quote of the day

"For one thing, although bone may seem like stone, it is tirelessly, ambitiously alive."
-Natalie Angier, Bone

(with sincere and utmost thanks to the one and only
Erik D. Pfeiffer for bringing this article to my attention)

siblings (& Dad & Scout)

gingerbread with fire dog topping

This was one of my absolute favorite things as a child, something I'd bake every year around Christmas time. These last few years Mom's been suggesting, somewhat wistfully, that I make it whenever I've been home over the holidays, but somehow it never actually happened. Finally, despite it's not being quite the season, we made this a couple days ago and it was even better than I remembered. Recipe stolen from the Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys & Girls (page 96).

Gingerbread (annotated):
Heat oven to 325 degrees.
Grease & flour 9-inch square pan.

Mix thoroughly:
1/2 cup soft shortening (or softened butter)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg

Blend in:
1 cup dark molasses
1 cup boiling water

Stir in:
2 1/4 cups sifted Gold Medal flour
1 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ginger (heaping)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (heaping)
1-2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized and/or fresh ginger

Beat until smooth.
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake 45-50 minutes (or until toothpick comes out clean).

Fire Dog Topping:
Spread over hot gingerbread a mixture of 3/4 cup of confectioner's sugar, 2 tablespoons milk.

Sprinkle brown sugar over top & serve warm, possibly with apple sauce.

optimism, cold spring, 4.25.09

fresh eggs, anacortes, 4.20.09

morning, Federal Way, WA, 4.18.09

'i basked in you...'

I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)

-Franz Wright

madison square

dave at dusk, 4.15.09

journaling, or, exchanges transcribed

"Theirs is a love hate relationship."
"Yeah. She loves him. We hate him."
(Mohegan Lake, 1995)

"I just don't like the taste of alcohol. I guess I'll have to explore the world of--"
"Sobriety?"
"--pot."
(Idaho, 1996)

avocado tree, rejuvenated

journaling, or, sometimes people go but then sometimes they come back

11/26/00
I dragged C to the Jefferson Valley Mall, it was sort of scary to be there after all these years. I got sparkly gloves and a 2001 day planner and 4 lighters at the dollar store. We went back to C's and called E and the three of us met up at the Olympic Diner for dinner. It was really good to see E again after all this time. This sounds sort of silly, but he still gives those same real hugs that I always loved so much about him. He looks pretty much the same, maybe a little bit heavier, a little more clean-cut, a little less edgy somehow, but still good. Dinner was kind of awkward but also kind of funny and entertaining. Afterwards he drove me into Peekskill to the train station but the next train wasn't for an hour. He waited there with me for most of the time. We got out of the car to smoke a cigarette and I was getting sort of hyper and jumping around (to combat the cold, of course). We walked down to the river and back and he said, "You know, I thought you were gone forever." He said he feels too young to have a job like his, that he should be washing dishes or something. He said he wants to get the hell out of Detroit, back to the east coast, maybe NY. He kept looking at me funny, staring, and I might have been reading it wrong, but I think he was happy to see me. He asked for my phone number and email before he left -- I hope I hear from him some time.

Grandma McNeil (July 2007)

G.Mac, or, losing the matriarch

Grandma, our Grandma Mac, our G. Mac, is dying. She is 91 years old so it should come as no surprise and yet, of course, it does.

She's had a long life, a life full to the brim with husband and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and spoiled plump cats and travels all over the United States and Egypt and Germany and probably other places I don't know about and a college degree and catfishing at dusk and hunting nightcrawlers in the dark and joy and afternoons at the ice cream shop in Harrison and long walks down to the Haines' and back and Cougar Gold and dinners out on the deck and sorrow and making the best spaghetti and meatballs in the world and frustrating attempts to get her youngest granddaughter to knit and a life-long commitment to the League of Women Voters and being informed and setting an example of tolerance and love and lugging buckets up the hill to water the flowers around the tree where the ashes of her husband and her son have been buried before her.

Nathan drove from Portland up to Olympia on Saturday to sit with her for a bit while she slipped in and out of sleep, in and out of consciousness, surfacing into different levels of lucidity. He's not sure if she ever really recognized him, and he's not sure whether she took comfort in his presence, but I imagine that she did, and I imagine too that he took comfort in hers.

He said that he's never seen anyone this close to death before. We share so much, Nathan and me, that I sometimes forget he wasn't there with me when Dad died. I imagine that Grandma's dying is different: quieter, less jagged -- a slipping away instead of a being taken.

Mom said tonight that in those moments when she is awake, she is sometimes afraid.

I wish that I could be there too, even unrecognized, if only to hold her hand, to absorb some of her fear, to say goodbye. But we have said goodbye before, she and I. She has been preparing, has perhaps been ready, to die for awhile now, and the last few times we've seen each other she's cried a little as we hugged, and explained once that every time she went through these partings with her loved ones, scattered as some of us are, she worried that this would be the last.

I swam sometimes in college, for a PE class or on my own, back and forth in that pool beneath the gym in Barnard Hall. Grandma swam laps too, for as long as I can remember-- in the lake in Idaho (little red bouy faithfully anchored the proper distance from the dock first thing every summer) or the pool at the WSU gym. She told me once, just a couple years after my father, her son, had died, that she liked, that she needed, this time in the water every day. She said that no one could tell if she was crying then.

My grandmother, my Grandma Mac, our tough old bird, is 91 years old and dying and I'm afraid I won't ever see her again and this makes me sad, even as I know that hers has been a good life, a full life, and that this is a good death, a quiet death, surrounded by some of the people she loves, some of the people who love her.

This, joking, mostly, from a journal kept during the summer of 1996, while a few of us were gathered at the lake cabin in Idaho:

The McNeil Matriarchal Clan
Grandma: The Supreme Matriarch
Vicki & Ellen & Sue: Minor Matriarchs
Emily: Matriarch-in-training
Nathan: The Token Boy
Grandpa: Father Figure



"and i've come here to ignore your cries and heartaches
i've come to closely listen to you sing
i've come here to insist
that i leave here with a kiss
i've come to say exactly what i mean"