Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #149 - Lori and Mom - 1984

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #149 - Lori and Mom - 1984

Hi Mom,

This is a Throwback Thursday special feature.

Here's just a short one as yesterday's was a bit more plus sized.

And in my weird future world, I am actually finishing this one before I have finished yesterday's. Oh, the joys of pretend time travel.

This picture was taken the same day or around the same time as the one featured yesterday. It's on the occasion of your birthday in 1984, Mom.

You would have been 48; Lori was 15.



This picture speaks volumes. I don't think it needs anymore description by me.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 151 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1512.03 - 10:10

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #148 - 150 Days Ago

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #148 - 150 Days Ago

Hi Mom, This one's not going to be well structured, and I am not going to try to impose structure. I am just letting it all fly. Streaming.

So, it's been 150 days since you died. I am only aware of this because I am doing this blog and as a weird, OCD compunction, I am counting the days.

So, that's 15 sets of ten days or ten sets of 15 days, which is basically 10 pairs of weeks or 20 weeks. I had thought of acknowledging the 144th day since your death, Mom, as that's twelve squared, and I am doing a lot of math with squares and square roots, so I notice such things.

20 weeks was the length of two quarters at K College but just about 25% over the length of a WMU semester. It's also basically five months - five sets of 30 days.

Earlier today, I said I missed you out loud, and I still felt the loss pretty hard and strong. I could probably do this every day, tell you I miss you, and the loss would always be there. I am going to have to keep figuring out how to live with the loss. Because the next looming milestone will be 200 days, which is over half of a year. Should I pause on day 182 or 183 (depending on how one rounds numbers) to reflect that it has been exactly half of a year? Now that I have done that calculation, I probably will.

But I do not wish to seem self-pitying. I do not wish to seem as if I am wallowing in grief. Life goes on. Life has gone on. In fact, this blog is meant to be about life going on. I am continuing those daily conversations with you, which talks about my life, which now also includes my experience with grief and with losing you.

Losing you but not losing you. You are no longer alive, no longer here physically, but I sense you often. I hear you speak to me. I feel your presence. I feel you watching over me. I feel your love, your pride, your approval (and occasional disapproval). I believe in spirituality.

And yet, I am also skeptical enough to know that these feelings could all be rooted in my psyche, could be my psyche's way of coping with the loss of you. It's just my mind playing tricks. There are no spirits. I do not really feel your presence. I just want to so badly that my psyche makes it happen. I want to believe in more, but I am also rational enough to know that there may not be more.

But I don't really like that theory. And one thing your death has taught me is that faith is all about believing in a thing when I have no rational and epistemological proof for it.

I see one of the dangers of writing this blog is that I will be seen as "grief boy," even if the majority of my posts are about living life and NOT about wallowing in grief. Simply because I am writing TO YOU, Mom, I can be accused of not moving on, not getting over your death (not that I think we can ever get over a loss like this one, you didn't get over the loss of your Mother, ever, Mom). I try not to mention or reference your death all the time out in the world, Mom. Though I did just recently share with my work supervisor that my obvious surliness brought on by stress is an ongoing by-product of how your death has affected my work and my life since July. And then, my good friend Walt Curley shares with me about his struggles on the four year anniversary of his mother's death, for the entire month of the month in which she died. So, I expect that this designation of "grief boy" is not something that I will easily shed, and I may not ever shed it.

Even though this blog feature (because eventually there will be non-Hey Mom content on this blog) is supposed to be about moving on, it's also meant to be a reflection on grief and loss at least some of the time. After all, I am trying to figure out how to grieve, to figure out my grief process, to find a way to keep living and to accept that you are gone. I find this last part still very difficult even after 150 days. I continue to think that this is a bad dream from which I will wake and the world be restored to the way it should be, Mom, with you in it.

I miss so many things that are part of having you here in a physical and living way, like kisses and hugs and just you as a living and breathing human being. I doubt I will ever stop thinking about that loss of that physical presence, though maybe I will stop thinking about it every day, at least at some point.

This feels finished enough.

I miss you, Mom.

I don't know if you have noticed this, Mom, but when I have to back date these posts, IE. publish backwards in time, I always pick the time of your last breath: 10:10 a.m. Blogger is positioned in Pacific time, so I actually have to select 7:10 a.m. so it works out right.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 150 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1512.02 - 10:10
and again 1512.04 - 8:30

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #147 - Charlie, the Christmas Elf, again

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #147 - Charlie, the Christmas Elf, again

Hi Mom,

Lots of work. So I am going for easy posts to catch up. :-)

My review of the Christmas show was finally published. I already wrote about the show and experience here in #130 and again in #137.

You always liked to read my reviews, Mom, so here's the link to the publication and the full text.

MY BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER REVIEW

"Charlie the Christmas Elf”
a production of Top Hat Productions and Cornwell’s Dinner Theatre
at Turkeyville, USA
Attended Date: Friday, November 13, 2015
reviewed by Christopher Tower

For 15 years Top Hat productions has rung in the yuletide cheer with original Christmas productions at Cornwell’s Professional Dinner Theatre at Turkeyville in Marshall. Overall, the Cornwell’s theater has produced 28 consecutive years of Christmas shows with shows nearly every day until December 19th. The shows are always cheerful, family-affirming, bright, and ebullient. This year’s is no exception.

For 2015, the Christmas gala sends out good tidings with a visit from a head toy maker and gift wrapper from the North Pole in “Charlie the Christmas Elf,” a show that should be part of every family’s holiday agenda in between pictures with Santa, caroling, wassail, and mistletoe kisses.
The show opens in Anywhere-ville America where the family toy shop run by sisters Maude (Jen Morris) and Judy (Megan Wheeler) may have to close due to low sales. The sisters are praying for snow, which always puts people in a gift buying mood, and yet they advertise to hire extra help, hoping that they will be busy enough to page wages to the new worker. A strange woman named Charlie (Holly Norton-McKeen) answers the advertisement. She’s clumsy and worse she sends people away from the shop without buying anything.

It’s soon revealed that Charlie was head elf in Santa’s shop at the North Pole, and she has struck out on her own to show Santa that she’s worthy of a raise and a promotion. As people visit the Christmas store, such as two friends (Peter Riopelle and Megan Wheeler) who run a Christmas costume rental business, Charlie finds what will make them happy and magically grants their wishes.
In the end, all is well (this is a family Christmas show after all), and Charlie returns to the Santa’s employ, but not before she makes more people’s dreams come true. Along the way, Charlie and the rest of the cast sing over two dozen Christmas songs, some traditional numbers, like “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “We Need a Little Christmas” as well as some different, newer, or modern songs, such as Amy Grant’s “Grown-Up Christmas List,” Michael Bublé’s “Cold December Night,” and Harry Belafonte’s “Jump in the Line.”

Each performer has the chance to sing several solo numbers while only a few of the musical selections are sung by the entire cast, who are only all together on the stage at the end of the show. Megan Wheeler as Judy works to cheer up her worried sister Maude (Jen Morris) from the start of the show with “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Charlie’s first solo is an ode to how much she dislikes the snow and cold, living as she has in the arctic with British singer Kate Rusby’s “Little Jack Frost,” from her 2005 album “The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly.” Jen Morris in the role of Maude makes a good showing with “Everybody’s Waiting for the Man with the Bag” made famous by Kay Starr and Lee Ann Womack. And Peter Riopelle does it up like Elvis in the role of Alex with “Merry Christmas Baby.”

Each of the four performers except Holly who remains Charlie throughout the show play dual roles. Jen Morris doubles as Skylar in the second act with a beautiful version of “Silent Night.” And Peter Riopelle shows up as Larry, the Christmas Elf, sent to check on Charlie and dials it down with a sweet “The First Noel.”

The performers are professional and over-flowing with talent, like every cast that has taken the stage in celebration of Christmas going back to the start of the Cornwell’s Dinner Theatre in 1987. The singing is strong, the acting well styled, and the direction by Top Hat producer Dennis McKeen is smart and well-orchestrated.

Unlike many past shows, this year’s Christmas tribute features less zany humor and goofy antics. There’s more moods like the gentle fall of snow at twilight. There are quiet and somber moments, and the characters remind the audience that Christmas exists to honor the birth of Jesus Christ. This tone is best exemplified by the graceful and radiant final number as the cast joins together in four-part harmony on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” made famous by Jeff Buckley on his 1994 album “Grace” and then later by Rufus Wainwright for the movie “Shrek.”
This heart-wrenching, emotionally moving song sounds the final, striking note of this fine Christmas production.

In the end, Charlie the Christmas elf leaves the cast and the audience with some sage words of wisdom: “Sometimes in life you don’t get what want when you want it; you get it, when you need it.” As audiences join the cast in a post-curtain-call sing-a-long, these words strike the central chord of the holiday spirit. And after a full turkey dinner and family-style fellowship, audiences leave this theater happier than when they arrived. Make this part of your holiday celebration.

On a personal note, for most of the last fifteen years, I brought my mother as my guest to see these Christmas shows after a bout of bacterial meningitis in 2000 left her mostly paralyzed. She loved these Christmas shows. A few years ago, when producer Dennis Mckeen dropped the sing-a-long from the show, my mother complained, and the next year, he returned the audience singing to the show just for her. My mother passed away in July from a degenerative palsy brought on by the meningitis. My father and I attended this Christmas show as the first one without her, and the fine folks of Top Hat productions dedicated the sing-a-long to my mother Marjorie Tower, making this year’s Christmas show more special then ever before.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 149 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1512.01 - 10:10
and again 1512.03 - 8:20

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #146 - - St. Andrews-1

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #146 - St. Andrews-1

Hi Mom,

Quickie post today as I am hammered with work and quite a bit under the weather, causing me to write this from the future, Thursday to be exact.

This is a picture of the gate at St. John's College, part of University of St. Andrews in Scotland, which preserves the contribution of St. Mary's College to Scottish theology and church life.

"In Principio Erat Verbum" originates in the gospel of St John, 1.1, and its English translation is "In the beginning was the word."

I am feeling a bit grandiose today.

This is one of my favorite pictures taken during our Scotland trip earlier this year.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 148 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1511.30 - 10:10
and again 1512.03 - 8:08

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #145 - Playing D&D

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #145 - Playing D&D

Hi Mom,

Okay, actually, PATHFINDER, not D&D. Pretty much D&D, but geekier.

So, I played Pathfinder today, Sunday, and I am now writing this from the future.

I have a crew of guys I know from K-College and WMU and a GM who I met through a friend of my wife's plus one guy I met via the co-op. Quite the hodge of podge but a good crew nonetheless.

We had not played since April, so we were all very rusty and it showed. Our of almost 25 adventures, this was our first failure. We botched it pretty badly, and I did most of the key botching. But we all had fun and scratched the gamer itch a bit with our play.

I know this is not of great interest to you, Mom, though you always supportive of my playing this game and hosted a few sessions, especially near the tail end of high school, including my very first ever game with Steve Curl.

But for other readers, Pathfinder is basically just a revised version of the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons, published by TSR. In 1997 Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, and in 2003, it issued the game as "open license," meaning that other companies or individuals could release products related to its latest 3.5 version of the game. In 2009, the Paizo company released Pathfinder, which is a revised version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. It is the preferred game system by many hardcore and longtime gamers, Though my friend Tom and I still prefer Dungeons and Dragons 2.0 (even inheriting some old rules from 1.0), I play Pathfinder with the group of guys who regularly convene at various houses.

The big three lessons from Sunday were as follows:

1. Do not use a Shocking Grasp attack spell in lieu of talking my way out of being arrested by anti-religion, Gestapo like city guard.
2. Check for invisibility and any other ways to hide the prisoner we are sent to rescue before launching fireballs into a large room just to attack adversaries I have not yet seen and assessed. Crispy corpses are not the preferred state for rescues.
3. PLAN. Do not waltz blithely into a heavily guarded compound full of extra-planar creatures, assorted demons, and spellcasters without serious reconnaissance, defensive preparations and safe-guards, and a series of offensive aids to help with combat.

In the end, we were lucky to make it out alive. I had two hit points left (of 61 total).

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 147 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1511.29 - 10:10
and again 1512.03 - 7:58

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #144 - Days Alone

Satchel in morning nap mode
1511.28 - today

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #144 - Days Alone

Hi Mom,

Here is today's picture of the puppy. It's darkish but that's intentional. I think it's quite sweet. It's dark now for a long time in the morning and early at night. It's dark now as I type. The days are growing shorter. I am watching David Bowie's new video after having just watched M.I.A.'s new video.

I am having a day home alone, if being alone includes a puppy, a cat, and six chickens.

Days alone are important. I love people. I love my wife, my kids, my parents, my sister, friends, but if I do not have enough alone time each week, I start to go a bit bonkers. In fact, the bloggery that this blog represents was invented during my special alone time when I lived with my parents during you hair appointments, Mom, which were one outing that for sure took you out of the house each week if possible. I especially liked sitting in the great room of the Richland Woods house during the holidays as the sun died so early, as it does at this time of year, with the soft glow of the Christmas village and Christmas tree lights that would slowly take over illumination of the room that daylight abandoned. And in that gloaming, I would write, and that's when and where I started this blog in 2007 with this ENTRY about the INVISIBLE WOMAN, even though I wrote it in May and not in that holiday decoration time from November-December.

I wrote 11 blog entries between that auspicious beginning on May 4, 2007 (0705.04) and January 9th, 2009 (the day before my first date with Liesel - 0901.09) because mostly, during those Friday times, I would try to write fiction that has not been posted or published. Alone time was sacred to me, and I was steadfast in guarding it and using it as best I could.

Alone time has continued to be important since getting married. Do not misunderstand, dear reader -- and I know you know this, Mom -- I love being with my wife, she's great, but I just need time to myself. I need the quiet. I need to decompress. AND I need to stop working. I have been suffering some misery lately as I work through alone time, either doing work work or home work. But knowing that tomorrow I am having some friends over to play D-and-D (Pathfinder, really, but fewer know what that is), I knew I needed some quality time lounging, reading comics, and watching football today. I even took a short nap. I am rejuvenated. But I would be mired in misery if I did not just cease work operations and forced myself to go lie down and relax for a bit.

Alone time.

It is a precious commodity, and so, I am going to go use more of it for home work and work work.

Then again, I never feel totally alone any more because I am married and have a family. But also, I feel you, Mom. You're here. You're sitting right here in this room, and you're smiling.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 146 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1511.28 - 17:52

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #143 - Deer Rutting in our Yard

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #143 - Deer Rutting in our Yard

Hi Mom,

So, on Wednesday, we had two deer rutting in our yard. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the actual fornicating, though I saw it. Also, I did not get a picture or video of Satchel facing off against this buck across the fence gate in the back of the yard.

But this is the area where the rutting took place (below) and both deer in it.

So, when the buck came around to the front of the house for a snack, Satchel went on high alert, barking like crazy.

Later the buck retreated, and I thought he had left as there were guys with leaf blowers only 100 or so yards away, but he was still in our side yard with a doe, busy rutting. I learned his location when we let Satchel into the backyard, closed to the side where the deer were by a fence and gate, and came to see why she was still barking very intensely. I wish I had grabbed my camera because later the buck actually snapped at Satchel across the fence gate and kicked its hoof. We brought Satchel back in the house and would not let her go out, but later, as I left, I saw the buck humping the doe. I had not seen that before in reality, not on film.

The deer moved on later that evening, but not until, Satchel, who had gone to Camp Fido, had another round of barking at the deer and being warned off by teeth gnashing and hoof stamping.

Um, so, Happy Thanksgiving?

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 145 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1511.27 - 10:10