To every guitar there is a purpose...

Many times over the past few months I've found myself wanting a small guitar to play at The Garden School. I have several at home ~ one of those is even a small Martin that travels well. When I would leave for work in the morning, with all intentions of taking it with me, I would fill my hands with other things and then decide that the guitar was too much to carry. So, in the three months I've been at the school, I have not once played a guitar with the kids.

So... I started looking around for one to keep at school. I love the shape of the Tacoma parlor guitars, and had seen an Olympia 3/4 parlor-style guitar at Harry's Guitar Shop in Raleigh, NC that had a similar look and feel. Of course it didn't sound like the $1200 Tacoma I'd been looking at, but it sounded much better than I expected. I didn't buy one then, but recently decided to look around and see if I'd have any luck on Ebay.

I found one right away... with a gig bag... for a total price of $39.99!

It arrived a couple days ago. I have enjoyed playing it at home ~ and am having twinges of hearing it (I haven't figured out if it is a girl or boy guitar yet) ask me to keep it here and not send it to school...

But... it starts to school on January 2nd. I think it is going to have a great time.

If a spirit is going to visit me......

...it would make sense for it to come in a book. When I moved to Los Angeles, about half of the weight of my move was books. I left more than 80 percent of my books back in North Carolina and my heart yearns for each of them. Books have always embodied the very spirit of my life. If I was interested in something, I'd buy a book about it and read it cover to cover. If I wanted to share something important with somebody, I'd lend or give them a book. I've been like this since I was a very young adolescent. My books are part of me, I am part of them. Each one is special, not a single one is unimportant.

Over the years, other than children's books, my mom gave me a couple of dozen books that she felt I'd like, or could use, or needed to have. I brought many of them with me when I moved to Los Angeles. One book she gave to me that I hadn't seen in years is called The Complete Book of Sewing.

When I was a teenager, I made almost all my clothes. The style of clothing of the day just wasn't what I liked to wear and she'd taught me to sew years before. She bought the book for me so I could refine my sewing skills. I left it at my parent's home when I got married in 1974.

I'd personally packed all my things from my apartment when I left North Carolina. I packed each book. I had three bookcases that I brought with me. All the boxes and furniture were taken from my apartment on a small truck. Then they'd been moved to the warehouse and a week or so later all the furniture was re-wrapped in blankets and put on the big moving van to come across the country.

So... the moving van arrives in South Pasadena. One by one the pieces of furniture come off and the boxes come off and everything gets checked off the inventory sheet. One bookcase is unwrapped and there, on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, lying flat in the middle of the shelf, is my sewing book. The driver unloading the truck was absolutely amazed that it was there. He said that it couldn't have been there when they re-wrapped the bookcase. He had wrapped them himself and he'd have noticed and secured the book elsewhere if it had been there. He was dumbfounded.

My younger brother (15 years younger) had gone to design camp when he was in high school. When I opened the book, there were certificates of his from when he'd gone to camp. He'd taken it to camp, and then brought it back to my mom and dad's house.

Somehow, the book followed me to California. It did so in dramatic fashion (not just showing up in a box or on the bookcase).

Mom, I'm glad you know where I am. I suppose my trail of scents worked...

Peace. Mona

The Fastest Year

Thanksgiving came and went last year. I hadn't been in my parent's home for Thanksgiving for several years, so it was ironic that I was there, cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family, while my mom was in the hospital. There was wariness that she'd die on Thanksgiving or on my brother's birthday, which was several days later. Her death would be sad enough without connecting it with ritual celebrations.

I spent Thanksgiving cooking in her kitchen instead of going back and forth to the hospital as I had for most of the week. She lived for another eight days, dying on Friday, December 2nd, 2005, one year from tomorrow.

Tonight marks a year since the last night I spent with her. That night, my dad went home to sleep, so mom and I were there alone together from around 11 PM on Thursday night until around 5:30 on Friday morning when Dad came back. I spent a lifetime in those in-between hours. I cried, I held onto mom's hands, I summoned nurses as her oxygen levels dropped, I turned out the lights and put my head down on her bed, the staff adjusted the monitors so they would no longer alert us of her slipping away.

Dad and I were there together when she took her last breath. We held her hands as her breath grew shallow, and then ceased all together. The last monitor, which couldn't be set low enough to not go off, signaled a heart rate that soared and then steadily dropped... 260, 220, 180, 130, 60, 20, 0....

I'd never before witnessed death of a human being. I felt it somehow right that I was there with both her and my dad as she slipped away. It was a time of silent sadness.

I'd taken pictures as the sun rose that morning. Her last sunrise. My last sunrise with a mom. My dad's last sunrise with his love. The room was bathed in an orange and red light for a few minutes that morning, then it lifted. The sun shown bright and it was a new day.

I miss you Mom.