Thanks for all your nice comments and the wonderful postcards I received last night when I got back. It's so nice to be home , and a treat to fire up the computer again.
I woke up at 3:30, stayed in bed until 4. East Coast time on the West Coast is no fun. When it gets closer to daylight, I'll go to Lake Balboa with Molly.
Sorry to duck out so suddenly on the party.
My long ago friend from England, Jayne Pilling, was here for a day and then it was off to Medford, NJ to help my mother move to assisted living. I took my laptop but it was just a weight on my shoulder. I'm learning that there are friendly airports and cheap skate airports-- some provide free wireless connection (I think Atlanta was one) but most send you to some site where they want $8.00.
Anyway, I hit the ground running at my mother's place, plowing through dressers and closets to winnow down her possessions so they could fit in one room. She was living in a two bedroom apartment with many closets, filled with a trimmed down collection from 93 years. I stayed up late, I got up early.
I pushed dolly after dolly down the hall, skirting in and out of the traffic: walkers, wheelchairs and the dreaded scooter cars with flags that never slow down, then up the elevator, around the corner-- oops sorry-- didn't see that walker, and into my mother's new room.
It's a pretty room with a balcony that overlooks two magnolia trees and a greenhouse-- green grass and birds singing. It's a big room. I took a picture on the cel phone but have no idea how to get it from cel phone to computer. There's a slot for microsd, and I'm not sure if that's the same as the small plug that came with my Sony camera.
I read two books on the airplanes: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy. Both books are strong and rough and memorable. I was surprised that Kevin McCarthy, the father in the Twilight Zone (movie) episode I worked on, was Mary's brother.
I'm only back a few days, then we're off on our long anticipated Wild Bear Adventure in Canada. More on that later. It's almost daylight.
8 comments:
So glad you're back and that your mother's room is nice. Way cool that you worked on a Twilight Zone episode!
Hooray! You're back!
Sounds like you've been busy, with sorting and hauling decades and decades of stuff. Your mom is lucky to have you.
This Canadian Wild Bear adventure sounds interesting. We'll miss you, but after all that work, you need a vacation.
Wait a minute. Don't tell me you're going to disappear again. Surely you can take your laptop on the Wild Bear Adventure.
It sounds like a really hard job you had in Medford. What an accomplishment. The room does sound nice, though. How did you mom take to her new digs?
The Twilight Zone piece is wonderful & funny & scary!!!!!!! Which episode is it? We've got to rent it.
Yeah, I'll bet bears love it when you try to take lots of photos of them.
Kevin McCarthy's big movie when he was younger was "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Remember those pods?
Their childhood was grim. The flu epidemic was devastating.
Yes Mary McC. is one of the best. I've always loved her essay on Nabokov's Pale Fire, too. Is it in the Memories that she learns she has a face like the map, meaning like the map of Ireland....she was beautiful.....didn't like to use credit cards, dispensed wads of cash up and down Madison Ave. I wouldn't mind doing that myself. The cash part, but not Madison Ave. I recently read an old NYRB from 1992; there, Elizabeth Hardwick (who was glad Mary's memoirs didn't get around to her)speaks of her "smiling precision and daunting determination on accuracy.....She worked as a master of the art of writing every day of her life. How it was done I do not know." And The Stones of FLorence, w/photos by Evelyn Hofer. Its first line is "How can you stand it?"....sorry, I'm feeling like a bookish fan today.----Kate
Katy, I enjoyed your comments. My favorite part of the Catholic Childhood book was her description of a visit to a ranch in Montana while she was at boarding school in Seattle.
Interesting that E. Hardwick describes her great accuracy, because McCarthy admits openly to having great skills as a liar, developed for self preservation, and writes about that in this book. I don't imagine you get over that.
I want to read more of her work.
And Mean Jean, you're right about the awful awfulness of the influenza epidemic and the way it changed her life.
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