"Madness"

2009?

I am officially referring to 2009 as my lost year! People go on a party tear and have a lost weekend or even a lost week, but I think one only loses a full year when one has amnesia, and that only happens in soap operas. So basically the past year has been like 365 days of the sand passing through the hourglass. Or maybe, so much happened and it all went by in such a blur that it just feels like a blip (but isn't all of life just a nano-secondth of a blip?).

At the end of 2008 a long lost friend from Ireland reconnected with me after several years, via this very blog, and I was so excited and so full of all the things I wanted to share regarding the past 10 years, that I got totally overwhelmed and never really resumed contact. Now it's a full year later, but it seems like just last week I received this:

sarah cottle said: Pam, Pam Fazier, formerly of Seattle, then Bozeman? Pam who I've been trying to trace for years? Pam who took me whale watching on the Pugeot Sound? Pam who made Vicki, Kirstin and myself dress in silly clothes, drink booze and attend a barn dance one thanksgiving eve before eating an overcooked, exploding turkey? Pam who visited myself and brothers Mark and Andrew in Timsbury, England then drove around Devon and Cornwall in a rickety camper van where we 'surfed' and ate 'fish and chips with vinegar' washed down with beer every evening for two solid weeks? Lord! can this be you? Please, please find this message and get in touch or if anyone out there can make the connection tell her its SARAH COTTLE from ENGLAND who loves and misses her... Soon...x

Of course I contacted her by email and told how thrilled I was to have been found, and that I'd been trying to track her down as well, but I never really took the time to write a proper letter and reconnect. And in a way, it doesn't even feel like a year went by, and I'm just as thrilled to know that I can at least write her a catch-you-up-on-the-past-10 years letter, because I know where she is in the world. Although, it has been a year and she might have moved, right?

The blurry bits I do remember from my 2009 fugue state are as follows:

• My sister had a baby girl, Hazel Coyne Sehlhorst, born 3/13/09-I went to Seattle to attend the birth, but she decided to arrive late and I had to return home.
• John and I took classes to become foster/adoptive parents.
• I went to Seattle in May to meet my niece.
• In June we started our transition plan to adopt Katherine, a beautiful 9 y/o mini tornado, by having her for weekends. She brought "MADNESS" into our lives.
• In July John's mom died.
• In August Katherine became a part of our family, my sister et famille came out for a week, I got sick, and the month was over.
• Back to school in September, Erlan starting middle school and Katherine in 4th grade. Two kids, two different schools.
• Turned 47, working full time, NextGen, H1N1*.
• The holiday season.

How's that, a whole year in 9 bullets?

Main Accomplishment--living through a hatch and a dispatch** with sanity (and hopefully sense of humor) in tact.

Thankful for--my family, especially John; my job which, in a sense, is also family; that we are still housed, clothed, and fed, as so many are not.

Haunted by--the fallout from reporting a coworker and friend to the state licensing board.

Regret--any pain caused by my unintentional unkindness.***

Resolve--to write a proper letter to my friend Sarah; to try to do 2010 more intentionally; exercise; ditch j-screwed.

* I did not have H1N1, but it and NextGen (our new electronic health record system), were all consuming work phenomenons.

** My brother Steve married his pregnant wife the day after our mother died, and at the wedding a good friend (the mother of one of Steve's high school friends) after a few glasses of wine came up to me and said, we used to call this "a match, a hatch, and a dispatch". That phrase has always stayed with me as a sort of circle-of-life type thing.

*** Any intentional unkindness has either been accounted for, or hugely enjoyed.

             

Peace be with you

Bon voyage Laura Worth Strange.
Much love to Marcus and Amonette.

Happy Birthday

Yesterday (9-8-07) would have been my mom's 67th birthday. I received a call last night from one of my mom's dearest friends from California (I may not have mentioned this, but I grew up in Huntington Beach, CA). Becky Heinzen was my Brownie troop leader, she is the mom of Karen* and Kris, grade school chums (whom I'm no longer in touch with), and she remained my mom's long distance friend once we moved from HB back to Seattle. At one point during our catch up conversation, Becky said, "Oh, oh, I have to turn this up!" and I heard Neil Diamond's Holly, Holy blaring through the phone. Next to my dad, Walt, and my step-dad, Rob, Neil Diamond was the love of my mom's life. Becky was listening to Neil Diamond, drinking Cuervo Gold, and talking to me in honor of my mom. It was amazing to get such a great gift on my mom's birthday!

*Karen was my friend and Kris was the slightly younger pesky little sister. Karen and I learned about sexual intercourse by reading her parent's collection of Time Life Life Cycle books. At the time it was fairly titillating for such dry academic stuff. Karen and I grew apart when her family moved to Colorado. I don't think they were there very long because the next place I remember them living was Mission Viejo, CA. They had a built in swimming pool!

Here are some pictures of my mom through the years:

TODAY (9/9/07) is my mother-in-law's birthday. Amonett is 90 fucking years old! She is an amazing woman with an amazing story. Her Uncle invented windshield wipers, I shit you not, and at some point in her early 40's she became the recipient of a lifetime trust set up by her Uncle Jack. This afforded her the income to divorce my husband's father, Frank Worth, and move with four children (the eldest had already left home) ranging in ages from 4-15, to Coral Gables, FL. They lived in a couple of swanky houses before Amonett bought a sailboat and moved the family onto it. At some point during those years, John and his sister Laurie went to Europe, Reid, Laurie's twin went to college, and Charles went to live with his dad. Amonett, now in her early 50's, started dating Federal Agents and traveling in the ABC islands. When Amonett was in her 60's she lived with her mother in Washington, D.C. When Granny died at the age of 97, the 70 year old Amonett Gordon Worth moved to Montana to be near two of her sons, John and Charles.
Here are some fun pictures of Amonett:

Happy Birthday Carol and Amonett!

To Helen

by Edgar Allan Poe

I saw thee once— once only — years ago:
I must not say how many — but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe —
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death —
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd— alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight—
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world an slept,
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!— oh, God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)
Save only thee and me. I paused— I looked—
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)

The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All— all expired save thee— save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes—
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them— they were the world to me!
I saw but them— saw only them for hours,
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to he enwritten

Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition; yet how deep—
How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained;
They would not go— they never yet have gone;
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since;
They follow me— they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers — yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle —
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

-The End-

Another World*

It’s amazing how one can be doing the most mundane thing when one’s entire life changes. It was May 25, 1979; I was 16 and a junior at Edison High School; I was sitting on the couch in the TV room of our 9412 Hingham Drive, Huntington Beach, CA home watching my favorite daytime soap opera while my mom stood at the ironing board, ironing my dad’s white short sleeved IBM business shirts. I’m not sure why I wasn’t in school and I can’t remember if my brother and sister, Steve and Gail, were with us.
We were watching, and watching and ironing respectively, when NBC “interrupted our normal TV viewing for a special report” of the devastating crash of American Airlines Flight 191 shortly after taking off from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for LAX. I remember being impressed by the enormity of the tragedy and slightly annoyed by the disruption of my beloved soap, then I noticed my mom crying. Not sad empathic tears, but tremble-y fearful choking sobs. As I looked at her with confusion, she choked out that my dad was flying home from Chicago (my dad traveled weekly for IBM and it was not uncommon for me and my siblings to have no idea where he was). I immediately tried to put her mind at ease as I, with earnest conviction, stated that there was no way that dad was on that plane! She was slightly comforted by her 16 year old authoritative daughter, but only because she wanted to be.

What happened in the ensuing hours, days, and weeks is somewhat of a blur. In that moment with my mom, I believed that there was no way my dad could have been on that plane. However, as the hours went by, there was no “I’m safe, I was not on that flight” call. Conversely, neither was there the dire call or visit from airline personnel delivering the earth shattering news that my dad was gone forever. My mom, and within the hour, her best friends tried desperately to get information, but only got busy signals and the runaround. Trying to keep things as normal as possible, I drove myself to work at Swensen’s Ice Cream Parlor in my own 1970 Toyota Corolla at about the same time as my dad should have been pulling into the driveway. It was a busy Friday of the Memorial Holiday weekend and while my coworkers told me to go home, I knew I needed the distraction, and did not want to be in our brightly lit, drama ridden kitchen awaiting confirmation of what I then knew to be fact. It’s not that I felt him gone, I just knew that if he had not been on that plane, he would have found some way to call and let us know he was safe.

When Roy Brown, my brother’s soccer coach, my mother’s best friend’s husband, my dad’s friend, a man with no personal connection to me, came into my workplace, I knew it was time to go home and start to help piece together what would be the rest of our lives without my dad. Roy was a big, blond, red faced, emotionally unavailable man, who uncomfortably walked into the packed ice cream parlor and told me I needed to come home. I told him I needed to finish what I was doing; partly because I was, and I still am, responsible that way, and partly because I needed to prepare myself mentally for what was coming. Roy conceded and let me finish up at work; he insisted on driving me home when my preference was to drive myself, and on this matter he did not concede. We all needed to regain some control in whatever way we could. The drive home was silent.

I still have a vivid and visceral memory of walking back into my house that night. The severely bright florescent lighting was in surreal juxtaposition to the overwhelming sadness and loss. I was as desperate not to cross the threshold between the dark dining room and the overly lit kitchen, as I was not to cross the threshold into my fatherless life. When I saw my mother’s despair, the loss hit me like punch in the gut and my own dam broke.

I never paid much attention to the details of the crash. A couple of years ago my brother sent me copies of all of the newspaper clippings he had collected and I still haven’t read them all. I’ve since googled the crash and found information on Wikipedia and this site.

Twenty-eight years have passed and I still hold dear the values and life lessons I inherited from my dad. I still feel loss and sadness and although it isn’t a gut punch feeling, it is the sadness of a life lived with the absence of...too many experiences to list.

In Loving Memory of Walter Lewis Frasier
11/30/1938-5/25/1979

*I actually posted this last year on my iweb page, but as it is no longer accessible, I thought I would share again.