Monday Musing--Remembering Cherry

It is hard to believe that it has been three years this morning since Cheryl lost her battle with cancer. In so many ways, I still feel her with our family and I try to keep her spirit alive so that my children can know her, even those who were barely here when she went. I was blessed to have a mother-in-law who was so inspiring as an artist and supportive of my family, of our way of doing things and of who we all are as individuals. The dedication of my first novel is For Cherry -- who believed, because she was a huge part of encouraging me to pursue my dream of writing. It is one of the great sadnesses of my life that she was not here in this world to see its publication.

Buffalo, NY Nov 2005

I have always been haunted by the photo (right) of Cheryl and Max at the piano in her living room at HodgePodge Lodge. It was a typical moment--Cherry rising early with the boys, brewing her chicory coffee and giving them her undivided attention, teaching them something. In this case, little Max how to play the piano. I know it is a trick of the camera, of catching her fingers in motion, this wave, and her expression is so Cheryl. But I remember looking at it as soon as it was taken and thinking, someday she will be gone, (because we all lived with her cancer as a constant since her untimely diagnosis in 1994.) I remember thinking, this picture will be precious, because Max might not remember her, but she will always be here, present, waving, here I am, I am with you, teaching you, guiding you, sitting right beside you.

Cheryl Gobbetti HoffmanTo read more about her inspiration to me as a mother and a writer, you can read this essay, Dawn Chorus.

To read about the Buffalo music community mourning the passing of a woman who was a flute phenom and gifted, dedicated professor, read Cheryl's obituary in the Buffalo News.

To read an interview with Cheryl about her pursuit of the dream of her golden flute mentioned in the poem below, click here.

Below I have uploaded some photos of Cherry and the family over the years. I am taken as always by her ability to give singular attention to her grandchildren, by her sense of style, her talent with words and music and the way the photos manage to capture her elegant and generous spirit.

At Philadelphia's Victor Cafe on the eve of our wedding, May 2000

Grand Cayman with baby Hayden, January 2002

Doting on Hayden in Hodgepodge Lodge, Nov 2002

Welcoming Macrae, Aug 2004

Cherry and her boys, Miami 2006

with Max at the piano, Buffalo Nov 2005

Holding her namesake, Piper June 2007

mother and son, Nov 2007

"Pashas Ride for Grandma Cherry" Piper and Max in the Brain Cancer 5K Philadelphia Nov 2010

Below is a poem my mother-in-law wrote in 1999.  I turned my house and our lives upside down looking for it as she was dying of brain cancer in the summer of 2008--no luck. A year later, one of her dear friends found a copy, had it beautifully framed and mailed it to us. It was a poem for a contest for Sunsweet Prunes, and the prize was $15,000, which would have paid for the achievement of her dream to play a golden flute in solo concert at Carnegie Hall. She did not win the contest, but she achieved her goal anyway. 

Today, the third anniversary of her trip to the other side, I am continuing my tradition of posting it on August 1 as it captures the whimsy, ambition, monstrous talent and joie de vivre that embodied Cheryl:

Taste How Good Life Can Be

Before me on the tree of Life there Suns a Plum   (quite Sweet)

  a New York debut (flute of gold) with Zest I Prune --  replete.

  How Good 'twould Taste--the Essence bold--Choose me! I've Dreamed this feat.

Grand moment Prized: (I'd croon -- Complete.) it's Savoury... Tangy... Fleet...

Embracing Aspirations ripe and Pitted -  scarred by blight,

I reach for this Experience.  Dare wish... could Be.... (how Right?)

my pipedream old (play Carnegie) the girl I was  Excites

Achieve this goal?  O!  heart's delight -- such fancy you invite.

Now 45, (surviving) how I thrive thanks to the 'fife'

I play and teach - give air to thought - I'm also mom and wife.

No matter that my Circle's closed (with cancer comes great strife)

Select me.  Stage my solo turn.  no Contest - I sing rife.

Imagining... begging time and place  (my Spirit writhes)  come round,

please join me - help me celebrate - skip not the beat I've found

the secret: working hand in hand  - we resonate - abound.

I ask support,  (pray Musically)

  Fund Magic....

I'll spin Sound.

Cheryl Feyrer Gobbetti Hoffman (Oct 6, 1954-Aug 1, 2008)

Below I have uploaded some photos of Cherry and the family over the years. I am taken as always by her ability to give singular attention to her grandchildren, by her sense of style, her talent with words and music and the way the photos manage to capture her elegant and generous spirit.

At Philadelphia's Victor Cafe on the eve of our wedding, May 2000

Grand Cayman with baby Hayden, January 2002

Doting on Hayden in Hodgepodge Lodge, Nov 2002

Welcoming Macrae, Aug 2004

Cherry and her boys, Miami 2006

with Max at the piano, Buffalo Nov 2005

Holding her namesake, Piper June 2007

mother and son, Nov 2007

"Pashas Ride for Grandma Cherry" Piper and Max in the Brain Cancer 5K Philadelphia Nov 2010

Below is a poem my mother-in-law wrote in 1999.  I turned my house and our lives upside down looking for it as she was dying of brain cancer in the summer of 2008--no luck. A year later, one of her dear friends found a copy, had it beautifully framed and mailed it to us. It was a poem for a contest for Sunsweet Prunes, and the prize was $15,000, which would have paid for the achievement of her dream to play a golden flute in solo concert at Carnegie Hall. She did not win the contest, but she achieved her goal anyway. 

Today, the third anniversary of her trip to the other side, I am continuing my tradition of posting it on August 1 as it captures the whimsy, ambition, monstrous talent and joie de vivre that embodied Cheryl:

Taste How Good Life Can Be

Before me on the tree of Life there Suns a Plum   (quite Sweet)

  a New York debut (flute of gold) with Zest I Prune --  replete.

  How Good 'twould Taste--the Essence bold--Choose me! I've Dreamed this feat.

Grand moment Prized: (I'd croon -- Complete.) it's Savoury... Tangy... Fleet...

Embracing Aspirations ripe and Pitted -  scarred by blight,

I reach for this Experience.  Dare wish... could Be.... (how Right?)

my pipedream old (play Carnegie) the girl I was  Excites

Achieve this goal?  O!  heart's delight -- such fancy you invite.

Now 45, (surviving) how I thrive thanks to the 'fife'

I play and teach - give air to thought - I'm also mom and wife.

No matter that my Circle's closed (with cancer comes great strife)

Select me.  Stage my solo turn.  no Contest - I sing rife.

Imagining... begging time and place  (my Spirit writhes)  come round,

please join me - help me celebrate - skip not the beat I've found

the secret: working hand in hand  - we resonate - abound.

I ask support,  (pray Musically)

  Fund Magic....

I'll spin Sound.

Cheryl Feyrer Gobbetti Hoffman (Oct 6, 1954-Aug 1, 2008)

"CHOSEN" on sale today

I wrote my first novella at age five, illustrated in crayon, on the white cardboard inserts that came folded in my dad's dry-cleaned dress shirts. It was a turbulent love story, of course, between a babysitter (the most gorgeous, glamorous person I could think of) and her boyfriend, as told from the point of view of the little girl she babysat.

Plot: The boyfriend wasn't sure if he loved the babysitter, who rode horses and made chocolate chip cookies, or the Other Girl, who was so obviously a bottle blonde with her yellow hair and thick black eyebrows, shown walking past a bleeding kitten.

Dialogue and interior thoughts were revealed in caption bubbles. The narrator's angst and loyalty were revealed by her presence in a little boxed corner on every page. Fortunately,  it had a happy ending. A kiss under the porch light with half of the young narrator's face peering over the window ledge. Hearts littered the air. 

At age five, I bound the seam of this book titled "And So They Kissed" with yarn, dreaming of the day when I would write a 'real' book.

Thirty years later, that day is here. Hearts are littering the air. 

"Taste How Good Life Can Be"

This is a poem my mother-in-law wrote in 1999.  I turned my house and our lives upside down looking for it as she was dying of brain cancer--no luck. A year later, one of her dear friends found a copy, had it beautifully framed and mailed it to us. It was a poem for a contest for Sunsweet Prunes, and the prize was $15,000, which would have paid for the achievement of her dream to play a golden flute in solo concert at Carnegie Hall. She did not win the contest, but she achieved her goal anyway. 

Today, the second anniversary of her trip to the other side, I am posting it here as it captures the whimsy, ambition, monstrous talent and joie de vivre that embodied Cheryl:

Taste How Good Life Can Be

Before me on the tree of Life there Suns a Plum  (quite Sweet)

  a New York debut (flute of gold) with Zest I Prune -- replete.

  How Good 'twould Taste--the Essence bold--Choose me! I've Dreamed this feat.

Grand moment Prized: (I'd croon -- Complete.) it's Savoury... Tangy... Fleet...

Embracing Aspirations ripe and Pitted -  scarred by blight,

I reach for this Experience.  Dare wish... could Be.... (how Right?)

my pipedream old (play Carnegie) the girl I was  Excites

Achieve this goal?  O!  heart's delight -- such fancy you invite.

Now 45, (surviving) how I thrive thanks to the 'fife'

I play and teach - give air to thought - I'm also mom and wife.

No matter that my Circle's closed (with cancer comes great strife)

Select me.  Stage my solo turn.  no Contest - I sing rife.

Imagining... begging time and place  (my Spirit writhes)  come round,

please join me - help me celebrate - skip not the beat I've found

the secret: working hand in hand  - we resonate - abound.

I ask support,  (pray Musically)

  Fund Magic....

I'll spin Sound.

Cheryl Feyrer Gobbetti-Hoffman (Oct 6, 1954-Aug 1, 2008)

Some people have it way worse

This week writing has taken a backseat to hospital time, which I hate. First off, there's this smell, like overcooked vegetables that marinated in plastic bags of dog urine. And then there's the way that just sitting there can be so draining. Plus I'm from the suburbs and think parking somewhere is my god-given right, not a paid privilege.

Saturday night my mom fell and shattered her femur--an injury common to linebackers, people with osteoporosis and recent knee replacements. Two out of three ain't bad. Having been left in hospitals often as a child, she likes 24/7 family coverage, which makes a good case for large families, except that we all went on to have kids, passing our offspring like batons at the hospital parking garage and corralling them on whirlwind field trips around the city where the child/caregiver ratio is like an underfunded public school. I keep quoting to my siblings the analogy of marathon vs. sprint--I think we're going to make it.

But I was already hospital weary: Last Thursday my son had his annual check-up with the craniofacial team at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. This is a marathon in its own right, eight specialists in as many hours, people we have known since Hayden was a baby and transferred there at birth unable to breathe or eat on his own. I used to dread these--I wonder if other people who have gone home without their babies share my same anxiety that they technically belong to the hospital, and at any moment the hospital might take them back? When Hayden was younger, these loomed large, as each team evaluation presented the possibility that another syndrome would be diagnosed, the proverbial other shoe coming crashing down. So far, so good.

But each year since he was about five, I have seen them as reassurances, confirmations that the hurdles are mostly behind us, and our son is blissfully normal. This year Hayden opted in on a study on the effects of craniofacial abnormalities in children. ("Fifteen bucks? For answering six pages of questions? Seriously?!")

I had completed my own version, but surreptitiously peeked over his shoulder as he was doing his. What mother doesn't relish a glimpse into the mind of her eight-year-old boy?

I feel self-conscious and don't want to read aloud in school because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech.

NEVER

I feel like bad things happen to me because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech.

NEVER

I am teased because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech. 

NEVER

I want to die because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech. 

Hayden looks up at me, eyes wide, and whispers earnestly, "Mom? I think some people have it way worse than me." 

Looking around the waiting room in the pediatric plastic surgery unit, walking to get our lunch in the atrium, passing the NICU where he spent his early months, the PICU where he writhed after his second surgery, the closet where they took us when they told us he might not make it to the end of the week, Hayden still holds my hand.

We meet with the last specialist, who gives us his blessing to continue life as usual, and come back and see them all next year. Walking to catch the train home, Hayden quietly picks up trash on the city sidewalks with a disgusted harrumph, carries it for blocks until we find a garbage can. Then he is asleep, leaning against me on the train as I steal a few minutes, editing my neglected manuscript. Outside the SEPTA windows, the city falls away to green. We will soon jump in the pool to rinse the hospital smell off us, and I think again as I listen to him snore and kiss his wild curls, even as we gear up for my mom in a straight leg, non-weight-bearing cast for three months, some people have it way worse. We are indeed blessed.