Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022: The Final Letter of Volume 2

 

 

 Dear Joanie,

    Here I am in my Easter finery.  

GG Katie; I borrowed the hat.

 

 

 

Easter Brunch at the Carillon

    Today, we looked at pictures of you playing with your cousins at your grandmother's house. We had a quiet Easter Sunday. The brunch was scrumptious, with omelets, lamb, salmon, rice, carrots, salad, potatoes, stuffed tomatoes, cupcakes, neopolitans, croissants, coffee, and mimosas. Oh, and jumbo shrimp with cocktail sauce. 

    As you can see, we are not wearing masks, although we wore them from our apartment to the restaurant downstairs.  We're not entirely mask-free, but we're edging closer to that. I will, however, continue wearing my mask in the big stores, and Dougie will continue NOT going to the big stores at all.

    Last night we were able to go to the Easter Vigil at St. Aidan's.  It is our favorite service, although, of course, for most people, Easter Sunday remains the most attended. At the Vigil, we light the first fire of Easter, place incense in the Paschal Candles, hear stories of salvation history, right up to the present, repeat our baptismal vows, take Holy Communion, and shout the first "Hallelujah! of Easter.  Before Holy Saturday, we went to the Good Friday service, a solemn ritual in which we hear the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus in all its cruelty. We offer prayers for our broken world, and leave the church in silence.  We often say that, as Christians, we are Easter people in a Good Friday world. 

    As we move toward your second birthday, we have endured two years now of COVID restrictions that are, as I said earlier, now easing up.  From the reports I hear, we are encouraged to enjoy this time, knowing that it may not last given, the new COVID variants that keep popping up all over the place like kernels in a popcorn popper.  We shall see. We are now all encouraged to get a second booster shot, since there is some question about how long the effectiveness of the first booster lasts.  That will be a total of four shots. 

    Also as we move toward your second birthday, the world is wearied and worried. We have seen such injustice and horror in Ukraine, and gun violence in this country continues. Climate change is very real; in the West, we are still experiencing drought, with very little rain this spring. Our politicians seem self-interested and the movement toward regulating women's lives are frightening.  But then there is this:

  Just last week, the first black woman was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice: Ketanji Brown Jackson. You will know her name because she will still be serving when you are old enough to think about what happens at the Supreme Court Level. You will also learn how eminently qualified she is for the Court, and I hope you learn about those who supported her as well as those who opposed her.

And this:

We watch you as you grow into a little girl fully embracing your world with your strong will and determination. 

We welcome also Baby Luca into this world.

We give thanks for your parents who are doing such an amazing job at bringing up our Joanie!

Happy  Birthday on May 23, 2022!

Love,

GG Katie

 

 

 

On the Other Hand, It Wasn't All That Bad

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  Jellyfish
  

  
     Dear Joanie,

    Tonight I'm back at the Carillon, and everyone--Shelby  Poodle and Dougie--is sound asleep and I will be soon, too.

    But I wanted to say this about my childhood. It wasn't all that bad. I do have many memories that echo the nostalgia of those who grew up in a more stable home. My beach days and nights, of course, where I swam and walked, and tanned (dangerously), and talked to myself and stared out for hours at the vast Gulf Of Mexico with its warm currents and nibbling fish and jellyfish and Portuguese Man o' Wars, which gave us the thrill of living dangerously as well. Picking blackberries and going crabbing and letting the cool breezes sweep over my sleepy self as I lay down in a rickety old beach cabin with huge wide screened in windows and an ice box that looked like a refrigerator, but really was an ice box. We'd buy huge blocks of ice to put in it to keep our Cokes and tuna fish sandwiches cold. Padre Island and, later, the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston were the fair seedtimes of my soul, as Wordsworth so beautifully said about his childhood.

    I loved playing kickball with the neighbor kids, catching fireflies in a jar, collecting all kinds of seashells, and best of all, finding sand dollars during the winter months on the Gulf. When we took the ferry to Galveston, the porpoises would frolic in front of the boats and lead us all the way the the landing, while the pelicans swooped down for fish and the sea gulls screeched at everything and the jellyfish floated in the wake of the ferry.

A Postcard from the 1950s when we would have been taking the ferry.

    I loved--and still do love--sitting in a cafe on the Intracoastal Canal and watching the barges and tugboats make their way to the East Coast. I thrived on the large Gulf shrimp, french fries, hush puppies, gumbo, guacamole, and the watermelon that grew in the sandy fields on the peninsula. 

    When I got tall enough to stand on the shore side of a seine (I'd never, ever be tall enough to stand in the deep water),  I'd join about eight other people holding the seine first in a straight line our into the Gulf, then holding on really tight while the tall ones, mostly men, would begin to move in an arc toward the shore, until, reaching it, we all dropped the huge net to see what bounty the Gulf had given us. We got mostly redfish and crabs. By law, we'd have to throw back any shrimp that managed to get caught in the net, and through caring and caution, we'd throw back the baby shark and the turtles. 

This is a picture of men seining on the Gulf of Mexico.

    Padre Island has been a big resort area for decades now, but when I was a little girl, there was nothing there but a single lane road and some jetties reaching out into the Gulf. The shore was sculpted with grassy sand dunes and the possibilities for building castles and digging tunnels and burying one another in sand were endless.

    There is some irony in the fact that I've spent most of my adult life in a land-locked state, where I've turned to the mountains to feed my soul. But salt water still runs through my veins.

    It wasn't all hardship, my childhood.  

Portuguese Man O' War

    Love,

    GG Katie

A Short Time in the Mountain Home

Dear Joanie,

    Tonight I'm writing to you from our little house in the mountains above Boulder.  There were a few days in between renters, so Shelby and I came up for a couple of nights. I love being up here in this place I worked so hard to make a home. Beginning this time of year, we try to be outside as much as possible, even though we know we'll have more snow and rain, probably well into May. 

    Shelby and I hiked up the mountain, where she met two of her friends, Filbert and Lupe. Then I worked in the yard most of the afternoon, clearing out beds. The cherry and apple trees have some tiny buds on them,and the aspen do as well. Miniature daffodils are the only thing blooming right now, although the earth is teasingly sending up little shoots of irises and mountain flax, and the rabbit brush has turned green.

    There was a time that I thought this would be the last house that I would live in, that Dougie and I would grow old and older and one of us, then the other would die here. I do hold on to this place, although selling it would be really advantageous to us. I want the children to inherit it and do whatever they want with it, but I hope that maybe one day you'll spend some time here. 

    This isn't the first time I've left a house and a place I love, often having no control over moving, especially when I was a child and then a teenager.  This is one part of my life story--moving from place to place.

    When I was growing up, we moved all up and down the Gulf Coast of Texas, following Curt my step-father (that's a whole other story I need to tell you about) from job to job. I was born in Houston at St. Joseph's Hospital in 1939. From that time until about 1950, we moved from Houston to Spring Branch to Robstown to Corpus Christi to Aransas Pass and finally to Beaumont when we moved in with my Grandmother Turner, Amy's mother, when I was in the 6th grade. The one constant in my life at the time was the beach, where we spent a lot of time playing while our parents fished.  I've often said that I have salt water in my veins, I so love being at the beach.  

    I learned how to be tough, always being the new girl in school. I learned how to eat lunch by myself and be alone on the playground at recess looking as if I preferred it to being part of the group of girls sitting in circles together or pushing each other on swings or playing Jacks. 

    Why did we move around so much? Curt went from job to job and we followed him as things went from well-to-do to average to poverty. The five of us lived in two rooms in Aransas Pass, and that was right before we went to live with Grandmother Turner, whom we called Mama. She was suffering from dementia and we clearly needed a place to live, even though Amy's four remaining sisters (Aunt Christine having died much earlier) and two brothers lived right there in Beaumont. I lived with Mama until I was 18 and got married and left my family for Lake Charles, Lousiana and, later, Holyoke, Massachusetts, when your Grandmother Coco was two years old and your Great Aunt Julie was a newborn. 

    I have to be quite honest here. It wasn't a happy childhood, all that moving around. Some people look with nostalgia at their growing up, picturing a stable and a happy time.  But there is very little I look back on with warmth and happiness. 

    I have always been searching for a home, trying to make a home. Now I am living in a rather upscale senior living community, on the 6th floor, in an apartment light and airy, with windows looking out at the mountains. It's much like living in a hotel, which isn't a bad thing, mind you, but my heart is still in this little mountain house, where it's now past midnight as I bring this entry to a close.

    More to come about my childhood...

    Love,

    GG Katie

     

It's April 2022 and Maybe, Just Maybe Things Are Sort of Normal

 Dear Joanie,

    You will be two years old in about two months, and Dougie and I continue to watch with such pleasure the pictures and videos you mom and dad post almost daily. As I've said before, in less than a year, you've turned into a little girl, dancing, walking, traveling to see your Grandpa John, singing. Such personality, especially in your facial expressions, and such a delight to see. You are embracing the world head on!

    Since it's the beginning of April--today being actually what we call April Fool's Day (But no one is quite in the mood these days to play jokes, since we're tiptoeing back to normal), I have decided to write something everyday this month, so that I can order Volume 2 of Letters to Joanie in time for your birthday May 23. I'll bring you up to date on what's happening in our world, but then I think it's time that you also got to know a bit more about me. So the month of April will give you some insights into my life story, which has been a journey with many rough spots and wild turns, but has also been a journey of many peaks and great joy.

    For today, I'll bring you up to date on what has been happening in our lives.

    Dougie continues to get better from his bout with COVID, but he is really frustrated because he can't remember words. He is still doing speech therapy and physical therapy. He's in a pretty good mood, and the staff at the Carillon are encouraging him to get into more activities so that he doesn't sit and read all day long, which is his favorite thing to do. 

    I didn't get to go to Mexico, and I was heartbroken.  I thought I had everything covered with a walker for Shelby Poodle and people checking in on Doug: his cousins, my friends, the staff at the Carillon, But your grandmother, your great aunt Julie, and Beth,the nurse at the Carillon all agreed that Dougie should not be left alone, so at the last minute I canceled my trip. I have to say that I felt it was a lifeline for me, since the changes have been so great this past year.  What can I say? I canceled my flight, my ride to the airport, and the retreat I was so much wanting to go to.  I will try again next year.

    Shelby Poodle and I continue our work at the Summit Middle School, and next week, she begins meeting with students who have ties to Ukraine, which is now being brutally invaded by Russian soldiers to the shock and dismay of the rest of the world. Here is a picture of Shelby and me as a therapy team:

She is much loved at the Summit Middle School as the students sit on the floor with her and pet her. Now, when we go to the school, we can hear the kids saying, "Hi, Shelby!" as we walk down the hall.  They don't know my name at all!

    To be continued tomorrow, when I begin to tell you about my childhood, when I moved from place to place to place...

Love,

GGT Katie