1.13.26

“Losing a mother doesn’t happen in a moment. It takes years to appreciate the impact of what’s gone.”

— Lisa-Jo Baker

Just below freezing and not a cloud in the sky out there.

Watching an airliner mark in the sky to the east, making a turn over the Elmira Vortac and bending the white arc leftward toward Chicago or places west.

We always knew the altitude of the contrail layer when we were flying as part of a strike package, or practicing 2 v 2 or 4 v 4 out on the ranges. Generally contrails were to be avoided; they gave away your position and your numbers, after all. Sometimes, however, you'd mark on purpose, either as a show of force (one flight lead called out on the radio as the four jets climbed through 32,000 feet and started leaving contrails, "Gentlemen, I give you the claw!") or to distract the enemy from noticing the other jets somewhere else who were sweeping in low and fast to shoot the bad guys in the lips.

Ah, the good old days.

This morning would have been Mom's eighty-second birthday. She was born in Waco, Texas, on January 13, 1944, a few months after my grandparents returned home from the Pacific so Grandpa could attend pilot training.

Every January 13th I'd send flowers and call as I made my way in the world and we both got older. The last call I remember Bobby having to assist in getting the phone to her and translating because she was having trouble speaking. She had some okay days after that--Jim came from Europe to visit that May, and she joined us for supper in the dining room of the assisted living facility, coifed and obviously pleased to have Peg, me, and her grandson there at the table with her.

Then three months later she was gone.

I made a point of being matter-of-fact about it all. We all get old. I was lucky enough to have a Mom around until I was nearly sixty. I needed to be grateful, not sad.

But there are days when I want to pick up the phone and get her thoughtful take on what's happening in my life, in the world. Days when I want to show her some amazing place Peg and I have found up here in the hills of western New York, a place she'd surely love. Days like today when I'd be planning a call to see if the bouquet from Flowerama of Plano arrived timely; that is, when she wouldn't call me first to say how lovely they were there on her kitchen counter.

So there's that.

In other news, I believe I've reported previously that Peg has become quite the baker.

The origins of this flurry of breadmaking trace back to sampling Olivia's homemade loaves the last time we were in Andover to see the kids. The motivation to keep at it is a little more complex. Maybe trying to distract from the polycrisis. Maybe it's just another of her cooking fancies, like the Indian food craze of 2024, or her determination to pair every meal with carmelized Persian rice the year before.

The bread does keep getting better, with the right amount of fluff and salt and crisp delicate crust. She'd been taking each experimental loaf to the hospital to share as she perfected her technique--these people up here can't cook, generally, so if the end product was a little off, maybe a little too dense or chewy, they'd never know the difference. But New Year's Eve she shared a loaf with the crowd here at the condo, and it was scarfed up to groans of delight before I managed to secure a piece. So last night, finally, she baked one for us to share.

And, of course, it was delightful. P's a powerhouse in the kitchen, and she's definitely broken the code on breadmaking.

Today looks empty if you peer at my calendar, but in fact it's packed with drafting and last-minute preparations for the Manhattan adventure. Tomorrow I meet with the orthopod to go over MRI results and come up with a plan for this knee--it keeps getting worse, not better, so I'm thinking a bit of debridement is in my future. But when?

I guess we'll figure that out.