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We hold parts of each other. I believe it is an extended form of memory and identity. Places, objects, design, they are all parts of this process of understanding one's self, community, civilization.
I am attached to people as individuals, but also as parts of a world view.
I have joked in this blog that I mustn't speak to certain relatives without first reading the NY Times, but I hold deep respect for their attention to detail about all things NYC. I am not this person, I used to be...
My reading no longer comes with the crisp sound of folded newsprint.
If you did not just have a sensorial memory you have never lived with this sort of reader.
I always read the NY Times before speaking with Cousin Susan and recently she died.
I last wrote about her HERE (click to read post).
Another piece of Bob has left with her. We both loved him. She was my mom's cousin, but he adored her and if it wasn't for her, they might not have gotten married.
Susan's apartment, with her husband Evan, was Bob's "first big residential renovation".
The apartment is exactly the same now as it was in the early 1960's.
I was there in 2011 and Cousin Susan showed me everything (again).
It was a ritual - one I loved. As I read her obituary in the NY Times I played it over in my mind.
She would start..."There used to be a wall here." She gestured to the left from the foyer into the dining room. "He (Bob) said to me, 'Are you planning to cook a lot of meals?' I said, 'No, what do you think??' - so he moved the kitchen. I didn't need that huge kitchen and now we have this beautiful dining room. It does however, have the back door entrance in it, but who cares?" - and the tour would move on.
We would then enter the kitchen. I could have told anyone it was a "Bob Caigan kitchen", two sinks, two ovens and a telephone area designed with a place for phone books, pens and pencils and a shelf for writing down messages.He died before cell phones and he believed firmly that one needed to plan ahead and be prepared for how the phone would be answered and messages taken and given.
As an architect and designer he planned for how life would flow most easily.
It upset him terribly when there wasn't order.
When people die I have this horrible feeling that they have been misplaced. That their stories will be lost or untold. I am Bob's Daughter. I am upset by the mis -order of the internet. It is not disorder. It is more akin to misinformation.
There have been very fancy words used to describe Susan O. Friedman, but for me she always had the best blanket to sit on at the Lakeville beach and after I had our twin daughters and was hospitalized, I called her crying and she brought me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Oreo cookies in plastic lunch baggies and sat with me. That's my eulogy. You can read the real one HERE (click).
With love,
Bob's Daughter
I am attached to people as individuals, but also as parts of a world view.
I have joked in this blog that I mustn't speak to certain relatives without first reading the NY Times, but I hold deep respect for their attention to detail about all things NYC. I am not this person, I used to be...
My reading no longer comes with the crisp sound of folded newsprint.
If you did not just have a sensorial memory you have never lived with this sort of reader.
I always read the NY Times before speaking with Cousin Susan and recently she died.
I last wrote about her HERE (click to read post).
Another piece of Bob has left with her. We both loved him. She was my mom's cousin, but he adored her and if it wasn't for her, they might not have gotten married.
Susan's apartment, with her husband Evan, was Bob's "first big residential renovation".
The apartment is exactly the same now as it was in the early 1960's.
I was there in 2011 and Cousin Susan showed me everything (again).
It was a ritual - one I loved. As I read her obituary in the NY Times I played it over in my mind.
She would start..."There used to be a wall here." She gestured to the left from the foyer into the dining room. "He (Bob) said to me, 'Are you planning to cook a lot of meals?' I said, 'No, what do you think??' - so he moved the kitchen. I didn't need that huge kitchen and now we have this beautiful dining room. It does however, have the back door entrance in it, but who cares?" - and the tour would move on.
We would then enter the kitchen. I could have told anyone it was a "Bob Caigan kitchen", two sinks, two ovens and a telephone area designed with a place for phone books, pens and pencils and a shelf for writing down messages.He died before cell phones and he believed firmly that one needed to plan ahead and be prepared for how the phone would be answered and messages taken and given.
As an architect and designer he planned for how life would flow most easily.
It upset him terribly when there wasn't order.
When people die I have this horrible feeling that they have been misplaced. That their stories will be lost or untold. I am Bob's Daughter. I am upset by the mis -order of the internet. It is not disorder. It is more akin to misinformation.
There have been very fancy words used to describe Susan O. Friedman, but for me she always had the best blanket to sit on at the Lakeville beach and after I had our twin daughters and was hospitalized, I called her crying and she brought me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Oreo cookies in plastic lunch baggies and sat with me. That's my eulogy. You can read the real one HERE (click).
With love,
Bob's Daughter
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