My mother was born on 25th December. That will never change.
The way I feel about Christmas, knowing my mother’s birthday, has changed over time.
The beginning
As a young boy, like most kids, my parents’ birthdays didn’t mean anything to me. I don’t remember how old I was when I realised that my mother’s birthday and Christmas were the same day. I was just excited about Christmas presents, that I don’t think my mother's birthday occurred to me.
The grump
There was a time, when I realized my mother’s birthday was the same as Christmas that I was annoyed that my mother’s birthday was the same day as Christmas; I’d have to get TWO gifts for one day! Jeez! And to top it off my mother was impossible to shop for (much like I am now, I suppose). She always said she wanted nothing, but what sort of kid doesn’t get a gift for his mother’s birthday and Christmas?!? TWO gifts for one day! Jeez!
The sensitive kid
As I got older, I didn’t feel bad for me that my mother’s birthday was Christmas; I felt bad for her. I mean, no one outside of your family will even know it’s your birthday because they are obsessed with Christmas. I’m not one who likes to tout my birthday is coming up, but it’s at least nice to hear friends and colleagues say happy birthday to you. That doesn’t happen very much if your birthday is on Christmas because you don’t see those people. It was still a lot of work to get two gifts though.
The young adult
At some point in my life, I think it was me that came up with the idea that we shouldn’t get Christmas gifts for the adults in our family. Christmas gifts were for the kids. (I should note that I still love this idea and I like not receiving gifts from people, as odd as that may sound). At that point in my life, Christmas became more about my mother’s birthday than Christmas. 25th December was my mom’s birthday and it just happened to also be Christmas. I also looked at it as all these people in the world celebrating my mom’s birthday. I’ve always liked that view of 25th December.
The birthday after
My mother died in 2010. Her first birthday without her was very difficult for me. I remember walking around Mesa, Arizona by myself for about 45 min that afternoon, in tears. 25th December would never be the same again. On that day, I knew there were families around the world, filled with joy and happiness. My family was filled with sadness and grief.
The years since
I don’t look forward to 25th December these days, but I try to keep that to myself. I try to not even think about it. I mentioned the other day to Lauren that we don’t have any Christmas tradition, but I’m not sure I want one, because it will be another reminder of the date.
Our kid is excited and I’m doing my best to be excited for her. Knowing this year will be her last Christmas as an only child makes me want her to enjoy it all the more (nothing kills your Christmas more than your sibling getting the gift they really wanted and you getting socks).
I’ve cried every 25th December since my mother died, and I’m sure I’ll cry again this year.
Over the past few years, I try to own Christmas as my mother's day. I try to see the lights and celebrations as the world celebrating the life of the woman who made me who I am. When the day comes though, I know there will be an air of sadness over me, as there is every year.
My mother was born on 25th December. That will never change. Happy birthday, mom!
My dad's cat, Geordi, had to be put down today. He had had kidney problems for more than 1/2 of his 13-year life and it just got to be too bad this time and he had to leave us.
Geordi was Lauren's and my cat until we moved to the UK, so it's a tough day for us.
Geordi was found when he was 4 months old, along with his 3 siblings. When we went to the shelter, I was more interested in getting one of his siblings, a Calico, but the feeling wasn't mutual. It jumped out of my arms and ran away. Another one of his siblings hissed at me. Geordi walked up to my hand, sniffed my knuckles, and rubbed against them. He was our can from that moment.
We went through a lot with Geordi. Lauren naming him after Geordi La Forge; when we figured out he was loosing his baby teeth when we found teeth all over the flat over the course of a couple of months. We went through the period of him peeing in our dustpan, getting on top of our fridge, getting outside and chasing squirrels, and generally being a manic cat in our apartment. He would poke Lauren in the face to wake her up, pee on her side of the bed (never mine, for some reason), wrestle with me and sit on any grading I had to do. His incredibly loud an incessant meowing, that could both drive you crazy and also make you feel like you were having a conversation with him.
I moved him from California to Maryland with Geordi while he was recovering from surgery after one of his kidney stone problems. My mother was very ill at the time and I didn't know if bringing a cat into my parents' lives was the best thing at that time. I never got a good sense of how my mother felt about him, but he was a godsend for my dad when my mother died a few months later.
He was a different cat in Maryland. A much calmer cat, who seemed to match my dad incredibly well. Not the cat that would race around at full speed, but a cat that would take his time getting around - what was the rush in a much bigger space to live. He also became a cat that could go outside without the constant worry that he would run away. He still was a loud meower though and always would want to tell my dad about his day when my dad came home.
He was my dad's loyal companion for nearly 8 years, who my dad talked about more than anything else.
Even though I haven't seen him very much since 2010, Geordi is very much a part of my life. We talk about him all the time and just a few days ago our kid saw a cat and she immediately said that it 'looks like Geordi'. I look at him every time I unlock my iPod, looking at his regal best and have never considered changing the lock screen on that iPod.
It was cool to sit there with our kid, watching the ping pong balls drop onto the stage; hundreds of them, as the acrobats avoided getting hit by the ping pong rain.
Ping pong and acrobats. Both on one stage. Who thinks of this stuff?
It must be August in Edinburgh, when the Fringe Festival hits town, the population triples, and the smell of hamburger cooking is already wafting into my office as I come in in the morning.
I’m not a hard core Fringer who sees multiple shows a day, or even one show a day. In the past 3 years, I’ve seen about 20 shows and all but one of them were seen with our kid, so I’d say I’ve kid fringing, or kringing (and cringing) over the past few years.
Even though I’m not hard core, I like the Fringe. I like the completely bizarre costumes I see people wearing as they walk around the streets of the city. I like everything in the center of the city covered in posters, like we live in some sort of imaginary world. I don’t even mind the tourists who stop inexplicably to take a picture of something that I don’t see as picture-worthy.
I like that for one month a year, you can see just about anything you could imagine on a stage; I’ve seen a guy get kids to laugh so much about boogers while every parent in the audience looked disgusted; I’ve done several kid ceilidhs, seen improvised musicals, David Sedaris, non-improvised musicals, W. Kamau Bell, incredible physical performances, Tig Notaro, bubble performers, and some performances so bad I’ve walked out 10 minutes in (along with 2/3 of the rest of the audience). The phrase ‘meh brand’ means something in our house entirely because of a show we saw several years ago.
That being said, I also like coming home on August days, being completely removed from the fringiness of the city, on our little street where you would have no idea the population had grown by 3 times, and where you wouldn’t know that acrobats avoided getting hit by ping pong balls at about 3:15 this afternoon.
As a boy, I used to get so dirty; my mother hated it. I remember my mother scrubbing me so hard to get me clean that it hurt. She would then coat my body with Vaseline, because we lived in such a dry climate.
Seven years ago, I told this story at my mother’s funeral. I hope it was more eloquent at her funeral than the three sentences I used to start this blog because I think my eulogy to her was the most meaningful speaking I’ve ever done in my life.
My mother always seemed to have Vaseline in our house, up until she died.
After my mother died, I stayed in my parents’ house for several months, using the bathroom my mother had been using. When I moved to Edinburgh, I ended up taking some things from that bathroom, mainly for nostalgia purposes. One of the things I took was a big tub of Vaseline my mother must have been using. It’s not the sort of thing you think of taking when you’re moving internationally, but it just seemed like the thing to do.
That tub of Vaseline has been with us since then.
I get dry spots on my knees and, when I care enough, I dig through our closet and find that tub. I sometimes get a dry patch between two of my fingers and when I care enough, I dig through our closet and find that tub.
A few of months ago, we noticed that no matter how much lotion we would put on our kid’s legs, they would get ashy and dry. We started using baby oil on her skin, but she would still end up getting dry legs. Then I remembered that we had that old tub of Vaseline in a closet somewhere. I pulled out that tub of old Vaseline and we now use it on our kid.
I don’t know if I should be using 7-year old Vaseline on our kid (I don’t see an expiration date on it), but every night after I’ve scrubbed our kid (though not to the point of pain), as I am coating her body with Vaseline, I think of my mother. I think of how my mother and how she had used the same tub of Vaseline on her skin that the grandchild she never met is now has on her’s.
So there I was, in the cemetery office, with my shirt half off....
21st March will mark 7 years since my mother died. My sister has said that she is losing sleep (she responded to an email from me at 2:30 am the other day). I’m listening to Alison Krauss, whose music (for some inexplicable reason - my mother had no idea who Alison Krauss was) always reminds me of my mother.
For the first time since my mother died, I plan on going to work on the anniversary of her death (I’ve taken the day off any time it’s fallen on a weekday) and will try to make it as normal a day as I can, even though I know it won’t be. It happens to fall on the day our kid turns 4 years and 7 months so, partly as a distraction, I’m going to try and teach our kid on that day, to say that if she’s asked how old she is, she should say ‘four and seven twelfths’. I'm even considering making 7/12 of a cake to keep my mind off things.
My mother didn’t want to die (very few do, right?). Even though she was very sick, she didn’t want to accept her oncoming death to herself. I felt like many who knew her were not ready to admit it themselves either. No real plans had been made about what to do with her body after she died. I feel like I knew what my mother would have wanted, but the circumstances didn’t allow for that, partly because my mother didn’t want to accept that she was dying.
It led to some degree of family strain after her death that I won’t get into here; it’s really not worth bringing up in any more detail. All I have to say on the topic is, if you have some around you that you love - anyone - tell them. Write it down and let them know what you want with your body after you die. It’s not a fun thing to discuss, I know, but it makes things easier for everyone when that day comes.
In the end, a decision was made to bury her in Baltimore.
Why did I start the blog with the sentence I did? Death sucks and me with my shirt half off is what I think of when I think back to the time my mother died, and try to find moments of humour in that time of my life, of which there were very few.
We had this idea that on my mother’s grave placard, we might be able to place a Gye Nyame. We brought this up to the cemetery manager (I’d hate that job, by the way). She was open to trying, but had no idea what a Gye Nyame was. My dad tried describing it to her then I it hit me that I literally had one on my body; on my left shoulder blade to be specific. I had had a Gye Nyame tattoo for over 8 years at that point so the obvious thing to do was to lift my shirt up.
So there I was, in the cemetery office, with my shirt half off, showing my tattoo to the cemetery manager, who I had only just met. We all thought it was kind of a funny scene. It was a welcome break to what we had been going through over the past few days.
In the end, the cemetery manager couldn’t get the Gye Nyame on the placard, which was fine, really. To be honest, I don’t know how much my mother would have wanted a Gye Nyame.
Whenever I think about mother’s death, I think about watching basketball in the hospice in the few hours before she died; I remember my sister waking me up from a jet-lagged sleep to tell me it was time; I remember that last gasp of air my mother took; I remember calling Lauren in the very early hours of the morning. I remember a lot of things that make me feel very sad.
Then I remember showing that woman my tattoo and I chuckle. My mom would have laughed too. I miss my mother every day.
I went back digging through old blog posts before I sat down to write this. The first blog I wrote about the Oscar Nominees was short and sweet. Back then they only had 5 nominees. Those were the days, when I didn’t have to carve out time to watch 9 movies (and didn't have a kid to deal with), like I did this year.
I think there were a number of good movies in 2016, but not a lot of great ones. I still hold 1994 as the best year of movies in my adult life, for anyone who cares to know that information.
I’ve been able to find the time to watch all the Oscar Nominees again this year, and have ranked them by my preference.
I’m not normally one to cry during films, but there is a certain kind of relationship in films that always get to me. Scenes that involve mothers, children, and loss on film are my Achilles heel. I still tear up every time I see this scene, I tear up.....
If this film wasn’t such an emotional gut-punch for me, I don’t think it would be anywhere near this high on my list. I was shocked at how much this film affected me. I went into it not thinking I would like it. As a parent of an adopted child, watching a film about a guy looking for his birth mother, I was positive it would ignore the parents that raised him. The film was so much more than that. There was so much about how he lost his birth family and how hard he tried to find them, as a young boy. Seeing that part of his life really made me feel for his longing to find where he came from.
I want our kid to see this movie when she’s old enough to get it. It’s a movie that will stick with me for a long time.
My sister said she didn’t like Moonlight as much as she thought she would. Her comment got me thinking that maybe this is a film most appreciated by black men. I don’t personally know of any white people in my life that have seen this movie, so I’d be curious to hear their thoughts.
This is the movie from 2016 that I most want to see again. It’s not a movie that can be described by plot; there isn’t a plot, but there is a theme. It’s about a guy, who has grown up in not-so-great circumstances, who is most likely gay, but can’t admit that to himself.
For me, the 3 actors to play main characters at three points in his life, each gave heart-breaking performances. If film awards were not given to the person performing the role, but to the character, Chiron is my character of the year.
I also liked the way the movie ended, and I may be in the minority there, but I like that it gave me something to wonder about at the end.
This is a film I thought was great while watching it and for about 48 hours after watching it, but I know I won't remember it in a year.
I don’t know what it is about a type of movie set in or around Boston that has this effect on me: Mystic River, The Departed, Gone Baby Gone, The Town. I remember really liking every one of these movies but could tell you almost nothing about any of them now.
I like Casey Affleck and always have (he was one of my favourite things about Good Will Hunting, and that’s saying a lot, because I love that movie). I thought he was great in this and I thought Michelle Williams really pulled out all the stops for the scene that got her an Oscar nomination. One thing I didn’t care for was Lucas Heghes. He’s getting a lot of praise for his role, but I didn’t care for his performance much.
Again, good movie, liked it a great deal, but won’t remember it by summer.
I happened to see the mother of one of our kid’s friends shortly after seeing this movie and she asked what I thought. Her one line review of the movie sums up very well how I feel about it: It’s definitely more about style than substance.
When I watch a film, the story, and the way it’s told have to both be great for me to think the film is great. This story did an excellent job of telling a story; I loved the movie as a musical, I thought the songs were great, I thought the actors showed range of talent (though John Legend put them to shame on the singing front the second he opened his mouth). But the story under all of this was a pretty basic story.
This film was the opposite of La La Land. It’s all about substance and not so much about style.
As the film ended I thought to myself, that I’d really like to see the play on stage; I think I would have liked it more.
The performances were exceptional, but the film felt very ‘stagey’, as I guess it should, since it’s based on a play. This stagey feel took something away from me, but I’m not sure how it could have been improved.
Great performances, would be great on stage. As a film though, something was lost for me.
I think I read/heard too much about this film before I saw it. I thought it was just OK, to be honest.
There was talk of a twist ending, but I thought it was fairly well explained and therefore not a twist. I kept waiting for a twist that never was. Maybe I saw something people didn’t see, but Lauren had the same thoughts I did, so I can’t be just me.
The thing I liked most about this film was the score. I’m not a score person, but this score and that of Moonlight stayed with me. Scores don’t usually do that for me.
I saw this film, I thought it was decent, I didn’t really like it that much, but feel like I should see it again because I feel like I’m missing something.
There is an interesting plot line in this movie about why two brothers are robbing specific banks, and it winds up with an interesting....I don’t know if I’d call it a twist, but an interesting way things end up.
This movie got a lot of good reviews (98% on Rotten Tomatoes), and I’m wondering if it’s that thing about the plot that people really like, or the performances (which I just thought were OK), or what.
I just didn’t connect with this film, and a second viewing might be in order to better appreciate it.
I was leaving work when I saw the list of Best Picture nominees on Twitter. My first thought when I saw the list? ‘Dammit, I’m going to have to see Hacksaw Ridge’
To me, knowing almost nothing about the story, this was some religious film directed by Mel Gibson, who has been known to hit you over the head with religion and violence in his films. I didn’t really feel hit over the head with the religion aspect of the film; it is a true story and has religion as a major part, so I guess you have to go with that part of it. The violence was a bit much, but I would imagine that is what war looks like. It was gory, very gory, but again, if that’s what war is like, you have to go with it. And the war scenes were very well done, in my opinion.
I did have some problems with the story and how the guy got to the point where he wanted to join the army (I didn’t feel like the film really explained well enough his reasons) and why it wasn’t a problem for his brother to join the army and not worry about killing people - I think exploring the relationship between the brothers would have been good, but that would have added significant amount of running time.
It was better than I expected it to be, to be honest, but I won’t go championing it to people, because it’s not for everyone. You have to like war movies, and not be bothered by religion playing a role in a film to go for this.
Hidden Figures suffers/benefits from the same thing Beasts of the Southern Wild did, in my opinion. I felt that latter got a lot of praise because it was done on a low budget with untrained actors. I feel that Hidden Figures is getting a lot of praise because of the message and history behind it, and not the film itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great message movie, about true events, and I think every pre-teen girl (especially minority pre-teen girls) would benefit from watching this movie. That being said, I’m not a pre-teen girl and I felt like I was watching a movie for pre-teen girls. It felt like a Disney movie (even though it’s not). It was very soft around the edges, with very cliche scenes.
After watching this, I kept thinking I would have liked a film about the same subject a lot more, if it had Ava DuVernay behind it; she would have made it a much grittier film, and one not so much for pre-teen girls.
The film that got no love
It didn’t get a best picture and didn’t get nominated for either of the sub-categories it may have qualified for (animation and documentary). The film is Tower. I thought this film was amazing and was disappointed it didn’t get any Oscar love. Here's the trailer...
