Endings and Beginnings

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

Though it doesn’t show here, I have been actively writing this month.  At the suggestion of the writing circle I added dialogue to my short memoir, Studebaker.  It is a delightful improvement and I have posted it under About Being Me.  Also I have been organizing sections of my father’s stories so that it flows and reads better.  There is still a long way to go on his memoir, but I have started and for that I am pleased.  With a nice visit from San Diego sister Lori, the return of niece Molly from Juneau, and Christmas with my family in Corvallis, there has been much loving and hugging to keep me warm this damp and chilly time in the Pacific Northwest, when darkness dominates.

Three days ago I provided my fourteen year old Beagle Jacques, death with dignity.  He had been failing since before Thanksgiving, and just before Christmas I noticed he was bleeding internally.  He hung in with me ‘til Boxing Day, and now he’s interred under the Camellia shrub in the same raised garden where Scooter and Mattie rest.  Jacques was a scamp.  He arrived at our doorstep in 2000, an outcast or runaway.  Before we’d even given him a name or permission to stay, he took off out the front door.  I stood on the porch and told him he was free to go if that was what he wanted.  He looked at me in Beagle befuddlement wondering (I surmise) why I didn’t yell at him, chase him, or try to hit him.  I just said, “OK little fella, you wanna leave, go ahead.  You wanna stay, come on up here – the door is still open.”  He did.  Though Creighton and Jacques had a difficult relationship, Jacques trusted me to the very end.  His trials here are over, and with him I buried some long held sadness for all that happened during those difficult years after he walked back up the stairs and into my heart.

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Touching Branches

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

I don’t recall what age I was when my mother gave me the silver medallion.    She knew I was curious about it, and that I would take good care of it, which I was/am and have.  The name on it is George Angus Sutherland.  My grandfather’s name was George Sutherland Low, so we all figured there was a connection.  For the life of me I have not found it yet.  After obsessively scouring Ancestry.com, I have a deep and wide picture of grandfather’s family tree.  Likewise, I have dug into the lineage of George Angus Sutherland.

He was born about 1847, in Aberdeenshire.  He earned the medal honoring his diligence and good conduct, while a student at The Gordon Fraser Hospital, a vocational school for boys of poor families in Aberdeen.  His name is on the 1861 Scotland Census as being 14, and residing at the school.  There are three other census records I have found that are definitely him.  In 1871, age 24, he is listed as the son and is living with his mother, Isabella Kelly age 48.  In 1881 and 1891 he is listed with his wife, Mary Sutherland.  There is no record of children.  End of his line.

What has me flummoxed is the lack of a link with the George Sutherland Low family tree.  George Angus Sutherland’s mother, Isabella Kelly, doesn’t show up on any other census records.  So where did she come from?  There must be a tie in somewhere.   I’m sure I have found her parents and family and I believe it is a correct link because of her birth year (1823), and her registration district; Old Machar, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire.

Isabella was the daughter of Mary Massie (1799-1874) and George Sutherland (1781-?).  She had two brothers and two sisters.  On their limbs I have added thirteen potential cousins of George Angus Sutherland.  In the 1841 Scotland Census,  Isabella Sutherland, her parents and siblings are on the roster of a poorhouse.  Five years later, George was born.  There is no record of a marriage, no birth/christening, only the census account in 1861, that George Angus Sutherland is fourteen.  Then in 1871, the census lists him living with his mother, Isabella Kelly , and the next record I find of Isabella Sutherland, born 1823, Old Machar, Aberdeenshire, she  is the head of a household with boarders.  A Mazeing.  And I still don’t know where the branches touched.  But somewhere they did.

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Being Narrative Beings

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

Often I will awaken after midnight and have a difficult time returning to sleep.  One of the methods I use to lull myself is to turn on the radio, low enough that it doesn’t disturb my husband, but high enough I can listen if I want to.  One very early morning this week, I was treated to New Dimensions, a program I have followed over many years.  This interview was hosted by Justine Willis Toms and featured Michael Meade, a scholar of mythology and acclaimed storyteller, of whom I was unaware.  As I listened, some of his explanations resonated deeply with me.  Today I was able to listen to the interview on the New Dimensions website.

There were many facets of this conversation that I found enlightening; the definition of apocalypse (a period of chaos and creation) and end, (loose end, the remnant where things begin again).   Meade explained that humans walk along shorelines to make decisions, because it is the place where change occurs, the betwixt and between.  I love that.  And the one gem that prompted me to review the tape more than once is how he understands the importance of stories.  “Relationship is built on sharing deeper aspects of the story.  We are narrative beings and part of our creativity comes from finding out where in the story we belong.”

This idea confirms my comfort that I am right where I should be; part facilitator, part interpreter, and primarily scribe of my father’s story and that of his father.

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Almost Empty Ferry

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

In 2007, Creighton and I spirited ourselves away to Orcas Island, for the week of Thanksgiving.  Although I missed being with family, the quiet solitude was healing.  In summer the Ferries teem with people from all walks of life and many nations, the car decks are stuffed with autos of every variety, old VW Vans, RV’s pulling boats, families, dogs, bicycle campers, the works.  In November, it was quite a different scene.  The photos I took tell the story.

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Ninety Years

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

At the advanced age of ninety, my father is stuck and discouraged.  Whenever I visit him, the litany of grievances about his physical health, medications, and the condition of his home must be rehashed.  He sees them as obstacles that keep him from moving forward.  At least once a month, I make the 200 mile round trip to  listen attentively, empathize with him, and stay connected.  In the past year my priority during our chats has changed from trying to influence him to proceed in a direction his children believe is best for him, to encouraging him to tell me his stories.  My goal now is to get as much of his personal history written as is possible in the ever narrowing window of time we have left to be together.

Yesterday, I put my mini recorder on the table beside him, demonstrating that we did not need to speak into it, just talk normally and forget it was there.  In an earlier email I had included five starter questions that Storycorps suggests on their website.  We both had copies of them.  Dad teared up at the first one, “What was the happiest moment of your life?”  After a long pause, he said he had given the second question some thought.  For close to an hour he told me of his young life, revealing events he had never before told any of his four children.

This morning I listened to part of the tape and know this process is going to work.   Priceless, more precious to me than anything, this opportunity to listen as he tells us his story.

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Porcelain Berry Vine

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

Everything in nature is perfect, even though it may not appear so to the human eye.  What I want to do with my drawings is transform a flat surface, using color and texture, so that my subject appears three dimensional.  I consider it a blessing when the drawing reveals the subject’s natural loveliness, and sensual opulence.

Drawing in progress:

 Ampelopsis brevipedunculata ‘Elegans’
Family:  Vitaceae (vee-TAY-see-ee)
Genus:  Ampelopsis (am-pel-OP-sis)
Species:  brevipedunculata (brev-ee-ped-un-kew-LAY-tun)
Cultivar:  Elegans
or, in common parlance:  Variegated Porcelain Berry Vine

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Harbingers

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

chickadees feast
woodpeckers cling
hummingbirds spar
lapping long draughts

ever more slowly
koi course

last light profiles
pear tinged poplars
against steely blue sky

maple leaves
big as dinner plates
lie scattered
wet

shreds of storm clouds
tangle in branches

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Shades of Autumn

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

This gallery contains 18 photos.

I am keeping a close eye on that one big Brandywine Heirloom Tomato that is ripening in my kitchen counter colander.  I only get two or three of them to mature (due to our cool PNW summers and falls) and … Continue reading →

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Approaching Zebra

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

I took this photo inside the Old Point Loma Lighthouse, from the top of the stairs looking up at the searchlight in its glass paneled ceiling.  I titled the photo Zebra 2, knowing Creighton would understand the reference. There was a coincidental, yet distinct resemblance to a photo I’d taken in 1980,  looking up at the ceiling inside the Seattle Kingdome.  He had given that photo the title –

Approaching Zebra.

Though the dome was demolished long ago, my image of it and happy memories of watching Seattle Mariner baseball games there, remain to this day.

In the end it really is all about perspective. 

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Batshit Tidbits

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Lindy Le Coq

In a company of widgeons,
huddled under a cloud of bats,
a parliament of owls and
a wisdom of wombats
remark upon a loveliness of ladybirds.

A convocation of eagles
approach a tower of giraffes
who are watching a memory of elephants
applaud a cast of falcons.

In the distance, a flutter of butterflies
and a charm of finches
ignore a scold of jays
preferring instead
a flamboyance of flamingos.

Spurred into action by a doading of sheldrake,
a posse of turkeys, gabbling loudly to encourage a mutation of thrush, are startled senseless by a smack of jellyfish.

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