After Janie Ivey’s initial inspiration in early June I started ruminating on reminders of Kate Ocean. It’s three and a half years now since she died and I’m still reminded of her frequently, and once I started assembling this blog I found my list growing and growing.
Here is a sampling, by no means complete, of these reminders. Their ordering isn’t quite random — the first couple and the final couple are among my favorites.
Valentine’s hearts hanging on ceilings
Left photo is from 2013. When “B” and I first learned of Kate’s desire to hang hearts from the the ceiling of BCRC (Breast Cancer Resource Center—old location) we thought it was a terrible idea, but Kate persisted and I worked out a way to do it that wasn’t too bad! (Faint praise, eh?)
Shortly after BCRC moved to its new location I wondered if Kate’s and my decorating careers were over. They were. We didn’t decorate for another event.
The right-hand photo shows the lone heart from 2013 still hanging on Chris’s and my living room ceiling. This was my ceiling test area.
The Milpas roundabout
I love the Milpas roundabout at the 101, and every time I’m here I think of Kate who would drive out of her way to AVOID it. Oh well. (Image constructed by Google Earth from photographs and a simulated viewpoint of several hundred feet altitude.)
There are now plants in our kitchen bay window
In our nice, sunny kitchen bay window we didn’t always have plants. I remember Kate being horrified by our (well, I ‘spoze, mostly Paul) keeping kitchen tools there such as a colander, cheesy plastic containers, and other unworthy items right where Kate knew plants belonged.
On the right is a current photo of a Christmas cactus (gift of Kate Ocean!) that has taken over the bay window. If Kate could see it, she’d say, oh Chris, we need to repot your plant. Then Chris would say, nooo, if you do that it’ll just grow bigger still and then you’ll want to repot it again.
Then, if there was another time, Kate would say, oh Chris, we need to repot … and Chris would say …. I THINK we would all enjoy these scenes!
Most times I drive by her street (either South Voluntario or East Figueroa)
Stopping by her place after picking up flowers from Trader Joes’s
I don’t do this any more, of course, but still it was a little jarring when I realized I’ve mostly forgotten that during her final few years with us, after picking up one or two grocery carts of donated flowers from TJ’s, I’d usually stop at her place on my way to BCRC to drop off a couple of bouquets. I’d usually wind up with a cup of coffee out of the deal, too.
It was in making our simple drop-off arrangements I got adept at sending text messages between our (not smart) phones. I always got a kick out of thinking of the two of us relative old farts comfortably exchanging text messages (we were both so much older than the typical texting demographic!).
Small fish table; and other things
For example: ceramic coaster featuring a very large letter “K”, Christmas plate that “B” and Kate gave us loaded with cookies, Nordstrom towel, Loo sign.
Photos
I have a couple hundred photos where she appears, and, of course, any time I see one it’s a reminder; here, with Janie, e.g..
Marshmallow roasting sticks still beside our fireplace
We used them during the S’mores part of our 2 or 3 Christmas Eves together. I cut them from a bamboo stand in our back yard. In the left photo, which is NOT a reenactment, I’m pretty sure one of the hands is Kate’s. In the right photo, taken a couple of weeks ago, the same sticks are still there, waiting.
And speaking of Christmas Eve …
On the first Christmas Eve at our house with Kate, she and I went out on our back patio to check out the Star Walk app on our iPads and as we were holding an iPad up against the dark sky and inviting the app to tell us about the constellations we were looking at, Santa and reindeer dashed by. They don’t run or gallop, do they? Don’t they dash? How can you not like that? Anyway, in this example these guys are dashing past the constellation Pegasus. The dashed line is the Earth’s apparent path across the heavens. Completely gratuitous feature of the app! Christmas Eve only.
Any time I pick up either of the Kate photo books I assembled
It’s a concentrated reminder and a real visceral twang.
Any time I think of the Celebration of Kate’s life at the mission
I remember the distinct pleasure of working with a terrific group of others to do the best we could for Kate’s memory, Kate’s many friends, and ourselves.
Mobile hanging in Chris’s room — a birthday gift to Chris from Kate
Begonia photo from our daughter Kate
Left: begonia, RB Jr., is shown at Kate Ocean’s Voluntario Street place in about 2013. RB is from Ruby Begonia, Kate’s name for the begonia Chris acquired from her mother many years ago that is somehow still alive despite Chris’s care. RB Jr. is from a cutting from Chris’s plant. She fussed over this little guy a bunch, whose health I felt she somehow connected to her own.
Right: photo recently arrived (without any prompting or any idea that I was assembling this list) from daughter Kate showing current healthy state of her cutting from RB or RBjr that has grown up and is now living in Melrose, Massachusetts.
Trips — At the Santa Barbara airport a couple weeks ago, e.g.
Just before leaving Santa Barbara, I found myself ready to take a socks photo, something I routinely used to do for Kate when I was out of town. Besides a socks photo (especially my heart socks that I came to think of as my travel socks) I’d email a goofy safe-arrival photo, and maybe others. When we returned from trips she’d ask how are the babies? (Meaning the cats.) She seemed to enjoy hearing about our trips, not feel bad because we were reminding her she may not have the wherewithal to do similar travelling.
Reminder from Shutterfly of 7 years ago
Shutterfly emailed this collage to me just a couple of months age.
I’ve uploaded several thousand photos to their website over the last 10 years, and produced many photobooks and lots of prints of many sizes from them, so they have lots of photos and projects they can remind me of.
This particular group of photos is from Kate and Reggie’s Hawaii trip of October 2010, and BCRC’s annual December Tea and Fashion Show of probably the same year. (No, I don’t know where Shutterfly got seven years ago — may not be worth any time investment doing some math here.)
Annual French Festival in Santa Barbara
She always spoke so fondly of the French Festival. This notice was emailed to me just a few weeks ago, so perhaps as long as there’s an active French Festival in town they’ll be reminding me of Kate every year about this time.
Shoe-changing bench
I probably see and use this bench of Kate’s more than any of the other reminders but somehow it was the last thing I thought of!
Note to those who might actually read this post: that possibly disparaging comment at the very, very end of this post is actually a link to, and the title of the previous post in this blog site, I do not mean it to say anything about the current post!
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