August 2 is my sister Shirley’s birthday. She would have been 76 today. Here’s the birthday card I bought for her a couple of months ago.
I think she would have gotten a kick out of it.
During the viewing and funeral in early July, many people came up to me and said I looked just like Shirley, that I could be her twin. Growing up, I never really saw the resemblance.
The sisters in 2007. Shirley is on the left, me on the right. Note that in this photo I have 20% less hair and 20% more body fat than I do now. Just saying …
I was blinded by our age gap. Now when I see photos of her, especially those from when she was in her 20s, I’m stunned by how much I looked like her when I was the same age. It makes me both happy and sad. I’m happy that when people see me, they see her too. I’m sad that I only came to know this now.
In any case …
Happy Birthday, Shirley! I love you and miss you bunches.
I’ve got only a couple of days before the month of July is over … to which I say, Good riddance, July! For those of you new to my blog, let me start with the painful acknowledgment of my sister’s death late on July 1. For context, I have three siblings and our birth order is as follows: oldest sister (C), Shirley, brother (G), and, finally, me. Shirley is (and always will be) my second sister, separated in age by just over 11 years. As I was growing up, she was probably more of a babysitter than a sister to me, an authoritative but protective figure; hence, my primal scream when I learned of her death.
We went to the viewing, the funeral, and the burial with my 98-year-old mother in tow. Admittedly, I was initially surprised that my mom wanted to go at all. The grief etched on her face was often difficult to bear. No parent should outlive their child, and the anguish in her open-mouthed but silent howl broke our hearts many times over. After the burial, when I thought for sure she’d head for her bed, she sat in her chair and asked, “So what’s next? Where are we going?”
“To the Auspelmyer’s [my sister’s home]. There will be food. Do you want to come?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t want to miss anything.”
I think I found the secret to my mother’s longevity: She doesn’t want to miss anything.
I want to share this memorial card. I think it was my oldest nephew who selected the poem. It’s perfect. It’s how I want to think of Shirley. Not gone, but always with us, in our hearts.
Here also is a link to her obituary: Shirley Auspelmyer. If you have time, a lovely 9-minute video is also on the website.
Shirley and I started to become close after I left home and crashed my way into adulthood. With every passing year, we missed each other more. When both of us started showing gray hair, the difference between us of 11 years became irrelevant. It didn’t matter that we were a bit like night and day. Shirley had embraced the life of a traditional wife, marrying at 19 and embarking on her sole mission in life: raising a family. She wanted children and grandchildren. She especially loved babies.
I didn’t marry until I was 32 and after I had made sure I’d never have children. I like kids well enough, and I always had fun playing with my grandniece and grandnephews when I visited home. But I didn’t have a mission in life, a desire to propagate unless you consider raising a herd of cats a mission. Although we had our differences, and maybe because of those differences, my sister knew me better than I often knew myself.
For my 30th birthday, she sent me a book of poems. Does anyone recognize this book? I’ve kept it now for 35 years. The pages are brittle but still intact.
Shirley attached a note with the book, and I’ve opened the book to a poem that reminds me of my sister.
The “Ted” she refers to was our neighbor who treated us as if we were his own children. Growing up, Saturdays were shopping days with Ted. He’d buy us anything we wanted. As we got older, Shirley and I became less interested in what Ted might buy us and more satisfied just being with him.
I miss my sister. I won’t ever stop missing her, but I know I need to resume my life. I’m taking baby steps. I’m in no hurry.
I was only nine and you were nineteen when you married and left the family home.
As you took your vows, I sat in the pew, steeling myself to be quiet,
voiceless cries whirling in my head: “Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
I was only nine and, although you left, you didn’t leave me.
Instead, you gave me
the gift of a strong, silent, and steadfast brother in your husband,
the gift of three tall, handsome, and intelligent nephews,
the gift of eight beautiful and gifted grandnieces and grandnephews.
You never left me. You never let me go.
I was the one who left, who packed up my few things and moved across the country,
first to the West, then to the South, never back to the North.
You never let me go. Your letters followed me everywhere.
If only I had thought to tell you that I kept all the letters and cards you sent me.
Over thirty years of missives about the weather, the farm, the boys, your work, your life.
If only I had thought to remind you of your funny stories,
like that time in a hotel when you got locked inside a bathroom
and it took four men and how long to get you out
while you sat on the toilet and patiently waited.
Or how you used to joke about wanting to experience an empty nest as
your two oldest sons cycled through your house as they cycled into adulthood,
first one and then the other,
rinse and repeat,
testing your patience but never your love.
You were always there for your sons,
for your husband,
for our father,
our neighbor,
your friends,
our mother,
our siblings.
For me.
Family was your mission in life.
I could have been a better sister.
I am afraid of life without you.
I wanted to take for granted that you would always be here for me,
that you would never leave me.
When your husband called to say you were in the hospital again,
I felt that nine-year-old girl uncurl in my heart,
her hot fingers clenched as this time she screamed the words, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
You are gone. Not from my heart, not from my memory, but from my future.
I could have been a better sister.
But I could never have been a better sister than you were for me.
In memory of Shirley Marie (Bailey) Auspelmyer
August 2, 1946–July 1, 2022
I am going to take a hiatus from blogging and writing online. Not that I’ve been doing much of either lately but why not make it official.
Here’s the deal: my sister Shirley is dying. The sister with Parkinson’s. The sister who has been dodging health curveballs most of her adult life. The only one of us four who went on to have her own family: three sons and eight grandchildren. The sister who wrote letters to me after I left home. Long letters that I’ve collected in a box for over thirty years.
We visited my family in May for a few days. I hadn’t seen Shirley in almost seven years and wasn’t prepared for how Parkinson’s had altered her. Cognitively, she was still with it. We had conversations, cracked jokes. Still, I was terrified watching her walk about because she was a fall risk. I’d hover, sometimes holding my breath until she sat down and was, in my view, safe.
A few weeks ago, she was admitted to a local hospital for a UTI. Then she was discharged. Then she was readmitted because the antibiotics hadn’t worked. And it has just gone downhill from there. One week ago, we were all worried about her having an antibiotic-resistant infection. The doctors proposed sending her to an infectious disease center. Before they could do that, they had to do a couple more tests to determine if anything else was causing the infection.
They found a large mass in her abdomen; a biopsy confirmed it was cancer.
Here’s where the rage kicks in. Shirley has been under the care of SEVERAL doctors for SEVERAL years and yet this large mass just appeared? The attending doctor suggested that it might have been growing in her abdomen for at least a year. Seriously?!
But it’s too late for rage. The mass is there, it’s malignant, and treatment is not recommended because of her condition. She hasn’t been responsive for a while so her husband and sons have to make all the decisions. She’ll receive hospice care at the hospital.
I don’t want her to go, but I know we have no choice. I only hope that someday I’ll have the strength to write about her and share my memories of her.
I’ve been inspired and comforted by this essay by Eileen Vorbach Collins: My Grief Goes On: A Letter to My Late Daughter. I can and will grieve for Shirley as long as I’m alive. Just like I still grieve for so many other friends, family members, and furred children that I’ve lost. I haven’t lost the memories, though. The memories are my comfort.
Comments are closed because I need to step away for now. I can imagine what you all would say, though, and, believe me, I appreciate it.
So now, find a loved one–whether furred or hairless or both–and hug them tight.
I always feel apprehensive when reviewing poetry, maybe more so than when I’m writing the poetry myself. Some time ago, I took an online writing course, and the instructor mentioned in passing that she liked writing poetry because you didn’t need to explain poetry like you would explain a story or an essay. While that idea frees me to write poetry, it definitely makes it more difficult to review poetry.
Poetry is like music, like art. You can admire the technique, the skill in putting words (or notes or paints) together in a pleasing way. But the poetry I’m attracted to does more than please me. It lifts me out of myself and sets me to ponder ideas and feelings I either hadn’t considered or had been afraid to acknowledge. So ends my long introduction to this review of Merril D. Smith’s book, River Ghosts.
Cover art by Jay Smith
But before I begin my review: Just look at that cover! River Ghosts is published by Nightingale & Sparrow, and what a gorgeous book to hold in my hands. When I first saw the cover on Smith’s blog, I knew I had to have a printed copy. I have not been disappointed. In fact, when I wasn’t reading Smith’s lovely poetry, I had her book displayed on a bookshelf so I could enjoy seeing the cover.
The first poem in this collection–“River Ghosts”–sets up the reader for a journey into the past and present, into if and when, with “echoes / over the river.” The reader is invited to “Observe again.” but also to “Now solve the problem.” And that’s just in the first two poems. Smith might not intend for the reader to “solve the problem” presented in all the poems, but she definitely intends (in my humble opinion) for the reader to observe again and again, whether she is observing “a train to hell,” a first love or dark matter. Like a river, these poems meander–at turns edging toward grief (“our mother stopped eating before she died, / now I hear her ghost-laugh in my dreams”), then sisterly fun (“we rubbed the laughing Buddha’s belly for good luck”), but always listing toward the mysteries of the universe, encompassing life and death:
Once some brilliant star breathed time
in the after-wake of explosion and danced across a universe
exploring eternity
The poems were compiled after Smith’s mother died of COVID-19 in April 2020, and so a number of the poems feature her mother in her youth and old age. She (and others long-deceased) also features as a ghost; not a scary, haunted ghost, but:
Not living,
no longer here,
yet not completely gone.
In her poem “Family Ghosts,” Smith makes clear her calling and intent:
Subsisting, existing
their ghost voices sing to me
I hear them
I feel them–ancestors calling me,
this is what we do, generate, create the songs of our hearts forever.
These are poems I will be turning to often as I seek comfort when my own family members become “not living, / no longer here.” I will find comfort in knowing that they are “not completely gone.” Smith demonstrates how a writer could (and, perhaps, should) allow ancestors to speak through her, echoing through the years, so we always remember not just when but if.
When I saw the list of words, I started putting them together. Of course, adding in a few of my own. I believe I’ve managed to include all the words in the list. I don’t know what you would call the following (if anything), but it was fun to do. It’s also quite rough, but I suppose that’s obvious.
All.The.Words.
I need some fast material
To copy, detach, and vanish
Into a glorious seed sack
Made out of my beggar skirt.
Don’t imitate my voiceless polish.
Conspire, instead, conclude some tasty paint.
Add general onerous hobbies that scab and construe.
I am capable although I appear to deprive.
It’s in my walk, offset and misty,
A simple, illustrious ornament from my youthful but elderly mother
She doesn’t wear a nappy but she’s cagey.
She preset the celery to a paltry stew.
I stimulate the waggish ink unit in exchange for something tasteful.
I offer a shiver of hope that will hit the tree,
Leave the correct but tasteless and spooky indent.
Useless. So useless.
I emit an aberrant and callous hush,
Spy a stereotyped representative, his knee sturdy, cloudy, and square.
I hinder his needy hose with paste,
Satisfy his hate,
Disobey and encroach on the stone where a mean flash of a friend lies tired but exuberant.
I measure my mother.
She makes a soup of a questionable cut.
I infuse and injure it with a full absurd and icky taboo.
I suck and
Produce a heartbreaking recess of robust reading.
I’m not sure Junior and Raji approve of this “poem.”
An alternative title to this post would be The Great Escape. Be assured this story has a happy ending, although the experience probably shaved a few years off my life.
Last Sunday I was minding my own business, sitting in front of my computer checking email, when I heard my husband calling for Raji and rattling the dry food container. I thought to myself, “Why is he doing that? He gave all of them lunch just an hour ago.” At that moment, I turned to my window which looks out onto our deck. I saw Raji’s ginger-striped bum sliding between two of my potted plants. I didn’t react at first. I only remember thinking, “Oh.”
Then my heart made a nose-dive to my stomach. I ran to my husband who was outside, trying to encourage Raji to turn around and come back inside the house. Quietly he told me that Wendy had also gotten out. He had managed to sequester Junior in one of the back rooms, all while I was busy reading and writing emails.
Naturally, I was calm and not at all worried. HA! I call BS on that!
I was totally freaked out. I ran around to the front of the house where Greg had last seen Wendy. I couldn’t find her. At all. I hurried to the back yard where Greg was still talking to Raji as our little innocent kitty explored. For the next two-and-a-half hours, we followed Raji as he investigated the perimeter of our property, occasionally jumping a fence to a neighbor’s yard.
Meanwhile, Wendy had disappeared.
Every so often I’d return to the front of our house, walk a ways up and down our street, calling her name. All our doors were open, including the garage door, an invitation for them to return. Junior continued to protest, shut up in the back room, his voice plaintive and distant.
We couldn’t get close to Raji. Generally he doesn’t like to be picked up so we knew if we rushed him, he would run away from us. At one point, he started talking to me and seemed frustrated by his attempts to get back in our yard. While he could jump onto our neighbor’s chain-link fence, he didn’t like the fences and kept trying to find ways around them. Finally he was back in our yard and he ran up to the back porch! Unfortunately, he went to the one unopened screen door, the screen door that we rarely use because the porch has settled over the last thirty years, and the door is difficult to open and close.
It started to rain.
At first, just sprinkles and then a downpour. By this time, Greg had gotten the other screen door open but Raji was sheltering under a group of ferns. I went back to the front of the house. Still no sign of Wendy.
I sat down on a stool and tried to think of what to do next. I had alerted our neighbors across the street, and I managed to put an alert on the Nextdoor app. Raji seemed to want to stay close by, for which I was grateful, but I was perplexed that Wendy had simply disappeared. Greg came around to the front, and we started to talk about next steps.
As we talked, I heard a small noise. I looked at Greg. He had heard it too, but couldn’t tell where it came from. I started to call for Wendy and then heard a distinct “Meow.” She was in the garage, but where? We couldn’t see her. We were cautious in how we looked for her, not wanting to make any loud noise or sudden movement. My fear was that she would get spooked and run off.
Finally, I looked into the recesses under Greg’s work bench. Wendy was sitting in the middle of a considerable amount of clutter, behind a large board that was propped against the bench. She had chosen the one spot where she couldn’t be seen. Greg moved the board, and Wendy looked at us like she couldn’t imagine what the fuss was all about. We closed up the garage, keeping our eyes on Wendy in case she decided to bolt. She didn’t.
Once Wendy was safe, I went inside our house to close the French doors that opened onto our back porch. As I started to close one of the doors, Raji sauntered in. Yes, he sauntered. In disbelief, I watched him cross the back porch and enter the dining room, acting as if nothing had happened. I immediately closed up the house and let Junior rejoin us.
How did this happen?
We know that our cats, Raji in particular, enjoy hanging out in the garage. I don’t know why. They just do. A side door off the garage leads to the great outdoors. We keep it closed for the most part, but, sometimes, especially when, for whatever reason, one of us is going in and out, the side door is left open for convenience.
Greg was going in and out, taking care of some minor yard work. He was on his way out again and didn’t see that Raji and Wendy were right at his heels. By the time he realized they were in the garage and the side door was wide open, it was too late. Junior was also following the group, but he’s not as quick as he used to be, so Greg was able to grab him and put him back in the house.
Lesson learned
Keep the side garage door closed at all times, and make sure we know where the kids are before entering the garage.
Theories as to why we didn’t lose our cats
Wendy probably never ventured far. The garage is a safe place for her. After we first got her in August 2013, we had a couple of episodes where she escaped through the front door. The trick to getting her back was to open the garage door. At the sound of that door opening, she would hurry back to us. And it’s likely that when it started to rain, she came back to the garage for shelter. She just didn’t bother to let us know right away.
Raji probably wondered where we had gone. For over two hours, we had been calling and talking to him, following him around. Then, all of a sudden, we were no longer there. As long as we were talking to him, he was content to be outside. But I think it worried him when he no longer knew where we were. He had to come inside to find us.
We are still amazed at our good fortune: that our kids didn’t go far, that they came back inside of their own accord, and that the horrible experience (for me and my husband) only lasted a few hours. We are also grateful for what this experience showed us: that our cats are truly domesticated, that they will choose home if given the choice.
I don’t think I could go through something like this again, though. I felt utterly helpless. My husband felt deeply guilty. Neither of us wanted to imagine life without Wendy or Raji.
Thank you for reading. Here’s a few post-adventure photos. Well, actually the first one is pre-adventure, taken the morning of.
Raji and Junior in the window.
Raji catching up on his naps. Yes, those are my feet, and that is Wendy’s fleecy blanket he is lying on.
Wendy still not understanding what all the fuss is about. She just wants to snooze.
After nearly three years of no traveling, not even within the not-so-great state of Florida, we finally, FINALLY, took a trip. It wasn’t the most exciting trip we could have taken, but it was the most important. We went to my old childhood stomping grounds and visited family. As many of you know, my mom is 98. I also have an older sister living with Parkinson’s, and a younger cousin living with Multiple Sclerosis. So this trip was bittersweet.
My mom is in good health, with a strong enough constitution to insist that it would be “ridiculous” (her word) to live to 99 or longer. I know she’s ready to go, but it was good to see her enjoying herself during our visit.
My sister … well, I hadn’t seen her in about six and a half years, so it was a shock to see what Parkinson’s had done to her body. Still, mentally, she was all there, quick to spar with words, get the joke, and say when she was done for the day.
My cousin, I hadn’t seen her in the same length of time. Fortunately, she was feeling well enough to sit through a short visit. She still has her bright, light-up-the-face smile, but wouldn’t talk much about her illness. The visit with her was rich: when she married some thirty-odd years ago, she and her husband built a house and included an in-law section for her mother and father. Her father (my uncle) is now deceased, but her mom (my aunt, my mother’s sister) is still vibrant at 94.
While we were there, my cousin’s nine-year-old granddaughter stopped in after school, to wait for her dad who would take her to judo. At first shy, Farrah was soon entertaining us with stories about her chickens. The best part was watching how she interacted with her great-grandmother. My aunt insisted on sharing her chair with Farrah, and I could see that they had a warm, loving relationship.
It was, as always, an interesting experience to sit at a table with my mom and my aunt at either end, both hard-of-hearing, playing messenger when one couldn’t hear the other. In fact, most of the people we saw, including ourselves, are hard of hearing. Some who need hearing aids wore them (myself, my husband, my sister); some who need hearing aids didn’t (my mother). I never talked so loud and for so long in my life.
My husband and I consider our trip to be a great success. I didn’t plan anything, just knew generally what I wanted us to do: get my mom and her sister together; meet one of my cousins for the first time (long story for later); spend as much quality time with my mom and sister as possible. Check, check, check.
Now, who knows what the future holds. I feel it stretching before me. I’ve come home to a couple of doctor appointments and not much else, and that’s just fine. I say I’m back “more or less” because part of me is still in New York, still musing about all we saw and did there.
Of course, one of the things I did there was take photos. On our first evening, we took a short walk across from our hotel and saw these lovely wildflowers.
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This was the view from our window. No, it’s not spectacular, but it was a nice view nonetheless. One evening I watched a rabbit hop around the grounds, probably checking out the picnic table (not seen in photo) for crumbs.
View from room window–Holiday Inn, Johnstown, NY
My mom has purple tulips in her little garden.
A purple tulip
Mom’s purple tulips
We flew out of Albany, New York at 6 AM. This is was the view after we’d been in the air about a half-hour or so.
View from plane.
Finally, to my surprise and delight, my onion bloomed in time for our return home.
The whole onion plant
The onion plant was an experiment. A couple of months ago, one of the onions I had bought for cooking started to sprout. On a lark, I decided to plant the onion and see what would happen. I don’t know if the long stalks are edible (they smell like green onions when I cut them), but I got pretty excited when bulbs appeared on a couple of them. And this is the result.
Onion bloom
Thank you for reading. Here’s your reward for reading to the end.
Another post with comments turned off. It’s not like I don’t want to hear from anyone. It’s like I’m going to be more off-the-grid than on-the-grid for the next couple of weeks.
When I’m fully back online, I promise I’ll turn comments back on, and we can have a chat. In the meantime, enjoy these pretty flowers that are blooming by my mailbox.
I’m taking a break from my never-ending, might-never-finish novel to share a review of Kevin Brennan’s latest novel, The Prospect. First, I need to acknowledge that I did receive an advanced copy of this wonderful novel. But I also bought the Kindle version. Just sayin’.
As you might guess from the title of this post, the novel has to do with baseball. But, there’s a twist. In this case (and this is not a spoiler), one of the characters is not your average wanna-be Big Leaguer. He is a phenomenon, what scout Bud Esterhaus would call “the living unicorn of a ballplayer.” The twist is that he is a she.
Are you a baseball fan? Do you lapse into what some might consider a foreign language when discussing America’s national pastime? I’m not, and I don’t. In fact, I know zip about baseball. But you don’t have to know baseball to become engrossed in this story of a young woman who wants to play in the big leagues with the big boys.
The story is told through Bud Esterhaus, a divorced late-middle-aged man whose real mistress was not the Elaine that his wife eventually found out about. No, although Bud argues that Elaine was his wife’s tipping point, the real wedge in their marriage, as well as in his relationship with his son, was Baseball, with a capital B. In bold, 42-point font.
In The Prospect, Bud discovers Joe Carpenter, a slim, small player who, as a military veteran at 26, is considered a bit old for the minor leagues, but that will be the least of Bud’s problems with Joe. From the book blurb, you, the reader, know that Joe is really a woman, but no one else does, which is one of the reasons why this novel is a nail-biting page-turner. Jo aka Joe manages to keep her secret for a good long while with Bud twisting himself into knots to accommodate her “eccentricities.”
What I’d never seen was a player who apparently didn’t want to be seen in any degree of undress. In a place where there’s literally nothing to be ashamed of, never taking off your clothes is bound to arouse suspicion.
I wasn’t above spreading that war-wound idea around. But I wasn’t about to ask Joe either.
When she does slip up and Bud learns of her deception, both the reader and Bud are already committed to this “living unicorn.” We’re all in, and the tension shifts from how long can Jo keep her secret to how long Bud and Jo can keep her secret. One thing to keep in mind, and I found this to be a fascinating part of the novel, is how often people see only what they want to see or expect to see.
Jo and Bud have a number of close calls, adding to the tension of the story and to Bud’s already high stress level. According to Bud, Jo is an “innocent”:
Not so much naive. Just innocent. There’s a difference. To me, a naive girl trying to play pro ball was putting herself at enormous risk but didn’t know it. Jo, the innocent, knew what the stakes were but was going to rely on her brains and her skills to get by. Her innocence was to be found in how she believed it completely possible.
I came to think of Jo as both naive and innocent. She knew what the stakes were and definitely believed in her own smarts and skills to succeed, but to believe she could maintain the deception indefinitely seemed naive. And selfish. She was 26 years old with military experience, yet Jo Carpenter didn’t consider the impact of her secret on others. It was a dream of hers to play pro. She was going to try and make it happen without regard for who got hurt. Bud was putting his own career on the line by helping her, but she never seemed to truly understand the risk he was taking. It wasn’t that Jo didn’t care about Bud. She does, in fact, come to care deeply about him. Still, it’s all about her.
In a way, Bud has the same problem. Bud is all about baseball and finds it nearly impossible to reconcile the fact that his son couldn’t care less about it. Bud does acknowledge that not every boy will grow up to love baseball, but he couldn’t meet Stan even halfway while he was growing up. Bud loved the game and–without regard for who got hurt–he put the game ahead of his family. Bud and Jo needed to find each other and go through this coming-of-age experience together. With Jo, Bud got to experience the kind of bond he had wanted with his son. She validated his need and his ability to be a father.
In turn, Jo got the guidance she needed, not just in how to play ball, but also in how to play Life. When someone believes in you, like Bud believes in Jo, everything seems “completely possible.”
When I get frustrated with a character, when I want to argue with them, that’s a pretty good indication that I’m deep in the story. I’m hooked. Plenty of times I was frustrated with Bud or Jo or both at the same time. But there were more times when I was cheering them on or commiserating with them. Brennan draws his characters so vividly that you believe they could walk off the page and into your life. With these characters, I’d also expect them to grab some beer and drag me to a baseball game. And I’d go with them … happily.
I know zip about baseball, but I know when a writer has hit one out of the park. Kevin Brennan has done just that with The Prospect.
Marie at 1 Write Way 