ABSOLUTELY 2012 ~ AT THE BIJOU

“So we beat on, 

boats against the current, 

borne back ceaselessly

 into the past.”

~ Literary Hero of Absolutely*Kate, F. Scott Fitzgerald

billowing souls . . . as souls should be billowed

Therein sails

our best futures.

Cross currents,

great tidings,

fair winds,

following seas,

to you and yours

 from the best 

of what is me.

This year is dedi'kated to:

OUT OF THE PAST ~ into all our Futures ~ Mitchum & Greer

The shimmery shadows of NOIR,

The Authors who breathe life

into mere wordings,

The laughter-ever-after

when colleagues become friends,

inspiring where least-expected,

ABSOLUTELY BEST PARENTS OF THE WORLD

And naturally,

from my core and coeur,

~ My Mom and Dad,

Franny and Paul,

reunited in their celestials

. . . once again

TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPIN'  SLIPPIN' SLIPPIN' ... INTO OUR FUTURES
  ~ pic ala  EnglishExercises.com

I love you guys!

Grace o'my thanks

for how your superb collaborations and how authors-taking-authors the higher soars  AT THE BIJOU

See you in the brave and brazen New*Year with Jump*Jivin' JANUARY NOIR 

to cheer!

~ e'er your pal,

with auld lang syne ~ 

we'll take a cup o'kindness then, eh?

~ Absolutely*Kate

Believing in Believers

LICKING WOUNDS ~ By Absolutely*Kate

LICKING WOUNDS

By ~ Absolutely*Kate

I had a puppy named Happy. Happy was a be-everywhere, but mostly real close right-at-your-barefeets-in-summertime kind of wagging-his-love-where-he-rambled dog. The summer I was sixteen he sat beside me on the bottom cement patio step when a couple of tears did that slow-motion slide from a first love about something or other that might've not gone right the date the night before. I don't remember the date or what might've gone wrong, but I don't forget a Happy dog that didn't leave the side of a sad girl in summertime. The next day, everything must've gone right with lovin' and livin', 'cause Happy followed me through the big back yard to the garden at the long white fence where I picked daisies, roses and blue bachelor's buttons. Nothin' like a summer bouquet when you're feeling as Happy as your trusty dog's name. Those are the days that give a life well lived a certain center of meaning.

All our dogs were named Happy, from the time when I was two to sixteen and probably even beyond that. Good-natured Aunt Barb would come to visit and wonder right out loud why our dog lived so long. The last Happy I remember was some kind of combo spaniel and full-fledged pal to all ends. He led a dog's life in a dog-eat-dog world with a family who flourished like summers tend to do ~ brighter lights, more warmth, and constant growing. You know, like the way colours collide in a garden out back by a long white fence.

 Love and laughter, as corny/cliche as it sounds,

 is the best nourishment for 

a good happily ever after, after all.

 There were five of us kiddos who grew and knew Happy at our sides, nippin' at the spokes of trikes and two-wheelers going up our dead-end street to meet friends and take on adventures. We grew up in all our own stories that friends, adventures and a laughing family with a Happy dog made possible. We're spread across this big ol' country now. We're figgerin' out how to go about our new sense of happy 'cause we lost our hero, our core, our Dad, last summer. Our Mom was his sweetheart from when she was just nineteen. Imagine that! Valiantly, she took on the home and the gardens and the friends and the family that came to call with casseroles and concern at the house where Happy used to live. Through the empty NFL fall and the brittle playoff winter she rooted for herself and Dad's Steelers, but her heart finally caved. That's what solitude of loneliness can do in a house where Happy used to live. Dad's Steelers made it to the SuperBowl. Mom didn't make it to Mother's Day. Like Happy though, each of us five kids made it to her side when feelings or healings needed ~ well, a sense of understanding, as close as one could get. Memories adhered. Knowings without words passed within, the kind emanated to last through all our ages.

Happy went into the woods like loving dogs who are part of a laughing family do when it came the time for him to end his time on this earth. There's a kinder nature that comes outta love and loyalty. Natures like that lick wounds so loved ones don't have to sensate so much suffering. 

Paul and Fran, together again

I thought grieving Happy not coming back from his woods and grieving Dad and Mom not coming back from their hospitals would show me how to know nature's subsidings. I did all the right take-care-of-stuff, said all the right words to splendid caring folks giving empathy's way.  I did the tending to's that parents who taught by example to fully appreciate a life well-lived would be proud of, and in my creative have-no-bounds imagination, Happy would still wag at the edges of my sensibilities, tucked into my side on the warm summer bottom cement step to the backyard which nourished spirit and soul.


Recently, I've gone into the proverbial woods ~ barefoot through sun splotches on a back deck back in Connecticut after fonding my final farewell to the Ohio homelands. I took two days, fully alone, first sick and then better . . . me and the sun, with a sense of happy at my side . . . thinkin' 'bout all the family,  friends, Ohioland neighbors and good-gumption author folks who were all along the journey down a deadend street headed back into adventures.


There's something to be said for giving in to licking wounds. You come out of your  woods not ever the same person.


It's good. 

This was me, writing

 to you to say,

 "Thanks, for being around".

You wanna go run or throw a ball or take an adventure with me or somethin'?

Happy Good ol'Summertime,

~ Absolutely*Kate

MY HUMBLE LOVE ~ By Absolutely*Kate

My Humble Love

 By ~ Absolutely*Kate

Hummingbirds darted into all the action on the patio back in Ohio where Franny and Paul's kids put sorrow and grief aside (away?) to hustle a home into a house ready for another young family to find and grow up their own kinds of joys.  Mementos were shared. Closets, cupboards, rooms, basements, garages gave way their furnishings and adornments, tools and tenacities to family, friends, neighbors, the timely church rummage sale (where Franny used to skim good pickins' for the church card party that she chaired) or the Happy Dumpster -- all in a matter of 4 hard hustling days. 

FRANNY & PAUL ~  TOGETHER AGAIN

We done the ultimate of superb parents proud, parents who provided home and heart in love, laughter, learning;  parents who treasured well the people who walk into and fill our lives with real colour;  parents with values and propensity to work smarter not harder, (Paul's credo), and ever to leave a moment kinder, stronger, better than you found it.

In a literal "labour of love", Kate, Dave, Jim, Lorri and Jeff Pilarcik closed full and fine the chapter of where we came from . . . ergo a softer (thus stronger) peace now exists to hold high the beacon to where we're going. 

My Thanks for how you tremendously kind folks were with me on chronicles and bolsterings, prayers and good vibrations along this bittersweet journey of bidding farewell to the reunited love birds, Franny and Paul, who fell in love on a dance floor when she was a sparkling 19 and he a dashing 21, a young man going places with just the right gal at his side. There remains ever a remarkable awareness of their presence in mine and my valued siblings, mates and our collective children's lives. 

I'll hold close this core into a new sense of clarity. 

My humble love,

Absolutely♥Kate

 

God Bless Paul Edward Pilarcik

~ Who believed in the goodness of folks and the Pittsburgh Steelers, teasing into deep laughter, his Slovak father's grapevines, bountiful gardens, supervisory skills more like coaching, the wealth of a good cup of coffee on a back patio, and winning a ball game against all odds even if it was the 9th inning

29 June, 1930   ~   22 September, 2010

~ JOINED TOGETHER AGAIN ~ 

God Bless Frances Delores Kozel Pilarcik

 ~ Who favoured family, friends, flourishing faith, flowers and fine fun; who wrote and created and painted, who gave without measure, touching forever the lives she graced

13 October, 1932  ~  3 May, 2011

FRANNY & PAUL ~  TOGETHER AGAIN

 

A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON . . . By Franny's daughter, Absolutely*Kate

" T O G E T H E R   A G A I N "

A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON

By Franny's daughter . . . 

Coincidentally, by Paul's daughter too, 

~ Absolutely*Kate

It's inordinately quiet in the house I grew up in. Childhood bedroom doors our enthusiasms pushed open to  jump on each other's beds or share a secret or play another summer round of Monopoly are closed now. People and memories are sleeping, even the ones from the West coast contingent who flew in tonight from their other timezone. 

The youngest brother was here first when I pulled up the long driveway I'd learned to back a 1971 red Camaro out of using only side mirrors. Our first hug mirrored the sides of emotion that dug the depth to devotion of parents who gave life a full-fledged thriving. We acknowledge where words are superfulous that constant laughter churned achievements into places heavens hailed. The younger sister arrived next with the middle brother closest to the Cleveland airport. As he headed an hour's drive home, before his return the next day and the calling hours one after that, and the funeral one after that, and the final family farewells one to be after that, neighbors who were friends and ladies of the church who became extra sisters to our mother, trickled into a gush of how a sensitive stream splashes bounty. 

The care that comes in foil dinner platters tastes unsuspiciously like sausages, rigatoni, cabbage rolls, saucy meatballs and love that begets love. The baked delicacies of pineapple zucchini bread, homemade cinnamon rolls and orange cream pies mingle on the kitchen counter and table where I've arranged yellow tulips from Mom's gardens midst thoughtful breakfast items and even good hearted pizzas and beer. 

Condolence callers come in sad but leave with the kind of light that laughter's resilience rekindles to teary eyes. Both comfort and energy emanate the stuff that hugs are made of, and words no longer need sound to speak their better volumes.  Cheer responds to challenge when we open their share and tender our current trivia query ~ "What was Mom's favorite flower?" (No two same answers have collided - she loved them all. There'll be no clearcut winner, or they all will be, which makes more sense.)

The brother just two years younger than I, whose spirit once mailed me a real tumbleweed just because I marveled at its wonder, lands after midnight at the Pittsburgh airport. More family from the sister burst in a few hours ago, rejoined generational joy. More stories swapped. A toast to Franny, clinked 'round the kitchen table. My childrenfolk and love take to the road before and just after the crack of dawn's early light. The more we're together, the more we sense Mom's alright.

She wrote the input 
for her own obituary here.

Yes, on a typically sad page where the news is dying, our Mother, Frances Kozel Pilarcik inserted a photo of her with Dad under the heading "Together Again".

God Bless the Lady who held the hand

and kissed away the tears.

And God bless all of you,

whose worldwide webbing reach

is so touching . . . 

 You've bolstered me,

for the hurts and healing

of the next two 'morrows.

 Good Night. I sleep perchance to dream

of the beginnings this sleeping house shares.

Love, 

~ Absolutely*Kate