On my watch

During the last five or six months of my Mom's life, she wore this white watch with a rubber band that I unsuccessfully tried to convince her to not wear. It was ringed with plastic diamond things. The watch band had some sort of basket pattern, with silver retro numbers. It was hideous but she was very attached to it. I rescued it from her bag the week of her funeral and wore it to New York. It was one of those moments of unadulterated grief when finding one of her quirky, idosyncratic possessions and putting it on brought such relief for the feelings caused by her absence that I didn't care how it looked. As grief abated, I realized that I wasn't going to start wearing her watch, it would be too hard to explain to anyone else.

What happened after made me miss her in a different way. Jane went to a meeting at a large hospital where a wealthy supporter of a research initiative was present. In the meeting, Jane was speaking to the woman and looked down at her wrist and realized that this society lady was wearing the high-end version of the watch that my Mom's had been imitating. Instead of fake plastic diamonds, it had real ones.

My mom would have thought it was hilarious that there was a fancy version of it. The absurdity of the watch to begin with, the fact that there is a high priced iteration of her ten dollar drug store one, and the fact that Jane encountered an east side society lady wearing it would have elicited some wry and self-effacing comment about her brush with the well-to-do. I miss talking about things like this with her more than anything else.

Tanto tiempo

It's been forever since I wrote. In the absence of actual posts from me, people sometimes find their way to Jane's blog and are keeping up on recent events that way. For those of you who haven't followed the parts of my story there, I should explain that my mother passed away on August 14, 2009. It was sudden, completely unexpected and all happened while I was on vacation in Ecuador. We were at the top of the Teleferico in Quito when I got the phone call, killing time before going to the airport to catch a hurriedly changed flight.

This isn't meant as an excuse for not writing, the last post was after all two months before that. It is actually missing her that brings me back here again, I think. She was my most loyal reader and although the feelings of immediate shock have passed, her absence leaves a gaping hole in my day. She was one of my loyal readers and it seems a good space to talk a bit about the roller coaster.

Things that happen these days:

In my cell phone address book, the phone number still reads "Robert and Doris Calhoon." When my father calls me, I invariably think for a split second that she is finally returning my call, after so many weeks.

My June 14 post is now bittersweet, since it was about seeing Up. I recommended this movie to my parents, it is about aging and life changes, after all. It's the last movie she saw in the theater. When I cleaned out her purse, I found the 3-D glasses from the movie.

Here is the obituary.

Arriba

I wanted to see Away We Go, but Jane wasn't having any of the bittersweet socially awkward indie comedy and so we went see Up yesterday, which I have to admit was a much better use of a Sunday afternoon at the movies. We saw it in 3D, which was TOTALLY worth it as well, since the animation is really spectacular. It works in aging and loneliness and failure and evil (in the form of an aged Lindberghish Christopher Plummer, with herds of talking dogs) and how we resolve the loss of the things we always meant to do but never did. And yes, I did cry. Just at the beginning though.

That time of year

Summer in New York has come. There are barbecues, outdoor concerts, cafes serving salad, and girls in sandals everywhere. It rains almost every day, making the sandals a little inconvenient, but we are hoping for clearer skies soon.

Big Buses

I walked in front of one of those double decker tourist buses last night, and dashed back to the traffic island in the middle of the broad street. He was turning left onto Delancy from Chrystie, and we both had a green light. He actually stopped and leaned out the window to ask me why I went back, and I yelled back at him that is was because he was coming right for me. When a double decker bus is coming right at you, abstract concepts like the pedestrian right of way becomes kind of beside the point.

Nostalgia

Tonight is the inauguration of Cine de La Diferencia in Cuenca, the gay and lesbian film festival I helped plan last year. I can see the Teatro Sucre, right across from the Parque Calderon and imagine the flurry of costume emergencies, cash box preparations, one person asking the other "where the hell is the champagne for the toast," and everyone dressed up in Sunday best.

The pictures are from last year, when the kids I worked with put together these beautiful dance combinations, these amazing artistic expressions about sexuality. The organization was totally lacking, there were countless juvenile conflicts, we didn't get the tickets sales we wanted, the publicity happened late, the press we got was totally homophobic. But we freaking did it. All sorts of people came watched films and talked about sexuality. Almost a year out, back in New York, with my head full of details about a new all-consuming job, the finer points of what went right and wrong are so much less important than the fact that we pulled it off at all.

Congratulations to Cuenca Diversa! Como me gustaría estar allá con ustedes hoy.

Sustainability

My Peace Corps Project is plugging along with this years' iteration of Cine de la Diferencia. Thanks to everyone who contributed to support this so generously.

That awkward conversation

You know when you have a fight with someone you are very fond of and several months go by where you don't really talk, but in the end you decide that you remember all the things that are great about about the person and you start to make little overtures and then suddenly there you are having coffee and its exciting and uncomfortable all at the same time?

That is how I think this post might be. Not that I had a fight with my blog, or anyone who reads it, but after so many months its difficult to just pick up and act like everything has been all hunky-dory this whole time.

I mean, everything has been fine, it is just that I have been very neglectful. This has to do with having a job which sucks up way too much time in front of the computer, and way too much of the energy that makes blogging fun. But I fear that Jane will take me off her blogroll if I no longer post and so here is a commitment to getting back into to the rhythm of documenting my New York life.