Letters from Home

Lately I have been rummaging through boxes of old letters written by me to my folks and by them to me, and those to and from siblings and friends over the years. They are treasure chests filled with tangible bits of the past so unlike today’s electronic missives. These messages were penned and folded and licked by loved ones now long gone and opening them engages all the senses. A tearstain here, there a lipstick smudge, a pressed flower, a spatter of kitchen grease, colored crayon scrawling, all shrouded in a lingering perfume of musty attic. Old letters are not just read - but touched and smelled. Why some of our correspondence from the past was saved and others thrown away is a mystery. Were some kept as cherished mementos, historical references, proof of love, incriminating evidence, or for future blackmail? They are records of trips, births, deaths, aspirations, joys and despairs - all of the significant hurdles we surmount through life. Events we have triumphed and fretted over and noted down in dispatches to loved ones. We scan the margins of these remnants of the past for little asides, clues that may reveal new answers to old questions. Now and then we come across omissions, and painfully regret those things never written. Letters we wrote years ago reunite with the ones we have received and their long forgotten conversations are rewound and replayed on crumbly papers. Personal stories, anecdotes jotted down on the backs of postcards, on fancy stationery, in greeting cards, on cocktail napkins, clipped newspaper articles annotated with ball point pen, snapshots and ticket stubs, all combine to chronicle a family ‘history’. They get sorted and resorted, tied into bundles, stored in boxes and plastic Ziploc bags. We catalogue them, grouping them by year and writer, classifying and reclassifying them according to ever-changing schemes. The process awakens memories which have been slumbering, raising them up to hazily stretch and drowsily mingle with current thoughts. Like resurrected zombies, they arise and shuffle among the living, moving and speaking once more, reiterating long buried conversations. Our inner ears grow sharper over the years and prick up on phrases once passed over and dismissed as trivial, but now blaringly significant. The study of Philosophy and poetry puts great significance upon the meaning and specificity of language, requiring careful and repeated readings to absorb their content. With this in mind, I crisscross my fields of letters again and again hoping to glean a few new grains of meaning with every passage.

comicbooks

My passions for reading and drawing began with my older brother’s comic books. Those colorful magazines obsessed me as a child and, eager to keep abreast of my heroes’ exploits, I struggled to increase my vocabulary with each issue. My brother also loved to draw and plan things on paper and, using the comics as references, I mimicked him as soon as I could make marks. My Mighty Mouses and Plutos were, for a 4 yr old, impeccable. Later on I drew Superman and Alfred E. Newman, eventually turning to study Degas and Michelangelo - but that was all ahead of me in some distant hazy future place. During naptime, my caped teddy bear (a hand towel safety-pinned around his neck) flew above my bed swooping down to rescue Raggedy Ann or some other hapless victim. During the long days while my brother was at school, I often went down the street to a friend of my mother’s house (probably so she could watch me while my Mom was busy with babies and whatever Moms did). There I followed Mary Jane around, watching her garden, do laundry, can peaches, and magically paint and fire pottery in her basement studio. I still have a plate that I painted there when I was 5 – (Mary Jane helped me out with my signature.) When we had finished in the basement, I’d go upstairs and sit with her elderly mother while Mary Jane was busy out in the yard. Her mother was confined to her bed upstairs - at least I never remembered seeing her anywhere but there in the bed. In the bathroom across the hall was the great repository of comics. The drawers in there were stuffed to the point where they could barely close without crinkling up the covers - it was the mother lode! Now Mary Jane’s daughters were older than me and had different tastes in comics, so there was very little overlapping in selections. They had Betty and Veronica, Sluggo and Nancy and Little Lulu and several of those crime and gore types with plots too dark and complex for my young mind. I studied them all – the sacred texts of my youth - ravenously thumbing through little Lulus, staving off my hunger for the next issue of Mighty Mouse or Uncle Scrooge to come out. I was a child of the Disney era. I knew the Mickey Mouse Club song by heart and sang along everyday - especially liking Wednesday (‘anything can happen’ day) and Round-up Fridays, where they danced around wearing those horse costumes with little fake legs (I so wanted one of those horsy outfits.) My attention was riveted to those TV shows while they were on the air– but when they were off, those colorful comics reigned supreme. They were ours to keep, to carry around, and to page through again and again. For the following few years, my fifteen cent weekly allowance went to comic books and bubblegum - for me the perfect combination for a joyful afternoon in some quiet corner. Nowadays, as I thumb through an art book, I may see the images with older more educated eyes, but my childlike intensity endures.

Mrs. Sasina's Magic Zinnia Seeds

We cut down the lilacs in front of our house this week. They were planted years ago, little ‘suckers’ brought over in our kids’ wagon along with other flowers given us from a 90 year old neighbor lady, Emily Sasina. She lived in a little house on the alley a few steps away from us and we referred to her as the ‘flower lady’ because her tiny little house was surrounded by plantings and seemed to be in constant bloom from the first growth of Spring to the onset of winter. When my girls and I used to pass her home on our walks up the alley to the grocery store, she would beckon us over to pull a weed or water a shrub or come in for a cookie. Her television blared away next to the front door letting us all know when the evening news had come on. From her chair facing the doorway, she kept tabs on the neighborhood, chuckling at the antics of everyday humanity. Above her chair was a clock that always read 5:17, the hour of her husband’s death. Despite private sorrows, hers was a cheery nature - maybe because she was always surrounded by flowers. She was one of those depression era holdovers who were skilled in making do with little and needing even less. On visits to her simple home, my children would practice their early social skills - sitting politely while we chatted, admiring her old lady collections of ceramic bunnies and greeting cards, fetching items, watering plants and later purchasing things at the store for her on our errands. She walked less and less as she got older. I would see her bent figure on trash day hobbling with her cane, kicking a bag of garbage down the alley to the curb in front of her home. One summer day she made it all the way over to my house for a surprise visit. I was sewing in the kitchen and she sat and cooled off while telling me tales of the neighborhood. She admired the colorful Hawaiian shirts I was making at the time and I was glad to fashion one for her and tickled to see her wear it. Every fall we clip and save the faded blooms of ‘Mrs. Sasina’s magic zinnias’ – sharing them with our friends and family. How better to honor her spirit than with such simple hardy flowers that bring color and joy year after year after year.

Savvy Waitress

My little sister loved Bob's Big Boy hamburgers and when I was a waitress there, I would occasionally bring one home for her after work. Waking her up by waving a warm juicy burger under her nose brought a groggy joyful sigh – even if it was 2am. I remember my first day on the job and my panic at having to take orders when every table in my section filled at the same time. Nothing makes or breaks your ability to maintain your cool under pressure like waiting tables at a family restaurant. It should be required training for all military personnel. Coffee shops serve the whole gamut of humanity, early evening brings old couples and young families, while late night the place becomes the last stop for after hours workers, dates, and partiers looking to sober up. Single men sat at the counter, ordering the same meal night after night, engaging in what little conversations they could with the patient smiling girl paid to be on the other side. One regular used to stutter and work up the courage to finally blurt out “wwwwwhaaat’s good tonite?” and after I proffered a few ideas, settled on his usual ‘medium tip with blue cheese on the salad’. He never ordered anything else, but always asked his question, working up something close to a conversation. Another counter regular was the spitting image of the horror film star, Vincent Price. He was always smiling and chatty and went to the Sav-on drugstore after his dinner and got a nickel ice cream cone - he loved the idea that you could still get an ice cream cone for a nickel. Wouldn’t it be funny if it really was Vincent Price, getting his dinner at Bob’s Big Boy and having a nickel ice cream cone afterwards, how weird would that be? The busboys were all from Mexico and whether they had legitimate paperwork or not was a grey area that no one bothered to discuss. Most, if not all of them were married and lived frugally, sending the bulk of their money back home. Our group (about 6 or so) lived in a ramshackle house just behind the restaurant. Jesus was gaunt and serious, all business. Felipe, in his 60s, was a cheery tiny man. I remember him constantly laughing and talking rapidly in Spanish (which I spoke not a word) his eyes lit up and hands waved describing the plot of his favorite movie, Godzilla. Santiago was young and handsome, an industrious worker who spent his free time and money going to the Forum in LA hoping to be a boxer. He was always sighing in my presence and exclaiming ‘Corazon!’ until finally I gave in and stopped by their home after closing for a visit. They were all very hard working; warm, decent guys and I had absolutely no qualms about being at their house after hours. I did have uneasiness about working at the restaurant and going home at nights to a nice house up on the hill with a swimming pool while many of my co-workers lived in make-ends-meet conditions. That is the dilemma of an entry level job for someone with little experience in anything other than babysitting and doing homework. Later, while in graduate school, I extended my job repertoire by becoming a motel maid. A wonderfully relaxing and mindless job - a vacation compared to waitressing, but then it paid way less. I almost feel sorry for those who have never had a nickel and dime job at some point in their lives, it is an experience which pays with a reality check whose value cannot be measured in dollars. On the rare occasions that I eat out, I leave my tip, visualizing the staff in the back room smoking, drinking sodas, complaining about rude customers and evil supervisors, strategizing how to placate aggressive cooks who sabotaged their orders for amusement, telling jokes, making their plans for the future. After doing my time at Bob’s Big Boy, this battle-scarred savvy waitress is ready to tackle whatever comes to sit at her table.

Salutations

Dad was in the service during WWII like most of his generation. Instead of going overseas, he was sent to Ohio to work on airplanes with a group of engineer-soldiers. They fought for their country with slide rules instead of rifles. I don’t know the exact dates of his military stint, other than that he and Mom married in October of 1943 and my brother was born in September of 1945. Mom and the baby went out and lived with him on the base, for she told me various stories about this time period. Army life for my young Mother, with knife fights and drunken brawls outside her doorstep, was quite a change from growing up in Beverly Hills. During this time, she learned to knot a sewing thread with a few deft twists and a quick roll between the thumb and forefinger. I remember so distinctly her showing this trick to me and telling me of the older no-nonsense female army sergeant who had taught it to her. In this photo, Dad is holding my eight month old brother Mike near their Army housing. I wish I knew what he was saying – the expression is an unusual one for him. Rather than a proud, beaming new father, it’s as if he were delivering a gangster impersonation or sarcastically barking an Army command.

He told me he liked carrying Mike in his arms around base all the time because it got him out of saluting.

Doors

With a brother 4 years older and sisters 5, 7 and 12 years younger, I had some breathing space growing up. Fascinated with the cool activities of my older brother, I too, drew pictures and made models (even though I didn’t particularity like cars and planes). Watching over my little sisters, I helped them build forts and arrange plastic animals in the sandbox, staying long after they lost interest to finish ‘our’ constructions. Escaping the hubbub of preschoolers, I often worked and read and drew and made things alone in my room - a lovingly built sanctuary, with a ready audience just beyond the door. Through that portal, there was always someone available - even if just to argue with, or to play cards with, or tell to shut up, or to turn down the TV, or to show what I was making. I remember working late out back in the rumpus room and coming into the house at 1 or 2 am to get a snack and say hello. It was dark and everyone had gone to bed. So immersed in my own creations - I had no sense of time. Hours flew by, and when I went to visit the ‘other’ world, it was already closed for the night. Dorothy opening her door to enter OZ and those space ships and time machines in Dad’s science fiction books were not such far-fetched ideas – they were just another way of describing that transition between imagination and reality. My Dad saw the world that way in his last years as his dementia increased. Science fiction WAS reality for him. The way his mind worked, he DID go thru doors and get transported to different times and places, for he was seeing with his mind, not his eyes. Sometimes he was on a cruise ship or at the beach house or at the airport or with his mom. His memory so often seemed so much more vivid than his failing eyesight that it overwrote his real-time mental processes. He evaluated his observations with a logic that worked for him and his reality was the reality of a dream state - like those spiritual American Indians in the movies having visions. The dream IS the reality - ignore what you see, go with what you believe, believing is seeing. As we would walk Dad down the hallway at the nursing home, he would suddenly step to the side exclaiming “Look out there’s the opening in the floor! See it! Step in it, WOOSH! You’ll go right through!” And he was right, for he fell many times at the home. Even now I watch my step in unfamiliar hallways, wary of those unseen doorways.

Akerholm Hair

Today is my Mom’s birthday, she would have been 84.

Here she is being held by her 71 year old Grandmother, Anna Catherine Akerholm.
I have always been haunted by this photograph of the two Annes. The stark look of another era, the breeze blowing my Great Grandmother’s wispy thin white hair - “Akerholm Hair” – Mom called it with a sigh as she tried to make it curl and look fuller on our heads. But that Akerholm hair would always cut loose and refuse to be managed, much like our unbending personalities. Mom would tell us about trips as a child to Mississippi to visit her tiny peppy Grandma Annie and how they would all jump on the beds together and have pillow fights. Gramma Annie in her seventies and still spry and FUN, that’s how Mom wanted to be.
Me too.

Rash Medicine

The Iron Baby piece reminded me of another story about my early childhood my Mom used to tell me. It seems I had a terrible skin rash on my neck and to prevent me from scratching at it, my parents put my arms in splints. Whether this revealed a dark side to my parents or was merely an overly harsh medical practice of the early 50’s, I will never know now. Anyway it seemed that despite my constraints, I managed to be able to eat a graham cracker through various sweaty contortions. I dearly wish I could still twist like that now - maybe I should use graham crackers in my yoga practice.

Iron Baby

At a family reunion, Uncle John told me a story about my childhood that I hadn’t heard before. It was the first time he had ever met me and I was about a year and a half old. It was in California and we were all outside most of the time. My brother was playing with his buddies, a group of neighborhood youngsters who ran free on the block. Confined to my playpen, I was desperate to join them as they moved further and further away. The playpen was one of the old kinds with a hardboard floor divided in half so that it could be folded up and stored. Realizing this, I managed to move the padding aside, lift up the flooring, and by holding onto the sides, walked my way down the street, cage and all, to join the group. To this day I still have that determination - as well as the biceps.

Joyride

I have been spending a lot of time in the past this year, an activity triggered in part by thumbing through old notebooks and in part by my own daughters having moved out of the house. Their new beginnings remind me of my own leaving home, and how I snuggled the past while the future beckoned me on.

- from notes in a 1981 journal -
The weather at the beach that year was beautiful with unusually clear and cool mornings and not a hint of fog. I almost missed those socked in mornings where you wait and wait for the sun to break through, wondering if it will be a nice day for tanning. This day there was a weird cloud wall hugging the coastal hills, as if creating a barrier between the sea people and the desert people – almost like Steven King’s MIST, cutting us off from the rest of the world. On each visit out here from the Midwest, I wanted to pack in as many emotions and experiences as possible, taking them back as prized souvenirs. I have always had trouble with being ‘here’ and ‘there’. I am tethered to my past, cherishing those loving bonds while throwing out new lines in other directions - not to replace the old ties - but to add to them. Is the present merely the instant in which you speculate backwards and forwards - like that moment between inhaling and exhaling, a turning point, a moment of decision, or a limbo between then and when?
As we came in downstairs from our walk, we heard the thud of footsteps above or was it low thunder from those cloud covered hills? Mom was pacing. She was always a busy and engaging person, a mover and shaker. “Come on you deadheads! Let’s get up and go!” And we gladly got up and went, for the trip was usually a joyride. On this day she was distracted, edgy, and irritated - wishing we were all doing something else. She sat down to read, then got up and moved a lamp, sat down, reached for the ash tray, sat back, sat up, put her book down, strode over across the room to the end counter and dug through a tray of junk, picked up a pen, took it to the kitchen, returned the pen to the tray, went to her chair and sat down and nosily opened her book to read, thus creating an excitement with her actions that she felt was lacking in the room. Maybe she longed to have each minute of our visit as intensely special as I did. Maybe she was also uncomfortable with the in-between state of ‘now’. It hadn’t occurred to her that we were also engaged in ‘activities’, they just fell outside the boundaries of her definition of the word. It must have annoyed her to see my Dad just sitting there in his chair, to her, ‘doing nothing’, when in his mind, he was probably running laps. What we were doing was watching the surfers out on the ocean. There they floated, their eyes on the shapes of incoming swells. Maybe just sitting there astride their boards on the undulating surface, so in tune with the rhythms of the sea was the real joyride.

NANA

My maternal grandmother, Nana was always ancient. Her face was wrinkly and the skin on her arms hung like draperies, her hands were knurled and veiny, their age accentuated by bright red nail polish. I watched her hands a lot as a child. They were my focal point when she told me stories, when they held a cup and read the tealeaves, when she mixed fruitcake ingredients in a big bowl, and especially when she held playing cards. For it was at those times my world was a glorious land of gaming. Puzzles and games were her life blood and since she lived with us much of the year, we played a lot. She was my roommate during my early childhood in Ohio, spending countless hours with me while my Mother was busy with the triple whammy of three baby sisters. I used to rummage through Nana’s “special” drawer in her dresser when she was away, looking at the little woven grass slippers made by Indians, her Eastern Star ring and pins, and especially the little test-tube vials of powdered pigments from her china painting days. These were so intriguing to me, so like the chemicals in my brother’s chemistry set, but strangely out of place nestled here in a drawer with embroidered handkerchiefs. I felt sure that they had magical powers. By her bed was a little porcelain figurine and a tree. I don’t think the tree was alive, it was more like a sculpture tree, but it did have moss around it’s trunk and some kind of dried vegetable matter on it’s branches for the “leaves” –‘cause I touched it! We also had a neat nightlight in our room that automatically lit when you lifted it up. It was metal, in the shape of a candlestick, with a bulb where the flame would be. We both used it on nightly bathroom calls. The light wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the side hallway down to my brother’s room. This was bad since I imagined the giant Tarantula spider lurking there. (As a 2nd grader, I had gone to way too many horror films with my older brother.) I would hurry along tightly clutching the light and keeping my eyes averted from the terror of the shadows.
Nana would spend half the year with one daughter and the other half with the other. Much of the time in Ohio she was with us or visiting her siblings here and there. She divorced my grandfather Papa when my Mom was 14 years old, and was unwise with her settlement. Spitefully refusing to follow Papa’s advice on investing, she lost most of it and was forced to live with relatives for her remaining years, eagerly awaiting her social security check like a kid waiting for her allowance. When we moved to California and lived on Seahurst, she was a permanent morning fixture, perched on a barstool at the kitchen counter with coffee, cigarette and crossword. Up for hours and all coffeed up, she was way too cheerful and chatty for our groggy, not-ready-for-school selves. We tried to hide in our Cheerios and the morning comics to avoid conversations and her “so you’re off to schooly-ooly!” chatter.
(I have a mental picture of my daughters reading this and thinking “boy does this sound like MOM!” - Well it’s in my blood and probably in theirs too.)
I remember a period in the 60’s when Nana was all keen on winning herself a Pontiac Grand “Per-ee” as she put it. The newspaper was running a game with a word jumble that unscrambled to reveal the name of some obscure Island. Each week a new island’s name was decoded and dutifully mailed off to the PO Box. She did make the finals but alas, never won. She had a nice car, a Pink Plymouth sedan with clear plastic covering the seats. She used it to drive back and forth to my Aunt’s home in the valley for extended stays and often we kids would accompany her. In the summers Mom and my Aunt would trade children for awhile and everyone got a new take on family. It was especially nice for the twins and Chris and cousin Anne as they were close in age and often in tune with the same pastimes. It was also great for Tom and Sue, the two late arrivals of our families. There was an exotic quality to living at my aunts home, the dynamics were different, the pace, the smells of the house. This novelty was mixed with a burning desire to return to my own home, room, dog, etc. In the early days our house had a pool and theirs didn’t. With their location in the San Fernando Valley and its 100°+ temps, we suffered and did our best to distract ourselves with games and stories. They had different old stuff in their closets that they would bring out and tell us about, plus my uncle kept pigeons! This was good and bad. They cooed and pooped outside the window of the room I stayed in, but I could look out the window and watch my Uncle take them out and feed them. We had no birds at our home, dogs, horses, ducks, guppies, rabbits, mice, fish, lizards, and for a short time a goat, but no birds – Mom hated them and the poop was probably a contributing factor. Nana loved birds (her room at my aunt’s was happily beside the coop) and once bought one from the Newberry’s pet department at our local shopping center. It was supposed to be ‘for’ me and her story to Mom was that it was free in some sort of promotional giveaway. It was a little yellow and grey bird of unfamiliar species – nothing recognizable like the canaries and parakeets some of my friends had, just a little molting bird that sat in its cage and pooped and never made a peep. It met with an untimely death when Dad was paneling the pool house where Nana lived. The sudden sound of his electric drill gave it a heart attack and we found it keeled over later that afternoon. Few tears were shed at its funeral. The pool house was built to accommodate my Grandma as well as provide bathroom and dressing space for swimmers and a recreation room. It had a large room with a fireplace and room for a pool table (Dad’s joy) with a small bedroom and bath off to the side. When Nana still lived out there, we’d go out and visit her - watching her TV, drinking cokes, eating forbidden cookies and candy, it was cool. After she died (1966), one by one we moved out there, as a sort of rite of passage for whoever was the eldest child still living at home. Separate from the house and out of earshot of our parents, Nana’s old room retained its aura of decadence as if still under her mystical influence.

Churchgoers

Several years ago I was at a point where I just wanted to STOP WORKING, so I decided to take a walk – ‘Walk it off’ as Mike’s coach used to tell him to do. I was feeling like I had been letting ‘free’ time slip away from me. Work and its responsibilities are always in a corner of my mind - like a vastly overweight house guest who is constantly underfoot when you want to get something out of the refrigerator or vacuum the living room. I had so many duties, there really was no choice. I had so many things that HAD to be done and done NOW and by ME and so I just had to get busy and DO THEM and I did and now I AM taking a break. So I walked downtown and visited my usual spots, then headed home thinking of some sort of extravagant way to play hooky. I opted for a Tomato/Provolone Foccata from John’s Grocery after poking around in the Northside Book Market looking for a copy of Gift from the Sea for a friend. There wasn’t one available - everyone must keep their copies. I did come across three copies of Dimitri Merzekovski’s Romance of Leonardo da Vinci - guess that one’s not a keeper. My Dad loved used book stores along with hardware stores and lumberyards. He was a poker-arounder and I am too. He’d mosey around the stacks of books, telling me which ones he’d read and loved, and then would think of something to look for and go off on tangents, wandering down another dusty aisle. I remember a time in Pasadena, when we looked for a copy of a Tarzan book (I thought used books - cheaper! but actually they were about the same price –often even more -being antiques and all). At that time I was heavily into the ape-man series and the libraries didn’t stock them for some erroneous puritanical reasons. Tarzan & Jane WERE married and NOT living in sin! (If anyone on those morality committees had actually read the books they felt were so detrimental to society, they would have known that.) Dad had read them all and tried to steer me towards Edgar Rice Burroughs’s other hit series, the John Carter of Mars books. I never did read them. I liked the jungle and the animals better than Space. Dad loved the future. So as if accompanied by Dad’s ghost, I found myself gravitating to the same haunts. There is a wonderful sense of reverie and peace after an afternoon of bumming around in a used bookstore. It triggers all sorts of other peripheral thoughts and your mind flits from memory to memory, recollecting past readings and the time and place where you read them. The smell of deteriorating pages, yellow and crumbly, is heady incense. It was a most perfect spiritual experience and carried me away from my burdensome present, it’s my church.

My younger daughter, the animal lover, also became a fan of Tarzan and was ecstatic to find that I still had the complete series; she read them all and insisted that they be willed to her. She is studying to be a librarian and so goes to church everyday.

Mama-San

On one visit to my parent’s beach house, Mike and I had gone down ahead, eager to see the ocean after living 2000 miles away in land locked Iowa. We unpacked and walked the beach, said hello to the ocean, and were hanging around awaiting my folk’s arrival. Dad walked in accompanied by a silent smiling geisha. She nodded fanning herself and refused to speak for a half an hour. It was weird to see my Mom staying in character for so long. Having been captivated by the book and TV series Shogun, she thought arriving in Japanese attire would be a riot. They managed the 2 hr drive down without causing any accidents, despite a few second takes at the ‘Japanese’ lady in the passenger seat with the cigarette dangling out of her mouth. She either borrowed the outfit or it may have been a leftover from when the Japanese tourists stayed at out home a few years before. Mom had befriended a guy who sponsored foreign visitors to the USA - I forget the name of his organization “American ports of call” or something. His idea was to pair up tourists with host families for overnight visits so they could get a real feel for American family life. Mom was all for it and we had visitors for dinner and occasional overnighters like the Japanese contingent. The latter was a group of 7 or 8 young Japanese students who Mom arranged to have stay at several friends’ homes, we had 3 or 4. I was working as a waitress at the time and didn’t usually get home till after 2AM and not being clued in about the guests, came into a silent house oddly littered with dozens of origami cranes, foreign teabags and a Mexican sombrero. Tiptoeing over blanket covered bodies on my way out to the pool house where I slept was a surreal experience.
This was not Mom’s first time in disguise. Once when her dad was visiting from Tennessee and we all went to Disneyland, Mom bought some fake eyelashes and sat on a bench with them on smoking a cigarette in a long holder, he totally passed her by without a turn and she loved it.

Strumming to himself

Several years ago, for his 75th and final birthday, John was given a tape made from some old wire recordings my Grandfather, Papa, used to send back and forth to my Mother and her sister in the late 40’s. Recorded “letters”, an innovation - and Papa loved whatever was the latest thing. George had sent me one earlier and it was so strange listening to my parents as young kids in their twenties, sounding so well, young. I was in my late forties then and felt like I was the parent, listening to those youthful voices from the past. So there on the couch sat Uncle John with the cassette player to his ear listening intently, tears streaming down his face, smiling and crying at the same time, a beautiful heartfelt moment and an awesome gift. Later in the afternoon, while the young people were setting up the BBQ and milling around outside, Uncle John was playing his guitar on the sofa alone. Playing quietly, so totally immersed in the music and oblivious to us all was a lesson in inner peace. When he was young, his musical ability gave his quiet personality a foothold in social gatherings. His talent came naturally, for he had an ear for music. During family get-togethers, he loved to take a seat at the piano or organ and play without “performing." Like delighting in a happy child at play, we all sang along and shared in his pleasure. He always seemed at ease, naturally funny and loveable. He’d be there at gatherings, his single glass of wine in hand, chortling after making his standard toast – “Here’s to our wives and lovers – may they never meet!”

Working Jigsaws

I have been thinking about my writing and why I am mulling over the past. I am trying to remember, trying to sort out the pieces, as if they were parts of a puzzle, trying to join them together with some coherence. Arranging and rearranging the pieces, assembling a slightly different picture every time. What image am I trying to create? I am not really sure. Mostly I am remembering, re-traveling long ago paths and hoping that by retracing my steps I will come across something I missed on the first trip, some sort of ah-HA! - so THAT'S WHY. I go over the scattered memories and conversations, sometimes like a detective building a case, sometimes like a collector bringing order to his pile of treasures by continual repositioning. My memories are different from the recollections of siblings and cousins. When their new odd pieces are thrown into the mix, I try to make them fit. I shave a little off of this one’s edge or press that one into a spot where it doesn’t quite fit. My grandmother, Nana, had an intense love for games and puzzles. She enticed us into her world, lavishing us with the attention a child craves when growing up in a large family with busy parents. We became addicts. Besides the intoxication of the inner world of mental games, there were all those wonderful physical objects to hold and move about; checkers, cards, dice, chips, and most of all those strangely shaped colored bits of cardboard that could join together to create a masterpiece. At our cabin there was always a giant jigsaw puzzle in progress on a rickety card table at the end of the living room. We worked on it in shifts, our backs stiff, our eyes bleary, hunger and thirst gnawing away at our guts. It was a grueling and dangerous activity. At any given moment the dog could pass underneath, wag his tail and knock the sky off the edge. A passing sister, (snidely insisting that puzzles were a waste of time), would find the piece with the little part of the red boat – annoying those of us who had been putting in endless hours searching for it. The little ones, drawn by the intensity of our adult concentration like flies to sugar wanted to “help”. We shooed them away with “don’t touch that! - here you can work this one”, appeasing them with a game box missing so many pieces that we knew better than to attempt it anyway. So here I am, putting in my time, finding parts that interlock, bringing together sections of a larger picture; clouds here, a boat there, the horse’s leg, working towards some sort of completion. I probably won’t end up with a masterpiece, but maybe I’ll get a picture of my past without too many holes in it.

Kitty Hawk

My dad dreamed as a child about flight and early on turned his inventive mind towards planes, and sticking fast, became an aeronautical engineer - getting to do what he loved for the rest of his life. He always claimed a connection to the Wright brothers. Apparently one of his Mother’s relations had been married to Orville or Wilbur or something, the thread was thin and tenuous, but we gripped it tightly. He grew up reading the classics, but was always thinking of the future, gravitating towards Buck Rogers and John Carter of Mars, and eventually shifting to Heinlein and Asimov. Our attic was filled with musty yellowed copies of Analog, Argosy and Amazing Stories and we would shuffle thru them, reading short stories about spaceships and robots when other families read Zane Grey and Mickey Spillane. Dreaming of the future, he helped to make it,designing planes his entire life, from the Flying Tiger to the Stealth Fighter. And yet, it wasn’t until the late 80’s that he finally visited Kitty Hawk - the Mecca of aerospace. To view the path and feel the breeze must have been a moment of triumph for him, coming full circle as he did. They stopped off in Iowa on their way home, in part to visit and also so that Dad could recuperate from a bug he may have caught on those historic winds. They had photos to share with us and developed them at our local one-hour shop. The manager was so taken with one of Dad's ocean photos that he asked if he could post it on the bulletin board. That honor probably gave my Dad more joy and pride than any award from art competitions ever gave me. It is for me, a treasured shot , although almost eclipsed by his photo of Mom with a camera sneaking up on a gull.

Holy Matrimony, Batman!

In answering an old friend's questions about the circumstances of my wedding, I pulled out the old photos and made a facebook album of some choice shots. Our wedding was decidedly no frills. I always was uncomfortable with dress ups and fancy ceremonies. How I ever got thru my sorority days was a miracle, and going to church was an ordeal of an hour of rolling up my hair during Gunsmoke, so it would bend a little on Sunday morning - a day I grew to dread more than Monday’s return of school. My younger sister had recently had a huge Church wedding with lots of bridesmaids and fancy dresses and a big reception at home - so I figured I was now off the hook. Mike and I knew we’d get married but wanted to wait until we were done with grad school before taking that step. We intended to stay on in Iowa City, having grown attached to the place, and with both of our families 2000 miles away, just figured we’d go and get hitched here. We planned no ceremony and didn’t expect anyone to come all the way out to the boonies even if we had. Getting married for us was just a legal matter. We planned to go to the Judge’s house after work on a Friday, sign the papers, and then go sign a lease on a little rental house we had been eyeballing for our new digs. After that business was done, we’d pick up Robert and John; Mike’s in town brothers, go to the local steakhouse and then play cards. A fun filled evening by our standards. But no, in-laws took us by surprise. Mike’s older brother Joe flew in from Colorado, insisting that Robert and John were too young to oversee an event of this magnitude, along with my parents – who refused to be left out of their eldest daughter’s “Big” day. Well, we worked through the “big” day as usual, me at Ho Jo’s, making up beds, and Mike at the Frame House, framing pictures. In the afternoon when I got off work, my folks came over to our apt to strategize. Dad asked if he had to rent a suit and when I said “nope!” promptly took a nap. Finding that we didn’t want to plan anything, Mom took matters into her own hands and busied herself making arrangements for a “proper” dinner at a posh restaurant and cake afterwards. The “ceremony” of paper signing at the judge’s home was almost drowned out with music blaring up from the basement, where her kids were watching the TV show, Batman. Who else can claim that infamous 60’s theme song as their “wedding song”? The day after our nuptials, my folks took us around with a realtor looking for a house they could buy and rent to us until we got sick of this Iowa business. Since we had passed on the fancy wedding, they sprang for a U-Haul truck to move our stuff from California back to Iowa. After 33 years we’re still living in that house and haven’t gotten sick of it yet.

Chafing at the Passage of Time

I pulled out an old sketchbook the other day. It was a “journal/sketchbook” I used in 1981 on a vacation at my parents beach house out in California and later on at home in Iowa. Reading those entries and looking at the old paintings after so many years have passed was another trip in itself. I was way too serious in my diaries and way too somber. It was as if I didn’t want to write about anything fun – preferring instead to pour out my angst onto the pages. Reading the passages stirs up some painful memories, but I wouldn’t let go of them for the world. The sketches belie a beauty and serenity that was indeed there, serving as a backdrop for the growing pains of revisiting a home and parents that through the passage of years, shifting relationships and physical distance, you have grown away from. Memory is selective. Whether we choose to keep the joy or the pain from the past depends so much on the fickleness of mood and personality. I think optimists underline all the pluses in their past, plucking them out like flowers, while the pessimists are always finding all those weeds.

From November 2, 1981 at home in Iowa - revised
“It’s like my handwriting - it’s terrible because I try to write as fast as the words come into my head. Sometimes I think I’m making the letters sloppy on purpose - to spite myself. I know I can write legibly and even use all the letters required by each word. So why not? What is this heated rush - this sense of urgency that my thoughts are so transient, so fleeting that I must grab them as they fly by. If I don’t tie them down they’ll be gone forever. Time is my enemy - my tormentor. It laughs and sneers, tongue wagging, eluding me, always two steps ahead of me. Always stingy with itself, time is not generous with me. When I knock at time’s door, looking for a donation, it always says it gave at the office.

Once on a visit, while filling the coffeepot, I asked my Mom if she too, got mad that the water didn’t come out of the tap fast enough, YES! , she laughed.