My calendar has been lying on my desk all morning, open (by some unrelated scheduling) to the week of my birthday. With one of my classically uncoordinated moves, I reached for my spoon, scooped up a mound of oatmeal from the bowl also sitting on my desk and then inadvertently dumped the entire spoonful into the calendar. Right onto May 14th (which is, in fact, my 27th birthday).

I’m hoping that this is not a bad omen.

I went to a friend’s departmental goodbye party this afternoon. She was one of the first people I met when I moved to Philly, and now, after four years, she’s leaving for better things and exciting opportunities. This was the first of what I assume will be many send off events I’ll attend for her over the next couple of months.

As I walked into the party, she was surrounded by her (almost entirely female) students. They took turns engaging her in conversation, the rest hanging on to her every word, waiting their turn to address her. It was obvious how much they liked and respected her. There was even a little awe/hero worship going on. I got a kick out of watching her inhabit this role that was mostly foreign to me. It was interesting to see the people who made up the other half of her life. She spotted me and eventually made her way over to say hi, but was quickly caught up in conversation with her admirers. It was fine, as I know it was not my last opportunity to say goodbye.

I have another dear friend who’s moving at the end of May, to go back to her home state of Texas. She told her boss today that she’s leaving, which adds an additional layer of reality to my understanding of her departure. We’ve carefully orchestrated the weekends between now and then to include as many Philly activities as we can. This Saturday is thrift stores and the Italian Market, followed by an evening of cooking at my apartment. There’s also a trip to the Dansko outlet, a visit to the zoo, a weekend in New York and a day of Philly tourist stuff on the agenda in the coming weeks. All fun, but not without an element of the bittersweet.

I am sad to see these two women go, they’ve both played vital roles in my life over the last four years. But I’m also deeply okay with it, as I know absolutely that they are making moves that are good and right for them. I even feel little bursts of excitement, knowing that their lives are about to change in both dramatic and minute ways.

I think in some ways, I’m also just a little bit envious, as they are taking steps to walking through freshly opened doors, while all I can see for myself right now is that first crack of light. Well, you’ve always got to start somewhere.

I left work early today. I don’t often do things like that, mostly because I have a boss who doesn’t let me, but also because I start to finally get productive right around 3 pm and so need to harness that energy. Today, however, my boss was out of the office, I wasn’t getting anything useful done and the weather was beautiful. So I took the opportunity to sneak out an hour early. Walking down Market Street, my mind was fairly empty, except for thoughts of what to have for dinner. I wasn’t really paying attention to my surroundings, but in the distance I saw a familiar person (what it with me and running into people on Market Street?).

It was my friend Shay, who I’ve been trying to make plans with for weeks. We used to work together (although we were friends even before that), and would see each other every day. It’s been strange to lead a life so devoid of her presence for the last nine months. But there she was, thrown perfectly into my path. We hugged tightly and stood in the middle of the sidewalk for a good fifteen minutes, talking, laughing and giving each other much needed reality checks. It was like no time had passed at all since we had last been together.

She needed to get to class, so we parted ways, each continuing in the direction from which the other had come. I giggled to myself the entire way home, feeling happy and grateful for the encounter.

Another stage on the road to adulthood…

Just about once a week I find myself apologizing to my mother for the obnoxious acts I performed while growing up. Today’s apology was issued when my mom reminded me about a fit I threw at the ripe age of 19. My parents had invited me to come with them to dinner to celebrate their wedding anniversary, and I started crying over the salads because my dad wanted me to pay for the replacement hard drive for my computer. I remembered this event with just a little embarrassment and said, “I am so sorry that I was such a pain in the ass so much of the time.” Her response was simply that she has always loved being my mother, and that she learned a very important lesson that night.

Never invite your children along for your anniversary dinners.

I can’t tell you at what age I had my first cup of coffee, but I can tell you that I was young. My parents have always been coffee drinkers, establishing the smell of brewing coffee as something deeply linked to mornings (especially weekend ones). I could have told you how they liked their coffee when I was four or five (although my mom had a period in there where she drank Postum, which messed up the system. Thankfully, she came to realize the error of her ways, and returned to coffee, albeit decaf). My mother likes her coffee to evoke the taste of coffee ice cream, so she always puts in a spoonful of sugar and quite a lot of milk. My dad on the other hand puts no sugar in his coffee, and prefers that it is not stirred after the addition of milk. Watching him put together his morning cup one Saturday morning when I was around eight years old, I commented on the fact that I liked it that he didn’t stir, because I liked seeing the swirls of coffee and milk as they fought and finally came together. He grinning at me and told me that that’s why he did it.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest as espresso came of age and coffeeshops appeared on every corner, it was hard to miss the call of caffeine. There was a Boyds a block and a half from my high school, and my friends and I would often skip a class to go down there to get a mocha (which they made with sweet chocolate syrup, a practice that would now make me shudder) or a latte. The Christmas I was 14, I announced that I wanted an espresso maker as my big gift that year. My parents got me one, a little white DeLonghi machine, where your ability to steam coffee was dependent on how tightly you had packed the grounds into the holder. I made lattes for my entire extended family (we were down in LA my grandma Bunny’s house for what turned out to be her last Christmas, there were many relatives) that morning. I burnt myself several times before I got the routine down, but managed to coax many decent cups of coffee out of that little guy.

However, despite my life-long devotion to coffee, it took me years to build up a steadfast caffeine addiction. I would drink coffee fairly regularly, and then stop for weeks at a time, always stating that I wanted to save the effect of the caffeine for times when I really needed it. However, lately I’ve come to realize that I can no longer deny it. I am deeply addicted to coffee. A day without a cup, and I hurt, my head pounds and I want to crawl back into bed. I rely on either a french press or a little Bialetti stovetop espresso maker to get me through the morning. But really, I don’t mind. I love the ritual, the taste, the smell of coffee and offer thanks to that first person who figured out that if you dry, roast, grind and run those beans through hot water, that something good comes out.

It’s Friday and I’m still not entirely sure what happened to Monday. One of the happy things that Friday brings with it is the chance to post a Random Friday Ten. You know the rules, but for the sake of clarity, here they are. Set your pod or other, admittedly inferior, digital music device to shuffle/random and report back the first ten (or eleven) songs it spits out. No omitting, hedging, or sleight of hand allowed.

1. Magic, Ben Folds Five (The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner)
2. Paint it, Black, Sneakin’ Out (Mississippi Studios Live)
3. I’m Nuthin’, Ethan Hawk (Reality Bites)
4. Logical Song, Supertramp (Magnolia)
5. Baba O’Riley, The Who (My Generation-The Very Best of the Who)
6. Jesus on the Mainline, Ollabelle (Ollabelle)
7. I Was in the House When the House Burned Down, Warren Zevon (Genius: Best of Warren Zevon)
8. Shining Through, Fredo Starr & Jill Scott (Save the Last Dance)
9. The Lighthouses Tale, Nickel Creek (Nickel Creek)
10. Mystery Train, Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Strawberry Jam)

Favorite Song: The Lighthouses Tale by Nickel Creek. I like songs that tell a good story, and this one does that brilliantly. Plus, there’s some good mandolin work.

Favorite Album: Strawberry Jam by the Butterfield Blues Band. I’m not sure when exactly I discovered the Butterfield Blues Band, but I’m certain that it was my dad’s responsibility. I went through a distinct and power blues obsession in my early college years, and was always asking him to send me more music, and I believe this was part of that era.

Least Favorite Song: Shining Through by Fredo Starr and Jill Scott. I don’t know why, but this one doesn’t do it for me.

Least Favorite Album: Ollabelle. I bought this album because XPN always played one song from it that I really liked. Then I bought it and discovered that it was just a little too much Christian rock for my tastes.

Seen Live: I’ve seen Ben Folds a couple of times, once two summers ago down at Penn’s Landing Festival Pier (which shouldn’t really be considered a concert venue, it’s a big stage on a parking lot with fences around it) and at a World Cafe Live free at noon thing last year on my birthday.

Portland Connection: Sneakin’ Out is a Portland area band that my sister has played with, and who, according to my parents, are absolutely hilarious. They’ll be playing at the High Sierra Music Festival this summer with my sister.

Need more Random Friday? Check out these folks:
Andrea
Ashley
Ben
Brian
Dodi
Fred
Howard
Jill
Luna
Mac
Mark
Matthew
Sherri

If you are playing along, let me know, and I’ll add you to the list.

I’m feeling neither creative or particularly interesting these days. I’ve been going through a period where I’ve needed a lot of sleep, and haven’t wanted to do much. A friend asked me recently if I thought I was depressed, and I thought about it for a minute before I responded that I’m neither sad nor depressed. I’m simply feeling kind of quiet. I’m calling it my emotional growth spurt of 2006. I’ve actually been feeling like I’m preparing for something new, maybe a change in the way my life functions. All these thoughts had been percolating for sometime when I went to read my Free Will Astrology horoscope today. It said:

I once knew a psychic who worked with people in comas. He contacted their spirits, which were wandering in limbo between this world and the next, and tried to convince them to either fully return to their bodies or else let their bodies die and formally exit to the other side. The task you now face is nowhere as dramatically life-and-death as that, Taurus, but it’s comparable in a sense: Being neither here nor there is a futile state that you shouldn’t continue to accept. Do what’s necessary to make the knotty choice with as much grace as possible.

I’m not exactly sure what the choice is, but I’m ready to make it.

A large, invisible hand is currently locked down on the right side of my skull. Light hurts my eyes, and the movie my roommate is watching is causing my head to implode over and over again. The only immediate future I can envision right now involves a dark room, several more ibuprofen and sleep. Deep sleep.

I’ll post something worth reading tomorrow, when my brain has returned to it’s normal size and shape.

Four years ago today my grandmother died. She had spent the better part of two weeks in the hospital, but the end came more suddenly than I was prepared for. Looking back on it, I should have been ready for her to slip away that morning, but I wasn’t. No family members were with her in her last moments, as I had chosen to go to work that day after most of a week away, and my mom’s younger brother was sleeping off a cold at the apartment, fearful that had he been with her in the hospital that he would get her sick(er).

I remember going to find her in the emergency room, when I couldn’t reach anyone in the apartment for most of the day. She was little and alone in a big hospital bed, waiting to be admitted. She had lost the bulk of her expressive powers to a stroke ten years earlier, and for reasons that still infuriate me, her aide had left her by herself in a curtained off triage cubby, confident that the nurses would take care of her. I stayed with her that entire night, walking along side her bed as they rolled her into a room at 2 am, sleeping on the lightly padded window seat until morning.

I spent large parts of the next two weeks with her at the hospital, ever thankful that the non-profit I worked for at the time was run by a woman who had known my grandparents for more than 3 decades, and wanted to ensure that my grandmother got the very best care. I brought in bottles of lotion, bags of candy, hand mirrors and tubes of lipstick, hoping to make Tutu comfortable and happy. She slept away several days, and then suddenly started to perk up. Visitors came and went, and I stayed. I held her hand and quietly sang. I rubbed circles on her back and smoothed scented cream into the backs of her hands, the skin there resembling vintage silk. I cried a lot and told her it was okay to go.

Her period of improvement peaked and then started to recede. She became mostly unconscious and her breathing became labored. I will never forget the gurgling sound that accompanied each intake of air. With the help of a nurse and some vaseline, we pulled her rings off her swelling fingers, to relieve the pressure. They were hard to remove and it wrenched my gut to pull at her fingers like that. It was during that act that I knew she was already essentially gone, as had she been lucid she never would have stood for such treatment.

I was at work the morning she died, having gone in for a couple of hours with the idea in mind that I would head over to visit during my lunch hour. My phone rang and the island-accented voice on the other end said, “Marisa, it’s Margaret. It’s over. She’s gone.” I left work in a fog, and walked the four blocks from my office to Jefferson hospital. When I got there, Margaret was standing in the hallway, with a bag of my grandmother’s personal things. A sign had been posted on the door, asking that anyone who wished to go in first speak to the duty nurse. Margaret headed back to the apartment, and I stayed there, to call the funeral home and handle anything else. I peaked into the room, but could hardly look at the body in the bed. I remember from my quick glance that her neck was bent at a funny angle, and that her hair had reverted to it’s natural curl, after years of religious straightening. Most people say that when they see a loved one after death, that they realize quickly that the one to whom they were close isn’t in that shell anymore. I’d like to say that was true, but my grandmother identified so deeply with her body, with being beautiful, that it was hard for me to separate her spirit from her body.

I quickly walked out and stood in the hallway, waiting to talk to someone. A social work student who was interning on the floor came up to the door and started to go in, but then read the sign on the door and stopped. She turned to me and asked why she couldn’t go in. That was the moment that I started to weep. I wanted to scream at her, and a part of me didn’t understand how it was possible that she was proceeding with her normal routine, when my life had just changed so drastically.

After I dealt with what needed to be dealt with at the hospital, I started making phone calls as I walked home. My uncle was sound asleep in the apartment, he sleeps with a machine that blows air up his nose (to manage his sleep apnea), and so I hadn’t been able to wake him with the phone. I woke him, and we went for breakfast at Little Pete’s, the restaurant that had been my grandparents’ home away from home. Telling some of the waitresses there that she had died was harder than telling some members of my family.

The funeral was held several days later. My grandmother was dressed in leopard print pajamas (it was a closed casket, but I liked knowing that she wore animal prints to the end) and I dressed like she would have, in all black, with lots of eye makeup and heels. Little Pete’s catered the reception.

I moved to Philadelphia in part to be here for my grandmother. I had no idea that we would only get 10 weeks together before she would make her exit. But having spent those last days with her, I would never choose to do it differently. I will forever be grateful to have had that time with her, and to have helped her know how deeply she was loved.

I walked up to the counter at Sue’s Produce Sunday afternoon and managed to catch the tail end of a conversation that caught my attention. A young woman with a vaguely British accent was explaining the virtues of the fruit she was buying to the woman behind her in line. She explained that she didn’t like it at first, but that her husband was from Ecuador, and that she had come to love it. I leaned in a little to hear more of the conversation and to try to catch a glimpse of what fruit she was talking about. The man bagging her groceries gave it away a second later, when he talked about the sizes they can reach. And I knew.

Papaya.

I ate a lot of papaya the summer I spent in Indonesia. I stayed for two weeks in a cheap hotel in Bali that offered breakfast as part of the deal. In addition to bunches of slightly spicy mini bananas, there was always a flower-garnished platter of papaya on the buffet table. I ate it every day, each morning hoping I would like it better than I did the day before, and each morning feeling disappointed that I couldn’t help but find that it tasted slightly of vomit.

Several months ago, I woke up one morning with the realization that my ever-regular lower intestinal system had suddenly stopped being so reliable. Being one who is rarely constipated, when it happens, it freaks me out just a little. I called my mom, hoping that she’d have the mother-knowledge I’d need to get me through this situation. Her advice was to slow down on my normal abundant veggie intake and drink papaya juice. Having eaten all that papaya in Bali to limited enjoyment, I was wary of trying it out again, but I figured it was worth a try.

That first sip of papaya juice sent me slamming down a tunnel of nostalgia that was so thick that I was momentarily dizzy. It wasn’t an experience of memories so much as a momentary trip to another time and place. It seems I spent a lot of time constipated as a young child and so had consumed a whole lot of papaya juice. In those days, my mom would give me a bottle full of watered down papaya juice and wait until it did the job. When I called my mom to tell her how instantly the papaya juice had triggered a scent/taste memory, she burst out laughing. Thankfully, the magic of papaya works as well on 26 year olds as it does on 2 year olds. It’s nice to know that some things don’t change.

Since I’m telling poop stories, I’ve now got one for you about prunes. Specifically about my parents’ dog Bonnie and a 2 pound bag of prunes. Bonnie is a mutt, with just a little Dingo (wild Australian dog) in her. Dingos never know when or where their next meal is coming from, so they eat any time they encounter food, or anything that even resembles food. This is a trait that was passed down to Bonnie from her many times great-grand-dingo. She eats anything and is always scavenging for food. Nothing is safe. I’ve watched her scrape chewing gum off the sidewalk with her front teeth, so convinced was she that it was going to be her last meal.

One time, about six years ago, my mother bought a 2 pound bag of prunes (I think that she was going to make hamentaschen, but one never knows in my parents’ house). The bag was left on the counter, and while it was scooted back until it rested up again the wall, the clever and resourceful Bonnie found a way to get her paws on it. My parents came home to a mostly empty bag, a sticky kitchen floor, and a dog that was hiding in the basement, as she knew she had been bad. Prunes have an intensely laxative effect after just a few, but 2 pounds, well, that’s just asking for trouble. Or a colon explosion.

My parents immediately called the vet. The first question they asked was whether the prunes were pitted or not (they were). With that information in hand, the nice woman on the phone just started laughing hysterically, but with a trace of pity in her voice. She told my parents that Bonnie would be fine, but that they might want to lock her someplace they didn’t care about too much, as she was going to be running fast and loose for the next couple of days. It took three days for those prunes to run their course, and I think that in addition to celery, they are the only thing that Bonnie will refuse to eat. I guess some memories just never leave you, even if you are a dog.