My mother started "collecting" bicentennial quarters soon after they started coming out. As they became scarce in circulation, all of her children started looking for them for her. One of the ways I would find them would be to gamble at the quarter slots when they were quarter slots rather than paper slots of a quarter value. One such trip, infrequent because Marilyn didn't like to gamble and I never seemed to get away on my own (which continues even now as I have yet to go gambling even with all this supposed time I have in my Life after Layoff), I found around $20 worth of bicentennial quarters.
Marilyn saw in this two opportunities: she knew that looking for specific quarters would slow my gambling down and pulling out more quarters would guarantee that I would leave the casinos with more money. So, she had me start "collecting" state quarters for her, which had yet another benefit: she got the money. She looked on the quarter fund as disaster money. It was part of her disaster preparation to maintain a little cash should some earthquake knock out electricity, phones, ... and we needed to buy something. The quarter "collection" served double duty.
Oh, when I say collection, I don't mean one of each. I mean every state quarter that made its way into my hands, made it into hers. I'm still "collecting" them.
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Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Seeing Texas: Laredo
When I was a young singer in one of the K-12 grades’ choruses, we learned several western themed songs. One had a line about being a cowboy on “the streets of Laredo.” The reality didn’t match up to the romanticized version I had created in my mind. I don’t think Marilyn had any such romantic image. She was a consummate realist but one who enjoyed seeing new places, even places she never intended to return to again.
Part of the problem was that we traveled south in Texas in the heat of the summer. I swear it was over 100 degrees even after the sun had set. My memories of Laredo are actually three, two of which are not even of Laredo.
The first thing we did was park and walk across the bridge into Nuevo Laredo and have lunch. Marilyn asked for water and I unconsciously took a sip but no more after I noticed the water worm in the glass. I pointed it out to her before she took a sip. It would be another 27 years before we would return to Mexico.
The only thing I remember about Laredo proper is our walking around the downtown before we went back to the car to find a restroom for each of us. We ultimately stopped in a hotel where the bathrooms were in the basement. In Laredo, the physics of heat rising and a lesser temperature underground, didn’t seem to apply. We did compare notes and I learned of her techniques for using the facilities in strange locals. I still don’t know how she did it without truly sitting down. But this experience was the start of something that turned into a running travel joke between us and perhaps a goal: writing a travelogue of our travels titled “whizzing through America.”
We camped further down the Texas side of the Rio Grande at a park that I may remember the name incorrectly but believed to be Zapata Park but it may have been all the way to Falcon State Park. It was a sandy park, certainly so in the camping area. It was also hot all night. With our discovered interest in facilities, we couldn’t help but note that this park just had the equivalent of Porta-potties, well used and stinking ones.
It may have been this trip that we were tooling by the King Ranch, a ranch the size of Rhode Island, going about 80 mph on a two lane, one each way, road with literally no traffic. As we zipped through one crossroad, I thought I noticed a snake. As soon as I could slow safely I turned around and confirmed that it was not only a snake but a coiled rattler. With the windows down we could definitely hear the rattling. We stayed safely in the car, did a U-turn around the snake, rolled the windows back up to use the air conditioning more effectively, and proceeded on our way, at speed. Texas was big and our time was limited. Besides, we were in a 280Z and gas was, relatively, cheap.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Part of the problem was that we traveled south in Texas in the heat of the summer. I swear it was over 100 degrees even after the sun had set. My memories of Laredo are actually three, two of which are not even of Laredo.
The first thing we did was park and walk across the bridge into Nuevo Laredo and have lunch. Marilyn asked for water and I unconsciously took a sip but no more after I noticed the water worm in the glass. I pointed it out to her before she took a sip. It would be another 27 years before we would return to Mexico.
The only thing I remember about Laredo proper is our walking around the downtown before we went back to the car to find a restroom for each of us. We ultimately stopped in a hotel where the bathrooms were in the basement. In Laredo, the physics of heat rising and a lesser temperature underground, didn’t seem to apply. We did compare notes and I learned of her techniques for using the facilities in strange locals. I still don’t know how she did it without truly sitting down. But this experience was the start of something that turned into a running travel joke between us and perhaps a goal: writing a travelogue of our travels titled “whizzing through America.”
We camped further down the Texas side of the Rio Grande at a park that I may remember the name incorrectly but believed to be Zapata Park but it may have been all the way to Falcon State Park. It was a sandy park, certainly so in the camping area. It was also hot all night. With our discovered interest in facilities, we couldn’t help but note that this park just had the equivalent of Porta-potties, well used and stinking ones.
It may have been this trip that we were tooling by the King Ranch, a ranch the size of Rhode Island, going about 80 mph on a two lane, one each way, road with literally no traffic. As we zipped through one crossroad, I thought I noticed a snake. As soon as I could slow safely I turned around and confirmed that it was not only a snake but a coiled rattler. With the windows down we could definitely hear the rattling. We stayed safely in the car, did a U-turn around the snake, rolled the windows back up to use the air conditioning more effectively, and proceeded on our way, at speed. Texas was big and our time was limited. Besides, we were in a 280Z and gas was, relatively, cheap.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Traveling Marilyn (Texas)
Even though I “captured” Marilyn with a fantastic traveling vacation, I didn’t truly understand how much she loved traveling until we moved to Houston, Texas. (Come to think of it, she did take me to a Canadian Rail Travelogue documentary at The Ohio State University. That was what prompted our long and unfulfilled desire to visit Banff.) She was an unabashed tour guide. She always loved to show her visitors the sights, many of which she had already scoped out, in person. She read tour books. She read the travel section in the newspaper. She watched all the travel shows on TV. Once based in our Houston apartment, we were able to put her research into practice.
She went to the tourist spots but also liked the out of the way spots. Our first year in Houston was spent at work during the week and on the road every weekend. It slowed down when we bought our first house and slowed even more when we started having children, but it never stopped. As our children got older, it picked up again. She loved the planning, the anticipation. She made all our trips a great experience.
Over the eight plus years we lived in Houston, went everywhere in and around Houston and Texas, except Big Bend and Amarillo. She always wanted to see Big Bend in the spring for all the desert flowers, but we were otherwise occupied: new house, new children, other uses for our limited vacation time.
We did see most of the rest of Texas, sometimes several times. Many of these are worthy of separate topics:
• Spots in and around Houston, including Bayou Bend, Gilley’s, San Jacinto Inn, Johnson Space Center, Galveston, …
• Mustang and Padre Island, along with Corpus Christi. (We returned regularly to Mustang Island.)
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Several camping and cabin excursions north, west, and south of Houston
As in many of our living places, if you could find a native Houstonian, Marilyn, and because of her I also, had visited more places and knew more about the local area than they did. If she did encounter an exception to that rule, she would usually pick their brains for recommendations on where to go and what to see, of course, she would also do this with her less traveled encounters. Everyone had been somewhere and she wanted to know about it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
She went to the tourist spots but also liked the out of the way spots. Our first year in Houston was spent at work during the week and on the road every weekend. It slowed down when we bought our first house and slowed even more when we started having children, but it never stopped. As our children got older, it picked up again. She loved the planning, the anticipation. She made all our trips a great experience.
Over the eight plus years we lived in Houston, went everywhere in and around Houston and Texas, except Big Bend and Amarillo. She always wanted to see Big Bend in the spring for all the desert flowers, but we were otherwise occupied: new house, new children, other uses for our limited vacation time.
We did see most of the rest of Texas, sometimes several times. Many of these are worthy of separate topics:
• Spots in and around Houston, including Bayou Bend, Gilley’s, San Jacinto Inn, Johnson Space Center, Galveston, …
• Mustang and Padre Island, along with Corpus Christi. (We returned regularly to Mustang Island.)
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Several camping and cabin excursions north, west, and south of Houston
As in many of our living places, if you could find a native Houstonian, Marilyn, and because of her I also, had visited more places and knew more about the local area than they did. If she did encounter an exception to that rule, she would usually pick their brains for recommendations on where to go and what to see, of course, she would also do this with her less traveled encounters. Everyone had been somewhere and she wanted to know about it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Our second Christmas and the origins of the "fun hunt"
I was just trying for something unique and interesting and while I couldn't find the nesting boxes that would have required multiple unwrapping, and wrapping, to start it out, it also ended up being a labor saving device, my labor. Besides, the boxes would have been better suited to something small, like jewelry, and my present was big. I was continuing a tradition begun in the previous year of gifting special cookware, a copper clad wok, and unbeknownst to me, starting a longer lasting tradition that I would take up again once our children could read. (Just as Marilyn much later let me know that gifting food related items was not the most romantic of choices, she kept the clues for some time, letting me know that she thought them part of the present.)
Indeed, a "fun hunt" is a series of clues written somewhat obscurely that ultimately lead to a present. It is much more fun with an audience so I was truly appreciative that my two then unmarried sisters could be present to witness and join in the laughing. It also helps with large, unwrapped, and less than perfect presents.
The rest of this topic is best told by pictures, but first let me set the stage.
We had been in Houston for less than a year, which meant that I had very little vacation accrued. (Marilyn was still doing temporary work and could have taken off any amount of time but chose to stay with me, which was to be expected but also a great present on its own.) Besides, we were in the process of looking for a house and may have already committed to one. So if lack of vacation time wouldn't have kept us from traveling, the lack of money certainly would have. Our small two bedroom apartment was a limited palette with which to paint a truly "fun hunt," but she appeared to have "fun," which was the whole purpose. (It also made up for a less than stirring present. She did use the wok and a later birthday gift of a Cuisinart Food Processor rather extensively but after she commented on them I moved on to other gifts, silk, that also kept on giving, but unfortunately which she used far fewer times.)
The fun hunt started with a simple Christmas card.
I can't remember the order but since it was a kitchen item, the kitchen was figured prominently. This time it was the utility drawer.
As small as it was, I still ran her all over and back and forth in the apartment. This picture was hung in our bedroom. (It was a gift from her best friend taken on the bike trip they took through Europe of a hostel they stayed at one of the nights.)
Back to the kitchen. At least the clue didn't have time to frost over but she did have to move some stuff.
And finally behind the toilet. She was a little surprised that I would use such a location and as a result had to be helped figuring out just where the final clue was.
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The "burp" that meant "I love you!"
Some might think that the amount of time that I knew Marilyn before we got married was a short time, and it was. But it wasn't short because we should have delayed our wedding, it was short because we didn't meet each other sooner. Now I know that circumstances couldn't have been changed in any way to allow that earlier meeting and any change in circumstances would have more easily caused us to miss meeting each other at all.
But, amazingly in the short time between my profession of love and our marriage, I was involved as an usher in a wedding for a couple from work. Their wedding was a rather low key affair which is memorable to me for only two reasons: they wrote their own marriage vows, which I found to be particularly weak promising to remain married only "as long as [they] both shall love;" and an equally low key rehearsal dinner at a non-descript Columbus restaurant. (Indeed, I heard they were divorced shortly after their marriage.)
It was their rehearsal dinner that gave me insight into a Marilyn that I could only grow to love more and more each day. After some beer and I can't remember what to eat, I was leaning over to murmur, "I love you," in Marilyn's ear. Instead, I burped. Marilyn knew what I was trying to do and from then on she always interpreted my unintentional burps as an "I love you."
I always claimed that all of my burps were unintentional but she had a more discerning ear.
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Swimming in March
One of the features we truly liked at our new apartment was the swimming pool, particularly since we had it to ourselves. Having been married in the blizzard of '78 the warm weather in tropical Houston, by comparison, was meant to be enjoyed and we did. The people who did notice us in the pool gave us some rather strange looks but we didn't mind.
In addition to spending a lot of time holding each other. swinging each other around, and putting our feet together and shoving at the same time, Marilyn used some of the time to swim, her version of swimming. (Thinking back, this might be why she insisted that each of our children take true swimming lessons, with certifications at the end.) She mostly kept her head out of the water and kicked rather strongly, also at the top of the water. The splashing sounds her feet made reminded me of the stern-wheeler we had just seen in New Orleans, the Natchez.
I was a little indiscreet when I supplied the Natchez steam whistle to accompany her paddle wheel sounds, after all, she had her head out of the water and could hear me.
By the next year we were not swimming in March but were still wearing our winter coats like native Houstonians. Besides, we were no longer at the apartment and had not yet joined the Jewish Community Center. But we never used any other pool as playfully as we used the apartment pool our very first year in Houston.
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
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