Healing in Spain

Six weeks ago, on March 15th--the Ides of March--my mom slipped quietly from this life to the next.  Todd had just arrived from Spain, completing our family circle.  He sat next to her hospital bed, looking out over the view from my mom’s bedroom, holding her hand.  Although she had been mostly unresponsive for the last couple of days, my mom must have sensed, finally, that it was okay to go.   With us three daughters taking a brief reprieve downstairs, and just Todd and Rich—the two surgeons—in the room, my mom quietly and peacefully crossed over. 

I was overwhelmed by a welter of emotions: sadness, relief, gratitude, and deep, abiding love for my mom, for my sisters, my husband, my daughters, my stepdad, my brothers-in-law, Parviz, my aunts, my whole family gathered around.  Tia and Sasha faced their Nana’s death with sadness and acceptance, asking to come see her, holding her hand, kissing her cooling cheek, remarking on the chill in Nana’s hands while her chest was still so warm.  They were not afraid to be with her, and their show of tenderness and love was a soothing balm to my own pain.  Their acceptance of death, mirrored in her own approach to the end of her life, was my mom’s last gift to all of us.

Cupertino sunrise: Appreciating the beauty

And so, with great relief and heavy hearts, we returned to Spain 10 days later.  The celebration of my mom’s life was joyful, tearful, funny, and packed with those who loved her deeply.  We owe a huge debt to my sister, Suzanne, and Felipe Escamilla—Suzanne’s colleague and friend and now a friend of the family, too—who spent hours putting together a video of my mom’s life and words.  It is a marvelous compilation, and I am grateful to be able to return to her words over and over—I continue to learn from her, even now.

Click here for video link

Found on the beach by Simone:  A message from Mom

Spain and the amazing people we have met here have opened their arms and embraced us on our return.  From the sweet little public-catholic school, Nuestra Señora de La Merced,  to our multiple groups of friends, to our landlord, to my dance compañeras, to the folks at the hospital, to the guy in the panaderia next door, everyone has swept us right back into our life here.  While Tia and Sasha were a bit nervous their first day of school, it took them about 10 minutes to readjust, thanks to the help of their friends Daniela and Isabela.

First playdate back in Spain

What I had missed most (aside from my husband) was flamenco.  I have been fascinated by this music and dance since I got here; the desire to understand its intricate rhythms and forms has only intensified, and over the past 8 months I practiced my five bulerias and the sevillanas whenever I yearned to return to Spain.  I danced for my mom on occasion, and was sad to have missed performing in the Christmas zambomba as well as an actual performance in Madrid.  I jumped right back in, not only with my original class with Concha Baras, but with an additional two classes per week in the morning with Lola de Cádiz, and then another group of friends started a class Friday nights with Estefania that I just couldn’t pass up.  All of this brought me right up to speed pretty quickly, and all of a sudden Concha had arranged a performance in a caseta for her bulerias students…Ole!  Goal achieved!  I danced bulerias at the feria!

Click here for the video

With friends Angeline, Carolina, and Montse at the Puerto Feria Gates

The Feria, the Feria, it’s feria season.  Tia, Sasha, and I practiced our sevillanas, which wasn’t tough, and even Todd got in on the action, doing a manly version pretty well, bolstered by his improved Spanish (8 months on your own living in the middle of Puerto was quite an incentive to learn).  We went to the feria for four days straight, staying out until way past midnight (even the girls!) and taking in this most Andalucian of experiences. 

Click here for sevillanas

With Daniela and Isabela--¡Ole!

And the dresses—oh, the dresses!  I went out and bought two new ones (new for me, anyway), and felt like a medieval Spanish princess all night long.  My newly-acquired affinity for dressing up in the most outrageous mode possible is matched only by my fascination with how the other women dress—truly, there are so many styles and ways to match colors and flowers and accessories that I walk down the street, marveling at the pageantry.  And then you get to DANCE in these dresses, all night long!

A Carmen de Sevilla wannabe

My Frida Kahlo look, with friend Christina

Vamping outside the castle portals

This feria season lasts over a month, if you only stay local: Puerto went first this year, starting its 6-day run on April 24.  Rota was next, from May 2-5.  Jerez came next, the cradle of flamenco and Andalusian horseflesh, with a spectacular show of dresses, for both people and horses, from May 6-12. And Sanlúcar, in the Feria de Manzanilla, starts May 28. 

Dad can dance, too, it turns out

Watch for our next update to find out if the next flamenco class I’m adding—a weekly evening class where you learn just how to perform in public!—does me any good.  I know my mom would take delight in what we are doing; my only regret is that she can’t see Tia and Sasha all dressed up.  She would laugh at the exuberance and joy of all this craziness—and that makes me feel better.  Gracias, España. 

¡Muchisimo gracias!

My Mom’s House

Cupertino Fog

When I first flew back from Spain in a mad dash to get to my mom’s side, I went straight to her house.  I grew up here from my birth in 1963 until I was 16, when I was sent to the old country, Germany, to learn the mother tongue.  I stayed only a short 18 months after I returned, then boomeranged once more for a year when I “took a break” from the tough college life. 

Me and My Mom, Summer 1980

Now I find myself here again, looking out across the sprawling Silicon Valley.  I have loved this view nearly as much as my mom has, whether it is in the morning, the sun rising over the eastern foothills and chasing the wisps of ocean fog that have crept over the coastal range, or at night, the basin filled with twinkling lights like a upside-down heaven. 

Moonlight over Silicon Valley

It is not easy being here, the house full of memories despite having been completely remodeled.  I still head for the staircase the wrong way, my mom having changed the entrance to her bedroom.  Some parts are still untouched, though, like my mother’s office, still and quiet and strangely clean, the consequence of her brutal illness and a 7-month absence to try and fight it.  It hurts to see the neatness; my mom is a sort-of compulsive cleaner, but just in little ways, and she makes piles of her things that mirror her propensity for multi-tasking.   So it’s been rare that I’ve seen her office so tidy, and it is yet another reminder of how close we may be to losing her.

Strangely neat and organized

Most days now my mom stays in bed, leaving only to go to the bathroom.  But these upstairs rooms are glorious, remodeled yet again to create a raised bathtub that commands a view across the valley.  My mom always loved baths, yet never had a bathtub in her bedroom until this remodel.  For the past seven years she has bathed in splendor, the neighbors too far away to catch a glimpse of her slender form submerged, a foot extended to add more hot water.   Now we must gently lift her over the high edge; it takes three of us to safely get her in and out.  But the sigh of satisfaction she gives once settled makes it worth the effort. 

Cupertino Sunrise

From her bed she can see out across the familiar neighborhoods and to downtown San Jose, and to the northeast to Moffett Field where she landed at age 11, a scared German immigrant fleeing post-war Germany.   This view is what captivated her in 1962 when she was searching for a house to buy, and still captivates me to this day, although I’ve looked at it for nearly 50 years.  The first addition to the house—built after I was born—was her master bedroom, a second-story addition that only made the view more impressive.   Watching my mom gaze across the valley seems right, confirming that this is where she needed to return after deciding to abandon chemotherapy. 

The South Bay and Moffett Field, where my mom arrived in 1948

A final (mostly) unchanged vista is from the back deck.  After buying this house, the very first thing my mom insisted on was a back deck cantilevered over a verdant, poison-oak-filled canyon.  We loved to tell people that it was part of the famous San Andreas fault.  A rope swing hung next to the deck, and we quickly mastered the hair-raising jump from deck railing to swing board, sailing out over the canyon and back and only occasionally falling off and rolling down the hill, a hair-full of stickery oak leaves and poison-oak rashes our punishment.  The canyon is filled with deer, with a little creek that runs through it; it would have been a childhood wonderland had it not been for the poison oak everywhere which kept us from exploring more than once or twice. 

New deck, no railing: 1963 and pregnant with me!

My mom has continued to add on to the house over the past 50 years, first the master bedroom, then a dining room and laundryroom, then a library and remodeled bedrooms, followed by a music room, an extensive entrance remodel complete with koi pond, and finally a full living room extension that doubled the view of the canyon.  Our friends called it the “Rico Mystery House” after the famous but crazy Mrs. Winchester’s house in San Jose, and it took a two-year remodel and a nearly-complete gutting to bring all the disparate pieces together in some kind of union.

The Rico-Ressman Mystery House, all unified.

Now I walk through the house on my way to the bedroom, anxious and emotion-exhausted and intent on my mom.  But I am glad to be here, full-circle somehow, to see my mom through this terrible silver-lining-laden journey.  Silicon Valley’s sea of lights shine out and remind me of the beauty—of the valley, of life—that my mom has taught us to see.  It’s right to be here. 

Moments of unexpected beauty

Ode to My Mom: New Year 2013

Near-twins?

I have been here in Los Angeles for six months now, far from the halcyon dreams of Spain and flamenco where Todd is still doing occasional surgery.   Despite the anguish and fear of a terrifying illness pressing down on our family, these past months have also been a time of beauty and wonderment.  This is how my sister Suzanne put it:

"I have these flashes of extreme gratefulness and feel profoundly lucky in this cancer experience.  I don't really understand it--how can one feel grateful or lucky about something this awful and serious??--but when it comes, it is like an incredible healing light that shines right through to my core."

With Suzanne this past June, just after diagnosis for a third cancer

The center is my mother, Gabriele. We’ve had hours and hours and hours together—hours in the car, driving from Cupertino to L.A., hours in the hospital where the best I could do was to help her up and down out of bed, hours walking through the neighborhoods, my grip strong on her delicate hand to keep her safe, hours spent sitting in bed talking, remembering, sharing, revealing, laughing, crying, sitting silent.  I am who I am in great part because of my mother’s strength.  “I am so grateful for all this support!” she encompasses us all with a sweep of her arm at a recent doctor’s appointment.  “Ah, but it’s not luck,” Dr. Wolcott nods, “you helped create this.” 

Christmas, 2012

And this is my mom.  She has modeled for us a way of living, a joyousness in the world that always finds the glass half full.  Despite a shattered and bewildering childhood in war-torn Germany, despite having been bombed out of three houses and losing her mother at age 7, despite a wrenching move to a foreign land, despite a difficult marriage and eventual divorce, my mom has always reached out, not only loving and kind but willing to share her vulnerabilities, her weaknesses, her wisdom for which she often paid a high price. 

Circa 1978, while battling colon cancer

She shared herself with us, her daughters, a gift that continues through these past months.  It was she who saw my own early teenage vulnerability and helped me struggle through, often using poetry, as she did with this piece of a poem by Peter Meinke to speak to my insecurities:

I thought you knew

you were beautiful and fair

your bright eyes and hair

but now I see that no one knows that

about himself, but must be told

and retold until it takes hold

Her message to me, that she would tell me and tell me until I could realize it myself, not so much about outward beauty but about self-worth, resonated. Much later I realized how much we shared, my mom and I, because for all her beauty and ebullience and style, she also did not know this about herself.

With my beautiful mom, circa 1972

Teenage me and my mom at 40, 1977

Through two previous bouts with cancer—colon cancer at the age of 39 which left her with 8 centimeters of large intestine and breast cancer 15 years later—my mom continues to be in love with the world, with the beauty of the view from the deck of our childhood home, with ideas about time consciousness and brain research, with the secret garden of fruit trees and tomatoes and real-live chickens in a coop that fascinate her grandkids. 

Always a new project: a chicken coop in the Secret Garden in Cupertino

She does not tell us how to live, she shows us.  At 60, she took up windsurfing and photography.  She has written her memoirs of childhood, she reads about time and quantum physics.  When I tell her of the miracle of watching a sea urchin embryo flip-flop through gastrulation, she blinks in wonder and amazement at the beauty of the digestive tract. 

My mom, 62 years old, Maui

Mom traveling in Turkey, 2010

And now, in the face of this third cancer, my mom is not afraid to look at death.   No, no, it is not that her death is imminent, although we all must die—as one of her baseball caps says, “I’m terminal---so are you.”  But rather than shy away from talking about it, my mom somehow takes the awfulness and turns it into something mysterious and full of wonder.  It’s not that she is spared the fear and the despair of rounds of necessary poison, or that she doesn’t weep late at night when she thinks we can’t hear.  She does.  She tells us of it, too, and we hold her when we can.  But the truly amazing is the details she notices, the squirrels chasing outside her guest house; the radiance of the southern California sun on a December day, the delight in her grandchildren’s reading to her or reciting a Spanish poem. 

Fun with wigs: Simone, Tia, Nana, and Ado (no wig!)

So my mom is giving us yet another gift of herself, the sharing of her passage into the end of life, the facing of death whether it come soon or late, and the ways in which to live fully.  As we enter the New Year, she and my stepfather Rich have sent out their letter to friends and family, by whom we’ve been swamped with love and caring.   It is the story of my past 6 months, condensed into a poem, poems being the currency of her world, fragments and often whole poems arising as needed.   

From my mom and Rich's New Year's letter 2013

I am grateful and awed and feel profoundly lucky, as my sister put it, to be at my mom’s side.  For she has, in these past six months, continued to make my world bigger, just by being who she is.   She writes of her illness as “an adventure, though an unchosen one.”  And she continues, “Each day brings us epiphanies about life, and gratitude, and the riches inherent in love.”  And she ends with this poem that captures a little of her essence, and make me even more proud that I am her daughter.  Mom, I love you.  2013 promises to be an amazing year.

When Death Comes

When death come
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes 
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say:  all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

                            --Mary Oliver