More on Rosalind's quilt

Rosalind started this cathedral window quilt and I am going to finish it.  It won't be exactly as she planned but I wanted to highlight her work, not mine.

   

I found one square that Roz had written on with pencil.  She wore her name and birthdate on  corner.

   

Her husband was Arnold Yasui. She had written his name and birthdate on the opposite corner.

   

I used an off white thread to backstitch those details. This square will be the center of my quilt.

   

My sister's nickname was Pinky. and the colorful fabrics she chose had various shades of pink.  I chose a pink fabric with tones from the "window" pieces.  This became the sashing between the squares.

I thought too much pink would take away from the squares, so I picked a green fabric that worked with the green of the "windows".

   

I need to add a back piece, some batting and start quilting.

Pinky

                                  

Today would have been my sister Rosalind's 55th birthday.  You wouldn't have known that because she was so young and beautiful.  She got the nickname Pinky when she was about 3 and we called her that for the rest of her life.  I think she liked it...at least she did as an adult.  Not too sure about when she was still in shcool.

When Lee and I built her memorial garden, I felt a little better.  When I buy things like the Pinky Winky Hydrangea, I feel better.  It was fun to get dragonflies for it and I loved finding the ant, for aunt Roz.  But today is her birthday and I don't feel better.

I hate cancer.

Rosalind Risser Yasui Memorial Garden

                                   

It has taken a lot of time and money, but the garden is finished.  I would like to think Roz would be pleased.  Lee and I designed and built the gazebo to sit under and enjoy the view of the orchard.  We have apples (currently being attacked by something the Ag agent is going to find),

                                 
 peaches, plums and apricots.  There is a pear that was given to me in lieu of flowers from my library friends after Roz died.  That was the germ of the idea to build this garden.  This year we added blueberries and I hope they will grow big and lush.

There are several things we did to honor Roz and Dad.  I used rocks around the deck because he loved them.  I wrote about that in an earlier blog.  My brother Roland told me about a Hydrangea called a Pinky Winky.  Her nickname from childhood was Pinky...another earlier story... so we planted one of those.  Dad and Roz loved Hawaii, so we planted a Hibiscus.  It may not survive our winters, but I will cover it and hope.

                                                                     

Roz gave me a garden rat when we lived in Laguna Niguel, so I brought it with us when we moved and it is now in her garden.  It will share garden space with the Pinky Winky Hydrangea

                                    

I put a fresh coat of glossy black paint on a table and chairs and I intend to sit out and have an adult beverage there soon.

Roz came and stayed with us in Laguna Niguel several times after her diagnosis for about a month each time .  The first time was after her surgery.  Her husband had to work and I wanted her close so I could help her.  She needed help dressing and I wanted to feed her.  I was worried she wouldn't eat if she was home alone and hurting.

The second time was after her treatment.  She wanted to learn to scuba dive and asked me to take the classes with her.  We had snorkeled all over the Pacific, but we were never certified.  So we did that together.  I learned afterwards that it was one of the things on her "bucket list".  I am so glad she asked and so glad I agreed. 

Roz couldn't just sit and vegetate.  I can and tried to teach her that fine art, but I was unsuccessful.  Sometimes she would go out in our garden and putter around. Occasionally I would go out with her, but at times she would just go out when I was doing something else.  She would always have garden gloves and a bandanna.  Her husband Arnold shared her bandannas with my cousin Saja and me and now I take one with me when I garden.

When we first moved to Laguna Niguel, we had a trio of palm trees under which grew a mound of mint.  Now mint is very invasive and I had to keep digging it out of the rest of the garden on a regular basis.  I have since learned that if you don't want it to spread and take over, you need to put it in a pot.  I finally had enough and used Round-Up to kill all the mint.  I spent the next year or so trying various annuals to bloom under the palm trees.. Nothing worked.  I added soil amendments and tried things that liked full shade all the way to full sun.  Dead, dead, dead.

 

I gave up and took all the failed experiments out and bought a bunch of mint.  If that is all that would grow, I would just deal with the consequences.  I spent an afternoon buying and replacing the mint and it was growing nicely.  Then Roz came for one of her visits.  She had been there when I was fighting the mint on a previous visit.  When I came out to the garden to see what she was doing, she smiled up at me.  She had just spent and hour digging up all the mint I had planted.    She was so happy to have helped me out with my mint problem.  What could I do?  I thanked her and never told her the story.

So I planted mint in Roz's garden.  If it spreads beyond the garden, we will mow it and the smell of freshly mown mint will remind me of Pinky.

I have a few ideas for garden art, which I love, and I will add them as time goes on.  I will get some dragonflies to put on and around the gazebo.  I am thinking of a trellis with wisteria to climb on and dangle through the gazebo top.  I want to add a brass plaque but I need to figure out what I want it to say.  Pinky and Dad's garden?  Paradise in Virginia?  I have no idea.  I am open to suggestions.

                                           

More Puppy

I had intended to write about all the improvements we have made in our new home since we moved. Granted most of them were done long before I started this blog, but I wanted to show some of the work involved with taking on a home of this size and location. Nonetheless, that will have to wait for a future entry. I am going to write a bit more about RJ and include more cute puppy pictures. I would say it is because of an out pouring of requests, but there were none, so here it is anyway.

His current name is RJ. There are quite a few reasons for this. He looks a lot like the best dog I had growing up, Rebel. I considered Rebel Junior. He also has some mannerisms of my aunt's dog, Josh. One of the reasons I had to get a dog now was because of the death of my sister, Rosalind. I needed something to love on and I couldn't be with her. I guess I got hormonal or something, but it became very important for me to find a puppy. I had thought about getting a girl dog and naming it in some way after Roz, but I loved this dog and he is a boy. No self-respecting boy dog would like being called Pinky or something girly like that, so I settled on RJ. Her initials are RJJRY, but I stuck with RJ to honor Roz and Rebel and Josh. It works for me, now I have to convince the dog to come to his name....or rather his initials.




Now I know a dog is a long term commitment, so I didn't want to get just any old dog. I also had to keep in mind the cats. They would not like any interloper, so I had to get a young dog that would be cowed by their irritability and not chase them. I also preferred to get one from a rescue shelter. I would never buy one from a pet store as I would not want to contribute to the puppy mill industry. There is an animal rescue in the nearby town of Fincastle. It is called LAP for the League for Animal Protection. We have gone there off and on since we moved here. None of the animals quite fit the bill for us. We had always had Golden Retrievers and loved them, but we wanted a different dog this time. All our Goldens had ear problems, in part because of the long floppy ears keeping a moist environment in there, so we wanted a dog with pricked ears. Lee and I both love German Shepherds, so we were looking for a mix that was predominantly German Shepherd. We didn't want a pure bred as we hate what the breeders have done to the hind legs. In order for them to look more powerful they have bred them to slope down in the hind end and this has caused a lot of hip problems.

So now we have a German Shepherd mix. The problem with this is we have no idea what is "mixed" in. He is obviously mostly GSD and hope the rest is some sort of retriever rather than some sort of pit bull! So far he is happy-go-lucky and sweet, so we figure whatever it is, it is a good mix for us.

RJ loves to go to the barn with us in the morning. At first he hated to get put in the Mule and he wouldn't get in the back, but now he hops in and rides with a big smile. When he gets bigger and more trustworthy I will work on getting him to hop in the back, but for now he steps in on the floorboards and either rests his front feet up on the seat or he hops all the way up on the seat and we have to scoot him over in order for us to fit!

RJ is very cautious around the horses. he doesn't bark at them, other than the first time he saw them running to the fence to be let out for dinner! Now he just stays to the side and keeps a cautious eye on them. They are BIG and their feet are HARD. He runs happily around the barn when I am working and eats horse poop when I am not looking. I would advise all visitors to avoid getting kissed. As an aside, he has also discovered the never ending porcelain bowl of water we keep in our bathroom that is just the right height for RJs so I mean it....no face kisses!

We are working on decorum in the house. Rhett is very curious and comes around, but does not let RJ get too close. Ashley is still avoiding him and stays up on bookcases most of the time. We lock the dog in our room at night and the cats out. The cats have always been locked out as they think 3:00 is a wonderful time to wake us up and cannot be convinced otherwise. So they have the run of the house when we sleep and whenever we take him to the barn or when we put him in the crate, which we do when we leave the house. I try to only pet him when he sits and is quiet...thanks to the advise from the Dog Whisperer! I am using a lot of his principals for training this dog.

He seems to be potty trained. On the other hand, we take him out a lot, so maybe we are the ones trained!




Mostly this post is to show the cute puppy pictures and so you can oooh and aaaah over the puppy and I can get on with writing about other things. But like any proud mommy, I love this dog and I want you to do so, also! The biggest hardship so far is the fact that I have to vacuum a LOT more, now. Mopping will also have to be stepped up. Of course I could blame it on all the "kids" that came for Tara's graduation. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Blame them!

Roz

Our most wonderful and caring niece has put together a loving tribute to Roz. Anyone that wants to see her as she grew into the beautiful, talented person she was should visit this on YouTube. (I tried to cut and paste it here and then I just typed it in, but it wouldn't show up. So frustrating. So, unless you can tell me how to get it to show up here, go to YouTube and search for Rosalind Risser Yasui.)

Thanks Natalie. I watch it every day...and usually I cry, but sometimes I just smile and remember.

Leave me a comment and I will send it on to Natalie.

Rosalind Risser Yasui

Well, it finally happened. We knew this was coming for a long time but I just couldn't grasp it so I tried not to think about it. My most wonderful, funny, smart sister died April 17, 2010 from breast cancer. Now, no one dies from breast cancer in their breast. It's when it travels to more important parts that it kills you. In Roz's case it went to her lungs and slowly drowned her. It took a year.

I can't write a story that makes sense right now so I am going to just write about things I remember as they come to me. My memories of Pinky.

When we were kids there was a TV show for children. Sort of a precursor of Mr. Rogers. It was called Romper Room. The host would sing a song...
Pinky winky baby,
Pinky winky woo,
Pinky winky baby,
I love you.

She loved that song and want to be Pinky, so she was for 50 years. She would answer the phone, "This is Roz." and I would say, "No, it's not, it's Pinky." And she would agree, "This is Pinky."

When we were kids we shared a room and back before we got carpeting, it had a blue linoleum floor. On rainy days when we couldn't go outside, we would play games on our beds. In one of them, the floor was the ocean and we had to stay on our beds, which were boats and wriggle on the ground as if swimming, if we had to go to the bathroom. We also would fight like cats and dogs and I had scars from scratches on my forearms well into my 20's. If I dared to hit her back, I would get into trouble as I was older. Also, Roz was always sort of frail. Not really sick, just not as hale and hearty as the rest of us. As the baby, she was picked on and defended in about equal measure.

When we were 11 and 13 our father took a sabbatical leave and took all but our brother, Randy who was in college, to live in the Kingdom Of Tonga. We were all teenagers. Roland was going to be a senior in high school and Robin had just graduated. We lived in some of the most primitive situations. Places where water was what was collected off a tin roof and we had to strain the mosquito larvae out and boil it to even use it to brush our teeth. Practically a full time job with our little camp stove. We also had places with actual beds and running water, even though it was only from a hose bib in a large area with a real concrete floor.

Dad enrolled us in school. Rosalind went to what I remember as Tonga College..what they called high school. She had to wear a uniform of a blue skirt and white blouse. Roland and I opted to go to Atenisi Kolisi, or Athens College. Their uniform was black skirts for girls and black slacks for boys with a white shirt. We chose Atenisi because it was the Tongan version of continuation high school for unruly kids and started later and ended sooner than the other schools. I remember they asked Paula to come sew the skirts. There were no ready made. He just looked at you and started cutting fabric and made the skirts. They called him Paula Faka Leiti or Faka Fefini. Paul was gay and Faka means like and Fefini means woman. Paula is the Tongan version of Paul, I don't know of any words that end with a consonant.

Because we lived together and knew almost no one else, we became very close. Dad bought a bicycle (pisikileta is how I remember it) to get around on. I would ride Roz to school every morning on the flat framework on the back of the bike. She would sit side saddle and I would drop her off, then ride home and walk the few blocks to my school in case Dad needed the bike. Roland ended up opting out of school when they tried to get him to teach as he was already better educated than most of their teachers. He ended up going out fishing on ocean-going fishing boats most days. After school I would go back and pick her up. One day I rode a horse to pick her up. I always loved stories of kids that got to ride back and forth to school and thought she would be thrilled. She was not. She had to climb up on a big horse with a skirt and ride home in front of all her friends. In Tonga girls did not ride horses, other than me, and they tolerated me because I was an American and we all know they are different.

After Roland went back to finish high school, Robin, Roz and I became even closer. I remember walking down some road in the soft, warm rain while we worked out 3 part harmonies from songs where we tried to remember the words. We tried not to sing around Dad, because he would then make us get up in front of any group of Tongans that had invited us for a feast and have us perform. We were not the Osmonds and I resented every minute of it. I think we sounded OK, but I'm sure our faces let people know our opinions! So we banded together throughout the South Pacific and then on to an 8 week tour of Europe crammed into a camping van. More bonding against parental units!

After Roz had her breast surgery, she came to stay with me in Laguna Niguel to recuperate. She was horribly bruised from her armpit to her waist. The incision was small and I think they went up to the lymph nodes from the breast incision and I think they should have done two incisions and they wouldn't have hurt her so much. She was told from the beginning that her kind of cancer HER2- was the worst kind and it always came back. From then on she accepted that she had less than 10 years and lived her life that way. I kept thinking they were wrong and that she would be lucky and not get it back. She did everything they told her...chemo and radiation and even some experimental drugs from UCLA to prevent the occurrence even though she had to stop early as it was affecting her heart. But she always knew it would come back.

After a year of treatment, Roz came back to Laguna Niguel because she wanted to get her SCUBA certification. She always loved Hawaii and we had spent a lot of our time in Tonga snorkeling, but she wanted to do the "real" thing. So we both went to a sports shop and then to local pools and finally two ocean dives. Once off the coast of Laguna Beach and once off Catalina. We promised each other that we would go to Hawaii or the Caribbean and do some diving where big heavy wet suits and correspondingly heavy weight belts to counteract the buoyancy of the suits, were not an issue. We were together for a whole month and loved every bit of it.

I remember her going out to our small garden. I had recently replanted some mint in a place where I had previously taken it out as it was so invasive. But nothing else would grow there in the shade of 3 palm trees, so I had replanted quite a few mint plants. Roz went out to do some gardening and proudly told me later that she had removed all the mint that had "come back." I never told her I had planted them.

Later she told me that the SCUBA experience and a long trip to Germany with her husband Arnold, combined with a visit with her friend from Finland, Kirsi Heiskala, were all part of her "bucket list". I'm glad I could help her mark off a few things.

When we moved all the way across the country to Virginia, she came and stayed for another month. Arnold stayed for the first week and then he had to go back to work. She stayed and we built corrals and a loft in the barn. I can also picture her weeding my garden here, thankfully I did not have any mint. I have learned my lesson and keep mint in a pot. So now as I drive down to the barn every morning I see the corral she helped build where I put the horses. I see the loft where we store the hay. I see the garden that she spent so much time helping me weed and keep the bushes nicely trimmed. I see her everywhere in my house, yet I can't see her here ever again. I still can't grasp that notion. My much beloved sister will never come see me or go for a dive in clear blue waters. I just SPOKE to her.

Arnold called and said she was failing. I knew she had asked that Arnold be the one with her at the end, but on my last visit I told her I would be back. I didn't want to upset her by talking about this being our last visit ever in the whole expanse of time. I knew she hated it when I cried or talked about how much I would miss her. She didn't want to have to comfort ME. She got mad at me for crying when she was first diagnosed, so I tried not to do it in front of her.

So, when Arnie called me, I asked her if she wanted me to come and she said, "Yes, I'd like that." So I got online looking for a flight. This was Thursday. I ended up booking a flight for Sunday, for a no damned good reason. I did have a vet coming to inoculate the horses and I did need to do some wash to go on a long visit, so I booked for a week-long trip and wondered if I would have to re-book and stay longer, because this time I wasn't going to leave her. I even thought about how I had been a nursing student at one time and had worked in a nursing home taking care of bedridden patients. This was back when nursing staff didn't wear gloves when cleaning up people and I figured I could do anything after that. Maybe that was why I had taken those courses all those years ago. Maybe I had been a nursing student so that one day I could help my sister through the last days of her life. I even looked forward to being there for her in this or any other way. It was to be my final gift to her.

Then Arnold called me late Saturday night and I knew. Even when he was unable to say the words, or even any words, I knew that I had missed the most important thing I was ever supposed to do. I had missed being there with my sister. I had let Roz and Arnold down and I will never forgive myself. I will miss Pinky forever and I don't know if I will ever stop crying when I think of her or talk about her. And I don't know if I will ever stop wondering if maybe she knew how hard this would be for me and she chose to go early to spare me the ordeal. What she didn't know was that I looked forward in a scared sort of way to being there for her. And I was too late and now I'll never know if I could have been strong for her and Arnold and if I would have been a comfort to her. I'll never know and I'll always be sorry I let her down. I'll miss you Pinky.