On stories, text & the novel "Family Matters"

“Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different. ” 
― Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

Vintage Books & Anchor Books posted this today on my Facebook news feed.

I have never read anything written by Rohinton Mistry & in all fairness, perhaps I should read this novel before commenting on a quote posted on a news feed on Facebook.

But this is my blog & to paraphrase a 1963 song by Lesley Gore, the first hit single for producer Quincy Jones;

It’s my blog & I will write if I want to.

While I agree that everyone underestimates their own life, its importance & influence, I cannot reach the conclusion from that particular observaton that all  of our life stories are the same.

I know, from years of study, that all text comes from texts before & influences texts to follow.  But each poem, each short story, each novel, each individual’s text is unique.  A reweaving of what came before, but the result is the author’s own weave.

All writers – those that put words down on paper or on film or on the Internet or are authoring the story of their lives – all writers pull from their past & others’ pasts & from the present &  from projections into tomorrow.

All our stories are not the same.

Because the only important story is not one of “youth, loss and yearning for redemption.”

Rohinton Mistry was born two years before me, so his words are not coming from a place of extreme youth.  He was born in India, resides in Canada & writes in English.  He is a highly recognized author: Oprah's Book Club, Scotiabank Giller Prize, Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada.

Although we are so very near in age, we come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different experiences. 

Which may explain my resistance to his premise in this quote that the only important story is of “youth, loss, and yearning for redemption.”

Because I truly believe that there are so many stories yet to be told.  Stories born of maturity & experience & enlightenment & forgiveness.  Stories that do not focus on youth or loss or yearning but on what comes when one realizes that the very best to be is found in the sunrise of the next morning. 

And on the realization that redemption is always possible, at any stage in one’s life.

All stories contain threads of other stories.  It is impossible to tell one’s own story without drawing on the stories or incorporating into one’s memory the threads & pieces of stories told by family, friends, extended family, strangers; from fiction or from the world.

In spite of the words Tolstoy used to open his magnificent Anna Karenina, all families & all family matters, are not the same:

 All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

So, it seems that this text by Rohinton Mistry & I have a rendezvous that is perhaps overdue.

I will, of course, let you know how that rendezvous plays out.

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On How Jean Travels

As a follow up to Jean’s recent flap surgery to close the wound left by a bedsore, this morning we went to see her surgeon, Dr. Ravi, at the Advanced Wound Care Clinic at Methodist Hospital in Sugar Land. 

And to have Dr. Ravi look at a new development.

Our visit, which began with Jaki Jean putting her dress on backwards & only noticing as I climbed into the ambulance & the EMTs taking the longest route out of Meadows Place to the Southwest Freeway to avoid construction, went well.

When we returned home I positioned Jean according to the instructions given me at the Wound Care Center.

Twenty minutes later, I left the kitchen to check on her & her position had changed.

This was not the first time I had noticed that I would place the wedges to position Jean & find her position changed.  In the hospital & at the Long Term Acute Care facility, I attributed this to the nature of the sand bed.  Her body was slipping.

But today, because of questions Jennifer, my favorite nurse at the Wound Care Center, asked, my care giver spidey sense was heightened.

So I comment:

I think you move when I am not looking.

Silence.  And a look I have come to recognize. 

I ask:

Do you move when I am not looking?

Yes.

Do you move yourself?

Yes.

As I  move to re-position Jean with the wedges we use for that purpose, I explain why it is important for her to not to rearrange herself.  I tell her about the new development, not a bedsore, but a tender place on her body that we need to allow to heal without pressure.

And because I remember that this woman is not just my mother, but the amazing Lavera Jean Sims Ettinger, whose kindness, love, intelligence & sense of humor are still with us, I apologize for not explaining why positioning is so necessary.

I remind myself that repositioning  herself, moving herself, is still a control my mother possesses.  Jean cannot get up out of her bed & walk out of the room.  But she can decide exactly where in that damned bed her body dwells.

Today, I took that control from her.

And once again, my heart breaks a little bit more.

Remembering D-Day, 1974 & Today

In 1975, I found myself with a man I would eventually leave, in a pub in the outskirts of London on June 6^th.

It was crowded, the crowd very British & the loudspeakers full volume.  There were no televisions in pubs in those days & the only electronic device was the radio playing through the loud speakers.  We were the youngest two people in the pub & the only Americans.

We were staying in a bed-sitter flat in a suburb of London.  We ate breakfast in our room, which was equipped with a hot plate, a sink, dishes, a tiny thing that passed as a refrigerator, a television & a heating unit that demanded coins. 

Our flat was ground level, a picture window facing the street.  A tube station was within a short walk & London was just a subway ride away.

Our bathroom was equipped with a claw foot tub & a toilet nestled in the basement next to the host family’s washer & dryer.  Which resembled nothing I had ever seen before.

As we explored London & its environs, we ate our lunches from our backpacks or at pubs.  Pubs offered cheap food,  great atmosphere, endless refills on hot tea.  We drank copious amounts of hot tea.  And an occasional pint.

On June 6^th, we sat in a pub, drinking our copious amounts of hot tea & suddenly the music blaring over the loud speakers stopped.

We were in the middle of planning a day excursion to Stratford-Upon-Avon & another to Stonehenge.  Until we noticed that all conversation & movement but ours had stopped at the sound of one voice coming from the radio through the loud speakers.

The voice of the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe in World War II.

People of Western Europe: A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan for the liberation of Europe, made in conjunction with our great Russian allies.

I have this message for all of you. Although the initial assault may not have been made in your own country, the hour of your liberation is approaching.

All patriots, men and women, young and old, have a part to play in the achievement of final victory. To members of resistance movements, I say, Follow the instructions you have received. To patriots who are not members of organized resistance groups, I say, Continue your passive resistance, but do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal to rise and strike the enemy. The day will come when I shall need your united strength.  Until that day, I call on you for the hard task of discipline and restraint.

Citizens of France! I am proud to have again under my command the gallant Forces of France.  Fighting beside their Allies, they will play a worthy part in the liberation of their Homeland.

Because the initial landing has been made on the soil of your country, I repeat to you with even greater emphasis my message to the peoples of other occupied countries in Western Europe. Follow the instructions of your leaders. A premature uprising of all Frenchmen may prevent you from being of maximum help to your country in the critical hour. Be patient. Prepare! 

As Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, there is imposed on me the duty and responsibility of taking all measures necessary to the prosecution of the war. Prompt and willing obedience to the orders that I shall issue is essential.

Effective civil administration of France must be provided by Frenchmen. All persons must continue in their present duties unless otherwise instructed. Those who have made common cause with the enemy and so betrayed their country will be removed. As France is liberated from her oppressors, you yourselves will choose your representatives, and the government under which you wish to live. 

In the course of this campaign for the final defeat of the enemy you may sustain further loss and damage. Tragic though they may be, they are part of the price of victory. I assure you that I shall do all in my power to mitigate your hardships. I know that I can count on your steadfastness now, no less than in the past. The heroic deeds of Frenchmen who have continued the struggle against the Nazis and their Vichy satellites, in France and throughout the French Empire, have been an example and an inspiration to all of us.

This landing is but the opening phase of the campaign in Western Europe. Great battles lie ahead. I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us. Keep your faith staunch – our arms are resolute – together we shall achieve victory.

At the end of the speech, every woman & man in the pub stood, all their faces streaming with tears & applauded.

Humbled by their reaction to an event that occurred thirty one years earlier, before either of us was born, we were silent & still.

I lost my appetite for my tomato & cheese sandwich on buttered white bread & for those comforting copious cups of hot tea.  Other speeches were played & read, but this was a speech by the American general who would become the 34^th President of the United States.

And then a man at a table near us reached out his hand, & smiled.

You are Americans, aren’t you?

One of us replied yes, sir & he got up from his table, shook our hands & said

Welcome.  You will always be welcome here.

Other patrons stopped at our table on their exit out of the pub to give greetings & solidarity.  As we left, those that remained called out wishes for a safe & happy journey.

It was one of those singular moments that sometimes happen when you travel & attempt to mesh yourself in the local culture. 

On our trip that summer, we experienced incredible singular moments.

But none like that particular moment.  A moment that was not just about being American or British or French or Russian or Australian or Belgian or Brazilian or Canadian or Chinese or Danish or Greek or Dutch or New Zealanders or Norwegians or Polish or South African or Yugoslavian.

 It was not even about being German or Italian or Japanese or Hungarian or Romanian or Bulgarian.

It was about a day that will ever remain in our nation’s collective memory, & other nations’ collective memories, as the day when all who loved freedom stood together, kept their faith staunch, their arms resolute & achieved victory over an enemy that threatened the world.

On this day, the 70^th anniversary of D-Day, I salute those men & women whose sacrifice guaranteed that the rest of us could emerge.  Free.

Jaki Jean on Another Conversation about Jean

I used to think that this was the most we ever looked alike, until now.

Today, another conversation with our Home Health Care Provider.

Jaki:  This is Jaki Ettinger, Jean Ettinger’s daughter.  May I speak with Vincent?

Voice answering the phone:  Miss Jaki, this is Vincent.

At once, I remember that I hate being called Miss Jaki.  Except by a five year old.

Jaki:  Vincent, we have a problem.  A very big problem.

I explain to Vincent, not for the first time, that I have fired one Home Health Care Provider.  I explain that the reasons for that firing had to do with the quality of care or lack of it, that the nurses did not listen to me & my mother ended up in the hospital with her kidneys functioning at less than 15%.

I remind him that his company has traditionally given my mother the very best of care & concern.

Next, I tell Vincent that the colostomy supplies I ordered should have been delivered to our home, just like all the other supplies Medicare covers.  I explain that I don’t care about that he ordered two patient’s supplies & my mother’s ended up at the other patient’s house.

Then  I take a deep breath & address the subject of the nurse Vincent has assigned to my mother. that said nurse did not show up yesterday as scheduled.  

That I know I cannot have our cherished Chike, who has moved on in his studies, but that I need a nurse who will honor her/his word, a nurse who wants to be a Chike, a nurse who will take care of my mother.

And then I tell him that I know that I am demanding, but that I make no apologies for those demands.  This is my mother. 

I hope, Vincent, that you would demand the same for your mother.

And in closing, I tell Vincent that the only reason his company is still employed is Loretta, the Home Health Aid who comes twice a week to bathe my mother & wash her hair.  

I do not tell him that I can do both.

Instead I tell him:

I work our schedule around Loretta’s schedule, Vincent.  She is that fine.  I want a nurse who will inspire the same response.

We shall see.  Every day of this journey with Jean brings a different challenge & an amazing joy.

While I was editing this post, Vincent called.  He told me that Medicare would now only pay for a nurse to come once a week.

Vincent,  I replied, Raphael  (yes the offending nurse’s name was Raphael, & apparently never  a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle) did not tell me of the change.

Vincent kept explaining things but all I heard was that Chike was available to come once a week to check on & care for Jean.

And I wept for joy.

JJ on Why the Bounders Still Rule

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Today, my friend Cate Poe, of Connecting with Cate, posted about street art in San Miguel de Allende, (where she lives with a Texan & too many currently beige walls) & about street art by women across the world.

And my thoughts went immediately to three black & white photographs I retrieved from the space once in Jean & Jack's  house once occupied by my Omega Son Sam.

For many years & in many spaces, these photographs resided on the walls of where I lived.  In the rooms of places I lived alone, in the rooms of places I shared, in the rooms I tried to create for my sons to call home.

And then they ended up in Sam’s space, along with my paintings that dated from long before Jaki Jean thought about children, or sons. 

When Sam moved out to begin his own life & write his own text, he took those paintings with him.  Except for one, which I asked him to leave.

The why of that is another story, not for this moment.

He did not take the black & white photos of Houston inner-city graffiti.

I remember driving by the brick fence on which that graffiti text was drawn & written when I was an inner city dweller, living in a quadraplex on Stanford Street.  I remember how it absorbed me, how I wondered who created it, what did it signify, why this particular place.  

I must have discussed it too many times at family dinners with my parents & siblings.

Because one day, for my birthday or perhaps for Christmas, I received three 8x10 black & white photos of the art work that so intrigued me, courtesy of my sister Janet.

The images – an outline of an androgynous human body, the declaration The Bounders Rule, were not exclusive to the corner I passed on the way from my apartment on Stanford Street & Richmond Avenue to travel across downtown to the Spanish Village on Almeda for margaritas & conversation.

Each trip, to Spanish Village & from Spanish Village, those images intrigued & delighted me.

Over the years I have heard two different stories about the origin of these images.  The Bounders were a skateboarding street gang, the Bounders were a group of Bellaire High School students who traveled across the inner city, outlining their bodies on public buildings, public places, public streets.  And pronouncing that the Bounders ruled.

I heard the story about the skateboard gang from a fellow inner city dweller.  I heard the story about the Bellaire High School kids from a graduate, who claimed to be part of the rebellious & daring group.

One of the body outlines was on an overpass over the Southwest Freeway.  She had a plausible explanation for how that was accomplished, so my instinct was to believe she had been a Bounder.

Not long after Sam was born, I met a group of college students who had graduated from Bellaire with my source & they firmly denounced her claim.

Jaki, even in high school, she fabricated adventures.

During the time I was friends with my source, ten years my junior, she told me many plausible stories. 

About living in Greece for a year, about leaving her parents’ home at 18 to escape her father’s control, about the pressures of growing up Catholic, about an abortion she had before moving to Washington, DC, another pregnancy scare while we were sharing an apartment on Virginia Avenue next to the State Department, a job with CBS, a lump in her breast, a scheduled surgery to remove the lump.

We were polar opposites politically, absolute soul mates when it came to literature, text  & children.  She sent me a subscription to William F. Buckley’s The National Review & gleefully renewed it for years.  She once donated money to the Republican National Committee in my name.

It took me decades to get the elephants to remove this donkey from their mailing lists. 

Only during the 2008 election did I finally convince them they were not going to win me over.  William F. Buckley aside.  My love affair with him was with his voice, his words, his command of the English language.

Not his conservatism.

She was brilliant, articulate, kind.  And a wonderful writer.

Much later, after the day her mother was due to come to D.C. for her surgery, the day she took my son Nicholas to the Air & Space Museum for the nth time, the day she cleaned the apartment, destroyed all her correspondence, drank a fifth of gin & consumed all of Nick’s allergy medication, all her fiance’s pain medication & threw herself into the Potomac, I learned that she did, indeed, fabricate adventures.

She also took my half of the rent & the phone bill, but did not pay her half.  While she was recovering from her suicide attempt, I was served with eviction papers.  I cannot count the number of times that the phone was disconnected & I believed every fabricated story she told me.

Of course, in retrospect, there were signs.  Some we recognized, some we allowed her to explain away.  Too many ignored when we tried to talk to her family.

She healed, her fiancé paid all her debts, worked closely with her doctors.    They got married quietly, he found her a job writing a newsletter from home, they had a son.

She sent me a wonderful crib mobile that played classical music when Sam was born.

She was not a Bounder, but she was, & is, a survivor.

The wall that once displayed the Bounders declaration has long since been whitewashed clean. 

Retrieving the Bounder graffiti from Sam’s former space a few weeks ago, I brought them downstairs & told my sister Janet that I wanted to reframe them, with denim mats to match the quilt she made me.

The photos are still in the Lucite frames from so many decades ago. 

When I look at them, I remember that brilliant Bounder wannabe & how she conquered her demons, most of which were surely caused by a chemical imbalance.

And when I look at the Bounder photos,   I also remember what it was to be a young woman living in the inner city surrounded by friends, art, intelligence, voice.  And wonder.

Thank you, Cate, for reminding me of who I was & still am at heart.  And who I can be.

Bounders still rule.

Note:  The original photographs are much finer than the pictures I took through the Lucite frames & cropped for this Blog.  My apologies to my sister.