The Subtle Landscape

Mom died a year ago about right now. A week before she left us I had to visit with our lawyers about the sheaf of speeding tickets she’d accrued. She had a big house with a swimming pool both of which she managed all by her lonesome. She was ninety and going strong. Holding her own. You wouldn’t want to cross her.

This is not to say that she had a big opinion of herself. She did not. On the counter next to her purse was this note to self:

You are not God
This is not heaven
Don’t be an ass

I suppose it follows that she wasn’t given to gratuitous hugs and kisses. One had to be open – receptive to her own particular emanations of love and grace which I’ve come to realize knew/know not bounds of time or space. Much to my surprise there remains physical evidence of this.

Surprise because the evidence is photographic. Mom did not like to be photographed, but those of her in the throes of motherhood convey a sense of the beatitude behind her bluster.

Mom used to smoke and that, for some reason, reminded me of the film “Cool Hand Luke”. Luke, played by Paul Newman, is trying to find his way in the world. We all are of course, but he has had more trouble than most. About half way through, having found himself in a prison work camp following a ridiculous crime, he is visited by his mother. Arletta, played by Jo Van Fleet, is obviously dying from a serious lung disorder, but smokes nonetheless. There is a rough fondness in their interaction and both are sad for the way things worked out.

Luke: “What I’ve done with myself is my own problem.

Arletta: “Oh no it ain’t Luke. You ain’t alone. Everywhere you go I’m with you”.

Luke: “I tried to live always free and above board like you, but I can’t seem to find no elbow room…”

Arletta leaves and not much later Luke receives notice of her death. The warden, played by Strother Martin (“What we have here is a failure to communicate…”), recognizes this to be a/the seminal event in Luke’s life and puts him in solitary. Upon his release from “the box” Luke takes a more direct approach in his pilgrimage.

Well, I’ve tried to live always free and above board like Mom. Like Luke I have made mistakes. But, thanks to Mom, I have been able to find elbow room.

Thanks Mom.

After 90 full years of pedal to the metal, Gloria de Silva Gierke died on November 6, 2018 in bed just after putting on her glasses, but before selecting a book from her overloaded nightstand.

Memorial services to celebrate her life will be held at 10:30 AM on Tuesday November 20, 2018 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 121 West 12th Street, Davenport, Iowa. The family will greet friends in the Great Hall from 9:00 AM until service time. Memorials may go to The Figge Art Museum,The Quad City Symphony or Trinity Cathedral.

Gloria was born on March 23, 1928 at Cook County Hospital in Chicago where her father was a physician in training. A few years later she was joined by her brother Bud with whom she had a particularly close relationship until his death in 2010. After completing his residency Dr. and Mrs de Silva (Edward and Gretchen) moved their family to Rock Island where he joined his father’s practice. Gloria loved school and attended many, but credited St. Katharine’s for a lifelong love of learning.

As for many of their generation, WWII intervened and Gloria had a trove of interesting memories as her family followed her father’s MASH unit across the country from one army base to another. In Brownwood, Texas she was home coming queen. Upon return to Rock Island she was Queen of the Mardi Gras.

After the War, Gloria attended Northwestern University in Evanston where she was, for a time, pre med, but was graduated with a degree in literature. Thus arose a passion for the arts in all their forms. At about this time she and her brother were devastated by the divorce of their parents. Both parents remarried however and happy new relationships developed all round. The bond between Gloria and Bud greatly strengthened.

On May 1951 she married Glen Gierke less than a year after their first encounter. A few months of unmitigated bliss ensued until June of 1952 when their first child, Budge, was born. Ed arrived in August of 1954 and Peter in January of 1956. Gloria was an unbelievable mother and neighborhood captain tending tirelessly to issues related to hydration and minor loss of blood. Once Peter was in school full time Gloria returned to work as treasurer of the family business, Gierke Robinson Co. Less than a year later her father wrote to her husband of his concerns about Gloria working too hard. Ha. She never took a sick day for the next forty-five years. She would have preferred to step directly from her office and friends there into heaven, but agreed to sell the business in 2014.

Gloria found time to engage in a wide range of pursuits for the good of numerous causes, including her decade plus services on the boards of the Tri City Symphony, St Katharine’s, and Trinity Cathedral.

Through to the very end she nurtured the development of her children, grandchildren, great grand children, and all significant others. They are all very much the better for her hand in their lives. One felt fortunate to be in her orbit.

She would wax proud and powerful about her sons, her great good fortune in Sally, her wonderful grandchildren: Tiana O’Konek (Nathan), Andrew, Abigail (John Farrell), Peter (Jaiyin Hu), and great grandchildren Henry and Nettie O’Konek.

Chief among the many souls she cherished who left before her were son Ed and husband Glen.

Sui Generis. Go Cubs!

  Well, for a variety of excellent reasons, I haven’t been able to accomplish much this week and was looking out my window while trying to think of what to do next.  I noticed something white across the river and took up my binoculars to investigate.  White pelicans.  There were never any such birds around these parts when I was young, but now there is a healthy breeding population.   

  They are beautiful to watch in flight, particularly when in flocks.  (I looked it up, groups of pelicans aren’t flocks, they’re pods…)   The birds’ moves are coordinated, mostly, and are slow and elegant.  Not as exciting to watch hunt as their grey cousins however.   When fishing, the former sort of just bob.  The latter, collapse their wings upon spying quarry, point their beaks at dinner, and crash through the water’s surface in pursuit.

  They don’t live around here though and I soon bored watching the white ones lounge about and began to scan upstream.  Came to the house you see above.  It was built by Colonel George Davenport in about 1833 near the site of his first residence, a double wood cabin.  Davenport, after whom the largest city in our metro area is named, had an interesting method of organizing a family.

  He was about twenty-two in 1805 when he married the widow Margaret Lewis who was seventeen years his senior and had two children, William who died shortly thereafter, and Susan who had been born in 1800.  In 1817 Davenport and Susan had their first child, George Jr and in 1823 their second son, Bailey.   Colonel Davenport was also blessed with a daughter, Elizabeth, born to him in 1835 by, uh, one of the family’s indentured servants.

  Like I said, interesting.  Next time I get distracted and look out the window I’ll have to imagine what might have been the nature of dinnertime conversation over there.  Would have been a confusing eight plus place table, with Dad, four children, and everyone else named Mom.