Cristina: A Legacy of Awesomeness

This page is a little tribute to Cristina Sayre, the most awesome lady ever to grace my world. She rocked so hard it was difficult to fully appreciate her awesomeness, and even more impossible to accept that she is no longer here.

She wasn't for everyone. If she was for you, you were a lucky bastard.

There are no words that can come close to describing what made her so badass. There is no memorial that can do her justice. No monument immense enough to capture all that she was.

But I have to try.

Here is what I wrote for her once on birthday over at Half-Baked Birthday. I'm glad she got to read it. 

I don’t know anyone as fiercely independent as Cristina. She’s 100% her own woman. By trade she writes and keeps her finger on the pulse of trends in all realms. Her own style is only slightly informed by what she observes. Most of it comes from her, reflecting her unique sense of self and what she choose to express.

For someone so fashion-forward, she isn’t concerned with cool. Call her a hipster and you just might get decked, if not by a fist than with a look. She likes what she likes, regardless of where it sits in current popular favor. High heels, Elvis, mead, Miss Piggy, pub food, Crowded House, Kirchner, fart jokes, Liberace, hockey, fancy dresses just for the hell of it. Actually, most of what makes Cristina so awesome is just for the hell of it.

She’s unapologetic. She’s tough. She’s quick to speak her mind and unafraid of the consequences. But there is a sensitivity she keeps well protected. An insistence on basic human decency and treating people with respect when they’ve made an effort to do the same. She’s harsh with the world, but kind to those in her world. She doesn’t aim to please. She lives life on her terms, changing and growing but never departing from who she is.

We’re different, her and me. My approach to life involves a fair bit more cowering and worrying if I’ve offended anyone. Yet in so many ways we see life the same way. I look at Cristina and wish I had the guts to be more like her. Like everyone, she may have regrets or insecurities or fears, but they don’t define her. Bravery like that isn’t easy to find.

Our lifestyles take us in different directions, but she’s a person I wish I could spent more time with. I miss working with her, where I could be sure of seeing her all the time. I’m so bad at keeping up with people, but I hope to a better friend to her. For purely selfish reasons!

And her obituary, which I eeked out a year after she passed. 

The world became a less awesome place with the death of Cristina Sayre on December 2, 2015. A fierce feminist, stylish provocateur, and loyal Sharks fan, she was equally at home taking in a Broadway play or chowing down at Henry's Hi-Life. San Jose by birth and by soul, Cristina was known to flirt madly with New York City and carried a torch for Dublin, Ireland. For work she wrote sharp, compelling copy and curated stylish lists of must-have objects both useful and whimsical. But work was only what she did. To understand who she was, you'd need to share stories with her over a pint. If you were lucky enough to know her, you never missed a chance to do just that.

She leaves behind her mother and best friend Ann, younger brother James, grandparents Lois & Walter, and a group of friends that spans the globe, all muddling by in a world that's a little less bright in her absence.

Here is the stuff she chose to share on social medias:


Her blog is down, but you can poke through the 
internet archive.

Instagram   Twitter   Good Reads   Last.fm   Yelp   Kaboodle   Foursquare   Letterboxd   Spotify   Pinterest   Pandora   Flickr   Untappd

Cristina was passionate believer in women’s health rights, particularly  Planned Parenthood's commitment to health services serving for low-income women. Please consider remembering her with a donation in her honor. 

She’d be proud of you. 

 Donate at ppmarmonte.org/donate
List Cristina Sayre in the “Honor Gifts” section.

                                         

Cristina’s ashes are entombed in the
Nature Garden at Oak Hill Memorial Park
300 Curtner Ave, San Jose, CA 95125

The Nature Garden is behind the curved-roofed Chapel of Roses
at the main entrance on Curtner. Park behind the
garden, enter the arched entrance and turn right.  

Her niche is in the wall, six spots on the bottom row.

    

Farewell, dear friend.

Burn, Suby, Burn

It has been a rough year for my family, with health scares, a house fire, tragic deaths, unexpected major expenses and countless other personal tragedies big and small. They seem to come regularly, just about the time I'm settling into feeling normal and thinking the worst is behind me. And then my car catches on fire.

For sale, as-is.

I've always been a little down on my Subaru. I liked driving our previous Subaru, a snappy red Outback nicknamed Ruby Suby. But Ruby was old and unreliable, and the new Outback we found was much better in every way but one: it was white. My mother had driven a white station wagon when we were kids and I wasn't thrilled to be saddled with a mom-mobile. It quickly earned the name Moby Suby, my white whale. It was a good car, though, and I got used to it. At least it wasn't a minivan.

And then yesterday. I had just exited the winding mountain Highway 17 when I noticed some white exhaust behind my car. Not much, but I knew something was wrong. The power steering started to give out as I scanned the dashboard - no oil light, engine temperature normal. I drove along slowly, hoping I could make the 3/4 mile ride home. The smoking continued so I pulled over into a driveway, wondering if I should go on, when a car coming the opposite direction stopped. I wondered why - there wasn't that much smoke. They drove away, and I decided to keep going. Suddenly brown smoke began pouring from the engine. Another car stopped, and the driver yelled out that the car was on fire. I pulled onto the shoulder - luckily there was one here, and it was asphalt. I jumped out and unbuckled Adele, placed her on the hillside and told her stay put. I turned back to grab Lucas, who had already unbuckled himself and jumped right into my arms. The man who had stopped was now dropping road flares and told me to move further away from the car. By now flames were visible under the front of the car and the smoke was dark brown and gray. I began walking down the road and called 911. A fire unit was on the way, they said. Then an SUV pulled up and I saw it was my friend Jayme. We've known each other for 8 years, long before either of us lived in the mountains, and now she lives just down the road. It was a relief, and I started crying. We got into her car and she drove a bit away to a safe spot.

Nothing to do but smile.

The fire unit took a while to arrive. Moby Suby's engine was engulfed in flames as the hood melted away. I worried the hillside might catch fire. The windshield shattered and black smoke poured into the car. I already held no hope that the car would be saved, but now I also knew everything inside would be lost as well. We were all safe though. The kids were watching a DVD in the backseat. After what seemed an eternity the fire truck arrived and it was all over. I had Jayme take the kids to her house while I waited for Philip and the CHP to arrive. Her husband Denzil came by to keep me company on the side of the road. Eventually the wrecker arrived to scrape our car off the melted asphalt and haul it away and that was that.

I have been focusing rather deliberately on the silver linings. No one was hurt. It didn't happen on the fast and shoulderless highway. I did not start a forest fire. Jayme just happened to drive by so I was not alone. And best of all, a nice discovery: I'm pretty cool under pressure. I didn't panic. I knew that despite the scary smoke and flames that engines do not immediately explode, so I was able to calmly get the kids out. They are curious about the situation but not scared or scarred by it at all. I'm shaken now but at the time I held it together fairly well.

I've managed to do this before. When Lucas' forehead was split open on the playground, my brain clicked into a practical mode and reminded me that faces bleed a lot and he was going to be just fine. When Adele began choking on a piece of plastic confetti (a week later, in the exact same spot) I did all the proper Heimlich steps that people around me were instructing, my brain calmly repeating that she as long as she was still breathing she would be just fine. These scary moments pass and I'm left with a good story. Maybe if I were in a truly hopeless situation - trapped somehow or unable to determine what to do next - I would freak out. But so far I've been pretty damn good at moving through frightening moments.

Moby Suby in better times.

There is part of me that finds it easier to deal with sudden tragic events than the everyday business of life. Getting through a day of school pick-up and errands to run, laundry to fold and dinner to make, rushing home in time for naps and running out the door late again for the next appointment. The endless cycle of activity and my inability to shape any kind of routine around it is a constant source of disappointment and frustration. I can't figure out why my daily life is so hard when it sounds simple. Food, sleep, play, housework. So how do I end each day feeling like a failure?

Yesterday I didn't feel at all like a failure. Tragedy strikes and you act and you cope and you move on. Today I'm already back to dealing with the normal stressful routine of life, the naps and meals and laundry, along with arranging the disposal of Moby Suby's charred remains and researching for this weekend's car buying expedition. A minivan may be in my future after all. It's not the end of the world. Just another day in a life.

Home Wreck

When I attended Notre Dame Belmont it was transitioning from a high school to a "college preparatory institution."  To combat dwindling enrollment at this all-girls school — there were 88 girls in my class, only 54 in the class 2 years below us — the staff had put a sharp focus on education. Gone away were the Home Ec classes. Women of tomorrow don’t need to cook and sew! They need top-notch academics to compete in a man’s world!  The retooling did the trick. Enrollment rose and the school thrives today.

Only now, as a mother, do I see what a disservice it was to cut out those Home Ec classes. We were brought up to be super women. To have it all. To balance with a career and a family. To bring home the bacon AND fry it up in a pan. And that’s all great until we become mothers without a clue of the basics of running a home.

Turns out the home arts come in pretty handy. Would it really have been so bad to teach a little household management to women who, while destined to be the leaders of tomorrow, will still have to make sure the kids are fed, the laundry folded and the house clean for company? The stresses of caring for a family are huge, and those expectations don’t diminish for a working woman. Or for someone like me, who has a career on hold and finds herself drowning as a homemaker.

This is fresh on my mind as I taste the white plum jam I made this week. It was a valiant effort that jelled well but turned out way too sugary. Most of what I try to do around the house ends up like that. Folded sheets are lumpy, hems are crooked, floors never quiet come clean. It works out, but not well.  I read up and try to improve but I’m missing that basic experience of how to do all this. I’m just clueless.  I don’t really beat myself up that much —  life is too short to worry about dust bunnies. But I imagine how much easier this job could be if I had few basic skills under my belt. Because at this stage of my life I don’t have time to go back to Home Ec.