This past week, I got a message from a friend asking if this site was down. I checked and sure enough, I had left the domain name hanging because the domain registry had an old credit card for automatic renewal. I quickly rectified that mistake, and the site was available again. But I was embarassed further because I had not made a blog entry since March 27. That's a full month of silence. And that was on top of another month of silence from February 23 to March 24.
How did this happen? Well, life has a way of consuming time:
- My mother's fractured pelvis and elbow required her to remain in rehab for six weeks, which threw my parents' daily structure out the window. My mom still can't cook. My parents need a lot more help from me and my sister.
- My wife had to go Peru to see her mother whose health has been slipping, and she ended staying seven weeks. That left me with two dogs and two cats and a household to take care of. Luckily, I had my daughter to share the load with. Luckily, Teresa is coming back on Wednesday.
- Doing my tax returns, which always requires me to wall myself off from other distractions to get the damn things done in time. This year, I had to do my parents' taxes for the first time.
- My 9-5 job demanded that certain tasks be finished on time. I could not take time off because I had to save it for my parents' doctor appointments.
- All the other tasks of daily life.
- Given these time constraints, I had to choose between blogging about yoga or doing yoga -- or doing neither. I got in a fair number of classes each week. Sometimes, I'd go without yoga on weekdays; other times, I'd skipped a weekend class to get errands done. Each evening, I always fit int about 15-20 minutes of restorative spinal twists and backbends because I found that it allowed me to sleep more deeply.
Not much posting here in this corner of the blogosphere lately. The reason is that my mother fell this past weekend and fractured her hip and right elbow. She was hospitalized for four days and then released to a rehab home where she will probably spend a couple of weeks, if not more. The experience of seeing my mother in intense pain and not being able to do anything about it gives new meaning to the definition of helplessness . At 90 years old, she's not prepared for this type of painful injury, and the whole bundle of medical emergency and information overload has been overwhelming for her and my dad. This has meant that Judy, my sister, and I will have to take a more active role in their health issues.
Of course, you can also through in the overload of work from by my 9-to-5 job because of the extended downtime due to the DC blizzard, so I've been forced to work extra time to catch up.
All that has meant that my yoga classes have been confined to the weekends, and anything that I can fit in on my own at home.
I was talking to a friend about how I could really use a yoga class and she responded with the question "Why wait?" I can deploy tools that I already have in hand from my practice. We immediately set up two little postures that I could use when I felt I needed the boost in prana:
- Standing posture - a disguised mountain pose with my arms held in front with one palm over the other in a shiva or Buddha mudra (tends to have less muscular tension than other mudras) that seals in my energy.
- Seated posture - in a chair, weight firmly over my sit bones, no slouching back, my legs crossed at the shins to relieve any tension in the legs; again, a mudra helps focus my mind.
Whenever I slip into one of these postures, I get the sensation that I am deploying my invisible superhero powers and they expand around me like an aurora.
I spent the day running around on medical errands that had a kind of deadline hanging over them: the impending snow storm that will lock us in our homes for another 24-36 hours. Take my wife for a chiropractic evaluation, pick up prescriptions from the drug store, take my dad for blood tests, pick up x-rays of my wife's back before the doctor's office closed at 4:30, fight the traffic out of DC even though there should not have been a rush hour because there was no Federal employees working today. There were a couple of other odds and ends thrown in the mix too.
And to top it off, there was no class at Thrive Yoga this evening. I know that snow flacks were falling by 5:30 and traffic was wicked so who could blame Susan Bowen for canceling classes for most of today and all tomorrow. After all, schools are closed for the rest of the week. Sure, I could have gone for a yoga class in the morning, but that would have made my day even more stressed out. I needed the yoga to unwind, not complicate my schedule on a day when I could not be sure how long it would take me to get from one end of town to the other.
Lucky for me, I took a yoga class at 6:00 pm last night. Susan combined the vinyasa and prenatal classes. You'd think that would be an odd mix, but it worked out just fine. As Susan said on my Facebook Wall: "Labor will be much more challenging than a yoga class -- so why not practice at a level that helps prepare the body, mind and breath for Labor." In other words, maybe the vinyasa class was stepping up to the ladies' level. In any case, I was rewarded with a nice practice. In Wide-Angle Seated Forward Bend (Upavistha Konasana), it occurred to me that the pose was about knowing which muscles to release instead of which muscles to contract. It also means releasing the muscles, and keeping them released over an extended period of time. Because I am so tight in the lower back and core (I basically can't fold over; I'm practically upright), the time available in class to release and re-release is not going to make much of a difference. I need to practice it at home and actually play with accessing muscles and letting go.
Should have mentioned this sooner, but I picked up my dad from the hospital and took him home at noon. Both he and my mom were greatly relieved that he did not have a serious "cardiac event," as the doctors like to call a more generic heart phenomenon. He has a bad valve that is causing him shortness of breath and pain. In fact, his heart is strong, but the aortic value is not performing well. The only way to fix it is by replacing it through open heart surgery and my dad is not a good candidate for that, what with kidney problems, age and other complications. The doctors are going to adjust his medications to deal with the condition. We're gong to have to watch him to make sure he does not do any heavy work.
I made it to hot vinyasa yoga in the morning at Thrive Yoga. I threw out four full trash bags of junk that I had been hoarding for years. I went to see my father in Holy Cross Hospital and spent a couple of hours chatting with him, no interruptions; he was admitted for observation this morning because he woke up with chest pains and numbness in his arms. At 88, the doctors wanted to be sure that there were no other complications.
I've had to spend the past few days undergoing a major overhaul in our living quarters. After nearly a decade living independently, our daughter Stephanie is moving back into the house so that she can swing it financially while finishing up her studies at the University of Maryland. To fit her belongings in the house and give her some independence, I have moved my study from the basement to one of the spare bedrooms. I am shrinking my work space by half, at least, but I get to put my desk by a window and have nature light for part of the day. Another plus is that I no longer have a TV in my study nor a couch where I can stretched to read commentary on Patanjali while watching the Redskins beat the Oakland Raiders. My cell phone now picks up a good enough single that I can carry on a conversation. I get a wooden floor, instead of linoleum, so I can roll out a mat whenever I feel like it
My family, my wife and me, really, have accumulated too many belongings for the type of house we own, a small townhouse. My wife has her oil paintings, art booms, her doll collections, her sewing and seamstress projects, stacks of cloth. My son never move his old school (community college, GWU undergraduate, UMd postgraduate) stuff out of the house, and is now dropping off his photography displays. Now Stephanie is going to deposit the physical manifestations of her independence and file up the basement.
Needless to say, the move has been brutal physically. I've moved three book cases and their contents, plus desk, keyboard unit, two filing cabinets and contents, and all my computer gear from the basement to the second floor. My back and legs ache from the exertion. Then, I had to put them all together again. I still have three-four more bookcases. I have taken down bedding, mattresses, bed frame, boxes of belongings,
It's also been a time to sort through stacks of books, magazine, correspondence and just plain junk, and decide whether to keep it or dump it. I have tons of stuff accumulated over 40 years (My parents donated my school books and independent reading when I left home). Do I need to keep a book on DOS 6.0 for sentimental value? Am I ever going to get around to reading my collection for Wired magazine that dates back to 2003? Will I ever send that external hard disk that I dropped during the clean up to a certified lab where they can dig the data out? Should I throw out the files for a story that I was going to write about 20 years ago? That's why I was in the basement, the weight and state of decomposition of these stories weigh heavy with their doom, with the squandered human anecdotes and embalmed statistics. I can move the worst offenders into the closet under the stairway that's under the stairs. No light there, not even a naked bulb. I have to bring a flash light to pull out my old tax returns.
There is a pang of nostalgia in this ascension because I've resided in the basement for 10 years. It was away from family traffic. It had a routine -- I was in charge of the washer and dryer, staging the loads so that they could move through the machines at the least expensive power rates in the evenings. I would take advantage because I could give my yoga kit special treatment by not putting them through the dryer, just hang them on a line or hanger. I could grab my dress shirts out of the dryer before they got wrinkled. But, I also had to clean out the kit litter. My wife can never claim that I did not help her with the household chores. I could let my disorder sprawl over the floor and boxes, and no one would get their fingers in them because, except my wife, to clean them up.
Of course, my wife's solution to this quagmire: sell the townhouse and get a big independent house with garden and storage shed, big closets, lots of windows opening on the east,south and west. Something worthy of our stature. I tell my wife that the market is not prepared for us.
Labels: family, life style, milestone
My brother's obituary as it appeared in the Dallas Morning News on October 25 (only viewable for 30 days after publication):
Richard Elliott Smith passed away Oct. 23, 2009 after fighting a 3-year battle with lung cancer. He was born Jan. 12, 1953 in Anderson, Indiana to parents Lynn and Lorraine Smith. He graduated from Anderson University and Dallas Baptist University. He held 2 Master's degrees.
Richard's special joy was being a special education teacher. He recently worked at Highland Park High School in the Special Ed department. He was featured in the May 1st edition of "The Bagpipe" in which he spoke of his cancer battle. His favorite shirt to wear to school was a T-shirt with the phrase from "Spamalot", "I'm not dead yet". The saying was from a spoof on the 14th century black plague. He also loved telling his doctors and nurses "I'm alive and well and kicking" when asked the question "how are you doing?"
Richard is survived by his wife of 4 years, Susan Peterson-Smith. Also survived by his parents, sister Judy Zack and brother-in-law Sam, brother Michael Smith and sister-in-law Terri, sister and brother-in-law Anne and Mike Hahn, sister and brother-in-law, Christa and Floyd Stanley, nephews Stephen, Jonathan and Benjamin Zack, Matthew Smith, nieces, Stephanie Smith, Gretchen and Delaney Hahn, Emily Stanley and nephew Samuel Stanley and mother-in-law Anne Peterson. Richard was loved by his furry children, Harry Potter, Narnia, Clarrie and Liaku.
Special thanks to Dr. Gupta, Dr. Samsula, Dr. Engleman and Dr. Cheek. Also to the wonderful staff at Texas Oncology Plano Baylor special thanks. A big thank you to Baylor Regional Plano Hospital and their staff for the care they gave to Richard throughout his illness.
Funeral services will be at The Church of the Incarnation on Oct. 30th, 2009 at 3:00 p.m., followed by inurnment at the Church of the Incarnation Memorial Garden, The Reverend Father Matthew Oliver, presiding and The Right Reverend Anthony Burton, assisting. Memorials to be given to the Church of the Incarnation Foundation, Granger Fund.
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| From Richard |
I know that Susan had to undertake the task of putting this together, which really sucks. In the middle of mourning, you're supposed to write a life story that sums up 55 years on earth. I wish she had asked me to do it, but I know only a small portion of his time in Dallas and certainly not enough about his last three years.
I was telling my daughter before I flew to Dallas that Richard really should have felt fulfilled at this stage of his life: he had a meaningful career, teaching special ed, after decades of seeking a profession that was rewarding; he had met the girl of his dreams, Susan, after decades of seeking a soul mate, and both of them had purchased a beautiful house in the suburbs of Dallas. It just a bitch that once he had all these things in hand, he had to share them with the cancer monster.
He was a seeker all his life, and it took him all the way down to Texas. He ended up having two Master's degrees and probably enough extra credits to qualify for another degree. He could have made a fortune at accounting if he had bothered to get certified as a CPA, and indeed his skill with numbers and spreadsheets served him well.
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| From Richard |
I spent six days with him in June. That was the most time that I've had with him since I left for Mexico and Peru in 1973, and he was going to be a sophomore at Anderson College. Even as kids, we were separated by four years, which meant that I was over high school when he started, and graduated from college when he was freshman. When you're young, you think that four years of age difference create huge barriers, but today I look back and think how trivial those differences seem.
Since then, we spent little time together. He made a short visit to Peru in 1976 (he broke his leg just before the Tri-S trip and wore a cast in the Peruvian rain forest, doing service work in Pucallpa). We spoke on the phone, wrote a few letters, had a few family reunions together, but never more than a few hours. When I came back to the States in 1990, he had left my folks' place to work in Texas. More short encounters until his marriage in October 2005 and then the illness.
I wish I had sought out more opportunities to be a big brother to him. Over the past 30-some months, we've spoken on the phone more than we ever did, but it always seemed that he could never hold a conversation for more than 10-15 minutes before getting fatigued, especially in the evening. Plus, at the end, the treatments had stolen 80 percent of his hearing so carrying on a phone conversation was a burden. He hated his hearing aid.
Post Script: Susan has put up a commemorative site with lots of photographs of Richard, some that I had never seen before.
This past weekend, I participated in the multiple-session workshop of Brian Kest at Thrive Yoga. I had made a commitment to Susan Bowen, the studio owner, that I would take photos of the sessions, and I was really looking forward to the event. As it turned out, my brother died on the eve of the workshop. Since the funeral was not until the following Friday, I decided to attend. As I told Susan when I showed up on Friday evening, I wanted to celebrate my brother's life on the mat, just as I have included him as my yoga intention for the year.
In a way, the physical demands of the Kest workshop were just what I needed. The need to reach beyond my normal edge in my yoga practice meant that my body's messages overwhelmed the emotional pain of my grief. I had no time to dwell on his death, and when I got home, I had no problem sleeping. Yesterday, I felt so drained and fatigued that I did not go into work, and today, I am dragging again, but I believe it's more because of my grief and pain from my brother's death. Last night I could not get to sleep until 4 am.
Because of these considerations, I have not had a chance to comment on the workshop itself. It was just too difficult to focus on putting ideas down on paper. I don't think I can do more now than jot down some initial ideas and then come back later with something more substantive. Kest leads a physically demanding yoga practice, based on Ashtanga yoga but evolved over 30 years of his own experience. Susan had to wait a full 18-months before she could book a date for him, and we had many people from outside the Thrive Yoga community coming in for the workshop, some as far away as Florida. Many of the participants were repeats, either having taken a class, workshop or retreat previously. His most memorable line was "Some people bring their shit to yoga, and turn yoga into shit."
My brother Richard will be laid to rest on Friday, October 31 in Dallas. I'll be flying down on Thursday to join the family there. He's going to be cremated and buried in the Church of the Incarnation's Memorial Garden, which is located on the church grounds. Richard and I visited the setting when I was there in June, and he was really pleased with the arrangement. I spoke with Susan, his wife, and was comforted by her account of his last days. She told me that he was ready to move on. I believe that I was the last person to speak to him on the phone. He seemed to fall asleep while I was talking to him (probably the medication to relieve the pain and ease his breathing), and he never woke up.
I would also like to thank all those who have posted condolences in this blog, on my Facebook, or via e-mail and phone. Your thoughts and best wishes are appreciated and I will relaying your messages to my parents, sister and sister-in-law.
My son, Matthew, has been selected to show his photos in the Washington Project for the Arts's Options 09 exhibit, the 13th installment of the biennial show. He was one of the 250 artists that the WPA evaluated this year, ending up as one of the final 13 who will show. He's the only one who does not have formal art training (a Masters in Fine Arts) so it's his talent that's getting him in there. For the first time, he will be displaying his photos in the format that he originally envisioned them (larger prints, sparing no expense):
As a tradition, OPTIONS is a survey of the brightest and most talented emerging artists in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia regions and offers visibility for artists who do not have gallery representation. WPA originally developed the biennial series in 1981 with legendary artist Gene Davis and Washington Review Managing Editor Mary Swift as curators of the first WPA OPTIONS showcase.
This year, WPA is fortunate to have Anne Collins Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, curate the exhibition.
The exhibit opens today at the Conner Contemporary Art, 1358 Florida Ave, NE,2nd Floor, Washington,DC, and will last through October 31.
Needless to say, this is a big breakthrough for him, and we're very, very proud of him. See his website.
The exhibit got a review in the Washington Post's Weekend supplement: "Other surprises: the sheer amount of painting. Work by Johnson, Mullins, Kim Manfredi and Polly Townsend may give hope to those who have heard rumors of its demise, and the shortage of great photography. True, Ren, Matthew Smith and Matthew Wead all contribute interesting photographic works. But where are the others?"
My family has been in an extended debate about what the last enigmatic line means?
My wife has left me.
More accurately, she has flown to Lima, Peru to take care of her mother for a month. Luisa is now over 80 years old and really needs someone to keep an eye on her. Teresa's sisters have been visiting for a while so now it's Teresa's turn. It's the only window of opportunity because Teresa does not have classes in the summer.
Her absence means that I have to take care of two dogs and two cats. The cats take care of themselves, except for emptying their litter box and filling their food bowls, but the dogs are more time consuming. I try to give them at least one 20-minute walk a day to compensate for being coop up in the house during my work hours. Their walk comes after they've had their dinner. What they want most when I come home is attention.
My daughter, Stephanie, has offered to come by to help out some so my housekeeping and pet caring duties may not be as extensive as I fear.
All this interrupts my daily routines so I may not have the same amount of time for yoga and meditation. I was able to fit in my two weekend classes, in between helping Teresa pack and taking her to the airport. That came after a week in which I had been unable to take in a single evening class because the Washington Metro was not cooperating. Trains were packed, stopped frequently, even went out of commission due to mechanical problems.
My son, Matt, had another set of photographs on public display at Artomatic, the yearly, month-long, DC-area multimedia free-for-all that fills up an empty office building with the creative work of hundreds artists of varying degrees of accomplishment and invention. The show will be taken down tomorrow so we went to see it this evening since our travels had prevented us from taking it in sooner. Matt had to put in his time as a volunteer at the event (a requirement of all participating exhibitors) but he got away from a few moments so that I could snap this picture of him.
Matt drew a lot of attention, apparently, and I had feedback from a friend who chanced upon the exhibit and thought it was really good. Matt also got a favorable review by Mark Power (his photography teacher so he may not have been completely impartial, but probably sensitive): "His work may not have been the "best" photography at Artomatic but I liked it the best." According to the exhibit rules, Matt had to design, build and set up his exhibit himself so he invested a lot of time getting the show ready, even learning how to frame pictures. As I mentioned here previously, he was in an photo exhibit in March.
I thought his photos were quite inventive and the triptych plus one format created a kind of graphic language that tapped into quotidian objects for resonance and irony. Matt had never shown any "artistic" tendencies in childhood; he had plenty of potential as a writer. His training as a geographer (cartography, remote imaging, and other graphics) probably opened him to more visual expression. He's mostly self-taught, except for a few classes that he's taken recently.
