I’m taking a short break in my Millipore narrative to introduce you to a real character. We’ll just call him Big T, because that’s what I called him. And he called me Big D. I met Big T while in the International Divison. In my last post, I talked about going back into the domestic group, and I did. But prior to that — and, seriously, I do have memory issues around Millipore because I spent so many years there and they seem to run into one another — I was back in the International Divison. This was after, of course, they rolled Intertech into Europe and made it one big group.

The International Division had a new President, whom we’ll refer to as JL. He was a pretty respectable leader. Although I did not work directly for him, we got along really well. I worked directly for his VP. We’ll refer to him as AW. (By the way, these are all legitimate initials; I’m just leaving the names out.) Big T was hired in 1979 as President of the Japanese subsidiary (or Nihon Millipore Ltd.), a pretty big job. However, it was common practice to have new upper management personnel spend a significant amount of the time in the home office. They gave Big T the office right next to mine, and it began a great relationship that I remember fondly to this day. This is a guy I’ll never forget.

I loved Millipore because it offered flexible hours. The other thing I loved about it was, if you were considered a trustworthy, productive and valued employee, they didn’t watch over you. I pretty much called my own shots, and I loved making my own hours. I did a lot of writing, so it was not uncommon for me to arrive at the office around five in the morning when it was quiet. Most of the time, I’d work until at least 4 p.m., but flex hours allowed me to sometimes be out of there by 2 p.m. if I felt comfortable that my work load was manageable.

The Japanese, of course, are notorious workaholics, and Big T was no exception. Most of the time, we’d arrive at the same time and have coffee together. He’d walk in and say, “Good morning, Big D. How are you this morning?” And I’d reply in kind. But as fate would have it, we turned this mother into a competition to see who could arrive earliest. Millipore didn’t officially “open” until 8 a.m., so the only way we could get into the building that early was via the guard’s desk. We had to sign in, so we had a legitimate timekeeper. He was happy to help out. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he really got into it and had some fun with it. The day I signed in at 3:52 a.m. was the day Big T said to me, “I give up. You win. You’re crazier than any Japanese businessman I’ve met!”

An attempt at Americanization

In spite of the fact that Big T was a big-time hire…the President of Nihon Millipore Ltd., we knew we could have fun with him. Remember BG of  Bridget Calendar fame from my earlier post? Well, he decided we needed to teach Big T how to communicate in American slang so that he could be more involved in meetings. We got him a small notebook and pen to keep in his pocket. On the front, we put a label that read Big T’s Little Book of Slang. He took this very seriously.

We taught him all kinds of stuff…phrases like “Tell them to shit or get off the pot,” “Now you’re cooking with gas” and “Be there or be square  We also told him the appropriate time to use his new phrases. We also taught him things like “What the hell is wrong with you?” and “That’s a no-brainer.” Then, there’s the infamous “There is no gravity. The earth sucks.” But the best thing we taught him to say was, “Well, shit fire and save matches!” when somebody actually did something right. I mean, to actually watch this little Japanese guy blurt this stuff out at meetings was hilarious. Every time he did it, JL, the President of the International Division, would look over at us and shake his head. But for BG, it didn’t stop there.

One week we had a pretty full crew in Bedford. We were all sitting at a lunch table when Big T took his notebook out of his shirt pocket and looked at AW, and said, “Alan, what is pussy?” The entire table had been chattering and it just plain stopped. There was dead silence. I was quietly laughing my head off because Big T had no freakin’ idea what he’d just asked, and AW was left holding the bag. By the way, AW was convinced the perpetrator was either me or BG. It definitely wasn’t me, so if it wasn’t me everyone knew it was BG. I was the only female sitting at the table, so AW asked me to leave. I just looked at him and said, “No way. Go ahead. Explain this one. I’m all ears.”

He did explain it to Big T, but not in our presence. I have to tell you, that wasn’t the only disgusting word BG managed to teach Big T.  AW had a full list of stuff to explain to him over the next several days. BG just kept going at it like the Energizer Bunny during the course of that week.

“No more Pearl Harbors!”

One week, both the division president and vice president were at an offsite meeting and the secretaries were doing double duty on a project for Big T. Both of the big guys were due back in on Monday and Big T was scheduled to give a dry run of his big presentation to Millipore’s CEO. The secretarial staff and two temps had been working on numbers and overheads the entire week, typing and retyping them. Finally, the project was just about done on Friday, so Big T decided to take all the secretaries and the temps out to lunch together. We borrowed a secretary from another group, and I agreed to help her cover the phones for them while they were gone.

Now, JL was pretty much anal retentive when it came to secretarial coverage. He had some rules that I considered over the top. Had he been here, he would never have allowed Big T to take all the division secretaries out all at once. He would have to do it over a couple of days. I thought that was just pretty stupid given the amount of work they just did. They were gone for a couple of hours and, in the meantime, I had a three-hour meeting. None of us were aware that JL was going to get out of his meeting ahead of schedule and show up at the office after three on a Friday afternoon, but that’s exactly what he did. And, of course, Big T had treated the ladies to a bit of wine with their lunch.

When I got out of the meeting, I walked by JL’s office and saw the most unbelievable scene. I just burst out laughing. As angry as he was at Big T, JL was laughing too. After getting called out for taking the secretaries out for lunch without leaving enough phone coverage, Big T dropped to his knees in front of JL and began bowing. As he continued to bow, he kept repeating over and over, “Please boss, forgive me. No more Pearl Harbors! I promise.” It was hysterical.

Everyone was pretty sad the day that Big T’s year in the U.S. was over. We had a great party for him on his final Friday. By that Sunday, he was back in Japan with his family and running the Nihon Millipore Ltd.

I made it a point to seek him out when he returned to the U.S. We had a mutual respect for each other and he had no problem joking around in spite of our cultural differences. I remember the last time I saw him. I had moved into the Lab Water Division as the International Marketing Services Manager and was having a miserable time with my European reports.  I made a comment about the pressure making my hair gray. He turned around and looked at me and said, “Hey, stop complaining! At least you still have hair!”

My dad died when I was nine, so my memories of my dad are not as voluminous as they are of my mom. Yet, in spite of the fact that he’s been dead forty-six years, the memories I do have are pretty vivid. My memories are almost like short little films. What I wish I had are photos, but I don’t right now. I know my sister Mamie has photos of my dad, particularly from her wedding. He gave her away at her wedding on October 14, 1962. By August 8, 1963 he was dead. Over the next few weeks, I’ll borrow some photos of my dad, scan them, and add them to Mi Famiglia and to this post.

When I was little, people would say that I was the “spitting  image” of my dad, and I was. He was a very mild mannered guy, though. I don’t consider myself mild mannered. I think my personality is much more like my mom’s. As I’ve gotten older, I think I look a bit more like my mom as well.

I used to go food shopping with my dad all the time. Since he and my mom never had their drivers licenses, he and I used to walk to the end of the street to Broadway (in Revere) and go to the Stop & Shop. I remember that it was right behind the fire station. We’d buy our food and then we’d carry all these bags  back up the street. Sometimes we’d get on the bus and go to McKinnon’s in ‘Everett. He used to say that they had fresher fish and meat. He’d also buy Eight O’Clock coffee and have it ground right at the cash register. I used to love the smell of coffee even as a kid.

Not having a car never held my dad back. I used to love the beach so much when I was small. My dad and I would take the bus to Revere Beach together. It was nothing like it is today. It was amazing. I remember the Cyclone Roller Coaster (it was awesome) and The Wild Mouse. I also remember the Hippodrome where they had the Bumper Cars (we called them the Dodge’ems) and the Flying Horses. But we didn’t spend a lot of time there because all I wanted to do was be in the ocean. I remember that the waves used to be so big back then. They’d come in and my dad would pick me up by my arms and swing me back and forth. Then, when the wave got close he’d let me go and I’d go right through it. I could do that for hours. My dad was great. He’d do whatever I wanted. If I wanted to build a giant sand castle, he’d be right there building it with  me. Then he’d take me to Kelly’s Roast Beef. When I was a kid, I was too dumb to appreciate the clams. I used to just get a roast beef sandwich. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned how awesome the clams are there, even today (I’m talking about the Revere Beach location only; the other Kelly’s restaurants are pretty mediocre, I think).

Today at work we were talking about when we were kids and the things our dads used to let us watch on TV. My boss was telling me that her mother was mortified that her dad used to let her watch Benny Hill, a really unbelievably funny British comedy. When I was young, people were disgusted by the Three Stooges. I used to love the Three Stooges (still do; I’ve downloaded every single episode). “Violent is the Word for Curly” is my favorite episode. It’s the one where this all-girl’s school mistakes the stooges for three professors, and they end up singing the song “Swinging the Alphabet.” I remember that the big topic of conversation in my neighborhood was that the kid down the street had whacked his father off the head with a hammer after watching the Three Stooges.

Apparently, however, Superman had a more profound impression on me than the Three Stooges. We lived on the third floor of an apartment building at 218 Beach Street in Revere and all of the tenants had back porches. One year I got a Superman costume for Halloween, and I was playing on the back porch. My dad grabbed me by the cape and probably saved my life just as I was about to jump off the third story porch.

On Sundays my dad and I used to go to Woodlawn Cemetary in Everett, believe it or not. ‘We’d be at my grandmother’s anyway, and it was just down the street. It’s beautiful there. The flowers were beautiful and there were plenty of benches to sit on. We’d walk through and then just spend time talking about stuff. He also took me there to teach me how to ride my bike. Like almost every other cemetary, Woodlawn had an “old” and a “new” section. Some of the stuff in the old section, like statues of angels,  was amazing (and kind of scary to a kid).

My dad was an amazingly patient man. One of the things I absolutely have a phobia about is vomiting. I’m not kidding you. I consider it one of the most disgusting human events on the planet. Once when I was little, I must have caught a stomach virus at school. Unfortunately for my dad, it was on a night when we had pizza and chocolate covered marshmallows for dessert (a truly disgusting combination). I remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling really sick. My mom and dad let me get in the middle of the bed between them. That was their first mistake because that was the first place I yakked. I figured if I didn’t go into the bathroom, I wouldn’t get sick. Talk about twisted fucking logic, man. A few hours later, I was at it again. This time, my dad made sure I got out of the bed. The situation remained the same, however. I refused to go into the bathroom, and proceeded to throw up right on his foot in the middle of the living room. It was pathetic, but he remained calm and cool, and extremely comforting in spite of my absurd phobia.

The unthinkable happens

When my dad was 52 (and I was 9), he got sick. It was first diagnosed as arthritis in my dad’s back. Nobody could really figure out what it was. It just never occurred to me that my dad was ever going to die. I remember they sent my dad to a gym to work with a guy named Mayo Kahn (who, as it turns out, was the actual model for Superman), but the pain kept getting worse. He was eventually diagnosed with lung cancer. By then it was pretty advanced, I’m told.

In 1963, there was no chemotherapy. There was only radiation. He suffered in the Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett for three solid months. Still, I never dreamed he wouldn’t be coming home. They wouldn’t let me in to see my dad in the hospital because they said I was too young. I remember my sister’s husband, Skip, sneaked me ino the Whidden one Sunday. I’m sure he didn’t look anything like what I remembered, but it didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to be with him.

One day, the phone rang at home and I picked it up. It was the doctor. I was pretty naive at 9 years old and I remember being happy, thinking it meant my dad was coming home. I gave the phone to my mom, and she left me with my grandmother and rushed to the hospital. Many hours later, my mom and sisters returned home without my dad. He had finally died. There would be no more suffering. It took a long time for that to sink in. When everyone had gone home after that long day, I remember being alone in my room crying myself to sleep. That was the first time in my life I had come face-to-face with death. There have been many times since then, but none have had that kind of effect on me (with the possible exception of my mother’s death many years later).

Writer’s Note: My sister Mamie was in labor in the Whidden Hospital while my dad was dying there. My dad died August 8, 1963. My niece, Maria Julia (after my dad), was born August 11, 1963 in the same hospital.

Yeah, before she was a Della Piana, she was a Catanzano. That was my mom. She was born in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 26, 1910, and she was one of ten children (two of them died as babies). My mom passed away in Medford, Massachusetts on February 19, 1992 from the ravaging effects of colon and liver cancer. In the 82-plus years she spent on this earth, she left her mark on all of us. Even today, people remember her and tell me that she was something else. She was. She was always her own person, that’s for sure. I prefer to call her a piece of work. My sisters and I have joked for many years that my dad had to be a saint. We were convinced that she wore the pants in the family, but we also were very clear that my dad adored my mom. I am eternally thankful that I had her in my life for 37 years.

Although she was a graduate of Burdett’s Business School and worked at J.L. Hammett Company (yes, the oldest school supply business), my mother was a stay-at-home mom the bulk of her life. That changed on August 8, 1963 when my dad died of cancer at the age of 52. It was a shock to us. He was originally treated for arthritis before they found out he had lung cancer. He was gone in three months. She was up that hospital every single day and night with him until he passed away. My mother had to go back to work after that. She worked at a donut shop across the street from my house so she could keep an eye on me. I had my own house key at nine so I could let myself in while my older sisters were at school.

My mother was a tough woman. She was the first woman in Everett to wear slacks. Somewhere at my sister Mamie’s house there’s a photo of her walking down the steps of some building in Everett in a pair of pants. She pulled us all through after my dad died, even though she and I were forced to live with relatives after my sisters were married. First, we lived with my Uncle Tony and his family (including 14 children) in Medford for a while. That was a blast, actually. I was really close to my cousins. After that, we moved into an apartment with nasty Auntie Buddy for many years. That eventually came to an end because she was intolerable to live with. Once I was old enough to move into an apartment, my mom moved in with my sister Mamie, her husband Skip and their three children. She lived there for 18 years.

“Mrs. Della Piana, DSS calling…”

I think I was a shock to my mother’s system. I really do have a pushing-the-envelope mentality. I’ve been like that since I was a kid. She really didn’t know how to handle me. I pulled some really unbelievable stuff, like telling her I had tonsillitis and taking 23 consecutive days off from school. The incredible thing was she listened to me for so long. What mother lets her kid take 23 days off without checking the situation out with a pediatrician? When she finally did that, he proceeded to tell her that I was basically full of shit. After that, all hell broke loose. She was absolutely pissed, chasing me around the house with a broom.When I tried to hide under the table, she turned the thing around and started poking me with the broom stick.  She was determined to make me pay, I’m convinced.

And then there’s the little matter of my Aunt Buddy’s car. The three of us were living on Riverside Avenue in Medford at the time and my aunt had a 1964 Chevy Nova. When the two of them left for work, I’d take the spare keys and drive that mother around the block. I had to be about maybe 12 or 13 years old at the time. I was sitting pretty until one of my nosy neighbors walked over to the house and told my mom I was driving the car. I got whacked with a frying pan for that one, but she never told Auntie Buddy about that little incident.

She also hated peach fuzz. Drove her nuts. We had this telephone table my mom would sit at when she talked on the phone. I’d wait until she’d be in the middle of a conversation, then I’d grab a peach from the refrigerator and rub it down her arm. She’d immediately throw the phone in the air and yell, “You little bastard!” Then, she’d chase me around the house, forgetting completely about the person on the other end of the line. It was like waving a red cape at a bull.

One of the funniest things that ever happened took place on a bus at Wellington Circle in Medford. My mother and I were taking the bus to see my grandmother in Everett, and we went by this shopping center with a Dunkin’ Donuts. I remember pointing to it and yelling, “Ma look! It’s Fuckin’ Donuts.” I had spent the previous night at my Uncle Salvy’s house with my cousin, and she just knew he told me that’s what it said. She knew because he was trouble with a capital T. She gave me the dirtiest look on the planet and said, “I’m going to kill him when I see him.” As soon as that happened and everybody on the bus was laughing, my mother decided we were getting off and waiting for a new bus. She practically pulled me off by my ear. She was determined that I was never going to say that word again. (She lost that battle, by the way.)

Pinching. That was another weapon. It was brutal, but effective.

My sisters and I are pretty much convinced that, if she were alive and parenting today, DSS would be at our house…a lot. In fact, they’d probably just move in with us.

Devoted to her family

My mother didn’t see eye to eye with her sibilings about many things. She had great differences of opinion with my Aunt Buddy. When we lived with her, my mother felt that she was too hard on me…expected too much from a child. That was one of the reasons why she decided it would be best if just she and I lived together. In spite of that, my mother never allowed the rift to become a lifelong rift. She remained close to my Aunt Buddy. They did many things together. She also had a testy relationship with my Aunt Muff. (Really, don’t ask me how she got that name. Her real name was Florence.) Yet, my mother made sure that we remained respectful over the years and, when my aunt had problems or troubles, my mother was there.

My Uncle Joe was the baby of the family, an unpredictable schizophrenic for many years. My mother and her sisters, even as they grew old, saw him three times a week. They cooked for him. They cleaned his house. They interceded for him with the Veterans Administration. They made sure he got the care he needed.

The one thing my grandmother did was instill a deep sense of family in all of her children. My mother did the same with us.

Losing our best friend

My mom had been sick for a while. The doctor had first diagnosed her with a spastic colon, whatever the hell that was. There were other diagnoses as well. I’m not sure what the final test was that they ran, but I suspect it was a colonoscopy. To this day, I don’t have any idea why they took so long to run it. I remember getting the call from my sister JoAnne. They had found a tumor in her colon and, by the time they detected it, it had its own blood supply. That’s never good. Never.

My mom agreed to surgery, but made it clear she was doing it for us and that there would be no chemo at 82 years old. We understood that perfectly. My mother had been a smoker for most of her life and had emphysema for many years by the time her surgery was required. The surgeon, Dr. Frederick Ackerman, decided to put the surgery off for a month in order to strengthen her lungs. During that time, she visited a pulmonologist at Mass General Hospital. The decision was made to do the surgery, then immediately put her into the ICU on a vent until she was strong enough to breathe on her own.

We were all there that day, just hanging out in the waiting room for what seemed to be endless hours. We were joking about her and I remember saying, “I wonder what kind of shit she’s giving those doctors.” Everybody laughed. Finally, Dr. Ackerman came down and said that the surgery was successful. He had to remove some lymph nodes, but she was “clean” of cancer.  My mom remained in the hospital for quite some time.

One Sunday, I went up to visit her in the White Building at MGH and my sisters were already there. I walked toward her room and saw a bunch of doctors and attendants working on her. I remember that one of my sisters grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back. “Don’t go in there.” I can’t remember if it was Mamie or JoAnne. Her lungs had filled with fluid and she couldn’t breathe. That was a scary moment. It’s funny that all these years later that’s one of the visions that remain clear in my head.

My mom came home and she was in her usual good spirits for many months. Life went back to its routine. Then, one day my sister called me at work. We were talking about stuff and then she mentioned that my mother seemed a little weak. She could tell by her voice. We didn’t know what was going on, but I told her that maybe she was just overtired. That was being optimistic.

A couple of nights later, they had to rush her to the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. They said she had pneumonia, but there was surely something else at work. They ran some tests and determined that she needed more tests. Her primary care doctor called us and told us that they found some spots in her liver. The CT scan came next. The determination was that she had liver cancer. The doctor believed it had been there all along, but it had been so small that it couldn’t be detected. It was just a matter of time now.

We had the inevitable conversation about what she wanted. The one thing she didn’t want was to be revived. I remember we got the paperwork from the hospital, and my sister carried it around with her for at least a week before we could summon the courage to sign it. At the end of the day, it was what my mother wanted that counted. She told us that she had spent more than thirty years without my dad and that she was confident she’d done her best for us. It was time to let go. We signed.

My sisters and I spent the night of my 37th birthday at the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. My mom wanted them to bring a cake to celebrate, so they did. She had grown close to one of her nurses, Lisa, and she came as well. Lisa told us that she loved my mother’s sarcastic sense of humor. (Funny thing was that Lisa and I saw each other for about three months after my mom died. I suspect it was that connection.) Later in the night my mom fell asleep. That’s when I decided to blow up the blue latex gloves — about 20 of them — and tape them to her bed.

My oldest sister, Mamie, walked into the room with Lisa and said, “You know she’s going to kill you when she wakes up.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll blame you, Mamie. You’re the one that told me it’s important that we don’t treat her any differently than we normally would. I’m just being myself.”

The long goodbye

A few days later, we brought my mom home to die in Medford where she had spent the last 18 years of her life. This was so hard for me to watch. I felt so guilty because I had to walk out of the room so often. My sister Mamie told me that I didn’t have to be a rock all the time, but I have to tell you that she definitely was. Everyone was there all the time, trying to spend every moment possible with her that was left — my Aunt Buddy, her grandchildren, her daughters. It was painful.

She was a proud woman. It was hard to watch my brother-in-law lift her up like a baby and put her on the commode in her room. She had suffered from emphysema for years, refusing an oxygen tank and staying tough. Looking at that shit tore me apart. It was hard giving her morphine. All of it was painful from day one until the very end. I felt guilty thinking that I just wanted it to be over, but I wanted it to be over for her sake. I knew she was hating being dependent and helpless.She had said one thing to me when she came home. She told me she wasn’t afraid to die. She was afraid to suffer. I promised that we would not allow her to suffer.

I was at work one day when my sister called to tell me that my mom was having last rites later that morning. I cancelled all my meetings and left the office, arriving just before Father Gallagher showed up. We were all there in her room. At the end of the process, my mother looked at Father Gallagher and said, “Not bad for an Irish guy.”

Everyone started laughing and he said, “You know, Frances, I wouldn’t expect any other comment from you.”

It was a little bit of levity in an otherwise sad situation, but we all knew the end was near.

Several days later, I was once again at work when my sister called. She was crying. She had been sitting with my mother and talking to her. My mom made her promise that the three of us would stick together no matter what. Mamie promised on behalf of JoAnne and I. She also told my mother that it was okay for her to go. My mother, apparently, was particularly worried about me. It was probably because I was still seen as the “baby” of the family, even at 37. My sister Mamie promised that she and JoAnne would take care of me. At some point, my sister — totally exhausted from the ordeal — fell asleep at the bottom of my mom’s bed. When she woke up, my mother was gone.

I rushed to Medford as fast as I could. I had to have broken the land speed record. I arrived just as the funeral home was unzipping the body bag. That was a horrible experience. I asked them to wait. I wanted to say goodbye alone in her room. I remember closing the door and sitting on her bed, apologizing for not being there in the end. I really hated myself for that for a long time. Then I forced myself to watch as they packed her into the body bag and took her away.

As if this all wasn’t enough pain for her children to bear, my Aunt Muff weighed in with her own brand of lunacy, accusing my older sister Mamie of not doing enough to save my mom’s life. My sister had been the primary caregiver at the end of my mom’s life and, no matter what differences I had with her, she didn’t deserve that. I remember calling my Aunt and telling her to shut her mouth. (I believe it was actually “Shut your fucking mouth.”) My mother had made the decision to go no further. She did not want to be rushed to the hospital one more time. I’m not sure that anyone even knows that I called my aunt, but that’s the very last time I spoke to her even though she lived to be in her nineties. That was the end for me.

The final march

My mom was buried out of Gately Funeral Home in Melrose, right down the street from where I was living. When I arrived for the first night of the wake, I couldn’t believe that the line to get in stretched out the door and all the way down the street. It was like that for two nights. I had been working at Millipore for 18 years, and the place was packed with Millipore people, even those I had considered to be adversaries…people I went toe-to-toe with every day. I remember commenting about this to my boss and she told me to consider it a sign of how much respect I had gained in the Company. Funny, some of those people came to the wake both evenings and also to the funeral.

Kneeling in front of that coffin on the day of the funeral was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I knew it was the last time I’d see my mom. They’d close the top and it would be over. I could barely keep myself together. I remember getting up and turning around and seeing Lisa at the back of the room, quietly sitting there. That was a great help to me. The other thing that helped was that everyone had such funny stories about my mother, especially my cousin Richie. He had us rolling in the aisles with his stories. She used to pull him by the ears too.

But, undoubtedly, one of the funniest stories was told by my sister JoAnne and my sister Mamie’s husband, Skip. JoAnne was at Nahant Beach with her friends, and my mother didn’t like the sound of that. She gave Skip and Mamie a flashlight and told them to go check on her. Nobody argued with my mother. He got there and his lights were disturbing everybody at the beach that night. He said to my sister, “Your mother is going to get me killed.” They eventually did find her with her friends, and reported to my mother that she was okay. JoAnne arrived home later and, when she put her bag down, a bottle of wine rolled out. She convinced my mother that she was holding it for a friend. My mother bought it. It was almost as easy as the tonsillitis lie.

It was freezing the day of the funeral. I remember that much, although some other stuff is a blur. The last clear vision I have is watching her coffin being lowered into the ground, joining my dad. My sister Mamie then said the funniest thing I heard through this whole ordeal,  “Watch out, dad,” she said, “here she comes.”

One of my blog readers recently sent me a private email suggesting that maybe I write about myself, since this is my blog. I really haven’t been much into writing recently. There have been some personal circumstances that have led to a great struggle with writer’s block. I’ve been trying to work my way through it, but it’s just not resolving as quickly as I’d like. I will give this my best effort, but every word comes with a struggle. Maybe it will post before the end of my night. Maybe it won’t. I don’t make many promises these days.

As basics go, I’m the third daughter (referred to by everybody as ‘the baby’ of the family even at the advanced age of 55 years) of Julius Francis Della Piana and Frances Louise Catanzano. As one of my best friends once said to me,  “Can’t get much more Italian than that.” My sister Mamie is 11 years older and my sister Jo-Ann is 9 years older. I was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and spent my first six months on Prospect Avenue. After that, I grew up mostly in three towns, Revere, Everett and Medford. I attended Catholic schools for nearly 14 years (no post-education therapy or pills required; how does that happen?). One time I went to a fortune teller in New Orleans. She told me I’d live to be 76 years old after having a major health crisis. I figure that happened last September 6 when I almost died from pneumonia and septicemia. Apparently, I was pretty sick in this photo but was completely unaware of that fact. Then again, maybe that wasn’t it yet. With my luck, there’ll be something else ugly in store. Only time will tell.

I confess I really don’t know how to do this. I’m not particularly good at self narratives and never have been. I’m going to try this in a different way.

Things that piss me off

So many things fit here, and a lot of them political. I promised I’d keep politics to a minimum on this site and focus on them on Turn-Left, and I will. I will generalize here.

- The two-party system is dead in America. The GOP is owned by special interests and the Christian right nutcases who want the government guidebook to be the Bible. And the Democrats have become the new Republicans. Neither works for the condition our country is in, and neither party will shape up until there is a serious threat from a legitimate third party. In fact, I’m considering switching to the Green Party and donating my advertising and public relations skills to putting them on the map.

- The POTUS is a sham. That’s particularly galling. He was groomed for this position and his whole road to the White House vs. his performance in the White House is classic bait-and-switch advertising. Yeah, yeah, I voted for him but that’s because I’d never in a million years vote GOP. I read the platforms. Their positions on the GLBT community in that platform are all negative, so why would I? On this topic, I am a one-issue voter. And, while I’m at it, let me tee off on the Log Cabin Republicans. What’s the point? Gay + GOP = Oxymoron. Period.

- Hypocrisy in all forms, regardless of where the politics lie. Making yourself out to be something you’re not is total dishonesty. It almost goes to character for me. Let’s use the GLBT issue again here. I’m proud to be a lesbian. I don’t try to hide it anywhere. I don’t ride around with a bullhorn, but I do not deny it. I know people who still do. Things don’t get better that way. Society doesn’t change. The world doesn’t become a more accepting place. If you take care of business in your own world, and everyone else takes care of business in their own worlds, then tolerance almost becomes viral. The more people see who really are, that we are not so different from everyone else, the more perceptions change. That’s a good thing.

- Religion in politics. This could be my number one piss off. Religion is private. Commentary from the church members should come from the pulpit, not on a prime time stage with members of the White House and Congress at their sides. If we’re so damned advanced as a nation, why the hell is the rest of the planet moving away from marrying politics and religion while we are going in the exact opposite direction? Now, let’s get into the issue of the C Street Church (The Family) for a minute. The church’s tax-exempt status should be immediately revoked. Then, it should be shut down. The members of Congress who have lived there should be made to resign. They have been brainwashed. And the nutcase who was their spiritual leader, Douglas Coe, should be tried for treason for invoking the names of Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. That’s never going to happen. We’ve got a government in place that won’t even deal with torture (and don’t start me on that), so it’ll never take up this issue. Cowards.

- A stagnant American public that sits by and allows all of this to happen. What are we waiting for? The right politician to rise to power who will just do the right thing? I feel like that’s what everyone’s doing with Obama. Wake up! It doesn’t work that way and never has. I don’t even know where that belief came from?

- I hate that the majority of my spam mail is about male enhancement medication. It’s unbelievable. We are fixated on that crap. I wish there was a lesbian filter on my email that would keep that stuff out. In the meantime, I have an idea for a product of my own. It’s called the Pudmaster 5000. It consists of a male enhancement pill (take your pick; there are literally hundreds available) and my Electrolux.  Use your imagination on that one.

Things that make me happy

- My kids. Yeah, they’re very different and I honestly didn’t bring them up to be that way. I truly believe they are just wired that way. They’re pretty cool kids. They are very independent (Thalia in particular) and form their own opinions, which I especially like.

Thalia is a gamer and she’s good at it. She prefers the Korean/Japanese sites and the whole language thing doesn’t seem to hinder her. Frankly, I don’t know how she even gets on to some of these sites, and I really don’t want to know. (Although, last week I watched her somehow fake a Korean I.D. and get into a site, and was completely amazed.) I have watched her play and she seems to have instincts for the games themselves. It’s extremely weird to watch because I don’t think I could do that without the language. I’m wired differently. She’s also a History Channel watcher and is particularly interested in the psychology of war. She’s about to be 13, and I think that’s incredible. She told me the other day she’s working on the whole ‘God’ thing. Not sure he exists. I suppose I should be trying to direct her, but I just can’t. I check where she goes on the web and she appears to be checking out a lot of different spiritual paths. Thalia, however, does have a healthy respect for The Dalai Lama, which is okay with me. So do I. In fact,when Thalia was in the second grade, she was convinced that the Dalai Lama was her grandfather.

And then, there’s Aaron. He doesn’t have time for such things yet. He’s busy becoming a Poke Master right now. My right ear is always the conduit for Pokeman information, the name of the character and what he/she is the evolved form of…the details never stop. It’s like having a constant buzzing in your ear. Thalia swears he’s destroying brain cells with his Nintendo. She said, “You know, boob (that’s her name for him), that might be good for your hand-eye coordination but your brain must be fried.” He ignores her. Either that, or he’s in the Poke Zone.

The thing that about Aaron is that, just when you think he’s not paying attention, he says something that indicates otherwise. Beth and I had one of our usual donnybrooks the other night. I didn’t want it to become one, but I couldn’t keep myself from engaging because I was overtired and suddenly the the target of a pile of unwarranted insults.  Later when I went up to see Aaron, he said to me “You know, if you didn’t sleep with her you wouldn’t fight.” No shit, but how did he know?

- Writing. I have not been prolific lately. I have been struggling through, and I have certainly learned something about myself. I’m the most prolific when I’m happy. Writing is not a refuge for me. I can translate my pain, but only into painful words. I can write directly about the issue, but I cannot clear my head of the issue/pain for a period of time  by writing about something else. At least I haven’t been able to so far. I’m going to continue trying. It is at times like these that I am glad I’m not writing for a living. I couldn’t do it right now.

- Music, on the other hand, is indeed a refuge. It’s where I hide when things are unbearable. By the time the CD took over the music industry, I had over 1,000 albums. I kept the albums because I think album art is amazing. Art is lost on CDs. I always worried if I’d have enough space to keep these albums as I moved around, but then homelessness took care of that for me. Don’t know where they are, but it doesn’t much matter. I’m a Buddhist and long ago lost my attachment to mere things. I’ve managed to replace most of my albums via downloading, and add to my collection as well. Here’s an annoying statistic for you: As of this very moment, I have 2,691 songs which translates into 7.7 days or 12.70 gigs of music in my iTunes. I carry another 8 gigs of music on a SanDisc Cruzer.  The music is from all over the place (no disco, no opera and very little heavy metal). Oh, yeah, there’s no rap either, but there’s plenty of R & B and Motown. I have an iPod as well. Can’t say that I use it all that much, but it’s there. I just read a pretty funny article about revealing the contents of your iPod to people. I don’t use my iPod much because I listen mostly while I write or in my car because I always seem to be on the road to somewhere. If I do that, then I just open up iTunes, click on shuffle, and put on my podcasting headphones.

-Painting is another of my favorite things to do, although I don’t do nearly as much as I’d like and there are usually huge gaps of time between efforts. I actually think it’s been a couple of years now since I’ve done anything. Pretty sure. When we were homeless in Lynn, there were always tons of old house windows sitting on curbs throughout the city waiting for the trash pick-up.  One day I decided to pick a bunch of them up and start painting on them. I’ve done maybe 45-50 windows since 2003, and maybe 30 are trashed or still sitting in the basement of that nasty house in Lynn. Others were gifts or donated. I never sold any. I was pretty much painting for my sanity at the time. There are five paintings still here hanging along the stairway to the second floor. As it turns out, they are my five favorites. Acrylics work best on the windows, but I also paint conventionally (paper, canvas) in water colors and oils.

Personal philosophies

I don’t know about this. Somebody asked me to reveal my personal philosophies, but this is pretty open-ended. I would have felt more comfortable had they specified areas of interest. I’m not sure my personal philosophies really amount to anything, but what the hell.

- One of my very best friends on the planet had this philosophy: “Life is too short to be small.” I like that one and have adopted it myself. What does it mean? Well, the word “small” could be switched with the word “judgmental.” I think people who spent their time judging others are basically small-minded people. I don’t believe we were put here to judge because I don’t think anybody on this planet is in a position to judge. I do whatever I can to beat this stuff into my kids’  heads: I don’t want them passing judgment on anybody. I want them to be open-minded and accepting of everyone and their differences. That’s what makes this life interesting.

- Life is too short to spend it with the wrong person. I’m there now, and I’ve been there out of sheer responsibility and guilt. But I have to confess that I look at things very differently since my near-death experience and am moving forward on changing this.

- Love is never easy, but it’s always worth it if it’s the real thing.

- War is a waste of time, money and — most importantly — human lives. I just don’t get why politicians can’t use their words. Know what I mean? If kids can do it, grown men and women should be able to do it. The United States claims to be a “peace loving” nation, but the statistics prove otherwise. The majority of this nation’s lifetime has been spent in wars, a few legitimate, but most not (especially the two useless, evil, life-wasting, money-sucking wars we are involved in right now).

- If you have kids in school, stay involved with their education. American schools are great for trying to homogenize the student population. They just love squeezing round pegs into square holes so that their lives are nice, tidy and easy. On a personal note, I’m trying to eliminate the MCAS in Massachusetts schools. This foolish test was nothing but a political ploy, just like the whole Massachusetts health care coverage debacle. I think the MCAS is an unfair detriment to both the teacher and the student. Whose measuring the performance of the administrators and those doling out government funding? Standardized testing is a joke. Again, square peg, round hole. Anyone in Massachusetts who wants to do the same should contact me at political.junkie2754@gmail.com. Thanks.

- If you’re waiting for the POTUS and his minions to just do the right thing, you are living in a dream world. Frankly, American politics is systemically corrupt now. It’s not just a “few bad apples.” We have allowed Wall Street high rollers, Corporate lobbyists, and the radical Christian right such access to our government that it’s hopeless unless the American people accept their responsibility and take the government back. I’m not convinced the Americans have it in them. Every public servant in both parties are owned in some way, with the absolute exception of Dennis Kucinich and the possible exception of Russ Feingold. Take a look at campaign donors on both sides of the aisles. It’s disgusting.

So, the first thing that has to happen is complete election reform. No corporate donations, thank you very much. Everyone runs on public money. No exceptions. And millionaire politicians (read: Mitt Romney, John Kerry, et al.) should not be allowed to pour personal dollars into their own campaigns. Clean it up at the root. The next thing that must happen is serious challenge from a third (progressive) political party. The GOP has become a wing of the radical right, the Dems are now the new GOP, and the progressives are all sitting there wondering WTF to do. Know what?  There’s something out there called “The Green Party.” Either go legitimize it or rebuild it over the next four years to try to mount some kind of real challenge. That’s the only way the GOP and the Dems tow the line.

- Remember to always have a healthy disrespect for authority. I even tell my kids that (and they use it on me all the time).

- Be careful when you hang around me. You could end up in my novel.

Well, my work is done here. Hope you all have a nice day, and I plan to offer a much more interesting post the next time around. Hopefully, the writer’s block is abating, but I really won’t know until I try this again.

Every once in a while, I slip in a character study of people invading my life for better or worse. This is one that falls on the “for worse” side. We may call her Auntie Buddy, but she ain’t nobody’s buddy. How would I describe her? Well, let’s see…unyielding is a good word. That can be followed by dictatorial. Self-righteous works well also. Resentment should be her middle name. And for a woman who is a devout Catholic, she is decidedly un-Christian. But that’s not so far removed from most of the outwardly devout/inwardly nasty Christians I’ve come into contact with over the past, say, five years.

Her real name is Aurora Ann Catanzano, but she never used the Aurora. She hated it. She called herself Ann. She was named Aurora because supposedly the Aurora Borealis was visible the night she was born. Personally, I think it was one of those times in history when Lord Voldemort was making a return. That’s what they saw in the sky the night she was born.

Auntie Buddy is a resentful person because she never did what she wanted to do with her life. She was in love with someone, but her Catholic brainwashing caused her to walk away from that relationship because he was divorced. She never found anyone else. Auntie Buddy never escaped the fate of the unmarried youngest child in a large Italian family: You are there but to serve. Iron your brothers’ clothes. Do your mother’s errands. Take care of whomever is sick. You know, responsibility with that old world charm.

Only the good die young

She is living testimony to the old addage that “only the good die young.” She’s the last in her family at 93, and she’s as ornery today as she was when she was 50, 60, 70 and 80. You can never do enough for Auntie Buddy. And when you do go out of your way for the eightieth time, she’s always got something to complain about. There’s always something you just could have done ever so much better. She brings new meaning to the word ungrateful. I believe I may have left that descriptor out of the first paragraph. That belongs there as well.

I was unlucky enough to have to live with her after my father died. My mother simply could not afford an apartment on her own. It was like living with all three of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters rolled into one. As I got older, her nagging got more offensive and harder to take. By the time we moved to Riverside Avenue in Medford, I was prepared to take extreme measures. To spite her silently, I used to back her 1964 Chevy Nova out of the garage and drive it around the block. This wouldn’t have been bad, but I was only about 13 or 14 at the time. Finally, I got bagged by a neighbor, who came over and blew the whistle on me. That was ugly, but I eventually ended up owning that very car. It was a great car, but I never really took care of it. I was a student at the time. On the way home from an overnight party, I managed to seize the engine (which usually happens when you don’t pay attention to the oil and water). That was a sad day.

Crossing the line

You know, I could handle all the stuff as a kid. I admit that I do have a resentment toward sweet, little old Auntie Buddy. However, I bear that resentment for something she did to me much later in my life. When my family was teetering on homelessness, she could have helped. Auntie Buddy, the cheapest person on the planet, has plenty of money put away. Her plan is to leave each of us $25,000 when she dies. My oldest sister approached her, told her what was going on, and asked about helping me. And Miss Happy said, “All she has to do is ask.”

Well, I did ask and I have to tell you that is the toughest thing I’ll ever have to do. I hate asking for help; it is not in my nature. I’ve been on my own for a long time. Instead of helping, however, she turned me down. She gave me $200 that day but said that was all she could do. She was determined that she was not going to give anyone the money before her death. Not long after that, we were evicted.

Dereliction of duty

When my mother was dying, we promised that we would take care of Auntie Buddy when she was gone. They had been friends (although I don’t understand how) as well as sisters. It wasn’t that my aunt didn’t piss my mother off. It was more that my mother didn’t take any shit from her. I have to tell you that — although it is not very Buddhist of me — I have no desire to caretake her. I’m trying to get past this little issue, but for now there is no getting past it. In fact, I’ve considered voodoo in the past, which is decidedly un-Buddhist. However, I have resisted my darkest thoughts to date.  There are other complicating factors, like I neither have the time nor the financial freedom to drive down to Wakefield from Amesbury to do her food shopping or anything else. I leave that torture to my sisters.

Haven’t seen sweet, kindly, old Auntie Buddy for a while. Missed her at Easter. Dang it. Didn’t go to the fourth of July cookout at my sister’s. Dang it. I’m just striking out all over. I hope the trend continues.

In every life, there are people who do not occupy a significant part of the memory. Nevertheless, these people made some kind of indelible mark. Welcome to the “Characters” category.

About a month ago memories of this guy we’ll call Stan came back, not in any sigificant way, but with enough force to merit my laughing out loud. I’ve tried to remember more since then, but am stuck with two memories that dominate.

George met this friend in college and he quickly became part of the group. He was really funny and he would just plain embarrass you in public. The short story is that Stan, George and I used to go drinking at the airport. Yes, Logan Airport. We’d go to the swanky lounge and pretend we were waiting for a plane to fly us somewhere. We’d sit there and watch the flights take off and land. We could spend hours there. It was absurd, really. Can you imagine trying to do that now in a post 9-11 world? You’d never get that far at any airport, let alone Logan.

One night we were leaving the airport and were on the bottom floor where people where checking in for their flights. It was really busy that night. George and I were walking ahead of Stan, but didn’t really realize he had fallen behind. He did that deliberately. Pretty soon, we heard a commotion and turned around. There he was pretending to be blind. I mean, he was very convincing. He was boucing off people and yelling, “Hey, wait! I’ve lost you. Don’t leave me here! Where are you!”

I believe we were caught by surprise and we really didn’t know what to do, simply because this was a new “act” for him. George was stuck between just letting him go and running back and getting him. Actually, what we really wanted to do was pretend we didn’t know him. Eventually, we ran  back and grabbed him, but we were not saying very nice things to him. The whole airport was glaring at George and I for letting this poor blind kid fumble around and find his way.  I just remember that when we got away from the masses of people, we stopped in some corridor and just laughed like hell. And that’s the end of the memory. Bang. I’ve not been able to go any further.

One other time, I remember the three of us going to see Linda Ronstadt at the Music Hall in Boston and he pulled the blind thing again. We were really quite close to the stage. Stan waited until the clapping stopped between songs and it had become extremely quiet.  He then turned to me, grabbed my arm, and said in a very audible voice to those around us, “Tell me. How does she look?” Well, that was it. We all were just rolling in the aisle. It was unbelievable. He was the kind of guy who caught you every time. He kept doing it, but you could never anticipate when he would try it.

And those are my only memories of him. Short but extremely sweet. Maybe somewhere down the road, there’ll be more! Who knows.