May 17, 2025: "Why My Mother Made Me," Hold On to Things, "Momento Mori"

What makes a person?  It's an interesting question.

Do past traumas?  Old relationships?  Physical challenges?  Movies?  Television shows?  Parents?  Teachers?  I guess it boils down to nature versus nurture.  Are we born with our personalities, or do our personalities develop over time?

Sharon Olds meditates on why she was born . . .  

Why My Mother Made Me

by: Sharon Olds

Maybe I am what she always wanted, 

my father as a woman, 

maybe I am what she wanted to be 

when she first saw him, tall and smart, 

standing there in the college yard with the 

hard male light of 1937 

shining on his slicked hair. She wanted that 

power. She wanted that size. She pulled and 

pulled through him as if he were silky 

bourbon taffy, she pulled and pulled and 

pulled through his body till she drew me out, 

sticky and gleaming, her life after her life. 

Maybe I am the way I am 

because she wanted exactly that, 

wanted there to be a woman 

a lot like her, but who would not hold back, so she 

pressed herself, hard, against him, 

pressed and pressed the clear soft 

ball of herself like a stick of beaten cream 

against his stained sour steel grater 

until I came out the other side of his body, 

a tall woman, stained, sour, sharp, 

but with milk at the center of my nature. 

I lie here now as I once lay 

in the crook of her arm, her creature, 

and I feel her looking down into me the way 

the maker of a sword gazes at his face 

in the steel of the blade.

We all hold onto things--trinkets from the past that seem too important simply to throw away.  I still have a People Magazine from the week River Phoenix died.  I've been keeping diaries and journals since I was in middle school.  I have boxes and boxes of them.  I've been posting on this blog for close to 15 years now.  Well over 5,000 posts.

My poems and posts and stories and journals are my my mementos.  They remind me of who I am, where I come from.  And now this post will be another of those reminders.  Twenty years from now, I may reread these words and not remember a single thing about their composition.  Or I may remember everything.

What I want to remember about today:  my wife and I watched an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tonight.  Being happy.  Feeling blessed.  Not wanting the night to end.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about all those things that remind us of life . . . and death, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Find an index card and turn it vertically.  Write a poem about something that doesn't last long.  Writing on an index card vertically will result in much shorter lines--see how this added structure changes how you normally write.  For extra credit, turn the index card over and write horizontally about something that lasts a long time.

Memento Mori

by: Martin Achatz

My sister's hospital badge,

from when she was still saving

people's lives.  A polaroid

of a cocker spaniel, blue ball

in his jaws, as if he's waiting

for me to toss it one last time.

My grandfather's wedding ring,

worn smooth as an old tooth.

My grandma didn't want it, 

told me it belonged to his first

wife, as if love was a well

that could run dry.  We all keep

tokens like these in dresser

drawers, closet boxes.  I bet

Mary Todd kept the silver

half-dollars from Lincoln's

eyelids.  Maybe she worried 

them all day until her fingers 

burned, slept with them 

under her cool pillow at night 

until she couldn't remember

the sound of his voice or 

the smell of his 

whiskered cheeks.

March 5: Gary Cooper, Alec Baldwin, Joan of Arc, Saint Colette

...The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little.  So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.

"Where?" she asked me--excited as hell.  "Where?"

"Aw, you just missed him.  He just went out.  Why didn't you look when I told you?"

Holden is being a dick here.  He's met a group of girls in a hotel ballroom, and the girls are more interested in celebrity-gawking than dancing with him.  So, Holden, as usual, starts lying to them, claiming that Gary Cooper (not Elvis) is in the building.

I understand about being a starstruck.  The two times I've visited New York City, I spent a good deal of my time gazing at the crowds, waiting for Madonna or Sarah Jessica Parker to walk by me.  I did go to a taping of Live With Regis and Kelly.  I saw some member of the Temptation Island cast, a girl who dressed like a Vegas lap dancer.  I believe Bob Costas and Martin Short were also guests.  I went to Rockefeller Plaza to get on camera for the Today show.  Al Roker actually interviewed me on air two days in a row because I was holding my three-month-old daughter.  Al's a sucker for babies.  At Today, my wife and I got pictures with Martin Yan from the cooking show Yan Can Cook.  The highlight was running into Alec Baldwin at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Yes, my encounters with stars ran the gamut, from trashy reality TV star to A-list movie actor.  I would have irritated the hell out of Holden.  I'm not sure what it is about celebrities that excites me and the rest of the human race.  It doesn't matter who it is, either.  I could see Dan Rather or Meryl Streep walking down the street and get equally geeked for either of them.  (Clare Danes is a whole other issue and blog post.)  Fame is fascinating.

Tomorrow is the feast day of Saint Colette.  Colette interests me for one reason.  It's not because she joined the Franciscan Third Order when she was 17.  It's not because she established or renewed 17 convents and several friaries during her lifetime.  It's not because she miraculously received a relic from the cross during a Friday meditation.  Or because she was a visionary, once seeing "souls falling from grace in great numbers, like flakes in a snowstorm."  All that's interesting, I suppose.  However, in several accounts I've read of Colette's life, one detail stands out:  she may have been friends with Joan of Arc.  At the very least, Joan of Arc once passed through Moulins, France, and the convent where Collette lived.  Colette is famous by association.

Not that I think Colette rushed up to Joan's horse and begged her for an autograph.  Saints have this annoying habit of being unimpressed by things like celebrity.  They're more impressed with unimportant things like prayer and compassion and charity and good works.  Things that will never end up in the pages of People Magazine.

Rest assured, if Saint Marty had seen Joan of Arc passing by his house, he would at least have taken a picture with his iPad.

Joan of Arc's actual autograph

March 4: Saint Casimir and My Famous Cousin

So, I have a famous cousin.  That famous cousin's name has been thrown at me quite a few times in the last week.  If you recall, I recently wrote about my weakness for jealousy and envy.  More than one person who has read that post (February 26, 2011) has said to me, "I'm surprised you didn't mention your famous cousin."  My father, who is not even aware of my tiny flaw, handed me a People magazine last Sunday and said, "Do you want to read about your famous cousin?"  Everyone feels it necessary to add the word "famous" in front of "cousin" for some annoying reason.  Yes, that's right.  My cousin is famous enough to grace the pages of People.  In fact, a couple years ago, he made the "Sexiest People Alive" issue.  Whatever.

I have been blogging for over a year now, and I have successfully avoided this topic so far.  It's time to talk about the elephant in the living room.  I can no longer hide the fact that someone related to me is famous, successful, rich, and sexy.  My reticence has nothing to do with the fact that I'm trying to protect his privacy.  My reticence stems from the fact that he gets enough damn attention already without me adding to it with my blog.  But, due to how many times I've encountered my cousin's name and face in the past week, I think God is trying to tell me something.

My cousin's name is Grant Achatz, and he has, among his accomplishments, won the James Beard award for Best Chef in the United States for the year 2008.  He is one of the leading chefs in molecular gastronomy, whatever the hell that is, and his restaurant in Chicago, Alinea, was given the Five Star Award from the Mobil Travel Guide, one of only 16 restaurants nationally to receive that rating.  In 2010, Alinea was named the number 7 restaurant IN THE WORLD by Restaurant magazine.

Alright, all that's pretty impressive by itself.  But it's his personal story that's made him a celebrity.  In July, 2007, my cousin was diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth.  Doctors wanted to take out a portion or all of his tongue and jaw.  He refused, opting for radical radiation therapy.  The treatments caused him to lose his sense of taste.  He has gradually regained his ability to taste, and now, in 2011, he is cancer-free.

That's my famous cousin.  He's a world-renowned chef, owns a million-dollar restaurant, and survived tongue and mouth cancer.  Sounds like the ingredients for a good book, doesn't it?  Someone thought so:  his memoir Life, On the Line was just released yesterday.  One of my best friends just called to tell me they're talking about making a movie out of the book, possibly starring Tobey Maguire.  My friend was laughing so hard when she told me this news that she could barely speak.  Another friend suggested my cousin should be played my Robert Pattinson.  "I'd go see that movie," she said in her best, Twilight-crazed fan voice.

Now, having a rich, famous, handsome cousin doesn't help me with my character flaw.  In fact, it's like having a mosquito bite that just won't stop itching.  I keep scratching and scratching and scratching.  And my friends don't help.  I'm sure Superman's friends didn't keep handing him kryptonite shakes every day.

Casimir, today's feast saint, wouldn't understand my little problem.  He was the son of the king of Poland, but he "had a horror of luxury and practiced many mortifications in secret."  Like any good saint, he had absolutely no interest in royalty.  In fact, he turned down the throne of Hungary when it was offered to him.  Casimir died at the age of 26 of tuberculosis in 1484.

Well, I suppose I should feel a sense of relief now that I have revealed my little secret about my cousin.  Now I can be jealous of him publicly and frequently.  Don't get me wrong.  I know Grant has had a difficult life.  He's worked hard.  He's faced an illness that, at the very least, should have ended his career and, at the worst, could have killed him. He overcame it, tongue, career, and life in tact.  And he's a freaking genius chef.  He deserves all of his success and money and good looks and world traveling.

Saint Marty's going to take his cue from Casimir.  Saint Marty's going to develop a horror of luxury.  Of course, Saint Marty needs to HAVE luxury first before he can be horrified of it.



Notice the family resemblance?