Trying to write after a long layoff . . .
I get ideas – usually in the small hours of the morning – but translating them to written text has been extremely difficult. Is it writers’ block? I don’t really consider myself a writer. I would like to write more. I think I write well. I don’t think I am a ‘writer’.
I spend a lot of time at work on a computer. At home, I actually have a decent setup but there always seems to be something else I should do. I keep thinking I will use that early morning good energy time to write. Someday . . .
And someday may be approaching. After Sepi and I made the decision last January that I could retire, the actual date has crept closer and closer. Jon at work got me a countdown display that shows days and hours (and minutes and seconds!). I keep it on the Stage Manager’s desk for anyone to see. I believe it’s on 41 days today.
Yesterday at work was an annual event honoring the members of the orchestra who are retiring. Surprisingly to me, I was included in the celebration. Esa-Pekka made a little speech during the concert in which I was called out on stage for applause from the orchestra and the audience.
After the show there was a gathering with food and drink in one of the backstage rooms. Michele got up and said some nice things about me. I then spoke briefly, thanking my crew, Michele and Tim but forgetting Sepi. I found that I got rather emotional doing it. I really love the orchestra. They all appreciate what we do.
I really do consider it the pinnacle of my career. It’s a hard job but being part of the team that helps a great orchestra make great music is very satisfying.
After many years of hiding it, I let the cat out of the bag to certain members of the orchestra that I like to play music. I was reluctant to do that because I know how good these musicians really are. I’m not even close to their level. To a person, though, they have been supportive of my music making.
Lately, a common question I get is what am I going to do in my retirement. I say play more music. Then I say write more.
Eight
Eight years today since we lost Zach.
It’s still early afternoon here in California as I write this. At this time on this day eight years ago, Zach was riding his bike around the LSU tailgate parties visiting with friends.
It’s a measure of how far I’ve come that I had to look up the date to make sure I had the right one. I get the 14th and 15th confused for some reason. Zach was killed on the evening of the 14th. November 14, 2015. Many of us got on an airplane the next day and were in Baton Rouge less than 24 hours after it happened.
I had a resolution for a long time that I would not mark Zach’s death date but instead focus on his birth date. On the whole, that hasn’t worked very well. This year is the first time I haven’t been counting down the days to November 14th. I will take that as a good thing.
I’ve averaged about one or two crying jags over Zach per year in the last 5 or so years. Sometimes a photo of him comes up on the screen saver and I have to catch my breath.
No one else in the family has mentioned it and, aside from this post, I’m not going to bring it up.
Sepi and I came down to Mom’s today. We usually come on Sundays but because of a quirk in my schedule, my only option this week was today, a Tuesday. All the way down here I kept thinking the traffic was weird for a Sunday. Somehow, my confusion over the exact date of Zach’s death seems related. My work is very stressful and I think of retirement often. I also know Zach would have something interesting and useful to say about my work situation.
Idyll
Sitting at Mom’s, recovering from hernia surgery. The air is a nice 73 degrees. It’s a bit breezy; a little cool in the shade in this late afternoon. Teresa is up in the orange tree trimming branches. Sepi is out watering with the hose making Mom nervous. She still has her dislocated shoulder in a sling and Mom is terrified she will fall again.
When I got off the freeway in Santa Clara yesterday I opened the car window and had a major deja vu moment. It took me right back to the many summer days spent here doing all the things that we kids did in the summer: riding bikes, playing baseball, walking in the creek throwing rocks at lizards.
Today we took Mom for a walk around the block. She didn’t want to go that far when we left but she went all the way around. It was .57 miles. Sepi likes to lean on me for safety. Mom had her wheeled walker.
The surgery was a week ago last Thursday. The first couple of days were rough but since then I’ve been able to do pretty much what I want to as long as it doesn’t involve heavy lifting. I have a little pain in my gut that surfaces when I make certain movements. The doc gave me Norco – which I call Vicodin (I’m not sure if it’s really the same) – but I haven’t had to take any. Ibuprofen and Tylenol are doing the trick.
Tim from work called me today and wanted to know how I was doing and if I was still planning on coming to work next Wednesday as scheduled. I’ts been really nice to not have to think about all that stuff.
Now for the less than idyllic: Teresa needs more bags for the oranges she’s harvesting. I don’t have shoes on so Mom went in under the tree to deliver them and I was watching carefully. We don’t want her to fall either!
I’m not so good I can write well with distractions like that. It’s my first post in more than a year so I’ll be happy with this.
two months!
Holy maroly, it’s been almost two months since I posted here. Is anyone still checking on me here? If you have been, thank you. I’m going to try to briefly explain what has happened.
Sepi and I moved into our new home Sept 1. It was her home for many years but she has only lived in a small apartment in the house for around 9 years. The larger part of the house has been rented to a succession of tenants. Our first day was spent ripping out the old carpet and hauling new flooring up to the main living area. Two weeks later, I moved myself out of my apartment. The floor wasn’t done so everything was provisional.
I worked on the floor as I had time but I was quite busy with work so it went slowly. It wasn’t until the first weekend of October that we cracked Sepi’s stored furniture in the garage and brought it upstairs
(draft from November 2018. Now I can let two months go by without writing about it. I still feel bad, but I don’t write about it.)
gifts
We’ve gotten a lot of gifts for our wedding but today I want to talk about some gifts we gave to others. Specifically, a gift we gave to our officiant, Willie Brown.
Willie, of course, is the classic man who has everything. Sepi and I had coffee on Sunday with another politician who knows Willie. We asked what she thought. She was a stumped as we were. ‘A tie?’, was all she could come up with.
We went to Macys, then Nordstrom, looking for ties without success. Even the nicer ones were made in China and I wasn’t going to give Mayor Willie Brown a tie made overseas. Sepi texted back to her friend our dilemma and got back an address in the outer Sunset.
Well, it’s Sunday afternoon after 3 pm. Our meeting with Willie was the next day. We didn’t want to wait the gift until the day of the wedding; there would be too much else happening then. So, we headed out to the Sunset.
In the Sunset nowadays there are mini neighborhood centers all over. This was one of them. A block with a hip restaurant, a gift shop, a church, a yoga place, a surf shop . . . and another little shop with what appeared to be more gifts.
I still had ties on my mind so I was puzzled when I went in. I didn’t see any ties! Well, I was here, I might as well see what they had.
It wasn’t a gift shop, except in the very broad sense of the word. It was the shop of an artist couple: a painter and her print-maker husband. Their paintings and prints were all San Francisco themed. Sepi liked the one that was an image of a bear holding a map of California with the slogan ‘I Love California’.
(a draft from 4 days before the wedding. Amazing that I got even this much done. I was sure I had a photo of Willie and Sepi and the painting but I can’t find it.)
Farsi
I was going to write about learning Farsi, but just as I was getting started, Sepi got her phone call from distant parts. Today, it’s Tehran, Gothenburg, and Kish Island (Iran). I wouldn’t be surprised to see Farideh from Montreal showing up any time. It’s ‘The Gang’, Sepi’s phrase for her sisters and cousins who talk regularly via WhatsApp.
Almost always just women, they usually start their call by asking about ‘Daryoosh!’ I learned early on how to say ‘hello’, ‘how are you’ and ‘I am fine, thank you’ in Farsi.
Unfortunately, I seemed to be stalled there. Sepi told me the other day how to say, ‘It’s nice to see you,’ but it hasn’t stuck. I found a really nice web site with Farsi phrases but almost never go to it. You’d think I’d be motivated to learn with all these interesting Farsi speakers to talk to.
The calls are almost always fun, with several people talking at once in happy voices. There have been serious moments, such as when Sepi’s aunt was dying last summer but mostly it’s just people happy being together. One cousin got COVID but seems to have gotten through the worst of it. Sepi’s sister, Mali, was sad when her niece left Iran for Canada but she puts on a brave face. Mali’s own children – with a grandchild on the way – are all still in Tehran.
I’ll keep at it. It’s likely that there will be many more such calls in the months ahead. We can’t go to Iran, but Canada and Sweden are on our short list of places to visit when it is safe to do so.
The other day, Badri, who lives in Gothenburg, tried to teach me some Swedish words. Aieee!
Ear wax
I remember clearly the first time I saw my own ear wax. The first great California drought I experienced was in 1977 and 1978. Like a good citizen I cut down on my showers. One day I noticed that one of my ears was plugged up to the extent that I couldn’t hear at all on that side.
At the doctor’s office, they put some stuff in my ears and had me sit in the waiting room for a while. I remember it as quite a while, perhaps half an hour, after which I was brought back into the examining room. They had me hold up a cup-like thing to my ear and took a thing like a 409 bottle and stuck it in my ear and commenced to squirt.
Shortly they were done and I could hear again! Miraculous!
Then the doctor showed me what was in the cup. Aiee! It was a huge black, greasy-looking cylindrical thing about a half inch long!
‘That came out of my ear?’ I was dumbfounded. I had no idea such things existed. Then they did the other ear and another greasy black thing, not quite so large, came out of that one.
Over the years since, I’ve come to realize that my ears generate wax and must be cleaned out periodically. Recently, I’ve mostly gotten it done along with my annual physical. I thought I had it done in January but I can’t remember for sure.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I felt that familiar sensation of my ear plugging up. I didn’t want to go to the doctor now just for that so I looked into what was available OTC. Sarah told me about a squirt system she had used that sounded like the one the doctors used so I got one.
Today I got it out and got everything ready. After I had left the drops in for a while, I got Sepi to come over and run the squirt bottle. She was almost to the end of the water when the big plug came out. She was dumbfounded! She had no idea such things existed!
Sepi is very worldly so when I show here something she’s never seen before, it’s worth mentioning. My astonishment from 40+ years ago was somewhat validated.
Now she wants her ears cleaned out!
My other family
There was another milestone event today in Sepi’s family – my other family. Farideh, Sepi’s sister in Montreal, has been trying to get her daughter Sara to come to Canada from Tehran for some time now. Sara’s travel arrangements were complicated by the fact that she wanted to bring her 12 year old son with her. Not to mention complications due to coronavirus!
Sara had been all set to come in August, but at the last minute there was a snag and she had to stay in Tehran. After much agonizing, Sara had decided to come ahead this weekend even if it meant leaving her son in Tehran. She bought tickets for two, though, and they both went to the airport yesterday with hope in their hearts.
At the last minute, the authorities allowed Samyar to board the plane! Joy was spread across three continents! Sepi and I embarked on a marathon FlightRadar24 viewing session. We ‘watched’ the plane take off from Tehran, cross the Persian Gulf and land in Qatar, then a couple of hours later take off from Qatar and head for Montréal.
This morning, when we picked up the track they were over the North Atlantic. We ‘watched’ them as they first made landfall over Newfoundland, then crossed the top of Maine and landed safely in Montréal.
Through the miracle of modern communications – mostly WhatsApp video calls, we were able to be in nearly constant touch with Sepi’s sisters in Montréal and Tehran. Farideh’s joy over the prospect of seeing her daughter for the first time in three years is tempered by Mali’s sadness over losing her niece. Mali’s daughter is grief stricken as the two girls are almost the same age and are very close.
Sara is only on a visitor’s visa so she will most likely have to return to Iran but Farideh’s goal is to get her permanent residency in Canada. Once Sara and Samyar are out of quarantine they will be working on that. There will be some big hugs first, though!
family
This is really Sepi’s story but she doesn’t have a blog and I think it’s really cool so I’m going to tell it. The best part, anyway.
Sepi came to the US in her early 20s. Growing up in Tehran, she had always wanted to be here and she did it despite the fears of the family for her safety. They helped her out but, especially after the revolution, communication became very difficult. After Sepi got elected to the City Council it was even dangerous. She only went back twice in over 30 years. Two of her brothers live in Southern California and she kept in touch with them but not the other siblings in Iran.
She knew one sister had emigrated a couple of years ago to Canada. Toronto, she thought. Her niece went too, but to another city, maybe Quebec. She wasn’t sure. And there were some other cousins in Sweden.
Another sister and another brother were still in Tehran. Eleven and a half time zones away.
Last year, we heard about a messaging app called Telegram. It was supposed to be super secure and used by many people in Iran because of that. We signed on and had some nice text conversations with her brother and sister and their kids. But one cousin was always posting links to pop songs and long diatribes in Farsi so we opted out.
Then, one day in April, Sepi’s phone rang. Somewhere along the line she had installed another messaging app called WhatsApp and her sister in Canada was calling her using it.
It was a video call! And her other sister in Tehran was on it too! I happened to be right beside her when this all happened. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying but I could hear the joy in their voices and I could see the tears in their eyes. They chattered back and forth for quite a while, at least 15 minutes, before regretfully signing off.
The best part is that Farideh kept calling. Sometimes the brother in Tehran was on, sometimes the brothers in Southern California came on. There were (at different times) nieces and nephews and cousins on these wonderful cacophonous conversations across thousands of miles. They all got a good look at me and decided I was OK.
Sepi calls me Christopher most of the time and that seemed to be a name that confused the Farsi speakers so I got to choose a Persian name. Someone suggested Cyrus so I thought of Persian kings and decided I liked Darius better. I especially like the Persian pronunciation, Dar-YOOSH.
Now we have long conversations several times a week. We’ve clarified a lot of family ancestor information. We’ve gone for a virtual walk around Farideh’s neighborhood in Montreal (not Toronto). We got to talk to a cousin yesterday who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. That was sad, but talking to Sepi made her happy. Some of these people hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager.
I listen carefully and am becoming able to pick out a few words here and there. Sepi sometimes translates as we go. Otherwise she fills me in after the call is over.
The calls make me happy every time!
memories
Day 54 yesterday. Sepi and I went to Santa Clara yesterday. We saw Mom for the first time since early March. No touching, but we sat in the patio and chatted for a while. I brought some salt for the water softener.
After we got home I was spinning through FaceBook and saw that it was Noah’s birthday . . .
11 years old and he’s still the spitting image of Zach, at least to my eyes.
And once again, I am so pleased that he has a stable home environment to grow up in. Ally and Dave are terrific parents.
Well, the whole thing prompted some pillow talk with Sepi. She didn’t remember the story of how we found out about Noah and how Ally and Dave brought him up to Michigan to meet the family. What a tremendous thing that was! I believe I’ve documented here how difficult it was for me to accept him for what he was.
I still love Dave’s simple comment: ‘I’m the Dad.’
So this morning the power went out and I couldn’t work on the big computer as I had been planning so I picked up the iPad. This is the one that had belonged to Zach and still has some foibles related to his ownership. It still has access to his Google Drive even though I do not have the password.
It isn’t his regular Google Drive account. I got all the stuff off of that early on. This one – I think – was for his research into gender roles in intramural sports. It has videos of some IM flag football games. When I looked at them this morning I thought, these have no value to anyone any more. I deleted a couple, then noticed the date: November 10. Aiee!
Now I’m not sure – still, after all this time! – that I should be deleting anything. Then, when I went to crop the photo, I noticed that the dates were 2014. You probably can’t tell on this tiny photo but they’re all October and November 2014. Oh well. I haven’t heard from his thesis advisor since about six months after Zach’s death. He was going through some pretty serious changes then. I’m going to go ahead and delete them.
It’s even possible that I already sent this stuff to Alex and I don’t even remember doing it.
The only other thing of interest is Zach’s account name. He actually made two of them, both named Tom Brady with emails of woodrowreasearch and woodrowreasearch1@gmail.com. I haven’t tried to get into those accounts. I spent a lot of time in the first year going through Zach’s real emails and cleaning up things there. Whatever is in that inbox is way out of date. If someone else knows how to get into it and finds something of value, please let me know.
Or not.
Day 55.