A Visit

Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. Mom and Dad drive down to see me, and Gigi travels with them.

Furnished Reunion

Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. This was the living room of my furnished apartment.

Saturday Mail Delivery

Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. I lived here for two years.

I return after the first day of classes.

 

Urbana, Illinois, September 1980. I did my most productive studying in this room. The book on the "sliding bed/couchy thing" is for a course about twentieth-century Russian history. (Russian history was one of my four fields in graduate school.) An engaging professor taught that class. I was sorry to learn he recently died.

Poster Reunion

Urbana, Illinois, May 12, 1972. This was the science fair at which Mr. Irene and I could have launched a friendship, but we didn't.

Grab a Book: "Downstate" Edition*

Urbana, Illinois, September 1984. Mom and Dad visit me again—this time, they're checking out the new apartment. They brought Meškė! (Meškė's leash sits on the edge of the desktop.)

Mom's reading my copy of Vogue Knitting, and she brought a project to work on during the three-hour ride from Suburban Chicago. That gold, vinyl knitting bag travels well.

*To Chicagoans, anything south of Joliet is "Downstate"—or "Southern" Illinois.

Settled-in Reunion

Urbana, Illinois, September 1984. I moved to a different apartment when I returned from Venice. This one wasn't furnished, and I visited many garage sales before I felt settled. I was happy with the desk, but I did acquire a better chair later. I also bought a word processor that year.

Tastes change.

When I finished my first year of grad school, I left Sherman Hall and moved into an apartment. The apartment was a few miles from campus, and I most often biked or walked to classes. I chose the unit primarily because it was furnished. Back then, I didn't think the furniture was nice.

 

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Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. Now, I wouldn't mind having that dinette set.

A Place to Study

Last year, a commenter identified the "sliding bed/couchy thing" from my graduate dorm, Sherman Hall. When pulled out, the bed touched the back of the desk chair.
 
Today, I ran across two photos of my Sherman Hall room:

Urbana, Illinois, September 1980. I took this photo of the room early in the school year; later, a turntable rested on the end table, and stereo speakers stood on the bed's shelf. The knapsack got a lot of use. (Also: that's not a bong, that's a Dansk candle holder. It's in our kitchen now.)

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Urbana, Illinois, September 1980. Mr. Irene and I still use two Bardelli mugs of the same vintage as the one on the desk. The pillow—and the design on the wall in the previous photo—are from the time when I did a lot of needlepoint.

Sherman Hall

Champaign, Illinois, January 1981. A commenter today correctly identified the dorm that housed my first, graduate-school room. The room was on the fifth or sixth floor, on the left. The quarters were small and provided a good place to study.

Do you want to go for a ride?

Door County, Wisconsin, April 1977. Gigi looks ready to go for a spin in my Dad's 1972 Buick Skylark. After Dad bought another VW, I got the Skylark. It was my first car. It was a V8, and it got 12 miles to the gallon. I drove it many times between Urbana, Illinois and Chicago. In the early 1980s, I sold the Skylark to a vintage car collector. He paid $400.00 for the car.

Splat

When I was an estate planner, I developed the habit of reading obituaries. Estate planning professionals aren't "ambulance chasing" when they open the obituary page. They instead read obituaries because obituaries alert a lawyer to incoming cases. It's a good idea to review a file before a grieving family member arrives in the conference room.

Obituaries are complicated pieces. How can a life be summed up in a few, expensive lines? What if the newspaper permits "Discussion" or "Comments" on an online obituary page? Can a family decline that option? Why don't obituaries usually cite the cause of death? People want to know. We know a decedent loved his family, but what did he love about his life?

A lovely woman asked me today if I have a "Caring Bridge" page. I replied "no," and I explained the blog. The blog accents what is important to me, and who mattered. Like any edited, selective work, it's the modified truth. I try not to embellish that truth. One of my favorite sayings is, "I want to get it right; I don't want to be right." I do, however, edit: sometimes people and things cut themselves out. Corners of drama and bags of anger weary my shunted patience.

About fifteen years ago, I was shopping in a "Marshall's" department store, and I caught a glimpse of my image in a mirror that wrapped one of the building supports. I was startled. For a second, I didn't think that I was the person in the mirror. I thought of myself as a spry twenty-two-year old who could earn the 1980s equivalent of "chili peppers" on ratemyprofessors.com. What I saw was a preoccupied, middle-aged woman in a shirt-waist dress.

That memory returned today when I read the piece about people trying to reconstruct family recipes. Will it taste as good as you remember it? (Ask any Lithuanian immigrant who's been in this country for more that twenty years to go back and taste the delectable Lithuanian chocolate of her youth. Blech. It tastes like a chocolated laxative!)

Can I align the past that lives in my memory with the history that the photos reveal?

When I "shake my legs," as Lithuanians say, my obituary will have one line: a link to this blog.

Champaign, Illinois, January 1981. This is the "Irene" that lives in my head: the graduate student, sitting in her monastic dorm room.

Desk

Urbana, Illinois, September 1985. This is the place at which I sat and wrote a dissertation.

An Introduction to Žulė

When I moved from Urbana, Illinois, to Columbus, Ohio, to start working at my first job, I bought a dog almost as soon as I had finished settling into my new apartment. That dog was named Žulė, and she was an apricot Miniature Poodle. Eventually, her fur turned almost white.

Žulė defied every Poodle stereotype. She rarely barked, she was extraordinarily confident and independent, and she exhibited no nervous or unnerving habits. I trained her to ride calmly in the car, and by the young age of four months, she could sit quietly throughout a seven-hour trip to Chicago. During our many drives to Chicago, Žulė and I often pulled into an Amoco station in West Layfayette, Indiana. While I freshened up, the gas station attendant who had gotten to know us walked Žulė around the property.

After Mr. Irene and I married ("love me, love my dog"), Žulė brought us much joy. She died just short of her eighteenth birthday.

Columbus, Ohio, November 13, 1986. Žulė, at the age of four months, rests after being groomed for the first time.

The Eighth-Grade Science Fair

Although Mr. Irene and I grew up in the same Chicago suburb, we attended different grade schools. Both schools were Catholic insitutions, run by nuns, but they stood at opposite ends of the town, about eleven blocks apart.

Mr. Irene and I each enrolled in our grade schools' Eighth-Grade Science Fairs. Participating schools sent two or three "winners" to the Illinois State Science Fair. The Illinois State Science Fair took place at Assembly Hall, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Coincidentally, both Mr. Irene and I were sent to the Illinois State Science Fair by our respective grade schools. That's the first time we officially intersected, even though our families had known of each other since the Displaced Persons days back in Seligenstadt.

Urbana, Illinois, May 11, 1972. We arrive at Assembly Hall. Did most land-grant universities build such mushroom-cloud structures?

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Urbana, Illinois, May 11-12, 1972. Mr. Irene stands next to his science project. His patterned shirt complements the plaid jacket.

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Urbana, Illinois, May 11-12, 1972. My poster looks more professional, no? I sewed that dress. It was a pink-and-white polyster piece.

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Urbana, Illinois, May 12, 1972. It's the awards ceremony. My Dad had a wicked sense of humor.

Gary

My friend Phyllis called me today. Her husband, Gary, died on January 1.

Phyllis met Gary when she and I were History grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Gary, a blind English professor, was crossing a busy street. His seeing-eye dog, the Golden Retriever "Spar," was about to lead Gary into traffic. Phyllis, a bystander, jumped into the lane and pulled Gary (and Spar) to safety. And so began the romance.

I spent many evenings with Phyllis and Gary. Phyllis used to say that when I was in Champaign, away from my own home, I could get my "dog fix" by visiting them and Spar.

I went to Phyllis and Gary's wedding, and they came to ours.

 
Suburban Chicago, June 1989. Phyllis—in the rose bridesmaid's dress—and Gary dance at our wedding.

UPDATE: Here's a tribute published in the Champaign-Urbana newspaper, The News-Gazette.

Diva

My Mom has a great love for opera. I have childhood memories of hearing Puccini melodies drifting up from the Rec Room on Sunday afternoons. Mom taught me to appreciate the distinct instruments different divas possessed, and by my preteen years, I could distinguish the voice of Maria Callas from that of Marilyn Horne, and Joan Sutherland from Beverly Sills. During some opera seasons, my Parents bought tickets to stagings at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. There, I saw several thrilling performances, including Sutherland in "Lucia di Lammermoor" and Leontyne Price in "Madame Butterfly." One of my first dates with Mr. Irene was to see a performance of "Don Giovanni" at the Lyric featuring Samuel Remey. Interesting choice.

When I was a graduate student, I learned that Leontyne Price would be in (the small college) town to perform a recital. I stood by the ticket window to see if any seats became available. A woman who had an ill husband sold me his spot, and we sat together in the front row of the mezzanine. When Price sang the first few notes of "Un Bel Di," my heart lept into my throat, and I wept so hard I got the hiccups. That aria swept up many memories. 

Suburban Chicago, May 1961. I belt out a tune while Mom accompanies me. The skirt I am wearing is part of some costume. Notice the plastic tub on my head, which served as a fine crown. I still remember the throw pillow on the left. It was gray, and the quilted strips were made from vivid colors. Sculpted carpeting! The still life above the piano features a lilac bouquet. It was painted for my Mom as a gift. This was before my Parents hired an "interior decorator" to redo the living room. One of the changes he made was to move that painting from above the piano and replace it with a fancy chandelier. That's sure to appear here in later photos.