Remembering Aunt Mollie

Today is the funeral for my Aunt Mollie, formally named Mollie P. Ianno. Her maiden name was Fonte and she was my dad's eldest sister. Actually, her name was Mary Pauline Fonte, but her mother was also named Mary so, she became "Mollie." Mollie took care of my dad and her other seven siblings as well as she could in a large and poor Italian home. She spoke often about how my dad was a "good boy" and had a tough tone to her description of three other siblings.

She was tiny.  Like a hobbit.  In 1967, I remember visiting her when I was eighteen and she danced the tarentellla for me in her Arcadia, California kitchen. Sunlight streamed through the windows and bounced off the white porcelain sink as she twirled with a sharp tomato-cutting knife in her hands. Her husband, Frank, made fresh pasta.  He loved to drive his car on the wide streets.  His belly rubbed behind the steering wheel as he chauffered me to see Blue Boy at the Huntington Library and Museum.  My cousins, Chuckie and Frankie, took me to my first trip to Disneyland.  I don't remember any details from that drive or visit, except the speed of the freeway with convertibles flying past us like noisy blue jays. Jeannie was married and out of the house then with her own growing family of three, but we have bonded since she became Aunt Mollie's companion and caregiver.

Many visits to California to see my auntie since then. First in Hemet where Aunt Mollie had Christmas cactus on each windowsill in their sun room. For twenty years the one she gave me flourished in my bathroom, but this Spring, as her 102 year old body finally began failing, the cactus also began to shrink.  Still struggling to survive, it's on my shaded patio, returning full circle to its place in the sun.  Later, my husband and I visited her in Fountain Valley where she was the little queen in Jeannie's home, celebrating her 100th birthday under the magnolia tree with friends and family.

After my dad died in 2014, Aunt Mollie was my last link to him and to the childhood stories about Dad that gave me insight into his adult behaviors. Her stories, no doubt embellished with the love of a big sister and adjusted memory of an old woman, helped me forgive him for his many faults and helped me appreciate the deprivation that drove his demons.  My dad always saw the cup as "half empty" or nearly so.  Aunt Mollie always saw the cup as "half full" or full to overflowing.

She's gone now, too.  Buried today in Calfornia...where the dreamin' for some, still goes on.

photo of Aunt Mollie at the Ted DeGrazia Chapel altar

My tiny tribute poem reads:

Becoming Mollie

she lived for ten+ decades with

an orange tree's deep roots.

Catching up with Slow Life

Hmmm.  Somehow, followers, the photos I thought I posted of the Iron Chef event a) didn't get posted and b) I can't find them on my computer right now.  So I apologize for your viewing and seeing nada at the time, but I am asking Mark to resend them from his phone and I will put them up as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here are photos gathered from this early June with my dad, Ralph, and Mark's dad, Jerry. We are "celebrating" Jerry's return from almost a month of skilled nursing and hospital care and my dad's rare "outing" from the memory care wing to his (former) main dining room at Cascades of Tucson.  Here, one of their mutual friends is chatting with them.

 

The second photo is from this week on 6/6--the 70th anniversary of D-Day.  My dad was in the Army and working with their burial unit.  He arrived four days after the landing and was assigned German and Italian POWS to help with burials in Normandy.  The hospice that is now helping with his care, Casa De La Luz, offers an "honoring" ceremony to veterans, so here is Dad with one of his gifts:  a very attractive Army blanket.  He also received a plaque and a knitted prayer pocket.

 

 

As care for both dads has become more complex, our "slow life" isn't quite what we would like it to be, but we are thankful for all the assistance they receive from others and for our occasional weekend getaways.  I will be sharing a photo or two from our recent Phoenix getaway in another post.

 

Eldercare etc.

Since January, both my husband and I have been on the front lines with eldercare for each of our dads.  In between, Mark also was the financial and medical rep for friend who was dying, has died, from prostate cancer.  Needless to say, we have had to stretch our emotional, spiritual and physical muscles.  And we are finding it is more or a challenge to stretch those muscles now that we are in our sixties.  I call us "young seniors" and, fortunately, technically and medically that is true...so far.  But stress takes its toll and if it were not for the generosity of one of my friends we would probably be feeling worse than we do.

Once a month, we "escape" to Phoenix and stay 2-3 days at my friend's condo which she often does not use on the weekends.  We usually eat out once or twice at a local restaurant, but primarily we cook in and have really slow days with no particular plans.  In March, we attended the last spring training game of the Dbacks which was at Chase Field.  We had the fun of the stadium without the intensity of the full season. We also revisited the Japanese Garden and felt the serenity of the green landscape amidst the urban desert. Last month, we rejoined the Phoenix Art Museum.  We did it on our last vacation day and did not have time to take in the Hollywood Costume exhibit.  That, we intend to take in when we next return.  But we did have time to visit the Red Carpet exhibit and visually savor our favorite wing where the Impressionist paintings and sculptures are part of the permanent museum collection.

As we wrestle with the medical care system (I use the term loosely because, often, the reality is that the fragmentation and cost-cutting elements are disparate and frustrating), deal with phone calls, and emails--we often share the concern we have about our own eldercare future.  Once both my parents made it to 90s, their quality of life took a dive.  I see the same with my father-in-law.  Yet our culture resists the reality of death and the medical world, on the one hand, seeks to prolong life at whatever cost and regardless of its quality and, on the other hand, the medical world sets up barriers for compassionate care.

We can do our best, as baby boomers, to pretend it will be different for us, but it may be worse.  As drug costs go up for last stage of life care, will we be braver and refuse to buy into the possibility of 2-6 more months of life when a week of pills could cost "the system" $10,000 or more?  What are we doing now to prepare for our oncoming eldercare? 

I don't have answers today.  I know Mark and I try to exercise, eat wisely (with the occasional slip into comfort food land), and, each on our own way, we practice other healthy habits.  We hope we have a decade of  "good years" left, but, as we are reminded by the health crisis situations of several peers, there are no guarantees we will have another good year.  We only have today.  So, today, we walked on Mountain Avenue, watched baby bunnies hop through a fence and heard baby birds squawking for food from their nest in a blooming saguaro.  We are grateful for our late cool spring weather, for our home, friends and each other.  And hope for another tomorrow.

Early Christmas at the Tucson Mall

It wasn't in our plans to visit the Tucson Mall this weekend, but with the extended rains we were getting antsy to walk and so we went on Saturday.  I knew the decorations would be "up" and decided ahead of time to just go with the early "ho-ho-hos" even though, for me, the Season begins after Thanksgiving.  I have no plans to be anywhere near shopping next weekend, and then we have our anniversary (39 years) and Mark's dad's birthday (91 years) the next weekend....  So, just on the whim of the day, I did some holiday shopping as well and enjoyed myself.  As long as Mark can find a place to sit with his phone and do emails and texting, he doesn't complain but he is no shopper as our son is--and Aron and I had many good times at the Tucson Mall, lo, these three decades. 

Here are two photos by Mark that capture the Santa's Village scene from the second floor, and "just the tree" in at the west end of the first floor.  There were many shoppers, lots of families and kiddies (little girls with lavendar bows in their hair, boys riding on the "Safari animals" in front of JCP). 
It's not Times Square or even a town square, but in Tucson, it's good enough.

Sunday outing at the Southern Arizona Water Color Guild Gallery

After spending the morning sitting on the front porch, waving to neighbors as they pass by, I took a short walk in the neighborhood, appreciating my surroundings.  In the mid-morning light the flowers were partially shaded, but their colors were brilliant reds, yellows, and purple.  I saw a few butterflies, two hummingbirds; and multiple grasshoppers popping across the sidewalk. Our cat, Gray, kept going back and forth from the cool house to the warming patio and eventually settled on a soft chair in the backyard.

When Mark got home from his morning meeting and visiting a friend, we drove to Ft. Lowell Park and walked around the small lake, viewing the egret fly, the ducks paddle, and the turtles poke their heads just above the water ripples.  Continuing our walk, we followed the path through the pecan groves which are beginning to shed their nuts and finished with a cooling stroll among the cottonwoods.  Since this weekend is also the Open Studio Tour for our local artists, before returning home I wanted to visit the gallery for the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild  http://southernazwatercolorguildcom  . 

Yesterday, we spent time on the westside (after I did my downtown library happiness community conversation), visited the Mission Gardens, and enjoyed an early dinner at the Tucson Food Truck Round-Up www.tucsonsbirthplace.org  www.tucsonfoodtruckroundup.com.  Then we went to 2nd Saturdays in downtown Tucson and thoroughly enjoyed the music by The LoBros www.theLoBros.com.  Thus, having gone to the westside and downtown yesterday, I knew I didn't have the legs to do those galleries, so a short visit to the WaterColor Guild's Gallery, matched with light lunch and shopping at Whole Foods pretty much took up the early to mid-afternoon. 



Back home, it's catch-up on the computer time and then watching PBS' Masterpiece Theatre where I am totally hooked into the latest classic, Paradise.  What fun to imagine how London might have been when shopping for the new middle class meant buying fabrics and lovebirds from Paris. 



Fantasies are fun and as I reflect on today's outing, I realize how happy I am today where fantasy and reality can intermingle and bring me joy.

Family in California

Here's the link to a few of the many pics Mark took of the Fonte-gathering for Aunt Mollie's 100th birthday.  There are also photos, near the end of the album, of my cousin and his wife (Craig and Lynn Sjurset) with us at the Getty Villa.  Enjoy!

https://picasaweb.google.com/115037493039149573213/20130915?authkey=Gv1sRgCNKY77Hw2vbk9gE&feat=email#slideshow/5924043088705972226