1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,400 You're listening to I Have No Process. I am your host, Nicholas England. 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:29,900 This is the sixth episode of 71. 3 00:00:35,400 --> 00:01:04,700 I don't believe in biography. 4 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:11,900 I don't think it's possible to really know anything about a person without having been there with them. 5 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:16,400 To hear what they said the way they said it. 6 00:01:17,900 --> 00:01:21,900 To observe the peculiar expressions illuminating their face. 7 00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:27,400 Every interpretation is about the interpreter. 8 00:01:27,400 --> 00:01:35,400 If I tried to tell you about Janet England, I'd only end up telling you about myself. 9 00:01:37,400 --> 00:01:42,400 I simply can't get out of her way, if I'm the one who's doing the talking. 10 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:56,400 If you want to win a glimpse of who Janet was, then get out your ironing board and iron every pillowcase and bedspread you own. 11 00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:08,400 Put on Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again" and hum along, with your lips pursed and your clumsy hips swaying back and forth. 12 00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:16,400 When you finish, go into the kitchen and get a couple of thick slices of farmer's bread. 13 00:02:17,400 --> 00:02:21,400 Slice up some Gruyere, some white cheddar. 14 00:02:22,400 --> 00:02:25,400 Spread Sir Kensington's mayonnaise on the outside of the bread. 15 00:02:26,400 --> 00:02:28,400 Place the cheese within. 16 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:34,400 Heat up a skillet and make the best grilled cheese sandwich anyone ever had. 17 00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:38,400 Pour yourself a glass of iced tea and grab your laptop. 18 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:42,400 Check your email, then your Facebook feed. 19 00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:47,400 Leave a new batch of comments on the latest crop of posts. 20 00:02:48,400 --> 00:02:51,400 Tell everybody what you told them yesterday. 21 00:02:52,400 --> 00:02:55,400 They look like they're having a great time. 22 00:02:56,400 --> 00:02:58,400 They're so beautiful. You love them. 23 00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:04,400 Take a call from your son's wife. Either son, it doesn't matter. 24 00:03:05,400 --> 00:03:09,400 Fawn on her in all the ways she deserves. 25 00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:14,400 Embrace her with as much warmth as you radiate to your boys. 26 00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:22,400 Leave no doubt that she's your child as much as the ones you gave birth to. 27 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:27,400 Then once you're off with her, call your ex-husband. 28 00:03:28,400 --> 00:03:30,400 Listen to him ramble. 29 00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:34,400 Temper his concerns with fondly shared memories. 30 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:38,400 Remind him that he's your oldest friend. 31 00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:47,400 Thank him, as you always thank him, for providing you with the greatest joys in your life. 32 00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:52,400 Those two boys. 33 00:03:53,400 --> 00:03:58,400 After you take out the compost and balance your checkbook, remember to call your sister. 34 00:03:59,400 --> 00:04:01,400 It's been a few days. 35 00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:08,400 In the late afternoon, read a few chapters of the latest Maisy Dobbs. 36 00:04:09,400 --> 00:04:13,400 Gaze out your library window toward Little Ascutney. 37 00:04:13,400 --> 00:04:18,400 Gaze out your library window toward Little Ascutney. 38 00:04:19,400 --> 00:04:24,400 Watch the daylight deepen across the tops of the trees. 39 00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:30,400 Come to think of it, your own writing needs a bit of review, doesn't it? 40 00:04:31,400 --> 00:04:34,400 Go find a bottle of wine on the baker's rack to decant. 41 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:38,400 Then open up that latest piece you were working on. 42 00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:42,400 The one you plan on sending to your son for Mother's Day. 43 00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:46,400 The one that goes like this. 44 00:04:47,400 --> 00:04:50,400 Three hours with you. 45 00:04:50,400 --> 00:05:08,400 Nyesha Arrington's Wilshire. Market, Del Mar. The Virginian, Buffalo. Forage and Chatter, Edinburgh. Akbar's, Glasgow. McHugh's, Belfast. 46 00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:12,400 Three hours of dining delight. 47 00:05:12,400 --> 00:05:19,400 Listening to you read your poetry, or an elegy, or your manuscript. 48 00:05:20,400 --> 00:05:22,400 Listening to you play your sax. 49 00:05:23,400 --> 00:05:27,400 Listening to you amuse your friends, or advise or comfort them. 50 00:05:28,400 --> 00:05:35,400 Listening to you explain a movie that I just didn't get, or make sense of something I cannot understand. 51 00:05:36,400 --> 00:05:39,400 Three hours of pride. 52 00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:49,400 When I was recovering from surgeries, or feeling sad or scared or confused, you were always there. 53 00:05:50,400 --> 00:05:57,400 Holding my hand, easing my pain, giving me strength, making me laugh. 54 00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:04,400 Cooking me pasta with bacon and mustard, or helping give Jeff the boot. 55 00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:08,400 Many, many hours of gratitude. 56 00:06:09,400 --> 00:06:13,400 So much in common, so many wonderful memories. 57 00:06:14,400 --> 00:06:21,400 Every hour or three or more is a treasure held by me. 58 00:06:22,400 --> 00:06:30,400 I gave you life. You gave me joy and so much more, including an amazing daughter. 59 00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:42,400 We've shared our love, deep and unconditional. From your beginning to my end. 60 00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:52,400 If you can manage all that, then you can manage this. 61 00:06:52,400 --> 00:07:02,400 A month later, on that son's birthday, put the finishing touches on that other piece you've been crafting for Writer's Group. 62 00:07:03,400 --> 00:07:07,400 The one you can't get out of your head. 63 00:07:08,400 --> 00:07:12,400 "Subconscious Premonition." 64 00:07:13,400 --> 00:07:17,400 Do we know things that we are not aware that we know? 65 00:07:17,400 --> 00:07:22,400 Early in my first pregnancy, I heard about nesting. 66 00:07:23,400 --> 00:07:32,400 Supposedly a time near the end when an expectant mama gets a burst of energy and does crazy things to prepare for her baby. 67 00:07:33,400 --> 00:07:37,400 As my pregnancy progressed, I couldn't imagine such a thing. 68 00:07:37,400 --> 00:07:50,400 But sure enough, about a week before Max was born, at 10pm one night, and though feeling as large and awkward as a whale out of water, I started rearranging furniture. 69 00:07:51,400 --> 00:08:02,400 Heavy pieces, moving them from one bedroom to another, over raised thresholds, around corners, and through old narrow doorways. 70 00:08:02,400 --> 00:08:10,400 My husband was downstairs engrossed in some show, couldn't hear a thing, and I didn't ask for help. 71 00:08:11,400 --> 00:08:14,400 This was my project. 72 00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:25,400 Just a few days later, in the same room I'd been rearranging, my water broke, and off we headed to the hospital at midnight. 73 00:08:25,400 --> 00:08:33,400 Twelve years later, my parents spent a week with my family in Encinitas, California. 74 00:08:34,400 --> 00:08:44,400 While my father was loading their car and preparing to drive an hour north to my sister's home in Costa Mesa, my mother came to my bedroom. 75 00:08:44,400 --> 00:08:57,400 She held me, she told me how much she loved me, how proud she was of me, of the woman I had become, and the mother that I was to my sons. 76 00:08:58,400 --> 00:09:07,400 She asked me to try and be patient with my father. He'd always been difficult, and we had often butted heads as I got older. 77 00:09:07,400 --> 00:09:23,400 She and dad then spent a lovely week with my sister and her new husband, and the night before they were to drive home to Cincinnati, my mother had a heart attack at two in the morning, and by five a.m. she was gone. 78 00:09:24,400 --> 00:09:31,400 She was perfectly healthy, no pre-existing conditions, no warning of any kind. 79 00:09:31,400 --> 00:09:39,400 Yet she had said to me all of the things she would have said had she known she'd never see me again. 80 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:43,400 My sister shared a similar story. 81 00:09:44,400 --> 00:09:51,400 Lately, I have begun to wonder if perhaps I am experiencing a subconscious premonition. 82 00:09:51,400 --> 00:10:00,400 Wondering what is prompting me, motivating me, to make so many plans and preparations for my death. 83 00:10:01,400 --> 00:10:12,400 I have had a will and trust for many, many years. First with Kent, as soon as Max was born, and then a new set of documents after my divorce. 84 00:10:12,400 --> 00:10:21,400 I am only sixty-nine, and in generally good health, with little cause to think my life will end in fewer than fifteen to twenty years. 85 00:10:22,400 --> 00:10:40,400 And yet, lately I have been making spreadsheets of all my belongings: artwork, furniture, jewelry; itemizing origin, purchase date and price, estimated current value, and whatever other information I know. 86 00:10:40,400 --> 00:10:52,400 I have discussed plans with my sons about when I might sell my Vermont house and move to Seattle, where I will live with and be cared for by Nicholas and Alyssa. 87 00:10:53,400 --> 00:11:04,400 I can then invest the house proceeds in their properties, to relieve them of the hardship of having to dispose of a house and furnishings on the opposite side of the country. 88 00:11:04,400 --> 00:11:11,400 And any of my belongings that they might desire will already have been shipped to them. 89 00:11:12,400 --> 00:11:23,400 I have also been actively trying to complete research on several lines of ancestry, label and copy or distribute the hundreds of photographs passed along to me by my mother, 90 00:11:23,400 --> 00:11:34,400 and prepare materials in an orderly fashion to be passed along to my unborn grandchildren and my great niece and nephew. 91 00:11:35,400 --> 00:11:45,400 I have family knowledge that no one else has, and if I don't do this, much will be lost to those future generations. 92 00:11:45,400 --> 00:11:55,400 Now, I am always the first to admit that I thoroughly enjoy making spreadsheets and doing the research to complete them. 93 00:11:56,400 --> 00:12:01,400 And while it is very time consuming, I also enjoy working on the family history. 94 00:12:02,400 --> 00:12:07,400 But somehow, everything I am doing has a sense of urgency about it. 95 00:12:07,400 --> 00:12:14,400 Not simply that I need to do it, but that I need to do it soon, now. 96 00:12:15,400 --> 00:12:22,400 Maybe nothing more than my detail-oriented personality is prompting all of this planning and activity. 97 00:12:22,400 --> 00:12:36,400 We can hope so, but I guess either way, I'll be prepared. 98 00:13:22,400 --> 00:13:30,400 Game 40, Padres 2, Dodgers 4, May 13, 2023 99 00:13:31,400 --> 00:13:43,400 The dandelion swarms, sprouting across our grassy knoll, blow the whispered promise of their descendants throughout the air. 100 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:52,400 These well-intentioned poems of ours pollinate fragments of ego everywhere. 101 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:09,400 Game 41, Padres 0, Dodgers 4, May 14, 2023 102 00:14:09,400 --> 00:14:17,400 I do not have the strength to go to you. I have always been meant to sit in the shade. 103 00:14:18,400 --> 00:14:27,400 It is quite a walk up that hill, I know. But I would rather talk here, if it is all the same to you. 104 00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:43,400 Game 42, Royals 0, Padres 4, May 15, 2023 105 00:14:43,400 --> 00:15:02,400 Wacha's three-pitch strikeout of Pasquantino delivers a smile, with the curvature of Cupid's taut bow, from my lips, to my thighs, to my giddy outstretched toes. 106 00:15:02,400 --> 00:15:16,400 I breathe in the expanse of total relaxation. The goodness of the familiar, letting me know my heart is safe at home. 107 00:15:16,400 --> 00:15:31,400 Rocking chairs on the porch. A cat warming itself in a curl by the kitchen door. Wacha's signature change-up, down and away. 108 00:15:31,400 --> 00:15:48,400 Game 43, Royals 5, Padres 4, May 16, 2023 109 00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:56,400 Tristan Gooley tells me that who you are is what you perceive and how you respond. 110 00:15:56,400 --> 00:16:24,400 As I watch Xander Bogaerts give up on becoming the tying run, the moment the Royals focus the whole of their attentions on Odor, helplessly stranded in a narrowing gap between first and second, Xander staring at home plate from third with the resolve of an opossum, my response is this. 111 00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:41,400 Game 44, Royals 4, Padres 3, May 17, 2023 112 00:16:41,400 --> 00:16:57,400 I do not need what this ritual once thought to provide me. I accept my mother's death, without caveat and without a troubled heart. 113 00:16:57,400 --> 00:17:15,400 Everybody has to die. She is dying splendidly. Like the glorious bloom of the crabapple tree, passing in springtime, she is perfect. 114 00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:30,400 Meanwhile, the experience of watching this Padres team has grown soul-deadening. Its appointments having waned to a sad predictability. 115 00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:52,400 One hundred thousand men left stranded every night. And yet, I have been determined from the beginning in nothing but the process, here to answer every dinner bell, no matter the sound. 116 00:17:52,400 --> 00:18:06,400 So, as I go on, now bereft of conscious purpose, what in this way might be disclosed? 117 00:18:06,400 --> 00:18:23,400 Game 45, Red Sox 6, Padres 1, May 19, 2023 118 00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:38,400 Taking care of my mother as she dies has been such a wonderful stage on my path to giving up on the man I have always thought I was supposed to be. 119 00:18:38,400 --> 00:18:59,400 I used to think a person's dignity never had to surpass that of a squirrel clinging to a tree. I don't do much thinking anymore. 120 00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:09,400 Game 46, Red Sox 4, Padres 2, May 20, 2023 121 00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:24,400 Butter spatters black the silver pan, liquefying fat into mayhem. Steam vents of seared steak billow through the house. 122 00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:32,400 The women open every window, in part to while away their famished wait. 123 00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:40,400 A barrage of angst roils my head as I stare at nothingness. 124 00:19:41,400 --> 00:19:51,400 The furnace urge to be spared, to escape the days, whatever meager tedium we have left. 125 00:19:51,400 --> 00:20:08,400 Game 47, Red Sox 0, Padres 7, May 21, 2023 126 00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:15,400 Janet regurgitates her meal after the game's first pitch. 127 00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:25,400 For us, this is a threshold past. Tumbling over the ridgeline of a windswept dune. 128 00:20:25,400 --> 00:20:47,400 We will shift to a liquid diet, all the sweet calories of juices, blended things. But there will be no second scan to discern if the nausea is in her mind, her meds, or some constriction of her duodenum. 129 00:20:47,400 --> 00:21:01,400 There is no calculation to make. No cause, no cure. Nothing to be done but to manage, endure. 130 00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:12,400 I take her / she holds my hand, and in that wordless gaze, we determine one another. 131 00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:28,400 Game 48, Padres 7, Nationals 4, May 23, 2023 132 00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:39,400 Cronenworth's long ball is initially ruled a double, landing atop the wall, colliding near the grate. 133 00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:51,400 With tenured pessimism, we attend the ump's review, then are stunned when they affirm the challenge and reverse the call. 134 00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:54,400 A home run. 135 00:21:54,400 --> 00:22:13,400 But wait, an old man in a Nationals jersey, standing near the locus of dispute, points emphatically at the top of the wall, challenging the challenge with the wag of his finger. 136 00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:28,400 Game 49, Padres 3, Nationals 5, May 24, 2023 137 00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:40,400 I feel apologetic for any critical remarks I made before, regarding Garcia, Tatis, whomever. 138 00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:46,400 Their work is real, their efforts great. 139 00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:54,400 They endeavored through years of hardship to get where they are. Names recognized. 140 00:22:54,400 --> 00:23:09,400 I've never worked that hard for anything, save self-preservation. 141 00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:19,400 Game 50, Padres 8, Nationals 6, May 25, 2023 142 00:23:19,400 --> 00:23:28,400 I am not here to watch the Padres win, I am merely here to see them play. 143 00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:45,400 Which do you prefer, the stained glass of cathedrals, or a view of the craftsmen absorbed in their work? 144 00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:56,400 Game 51, Padres 5, Yankees 1, May 26, 2023 145 00:23:56,400 --> 00:24:15,400 As her eyes rolled back in her head, and her mouth curled into the frantic frown of a caged thing, shocked by a cosmic lightning bolt, smote by a massive stroke, 146 00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:25,400 before the paralysis took her right side, Janet asked her sister one last kindness. 147 00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:45,400 "Keep talking."