as I'd once feared. Tonight I had to go to the mall for an errand, and I was pleasantly surprised that the Christmas Consumer decorations and muzak didn't bother me. I've struggled with Christmas every year since my dad died in 1979, and walking through a store at the holidays quite often would leave me in tears. This time, though, something was different. I kept hearing in my head "You deserve to enjoy Christmas. We're happy, and you should be too." That thought kept running over and over, and at one point (in Yankee Candle) when my favorite of all Christmas songs came on - Home for the Holidays by Perry Como - I was singing along and smiling. There was no dark sadness or feelings of despair. I felt like at last, Mom and Dad are together and the holidays are again a time for joy, new traditions, and happy memories to be shared and made.

Didn't that just sound like a Hallmark card? But it's all true.

Progress is being made, and I have another piece of good news to share: I have 2 weeks of writing retreat in January 2010 at the same place I've gone to over the last 2-3 years. Wow, what an incredible gift! My recent meeting with a new manager has inspired me with notes and possibilities and I am soooo ready to write, revise, and create.

I'm off to drink my nasty-tasting Chinese herbs now.

Malaguena

I have a partial recording of my Dad playing Malaguena on his accordion and it is amazing. Wish I could get that in a format to post here... meantime you can enjoy Jose Feliciano

New shit has come to light

Had a good counseling session yesterday, which uncovered a couple interesting things. A lot of the trauma I'm feeling with Mom's mortality is very much linked to the 11-year-old me who didn't get to grieve Dad.

I have a memory from his interment at the cemetery. Somehow, I wasn't up front next to Mom, where I should have been. My only memory of the graveside service is staring at someone's suited back. I was BEHIND someone, not allowed to partake in the ceremony, as it were.

Fast forward 4 years to my grandmother's deathbed. She had been in a nursing home for quite awhile, and they had called the whole family in, for her death was imminent. We were crashed out in lounges and such until the moment came, then we all crowded in her room, and she died. I was COMPLETELY freaked out and did NOT want to be there. One of the Salvation Army ladies who was close with my extended family, but not close to me or my Mom, tried to hug me and literally had to force me over to the bedside. I didn't want to be next to my dead grandmother, but I was FORCED to because someone else thought they knew what was best for me.

So there you have it- everyone else knowing what was best for me as a child trying to comprehend a tremendous loss, with no support for real grieving.

Here I am at 40, uncovering these horrible memories and watching my mom deteriorate, knowing that she only has a few years, if that, left. I am working really hard to make my time with her meaningful. Sometimes I look at her and see slices of times past - remember the person she was. My job is to accept her for who she is NOW, age, disease, and all, and be thankful that I have had her this long in my life. Unlike when I was 11 and 15, I DO have control over how I experience the end of her life and her death, and I have so much more support and so many resources that I didn't have as a kid.

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I have to drive to Auburn now to attend a ridiculous workshop for the chorch job (how not to molest children, I assume). It looks like the chorch job will be able to meet my minimum wage requirement (which isn't saying much - it's barely enough to get by on with my huge student loan payment that starts up in January again). However, they are willing to let me teach next summer, which will help make ends meet. I'm still hoping one day we can buy a house. If I have a job that doesn't go away every 3-4 months, the banks will be more willing to look at us, I hope.

The Sunshine is All Around Me!

Today marks my 4th decade on Planet Earth. It's 55 out, the sun is shining, and I've had a wonderful couple days' worth of celebration. I will post pictures tonight when I get home.

I am deeply thankful for all that I hold dear, especially my Mom and Dad, for bringing me into this world. I was a "surprise" you know, and at the age of 41 in 1968, my mother was brave to have a baby. Thanks, Mom!

For those of you who know me by name, please check out www.sixsentences.blogspot.com for a little surprise. It's a special birthday gift, indeed!

Life Goes On

Yesterday was Uncle Bill's funeral. It was a tiring day: we drove to pick up mom and then drove another 30 minutes to the city where the funeral was. On a flat tire. When we parked, the parking attendant let me know I had a flat. Thankfully there was a Firestone next door and they fixed it (took 'em about 15 minutes and of course they charged for an hour of labor, those bastards).

The funeral was at the Salvation Army citadel where my Uncle was active. The service was about 1 and 3/4 hours long, and I'd say about 20% of it was about my Uncle. The rest of it was about Jesus and the Bible, with the brass band and all. Not at all moving or cathartic for me or my mom. The only time I really felt anything was at the very end, when the U.S. Army guys came in and unfolded the flag, and Taps was played. That's where I broke down. Since the ground was too frozen for the interment, they did what they would have done at the graveside. This is why they came to the service. I wonder how the U.S. Army guys felt about the Salvation "Army" with their ranks and their uniforms and all that.

The only uplifting thing about the whole experience was seeing my cousins and my one remaining uncle again. We all vowed to be in better touch. My cousins aren't that much younger than I am and they only live an hour away. I hope we all follow through with our promise. I held up my end, anyway. I emailed them last night, so we'll see.

Mom held up pretty well. She told me that on Friday she had her first real cry - it finally felt real to her. I'm glad to know she is grieving and mourning and not trying to repress it.

I am doing pretty well, although I had a very odd experience last night as I was falling asleep. I was thinking over the day's images and impressions, and suddenly I was back at my father's wake. I remember (and this will sound gross to you, I'm sure) that I kept touching his face. I couldn't get it that this was him but it WASN'T. I knew that I would never see him again and so I didn't want to move away from the casket. Last night all of this long-forgotten detail came back to me: there was a soft pink spotlight shining down on his face (a trick of the funeral parlor to make the deceased look healthy), and his rosary beads were entwined in his folded hands. He wore a grey suit, and there was the flag from the U.S. Army folded up inside the casket lid. I remember thinking that he just looked asleep (which I guess is the point of the whole embalming thing). The little prayer cards that mom had printed up had The Lady of Fatima on them, to whom Dad was very devoted. I slipped one inside his jacket and said good-bye. Finally mom had to tell me to stop touching him because there was make-up and chemicals and stuff.

Pretty gruesome, huh? And I never had any counseling over this (I was 11 at the time)! Not until I took myself to see someone when I was in my early 30s. Pretty disturbing, huh?

I guess I'm still processing that loss. I know that it will never go away, that emptiness. But that is life and death, and that is Samsara, and that is just the way it is. I don't have to carry it as a burden. This I've learned, at least.

I promise my next post won't be so depressing.

A Lifetime Ago...

From 1980 through 1990, I attended a music camp in Canandaigua, NY that saved my life.

At a 4H camp in the Bristol Hills of western NY, Bristol Hills Music Camp was held every August for two weeks. As a camper for five years, I attended camp for one week, and as a counselor for 5 years, I was there for two weeks every summer. It's been 17 years since I'd returned to the camp, and yesterday I attended the week-ending concert that the daughter of friends was playing in. I had recommended the camp to them last spring, since I knew that like myself at her age, my young friend B. had no experience playing with an ensemble (she also plays violin).

I went yesterday with the joy of watching her play, but also with a jumble of memories swirling around in my head. We arrived at the camp and I was struck by the fact that it looks EXACTLY the same as it did 17+ years ago. There are only a few minor additions to the campground, not enough to spoil the experience of revisiting my favorite place from those years in my life.

Even better - there were folks from my days at camp in attendance, including one of the former camp directors. Here's a picture of myself, Sarah, Amy and Betsy. Oh, the times we had - and the rock we're sitting on is a rock festooned with memories from countless years and campers:



When I say that camp saved my life, I am not exaggerating. My dad passed away in 1979, and we were by then living in Elmira, NY, a dreadful place that held nothing but loneliness and despondency for many years. My school had a shoddy excuse for a music program, with no orchestra and no string ensemble to speak of. As you know (if you read this blog or know me personally), I was not a happy person from the ages of 11 - 19. In fact, I was damned depressed with thoughts of suicide flitting through my hormonal brain. I didn't fit in at school and I had practically non-existent self-esteem.

At Bristol Hills, I realized that I had talent, and that there other people in the world like me. It's the place that saved me from a depressing, lonely, confidence-sapping existence in Elmira's Catholic schools. I felt wanted, needed, appreciated, loved. I belonged. I was someone special, someone people looked up to and although I have never been a great violinist, Bristol Hills made me a better violinist.

To Sandy, Sarah, Kate, Amy, Wil, Brooke, Margie, Jennifer, Jon, Betsy, Hebert, Mr. Z, Mr. Bradley, Greg, and all those campers and counselors whose names I can't recall right now -- I thank you all for creating a place in which I could thrive for ten years running. Thank you for creating the place that saved my life.

I realized as I walked around the camp that certain areas and buildings had entered the landscape of my dreams. Clearly this place has remained a deeply embedded part of my unconscious mind. After yesterday, it is once again a shining place in my conscious memory. I am so pleased that young B. was able to enjoy the same set of traditions and experiences of playing in an ensemble with other dedicated musicians. Here's to the long life of Bristol Hills Music Camp!

String Lodge (all strings-only rehearsals are held here, and the sound is resonant and glorious)


The Edge of Girls' Village, Photo building (?) on the right (junior chorus rehearses there)


Eagles Nest and Lotus Lodge (two of my former cabins)


Main Lodge (where all meals, senior chorus rehearsals, orchestra rehearsals, band rehearsals, mixers, and concerts are held - the strings always fall flat in this building while the brass drowns us out)


We've decided we need to round up as many alumni as possible and try to hold a reunion of sorts next year. Alum #1 on the hit list: Wil Shore. Where are you?

This Day

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you might recall that May 8 has special significance for me and mine. On this day in 1979, my father died of cancer. I was eleven years old. It still seems like the recent past sometimes, his death. Sometimes it still feels like I could turn around and he'd be standing in the door way, smiling at me.

I know he'd love Bizarro - especially his sense of humor. I don't know what he'd think of me, exactly. I don't know what *I* think of me, exactly. But that's another issue.

Anyway, today I remember Angelo Cambio - accordion teacher, musician, adoring father, landscaper extraordinaire, storyteller incomparable, visionary, dreamer. I think I am like him in more ways than I can fully understand. And I still miss him as painfully as I did 28 years ago this day.