we must risk delight

A Brief for the Defense. by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

one need not make sense

The City of Berkeley did an online funding campaign to buy 20,000 posters that read "Berkeley Stands United Against Hate". I put one on the front and one on the back of my mobility scooter. I reoved the front one quickly because it got all smushed and it bugged me. The one on the back is still on there. I tend to forget it is back there until someone, nearly always, with only one exception thus far, makes a supportive comment, cheering on Berkeley's rejection of hate.

Yesterday I had to take care of an errand at my local Social Security office (needed new card!). As anyone who ever enters a Social Security office know, even those with 'appointments', there is usually a long wait. I go into my SS office with a book, expecting the wait. And my expectations were met yesterday.

Some guy, who seemed homeless and who eventually convinced me he is mentally ill, rushed in. If you get a number at Social Security and you are not present when it is called, you lose that number and have to start over. This guy rushed in and shouted his relief that his number had not yet been called.

Then he pulled out an elaborate map of something that seemed related to recent political uproars here about free speech. His map, handmade, had circles with words, and lines connection some circles. He pulls it out to show the security guy, who politely acted like he was listening.

But the crazy guy thought he heard his number -- he did not -- so he put his map of Berkeley's politics and/or emotions away and rushed to a service window. When he discovered he had not been called, he came back to the waiting room and just happened to sit next to two very beautiful young women who are, I gradually learned, from Barcelona. These young women were polite to the guy but they also did what I gradually did:  they ignored him.

"You gals look too young to need Social Security", he said to the young women, loudly and pointing at them. They leaned into one another and seemed to glance around for clues on how they might behave.  I weighed in saying "Maybe they need a Social Security card."

And with that, he stopped haranguing them, for he had been haranguing them.

I wanted to say "You look very young to be receiving Social Security. Is it disability you get?" because he looked to be in his thirties, early forties tops. But I did not. While I was sure the security guy would have intervened if the crazy guy had become obstreperous towards me, I exercised some judgment and kept quit.

Then, crazy guy (hereinafter CG) noticed the "Berkeley Stands United Against Hate" sign and shouted to me "I thought the sign was going to read 'Berkeley Stands United against Truth' because it does, you know.

I offered no response. I have learned, through many attempts to befriend homeless people that the schizophrenics are often incoherent, often angry. I thought this guy was looking for someone to rant to and I did not want to attracted more of his attention.

But, hey, CG, fuck you for muttering that Berkeley doesn't are about the truth.

CG did go into a rant to no one in particular about how corrupt and too-liberal Berkeley is. He cited just about all the white supremacist talking points one hears these days.

Once again, I wanted to say something, such as "if the politicians people with your views succeed in their agenda, they will be eliminating disability, and if you are on disability (I am 100% sure he is), whatcha gonna do?" Once again, I kept these thoughts to myself.

I can feel great compassion for the mentally ill, especially the homeless ones. I don't think this guy was homeless because he had no stuff and he did not smell. But he was crazy. And since he was at SS office and his apparent youngish age for SS, he must be on disability. So he's one of the good mentally ill:  he has accepted his limitations and accepts government help.

So weird, but consistent with being mentally ill, that he spews white supremacist and nazi end social service rhetoric. But that's one of the benefits of being crazy:  one need not make sense.

sun-kissed and grateful

Today, I.so.did.not.want.to.go.swimming.  I had a big silent tantrum with myself, telling myself I didn't have to go and what is the harm is skipping a day. 

A couple years after living in CA, but when I had been swimming every single day but Christmas for most of those years, I became very depressed. On a visit to Seattle, I made an appoinmtnet with my borderline therapist at UW -- she even gave me a two hour slot, cause we had not talked in a couple years.  And she did not charge me for that appointment!

And she asked me the perfect intervention question:  "Can you think of something in your life that changed just before you became aware of being depressed?"

And, bingo, my depression lifted with my answer. My answer was, and this seems obvious in hindsight but Melanie's question triggered my awareness, "The thing that changed is I began to skip swimming a day here, a day there, then more."

Since then, and that was almost ten years ago, I remind myself of that exchange with Melanie every time I want to skip a day in the pool.  It usually works, getting me to swim that day.

This morning, even trying to nudge myself to the pool with Melanie's question did not move me.

And then this thought popped into my head "My friend who loves me spent $350 so you can go swimming every day. Get out there today as payback for her gift."

And, of course, for I would not be writing this if I had given into my inertia/resistance today, I went swimming.

I love swimming in any weather. Cold, dark rainy days are great, partly because the pool has almost no one in it. Lots of folks don't go swimming in the rain. Today, however, it is very sunny and, for the Bay Area, very hot. Hot and sunny are my all time favorite swim conditions.

It was your kind, generous gift that got me in the pool. My face feels lightly sun-kissed now.  I love how the sun can 'kiss' my skin and that kiss moves with me through the rest of the day.

and I love me.

And I love the friend who, for the third year in a row, gifted me my membership where I swim.

broken human souls

The stands out in contemporary life, is that there are so many broken human souls. Human souls who are struggling, who don’t know what to do with their lives, who keep asking themselves:  what should I do now, what does life want from me? People who start this or that but find no satisfaction therein. There are more and more such problematic personalities. How does this come about? This happens because there is something lacking in the way people are educated. We educate our children without awakening the forces that will help them to tackle life.  What helps to prepare people for life is the opportunity to imitate during the first seven years of life; that he can follow a worthy authority up to the fourteenth year; and that up to the twenty first year he learns to love in the right way –  because these forces can no longer be developed later. What human beings miss when certain forces that need to be developed during specific years of youth, are not awakened, turns them into problematic personalities. We need to understand that!

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner  -GA 296– Die Erziehungsfrage als soziale Frage – Dornach, August 10, 1919 (page 49)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger

going home for lunch

When I began grade school, in 1959, the year I started first grade, all the kids in my school walked hoe for lunch, had lunch with stay-at-home moms and walked back to school. The few kids who hd no moms at home at lunch time, i.e. moms who worked outside the home, they all ate lunch in one classroom, probably with some teacher on lunch duty.

All the kids who had stay-at-home moms felt a bit sorry for the kids who ate lunch at school. I could not imagine what it would be like to not have a stay-at-hoe mom.

I guess the world changed a lot from 1959 to 1967 when I graduated form the 8th grade. Sometime in my later grade school years, everyone brought lunches to school, ate lunch at school and we all got out a little earlier. This earlier discharge caused a new set of problems for the kids with outside-the-home working moms.

What changed?  I guess women were entering the paid work force more and more. Maybe my packed-to-the-gills baby boom laden school was trying to be modern.

Once, when I wsa in the third grade, I passed out on the school playground. The school called my mom to tell her she hd to come pick me up, that the school did not want to be responsible for what had been a longish time with me unconscious on the playground. I had also fallen smack hard on my forehead so the school wsa worried about a concussion.

MY parents, like most households in my world around 1960, the year I passed out on the playground for no apparent reason, shared one car. And usually my dad took that car to work. Mom only kept the car if she had a specific reason to need a car but a stay at home mom with a baby in the house and three or four kids to feed at lunch time rarely needed a car.

When the school called to say "Come and get her, we can't be responsible if she is concussed", mom said "I will have to bring the children's wagon and haul her home in the wagon." The school person on the phone might have gasped as she said "A wagon? I don't think it wise to haul an unconscious and maybe concussed child home in a wagon." Mom said "well, that's all I've got."

Mom knew other moms at home but all of them also shared the family car with their men and their men took the family car to work.

Mom got off the phone and began to bundle up her latest baby and was trying to figure out how to haul unconscious second grader me and her newborn in a wagon, when a priest from our parish called. He said the school nuns had told him I needed to go home, that mom had no car and he would bring me home. And he did.

I wish I remembered exactly when kids at my school stopped going home, midday, for lunch. It was such a different time.

This shift, to eating lunch at school, must have happened when I was in the 7th grade. Because my brother Chuck the fuck was still in the school and we still went home for lunch. Older kids had a different lunch time than younger kids so I ate with Chuck and Joe and Tom and Dave ate together. It never occurred to me back then that giving my mom two lunch shifts of children to feed was adding to her work load.

Whatev.

I remember that I was in the 7th grade when my brother Chuck, teasing me in particularly nasty comments, although he was always nasty and I have no recollection, not once, of either of my parents ever telling Chuck to shut the fuck up, to stop tormenting his sister. Chuck did not torment Joe who was a hella lot bigger than Chuck, albiet two years younger than him. but Chuck was fine with teasing a girl.

So one day, when I was in the 7th grade, Chuck said something I considered truly despicable and I threw my fork at him. Flinging that fork was not quite a concious choice. I was shocked by whatever Chuck had said, deeply hurt, triggered and I flung that work instinctively, without thinking. Mom was not home. She had gone over to Mrs. Danaher's for some reason. Mrs. Danaher lived on the next block, had lots of kids like mom had.

My flunk fork, and all four of ite tines, landed in the upper park of Chuck's left cheek, four tiny puncture wounds. Chuck could not have been very wounded because he jumped up, taking care to hold that fork in its four puncture holes, and ran down to the Danaher's to show my mom.

Duh.  The work was not really embedded in his face. He held it in to 'show mom' what I had done. Fuck that asshole retroctively. The fork proved I was wrong and my mom, and neither my dad ever would listen to me tell them what he had said. The fact of his four tiny fork tine punctures was my doom.

I was punished by not being allowed out to play after school for a long time. Ha. I was never allowed out to play unless I was toting mom's babies along with me. So I was never allowed 'out to play'. I was always working for mom, her own Cinderella.  I doted on my two baby brothers at that time, Tom and Dave. My punishment only meant I had to take care of them at home for awhile.

It was sometime after the fork assault that our school stopped having kids go home for lunch.

I did not understand then and I don't understand now why giving us 20 minutes to eat lunch at our desks, bag lunches from home for my school had no in-use cafeteria (it had one but that school did not ever use it) added up to being let out of school one hour and fifteen minutes early.

Cultural change, especially when it is imposed on communities without any community buy-in, no engaging of the comunity, is hard. It's not that people don't want to change but people don't wat to 'be' changed.

In my Catholic parish world, nuns and priests had godlike powers with the priests of course having ore power than the nuns. I know tose nuns had to get the priests to okay that lunch change.

We are not meant to stay wounded

We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds - the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them. Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise.
--Caroline Myss

A Reward

Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled
to leave the house and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.
I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets
Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.
Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied.
But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall-the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.
And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
widewinged toward me, settled
just offshore on his post,
took up his vigil.
If you ask
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.

- A Reward by Denise Levertov

taking a knee

An old friend of mine says there was a saying in the sixties, although no in my Catholic grade school world, that women say yes to men who take a knee.

💋💋💘

learning to see: rilke

“I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of. Everything passes into it now. I don’t know what happens there.” - —Rainer Maria Rilke.

the best apology

year of hate 50 years after summer of love

I just saw Amber Cummngs, who presents as a transgendered woman but who also carefully hides her identity. I was sitting in the Amazon store to charge my scooter, which was out of power. I could not enter any other building to charge it. Capitalism won't allow even the great UC Berkeley to close a conservative business like Amazon. And, yes, Amazon is conservative because it rushes to the bottom of pay scales, pressures employees to do more work than they can reasonably do in the time Amazon insists they do their work. Fuck Amazon, eh?

Sitting in the refrigerated Amazon store on campus, Amber rushed in, rushed to the door that usually lets folks go from the Amazon floor into the student union. Today, no one could enter the student union if they did not have student ID. She was smiling broadly as she ran through the Amazon store, seeming to believe she had found a way 'in' to the student union. And when she saw she could not get into the union, she ran out just as quickly. She ran like a guy, ya know? Amber saw the 'no exit' sign and ran out again. She might have needed to use a toilet, which were on the otherside of that no-exit/no-entry door. Just steps away from that door lies toilets and, which I was coveting, one of those new fangled (not all that new!) water fountains with a spigot to fill water bottles. I was out of water and wanted water badly. It's hot out there, eh?

I watched the show on Upper Sproul from inside the refrigerated Amazon store. I didn't get a full charge. A full charge takes at least a couple hours, but I got enough juice to get home.

No loud talks. A small group of conservatives.

Anyone else notice that there have been virtually no helicopters for the last couple days, when Milo fizzled, and the "No Hate in the Bay rally" but then the nazis show up and so do the helicopters.

The nazis marched from Lower Sproul to Upper Sproul chanting "Who's Streets?  Our Streets?"  I laughed, because they were not on any street.  Maybe they had sung that when they marched earlier.

When I thought I had enough power to get home, I rolled outside to hear the speeches. With no sound amplification, the only thing I could hear was a very attractive young black man who was using a particularly attention-getting voice, wheedling, shrieking, "No hate. No Nazis. No racism. Go hoe you fucking Nazis."  I liked that last bit the bit:  go home you fucking Nazis.

I saw outside to listen just a bit, machine turned off to save my power. No speeches, not even shouting without amps. So I broke down and rolled over. Still no speeches. But a bunch of dweeby jerks in MAGA hates or Trump t-shirts trying to be jerks to what seemed like mostly black people.  Like this: a black woman, not a young student but she could be a student, was filming the scene pretty close to the gaggle of Nazis at the foot of Upper Sproul. Geez, if they wanted to speak, even without amplication, surely they would get on the steps to shout over the assembled onlookers. This one jerk goes up to the black woman filming and he gets as close to her smartphone as he can and then he waves and says "Hi Mom". He was baiting her. She was indignant but the twerp moved on quickly, seeming to know he would have pissed her off but not seeming willing to deal with the consequences of his obnoxious behavior.  He was demeaning others, mocking them, but, imho, he was being a pathetic jerk.

So I rolled a little closer. And right in the center of all the Nazis:  a young black men who seemed to be with the Nazis. And the Nazis had security, similar to the security anti-hate rallies used on Sat, Sun and Mon:  people who support the Nazis assigned to mill about and patrol/protect/provide security. A couple of these white nazis who seemed to be running security started doing heavy, hard handshakes to followers, saying "Thanks for showig up man, it means a lot".

There were not as many as fifty Nazis there.

I got up close to Amber, I could have reached out and touched her. As usual, she wore the only outfit she seems to own. I am convinced she is a he. And I wish it was considered a mask to mill about in a disguise. Male or female, she wears a wig, sunglasses and tries hard to hide her identity. If masks are banned, why is Amber (a fake name, I am sure) able to mask her/him/humself.

What goes into the thinking of folks like Amber and that black man hanging with the
Nazis at Upper Sproul? If Amber actually is a transgendered woman, wTF is wrong with her? Has she read about Trumps efforst to persecute transgendered military? and transgendered humans in general? Does s/he know, and she must know, that Trump and Pence are rabidly homophobic, anti-female, anti-transgender?  What kind of world does she imagine her support of white supremacy will give her? Does she think onces its all us whities that Amrika will suddenly like gays and transgendered male-to-female humans?  Amber:  do your homework. The Third Reich sent as many homosexuals as they could to the death camps and Nazis are not likely to change stripes and find a place for transgendered anyone.

What is her deal?

I was right next to that white chick 'news' person, the conservative nutter. Like inches away. I heard her assessing the situation, discussing with either her camera guy or a producer to decide what to try and get on camera.  I wanted to turn to her and say "Nazi go home" but I was in the middle of lots of people, many of them Nazis.

Too bad Yvette Fellarca got arrested again. I don't support her tactics and I think the cops are biased against her.

It seems to me that BPD, UCPD, UC Berkeley and, most of all, the news media, are biased in favor of white supremacists and Nazis. No helicopters for the 'no hate in the bay' but lots of helicopters for, at most, 25 or so Nazis.

UCPD has little platoons of cops all over the campus, patrolling. Yes, patrolling like in wartime.

I am reminded of a novel I read in Spanish in college, so by a highly regarded Spanish novelist. It as about the Spanish Civil War.  I did it in an independent study with my favorite Spanish professor and we'd meet in cafes to talk about it. I was kinda his star student. Was the writer Garcia Lorca?  I don't remember when Garcia Lorca wrote, but it was definitely about the Spanish Civil War. The Vietnam has just barely ended when I read that book. What stands out from that book, read forty+ years ago, is the way troops patrolled forests at night, following almsot the same paths each night, always out on patrol in the dark. They did not follow the exact same path daily for they did not want to wear a path in the brush. Up and down. Meeting with professor Alfieri to discuss the chapters about those nighttime military platoons on patrol, I said, in Spanish, that the writing was somewhat poetic, that the author wrote as if those patrols were a delicate dance. And they were, for they were life and death. One wrong step and death could come or death could be meted out. An elaborate dance, I suggested, Alfieri gushed over what I said, even wiggled in his chair a bit. I had nailed that interpretation and he was proud of me. And impressed. I wanted to say, but did not, "Come on, you know I am brilliant. Of course I got the dance."  I did not share with him that I had thought about the patrols I had heard and read about in Vietnam, another dance of death.

a box full of darkness

My box of darkness is taking forever to unpack.

celiac disease is genetic

I just learned many people have the genes to develop celiac disease but it can take a long time for the illness to emerge.

For at least two years, I have talked to my primary about the symptoms that are common for someone with celiac. Thank goodness I saw a pain specialist a few months ago who told me if I had these symptoms several times a day, it was not normal. So then I repeated that to my primary and finally, years into the symptoms that I had told her about (I love her anyway -- she spends time with her patients but is not a great diagnostician . . I have to figure out what to tell her to get diagnosed!). . . so today I see the specialist to help me with these symptoms and right away she thinks is celiac.

I haven't heard the test results but I know I have it. My mom had it but she often ate gluten.

Me. I will never eat gluten again if the test results say I have it.

pink angora pantsuit to encourage me to get an abortion

As soon as I got pregnant, like within 48 hours, I started barfing and dry heaving and did so until my baby was born. It was a wicked tough pregnancy, made even more stressful because my then-husband said since I believed in a woman's right to choose, I had to give him a choice and get an abortion cause he wanted one. . . the worst gift is coming, I promise . . he kicked pregnant me out of our jointly owned home and changed locks. I did go to my dad's, the nearest parent, for awhile but I needed lots of health care and all my health care was tied to the ex. But while I was in Chicago, barfing or dry heaving constantly, my Catholic mom, my Catholic dad, and four of my five Catholic siblings urged me to abort a baby I had very openly and intentionally conceived. My mom rushed to Chicago from two states away to press me to abort and she brought me a gift to make up for my sadness, with her, I guess, assuming I would get the abortion so her gift would fit. She gave me a pink angora pantsuit. I have never been someone who would wear a sweater pantsuit, much less pink angora. A true pink angora sweater and matching pants is all fluffy. I reminded my mom that I only had the contents of one suitcase, no home, no money and I was pregnant and needed maternity clothes so would she return that pink angora pantsuit and give me the money -- or, at least, buy me some maternity pants or something? She grabbed that hideous pantsuit and said "I might wear it myself but I won't return it". She was in a hotel, not welcome to stay at my dad who had not wanted her divorce. I went to my dad's, got a pair of scissors, returned to mom at her hotel and cut each piece of the pantsuits in half. The sound and feel of those orange Fiskars scissors slicing that kinda thick, it turned out, knitted fabric remains one of the most satisfying sensations I have known. Not the most satisfying but gosh, all my misery and fog began to cut away as those scissors cut that damned pink angora. It sure felt to me like my mom thought I was such a ninny that something she thought was cool, such as a pink angora pantsuit, would persuade me to abort my baby. I do believe in women's right to choose and my choice was to keep the baby whose presence I already felt as I sliced that crunchy pink angora. Yeah, it kinda crunched under the scissors. So satisfying, cutting it up. I wanted my mom and dad to support me but they told me they didn't want me to have the baby and be dependent on them financially. I was an actively practicing lawyer at the time, fyi. And only women who have experienced hyperenemesis can possibly know how physically miserable I was. Many, including my doc, said it would go away but it did not go away. And, of course, my folks and siblings, except for my baby bro who was fifteen and said he'd raise my baby, get a job and care for it, if I didn't want it but he was the only one who supported me during the worst weeks of my life. well, my mom did give me that gift to support me?

entertainment division of military industrial complex

Dahlink, please sell me your hotel

My sister was briefly married to the grandson of a woman who emigrated to NYC from Israel, initially settled in Brooklyn and immediately set out to buy apartment buildings in Brooklyn that she filled with more emigrating relatives. She soon realized she could go bigger. When she died, she got a full half page of the paper-edition of the NYTimes for her obit. Her obit noted she had built the largest real estate empire that a woman had ever singlehandedly built and the only woman comparable to Peter's grandmother (who I never met) was Leona Helmsly, but the NYTimes obit writer carefully pointed out that Leona had married her real estate fortune while Peter's grandmother, an immigrant with almost no education, had. She owned many high rise apartments along Central Park South when she died.

And she was reputed to be one of the coldest, meanest, nastiest people one could ever meet. And this from her grandson who happily inherited millions from her.

A longwinded tale to suggest that being an asshole is a requirement for a New York real estate empire builder.

Peter's mom, who took over managing her mother's real estate empire, is someone I did meet. What a horror show she was. And. . . and. . . since Peter's mom ran a real estate empire that used to include a hotel at the corner of 59th & 5th, with a Christie's Auction House on the ground floor, my sis' former mother-in-law got a phone call from Ivana Trump, then freshly divorced from the Donald. This is a true story. Ivanna, in her thick accent, invited my sister's mother-in-law over to 'talk'. Ivanna. Turned out Ivanna wanted to buy the hotel at 59th and 5th because, as she put it to my sister's then-mother-in-law, she knew Donald wanted it and she wanted to beat him to it. Donald, btw, owns it today, well, as much as he actually owns anything: it now bears his last name. My sister's mother-in-law was not interested in selling then. Sis' mother-in-law barely ever spoke to me, hating the fact that I was allowed to stay in her family's real estate but she loved telling the Ivanna story so I heard it. Ivanna had her in her palatial apartment somewhere in Manhattan, asked to buy the hotel at 59th & 5th. When Ivanna was turned down, sis's mother-in-law began to leave but Ivanna called her back, still, of course, speaking with her thick accent and said "Dahlink, wait, I want to give you this valuable, high priced basket of cosmetics from my new cosmetic lines. I am sure you will be thrilled to have this!" Sis' mother-in-law took that basket and, if she is still alive, she is likely still telling the story for laughs. Sis' mother-in-law was very, very rich. She did not need a basket of cosmetic samples from anyone. Ivanna was so full of herself. Since we all knew this story, my family and I have often guffawed over Donald's divorce from Ivanna because they sounded so well matched to us. . . Now I remember, Donnie cheated on Ivanna with Marla. And, like the sands of time in the hourglass, there go the days of Donnie's unhappy, miserable life in gold leaf.

A time must come

perfect easy meals

For several weeks, with local farmers markets full of all kinds of tomatoes, I've been eating an heirloom a day. I slice it, grind a little pink himalayan salt and eat the heavenly food, often that's my meal. Sometimes I add thin slices of fresh mozzarella:  sublime.

A favorite that is about to disappear until next spring is fresh figs with small pieces of feta.

I try to do no animal dairy. I don't do much animal dairy.  I just can't give up cheese, most notably fresh mozzarella on purple and red tomatoes. Or orange ones. Or red and green ones. or green.

The fits and feta;  ALSO  sublime.

I eat a dark green leafy salad daily. Does that count as cooking?  I don't think so. My favorite green is spinach. Oh my goddess, I love spinach. Spinach, thin slices of red onion, maybe some quinoa, lemon tahini dressing or anchovie-olive-oil dressing. I make my own dressing, making just enough for one salad. 

I lived in co-housing for two years awhile back (almost 20 years ago). The community had at least two community meals a week that usually had 60 to 75 people sign up. The kitchen was well stocked and set up as a commercial kitchen so it was easy, cheaper and tastier to make salad dressing. I am glad I discovered how easy it is to make one's own salad dressing. my secret: the one cup container for the Magic Bullitt.  And another secret:  I add some mayo instead of raw egg for the anchovi olive oil thing.

Slices tomatoes may go into my main dish salad, sliced cukes, spaghetti'd zucchini.  Get this:  I bought a mandolin some years ago, for slicing food in fancier ways but something went wrong with the order. Or the shipping. The company told me to keep it and refunded my money. The mandolin makes spaghetti-like noodles out of zuccihini.

Garlic.

My fanccy cooking has narrowed to pan baked salmon and spinach braised in garlic infused olive oil. Oh my goddess, I love graised spinach.

I am actually a competent and sometimes quite good cook. I can make lots of stuff. For while, I was making awesome soups. Maybe as the colder, rainy days arrive, I'll do soup.

right now the sublime perfection of a purple tomato with perfect salt and, for another meal, a couple figs and some fetz are so awesome.

I am very discplined about avoiding sugar and strictly limiting carbs. Not for weight loss, but to manage my type one.

I am noticing I feel guilty about my simple, uncooked food. Why?  Nobody cares what I eat.

one example of what an ass he was . . .

My ex-husband was severely abusive. Our PhD marriage counselor, with whom I continued in individual therapy when we gave up on counseling so I could get well enough to get out with my baby, testified in his deposition that my ex was the cruelest human he had ever met in over 20 years of marriage counseling -- this under oath. He said "Most people have a certain threshold of decency beneath which they will not sink and this man has no threshold of decency." He said a lot more, enough so my ex dropped his custody petition. And I have written about those chapters of my life many times already.

I was working when I got pregnant but my pregnancy was a particular tough one. I was hospitalized three times, for a week and once for two weeks, before I went into hospital to have my daughter. Hyperenemesis is the name for what was wrong but in 1981-82, even my obstetrician seemed to think my nonstop barfing, dry heaving and huge weight loss (whereas most pregnant moms gain weight! at least the weight of the baby -- not me, I lost a lot and I wasn't fat when I got pregnant). So I was home.

And I stayed home with her for awhile. Not all that long. She was only 18 months old when we separated and I went back into the work force. During the pregnant and then her first 18 months, I did quite a lot of work inside the house.

Most of the windowsills were badly weathered, beyond restaining. So I painted all the wordwork in the house, and all door frames, window frames, cupboards, shelving were wood, with a white enamel. A ton of hard work. And I did a lot of it while pregnant for we bought the house during the pregnancy, it needed some cosmetics.

I also painted the worn out kitchen cabinets, with offwhite enamel.

I learned that painting with enamel is harder than painting a wall with water-based wall paint. I had to use small brush strokes and work slowly to ensure there were no drips. Enamel dried fast and sanding little drips was more work so I learned to paint carefully.

I did other home improvement projects. On his good days, my ex sometimes bragged that he had not known he had married a housing contractor. I got the home improvement skills from my mom. She always had projects going in every house she ever lived in.  My dad was like my ex:  he never did anything in the house.  I was expected to be a modern working mother, bring home a paycheck but also do absolutely all of the home work, including lawn mowing.

I digress.

What I just remembered, with a sting coming to both my eyes, is that he insisted that every night before he came home, I removed all signs of any work I had been doing that day. I could not leave my paint cloths in view, my rolling pain out. He said he deserved to come home to an immaculate house.

I explained to him, even pleaded about this, that making me clean up my painting, sanding, wallpaper projects every day before he came home almost doubled my workload and slowed down the projects. I had to spend needless time getting everything set up again the next day and more needless time hiding it from the king of that castle.

What an asshole. What a male entitled white prick.

If I am attracted to a man, all can correctly assume he is an asshole, probably an intense narcissist (as our marriage counselor had diagnosed my ex, along with some other disorders -- doc said my ex needed extended psychiatric hospitalization to have any hope of normal, although he, the doc, doubted that five to seven eyars would show any improvement in a man with no threshold of decency. His three personality disorders were so severe.

All these years since my daughter shunned me while she was still a teen, never giving me a chance to be an adult friend to the adult I assume she has become, it only recently occurred to me that maybe she, like her father, has no threshold of decency. Maybe she, likd her dad, is severely narcissistic. I know for certain she is intensely OCD and has anorexia. But I only recently considered severe narcissism.

I have been remembering comments from her in which she was cruel to me. My sister was always telling me my daughter was cruel to me and that she thought it might kill me. But I didn't consciously perceive her cruelty. Lately, I get these flashes of my daughter saying very unkind things, refusing to do very simple things for me even while I was in the middle of doing huge things for her. Like this: she had to leave campus so she came to stay with me for some school break. And I drove her back, aobut five hours round trip for me. I could have put her on a bus.  I could have let her figure out and finance how to spend a week without the dorm to stay in. But I picked her up, fed her, took her shopping, treated her to all kinds of things and then undertook the five hours, approximately, to take her back to her dorm. As we got close to her campus, off the interstate, on two lane curving roads lined by trees, I asked her to sew a button on my winter coat. She had learned how to properly sew coat buttons in Waldorf. We still have another hour or so of driving and she could have sewn on that button in a few minutes.

She was furious that I had asked her to sew on a button, and she sneered and snarled at me, excoriating me to expecting her to do something for her. Forget that I had just feted her, spending money on her all week, and preparing food for her OCD anorexic self (a special kind of hell, food prep for a person starving themselves).

At the time, I may have pointed out that I was driving several hours as a favor to her. I may have pointed out, but I don't remember if i did, that I could pull over to the side of the road, far from her destination and just drop her there. If I didn't say such things, I was thinking them.

When I remembered not just her refusal to sew on one damned button for her mother, who had paid for clothes on her bed, food in the college cafeteria, the college dorm by selling my investment duplex Victorian, but her sneering nastiness. Her anger for me was so alive for her. And I see, now, that I coped with it as i coped with the serious abuse I had experienced in childhood and in my marriage to her father:  I blocked it out.

When I recently remembered her sneering, nasty, even vile refusal to sew on that button, I remembered how I had felt when she sneered at me about it. And I cried long and hard, as I am doing now as I write.

Like father like daughter?  did she turn out to be someone with no threshold of decency?  No mother wants to believe that aobut her daughter and I don't quite believe it. But I was not abusive to her and, I am remembering, she hated me almost always. What the fuck did I do to earn her angry revulsion towards me?

Oh another one of her narcissistic delusions:  she believed she was tidy and I was not, that if a few things were scattered around the house, it was due to my laziness and sloppiness. Yet when she would go away, like to summer camp or class camping trips or whatever, my house stayed tidy the whole time. I had bought her bullshit, that she was tidy and I was not but when I was in that house alone, it stayed tidy.

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I am very unhappy

Wow about kids under age six on psychiatric drugs. Something very awful happened to my daughter when she was five. She had some therapy at the time and returned to therapy around age 9. When she was about ten, her therapist suggested she consult with a psychiatrist to be put on psychaitric medication. I made an appointment to explore medication but talked things over with my daughter. Neither of us felt called to have her take psychotropics. The meds recommendation was rooted in her fairly significant OCD, which seemed rooted in anxiety to me; additionally, her father was and, I am sure, still is very intensely OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Katie had to check the doors at night to be sure they were locked dozens of times each night, wash her hands until raw.

So we went for the appointment and had a short wait. The waiting room was dirty, which struck me as odd for a shrink who claimed to specialize in OCD. Before he came out, my daughter and I discussed in that lobby how we were just exploring, that it was very unlikely we'd follow any advice to take a prescription drug for OCD. Then the very big, fat doctor came out, reeking of the cigarette he had obviously just smoked.  I see, as I reflect on that appointment, that I might have been trying to allay her significant anxiety about seeing a new doc. The cigarette smell was enough to have my daughter flee but then he had the unbelievable temerity to grab her up off the floor in a big, smelly-cigarette hug. She looked over at me at the top of his lifting hug and silently mouth "please mommy". So when he had put her down, I took her hand, told that guy we would not be needing our appointment.

I still think medicating a child for what was, in our situation, a significant anxiety disorder. She later did self-harming, picking at both her thumbs until the skin was worn off and the thumbs so raw it hurt to look at them. Still, I did not endorse psychotropic meds. Then she became seriously anorexic, collapsing from her self starving, developing heart problems. We learned in family group therapy for anorexic that every single anorexic we ever met was also OCD, also a perfectionist in everything, also a star student/top achiever.

I talked, a bit, with my daughter's Waldorf teacher about her challenges, even after she had moved on to h.s. for she loved him dearly and he loved her. He once told me, while acknowledging he should never say such a thing to any parent, that she was his favorite student in her class.

She was hospitalized for several weeks and then in all-day day treatment the rest of that summer.

I wish I could stop trying to remember as many details of her life with me as I can. I spelunk in my memories hoping to uncover the key to understanding why she has shunned me since she was 19. what did I do?

When she started seeing the therapist that referred her for a psychotropic med evaluation, the one we fled together, she said she would only see a therapist if I agreed that I would never talk to that therapist about her therapy, never ask him what went on in their sessions. She knew, as lawyer I knew, that the therapist had to make his files about her available to me as her guardian and that I could have met with him regularly to find out what they were doing. Instead, I engaged in an act of great love and faith in my daughter. I decided that if the only way she would confide in a trustworthy adult -- keep in mind I know what some of her damage was about, damage I would never write about openly -- then I would agree to her demand. I did talk to that guy once, at his insistence, so he could take her social history. This is a standard practice for therapists treating kids, I think. In that social history interview, which was the only time I ever talked to the guy except to say hello and goodbye when I took her to his office for her sessions with him, I told him about the incident. He told me she had not mentioned it. And I don't think she did. I think after she had been seeing him for quite awhile, he brought up what I had told him. And she became furious with me, raging that I had made up the story I told him.

Even now, I wish I could convince myself I made it up. Several professionals had to pound it into me that what happened happened, that I had to bear up and take care of my child instead of, which was my first and common instinct in such circumstances, to just wish it all away.  I was yelled at by multiple professionals when they realized I intended to honor her visitation with her father. 

Anyway, I am getting too close to what happened.

After she had left home, at sixteen, for college, I moved to go to grad school.  I had been accepted into a more prestigious program than the one I attended but since my daughter had spent the entire summer in full time treatment for anorexia, I chose a program a few hours away from her college - not close to her but not across the country, as I would otherwise have been. That choice has cost me, giving me less gravitas in my work.  I never told her about it. She, in fact, angrily confronted me about moving to the east coast -- but hours from her college -- as 'following her'. She demanded, in a joint session with her eating disorder therapist (once she entered the land of eating disorders, she had to change therapists. . ) that I stay in Minneapolis. I told her that I had been making choices with her as the top priority all her life but she was headed to college and I would make my choices based on what I want and need, not making her my top priority.

She hated me back then. When she was at her first college, if I sent her one email in a month, she would call me up and angrily screech at me about intruding on her life, as if a parent staying in touch with a child was not normal. I note she did not complain when I sent her money but if I sent her a letter, this all before the ubiquity of online communication, she would also call me up and verbally attack me.

What did I do? What the fuck did I do? Is she, like her gather, a malignant narcissist? She has his OCD, why not his narcissim. How could she take take take from me and then shun me once, like Shel Silverstein's giving tree, I had no more money or stuff to give her?  How can she live with how she treats her mother? Who is she?

When she learned from the therapist who referred her first for psychotropic mediation and then for anorexia treatment knew about the incident, she was so angry. She screamed at me about it many times, insisting I had planted the whole thing in her mind. As if I would do something so cruel to my beloved child. Paul, the therapist I had agreed not to consult about her treatment, told me, as I picked up her file for the anorexia folks, that child predators count on children's memories going fuzzy, count on having the abuse forgotten. It hurts to remember and it feel better to forget, he said. And he also said he never believed she would take her self starving as far as she did, that he kept expecting her, as we both, in our own ways from different perches, watched her shrink away, that she'd start eating again.

Her pediatrician said the same thing to me, that he was surprised she took it so far.

I don't think I was a bad mother but it is hard not to beat myself up for being one.

you a white racist bitch and I am going to hurt you

Last Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun evenings, someone that also lives on the courtyard that my top floor apartment over looks blasted a stereo for hours. And not after ten p.m., but before. Berkeley has an ordnance that prohibits loud music that intrudes into any residential space after 10 p.m. and our leases in this building prohibit loud stereos after 10 p.m. but also all the time. Enjoy one's music, sure, but one does not have to get the walls vibrating two floors up to enjoy listening to music.

I did not complain about last Thurs, Fri, Sat or Sun because I was sure other neighbors would and I took on the role of noise-complainer for years and I'd tired of it. And, so far, assuming others will complaint about noise that drills into my soull -- it is not music when muffled by two floors, when not chosen by the listeners, when it disrupts the ability to talk to a person in the next chair. It is not music when my walls are vibrating.

So, when the loud booming noise got going this Monday evening, and I actually felt kinda sick, like I wanted to crawl out of myself to get away from it, I decided to figure out which apartment the noise came from and then ask them to turn down the music.

When I first moved here, management asked residents to never take noise complaints directly to neighbors because one never knows what they might experience. The loud noisemaker might be drunk or high or just violent. I have lived here 8.5 years and never gone directly to a neighbor to ask them to turn down music but the fifth day of this, I swear, unbearably loud, pulsing, pounding and profanity laced, 'music' had worn me down.

When I knocked on the door, no one answered. Maybe they could not hear me because, as I have indicated, the noise was wicked loud. I could not hear myself think, barely hear my knocking.

So I came back up, closed my windows but I could still hear the noise. Thus demonstrating the noise was unusually loud because our windows are soundproofed. It was warm most of these days (it is not so warm today) so as soon as I closed my windows to shut out some of her music noise, my place became stultifying, breathless.

On Monday, I took matters into my own hands and returned to the offender's door so I could record on my smartphone the noise, to demonstrate to my property manager the next morning how truly unacceptable the noise was.

Just as I rolled up to the door, and this gives me the sense that she knew it had been me who had knocked, meaning she heard me and looked through her peephole, she turned off the music just as I got near her place and she came out of her apartment. So I said "I was going to record your noise but I am still going to report you in the morning."

Without missing half a beat, she began to speak to me in a sneering, angry, disgusting tone. Just the tone of her voice creeped me but her words creeped me more. "You know what?" she said, "You are a white racist bitch, that's what you are. No, I take that back, you a pink racist bitch." To which I pointed out that until she emerged from her apartment I did not know her race and that it is not racist to object to her loud stereo music. She repeated the racist thing many times but she changed it up by standing over me on my mobility scooter, looming, closed fist raised and saying "How about I beat you? How about I hurt you real good? What you gonna do? You can't do nothing. I could beat you up and you couldn't do anything." To which I, never at a loss for moxie, said "Well, one thing I would do is do my best to hit you back." What, did she think I'd let her beat me up and just passive sit there?  As if. She repeated her lines, I came up with new ones. "And another thing I would do for sure is file an assault report and do my best to get you arrested and I am pretty sure you will be evicted if you beat me up." [I am quite sure of this! It says right in our lease that we all have a right to be safe in our homes and in our halls and assaulting another resident is grounds for eviction.]

I didn't understand, not until I talked to my property manager to report the assault (such a threat is an assault on its own, look up the law if you doubt me here), that she must have been saying that "What you gonna do if I beat the heck out of you? You caint do nothing, I could hurt you and you couldnt do a thing." because she had, wrongly,  assumed I could not stand up and defend myself.  I use the scooter because I need two new knee replacements that I can't get because of my medical history. I use the scooter because my heart failure leaves me breathless if I walk more than a block or two. But I can walk. I can stand up to an abusive bully.

So, she was leaving and she headed to the elevator lobby, as did I. On my scooter, I have to use the elevator but she, in a moment of wisdom, decided to take the stairs down (I was headed up). But then she came back to the floor landing to threaten me anew, holding her closed fist over me, vibrating with her anger that I had dared to challenge her five days of boom boom boom pounding stereo beat and she said "I am going to hit you and you caint do nothing about it." So I stood up, got off my scooter, believing I was about to get hit and I thought standing up would allow me to better fend her off.   I have never actually exchanged fisticuffs with anyone, I have seen my four brothers and boys they knew fight. Plus I have been hit by a long ago abusive husband. I never even thought to strike him back but this gal, I was actually thinking about what strategy I would use to stop her hurting me. As I stood up and stepped away from the scooter, her closed fist still in the air but no longer so above  me, she began to mock me for having stood up. She laughed, in a nasty way, saying "You see? I have scared you. You know I could hurt you so you jumped." That last comment shocked me, that she was so callous and cruel that she was mocking me for reacting to her threats.  "I did not jump", I said, "I got up so I could hit you back." Then, and I wish I had remembered this sooner, I remembered the newly installed security camera across from all the elevators. I pointed to the camera and said "Smile for the camera. I can prove how you are behaving." With that she left.

My property manager said she would get her business' attorney to handle dealing with the woman. Since Monday, I have not heard her stereo! And I may not see her for years. I had never seen her before but was told she has lived in building, but not in that particular unit, for a few years. I had never seen her before.

And my property manager also said this, when I told her about 'you a racist' and 'you a pink racist' (spoken in a scream, so some neighbors along the hall opened the door to see who was screaming, then quickly closed their doors again . . ": she said "With Trump, for most black people these days, they see a white person and they see a racist."  I didn't say this to my would-be assailant or to my nice property manager, who is black, but I wanted to say "I think every one has some racism taught to them but if I am one of the bad racists, a threat to black people, then we are all totally screwed because I am one of the good guys about race."

Did I mention my scooter is festooned with Berkeley Stands Against Hatred? Did I mention that I could move to many white communities that black neighbors might have trouble renting in? So I choose to live where I do, in a mostly black resident building. Would a racist live here by choice?

Did I mention I cried for more than an hour after she screamed at me and threatened to hurt me? Except for my long ago abusive husband, oh, and my older brother when I was very little, no one has ever struck me. I have not struck another human ever. Once or twice, I think I lightly swatted my toddler's diapered fanny when she was ignoring my warnings about something along the lines of  "don't touch the hot stove" or don't you ever run out into the street like that again!

I can have a gruffness about me but I am not violent. And while I do think, with great regret, that all people of all colors tend to have some acculturated bigotry bred into them. I know, as this angry, violent neighbor does not, that I grew up on Chicago's South Side in the fifties and sixties in, yes, a white neighborhood but my parents were, for that era, very liberal about accepting blacks. Blacks were the only color besides white in my childhood world and I didn't actually know any until I started h.s. My dad worked for the city and worked with some black men. In forbidding his kids to ever say any of the endless names whites had in those days (and some probably still have) to denigrate black humans. I never heard my father use a single word of profanity. Not ever. I never heard him make a racist hate statement. And my mother was similar. Mom leaned Republican and I heard my parents fighting about that but mom was just as liberal about forbidding her children to refer to black people in derisive terms.

Sure I have some cultural racism bred into me, just like my violent neighbor with the powerful stereo has some bred into her.

I did not like hearing her scream that I was a pink, white racist bitch but what cut me hard, left me in tears more than once since the ugly interaction five days ago, was that closed fist raised above me and her threat to hurt me, her demeaning, angry tone as she said "I could hurt you so bad and there is nothing you can do about it."  Now I am smiling. I am too raw to laugh but I am smiling. The way she kept saying, in her nasty, sneering, obviously wanting to come across as mean tone that she could hurt me and there was nothing I could do about it influenced me to feel helpless, feeble, defenseless, even as I shared my feisty thoughts about how if she did hit, I'd sure as heck try to hit her back. I did not share with her, but will share here, that I had decided, when I got off the scooter to face her eye to eye (I turned out to be much taller than her when I stood -- she had not calculated on that, methinks!), that I had decided I do my best to strike her in the face, reasoning privately that she would be surprised if I struck a painful blow, I was most likely to inflict pain if I struck her face. Yes, I had such awful thoughts. But, as I have written, when I stood up, although she mocked me as a scaredy cat for 'jumping up', I believe she finally left because she rightly interpreted my getting up as indicative of my determined intention . . . to fight back. Thank goddess she did not hit me, that she ran away.

Once a Puerto Rican neighbor who no longer lives in this buildilng accused me, and everyone else including the black neighbors, at a community meeting of all being racists. He said the blacks had internalized racism and turned it on themselves but that me and the only other white in the meeting, a man married to a black woman, with black kids, were the worst racists. To which I said "If I am one of the worst racists, the world is in trouble because I am one of the good guys."Why was he angry with me?  The meeting was to discuss building security. It says right in our lease that no resident should admit someone they do not know up to the residential floors, that if someone is here to visit someone, that person should let their visitor in. But this Puerto Rican guy saw racism in that. I remind:  me and one white man married to a black woman were the only whites at the meeting. He said he works with disadvantaged youths over in SF and sometimes his kids (his work kids, not his actual children who I would happily have let up anytime. . . ). He said if anyone in the building didn't let up his racially diverse kid clients if they came to see him here, and they sometimes did, that we were all racists. So I said "I can't know who your client kids are and it is unfair to ask me to let them up. You let them up, that's how it works". Then the guy, who may have been having a sucky day, started shouting, choked up and ran out. His wife, a Japanese woman, cried after he left and didn't seem to know what she should do. When she started crying, though, she left.

My property manager said the incident was elder abuse and ordinary abuse, that yes indeed it violates our leases to assault neighbors, to threaten them with violence.

No stereo tonight, none from any apartment. Music usually rises over the weekend when neighbors know no one is in the office to stop them.

True confession: once she began threatening to hurt me and calling me a racist just because I didn't want to hear her loud music, I called her a cunt. And I saw how that greatly pissed her off so each time she insulted me as a racist or renewed her threats to hit me good, I called her a cunt again. I confessed this to my property manager. I feel bad that I called her a cunt several times. I was wrong to do so. . . . . but five days of her stressful music and it being over 30 years since anyone held a clenched fist over me . . and, 30 years ago, someone did hit me. Many times.

Altho my ex husband preferred to use what he called 'rubber punches'. He said if he hit me just right, he would not leave bruises. But I bruise very easily and I always have. When I got shots as a kid, I'd have dark purple, baseball-size bruises afterwards. So my long ago husband would see my bruises and hit me for bruising. Our marriage counselor testified under oath that he was the cruelest person he, the doctor, had met in 20+ years of marriage counseling. That doctor said 'most people have a certain threshold of decency beneath which they will not stoop and as far as I can tell, Tree's husband has no such threshold." The father of my child. He stopped hitting me and developed a new favorite violence:  he would drag me around the house, up stairs or down stairs, by my hair.

For those who have never endured this particular violence, and I never shared this with him -- he did not need more motivation to hurt me -- it is really awful. Your hair comes out in clumps, leaving little bleeding holes in your scale. And as they develop scabs as part of the healing and then you brush your hair, you tear the scabs. And it hurts like heck. It hurt like hell. All of my weight dragged by a fistful of my hair clutched in his vicious hand.

But my kid has a relationship with him. Not me. Just him. I never told her about the hair dragging or most of his abuse. She was a child. And he was an asshole to her, too, so I didn't need to unload my history with him onto her steep pile.  I wonder how she can be FB friends with him, and her boyfriend be FB friends with him, because I know what he did to her, even if she doesn't know what he did to me.

Another thing our doctor said under oath:  he was not sure someone could be as viciously abused as I had been and ever be fully whole but that if anyone could do it, it would be me. He said I separated my unhappiness with him from my joyful relationship with my daughter.

Our doctor, who had initially been our marriage counselor and then I stayed in therapy, instinctively understanding I needed help to leave and save my kid, also said my ex had three personality disorders, with a very severe case of narcissism - like DonnyJohn! He said my ex needed extended psychiatric hospitalizetion, like five to seven years and, even then, he, the doc, doubted my husband could ever be normal. he also said he did not think my ex should have any unsupervised visits. A prescient insight given what he did to our daughter a few years on. But she has a door open with him. Not me.

in the shade of the old apple tree

The house I grew up in right in Chicago's South Side had a large, old apple tree. Every single time my grandpa fitz came over, he would sing 'in the shade of the old apple tree. . . " He knew all the words. as I was the only girl in my fam until I was 14, my grandpa always sang to me.

AND when my now 35 year old daughter was growing up, she and I would, every fall, beginning when she was one and I still married to her dad but we kept the tradition going, we'd go to a place that let us pick apples -- for a price. With her dad, we would go to an arboretum and just buy a bushel and then bake bake bake pies.  When it was just she and I, we gathered apples at orchards that let one pay to do so. Free falls on the ground were cheaper. And then we'd bake many, many pies. I had a jillion pie tins from some restaurant that my great aunt Effie Carlota (on my mom's side, my maternal grandma's baby sister) has saved to be frugal instead of returning the pie tin for the small deposit. When she gifted me a couple hundred pretty sturdy pie pans, my daughter and I exchanged gleeful looks for we knew they were better than the cheap alum foil ones we bought . . . for our annual open house. At our annual open house, held all day on a weekend day after a full day of baking as many pies as we could (30 at least, some years more) and most got to take home a piece. And so many loved having the tin, which was embossed with the logo of some popular local place.

And for many years, in fresh apple season, I never went to anyone's home without bringing a homemade apple pie. When it was for company, I used to also bring cinnamon ice cream, which was hard to find. Now a type one diabetic, no pie for me. I barely eat apples.

But the hundreds of apple pies I have are alive in my etheric.

Oh: when she was very tiny, my daughter 'helped' by sucking apple slices covered in cinnamon and sugar, before they had been put in a pie. She was the taste tester and proud of her job. She would suck lots of slices but never eat them. I guess I tossed those slices but I don't remember. I feel such tenderness and love, for myself and for her, recalling her delight in sucking that cinnamon and sugar, feeling proud to help, licking her fingers. And I feel, painfully, the growing heart failure, the heavy toll her choice to shun me for 16+ years costs me. My pain does not diminish. It grows. It changes. And it does not grow in all aspects of my being. But I feel the loss of her literally tearing my heart down, central to my heart failure.

now I am crying, time to stop.

public schools private schools affordable housing predators

I never went to public schools. In the Post WWiI baby boom, Catholic parents mostly sent their kids to Catholic schools. When my now 35 year old daughter was ready for school in Minneapolis, which had pretty good schooils and some great magnets, I decided to enroll her in public school. By that time, altho Minneapolis had a very small black population (small Asian pop too . . ), there were few whites in the schools. White families either did the white flight thing and move to upscale suburbs or sent kids to private. I decided if all whites did that, the future would not be good for anyone.

My daughter enrolled in what was touted as one of the absolute best public schools in a school system with mostly good schools PLUS her school was designated as ESL (english as a second language) and there were 67 first languages amoungst the kids in her school. I was so pleased that my white child would be immersed in such diversity.

Her standardized test scores her first year were high nineties. Also, when she was less than two, her pediatrician 'diagnosed' her as extremely gifted and told me I had a higher responsibility to a child so intelligent, that I should find gifted schools for her. I knew as that doc spoke that I would not go the gifted route. I got a strong intuitive hit that gifted schools would teach to my daughter's left brain and ignore her right, and ignore her heart/emotions.

Her standardized test scores in her second year plummeted to some high seventies and low eighties. She was having a lot of fun but her intellectual skills seemed to be atrophying. She was so bored in school that she was allowed to return to her first grade teacher to tutor some Hmong girls. Many Hmong landed in MN post the Vietnam war. MN had high level of social services and attracted lots of immigrant refugees. (also lots of Somalis!). The Hmong had no written language when they came to MN. My daughter loved tutoring a few Hmong kids and it kept her from being too bored.

Then the school, seeing that her IQ test scores were about two inches above the top of the chart for IQ scores and she was enrolled in their 'gifted' program, which amounted to one hour -- just one hour -- a week in the library to use computers, a new thing at the time. Only boys got to use the computers got they just took them over. My little dumpling borrowed my miniature tape recorder, which I used in my legal practice when I did a bit of crimina defense. The police would not let lawyers copy files so we'd go read them and dictate them in their entirety for our files to prep for hearings/trials. First Katie told the 'gifted' teacher that it was unfair that boys got all the time on computers and the teacher denied it but my little gifted sleuth tape recorded proof. Presto. Girls got half the time on the computers. But the only thing going on on those computers was playing games. This was around 1987-88 before there were many eduational uses on computers and that 'gifted teacher' didn't know diddly about the computers at her disposal.

My daughter returned for a third year in that public school but I was growing skeptical of my decision to send her there. Then in the third grade, a little boy named Tony who somewhat obviously was not well loved or parents. His hair was always nappy; his hair often had bits in it as if no one ever combed it or cleaned him. And his clothes were so shabby. LIttle Tony looked to me like he was shellshocked, or had just put his finger in an eectric socket. I went on some field trips and one was on a frigid day and poor Tony had no coat, not a sweater. So I was disinclined to get Tony in trouble when he began to have his cousin hold my then eight year old on the ground while Tony would dry hump her. I felt a lot of empathy for that Tony, imagining he was replicating behavior he had seen, behavior a child that young (7 or 8) should not see but my kid was hurt and afraid. There were teachers who supposedly supervised recess but no one ever responded to my kid's cries for help, not even after I tipped the admin to what was happening. So I met with the principle and she shrugged, rolled her eyes, flopped her hands back and forth and said "What do you think I can do?" and I said "You can have the recess teachers keep Tony off my kid" and she said "I have made several appointments with Tony's parents at the home but when I go there, no one answers." Again with the shrugs, eye rolls, hands flipped to show her exasperation. Still very much in a lawyer mentality at the time, I said "Well, have you considered your legal liability if I were to sue the school for failing to protect my daughter after you have been put on notice that she is being assaulted in front of your staff, your negligent staff?" And that is when I decided to enroll my child in Waldorf, which is what I had wanted to do when she started school but I was trying to be a good liberal white person AND I wanted my kid to take diversity for granted. Diversity in Minneapolis in the eighties was not common.

After Waldorf, she went to a fancy prep school on a free ride. Everyone wanted my daughter. She got academic rides to start college after only 2 years of h.s., then academic scholarship to an Ivy to finish her degree plus the first college would have kept her through her BA on that free ride if she had wanted to stay.

I'll never know what would have happened if I had kept her in that public system. She did get accepted into South High, into both their IB program and she was automatically enrolled in a program that allowed her to take free courses at the U. of MN. instead of h.s. classes. But she wanted that prep school. Turned out she was into fashion, status, appearances. She did not get this from me and I nearly refused to let her go to that Episcopal prep school.

I think, but this is self interest, that I gave a lot of thought to how to educate my daughter. And I did have her in public school for those three years, watching her standardized testing results go down each year, seeing that the school was incompetent about providing a safe environment.

I never resented that little boy Tony. A part of me longed to adopt him, or take him under our wing or something.

In the end, I decided I had to make a decision for what was best for my kid, that sacrificing her to public schooling was not in her best interests and she only had me to count on.

Today she works in the Midwest, not Minneapolis, as an affordable housing developer. The housing crisis exists where she works but it is not as bad and there is some state funding in the states her company operates in.Although 'affordable housing' sounds good, I think she works for rich investors who are politically connected and buy up public housing under the story begun with George W that public housing could not afford maintenance but billionaire developers could buy public housing, rehab it and . . and what?  It's not really the good work it sounds like. Public housing holds a unique place in this culture and it is almost all gone. The city where I live now sold off all its public housing to a billionaire company just like the kind my kid works for. Or did. I am not clear her new employer even does the token 'affordable housing' thing.

One of my proudest parenting moments: when she was about 15, she told me to expect to have a black son in law because she had always found black people more attractive. Another proud parent moment: as soon as she got to college at age 16 and was rejected by a boy she later had a torrid affair with, she had two affairs with two girls and nattered on to me about them without missing a beat, just as she had nattered on about boys. She may have been hoping to rattle me but being gay was just not something that bothered me. I have a gay brother, her favorite uncle out of my four bros and my best friend as she grew up was a woman who refers to herself as a bulldyke (and her wife was around but not my bestie). Those lesbians were more our family than our blood kin hundreds of miles away in Chicago.