Mother’s Day and other adventures
Even the obits have something to say
Check in
I blew my deadline a bit tonight because I was watching my niece graduate from California State University, East Bay, on Zoom. Way to go, Cynthia Pollak!
Her degree is in English.
Mother’s Day
It’s tomorrow, May 12. My son-in-law recently captured a madonna moment in a New York subway station.
In the years my mother was alive (she died in 2011 at the age of 97) I was proud to go to the trouble of securing a reservation for Mother’s Day brunch at an au courant restaurant. She went along with my choice, but I don’t think she ever cared. She would have been as pleased if I had made her pancakes in my own kitchen.
Mother didn’t trust commerce, and she taught me that Mother’s Day was a made-up holiday, a creation of greeting-card companies. But that was not the case.
In the mid-19th century, Julia Ward Howe took time out from writing the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to lead a “Mother’s Day for Peace” for several years.
A friend of hers, Ann Reeves Jarvis, organized a Mothers’ Friendship Day in 1868, bringing together former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation.
Ann Jarvis’ daughter, Anna Jarvis, who never married and was not a mother, took up the torch and lobbied hard until Mother’s Day was declared a national holiday by President Wilson in 1914.
In later years, Anna Jarvis came to hate the commercialism that engulfed Mother’s Day, and she tried to reverse Wilson’s proclamation. Obviously, she did not succeed.
Mother’s Day flowers
White carnations have long been a symbol of Mother’s Day. Some churches pass out white carnations to those whose mothers have died and red carnations to the children of living mothers.
In Oregon, rhododendrons famously bloom around the holiday, and the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, near Reed College in Southeast Portland, is mobbed.
A visit to this nine-acre public garden, situated around a lake, is worthwhile on a spring evening, not just for the rhodies but also for the other plantings and the water features. It’s part of the Portland parks system but is administered by the Portland chapter of the American Rhododendron Society.
You will also find rhododendrons and azaleas, a related species, blooming like mad in gardens throughout Portland and other cities.
This year, they blossomed early. Many of the bushes in my neighborhood are already spent, gone the way of lilacs and tulips.
Dogwoods are blooming now, too, as are horse chestnuts, fruit trees and irises.
It’s summer, after all, according to the Celtic calendar. Beltane, the opening of summer, was May 1. All over town, the trees are changing their chartreuse spring garments for slick green summer raiment.
Yardstick
Why can’t I be more like you, Mother? Strong, determined, Fierce but subdued. No one understood your buried veins Of despair and worry— Don’t let them take my children away. Why can’t I be more like you, women teachers? The mentors that I revered. These mattered: rules, intellect, But heart was hidden, never bidden. That vein throbbed beneath, Too far down for seeking. Why can’t I be more like you, my daughters? Knowing the secrets of charm. Unabashed, creative, flexible. Forging your way with your grandmother’s heart, Strong day by day in an ungiving world. Why can’t I be more like my friends? Wise, caring and kind, compassionate. They love me for free, no return required. Their eyes on the stars, their hand in my own. These are the women I love, who love me. Of course I am grateful for them and their gifts. I only wish, Deep in my heart, I could be more like them.
Adventure
It’s easy to take my power wheelchair on Trimet buses and trains, so I don’t often use Lift, Trimet’s paratransit service.
This week, though, I had an appointment at Kaiser’s Westside Hospital in Hillsboro, which is difficult to reach by bus. Lift was the option I took.
One thing I really value about taking the minibus is the detours to pick up and drop off other passengers. I’ve discovered parts of the metro area I didn’t know.
One of them was Garthwick, a hidden enclave south of Sellwood in Southeast. In the mid-20th century, an eclectic scattering of about 100 homes in many styles were built on large lots. The land was left over from creating the Waverley Country Club. The homes have Portland addresses, but the land is in Clackamas County.
New places
The bus took me directly from my home to Kaiser for the appointment, but the trip back home was another matter. In a two-hour span, I got to visit one place I’d long been curious about and another place I didn’t know existed.
Nike
First, the bus drove onto the Nike campus in unincorporated Washington County. If you pass it on the road (it’s bounded by Southwest Murray Boulevard, Jenkins Road, Walker Road and 158th), all you see are huge berms and rock-crusted entry roads. Inside, it’s a jewel box of gray and glass buildings, scattered like wayward diamonds amid lawns and trees. The sky that day was filled with interesting, lowering clouds, white and gray.
We picked up a woman at the Tiger Woods Center and drove her to her home in Cedar Hills.
From there, the Lift bus drove, and drove, and drove, across the Willamette River and up North Vancouver Avenue, almost to Washington state. We crossed the Columbia Slough and turned onto North Schmeer Road.
Amazon
Schmeer Road is home to two huge Amazon installations, a fulfillment center and a SOR, or “sortation” center.
The fulfillment center is a huge warehouse full of product. Hundreds, thousands, millions of things. As items are chosen and packaged, they end up in the sortation center to be sorted for last-minute delivery. Look here to find out more than you will want to know about the differences between them.
To get to the front entrance, which was at the back of the massive SOR building, our bus crept along a half-mile or so of road at 5 mph, encountering dozens of truly annoying speed bumps. We picked up a man with a white cane and went back over the speed bumps, bumpety-bump, to Schmeer Road.
There are, by the way, no bagel outlets on Schmeer Road.
The Amazon complex was built on the site of Portland Meadows, a vintage horse racing track that was demolished in 2020. It had operated for 73 years.
Back home again
The man we picked up lives in the Hollywood District, so to get there we traveled down Columbia Boulevard—past the Oregon Humane Society, Papé heavy equipment, Amalgamated Sugar and Tacoma Screw. I could smell cookies baking in the old Nabisco plant, now called the Mondelez International Bakery.
The bus turned onto Northeast 33rd and followed that street, a neighborhood artery bounded by small single-family homes. We traversed several neighborhoods, starting in Sunderland and traveling through Concordia, Beaumont-Wilshire and Grant Park to Hollywood.
We passed Aladdin’s Cafe (“best hummus and felafel in Portland”), New Seasons and Walgeens, Bless Your Heart Burgers, and the old Kienow’s food store that became a QFC and is now a CVS.
Wilshire Park, Grant Park. The three-story Airplane Building at 33rd and Broadway, home to Gordon’s Fireplace Shop for more than 60 years, is now an edifice of broken windows and graffiti.
We dropped the man with his white cane near the bowling alley on Northeast Halsey. Then it was home to my house on Main Street.
Main Street, not Wall Street. That was, you will recall, the mantra of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I just looked it up: those events happened in 2011. Thirteen years ago, but it seems like yesterday.
Obits
I try to look at the obituaries in The Oregonian every Sunday. I seldom see anyone I know, but it’s a way of remembering the dead.
A colleague at The Oregonian read the obituaries obsessively every day. He had lost his brother to cancer as a child, and this was a way of coping with that loss. Although I’ve not taken the time to do that—and now the daily obits have dwindled to virtually nothing—I still read the obituaries of people I didn’t know. Sometimes, even in the cookie-cutter prose, I find glimpses of humanity,
Before the roof fell in
In pre-Internet days at The Oregonian, the obituaries were written by staff. Everyone pitched in. We had certain rules: a cause of death was mandatory (many families didn’t want cancer or suicide listed), and nix on the phrase “in lieu of flowers.” Our florist advertisers didn’t like it.
Now the obits are written by family or various services provided by funeral homes and others. Other than charging for space, the paper has nothing to do with content.
This week’s pearls
On Sunday, April 28, there was the usual sprinkling of names in the replica edition provided to subscribers. I was moved by two entries next to each other:
Joseph Gnanasegaram, who died at 83 on April 19, and John M. Gray, Jr., who died April 20. He was 68.
One fancy name, one plain name.
Gnanasegaram was well-known as the founding principal or Fisher’s Landing Elementary in Vancouver, Wash., in the 1990s. The students called him Mr. Seagram.
From tributes left to him on obit sites, I gather that he was born in Sri Lanka in 1940, back when it was still Ceylon.
John M. Gray, Jr., lived most of his life in Yamhill County. He was the county council for two decades, and a member of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church for more than 50 years. The obituary didn’t say where it is; I’m guessing Newberg. Gray lived in McMinnville.
Obits worth reading
Two places you can find superbly written obituaries are The New York Times and The Economist. The Times’ subjects, many of whom you have never heard of, are always interesting to read about. After The Times started providing delivery in Portland in the 1980s, I remember being charmed by an obituary for Lucy Boston, a British author of some of my favorite children’s book, the Green Knowe series. She died in 1990 at 97.
The Economist runs one obit per issue, on the back page. They are never signed, but they contain some of the best writing anywhere. I published a snippet of one on December 5, 2022. Here it is again:
In an obit of the crime novelist Elmore Leonard, the writer creates a muse-like figure called Writerley, who has a way of dropping by unannounced and uninvited to Leonard’s gritty digs in an industrial area of Detroit. On one visit:
“[Leonard] knew in advance what Writerley would say. He was a peddler of any dope you wanted: prologues, adverbs, adjectives, metaphors, patois dialogue, descriptions of the weather. Even now, as he settled himself uninvited on one of the Naugahyde chairs, he was saying: The rain was falling fast outside, the sky was pelt-gray, and dark clouds were massing over the dismal city like skyscrapers about to topple.
“Leonard ignored him and wrote: Another spring day in Detroit.”
I hope when I die, someone writes a decent obituary for me. I don’t want to write it myself before I pass. That’s creepy.
Check out
Arising
The sun surprised me, Tugging at the blinds, Laying patterns on the floor, Lining the curtains, gleaming On the house of my neighbor, Washing his cat with warmth. How long will it last this time? Just, just don’t try to measure. When sunlight comes, embrace it. Counting and continuance, no, that’s not The way we count this treasure. Fresh leaves are knocking on the window. The ground wears a coat of maple seeds, Little spinners, all that wealth So that one of thousands Makes it to the ground, the soil, To the sunlight, the grace that brings. Oh, decades later, a splendid tree.
Followup
Just one more mention of Tōv Coffee, the Turkish coffee shop on Southeast Hawthorne at 37th. This week, I met the owner, who said his name was Joe. That’s the perfect name for a man in the coffee business.
—30—
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Don’t think it’s creepy to write your own obituary. I’ve written mine. It took a lot of work, but it will spare family having to try to remember pertinent stuff. One of my sisters died without having written an obituary and we all had a devil of a time trying to reconstruct her life.
I love the observation and sense of discovery in your writing.