I miss you.

I sit and I wonder when the next time I can see you will be. It won't be during the summer with lazy days on the Delaware or at Leonard's house for a barbeque we both used to feel too cool to be at. It won't be in the winter upstate in Syracuse sledding down treacherous terrain, shopping for bargain lotion at Target, playing video games until our thumbs hurt. Although it won't happen anytime soon, I see you everyday. Mostly through little things, the sparkle on a river, a kind old man, a book, my camera, a warm and gentle breeze. Sometimes the signs are goose bump causing incredible. The world keeps moving and so do you. You were too fascinated with it to stop. Instead of moving on, I am moving with... With your spirit and inspiration and love. I love you always and you will be forever with me.

Sorry for the improper sentence structures. Thoughts from my head to paper.

Lively

Even when she was inside of me, she kicked and squirmed and made her presence felt as a person who needed to be moving.

When she was six months old, we got her a walker, one of those bumper cars for infants which allowed her restless feet to move her about the floor.  Back then the walkers didn't have any toys attached, and the wheels were big.  Because it made so much noise, R. put down a layer of foamcore on the floor hoping to reduce the racket to the downstairs neighbors.  She would rattle around and visit us in the kitchen, the bedroom, pushing off with her strong feet and legs.

Next came the Johnny Jump up which we hung from the sprinkler pipes.  This let her have the joy of flight,  bouncing straight up toward the ceiling. 

The minute she could walk she could run. The minute she could run, she wanted to learn how to roller skate, how to roller blade, how to jump rope.  The skip it toy let her skip before she learned how to hold the handles of the rope to loop over her head.



She was an expert at tag.  Her friends loved to run with her in the park.  She loved to swing on the swings in the park.

Later, she would walk everywhere in the city in her beat up sneakers.  Her feet took her places I could not follow.

Complete set of Shakespeare

The Narrowsburg Library has purchased a complete set of Shakespeare with funds in Elizabeth's name. They will display it in the library as the "Elizabeth Aakre Shakespeare Collection."

Dear Elizabeth

It is finally winter today, with the temperature 23 degrees at 8 AM.  The cats are sleeping. Richard is sleeping.  It is Sunday morning, very quiet. 
You should know that the neighborhood has changed a bit.

The empty spaces, including the parking lot around the corner, the old restaurant called Dennises, have been filled in with luxury apartments.  The place above Teddy's is now an 8 floor luxury apartment building.  ON Tuesday nights we can see the poker game that takes place directly across from your bedroom.  We can also see a large picture of a woman's face that is hung in their living room.  I don't know if it is of someone personal to that household, or just a modern picture of a woman looking a bit dazed, a bit too gigantic for comfort in a space closed in, but we get to see her perfectly from 30 yards away.

Every year without you we continue, bereft, humbled, to live.

Wore your boots

Wore your boots today,and your parka. It was our first snow of the winter this year. Sidewalks are slippery, there is slush in the curb cuts.  Your parka has a hood which prevents the wind from slicing into my face flesh.  Your boots are lined, so even though they are rubber they are warm.  Temperature today was in the 20s.  Your dad and I went to see a movie, a documentary about a high class erotic dancing show in Paris called Crazy Horse. 

I thought all of these women who dance in the show are just the age you would be now, or a bit younger. Perfect specimens.  But the women are more like prize animals in a country fair, whose perfect buttocks make them uniformly boring.  How can you distinguish one from the other?

You were unique. You were our one and only.  Thank God for that.

Love,

Mom

After Five Years

I think more of the  luminous ways that Elizabeth was alive.  How alive she was when she was trying on clothes, and looking for something new to wear.  How alive she was when talking on the phone, and laughing with friends.  How alive she was when reading, or writing, or doing her homework.  All of these things pointed to a normal long life.  How ordinary in some ways she was, growing up with two parents, lots of relatives, lots of friends, a passion for photography and the world of images. She was a discerning reader, and was developing an inordinate fondness for Faulkner.

But she was an ordinary kid, wanting to eat the cookie dough off the spoon when the baking was done.  She loved ice cream, and her dad allowed her a lot of it insisting it would provide her her calcium requirements.   

She loved people.  She went out of her way as a young girl to be friendly.    In early childhood, when she was a student in preschool, she learned how to answer the phone at reception.  (Was this the beginning of her lifelong love of the telephone?)

Dear Elizabeth

Just a note to say that we are having unseasonably warm weather, the cats are restless, I am off work as it is Columbus Day, and thinking, that is what I do when I have time to do it, thinking of what a fine human being you were. You wanted to give money to that homeless man and his dog when you were nine and we passed them on the way to school every day.  You were making things for your friends as soon as you learned how to make things, like pillows.  Your to do lists were full of items that you wanted to give to your friends, or to your boyfriend.

But besides your generosity, and open heart, you were funny, and you loved to laugh, and we had some good times watching movies together.  I wonder what you would have thought of Ryan Gosling's banner year.  I wonder if you would have defended Clooney's dud movie.  It is a little game I play when I think of you.  What you would have made of this and that that has happened since you died.

The tears have not dried.

My bookshelf, pictures of cousins, LP, Alexis, you and I at Thanksgiving dinner at the "kids" table and the two of us in Manlius. I miss you every day.

Duskywing moth on Jerusalem Artichoke

Found the flowers along the railroad tracks on the path up to the mile marker that Elizabeth would swim from.  Found the moth on the flower after cutting a bouquet for our back yard.  It was on the day we buried Scooter's ashes next to Whiskers' grave near the bushes where the catbirds always whined-- just north of the pond on Ackerman Rd.

Many happy swims in the tube on the pond.

Elizabeth Aakre Fund at Narrowsburg Public Library

More donations have been made to the Elizabeth Aakre book fund at the Narrowsburg Public Library.  Thank you to those who have given.  If you are interested in doing so, here is where to send the money:

Tusten-Cochecton Library
198 Bridge St.
Narrowsburg NY 12764


In the meantime, the librarian would like to know what books the library should buy with the money. Do you have any suggestion?  Please write and comment if you do.

And thanks again for the support.

Elizabeth's birthday

One year she wanted to have a party at the pier, before she was seven I would guess, or maybe when she was eight, with several friends and dozens of water balloons.  We filled them in the sink in the kitchen, bombs loaded with water, bombs with their brightly colored skins whose lips were thicker and might snap while wrapped around the tap.

This was in the days when the pier was sort of shabby and had a miniature golf course and a hot dog stand, and just a little play area perfect for exploding water balloons.

The girls and boys came wearing bathing suits.  How relieved we were at the bright sun that June day.  Elizabeth was delighted to throw a balloon at me, but surprised when it didn't burst.  You really had to heave the things, and when all the children were assembled, heave them they did. 

If you haven't seen it, please read the comment under the post for Scooter above.  It is very lovely, and I am grateful to whomever posted it.  It is her first birthday comment today.  What a great day it was the day she was born!

Water Bombs filled with water, from German Wikipedia

Scooter (1998-2011)

Scooter died today.  He was 13 years old, and spent his first eight years as Elizabeth's pet.  Born in Sullivan County and rescued shortly afterward, he was the runt of the litter who managed to march to his own drummer.  The day we drove up to the animal rescue, there were a baby deer, many puppies and other kittens contending for adoption. (Well not the fawn, but she was distracting with loveliness.)  We had been told there was a kitten there whose name should be trouble.  He strayed from the group.  He was a biter.  He got lost, and tumbled down hills.

Scooter with Elizabeth in 1998

Still, we took him home where he soon adjusted to life with the loving Elizabeth.  She let him sleep in her bed.  He was a great companion to all.  His favorite position was flat out on your chest when you were in a reclining position.  He liked to be scratched behind his ears.  Like many other cats of my acquaintance, he did not really approve of reading, and did his best to prevent you from doing it by tearing the newspaper to shreds for instance, or sitting on your book while you had it in your lap and thought you had made it clear it would be better to stop back later after this chapter.

As a hunter, he would bring us shrews and mice he had caught.  He had no use for bats, even though they tempted him and made him take ungainly leaps upward which proved only how difficult it was to capture a bat without a butterfly net.

When Elizabeth died, he seemed to look for her and would sometimes howl with grief. Her last note hanging on our door was "Be nice to Scooter! Play with him!"   We did our best to follow her advice.  His greatest pleasures were lying in bed alongside Richard, and eating fresh chicken Richard had fried. We will miss him most dreadfully.

This picture was taken in 2004 or so when we were in rural Pennsylvania.  Elizabeth complained when I cut my hair.  She said now that you are 50, you don't have to do that thing that 50 year old women do.  You don't have to cut your hair. 

During the summer we had time to spend with each other without looking at the clock.  We would drive and get ice cream and go to the movies in Callicoon, and take long swims.  By now I would be thinking of what to get her for her birthday. 

Listening to Lizzy's laugh

In the process of spring cleaning, I came upon some audiotapes recorded when Elizabeth was four years old.  There is a lot of laughter and fooling around, and some singing.  Besides her dad, I can't think of anyone who liked to laugh more.  She could be very serious, and loved serious books, and did not shy from sad movies, but she had a light hearted side that was lovely to hear on these old tapes.  At one point she was singing Ring around the rosy with her friends Khalila and Jazmyn. 

Photography and Elizabeth

Starting a project in my studio lighting class about you. Projects in digital seems funny, when the subject is you. I hope you aren't too angry that they're digital. We aren't taught how to use film with soft boxes. I love you.

Cousin Nicholas

Ah Elizabeth another year without you

Without your lovely grin, your ability to download photos at the speed of light, without your found images on the walls of the your room, without you carefully groomed fingernails and your ability to be friends with males.  You were  passionate about Harry Potter and the Golden Compass.  When you dove into a book you wouldn't come up for air until you had to eat or starve.  You let the book consume you as you consumed it. 

I loved reading on the porch with you toe to toe, you and me, lazing in the summertime, lost in our own thoughts, nobody breathing down our backs with some deadline.

You and I would sometimes walk along the railroad track to the one mile marker, then skid down the sooty bank to the river below where its clear shallow waters took us down stream and we could float on our backs and watch the birds.  Sometimes there would be an eagle, or the merganser ducks who swam in packs herding their little ones into the shallows where they could dive for minnows.

You were a great swimmer.  You were good company, funny and bright and stylish. 

Sometimes after the cat has eaten his fill he walks around howling.  I call this his postprandial howl.
I think that he is calling for you.  Can you hear him?  It is a soulful howl, and it says what I feel, left here to navigate without you.

Scooter, August 2010

Thinking of you especially today. Elliott Smith on my I-pod. I miss your hair and smile. I love you forever, Lizzy.
Love,
Cousin Nicholas

George Clooney

Lizzy would have liked Clooney in his new movie, The American. It is easy to watch his face, with his minor resemblance to Cary Grant both in masculine handsomeness and appeal to both men and women, for two hours.  He doesn't say much.  He doesn't overact.  He holds our attention because we sense he is thinking when he is silent of something meaningful and important.

Elizabeth loved his ability to play a rogue hero, beginning with his part in the television series, ER.  The doctor who had an uncanny ability to save children in peril had a special place in her heart.  When she was eleven, she spent a night in the Children's ICU at St. Vincent's Hospital with a bit of plastic from her mechanical pencil lodged in her lung.  The doctors and nurses there took great care of her, and she developed a deep respect for medicine and thought about becoming a doctor.

She loved Clooney's ability to perform in comic parts like Oh Brother Where Art Thou.  She liked the way he wore his tuxedo while commandeering the other handsome actors in the Ocean series.

Clooney and Brad Pitt

 
In The American, he plays a mysterious spy employed to make customized weapons.  He is extremely good at evading the enemy,  and has an eye for a pretty girl.  Pretty girls have eyes for him also. 

As Clooney ages, and goes beyond just being a leading man, he has developed a less kinetic, more still presence on screen.  His hair is now gray.  He is almost fifty, and his good looks are taking on some seasoning.    He reminds me of Paul Newman in The Sting, when everyone stood up and took notice at how his acting became more natural as he aged, and his prettiness hardened into something more like beauty.  When a handsome man is young, he is often taken for granted as just a pretty face.   

Consoling as it is that Elizabeth died at the peak of her beauty, watching someone like Clooney, who she loved, get better and better as he gets older, makes me wish that Elizabeth could have had that chance too. 

George Clooney

Birthday

Elizabeth would have done something for her dad on his birthday.  The day went by with her in the back of our minds.  The last time she could she made a lovely card with pictures and sent it to R through me so that I could print it out and give it to him.  There were colorful small drawings and her tiny delicate script and a mind at work that let him know she loved him. 

Shadowchild by P.F. Thomese

What a beautiful book this is.  I have only read a few pages but already I want to read more by P.F. Thomese, a Dutch writer whose little girl died when she was a few weeks old.  The book was published in 2005, in a translation from the original published in 2003.  Here is an excerpt:

Does love disappear when the person disappears? Where does the love go when the body is burned to ashes? It flees into similes.  The body has been taken from the earth, but not all the things that remind you of it.

 "Thine eyes are like the ponds in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. Thine head upon thee is like Carmel..."  Like, indeed, like, like. Love looks for an embodiment it can no longer find.