Happy Mother’s Day!!

To all the mothers, grandmothers and godmothers that I met last year … and those moms that I’ve loved forever … Happy Mother’s Day!!

Never forget how beautiful you are.

Cambodia

Guatemala

Haiti

Peru

Cameroon

Armenia

 

Ecuador

Rwanda

Everything old is new again.

I confess: I’m not really much of an antiquities aficionado. I’ve been known to bolt through the ground floor of The Met in less than ten minutes, muttering obtusely that all those broken columns and marble statues look like plain old rubble. So when I headed for Bogota’s National Museum, the biggest and oldest museum in Colombia, with an entire ground floor wing dedicated to pre-Columbian archeological treasures from 10,000 B.C. and centuries forward, I knew exactly what I planned to skip.

But this museum pretty much had me at hello. Built in 1874 as a prison, it was known as the Panóptico and its 104 cells were used for incarceration until 1946. The place was renovated in 1975 with lovely courtyards and fountains, and the galleries extend in a Greek cross in three directions–so there is always something hidden and beckoning you to explore.I started with the black & white photography show of Leo Matiz’s decades of photojournalism and avant-garde work – which was mesmerizing and profound.

My favorite photo by the splendid Leo Matiz.

Then I headed for the third floor — for fine art by Colombia’s beloved Fernando Botero, Alejandro Obregón, Andres de Santa Maria,and Guillermo Wiedemann. And that was… okay. I wasn’t really feeling the magic, so I cruised through the second floor which is mostly a history of portraits and odd stuff from Colombia’s founding fathers, none of whom I knew – except the inimitable (and incredibly gaunt supermodel) Simon Bolivar.

Finally, since I had the time and about 15% of my art energy left, I headed for the artifacts, figuring I could race through and said I did it.  And boy howdy, did I get an eyeful!  Here was all the magic I was missing from the modernists.

Gee, I wonder where Botero got his inspiration…

This didn’t feel like boring antiquities; it felt like having a conversation with somebody from 5,000 years ago… who just happened to have a nagging wife attitude like me.Or was poignantly sharing a secret with a friend…Or maybe was just having a really f@#*ing bad day. The pieces were so unbelievably charming….…I just about laughed out loud. It was incredible to believe I was looking at things created by people from cultures as far-flung and ancient as the Amazonas, Orinoco, Guajira, Andes and Pacific Coast …… when they really could have been people you’d see on the streets of New Orleans or Soho any day of the week. A little whacked but what the heck? And I’m pretty sure a few of them had to be inspiration for a video game or animation film …. I was just walking on air as I left .. until I got to the final little vault in which the museum keeps the 1500-year old mummies, surrounded by their graven gold.

Photo by Martin St-Amant from Wikipedia.

That put a morbid chill in me! So I headed out to the cozy Museum Cafe for a cute cup of Juan Valdez’s special blend  — and believe me, like so much in this sublime Colombian museum, it’s nothing whatever like Folger’s American model.

As I sat there marveling at my exhilarating, unexpected afternoon experience of photography, painting, creativity, caffeine, nature, incarceration and yes, antiquities… I thought this must be why I love museums so much. Because despite all our preconceptions and prejudices, they can sometimes show us who we are .. and who we apparently have been for thousands of years.

(I’m aghast that I didn’t bring my real camera and only have these iPhone photos to share with you…. just goes to show my cavalier attitude that was SO unwarranted!!)

A Perfect Day in Bogota

Larry & I arrived in Bogota, Colombia on Saturday night on a recruitment trip for Oglethorpe University, trolling for new international students.  Because we were heavily scheduled with recruitment meetings on Monday (don’t you hate when work interferes with travel?) Sunday was our one day to get out and explore.

Every park is an ersatz soccer pitch..even in the rain.

At 8,612 feet in altitude, Bogota is naturally breathtaking (or breath-gulping) but it’s also a surprisingly easy city to adapt to. Sure, there are 8 million Bogotanos living here– but instead of being caught up in overwhelming traffic and chaos, most of them seemed to be out walking their dogs, taking a yoga class in the park…

… or biking, rollerblading and practicing their high-wire tricks in the multitude of city parks.

Getting a bit wobbly wit it …

Bogota is called The Athens of South America for its plethora of museums (58), libraries (33), theatres (45) and universities (106)– but we weren’t going inside for culture; we just wanted to wander. 

First stop: the Carrefours Supermercado, simply because the fruits on display looked so enticing. Eventually, the polite employees did kick me out for taking photos, but not before I got my fill of exotic tropical fruits you’ve probably never seen in the USA (who knew there were 11 kinds of mangoes??)

Next, we bopped over to the colonial enclave of Usaquen to check out my two favorite words in any language: flea market — a Bogota Sunday tradition and my destination to replace the genuine fake Dior sunglasses I bought in China (duhhh!) that naturally broke in half upon my arrival here.

I’m never buying anything in China again…if I ever go to China again.

We found lots of things to like in the market stalls: a new wallet for Larry to replace his bedraggled one, and a chartreuse long wallet for me to replace my 25-year old Tumi model. I’m a bit nervous that my new wallet is so bright & pretty, I’ll trash it out in a matter of weeks… so knowing me, I’ll just admire it and keep on using my old black indestructible model. (This type of thinking drives my husband nuts.) True to my original mission, I scored a cool pair of shades (not fake Dior) to keep me from squinting all day long, and only had to go back and return them once because a scratch on the lens was making me dizzy (my habit of returning things that I just bought likewise drives my husband nuts).  Along the way, I fell hard for a beautiful leather purse for Lulu (hope she’s not reading about her surprise here!)….and succumbed to the charm of a super cool juicer that was bought as a present but that now I don’t want to give away (a constant moral quandary that I face when buying adorable things — which also drives my husband nuts).

Hand-painted lemons & a cast-iron frame … how can I part with this?

All that spending (a whopping $75) and resisting the urge to clobber me gave Larry a big appetite — so he treated himself to a gorgeous paella whipped up in a giant wok alongside some delectable sauteed mushrooms ..

…and I demurely dove into a custard cake that was pure coconut heaven.

Fortified and shopping-satiated, we jumped in another cab and headed out to El Campin stadium to watch the Millonarios professional soccer club play. Now that was an experience — aural, visual and physical. First thing you notice: Bogotanos don’t just watch soccer – they jump up and down in place for the entire game (and why NOT take your shirt off, while you’re at it??)

They also those blow non-stop on those insanity-inducing vuvuzelas, bang on timpani and kettle drums that they lug to the game, and holler at the top of their lungs over every play. For my husband, who routinely watches the most obscure games from around the world on GOL TV, it was a trip to paradise and even though that generally drives me nuts, I was a good wife and threw myself into the spirit of the game.

Go, Millonarios, Go! (note my new designerless sunglasses)

Back at our cute hotel, I collapsed from the 6 straight hours of walking & intense shopping/sporting and watched Joan Rivers on “Fashion Police” while Larry went up to work out on the three antiquated fitness machines that make up the rooftop “gym.” We finished with a delicious Italian dinner in the T-Zone at Luna, followed by a quiet stroll through Bogota’s streets.

The obvious question is — “Whoa! Is Bogota really that safe to wander around? ” And the answer is — for the most part, Si! In the 1990s, Bogota was considered one of the most violent cities in the world (an unenviable claim now held by Caracas next door) with a murder rate of 81 per 100,000 people. Today, that rate is down to 17 — a 500% dramatic reduction accomplished by putting a staggering number of policemen on the streets and rigidly enforcing an integrated security policy. I have to mention that there has also been a forceful campaign to ban carried weapons on the city’s streets — and guess what? It actually works.

So far we love Bogota, even if we do now have to go to work. Stay tuned for more Colombian travelogues as we fly on Wednesday morning to Medellin (famed for having the most beautiful women in Colombia — but we’ll let Larry be the judge of that!), then onto Barranquilla on Thursday night. Hasta luego!

Saying goodbye.

(* This story is featured on Huffington Post )

One of my best friend’s father is dying and even though Michelle is miles away, I can feel the sorrow behind the funny emails she sends me. Because she doesn’t work and her kids are grown, she’s had the time to go out and stay with her parents as they’ve moved through Alzheimer’s, strokes and chronic old age. In other words, she has had the great privilege of really being with her parents as they depart this world.

That’s not a sarcastic statement. It is a privilege.

My dad died in 2003, and even though I was working (and we had four kids at home), he was close enough that I got to see him a lot. Every Sunday, I’d drive the 30 minutes from Swarthmore to Wilmington with my daughter and spend the evening with Grandpa Tom. We wouldn’t do much – just talk and have some tea, play some card games with Lulu, and hang out together. I might cut my Dad’s toenails (my other sister would do anything but that) and slather him up with lotion since his skin got terribly dry after his stroke. Or I’d bring him some new shirts I’d found at the Goodwill. He never wanted me to buy him new clothes because he figured he wouldn’t be around long enough to wear them out, but he loved the used shirts I’d find at the Goodwill and got lots of compliments on them. My dad was a handsome guy and he looked good in bright colors that brought out his green eyes – and I knew how to troll for the good stuff. He was always so tickled that his total wardrobe bill was maybe $15.

Looking good, Dad!

Every once in a while, we’d have a cocktail… if I could talk him into it. For as long as I can remember, my dad had a Manhattan every night – just one, but always one – and I loved making them for him. He didn’t like expensive booze – he said if he liked it too much, he’d be too tempted to drink it (peculiar but compelling Irish logic). He bought truly frightening $10 half-gallons of gin that he drank for strictly medicinal purposes and would never let me open the bottle of signed Maker’s Mark that he kept on the kitchen counter like a talisman.

He’d gotten that bottle on a recent trip to see my cousin Anne in Kentucky and just the memory of that trip with his favorite brother’s only daughter (and her sweet husband Jim), brought back by the red-wax encased bottle, gave him much more pleasure than actually drinking the fancy bourbon.

Dorothy Mae & Tom Londergan

My dad loved to talk about people he used to know and I liked to ask him about certain things in our past that I wasn’t quite sure about. Had my Uncle Mart really almost made it to the Big Leagues as a pitcher? What formulas had my dad been working on all those years at DuPont? And why didn’t he and my mom ever fight – or did they?

Being with a parent who is getting near the end is to experience time slowing down to a lethargic crawl. One afternoon can seem like an eternity – but then you come to the end of a week and you can’t think where the time has gone. There’s a lot of sitting around doing nothing in particular — but to me, that was never boring. You know you won’t get another chance to ask these questions. But you also know it takes a whole lot of sitting- around-together-time to get to the answers.

Towards the end of his life last year, my husband’s dad used to think he was back in the service during WWII , and Larry would have riveting, deeply revealing conversations with him about the first years of his marriage to Larry’s mother, and his relationship with his own parents. Larry would fly up for the weekend and they would sit in the apartment for hours at the dining room table, maybe doing a jigsaw puzzle, and just wander through the tapestry of his life.

Eddie Schall — reading his beloved New York Times.

I am so glad my friend is out there with her dad now– and that two months ago, she chose to go out and spend 4 long, uncomfortable weeks on her brother’s sofa to be with both her parents. Her dad could talk then and was much more lucid. Her mom has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember much but my friend was able to curl her mom’s hair, take her out to daycare, and most importantly, get her dad to come home from the hospital. She encouraged her dad to eat, made him laugh, gave him a reason to get out of bed again, and was able to be the good daughter and apple of his eye — which after he’s gone, she’ll never be again. (When my dad died, the thing that almost killed me was the realization that nobody would ever be that happy to see me again.)

Of course, it wasn’t always that way. My dad was incredibly critical, distant and distracted when we were growing up, but he changed dramatically after my mom’s death in 1986. For the first time, he needed us and he wanted to have a relationship with us personally and individually –all 8 of us. For the girls, I think, that was a bit easier than for the boys.

My dad, Mary Lou & Kathy.

I moved from Colorado back to Swarthmore in 1996 to get married, and went from being the child furthest away to the closest. This enabled me to see my Dad regularly and routinely, while my daughter Lulu developed a specially sweet & warm relationship with her only living grandparent. Of course, I had lots of brothers and sisters to share the taking-care with, but I don’t need to tell you that being with an aging parent takes time. Quantity time. It takes Sundays and Friday-night meals together, holidays and mid-week visits, and trips to the hospital after a stroke …

But like I said, it was a privilege. I wouldn’t give up that time with my Dad for the world; I only wish I hadn’t been working so hard or hadn’t let other responsibilities keep me from seeing him more.

Because once your parents are gone, they never come back.

It’s one of the cruelest mysteries of the universe – how somebody you love so much and who’s given you life can be the instrument of so much crushing pain when they go. I don’t understand that; I’ll never understand that. The only thing that makes it a little easier to bear is to be the hand they are holding at the end.

Me & my Dad.

P.S. After my Dad’s funeral service, we all went back to his apartment, the grandkids put on his funny hats and ties and Goodwill shirts, and we all had shots of that precious bottle of Maker’s Mark – toasting to Grandpa Tom’s wonderful life and good death.

And this one’s for you, M:

How Green Is My Alley

You may find this hard to believe but I love it when things get a little wild. The only problem (well, some people feel it’s a problem) is the line between fun wild and out-of-control wild can sometimes be a tiny bit difficult to recognize. Particularly in a garden. So all day Saturday I spent my time slashing my out-of-control plants back into some semblance of decorum.  10 giant dracaena spikes that I always forget to take out of the pots during the winter (because I like to watch them blowing in the wind) I had to literally saw out of the soil… and then settle for wimpy little tadpole seedlings.

My banana palm quietly came up with this 10-inch bloom in the garage

The wall of embedded variegated vinca vines with pretty blue flowers that I also neglected to discipline last fall when they were tumbling over their containers like a tsunami? Cut back to the nub … and pulled out of the mortar. Enter mild-mannered pots of crimson geraniums.

My swamp sunflowers that got so unruly they can’t even be staked anymore and have smothered my echinacea and sweet little white daisies?Pulled up by the roots and replaced with Mexican sage & a pomegranate dracaena which is supposed to get 10 feet tall.

Bye-bye swamp things…

Oh rapture! That almost makes up for the golden-yellow masses of sunflowers that won’t be showing up at my window in late September. Almost.

Giant viburnum snowballs will do me for now…

So — the wild fun is temporarily over, and I’m exhausted.

Everything is neat and tidy and in line.

Demure bedding plants (sigh).

I can’t wait for the wild to kick in!

Happy Earth Day!

Holy Guatemala!

Even for a Catholic like me, the Guatemalan religious traditions of Santa Semana (or Holy Week before Easter) are something to behold. Almost 40% of the country has switched from Catholicism to evangelical Christianity, but that hasn’t made a dent in the high holy days.

On Palm Sunday in Antigua, the Mass started at 6 a.m. with a great tolling of bells and in the church plaza, beautifully hand-made palm arrangements were on sale everywhere.        

But the best part of the celebration was a tradition unique to Antigua — as overnight and through the day, people painstakingly created gigantic sidewalk murals out of colored sawdust. It reminded me of the exquisite sand paintings created by Tibetan monks – so precise and so temporal.

Some paintings were religious; others just beautiful. But everywhere in the city, people were out in the streets, making their beautiful mark. It’s such a cool tradition from such a remarkable culture.

And just part of why I love Guatemala so much.

Happy Holy Week!

WTP??!

As required by my last post, here’s the humor you’ve been looking for, sent in an email from my friend Mimi:

Young people have their acronyms; now Seniors have their own texting codes:

* ATD- At the Doctor’s

* BFF - Best Friend’s Funeral

* BTW- Bring the Wheelchair

* BYOT – Bring Your Own Teeth

* CBM- Covered by Medicare

* CUATSC- See You at the Senior Center

* DWI- Driving While Incontinent

* FWBB – Friend with Beta Blockers

* FWIW – Forgot Where I Was

* FMI- Found My Insulin
* GGPBL- Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low

* GHA - Got Heartburn Again

* HGBM - Had Good Bowel Movement

* IMHO – Is My Hearing-Aid On?

* LMDO- Laughing My Dentures Out

* LOL- Living on Lipitor

* LWO- Lawrence Welk’s On

* OMMR- On My Massage Recliner

* OMSG – Oh My! Sorry, Gas

* ROFL…CGU – Rolling on the Floor Laughing…Can’t get Up!

* TOT- Texting on Toilet

* TTYL – Talk to You Louder

* WAITT – Who Am I Talking To?

* WTFA – Wet the Furniture Again

* WTP- Where’re the Prunes

* WWNO – Walker Wheels Need Oil

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now this is what the Internet is for.