Wordiness

Here I am, trying to figure out whether to indulge in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, in case you haven't heard) again. I had a lot of fun with it last year, even though I didn't get my 50,000 words spilled out on the page within the 30 days allowed. But, for 4 weeks and 2 days, I got to live several hours a day in a world I cobbled together out of accurate observance and flights of fantasy, with a lot of interesting Fictional meals and wine thrown in. And it gave me an excuse for being incommunicado for lengths of time. And for not socializing. And for failing to shop or cook or clean or pay bills - well, no, I didn't go that far.

But who knows what I might be capable of? I'm a good deal more sedentary this year than I was - or thought I was - last year. I could let all routine maintenance chores drift away, drift away. . . I'm liking the sound of this, more and more. And, if I started and didn't finish, who would care besides me? If I started and didn't finish but felt like keeping on, why not? Probably my new best friends at the website (NaNoWriMo.org) would have something pithy to say about my indolence but it's not like they'd be the first folk to notice.

I have come up with a world that seems like it'd be fun to inhabit for 30 days. I've got another two weeks to decide but Halloween's the deadline. Hee hee.

The Midnight Waltz

Way back around the dawn of time, when raptors ran the earth and I was about to turn 16, my parents moved from Western Mass to Wisconsin. They had made arrangements to leave me in Mass, at boarding school. I was initially resistant to this cruel incarceration but one semester at Cheesehat High convinced me that BS was the definite lesser of the evils. Back I went, lucky me, to share a room right next door to the dorm mother, with a girl built like a fire hydrant. She once told me that I was the kind of person she could imagine inviting to a dinner party only to have me stand on my head. I did not stand on my head even once while we were joint captives in our steam-heated room. It wasn't one of my skills, then or later. But I sort of knew what she meant: I was some kind of mid-Western wild woman, bound to disrupt.

In order to get from Not-My-Home, Wisconsin, where the clay under the sod in the front yard absorbed so much water it could suck your moccasins off and disappear them, to BS in Middle Mass, I took the train. At Xmas time, I took the train the other direction. I boarded in Springfield, MA and, some 19 hours later, disembarked in Chicago. The first time I took the westerly trip, I met a guy from a boys' BS, who was traveling home to Iowa.

At that holiday time of year, the only tickets available were in the coach cars. The seats were upholstered in that prickly, industrial maroon colored plush and smelled overwhelmingly of cigar smoke. Snow lay heavy all over the landscape, robbing it of variety. A traveler could doze, read, munch on the cheese and peanut butter cracker sandwiches from the vending machine at the Springfield station, stare at one's zits in the mirror in the lav until someone pounded on the door for the third or fourth time, hang out in the dining car, spending every last cent of travel money on stale sandwiches. . . Or socialize.

I don't remember what we talked about, me and Joe Prep. We had a lot in common or not much at all. Somehow, we found things to say to make each other laugh which, it turned out, we both liked to do. By the time the train got us across the Mass/NY border, we were fast friends. We shared cracker packs and licorice. We bought soda in the club car. We fell asleep leaning on each other and woke up at midnight, in Buffalo.

There was a long layover in Buffalo. Since we were awake, we got off the train. The station was cavernous and almost empty, in the wee hours. Lots of marble and ornate trim, left over from the days when Buffalo was a grand place and travel was for high style people. There was waltz music playing somewhere, wafting through unseen speakers throughout the station. Joe assumed the dance position. I stepped into his arms and he waltzed me in stately circles, swooping through the station until we were laughing too hard to continue and I had to pee.

Of course, Joe and I lost touch after BS. Nearly thirty years later, we got back in contact, had a brief, long-distance (planes, not trains) romance and then he married someone much more suitable. Last year, after a while of silence, he sent me a card, thanking me for my friendship and announcing that he had early Parkinson's. Since then, more silence. No responses to FB pokes or silly e-cards. But stalwartness was always his style.

In three days, Joe will turn 70. I wish him love, miracles and spontaneous waltzing in midnight marble caverns.

Who's That?

Most of the time, I don't really know what I look like. I pretty much recognize myself in a mirror, at least at home, where I'm used to the mirrors and their quirks and only really look at my reflection in the one with soft lighting. But catching a glimpse of person dressed like self passing by a window? Not so easy, especially when reflected person doesn't much resemble what I think I'm projecting to the world.

Part of the problem is that you see what you're looking at, sort of. I look at my eyebrows (or lack thereof) fairly often, to see if they're once again filling in the area underneath them with coarse, rogue hair. I look at whether the part in my hair is drifting back to the middle of my head, exposing some sunburned scalp. I look at the creases deepening in that floodplane between my nose and the corners of my mouth and how, despite my efforts to be cheerful and carefree, the corners of said mouth turn resolutely down. Unsmiling, I am one scary looking Gramma.

So I take all these small facial components out for a walk in public and don't recognize them when they reflect me back in an unfamiliar venue. And wonder why I am so vain.

I don't remember being this vain during my extended youth. All my appendages worked. Nothing changed much from year to year, although my skin got dry and drier. Sometimes I had good haircuts, sometimes I just had to wait until a bad one grew out. I never learned what to do with makeup, so the most I could manage was mascara and brush-on blush. I have bought many lipsticks in my adult years, all of which got used twice, at most. None of them made my thin-lipped mouth look voluptuous, oddly enough. Chapstick was a good alternative which didn't show if it bled into the little cracks around my lips.

I think I'd better start celebrating my slender ankles and nicely shaped finger nails. Why not? Oh, and the temporary lack of hangnails is good. Given a bit more time, I may even get to enjoy my earlobes.

Rambling Retirees

Our neighbors, Hans and Shelley, the ones we eat with twice a week, are toddling off to Europe next Spring, at the insistence of their thirty-something daughter. Said daughter is a stalwart and intrepid adventurer, who speaks fluent Spanish and has a facility for languages. Neither parent speaks any language other than English, other than a little Mission District Spanglish (Taco, burrito, salsa, caliente - that kind of verbiage).

They are looking to go to Paris, Rome and Siena. Perhaps they will take the train from Paris to Rome and detour to Florence, but that will take a day and a half bite out of their two week trip. Is time spent sitting on a train, peering through the dark for a glimpse of a feeble night light a waste or does the exoticness of sharing a railroad car with fellow travelers, their food and their reading matter make up for the time spent? This has become our hot topic of conversation at dinnertime: right up there with the Giants latest win or loss and local politics.

The Mate and I are worried about this traveling situation. Hans is the kind of dude who doesn't notice me on the sidewalk in front of my house unless I call his name insistently, several times. The inside of his well-groomed, attractive head is too busy for inconsequential observations. When he walks with Shelley, they walk quickly, engaged in conversation. Neither one of them suffers from hearing loss yet, so the fact that she is usually a step or two behind him doesn't interfere with their discussions. As they walk and talk, they are usually looking downwards, the better to minimize random input and stay on topic. Or so we suppose.

How will these well-established routines play in the capitals of Europe? Will they wind up eating pigs knuckles, thinking they have ordered pasta primavera? Will they be able to find the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish steps? Will the cab driver deliver them to the train station instead of the airport? Will their fellow train travelers assume them to be Germans?

We have mentioned tour groups to them. It would set our ever-active imaginations to rest if they would simply sign on with a tour and get hauled around en masse from tourist attraction to tourist accommodation, with no opportunities to get lost or otherwise embarrassed.

They probably felt the same way about us when we traipsed off to France a couple years ago. We survived. I reckon they will, too.

Not Quite Make A Wish

Last December, Susan and Diana and I took an overnight trip to Calistoga. I imagined we could hole up in a family suite at the Calistoga Spa Inn and drink a little wine, munch on small tasty olives and cheeses, have some girl time and - mostly - soak in the hot water and let our aches and cares vanish into the mists of steam.

Sooz and I had done a week together at the Russian River three months earlier. That was before her latest round of chemo and before she had the feeding tube. She'd had trouble swallowing and wasn't eating a lot, but she was sampling lots of soft, easy to swallow, easy to digest comestibles. That was also before we learned that the hard lump in her chest was a fast-growing cancer of the esophagus, slowly and steadily swelling to block both breathing and eating, rather than scar tissue from the previous radiation burns. Sooz brought a project to the river: a small quilt she wanted to put together for her soon-to-be-born grandchild. It was a complicated pattern, moving from light orange to dark amber, in various length strips. Getting the quilt pieced right absorbed most of our waking hours. It was too cold to lie on the beach or swim, but the house was cozy and we both brought books to read. We shared driving on the way home.

After that, her health went pretty much straight down hill. The feeding tube went in because she was so undernourished and dehydrated. She hated the feeding tube. She hated the feeling of the liquid food, often stopping the flow well before the amount in the feeding bag had been exhausted and refusing to continue. She fought and fought to stay in the present, to participate with her treatment, always thinking that whatever next procedure would somehow be restorative and she would then be strong enough for another round of chemo, which would beat back the cancer and banish all the damage, including wrinkles and greying hair.

She was in and out of emergency, in and out of the hospital. I saw her every ten days or so, in between doctor's appointments or minor operations. The day of our Calistoga excursion, I hadn't seen her for a couple weeks.

Diana was staying with Sooz at the house, by then, to help with all the infinite small set-ups for infusion of liquid food, the endless trips to nowhere but doctors. It had become harder and harder for Sooz to make herself heard, so Diana was our connection. Diana was being nudged into the role of food cop and she didn't care for it.

The day of the trip, I met them at the Alta Bates labs facility. Susan had required hydration, as she did several times a week. She emerged from the hour-long process in a wheelchair, looking skeletal and cross. She had brought a suitcase but had forgotten some of her meds and equipment, which meant a long swing off the freeway to retrieve the necessaries. Was Susan sure she wanted to go on this trip? Yes, she insisted. We made the swing west off the freeway and parked in the weeds near her back door. Walking from the car to the house exhausted her but, yes, she still wanted to go. She slept for the entirety of the two hour trip.

She had to rest awhile, halfway from the car to our motel room. The afternoon wind had kicked up and the courtyard patio was partially shadowed, so late in the year. Sooz was shivering under layers of sweatshirts and scarves. Even though she had a waterproof device to hold her colostomy bag and a bathing suit cut to accommodate it, she was too cold and too tired to strip, put on the suit and walk the twenty or so steps to the hot pool.

She tried a taste of guacamole, a drop or two of wine, a crumb of cheese. She balked at having her liquid meal by tube. We watched a Law and Order rerun and then we all went to bed and lay awake all night, while Susan struggled for breath. Diana and I managed a quick dip in the pool the following morning and then we headed home, with a sense of urgency. The next week, Susan had a tracheotomy, which left her unable to talk and breathing with the help of a machine.

She lasted long enough to hold her brand new grandson but not long enough to get her affairs in good order. She had hoped to be able to die by a body of water, alone and peaceful.Things don't seem to work out like we plan.

Dental Recreation

Because my boy Hank had a November birthday, he was deemed not old enough to start kindergarten, that first Fall in Ward. Sad for him: all the other town kids, except two year old baby Caitlin, trudged to the school bus stop in front of the Old Depot every weekday morning at 7:30(well, most mornings) and climbed on the bus for the roller coaster ride to Nederland. They arrived back in the same big bus about 4 in the afternoon. Hank, therefore, had to hang with the guys.

This meant riding around in pickups, making supply runs, going up into the forest to cut down standing dead trees for firewood, grilled cheese for lunch at the Old Depot, picking up an expletive-heavy vocabulary, learning to chop kindling, lots of not-much-happening time, in which to retreat into a complicated fantasy life featuring large camper trucks and small stuffed animals, while he waited for Thespia to trundle home.

The other thing he got to do, for the first time in his four + years was go to the dentist. His teeth, not yet loosening to make room for big boy choppers, were decaying at an alarming rate. I had thought he brushed his teeth adequately. Apparently not. And I, after at least four years of dental neglect and chain smoking, needed both fillings and a root canal. Hank and I began making weekly trips down the mountain to the dentist.

We had a routine. We shopped for groceries first, knowing we weren't going to feel like taking our puffy, novocained, thick-tongued selves into MegaFoods after our dental visit. Shopping included big bags of ice for the coolers, so we could also buy meat and cheese and eggs and keep them from spoiling in the car. As winter came closer, we didn't need to take the coolers into town.

After the dentist, when we had been very brave and also not bitten anyone, we stopped for gas before the trip up the mountain. Gas at that point was 23.9 cents a gallon. Cigarettes - available at the Gas N Go, were $2.50 a carton. And we got our treat: Vernor's ginger ale and a block of hot pepper jack cheese. We pinched off chunks of the cheese, gently introduced them into our swollen mouths, gave a perfunctory chomp or two, to release the flavor, and washed it all down with Vernor's. Very fine dining.

I was actually sorry when our dental work was done. Hank was no longer in danger of mouth rot. I had a beautiful gold crown covering my dead tooth. But I had enjoyed my travels with Hank, cheerful, silent, willing, eyes wide open boy that he was, and now they were done.

Working Girls

After two months at 9400 feet, I was able to walk up to the Old Depot Cafe and Grocery Store without long pauses for breath catching. I walked slowly, true, but steadily, in my Vibram soled boots. Because Ward was full of crushed rock and therefore slippery. I didn't make that walk much. We usually drove the pickup to the Cafe because we needed to fill our five gallon water cans every second day. They got filled at the grocery store hose, just like everybody else's who didn't have running water. We might have made do with water from the creek across the road, but the creek ran down through town, down where everybody's outhouse leached into the stony soil. If you got your water at the top of the town, it was unpolluted, straight down from the forest, maybe having drowned a few small forest creatures or been shat in by large roaming creatures with antlers or fur, but otherwise pristine.

Once I was acclimated, I needed something more to do than those Rescue Me! letters I'd been sending to my feminist friends in California. And along came a Job! The woman who had been postmaster was planning to retire and have a baby. No one seemed to want the job. And I had creds, having worked a whole Christmas month for the USPS in San Francisco. With a minimum of training, mostly involving learning the locations of stamps and cancellers and how to send certified or registered mail, there I was installed in the old schoolhouse, with access to everybody's magazines and postcards.The post office was open from 8 - 11 a.m. and 1 - 4 p.m. I got paid every two weeks and there was pension money building up, at a slow but sure rate. We immediately started buying better beer and wine.

My dog, Zoom, liked hanging out at the post office. I didn't deliberately take him with me to work but he usually found his way there within half an hour of opening. He'd wait out on the stoop until a customer opened the door and then he'd prance in, ever so delighted to see me, happy to lie at my feet while I skimmed through Field and Stream or Playboy or Modern Romance, and waited for the post truck to arrive.

Mike drove the truck up from Golden, through Nederland and Ward, on up to Jamestown and then looped back. She was a genuine mountain girl, big all over, particularly ponderous in the thighs and calves. She took a shine to me and began coming over to hang out in Ward, keeping me company. Fortunately for my magazine addiction, she had to be on her way out of Ward and back to Golden with the outgoing mail by 2:30 p.m., which gave me almost enough time to peruse all the days magazines before their subscribers came in to collect them. In extreme cases, I held back delivery for a day.

Evasive Tactic

Someday soon, the word "bank" will be used to denote the lowest rung of execrable, conscienceless behavior/attitude that could possibly be imagined. Arrogant exhibitionistic, small-minded flaunters of excrutiating stupidity will be described as "bankish". Maybe they already are and it's just another loop that I have been happily out of. Until now.

Yup, after six weeks of breath holding (don't try this at home) we got a response to our offer on the six bedroom House of Multiple Possibility and a garden too. The banks response to our bid of $425,000 on a house that was listed at $449,000 was to offer to sell it to us for $465,000. On what planet does this make sense?

Our realtor couldn't figure it out. The Listing Agent didn't have a clue. Heads were being scratched up and down the 101 corridor, to no avail.

We said no to the bank and no to making another counter-offer unless it was a lower offer than our previous one. I mean, WTF? Lock into a little charade of throwing numbers at each other for the rest of the winter, only to discover (which seemed likely) that the two other feckless lenders were not being considered here and therefore wouldn't sign off on the deal? Or maybe we could just get on with our lives. . .

So, we won't be moving in beneath the astonishing arms of the world's largest magnolia tree, across the faculty parking lot from the regional high school, down the street of high steps and hidden gardens, a mere two blocks from Whole Foods. I get to keep my drawer full of holey socks and stretched-out underwear. No need just yet to finally toss away those battered toys in the back closet of the back bedroom. I don't even need to sort the utensil drawers in the kitchen. Reprieve! Or is it?

Mountain Survival Tactics

If it wasn't all about dope, it was all about alcohol. Or a combination, natch.

Nederland was a crap town. Ugly and useless and mean. Where you went if you wanted to get your jaw busted or your front teeth knocked out before Last Call. Didn't even have a classy jukebox: couldn't differentiate good country from shlockola. Danced to it, the way drunken fake cowboys dance: lurch from side to side til you bump into someone and can start a fight. Boy, howdy! Big fun.

Nederland is where my kids went to school. Miles down the Peak to Peak to this crummy little school, where they took one look at my shy daughter, in her scuffed boots and overalls, and decided she was a retard. Didn't have no time or room for retards in intellectually advanced Nederland, CO, no sirree, so my girl baby got the slap end of the teacher's tongue. And by the way, if I ever track that person down, she better have a tale of woe that will at least arrest my impulse to accelerate her passage through this world of pain. But I digress.

Ward had its own problems, not the least of which was providing shelter for major drug dealers, which created odd scrutiny: cars with several antennas, cruising through, drivers indiscernible behind tinted glass, that kind of thing. We had this funny little person living there, however, who was a sheriff's deputy in Boulder County. He worked a regular shift, kept his ear to the ground and always managed to get a call in to one of the few phones in Ward, just ahead of a visit from some official unpleasantness.

When we had been there about a year, a group of men, women, kids and a few horses suddenly showed up in town and colonized some vacant buildings. The men were slick talkers and the women were pregnant or busy with children and not inclined to sociability. Word drifted around that they were all on the lam from Florida drug charges: a bunch of Vietnam Vets, putting their military education to good use. Their presence among us upped the visits of dark-windowed cars enormously, especially after they had a little exchange of gunfire with some rude tourist. Not Ward's finest hour.

Settling In

On Day 2, I wanted to go home. Home to Point Richmond, to our little house on the hill overlooking the Standard Oil storage tanks, which frequently caught fire. Home to the bed built into the dining nook and the blackberry vines obscuring the entrance. Home to my consciousness raising group and our endless, bottomless bottles of Almaden rose.

I was bewildered by the mountain folk. They didn't talk much (unless they were women, which most of them were not) They didn't smile or joke. They had luxuriant facial hair and they all smelled like wood smoke. Before too long, I found out they had all known each other as undergraduates at UCBoulder, which is why they had come to Ward when they dropped out of college, but I did not know that on those first miserable days. I felt inadequate and dismissed and when that happens to me, I fold.

On Day 1 we had discovered that Ward was a dry town. Not that you couldn't drink alcohol there, but you had to find it first. Hazel was a Christian Scientist and she had decided, back in the days when there were only six people living within the town limits and five of them were women and she was mayor, that alcohol lead to bad behavior and was therefore not to be offered for sale in Ward. Hazel was no longer the mayor but that law was still on the Ward books. Nederland, 10 miles away, was where the bar was. Boulder was where supplies, including alcohol, were.

Boulder was about 25 miles away, downhill. When we needed to save gas, we coasted with the motor off until the last quarter mile before the first gas station. That was tricky on icy roads. The BF enjoyed it.

He enjoyed a lot of things about Ward. The first winter he changed his long underwear twice. He did participate with our once a week shower, but then he put the same longjohns back on. Mostly, he liked driving up into the forest to use the chain saw on standing deadwood and popping cool ones with the lads, after work on that building of Hazel's in the middle of town that became our community center, just in time for Thanksgiving.

I didn't go home, after all. I wrote passionately unhappy letters to my California support group for a month or so. They wrote back and sent little gifts, but they had drifted apart. All of a sudden, the Ward postmaster (she was really a post mistress but we didn't have that term in the USPS) was leaving her job and it was up for grabs and I, with my one month of Xmas service to the PO in 1967, was a shoo-in, so I became the primary earner.

Learning By Error

Becoming mountain folk is a lot easier if you start in the summer. We thought it was summer, that June of 1970. It was hot in California, hot in Nevada, super hot in Utah and then we started to climb. That first afternoon we drove into Ward it snowed.

We landed at the first house off the Peak to Peak highway, where Norman, Jim and Cheryl lived. Jim and Cheryl were married. Norman was probably 25, at most, but, with his enormous, scarred hands, burly build, stringy blond hair and enormous clothes, he looked like a Yeti in disguise. Jim was doing his best to emulate Norman, but he was - at best - Norman lite. Jim was lazy and soft: a manana kind of guy. Cheryl, of course, was totally present and totally competent. She wore the uniform shapeless pants and flannel shirt, tied her long hair back with string and made the whole pump/woodstove/outhouse thing look effortless. This household gave us space to park the camper over-night and told us many stories about Ward. The case of beer we had brought as a peace offering was entirely consumed before we all staggered off to oblivion.

The next morning, we introduced ourselves to Hazel, who presented us to our dim and dusty new home and took the BF on a reconnaissance of his area of endeavor, which looked a whole lot like our house except with less structural integrity and less roof. The kids and I lugged our valuables inside and began gathering up twigs and branches for stove fuel. I almost flunked my Girl Scout camping badge, due to my inability to start a one match fire, so I was not surprised when the wood we had gathered and shoved into the stove began to smoke. And smoke. And smoke. No flames, no heat, just smoke, which oozed out of the stovetop and the stovepipe and soon filled the house with such acrid pungency that we opened all the windows that would open (two) and sat outside until the fire went out. At least the snow had melted. That was Day One.

Where Does the Time Go?

Ward, Colorado, does not have a proud history. It sits 9400 feet in the air, not far from the Great Divide, and the wind truly does come whistling down the borderline. All the time. It takes a low country horse months to adjust to the altitude. It took me longer than that.

Hazel was not only the BF's employer, she was our landlord. She owned the shack with the newspaper insulation, the ill-fitting windows and the minimally functional woodstove, with a firebox about big enough to heat and cook with toothpicks. If we'd taken time to think about it, we might have noticed that she owned our lives for as long as we stayed in her house, in her town. Instead, we were busy sorting out how to be mountain folk.

It wasn't that Hazel demanded much of us. She led a very solitary life. She kept her lights on all night long and seemed to subsist on peppermint ribbon candy, except for when she sedately drove her red Jeep Wagoneer down the canyon, into Boulder. Then she would eat at McDonald's. Her trips into town rarely involved buying groceries.The BF took to riding along with her on the Boulder trips, to meet the guys at the lumberyard or pick up a clutch of tools. Or maybe just for company and the McDonald's lunch: something he would have disdained in California.

Hazel liked to hike up in the Brainard Lake State Forest meadows, when she had time. She was a botanist extraordinaire, never missing a tiny alpine flower, hiding its light under a rock, and knowing exactly where and when to find the elusive columbine. She hiked with a magnifiying lens and she liked people along on the hikes. That's where we got to observe her sleeping habits. After walking a quarter mile, she'd sit down beside a warm rock and nod off for ten or fifteen minutes. She'd wake, refreshed and take another catnap half an hour later. We surmised that she did not sleep at night.

The thing I remember most vividly about Hazel is her relationship with time. She frequently remarked that she didn't have time to do something. As her life wasn't complicated with family or work or social commitments, it was hard to determine what was clogging her schedule. But now I am beginning to understand.

It's not about how much time there is in a day. It's not about keeping a calendar. It is about psychic time: what you need for yourself, what you have available to spend on others. Just like Hazel, I have fewer things than ever claiming my attention and less time to spare on things that must be scheduled. The more time I spend alone, the less I am inclined to sacrifice my solitude. I wonder if this would be true if I'd never known Hazel.

Looking Back

In 1970, my BF, the kids, the dogs and I pulled up stakes in California and relocated to Ward, Colorado. At the time, Ward was almost a ghost town. There was still a post office, a general store and cafe and a fire department, with an old Forest Service tank truck and a six person governing group: six people who, against enormous odds, had made it through many winters in the high, windy place and could still be relied on to show up and vote.

We were there because there was a carpentry job that the BF, a neophyte hammer swinger, thought he could handle and I didn't have anything better to do and the kids and dogs didn't get a vote. On our trip from California, in the BF's funky camper, the dogs had discovered the joy of porcupines. We had to spend most of a day at a vet's in Elko. We quickly learned to do the quill extraction ourselves.

Hazel, the woman who would be writing the BF's checks at his job in Ward, was 72 years old when we arrived. She had been the state botanist of Colorado for many years. She owned most of the gold mining town of Ward. She had grown up there. Her father ran the livery stable. During the boom days, he handled travelers' horses and had his fingers in many travel-related pies. Hazel, his only child, delivered milk to the miners and their families. In 1906, fire raged through the closely-built community of miners' shacks and destroyed them. Most people left, and Hazel's father bought out their claims, their homesites, whatever they couldn't carry away, for negligible sums.

In 1970, the town was not beautiful. Ward sits in a little teacup, right below the Peak to Peak highway, with National Park all around. In order to extract whatever gold ran through those mountain rocks, they had to be dug up and crushed. The mine dumps circle the town and nothing will ever grow on those dead spills of scree.

Our house was a three room shack with a wood cookstove, a coal burning heat stove, a collapsing hillside pressing on the back of the house, a decrepit and listing outhouse and no running water or power. We bought a turquoise and white battery operated record player so we could listen to Carole King and James Taylor. We had several coolers to keep our perishables in. We read by kerosene lamp and candles. We hauled water in 5 gallon cans from the hose at the cafe, up at the top of the town.

BF began his job, which involved shoring up a sagging, roofless building in the center of town. Hazel wanted it preserved because it stood on a mine claim. She owned the building but not the land. BF, in full ex-Mime Troupe, all for one, one for all mode, decided that the building could, in fact, be a Community Center and could be restored much quicker if he could hire more people. Some of those counter-culture types, maybe, who were trickling into town. And so the greening of Ward began.

Mourning Thoughts

This weekend would have been my friend Sooz's 66th birthday. She missed it by four months. She lived long enough to be eligible for Medicare, but that may be part of the problem. In the months between her 65th birthday and her death, the care she received became less comprehensible than ever before, and she had been through some incredibly bad crap already.

At the outset, she was a Kaiser patient. Her female doctor could barely stand to be in the same room with her, because Sooz smoked. Because Sooz smoked, that particular doctor gave up on her before they really began. She did not send her for tests or schedule a colonoscopy when Sooz complained of intestinal pain. A year went by before, as insured under another agency, Sooz went for a colonoscopy, which could not be completed because of tumors. For want of a test, a life was lost. . .

The cancer was misdiagnosed and, consequently, mistreated. After the tumors shrank enough to determine where they were located, it was too late to eradicate them in situ. And so they spread. And spread. And she did radiation and chemo and more and the radiation burned her chest.

When she died, she was eating through a tube and breathing with the help of a machine. Her cat was terrified by the sound of the machine and wouldn't come near her. She couldn't converse or verbally make her wishes known because the operation to insert the breathing tube had gone awry, canceling her ability to speak. And she couldn't think, really, in the roar and drama of life-sustaining machines and the stately dance of revolving caregivers, so she waited until the wee predawn hours and pulled out the breathing tube and left us.

There is nothing to do with this information except try like crazy to avoid placing one's faith in Western medicine and hospital care. Sooz was my heart sister and I thought we would get old and even more sarcastic together. I want to do something for her, about her, this weekend but it's not clear what that should be. Yet.

Hey Hey Mr. Postman

My sister and I are corresponding this year. We manage to send off one letter every four or five weeks. When I imagined this project, I think I was remembering that surge of connection, that urge to communicate that I used to experience when a personal letter arrived. I would tear it open, devour the news, react audibly to each surprising factoid and run to the computer to reply. Or so I imagined.

Since my sis and I have each acquired a little computer savviness, we can e-mail and chat, in addition to the letter-through-the-mail thing, so that still happens. We're also both on Facebook. All hurry-up info gets transmitted one or several of those ways. Letters, therefore, are for reflection and contemplation.

Our mother taught us about letter writing. She conducted lively correspondences with various old friends and family members, back in the leisurely days of cheap postage. When we went away to school, she wrote faithfully, several times each week. She wrote about the dogs, the cat, the parakeet (until it slammed into the refrigerator and broke its little yellow neck), the neighbors' burgeoning yard art collection, my dad's progress in barbecuing chicken so it was at least warm inside. Homey stuff. A little formulaic, not very interesting, maybe, but it kept alive the illusion of family. That's what Sis and I are doing, all these years later.

Our recurring topic is our kids. Our Adult kids, I should say: the youngest is her daughter, who will turn 30 in January 2012. We circle and gnaw away at the fact that, in surprising and complicated ways, we envy our children.

For awhile, it looked like my kids, who grew up gypsying around the country, going along for the ride, eating at the low end of the food chain (was it abusive to put wheat germ in their chocolate chip cookies?) were triumphing over all that adversity and happily ensconced in the upper middle class, complete with fine cars, big houses, handsome dogs and beautiful kids. Then they started divorcing: both of them in the same year. And it developed that their marriages had been smoke and mirrors for years before whatever occasioned the final rupture. And my heart breaks and breaks for them and for how very little I can do to help.

My sister's daughter is a bright, beautiful, architecture student, who has thought, for a number of years, that she was her parents' keeper. Most recently, this has lead her to renounce them for their temerity in rebuilding a flooded river bed on their property (the flood having come perilously close to the house and brought the river almost into their kitchen)without her involvement. Never mind that they live in Vermont and she is married, living in Oregon in a house that she and her husband own. Niece believes that she has been disrespected by not being consulted and is now excluding her parents from participation with her life.

Sometimes, it is impossible to write about information like this. Sometimes, it's the only way to give yourself a look at what you're really thinking. Correspondence continues.

A Little (Very) Light Reading

I grazed at the Book Depository last week and came up with a newish Brit Chick Lit book, called "The Brightest Star In The Sky" by Marian Keyes. It'll go back on the shelves on Wednesday and, yes, I did stick it out, though the first couple of chapters were somewhat baffling.

There is, you see, a mystery narrator (MN). Although you guess the identity before long, you're meant to be a little confused until the last chapter, when you find out what MN's mission is. Then you wonder why you needed MN to hover around, commenting on stuff, rather obscurely.

The action mostly takes place in a building of flats in Dublin, where live a variety of quirky beings, mostly at odds with their life situations. Lydia drives a cab and tries to keep her mother from sinking into dementia, in between bouts of having wild sex with various good looking guys. Katie is forty and believes her life is on the fast track downhill, even though she is beautiful and sexy and liked by everyone who knows her except her mother. Jemima is 88 and dying of cancer. Her foster son, Fionn, is a babe magnet and as shallow as a mud puddle. Matt and Maeve, a married couple, once had a fine romance and now are getting fat and wearing sweat clothes to bed. All of these problems are explored and then solved by virtue of a car accident, a suicide attempt and an Act of God (in the Epilogue).

Ms Keyes has written a lot of novels and is probably a more-than-adequate, Irish replacement for Maeve Binchy. She certainly gets Chick Lit! I'm not fond of deus ex machinas to solve plot problems but, hey, it's escapist reading and I say go for it!

By the way, there is only one stargazing episode (because Dublin is a city and city air is polluted, making it hard to see the stars) and he's not really stargazing, he's standing on the sidewalk, peering into his downstairs neighbor's window. So we never find out why she chose this title.

Perchance to Dream

In the last few years of her life, my mother did a lot of sleeping. Not at night: night hours were for worrying and sometimes for the kind of reminiscing that recasts a life experience into something cringingly stupid you once did. Mom slept during the day, sometimes dropping off in the middle of a conversation. She slept deeply, if briefly, mouth open, head falling forward, gentle snores. Kind of like listening to a canoe bump against a dock as the wake of a speed boat spreads toward shore.

She and I had our best times during our daily 4 p.m. phone calls. 4 p.m. my time was 7 p.m. her time. She was back from what passed for supper in the no-frills retirement home, probably having skipped the hot dogs and beans and gone straight for the strawberry shortcake. She had brushed her teeth, put on her PJs, turned down her bed and eaten a couple pieces of chocolate before she dialed. She told me gentle lies about how she was feeling. She'd report on the confusion levels of her dining table mates: whether anyone remembered to pass the serving dishes and if she'd gotten a spoonful or two of mandarin orange slices before that ill-mannered wretch at the end of the table upended the bowl onto her own plate. If Mom had been to a play or concert, she'd expound on the audibility of the event. On a slow news day, she would ponder her maiden cousins, Selma Opal and Esta, aka the Roberts girls.

I met the Roberts girls once or twice. They lived in a little, tidy, airless house in Hamilton, Ohio. They had a parakeet. They kept their Venetian blinds closed at all times. They kept nothing of interest to children in their home. A visit with them did not include snacks or a meal. They seemed pleased to see my mother and pleased when she left. When the last of them died, she left my mother more than $100,000. The same amount was bequeathed to each of my mother's two brothers. Mom found this bewildering.

She formed the opinion that I should write about the Roberts girls. They grew up on a farm. They inherited the farm and sold it soon thereafter. They never married. They lived together all their lives. One of them worked.

That's it?

Tell me about them, I would urge.

They watched my brother and me while Father helped with the haying. They went to college but Esta didn't finish.

This was not a lot to go on but it's all she had to give me, beside the recurring pressure to write about them. One fine day, I realized I could do that, unhampered by stubborn facts.

I gave each sister a voice, to entwine and harmonize with the other two. Definite opinions. Dreams. Taste in food. Personal clothing style. I made all sorts of stuff up. Sex found its way gingerly into the narrative.

I got a fair amount written in the Spring of 2004, just before my mother died. I gave it to her to read, the last time I saw her. She was very loosely anchored, by then, but her past, with the golden sheen of a long Ohio summer day, still interested her. So did my story. She didn't say a thing about the truth of the matter.

Makes you wonder about history books, doesn't it?

Book To Read on a Train, Maybe

The name of the book is "A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies". The author is Ellen Cooney, which might be her real name. What's your best guess?

I googled her. She grew up in Massachusetts, outside of Boston (but not that far - not that anything is really far from anything else in MA) so her intimacy with the landscapes and stratified small towns a person rolls through on the way from one side of the state to the other are part of her basic body of information.

What do you think the book is about?

Short version: Red-haired, impulsive (was that redundant?)Charlotte, who married up then spent a lot of time miscarrying and compromising her immune system finally recovers from something like polio, only to discover her husband lustfully smooching some full-bodied lass in the midst of a snowbank on a public street. All this happening in the 19th century, in a small industrial MA town. Wife runs away to Boston to shelter with someone who used to cook for husband's family and now cooks at a hotel on Beacon Hill. Not just an ordinary hotel, pay your money and get a room. Of course not. A very special place for very particular ladies.

Who turns up as a resident but her husband's aunt, who is also the doctor who told Charlotte what she had was "brain fever". What is she doing there, given that she and her husband own a house less than a mile away and she works at the local hospital? Shortly, Charlotte realizes that all these beautiful young men she keeps running into in the hall are "available". Soon, she avails herself of the availability, experiences passion and decides to go back to her rule-ridden husband.

Issues of class and education are raised, dangled and dropped. Charlotte's awakening is so partial that she doesn't get time enough to become an accomplished courtesan. All the interesting stuff about who she really came from and where she might go with that is blanketed under a need to have rewritten this puppy four or five more times, putting the back story to use soon enough so the reader gives a rat's patootie what happens to this naif.

Occasional good descriptive writing. Someday this Ellen Cooney will put her historical material to better use.

Night Time Is The Wrong Time

I think about that Sebastopol house in the middle of the night. Where does the sun first glance off which window on a winter morning? Is that dining room floor decor painted on and restorable? When does the sun come into the kitchen? Could I dance all over the second floor landing, maybe put up a trapeze? Because I've always wanted to have a trapeze, ever since my mother dragged us off to Tallahassee in 1948 and we got to see the Ringling Brothers aerialists practice. That was before I sat down on the red ant hill to tighten my roller skates. What happened next was neither pretty nor fun.

Lying in my Select Comfort bed in the 3 a.m. gloom, wrestling with blankets, I think I can never move anywhere. I don't like going places. I sometimes like being places other than home, it's just getting there. And, if we're talking about New York, I only semi like being there and not at all if I have to take the subway. Unless Pippa is with me, and then I feel brave enough. She shouldn't have a coward for a Nana.

There's a lot to be done at the Sebastopol house. The floors are the beginning. The walls have a dusty patina of neglect. Interior painting will brighten up the atmosphere. I might have thought about feng shui, five or more years ago, but I think I'm over that. Or I won't do it unless the house begs for it. I know a few feng shui house plant and crystal tricks, if I have to appease some awkward corner or misplaced closet door.

But do I want this house? If I get it, will I want it then? Since life in SF is comfortable and livable, do I need to stand everything on its head and sail into uncharted waters? TBC

Am I Hoarding Yet?

Pippa says "I like dogs." She steers me over to the park bulletin board, where someone has posted an announcement about five available pug puppies. "Nope," I say, not even bothering with "You should talk to your mother." Or "You like cows, too, but you might not be so happy sharing your bedroom in Brooklyn with one." Her round about approach to the issue of pet ownership interests me, though. No childish "Buy me one, buy me one!" for her. Simply, grandly, make the announcement and see what happens next.

At home, at her Mother's place, they have two cats: Smart and Silly. Silly has a little gender confusion: she is slow and credulous, like many a male cat of my acquaintance. Or maybe she and Smart just divided up the cat jobs and she got the short straw. For a time, while Pippa's parents still lived under one roof, her dad had taught Smart and Silly to use the toilet for a toilet. He read about it somewhere and liked the idea of eliminating a litter box. And it worked. It wasn't all that fun to find the little cat scut floating in the only toilet, but it was flushable - not by the cats, unfortunately. This toileting practice has faded away, now that the former man of the family resides elsewhere. Silly did learn to do it, though she was often lax in her positioning, so maybe she's smarter than she'd like us to think.

At her Dad's home, Pippa has a bunny. I don't know whether the bunny uses the toilet but I rather doubt it. Bunnies don't have the agility to scramble up on the toilet seat or the claws to hold them in place. I kind of hope the bunny gets to just deposit his waste wherever he finds himself.

Currently, at my house, there are two dogs and three cats. We have Gracie, a terrier mix, with reproachful brown eyes and a penchant for rolling on rugs. Her companion is Omar, a Tibetan Terrier. He looks like a shrunken llama and is generally of good cheer. Gracie is 13, Omar is 1. Every morning he herds us up to the park, where Grace sits daintily on the path in the shade with her little short legs to the side, as she watches her puppy gambol and cavort with pugs and Boston bulls, chihuahuas and the occasional Australian heeler. Gracie interferes only if she believes one of the big dogs is hurting Omar.

The cats are Jazz, Tiny and Mama Katz. Jazz used to live in Seattle with my daughter, in his salad days. He was a roamer, with two or three ports of call, all of which fed him. He came to me when Pippa's family moved to New York. Jazz is not a fan of change. For the first year of his residence here, he lived in the basement, cuddling up to the golf clubs and boxes Pippa's parents had stored there. He barely acknowledged me, when I appeared with food for him and would not eat in my presence. On a number of occasions, delivering kibble, I stepped on the skeleton of some small rodent, so I know Jazz was not starving himself to make a point. These days, he climbs on my lap as soon as I sit down somewhere and twines his claws into my garments, purring vigorously and gazing into my eyes. This doesn't make me entirely happy but it's nice not to have to hang out in the basement with a sad, sulky pet.

The other two cats are mother and son, acquired from a rescue in Alturas. Tiny is part Maine Coon (the body type and weight) and part Scottish Fold. Mama is one-third his size: a scrawny tuxedo Fold. They both have the characteristic tiny, folded ears. Tiny has the huge eyes and fat face. They are fond of each other, except at meal times. Their relationship features a lot of sleeping, which they are proficient at. They were feral, when rescued and are particularly good at finding hiding places.

They all like Pippa. She calls them on their birthdays.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

Because my darling Pippa is perched, if a bit precariously, on the final edge of innocence before she starts middle school next month, I prescreen reading matter that could be just a mite too hormone-driven or psychologically twisted for her. For the her that appears to be, that is: the one in the beret and long scarf, freckles on her cheekbones and feet as flat as Kansas in her red size 9 espadrilles. The young girl who still gets a kick out of Amelia Bedelia and Nancy Drew. Not quite (Thank the powers) ready for prime time. If she could only stay that way for five or six more years!

So, full of grandmotherly solicitude, I picked up a potential book for Pips while shelving at the Book Depository. I liked the neon orange cat on a bed on the cover. The title was cryptic: "A Mango-Shaped Space". It was written by Wendy Mass, who says she would have been an astronaut if she hadn't gotten carsick, but we can discount that as the kind of thing that people say when they are trying to appear quirky and worthy of attention to tweens. Better to just ask them what's up with Lindsay Lohan. But this book was published in 2003 and I think Lilo was under the radar, mostly, that long ago.


Okay. So Mia, the main character, is thirteen and can't get math. In fact, as the book rolls, you find out that she hasn't been able to get math since she was in third grade but nobody tried to solve that little glitch. Now the math is algebra and things are getting dicey. Her trouble is that math is not in color and, for her, everything else is. Letters have colors. words and names have colors. She lives in a very bright, kinesthetic world. Her area of high function is art. And she has this cat, Mango, who is orange, has a lung disease, and was found by Mia at her beloved grandfather's grave side, the day of his funeral. Already this book is almost too complicated for a reader of my advanced years.

The name of Mia's condition is synesthesia. Lots of people have it, though more women than men seem to. Maybe men just suck it up. Wires get crossed in the brain and impulses jump all funny. Distracting, to say the least. Mia is glad to find out that she's not the only freak on the planet who sees the letter A in sunflower yellow.

Her family is a pain in the butt, collectively and individually. They all try really hard to be interesting and aren't. Her best friend has turned into a hormone-addled jerk. The cat gets shut out in the snow (this is wintertime Chicago) and dies. Mia learns how to make colors out of algebra. I didn't care, much. The cat had no personality and Mia was a spoiled brat. I think Pippa would put this one down after ten minutes. See how important it is to prescreen?

Food Porn

Last night The Man and I had dinner at an astonishingly expensive place, to celebrate his natal day, the anniversary of which was actually last weekend. But last weekend we were in the midst of children and grandchildren, each with his/her own food idiosyncrasies, so strawberry shortcake with gobs of whipped cream at the kitchen table was as good as it got on the actual day. Delicious ahi, too, if I do say so, pridefully.

Well! Last night at Saison it was all wine pairings (all French, mostly white, largely heaven-sent)and broths (or do we say infusions?) and foam and teeny weeny pieces of fish, looking like a lesson in sushi, only prettier than those plastic things you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants. Here's what we started out with: wood-smoked caviar from the Delta, eaten with one of those dear tiny caviar spoons. Later on we had something called "heartbreads", which was eaten with a long toothpick. There were many, many other artfully plated courses.

I liked everything but the rabbit. I didn't actually dislike the rabbit, I just didn't want to eat it, even though it was chopped and minced and stuffed inside an improbably green cabbage leaf like a wee sausage - that is to say, unrecognizable as a bunny. The Man is a stalwart in situations like that. He manfully ingested both of our petite portions.

That's the thing. The portions are a step up from miniscule. I actually remembered to go on Yelp to check out the verbose foodies' reactions to the restaurant and managed to get both scared and confused. Scared, because several people had written tragically about how much they had wanted to like the place, even though the wine pairings weren't included in the prix fixe but cost an additional $88 per person. I also came away from Yelping with the impression that menu items could be ordered individually, which is most definitely not the case. Then there were several complaints about leaving the feast still hungry. That did not happen last night. I only took one bite of my popcorn ice cream and I brought my entire puff pastry wrapped cheese item home, wrapped up in a tinfoil swan.

We had a lot of fun with the food (twist the head off the Monterey prawn then thoroughly clean fingers with lemon-scented towel) and even more with the wine. We both felt like we had eaten far more than we could reasonably digest, but neither of us is a barfer, so we tossed and turned all night, trying to find a pressure-less spot for the grumbling tummies. We even saw someone there that we knew. We could hear each other talk and the music was 70's folk-rocky, pleasantly forgettable tunes, except for the Eagles. Really?

Critical Faculties Engaged

The Man thinks my future as a book reviewer should be as a reviewer of Bad Books. Books that might get reviewed by Romance Writers of America or the Dumpstown Weekly or as a Read that, hated it passing mention in some snooty on-line culture emag. Or that might get seriously dissed in the special NYT reviewing of Kids' books because it deals "inappropriately" with YA issues. Or reviewed nowhere at all because the writer doesn't have any connections or friends of people in the trade or famous parents or infamous parents, for that matter. As in Paul Newman's daughter's doctor's shrink.

Well, I can accept that. Provisionally. I read a lot of books that only teenage girls or women would bother with because we know WHY WE READ. Can you spell "ESCAPE"? I'll sit here in my cold kitchen with the fog-iced wind blowing in the back door, reading about harem women, sheltering from the day's heat in clay rooms with two foot walls, as they eat figs and drink sultry sweet wines and wait for the apocalypse. My darling Pippa Grandgirl will sprawl in her Brooklyn 6' by 8' baking bedroom, reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder's father wading through six foot snowdrifts. Books can take you all sorts of places.

That said, here's my take on Patricia Gaffney's "Mad Dash".

Chick Lit, for sure. Irritating heroine, with redeeming qualities. Irritating hero, cute but basically clueless. These folks are in their 40's and she is bored out of her mind while he is too comfortable in his routine and his hypochondria.

You could write this book, yeah? Of course she takes off for awhile. Of course he doesn't understand and feels aggrieved and adrift. Of course each of them has a brief dalliance with someone who is breathtakingly the Wrong Person. There are dogs in this story but no cats.

The book is kind and sweet. I shed a few tears at the end for the peripheral, relentlessly cheerful, though old and frail, character, who had to have a major health episode in order to bring everyone round right.

Not such a bad book. Interesting musings on the contradictions in the life of Thomas Jefferson. If you're easily bored by people who should know better acting like pre-teens, skip it.

Read It And Laugh

For a year now, I've been volunteering for Friends of the Library. It's a quirky, labor-not-too-intensive way to spend time around books and the people who love them. We throw almost nothing away (except for Reader's Digest Condensed books, which always make me nostalgic). I read a significant number of RDC chopped and channeled books. Night of the Hunter was one of them. Whoa! I was afraid to look at people's knuckles, for awhile.

FOL is a lot of fun. I work at the warehouse where donations are made, so I participate with the first sorting, before our book mavens, who cull for our retail sources and the on-line sales, have had their picks. We get stuff no one would believe: musty copies of Horatio Alger books (where have they been?), someone's complete collection of Vanity Fair magazine - but also copies of Hello! and Amazing Detective, opera LPs, bibles by the carload, diet books featuring seaweed and tofu, some of the most beautiful cookbooks ever - really, porno shots of food and landscapes with your occasional recipe thrown in.

The people I work with are just as solitary and disenfranchised as me. So we chortle about BBC TV series featuring Older People, and self-help sex books. We eat pretzels and Pepperidge Farm goldfish and all the baked goods anyone wants to bring in, which we discuss with passion and committment. Don't even start with what we find in books: prescriptions, love and hate notes, photos of people with bubble hair and strange props, invitations to events long ago.

I like to work with the kids' books, packing them up for storage (bankers' boxes) with all their weird shapes and sizes, musing about whether my granddaughter would be interested in particular YA books (she is such a sophisticated 10 year old but still reassured by happy endings) (who isn't?) Kids have ways of loving books with crayons and stickers and nicks and tears out of pages in ways that we, the elders, no longer allow ourselves. I don't throw anything away unless it has already fallen apart and shed too much of itself to be useful or enticing.

The warehouse is where all my good (and not so good) reads come from. We get a lot of pre-release books from various reviewers and I just love those puppies, even when they are worse than mediocre. They'll be showing up in this book reviewing blog very soon, probably in multiples.

Liking This Book Review Stuff

I finished a couple other books this week. One was called Her Fearful Symmetry. It was highly peculiar: arch and fanciful and a great big stretch of the credulity. Much disbelief to be suspended. For instance:

Do you believe a ghost could pull a kitten's essence out as the kitten jumped through the ghost? It kills the kitten, temporarily, until the ghost puts the essence back. Then the kitten is fine until the ghost tries it again and doesn't make the restoration moves in time. Bye bye kitten. (Little Kitten of Death, in the book) See what I'm saying?

Or how about twins crushing on the same man, him having a quickie with the one he isn't attracted to (but they are identical, no?), pregnancy, birth of twins, and then I'm not going to say, just in case you might want to read it. Me, I'm lying here, buried under a mountain of disbelief and still trying to suspend it. I will say that this author has a really hard time writing men you can believe.

Actually, it was a fun book, except for the characters, who needed some discipline. I learned a lot about Highgate Cemetery, for example. Check it out, next time you're in London.

Okay, I told you stuff that happens in the book and whether it had some content worth reading for. Is that a book review or what?

Ready For Prime Time?

Maybe I'm going to start writing book reviews. That has materialized as an option. Not a paid option, no, but a chance to be in print (if only in cyberspace) and noticed by several readers could be exhilirating. The thing is, I'm not sure how to do it. Can it really be only slightly more complicated than it was in fourth grade? Just put down the title, the author, the publishing house, what the book was about, more or less, and whether you liked it? Does a review always need to shake hands with previous books by the same author, all the classical influences and the economic climate of the time in which the book was set?

I just finished reading "Motherless Brooklyn" which I thought was a very fine book. It made me laugh out loud, feel abashed about laughing, and laugh some more. I mean, please! What's funny about mob wannabes running a car service, with a sideline of cheating Japanese investors in a Zendo? What's funny about Tourette's syndrome? Really? Quite a lot, if it's Jonathan Lethem writing.

What luxury of language! What a joy to write! Words buzzing and humming and dive-bombing around the old laptop, loaded with virtual saliva. Unimaginable physical tics. I loved the straightening of the collars of authority figures.

If you saw Lionel Essrog on the street or sitting on the wobbly vinyl corner stool at the last diner in your neighborhood, tucking into a salami hero and ticcing with his head and neck, you'd maybe get up and move or at least redirect your eyes (unless you were a kid, of course, and then you'd stare, maybe giggle) Because you would choose to forget that a real person lived inside of all that physical paraphenalia not working the way you expect it to. Unless you had more than a nodding acquaintance with Tourette's, you could fail to discover what else goes on for the bearers of that particular burden.

I think J. Lethem jumped right over a big hurdle (or the elephant in the living room, whatever) and gave us the whole emotional grab bag and I say Thanks! You're my hero.

Not a book review though, right?

Sleep Is a Trickster

Sleep is my craving. It's been twenty years since I could do it very well, by which I mean fall off the edge of consciousness into a very warm abyss and float endlessly for hours, wake peaceful and relaxed, like a yacht docking in a placid harbor. Maybe it's only hindsight says it was like that. Maybe I was always a restless, dream-ridden, snoring and shouting sleeper.

I am a shouting sleeper now. I shout things like "Get out of here!" "You bitch!" "Don't you even think about it!" Often I wake myself up with the ruckus and my heart beating 150 mph. Or the Man will wake me up, insisting that everything is okay, which is ludicrous because why would I be shouting if everything is okay?

I could approach this scientifically, were I so inclined. I could write down every single thing I ate and drank during the course of a day. If I forgot my statin. Whether I had one or two toffee-ettes. Did that sip of brandy really count? And then I could compare my dream life, under the influences of various comestibles. Well, it would be fun to discover whether dining on mushrooms produced Lewis Carroll sorts of rabbit hole dreams, wouldn't it? Or forgetting the niacin meant dreaming of kung pao shrimp. But I am not that organized, not to say (or even imply) compulsive. (Is the opposite of compulsive expulsive?)

The other night I dreamed about Stepson. He was dressed in a suit (never happen) and frowning, meeting with other suits, also frowning, lots of tension and silent communication taking place, Stepson clearly out of his depth with these Mafioso types. Then, there was his girlfriend, drunk and crying, worried about him and his associating with these types but he wouldn't listen. So she drank and he repudiated her for drinking. Where did that come from? was my waking thought.

A couple days later, we found out that Stepson and Girlfriend, who were planning on a marriage in a month or so, have broken up. She doesn't know why. He does not respond to phone messages or e-mail. You know how some people just seem right together? They did. No cause for joy.

More Adventures in Real Estate

Travelled to Appletown today and saw a wondrous house. It has porches and twelve foot coved ceilings and built-in dining room cabinets and dark wood wainscotting and a five burner stove and six (6!) bedrooms and three bath rooms and a creaking wide staircase up to the second floor landing, which is as big as a living room with a wall's width of casement windows. Oh frabjuous day, I sang to myself, rapturous to be in such roofed and towering space, way more than enough to swing a cat in (which I would never do, of course). Almost as good as a French railway station and a lot quieter. It even has an alley! Even the realtor, who hadn't wanted to show it to us because it is right next door to the Appletown Regional High School, was impressed. He said it reminded him of his high school girlfriend's house. He lingered on the side porch. I bet his girlfriend's parents hadn't painted their dining room ceiling tendrils of shiny gold, though.

There is an absolutely enormous magnolia tree in the front yard - a tree you could climb up and hide in. There is an even bigger Doug fir next door, hanging over the fence to shade the side yard. There is sun glancing in windows which seem to have been located precisely so this could happen. There are the ghosts of 15 foot Christmas trees and the faint scent of cinnammon (in my imagination: I can't actually smell a damn thing) The house felt well lived in - tired, now, in need of a heap of cosmetics, but waiting and patient, not in a downhill rush.

Do I think we will buy this house? No, sadly. The Man and I are good for about an hour on a project (weeding, cultivating, pruning, kitchen malingering) before we wander off to whatever book or baseball game is currently fascinating us. (He does read. Me and baseball, not so much)So how in the world are we to take on a project like this house? It's not totally impossible because the house is livable as-is and the cosmetics could be undertaken gradually, after the main living areas were buffed and polished. I won't stop wishing yet. The Man liked the house at least as much as I did, and saw the challenges and the potential. He didn't even find forty-leven things wrong with it during our drive home, so there's hope!

So Blue

I've been thinking about loneliness, recently. Partly because of losing my friend Sooz and realizing that I didn't have anyone to replace her with, even if someone could have replaced her, which they can't. If you see what I mean.

How can a new friend replace someone who has known you for twenty some years, has shared your office space, has put together Office Depot desks with you and not even lost it and started screaming, has buffered you from your snotty daughter-in-law during togetherness episodes at berry-picking farms and gone real estate shopping/dreaming with you in the northern counties? Not to mention all the clothes swapping that went on.

I'm not the world's easiest person to befriend. I just don't put much out there until I know someone pretty well. I'm the one who listens, not the one who vents. Also, with this Old business going on, I don't attract much positive attention, out there in the possible friend pool situation. So, it's pretty random, who I wind up with access to.

My mother spent an awful lot of lonely years. My father spent his evenings at one theatre or another, in his various directorial positions. Sometimes she acted in his plays but mostly she was the one at home, waiting to hear his car pull up and his key in the lock before she fell deeply asleep, so certain was she that some night, in an alcohol-fueled misstep, he'd drive right into the river and forget how to exit the car. They probably spent a total of 3 waking hours a day in each other's company. But it had the earmarks of a normal long-term marriage, I guess.

My mother's father, my grandfather, was so oblivious to his wife and her needs that he let her die of kidney failure, brought on by her dehydration, due to failing to ingest liquids so she wouldn't have to try to drag her arthritic body up a flight of stairs to the only toilet in the house. So my mom either wasn't expecting much from a husband or wasn't particularly surprised not to get much. Other than a lot of responsibility and not much help.

Me, I think I've been lonely all my life. Except when I was raising kids. Having your own posse really staves off the blues.

More Food Musing

The grandboys are journeying home from Small Town Upstate NY today. Soon I will know whether anyone panicked, when the door to the runway gaped open. I will know whether a person can breathe in Charlotte on the last day of June, descending an achingly hot runway into an icily air conditioned holding pen. Why does an airline make you fly 1000 miles east in order to go west? Why are there no direct flights from Syracuse to SF? Tell me why and why, as Woody Guthrie sings.

I think they had a good time. No one indicated any different. They caught fireflys and swam in the pond and probably got to drive the rider mower. They were fed according to their limitations, which probably meant lots of delicious desserts and a sprinkling of salad.

Well, when the Man's kid was spending half his time with us, before he decided that drugs played him a more compelling tune than food and shelter and we were foolish old people who couldn't possibly imagine what his stressful life was like, thus we needed to be neutralized, food was An Issue. His meal of choice featured either pesto spaghetti or a steak burrito. Now, age 28, he is a gourmet cook, capable of producing all sorts of subtle and surprising food combinations to delight and amaze his friends and family. He also likes us. Blink and things change. In principle, I support that.

So, even though the grands do not, at this time, venture far from pasta and cheese or cheese and pasta with a little bread on the side, it is just possible that they might get to feeling a hankering to branch out. Try a little sauteed spinach. Munch a portabella. Barbecue some corn. They have been actively discouraged from taking risks of any kind but now they're a few steps out into the world. OMG! Hope I'm there.

Hot. Damn

Yesterday gave us a morning like many another Essay Effay mornings: cold, grey and foggy. I wore my fake fur vest, windbreaker, socks and a ski cap to the park. I'm not sure my dogs would recognize me outside the house without a ski cap on.

Puppy-O dashed and frolicked. Old Girl Queenie rolled from leg to leg, burling her way up hill and down dale, staying the course. Unbeknownst to them, we were treacherously planning to leave them alone for an entire day while we went in search of sunshine.

Somehow, we missed the flood of pilgrims to the Gay Pride Parade. We sailed across the Bay Bridge and serenely voyaged past herons in rice paddies and controlled burns beside irrigation ditches, until we came to Party City, 3 hours into the journey. Barely a car in sight, the last 40 miles, except for a bunch of big sedans and pick-ups parked outside the Mennonite church.

Oh, it was Hot. I fell asleep in cool sun and woke up in an oven. The wind blowing snarls into my bangs felt like a hair dryer. I slugged warm water into my mouth from a bottle that had still been half-frozen a half-hour earlier.

Party City has a big park and big trees, lots of trailer communities and a state U. The Man spent (or wasted, depending on whom you ask) a good (?) ten years of his life there and has many fond memories. Now that we are Old, he thinks maybe we should live there, at least part time. So we are there to look at a house. Not just look, you know: walk through, open closet doors of, exclaim over. Eat a few blackberries off the bushes on the fence. Sit on the front porch and wonder how sun gets past the trees in the winter, if they don't drop their leaves. Serious contemplation of a house.

House has a lot of charm and seven foot ceilings. The master bath is big enough to turn around in, just. The kitchen cabinets are made of quarter inch plywood and painted LightBrightWhite. But, there are two fireplaces and big old comfy soft sofas that the owners might even leave behind. And herbs and fruit trees in abundance. I could see me in a calico bandana (am I mixing too many images?) and granny shades, hawking tiny, ribbon tied bundles of purple sage and lavender at some farmers market.

After that, we went swimming. It was necessary to walk over pizza stones, masquerading as a poolside terrace, to get to the water, but then someone brought out Real lemonade, made from just-picked lemons and we sat in water and sipped cold bevvies and it was lovely.

If you're wondering, the car didn't cool off until we got to Berkeley. The dogs expressed their anxieties with a number of wiggling body motions and snorts.

How They Spent Their Summer Vacation

Here we are, in the summer of what do we do with two teenage boys whose life has been a lot like Jacy Dugard: they've been cut out of the world and encouraged to eat crap and play video games. True, they have not been impregnated twice and forced to live in tents in the back yard. But still. . .

The boys remembered with pleasure visiting their grandfather and step-grandmother in upstate New York, at their little farmette. They have turkeys and a pond and a garden and lots of space and fresh air. So, arrangements having been made, off the boys fly from San Jose to Chicago, where they will change to a smaller plane and fly to Syracuse. They have never flown without an adult before.

In Chicago, their flight is delayed. And delayed. And then canceled. They are given hotel and food vouchers. They hit the cell phones, everybody at every end of this looming fiasco is mobilized. Some blessed human, related to a co-worker of my son, who is huddled in her storm cellar, waiting for the end of the tornado warnings, volunteers to pick the boys up at the airport, feed and house them overnight and return them the following early morning, all of which she does. They then spend another 12 hours at O'Hare. The younger boy is fried and wants to go home. The older boy seems to be enjoying the challenge. Neither one of them, I just want to say, is wearing baggy pants or women's underwear. They do - finally - get to Syracuse. The next morning, there are strawberries and sunshine and swimming and laughter in recalling the airplane adventure.

Meanwhile, back in the home state, their mother is trying to convince the judge who issued the orders that it's time to revert. She wants a joint custodial schedule, no evaluation, no supervised visitation. This is appropriate, her attorney argues, because a psychiatrist has written a letter attesting to Mom having organic brain syndrome (which is?), known by this shrink because she's been treating Mom off and on for ten years. But nobody in the family has ever heard of her before, and Mom is not the type to keep secrets when she can get so much more mileage by flopping it all out there. Mom also has a letter showing she has been discharged from rehab. There's a reason, and it's not that she has completed a program. It's that she doesn't admit she has an addiction problem, so they can't help her. All there, in the letter.

What Mom hasn't done is go into an in-patient program or arrange - in timely manner - for an evaluation, as she was ordered to do. She had told the boys, while trying to talk them out of traveling east, that they would be back with her after this court appearance. Ain't happening. Next?

Definitely Half Empty

Really, what can you think when you descend the stairs in the dark at almost 5 a.m. to find the front hall full of dog poop? Which you notice, before opening the front door and smearing it far and wide. You decide to pick it up before retrieving the paper from the front steps and, on your way to the kitchen for paper towels and floor cleaner, step in a small pile you haven't noticed and track it all the way down the hall.

It's Saturday, so the crosswords are at maximum difficulty. The creator of the blighted puzzle this morning has a frame of reference I have no access to. Rock performers I've never even heard of - not that I'm fluent in rock, these days, just that folks like that are all over the media, so everyone knows their names. Or not. So I fill in the lame two or three short definitions I can hope are correct ("transpose digits" is "err"?) and decide that it will all be better by and by, after I take a shower.

It's a foggy morning, though the wind hasn't kicked up yet. Maybe 55 degrees. The infrared bulb in the bathroom that heats the cramped space enough to make it possible to take off clothing before getting into the shower is unplugged. Plugged in again, it doesn't function. Plugged into another outlet, it still doesn't function.

Inside the shower is an enormous black spider, glaring from the nether reaches of the tub. Not so long ago, when I tried to spare a spider - or at least give it a chance to survive - it leapt upon me from the shampoo shelf, causing me to jump and shriek and embarrass myself, even though I was the only person awake and present. . . I took a glass jar and put it down over the spider. It would not climb the sides, just sprawled there, with all of its legs splayed out.

A rational person would certainly have given up for the day, no? But then I'd have missed standing in line at the pop-up deli and coming away with corned beef! Kosher dill spears! Whitefish salad! Potato salad. Saved by sheer dumb resolve to power through!

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Last night I had a Law Nightmare. It was probably also a Death Nightmare. A former client, someone I never should have met but I did, and became his rock and his salvation, given that he had not the least idea how to live in this particular world. If whatever it was couldn't be accomplished by shouting or pouting or desperate acts of self-mutilation, he was lost. Dutifully, and despite his inability to ever come up with any money, I kept trying to represent what he told me his interests were. Such as taking his tiny daughters away from their drug-addled Mom and keeping them safe in his stinky little dog-filled house in a neighborhood where no female could venture outside without a male protector. And then, of course, he'd add a woman to the mix: someone from the neighborhood who lived on SSI and had a weakness for kinky sex and marijuana or someone who came to the door selling candy bars for a high school charity and was perfectly happy to settle in with takeout from McDonalds and a lot of hashish.

The tiny girls got bigger, started school, had learning problems, acted out. What else could be expected? The trick was to keep the matter out of the hands of CPS, to keep the family in Family Court, thus out of the juvenile justice/dependency system. When one of the no-longer-tinys told some school person she was being sexually victimized by her dear old Dad, it was no longer possible to keep the social workers at bay. Nor, I must say, did I want to. So I passed the caveman on to my office mate, a fighter, and advocate and much more familiar than I with the perils of the juvenile courts.

In my dream, Caveman had decided I had mishandled his matter and was determined to have justice, no matter how long it took to get there. He needed all his files and I found him looting my denuded office, searching for files I had long since shredded. And suddenly my old office mate, my dear dead friend, stalks in sporting a chic blonde bob and a sneer for me. She's going to represent him in whatever action will bring me to my knees! She won't look at me or talk to me, just stomps around looking stylish and forbidding. And I wake up, with my heart going hundreds of miles an hour and no idea why these two want to team up for anything, let alone inhabit my dream life.

I'm not sure I want to know what it means.

I Think I'm In Love

Pranced off to the DeYoung today, to follow the lines in the sand to the Picasso Exhibit. It opened last Saturday, to enormous hype, including some companion exhibits featuring G. Stein et famille, their art collections and personal foibles. I always like a good foible exhibit, me.

Well, it is a lovely and wondrous exhibit and especially nice if you spring for the audio tour, even though the volunteer who connected us must moonlight as a dominatrix ("You Must have this audio if you're going to the exhibit!!!!")The Man insisted that he didn't need it and wouldn't have it. I caved, and was glad I had, being an afficionada of odd factoids, of which there are a multiplicity.

A long, long, long time ago, when I still raising small children, I read a book by Francoise Gilot called something like My Life With Picasso, which made me yearn for small, white-washed, tile-roofed mud houses, close to a beach and brooding, sunken-eyed men in espadrilles, painting on everything, painting breasts and guitars and roosters and eyes with starry lashes. A life lived with wine and bread. A life different from the one I was experiencing in New England, in drafty old summer houses, ripe with mildew and fade. Gilot was all but missing from the exhibit today but there was a picture of Picasso wife # 1 or maybe 2: Olga, a beauty, painted from a photograph (interesting factoid) and looking remarkably like a Matisse.

There were none of the sexy paintings, really. No satyrs, no nymphs. Only one minotaur, not engaged in randy malfeasance. Fairly tame and dimly lit, this exhibit, but I didn't get to see any of it in Paris, two years ago, because the museum closed two days before we got there and won't reopen until it's renovated. Art without a home. Anyway, a gracious and welcome traveler/guest. See it if you can.

But Seriously, Folks. . .

How are we going to deal with this weather? Today, in Essay Effay, the temperature never topped 60 degrees and the wind howled icily down the east/west streets. I had on the Man's windbreaker, which I wear all winter for park walks, but I forgot my hat (wool) when we walked dogs this morning and, as a result, I have an earache.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast they are frying. "Dogs are sticking to the sidewalks" as my Dad used to say, quoting (perhaps) Thornton Wilder. "Could fry an egg on that sidewalk" as somebody or some bunch of bodies used to say, to express overheated urban conditions. And in Texas, everything is drying up and blowing away (can you say "Dust Bowl"? How about "Great Depression"?) And, as goes Texas, so goes a lot of agriculture and up up up go food prices. And then there's China, desperately needing water. And Vermont, drowning as the rivers swell and tear away the land.

Not so long ago, it seemed possible to exist comfortably and eat just fine on a modest monthly income. Fish and chicken were cheap, vegetables even cheaper, beans a good protein source. . . Last time I checked, salmon was $18/lb. Chicken could be had for under $3/lb., if you were going for something that wasn't raised on hormones and pesticides, but that would be a special. So, you're an old person (yes) trying to make a small amount of social security go a long, long way and you better hope you are good friends with your neighborhood butcher, who can save you a couple of soup bones to add to your parsely broth. That's while he/she is still in business for the next few months. But then?

My compadres are old enough to remember the back-to-the-land surge of the late 60's. All of a sudden, we coddled little suburban brats were asked to learn how to chop wood and haul water and garden and keep chickens for eggs and meat (I don't have to detail what it took to get to meat with chickens, do I?) And this was all in order to be self-sufficient, because Vietnam and corporate America made us think the shit was hitting the fan and we needed to get off the grid. Some of us are still out there, more comfortable now, no doubt - maybe growing a little for a medical marijuana collective, maybe specializing in quail eggs or heirloom tomatoes, maybe just growing enough to can and freeze and trade a little with neighbors, if it's a good year and the late rains don't steal the pollen.

It would be wise not to be helpless during these dark days.

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart

Do you live in a world of rue and remorse? Probably not, if you're youngish and vigorous and still feel like you're on top of your game. Just be aware, that walking among you - maybe even in line behind you at Whole Foods, with impeccable products in the hand basket and a cloth bag to pack purchases in - are people like me. I may have a big bouquet of organic flowers and a clutch of organic shampoo and body wash, with no discernible, irritating odors, I may be wearing jeans and a Santa Cruz hoodie and flip flops that show my silver blue toenails. I won't be wearing makeup but my hair will be clean and brushed and I'll have my diamond stud earrings on. You probably wouldn't swing a wide path around me or avoid eye contact because you don't know how much I rue and regret, how paralyzing it can be.

This morning, I woke up remembering when Daughter-In-Law (DIL) quit her quite good job with the County, five or six years ago. She quit, allegedly, because she didn't want her boys to have to go to after school care. They rarely did, since she was working 3/4 time, but even if they had, all their friends did, so what was the big deal? Could it have been that her drug habit had advanced, even then, to the point that people were noticing?

For quite awhile I wondered about that. After she and my son split up, I assumed she had stopped working on the advice of an attorney, to boost the amount of support she would be paid and to make it more complicated for her to get back into the job market, so support would be extended. Now, I wonder and stare at walls. And I regret not - at least - asking.

The thing is, you go on learning how to look at things. You learn what a jerk you have been at points along the way, for not looking closely, more insightfully. You hope that this learning can inform the yet-to-be.

Where It Hurts

I really like my dentist. He's been more than patient with me for at least 25 years, as my gums recede and my teeth abcess and take leave of my mouth. He sees me when I'm in pain and almost doesn't lecture me, even though we both know I wouldn't be in such pain if I saw him more regularly instead of on an emergency basis. Because, even though I like him, I don't like the whole business of dentistry and ignore it as much as possible.

It's just like car insurance. I dislike the concept of insurance a lot. Seems like betting against yourself. If you're willing to do that, what other depths might you sink to? Plus, insurance is expensive. None of that matters, if you live below the radar. You just never register your car and abandon it when the plates go out of date. I mean donate it to a charity. By abandoning it. I don't like insurance but I have insurance because I'm not such a great driver anymore and I don't like having roadside chats with cops about expired registrations. Sometimes it seems like the choices in life are worse and worser.

Today, after he alleviated gum and sinus pain in the left side of my mouth by adding some padding to the right side of the device that provides me with the illusion of having upper teeth, my dentist told me that he wants to get a divorce. He says it's amicable, even though his wife doesn't want it. What can I say? She's a retired nurse and has been assisting him ever since she retired. She is smart and competent and even got him to travel to Europe. I thought they enjoyed each other's company. Apparently, they were good actors until they got their kids raised and now they have nothing to talk about.

What next? Will she move to LA, where her family lives? Will she get surly and refuse to play the amicable divorce game? He's planning on a trip to Mumbai (she hates all that spicy food and poverty, he says) His dental assistant says he'll no doubt buy a motorcycle and a Porsche. Today he had an awful haircut. It looked like someone had used garden shears and trimmed around a bowl, balanced unevenly on his head. This is worrying but it will be worse if he's suddenly all gleaming and spiffy because of a new love interest. I told him maybe to try a trial separation rather than the whole epic production, just to keep himself safe from fortune hunters. Hope he listened.

A Happy Day

Yesterday - Sunday - was one of those OK, that's why I live in a city days. Sunny, cool but not cold, a little breezy, Carnival sprawling all over the Mission and public tranportation. Friends came in from the East Bay, to convene at Yank Sing and gorge on dim sum. Heavenly little soup dumplings, pork and ginger filling, nibble gently from a spoon, topped with a sweet, spicy red sauce.

Yank Sing is in the old post office space at Rincon Annex. There is now a central atrium with a rainbath sort of fountain, fascinating to children, all told not to wade, not to stick their toes in. After the crafty manner of children, they simply wait to engage more fully with the water until the adults are busy with food or conversation. The sound of the water is as pleasant as the visual.

There are murals all around the front lobby of the building, painted by a Russian artist in the 1940's. They are bold and angular and somewhat maniacal: gold panning, beating of Chinese railroad slaves, vigilante justice. They seem weary and dust-covered and do not invite one to linger in the scenes depicted. One glass case contains items labeled "fragment of opium pipe" and "opium tin".

Next, we tromped a number of blocks to the inevitable multiplex, where Woody Allen's newest, Midnight in Paris, is playing. In the middle of a beautiful afternoon, the theatre is full, mainly of grey-headed people. Much French is being spoken in the groups waiting to enter.

And we are utterly beguiled. Paris struts her stuff in an arty, Impressionist sort of way, for the first five minutes or so. And then there's Owen Wilson, sounding like Woody Allen - initally comical and disconcerting, but we adjusted. The Man, who faithfully does not like Woody Allen and often remarks upon that fact, was chuckling after several lines.

So Owen time travels and meets everyone a romantic would have loved to drink a glass of wine with and falls in love with Picasso's latest mistress and a very good time is had by all. Adrien Brody has my vote for his wonderful portrayal of Dali.
Mostly wonderful is Paris: nightime, rain, bookstalls - it's all there. Our movie dates had meant to honeymoon in Paris after their relatively recent wedding, but one health crisis or another kept postponing it until they thought they would just give up the idea. Now, saturated with the relentless mystique, they will definitely go and sit on a bench in the Tuileries and watch romance occur.

We then went to the Ferry Building, which is structurally reminiscent of the Gare d'Orsay, and perched on high stools to eat (eating again! How could we be hungry?) wonderful Brie and various sorts of salumi, with mango chutney and mustard, washed down with an Alsatian Riesling. And we congratulated ourselves on such a fine day and vowed to do it again without delay.

And Then? And Then?

Yesterday, the Man and I traveled up to the northern counties to look at a piece of real estate I found on Craig's list. Our realtor friend had alerted us to the pest report ($20,000 in dry rot, beetles and termites and that was only one of the several buildings) and it was raining in the morning, which makes California people drive like rank beginners, but off we went.

I actually loved the property. I loved the irregularly shaped swimming pool, the frigidly cold pool house with labyrinthine paths to the shower and toilet and roof beams to support a spired cathedral, the lipstick pink rhododendrons, growing high and profuse in front of the living room windows, the flourishing blackberries, the creek we crossed to get on to the property, the needlepoint pictures framed on the walls...

Probably the most amazing aspects are those that will disappear with the current owner, who has lived there, child and woman, for 56 years. In a separate structure, listing a little, settling as rotting wood will, in the back portion, the owner has her cottage industry: dollhouses and dollhouse miniatures. Furnished rooms, full of doll antiques: rockers, corner cupboards, deal tables, gate leg tables, dining room tables with additional leaves, armchairs, settees, canopy beds. And all the accessories for every room, including carpets and tiny cushions. Dustless and gleaming in their glass cased displays. She does 9 fairs each year, so she is intimately familiar with what it takes to pack and transfer these tiny items to another locale.

In the 3 car garage, built by her now deceased husband, is a train world. Not the small trains - O gauge? - the bigger variety, ready to send into their travel patterns, through tunnels, up, around and under hills, bridges, and through incredible landscapes, including one where a gagged woman is tied to the tracks. This display has never yet been packed and moved. Will she be taking it along?

She says she has just decided she needs a change of scene. I think she's been shoved into that position by her children, who think it's too much house and grounds for her to keep tending. Her own feelings are clearly mixed, since her whole life has been lived in that area. Will decorating a new place in a new town give her joy? Will - or would - it me?

Petty Pace

Life, creeping on, so they say, from day to day. Sometimes it feels like trying to ride a plow horse. Sometimes it feels like floating down the river on a blow-up raft, sun shining, tiny fishlings nipping at your trailing toes. Sometimes it's like those dreams that wake you up, scared and trying to scream, only you can't seem to make any noise.
Son and Son's lovely wife have jetted off to New Orleans, to eat a little meat and a lot of rice and beans. Ever since they became instant parents of teenagers, a month ago, they haven't been cooking meat at home because the boys have been raised to think extraordinarily irrational things about people who eat meat. The devil's spawn would be the least of it. My ex-DIL never saw the point of live and let live. I think they invented the Rapture for people like her but she's not Christian. Not yet, anyway. The imminence of Rapture 2 may change her belief system. Getting to hang out with all that righteousness, uh huh!
Perhaps you are wondering, if you've been following this saga, whether she's in rehab yet. Best guess? No would be the one right answer. Her life is so complicated - apparently - that she can't even schedule a supervised visit and refrain from rescheduling several times. And then, when the visit finally occurs, she doesn't have much tolerance for it and ends it an hour early.
I guess she'll self-destruct but it sure is hard to watch her continue to sabotage the kids.

Raising a Kid

My sister and I were brought up to leave home. It wasn't systematic: my mother didn't have a master plan about how this would evolve, such as:
Age 6: Set table with folded napkins
Age 7: Separate dark and light laundry items
Age 8: Feed pets
Age 9: Iron shirts for ten cents each
Age 10: Bake cookies. Make scrambled eggs.
Nope, it wasn't organized. Any more than the rest of my life has been. A few systems built into the home environment would have been useful, says 20/20 hindsight.

Instead, we got being late for school because Dad had to shave just right and pat on the aftershave before he could drive us there. We got Mom in her panty girdle, sorting through stockings to find one with no visible snags. We got hanging out at the beauty parlor, inhaling perm solution and nail polish remover. We got hanging out at the college theatre, climbing to the catwalk, playing in the prop and costume rooms, flirting with the college boys. We got frozen peas. We got the best pork roast known to human kind, which neither one of us has ever been able to duplicate.

Were we raised right?
Was anyone?

All they could do was the best they knew. Dad gave us flamboyance and chutzpah and curiosity about our fellow creatures. Mom gave us books and poetry and her unshakeable belief that everything we did was a small miracle. And, working side by side if not together, they gave us the world to wade out into and see what we could accomplish. It hasn't been a cakewalk but we're both still curious.

Oh Blah Dee

And anyone as old as me knows the next two lines. By Golly, it's true. Life does go on. And on and on and on. Whether we want it to or not.

Yesterday, I was describing to a therapist that feeling of who cares anyway. And I knew she knew what I was talking about, even though she has a sweet life with a loving partner and dogs, that she KNEW what it meant to lie in bed and lack motivation to even roll a leg over the edge and point it toward the floor. To sit in a chair and stare at nothing as the light changes from morning to afternoon to evening. To wear the same clothes, day after day instead of making the effort of choosing something to wear.

I was especially pathetic in that regard on the day, a week ago, of my friend's memorial gathering. I needed to leave my house, looking at least half-way nice and pulled together, to shake people's hands and listen to whatever they had to say about my poor, dead friend. So I did. It took at least four changes of clothes before I got it to the point that I could edge past that last mirror and open the front door, get in the car. . . It's done.

And really, disorganized and silly and chaotic as it was (scheduled for 3 p.m., son and wife with photos and food didn't show up until 3:30, son so unready to let go he went to park the car he had just unloaded and didn't return for half an hour, but then spoke very movingly about his mother's bravery and commitment to social justice) it helped. Now I can have her near every day without all the weight of her sojurn, unresolved. We did her honor in a way that mirrored her life. The best thing was her bright-eyed grandchild and the Sancerre brought by her last, truest boyfriend. From her effects, I have kept a pair of Fatima's hand earrings. They are in a tiny bowl on my dresser, beaming protection. Maybe someday they will help me be stalwart.