Phoebe Kate

A little while back, I blogged about a Brazilian priest who floated off into the sky on a chair hoisted by helium balloons.  My sisterwoman Val MacEwan posted a comment saying I needed to order Danny Deckchair from Netflix ASAP.  Which I did.

If you haven’t seen it, you need to.  Seriously.  This 2003 Australian-produced indie film is sheer delight, the sort of movie you smile and giggle all the way through and come away from feeling as euphoric as if you’ve been breathing pure oxygen with chasers of laughing gas for 90 minutes. 

It’s zany, whimsical, absurd, loony and utterly charming.  I suppose it might be loosely called a “screwball romantic comedy,” in the flaky style of the classic “Bringing Up Baby” (with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant chasing a tiger around upper-crust Connecticut enclaves) and “Continental Divide” (with John Belushi and Blair Brown watching eagles in the Rockies.)  All the cast members turn in impeccably on-point performances, the comedy is perfectly timed, the romance is low-key and uncloying, and the two main characters are hands down the cutest and most endearing people on the planet (Miranda Otto of Lord of the Rings fame and Rhys Ifans, whose face you’ll undoubtedly recognize from dozens of movies.) 

There’s not a lot of truly “feel-good” flicks out there, though dozens are advertised as such.  This is the real deal…and it takes A LOT for a movie to make me “feel good.”  Is it a life-changing movie?  Hell, no.  But it does, gently and humorously, remind us why we’ve been granted a human existence — to find our true selves, find friends who understand who we really are beneath the stereotypic facade of demographics, do good for whom we can and live the dream we didn’t know we had. 

For the hero of Danny Deckchair, it took floating off into the sky and landing in a totally different place where no one knew him.  Hopefully, for us, we won’t have to go to such extremes to accomplish the task. 

–phoebe kate              

Just recently, I got my first telecommuting job as a ghost writer.  I see myself as a charming cross between Caspar of cartoon fame and A Christmas Carol’s Spirit of Christmas Past as played by Carol Kane in Scrooged, hovering ethereally over my keyboard every day.  Ohhhhh, yeah….

Ghost writing, like blogging, is something I didn’t understand people doing until I did it myself.  I mean, why in the world would someone post their creative writing in a blog instead of submitting it to magazines and getting paid for it?  Similarly, why would writers put time and effort into writing something that isn’t going to be published under their own name?  It makes total sense to me now, of course, though I’d have a hard time saying why or how –not unlike explaining the curious gastronomic appeal of oysters to someone who’s never eaten one or why I believe in God to an agnostic or why certain pieces of music that don’t affect other people always make me cry.  Both blogging and ghost writing appeared to me as proverbial opportunistic door knockers and I’m surprised at how much I enjoy doing two things I never thought I would. 

Like the old saying goes, ”Never say never.”  

Hmmm… 

Now just exactly what else have I said “never” about???

–phoebe kate

And they’re a long, long ways from home but I’m still here.  

My son JK left for his Vietnam/Hong Kong trip on Saturday.  Today my daughter JJ headed off for Columbus OH where she is going to live for the summer.  During college breaks, they usually are at home and working their local jobs, so this has thrown me for a loop.  I’m used to a house full of kids, even if the “kids” are grown.  My Mother’s Day was bittersweet, flanked by departures — temporary, of course, but nonetheless quietly wrenching.

I’m really glad my oldest kid Davio is here for awhile.  He’s 27 and anything but a kid but he has become more of a best friend than an offspring, a truly sweet plateau to reach in the path of parenthood.  And that’s the really big payoff in procreating — at some point, if you play your cards right and tear up your official Motherhood Club I.D. card, your sweet babboo becomes your favorite pal and the relationship metamorphosizes into something new and delightfully unexpected.              

Do you ever stop being a mom?  No, not entirely.  You worry about your grown kids.  You can’t help it and your adult children understand this.  You try to help in practical ways. You try not to give unsolicited advice.  You try to let them live their lives.  Easy?  Are you kidding?   But if you wind up with a bosom buddy instead of a great big overgrown baby, it’s a tremendous pay-back for all those dirty diapers, temper tantrums, childhood diseases, school days and teenage drama you endured, and it’s well worth waiting for. 

–phoebe kate      

I’ve spent most of today thinking about my mother.  Were she alive, she’d be 98.  It rather startled me when I realized she’d be that old, but she had me, her only child, when she was in her mid-40s.  She died in 1977 at the age of 67 after five years of suffering progressively more devastating strokes.  She never got a chance to know me as a mature woman or see her grandchildren, the first of whom was born two years after her death.

My mother was a remarkable and charismatic woman.  A tall (5′10) brown-eyed natural blonde, she possessed a joi de vivre and genuine friendliness that acted like a magnet drawing people of all kinds to her.  Everyone adored her.  She loved parties, going to them and especially giving them.  She never used a cookbook, preferring to invent her own recipes (and they turned out wonderfully, needless to say.)  She designed and made all her clothes, collected jewelry and fine antiques, and was a highly competent Mrs. Fix-It around the house, doing plumbing and electrical wiring and refinishing furniture.  Up until her health failed, she ran her own interior decorating business.  Her clients included celebrities on both East and West coasts and political figures in Washington, D.C.   

She was an avid reader whose favorite authors were Shakespeare (whom she constantly quoted) and William Faulkner, a fierce bargain hunter who never paid full price for anything and a passionate lover of animals and children.  She was generous to a fault, unfailingly gracious to the people for whom others have little or no regard (cab drivers, waiters, her clients’ servants, store clerks, bums, supermarket bag boys, garbage collectors, even the IRS man who audited her) and I never heard her utter a negative word about anyone.  She drew hilarious cartoons, enjoyed playing tricks on my father and me, loved to travel and to dance and to have a good laugh (also a good martini.)    

My ruminations today turned to what I learned from my mother, something I’ve never actually thought about before.  Well, it sure wasn’t how to cook, clean or sew.  “Phoebe will spend the rest of her life doing those things,” she’d tell my father when he fussed about me having no chores to do and being generally useless around the house.  “Let the girl enjoy her childhood, for heaven’s sake.” 

My mother was a smart woman and by her example taught me the really important stuff – being kind to all God’s creatures, keeping a positive attitude and your sense of humor no matter what, holding your head high in good times and bad, developing your creativity, enjoying the moment and inventing ways to make each day fun for yourself and everyone around you.

That’s quite a legacy you left me, Ma.  I miss you.

–phoebe kate                                                  

Today I packed my middle child, 23-year-old son JK, off for three weeks in Vietnam.  He just graduated magna cum laude last week from a private college in NC with a major in Politics and a minor in Philosophy.  During his four years there, he’s taken full advantage of their impressive study-abroad program. 

This Southeast Asian trip is special, however.  It is, ostensibly, the last trip he’ll ever make with the school, his friends and his teachers.  And this trip is one he engineered.  One of his favorite professors assigned him the responsibility to recruit students for the excursion as well as to organize, plan and execute most of the arrangements. It took the better part of his senior year to accomplish this formidable task — longer than it took for him to write his honors-awarded thesis.  Sixteen students plus several faculty members are going to Vietnam and it’s going to be a memorable experience. 

As I said goodbye to my son today, I couldn’t help but remember his very first trip abroad in freshman year to India.  That trip was special to me.  Since then, I’ve said many a goodbye to this intrepid traveler of mine and you better believe none of them are easy but that first one, four years ago, was the worst. 

I’d had months to steel myself for the departure.  I told myself I wouldn’t get emotional at the airport.  I wouldn’t cry.  I’d be happy for him going someplace I wished I could — hey, what old hippie doesn’t want to visit India?  I promised myself I’d be The Quintessential Cool Mom.  My three kids have always told me I’m way cooler than any of their friends’ mothers.  Sheesh, I had no intention of blowing my rep and street cred at this late date.

Ha.  In my dreams.

After my son and I hugged and said our I Love You’s and I watched as he disappeared through the maze of security checkpoints carrying an enormous backpack that dwarfed his 6′1 frame, I began to sniffle and tear up.  My mascara started to ooze.  And then I started to cry.  All by myself in the middle of a busy major airport.  At 10:30 on a weekday morning with businesspersons giving me dirty looks.

An attractive lady about my age who was standing near me came over and asked, “Are you all right?  Was that your son you said goodbye to?  Where’s he going?”

“No,” I sputtered.  ”I’m sorry.  I’m afraid I’m not all right.  And my son is going to India.  He’s 19 and he’s never been out of this country before.”  And then, despite my best efforts, I started to sob.

That dear lady immediately hugged me and said comforting things to me.  I don’t remember exactly what, but it helped.  Something along the lines of my son looked very mature and competent and it was obvious I’d raised him to be a fine and able young man.  That this was a wonderful opportunity for him.  That being a mother was hard.  Very hard.  That saying goodbye can tear your heart out, even if the goodbye is only for awhile.

I stopped sobbing and apologized for making an idiot out of myself.  She told me her children return yearly to visit family and friends in South America and that she cries every time she sends them off, even though they’ll be back in a few weeks or months.  “In time, you get used to it,” she told me.  “But it doesn’t get any easier or hurt any less.”

I remembered that compassionate and wise lady today.  And I remembered a heroine of mine in Southern literature.  Blanche DuBois said in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.”

And sometimes, so have I. 

–phoebe kate