Leda Begenzwin

When my daughter was little she had an alter-ego named Leda Begenzwin.  Leda was married to MR. Juja Begenzwin who worked at his computer way too much, missing the wonders of nature and the outdoors.  Leda made ginger cookies and sometimes we'd have tea.  We were very close friends.  Leda had an active social life and a number of children, including Flower and Billy.  I wish I remembered more about her because I know there were a great many details.  Luckily my dad is a packrat and he saved this email I sent him nearly 14 years ago:

"Yesterday Leda Begenzwin's sister Ginny came to visit.  She dresses just like Leda, but you can tell she's NOT Leda because her voice is different and she wears different shoes.  Ginny has a baby growing in her belly (Patrick's small sized basket ball).  When I asked Ginny how she got the baby, she told me she made it with her friend Maria.  Leda and Ginny have a third sister, Lynne, who I haven't met yet.  All three sisters have guitars and they like to play music together. Last night we had to ask Leda to leave because it was Harper's bed time."

I'll try to find a picture of Leda to post.  She was quite a character.  I heard a number of years ago that she'd passed away but then I convinced myself that she'd just moved to California and honestly, I'm not sure which is true. Every once in a while I think I see her waiting for a bus in Montreal. We're always driving by and I haven't been able to stop and say "hello."

Everybody is Somebody

Many of you know that Kali, a very fine descendant of Champ, will be opening for Taj Mahal on February 14th at The Flying Monkey in Plymouth, NH.  Some of you may not know just how special this connection truly is.  This 4 minute video will explain.





OMG, I put February 15th on the end of the movie and it's the 14th!  Too hard to redo now!.

And okay, the Chinese blessing isn't directly part of this story of opening for Taj, but I love it and perhaps that blessing had something to do with this.

For those of you Descendants who want to see more I may try to upload the whole 30+ minute file.  It's incredible to watch us when we were young and so bittersweet to see the ones we loved who are no longer with us.  And to be able to share their voices and images with our kids.  But I digress...this is about the wonderful, amazing and beautiful Kali!

Update: For cousins and others who want to see more of this special day: http://youtu.be/j7dYoma7kY8

My Nicest Neighbor Made me Cry

A week or so ago I posted on Facebook that a woman I know is starting a new household and we were looking for donations, mostly of furniture.  My friend, CF, privately messaged me that while she didn't have any furniture, she'd love to put together a care package;  something to welcome my friend to her new home.  We worked out details to get together where I could give her the spiced nuts my mom, her childhood friend, made her for Christmas and where she could drop off the household goods for me to bring to the woman who was staring anew.  Simple.  Nice.

As life and weather goes, we finally connected tonight when she stopped by our house.  As an aside, CF has stopped by our house for other reasons that all involve helping us meet our requirements as residents of our town. We are shameful!  CF helps us rise above our shame and meet our obligations to register our dogs and remember to vote.  She's the best! And we feel very lucky and appreciative.

Tonight she stopped in and navigated our icy driveway with her care package but added a $bill to the mix, a surprise.  To paraphrase, she expressed that, sure, people in transition need stuff, but there is some stuff they just need to be able to buy themselves.  She wanted to support that; to support someone to make their own decisions about what they need and want in a time of stress and transition.  My generous friend had to stand there while I broke out in tears, only in part for her generosity, but much more for her understanding.  I'm so sick and tired of people not believing in survivors' abilities to make their own decisions.  Wiser folk than me have said, "domestic violence makes you poor" and as I return to direct advocacy, every survivor I work with has had her credit comprised and her financial sense questioned as a component of the abuse.  No one trusts a survivor with cash.  And so as a community, when we give only goods and vouchers, though we mean to help and do, we are complicit with the message of batterers that survivors can't manage their money, that they need someone else to take control.  So while my friend's gift of cash was generous, my eyes welled up, also, because she trusted the judgment of a woman she didn't know, judge or question.  It was a demonstration that supported empowerment and was bigger than the gift itself.  It made my day, to say the least.

The Political Education of an Eleven Year Old Girl: a Snippet

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...So let me tell you why I robbed a bank.  First of all the group that I used to be a member of, was a political group.  We use to picket stores with high food prices, and we use to have group demonstrations in the public parks.  They were geared toward educating the people in the community about stuff like police brutality, or how racist the city government were toward black and spanish speaking people.  One of our goals were to educate the people and to organize them around their day to day needs, for instance, we use to go into a community, where the housing were real ragged and really run down, and we would put printed leaflets out in the community to the people telling them about city ordinances and housing laws and how they could all get together and make the landlords fix the houses, and bring them up to standards.  Some time we would get with the local workers and support them when they went on a strike for higher pay to meet the high cost of living, or for a better and safer working conditions in the industries.
Well later on a group of us began searching for a way to support the organization and our selves.  So we decided to take up robbing banks because we knew the government had to give the people their money back because bank money was federally insured by the federal government.  Another reason we did it was because or our political beliefs, which were take from the rich and give to the poor :), well thats why and how I got into robbing banks.

... :) Well I'm gonna go and do my stretch exercises, so you take care and remember that you can be anything you want to be, just work at it!"

Waltham

This was my first and third home.  My parents brought me home from the hospital to the second floor where we lived for a year or so.  Then after a stint in Hunts Corner, Maine trying to "get back, Honky Cat" we moved into one of the basement apartments, "still broke and out of work" as my dad says.  I remember living in the basement apartment.  There was a lady across the hall who was nice and we watched Rocky and Bullwinkle. Her boyfriend had a glass eye and one time he tried to unlock OUR apartment door thinking it was his. He was drunk.  I think it was in the bathroom here that my step sister (who was not yet my step-sister), Raina, was playing "store" all wrong so I pushed her.  Another time some other kids came to visit (maybe Richie and Jimmy) and they made a huge mess in my room.  That unsettled me.  I think these are both characteristics of an only child.  And I think it was in the kitchen here that I saw my mom cry because Bob Wills had died.  I knew right then that she was deep. It was from here that my parents sent me to an amazing and progressive nursery school.  The head teacher's name was Zen and her son, Finnegan, was my very first boyfriend.  Zen drove a Volkswagen Beatle.  I wrote my name in crayon on the church wall (the school was housed in a church) and blamed a friend.  A teacher named Andy wouldn't let another friend up from nap one day to use the bathroom and that boy peed on his matt.  I could tell, even at 4, that Andy felt terrible.  The teachers really loved us there.  They were all hippies.

I'm pretty sure this was the last place my parents lived together.  I remember seeing my dad cry once here, his head on his dresser.  Other than that, I didn't much notice that they split up, but my dad and I moved to Lexington and then my mom took me out to lunch every Thursday and we spent weekends together on the south shore.  To be honest, there was some tension amongst the grown-ups for a little while, but it was ok because I knew I was loved and very important.  I had a mom and dad, a step-dad, an exceptionally involved gram, some other nice grandparents and lots of kind aunts and uncles.   And Camp and soup.  I think I always felt very secure.

Moving to fancy Lexington was okay.  But I'm glad this is where we started out.  It's simple and sweet and hasn't changed.  That's a comfort.

Patrick and the Grands by Guest Blogger, My Mom!

Grammie and Papa Wayne took Patrick to see Monty Python's Spamalot at the Company Theater in Norwell.  I don't think this qualifies as a "spoiler", as the show is a decade old.  Near the end of the show, King Arthur and the very silly knights are still on their quest to find the Holy Grail.  They stumble on a clue that says "A101" and try to sound out what it can possibly mean, one idea is aioli, "a delicious garlic mayonnaise".  No, that's not it, so they get on their knees and ask God what it means.  A giant finger comes down from the "sky" and points to a seat in the front row, seat A101.  It's Patrick!  Patsy, King Arthur's assistant, the one who claps the coconut halves which sound like horse's hoofs as they pretend to ride, comes down from the stage, tells Patrick to stand up and "finds" the Holy Grail under Pat's seat!!  He brings Pat up onto the stage and King Arthur asks his name.  He then proclaims to the entire audience that Patrick Favreau is the peasant who found the Grail!  They give him a trophy and thank him profusely!  Pat was up on the stage at least 5 minutes, and handled it all beautifully.  The audience roared at how cute he was and Grammie and Papa were just thrilled.  When we later got autographs from the actors, they told us how pleased they were when they first noticed a kid was in that special front row seat, as kids usually handle it better than adults!  The lesson for us grandparents is that you can try and try to plan something memorable for your grandkids, but sometimes it's serendipity!!  It was great fun!

Remembering Peter

The memorial for our friend Peter is tonight.  Since his illness and passing I've been thinking about him a lot and feeling his absence.  Those of you who knew Pete know what a warm presence he was; what a kind, loving, funny and gentle guy.  In thinking about Pete I've been reflecting on how smart and well-read he was, but how he also was always genuinely interested in what the other person had to say.  He knew a lot about a lot of things, but he was no blowhard or anything like that.  In conversation he always made you feel like you had great expertise in whatever the subject and he was always curious to learn and understand.  And it was an authentic curiosity as opposed to something one might learn in a seminar on "how to win friends and influence people."  But I think it was one of the qualities that drew people to him (I don't know anyone with more friends!). Because he was such a good listener and he valued every person, every experience, every perspective.   He also had such a wonderful sense of humor and this often manifested with laughing exuberantly at your jokes so that you not only felt smart and competent in his presence but also incredibly witty and clever.  Again, this was not the least bit phony.  Peter just had a great funny bone and truly enjoyed humor or any attempts at humor.

I think these qualities also contributed to Peter being such an exceptional dad.  He enjoyed people but none more than children and especially (of course) his daughters.  He was fascinated by and deeply interested in them, in their perspective, their growth, their world. When Peter first told me about his cancer it was clear that his biggest fears about dying were for Carol and his daughters; that he wouldn't be able to take care of them, be there for them, make sure they were okay.  There's a huge community of people to honor his memory by loving and caring for his family (who are easy to love!), but of course, it's not the same and it can't be.

Peter never hesitated to ask for a favor and in return, you always knew you could turn to him if you needed help with something: a ride for the kid, assistance with a project, an errand.  Because he engaged with those around him so authentically, we all felt good, safe and comfortable to engage with him as our true selves.

Pete was very involved with the Children's Theater and now that the season has begun and kids have started rehearsing it stabs at my heart to run or drive by and know that Peter's not there.  He always laughed the loudest at the funny parts of those plays.  That old barn will miss him.

In honor of Peter, I'm going to try to be more like him.  I'm going to embrace curiosity and laughter and family and friends and music.  Thanks for helping to teach us all how to live, Friend.  We really miss you and hold you in our hearts and thoughts always.

photo credit: Bob McCann