the mantra is: wait til june ...

it's still busy at home and at work. being away 3 wkends in a row was important but a tad brutal. it will be nice to be home all the way through next week. things are shaking out a bit at work: rabbi goes on sabbatical; we enter the last few days of the holiday of Shavuot (bring on the blintzes, 8 AM on Friday morning). an all night (well 10 pm - 1 am) study session at Congregation Sinai tomorrow. gotta go to that. i miss text study and intellectual engagement a lot. there is rarely time.

the fence is starting to be rebuilt. need to leave a note for the across the fence neighbors because it will require getting on to their property and i promised i would do the advance work. i can drop it off on the walk tomorrow morning. and i have a salad garden: 4 kinds of tomatoes, red peppers and japanese cucumbers. 70 days from now call to see if things are being harvested. apricots are nuts again this year but the designer confirmed: no peaches or nectarines at all in the back. hmmmmmm.

well plenty late. tomorrow is another busy day and then there are the blintzes on friday.

catch the sliver of the moon. it is really lovely.
i'm a bit concerned about the nighttime walks, having read in the paper about two attacks at the major intersection near here. and then i heard helicopters last night. better to be cautious.

my father's library contains such a wide range of books...

i can always pick one up and find something very interesting. lately i've been bringing home one book each trip. today i picked up "Full Catasrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness" by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. The first page I opened was 161:

"Wholeness and connectedness are what are most fundamental in our nature as living beings. No matter how many scars we carry about from what we have gone through and suffered in the past, our intrinsic wholenss is still here: what else contains the scars? None of us has to be a helpless victim of what was done to us or what was not done for us in the past, nor do we have to be helpless in the face of what we may be suffering now. We are also what was present before the scarring, our original wholeness, what was born whole. And we can reconnect up with our intrinsic wholeness at any time because its very nature is that it is always present. So when we make contact with the domain of being in the meditation practice, we are already beyond the scarring, beyond the isolation and fragmentation and suffering we may be experiencing. This means it will always be possible to trascend fragmentation, fear, vulnerability and insecurity, even despair, if you come to see differently, to see with eyes of wholeness. ...

Feeling whole, even for brief moments (as in meditation) nourishes us on a deep level. It is a source of healing and wisdom when faced with stress and pain. ... You probably won't be too surprised to learn that the very word "health" itself means whole. Whole implies integration, an interconnectedness of all parts of a system or organism, a completeness. The nature of wholeness is that it is always present."

So I thought I would share that excerpt.
Have not yet been to the ocean. Need to leave in 90 minutes to take Daniel back to the airport (he is down for the day). The beach is pretty full (it is Memorial Day weekend, after all, even if it is not really toasty and warm). People are at the water, but not a lot in the water. The sailboats are having a wonderful time in the wind, tho.

back home...it's quiet outside at 12:15 AM

yeah, walking the cat. he was anxious to go out. ate some grass. smelled some bushes. same old, same old, but he doesn't get tired of it.

uneventful flight home. sat next to a young indian couple who had gotten married in california in september but went to her parents home in upstate new york for the formal family weekend of parties and celebration. almost 300 people. wow. just like in the bollywood movies. her hands were still painted with henna.

back to the ny experience:
monday was the day to romp in manhattan. we drove into the city in adam's truck and stopped at aud's apartment. he parked the car and we took cabs up to jean georges. omg omg omg. the best deal in manhattan. $25 prix fixe lunch. two items plus dessert. i had cod (with spinach and something else) and tenderloin (with potatoes and something else). plus the chocolate/ginger ice cream with a small dollop of lychee frozen yogurt. other fabulous items at the table: snapper cooked with small sprigs of lavender. tuna tartare with shaved radishes and sesame soy ginger vinaigrette. shrimp salad with avocado, tomato, greens, truffle oil. omg omg omg. and as we were leaving, Gordon Ramsey, of "hell's kitchen" walked out of the other dining room, not 15 feet away from us.

after lunch we wandered to the Time Warner Center, browsed around. the museum of art and design bookstore. several watch stores. ending up back at aud's. the boys went down to the village, we rested. aud and i met my cousin nancy and her husband stan for dinner at the Centro Cafe in grand central station, which was good because we needed to take the train back up to white plains because the kids were staying in the city. more food. i had cold pea soup and bastilla (moroccan chicken in phyllo pastry, with raisins and cinnamon. yum. and a chocolate lava cake for the table for dessert. yum. it is all about the food (and the shoes).

strange day at work started with my keyboard not working on the computer. it went ok but there is so much to do.

greetings from white plains, ny

it's been a busy week, getting ready to fly here on Thursday night (with 45 min delay etc). but i arrived chez Audrey in time on Friday morning, and we went for breakfast and purchased 2 dzn assorted bagels for the weekend. yum. we took a cab to grand central station, bought a sourcream and apple pie and took the train up here. we had several shopping stops like costco to lay in other provisions. food is important.

today was the unveiling of Linda's headstone. Audrey had a wonderful job done. it reads Linda Terry Blauner Klein
aug 21, 1984 - apr 13, 2008
beloved mom
sister, daughter
granddaughter, partner

the order is just right.
we had a minyan (10 people) including Rabbi Gordon Tucker, from the conservative synagogue a half block away from the house. linda's cousin Ellen was there, and also uncle Murray and his wife, along with audrey, elinor, david and julia, adam and me. it was only half an hour. rabbi read from psalms, sang "el malei rachamim," a few people spoke, and then kaddish. it was not easy. but now it too is passed.

i wrote a haiku this morning:

the first year has passed.
you bring us all together.
we are family.

it is wonderful being around the brothers klein. they are in good form.

after the ceremony we ate way too much yummy food, came back to the house, went for a long walk in the amazing neighborhood and are now kinda hanging out. it is drizzly and grey, contrast to Friday when it was sunny and close to 70 degrees, i think.

that's about it for now.
with appreciation to those of you who were able to write letting me know you were thinking of us. :-) lots of love all around.

happy mothers day etc.

from santa monica where it was another grey day. no clear line between the ocean and the sky. a few sailboats out. lots of people in the water, though.

today was "take care of deborah day," which included yoga, a massage, a swim in the pool and a bit of hot tub. not too bad. kinda made up for not getting to the ocean, which i think i must do in the morning which means setting the alarm. there is nothing quite like being right there, seeing, smelling, tasting and hearing the ocean.

happy mothers day, to everyone who is a mother or has a mother.

stuff and things

ketzl is such a boy. he likes taking a pish out of doors. we walked tonight and it had gotten cooler.

i'm laffing at the people here who think what we experienced today was humidity. well, it is more than we are used to here, but seriously, folks. try wisconsin in july. or ohio or new york. lots of places have real humidity. and the bugs that go with it.

starting to think about the logistics of flying three weekends in a row. it is beginning to get to me, of course with the emotional overlay of seeing Linda's family and going to the graveside for the unveiling of her headstone. yet another concrete evidence that she has been gone a year. thunk.

and there is so much to do in the way of packing and organizing and getting ready, 3 times. ok. off to start for this weekend. and set up laundry. another never-ending cycle.

measuring progress

i'm not there yet, but things are changing.
i'm not reading the obituary pages any more. well i did a few days ago, and found that the ex-husband of a high school classmate had died. but for a while there i was reading them almost every day, looking for others who died from pancreatic cancer. being frustrated when sometimes it would say simply "cancer" and not specify. i certainly don't check the grief/mourning sections of bookstores any more, and i'm ready to part with a number of books that i've collected over the past year. i thought when i first got them that i would keep them forever. there are 3 or 4 that i will keep but the rest i'm happy to pass along to the group or the library at Hospice of the Valley.

so sometimes the progress is measurable, and sometimes not.
at least there is a clear direction.

4/30/09

the turning of the page
...
the month really doesn't exist yet until the calendar page has turned.
the new days early on startle us as things which were "coming up"
are now fully upon us.
surprise, they say.
we are not the future; we are the now.
and the suddenness of the approach knocks us off balance.
plans made eons ago suddenly require implementation.
things which were future are now on today's to do list.
what was "not quite here yet" is now today's details.
the onslaught of time
starts with the turn of the calendar page.

post from April 26, santa monica

things have been wacka wacka at work. not even time to post this from the previous weekend. nor to write anything new. starting to breathe now, but 3 weekends of travel approach. so here's what i wrote on the 26th of april.

another weekend in santa monica.
things are slowing down. there is a lot of sleeping going on. but we did do two walks today. yesterday was really incredibly windy and when we returned from the farmers market (yum yum) we just stayed in. actually watched some basketball and a fabulous baseball game between the Red Sox and Yankees. 16-12 was, i believe, the final score, in favor of the Sox, which was good cuz they were at home. home runs, going through the full line-up between the 7th and 8th innings. more than 4 hours of baseball, and by the looks of the stands, very few people left.

tonight i had my first mongolian taxi driver. perhaps the first mongolian i had ever met. his first name Dash (well there is another syllable) is actually tibetan, he said, because his family and many mongolians became buddhists and incorporated a lot of tibetan words and names. he has two cousins here, but his mother and brothers are still in mongolia. he would like to be able to return home. we talked a bit about the change in political/economic situations after the fall of communism. problem was, there was no infrastructure. he was a mining engineer i think. that is one of the few areas where things could develop. we talked about the difference in weather. he compared mongolia to the colorado rockies, for a more familiar reference. i think i'd like to go to mongolia one day. on the list of places left to visit.

the shampoo i used today is 9 years old. i know the hotel where we got it. outside the cleveland airport, i think, on one of my 6 trips to ohio during 1999-2000. one of the earlier ones. i think when we stayed in Cleveland for a night too. maybe to see the bob fosse play in a fabulous old theatre. not sure of the specifics. i suppose i could look it up somehow. but it is not important. but i know where the shampoo came from. origins are somehow important.

more beach rocks, this time separated out in a small plastic bag outside any backpack, still caught the eye of the screener, who called his superior, who came over and held up the bag of rocks. and pronounced them to be okay. better than last time when they were inside the suitcase, causing them to take them out and re-screen everything, making me incredibly late for the plane. so this is better, except that the plane is delayed at least an hour tonight. the guy at the podium announced that the plane had not actually left san jose to come here. so it's a good thing i'm not picking daniel up. thank you jeremy.

tim is doing much much better as his nose and throat are healing and general strength is improving. moved friday to a rehab facility (actually the 7th floor of the Duke Univ Hospital) where he should be for the next 2-3 weeks, doing 6 hrs of OT/PT daily. that's a pretty brutal schedule but it will be worth it.
{update from North Carolina: jeremy is there now, making a move to a larger 1st floor apartment. tim is doing very well in rehab, working hard. should be back to the new apartment end of the week.}

more later.