Monthly Archives: November 2013

Why Do You Write?

30 Saturday Nov 2013

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Perhaps I can articulate why I have kept this small portion of a speech as a treasure in my file.  Mostly, because I’ve read volumes on “How to”: write novels, memoirs, essays, poetry, fiction, nonfiction: –  tens of thousands of words by more published and unpublished authors than I can count. Here in 313 words, Nobel Prizewinner, Orpham Pamuk says it all. 

 

From Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Lecture, 2006

Why do you write?
I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

Midwifing a Death

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Memoir, Sonoma County, Uncategorized

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January 15, 2004

MIDWIFING A DEATH

By Marylou Shira Hadditt

This is about death – a more forbidden word than ‘sex’. About death and an extraordinarily profound experience. I drove up the Coast to spend a day and a night with my friend, Page who had terminal liver cancer. The day was sunny and bright – the winter rains made the moss on the redwood bark shine like neon and the familiar route 128 took on new dimensions. Page had rented a house on the sea; she wanted to wake up in the morning to see the ocean once more before she died. The house was in Albion, (adjacent to Salmon Creek bridge where I’d had my car accident twelve years ago. Page was with me in the aftermath.)

The Albion house, was a gem of a California home. All floor to ceiling windows and redwood rafters and exposed beams. The house sat right on the edge of the headlands. One could see the ocean from every room in the house – Page’s large king size bed looked both to the West and South where a series of seaside monoliths caught the breaking waves. Even with the windows closed, we heard the sounds of the surf all night long. There was a quiet and peacefulness, both inside and outside the windows.

Page astonished me. An intense person – we are alike in many ways- one of which is often not being sure of ourselves. In bed in her bedclothes, she was a different woman. Clearly, without hesitation, she voiced her needs and desires. “I need your help”, or “I don’t want your help just now” — all voiced without “could you please” or “would you mind”. She told me and another visitor that it was time for us to go, She wanted the last half hour alone with the sea. Page could not have been that direct two months ago. There had been a transformation.

The transformation of her acceptance of death. She did a lot of reading about death, she asked friends to bring her poems and stories; I read to her from Whitman, “and to die is different from anyone supposes and luckier.” She asked me to repeat “luckier” several times. I read a fable about Eros and Death, getting their arrows mixed up with one another – love with death and death with love. Another fable of a Maori woman who shed her old woman’s skin. Page liked these simple fables. There were precise, no ambivalence. Page told me about a breathing meditation: on the inhale, the breath encircles the heart giving it protection from fear, but she admitted, sometimes the fear sneaks in. Page surrounded herself with dying and death, not sadly, not mournfully, but in gentle peaceful acceptance.

As I look back now on our two decades of friendship, I feel blessed to share dying as we share our living. I drove back to Sonoma County, not with sadness, or grief. I drove with an uplifting feeling, one might even call it grace. As I drove through that cave of redwoods along the Navarro river, turned on the Mendocino NPR station, – there was Berlioz’ L’Enfance du Christ. The nobility and holiness of that music, the grace of the redwoods, the shadows on the roadway: these embraced me. In love — and perhaps the grief, like Page’s fear, will sneak in from time to time.

Page-image-fixed

Page Prescott was the midwife for her own dying. She saw what needed to be done and went about doing it. Shortly after the days at the Coast, three days after her 70th birthday, Page chose not to eat and not to drink fluids. She was inviting death to come to her. She selected a cardboard casket and asked friends to decorate it. During the next week and half, she made certain to say all her good-byes. Eleven days later, she slipped quietly away in her sleep with family and friends nearby to ritually cleanse her body, prepare for cremation.

Two weeks later I had a wonderful dream. I am standing in my garden when a bright red World War I monoplane flies over. Page is the plot, wearing an old fashioned pilots cap. She leans out the window, calling, “Tootle oooh! Bye Bye” and sails off.

It’s Not Easy: Giving Up Driving

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

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GUEST OPINION: ‘I stopped, but it’s still not easy’
By MARYLOU SHIRA HADDITT
Originally published: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 5:11 p.m. Santa Rosa Press Democrat

I am 84. I quit driving two years ago on Dec. 31, 2010. At first it was very difficult. It’s still not easy.

I spent the first six months having anxiety attacks whenever I had to arrange transportation. Two years later, this still happens when I get last minute invitations.

I spent the next six months depressed and introspective while I learned to accept my new self-imposed lifestyle. Now when I hear a neighbor say, “I was bored so I hopped in the car and went shopping,” I confess the sin of envy.

It’s not easy.

I took the better part of the year to assemble a list of available public and private transportation:

Sebastopol Area Senior Center — no charge — but with five working days notice required.

Jewish Family and Children’s Services — with a fee — 24 hour notice.

Sonoma County Paratransit – fee — 24 hour notice.

Sebastopol shuttle — nominal fee — the last bus leaves downtown Sebastopol at 3:30 p.m.

It takes research and imagination. Other alternatives:

Airport Express, $35, takes me to Oakland Airport where my East Bay family picks me up.

Golden Gate Transit is a dreary 2½-hour drive into downtown San Francisco.

Each of the above public facilities has its individual quirks.

It takes creativity. A friend takes me grocery shopping every Wednesday. Good friends live in the country, far from the bus route. Paratransit delivers and picks me up at a restaurant in the village — my friend ferries me to her house. For after-dark events, I have a list of folks who enjoy similar things so I have both transportation and a date.

There were hints to decreasing driving ability. I list them in ascending order: I found it too stressful to drive freeways to San Francisco or Oakland — thus there were less frequent visits with my family. I took three right turns to avoid a left turn. I stopped parallel parking. I drove no more than 20 miles from home. No more night driving. My knuckles turned white when I grasped the wheel in traffic. At the intersection of Highway 12 and Fulton Road, I looked down and saw my foot on the accelerator instead of the brake. I corrected myself, didn’t bash into anyone. But I immediately remembered the Santa Monica man whose “stuck foot” plowed through a farmer’s market full of people in 2003, leaving 10 dead and 63 injured.

I chose to sell my car and gave up my keys.

My four adult children were glad they didn’t have to take the keys from me. Although in retrospect I wonder if I ignored any hints they may have given me. After the fact, one daughter said, “Mom, I felt like I was driving with Mr. Magoo.”

It’s not easy.

I’ve lost two valuable parts of my life: Freedom to go where I want, when I want to and privacy — delicious aloneness inside my car, encapsulated, a special place with windows on the world. Just me with my radio or CDs, sailing along Sonoma County’s country roads. One winter evening, atop Coleman Valley Road, dreaming down at the sea and the sunset, I pushed KDFC and there, miraculously on the radio was Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Delicious memory — my car and me.

I kept my expired driver’s license for more than a year.

Ironically, there is a special ID card for seniors that carries the same ID number and looks exactly like my driver’s license —- except it isn’t. And it’s still not easy.

 

Stories Seldom Told: Lot’s Wife

15 Friday Nov 2013

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here’s the link to the Stories Seldom Told Script online at

http:// www.frontporchspirit.com/theater/stories-seldom-told.html

IRID (written by Shira Hadditt)
(Based on Genesis Chapter 19)
No one knows my name. The name I was given at birth. The name my parents spoke when they called me to dinner; the name my brothers and sisters sang when they called me to play. I spent half my short life knowing who I was. Then I got married and somehow, I ceased to exist. I ceased to exist for myself, for my husband, and sometimes I am sure, I ceased to exist for my daughters. Those sweet girls, I’m sure they secretly worried that would grow up only to lose themselves in marriage as I had done. Yet we never spoke about. it One didn’t talk about such things; we were expected somehow to learn to live with our sense of nothingness. For all eternity, I have been identified by my husband’s name and none other.

Lot’s wife. No more. No less. There is no me.

I raised Tana and Tiamat, my daughters, as best I could despite the fact that Lot continually blamed them and blamed me that they were not boys, when of course we all know it was his seed which made them girls, not me. I was only the repository. But of course, we didn’t talk about that either. They would often come to me, my gentle daughters, asking why Lot was so brusque and sharp with them. I would smile meekly and say, “that’s just your father’s way, he loves you very much.” I wasn’t about to believe this and I’m sure they weren’t either.

I only wish I could believe that my husband, the father of my daughters, really cared for them. Virtuous Lot is that self-same man who had the gall to tell an unruly mob to do what they would to our lovely girls. “Do what you will”, I heard him say, not caring a whit if his daughters were raped or brutalized as long as G-d’s angels were left alone. Doesn’t Lot have enough faith in G-d’s ability to protect the Angels that he had to offer up the bodies of his daughters, his flesh and blood, as bounty?

That’s why I turned back. To see if my girls were there, to see if they were following Lot and me from the besieged city. I saw their bright faces, was relieved to see their young bodies unharmed, their eyes questioning. “Where are we going? and why?”

“Mother, Mother, wait for us.” They called to me. “Here am I, Darlings, waiting for you”. I turned around to reassure them. That’s when it happened. I don’t believe a cruel G-d punished me, but a kind and loving G-d gave me final respite.

When I turned back, I had dissolved. I became somebody for all ages. I became a pillar of salt. Some say that I became in death that pillar of strength, which is expected of all women. Others say I became the salt of the earth. For generations I have been known only as Lot’s wife. My name is Irid.

 

On Cross Country Moves

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Chicago, Family, Memoir, Uncategorized

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2013/1972
Does it really matter, like Penny said, Mom, that was 40 years ago. Forty years ago that we moved from Chicago to California. And yesterday an email from Lucia read:

IMG00401-20130923-1432≤Van pulled out @ 2:50 pm, 20 years, 10 months and 2 days after we took possession of this house that has sheltered us and kept us safe, and helped raise our children.>

I cried. First I cried for Lucia, the gentleness of saying goodbye to a house that kept her safe and helped raise her children. Then I sobbed for me. Sobbed for never saying goodbye to 50th street, that’s what we called our Chicago house. When I cried and talked go Lucia yesterday, complimenting her on her loving leave taking, out slipped from my mouth, with no forethought, “When I left 50th st, I fled. And I did. And the house we moved into twelve years before we moved out did not keep us safe, did not shelter us from the storms of our own conflicting souls and hearts and hopes. Did not keep us safe from the internalized resentment Tom and I had toward each other. Did not make a safe place to raise our children but surrounded them with our own sexual mishagash and alcohol.

I fled that house. When we moved to California, I fled that house in much the way I fled, in a hyper manic sate, after hallowe’en 1972. I was owned by the house or owned by everything in it. i remember a fragment of a poem: I was drowning in piles of Oriental rugs, piles of paper and clippings and books everywhere. A piece of the Garrick theater decor that, only the week before we left for CA, did Tom admit he never liked the thing. And how pretentiously he would point out to guests the rare Louise Sullivan carving framed over our mantel. How pretentious he was about his rugs, prints, pots. All were finer, rarer than in most museums. And for a long time, I believed him too.

1030 E 50th St. {Penny says, " the family joke is that this house is literally 5 or 6 doors around the corner from Obama House. Too bad we couldn't hang onto it, eh?"

1030 E 50th St. {Penny says, ” the family joke is that this house is literally 5 or 6 doors around the corner from Obama House. Too bad we couldn’t hang onto it, eh?”}

How much in love with him when I married him. Handsome, brilliant, melancholy Tom. I was going to make him happy. We combined my inheritance and his low GI bill loan to buy the house. We were going to make a home for all his collection: his Japanese prints, his Chinese pots, his antique rugs, his valuable books.
And by the end, most of the fine Japanese prints were sold at auction at Christie because neither of us were working and we lived on those prints. Like a house of cards, it all fell down on us. On me, on Tom, on our children.

I tried to remember my leave taking of 50th Street. Did I help pack things? Or did I just take off for California on the first plane I could get after January 1st to go to a new job, a new life. What do I remember? I don’t remember a moving van loading up like Lucia saw. I remember a tag sale, all over the dining room table;; I remember a piece of junk that had belonged to Noel sold for some ridiculously high price; I still remember the autographed White Sox ball from the year they won the pennant that Sam Bell had gotten for Steve and Steve said to sell it. Every once in a while, middle-aged Steve will mumble that he wished he had it.

I don’t even remember packing a suitcase. Getting on the plane. Getting off the plane.I remember going into the manager of the Contra Costa Times office, where they thought — from my good references from my boss
— they had a star salesperson === only my boss and I really knew my skills were limited to the Hyde Park Community. I got sent to the Valley Times. Wearing a brown knit dress which I thought would be California clothes I got from Stevie Breslauer in Hyde Park. Walking in there being terrified.. remembering visiting managers of large chain stores and not knowing what to say. In afterthought, I think somewhere along the line, i crashed, but that was long before I understood the working of the bipolar person.

And then I got fired. I don’t remember what they told me but the message was I was too hippie. I wore beads. And beads were Berkeley and free speech movement and Peoples Park. Fired: two or three months after we moved into that dinky three bedroom house, the girls shared a room, tom had an office. I had 1/2 of a double bed, 1/2 of a closet, but I did have my own towel rack.

As some point, I must have had some kind of incident or something, because I remember Tom took me to Stanford psyhc clinic, and the doctor said if I had another attack, he would put me on this new medication, Lithium, but he’d rather wait. Too bad he didn’t Rx it then.

So does it matter, forty years later, if I stayed and packed boxes, or if I left the whole responsibility to Tom. who’s been dead 25 years and to movers who are probably out of business. Does whatever happened forty years ago really make a difference today?. Do I need to feel guilty and bad mommy?. I think not. I really think not.

When we had our family meeting on 8/25 and I said I wanted my therapist to speak at my memorial service about how difficult the life of a bipolar person was, All three kids agreed it was completely inappropriate for a therapist to speak about treatment of a patient.

“ Besides, we all know you’re crazy,? mom. And they said it with love. Not with cynicism. Not with anger, They said it with love.

Pink Ladies

07 Thursday Nov 2013

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August 2008

Early in the week, I decided to keep a record of the “Naked ladies” along the pathway of the large senior apartment complex in which I live. They are also known as “Pink ladies”, “Resurrection Lilies” and properly named “Amaryllis Belladonnae”.  Their green leaves show brightly in early Spring, along the walkways, then by June they have died back.  Suddenly, in August, long after their green leaves have died back,  three foot high stems, pop up out of the ground, the way asparagus pop up when you don’t expect them to.  That was Monday.

Amaryllis by Enez35 @ Flikr Creative Commons

Amaryllis by Enez35 @ Flikr Creative Commons

 

Tuesday I watched the pink buds plump out, then I’ve been waiting for the blossoms.  Here it is Sunday and one or two are bravely blooming in our 60 degree summer (?) weather.

Instead, I will write about my most remember the Pink Ladies – hundreds of them, blowing wild against wind washed fences on the headlands over the Pacific Highway One, curves and all. An array of Pink Ladies  along the sea coast from Mendocino south almost to Jenner.

Maybe ours will bloom next week

Saving Robie House

04 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Activism, Chicago, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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SAVING ROBIE HOUSE
BY Marylou Hadditt

10/11/00
This is the story of how Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House was saved for posterity. I have no proof of what follows although much of it is probably documented in the Committee to Save Robie House papers on file at the Chicago Historical Society. Other people may have different memories. Mine is the recollection of a seventy-two year old woman about a series of events which happened forty three years ago.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School masterpiece, Robie House, located at the corner of Woodlawn Avenue and 58th Street, is immediately adjacent to the Gothic towers of the University of Chicago campus. Its side windows overlook an impressive Rockefeller Chapel and from it’s front loggia one can see the towers of the Oriental Institute, a museum of Egyptology and Syriology. Further west on 58th Street is the main quadrangle. In essence, an ideal situation for an important architectural landmark.

To the North, along Woodlawn Avenue, are several ordinary brick buildings, which belonged to the Chicago Theological Seminary, a consortium of various Protestant ministerial schools affiliated with the University of Chicago. In 1957 the Seminary decided it needed more dorm space and, naturally, more parking space. Robie House was slated to become a parking lot. Although today, Robie House is considered the cornerstone of modern architecture, at that time some thought it was “ugly”. It “looked like a boat”. Or maybe it like a “tank”. And the only people who cared about it were a bunch of architects.

Robie House. Flikr image by wildcat dunny ( thank you)

Robie House. Flickr image by Wildcat Dunny

There was nominal publicity in the newspapers, some voices were raised in protest, but not many and not loudly. My husband, Tom Stauffer, grew up walking to school by way of Robie House. An aficionado of the arts, Tom was distressed at the pending demolition and immediately began to look for ways to preserve the architectural gem.

Several events happened in fairly rapid succession. Frank Lloyd Wright called a press conference in Chicago to announce a proposed Mile High building., Wright displayed plans for a five thousand foot high building which would be anchored on the Laurentian shield on which Chicago sits. All facilities would be within the building. High speed pressurized elevators would take people to schools, restaurants, entertainment and so on. The prairie would revert to its natural state for all the people who live in this mile high hi-rise to enjoy. came to Chicago, to announce a proposal for a mile high building. (Ken Burns never mentioned the Mile High proposal on his program about Wright.)

As a staff member of the community newspaper in which Robie House and the University were located, I attended the Wright press conference, taking my husband, Tom, along. Tom, Bill McDonald from the PBS-TV station, WTTW finagled our way through the mob to speak to Wright about Robie House. He had no prior knowledge of the threat and immediately called another press conference to be held that afternoon at Robie House. His old friend Carl Sandburg joined him. It was sparsely attended, but given good coverage by WTTW. This afternoon that Wright made his much quoted quip: “Isn’t is just like a man of the cloth to destroy a work of art for a parking lot”. The Chicago Sun Times carried a story by Ruth Moore, who later became an enthusiastic fan for Chicago architecture.

A few weeks later, a young architectural photographer and preservationist, Richard Nickel, read Tom’s name in the newspaper, called and asked “what can we do about Robie House?” Although Dick’s major interest was documenting and saving Louis Sullivan’s work, he joined the Robie House battle. Tom, Nickel and I became a Committee to Save Robie House , complete with official looking stationery. The Chicago Theological Seminary laughed at our efforts, but gave us a key to the house,. We planned to open it on weekends, hopefully to raise to enough money to bring it to public attention.

Late autumn, cold and blustery as Chicago can get, we opened Robie House to the public every Sunday afternoon, There was enough heat only to keep the pipes from bursting. We had a bridge table n the foyer with petitions and pamphlets – For those two or three people who stopped by out of curiosity we led “tours” through the deserted rooms of the abandoned house. Tom, Dick and I wore mufflers, woolly hats, heavy jackets, and mittens to keep from freezing on those winter afternoons at Robie House.  Part way through the winter an architect, Bill Hasbrouck wandered into the Robie House lobby with a bundle of exquisite little magazines “The Prairie School Review”. Bill and his wife Marilyn researched, wrote and printed it in their Park Forest basement with hand set fonts and an antique press. This gem of a publication was filled with drawings, photographs and information not only on Wright and Louis Sullivan but Maher and other Prairie School architects. One of those magazines today is, I am sure, is a collectors item, but as I recall, Bill wanted to sell it for $2.00 – one dollar to the Committee to Save Robie House and one dollar for the Hasbroucks. Thus our trio committee because a quartet, and sometimes a quintet when Marilyn joined her husband. We struggled along during the winter of 1957. Ruth Moore from the Sun Times gave us an encouraging boost with articles on architectural preservation. We tried, but were not able to enlist Ada Louise Huxtable, the New York Times preservation expert, until much later in the struggle.

The break-through came about in a series of extraordinary circumstances that at first had nothing to do with Robie House or architecture. Tom decided that our nine year old son, Steve, should have a pen pal from another country . He located a ten year old boy from Italy. The Italian boy’s letters were translated by our neighbor. Steve’s letters to the boy were translated by his teacher. Tom and the teacher began to exchange letters, ultimately becoming pen pals while Steve’s and the Italian boy’s interest waned. When Tom heard that the teacher’s fiancee was an architecture student at the University of Milan, he initiated a complex campaign to create an international press for the Robie House . He wrote press releases for the Milan newspaper which the teacher translated for his non-English speaking fiancee, She, in turn, obtained signatures on a petition from the faculty and student body to save that American treasure, Robie House. The fiancee took it to the Milan press. The Milan newspaper headlined the “travesty ” of the eminent destruction of that world famous architectural monument, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House located on the University of Chicago Campus.

Upon receiving a tear sheet, Tom immediately translated the Milan article into French, sent it to his WW II buddy, Jean Pierre who placed the story in Le Monde critical of the University of Chicago’s threat to demolish a great work of art. The Milan and Paris articles were parlayed into a Parliamentary Question, raised by another war-time buddy, Tom Driberg MP. . Ada Huxtable at The New York Times published a story on “the disgrace of the University of Chicago.’ Ruth Moore from the Chicago Sun Times did much the same, Fifth Ward Alderman, Leon Despres ,an anti-Daley independent, joined the struggle to save Robie House. (At a later date, Despres was responsible for the appointment of the Chicago Architectural Commission,. Today, forty years later, a vocal and important voice in Chicago architectural preservation.)

The administration of the world- class University of Chicago was embarrassed by the pending demolition of Robie House. The University manipulated its way out by convincing New York real estate developer, William Zeckendorf, to purchase Robie House from the Chicago Theological Seminary for use as a field office for his nearby Hyde Park Urban Renewal project. In 1963, at the completion of the renewal project, Zeckendorf deeded Robie House, sadly in need of repairs and restoration, to the University of Chicago.

At this writing, the building is a museum, open to the public under the protection of the Frank Lloyd Preservation Trust. Much restoration has taken place over the years, and now, again more restoration is being done. At one point Robie House served as offices of the University of Chicago Alumni Association displaying Wright-designed dining table, chairs, lounge chairs, sofas and other examples of Arts & Crafts furnishings.

Post cards of Robie House are ubiquitous in Chicago. Sightseeing buses stop at the corner of Woodlawn and 58th Street. Prairie School theme silk scarves umbrellas, shopping bags, stained glass windows, gift cards and lamps use Wright designs are available in almost every mail order gift catalog. The initial restoration, was carried out under the aegis of the noted architect and preservationist, Bill Hasbrouck one of the first Save Robie House volunteers.

Marylou Shira and grandsons (L to R) Ryan, Ben, David. Robie House Lego

Marylou Shira and grandsons (L to R) Ryan, Ben, David. Robie House Lego

Birthday Surprises

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in Family, Memoir

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Preface: I dislike big parties, even more so when the host
and guest of honor are the only people I know. I was doing my
motherly duty to drive seventy-five miles to make an appearance at
my only son’s 60th birthday party. Instead I had the surprise of my
life.

When I came in through the doorway Steve was playing his sax. Non-demonstrative Steve immediately set his horn aside, cried “Mom”and rushed over to give me the hugest most wonderful hug Steve has ever given me. I huggged him back and we just stood there, holding each other for quite a while. Steve was beaming. I don’t know that I’ve ever before seen him look as exquisitely happy as he looked that night.

There was music. unending, ongoing, music- varied and wonderful music. Rotating friends, musicians all, in and out with their instruments. Jazz, Salsa, Big Band – a bit of everything. I was sitting inside the music, rather than being on the outside listening. Quite an experience. Steve played his flute – on occasion switching to the sax. There was an older man on sax which made for great duets. I met one of the women with whom he plays a flute quartet … heard the two of them duet. I watched a series of different double bass players: a thin young woman half the size of the instrument; three different men of all sizes and ages, slapping that bass.

This all took place, at his girl friends’ home: a natural hostess. She did everything with ease and grace – and she, too, was beaming. This was her party for Steve and she gloried in it. For me, it was also a birthday. I connected with a small handful of people I knew: Johnny T, Steve’s mentor, Susan and Roberto who remembered me from twenty years. I gloried in shaking hands with anyone and everyone, “I’m Steve’s Mom”, I said, beaming. Beaming. I was so proud to be Steve’s mom.