IM Dedd did an absolutely brilliant video that shows a whole other side of the Dedd Guy. I liked it.
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Here’s a link to an advert Michael J Fox did. It’s very hard for me to understand people who put zygotes above the already living. This broke my heart as it will yours.
If it doesn’t something is seriously wrong with you.
In my world we value life. We all watched Michael J Fox grow up, or grew up with him, or something.
Michael J Fox has the best of everything available to him. He deserves to live a long and happy life.
I can tell from the video what stage he’s at, and what happens next is something you don’t want to know about. I pray that he stays at this stage for a long long time or until a miracle happens.
Stem cell research might provide that miracle. Here’s where I’m supposed to say, leave a comment. However, if you believe that zygotes have more rights than the already living, don’t come near here, and just pray that nobody in your family or any of your friends ever come down with a debilitating condition, because prayers are all you’re going to have.
If you value human life vote Democrat. if you think you value human life because you love those zygotes, you have no idea what life’s about.
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Cooper has a wonderful post and video at Taking Place. Even got the name right.
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I don’t usually write about my day-to-day life, but I can open a page of Courting at random and remember the entire day. I’m not sure why I can, or why remembering precisely is important to me. Nobody remembers precisely. There have been countless book and movies about people remembering the same incident through different eyes.
But my Mom had a truly precise mind. She memorized everything that she saw, every piece of information that might be vital. I admired that and seemed to have some of the same abilities. I needed to remember everything because I’m so disorganized.
The disorganization and other problems I don’t really like to talk about because why? make me seem very literal many times though I’m capable of very abstract thought. I no longer try to make sense of my life and just live it. I back slide, but don’t beat myself over that.
There’s short fiction under this post if you don’t want to follow the “more”
But my Mom, she was organized to the max. Then she began to go blind.
My Mom could live on her own until she died because she had an amazing memory. My sister would become angry because she wouldn’t remember incidents from our childhood. How could she? She had to memorize everything just to get through the day.
One thing she never forgot was the 1968 Chicago Convention. She talked about it with more frequency:
“If we had let you go, you would have come back dead or worse.”
Worse in our family is brain damage. We didn’t celebrate when my Dad died, it was horrible but the alternative was so much worse. We had five days to get used to that, and those five days were a gift. He might have been in a coma but he was alive.
As somebody who wrote frequently about Terri Schiavo, I know many people are surprised that I feel this way. People who know me well understand. They also know that ten more days would have been five too many.
We couldn’t say good bye to my Mom. Selfishly I wanted to tell her that I loved her. Selfishly I wanted my mommy. I’m human.
I once told the Chicago Convention story to Bobbie Handman who was then Director of the New York office of People for the American Way. Bobbie brought her daughter Laura who is my age to the convention, and she brought Tom Hayden to the emergency room. I thought that too cool.
She thought that my Mom was very smart. She was. She believed in the here and now, on keeping current with news and style, though she had the black & white, white & black thing, going so all her clothes looked essentially the same.
My Mom had a life long friend who ended her life in Kittay House.
Claire was the friend I would run into at demonstrations in DC during Viet Nam. I always seemed to be holding a joint that I would have to drop.
To be arrested for protesting was honorable. Pot was something that they totally didn’t get and thought was the first step to schizophrenia. That actually was a big theory in my immediate family because of all the brilliant doctor cousins who were schizophrenic.
I debunked it on many occasions. Somehow my mother would retain her long term memory for anything to do with politics or family scandal.
My Mom ended up far from Kittay House in terms of life style. This is the hard part because I do think that she would have been better off in an independent apartment in an assisted living facility. There’s one in The Battery filled with rich old radicals.
Most people who live in Kittay House aren’t as economically comfortable. But I admire them. As I admire Claire, my Mom, Bobbie, and generation of people who never forgot to care about politics.
If they’re not asking, I am. What the hell happened to the kids in this country? My parents generation raised kids who gave a damn
Maybe it was having dinner together every night and talking about what happened in the world and in our country that did it for many of us. Maybe Viet Nam was so overtly injust. Maybe a draft had something to do with it, though most of my friends had high lottery numbers and the others, well, they got out of it. Maybe the racial tensions and the generation gap had a lot to do with it.
According to my Mom’s revisionist view of our history–remember her precise memory was only for what she needed to remember, politics and okay many scandals, though all except the family ones, political. Let me start that over while leaving in the sentence. According to her revisionist view, there had been no generation gap in our house. We could talk about anything. I would roll my eyes and “right, ma,” her to death as she hated being called “ma.”
She gave it back. Every evening at six PM I would have to read her the TV section of the paper. Even after she had an aide for four hours in the afternoon, five days a week. If I didn’t read the whole thing she would know. She would comment, moan and more about each show. I loved it when Who wants to be a Millionaire was on many days a week. She only liked that, was totally in love with Everybody Loves Raymond and would practically scream at me because I didn’t watch it. I watched every episode many times after she died.
She was crazy in love with Charlie Rose, and tried to stay up for Letterman. Of course she would wake up right after he was over, and tell me about it in one of our five phone calls a day. It took me a long time to stop picking up the phone to call her. Though a part of me did feel relieved. Her incessant teasing drove me crazy as she knew me so well.
It took me a long time to understand that the teasing meant she felt very comfortable with me and helped keep her mentally sharp. She did think that I was a bit hung up on the Florida election and the Impeachment until 9/11. I’m listening to Warren Zevon:
I want her to be happy
I want her to be free
I think that’s what my Mom wanted for me, or so it feels now.
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My husband and Zachary were both political. I don’t think that my parents could have tolerated the thought of me living with men who didn’t give a damn.
Though Zachary never really made it, his CDs are available from the Folkways Department in The Smithsonian. That always cracks me up; I have a boy friend in the permanent collection….
My Mom was alive when I found that out. Made her laugh also.
I have gotten my Mom back, and I thank every blogger who helped me find her. Thing is I feel really horrible about this country.
Met the sweetest boy the other night. He signed up in peace time, and is being deployed to Singapore in March. Took me about a minute to realize the connotations.
We can’t walk down these roads anymore. We can’t go into another war. We have to get out of this one. Those people at Kittay House are getting a bit too old too protest. But they do. And I will have to again, because I can’t betray my Mom. And the people in Kittay House. I knew them when I was a kid in Queens. They are from my earliest world.
I have never been particularly sentimental about my life. Obsessive. Crazed. Maniacal at times. But sentimental, no. I always thought that a good thing. I have a confession. I’m an optimist, really, I always think tomorrow will be better.
I think that about the USA also. But I think it needs our help. If you do nothing else, vote, and much as I hate to say this vote straight Democrat.
Oh I miss this side of me also. Just don’t have the time. Overbooked my time. But that’s no excuse for not being active. We all have to make a stand. Gawd, do I feel the ghost of my parents.
The first time I went to DC for a march, I was still in high school. It was the Pentagaton march. My future husband for a second would be arrested. All the really good ones were.
It was a different time. We had more rights. But if we all demonstrate together….
I love the story of your mother.
I love what you were and what you are.
Remember though - those kids who were raised to give a damn, well they raised kids of their own. Evidently something went very wrong.
These are different times, many parents - parents who are boomers - stressed the importance of getting into a good college, being on the best soccer team, having the best car, the best house and the best of everything to their children from the time those children were are four years old.
If not express it is implied. How the fuck does anyone expect them to have room to think about anything else.
That having been said there are thousands of people in high school and college working at making this country better, not hear enough but still.
Happy click and comment Monday.
thanks for the great post and the mention. and I guess in that order…:}
Great post about your mom, and about the state of things. Let’s hope things to come are different.
You’ve created a beautiful tribute to your mother:)Your memories are so charming.
About stem cell: I found it very interesting that Nancy Reagan changed her views when her husband was afflicted with alzheimers–I really can’t imagine why some people are against stem cell research.
And yesindeedee, I will turn out to vote with bells on! I was raised to give a damn, too. The young generation has a lot at stake, and I would think they’d be making more noise about the war, the national debt, and the environment.
Dear Pia…
My heart has been touched today, for you have touched it with this compelling post that speaks so eloquently about your mother, and the link to the MJ Fox commercial. I am reminded once again to exercise my voice with my vote. Thank you chica.
I bet you’d have survived the ‘68 convention. Is arrested worse than dead, though?
I always love it when you talk about your mom or dad or both…
I think your parents raised you perfectly…
It’s always so fascinating to read accounts of the Viet Nam stuff from people that were there, in the protests.
And as for stem cells, the living are far more important than a bunch of small barely-divided cells. I have no idea how people can make such judgements based on what they don’t know. We don’t know those cells have life in them yet, are self-aware, or are in a place where they give a damn. Living people DO give a damn about their lives. I say the same about abortion. What’s one life against another, when we don’t know?
Why not honour the life that we DO know??
And your mum sounds so awesome.. My mum is so oblivious to daliy life in anything outside her own sphere.. I think that’s why I try not to be like that, and have a clue of some kind about it all.
Thanks Pia, that was a moving post for me.
What I don’t get is that a substantial majority of stem cell research is done on cells that are not directly from the fetus.
But we put blanket bans on. I understand for sure that it’s hard to weigh one life against another, and it’s a decision that can be wrong either way you decide.
But limiting research that can save lives using placental stem cells (which are LEFT OVER) because of a rush to judgement is completely beyond me.
you are so, so right.
and thanks for the plug, my dear.
A true Pia post!
Beautiful tribute to your mother indeed and wherever she may be I am sure she is forever proud of her little girl…
Of course you know where I stand with stem cell research… I had both my kids’ cord blood banked…
Besos…
Me.
My Mom loves Letterman. Loves Regis. Loved Millionaire. Game Show Network is on at her house 90% of the time.
You may not be sentimental. But you care. If this post shows anything, it shows that.
hi pia thanks for the links! very useful!
Pia:
Just so you may understand that there are many people who see the stem cell issue differenetly than you do.
1) Many people accept that life begins at conception since a unique dna is formed that will identify that new person ofr the rest of their lives.
2) There has been no proof that embryonic stem cell research will ever lead to a cure for anything.
3) Other forms of stem cell research (adult, umbilical cord, etc.) that do not require the killing of an unborn child have led to many break throughs. This is wher the money should be going.
No, I am not a religious zealot. No, I am not a staunch Republican.
I am just a grown zygote that is glad that I have made it this far.