Category Archives: mother

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Mother and father

This is a photograph from 1963ish, both of my parents and me in the front of the canoe. This is at my maternal family’s “shacks on a lake”. Cabins, but no electricity. We filter the lake water now but we did not while I was growing up. My parents look way too young to me in this photograph. I still miss them!

I do not know who took the photograph. My grandparents?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mother.

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You can have some of the things some of the time

My father’s name is Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway. He went by Mac. He died in 2013. I miss him and I still follow Mac’s Rule.

Mac’s Rule is simple: You can get one third of the things that you think you can get done in a day.

I played with this on my days off for quite a while. I would write a list of all the things I wanted or needed to get done. Once I write the full list, it looks silly. Soon it is clear that he is correct.

When I am working full time in Family Medicine and have a five year old and a new baby, I think about getting something done on the weekend. Clear my desk, organize photographs, that sort of thing. After a while I realize that the weekend was more like this: Meals. Get kids clean and dressed. Laundry for the next week. Clean the house a bit. Do some fun family things! Read to kids and put them to bed! My list changed and instead of the ambitious “organize photographs”, I would think of something very small. Perhaps take one roll of developed photographs, pick some of the duplicates, send them to the grandparents. That was it for the entire weekend.

If I apply Mac’s Rule to my life and list all the things I want to do, which third will I pick? For years I write lists for a day off and then pick the top third that I want to get done. If something is added to the list, a friend calls to go to coffee, I take something else off. I make sure that the list always has something that I need to do on it (and often don’t want to: start taxes, pay bills, clean a bathroom, whatever). And something fun.

I don’t try to do it all. It’s very satisfying to get that 1/3 done on the list. And I feel like superwoman if I get an extra thing done! I get to choose which third to do and think about it. And the stuff that I don’t want to do slowly gets done over time. It isn’t that awful to do one of those duty jobs, thank you letters, tax information, dental appointment, mammogram, every day and then it gets DONE.

I am working with someone who puts RUSH at the start of every single email subject line. I have to say that it makes me want to dig my feet in and not even read the email. What kind of rash haste are they working under and why would I pay any attention to the RUSH by the ninth email? It is annoying and ludicrous. I move those emails to the next day list and don’t read them on the day of arrival. No pressure, so there.

Blessings on my father, for Mac’s Rule.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rash.

The photograph had to be taken before May 2000, because my mother died on May 15 and she is on the boat. I don’t know who took it, another group sailing. Both my kids are there, my father with the tiller, and I am tucked behind the friend facing the camera. Why haven’t we pulled the motor up? This is Sun Tui, the boat currently in my driveway on a trailer.

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Painted sky

I think the sky and water here are more sophisticated than I anything I can imagine.

After my mother died, I wrote a poem about her and my kids. Her part:

I keep wondering
what the art supplies are like
and if you work on sunsets
or mountains
or lakes

The rest of the poem is here https://drkottaway.com/2021/09/23/painting-angels-2/.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sophisticated.

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Ages

Here is my daughter on the lap of her great grandmother Evelyn Ottaway. I think my daughter was a little over one and my grandmother was 90 or very close. We flew from Colorado and visited friends and family. My grandmother was living with my aunt Pat right then. My daughter was very relieved when we got home, but she let many people that she didn’t know hold her. This was the only time she saw her great grandmother.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: age.

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child

some people say
they just want their children to be happy

not me
I don’t understand that
to want a child to be happy
fixed in amber
with one emotion

I want my children
to feel what they feel
to feel happy, unhappy, sad, angry
gloomy, ecstatic, joyous, jealous
snarky, sarcastic, silly, relaxed
to feel the full gamut
the full rainbow
of emotions

In my mother’s family
they pack their sorrows in their saddlebags
and ride forth singing

the trouble is
the saddlebags get heavier over time
weighted with grief and fear and anger
or whatever is unacceptable
to the family
until the horse staggers under the weight
falls over
dead

then they must try to drag the saddlebags
too heavy for the horse
through their lives

I am gifted my mother’s letters
when my mother is in the hospital
the tuberculosis sanatorium
the first letter a month
after I am born

My mother is cheerful in the letters
a little snarky about her roommate
a little lonely

But what stands out is what’s missing
She barely mentions me
in some letters not at all
her first baby
who misses her
and who she can only see outside
through a window

And what was in her saddlebags?
When she coughed blood 22 years old
and eight months pregnant
she thinks she has lung cancer
and will die

She says this without emotion
lightly
almost as a joke
a relief when it was tuberculosis
even though that meant six months
in the sanatorium
separate from her young husband
and baby
at least she was not dying

She doesn’t get to hold me again
until I am nine months
and I have no idea who she is.

The worst thing anyone can tell me
is that I should not feel the way I feel.

I shut down.
I don’t stop feeling how I feel
but that person is locked out.
I will not trust them with my feelings
for a long time
I am an expert at hiding my feelings
raised in an emotionally dangerous
household
and physician training as well.

Once on the boat
my daughter says, “Mom, I’m scared.”
My father says, “Don’t be scared or go below.”
“No.” I say, “Come here. What are you scared about?”
We have run aground.
Too impatient to wait for the tide
we are trying to winch ourselves off.
“I am scared we are trapped.” says my daughter.
“How far is shore?” I say.
We are in the marina.
“Not far.” she says.
“Could we get to shore?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still scared?”
“No.”
Soon a rowboat comes and takes the kids
to shore to play.

“Don’t be scared or go below.”
That was my childhood.
Emotions as monsters.
I went below.
I chose to make friends with the monsters.
I feel what I feel.
One friend says, “Of anyone I know,
you process your feelings in real time.”
and I laugh, but am honored,
because it took years
to reach this.

Don’t share your feelings with fools.
Don’t share your feelings with people
who want you a certain way,
or who try to control you.
You have a right to your feelings
as they are.

And this is what I want for my children.

The photograph is my mother and me in March 1963. I do not know who took it, perhaps my father. I would have been right around 2 years old and my mother was 24. I did not see these photographs from when I was first back with my parents until after they both died.

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Birth

I am born today anew. Why does birth feel like a rejection, like a spitting out from the shelter of a womb, a body, a mother, a community, a job? I gasp in the new unfamiliar air, unsure how to use my lungs in this place. This labor was not terrible, not as hard as ones in the past. The air and light are shocking, I open my eyes, what is this place? Too bright, I close them. Hands have me and then I am back with my mother. Not inside but against her skin. The lights are down and I open my eyes. It was dark, dark, dark in that womb, so I open my eyes wide, to take in all the new information. I am shocked and afraid, but my mother’s heartbeat reassures me. I hope I won’t be eaten. What is this place? And now I am hungry and I start to search, not sure how to do it, search for food.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: birthday.

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Heroes and Heroines

Another group that I saw at the nowhereelse festival is Ben Sollee. The group was him, his cello, and a drummer. And oh, my gosh, could they fill the tent with music! And he used that cello in all sorts of ways.

So here is his song about heroes and heroines: Cajun Navy.

I like this one too: Infowars.

The photograph is of Helen Burling Ottaway’s small etching, Dolphin.

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Ride Forth

I thought I had posted this, but I do not find it.

Ride Forth

My grandmother
Packed all her troubles in her saddlebags
And rode forth singing

My mother
Packed all her troubles in her saddlebags
And rode forth singing

My father
Was the only one
Who ever saw the contents
He tried to drown them

My mother was loved
For her charm

I ride forth
Sometimes I sing
Sometimes I weep

My saddlebags are empty

Prayer flags flutter
Slowly shred
In the wind

I write my troubles
And my joys
On cloth
And thank the Beloved
For each

My horse is white
When I sing
Black
When I cry
A rainbow of colors
In between
The whole spectrum
That the Beloved allows

After I emptied
My saddlebags
I tried to leave them
But the people I meet
Most, most, most
Are frightened

A naked woman
On a naked horse

I had to leave my village
When I learned to ride her
Made friends with her
Beloved
My village does not allow tears
When she turns black
Their saddlebags squirm and fight
The people try to throw them on my horse

In other places
The horses are all black
The white aspect of the Beloved
Frightens them
And they attack

I carry saddlebags
And Beloved is a gentle dapple gray
And the illusion of clothes surrounds me
When we meet new people
Until we know
It is safe to shine
Bright
And dark

I hope that others ride with the Beloved
In full rainbow

I ride forth
Sometimes I sing
Sometimes I weep

Even the color lonely
Is a part of the Beloved

________________________

The photograph is of a watercolor of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway, by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway.

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Story morph

I’ve been seeing some embroidered stories. They are based on a true story, but the details are wrong or exaggerated.

One is an old friend of my sister. He notices a chair in his garage and contacts me. Now, my sister died in 2012. He says the chair is from Grandmother Tessie and that my sister told him “It’s the only thing I have left from my grandmother.” He wants the chair to go to my sister’s daughter and he may be willing to have it recovered for her.

He sends me photographs. Touches your heart, doesn’t it?

Except that Tessie was not our grandmother. She was my maternal grandfather’s mother, so my great grandmother. I have never seen the chair before and it would have to be late 1800s or bought late in her life. It does not look that old, though it looks chewed. Also, we all got boxes of stuff from my maternal grandmother Katherine, to the point where we all agreed it was ok to get rid of some of it. We offered it to each other first. Seven cousins and I got two pitchers. I asked my mother, “Why two pitchers?”

“After your uncles and I picked what we wanted, we lined up seven boxes. Then we went pitcher, pitcher, pitcher, pitcher. There were enough to send everyone two.”

Oh. My grandmother was a serious packrat. I got a silver plate pitcher and sugar bowl that look like they are from the 1930s, art deco. I had never seen them before they came in the box. So they are not attached to my memories of my grandparents at all, but I like them very much.

I send the chair message on and I don’t know if my niece will want the chair. Nor do I know if it was great grandmother Tessie’s chair. I had an enormous box of tablecloths and pulled thread doilies and so forth after my parents died. I would bet money that there was something from Tessie Temple in there. I offered it to both my children and my niece. They each took one tablecloth and napkins. I kept a few and got rid of the rest.

The other day I noticed that one cloth that I kept is signed Margaret White. She was my maternal grandmother’s oldest sister. I have Margaret’s small leather sewing kit as well, made in Germany and stamped with her name. I’ve had that since my teens and used it until the leather corners are wearing down. My mother said that my grandmother found her sister Margaret difficult, but I don’t know if that is true either.

At one point I emailed with a family member found on Ancestry.com. This is my paternal grandmother’s father’s half-sister’s descendant. She said the family rumor was that they were related to John Philip Sousa. I said, “My great grandfather, Fredrik Bayers, played saxophone in John Philip Sousa’s band.” She said, “Oh, that must be where that story came from.”

Are these stories benign or not? With social media and the ongoing trials of various people from both the government and investment schemes, the stories seem less benign to me. If my niece wants the chair, I think that is very kind of my sister’s friend to make the effort to get it to her, but the story was rather garbled. It makes me want to be careful with the stories I tell.

Peace.

The photograph is from 1965 or 1966, of my grandmother Katherine White Burling, me, and my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway. I would guess that my grandfather took it.