Leesburg Essay 12

Alex

Alex died of lung cancer on April 25^th at a New Hampshire hospice. I have included her obituary.

Alexandra, 47, of Farmington, NH passed away on April 25, 2009 at Seacoast Hospice House in Dover, NH after a long battle with cancer.

Born in New York City on December 9, 1961, Alex graduated from Ridgewood High School, Ridgewood, NJ, in 1979 and from the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, in 1983 where she studied pre-veterinary medicine. In 1986 she married Timothy Patrick, son of Perley & Sharlene of Dover, NH. Together Tim & Alex pursued their dream of raising a family on a small farm.

Alex was a devoted mother to her two sons, Shane and Ian, and served as their den leader and pack treasurer in the Cub Scouts. She was also a lifelong animal lover, owning numerous pets, caring for horses and tending livestock on her farm. An avid gardener, she started her own nursery, growing a wide variety of vegetables, flowers, and other plants on her “Rocky Meadow Farm,” ran a roadside market stand and was a repeat grand-prize winner at the Rochester Fair’s “Market Garden Display” in Rochester, NH.

In July 2007 she was diagnosed with advanced stage lung cancer. Determined not to let the disease slow her down, she continued working in her gardens, remained active in the Cub Scouts and participated in “Relay For Life” while undergoing chemotherapy. She taught those around her the meaning of strength and courage. She enriched all of our lives. She achieved her dream.

Alex is survived by her husband, Tim; her sons, Shane, 11, and Ian, 7; her parents, George and Eva of Ridgewood, NJ; her sisters, Felicie of Phoenix, MD and Gabrielle of Cream Ridge, NJ; her brother George of Leesburg, VA; and many nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held on Saturday, May 9^th at 1:00pm at Emmanuel Advent Christian Church Family Life Center, 34 Eastern Ave., Rochester, NH. In lieu of flowers, donations in Alex’s memory may be made to Meaderboro Community Church, 52 Evans Rd., Rochester NH, 03867

Life Events

When George and his family were drafting Alex’s obituary, attempting to tell something about her in addition to relating the basic facts of her life, I was reminded of the mini-obituaries—the “Portraits of Grief”—that The New York Times ran of all the people who died in the September 11 attacks. For each person, the writers captured something interesting and unique about them and it was very effective. I believe that they won a Pulitzer Prize for this, as well they should have.

I have heard about so many people recently who are either battling cancer or who have succumbed to it, I’m beginning to think that everyone is likely to get cancer, the only things that vary are at what age, what type, and when it’s diagnosed. This may sound outrageously pessimistic, but there are so many different types of cancer with so many different triggers that I almost think it’s a miracle to make it through life avoiding it.

In addition to Alex’s memorial service in the beginning of July, we’ve also attended a wedding (James and Ashleigh), First Communion (Alexander), and a three-fold Baptism (Mary, Eva, and Paula), managing to span a wide range of pivotal life events in a small amount of time. First Communion went well for Alexander. During the homily Father Mosimann gave before the ceremony, he spoke to the kids about the themes of love and responsibility. He then held up a picture of a man and a woman and told the kids that the “parents” in the picture would let them do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and asked how many kids would be interested in trading in their three-dimensional parents for the easy-going, flat parents. Sitting next to us in the audience, Nora—our little child with a lust for independence—stuck her hand right up.

It’s a Dog’s Life

Fully half of my family would like a turn at being Baxter. Nora would like a chance to try it because, as she says, Baxter never gets sent to his room for misbehaving (she mentions this as though it happens to her all the time), and he doesn’t have to wash his paws before he eats. George wants to be the dog because then he could sleep whenever he wants.

George is certain that Baxter has identified him as the pack leader (a.k.a. the Alpha Dog), which means the dog fears him but is very respectful of him. George has informed me that I am somewhere further down on Baxter’s totem pole: maybe not even Bravo, but Charlie. I had become convinced that Baxter is not a Jack Russell terrier mix, as we were told, as he has little resemblance to one, but a Miniature Pinscher, based on his coloring. But then I read on the web that the Miniature Pinscher, or “Min Pin” as I learned, is only 10 to 12 pounds, so unless 23-pound Baxter’s other parent was quite a bit bigger, I suppose I’m back to square one on the dog ID. Baxter’s favorite TV show is the Dog Whisperer, on the National Geographic Channel, which he watches intently, putting his head back on his paws only during those rare moments when the dogs are off the screen.

I just finished reading Cesar Millan’s first book, Cesar's Way. He is the human star/host of the Dog Whisperer, and a big advocate of exercising your dog intensely to improve behavior, resorting to a treadmill if necessary. We don’t have a treadmill at present, but I wonder if Baxter could manage the stationary bike?

A silly “What kind of dog are you?” quiz on Facebook identified me as a Maltese among a number of possible breeds. I would have thought maybe a beagle or some sort of respectable water dog, but a Maltese? An indoor, groomed, not-unlike-a-stuffed-animal breed? Me?

Years ago, when my Aunt Marilu was married to her first husband in Michigan, she became known in the social pages for serving canned dog food to her husband and his friends one evening after they had come back from partying demanding to be fed. They didn’t apparently notice the difference. This, then, from a recent issue of the magazine The Week: “…researchers presented volunteers with five types of mashed-up food, including pate, duck liver mousse, and dog food, and found that only three out of 18 were able to correctly distinguish the dog food from the others.” So there we go. A potential source of snacks for unexpected and presumably annoying guests?

Spring Break

We spent several days over spring break at Gabi’s house in the woods in New Jersey, taking day trips to Philadelphia. Despite the frequent rain showers, we managed to see Independence Hall, the Betsy Ross house, the Liberty Bell, the Franklin Institute of Science, the Cezanne exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a number of cheesesteak “restaurants.” The activity that impressed Nora the

most was “Ride the Ducks”: a tour bus converted from an amphibious truck of the kind used in the D-Day landings (an attraction available in a number of different cities). In addition to the tour of the city, the ride featured a duck sound-maker distributed to each rider; ensuring that the fun lasts long after the ride is complete. Alexander, in contrast, was probably most thrilled by firing his cousin William’s pellet guns into the forest (or alternatively at George). Or perhaps riding along the zipline Uncle Bill installed in the woods (see photos). Uncle Bill was an attraction in himself; like Uncle Hon or my father, he served as a constant source of entertainment.

Speaking Truth to Power

Just after school let out, we took our annual summer trip to Knoxville to stay with my parents. Alexander can barely fit in all that he wants to do while he’s there, mainly endless games of pool, swimming (actually really diving and/or splashing), and watching cowboy movies or sporting events with my father. This year he reached the point in his pool game at which he can quite consistently beat all of us, including George. I would play against him and he would tell me before pretty much every shot, “Wrong angle.” I asked him at one point why he felt the need to tell me this on every shot, and he said “I speak the truth.” Nora can now reach the pool table, too, which has improved her game immensely, although she can manage a cue stick only when half of it is screwed off.

Media Update

Books

Gabi recommended that I read the four-volume series of teenage vampire books written by Stephenie Meyer from which the movie Twighlight was made. At first my reaction was, “I don’t like horror, they were written for teenagers, blah blah blah,” but I then ended up almost finishing the first one by the time we left her house, and have since finished the remaining three. By number four I was certainly tired of the use of the word “agony” and certain other overwrought expressions (I tried to keep in mind that this is a book featuring an 18-year old girl). The thing about the series is that the characters are fascinating (although their appeal definitely declines by book four), the circumstances are clever, and the stories are real page turners, even though you could skip half the words on every page and not miss a thing.

In between the vampire books, I coasted through The Anglo Files, a book George got for me after hearing an interview with its author, Sarah Lyall. It is a laugh-out-loud examination of many aspects of British life (including parliamentary decorum, cricket, and false modesty) and I have to say that my conclusion is that the British are even weirder than I thought.

The book has definitely provided a broader context in which to watch English Premier League Soccer, which with some of the commentary (e.g., “that team that they’re playing is simply rubbish!”) is a little like watching that old TV series Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3000). Actually, George and I find ourselves harkening back quite frequently to MST3000 on those occasions when we’d rather mock some TV show than actually watch it, as was the case during season seven of 24 (although I read that Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica is joining the cast of 24 next year, which has the potential to take it up a notch from its current torpor).

The most disturbing chapter in The Anglo Files was that on dentistry, a topic which sets Americans apart from most other people on the planet. The British have perfectly awful teeth. The author’s point in this chapter was that the British have caught on to the fact that visibly rotting teeth makes one far less appealing, particularly for someone in the public eye, and are beginning to see the benefits of cosmetic—or even basic—dentistry. I don’t remember Germans having teeth quite as bad, but I do remember my visits to a dentist on a leafy boulevard in our leafy district of Berlin and how he spent literally about five minutes picking at a few of my front teeth and then told me to go on my way. He probably needed some extra time at the end of the day so that he could go wash his car.

Nora and I have begun reading “chapter books” together. We’ve gotten through quite a few in the last month or so, most of them books that were mine when I was little. We began with Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, which I thought might appeal to Nora because it concerns a little girl who’s just about her age. She had a lot of questions about why they did things in this or that way. George remembers being struck as a kid by the fact that Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of the book Farmer Boy and Laura Ingalls’s future husband, only took a bath once a week—in cold water. What strikes me now is how much of Laura Ingalls’s story concerns the consequences of children being naughty, so it’s quite amusing for a parent.

We then moved on to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. My favorite chapter concerns the “square candies that look round.” This title is very funny once you get into the chapter and realize the pun; I didn’t know if Nora would get it, but she did. (George had the same question when he read the book with Alexander, who also caught on immediately.) It’s really subversive how Wonka giggles away at the children’s misfortunes, and the Oompa Loompas sing these ridiculous songs mocking them.

Next up was Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. Nora did not seem at all bothered by the fact that Charlotte dies in the end. After this was Bambi by Felix Salten, which is far more violent and nature-video-like than I remember it being. In addition, there is a very unusual and striking chapter featuring two autumn leaves talking with each other about what’s about to happen to them (i.e., fall off the tree). We are now well into the Doctor Dolittle series by Hugh Lofting, which were my books but which I can’t remember reading. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the Little House books and also one of my favorites as a little girl (ironically, given my opposition to princesses), A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, also sticks in my mind. Alexander is just waiting for me to read Nora the first Harry Potter book.

Early in high school, my friend Jocelyn and I formed our own reading group and had the freedom to determine what we wanted to read. One of our choices was a book I read countless times: Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier. I should reread it as an adult. It has a very strange premise in that the lead character is portrayed as such a nobody, essentially, that she is not even given a name. Jocelyn and I christened her “Lois.”

In recent years I’ve met a number of people for whom John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meaney ranks as one of their all time favorites. I believe I mentioned this in a past essay as one of the books for which the movie was too much of a disappointment even for me to watch. It’s such a strange little book, but really endearing.

Movies: Three Stars

Before the Devil Knows Your Dead concerns the botched robbery of a family jewelry store. It was pretty good, but had an ending that left us shaking our heads with incomprehension. The movie features Marisa Tomei, adding to its appeal for George, for whom My Cousin Vinny, for which Ms. Tomei won an Oscar, is one of his favorite movies of all time.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is as long as its title but worth watching nonetheless. Brad Pitt comes off as an actor rather than a tabloid headline. The movie is also really beautiful; I imagine the cinematographer and the art director had a good old time. I wish I knew more about Jesse James, though. I think that the extent of my knowledge was summed up in the episode of The Brady Bunch (it’s very funny to sit around with a group of people who grew up in the seventies and try to think of every Brady Bunch episode you can) in which Peter dreams about being Jesse James and a descendent of someone who was killed by the James gang is brought in to disabuse him of his hero worship.

Nephews Shane and Ian recommended that we watch the movie remake of the TV series Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway as Agents 86 and 99. They said this while implying that Steve Carell in the title role reminded them a lot of their Uncle George. George kept pretty quiet about any resemblances he noted in the movie; I would point out that Agent 86 is at first an analyst churning out long, detailed, and boring reports and presenting them to his snoring colleagues. Maybe after Shane visited George’s office last year that’s the impression he was left with?

We went to the theater in Knoxville to see State of Play, starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, and Helen Mirren. The actors were all very good (Crowe quite chunky and with long hair, but I’m not complaining); the problem with the movie is that the plot was kind of murky in the end.

In Bruges, whose stars include Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes, is a very funny blackish comedy about hit men who are sent to Bruges, Belgium to await a call from their boss. It’s very violent, but the dialogue and situations are quite clever, and I was really impressed with Colin Farrell as one of the hit men. Also, the city itself looked lovely.

Movies: Two Stars

We half-heartedly watched half of Killer of Sheep, a black and white, 1970s examination of inner city Los Angeles. The 10,000 dollar budget was painfully obvious. I can see why critics regard it as noteworthy, but watching it is more like being in film class than sitting back and catching an enjoyable flick (Citizen Kane is another example of this phenomenon).

TV and Other

Battlestar Galactica completed its final season with an ending that couldn’t be anything but a little disappointing, although I liked it as it was completely unexpected. Now the Sci Fi Channel is touting its new show for the fall, Caprica, which goes back to the creation of the Cylons before the destruction of the home worlds. Someone loaned us the DVD of the pilot, and it was more interesting that I thought possible given that I had already rejected the idea of any kind of spinoff.

We eagerly watched the HBO series John Adams starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. I am a fan of Paul Giamatti (he almost—I repeat, almost—managed to upstage Russell Crowe as Jim Braddock’s manager in Cinderella Man). George was utterly mystified, though, with the portrayal of Adams as a generally cranky old man who manages to alienate pretty much everyone, Jefferson as a man who goes around mumbling and rarely ever smiles, and George Washington as still and diffident. As neither of us has read the David McCullough book on which the miniseries is based, maybe this view is a well-documented portrayal of the founding fathers, but it’s vastly different from the way they usually are presented in history textbooks and other books I have read.

Most afternoons this spring, as soon as Alexander had finished his schoolwork, he would rush down to the basement to get in some time on the Wii video game, specifically this really clever little Star Wars game in which the figures that you manipulate all look like they’re made from LEGO pieces. He and his friend Andrew, who would show up at the door carrying his own Wii remote, would sit down there arguing and collecting points, which they used to buy new characters with other battle powers. His conversations became peppered with references to the new guys he bought or would buy once he racked up enough points.

I wanted to brighten your day with some more gems from the country music world. My latest favorites include the following: “God is great beer is good people are crazy,” “There’s one in every crowd and it’s usually me,” and “Yeah, we went out last night, one thing started leading to another, out last night, getting to know everybody and their mother.”

Nine Months That Went By Much Faster Than Pregnancy and Now I Need a Job

Yoga teacher training wrapped up in May, although I missed the final weekend and thus have some hours to complete before I can get my certification from Yoga Alliance as RYT 200 (Registered Yoga Teacher at the 200-hour training level). I plan on completing my hours at the Kripalu Center in the Berkshires in mid-July. I am taking a workshop on teaching flow yoga with Shiva Rea, who is the founder of the particular style of yoga (Prana Flow is what she calls it) in which I received my instruction. The idea of spending a weekend with her is a little like a graduate student in political science, having been taught by a really capable teaching assistant or assistant professor, who then launches into a seminar with Henry Kissinger—well maybe not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

One of the categories of yoga poses (asanas) is that of arm balances, which are really fun. There are countless such poses, from the quite simple to the extremely advanced. For whatever reason, though, many teachers gravitate toward Bakasana, for which the English translation is roughly “Crow Pose.” I can’t stand it. Every time I get into it I feel literally as though I’m going to fall on my face and crush my nose. I love other arm

balances; even more complicated ones. But those don’t involve launching yourself forward, leaning your entire crouched body on the shelf created by your knees jammed close to your armpits, and dangling your face worryingly above the earth. And in order to go deeper, the practitioner is urged to “jump into it” (and then naturally to jump out of it). I would rather have an intravenous drip put in, I believe, which is just about number one on my list of least favorite things. I prefer Eka Pada Koundinyasana (“Pose Dedicated to the Sage Koundinya”), for example, in which your entirely body is sprawled out over the shelf created by two bent elbows. Your nose is again worryingly close the earth, but your extended body makes it unlikely that you’re going to fall forward; more likely that your elbows will collapse underneath you and you’ll hit the ground in a less painful and disfiguring manner.

Dance Update

We survived another dance recital at the Dance Academy of Loudoun. This year there were at least two groups of young dancers (neither of which was Nora’s group) in which some of the girls just sat down on the stage, started to cry, and wouldn’t get up to dance with the other group members. In the case of one of them, another of the dancers went to her crying classmate and convinced her to come and join the group for a minute or two. In the case of the other group, the girls’ teenage minder had to come and carry the dancer off the stage at the end of the performance. Nora did fine, although she told George that she was trembling during the dress rehearsal. During the actual recital she was apparently okay because, as she explained later, the lights were off and she couldn’t see the audience. Alexander pointed out to us that she forgot some parts of her dance; we told him that this wasn’t information she needed to hear.

Politics as Usual

I thought that there was hope a month or so ago that my most-hated figure in Washington, Nancy Pelosi, was going DOWN. After her ridiculous dissembling on whether she knew about waterboarding, the only thing I could think is, Doesn’t anyone in Washington have a backbone? (Okay, okay George—you would say Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld do, but I digress…) Wouldn’t it be refreshing for someone just to tell the truth? Do her constituents believe this nonsense?

Many people seem to believe that the Obamites are drinking their own Kool-Aid (as an aside, when did this become perceived as a racist term rather than a reference to Jim Jones?)—that they are so devoted to the liberal line that they believe that torture, as they define it, is worse for the U.S. than an attack on the U.S. or its interests. I actually believe that they understand perfectly well the trade-off and they are just praying that intelligence services (now demoralized) and the military (overstretched) will do a good preventive job, and Obama’s diplomatic overtures will help to lower the temperature in the Muslim World. Obama certainly doesn’t want to be in the position of having a massive strike on U.S. interests during his presidency, and having it come back that he left our national security apparatus without some major tools. He would then have to make the argument forcefully that the “corruption of U.S. values” is in the longer-term more of a risk to the U.S. (by, for example, bringing forward more people willing to fight against the U.S.) than the immediate loss of life (i.e., his voters) and/or property in the case of a terrorist strike. It would be similar to Bush having to stand up before the families of those who died in Iraq and explain why it was important to be there. Obama would need to be pretty eloquent and persuasive to make that argument; or prepared simply to blame everything on the previous administration. Either way, I’m sure he’s doing a lot of praying.

Random Thoughts on Food

My mother gave me a copy of an old Fanny Farmer baking book a couple of years ago, and I have found many very unusual recipes, like those for breakfast pies, one in particular which features a custard made of milk, eggs, and cream of wheat. Not at all trendy, which leads me to the category of things that come full circle; it might interest you to see this reassessment of the healthiness of lard.

Financial Update

George recently received a call from an alumni fundraiser from the University of Rochester inviting him to lunch. George, a trained diplomat, decided to take the offer of lunch even though it was clear that the guy was going to hit us up for a bunch of money. He first went through a list of ways in which George could “get involved” as an alum, including helping with networking, but the bottom line was that he wanted to issue us an invitation to join the “George Eastman Circle,” which is the designation for people who hand over big wads of cash to the school. George is not entirely sure that he heard the guy correctly, but he believes that he said that the school is trying to raise ONE BILLION DOLLARS through a Capital Campaign. They have a very nice brochure printed with all sorts of flowery phrases meant to make you feel good about being part of The Circle (naturally capitalized) and supporting the next generation of students. Well, really—if a Capital Campaign can raise that kind of money for a well-regarded but unfortunately-situated school like the U. of R., then I’m going to print up a glossy brochure and launch one to buy George a Mercedes.