8/18/23

 Friday, August 18, 2023

In bed at 11, awake at 4:30? 5:00?, thinking of Kitty, moved to BRR till 5:30.  56°, high of 74°, sunny morning, cloudy afternoon ahead, Air Quality Alert until 6 a.m. on Monday, wildfires, partiulates & ozone.  The wind is WNW at 9 mph, 4-9/17.  No rain expected for the next 10 days.  Sunrise at 6:00, sunset at 7:50, 13+49. 

Thinking of Kitty.  Tomorrow would be her 79th birthday.   If only.   I've been thinking of her approaching birthday all month.  It is birthday season in my famiy.  Kitty on the 19th, me on the 24th, cousin Doug on the 28th, cousin Jimmy on 9/5 and my Dad on 9/9.  There is an article in the current Atlantic  by Angela Chen titled "The Longest Relationships of Our Lives:  As brothers and sisters grow up, what they do can determine whether they stay stuck in their childhood roles—or break free of them."  Kitty was my longest relationship, 77 and ½ years.  With my Dad it was 65 years, and with Mom, not even 32.  Of the three of them, my longest and in many ways my closest relationship was with Kitty, especially in the last years of her life.  The numbers are a bit misleading in terms of real relationships.  My father and I had a strained relationship for much of our lives, a consequnce of his PTSD after the war and all that entailed for my mother, Kitty, and me..  We didn't speak for 13 years after my mother's death, but even before that we were never close.  Our only years of real friendship began in 1995 when his mother died and 2007 when he died, 12 or 13 years for which I am profoundly thankful.  My mother and I always had a loving relationship, though she was more faithful to it than I was after I left home at 18, a matter of deep regret for me.  But Kitty and I were always pretty tight, especially in childhood and in old age.  When we were both working and living in different states and raising our families we did not have as much contact as we should have, but there was always a tight emotional bond that we shared and that grew stronger as we grew older.  As I type these thoughts I wonder whether I should go back into the years of text messages which we shared every morning and which I have saved on my telephone and on this laptop, but I think today it would only make me sad.

Some thoughts: Kitty cried when I went away to college.  She told me she was devastated by my leaving.  I was so wrapped up in my own fears, anxieties, etc., I doubt that I gave any thought  at all to her feelings.  Mom, Dad, and Kitty drove me up to Milwaukee to check into my dormitory, have lunch at some local eatery, and then the three of them drove back to Chicago, probably saying little but knowing a big change was occurring in the family.  I was a Kitty's big supporter and big friend; I don't find it hard now to believe her report of being laid low by my leaving although I would have been surprised to know it at the time.

During my first year at Marquette, I experienced my first drunkeness and wretched hangover.  It was on a Thursday night at the old Forst Keller tavern at 9th and Juneau on the Pabst Brewery campus.  As luck would have it, I was to take the train back to Chicago for that weekend, which I did, with my freshman roommate Joe Daley.  My mother was working that evening when I arrived home with Joe, but Kitty had gone out of her way to make one of my then favorite dishes, fried shrimp with a spicy cocktail sauke.  I couldn't eat it and to this day I feel guilty.

She was with my mother in the vestibule of their apartment building when my mother opened my letter from Japan telling them that I was on my way to Vietnam.  Kitty told me that my mother cried when she read it; she didn't say whether she did but I suspect she did as she tried to reassure our Mom.

I learned late in life that Kitty believed (accurately, I think) that our father was jealous of us, of Kitty and me.  She believed that he thought our Mom devoted too much attention to us and inferentially too little to him.  I think she was correct in this thinking.  He resisted my mother's desire to live near Kitty after Kitty married and he made a point of discouraging visiting.  He was a troubled soul not only during our childhoods but even after Kitty married at age 22.  His emotional troubles had lasting effects on both Kitty and me.

I am recalling once when I came home from college for a weekend and Kitty had a date with some guy I either knew or didn't know, but didn't trust.  They came home late and sat in his car in front of the apartment building and I kept watching the car from our second-floor,  front room window and when I thought they had been in it long enough, I went downstairs, opened the car door, and told Kitty it was time to be home.  I could be a real jerk but God knows I was protective of her and why she loved me as much as she did is a mystery, but she did.  And I reciprocated.

In my entire life I have gotten into only one fist fight/wrestling match in my life.  When Emerald Avenue was torn up for new sewer lines being laid, there was a night watchman on duty each night, a Black man named Moses.  Kitty and I became friends wih him and would visit with him every night after dinner.  He was a religous man read the Bible to us and chatted with us.  We loved visiting with Moses each evening and one evening, when it was time to go home, Kitty gave Moses a hug and a kiss.  One of the neighbor boys saw this and taunted Kitty by chanting "Kitty kissed a nigger, Kitty kissed a nigger."  I got into a physical fight with the kid, swatting and wrestling with each other until we were pulled apart by someone.  My first and last brawl.

Kitty was the youngest of the family group we grew up with, which included cousin Jimmy (9/5/39), cousin Christine (1/?/41), me (8/24/41), cousin Doug (8/28/42) and Kitty (8/19/44), the 'baby of the famil'    We all tended to be protective of her.  The family was a pretty sad one, what with my father's PTSD, the notorious rape of my mother, my aunt's divorce, my grandmother's disliking my mother, and who knows what else.  As children we knew little of what was going on, the family motto seeming to be "the less said, the better."  My aunt, cousins, and paternal grandparents all thought my Dad was OK; Kitty and I knew differently.

A snapshot taken by our Uncle Jim at the Brookfield Zoo: Kitty, Dougie, me, Jimmy, and Christine.   All 5 of us were fatherless though in different ways and Uncle Jim did his best to make up for that lack.   On the other hand, he  was not so hot at composing great candid photos.

When 'the love of my life' dumped me when I returned to Chicago from my summer active duty in 1960 on the USS Coney DDE-508, I came home and wept on the back porch.  Kitty came out to comfort me, a 'mission impossible' but she tried and I know she suffered with me.    I gave her the wrist watch I had brought home from the ship's store for Charlene.  When I separated from Anne, it was Kitty that I 'poured my heart' out to on a long distance call to Utah.  She used to tell me that I was 'her rock,'  She was my rock. 

I used to try to visit Kitty in Arizona every year.  One year I was with her and her family at the end of November or beginning of December and I got to watch and listen to her dealing with the many families she helped every Christmas as the leader of her parish's Adopt-a-Family program.  She personally matched families that needed help providing gifts to children at Christmas with families who wished to provide those gifts.  There was nothing haphazard or catch-as-catch-can about her work.  She talked personally with the mothers (or grandmothers) of the kids who needed shoes, clothing for school, or whatever, including coveted toys or games, made sure she knew the exact sized of the clothing for each child, whatever was needed to make the gifts just right for each child.  All that information she then passed on to the family wanting to provide the help to the family needing the help.  It required countless hours on the telephone, all of which she did herself.  I also went on drives with her and her husband Jim delivering food from the St. Vincent de Paul Society to families in need and listened to her on the SVDP phone speaking with persons in need of financial help, usually for electricity bills.  She treated everyone with respect, with kindness and compassion, with dignity.  And then there were her regular trips to Andre House in downtown Phoesnix to help feed the homeless.  And how much that I was never aware of.

Kitty was the embodiment of the virtuous acts described in Matthew 25:31-46.  "I was hungry and you fed me . . ."  When our Aunt Mary became a widow many years ago, my mother took her into her home so she wouldn't live alone and when my mother died, Kitty took Aunt Mary into her home where she lived for more years than I can remember.  When her sister-in-law Gerri needed help, Kitty took Geri into her home where she lived under she died.  When our Dad lost his second wife Grace, Kitty took him into her home where he lived until he died.  "I needed shelter and you took me in.  I was sick and you cared for me . . . "                  

What I mostly feel now that she is gone is deep appreciation for all that she meant to me for so many years, through so many ups and downs, and regret that I did not share more time with her during our lives.  Mostly I am grateful for the time we did share - every single day - during the last 6 years or so of her life.  She was my very dear sister but also a best and intimate friend.  How lucky can a guy get.   What a treasure.  As my mother used to say, God threw away the mold . . .

LTMW at a bluejay feeding on the ground under the feeders, easily identifiable.  On the other hand, there is a small brown beauty with breast stripes on the sunflower feeder above.  Is it a female house finch? A song sparrow?  A pine siskin?  I notice how many cars passed by as I refilled the sunflower feeder around 6:30 this morning, thinking to myself that for this many neighbors to be leaving for work this early in the morning, it's a good bet our neighbors are either (a) factory workers, or (b) medical doctors.  I think we can safely pick (b).  At 7:30, there is a female house finch really doing a job on one of the orange helves I have mounted on a shepherd's crook.  She's all alone and able to eat her fill.  Nearby a male goldfinch is working on the niger seed tube, also taking his time unmolested.  And down below, a chipmunk forages on the seeds and nuts I spilled this morning before refilling the sunflower tube