Seasonal change and the steady rhythms of Mother Earth and Father Sky are my way... giving thanks always for the blessing of life every day. The seasons this year have been perfect, in their magnificent weather and in the ever-flowing human seasons we live as we grow. Maiden to Mother to (nope, no Crone) WildWise Woman... Glorious snowy Winter... blooming fresh Spring, idyllic hot hot Summer, and now reflective, gathering, more introspective Autumn. SO thankful for those who walk with me... As the seasons flow, together we grow more and more...

This summer mom came out for her yearly summer visit. We had a wonderful time, the only change was mom had no appetite... for the mother who taught me all I know about cooking, good food and savoring the fresh authentic ingredients this was worrisome. When she got back to Lincoln (hometown in Nebraska where I grew up) she saw the doctor and it turned out the reason was her stomach was filled with liquid... and it was ovarian cancer stage 3.

We were devastated... the docs told mom hospice was an option, she had till Christmas if no treatment was taken,,, BUT that's so not my mother! I realized when she said "Hospice? No way!" that she was as feisty as she had ever been. Mom always was existential, she took each day as it came and in addition to teaching me to cook she gave me my motto "Carpe Diem"... "Seize the Day". Just to be here now is the greatest gift.

So mom said bring on the chemo. She went home to her little house and has people come see her and read to her (she is mostly blind too and uses a walker) and she has my sister Emily take her to the chemo appointments weekly. We are all buoyed up by her great spirit. I think she accepts that these are her last seasons, it's not that she is in denial, she just wants to savor every moment she has.

I am thinking of her spirit and want to recount a bit about her now in her honor. June Perry was born in 1928 to Jerome Perry (born Henoch Pesetsky) and Rose Hershbain in Washington Heights, NYC. At that point "The Heights" was a neighborhood of Jewish immigrants coming up in America. She was very smart and graduated HS at 15, went to City College where she met my Dad, David Levine. His family were really really poor Jews and his dad was a rambler and a gambler, so mom's folks did NOT approve. But they were in love, so they married and went to Ann Arbor Michigan for grad school. When dad became a doctor of pyschology, mon's folks accepted him a lot better: "Our daughter married a Doctor."

With four kids under 8 years old, they packed the station wagon and the dog and we moved to Lincoln where Dad had a job at the University. Lincoln in the fifties was very very conservative: most moms stayed home. But June went to UN grad school and got her doctorate in English and began teaching at the U as well. We had a great family -- camping every summer taught me to love the land and the outdoors, cooking and baking from scratch, board games like Scrabble ... And she WORKED us: in the kitchen, in the yard, to be the best in school...

For a long time mom bugged me: she didn't seem to accept that I was grown and married with children of my own. She tried to still boss me around and we had some tough tough years. But she is the BEST grandma ever, my children are so lucky! The academic schedule means mom stayed with us every August and every Dec/Jan, so the kids really knew her and she taught them just as she taught her own children: words, poetry, food and wine, ideas and communication. Now they are grown too, and all the richer for having had Grandma June as a formative force, an older generation.

I love you, Mama.