Weaving My Life

 The day is emerging in the same damp gloom that characterized yesterday but with rain in the mix. The gulls are happy. Mulrooney is not. Me? I’m working hard at acceptance, a word I’m just beginning to understand.

“Some people think acceptance means giving up,” a friend said yesterday. I used to lean toward that definition with the phrase “Just accept it,” one that I usually accompanied with a shrug. This fell into the category of “Offer it up,” an admonition that told little Catholic children to emulate Job. Bear your misfortunes with equanimity and thank God you’re alive. Since this is a difficult achievement for a seven-year-old, which is when one becomes responsible for one’s sins and faults, it was easier to sink into an imposed form of resignation that reeked of defeat. As a rebellious child, I developed an aptitude for change, rather than acceptance, and this skill was well  sharpened by the time I became an adult.

Change is a word I’ve always welcomed, with its connotations of self-determination and fresh beginnings. And I’m not alone. It’s the American Way. We’re a country built by people who were unhappy and sought to change that fact by crossing an ocean,  pushing into a new continent, and then forcing our way across it. Although history praises the settlers, if it weren’t for the ones who looked for change, we’d all still be living in the original thirteen colonies. It was those who refused to “settle,” to “accept,” who made Manifest Destiny a truth, not a concept. 

Now that there’s little new territory to light out to, we’re still divided into the ones who settle and the ones who are driven by the thought of change. In fact even the settlers embrace that thought which is one that drives our economy. Change propels demand. Don’t like your house, buy a new one. Tired of your automobile, visit a used car lot. Hate your hair color, buy a new shade. It’s a fact that if acceptance was enshrined as a virtue in the same way that change is, our stock market would plummet in a millisecond and the whole world would lose the lifestyle that it yearns for.

Then Covid-19 came to town, an unchangeable truth that forced acceptance as the only form of protection. All over the world, people chose isolation over death. Staying home, avoiding others, wearing masks that concealed smiles and muffled speech, forestalling travel, even on a city bus--these habits became so pervasive that they threatened to turn into behavior  and when they were no longer necessary, they still had made acceptance an ingrained part of human life. 

I’m one of the millions of aging people that populate the world and for our demographic, Covid was a thief. Although it took years of possibility from everybody, it brought me and others of my generation closer to a sense of mortality. Death is no longer abstract. It’s a certainty.

This is a lot like being crammed into a time machine and spat out into the future. While my mind still was adjusting to the fact that I’d turned seventy, my body was well on its way to the next decade. Minor illnesses hit me with greater force, an accident on a city street made me think of buying a cane, flagging eyesight forced me to wear eyeglasses, my sags and wrinkles were impossible to ignore, and my body had gleefully accepted the law of inertia. 

These are changes that I don’t welcome and am unwilling to accept. Although the past years pushed me into unknown territory, I’m trying to find what is a realistic way for me to live and what is simply absurd. I swallow pills that might forestall cardiac problems, limited eyesight, and fragile bones. I’ve bought an airline ticket that will take me across the Pacific and back again, with the promise of more travel to come after. I make plans with friends that will propel back into motion and the world at large. 

But I’m halfway toward eighty. My Covid habits have become comfortable and my physical alteration inexorable. There’s a degree of acceptance that lurks under my need for change and I’m struggling to understand what that means. 

Since I’m a person who turns to reading when I’m puzzled, I’ve begun my search for meaning there. “Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,” May Sarton advised in a sonnet on what she called “this strangest autumn.” The resignation in this wasn’t a welcome signpost and I moved on, floundering until I came upon Abigail Thomas’s Still Life at Eighty.

These short crisp essays were written during the imposed isolation of the Covid years, a period when Abigail worked to put her truncated isolated state into words that made some kind of sense. Her enforced confinement led her to the word “acceptance,” which seems to have been as alien to her as it is to me. Even though her life has been one of sensuality and connection with the external world, she was raised in a household of scientific inquiry and rigorous thought and her mind has been shaped into a habit of research. She turned to the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots and delved into the words that gave birth to what we call “acceptance.”

“A thread used in weaving,” was the meaning of one of the words it’s derived from, she discovered, and when I read that, acceptance made sense to me in a way it never had before. With this as part of its root system, acceptance, instead of hope,  becomes the opposite of despair. While hope is a flame that needs to be tended to stay alive, while acceptance is an active task that weaves a thread into the fabric, over and over again.

Handwoven textiles are one of my passions and it made me happy to see my life as a piece of Thai cotton stretched out on a loom as a work in progress, rough and sturdy, with a bright and colorful pattern. I was the one who placed each thread and if I wove one into the fabric sloppily without caring, the piece was marred in that spot. If I stopped altogether, feeling this was  pointless,  the cloth would never grow beyond that point, staying frozen in that one place. Picking up a thread and weaving it into the whole, with care and thought, even at times when I disliked the color---that was essential. Taking what I have and making a full life from it when I have no choice but to use that particular thread is at the heart of acceptance. 

Recently I put on a pair of prescription eyeglasses that showed me vividly what I’d  been missing in clinging to my impressionist point of view. It was like walking through Disney’s Fantasia with colors that popped, even on a grey Seattle afternoon  and shapes so sharp that they made me wonder if my glasses were 3-D. Expressions on the faces of people who walked past me were as fascinating as an entire novel and architectural details on buildings I’d dismissed as bland became artful surprises. Then I came home and looked at myself in the mirror. 

Without the instant facelift that I’d been given by my bad eyesight, every wrinkle was as obvious as the Grand Canyon. Crow’s feet and crevices--there they were, all mine, along with my blurred waistline and my thighs dimpled with cellulite. 

It was too late for Botox, even if I could afford that option. These things were inexorably part of my appearance, and as much as I’ve denied it, they clearly showed who I am, an old woman. As I saw this truth carved into my face, I made my choice. I accepted. I smiled. 

And now with that thread in place, I’ll go on weaving, carefully, in my own pattern, with all the colors that come to hand.

. 

Three-Quarters of a Century? What the hell?

 After weathering the vast shock of turning forty-five, a process made easy by moving to Bangkok where I instantly reverted to the status of a clueless four-year-old, I've been skipping heedlessly through the following years without paying attention to the increasing numbers.  Not even hearing a tactless little brat who passed me on a stairway in Hong Kong and announced in horrified tones, "Mommy! She's so old!" made me stop and ponder where my latest birthday had taken me. Wrinkles? So what. A vanishing waistline? That was part of the American Way of Eating, regardless of age. Lost hair color? Grey was fine with me. 

Not even the inertia of the Covid years made me pay attention to entering a new decade. Seventy felt no different from sixty--until I reached the halfway point of my septuagenarian years. 

This birthday was different. Two months earlier my youngest sister died, swiftly and unexpectedly. Soon after this, I tripped over an errant rolling duffle bag, broke a little bone in one hand, and had cuts and bruises on my face for three weeks afterward. Two days after I turned seventy-five, I went in to have a cataract removed and observed all the strictures involved with that procedure for much too long. Suddenly aging and mortality weren't just staring me in the face, they were in my face, or to be more precise, on it. A healthy crop of freshly developed lines had come to stay and with my newly improved eyesight, I couldn't ignore them. Perhaps they'd been there all along, I realized with a surge of horror, and I simply had been too vision-impaired to notice them.

Today, after brushing my teeth, as I assessed my face's creases and crevices under the unforgiving light of my bathroom, another thought burst into life. The toddlers I once babysat when I was thirteen are now preparing to enjoy the blessings of Social Security and Medicare. We're almost contemporaries at this point, all of us receiving sales pitches from AARP.  There's nothing comforting about this at all. Nor am I soothed in any way by the knowledge that my oldest son will be getting those same missives in two more years and in that same time period his younger brother will hit the half-century mark. If they are approaching the dubious privilege of senior citizen discounts, then I must be perilously close to being ancient.

In years past, any time I felt as though age was catching up with me, I packed a suitcase and grabbed my passport. In the beginning of this coming year, I'm going to do this again. I'm hoping that a transpacific flight will work its usual alchemy and I'll return with a mindset that has no time to dwell on birthdays and their advances. God, I hope so. I really don't want to let the truth that next year I'll be closer to eighty than seventy get in my way of having a good time with the rest of my life.

Feeling Old in a City of Swifties

 Taylor Swift came to town and for two days the streets were full of young women and little girls. They flashed through downtown like butterflies, some still young enough to need a middle-aged mother in attendance, others striding in pairs like half of the leading characters in Sex and the City. Seattle's notorious dowdiness was suddenly perked up with bras and Stetsons and skirts that resembled band-aids,satin and tulle, sequins and cowboy boots. Among this, I felt as though I was wandering through a series of TikTok reels.

Suddenly I was in a city inhabited by avatars, shining and confident and somewhat terrifying, all young enough that they’ve never inhabited their lives without ever-present screens and cameras. They’ve been stars of their own private video worlds ever since they were old enough to hold a phone and they have an eerie physical presence in which every motion contains a pose.

Almost all of them were white. Many were blonde with bodies that looked as if they’d been manufactured by Mattel. Every last one of them had access to the financial comfort that could purchase a Taylor Swift ticket and the chutzpah to put together the sort of outfit that defied any concept of 20th Century style.

These are not the girls and women I usually see on the streets of downtown and that truth comforts me. There are young female people in the world today who are imperfectly human and unaware of their beauty and power, “same as it ever was.” But in their innermost selves, do they yearn to be one of the Swifties? Or have they turned their backs on that form of gender?

Taylor Swift is popular enough that she drew her audience from all over the Pacific Northwest. From Vancouver B.C. to Idaho, her followers descended upon Seattle in outfits they had probably agonized over for months. I need to remind myself that they aren’t a new species, just a transformed version of cheerleader and sorority girl. 

I’ve seen their kind before but they were in Bangkok, impossibly glamorous in full drag or dancing on the stage of a transgender cabaret. 

Was this weekend a watered-down version of a celebrity red carpet or a Pride Parade for straight girls? I’m too old to know the answer to that but I’m quite happy that my grandchild was at the Seattle Center, wearing everyday clothing in full sunlight, dancing and probably sweating to the music of Sir Mix-a-lot, for free.

Death by Tomato Plant

 For the past three weeks my hands have felt as though they’ve been bitten by mosquitos, although I haven’t seen any. The bites are swollen and itch like crazy, emerging every time I come back inside from my porch. 

I began to remember the invisible and voracious gnats that adored me the last time I was in Tucson, but I’d never encountered them in Seattle before. Besides, those little Southwest devils were averse to wind while my recent bites have shown up even when my porch is ruffled by a stiff breeze.

The bites seemed to become more annoying as the summer took on some heat but I could never find an area on my hands that looked like an insect had feasted there. The swelling and itching came within a few minutes after I came indoors and disappeared after an hour of annoyance with no visible scars. This wasn’t like insects I’d known in the past--and believe me, there have been many. Wherever I go in the world, the word is out. “Hey. Janet’s in town. Let’s eat.”

The source of the bites became my little mystery. Were they coming from the drain that lay just outside of my fence? Did my next-door neighbor have an open container of water within his lush garden where gnats had formed a summer home? Why did these creatures never attack me in the morning when the air is cool and my windows are wide open? And why did the bites show up every time I watered the massive tomato plant that my neighbor had given me a few weeks ago? Was there such a thing as tomato mites?

Last night after dowsing what’s become a tomato tree complete with yellow blossoms and miniscule green globes of fruit, I settled in with a magazine and a particularly virulent itching on my right hand, the one in which I hold my watering can. As the swelling fattened, my concentration went straight to hell and I grabbed my ipad.

“Itching” “Swelling” “Tomato plants”-- within a second google obligingly provided the answer. Tomato plants, with their abundance of pollen, are the bane of allergy sufferers. Itching and swelling are the least of their hazards to those with “sensitivity.” Some people go into anaphylactic shock after being in contact with tomato plants.

This apparently is a fact well known to gardeners and is the reason why tomatoes were considered poisonous for centuries. 

Good old Deadly Nightshade came by its name honestly. Some people can’t even eat a fresh tomato without lapsing into an allergic reaction and many gardeners only approach their tomato plants while wearing dishwashing gloves.

Today is the Fourth of July when most stores are closed. In preparation for the holiday, I stocked up on coffee and cat food. Who knew that my most essential need would be latex hand protection? It seems that my best avenue of defense is to wash my hands the second I come back inside and if that doesn’t work, resort to antihistamines. 

I’ve been so proud of the way my tomato plant has flourished--watering it twice a day, propping up its drooping branches with little sticks, pruning unnecessary branches, and taking deep breaths of its distinctive scent. And this is how it repays me?

Next year I’m going to sprinkle my porch with an assortment of artificial plants that provide greenery without danger. Or perhaps a cactus garden--all thorns, no pollen, no gloves necessary. 

Nature, I’m breaking up with you. It’s all over between us.

Getting the Bends

 Since I don’t know how to swim, Caisson’s Disease, or decompression sickness, has never been a problem that preyed on my mind--until yesterday when I got the bends. This usually only happens to scuba divers when they rise too quickly from the aquatic depths to the water’s surface. The rapid change of pressure produces nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream and in addition to physical pain, causes dizziness and confusion. Who would think this could ever strike on dry land?

Like most of us, I sank into the darkness of  isolation and fear in 2020 and have slowly risen above it in the years that followed. My social life remained cautious and my interactions scanty until this week when that all burst into blossom. For the first time in ages, I had four different occasions marked on my calendar, where usually there’s only one a week. First I was dazzled and then I became dazed. 

In the middle of time spent with one of my dearest friends and her husband, I began to pay for a bottle of wine and suddenly realized my debit card wasn’t there. Neither were an assortment of other crucial items, ranging from a credit card to my passport. 

Luckily I was close to home so I could race back to search for these things. Unluckily I live in a heavily touristed neighborhood with narrow streets filled with crowds of pedestrians. When the little clutch purse where my essential items live didn’t appear in my apartment, I became certain that they had either fallen from an unzipped compartment in my handbag or they were stolen by a pickpocket. 

I immediately canceled my bank cards. Two hours later as I struggled to make an online report of a lost passport, I got up to find something in a pile of papers that I’d moved from the table minutes before my friend arrived. Within them was a weight that was definitely not paper--and there were my missing essential items.

As I mentally retraced my steps that led to this act of stupidity, I remembered that in the middle of preparation for a visit that I’d longed for, I bought fruit at a stand in the crowded public market--mangosteen that both my friend and I had loved when we lived in Southeast Asia. I came home and removed the receipt for this purchase and then left the little purse on top of some papers. Then I received a text message about a job I was involved in, answered it, and began to make changes in the task when another text came saying my friend had arrived. I put what I was working on at the top of the pile of papers and moved it all to another spot. As soon as I saw my friend for the first time in over a year, everything else left my mind, consumed by joy. 

Some may unkindly chalk this up to impending senility. I prefer to think of it as a surfeit of happiness crammed into one week after years of not having this happen at all. Bubbles of effervescence in my veins stalled my brain and the result wasn’t pretty. 

The lesson learned? Slow the hell down as I make my way out of the depths.

Death and Life Downtown

 

Beginning a rainy morning with a funeral march isn’t going to brighten the rest of the day. Perhaps the best part of yesterday was meeting a Rottweiler puppy. The worst part was marching in the company of signs made by a man who comes to every protest, Seattle’s Republican co-opter: Support Small Businesses. Although the march was prompted by the murder of a small business owner, this seemed remarkably dissonant. 

The drumming that led us back to my neighborhood was appropriately somber and set a tone of grief for the dead woman, her unborn baby, and the husband and child who live without her. A senseless crime committed by a madman who heard directions coming from an invisible car was punctuated by a statement from a policeman. We knew who he was. 

There’s now a taskforce of fifty police spread over most of this sprawling city: Aurora, the CD, South Seattle, Downtown. That’s twelve police for each area. More lip service from a city that specializes in this.

On the way to the march, I passed a building where a window washer was poised halfway up a glass wall. Below him was a makeshift shelter constructed of motley objects with its inhabitant under an improvised tent made from a blue tarp and blankets. What insanity is brewing within it? Who would be able to stay sane under those conditions?

Later I went to PCC to get a magazine and ice cream that might pierce through the inner and outer darkness. What gave me a little jolt of joy was seeing a long line outside Ludi’s which is open at last. Nobody waiting outside looked like a tech worker and everybody was happy. When I walked back home a few minutes later, a sign on the door announced that they were closed for the day--sold out. By this time today, they will have been open for five minutes and I would bet there’s already a throng behind the waiting line rope.

This is the third business to open downtown in the past six months--Uniqlo, Ben Bridges, and Ludi’s. Because of its history, Ludi’s arrival makes me happiest. Across from the Market for decades as the Turf, a working-class diner and bar, it became Ludi’s when the owner bequeathed it to a Filipino employee. It was displaced for a parking garage and finally found its new home a block away from me, just down the street from the Thompson Hotel, the Moore Coffee Shop, and a building that has become low-income housing. This is what downtown should look like.

So as a vicious tragedy strikes one business, another one opens. This couldn’t have happened at a better time for the residents of downtown who fear that their neighborhood will die from gentrification as much as from crime..

I can’t wait to have a BLT and a beer at Ludi’s.

Starving the Algorithm

 I've deactivated my Facebook account, which I should have done long ago. Every day I woke up to memes and jokes from people I’d never met and probably never would. My recent “restriction--only you can see your page”--with no recourse provided when I clicked the buttons that supposedly would give me a chance to get out of what we’ve come to call Facebook Jail, made me realize how absurd and conditional this medium is. That it grudgingly gave me snippets of my past every day in the form of “memories” no longer seemed acceptable and I felt disgusted that I’d given it intimate access to my life from 2008 until now.

I moved all of my photos from Facebook to Google Docs--and please, don’t point out the shaky logic behind that. There’s no escaping The Cloud, now that cameras have all become digital. Facebook invited me to move all of my posts and notes too, but I don’t have that kind of time. It took almost five hours for the photo extraction to finish its odyssey and during that time I had to be close by to hit refresh when my wifi timed out. Moving my words would have taken days-and none of them are deathless enough to warrant that.

Next I went through my list of friends and trimmed it ruthlessly. What remained when I finished the triage were family and close friends who don’t have another presence on Instagram that posts everything they put on Facebook. This was a surprisingly meager list. Now that Instagram has become Facebook’s less obnoxious twin, there’s a large degree of duplication. 

I decided I’d deactivate for the first week before I pulled the plug for good on my old account so I could still use the Messenger accessory that’s attached to it. Once I delete that account, I can no longer use that particular part of Messenger. So until I had notified people that I had moved, I wanted to keep that option. 

Then came the shocker. I can’t issue friend requests to people who apparently no longer have Facebook in their countries, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand. Luckily some of them are on Instagram and all of them use gmail. 

I feel lighter this morning. Pressing the delete button and removing fifteen years of my life from Facebook, plus pictures and memories from times before that, will happen today after I’ve sent my last message informing people of this change. Once I’ve done that, I will have come a long way toward reclaiming the word “friend.” 

Perhaps this is my first step to truly leaving Facebook. My new account is infinitely different from the one I had for a decade and a half. The algorithm is in free fall with no data yet to feed on and it’s not a pretty sight. I’m getting a flood of posts that tell me how to roast cauliflower to where I can find a good auto mechanic in Arkansas. My option for removing them is “snooze for thirty days.” 

The “story” invitation is prominently displayed and it’s repulsively easy to wander into the realm of video clips by mistake. When I investigated my settings, there were huge numbers that I turned off. “Push?” What the hell is that? I hope I never find out. What I do know is that before I denied Facebook that power, my gmail account and my SMS were flooded with notifications. 

The beast is changing and feeding it may well be something I decide I’m not going to do anymore. Right now I’m enjoying the sight of it floundering, unsure of what to do with “Mulrooney Brown.” Bite me, Facebook.

Move On. Nothing to See Here

 Lunch with my son yesterday was shattered when he said,”In Mexico they have newspapers that show all the blood. What would happen if we did that here? Look, this is what an AK-47 does to a six-year-old?” 

Kids at his school were out at recess when they saw “a suspicious-looking man.” They reported him to a teacher and he turned out to be a parent who had come to pick up his kindergartner. 

Those kids were at recess. They should have been playing. Instead they’re monitoring their school grounds for potential danger. And we think it’s covid that’s affecting their mental health. 

If people formed human shields around schools every day at every school, would that only accentuate the children’s fear? "Why are those people here every day? Is someone coming to hurt us?"

If the Parkland students didn’t sway politicians from the gun lobby, what will? Maybe the pictures of bodies torn to bits? What paper or television station would have the courage to show that? 

But that’s what stopped the war in Vietnam--dead bodies shown on prime-time TV every night. Coverage of the civil rights struggle brought hate and courage into living rooms everywhere. Now we get our news from social media and watered down newspaper coverage. We don’t even have to change the channel. Click the image of a weeping face and move on.

We are a country who has decided murdered children are an acceptable fact of our national landscape. Some of us believe that Sandy Hook was a hoax and some of us have learned not to think about it at all. 

This is what democracy looks like.

Let Them Eat Cake

 Back in the ‘70s, one of the Andrews who wrote for New York magazine (Tobias? Solomon?) wrote a piece advising people of a certain income level that it would be better for them to shove a case of canned tuna under their bed than to put money in a savings account. Now the cost of that case of tuna is beyond the means of quite a few and a savings account is as useful as a piggy bank.

When our current century was still young and not yet covered in battle scars, I bought a case of Mama noodles to put under my bed. I think I could still afford that investment but I know my blood pressure would rebel. The flood of palm oil and all the delicious additives that make Mama the world’s easiest comfort food also make it one of the least healthy staples. 

For a person who is indifferent to grocery shopping, I still spend far too much of my monthly Social Security check on food, a fact that’s belied by the contents of my refrigerator. I blame this on my homestead upbringing and the food that nourished me when I was a child. All of the economical measures that determined what went on my plate every day--50 pounds of potatoes in a burlap bag, cases of canned green beans, corn, and peas, Crisco in cans so large that they often served as seating for guests at the supper table, enough sugar and flour to last through the winter--kill my appetite with the mere memory of them. They turned me into a person who only stocks up on condiments and a bag of rice to accompany whatever I decide to eat that day. Even if I could afford the financial outlay required by a case of tuna fish, the obligatory nature of it lurking under my bed would deter me from eating it--which I suppose is the point. Survival rations rarely inspire a bout of binge eating.

Then there’s the matter of canned tuna fish itself in this era. Cleverly, manufacturers have abolished the need for a can opener, giving most canned tuna a top that resembles what's found on canned cat food. The resemblance doesn’t end there. Is it a health measure or an economic one that has packed that tuna in water instead of olive oil? No matter which, the result is the same--a dismal lack of flavor that makes a can of Fancy Feast seem almost succulent. That case of tuna has become the nightmare that used to prey upon single women, the one in which they were old, alone, and living on cat food.

Occasionally I’m given a magazine from the days of my childhood and as I study the advertisements, my personal nightmare reawakens. 

Remember casseroles? Remember when a can of Campbell’s soup was the only flavoring agent and garlic powder was an exotic ingredient? If your memory flags, go to an old school NYC outer borough diner where salt, pepper, and a dash or two of Tabasco sauce are the only condiments in the kitchen or on the table. No wonder cocktail hour was a staple in many middle class homes in mid-Century America. To face the dinner table, fortification was essential.

The pendulum made its customary swing and suddenly Julia Child replaced Peg Bracken. The housewives who, in Ms. Bracken’s words, “would rather wrap their hands around a dry martini than a wet flounder” began to labor over recipes that had them tottering by the end of the day, perhaps because of frequent sips of the wine that went into those complicated and exhausting meals. No wonder American women were always on a diet. They were simply too tired to pick up a fork.

God knows what's going on in this country’s kitchens now. What I find telling is that Gourmet and Bon Appetit have disappeared from magazine displays--and so have Woman’s Day and Family Circle. When I make my annual purchase of Real Simple, I’m always dazzled by the preponderance of recipes for pasta and the lack of ones for desserts. There’s a clue, I suppose. Unfortunately the food photography is always more tempting than the recipes; although I may tear out a page for future inspiration, it always ends up in the recycling bag.

Instead I spend a generous portion of my food budget on condiments. A case of fish sauce under the bed? Now we’re talking…

Goodbye, Momo

 As the last trace of Momo disappears, my thoughts have the same tinge of sadness as the weather. I’ve finally reached the point where I can walk past the corner it filled for ten years and am able to look at the shop that replaced it without feeling mournful. Today on the second day of its final sale, I think of going down to say goodbye but I’m not sure I have the strength to do that. 

When Momo first opened, its windows bright and colorful with the sort of clothes that had never before been sold in the CID, I felt a bit outraged. When I first walked in and found it carried $200 jeans, I was horrified. Where did this shop think it was, anyway? But as I continued my exploration, I understood; Momo was like a neighborhood candy store that offered Faberge eggs filled with the best Swiss chocolates--and lollipops too. All the things it held were carefully and democratically chosen to make every shopper at every economic level leave with a purchase that made them happy.

It was a revolutionary approach to retail, made even more iconoclastic by the welcome it extended to anyone who walked in. Lei Ann Shiramizu and the people who worked for her quickly made Momo an unofficial neighborhood community center. Whether someone popped in to buy a greeting card or just to say hi, there was always a spot of chat. Tourists were lured in by the enticing windows and left with recommendations for neighborhood restaurants. Momo's customers were often introduced to people they’d passed on the street for ages without ever saying hello, let alone knowing their names. Lei Ann was not only a “connector,” she was the world’s best hostess who made every day at Momo feel like a cocktail party, no alcohol necessary. 

I lived around on the same block as Momo for years and when I needed a small present, the perfect snarky card, a bar of bourbon-vanilla soap, or a bit of cheerful conversation, that was where I went. “Retail therapy” has become as big a lie as “customer service” but at Momo I always found both--and so much more. I found a friend. 

Well actually I found two. Years after it opened I walked in and behind the counter was a woman as prickly as she was beautiful. We clashed until we discovered we read the same kind of books. Now in spite of the cavernous age gap that yawns between us, I love Angela with all my wizened heart. She is a gift from Momo, in the same way that Lei Ann is its greatest treasure.

It’s a grey and gloomy day and all I want to do is go to Momo. I want to be in the place where everything it contains goes beyond “sparking joy,” it lights a goddamned bonfire of delight. 

Not only did I always find the perfect present when occasions warranted it, Lei Ann publicized my book readings on the blackboard that was at eye level just behind the counter. She sold my last book and gave it precious window space. She--and Angela too--trimmed ragged portions of my self-inflicted haircuts when I rushed in for approval. She was there when my mother died, when a sister and I were bitterly estranged, when the man I loved lost his battle against cancer on another continent, and when my apartment was sold, forcing my departure from the neighborhood.

Momo was Lei Ann’s art installation and she made it a destination point for people all over this city. When I think of  everyone it embraced and welcomed, and of everyone who now passes its corner without ever knowing it had once been there, I feel tears at the back of my nose and the beginning of a lump at the back of my throat. At the same time, I feel deep gratitude for all those years when Momo was in place. Thank you, Lei Ann. Goodbye, Momo.