Dangermond.org

A friend recently said to me, “Wow, what a difference a week makes!” On Monday a week ago, my mother passed. Tatjana has always called mom a fallen angel and there was a moment when we were driving back across the Causeway on Wednesday, the day of her funeral, when the sun was streaking through the clouds and my brother pointed and told T that’s God and right then “I’ll Fly Away” came on my Ipod mix when I smiled and thought of my mom as a perfectly whole angel now.

On Thursday, I got a violent stomach virus and could barely get out of bed or do much more than moan.

On Friday, a friend stopped by and I managed to get out of bed, and as we were sitting at the dining room table, I got a call about an infant in distress who had been temporarily rescued by fairy godmothers – the caller said, “Are you interested?”

On Saturday, we hired an attorney in Indiana, he flew his private plane to the city where the baby was and had a consent signed.

On Sunday, I got in the truck at 6AM and drove like a bat out of hell for 953 miles to my dear Flower’s house who lives an hour from the infant.

On Monday, I arrived at the fairy godmothers’ house with borrowed clothes, diaper bag, formula, cereal, winter wear and hope.

On Monday night a week ago my mother died. I like to think she pulled some strings. On Monday night this week, I lay on the floor of Flower’s house with my son while she gave me a crash course in 9-month old baby care and my baby played with her baby.

On Tuesday, Tin and I drove through the first major snow storm of the year to the city where we would petition for the adoption. T flew from New Orleans to join us then I gave her a crash course in 9-month old baby care.

On Wednesday, all three of us – me, T and T2 – stood in front of a judge and when she asked if I would accept being the mother of this boy, tears burst out of my eyes taking everyone by surprise.

It’s Thursday, we are stuck here waiting for our federal criminal background clearance so we can cross the state line – a detail we didn’t know we needed until just now. It’s 14 degrees outside, but our family is warm and happy inside (though we miss Loca, Wolfie and Bam Bam).

Welcome Constantin Pavlovic Dangermond – where have you been?

We will call him Tin, although a friend did note that with a name like Constantin, our son will be comfortable in both the east and the west.

Thanks mom!

Miracles

WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love–or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds–or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down — or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best — mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans — or to the soiree — or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring–yet each distinct, and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass–the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim — the rocks — the motion of the waves — the ships, with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman

The law that Uganda is trying to pass which basically orders the death penalty for HIV infected homosexuals is brought to you by none other than The Family. I don’t believe that I have seen an organization so motivated by hatred until I came across this one courtesy of Jeff Sharlet’s book: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Forget what you know about foreign terrorists, these people are lurking in your Senate, Congress, neighborhood – they are on a mission of hate. Their belief is that Jesus Christ was about power, and they are using theirs to wield political clout and influence laws that are fundamentally hateful and anti-human.

I finally got out of the house or rather the bed this morning after being down for the count since Thursday. I took Loca to the park and was surprised to see the winterized version of it. It was supposed to snow on the northshore last night – brrr – that is cold for us here in the Gulf South. I was still coming out of a fog, the sort of new realization of my mom’s passing. I look forward to the memories of the last seven months being erased and supplanted by all the wonderful memories of my mother when she was vital and herself. But as a colleague wrote, this passage is “life defining.” Another colleague wrote about the passing of her own father saying she watched her big Italian ox of a father tethered to all the medical know hows that know nothing. She wrote, “What comforted me in the end was knowing that we didn’t have to worry any more, and that the celebration of his life would never end in my heart.”

And so that brings me to Chapter 1, Book 4. Book 1 was having two parents, then losing my larger than life father, Book 2 was finding my life as an adult that included too many miscarriages, Katrina, the end of a long and happy marriage, and Book 3 was the restoration and rejoining with my mother and sadly, her eventual death.

Chapter 1, Book 4 holds lots of promise. My father gave me courage and my mother gave me my free spirit. My intention is to use both to their best advantage. Despite the drawbacks we have had with our road to adoption, the night I flew back from NY for my mom’s funeral, we got a call. And then today another. This part and many others remain unwritten.

A serene day of mindless musing and contemplating my mom segued into a violent stomach flu in the evening and most of the day in bed. All of the stress and vibes of the last five months had to come out sometime.

Patsy Virginia (Thigpen) Namer
December 28, 1935 – November 30, 2009

When my grandmother died a lot of people came to her funeral in Franklinton, LA to mourn my beloved Mama Mae. However when the preacher got up to give her eulogy he spoke more about god than about Mama Mae and afterwards my mom and I lamented how at my grandmother’s own funeral she was given little air time even though she was the reason we were all there.

I vowed that I would get up and speak at my mother’s funeral and I’m sad to say here I am.

One of the many things that I would have said at my grandmother’s funeral is that my grandmother had come from 13 children, had had five of her own, and had many grandchildren and great grandchildren and even great great grandchildren but she never forgot to send me, one of her many grandchildren, a birthday card – with $5 in it. Every year no matter where I was living on or around my birthday, Mama Mae’s card would appear with another five dollar bill.

One time I was doing a phone interview with my grandmother asking her about her life. Most of you know that I’m an investigative reporter but the habit started earlier than my career. I called and asked my grandmother if she had been happy in her life. She said no. And I was floored. But then she added well I’d have to say that my children and their children have supplied me with a good deal of happiness.

It’s the same thing my mother would tell me many times during my life – that her children, all six of us, and their children and their children’s children were what had given her happiness.

I was thinking about how to sum up my mother’s life on this occasion. Most everyone here knew and loved my mother. But when I was young and compared her to other mothers I was always puzzled. Take for instance, the television mothers on Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver who were women in starched dresses with aprons holding a tray of homemade cookies while my mother was usually decked out in feathers wearing kitten heels.

While my grandmother remembered every single one of my birthdays, my mother sometimes did not or sometimes did not show up for the special events or the special occasions. Yet, in her own way, my mom was always there.

I used to be frustrated that my mom hadn’t done what she really wanted to in her life  – she always pined to go home to Franklinton and see her mother no matter where we were living but she didn’t, she always wanted to plant a garden but we moved around too much, she was always going to cook that special dish but most times it didn’t happen and yet my mom told me from the time I could crawl that I could be or do anything I wanted to with my life.

I often railed at my mother for the choices she made in her life – the weird people she would seem to befriend, the jobs with ridiculous hours or commutes, the fireplace she bought me when she had not a penny, yet my mom never judged me for the choices I made in my life, ever.

My mom was loathe to leave her house most of the time instead she preferred the security of her familiar space, yet she always encouraged me to see the world and couldn’t wait to hear about all the places I have been.

And though my mother had few friends and rarely saw other people with any regularity, turning down my, even my sister in law’s and other’s pleas for lunch dates, preferring to stay in her home than go out, still she never knew a stranger.

In sum, my mother was what we call an enigma, she didn’t suffer reality easily but she had a huge heart and loved even those who had forsaken her and through her lens I saw the world slightly different, slightly askew, but always interesting. Although she had her own demons she taught me to have self-confidence and then spent the rest of my life praising this quality in me.

There were many lessons my mother taught me – she taught me how to dance with abandon. She taught me how to blow huge bubble gum bubbles. She taught me how to love profoundly. And most of all she taught me unconditional love.

During the past months, in making decisions for how to honor my mother, whether in a Jewish cemetery in New Orleans, or in a non-Jewish cemetery in Franklinton, the question of religion came up several times since my mother was raised Baptist but converted to Judaism when she married my father,

I found myself looking at the larger picture of who my mother was, outside of one doctrine or another, outside of who she wasn’t to see who she was and I can remember in 2001 after a horrible surgery when we thought she wasn’t going to make it and she had a tube down her throat and she was trying to say something to me and I leaned in and she whispered feebly, “I thank god every day for you.”

And if I had the luxury of telling my mother one thing today, it would be that I thank god every day for her too.

Where my mother was just like my grandmother was that she abhorred confrontation, she hated to argue, she absolutely hated conflict. She preferred to see the world through rose-colored or rather chardonnay colored glasses.

But as to what religion my mother believed in, I think I can safely say that love was my mom’s religion.

Before we head across the lake to my mother’s family cemetery in Franklinton, I’d like to play this song in honor of my mother, in honor of the spirit in which she lived, in honor of the spirit of New Orleans, the city she loved.

Love is my Religion

When I landed at Louis Armstrong International Airport, it was pouring rain and my heart was heavy as lead over my mom’s passing. As I pulled out the parking lot, a call came in from a familiar number and I picked up – a birthmom looking to place her baby for adoption.

As Flower says, “Hope dies last.”

We lay my mother to rest in Franklinton in the family cemetery, near the dairy farm by my grandparents’ old house on Thigpen Road, near her older brother Dale, and his youngest son Carey, and right in line with my Mama Mae. Patsy’s home at last.

I vowed to mom when she was alive that I would speak at her funeral service but I went to sleep on Tuesday night and woke Wednesday morning dreading the service. My sister had called me a murderer at the hospital because I had signed a Do Not Resuscitate order for my mom. [Mom had entered the hospital with a living will that I learned very quickly didn’t mean “shit” according to the head physician – you have to specify exactly what your desires are otherwise they are subject to too much interpretation.]

I know my mother’s desires were not to live tethered to a ventilator, with a feeding tube in her stomach, her lack of dignity on public display day after day. I know this. I would have signed a DNR earlier but I could tell my sister wasn’t ready to say goodbye. But after five months and three Code Blues, I knew that not signing one was cowardly and so I went in and signed. The administrator told me, “About time, if this was my mother and I had waited this long, she would have come back to get me.” A family member called and asked me if I had really thought about it enough.

We met with the rabbi before the service who didn’t know my mother and again I felt good I had come prepared to speak on her behalf. My friends, who had become her friends, lined one side of the aisle while my family was on the other. My older brother flew into a rage because he was trying to wrest control of a situation that was already in no one’s control, but in the end I knew he was in pain, because while my mother was not his biological one, she was his mom too. Then my sister got up and got to me when she said that mom was her best friend and after she passed she wanted to be able to call her and tell her. Haven’t I had that feeling over and over again – wanting to call my mom. And then I stood up to speak. While at the podium, my sister turned around to my family saying over and over that I had killed mom. That is when Tatjana moved to sit among friends.

In the end, the family looked more like a loosely knit group of old lovers who were more in pain by association than not, and I knew that with my mom’s passing, the last vestiges of what had held this family together were now buried deep in the red dirt ground of Franklinton, Louisiana.

But like all doors that close, the ones that open are surprising. My aunt and uncles were so supportive they gave me a new lease on my mother’s side of the family. My niece who got up to speak on my mother’s behalf did so with such heartfelt emotions, I was in awe of who she has become. And my younger brother who was there to calm everyone down proved that all the men in my family are not rage machines. Last night when friends gathered at our house to toast my mother’s life I felt I was truly with my loved ones. Then later when my sleep was again broken by nightmares of me calling out to my mother over and over and T held me close and soothed me, I realized that my loving cup runneth over.

And to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, rest in peace Mom, we all loved you in our own nutty ways.

December 02, 2009

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   You’re having a very difficult time making up your mind about what you want to do next. You may find yourself taking long, aimless walks, or spending long periods of time standing still while contemplating your next move. The best thing you can do is get off to one side and let everyone else who’s in a rush go by you. Luckily, you should be much more decisive tomorrow — maybe you should save your most important tasks for then. After all, you don’t want to waste your own time or anyone else’s.

Mom’s funeral is this morning and the reason it is happening so fast is it is the custom of Jews to bury within 24 hours because the grieving doesn’t begin until then. In my flights of fancy, T and I have thought we would open an animal shelter for donkeys and dogs and called it Patsy’s Pet Paradox. That’s just one thing we dream of.

Here is mom with her brother Dale holding a little puppy, all the world ahead of her in this photograph. At the end, she led an interesting life and she was loved by many. What more could any of us ask for?