I recently spent ten days or so in the Northeast: not quite a week with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adrian_turtle in the Boston area, and then a couple of days with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cattitude and his family in Niskayuna (it's near Albany, N.Y.). There was no specific connection between the two visits, but Boston and Niskayuna are a lot closer to each other than either is to Seattle; flying across the country once, and a train from Boston to Albany, seemed more feasible than two cross-country trips close together*. Adrian and I had a pleasant week together (despite the heat), without much worth posting about.
We were in Niskayuna for an informal memorial gathering for Cattitude's mother, who died in February. She hadn't wanted any sort of funeral or memorial, but at least one of her children did, so the compromise was to get people together, and go to a nearby park that she loved and talk about her, just conversation. We dressed up a little—"a little" meaning I put on a silk shirt, and some of the other women wore skirts, and my nephew Ben complained a little about his nice clothes not being comfortable, but got to keep his blue sneakers. (He'd have been happier in shorts, I think.)
That gathering was quite pleasant: the family is donating a memorial bench, for just outside the library, where it can be used for story hour as well as by people who sit and read or use the library's wifi. The original thought had been a tree, but the park is well-supplied with memorial trees already. I like how they've done it, each tree has a plaque that names the person in whose memory it was donated and then says a little about the kind of tree: one noted that the species was imported from Europe in Colonial times; another, that it's related to the American elm but resistant to elm blight. But a bench will be more useful than another tree, and probably more noticeable.
I got to hear a bit more about Cattitude's mother—I liked her, but we hadn't spent a lot of time together, for reasons at least partly of geography—and his and his sibling's childhoods. (They lived in Schenectady when he was young, then the family moved to northern Westchester.** When Cattitude's father retired, they moved back to the Albany/Schenectady area, and his father is now an adjunct professor at SUNY Albany, meaning he gets lab space and sometimes answers questions from grad students. He's still publishing occasionally, with "SUNY Albany" on the papers next to his name.)
It was a bit overwhelming having that many of Cattitude's relatives around; his father, all three of his siblings and their spouses, and four of his five nieces and nephews (the fifth is in the middle of a research project in Africa). I think it may have been more overwhelming for him than for me; but expecting that shape of weekend is why I didn't get in touch with anyone in the Boston area other than Adrian, this visit.
Cattitude's father, Tom, is a collector (as is Cattitude, a bit, though in slightly different directions), and had accumulated a house full of stuff, mostly three-dimensional stuff (vases and statues and small Roman and Carthaginian sculptures of heads and…) along with some prints and paintings. He has decided it's time to disperse at least some of that, but wants to keep it in the family, so he is urging his children and grandchildren, and children-in-law, to take things. I mention the heads because his father gave them to Cattitude after his last visit.
It's a little tricky for us, both because we don't have a lot of space and because our tastes are somewhat different: we've had no trouble selecting furniture we both like, for example, but I realized a while ago that there's no point buying art if he's not there, because he probably won't like it, and vice versa. So we selected a few things, including three metal toy llamas with wheels that I think someone else had brought up from the basement and then changed their mind about. Most of the other children and their spouses took more stuff, it seemed like. One of my nieces is in the process of setting up housekeeping, and will now be doing it with, among other things, her grandparents' silver tea set, along with some more everyday dishes. We also took some glass bowls that I suspect aren't really practical, if only because I'm not sure where we'll store them, but we can deal with that when they arrive. The llamas are already here, because I thought "hey, those are cool" after we'd sealed a box with the bowls and a statue and an odd Chinese vase that Cattitude likes.
I have a silver pendant Adrian gave me, that I wear fairly often, and almost always when I'm visiting her; I also find it a comforting reminder of her, so I'm more likely to wear it in potentially stressful situations. And I had no idea what shape of memorial we were looking at except that it would be outdoors. So I had that on, and my sister-in-law Cathy asked me what it meant. I said it was a love token, and translated the Hebrew (while noting that I don't actually speak Hebrew myself), and let the conversation drift. I'm not sure why I elided who I'd gotten it from—maybe just that I felt somewhat surrounded by Cattitude's family. But the next morning, in their car—we were staying in the same motel, so they could give us rides to Cattitude's father's house—she asked whether Cattitude had given it to me, and I said no, it was from my girlfriend. I don't remember what Cathy said in reply; acknowledgement and maybe vague topic change rather than follow-up, I think. It occurred to me afterward that that's not a question she'd have been likely to ask unless she had a hunch about the answer. When we talked in the airport a couple of hours later, Cattitude said that he had been out about poly/the shape of our relationship(s) to his mother, but didn't know whether she'd said anything to rest of the family. I suspect Cathy or Don (Cattitude's older brother) may say something to other relatives, but it's going to be hard to be scandalized given that Cattitude was there for the entire conversation, being very matter-of-fact about it, and everyone knew I was coming from a week in Boston with her (rather than having traveled east with him). "Girlfriend" is ambiguous in many American contexts when used by one woman of another; "this is my beloved, and my beloved is mine" make it pretty clear that in this case it means a romantic partnership.
I think I'd have rather had that conversation with Cattitude's other brother, Peter, and his wife, because I generally like them better, and might actually have said a bit more about the relationship if it had been them. But I realized late in that visit that Cathy's conversational style felt as though she'd trained as a reporter and never learned when to turn it off. It felt as though she spent a lot of time asking me slightly probing questions, with less back-and-forth or discussion of less personal topics than most people use. But I wear that pendant as a symbol, and it's not just for me and Adrian to see. (Cattitude doesn't keep in close touch with his siblings; I don't know whether they do with each other, and hence how likely we are to be talked about if it didn't come up in the few hours after we left for the airport.)
*(Especially since I'll be going to Montreal soon, so it would have been three cross-continental trips in about five weeks; two in four weeks will, I hope, prove to have been less tiring.)
**that's a bit north of New York City, on the commuter raile, and more suburban by the 1990s than it was when they moved in.
adrian_turtle in the Boston area, and then a couple of days with cattitude and his family in Niskayuna (it's near Albany, N.Y.). There was no specific connection between the two visits, but Boston and Niskayuna are a lot closer to each other than either is to Seattle; flying across the country once, and a train from Boston to Albany, seemed more feasible than two cross-country trips close together*. Adrian and I had a pleasant week together (despite the heat), without much worth posting about.We were in Niskayuna for an informal memorial gathering for Cattitude's mother, who died in February. She hadn't wanted any sort of funeral or memorial, but at least one of her children did, so the compromise was to get people together, and go to a nearby park that she loved and talk about her, just conversation. We dressed up a little—"a little" meaning I put on a silk shirt, and some of the other women wore skirts, and my nephew Ben complained a little about his nice clothes not being comfortable, but got to keep his blue sneakers. (He'd have been happier in shorts, I think.)
That gathering was quite pleasant: the family is donating a memorial bench, for just outside the library, where it can be used for story hour as well as by people who sit and read or use the library's wifi. The original thought had been a tree, but the park is well-supplied with memorial trees already. I like how they've done it, each tree has a plaque that names the person in whose memory it was donated and then says a little about the kind of tree: one noted that the species was imported from Europe in Colonial times; another, that it's related to the American elm but resistant to elm blight. But a bench will be more useful than another tree, and probably more noticeable.
I got to hear a bit more about Cattitude's mother—I liked her, but we hadn't spent a lot of time together, for reasons at least partly of geography—and his and his sibling's childhoods. (They lived in Schenectady when he was young, then the family moved to northern Westchester.** When Cattitude's father retired, they moved back to the Albany/Schenectady area, and his father is now an adjunct professor at SUNY Albany, meaning he gets lab space and sometimes answers questions from grad students. He's still publishing occasionally, with "SUNY Albany" on the papers next to his name.)
It was a bit overwhelming having that many of Cattitude's relatives around; his father, all three of his siblings and their spouses, and four of his five nieces and nephews (the fifth is in the middle of a research project in Africa). I think it may have been more overwhelming for him than for me; but expecting that shape of weekend is why I didn't get in touch with anyone in the Boston area other than Adrian, this visit.
Cattitude's father, Tom, is a collector (as is Cattitude, a bit, though in slightly different directions), and had accumulated a house full of stuff, mostly three-dimensional stuff (vases and statues and small Roman and Carthaginian sculptures of heads and…) along with some prints and paintings. He has decided it's time to disperse at least some of that, but wants to keep it in the family, so he is urging his children and grandchildren, and children-in-law, to take things. I mention the heads because his father gave them to Cattitude after his last visit.
It's a little tricky for us, both because we don't have a lot of space and because our tastes are somewhat different: we've had no trouble selecting furniture we both like, for example, but I realized a while ago that there's no point buying art if he's not there, because he probably won't like it, and vice versa. So we selected a few things, including three metal toy llamas with wheels that I think someone else had brought up from the basement and then changed their mind about. Most of the other children and their spouses took more stuff, it seemed like. One of my nieces is in the process of setting up housekeeping, and will now be doing it with, among other things, her grandparents' silver tea set, along with some more everyday dishes. We also took some glass bowls that I suspect aren't really practical, if only because I'm not sure where we'll store them, but we can deal with that when they arrive. The llamas are already here, because I thought "hey, those are cool" after we'd sealed a box with the bowls and a statue and an odd Chinese vase that Cattitude likes.
I have a silver pendant Adrian gave me, that I wear fairly often, and almost always when I'm visiting her; I also find it a comforting reminder of her, so I'm more likely to wear it in potentially stressful situations. And I had no idea what shape of memorial we were looking at except that it would be outdoors. So I had that on, and my sister-in-law Cathy asked me what it meant. I said it was a love token, and translated the Hebrew (while noting that I don't actually speak Hebrew myself), and let the conversation drift. I'm not sure why I elided who I'd gotten it from—maybe just that I felt somewhat surrounded by Cattitude's family. But the next morning, in their car—we were staying in the same motel, so they could give us rides to Cattitude's father's house—she asked whether Cattitude had given it to me, and I said no, it was from my girlfriend. I don't remember what Cathy said in reply; acknowledgement and maybe vague topic change rather than follow-up, I think. It occurred to me afterward that that's not a question she'd have been likely to ask unless she had a hunch about the answer. When we talked in the airport a couple of hours later, Cattitude said that he had been out about poly/the shape of our relationship(s) to his mother, but didn't know whether she'd said anything to rest of the family. I suspect Cathy or Don (Cattitude's older brother) may say something to other relatives, but it's going to be hard to be scandalized given that Cattitude was there for the entire conversation, being very matter-of-fact about it, and everyone knew I was coming from a week in Boston with her (rather than having traveled east with him). "Girlfriend" is ambiguous in many American contexts when used by one woman of another; "this is my beloved, and my beloved is mine" make it pretty clear that in this case it means a romantic partnership.
I think I'd have rather had that conversation with Cattitude's other brother, Peter, and his wife, because I generally like them better, and might actually have said a bit more about the relationship if it had been them. But I realized late in that visit that Cathy's conversational style felt as though she'd trained as a reporter and never learned when to turn it off. It felt as though she spent a lot of time asking me slightly probing questions, with less back-and-forth or discussion of less personal topics than most people use. But I wear that pendant as a symbol, and it's not just for me and Adrian to see. (Cattitude doesn't keep in close touch with his siblings; I don't know whether they do with each other, and hence how likely we are to be talked about if it didn't come up in the few hours after we left for the airport.)
*(Especially since I'll be going to Montreal soon, so it would have been three cross-continental trips in about five weeks; two in four weeks will, I hope, prove to have been less tiring.)
**that's a bit north of New York City, on the commuter raile, and more suburban by the 1990s than it was when they moved in.
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