Father’s Day

Elliott

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I guess I have on occasion posted about father’s day. (Most notably in an unusual post before he died which can be found here.) Generally I tend to find it painful and assume others may as well. However, I just came across this photo of my dad the other day while looking for something else and I decided I would share it today.

November of 2017 seems like worlds ago for me, for all of us I guess in many ways since we managed to have two pandemic years we didn’t see coming in the midst of it. I had started my new job at Jazz at Lincoln Center earlier that year after almost 30 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had already been to Shanghai with the orchestra and was trying to adjust to a very different pace of work. (Posts about leaving the Met and that wild trip to Shanghai can be found here and here.)

Shanghai toy cafe.

Meanwhile, my parents had recently moved into this house, the house I inherited and will visit later today. That alone has changed so much. First my mother directed much of the planting in the yard which went from somewhat neglected to a sanctuary, but even in the year since she passed I have transformed it further with more plantings, a vegetable and herb garden and made the deck an oasis.

The NJ garden in clean up mode a month of so back. Strawberries and cherry tomatoes are evidently already producing. More on that later today.

The years she and my father spent in this house were years of caregiving and the house was set up around that. The bedroom I have taken was my father’s. (I used to sleep in a sunny room on the second floor which in some ways I preferred, but mom wanted me to take the main bedroom at a later time and ultimately it made sense so I could be closer to her at night.)

Recent photo of the front of the house in NJ.

Pictorama readers have seen, most notably, the garden transform. However, I have made many changes inside, redoing the floors, adding furniture, rugs, lamps and, of course since it is me we’re talking about, interesting stuff I have collected – already.

An older Milty on a very recent visit.

Still, this view out the window remains largely unchanged. It is a sunny, favorite window. I still have that chair, but it was moved a bit during mom’s last illness and has remained there. (That chair is Beauregard the cat’s favorite spot and if you sit in the chair with him he will pat your head.) For several years it gave first dad and then mom the best view of the small but cheerful yard to enjoy daily.

I remember the day I took this photo very well. It is the only picture I took that day. Dad had returned from a stint in the hospital and Kim and I were visiting and I snatched it discreetly. He had a rare very good day that day, arguably the last really, and I pretty much knew it was a real moment of grace in an inevitable decline. I remember him being very lucid and remembering all sorts of things in conversation with some prompting by me and mom; his memory turned to Swiss cheese at the end – bits he would recall perfectly and then complete holes. He was very candid about it.

Dad is taking a rest and enjoying the sun here. His extremely devoted cat Red on his lap. (I have written about Red here – a real prince among cats that one!) Our other cat, Milty (still around today at about 20 years of age and one of the New Jersey five) is observing from a favorite spot on the window sill – much beloved. Mom filled it with plants over time and although I keep fewer there than she did, there are still a bunch. I’ve changed the blinds as the existing ones (like so many things – think roof, deck!) broke shortly after mom died.

Red on my bed, a photo taken about a year after the one of dad.

Also on that window sill are some reproduction Remington bronze sculptures which were among dad’s favorite possessions. He always loved bronze sculptures and liked to have these around him. (There was at least one other, enormous one, at one time.) I recently found myself in someone’s office who also had some of these, including a large reproduction made for a restaurant, and immediately felt at home. All the walkers, bottles and other paraphernalia of illness is there too.

I have written posts about my father and his interesting and fulfilling life as a cameraman for ABC news, and about his youth and riding a motorcycle across the country (those can be found here and here), but today, just a small tribute to that moment in 2017, coughed up by my phone and as a gentle nod to the Father’s Day holiday today.

June

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: So I sat down this morning with all good intentions of ignoring Father’s Day entirely. Having bared my soul on the subject of our mutual Deitch Studio illness yesterday, I was thinking more along the lines of a toy post today. However, for whatever reason with the sun streaming hard into the windows early this morning I was out of bed and drinking coffee at an obscenely early hour when I got the idea of reading some previous posts. My Dad, Elliott Butler, died back in ’18 and I wrote a post that remains remarkable even to me that year about bringing him ice cream. (That post can be found here.) It was however the one from June of ’19 that really struck me.

Dad’s buddy, his cat Red.

I find myself dividing life into the before time (pre-March 2020) and the new time after. It certainly isn’t that there weren’t problems and concerns in the before time, but somehow reams of them got shelved over the past two years as we negotiated a world that at first was rocked by a pandemic and has continued roil and roll upside down.

Ryan’s Ice Cream in NJ.

I haven’t had the time, energy or inclination to spend a lot of time looking back or digging through the concerns of late ’19 or early ’20. I remember being crazy busy with work, traveling too much and feeling vaguely like it was spinning a bit out of control. My first thought upon being told to go home for an undefined period was that I would at last get enough sleep – and I did.

However, looking back on my post of June ’19 I reflected on one of the last cogent conversations I had with my father the year before who had had one of those strange lucid moments in a sea of not knowing where he was or what was happening, where he looked up clear eyed and asked if I thought my job (still relatively new at the time) was going to work out. Just a year in at that point, I gave him the honest answer that it was tough going and the jury was still out. (That post can be read here.)

Dad’s favorite cookies, a NY Black and White, also known as Moon Cookies.

He was always very interested in my career. Working in an office, raising money for cultural organizations was all very foreign to his work life of news, constant action and cameras, but he always wanted to know about it. We shared a love of travel which our jobs supplied in good measure though, and he was proud of me and what I did, if occasionally confused by what my work actually consisted of daily.

When I read the post I remembered the conversation well. There has been so much water under the bridge since then, but I guess the main thing is that he would have gotten a kick out of what I have achieved at my job over the past few years. It has been a rough ride, but somehow our performing arts organization stayed solvent, everyone paid despite some severe belt tightening and a lot of asking for and receiving help.

Recent photo of the Met. Dad was always proud that I worked there.

Three years since that post and I have a level of assurance about my work that was lacking back when he and I spoke that day. I pointed out that the thing about a challenge is there is the very real chance of failure. It was wavering in early summer of ’18 and I was still struggling a year later evidently. The tide started to shift though and luckily I wasn’t found wanting when the bottom fell out in spring of ’20.

The fight is never ending at a job where you bring in money and my exhaustion has returned after the pitched battle of these past years, although has different causes, and it hovers over me while I try to negotiate the new world. However, while the struggle remains I think I can say that the verdict is in and I have been successful which would have pleased him.

Meanwhile, I am planning on having a run (he would have thought the running thing was crazy, but would have secretly been sort of proud of it) and most certainly some ice cream with a tip of the hat to him later today.

Silver

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is Father’s Day and I had intended to ignore that fact as it just makes me sad since losing my Dad. (Some favorite posts about Dad can be found here and here.) However, this morning I saw a post on Instagram for a silver ring that caught my eye, offered by dealer in Australia who I follow (@madamebrocante), mostly for eye candy as her pieces are quite dear and generally more than I will spend on the internet where you can’t try things on – the best way to decide you must purchase jewelry. Nonetheless, a ring caught my eye as one that would go well with this cuff which has been a favorite of mine for decades.

Elliott Butler starting on a cross country trip by motorcycle.

Turns out the ring was a vintage one from the silver company of George Jensen, a Danish silversmith (1866-1935) whose designs my father loved with all of it. My father had a great eye and decided taste running toward Brutalist and modernist design in jewelry. He vastly preferred silver to gold and other than a good watch I cannot think of a piece of jewelry he gave me that wasn’t silver. (He loved silver in all things though and would buy sterling anything with impunity, wherever he found it. As a result silver services piled up in the house too over time.) He was not partial to gem stones liked his silver largely unadorned. (Meanwhile, I’m not sure who considers ring buying while recovering from broken fingers. I can hear my father saying, Well, that’s what you get for exercising!) His taste was consistently clean and simple lines in all things – from Shaker furniture to suits.

An example of Jensen’s Melon ring, not (yet) in Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

I have a small clutch of silver jewelry by the designer Art Smith pieces Dad bought Mom (a post about those can be found here), but my mother was never much on jewelry and doesn’t wear so much as a watch or wedding ring. (Weirdly I have ended up with a pile of wedding bands – grandmother’s, mom’s and unidentified.) Loren, my sister, had jewelry taste which ran very much to the traditional (gold, pearls, precious stones) and so when my father developed an interest in Native American contemporary silver jewelry I was the natural recipient.

Necklace by Art Smith

Among several pieces and most beloved is this silver cuff. I myself wear a lot of gold and this had been put away for awhile when I rediscovered it about five years ago. It is remarkably comfortable despite being hefty. My father used to purchase such pieces from a small gallery/shop neat Grand Central in a high rise with a public atrium and stores. The Whitney Museum had a space there for years. I wear this cuff very frequently – or at last did pre-pandemic, dressing for work.

When I started wearing the cuff again – after my mother had given me the Art Smith pieces – I decided to research the marks. It was made by an award winning artisan named Johnny Mike Begay. I cannot find a lot of information other than examples of his work. He was Navajo and died in 1976 which means my father purchased this more than a decade after Mr. Begay died. The design is one that he made many variations on – other bracelets, belt buckles and rings. I have long had my eye out for a ring, but haven’t found the right one yet. Although I pair it with some luscious turquoise rings and earrings what I want is something which, like the Jensen ring, speaks more to the simplicity of the design which is what appealed to my father.

The Jensen ring is a beauty and the craftsmanship and design are undeniably wonderful. Madame Brocante informed me that it was designed by Regitze Overgaard, maybe in the 1980’s, for George Jensen and is known as the Melon ring. Madame B’s example is way too small for my hands as it turns out – the ones available all run small – do Danes have tiny hands? Examples are available on the internet and it is tempting if the right size can be found. There would be no adjusting this design.

Regardless of whether or not I purchase one it gave me the pleasure of starting Father’s Day with a particularly fond memory of Dad I might not have had today otherwise. He would have loved that ring.

Dad’s Day

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: So, I have been arguing with myself about this post and whether or not I was going to write it. This is fair warning to anyone out there who doesn’t want to read a somewhat downbeat Father’s Day post, this one probably isn’t for you. It is the only thing on my mind though as the marketers (everyone from my drugstore to where I buy my running shoes) remind me to think of my father today – and he remains very much on my mind. It’s a small story but seems to be the one for today.

As those of you who have followed this blog (or my and Kim’s real lives) know, my Dad died last August, just shy of a final birthday and after several painful months in hospice. As you lose people in your life, especially to illness, it gets hard as the year spins closer to the anniversary and there are landmark dates or, for me, seasons that remind you of where you were in the previous year. I wrote about bringing my father ice cream on Father’s Day last year (in a story that remains a bit amazing even to me that can be found here) so I know exactly where I was this time last year, although the early summer weather had been telling me for weeks.

I remember that these were the last few relatively good days he had. And I have a clear memory of sitting next to his bed, eating ice cream and him suddenly asking me if this job that I had taken at Jazz at Lincoln Center was going to work out. He always enjoyed hearing about the ins and outs of my work life – the travel I did and the people I met. It tickled him that, like his career as a cameraman, I enjoyed my work and it took me all over. He was proud and marveled that he had a daughter in business as he would say.

I was just over a year in my job responsible for fundraising at Jazz after thirty years at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and it was a fair question. In fact the challenge was at times overwhelming me, a real tiger by the tail, and I did wonder what on earth I had done in taking it on. However Dad spent those last months of his life worrying about me and my brother and asking for reassurance about the future. I would tell him that I would make sure my brother and mother were okay and would take care of everything.

So I was tempted to lie and gloss over it, but in the end, I told him the truth – it was very hard and the jury was still out on whether or not I would pull it off. A challenge is just that and you might fail. Sometimes hard work and sincerity weren’t enough and I just didn’t know yet. He was never much of a conversationalist, which was made worse by the labored breathing of his illness, so he nodded his head, listened and thought about what I was saying.

A year later a lot has happened and as these things do, the job got harder and more difficult before there were any signs of it getting better and that only very recently. Somehow though, through a dint of unstinting hard work and some good luck in these last weeks, we are starting to see some traction. It is possible that after two years of unrelenting effort there is some real daylight as I look around. With the help and hard work of some many people, a sense of order is starting to prevail. I have learned a lot and Dad would be pleased I think – I can see a nod of approval. Meanwhile, I will be eating ice cream later today in his honor.