Watermark

My Mother

BETTY LOU JULIAN [BROGAN] SERR

Betty Lou Julian Serr  died October 12, 2009  in Chandler, AZ.    She was born in Long Beach, California July 5, 1924, the daughter of Bob & Georgia (Kenney) Julian.  She went to Montana as a baby  with her parents and resided on a ranch near Clyde Park until the age of ten, when the family moved to a ranch near Wilsall,MT.   She attended schools in Clyde Park and Wilsall, graduating from Wilsall High School in 1942. 

She attended computer school in Spokane, Washington, then worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad.  In 1945 Betty married Richard Brogan and lived in Denver, CO for several years.  Two children were born to them - Richard and Sharon Brogan.  They were divorced in 1955 and Betty returned to Livingston where she again worked for the railroad.  In 1958 she moved to St. Paul, MN where she was employed by the Burlington Northern R.R.  

In 1964 she married Joseph Serr in Mason City, Iowa and moved to White Bear Lake, MN.  She retired from the Burlington Northern in 1990.  Since her retirement the Serrs have spent the winters in Chandler, AZ.  After Joe’s death in 2005 she moved to Arizona permanently.

She is survived by her daughter, Sharon Brogan of Missoula, MT, her twin sister, Bonnie Pinkerton of Chandler, AZ, .stepson Richard Serr and his wife Marge, step-son-in-law Al Dieken of Oakdale, MN,  surrogate daughter, Louise Fritschy and husband, Ron, Denver, CO, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.   

Betty had several surrogate children in her life - always ready to listen to someone in need. She was preceded in death by her son Richard, brother Russell Julian, foster brother Robert Clark and her parents.

Niki

Today I get to write, because Niki is going to the grocery store for me. Niki has been, steady and patient, in my life for twenty-eight years. She has outlasted my absences and withdrawals, my long silences and strenuous sulks. We've played together, at auctions and art shows; at second-hand stores and carnivals. We have comforted each other when our lives collapsed in shreds at our feet.

Niki is a slender twig of a cowgirl, with an artist screaming to get out. And she does get out. Niki can make something beautiful of the ordinary and the broken; she can find spirit in the inert. Even in me.

Even now.

More than once she has held out her hand to me when I was drowning, and pulled me back to shore. Pulled me awake.

Friendship is a deep and marvelous thing; it's full of surprises. Sometimes the strongest grow from dissimilar seeds -- this lovely and extroverted girl, adventurous and daring; and me, so settled, so stubborn, so inside-myself. Going to an event with Niki was always a truly social experience; everyone knew her, everyone wanted a moment of her attention. Still, all these years past, the men of my acquaintance always ask: So, do you still see Niki? How is she? Is she married?

And her daughters are like her, lovely blooms from a lovely tree. Exotic, brilliant, compelling.

Niki, of course, sees this in her daughters, but not in herself. What is it, in our lives as girls and women, that blinds us to our own beauty? To our own gifts?

***************

Today is bright and bent and buried in snow. Surely, somewhere in this town, chainsaws are howling -- but I don't hear them here. Though I went out yesterday in the cold morning and shook snow from our trees, they still bow down, holding to broken branches with pale strings of wood. The lilac tree in my garden has again lost part of itself; the courtyard birches have great gaps in their canopies. Everything sleeps.

Lost

Today I am grieving a once-loved child, now lost to drugs and psychosis. A child desperate for love, who could not be still long enough to receive it.

Crank. Crack. Speed. Meth. These hard, harsh, one-syllable words -- have you ever noticed that? -- how they turn their users into harsh, hard, dangerous, one-dimensional people.

Is he a self-medicating bipolar, or have the drugs driven him to this madness?

In the end, in prison, finding Jesus in some smuggled substance, it does not matter.

But the end is not here yet.

In the end, someone will die.

Who failed him?

We all did.

Snapshot Poem 07 June 02006 -- Mariah

The world having survived
yesterday's coincidence
of numbers, I celebrate this

day after your twenty-eighth
birthday, watering the garden
you helped to make, feeding

the goldfish you worked
to house, inhaling the many
sweet scents of early summer,

these exuberant blooms so
like you in full flower, multi-
petaled, colorful, brilliant,

beautiful, mercurial, seductive,
almost frightening -- Goddess
Daughter who embodies all She

is, fanciful, dangerous, generative,
destructive, witchy and bitchy, oh
what a crone you will one day be.

666

There are many cheerful things I could blog about -- I have a list, including that today is GoddessDaughter's birthday -- but for some time now I've been distracted by a confluence in the news: many stories about this being 25 years since AIDS began to devastate our communities; and our Christian President's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I lost my brother, Richard Julian Brogan, to AIDS in October of 1986, and his partner, Judd Polivka -- my best friend -- in 1992. Richard was one of the earliest diagnosed, in 1982; and one of the longest-lived at the time of his death.

I was with him in the New Jersey hospital, where staff who objected were permitted to not treat, nurse, or touch him; were allowed to refuse to clean his room; could decline to provide respiratory or other therapy to ease him.

I was with him in Minnesota when a fall down the stairs left him unconscious, then aphasic and confused -- and the 911 medics put on their gloves and masks, set him on a hard backed chair, and left him there with me.

I was with him in New York, where taxis would slow, then speed away at the sight of this frail, sick man; where pharmacies had lines of gaunt dying men stretching past their doors.

It was a time when science was ignored in favor of fear and hate -- like today.

To those who seek evil in this coincidence of numbers, let me tell you -- I have seen it. It is here, right here, in our own hearts. It is the willingness to follow our fear instead of our love, instead of our god-given intelligence.

It is ordinary, everyday selfishness; the willingness to put one's own brief pleasure -- that rush of sexuality, or superiority, or smugness -- above the safety and security of our neighbor, our child, this stranger.

It is in the casual cynicism of politicians who will manipulate our ignorance and fear to their advantage.

I have sat in barred rooms with men who had committed terrible acts against others, and felt less contaminated, less evil, than I have felt in public rooms where bigots, wrapped in the jewelry of religion, declaimed their hate.

How willing we were to blame the victims of this plague, to call it homosexual -- still. Even with a full third of the young and heterosexual populations of some countries infected. And now, in this civilized, western, christianist country, some are actually willing to defend institutionalizing bigotry; the amendment of our brilliant constitution to exclude a portion of our population from its rights and responsibilities. These, our own brothers and sisters; our own children.

My heart hurts.

Memorial Day

When they brought my father out
of Germany, he weighed ninety-two
pounds.
            Was he still
a boy then? Was he kind?

    They could leave the camp
but had nowhere to go.
    A brass key to a church, where
sometimes there was food. Then
    back through the foreign woods.

                         Who might he have been?
If not for this? Did he dream, ever,
of people burning beneath his plane?
                         Does it matter?
    For years his medals rested

in a velvet box, passed from wife to wife.
   What counts against him?
    What weighs in his favor?
                         Who has the right
to measure?

I struggled for some time about what to post today, and finally decided on this somewhat revised version of a NaPoWriMo piece.

Will we ever have no need for this day?

Snapshot Poem 24 May 02006

Abigail & Henry ~ click for larger image

Abigail, today the park lawn
is a meadow of dandelion seed
and English starlings. An African
in eye-whacking tennis whites
teaches a young American how
to swing her racket. His voice
sings in this hot day. A piercing
call and from my shadow an osprey
shadow glides -- two young ones,
learning, turning in the blue
air. The mallard couple, he
with his glossy green cap,
she rather matronly, stick
their heads in the water,
tails straight up. How not-
British it is here, without
you. A man paddles past
in a red kayak. Your sweet-
heart longs for you, the children
ask, my dog watches eagerly
then droops in disappointment
as a woman in a dazzling scarf
comes near enough to know
it is not you. Abigail, this beauty,
this heat, these creatures, this
Montana summer -- we send it
all to you on this, your English
birthday. Let it be today's
bright and cheering tunic.

For Abigail

Davi & The Independent

Davi's been here only a few weeks, and already she's made the local newspaper [click for larger image]:

Homelessness is an ongoing problem in Missoula, sometimes in the context of poverty; sometimes in the context of panhandling and drunkeness. Our town is a 'stop' on the road to somewhere -- somewhere warm, somewhere welcoming, somewhere else.

Photogenic, isn't she?

Davi & Henry

My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set

I'm planning to write a post about this -- later. But I wanted to post a photo of the day, and this is my favorite, so here it is, without its narrative.

World AIDS Day

 

Sunset on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
for Judd Polivka 1940-1992

In afternoon, sun
becomes more precious, spare
near evening, as it falls
toward that spot, there

on the mountain. That far
spot, where trees thin
and shale shows through. 

You can see the shape
of the world there
at the curving edge
of sky. 

In the last moment
sagebrush burns
red. Then

stars. Pale
and countless
as dust

       as ashes.

In afternoon, sun
becomes more precious, spare
near evening, as it falls
toward that spot, there

on the mountain. That far
spot, where trees thin
and shale shows through. 

You can see the shape
of the world there
at the curving edge
of sky. 

In the last moment
sagebrush burns
red. Then

stars. Pale
and countless
as dust

       as ashes.

Bringing the Cows Home

Friday Cat Blogging will occur later today, or possibly it will be Saturday Cat Blogging; today you get cows. And on Sunday, here at Watermark, will be The Halloween Edition of  The Carnival of the Cats! Send in your entry via the Carnival Submission Form (my preference) or email to submissions (at) carnivalofthecats.com.

Now from cousin Sue (PeeWee's person) we have cows, horses, and cousins (click images for larger view):

I love these photos; they say home.

For more critters to look at during news breaks this weekend, try:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Dogs
Carnival of the Cats

Bezoar

A new member of the (extended) family [click photos to enlarge]:

      

be·zoar  (bzôr, -zr) n.

A hard indigestible mass of material, such as hair, vegetable fibers, or fruits, found in the stomachs or intestines of animals, especially ruminants, and humans. It was formerly considered to be an antidote to poisons and to possess magic properties.  [Dictionary.com]

Actually, he's pretty cute; a tiny Giant Schnauzer, adopted by Kris and family to accompany them on long hikes and camping trips.

Here is a brief movie of Henry meeting Bezoar [click to download]:

That's not me, by the way -- that's Kris.  I'm behind the camera.

World AIDS Day

   

Richard and Judd

Today, at the market, a middle-aged couple, squeezing
tomatoes. They remind me of you, one gaunt, grey,
with sharp cheekbones; the other large and reddish.

I remember you exiting the plane at the Missoula airport,
both in huge fur coats, New York queers and proud
of it. Christmas, and you two glittered and grinned

brighter than the trees. I wish I could tell you, again,
how you filled up my house with your games and quarrels,
and how I miss you now, all the empty corners. Every day

there is something I wish I could tell you. A woman
at my office has a Mariachi band made of stuffed frogs
and tin guitars. I am making a garden, dreaming

into spring, pale daffodils, crocus, orange columbine. 
The sunroom will have a heated floor of satillo tile.
I gave your buffalo robe to a Chickasaw poet, who one day

will give it to her daughter, and she to hers. I have tried
to put your things where they belong. The Hudson Bay painting
to a man who never loved a picture before. Your gold

LaBaron convertible to the artist who painted the woods
you went into, finally. Sometimes I look for you there. 
Are you where you belong?

80

My mom and her twin are eighty years old today -- both going strong and in excellent health.  Nearly eighty people celebrated with them at a gathering last week. 

Both are 'Sis'; both are 'Mom'; both are 'Grandma'. 

Think what they have seen in their lives -- electricity, automobiles, indoor plumbing, air travel, telephones, washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, astronauts on the moon, computers, television, email -- all this for women who went to a one-room school in a horse-pulled buggy. 

Happy Birthday Mom & Sis -- may you see much more! 

{Birthday cake ruthlessly stolen from scribblingwoman}

My Brother's Birthday

Richard Julian Brogan
b. May 30, 1951
d. October 4, 1986

Joe

Yesterday, a note from my aunt telling me that Mom had taken my stepfather to the hospital.  My mother would not have told me so quickly, not wanting to worry me. He's there now for a few days, "observation", though the doctors assure us it is most likely a medication reaction; a minor problem.

He is 92 and slowly diminishing. Is there a "minor problem" at 92?

the spider
weaves her web
in the windchimes

Abigail's Leaving

Amidst signs of early spring -- soggy lawns, bare pavement, dirty snow, rain -- friend/daughter Abigail leaves today for England.

This house will seem empty.