Category: Life Is A Spell

As of this afternoon my mom is living in the Rochester Home for the Friendless. At least that is what it was once called. Founded in 1849 as the Rochester Association for the Relief of Homeless and Friendless Females, the organization eventually outgrew its location in an old tavern on the corner of East and Alexander. In 1918 they changed their name to the Rochester Friendly Home, moved further east on East Avenue and began to accept married couples and single men as well as women. It is a skilled nursing facility and perfect for my mom’s needs. I really believe this but once we got my mom in the car it took a really hard sell on the drive out there. By the time we left I think she was in the groove.

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It is always an adventure going to the vet with Stella. For starters, she usually pees on me as I carry her toward the car. She is especially sensitive. She only comes out of the bedroom for a carefully selected group of people. A few neighbors, a few friends, a few family members. Everybody else spooks her. And it has nothing to do with being loud or quiet. She has her own criteria and I would say she has good taste.

We have had a lot of cats. Tori and Sadie and Gato came from Bloomington. Nellie, Nino, Fay and Ornette all came from Lollipop Farm. Stella came from under the porch of Rick Howk’s house in the city. Her mom was all white but mangy. Stella was the pick of the litter.

She is the first cat that we have ever had that didn’t spend most of its time outdoors. She is just too delicate. We could tell that right away so we kept her in. Curiously, she meows at the door when I wake up and goes out for just a minute while I get the paper. She nibbles on the grass near the door and she sometimes throws it up once she is back inside. We have mice in our house but she has never been interested. She is terrified of the vacuum cleaner.

She is the sweetest cat we have ever had but she is almost eighteen years old and it may be time to go. We don’t plan to do anything heroic, we just want to keep her comfortable while we can.

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Things are definitely not the same at my mom’s. My father’s absence permeates every corner of her place. We picked up her mail on the way in, a stack of sympathy cards, and my mom read them all a few times. In her cousin, Suzanne’s, card was another card announcing that a mass would be be said in my father’s name on February 26th at Saint Louis Church.

My mom flicks between American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies and the Hallmark station but none of them was doing it for her so we watched the Saturday evening mass that was being broadcast from the chapel in the high rise next door. I guess the broadcast counts as a mass of obligation these days. The pews were filled but only a janitor remained, picking up the flower petals, when I took this shot.

The aide ordered salmon for my mom and when it was delivered we left to have dinner with our friends, Jeff and Mary Kaye. Jeff grilled tuna they bought from a fish buying club in a wasabi sauce. It’s the middle of January and we had fresh kale and brussels sprouts from their garden! Jeff drizzled that with with some fresh squeezed lemon juice. The third-rate of a perfect triangle was the potato kugel he made with last week’s NYT recipe. Mary Kaye trumped Jeff’s efforts with a homemade orange sorbet.

Of course the conversation is the best part of any meal. I’m still digesting it long after the food has passed. I made a crack about someone seeing a shrink and Jeff said the word should be “expander.” And only then did I realize my friend, the therapist, was practicing his craft, something he has perfected, as a non-billable gift to us.

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Our friend, Jeanne Perri, moved to Nashville years ago but she still comes up over the holidays to visit her dad. He volunteers at St, Johns where his wife once spent some time. Sometimes he works in the gift shop but most of the time he works behind the counter in the ice cream shop. We found Jean assisting her dad as we walked by.

My dad was upstairs, flat on his back. He had just asked if we could take a ride and I suggested he close his eyes and take a ride.

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Handel’s “Il Pastor Fido: Incidental Music” was playing on the radio station that my father found on the hospital tv last night. The sound was coming out of the tiny speaker in the telephone-sized hospital remote that was sitting on his bed. This device not only changes the channel it cranks the bed up and allows you to page the nurse. The music was just perfect. Dreamy and moving at the same time. My dad was sleeping but surely absorbing it on some level.

I took this photo last night. My brother in law, Howie, arranged to have Bob, my father’s regular barber, pay a house call to the hospital. We had been up there all day but my father was encouraging us to stick around so we could meet Bob. Bob refurbishes pool tables on the side and keeps some in his barber shop on Monroe Avenue. Bob knew “the Deacon,” the local pool legend, Irving Crane. “He’s got some great stories and some of them are true” is how my father introduced Bob.

Leo is beginning to let his engineering side go. The first few days up here were an onslaught of doctors and to make sense of it all my dad constructed a flow chart on his iPad so he could keep the players straight.

Above a solid line he drew ovals for the three doctors responsible for his health before he entered the hospital. Below that line he drew the team he thought was running the show here. The Palliative Care doctor, nurse practitioner and intern were placed in these spots. Their role has been so outsized that my dad put them above his so called “chief hospital doctor.” I gently corrected him and he scrubbed the names out, placed the head doctor up top and put the palliative team on the next tier along side the oncologist, physical therapist, occupational therapist and social worker.

The way it was explained to us this crew was to collect their data and report back to the head doctor who would then inform us of the game plan. The thing is, my dad had it right the first time. At some point the Palliative Care team were the only ones that mattered. the only sane ones.

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From my dad’s position, propped up in bed on the fourth floor of Highland Hospital, he can just see the top of the new library going up across South Avenue. A team of construction workers started scurrying about at 8AM. My dad figures the guy with the white hat is the foreman and the blue hats are the carpenters and the green are the plumbers. The red hard hats are the electricians. In better days this would be the formative stage of a painting.

Leo was adjusting to the idea of hospice. A prescription would be ordered soon and we were discussing the location. The prognosis was a longer window than the qualifications for the Leo Center allowed. The appropriately named Palliative Care Center in the St Ann’s complex, near my parent’s apartment, is considered the Cadillac of hospice facilities. Fred Lipp, the painting teacher my dad and I had for twenty years, spent his last days there earlier this year. Fred was lucid til the end and telling me in his last days, “Your father is a trip.”

My dad was talking about the Chinese burial items that we had seen in a case at the Metropolitan when we went down to the Van Gogh show. He was working on some paintings of them. I found some pictures of those items on my iPad and he thumbed through them. He has an insatiable art appetite, something he passed onto me.

I remember arriving early at that Met show. We took the train in from Montclair with my brother, Mark. We studied the Van Goghs, ate lunch in the cafeteria and returned to the show for more. We took a break for dinner in the dining room and went back up to the show until closing. Somewhere along the line we saw the Chinese burial objects. Holy Sepulchre’s green burial, which has already been arranged, probably precludes artifacts in the grave.

My dad didn’t care for the lunch that was delivered and the nurse said we could call down and order whatever he wants. He was thinking about a peanut butter sandwich so I placed the order. Light on the jelly and whole wheat bread, preferably without the crust. The person on the other end said she couldn’t do that at this hour so I explained that it was all my dad wanted. She thought for a bit and said, “OK but you’re gonna have to cut the crust off yourself.” I described the route that Jack Nicholson took in “Five Easy Pieces” to successfully order toast. And that produced a hearty laugh from my father.

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I took this photo of my dad a few weeks ago. We were out at a doctor’s appointment and I noticed he had his camera, tape measurer and a pile of paperwork with him. I asked if he wanted to stop somewhere on the way home and he said he’d like to go to the barn.

I’d been to the barn on Westfall Road with him before. It’s falling apart and my dad is pushing the town to restore it. In fact he is drawing architectural renderings of what the restored barn could look like. I helped him take some measurements and he took some photos.

We visited the barn today but this time my dad was having a hard time walking. The doctor had told him he should be “putting his things in order.” I drove through the field and right up to the barn door. I supported him as we slowly walked to the center of the barn. We laughed at some spray-painted graffiti that read “Kill Your Friends.”

Something was off in his computer model and he was looking for the error so we retook some measurements. He sheepishly said “I probably shouldn’t be out here” but he was clearly loving it.

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We stopped down to the garden and picked a big batch of cilantro and some spinach. A bounty for mid December in Rochester! The temperature was near seventy and Jared’s goldfish had come out of hibernation. They were hungry and scurried to the side of the pond when they heard us.

Peggi put the freshly picked cilantro into a plastic bag and I set it down on a burner that had just been turned off. The bag melted immediately and stunk to high heaven. I threw the bag out and then opened the doors to clear out the stink.

We wanted to use the burner tonight so I turned on the overhead exhaust fan, put the burner on high and left the room. The melting plastic odor filled the house. I opened the doors again and lit some pine incense. In hindsight I suspect Jared, a former Kodak chemist, would have had a better solution for removing the plastic from the burner.

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Saint Ann’s had a great turnout for the afternoon Holiday Bingo event. The lights in the Oak Room were up bright and most of the residents were wearing green or red. Refreshments were on the tables and the moderator was calling out numbers and letters. It sounded like a party and I wished my parents were in there but age has gotten the best of them. And Bingo was never their scene anyway.

I was picking up my dad up for an another appointment and driving his car this time. I had snagged up a City newspaper at the Margaret Explosion gig last night and had already skimmed through it. They feature one city house in each issue, a regular column sponsored by the Landmark Society, and this week’s house was 107 Burlington Avenue on the west side, the house my dad grew up in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I handed the paper to my dad and he laughed so hard he cried.

The radio was tuned to his station, Jazz 90.5, and they were doing a 24 hour Frank Sinatra marathon to celebrate one hundred years since the Chairman’s birth. Non-stop melancholy songs like “Last Night When We Were Young” and “Moon River.” Johnny Mercer is my father’s all time favorite.

We parked next to the Ford Thunderbird, above, and I finally discovered the secret to opening the trunk on my father’s Honda Accord. I had had such bad luck before, pressing the buttons on his key fob over and over before the damn thing popped, that I would just hand it to him and let him pop it so I could get his walker in or out. It’s actually my mom’s walker but he has taken to it lately.

We were visiting his primary care doctor for the last time and as we got out of the car I asked, “Why is it that this trunk opener works for you and I can’t get it to work?” He demonstrated his technique and explained that he just holds the button down until it opens. The time factor! I am still learning from my father. He has given me so much by his example.

The good doctor pretty much handed my dad’s care off to a Palliative Care specialist and he shook his hand, a final gentlemanly goodbye. On the way home I said, “I wish you and mom could trade places.” My mom wants to die. My dad is eternally young and in the middle of so many projects. And there are always the birds to watch.

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I don’t know if it is the dark side of me that finds this extremely limited, grey/brown, late Fall palette so appealing or the minimalist side. It doesn’t much matter. I am attracted to it and I trust my instincts. I feel like I’m living in an austere Bergman movie as of late.

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Ossia’s program on Friday was especially good. They do four or five performances a year, programs that include five or six compositions by contemporary composers, and there are always one or two exceptional pieces. Friday’s program was all killer, no filler.

It included an out of body piece that reminded us of Gearld Busby’s score to Robert Altman’s “3 Women” and a couple of Morton Feldman-like works by the Japanese composer, Jo Kondo. The one that really knocked us out though was by the Icelandic composer, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. It is called “Ró.” We were sitting in the front row of Kilbourn Hall and our row gave it a standing ovation. Thorvaldsdóttir says her piece of sustained sound materials “reflects my sense of imaginative listening landscapes and nature.” It certainly did that for these woods walkers. We often stop and stare and listen and this is the experience.

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I dropped Peggi and my parents off at the funeral home in Penn Yan where my aunt was laid out. The Menonnite family in this buggy had just paid their respects to my uncle and cousins. My aunt and uncle, solid Catholics, lived on a farm near Dundee for sixty years and the land around them was slowly bought up by Menonnites. They became quite close and shared more values then you might imagine. A Menonnite family eventually bought their farm and rented their 200 year old house back to my aunt and uncle.

I had to leave the funeral home as soon as we arrived because I had forgotten to buy a flower arrangement, something my father had asked me to do yesterday. I spaced it out. I found a florist on Google, a few miles out of town, called the “Garden of Life.” There was a sign in front of an old farm house but no flower shop. I pulled in their driveway to lookup a Plan B and I saw woman with her dog and a small shop behind the house. I told the woman that I was going to calling hours at the funeral home in town and she interjected, “Helen? She told me she had already paid her respects and said, “Come on in and I’ll get you something.” She picked out a coral colored Poinsettia and added some other oddball touches. It was perfect.

A man came in the shop and asked about microphones for an event he was planning. The woman told him to go to Musician’s Friend and get a Sennheiser, but not a cheap one, a good one. When he left I said, “that was some good advice you gave that guy.” She asked if I was in a band and I said I was. She said she and her husband played in a band and, as if on cue, her husband, a drummer, walked in the door.

He introduced himself as Richard and said he left school when he was seventeen. He studied at Berkelee when it was still in its original location and his teacher was Louie Bellson. He went out on the road with a big band right after school. He played with the Temptations for six months, the only white guy in the band. They played the same set every night in the same order. He couldn’t take it anymore and quit. His band, “Soul Congress,” backed a long list of soul and gospel groups. They were opening for James Brown on the night that Martin Luther King was shot. Mr. Brown played a long set and wore out his drummer so he asked this guy to sit in. He said, “I’d go out on the road right now. I loved being on the road.”

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The only green around here is the Wembley Stadium pitch on our tv. Check the enlargement of this photo for our grey/brown surroundings. The French national team pulled it o gather to take on England in a friendly. The English saluted them before the game and cleaned their clocks in the 90 minutes.

The dental hygienist tried to sell me on bite-wing X-rays today just like the last time. I’ve had so many over the years I try to limit my exposure by turning her down and promising to do it next time. She has a kindergarten teacher-like manner. “Hi Paul! Are you all ready for Thanksgiving?” “Ah, no.” I usually dismiss her and that is probably my mistake.

I was looking my last full mow x-rays on her monitor while she cleaned my teeth. I have all these glaring white teeth in mouth, on the x-rays that is. “Those are all caps and bridges,” she said. “I should have taken better care of my teeth,” I thought aloud. She didn’t miss a beat and said, “Life is one long learning experiment. And our experiences make us who we are.” She added, “I don’t think we ever stop learning.”

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Up here, near Lake Ontario, we have not had an official frost so this seventy degree weather cannot be called Indian Summer. I’m only making that distinction because I stayed quiet when the lady at the voting booth called it such this morning. Somehow it always seems like a nice day when we vote. It probably has something to do with our route to the booths which takes us through the woods in the park, across the creek and up into the neighborhood of small houses between Culver and the park. Why isn’t this the new hipster section of Rochester? That would probably have something to do with number of Tea Party flags flying here. And those little placards in the window that read, “This house is protected by 2nd Amendment.”

The firehouse in Point Pleasant Fire is nestled into the aptly-named neighborhood. And the best part of voting here is getting a peek of the dreamy bar in the next room. Every year I vow to rent the place for a party, one with a band and dancing. We could crawl home through the woods.

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We considered going to the Halloween Bowie Karaoke event, “Bowieoke,” at Visual Studies tonight, just long enough to have “Golden Years” stuck in my head. Someone plans to to re-enact the 1976 Bowie/Iggy Rochester drug bust and I would to see that.

I was thinking we had to drop off art work for the RoCo Members show this weekend but that’s next weekend. And Peggi had set aside a coupon for Parkleigh, where my sister works, so we planned to stop by there, mainly to visit but also to take advantage of the coupon. Turns out the sale is next weekend. We’re gonna need the extra hour tonight to get our life organized.

We stopped in the new India House restaurant on Èast Ridge Road. They’re in a strip mall across from Medley Center in a place that was Chinese and then Thai and they are apparently too new to have any customers yet. We were the only ones in the place and we were ordering to go. We told the waiter we were in the mood for something hearty. He said, “What is hearty?” We tried “substantial, meaty without meat, not light, beans” and a few others. He recommended a spinach paneer dish and it hit the spot.

On the way home we passed a group of kids in costumes. I had the idea to yell “boo” so I pushed the button to lower the window. We were around the corner before I got it down.

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Away from Lake Ontario, further south but at higher elevations, the Fall colors are peaking or past. Up near the lake we are still coming on. We walked around the east side of Eastman Lake and then back along the western side of Durand Lake today. The paths were partially underwater along both lakes, unusual for this time of year. We suspected beaver action and sure enough we found it about halfway down.

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