Author Archives: Sans Souci

94. Mother-Daughter Journey: Her a Monsa

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  Her a Monsa. My grandparents lived in Brooklyn. My mother and father married and lived with my grandparents after the war. The War. There was a housing shortage and they managed to land an apartment in Stuyvesant Town, a Met Life development primarily for war veterans in Manhattan. It was still being built when my parents moved in and they paid a pittance for rent (in our present terms).  First a one bedroom. Then a two bedroom. Grandma couldn’t read or write; in Russia, girls were forbidden to be schooled. This was Kiev and the Tsar was in charge; … Continue reading →

93: Mother-Daughter Journey: The Tray Against the Wall

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  “YOU NEVER BELIEVE ME!” Now she is the child who may or may not have taken something. Or carelessly crossed a street. Or misjudged the contents of a glass, or what was or was not in the closet. Now she is the child. She hung up on me.” I wrote about this here. For over a week I did not hear from my mother. She was cognizant that she had hung up on me, in fact she told the social worker that she was well aware and would call me “next week.” “Next week” came and went. As for … Continue reading →

92: Mother-Daughter Journey: Finding Your Mother

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Taken at The Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY   As you know, I have been blogging about my mother for a number of years. In over ninety posts I have spoken about our relationship, the aging-journey, the observations and most of all my fears, perhaps selfish, as I internalize what I see and feel about my mother and her slow departure: she is now ninety-nine. I don’t want to become my mother. But, I had another “mother” and I miss her: she was my colleague, Sylvia. Sylvia was the school psychologist on our three-person team who was the queen of evaluations. … Continue reading →

91. Mother-Daughter Journey: The Big Bull Face-Off: J’Accuse!

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When I wrote the previous blog and then lost it, I failed to realize when reconstructing it that there were other things on my mind. You can call it revenge but it is likely more like justice for the elderly. If the elderly aren’t treated righteously now, when we “get there,” we will be screwed. Here’s what I wanted to add. While my mother has always tended to see other people as a threat, as untrustworthy and nosy, I always had the opposite approach; until they proved themselves otherwise. You decide. And, by the way, what would you do? For … Continue reading →

90. Mother-Daughter Journey: The Grand Slam

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[This is quite unreal but typical for a period of Mercury in Retrograde: I just lost, to a POOF of a moment, an entire blog, and I am pissed! This, after ongoing miscommunications and missing emails for weeks.  So, let me try to reconstruct it …     My tale of woe began last Friday when my recently purchased iPhone 7+ and I were having breakfast. All was well (though according the The New York Times, it was not.) Nothing strange was going on at that moment although I had visited the apple store two days prior with questions about … Continue reading →

89. Mother-Daughter Journey: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

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The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion. The tunnel is. Where was I? It is now the middle of the sixth week of my ongoing challenges—to advocate on behalf of my mother; I continue to spin. Just when I think I can take some time off, the phone rings. It’s complicated. We are at a turning point. Actually, we are at several turning points. The boxes continue to pile with folders, the folders continue to expand. 1. I am still up against my mother’s doctor’s office. I have sent fax after fax, made call after … Continue reading →

88. Mother-Daughter Journey: The Fearless Girl Won…Picking Through The Rubble

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A month has passed since I began tackling issue after issue. I spent full days on the phone trying to sort out a never-ending pile of documents that made little sense. I made calls that were never returned…well, actually, one woman I had been calling got back to me more than two weeks later. In the previous post I listed what was happening. The underlying problem is that one can’t get through to people, and that the people one wants, if not needs to get though to conveniently makes themselves unavailable. I have observed this over and over again. PhotoArt: … Continue reading →

Saturday Rant: Something is Rotten in the State of …

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  Brazil’s Largest Food Companies Raided in Tainted Meat Scandal Read about it here.     We are all connected… As the world turns. Should we be surprised by corruption in the Brazilian meat-packing industry? We’ve seen it here ourselves many years ago when Upton Sinclair’s book revealed the industry’s atrocities and shocked us into new federal food safety laws. The sad thing is that the tainted meat in Brazil was destined to be the lunches of school children. But, take a look…China and their scandals, some of which include lead paint in toys, melamine poisoned milk and baby formula… … Continue reading →

87. Mother-Daughter Journey: I Am The Tired, Fearless Girl

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The fearless girl sculpture facing the bull at Wall Street, NYC During the week I did a mini blog on facebook about my day, I posted the above photo. I awakened on that day and told myself that nothing was going to get in the way of solving an issue with my mother. That issue is small in comparison to what I face now. I feel like I am constantly being shot at with laser-bullets that are filled with problems. Just when I think I can breathe I can’t catch my breath. This is what is being shot at me … Continue reading →

On Relationships: The Essence of Love

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This morning, over coffee, I came across an article, in Sunday’s the New York Times which resonated with me. If you are on Facebook, you have experienced the innumerable cross-species relationships between animals: kittens and puppies, dogs and cats, elephants and ducks, whatever seemingly bizarre combo you can conjure. We were told when we were kids that love could never happen between differences, that fighting like “cats and dogs” would be a given between those two groups. Little did we know that animals can transcend those “givens,” and that the most incredible relationships can occur when there is an opportunity; … Continue reading →

January: Wasn’t Mercury in Retrograde Supposed to Have Ended??

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This has been one of the strangest months (for many reasons, but I shall not go into politics); it feels like something has been fiddling with communication; I’ve been cleaning up messes all month. This includes not only phone and email communications and interpreting, but snags in orders, deliveries, mail, the disappearance of one outdoor neighborhood kitty and the return of another that was gone for ages. Years ago, my astronomy class, (astrophysics by text book, star-gazing by night) had to meet atop Shepard Hall, a chocolate cake-looking Gothic building on the north campus of C.C.N.Y. There, as we shivered … Continue reading →

Nights of Broken Glass

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    Sometimes I lose track of hours, of days. I am scattered in my focus dealing with household issues, elderly parent issues and paperwork. I step back and find I have taken little time for myself. There are days when I don’t even leave the house, let alone get dressed.   Thursday was one of those days. It was the day after I had spent a good hour on the phone with a lawyer about pursuing a malpractice case (re: husband), and that has been left hanging because the lawyer he recommended I speak to didn’t return my call. … Continue reading →

New Musicians, Great New Music: Lo Moon

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Lo Moon I’d like to introduce the group, Lo Moon. Matt Lowell is the son of my doctor (of more than thirty years), he is an amazing musician who has finally made it, arrived. He’s out in L.A. and got a COLUMBIA contract. Way to go. Visit this and scroll down to read and give a listen. Or this:    

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Song In My Head Tuesday: The Band

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I switched on PBS the other night and fell into some nostalgic reverie. After that I have been unable to get the song, “It Makes No Difference” out of my head. (see video at 10:42) Call it post-election-funk, or disbelief each time I read the newspaper at the state of this world. I do believe we are going through a strange period in history and I do believe that even knowing and understanding history is not changing anything in the present. So, I pack my mental bags and leave to my sci-fi fantasy world which includes: Westworld, Orphan Black, Game … Continue reading →

86. Mother-Daughter Journey: On All Things Real and Perceived

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Happy Sunday from a rainy New York City, friends. I’m glad you’re here as I need to unload. Life is funny: it is almost as if I am living in a ping pong game, I being the ball, am being batted over the net as the caretaker between the two teams: husband on one side and mother on the other. To wit: husband’s game is tomorrow, the day we journey to Manhattan to two different hospital buildings–one for a C-T scan and another, nine blocks away to have his twenty plus metal staples removed from his head and sutures removed … Continue reading →

That Was Spinal Tap: This Is Brain Shunt

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The last we spoke we had learned via a spinal tap that the removal of some cerebral spinal fluid caused a notable improvement in walk and gait. So on to the neurosurgeon, a brilliant young man and assistant professor whose specialty is brain tumors. Thankfully, that is not what we are contending with, however, I know of two people who are making progress in dealing with tumors of different types at this very hospital. It seems to be THE PLACE for New Yorkers to get cutting edge medical care. In the middle of the month, surgery to install a brain … Continue reading →

Health and Hope: This is Spinal Tap

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This blog picks up where this one left off. We met with a lovely, young, brilliant neurologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital who is also an assistant Professor and doctor of pharmacology. She went over the MRI’s and deemed them “abnormal.” The recommendation was a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) to withdraw cerebral spinal fluid for evaluation and to assess pressure. This is what Dr. H recommended except he wanted to do this in his office and Dr. V. wanted this done in the hospital under radiological guidance. It was obvious we were in the correct place. In addition, she wanted … Continue reading →