In 1995 Marilyn was diagnosed with colorectal cancer with the real fear that she would have to have a colostomy bag. This ended up not being needed as the tumor was just about one inch in diameter and the small amount of colon removed allowed reattachment to the rectom. Unfortunately the tumor was right next to and had spread to a lymph node and a full course of chemo and radiation therapies were advised and done. We believe that the radiation therapy strongly contributed to her second cancer, uterine, ten years later.
This is a poem I wrote when I learned of her concerns prior to her surgery.
That you were afraid I wouldn't love you any more
I'm afraid just floored me--struck me to the core.
In a way, this way, it can be said and true:
"I already love you so much, no more can I do."
But who or what is this "you" that I love in "I love you?"
What are "you" composed of? Are "you" one thing through and through?
I've never stopped to think if I love an essence or a whole,
Or whether there are parts I don't love or taken a loving poll.
Yes, I love your body, the texture of your skin.
I love your sultry voice and laugh. Your smile does me in.
I can't imagine loving "you" less for loving all this stuff.
Even if some parts came missing, "you" would be enough.
It's not your mind or money, because I love "you" anyway.
Even when your mind's made up, or from my decision you stray...
Hell, not mine alone but your own you've revisited once or twice.
I love "you" though you agonize and include me in the vise.
It's only true for magnets that opposites attract.
"You" and I, we complement--face the world back to back.
And that's the "you" that I love. There isn't a surer path.
The "you" that is all of "you," and more, is my better half.
You are so much a part of me that we must be closer than siamese twins. We've grown so close that we more often than not crave the same foods. We are the proverbial "joined at the hip, ... the heart, and head." It's not necessarily that "great minds think alike," it's just great that our minds think so much alike.
And, I love you!
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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.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Marilyn Reads Michener
I found out the hard way that Marilyn liked reading in depth historical fiction with her favorite author being James Michener. Since I like to read so much I didn’t think anything more about her reading other than noticing and being glad that she also liked to read.
There were two instances that brought the differences in what we liked to read clearly to my attention. In the first one, I was a very supportive and participative guinea pig...
We were in Houston and because of the heat and humidity drinking a lot of ice tea. She had just finished reading Centennial, the story of Colorado from the raising of the Rockies to at least its centennial, or the U.S.’ Centennial, or… (I never read it so really don’t know the full story.) Anyway, the book had quite a list of teas that the Chinese workers building the Transcontinental Railroad used and she decided we should try every one of them. Some of them were hard to get but we managed. The one both of us agreed was not to our taste was Lapsang Souchong. It had a smokier coffee-like flavor that wasn’t as good as coffee, not that either of us drank coffee. (Although she did have a Melitta coffee strainer and we have had at least two other coffee makers. I believe it was and still is used mostly for parental visits.)
The second incident occurred much later when our whole family was snowbound in a rental house in Arnold. A local trip to a movie rental store was fine but our intended drive up to Bear Valley was cancelled. This time the book was Texas and the only movie she deemed suitable for children in the whole store that she also wanted to see happened to be the movie made from the book. I still don’t know how closely the movie “Texas” followed the book because none of us watched it through. Now though, none of her children would be able to be enticed to read Michener.
---------
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.
There were two instances that brought the differences in what we liked to read clearly to my attention. In the first one, I was a very supportive and participative guinea pig...
We were in Houston and because of the heat and humidity drinking a lot of ice tea. She had just finished reading Centennial, the story of Colorado from the raising of the Rockies to at least its centennial, or the U.S.’ Centennial, or… (I never read it so really don’t know the full story.) Anyway, the book had quite a list of teas that the Chinese workers building the Transcontinental Railroad used and she decided we should try every one of them. Some of them were hard to get but we managed. The one both of us agreed was not to our taste was Lapsang Souchong. It had a smokier coffee-like flavor that wasn’t as good as coffee, not that either of us drank coffee. (Although she did have a Melitta coffee strainer and we have had at least two other coffee makers. I believe it was and still is used mostly for parental visits.)
The second incident occurred much later when our whole family was snowbound in a rental house in Arnold. A local trip to a movie rental store was fine but our intended drive up to Bear Valley was cancelled. This time the book was Texas and the only movie she deemed suitable for children in the whole store that she also wanted to see happened to be the movie made from the book. I still don’t know how closely the movie “Texas” followed the book because none of us watched it through. Now though, none of her children would be able to be enticed to read Michener.
---------
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, February 21, 2009
Seeing Texas: San Antonio
While traveling to San Antonio was a distant second to Mustang Island, we did go there three or four times. Our first time involved camping in a park close to the city, again Friday and Saturday night.The camping was memorable for two reasons: There weren’t that many campers, the moon was full, and there I was carrying Marilyn piggyback on the park road singing “the moon at night is big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.” I think I may have injured my knees but I certainly didn’t notice it then. The second memorable camping experience on that trip was the late night arrival of at least two motorcycles, loud motorcycles. They were gone by the time we were up the next morning and both of us commented on the likelihood that they hadn’t paid their camping fee.
Still, our first tour of San Antonio involved Marilyn wanting to see all the missions in and around San Antonio. Unlike the Alamo, most of the others were still active churches. One in particular appeared to be closed but my wife wanted to see it so I tried the gate and it was unlocked. We saw the mission. She later confided that she wouldn’t have been so bold but I didn’t see it as bold at all. I felt that if I hadn’t “opened the door for her,” so to speak, she would have done it herself. I wasn’t being bold so much as chivalrous.Every time we went to San Antonio, we walked the Riverwalk. I think it was this first time that we went to a relatively fancy Mexican restaurant just off of the Riverwalk and enjoyed not only the food but a roving Mariachi Band.
One of our other trips to San Antonio was to show her parents another place in Texas. We camped at the same park and this time our night was interrupted by some woman in a nearby tent shouting: “No! No! No! Yeesss!” Marilyn didn’t take the hint, her parents were in the next tent.Another of our trips was to visit her sister and brother-in-law. Kroger had moved them for him to take on the management of one of their stores or district in their expansion into Texas. They showed us another great time on the Riverwalk and at some bars/cafes directly on it.
In all of our trips there, we never did ride on the boats that plied the river. Like most other places, Marilyn preferred walking. Most of our trips included stopping by the Alamo. Every time we stopped, we learned something more but the inside was too “touristy.” We much preferred the grounds outside and the juxtaposition of the city buildings with a spot that was reminiscent of a much emptier space. Plus, when I was younger, I always pictured the walls as much higher. Even the sections that hadn’t been reduced to the point that horses could easily jump over weren’t that high.
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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.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Seeing Texas: Mustang (and Padre) Island
I don’t really remember just when our first trip to Padre Island occurred, but we were on one of our seeing Texas road trips with my parents and sisters. We had gone west to San Antonio, Austin, and had even taken a longer trip south, on our own, so Marilyn the Tour Guide took the opportunity of showing my family a place that we hadn't seen. It was the first time we truly went to Corpus Christi, which wasn’t that impressive to us at the time, but then we also went to Padre Island, which was. Since we couldn’t drive very far on Padre Island, we ended up driving north onto and through Mustang Island.
I think it was the ferry at the north end of Mustang Island that really got us hooked but the plentiful and available car camping was at least part of the bait. We ended up going back to Mustang Island frequently that first year, even and especially in the remaining summer months. While humid, the breezes off of the gulf kept it from being unbearably hot, even in Marilyn’s two-person tent, which was much better, cooler than my larger canvas one and a whole lot easier to set up.
We got our camping on Mustang Island down to a science. Friday, shortly after I would come home from work, the 280Z would be loaded, packed with food, clothes, and cooking equipment inside and the tent and sleeping bag in a big canvas duffel bag outside on a bike rack. The Z looked a lot like it had a backpack on. I bet we carried that duffel more often than we carried our bicycles.
We typically ate sandwiches on the road as our dinner so we could get there sooner. Every once in a while for Friday dinner, but always at least once a weekend, we would buy a lot of cheap shrimp from some vendor and boil them up. I got quite skilled at pinching heads and we didn’t bother to butterfly them. With the seasonings that Marilyn carried with her just for this purpose, they always tasted good. What’s more, we didn’t have any refrigeration so we just had to eat them all, even if the mosquitoes drove us inside to do so. Like everything else is reputed to be, they were big in Texas, which made our tent’s screens all that more effective and they had to be after dark.
We were typically inside the tent after dark because of the mosquitoes. We had an electric lantern we would turn on and our first ritual was to find and kill all the mosquitoes that came in with us. We then would play cards, either two-handed bridge, which was really just to practice bidding, or Marilyn’s favorite, Spades. I don’t know when we learned and started playing cribbage but we didn’t play any cribbage on Mustang Island.
We only aborted the trip one time, when I didn’t pack the tent. Normally all the duffel bag stuff was already in the duffel bag and ready to go. While I had done the drying procedure before and successfully put the tent back in the duffel bag, this time I hadn’t. Maybe it was particularly wet or something distracted me. (Yeah, I should blame it on Marilyn because she was a most pleasant distraction.) The only real problem was how far we had driven before I remembered that we didn’t have a tent with us. If it had been any less distance, we could have made a quick return and still made Mustang Island. As it was, we were too tired upon our return to do anything but sleep. I think it was missing out on the shrimp that was the worst of it.
There were a couple of trips during bug season that came close to being aborted. One in particular we had to stop three times to clean the windshield. The windshield washer fluid and wipers were just not doing the trick and the resulting paste that was spread over the windshield may have been translucent, but it was far from transparent.
While we waded in the Gulf waters often, we never swam. One time our wading didn’t last long because of the spawning crabs. Now crabs typically didn’t bother anyone unless provoked but how were we to avoid provoking them when there were thousands, at least hundreds of them underfoot. It lasted as long as it did because we didn’t know what was going on. Then we noticed the people illegally catching them. You aren’t supposed to catch females with eggs.
---------
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.
I think it was the ferry at the north end of Mustang Island that really got us hooked but the plentiful and available car camping was at least part of the bait. We ended up going back to Mustang Island frequently that first year, even and especially in the remaining summer months. While humid, the breezes off of the gulf kept it from being unbearably hot, even in Marilyn’s two-person tent, which was much better, cooler than my larger canvas one and a whole lot easier to set up.
We got our camping on Mustang Island down to a science. Friday, shortly after I would come home from work, the 280Z would be loaded, packed with food, clothes, and cooking equipment inside and the tent and sleeping bag in a big canvas duffel bag outside on a bike rack. The Z looked a lot like it had a backpack on. I bet we carried that duffel more often than we carried our bicycles.
We typically ate sandwiches on the road as our dinner so we could get there sooner. Every once in a while for Friday dinner, but always at least once a weekend, we would buy a lot of cheap shrimp from some vendor and boil them up. I got quite skilled at pinching heads and we didn’t bother to butterfly them. With the seasonings that Marilyn carried with her just for this purpose, they always tasted good. What’s more, we didn’t have any refrigeration so we just had to eat them all, even if the mosquitoes drove us inside to do so. Like everything else is reputed to be, they were big in Texas, which made our tent’s screens all that more effective and they had to be after dark.
We were typically inside the tent after dark because of the mosquitoes. We had an electric lantern we would turn on and our first ritual was to find and kill all the mosquitoes that came in with us. We then would play cards, either two-handed bridge, which was really just to practice bidding, or Marilyn’s favorite, Spades. I don’t know when we learned and started playing cribbage but we didn’t play any cribbage on Mustang Island.
We only aborted the trip one time, when I didn’t pack the tent. Normally all the duffel bag stuff was already in the duffel bag and ready to go. While I had done the drying procedure before and successfully put the tent back in the duffel bag, this time I hadn’t. Maybe it was particularly wet or something distracted me. (Yeah, I should blame it on Marilyn because she was a most pleasant distraction.) The only real problem was how far we had driven before I remembered that we didn’t have a tent with us. If it had been any less distance, we could have made a quick return and still made Mustang Island. As it was, we were too tired upon our return to do anything but sleep. I think it was missing out on the shrimp that was the worst of it.
There were a couple of trips during bug season that came close to being aborted. One in particular we had to stop three times to clean the windshield. The windshield washer fluid and wipers were just not doing the trick and the resulting paste that was spread over the windshield may have been translucent, but it was far from transparent.
While we waded in the Gulf waters often, we never swam. One time our wading didn’t last long because of the spawning crabs. Now crabs typically didn’t bother anyone unless provoked but how were we to avoid provoking them when there were thousands, at least hundreds of them underfoot. It lasted as long as it did because we didn’t know what was going on. Then we noticed the people illegally catching them. You aren’t supposed to catch females with eggs.
---------
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, January 24, 2009
Tree Golf
While I was working for Amdahl Corporation in Houston, there were a couple of hardware engineers who played a lot of golf. I never played regular golf with them so don’t really know how well they played but Marilyn and I did play tree golf with them in a company sponsored outing they organized.
Tree golf was supposedly their brilliant idea after one of their less than successful rounds of regular golf where they kept hitting their balls out of bounds into the trees. Their thought was that if they were going to be hitting their balls into trees, they might as well play where that was the purpose.
Tree golf’s rules were simple. In a section of woods, nine trees were marked one through nine. Each player was allowed to choose one club from their regular golf bag but that then became the only “stick” they could use for the whole game. The object was to hit each tree in order, counting the number of strokes.
In tree golf typically a lot of beer was consumed, which if truth be known is how I suspect the round of regular golf became the inspiration for tree golf. I don’t know how much beer Marilyn consumed but it may not have been that much because she couldn’t have taken that many sips and swing her stick as much as she did.
Yes, she won the duffer trophy. She was quite proud of it because she had worked so hard for it. I would have put it down to just being a good sport, which she was, but she kept that trophy around until we moved out of Houston. I can’t remember all of its adornment but I do remember the twigs that represented trees, the empty beer can, and a badly sliced golf ball, which would have been unusable anyway with the mounting nail through it.
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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.
Tree golf was supposedly their brilliant idea after one of their less than successful rounds of regular golf where they kept hitting their balls out of bounds into the trees. Their thought was that if they were going to be hitting their balls into trees, they might as well play where that was the purpose.
Tree golf’s rules were simple. In a section of woods, nine trees were marked one through nine. Each player was allowed to choose one club from their regular golf bag but that then became the only “stick” they could use for the whole game. The object was to hit each tree in order, counting the number of strokes.
In tree golf typically a lot of beer was consumed, which if truth be known is how I suspect the round of regular golf became the inspiration for tree golf. I don’t know how much beer Marilyn consumed but it may not have been that much because she couldn’t have taken that many sips and swing her stick as much as she did.
Yes, she won the duffer trophy. She was quite proud of it because she had worked so hard for it. I would have put it down to just being a good sport, which she was, but she kept that trophy around until we moved out of Houston. I can’t remember all of its adornment but I do remember the twigs that represented trees, the empty beer can, and a badly sliced golf ball, which would have been unusable anyway with the mounting nail through 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, January 14, 2009
The Family Initiation
I don’t know how we are going to continue this and certainly don’t want to accidentally kill it by publishing it. But, my family initiation was done at my father’s parents’ house, as was my mother's over 50 years ago. Marilyn’s was done at my parents’ house, as was all of our children’s. As this story is about Marilyn, the story of her initiation needs to be included. And, at least for three of the five events, I have pictures. (But maybe my memory is faulty. I can only remember four things.)
It is important that the initiatee be either new to the family or at a rite of passage age. The new to the family person is more likely to go along, not wanting to offend. The rite of passage person is at least lighter but is also more likely to remember the initiation with fondness but the key is to remember the joining. And, most importantly, it’s fun, at least for the initiators and observers. A certain amount of gullibility is also a big help.
In Riding the Airplane, the victim (I mean the initiatee.) is blind folded and asked to step onto a table leaf, or board on bricks. Then two muscular assistants lift the table leaf and move it around, mostly in place. A third person hints that the “airplane rider” is hitting the ceiling with a heavy book and the rider is asked to jump. Even the skeptics hesitate because it does feel like you are higher than the three or so inches you really are off the ground. This is accentuated by a fourth person whose shoulder provides a convenient balance. This person squats as the board is moved around giving further evidence that the “airplane” is truly way off the ground.
Then there is the magic trick of Pinning a Cup of Water to the Wall, which the initiate will be able to do themselves once they are shown how. Somehow the person demonstrating the way to do it, in this case me because no one wanted to get the blame if it was taken badly, drops the pin. The person learning the trick usually is quite helpful and immediately bends to pick it up, after all I still had a full cup of water. It wasn’t full long and the person learning the trick was wet.
Threading a needle with one eye will be covered in a separate topic.
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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.
It is important that the initiatee be either new to the family or at a rite of passage age. The new to the family person is more likely to go along, not wanting to offend. The rite of passage person is at least lighter but is also more likely to remember the initiation with fondness but the key is to remember the joining. And, most importantly, it’s fun, at least for the initiators and observers. A certain amount of gullibility is also a big help.
In Riding the Airplane, the victim (I mean the initiatee.) is blind folded and asked to step onto a table leaf, or board on bricks. Then two muscular assistants lift the table leaf and move it around, mostly in place. A third person hints that the “airplane rider” is hitting the ceiling with a heavy book and the rider is asked to jump. Even the skeptics hesitate because it does feel like you are higher than the three or so inches you really are off the ground. This is accentuated by a fourth person whose shoulder provides a convenient balance. This person squats as the board is moved around giving further evidence that the “airplane” is truly way off the ground.
Then there is the magic trick of Pinning a Cup of Water to the Wall, which the initiate will be able to do themselves once they are shown how. Somehow the person demonstrating the way to do it, in this case me because no one wanted to get the blame if it was taken badly, drops the pin. The person learning the trick usually is quite helpful and immediately bends to pick it up, after all I still had a full cup of water. It wasn’t full long and the person learning the trick was wet.Threading a needle with one eye will be covered in a separate topic.
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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.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Happy stressed home ownership
While the monthly mortgage payment wasn't that much more than our then current rent, it was quite a commitment. (ARMs are nice that way.) It meant we were committed to Houston. It was a larger money liability than either of us had ever signed up for. And, although we didn't realize it at the time, it was a commitment to quite a bit of work. But from the following, we should have had a clue.
After we were "committed," it was fully ours but we hadn't moved in and hadn't yet arranged for any utilities, i.e., no heat, Houston had a freeze. The water wasn't shut off during the transfer. There were spectacular ice sculptures all over the city from the frozen spray of water from the broken water mains. One of the more remarkable of them, at least in size, was just across the street from our then apartment complex.
Marilyn was always attuned to the weather and would actually listen to the reports on the radio and TV. I have always tended to tune them out like commercials. So at her insistance, after dark with the temperature falling, by flashlight since there was also no electricity, I was wrapping the pipe that fed the water into the house with Marilyn holding a flashlight so I could see what I was doing. We then turned on a couple faucets in dribble mode to keep the water flowing. We didn't figure they would notice our little wasting of water with all the mains spewing it for no purpose around the city. Besides, while the water wasn't shut off, I don't know whether or not the account had been transferred yet. Our worst nightmare was that a pipe would burst in the attic and ruin both the ceiling and floor of the affected room and running water is supposed to be more resistant to freezing.
After making sure that our new house didn't wash away from pipes bursting, we had to clean, well, wash. Eventually we would replace all of the carpet and paint all of the walls, except for the walls with the mirrored glass tiles and the paneling in the family room, but for the two of us moving in, all we did was vacuum and wash. We also rented one of those "steam" cleaners for the carpet that was every where because vacuuming alone wouldn't have made the place livable. The previous owner was a chain smoker, which might have played a role in her demise. The house reeked. I don't remember the color of the steam cleaning water but I do remember the brownish yellow runoff and worse looking rinse water as we literally Formula 409'd every square inch of the walls and bathrooms.
Part of the do it yourself steam cleaning was to vacuum the floors thoroughly. It had red shag in the family room, kitchen and the bedroom off of the kitchen. Our vacuum cleaner wasn't powerful enough to suck up coins so I had to stop vacuuming frequently to find what was causing the rattle.
It was a lot of work to move into that house on the cheap but the purchase was truly a happy event. Now that we had a house, we could start working on a family. We did so with enthusiasm, no more Catholic approved birth control, after we first rested a bit.
---------
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.
After we were "committed," it was fully ours but we hadn't moved in and hadn't yet arranged for any utilities, i.e., no heat, Houston had a freeze. The water wasn't shut off during the transfer. There were spectacular ice sculptures all over the city from the frozen spray of water from the broken water mains. One of the more remarkable of them, at least in size, was just across the street from our then apartment complex.
Marilyn was always attuned to the weather and would actually listen to the reports on the radio and TV. I have always tended to tune them out like commercials. So at her insistance, after dark with the temperature falling, by flashlight since there was also no electricity, I was wrapping the pipe that fed the water into the house with Marilyn holding a flashlight so I could see what I was doing. We then turned on a couple faucets in dribble mode to keep the water flowing. We didn't figure they would notice our little wasting of water with all the mains spewing it for no purpose around the city. Besides, while the water wasn't shut off, I don't know whether or not the account had been transferred yet. Our worst nightmare was that a pipe would burst in the attic and ruin both the ceiling and floor of the affected room and running water is supposed to be more resistant to freezing.
After making sure that our new house didn't wash away from pipes bursting, we had to clean, well, wash. Eventually we would replace all of the carpet and paint all of the walls, except for the walls with the mirrored glass tiles and the paneling in the family room, but for the two of us moving in, all we did was vacuum and wash. We also rented one of those "steam" cleaners for the carpet that was every where because vacuuming alone wouldn't have made the place livable. The previous owner was a chain smoker, which might have played a role in her demise. The house reeked. I don't remember the color of the steam cleaning water but I do remember the brownish yellow runoff and worse looking rinse water as we literally Formula 409'd every square inch of the walls and bathrooms.
Part of the do it yourself steam cleaning was to vacuum the floors thoroughly. It had red shag in the family room, kitchen and the bedroom off of the kitchen. Our vacuum cleaner wasn't powerful enough to suck up coins so I had to stop vacuuming frequently to find what was causing the rattle.
It was a lot of work to move into that house on the cheap but the purchase was truly a happy event. Now that we had a house, we could start working on a family. We did so with enthusiasm, no more Catholic approved birth control, after we first rested a bit.
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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, December 11, 2008
Meeting by accident
Over a couple months of living at the apartment, I had observed several people exiting the complex using the inbound lane with no problem, while I dutifully did the right [lane] thing.
One day I noticed that Marilyn was already at the front of the right lane. So I whipped up beside her on her left. As I was waiting for her to notice me she decided to turn into traffic and instead turned into me.
She didn't let me know she was a "little" upset that I was where she didn't expect me to be until later. I was just surprised at the amount of the corner she cut, enough to hit my car.
Her car wasn't hurt at all. Mine had a dented front fender but nothing that impaired its driving. We each hopped out of our respective cars to look at the damage, hugged, and drove away.
I can only imagine the surprise and relief of the people in the line of cars behind us.
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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.
One day I noticed that Marilyn was already at the front of the right lane. So I whipped up beside her on her left. As I was waiting for her to notice me she decided to turn into traffic and instead turned into me.
She didn't let me know she was a "little" upset that I was where she didn't expect me to be until later. I was just surprised at the amount of the corner she cut, enough to hit my car.
Her car wasn't hurt at all. Mine had a dented front fender but nothing that impaired its driving. We each hopped out of our respective cars to look at the damage, hugged, and drove away.
I can only imagine the surprise and relief of the people in the line of cars behind us.
---------
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
"Collecting" state quarters
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.
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.
---------
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Rodeos in the “real” Texas
When we moved to Houston, it was already well into a boom that had brought many “foreigners” into it. While not impossible, you often had to ask several times to find the native Texan and even more to find a native Houstonian. But just outside of Houston was a remnant of the real Texas, a weekly rodeo, the rodeo that Deng Xiao Peng had been to just the year before.
While still at the hotel, we decided to sample the “real” Texas. I don’t think rodeos were Marilyn’s cup of tea but going at least once just had to be done. (She never did express any interest in the Huntsville prison rodeo, or any other rodeo and to my knowledge never watched any rodeo on TV.)
It had all the aspects that I now associate with rodeos but from my understanding was like a minor league. Individuals would accumulate points that would allow them to qualify for the more prestigious rodeos. Maybe a better analogy would be NASCAR or qualifying for the U.S. Open in golf.
But the thing that made it an unforgettable experience was one of the filler dialogs between the announcer and the clown about the clown’s recent marriage.
Basically the announcer congratulated the clown on his marriage and commented that he had heard that the new wife was a nagger. The clown affected not to understand so the announcer repeated the statement. This went on for a couple exchanges with the announcer finally almost yelling that he had heard the wife was a great big nagger. To which the clown said: “No, a little white girl about so high,” while gesturing with his hand about chest high.
Needless to say, we, recently married, liberal, almost Easterners, were shocked. But the rest of Texas, including some of my work experiences, which will not be written here, were substantially better and far less shocking. Perhaps I was taking the wrong perspective. Maybe it was a statement of how far we had come that a Texan would simply respond and not be offended by what was the implied suggestion.
Coming in a few topics will be a Family Tradition topic, namely an initiation that I, Marilyn, and our children went through. I have great pictures but do not want to give the initiation away as my children are recently married with spouses who have yet to be initiated. It's all volunteer and everyone who has gone through it has had fun, just not as much fun as the observers. It's still a great way to join the family.
---------
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.
While still at the hotel, we decided to sample the “real” Texas. I don’t think rodeos were Marilyn’s cup of tea but going at least once just had to be done. (She never did express any interest in the Huntsville prison rodeo, or any other rodeo and to my knowledge never watched any rodeo on TV.)
It had all the aspects that I now associate with rodeos but from my understanding was like a minor league. Individuals would accumulate points that would allow them to qualify for the more prestigious rodeos. Maybe a better analogy would be NASCAR or qualifying for the U.S. Open in golf.
But the thing that made it an unforgettable experience was one of the filler dialogs between the announcer and the clown about the clown’s recent marriage.
Basically the announcer congratulated the clown on his marriage and commented that he had heard that the new wife was a nagger. The clown affected not to understand so the announcer repeated the statement. This went on for a couple exchanges with the announcer finally almost yelling that he had heard the wife was a great big nagger. To which the clown said: “No, a little white girl about so high,” while gesturing with his hand about chest high.
Needless to say, we, recently married, liberal, almost Easterners, were shocked. But the rest of Texas, including some of my work experiences, which will not be written here, were substantially better and far less shocking. Perhaps I was taking the wrong perspective. Maybe it was a statement of how far we had come that a Texan would simply respond and not be offended by what was the implied suggestion.
Coming in a few topics will be a Family Tradition topic, namely an initiation that I, Marilyn, and our children went through. I have great pictures but do not want to give the initiation away as my children are recently married with spouses who have yet to be initiated. It's all volunteer and everyone who has gone through it has had fun, just not as much fun as the observers. It's still a great way to join the family.
---------
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.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Is Pearl there?
This is really an apartment story although I don’t believe that we were unlucky to get the same phone number of the previous tenants. However, the phone calls when combined with the catalog deliveries make me think that something like that must have happened.
Soon after we got a phone every once in a while rather late into the evening, or night, we would get a call from an obviously inebriated man who in a slurred Texas drawl would ask, “Is Pearl there?” Now that doesn’t sound so bad and could have been some prankster writing on a bar’s bathroom wall, “For a good time, call Pearl [our new phone number].” The first few times we tried to tell this person he had the wrong number, which led to something that wasn’t exactly a conversation, certainly not a two-way exchange of information, but we learned quite a bit. While he never heard or believed us, if he did actually hear us, and I do mean us, he would talk with me as readily as Marilyn, he would want to come over. I think he thought I was Pearl’s pimp. I don’t believe he thought Marilyn was Pearl but she never said.
Now, getting a random call from a drunk who always asked for the same person and wanted to come over wouldn’t have been scary in and of itself because telephone numbers are seven digits and this guy couldn’t have known our address. But then there were the catalogs: “Frederick’s of Hollywood,” and other introductions to the marvelous world of sexy, well, kinky. (Although I did try to talk Marilyn into allowing me to buy a few items for her, which was hard to do while I was trying to convince her that I didn’t need to be titillated by a perverted catalog.) It took someone showing up at our door looking for a good time for us to put two and two together for a million. Could we have gotten the same phone number as the previous tenants? Was the guy calling for Pearl truly going to be able to show up? Was he one of the people who already had? If so, why did he keep calling?
We didn’t lose the Pearl calls until we moved into our house almost a year later. One of the great benefits of moving then was that we got a new phone number. We would have insisted on it if it weren’t automatic.
After the first time she answered the phone to the Pearl guy, I got the phone calls. We didn’t have an answering machine but Marilyn had an answering service. Since we were both working, I was home whenever she was.
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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.
Soon after we got a phone every once in a while rather late into the evening, or night, we would get a call from an obviously inebriated man who in a slurred Texas drawl would ask, “Is Pearl there?” Now that doesn’t sound so bad and could have been some prankster writing on a bar’s bathroom wall, “For a good time, call Pearl [our new phone number].” The first few times we tried to tell this person he had the wrong number, which led to something that wasn’t exactly a conversation, certainly not a two-way exchange of information, but we learned quite a bit. While he never heard or believed us, if he did actually hear us, and I do mean us, he would talk with me as readily as Marilyn, he would want to come over. I think he thought I was Pearl’s pimp. I don’t believe he thought Marilyn was Pearl but she never said.
Now, getting a random call from a drunk who always asked for the same person and wanted to come over wouldn’t have been scary in and of itself because telephone numbers are seven digits and this guy couldn’t have known our address. But then there were the catalogs: “Frederick’s of Hollywood,” and other introductions to the marvelous world of sexy, well, kinky. (Although I did try to talk Marilyn into allowing me to buy a few items for her, which was hard to do while I was trying to convince her that I didn’t need to be titillated by a perverted catalog.) It took someone showing up at our door looking for a good time for us to put two and two together for a million. Could we have gotten the same phone number as the previous tenants? Was the guy calling for Pearl truly going to be able to show up? Was he one of the people who already had? If so, why did he keep calling?
We didn’t lose the Pearl calls until we moved into our house almost a year later. One of the great benefits of moving then was that we got a new phone number. We would have insisted on it if it weren’t automatic.
After the first time she answered the phone to the Pearl guy, I got the phone calls. We didn’t have an answering machine but Marilyn had an answering service. Since we were both working, I was home whenever she was.
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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.
Our first (and only) Houston apartment
We had been living in hotels for three weeks but had finally found the “perfect” apartment. Well, we both knew it wasn’t perfect from the start but most of its imperfections took time to discover and are at least one, if not a few, topics of their own.
We had also been dining out at the best restaurants that a per diem would allow. It was our second honeymoon after all.
Well, we get that special apartment with the gold shag carpet, the narrow cul-de-sac galley kitchen, a breakfast nook for a dining room, bedrooms, two, whose windows looked out over the scenic parking lot, … You get the idea. The very first night we got the key, before the little bit of furniture we had could arrive, Marilyn just had to eat at our new place, a picnic on the carpet.
It wasn’t directly on the carpet but I forget what we put down to make it both feel like a picnic and our first meal in our new home. The food, of course, came from some restaurant but it had a much different feel. I remember the feeling but can’t for the life of me remember what we ate. It felt like another tumbler to the lock of our lives just clicked into place.
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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.
We had also been dining out at the best restaurants that a per diem would allow. It was our second honeymoon after all.
Well, we get that special apartment with the gold shag carpet, the narrow cul-de-sac galley kitchen, a breakfast nook for a dining room, bedrooms, two, whose windows looked out over the scenic parking lot, … You get the idea. The very first night we got the key, before the little bit of furniture we had could arrive, Marilyn just had to eat at our new place, a picnic on the carpet.
It wasn’t directly on the carpet but I forget what we put down to make it both feel like a picnic and our first meal in our new home. The food, of course, came from some restaurant but it had a much different feel. I remember the feeling but can’t for the life of me remember what we ate. It felt like another tumbler to the lock of our lives just clicked into place.
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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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Crazy New Houstonians, Going to Zero
There are probably a lot of stories that I will eventually think of but the one that will be told here is Marilyn’s compulsion to finish the move to our new city. This didn’t involve finding living space, although we had just two weeks to do that. It didn’t involve trying the local cuisine, although we were doing that to a certain extent. (Marilyn never did fully embrace the “Cajun” spicy food imported from Louisiana or the spicy equivalent in Tex/Mex. Indeed even the native barbeque was not her food of choice. There will be a lot of food discussion opportunities throughout many of these topics.) It does involve going to a landmark that many cities have but one that I would have never thought of in a million years, going to the zero-zero address.
I can’t even remember the names of the Houston cross-streets that formed this landmark. But Marilyn insisted that we visit it. We were lucky that this address at least was in the Office Building portion rather than the middle of a slum. We were unlucky in finding parking, even though this was a weekend, not because of the crush of cars, but rather the dearth of open parking lots. I don’t know how far we ended up walking but at one point in our walk Marilyn wanted to cross diagonally across an intersection. She knew that meant she had to cross two streets rather than just cross the intersection itself, there was at least that much traffic to keep us safe, but she unfortunately insisted on crossing the street that the traffic light allowed immediately. Now, I don’t know whether Houston has any other street, intersection, or crosswalk, like this anywhere else. I can’t remember whether this was a temporary condition or one of intentional design but there was nothing to cross to.
In fact, there were signs, there was a fence, and an obvious lane of pending traffic that would pass in the lane we would have to be standing in once we arrived across that street. While Marilyn and I often held hands on many of our walks, we weren’t then. She was halfway across the street before I even realized what she was doing. I couldn’t think of any words that would have gotten her to realize her error in time so I ran out and grabbed her arm. She made to shake it off and got a real “I’ll show them” look on her face when she finally heard me say, “We can’t cross here.”
I still had to point out the signs and the lack of anyplace to stand, safely, before she would move back to the sidewalk we had left. We did get back, obviously.
It was then I realized just how stubborn she was. While I never did use this example of her stubbornness, I knew that she was far more stubborn than I was or ever could be. She always won true tests of wills but we rarely had them on the important things.
There is a good side to stubbornness and Marilyn had it—determination to spare.
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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.
I can’t even remember the names of the Houston cross-streets that formed this landmark. But Marilyn insisted that we visit it. We were lucky that this address at least was in the Office Building portion rather than the middle of a slum. We were unlucky in finding parking, even though this was a weekend, not because of the crush of cars, but rather the dearth of open parking lots. I don’t know how far we ended up walking but at one point in our walk Marilyn wanted to cross diagonally across an intersection. She knew that meant she had to cross two streets rather than just cross the intersection itself, there was at least that much traffic to keep us safe, but she unfortunately insisted on crossing the street that the traffic light allowed immediately. Now, I don’t know whether Houston has any other street, intersection, or crosswalk, like this anywhere else. I can’t remember whether this was a temporary condition or one of intentional design but there was nothing to cross to.
In fact, there were signs, there was a fence, and an obvious lane of pending traffic that would pass in the lane we would have to be standing in once we arrived across that street. While Marilyn and I often held hands on many of our walks, we weren’t then. She was halfway across the street before I even realized what she was doing. I couldn’t think of any words that would have gotten her to realize her error in time so I ran out and grabbed her arm. She made to shake it off and got a real “I’ll show them” look on her face when she finally heard me say, “We can’t cross here.”
I still had to point out the signs and the lack of anyplace to stand, safely, before she would move back to the sidewalk we had left. We did get back, obviously.
It was then I realized just how stubborn she was. While I never did use this example of her stubbornness, I knew that she was far more stubborn than I was or ever could be. She always won true tests of wills but we rarely had them on the important things.
There is a good side to stubbornness and Marilyn had it—determination to spare.
---------
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, October 18, 2008
Traveling to a new job, our second honeymoon
While I didn’t have a single interview until much later in Phoenix, covered in another topic, the attempt put my resume’ on the market and corporations in Houston were hiring. (The interview and associated stories are not part of my memories of Marilyn so if covered at all will have to be in a different forum.) Since Houston was on the way to Phoenix we decided to take the job. So the middle of February saw us on the road, again traveling to our married life in a new city.
I would like to be able to say that we gave each other longing gazes, and sweet-talked the entire trip but what actually occurred is that we drove two cars. There being two of us, and two cars, meant that we couldn’t even see each other when we were “on the road” but we made up for it most of the time when we stopped.
And stop we did. We made side trips to several places. I’ve selected a few of the more memorable for greater detail below. Since I wasn’t then and haven’t kept a journal what I’m leaving out may not be all that much but you wouldn’t know that if I didn’t tell you.
In Tennessee we discovered that Jack Daniels was distilled in a dry county. But they did let us smell the well alcohol laden vent gasses in our tour.
We stayed overnight in Nashville with a visit to the Grand Ol Opry.
Our next overnight stay was in the bad side, well the less affluent side of Birmingham. We would remark on this as our first of a trend later when we knew it for a trend. Many of the places we visited inevitably involved some tour of the more scenic side of the town, a nice looking road would be a dead end into the area dump or sewage treatment plant. Although to the best of my recall we never again tried to sleep in the scenic area.
Then came New Orleans. We stayed there several nights. While a lot of what we did involved truly good food, including the beans and rice at Hobo Billy’s and Bananas Foster at Brennan’s, we also visited Preservation Hall (I didn’t understand why anyone would want to preserve the hall but preserving the jazz was great.), walked on the waterfront, looked in on all the bars, watched people, took a ride on the Charles Street trolley, had our faces immortalized with a characterization (My upwardly growing eyebrows were made into devilish horns that was obvious as to the devilment in mind while Marilyn was characterized as an angel.), and my first introduction into shopping.
Up until that time, I had always thought that the purpose of shopping was to find something you wanted to buy. Marilyn nicely limited her introduction of shopping as an end in itself so I didn’t drop but I got the message. It was much later, and may make a separate topic in and of itself, that I heard the dreaded combination: “Since we are here, do you mind if I go in [to this store]?” and “Why don’t you come in and keep me company?”
Finally we made it to Houston and for two weeks were put up in a hotel at the Greenway Plaza. The fun we had living within walking distance of my work…
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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.
I would like to be able to say that we gave each other longing gazes, and sweet-talked the entire trip but what actually occurred is that we drove two cars. There being two of us, and two cars, meant that we couldn’t even see each other when we were “on the road” but we made up for it most of the time when we stopped.
And stop we did. We made side trips to several places. I’ve selected a few of the more memorable for greater detail below. Since I wasn’t then and haven’t kept a journal what I’m leaving out may not be all that much but you wouldn’t know that if I didn’t tell you.
In Tennessee we discovered that Jack Daniels was distilled in a dry county. But they did let us smell the well alcohol laden vent gasses in our tour.
We stayed overnight in Nashville with a visit to the Grand Ol Opry.
Our next overnight stay was in the bad side, well the less affluent side of Birmingham. We would remark on this as our first of a trend later when we knew it for a trend. Many of the places we visited inevitably involved some tour of the more scenic side of the town, a nice looking road would be a dead end into the area dump or sewage treatment plant. Although to the best of my recall we never again tried to sleep in the scenic area.
Then came New Orleans. We stayed there several nights. While a lot of what we did involved truly good food, including the beans and rice at Hobo Billy’s and Bananas Foster at Brennan’s, we also visited Preservation Hall (I didn’t understand why anyone would want to preserve the hall but preserving the jazz was great.), walked on the waterfront, looked in on all the bars, watched people, took a ride on the Charles Street trolley, had our faces immortalized with a characterization (My upwardly growing eyebrows were made into devilish horns that was obvious as to the devilment in mind while Marilyn was characterized as an angel.), and my first introduction into shopping.
Up until that time, I had always thought that the purpose of shopping was to find something you wanted to buy. Marilyn nicely limited her introduction of shopping as an end in itself so I didn’t drop but I got the message. It was much later, and may make a separate topic in and of itself, that I heard the dreaded combination: “Since we are here, do you mind if I go in [to this store]?” and “Why don’t you come in and keep me company?”
Finally we made it to Houston and for two weeks were put up in a hotel at the Greenway Plaza. The fun we had living within walking distance of my work…
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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.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Ceremony, Wedding Night, and Reception
All of our Granville Inn plans, well most of them, were undone by the weather. One of our claims to fame is making the most out of a bad situation. Now I describe it in a headline format: “State Shuts Down for Monnett-Westbrook Wedding.” It wasn’t that hard for me, my only consequences beyond it being cold, were calling the Granville Inn, getting them to agree to a reception only event a week later at no deposit cost, and not having my side of the family, parents nor sisters, at our ceremony.
The state, Ohio, was shut down for three days because of the blizzard of ’78 and not because of our wedding. We decided to go ahead and get married as scheduled even though it had to be at a completely different venue, one we could violate the no non-essential travel rule to get to without likely arrest. That venue happened to be Marilyn’s parent’s place as it had the largest contingent of attendees, including Marilyn, already there. I didn’t have to do anything to get it prepared and so cannot fully appreciate or describe the scramble they must have gone through. All I had to do was just show up and that is about the extent of my memory as well. I was and still am walking on air.
Thank goodness we have some poor quality pictures to remind me. They even scrambled together a multilayer wedding cake. This allowed us to practice our cake smashing for the official reception, with my family in attendance, the week later. We needed the practice. We both had too small of pieces and were far too polite, not only out of concern for each other but also where the crumbs would have gone, on her mother’s light carpet. 
(Marilyn let me be dainty with my second piece at the Granville Inn the week later before she fully crammed her oversized piece onto my face only partially hitting my large mouth. Since I am writing this I can exaggerate, regardless of how little.)
After the ceremony and after sharing cake and drinks with the guests who could make it, we got ready for our wedding night. You have to remember that a blizzard is snow and wind accompanied with a rapid drop in temperature to fully appreciate our wedding night. 
First, Marilyn dressed for the weather in fancy red underwear, long johns, and we went to a local Marriott rather than my cold apartment. (There were actual icicles inside the apartment.) It turned out that Marriott didn’t have the icicle problem because they kept the humidity down by reducing the interior temperature to close to freezing. This also meant that whatever food they served in their restaurant arrived cold regardless of how high they heated it to achieve the partial cooking.
But we didn’t care. We were married. And whatever else the cold weather may have ruined, it didn’t ruin our night. Let me just say that it was great cuddling weather.Our party at the official reception was too small to reserve the entire restaurant but I truly don’t remember if there were any other diners. Marilyn and I certainly felt like we had just gotten married. Our “honeymoon” period wouldn’t end for quite a while, if indeed it ever did, but definitely wasn’t over in just one week. The nicest thing about being married was that now if she fell asleep on me, I didn’t have to wake her up so she could go back to her place. Her place was now my place. I always enjoyed watching her sleep but probably not as much as she enjoyed sleeping. (But, I digress.)
In addition to not remembering other diners, I don’t remember what we ate besides the cake for dessert. That was good so we saved the top to be consumed on our first anniversary, also the subject of another topic.---------
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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