My Aunty Lou

 

I'm going back in time, once again, to visit my great great aunt, Lou Goodale Bigelow.  I knew "Aunty Lou," and would visit her in her home that adjourned my great grandmother Ada's home in the orange groves of El Cajon, Ca, just outside of San Diego.

Lou was a singular woman, especially for her time, and I love reading about her life of artistry and dedication to her craft.  She was a bit of an eccentric (as many artists are) and I knew this instinctually when I was a child.  Her small studio was set in the sunny and arid countryside. She kept heavy drapes closed during the day to keep out the heat, so her space was a cool oasis in the summertime.  Her studio was across a breezeway from her sister, who lived there with my great grandfather Oscar.

I knew some of our family history because my g-grandmother would pull out boxes of photographs made by Lou and others, and tell me the stories behind the images.  I now have these images, kept stored in an old leather suitcase from the 1940s.  Not only images on paper, but 4x5 inch negatives which are in great shape considering their age.

Lou made this portrait of Wallace Simpson, at the time the wife of a naval officer.  Mrs. Simpson came to Lou's photo studio on Orange Avenue in Coronado, CA and sat.  There's a good description of the session in the article linked above.  When the King of England announced he would abdicate in order to marry his love, Lou's photo was used in newspapers around the world.  It was one of the few contemporary portraits of the woman.  I grew up hearing this story many times, as it was Aunty Lou's most famous photograph.

I get a little thrill at the notion that I have a celebrity in my ancestry.  As a photographer, Lou was in the thick of high society through her association with the Hotel Del Coronado.  Snow birds from old money families, the movie industry and titans of power would often spend vacations there, and while there had their portraits made at her studio.  She also made many family portraits in the outdoor patio at the back.  

Here is my grandmother, Nadine, posing with Lou's dog Lady on the back patio.  Despite all the set designs Lou made for indoor work, the back patio with the giant pepper tree was a favorite of many.

I love remembering Aunty Lou.  I remember that she drove race cars, wore slacks, dove into work that women rarely did.  She had a confidence that came from her father in particular.  He taught her about photography and launched her career.  They were a bohemian bunch except for my great grandmother who was a very proper lady.  My grandmother would tell us some of her peculararities: never say you're full after a meal.  Always say you've had a sufficiency.   The terms of arms and legs were to be called "limbs."  When I knew her, she was a very old lady who always took care with her dress and appearance.  Quite a contrast to her artsy sister who dressed like a man and drove fast cars.

I come from them all.  I love that.

Pre-Existing Conditions

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, before my latest health scare.  I'm tired of it, I tell you. I wound up in the ICU with extremely high blood sugars.  I called 911 because I felt so poorly and knew I could not drive myself to the ER.  After lots of testing and IV drips of various liquids, turns out I had bacterial pneumonia.  This infection is what increased my blood sugars to dangerous levels.  This is one reason why I get all my vaccines and stay away from people who are sick.  I'm home now on oxygen.  No telling when I'll get off of it, but I need it even when I am sitting quietly.  I really need it when I empty the dishwasher or fix a meal.  Speaking of which, I can't use my gas appliances while there's all this oxygen in the house.  I'm getting creative with the microwave, and ordering a lot of delivery.  I've been craving sushi. Perhaps my body is telling me I need more omega-3?

Here is the litany I began before....

I did not win the health lottery.  Born prematurely, I had lung issues from the get go.  Thanks to modern medicine and the good care of my parents, I survived early and critical asthma.  It forced me to sit out various activities. I have memories of being five years old, watching the kids playing outside, knowing that I could not join them.  These were the days before inhaled steroids and albuterol rescue inhalers.  A big bowl of bowling water with Vics Vapo Rub was the treatment.  Nights in the hospital in an oxygen tent.  Miraculously, somewhere around my seventh year my health stabilised for some unknown reason and it wasn't until I was fifteen that my asthma kicked in again.  My parents took me for allergy tests, and I tested positive for just about everything.  I started on shots which lasted for a couple of years.  Despite this, I was active as a teen, and never considered myself 'sickly.' 

My frequent use of albuterol (inhaled) eventually led to heart rhythm problems in my early sixties.  A smart doc put me on an inhaled steroid and that did the trick.  My use of albuterol was reduced by 99 percent. I use it so infrequently now that I don't carry it in my bag when going out.  In the past, I would never be without it.

In my twenties I was chronically and severely depressed.  The medications back then were worse that the illness, so after trying two or three, I gave up.  This made my world exceptionally small and both my husband and I suffered greatly as a result.  I was lacklustre and slept a lot.  I cried a lot.  My illnesses ruined vacations for us.

When I was pregnant and thirty years old, I developed gestational diabetes.  Discovered near the end of my pregnancy, it was treated without insulin.  I watched my carbohydrate intake.  Both the asthma and the diabetes impacted my labor: I had a severe asthma attack and was given drugs to help.  They were essentially speed (adrenaline).  Because of the attack, I went into early labor but the use of stimulants hampered the contractions.  Three days of labor later, I delivered early: a very fat little cherub.  Doc said it was good that I delivered early, as the diabetes was responsible for putting a lot of weight on the baby.  Though born early, she had good lungs (hallelujah).  She also had severe jaundice which almost required a blood transfusion.  We got through it all.

Inserted later, after reviewing.  I can't believe I left out the biggest clunker of all: type 1 diabetes.  What a Freudian slip.  At 35 I got very sick.  Lost a lot of weight, was thirsty all the time and of course peeing all the time.  A trip to the doc and a pee test determined I had diabetes.  At the time we assumed it was type 2 since I was well into adulthood.  I was assigned an endocrinologist who was a pretty sour fellow and we went through the protocols.  It was daunting: so much to learn just to take care of myself daily.  Finger sticks (ouch) and gel pacts for low blood sugar.  I was taking oral medications at the time and my doc was happy with my progress.  At one point he said, "I wish all my patients were as diligent as you."  After a year, however, my sugars went up and again I became very sick.  Testing revealed I had no more insulin at all.  Wasn't making it, wasn't using it.  I was taught how to use and inject insulin several times each day.  This disease impacts everything in my life, and has done so for 32 years.  I am used to the daily care and consideration, and modern devices like a CGM and insulin pump do make life easier.

The health chronicles really kicked into high gear in my late fifties when I was hospitalised multiple times in a short period with completely bizarre and undiagnosed symptoms.  I was never given an explanation, and of course some doctors concluded immediately and without basis that it must be diabetes related.  No doubt this was because my blood sugars shot up to dangerous levels while my blood pressure tanked.  Close to death multiple times, I came to think of death as an inevitable relief from this cycle of illness.  These episodes scared the hell out of all who knew me, but I was too exhausted to feel such fear.

Due to my health, I was able to receive social security disability.  The episodes disappeared as mysteriously as they had come, but I lived with the reality that they could return at any time.

Two years ago, I had gastric by-pass surgery.  I was looking forward to losing weight and improving my health.  Unfortunately, I developed an ulcer at the suture site which went undiagnosed despite my repeated complaints to my surgeon.  I ended up being taken to the hospital, bleeding out, and immediately going into open stomach surgery.  I lost a lot of blood.  A lot.  My by-pass surgery had to be reversed.  I had lost 45 lbs in two months because, for most of that time, I could not eat anything.  Protein drinks made me sick.  It was a brutal way to lose weight. Two years later, all the weight came back on.

I survived the pandemic without coming down with Covid-19. Probably because I was very careful and stayed home except for solitary walks with my dog.  I don't go to crowded places because I can't stand crowds.  I didn't fly anywhere.  I had my vaccines as soon as they were available.  Plain dumb luck or following good protocols?

Ever since that stomach surgery 2.5 years ago,  I've never felt right again.  My doc and I have been working on why this might be so, and she's ordered an array of blood work.  The thing is: I have no energy.  Pushing myself only makes it worse.  She thinks it might be akin to chronic fatigue.  

Despite my lack of energy, I did make several trips since spring this year.  I paced myself and ordered wheelchair service at the airports.  I was able to visit friends, and attend a friend's memorial service in Washington D.C.  It was very taxing, but I did it and I felt proud that I did.  They were slow-moving trips with lots of rest, but I managed it and for that I am grateful.

My adult daughter is inured to my health emergencies, including my stays in ICU. She had to deal with my diabetic emergencies all of her life.  She had to get me juice and make me a sandwich to recover from low blood sugar.  She saw me emotionally snap while in the middle of it.  This didn't occur often, but it did happen.  If the juice wasn't coming fast even.  If my blood sugars were low enough that I was sweating, shaking and running hot and cold like a fever.

Speaking of my daughter, being pregnant with her was one of the healthiest periods of my life.  My body worked well.  I breastfed with no complications and kept it up until she weaned herself around her first birthday.  I love feeding her.  I loved that my body could do this.  I had no postpartum depression - I felt great.

There were many periods of great health: when I was a teenager and into my twenties,  I enjoyed backpacking.  I climbed mountains before dawn to watch the sun rise.  I swam in clear cold rivers and enjoyed the company of friends around camp fires. I built rudimentary furniture when I was too poor to purchase the real thing.  I learned how to repair cars, and fix plumbing problems.  I marched in political protests and had a short but wonderful career on a public radio station.  My voice went out into the world on the airwaves, as did the music I chose to play.

I guess this is all to say that even though I have been beset with various illnesses over the course of my life, I have lived a good one.  I pick myself up, dust myself off and get on with it.  Really, what else is there to do?

Sad News

As if life couldn't get any weirder, I found out today that my niece passed away two years ago.  Her mother, my younger sister, and I have been estranged for about that length of time.  I do occasional internet searches on S.'s children, just see how they are doing since their parents and I aren't speaking.  I was not expecting the news of her death, and it leaves me deeply shocked and sad.  

My niece ghosted me about ten years ago for reasons I have never been able to figure out, and she was not willing to talk with me about it.  When we did meet over family gatherings, she was saccharine to the extreme.  This kind of behaviour drove me up a wall.

I have no idea if she had been ill for awhile, in an accident, or anything. Further searches reveal nothing.  She was only 40 years old.  She had a hard life, relying on her parents for financial support when her home decorating business wasn't doing well.  She was a gifted caterer and party organiser with impeccable taste.

I don't think my older sister knows about this, and I hope to speak with her tomorrow.  I'm glad my parents aren't around to see this.  It would have devastated them.  She ghosted them as well, but my mother in particular hoped for a happy reunion at some point. 

 Maybe they've had it now.

The Day After

I feel like shit.  I am so disappointed in our country.  I can't say anything that would shed light on this insanity.  I am in the minority in the United States, but I usually am.
I can't even get the formatting right on my blog right now.  Do I care? No.
The great Langston Hughes speaks for me today.

• 

 Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!