Category: About Me

Love and Heartache

Posted on by Janette C Wolf

On April 23, 2022, my mother-in-law, Hella Meewis Beuck, died, and the world stopped.

Or it should have. Where my bio-mother was largely emotionally absent, Mutti (mama in German), was present with her whole heart. She knew how to listen, how to comfort, and how to work alongside without taking over. Whenever she came to visit us, she brought her work pants so she could garden with me. “But you, Janette, are chief,” she’d say. “I do what you want.”

I’m someone who cherishes alone time, and need a lot of it in order to be healthy. And yet, when Mutti stayed her with us, for weeks at a time, I wished she would stay forever.

I met her on my first trip to northern Germany with Birte in 2002. She opened her arms and her home to me, eagerly showing me old photo albums of when Birte was young, and feeding us her lovely homemade concoctions. The Germans really do have the best bread, and it’s amazing how many delicious meals can be made with potatoes and cabbage. And the asparagus in Spring cannot be rivaled.

The first time she came to visit us here, we lived in Oakland. Birte’s father, Gerhard, came too; we showed them all around the Bay Area, then took them to Mendocino, one of our favorite places, where we stayed in a gorgeous house on a cliff above the wild Pacific.

Mutti came to our Northern California home again again when we got married in 2007, along with Birte’s brother, Lars, and his daughter Jenny, who has so much of Mutti in her. (Had my own mother still been alive, she would not have come to our wedding, even though she did not live so far away; she had refused upon meeting Birte to even shake her proffered hand. Nor did my sister, aunt, or favorite cousin come to the wedding, all citing evangelical dogma as their excuse. My father, brother, and their wives did attend, however; and for that we were grateful.)

But the last two times Mutti visited us, she came on her own. On the days Birte worked, and Mutti and I were alone together, I came to know her loving, generous spirit best. We talked, laughed, told each other stories, worked in the garden, and sat quietly together, reading or writing.

It’s not always easy traveling with another person, but I’d travel with her any day. We took her to the Grand Canyon and Sedona, Big Sur, Asilomar, and Murphy’s.

On that first trip to the Grand Canyon, Birte named us Hellie Eins and Hellie Swei (Hellie One and Hellie Two). We each deferred to each other to the point of it being comical (You go first! No, you!), and we laughed at ourselves for that. We shared so many other traits, too; it was as if we were related. And we were, in our souls.

Our first early morning at the Grant Canyon, Mutti whispered, “Is it okay if I get up?” We were all in one small room, with two queen beds. Birte said, “You don’t have to ask our permission.” Mutti was often bullied at home by her husband, so it took a while for her to come into her own with us. But once she was fully herself and no longer being so careful, she blossomed into the gorgeous, playful, funny, smart woman, we knew she was; and we had a ball.

One freezing cold morning on that trip, we went to the Canyon before dawn to watch the sunrise. While Birte and I complained about the cold and wanted to quit before our massive star began its appearance, she insisted we stay, cheerful and uncomplaining. B and I jogged in place, jumped up and down, and ran short sprints in an effort to increase our body temperatures. I wrapped my entire face in my scarf, with only one eye looking out: Cyclops. Mutti walked quietly, uncomplaining.

We have visited the family in northern Germany once a year or so, for the past 21 years we’ve been together. Each time, when we first arrived, Mutti (usually with Lars and one or more of his kids) greeted us at the airport with two roses, one for each of us. She brought us water and food, and settled us into our apartment with extra dish towels, egg-free cookies and cakes, shopping bags, and rubber bands. She showered us with her time and love, in spite of how busy she was: managing her own home and husband, and also being deeply involved in the lives of Birte’s three siblings and their combined eight children (now nine).

She helped raise our niece Jenny, who now displays so many of Mutti’s best qualities: her hospitality, her generosity, her ability to listen and really hear.

The second time Mutti visited us, she began having severe pain in one leg. This, unbeknownst to us, was the beginning of her physical decline. On April 23, 2022, she died of heart disease, her beautiful heart so deeply broken and yet loving to the end. And the world should have ended. But it didn’t.

I still talk with her almost every day, telling her how we’re doing, or asking her for advice on how to deal with my health challenges. My goal is to channel her loving, listening spirit. Each day, I see her in Birte as well: patient, helpful, loving.

I only wish I could hug her one more time, or hear her delightful laugh in response to my fumbling German. You may be gone from this planet, dear Mutti, but you will never be gone from us. You are in us.

More Reflections on Death

Posted on by Janette C Wolf

On December 17, 2004, I learned from a message on my cell phone that my mother had died. I was in an “all HR” meeting at work in SF, and we were taking a fifteen-minute break. I headed to the quietest part of the crowded auditorium, right next to the stage, and played my messages. There was only one.

“Jan,” Dad said in my ear, “I wanted to let you know that Joan died this morning. Call me if you want to.” He often called my mom Joan when talking to me about her.

I played the message, played it again, replayed it. Perhaps each time I hoped he’d say something different, like, “Jan, Mom and I are going to be in Oakland on Saturday and would love stop by your house and to see you and Birte.” This was something I rarely heard; both he and my mom were most often “disappointed” in me. (Mom’s common phrase of disappointment, throughout my life, was, “Ohhhhhh, Janette. How could you?” or, “This is going to kill your grandmother.”) My parents were disappointed when I bought a house with Birte in April 2004, although, in fairness, they did come to our house warming party. They’d been disappointed when Birte and I started dating three years earlier; Mom refused to shake Birte’s outstretched hand. Before that, they were disappointed in me for refusing to let them have my daughter, Neysa, stay overnight at their house: I did not want them to hurt or try to “save” her the way they had me; my family had been evangelicals since I was thirteen. And then there was their disappointment when I divorced my husband of twelve years. When I was 23, and moved in with the man who would become my husband, they’d disowned me for a year, saying I was no longer their daughter. As a teenager, I disappointed them when I questioned the evangelical church’s stance on women’s roles. In fact I’d been disappointing them as long as I could remember.

After playing Dad’s message a fifth time, a song flitted through my head: Ding dong, the witch is dead…. Immediately I chastised myself: What kind of daughter am I to have that particular song in my thoughts? Later, Birte, who is a chaplain at John Muir, would reassure me that my feelings of both relief and grief were real, not shameful. Still later, I would meet others for whom that same song came to mind when their parent or sister or brother-in-law died.

My mother, like her father, had had heart disease for years. Early in 2004, she had narrowly survived open heart surgery. But she was getting stronger every day. She’d even gone with my dad to their reunion at Stanford, and walked quite a bit without assistance. We were all hopeful. Or so I thought.

When I spoke to my father about her death, he told me he hadn’t tried to revive her when she collapsed that morning as they were getting ready to go to breakfast at the senior community where they lived. “Her cardiac surgeon told me after the open heart surgery, when he almost lost her, that she wouldn’t live long. So I figured it was coming.” He smiled, as if he were telling a story about one of the many trips my parents took.

“But she was getting better! You yourself said so!” I countered.

“Actually, she wasn’t.”

“Did her doctor also tell her that she wouldn’t live long?” I was furious. What about HIPAA? “Don’t you think she deserved to know? It was her body!”

He said nothing. Had he let her die by not acting? If he’d been a Black man, there with his dead wife, wouldn’t the authorities have questioned him more about him his refusal to even try saving her? She was only 71.

A week after her funeral, Dad shipped all her belongings (minus her clothes, which he took to Goodwill) to me. “It’s just a few things,” he told me over the phone. “I think you should have them.” But when the movers arrived, they unloaded box after box after box of her papers, letters, photos, genealogical work (which I would come to appreciate), and a box labeled, “Joan’s Life”, as if all of who she’d been could be contained there. I cried when the movers left, and almost ran after them to beg them to take it all back. In sending me all her things, my father got rid of every trace of my mother. He didn’t keep even one photograph of her, or of them together.

In August, 2004, my parents had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Birte wasn’t invited. Our friends would feel uncomfortable with her there, Mom had said. I doubted she was correct about that; Birte tends to win people over quickly, with her jokes and compassion and genuineness. But loving my parents, as I did, I attended their party with Neysa. For a gift I drew a picture of Mom and Dad as they looked at their wedding. I spent hours on that picture, drawing, shading, trying to get the light and their expressions right. It was not a masterpiece by any means, but my young parents were recognizable, and a number of people at the party complimented me on it. Neysa and I also put together and narrated a light-hearted slide show of our memories of Mom and Dad.

I thought my drawing might be among her things that Dad sent me after Mom’s death, but it was not to be found. When I asked him later, he told me he’d “gotten rid” of it, along with other “clutter” in Mom’s closet. “You did what?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard him wrong. But no, he’d tossed it into the trash, just as he’d effectively done with my mother.

Mom was not an easy person to be around. If she’d been born later, we probably would have said she was on the spectrum, or suffered from mental illness. Dad was exceedingly patient with her, which could not have been easy. I appreciate him for that, and wonder if, when she died, he was, like me, partially relieved.

When my older siblings and I were kids, Dad had two sayings that he’d repeat in response to the problems we took to him. One, directed at my huge emotions and the tears of my siblings, was to pound his one fist into the other and say, “Hammer it down, Jan, hammer it down.” The other was to wipe his hands on each other and then to throw them over his shoulders. “Let bygones be bygones,” he’d intone. “The past is gone. The sun will come up tomorrow.” I’m not sure about my siblings, but I found none of his advice helpful. If anything, it only made me feel more alone and sad.

When Mom died, he quickly hammered down the pain of her death by getting rid of every trace of her; and thereby threw his fifty year relationship with her over his shoulders and into the past, to remain there unexamined. Dad remarried in 2006, and we all immediately loved (and still do love) his new wife. Being with her, he was much more easy going than he had been with Mom: he changed his tastes and habits to match his new wife’s. I think that, perhaps, because of his own childhood trauma, he learned to be who people wanted him to be. As his child, and my mother’s, this is something I learned as well; I am unlearning it very slowly through years of therapy.

Dad died fourteen years and ten days after Mom, on December 27, 2018, of vascular dementia. I’m thankful that we all saw him on Christmas that year, and that we got to tell him how much we loved him.

This month, especially, I miss them both. In spite of everything, they did the best they were capable of when they parented my sister, brother, and me. Unfortunately, their best wasn’t enough for me. Still, I’m grateful they tried.

Mom and Dad on their Wedding Day

The Reality of Death

Posted on by Janette C Wolf

I haven’t written recently, because I’ve been flummoxed, not only about what to write, but also about how this past year seemed to race by as if it were just a few minutes. I’m about to turn 61, and I’ve realized that I don’t have that many “minutes” left if I live an average lifespan (78.8 years for women). I think it’s important we talk about death, including our own; it’s something every living being will experience. I would like to face mine, when it comes, with curiosity and open arms.

I’ve thought often about death since I was 11, when my grandfather died. At the funeral, my grandfather’s body was in an open casket. I was nervous about seeing him, but I noticed when I did how pale and waxy he looked, how unlike himself. My grandmother, in her grief, lifted his torso and tried to pull his body out of the coffin, while screaming, “No, John, no!” Her behavior terrified me more than death did. Once we’re dead, we don’t suffer; but those who are left to grieve suffer greatly.

I thought deeply about death at age 17 when, severely depressed, I often considered ending my life. With no support from my parents, and no professional support, I relied in part on a pact I made with a close friend who also suffered from mental illness: we would tell each other before we acted if we were planning to die. As agonizing as my depression was, I did not slit my wrists in the bathtub primarily because I knew that someone, most likely my mother, would have to clean up the bloody mess I left. In college, still depressed, I wrote in my journal, “Fuck you, Mr. Death, Sir,” after a friend of mine died suddenly and horribly. Since then, I often think about death, my own and the deaths of those I love. We have such a brief stay here in which to make an impact upon the Earth and upon each other; it’s easy to get caught up in consuming and doing and busyness and forget that our days are ticking away.

I love visiting cemeteries, particularly old ones. There, I can imagine the lives of people who once walked and breathed and hoped and despaired like me. How did this child die? He was only six. Or this girl? She was just seventeen. Who was this couple who died within days of one another? Imagine their families’ grief.

Here in Benicia, we have an old cemetery with gravestones dating back to the early 1800s. One marker bears the name Blake, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Are we related to these Blakes? On the east coast, or in Europe, cemeteries are much older, which I find fascinating. Some have wizened wooden grave markers that are no longer legible. I wish here in the US, we could see individual gravestones for all the Native Americans who violently died in the “making” of this country.

(FYI, through the Sogorea Te Land Trust, an intertribal women-run organization here in the Bay Area, we of European descent who live on stolen land can donate a “Shuumi Land Tax.” Based on the size of one’s house, this tax “directly supports Sogorea Te’s work of rematriation, returning Indigenous land to Indigenous people, establishing a cemetery to reinter stolen Ohlone ancestral remains, and building urban gardens, community centers, and ceremonial spaces so current and future generations of Indigenous people can thrive in the Bay Area. Shuumi means gift in the Ohlone language Chochenyo.” I have long nursed bone-deep guilt for the violence enacted upon Native Americans by my own ancestors, and the stolen land that they homesteaded; and this donation is a way for me to annually atone.)

I also read obituaries regularly, I think for the same reasons I love to walk among tombstones: to understand and imagine stories. Some strike me deeply. In a recent Chronicle obit, a kind and compassionate-looking woman died at age 94. She was born in Berlin and died of cancer in San Francisco. (Here I make a connection: Birte attended seminary in Berlin, and came to Berkeley for her Masters Degree.) The woman in the obituary was of Russian descent and emigrated to New York escaped Nazi Germany when she was eleven. Her parents must have been people of means in order to do this, as so many were unable to afford passage. And, unlike later ships that arrived at Ellis Island with refugee Jews from Europe, her ship was not turned back. She later became an artist, a feminist, and a supporter of social justice. She loved to travel, visit museums, and listen to classical music. And, she enjoyed “an occasional ice cold vodka.” I wish I could have known her; I think we could have been friends.

Another, younger Black man who recently died also has a kind face. He’s was a registered nurse at Kaiser for many years, managing the pediatric ward. He later got a Bachelor of Science in computer science, and enjoyed building and working on computers. His hobbies were sports (Giants, Warriors, 49ers), motorcycles, jazz concerts, traveling, and dogs. His obit calls him, “loving, caring, gentle, and kind-hearted.” He’s another person I wish I’d known.

I’m fortunate and grateful to have the most amazing friends, spanning generations, every one of them kind, compassionate, and devoted to environmental and social justice. They are not many, but I love each one for what they bring to this world. And I dread the time when they die, if I am still here. Emily Dickinson, a distant cousin of mine, said:

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me – 
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring – 
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Trying Times

Posted on by Janette C Wolf

I’m late posting this, because I’ve been struggling to breathe. Most people don’t have to think about their lungs. Part of the autonomic nervous system, they automatically take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide around 20,000 times a day. But for people like me, breathing is more complicated. With all the smoke currently in the air, my lungs feel sore and defeated.

The first time I had a bronchial infection, I was four months old. But it wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I was finally diagnosed with asthma.

Between these two events, I struggled. At my elementary school, P.E. included twice yearly tests, where the teachers stood with stopwatches and clipboards and noted how many chin ups, pushups, and sit ups we could do in the allotted time. President Gerald Ford himself, we were told, had set these standards to help us get fit.

They did not help me. The six-minute walk and run was my nemesis. Our teacher pointed out two lines on the blacktop, between which we needed to run until she called time. “Go as quickly as you can,” she said, “and walk only if you must.” Year after year, I was lapped over and over by my peers, as I struggled to breathe. Afterward, my spit tasted like blood for hours, and my lungs felt as if they were pincushions stuck full of needles. I thought everyone must feel what I felt, and it was due to my own failing that I struggled.

In my early twenties, a supervisor wrote me up. “Get more healthy,” she admonished, in response to my being off sick with a bronchial infection for two weeks. I was ashamed at my body’s betrayal of me. But getting more healthy was as impossible for me as genie-ing myself to Paris. I already exercised, drank lots of water, ate healthy food, and rarely stayed out late. Some of my coworkers partied nearly every night, and never missed a day’s work. That’s when I realized that some of us are just more prone to illness than others. My body wasn’t betraying me, it was just being my body.

Fourteen years ago, I had to stop working because of my health. As year has passed into year, other chronic illnesses have joined my lungs, until I’ve come to dread the next occupant that comes along. And there will be a next one – there always is.

Most recently, on a rare clear day, when my lungs felt good, I decided to go on a hike. We have a state park just down the road from us, and I love getting exercise and watching all the birds and wildlife. I started out on the dirt trail, and had only just gotten to the edge of the Carquinez Strait, along which this path wanders, when suddenly, I was airborne. I struggled to regain my balance like a cartoon character who realizes they have just run off the edge of a cliff, but failed. I landed on my left knee, then my right, then hands and elbow. Covered with blood, I walked back to my car and drove myself home. When I took off my pants to look at the damage, my left knee had a deep horseshoe-shaped gash, and I could see pale white of my cartilage. I thought of driving myself to urgent care, but found myself going into shock.

Six hours and twenty-two stitches later, I’m now in a knee immobilizer for two weeks. So much for going on a hike. But I’m grateful I didn’t break anything, including my head.

Over the past years, I’ve realized that, while I didn’t get a body that can run marathons, I did get one that keeps trying and trying no matter how difficult the next bang is. I am grateful for my mind, with which I can read and write, and my hands, however crooked, that tend my garden. I have a roof over my head, and food in my belly. I am loved by, and I love, my beautiful wife, Birte, and our daughter, Neysa, who will always be my heart. I have my dog, Nalani who, at eleven years old, is still eager to comfort me long before I know I’m in need of comforting.

And I’ve realized that we all have stories; we all suffer.

I was at Disneyland once as a young adult, waiting in an interminable line for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, when two small children popped in front of me to be with their mother. They were British, and the children, a boy and a girl, whined, “But Mummy, it’s not fair!”

“Life’s not fair,” she snapped. “Get used to it.”

I often think about that woman at Disneyland all those years ago, and her two, now middle-aged kids. And I agree with her: life isn’t fair. But it sure has its beauty, doesn’t it?

Me at Age 4

Why I Write (And a Little About Who I Am)

Posted on by Janette C Wolf

It’s lonely being a writer, and I suppose that’s why so many of us are introverts. I love my alone time, and that includes writing. As a child, I dreamed of being a hermit, living in the wilderness with only the wild animals for company. The Bay Area isn’t exactly a wilderness, but it still has some beautiful untamed places, and that’s why I stay. Over the years, I have adored my pets, who have, on occasion, been feral: the closest thing to living with wild animals I’ll probably ever get. My current dog, Nalani, is a sweet angel. She’s my companion while I write, and helps me remember to take time out for play and naps. She can be wild, and I adore her.

When I was three and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “I want to be a fat lady in the circus.” Everyone laughed. And I immediately regretted sharing my dream. No one asked me, “Why do you want to be a fat lady in the circus?” If they had, I’d have told them, ” I want to be a fat lady in the circus so I can hold lots of children on my lap.” I’ve always loved kids, even when I was one myself.

As a child, books were a way for me to live with other families who were warmer than mine, perhaps kinder. Through books, I could peer into other worlds, worlds that accepted me for who I was: a sensitive, creative, empathic kid. In my own family, I did not feel accepted, by my mother especially. She was a beautiful, athletic woman with dark curls, long legs, and a smile that would melt a stranger’s heart. And she didn’t want me. Nearly every birthday, she told me that she was “so angry” when she learned she was pregnant with me. “I already had my perfect family,” she said, “a girl and a boy. And you hurt the most coming out, too.” I remember apologizing to my mother for being born. How messed up is that?

Perhaps because of my experience, I like to write about family dynamics, and especially women’s relationships with each other. Writing also helps me work through my feelings, including my mental illness (another thing many artists share). For me, it’s depression and anxiety. I wonder sometimes if I need to feel the darkness and fear in order to write about them. Antidepressant and anti-anxiety meds saved me (and continue to do so); they make me more myself, and more able to function in the world “out there.” After initially being on them for six or so weeks (and this was many years ago), I began to see the world in color again. It was miraculous.

I still have times of deep depression and anxiety. But I experience them as less terrifying than they were before. They used to seem endless, as if I would never see light again. Now I understand that, for me, where there is darkness, there will always be light. It’s just a matter of time.

I just finished a writing a memoir (which I may revise into a novel). It tells about my childhood, and especially my teenage years when my family and I were part of an evangelical church. There, I was vilified for questioning women’s lesser role in church and family life. I was told to submit to my boyfriend, but knew I was smarter than him and refused. My sister said, “Why wouldn’t you want to submit? He makes all the decisions and if something goes wrong, it’s all his fault. You don’t have to think!” But that’s just it: I wanted to think. Needless to say, I’m no longer part of that church. I find my deepest spirituality in Nature, even if it’s in my own back garden.

During the school year (except for this last, pandemic year), I teach poetry to children (grades 1-6), and write some myself. But my first love is fiction: short stories and novels. I’ll keep writing as long as I’m able.

More to come as the weeks follow! I appreciate your thoughts, ideas, and comments.

Nalani in my garden.