The Cousin Who Wasn't

BONNIE L.M. McCOY

BONNIE LEE MAY McCOY (Age 55)

Of Mt. Airy, MD, died peacefully at home on December 27, 2012 following a 14-month battle with cancer. She was predeceased by her parents, Rudolf P. May and Margaret Abbott May, her brother, Robin O Clay, and her aunt, Wahneta Rodehaver.

Ms. McCoy was raised in Montgomery County, MD.  She grew up at The Manor Country Club in Rockville, MD, where she competed from a young age in both swimming and golf.  She graduated from Magruder High School in 1975, and cherished the lasting friendships she made there. During her 35 years as a Senior  Executive Assistant, she held positions within the GSA, the DOD (Naval Warfare and Office of the SecDef for C3I); Northrop-Grumman; Hughes; Burdeshaw & Associates; Marconi NA; and BAE Systems Inc. At the pinnacle of her profession, she had supported five defense industry CEOs; Flag and General Officers (both active and retired) across the US armed forces; and many foreign and domestic defense executives. Highly regarded and respected, she served as a role model to others on her career path.

She is survived by her dearest friend, Sandra Dugan; the Henderson Family who "adopted" and made her their own; her former husband and friend Bob McCoy; and her beloved "Newfies", Sugarbear and Juno. Commemorative arrangements are pending for early 2013. In memory, Bonnie requested donations, in her name, to either the Colonial Newfoundland Club (c/o Treasurer CNC, 264 Knoxville Rd, Knoxville, MD 21758), or Gentle Ben's Giant Breed Rescue (Gentle Ben's, P.O. Box 533, Zelienople, PA 16063) to support their outstanding rescue efforts for the gentle giant dog breeds she loved.

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Once upon a time I had a cousin.  She was born the same year my parents got married, 1957.

Families are complicated and growing up, I didn't know the back stories and family history that took place long before I arrived on the scene.  There are black and white photographs of us playing together when I was two or three.

What I remember is that we visited infrequently, and it was always usually my family and grandparents going to my uncle's house.  If my uncle came to visit us or my grandparents, he was usually on his own.   As she got older, my cousin rarely seemed to be around when we were visiting; the golf, the swimming and the country club lifestyle mentioned in her obituary took precedence over family.  Bonnie's mother, my uncle's second wife, never seemed to be comfortable around us,  a working class family where three out of the four adults visiting spoke with accents.   

We would occasionally go with them to the country club they belonged to, swimming in the pool or to 4th of July fireworks displays.  My cousin would pop by to say 'hello' but didn't really spend much time interacting us or with her grandparents.  I don't know if my grandparents felt slighted, I know that something always felt odd.  I know my mother felt it, because she and my father would talk about it in the car after we dropped my grandparents off at their house.

When I was thirteen, my uncle was in Germany on a business trip and visiting family.  He became ill, was hospitalized, died and was buried in Bruchkobel.  Memories of that have faded over the last forty years, but I do remember my father taking my grandmother to the Passport Agency in downtown Washington, DC  to get an emergency passport renewal so that she could travel to Germany.  I remember hearing that Grandma arrived in Germany before my uncle's wife and my cousin, and before my uncle died.  And I remember that at some point several years after his, his widow wanted his ashes moved from the beautiful little cemetery in Germany to Arlington National Cemetery.  Which left most of us perplexed, particularly the relatives in Germany which was where my uncle was born.  Leave him at peace.

The last time I saw this cousin was some time in 1973 at a memorial service for her father.  I remember that relations between my parents, grandparents and my aunt seemed distant and strained at that service.

In 1974, we moved to Illinois and lived there until 1981.  My parents never talked about my cousin or her mother, at least while I was within eavesdropping distance, and being a self-absorbed adolescent, it just didn't matter to me.

My father's family and my mother's family live in neighboring towns outside of Frankfurt, so usually we would stay with my paternal grandparents, and go to make the rounds of visiting with  my mother's family.

Every single time we visited my mother's cousins, the question would come up, what do you know of Bonnie?  Is she in touch with your grandparents?  Is she in contact with your family?  With the answers being, not a thing, no and no each time.  I remember feeling irritated with the relatives, thinking they should be more interested in the person in front of them rather than the mystery cousin.

Now, it's difficult when one of your parents doesn't like or get along with the other half of your family, particularly when you are young and easily influenced.  I understand that.  But at some point, as an adult, if it were me, curiosity would win that conflict.

But I always wanted to find her, to find out how her life turned out, what she knew or thought about the other half of her family, so finding out that she died eight days before my mother passed away is sad because all the questions will be forever unanswered.

With the advent of the Bing, Google and Facebook, I would try to search her name, but never came up with any good leads, and life gets busy.  Four or five years ago, I went with my mother to her high school reunion. My mother was about seven years younger than her brother, but they both attended the same high school in Washington, DC, McKinley Tech. At that reunion we heard from someone who knew both my mother and my uncle that Bonnie's mother had passed away several years prior, but no one knew anything about Bonnie or where she might be living.

I'm sorry I wasn't more tenacious about finding her; I wish she had been more inquisitive as well.  I hope she is at peace. 

The Crash, 2013

Sometime, late this morning, my computer froze while I was in the middle of a patient visit for someone with multiple medications for multiple issues.

Ugh.

So I logged out, restarted.

Tried to sign in.

Nothing, nothing and more nothing.

Deadness.

And I sat there stunned, almost unable to reboot my own brain to start using pen and paper again.

It was horrible, and made more horrible by the fact that most of the paper charts have been scanned and shredded.

Gone.

Having to rely solely on patients' memories for their drug allergies, medications is not fun, I work in the world of "I take a little white pill."  Really, really, could you be any less specific?.

And the process of identifying the problem would take at least two hours.

And all data from 12 midnight onward was lost.

Well, shoot.  Glad I didn't wake up after laying down with the kids to snuggle Wednesday night to finish those last two charts, they would have been done after midnight.

And I'm the lucky fool on call tonight, though fortunately it's been quiet - it just annoys me that four days after being on call for the entire weekend, I'm back on call.  Once upon a time, whoever worked the weekend got at least a week's reprieve from call.

So to symbolize my heartfelt dissatisfaction with Vitera, I made a voodoo doll, Vitera Man, and stuck four lovely pins into it.

Vitera Man,

 my 1st attempt at making a voodoo doll

 I think I may be on to something, a cottage industry of sorts. I would have rather worked on my quilt projects but I felt compelled, pulled drawn to quickly whipping this up.  The best part was sticking in the pins.

Right about the time I finished him, I got the email that the system was working again.

But I still cannot access Intergy from home, so I may have to go back to my pin cushion and grab a few more pins.

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Happy Birthday to my Dad.

He would have been 83 today.

Miss you.

Camping for the Non-Camper

Written sometime after the first weekend of May 2013.

As a prelude, I have served my time camping and earned my camper credentials:  one week each summer from 1969 through 1975 at Mar-Lu-Ridge, including one year when we camped out in the woods and dug our own pit latrine, one week of canoeing on the Shenandoah River, and one week of biking and camping along the C&O Canal, and weekend camping while I was a Girl Scout.  So basically, I have crossed camping off my bucket list.  Been there, done that: bitten by ticks and bugs, cooked over an open flame, slept on lumpy, rocky ground. I am over it.

Until my own daughter became a Girl Scout. . . . .

And as a Brownie bridging to Junior, went on her first overnight with her troop to Oak Springs with all of the mothers.  Indoor camping, which is not as posh as it seems.  Two inch foam mattresses covered in plastic on metal spring cot frames that creaked with every movement and guaranteed to make one feel twice one's chronological age, which is not bad when one is eight, but is hell when one is 50.  But mothers do things like this because we love our children and want them to have rich, full lives and a variety of experiences.

The first night at Oak Springs we cooked outdoors and had a campfire that night.  The next morning we used the house's kitchen to cook breakfast.  Flush toilets, running water, civilization.  A camping trip in the loosest sense of the word.

During this initial camping experience, we were hearing that next year we'll be outdoors and sleeping in platform tents.  Oh, joy.  Must we?

So here we are one year later and we're off to Camp Sacajewea.  Platform tents.  Latrines.  Obstacle courses.  Zip line. Hurray, hurray, my vertebrae and knees were just a-quiver with anticipation.

But we got a perfect Saturday, blue skies, warm sun.  It was a great day to be getting up at the crack of dawn to head out to WaWa to pick up lunch and head to the meeting place.

Our campsite at Camp Sacajewea was Smoke Rise, with six or seven platform tents, a little cabin with a refrigerator and a couple of picnic tables and right across the path from the latrine.  So far, not so bad.

After putting our gear in the tents, we went off to our first activity, the zip line.  Another Item I had crossed off my list - Steve and I went on a zip-line tour in Costa Rica.  Fortunately as the troop's designated photographer, I took the pictures.  Except my own kid, who was worried about becoming dizzy, so I was not pushing her.

After lunch we went to the obstacle course, but we arrived there early and the girls ran for the tire swings.  Luckily they were able to have a blast swinging before the obstacle course overlord arrived and shut the fun down by telling them that they had to be properly supervised.  We had three mothers and our troop leader.  I'm a nurse practitioner, and these kids have been on swings for years.  Seriously?  I was practically chewing the bark off of a tree so as not to explode.

The fun part of the obstacle course was seeing our troop of 4th graders beat a troop of 6th graders at a game where they all had to stand on a log, and then rearrange themselves by birth date or alphabetical order without their feet touching the ground in three minutes.  It was my Thea who came up with the idea of crawling on their knees, holding their feet up, to speed up the process.  The 6th graders were annoyed, but the obstacle course overlord deemed that no rule had been broken so Troop 71602 won.

Later that afternoon we went to the Lego Robotics activity and then we went back to our campsite for jewelry making and dinner preparation.

The troop was divided into two groups - one making dinner and one making breakfast.  For both meals, they did an amazing job, they worked together, did all the preparation without a lot of prodding or supervision, and both meals were great.  Chicken or veggie parmesan for dinner with bananas stuffed with marshmallows and chocolate chips for dessert., breakfast burritos for breakfast.  Campfire cooking has improved since the time I was in scouts.

For as gorgeous as the weather was during the day, it got a little chilly at night.  A lot chilly.  The kind of chilly that makes it hard to change into your pajamas.  Fortunately, in addition to our sleeping bags, I brought extra blankets for Thea and myself - either they could be used underneath the sleeping bags or on top.  Platform tents have slats that allow cold air to seep up through the floor, but Mrs. Church and her years of camping experience brought plastic tarps to put over the floor.  Layers of long sleeves, sweatshirts and sweatpants and wool socks and dreams of the electric mattress warmer on my half of the bed helped me survive the night. 

After breakfast, we packed up, went for a short walk to toss a stick or a rock into the pond and say what we liked best about the camping trip and we went home.

Bad, Bad Blogger

I have chosen quilting over blogging.

I have chosen reading over blogging.

I have chosen hanging out with my kids over blogging.

Add to the list movies/TV, sleeping.

And unfortunately I've chosen Facebook over blogging, though Facebook is a form of addictive, time-wasting micro-blogging.

The headlong rush at the end of the school year swallowed up free time.  The seemingly endless cascade of  the last Girl Scouts meetings, the last Cub Scouts meetings, the end of Mandarin school, the end of religious school (though I like that one best because it drops off the calendar first), the end of Tae Kwon Do class, field days as schools, end of year parties rolled through our lives and dumping us into summer.  Where camps, trips to the pool and other just everyday stuff took over, along with work, there is always work.

There are a few unfinished posts, started before extended hiatus from the blogosphere was in its early days.  They might eventually be posted. Or not.

Right now gearing up for school has started.  Physicals, eye exams, cleaning out closets and dressers.  Teacher assignments won't be posted until the 21st (for Micah) and the 22nd (for Thea).  I've read through the fifth grade supply lists and am hoping she is assigned the teaching team that uses spiral notebooks.  I am so over composition books.  I despised them when I was a fifth grader in Mrs. Isenock's 5th/6th combination class, and that sentiment has not faded four decades later.

Thea has commented on how quickly the summer has gone by - with as few viola practices, as little work on the summer Mandarin homework and as little recreation reading as she can manage.  I have not used time this summer honing my nagging skills.

So I'll either reform my non-blogging ways, or not. 

Long Weekend

Time to get little projects done like trying to get some of the dust bunnies lurking under the bed and in corners into the vacuum and some of the clutter out, creating a little nook with a new chair and my laptop on the leaf of my nightstand, getting right of bags of clothing that had been packed up a weekend (or two) ago and cleaning out the pantry to make room for my mother's china.

Time to work, no time to write.  I have become a very lazy blogger, with drafts of posts piling up on my blog post list.  Spring is busy and exhausting, too many activities and too much pollen.  (Written in April 2013.)

We have a new family member, a yellow-bellied slider turtle adopted through the Mid-Atlantic Turtle and Tortoise Society.  Believe it or not, reptiles are abandoned by their owners, it's not just cats and dogs (and guinea pigs).  The lady who fostered Charlie for a week after picking him up from Baltimore where he'd lived for a year after being rescued told me of a turtle she had just taken to a new home whose aquarium had been put out in the trash with the turtle still in it.  Charlie and his new aquarium resides in Micah's room, and Micah is thrilled.

Getting the aquarium, getting it set up, getting the pump assembled getting the very large, very heavy coffee table out of the garage and upsairs, and all the other stuff was a series of misadventures.  The pump had missing tubing and had to be returned.  Steve actually read the back of the label of the aquarium and found it was not to be filled with water. Huh?  I made mention of the fact that the tank was going to be used for an aquatic turtle when I was buying the supplies at Petsmart - and the salesperson working with me has turtles as pets.  Turtles need UVA and UVB lights to keep their shells strong, and the lights remain on for twelve hours per day.  The day I had arranged to drive to Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania to pick him up, it snowed all morning making the Turnpike 80 miles of slushy torture.  I didn't want to open the box with Charlie until I picked up Micah, so we got him home, opened the box and what was described as a six-inch turtle was was more like nine or ten inches, depending on how the shell is measured.  And we only had a few minutes to put him in his tank and keep on moving to Micah's appointment with Dr. Choe.

So the larger than anticipated turtle needed a bigger basking shelf - another trip to Petsmart, and the lady from MATTS said he would have some of his familiar tank plants with him.  Didn't happen.  Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.  I hope the bulk of the upfront costs are finished.

Meanwhile on Monday I bought some guppies for Charlie.  Fast food, food that is highly motivated to be fast, they swim as if their lives depend on it.  When the five went into Charlie's tank, he shot off his basking shelf and got himself one, and then another.   And I thought one more went into his stomach, but it was doing a better job hiding than the other two who have banded together for survival.  After I put in the feeding stone for the surviving guppies, Charlie decided to hover over it waiting for them. . . .

Micah loves him, he doesn't shed and he's quiet.

ChongQing 2004 Reunion

Thea and Jennifer

It's been almost nine years since a small band of  adoptive parents boarded planes that took them to San Francisco where they boarded an Air China flight to Beijing.  Some of the group knew others from the travel workshop given by the adoption agency, but since everyone was scattered throughout the jumbo jet,  once everyone made it off the plane and into passport control at the airport, the group began to form for the first time.  At baggage claim, we met our guides and the adventure of getting to know one another began.

We went on a jetlag-fueled blitzkrieg tour of Beijing: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, lunch at a Friendship Store a visit to the Great Wall at Baodaling and as darkness fell, a trip back to the Beijing airport and a flight to ChongQing.

And on what was Labor Day back in the States, we gathered in the dining room of the Holiday Inn to fill out paperwork with our guides.

What made us a group came later that afternoon.  We boarded a large tour bus and went to an office building on the other side of ChongQing.  Rather nondescript, an elevator capable of holding at most four or five people and a ride up to the office where we met our kids. Thirteen babies from three different social welfare institutions, they were the glue that made us a group.

Trips to the grocery store to buy formula and baby food, pacing the hallways, hanging out in the playroom at the hotel, sight-seeing trips to the ChongQing Zoo, sharing stacking cups, toys, Tylenol for infants, the plane to GuangZhou, shopping and bargaining made us a very large, slightly strange family.  Two weeks together until we boarded a plane that took us to Shanghai and from there to San Francisco, and at SFO, we scattered - to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Colorado.

We are fortunate to be in New Jersey, which puts us in an area were a large number of our travel group live, and we have been doubly fortunate that we've stayed in touch - and that we get together every year.  The group changes a bit every year - especially since the kids are getting older and have activities and social lives of their own.  But the gathering happens - and the shared experiences of having people ask if our children are 'really' siblings (with 'really' being a synonym for 'biological'), what about their 'real' mothers, how much did you pay for them. All the annoying questions that you can share the answers that you would have liked to have given if we did not feel compelled to be the polite ambassadors for international adoptions.  And a thousand other topics, shared memories and whatnot.  Yesterday was that day, and it was wonderful - and I say this even after having to work in the morning and being on call for the weekend.

Meanwhile, our kids have grown, siblings have been added to the families and even though they don't see each other, they all seem to know that their shared history is important - and most of them have iPods, Nintendos, Wiis; the universal language of the electronic childhood becomes their common thread just as the shared experience of the trip to China binds the adults - and hanging out with other kids is more entertaining than hanging out with a bunch of parents.  The kids do pop over to the parents table every now and then, to check in, to eat and for that they will receive the pat on the head, the "look at how much you've grown" from the friends of their parents, so far they are not rolling their eyes at this, but that day may come.

Jennifer, Micah, Thea and Juliana

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of that trip that made us a group, and we've started talking about how to celebrate, could we get those members who don't live as close to come?, where to have it?  Our kids will be 10 to 11 or so, with younger and older siblings.  Suggestions welcome.

China 2004 kids, plus siblings, plus high school exchange students