The roots of the pattern were planted in the Styer house. The Styers lived next door when I was growing up. There were four children, two of whom were within a year or so of me. I spent a lot of time over their house, and they were all incredibly kind to me, welcoming me into their home on hundreds of occasions.

They were like a second family, and Mrs. Styer was the epicenter of this experience. She treated me more like her own child than someone else’s, and she coaxed the same kiss from me to get a treat that she coaxed out of her own kids. For most of my childhood, her house was like my home away from home, and she was my mom away from mom.

I can’t picture my life without people like Mrs. Styer. She hasn’t been the only angel to grace my life, but she is the first I can remember. Like so many others, she saw something in me I couldn’t see in myself. That faith, that sort of kindness, has made all the difference.

Last Friday I dropped off a gift for a friend. The gift was a token of appreciation for longtime support and encouragement. In the accompanying note, I compared that support and encouragement to the way Mrs. Styer would welcome me into her home. I meant it as the highest compliment — I’ve seen her in the face of every person who shows me similar kindness to this day.

Today I started my day half awake, like usual. I wasn’t fully awake until I checked my phone’s Facebook app and read that Mrs. Styer had passed away after a long struggle with cancer.

It was a jarring moment for me. The idea of Mrs. Styer in poor health is one I had resisted since hearing she was sick. Suddenly, the reality couldn’t be ignored. Still, I just can’t reconcile the frailty of her final human days with the vibrant woman I remember.

To me, she’ll always be what she always was: the avatar for every ounce of unmerited kindness anyone’s ever shown me, the first angel to grace my life and, yes, my mom away from mom.

days when we were green
summed up our wildest dreams:
just wanting to be

Comments

• March 11, 2010, EllenS writes: but lately I've been
  grey as a cloud, no thunder,
  just life without hue
• March 12, 2010, howard writes: sorry to hear that, Ellen (if your haiku is autobiographical). my past couple weeks haven't been that sunny either.
  
  i was prompted to scribble this one after attending my aunt's funeral last week. seeing all my cousins and so many other people i hadn't seen in years (decades, in some cases) reminded me of a time long past. i just remember the anxiety i had to be older, and now, it seems like i should have relished my youth a bit more ;)

I experimented with several other shaving systems, but didn’t care for any of them as much as I did the old-fashioned stainless safety razor my grandfather once used. I even picked up a cheap, slightly more modern version of it in a drug store, but it just didn’t seem to work as well as the original. So I gave up hope.

Then, out of the blue, my father found it the other day and passed it along to me again. I tried it out again yesterday. About a half dozen nicks and scrapes later, I realized my safety razor technique had become somewhat less safe. But I’m thinking I’ll give it another go. I’m hoping I can relearn the skill I used to have down pat.

The desire to go back to this practice may have more to do with my having so few direct links to my paternal grandfather, who exhaled his last breath 16 years before I drew my first. Maybe his safety razor is one of those rare links. Or maybe I just liked using it that much.

Comments

• June 27, 2009, Phil writes: My dad shaved with one just like this. He tried to teach me the artform, but I wimped out with one of those Norelco triple head deals. But it's still cool that you are using the same razor as your grandfather. That thing looks like it will last forever!
• June 27, 2009, howard writes: Interesting. My dad shaves with a Norelco triple head razor, too.
  
  And I suspect the safety razor may just last forever. Question is whether I can avoid losing it in the future ;)

Happy Father’s Day to all the paternal types out there. This year I decided to blog the occasion by posting a handwritten version of a haiku from a couple years ago. I’ll be seeing my father later today, but I wanted to post this slight bit of recognition to kick things off.

father walked me through
the angst of reassembling
all those verbal shards

Comments

• May 17, 2012, Cool Learning Disabilities images | Learningdisability & more writes: [...] kaleidoscopic tendencies Image by howard.hall for a Father's Day post [...]

*
I spotted a refreshing piece of news coverage this past week, when it became known that Sister Mary Scullion was named to Time‘s 100 Most Influential list. For those not in the know, Sister Mary is a Philadelphia nun who co-founded Project H.O.M.E., a cause I’ve personally supported for the past few years. Earlier this year, I decided to donate whatever 2009 profits my book yields to this worthy cause.

Sister Mary and the Project H.O.M.E. community have made much more than a dent in the scourge of homelessness in the City of Brotherly Love, and all I really want to say is that it’s good to see an influential persons list that includes those who don’t spend their lives as celebrities or self-serving power brokers. I can think of few people I would be happier to see on the Time list than Sister Mary Scullion.

**
I spent this past Saturday morning and early afternoon celebrating the first communion of the firstborn daughter of one of my dearest old friends. People who know me know I adore children — not just my incredible collection of nieces and nephews (one of whom celebrated her own first communion the Saturday prior) — perhaps because I retain such a connection to my own childhood. It was nice to see their family celebrate such a fine moment, and especially nice to have been included in it.

***
Earlier today I stopped in a the Yum Yum Bake Shop on the corner. I was trying to choose an appropriate combination of donuts from those available. The girl behind the counter remarked, somewhat apologetically, that the selection was “sparse.” It occurred to me how rarely words like “sparse” are used, especially by younger folks (the young woman behind the counter appeared to be in her late teens, possibly early twenties).

I complimented her choice of words, at which point she commented that she is sometimes “verbose.” I responded she must be a writer. She said she was.

I guess we’re everywhere.

(Sorry, by the way, for not handwriting the haiku — it was an afterthought)

Comments

• May 4, 2009, EllenS writes: I use sparse, but I'm a "Mathy" and consider it part of that part of my vocabulary. When I use the word I usually get the same stares of death as when I use other "Mathy" words.
  
  When I am in full airhead mode and forget to shut the math brain off, I get all "dichotomy this" and "partition that" and get all sorts of glazed eye responses.
• May 4, 2009, howard writes: I know a lot of folks who say "sparse",
  though most of them are at least a decade out of high school.
  
  That said, mathy? Really?
• May 8, 2009, EllenS writes: Sorry - I've only been half functional this week.
  
  Yes, the "Mathy" is within context of talking about matrix population but in my role of "data b!tch" within a data warehouse department, it gets used to talk about how an attribute might be stored in the warehouse. Some night when you have insomnia, call me and I can discuss linear algebra or data warehousing until I hear zzzzz's on the other end of the phone. I am very aware that what interests me does not interest people with even a smattering of normality to them....