Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2695 - Dad's Last Day: The Columbia River Gorge and Portland - July Fourth, 2022



A Sense of Doubt blog post #2695 - Dad's Last Day: The Columbia River Gorge and Portland - July Fourth, 2022

I have been missing my Mom a lot this year, especially on and around Mother's Day.

But not so much this July Fourth because I spent it with Dad, which is what we should do every year.

NOTE TO SELF: Don't try to go into the Gorge on July Fourth.

The road was closed to Corbett due to a parade. We tried to go around it and gave up after two tries.

Then we tried the other way, getting off the 84 at Bridal Falls, but they were checking permits. I really should get an Oregon Parks permit.

Good to know next time.

So we headed back to Portland and made our way to the food truck area at Mississippi and Skidmore, which I love. Not only was it a mad house with no where to sit but my favorite truck with the sushi burritos was closed.

So we drove down Alberta to 33rd but nothing really inspired us.

Knowing the area, we ended up at one of my haunts from when I worked at Concordia: Ps and Qs on Dekum, and we had a great lunch.

We came home after that and I worked hard on school prep as school started the next day. These activities I describe are from July Fourth. Today, the date of this publication, school began.

I took Dad to airport  about 8 p.m. after he took pictures of the lumber yard here in Kalama with its massive stacks of timber. He got to PDX around 8:45 and I said goodbye to him sometime around 9 p.m.

I am still sad thinking about it, and I miss him.

Still, it was a great trip/visit.

I have no regrets that I did not spend more time prepping classes and instead took a rare vacation and enjoyed my time with the Big Guy.


DAD VACATION

These posts on the "Dad Vacation" are published one day behind the day we did the thing. These picture were taken on July Fourth.


Blog Vacation Two 2022 - Vacation II Post #131
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.

Here's the collected Blog Vacation I from 2021:

Saturday, October 16, 2021













Here's reprinting last year's JULY FOURTH POST:




Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1226 (SoD #2329) - SIX YEARS AGO

Hi Mom,

Another year, another anniversary of the day you died.

I feel like I have covered this day in more than enough detail in past blogs, some of which are reprinted here in the collected annual edition.

Instead, I would just like to talk to you, which is what the HEY MOM feature was always meant to be. Is that okay with you?

I know it is.

It's not like I don't miss you, still need you, still wishing you were physically here. I still feel you all around me all the time. I still know you are with me, in me, near me, guiding me. I do talk to you a lot even when I do not transcribe it here. You were such an amazing human, one of the most amazing humans I have ever or will ever know.

But I have learned to live with losing you in these six years. It is not really hard any more. It just is the state of things. I have become a hater of the phrase "it is what it is," which I think is STUPID much like "from day one," which may not be stupid but is over-used. But more on that another time.

If not for the explosions and people who think Trump is still someone to cheer for, this would be a great holiday. I have become a HATER of fireworks. They happen when I want to go to sleep, but mostly I hate them because they scare the dogs. I HATE seeing my dogs scared.

IVAN IS HERE!!

We have not seen Ivan in 20 months, so this is special. Later today, Piper and her roommate come over, and we have food and hang out.

I have been working to get ready for Summer quarter, which starts Tuesday. I have one class -- English 101 -- set up completely and fully open. The other, English 102, needs more revision, but I am farther along in development than I usually am so I can take off all of today and some of tomorrow.

We get a new refrigerator tomorrow, as ours has died. We get the old one repaired Tuesday, where it will now reside in the garage.

I am taking care of things here: laundry, watering lawns and plants, walking the dogs, some cleaning, make the coffee, some cooking (grilling mostly), walk the dogs again, audio books, blogging, reading, writing.

Things are good. I am losing some weight but need to lose more. I am trying to eat healthy foods. I do not drink much at all. I have started Glucosamine, which helps with arthritic pain. I take CBD nightly.

Life is good.

I have been writing more lately. I have a short story in progress. I have taken a break from it for a time to get a novel rolling. I want to get in a rhythm of working on a few projects each week: stories and a couple of novels plus either a comic book idea or the notes for the cyberpunk fantasy epic.

Because I work for an amazing school, much more amazing than ANY in Michigan, I have faculty development money, and so I am taking a class in Young Adult novels at Sackett Street Writings Workshops.

This one:


8-week ONLINE Writing for Young Adult and Middle-Grade Workshop – begins 7.7.21

Begins: July 7, 2021
Instructor: Anna Hecker
Location: Online (weekly video Wednesdays 7:30-9:30pm EST)
Fee: $495 (usually $625)

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info. 

Start, finish, or polish your YA or MG novel in this supportive, proactive workshop. Brief lectures, tailored to students’ needs and interests, cover topics such as character development, voice and tone, plot, world-building, dialogue, romance, pacing, scene structure, querying agents, the business of publishing, and time management for writers.

Students will have opportunities to workshop writing with the class and receive written feedback from the instructor and fellow students. This course is intended for students with some writing experience.

All YA or MG genres are welcome.

APPLY NOW

Anna Hecker holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from The New School. She is the author of When the Beat Drops (Sky Pony Press, May 2018) as well as several young adult ghostwriting projects for Penguin/Razorbill, Alloy Entertainment and HarperTeen. Her articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Gawker, DailyCandy, Refinery29, and VICE Broadly.


Our first assignment is as follows:

THE HOOK
Why are you writing this story? Why will others want to read it?

CHARACTER
What makes readers want to join a character on a journey? How can we make our characters relatable, complex, and compelling?

SETTING UP YOUR STORY
The six crucial elements every story beginning should include.



Obviously, the hook is a question for us to answer. The character questions might be for us to answer, but the story beginnings bit seems to be a lesson we receive. I am not sure. These are not yet open.


I am doing all right, Mom.

It's going to be a great summer. I have friends. A regular D&D game. Two wonderful dogs. A great family. I am happy.

Plus, I finally got my teeth cleaned and had a dental appointment for the first time since we moved.

I want to wrap this up so I can do some fiction writing before Liesel and Ivan come home.

Thanks for being my mom, Mom.


2107.05 - 11:04 - ADDED NOTE: Ivan and Liesel left to watch fireworks, and I stayed home with the dogs. For a while they cuddled with me on the stair landing and then later the couch (because the stair landing was hurting my back), I felt so parental, so motherly, it made me cry a little, Mom. That's because of you. Thanks. That's not a sarcastic thanks. :-)




Here's the collection of HEY MOM posts from July Fourth:


This is what I did last year in 2020, the year of the pandemic:


Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1205 (SoD #1964) - Five Years Ago

Hi Mom,

Here we are again at another July Fourth, the day you left this earth, now five years ago in 2015.

I am still holding on to a lot of guilt for not being at your side and choosing, of all things, to try to play D&D with friends instead of continuing to sit vigil as you were dying.

I am all right. The grief is just a fact of life and has been for years. But it's there, and I miss you at the weirdest times, like when I use your measuring cup or when I am eating applesauce or when I hear screaming children next door, and I want to ask if I screamed that much when I played outside at their age.

And it's strange to be here, five years after your death.

I could not really imagine you dying at all, and I certainly had not vision for what it would be like to be here, still alive myself, after living five years without you.

It's surreal and strange, and yet, it's also the new normal.

And yet, grief cannot be about wallowing. Grief creates paradigm shift. It helps clarify what's important. And what is important is living life.

Recently, one of my students wrote a paper on quality of life and argued for the four day work week. He cited an often referenced adage that he would "rather work to live than live to work."

Since working through the most painful days of grief, the first 100 days after your death, (I also had a reckoning at 90 days after), I have dedicated myself as much as possible to living life, though I acknowledge that I work much too much.  WORK, WORK, WORK!!


Mom contemplating death
Her family's grave marker
May 11, 2011
CARPE DIEM! SEIZE THE DAY!

I try, Mom. I am working to improve my work-life balance; to reserve ample time and space for self care; to act on my best priorities, which are my family first, then my friends, then my work and avocations; to maintain this blog, and keep my writing muscles limber; to be the person that my dogs believe that I am; to love, learn, give joy, find joy, and embody the central principle of my life at all times: the golden rule.




And, so, LIVING.

I went kayaking on Coldwater Lake today, Mom. It's a lake formed by the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980.


Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1033 - Mount St. Helens trip 1805.03

It's not a thing you would have done in a million years, Mom, even when you were younger.

And yet, I feel closer to you there, in nature in general, but in that place in particular.

It feel right to me. It's the right thing to do on this day, after five years without you.

I wish you were truly here to see it, in the flesh, and yet, I feel you were watching.

The day had mixed results.

The temperature from our home (68) dropped by 15 or so degrees (to 54).

We did well with strapping the kayaks to the car and getting them off again once we got to Coldwater Lake.

We rowed out about a mile, and it was fine, serene.

We turned around and started back in a head wind. The waves were not white capped or anything, but our kayaks felt very tippy and unstable. It felt like we could capsize at any time.

I had hugged the shore rowing out, and after trying for a more direct route back, I made toward shore again as the wind was a little less severe in the shallows.

It went all right, and we both stayed out of the water.

The whole adventure would have been perfect had I been able to get out of the kayak, but in my attempt, despite good advice, I toppled over and cut my knee badly.

But with some first aid, we managed, and lashed the kayaks back to the top of the car and returned home.


you can just see the blood on my right leg from my cut knee

GRATITUDE

On this day, like on many days in any year, I think about how grateful I am for the upbringing that you and Dad gave me, Mom.

Here's one of my best gratitude posts:

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #217 - Gratitude
I think today is a good day to reprint the following:

LAST WORD ON THE GRATITUDE THING: I got the idea for the gratitude prayer (meditation, list, incantation, catalogue, rumination, reflection, or whatever you want to call it) from a movie called The Secret. I am not quite promoting the movie as a "true" exposure of an actual science. In fact, many of the stories in the film are a bit fatuous. However, I like watching it. I showed it to a class (my second viewing) about a month ago, and the idea of the daily gratitude thing struck me. In the movie, one of the interviewees (I forget which one and it's not important) explained how he had a rock in his pocket. At night, he would set it on his dresser with the other contents of his pockets. The next morning, he would retrieve it and remember to list the things for which he was grateful as a daily routine, like a prayer. He had a visitor from South Africa and told the man about his rock and gratitude practice. The man called it a "gratitude rock." After returning to South Africa, he wrote his American friend and asked for some gratitude rocks to be sent to him because one of his children was very sick, and he did not have the money to seek medical care for the child. The interviewee balked at sending "gratitude rocks" because, after all, "they are just rocks," he said. But he found three nice rocks and sent them to his South African friend. Months later, the South African wrote back. The rocks worked! His son was healed and recovered. They paid for his medical treatment by selling a hundred gratitude rocks. People believed in the power of the gratitude rocks.

I found this story inspirational. I do not use a rock, but every day, I make my gratitude list. I send energy into the universe. I focus on the positive and try to limit or dismiss the negative.

I think it's working.

Thank you, Mom.



I no longer enjoy Independence Day, which is okay, because I never really enjoyed it anyway. It's nice to have an excuse not to work.

Springsteen's song "Independence Day" is not strictly a mirror of missing you on this day of your death, but there are remarkable connections.

"Independence Day" by Bruce Springsteen from The River

Recorded three years before you died, Mom:




INDEPENDENCE DAY 

Album version
Well Papa go to bed now, it's getting late
Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now
I'll be leaving in the morning from St. Mary's Gate
We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow

'Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too
But they can't touch me now and you can't touch me now
They ain't gonna do to me what I watched them do to you

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day all down the line
Just say goodbye, it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day this time

Now I don't know what it always was with us
We chose the words and, yeah, we drew the lines
There was just no way this house could hold the two of us
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind

Well say goodbye, it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day, all boys must run away
So say goodbye, it's Independence Day
All men must make their way come Independence Day

[Sax solo]

Now the rooms are all empty down at Frankie's joint
And the highway she's deserted, clear down to Breaker's Point
There's a lot of people leaving town now, leaving their friends, their homes
At night they walk that dark and dusty highway all alone

Well Papa go to bed now, it's getting late
Nothing we can say can change anything now
Because there's just different people coming down here now and they see things in different ways
And soon everything we've known will just be swept away

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day
Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say
But won't you just say goodbye, it's Independence Day
I swear I never meant to take those things away
https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=independenceday

Info

INDEPENDENCE DAY is a song written by Bruce Springsteen and released on his 1980 album The River. The above lyrics are for Bruce Springsteen's album version of INDEPENDENCE DAY as released in 1980.
And, as usual, the annual recaps (here in a reprint): 

Mom - Mother's Day - 1976
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1176 (SoD #1596) - Marjorie Tower - RIP - 07-04-2015

Hi Mom, Living without you is getting easier with each year that passes. I never thought I would survive it. Does surviving losing you mean that I can survive anything? I hope so. I feel stronger and yet weaker at the same time. But though I am both stronger and weaker, I move on ahead into each new day. Those days come whether I want them to or not. Sometimes, I feel helplessly adrift in them, and at other times, I feel I am in control of those days, wrenching the life juices from their fabric and reveling in the gifts I have been given. And I have been given so many gifts. I feel lucky. I am blessed.

When I am not thinking of how much I miss you, I think about what your life might have been like if you had never gotten the meningitis or if we could have caught it earlier and stopped it before it stole your mobility, independence, and much of your freedom. Or what if it had happened to me instead? I wouldn't be here in the Portland-metro area; I wouldn't be married.

Mostly, I am unapologetic for my feelings or in still writing about grief and loss from time to time on this blog. People misunderstood how the blog was about life and not about death, how it was about living and not about grieving. There's just some grieving in the blog because there's some grieving in the life. People will still misunderstand. People will read the headline and nor the text. People will judge. But I am not writing for them. I am writing for me and to you, Mom.

I could have written about something else today, but I feel like that would be a betrayal not just of you and your memory but of myself. I cope with my writing. I practice good self-care with my writing. And somehow, I know you hear me, Mom. I still feel you with me, beside me, all around. I want to be worthy of your love and care, this life you gave me. I want to pay tribute to the living you in me, practicing the lessons you taught me in loving those in my life and showing them the white, pure light of the love that made you who you are and me who I am.

I am doing all right.

To close, I want to include a few more pictures and links to the last three posts on July 4th. There wasn't one that first year, 2015, as I started this blog series two days later, July 6th.

SIDENOTE: I am amazed that I have written 1176 in this series and nearly 1600 overall, when added to my 365 T-shirts posts, I have nearly 2000 blog posts on the Internet, which feels like good work for the last six years give or take.



At the end of that first year, 2016, I rode the Kal Haven Trail with Sue Creager, stopping along the way at the time of your death.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2016/07/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-363.html

Mother's Day 1994

In 2017, I didn't do much of anything. I just made a post explaining my emotional and mental state as of the two year anniversary of your death.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2017/07/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-728-two.html

Coldwater Lake Hike 1807.04
In 2018, I had moved to Woodland, WA, and I hiked Coldwater Lake as pictured in part above. Being in nature was even better than my first time, the bike ride, in 2016.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/07/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-1094-three.html



This year, no nature.

I went to see a showing of the new Ari Aster film Midsommar and had Vietnamese food. I walked the dogs, watched the neighborhood fireworks, and tried to keep the dogs calm. It was still a good day.

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- Days ago = 1461 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1907.04 - 10:10
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It's been FIVE YEARS.



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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you soon, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1828 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2007.04 - 10:10


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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you soon, Mom.
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- Days ago = 2193 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2107.04 - 10:10
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2207.05 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2559 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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