Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports from the the second half of life -- on books, writing . . . her husband, house, aging relatives and grown-up kids.
Within a few weeks of hip surgery, my mother was doing physical therapy at a skilled nursing facility. Photo 2010 BF Newhall
Barbara Falconer Newhall, June 5, 2010
Ten reasons why I’m finding it impossible to write about my 92-year-old mother, even though she’s all I can think about right now:
Daffodil. Photos by BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I don’t like daffodils. I feel about daffodils the way I feel about some of my writing – too damned cheerful. Too nicey-nice. Too tidy. Too certain that in the end everything’s going to come out just fine, that all shall be well. [Read more...]
One . . .
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
It’s done. Those blood-red snapdragons are gone from our front yard, and my rock garden is the better for it.
But what do I do with the blossoms? I’d take them to my 92-year-old mother – except she doesn’t like maroon any more than I do.
I can’t just toss them in the compost bin. They are trying so hard to live, to be the velvety, deeply colored snapdragons they were born to be.
. . . two . . .
I take pity and invite them into the house for their final days.
I look around for a vase. I try one, then another. Then another. Nothing works. On the fourth try, the blossoms and stems arrange themselves artfully in a glass vase.
Jackie O used to say that a woman can’t be too rich or too thin. I say a woman can’t be too rich, too thin, or have too many vases.
. . . three . . .
© 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall
Photos © 2009 B.F. Newhall
. . . four. This works for me.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I don’t like the snapdragons growing in my front yard. Their color, somewhere between scarlet and maroon, gets on my nerves. I don’t like scarlet. I like maroon even less.
The snapdragons are innocent. They are doing what they are supposed to do. They’re sending down roots, sucking up water, opening up blossoms. If I rip them out of the ground – now or just before they go to seed – am I an assassin? They may be ugly, but they are alive.
When I spotted the six-packs of baby snapdragons at the nursery, all I could see were a few creamy buds. And something pinkish. They looked good to me. But now they are taking over my garden.
Their dark, aggressive coloring shouts in my face, leaving the more modest blossoms in the yard, the lavender and the bacopa, to go unnoticed.
My mother, who turned 92 on Wednesday, has shelves and tables of potted plants growing with fervor out on her patio. One plant, philodendron, is not doing so well. It has only a few leaves, most of them dead or yellowing.
“Do I throw it out?” she asks. “It doesn’t look very good.”
I think of my snapdragons. And my cypress tree.
When Peter was little, we found out he was allergic to cypress. “Hmm,” I said to the pediatrician. “We have a cypress tree growing in our back yard a few feet from the house – and Peter’s bedroom.”
”Cut it down,” the doctor said.
Jon and I conferred. Our cypress was massive — five stories tall — and older than both of us put together. It was a magnificent tree, timeless, a 
steady presence at our house. Its branches had grown over and around our deck, so that you could go out there at any time, day or night, stand inside that tree and forget where you were in time and space.
No way were Jon and I going to get rid of that cypress tree. Peter would have to take antihistamines. Or grow out of his allergies. We’d move to another house.
Peter outgrew the allergies. The cypress tree, as stately and self-sufficient as ever, lives on.
But the awful snapdragons? The scraggly, deadish philodendron in the pot on my mother’s patio? 
They’ve got to go. Somehow.
© 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall
Photos © 2009 B.F. Newhall
