Okay, a little blogging during another book writing break. I am putting together my notes for the interview with L.H. tomorrow. He is one of the guys responsible for originally automating the DNA sequencing project.
I have decided to refer to official people I am interviewing by their initials. It struck me that they might be ego-surfing and accidentally arrive at my personal blog, as opposed to the biotech one. Must avoid that. Bad idea.
Anyway, the biotech book is going fine. The Little Gypsy manuscript is on target. The baby is acting like a genius and growing bigger every day. My wireless connection is flawless. Even my vegetarian lasagna has reached a new level of tastiness. Things couldn't be any better.
Then I looked at the calendar and realized, hey, my mother died a year ago today.
I was with her -- called down there to Daytona Beach for the occasion. She died according to script. The hospice person said, "it could be any time now," and actually gave us a handout titled "top 10 signs that death is near." Check, check, check, check. Check.
Here are things you don't know: My mother was in a German concentration camp until she was about 7. (She was half-gypsy.) She haunted her own life (and mine) with stories about these starving, tortured holocaust people. Grim. grim stuff. And it never really fit. Because my mother was the polar opposite of that concentration camp image: She was Uber-Alive. Red-lipped. White teethed. Supple. Buxom. Manicured toes slipped into 5-inch heel pumps in wild colors. Elton John glasses. Zsa Zsa accent. You go, dahlink.
Turbans. I bet you get the idea.
A year ago, the day she died, all I could think about was the concentration camp -- not the bodacious presence she'd assumed for so long. She looked and smelled as a starving inmate with a few hours to live might. Her breath labored. Her eyes yellow and dimming. The toes going blue, which turned out to be the first sign.
I'm depressing you tonight? Not the intention. I'm just trying to remember back, just a year ago, where the shock of my mother's death lies. I guess it lies in that image that, no matter how much she buffed up and polished herself all those years, her body was still to eventually return to the starved out state it would've been had she never left Auschwitz in the first place.
The sixty years of living on the beach and having a blast dating or marrying any rich man who interested her -- well, that was a nice buffer. But was it enough? Is anything enough when you know that you are probably heading for a painful and prolonged death?
Questions, questions. Watch this space tomorrow for a return to the regularly-scheduled lighter version I Am Gina Smith. It seems there is a lot of you. I am nearing 10,000 hits for just two weeks. Hot dog.
Send me an email and let me know what you want out of this. If anything.
Lisa ... I just dropped by via Dave winer's blog, to see what your blog was about. Interesting reading. Much like I would expect. You asked us 'what we would like to see?' .. YOU. That's what a blog should show: the author. In every conceivable light possible. Day-by-day .. the interests that person has in their life and the mix they have while swimming in the current and bumping into the flotsum and other occupants of the current, eddies and backwater.
So .. I'll be watching. From the looks of things .. it should be interesting.
les
Posted by: J. Leslie Booth | October 27, 2003 at 10:46 PM