Got an unusual comment from Christina the other day:
You were a joy to read… before twitter. Now, not so much. Seriously, have you not better things to say?
Well, the Twitter is basically a way to have something to say, frankly. I suppose everyone who’d be interested in my tweets have probably added me to their own Twitter lists, so I could probably stop posting them here. (I’m DianePatterson on Twitter, btw, in case you’re looking for me.)
But to answer your question: at the moment I haven’t found a particular raison d’être for this blog. Many of the things I’d like to talk about really aren’t fair for me to talk about much (for instance: my kids—yeah, I know, I win some kind of Mom-points for finally figuring that out) and others are just…well…
(more…)
My mother-in-law passed away last weekend. It wasn’t unexpected—she’d been sick for a while and was the reason for our whirlwind trip out to Chicago a few weeks ago—but still, it was hard. How can she not be there any more? Carole was always there, like a rock.
Actually, not like a rock. Carole was there like a tidal wave is there—anyone who knew her knew that she had energy to spare, she was always doing something, always helping with something, always talking to people. She made close lifetime friends from seat mates on plane rides. She had friends from elementary school she still visited with every week. Whenever Darin said we needed to do a big project, he suggested waiting until his mom came out to visit, because she’d either take over the project or spur us on to do it. Which she did, many, many times. There was nothing she liked better than making something happen, with the more people the better.
After Sophia was born and Carole retired, she started coming out to visit us every two or three months. She was a wonderful grandma—she loved playing with baby Sophia, taking her places, getting her things.
People tell lots of mother-in-law jokes; I can’t relate. I really liked Carole.
She got sick a couple of years ago, right after Simon was born. She’d always suffered from bipolar disease, but the depression she suffered struck her harder and lasted longer than any she’d had before. Bipolar depression is not just having a Really Bad Day. It’s a complete and radical change of the person. The doctors kept working on the chemical cocktails, trying to improve the chemistry, but for whatever reason, her condition didn’t really improve.
Then a few years ago she developed cancer. First, it was breast cancer, and she had a mastectomy and chemo. (Strangely, right after her surgery she was back to her old self for a few days, even organizing a dinner party at her house for a group of friends.) She had a clean bill of health for a while until earlier this year, when her doctor discovered she had brain cancer, necessitating brain surgery and chemo; then they found spinal cancer, more surgery, more chemo. And then more cancer showed up. The choice became yet more radiation or chemo on an already weakened woman, or hospice care at home for two to six months. So Carole came home.
Darin and his brothers were already out there helping Steve out with Carole’s homecoming. The doctors estimated she probably had less time rather than more, so I flew out with the kids over the weekend so they could tell Grandma they loved her. Simon was afraid to go into the bedroom to see her, but Sophia marched right in there to say, “Hi!” There’s a lot of Carole in Sophia, and I hope she stays that way, because no one was ever alone around her. I couldn’t tell if Carole was even aware that the kids were there, but Steve told me later she definitely was.
During last weekend’s visit there was a memorial service at the temple in which a lot of Carole’s friends came to celebrate her life. Despite the difficulties of the last few years, everyone remembered the woman who’d always been there for them, who’d picked them up and gotten them going, who’d organized and arranged and gathered everyone together for every celebration, big and small. I’ve never seen a tighter group of friends and relatives than the group Carole tied together in Chicago. In the afternoon and evening Steve had a reception at his house for people to sit shiva with him. The entire house was full. It was really beautiful. Carole had a lot of people who loved her a whole lot.
As we were leaving Steve’s house that night, the kids were jumping around, telling Grandpa good night and they’d see him in the morning. And I almost said, “Hey, keep it down, Grandma’s sleeping.” It dawned on me at the last second that no, in fact she’s not. I might be having a relayed reaction to really understanding that she’s gone. It just doesn’t seem possible. It isn’t fair.
Bye Carole. We already miss you so much.
For those of you who have been waiting with bated (baited?) breath, the project Darin’s been working on was finally announced at MacWorld: Safari.
What’s amazing to me is the cult of secrecy that has successfully permeated Apple. When I worked there, it seemed like every other person had a hotline to the Mercury News on their office phone—if you wanted to know what was going on at the company, just pick up the paper. But now secret projects are apparently staying secret, even within Apple.
While I was away from Nobody Knows Anything, Darin’s job situation changed a few times — he was with Eazel, then Eazel was no more, then Darin contracted for a while. Contracting in 2001 was not quite like contracting in 1997. Darin still had plenty of work, but he had to work harder to find it. Yes, I know: we can all hear the world’s tiniest violin playing in the background. But still, when you’re four months pregnant, the lack of consulting jobs worry you just a tad. Not to mention the quite considerable factor of health insurance–
You wanna start a fight with me? Tell me how great the healthcare system is in this country for anyone who isn’t megarich or in the Congress. We were paying $500 a month for what basically came down to catastrophic health insurance and out of pocket for everything else.
(deep breath) (counts to 10) (back to topic)
–So last year around this time, despite being my nauseated from pregnancy and his general reluctance to travel away from me and Fia, I encouraged him to go up to MacWorld and chat with buds he ran into there and he did.
And I am so glad he did. He ran into a few people and reminded them of his existence. Which was good, because a job opened up that he was uniquely suited for and Apple Computer hired him to work long-distance. So he’s back at Apple. Doing what I can’t tell you, at least not yet. (N.B. to anyone from Apple who might read this: of course I don’t know what Darin’s working on. He hasn’t told me either.)
Both of Darin’s brothers work at Apple as well, in very different departments. Mitch works on the iPod, Scott works on Java. I have studied this text intently but there’s nothing in there about “when the three tall eagles from the park of the high lands toil in the service of Steve” or anything like that, so you can all relax.
Given that his brothers live in the Bay Area and my family lives in the Bay Area and Darin’s job is in the Bay Area, we are feeling quite a bit of pull to move back there. There are lots of reasons to go, and plenty of reasons to stay here in Los Angeles too. (A really primary one is: we have a great house here, and in the Bay Area we’d be able to afford what, a trailer?)
In case you hear some ambivalence in this journal about what our future holds, you now know why.