Time out

My father took this picture of Dot and me. It says a lot about our relationship.

My mom, Dorothy DeCarlo, died on Sunday. She'd been seriously ill for more than a year and her last weeks were tough, so her death when it came was a relief to us and I hope to her, too.

She was 95 years old and lived a life that allowed her to mostly do what she liked doing--painting, sculpting, drawing, making ceramics, playing the cello, giving and going to parties, reading, attending theater, movies, and concerts. She raised four children (although "raised" is maybe overstating things a bit) and had a large circle of relatives and friends for whom her sharp tongue and bluntly expressed opinions were usually more than compensated for by her energy and enthusiasm, her often salty sense of humor, and the pleasure she took in art, music, food, drink, gossip, dogs, and being with people she cared about.

She was in some ways my biggest fan, even though I often disappointed her. "I always thought you'd get one of those MacArthur genius awards," she recently told me, with evident sadness. I have never done anything to remotely qualify for such an honor, but her expectations of me were always more ambitious than realistic.

I spent a lot of my life pushing away from her and then trying to reach back across the gulf I'd created, which I suppose is the story with a lot of mothers and daughters. Now we are separated by an even vaster distance, but her disappearance as a fact is allowing her to be reborn as a story, a meaning. And the distance is only temporary, since we are all heading that way sooner or later.

I am on my way to New York to help my siblings sort out and wrap up what Dot left behind and clear the way for our next chapters. My guess is that the blog will be inactive until I get back to Italy in ten days or so.

Scusatemi.  A dopo!