Category Archives: love

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A is for Artist: Helen Burling Ottaway

This month my topic for Blogging from A-Z is art and particularly my mother, the artist Helen Burling Ottaway, born May 31, 1938. She died May 15, 2000, of ovarian cancer. I am starting with her sketches, and the self portrait. My mother sent me a sketchbook for Christmas, 1978, that I still have. I was 17 and was an exchange student to Denmark. She drew pictures of lots of family and friends and mailed me the sketchbook. I really love it still.

I love her comments, too. They are often very funny. Here is my father and what was happening.

Sketch of Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway by Helen Burling Ottaway

#Blogging from A to Z Challenge

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Sea lions

Do you think the sea lions are talking to the Beloved? When they are on the rock with their heads tilted back, looking up?

Are they trying to feel the sun?

Do they have reflux and digest better this way?

Do you think the sea lions are talking to the Beloved?

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within normal limits

I think doctoring makes one cynical. Or at least messes up the scale of normal.

Maybe there are Marcus Welby docs out there, but I don’t know any. Doctoring messes up one’s scale. A wound is compared to black horrifying gangrene to the knee, pain is compared to screaming delirium tremens or full thickness burns or heroin withdrawal, one in four adults can be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder at some time in their life…. so then, what is normal?

What is normal for relationships? How many deeply happy marriages do you know? If half end in divorce, what are the odds?

Where is the line in love? Where is the line between loving the other person no matter what and wait, that is domestic violence. Where is the line for abuse? Do people agree on it?

No. They do not. What I think is behavior that is frightening may be normal behavior to my partner. Is it ok to drink until one is drunk? I don’t want to be around it. I saw enough of that shit at work. I deal with addiction daily. If someone wants to get drunk, they can choose to do that. But not around me. And no, I don’t want to date them. And if they are working themselves to death, is that ok? Well, I might be a tad hypersensitive to that, since I nearly managed that myself. So I don’t want to be around that either. That might be viewed as noble self-sacrifice. But at work, I see the caregiver die before the recipient of the care, all too often. Especially in older couples, where neither one wants to let anyone in the house to help….

….but then, some people do hear me. A woman thanked me last year for saying she should quit covering for her husband. She was afraid, but backed off. He is able to do more than she expected and he also is more respectful and kind to her. She thanked me and I got all shy and tongue-tied.

My definition of love is listening. Someone who listens and hears and lets me listen and hear. When each person can say what they are thinking and feeling and wanting and worried about…. because if only one person is speaking, if only one person is determining what the relationship is, it is not a relationship.

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Memorial

My mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, drew my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway, in a sketchbook in 1978. I was an exchange student in Denmark. She mailed me the sketchbook for Christmas that year. She died in 2000 and my sister died in 2012, so this is a memorial for both of them.

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memorial

Today is my sister’s birthday, Christine Robbins Ottaway. She died of breast cancer in 2012 at age 49. She had gotten stage IIIB breast cancer at age 41. She went through mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation and was clear for two years. Then it recurred and she returned to treatment, rounds of chemotherapy, a gamma knife radiation, another gamma knife and whole brain radiation. She was very very strong and tough and fought the cancer right up until the end.

This photograph was taken at my father’s 70th birthday party, in 2008. My friend Maline took the photograph. She and other old friends gathered and we sang the family folk songs.

Here is a drawing that my mother Helen Burling Ottaway did in 1978 of Chris. My mother always had a sketchbook. This is one she sent to me, because I was an exchange student in Denmark that year. At Christmas I received the wonderful sketchbook with my mother’s comments. My sister was 14 when I went to Denmark and I was 17.

Chris Ottaway by Helen Ottaway, 1978
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query

What is interested?

I am very interested in what my partner is doing. I may not be interested in the things he is collecting, but I am still interested in hearing about them, because he is interested. It is fun to listen to people’s expertise and joy and obsessions. Most people know a lot about something, and it’s often surprising to find out the topic or topics they take joy in.

When we first moved to town, our piano developed a key that did not work right. The piano tuner could not fix it. A second piano tuner also couldn’t fix it. We were talking to a neighbor and he said that he had worked with church organs in the past. He was the fix it when something was buzzing or not right. He said sometimes it was a loose board in the church that would vibrate with certain keys. He said that he was very good at fixing these, by wandering around the church and listening.

We said, please, come see our piano.

He came. He listened to the key and walked around the room. He pulled the piano out from the wall. This is a 1905 upright grand, big and heavy. The movers hate it and it breaks dollies. He looked in back and pulled out the culprit: a tuning instrument left inside! We had no idea how many years it had been there. It had rolled during the move and gotten stuck near the strings, affecting that one key! Fixed, instantly. We were delighted!

My partner seems disinterested in most of what I do. I am trying to understand this. I do not understand this. I am experiencing it as disinterest in ME. As if what I do or say is unimportant and only his interests are important. I always have to work on diplomacy, because it doesn’t come naturally to me. I am working on this. It feels asymmetric, unfair, unkind, to have my interest repaid with disinterest. I don’t like it and I am listening to that dislike. I also do not understand it. Though I do have a friend who has six interests and EVERYONE knows what they are, because that is all he talks about. He has a lot of expertise in all six. I am interested in everything, a generalist, and I am interested in what makes people fired up and passionate. I don’t care if it is model trains or knitting. We can learn so much from each other.