Finally, I returned to my local swimming pool. I haven't been swimming in Mountain View for an entire month. I did swim one day last week while I was out of town. I only swam half an hour on Friday. Today, I gutted out forty five minutes. And now, it's 8 p.m. and I am falling asleep.
Gosh, it felt good to resume to my normal routine. I walked to the pool. Then I walked to the grocery store. Then I hopped a bus to the drug store. Then I walked to the post office. And, finally, I took a bus home. If I had walked all of these errands, I would have walked about ten miles. As it is, I walked, maybe, five miles. I am feeling a little guilty. I was inactive long enough that it affected my fitness. Gosh, I am drained.
Still, being out and about today, doing dull, ordinary things, well, I felt like me again.
It helps that it is sunny again. My tan had faded. This evening, my skin has that sun-kissed feeling, the very sleight burn of fair skin out in the sun a smidge too long. It is, generally, a good feeling.
I was going to try and push myself to do an hour but after twenty laps, I had a bad headache.
This is such a boring post. I have heard from a few friends who became aware that I had been way sick. I love it when people who care about me inquire about my wellbeing.
I took a nap today. It's only 8 p.m. I am going to bed right now.
On the mend. It feels great.
One more thing: it is fun to be hailed by my swim buddies. Everyone had heard I had been sick. I love having people care about me. Pete doesn't swim on Tuesdays but I ran into him at Whole Foods. It is a sign that I am knitting myself into a community when I run into people I know at the grocery store. I had strong urges to give Pete and hug, even to kiss him chastely. . . but I didn't. I write a good game but I am shy. Pete said that he had heard I was sick, that he had worried about me. And then he said 'how do you feel, you look like you don't feel so great'. I
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Lake Woe-Is-Me
Goddamm.
Goddamm.
I was up most of the night. I just went downtown to return some movies to the library. The overdue fine is a dollar a day, per DVD. I renewed them once. I couldn't renew them again.
I am so crabby. Worn down. I am so mixed up about being sick. Am I sick? Or am I imagining it? I am so tired. So very, very tired.
Once I start moving, though, I do all right. It is nice to be out in the sunshine. Gosh, it feels like the whole world has changed since last I was well. It warmed up. Blossoms everywhere. Daffodils. Birds of paradise. Some big flowering trees are flowering. I don't know what they are.
Wah. I want. I want so many things that I do not have. I think I am sick because I want.
When I was a kid, I survived my whacko mother, well, survive might be putting too much positive spin on my story. I avoided more damage by needing nothing. I couldn't even let myself ask for things for Christmas. I would try to ask for humble little things. And, of course, I got positive reinforcement for asking for a book for Christmas. I never asked for a doll. Deep down, so far down that it was not conscious, not at all conscious, I wanted dolls.
My best friend, Tammy, she had dolls and was very generous about sharing them with me. She even let me bring her dolls to my house. My mom hated Tammy (she hated Tammy's mother, which amounted to the same thing). Mom liked to rant about the stupid presents Peony Montag bought stupid Tammy. Weren't they stupid to want dolls?
One year, Tammy's grandmother gave me a Barbi doll. I loved that doll. And I loved that woman for giving it to me. But I behaved like I did not want the doll. My mom went ballistic when Tammy's grandmother gave me a Barbi doll. She felt, and probably correctly, that Tammy's grandmother was judging her. Mom was embarassed. So was I. Finally, I had a doll but I never played with it. Eventually, I kept it over at Tammy's. I could not play Barbie dolls in front of my mom. My mother said Barbie dolls perpetuated bad female images and she was right. But I was still a little girl.
Some time after I got that Barbie doll, my mom announced that she was going to spend $100 on each child for Christmas. She said we could all place our orders, she would buy us exactly what we asked for. For some reason, I believed it. I poured over the Sears catalogue for many, many hours, carefully choosing how to spend my hundred dollars. I factored in sales tax, shipping costs. In my fantasy, I spent the entire amount on Barbie outfits. I had so much fun picking them out. When I was very sure which ones I wanted, I presented the lists to my mother. I was such an idiot. I must have had some weird issues. I so believed she was going to do what she said and get us exactly what we wanted. My mother hated Santa Claus. She didn't like to go along with the Santa Claus bullshit at all. Her hundred dollar game was really her way of scorning Santa Claus. Also, she was probably angry with my dad, who always bought us way too much stuff for Christmas. Way, way too much stuff. She probably came up with that hundred dollar plan as a futile effort to control my dad's spending.
So I put in the order, with mom. And I did not ask for anything else. I expected mom to keep her word. One of the incentives for her hundred dollar plan was that we were supposed to make a list of what we wanted, keeping her budget in mind and then no nagging, no pleading.
I kept my end of the bargain. I made my selections. I gave her the list of Barbie outfits I had chosen. I thought long and hard about going strictly with Barbie clothes. There was plenty of other things I could have asked for. But I believed this was my one chance to spend money, to direct the purchase. I so totally believed her.
I sincerely expected to get ten new Barbie outfits for Christmas. I couldn't believe the magic in that. Tammy and I talked
Goddamm.
I was up most of the night. I just went downtown to return some movies to the library. The overdue fine is a dollar a day, per DVD. I renewed them once. I couldn't renew them again.
I am so crabby. Worn down. I am so mixed up about being sick. Am I sick? Or am I imagining it? I am so tired. So very, very tired.
Once I start moving, though, I do all right. It is nice to be out in the sunshine. Gosh, it feels like the whole world has changed since last I was well. It warmed up. Blossoms everywhere. Daffodils. Birds of paradise. Some big flowering trees are flowering. I don't know what they are.
Wah. I want. I want so many things that I do not have. I think I am sick because I want.
When I was a kid, I survived my whacko mother, well, survive might be putting too much positive spin on my story. I avoided more damage by needing nothing. I couldn't even let myself ask for things for Christmas. I would try to ask for humble little things. And, of course, I got positive reinforcement for asking for a book for Christmas. I never asked for a doll. Deep down, so far down that it was not conscious, not at all conscious, I wanted dolls.
My best friend, Tammy, she had dolls and was very generous about sharing them with me. She even let me bring her dolls to my house. My mom hated Tammy (she hated Tammy's mother, which amounted to the same thing). Mom liked to rant about the stupid presents Peony Montag bought stupid Tammy. Weren't they stupid to want dolls?
One year, Tammy's grandmother gave me a Barbi doll. I loved that doll. And I loved that woman for giving it to me. But I behaved like I did not want the doll. My mom went ballistic when Tammy's grandmother gave me a Barbi doll. She felt, and probably correctly, that Tammy's grandmother was judging her. Mom was embarassed. So was I. Finally, I had a doll but I never played with it. Eventually, I kept it over at Tammy's. I could not play Barbie dolls in front of my mom. My mother said Barbie dolls perpetuated bad female images and she was right. But I was still a little girl.
Some time after I got that Barbie doll, my mom announced that she was going to spend $100 on each child for Christmas. She said we could all place our orders, she would buy us exactly what we asked for. For some reason, I believed it. I poured over the Sears catalogue for many, many hours, carefully choosing how to spend my hundred dollars. I factored in sales tax, shipping costs. In my fantasy, I spent the entire amount on Barbie outfits. I had so much fun picking them out. When I was very sure which ones I wanted, I presented the lists to my mother. I was such an idiot. I must have had some weird issues. I so believed she was going to do what she said and get us exactly what we wanted. My mother hated Santa Claus. She didn't like to go along with the Santa Claus bullshit at all. Her hundred dollar game was really her way of scorning Santa Claus. Also, she was probably angry with my dad, who always bought us way too much stuff for Christmas. Way, way too much stuff. She probably came up with that hundred dollar plan as a futile effort to control my dad's spending.
So I put in the order, with mom. And I did not ask for anything else. I expected mom to keep her word. One of the incentives for her hundred dollar plan was that we were supposed to make a list of what we wanted, keeping her budget in mind and then no nagging, no pleading.
I kept my end of the bargain. I made my selections. I gave her the list of Barbie outfits I had chosen. I thought long and hard about going strictly with Barbie clothes. There was plenty of other things I could have asked for. But I believed this was my one chance to spend money, to direct the purchase. I so totally believed her.
I sincerely expected to get ten new Barbie outfits for Christmas. I couldn't believe the magic in that. Tammy and I talked
Friday, February 08, 2008
I've lost my mind
I have lost whatever was left of my mind.
My apartment is pitted out. I've been sick about two weeks. I get sloppy when I am sick. When I don't have enough energy to walk across the room to get a drink, a drink I am just about desparate for, well, gosh, I don't stop to put anything away. I drop things in their tracks.
I am interested in food. I don't exactly feel hungry. I am bored. Food is something to do. But my kitchen is all clutter, dirty cups and saucers. It is too much trouble. I have never been able to cook in a messy kitchen. You clean, first, right? I am feeling a mild panic, thinking about all the work that lies between me and food. Even if I wake up tomorrow and declare myself well, gosh, it seems like it will take days for me to tidy up enough to do food prep.
Laundry is not a problem. I have tons of clothes. I can go weeks without doing laundry, esp. since for the past two weeks, I have been wearing the same things for many days in a row.
I have dirty clothes dropped all over the apartment. Cups and saucers all over. Empty water bottles that I tried to drop in the recycle bag and I missed. Tea bag wrappers, kleenex.
I am not a very messy person but right now I am surrounded by two weeks of untidiness.
Yesterday, I was very excited. I had called my doctor and been promised she would phone in a prescription. they told me to wait until 6 p.m. to check with my pharmacy. At 6 p.m. I learned that she had prescribed a cough syrup.
I know that
My apartment is pitted out. I've been sick about two weeks. I get sloppy when I am sick. When I don't have enough energy to walk across the room to get a drink, a drink I am just about desparate for, well, gosh, I don't stop to put anything away. I drop things in their tracks.
I am interested in food. I don't exactly feel hungry. I am bored. Food is something to do. But my kitchen is all clutter, dirty cups and saucers. It is too much trouble. I have never been able to cook in a messy kitchen. You clean, first, right? I am feeling a mild panic, thinking about all the work that lies between me and food. Even if I wake up tomorrow and declare myself well, gosh, it seems like it will take days for me to tidy up enough to do food prep.
Laundry is not a problem. I have tons of clothes. I can go weeks without doing laundry, esp. since for the past two weeks, I have been wearing the same things for many days in a row.
I have dirty clothes dropped all over the apartment. Cups and saucers all over. Empty water bottles that I tried to drop in the recycle bag and I missed. Tea bag wrappers, kleenex.
I am not a very messy person but right now I am surrounded by two weeks of untidiness.
Yesterday, I was very excited. I had called my doctor and been promised she would phone in a prescription. they told me to wait until 6 p.m. to check with my pharmacy. At 6 p.m. I learned that she had prescribed a cough syrup.
I know that
Saturday, January 05, 2008
something wicked this way comes
Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel, Something Wicked This Way comes, deeply affected me when I read it. I think I read it when I was bout twelve, which meant I read it about 1965. I am surprised to learn, as I just did this afternoon, that this novel was only published in the nineteen sixties. I read very little contemporary fiction in grammar school. There are so many 'classics' for children to read. I dedicated myself to reading everything that anyone said was good. I don't know how Ray Bradbury entered my system. I am pretty sure he wasn't promoted at my provincial Catholic grammar school.
When my daughter was growing up, I tried to gift her all the books that had been important to me as a child. I always bought Katie lots of books. She had a hard time reading library books. She fretted about the germs of strangers. When Katie was ten, in the fifth grade, her therapist diagnosed her as obsessive-compulsive, then he referred us to a psychiatrist to 'manage' her personality disorder. Both Katie and I recoiled at the idea of psychotropic meds for a kid but we made an appointment to meet with the shrink, to see what he had to say, to sense into the idea. Neither of us expected that we would go the med route. Both of knew my Katie struggled.
I knew as soon as we entered the waiting room of the psychiatrist that Katie would never return. The waiting room was dirty. This was not a public clinic. It was in a medical office building. It was a private psychiatric practice. The carpet was noticeably dirty. I am not OCD. I am not very fussy about someone else's carpet. If that carpet was dirty to my unfussy eyes, I knew, the place was unbearably filthy for my kid. I knew we might as well leave without seeing the doc, knew she would never agree to come back but, for reasons I no longer recall, I felt like we had to stay for the meeting. Perhaps my insurance would have charged me if I stood the doctor up whereas if we met him, then our insurance would cover things. I don't recall. I just remember beging creeped out in that waiting room, trying to hide my discomfort from my obsessive daughter. As if.
The doc kept us waiting way long. He came into the examination room, after keeping us waiting far beyond a reasonable amount of time. He was very fat, he reeked of cigarette smoke and he leaned over my daughter (surely her records indicated she was OCD?) and hugged her.
She cried out, pushed him back and said "Please, mom, let's get out of here."
"Fine with me, honey," I said as I rose, gathering my coat and bag, she doing the same.
"I think you are making a mistake," he said, "I think you should give me a chance. I don't think you should indulge your daughter like this."
"I would normally try to overlook your dirty waiting room, your surly receptionist, your keeping us waiting and even your cigarette smoke, even though you must have kept us waiting so you could smoke that cigarette, after you had already kept us waiting way too long, but I can't overlook the fact that you are a psychiatrist, you are supposed to know that you were meeting a new patient, a child, with a personality disorder for the first time and that you touched her before you had exchanged names. You touched her."
I knew, Katie didn't have to say anything except 'get me out of here' that she had noticed all the same things that had creeped me out.
Friday, January 04, 2008
touch you all over maybe touch your flame which is me
I want to touch every part of your body with every part of mine. Lips over everything, yes, of course. But also knee over everything, elbow, forearm. I want to touch everything there is to physically touch of you with everything physical in me. I want to be ignited by your flame, which is my flame, which is me.
I understand sex for the first time. I know desire for the first time. Before, I had sex and I enjoyed it. And I knew some physical desire, although not much.
But then, in june 2006, I experienced desire. I want you inside me. Suddenly I knew what it would have felt like to have carried a baby co-created by someone I loved. Oh my gosh, it would have been almost unbearably wonderful to have had your flame inside me for nine months. Oh my gosh. In the first moments when I knew desire, I also knew much grief because I can't have any more babies, I can't have you inside me for nine months.
I have had to settle for loving you. No touching. I don't even get to see your face much. sometimes I love you so much, I am so aware of the flame of you, that it seems almost unnecessary to be physically near you.
I came, just about a year ago, to accept that I am about as married as a person can be. I decided I was going to have to love you as you shared our life with Karen. My man sleeping with a woman named Karen. I thought it was unbearable but, as I am forced to learn and relearn, nothing is unbearable. I think I learned more about unconditional love last January than in the rest of my life altogether.
We saw one another last January. We went to the Kiefer show. You picked me up at Palo Alto Caltrain. Karen called and you said you had to pick it up, you said 'it's my honey". I had mixed reactions. Mostly, I cringed because she was not your honey, even I knew that. I cringed for you because it seemed to me that you were trying to force it to be so but when you said 'it's my honey', gosh, I felt clearly that she was not and I felt a little bad for you that you were faking it like that, I thought you were faking it for your own benefit, not mine. But also I cringed because your honey had my man.
I understand sex for the first time. I know desire for the first time. Before, I had sex and I enjoyed it. And I knew some physical desire, although not much.
But then, in june 2006, I experienced desire. I want you inside me. Suddenly I knew what it would have felt like to have carried a baby co-created by someone I loved. Oh my gosh, it would have been almost unbearably wonderful to have had your flame inside me for nine months. Oh my gosh. In the first moments when I knew desire, I also knew much grief because I can't have any more babies, I can't have you inside me for nine months.
I have had to settle for loving you. No touching. I don't even get to see your face much. sometimes I love you so much, I am so aware of the flame of you, that it seems almost unnecessary to be physically near you.
I came, just about a year ago, to accept that I am about as married as a person can be. I decided I was going to have to love you as you shared our life with Karen. My man sleeping with a woman named Karen. I thought it was unbearable but, as I am forced to learn and relearn, nothing is unbearable. I think I learned more about unconditional love last January than in the rest of my life altogether.
We saw one another last January. We went to the Kiefer show. You picked me up at Palo Alto Caltrain. Karen called and you said you had to pick it up, you said 'it's my honey". I had mixed reactions. Mostly, I cringed because she was not your honey, even I knew that. I cringed for you because it seemed to me that you were trying to force it to be so but when you said 'it's my honey', gosh, I felt clearly that she was not and I felt a little bad for you that you were faking it like that, I thought you were faking it for your own benefit, not mine. But also I cringed because your honey had my man.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
stumbling and fumbling
Something unusual has come over me. Normally, I am great with detail but in the past couple weeks, I have become a stumbling fumbling doofus. I am having trouble managing the minor administrative details of my applications for MFA programs in creative writing. Very minor administrative details. Minor. Very minor. And I am flubbing them, missing deadlines, failing to track basic detail.
It is so weird for me to be befuddled, at least with detail, that I don't have the problem-solving skill to fix my confusion. My mind becomes pink cotton candy when I try to pause and think about what I have to do to fix my pixilation.
Maybe I am not supposed to apply? Maybe my best self is trying to send me a signal?
Or maybe dementia has set in and I am going to be a goofball for the rest of my life.
Gee, I hope not. I have come undone.
It is so weird for me to be befuddled, at least with detail, that I don't have the problem-solving skill to fix my confusion. My mind becomes pink cotton candy when I try to pause and think about what I have to do to fix my pixilation.
Maybe I am not supposed to apply? Maybe my best self is trying to send me a signal?
Or maybe dementia has set in and I am going to be a goofball for the rest of my life.
Gee, I hope not. I have come undone.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
the new year or something
Lots of things are wrong about me but something that isn't wrong about me anymore is that clinically depressed is no longer my baseline. Clinical depression was my baseline for about 45 years. The thing wrong about that is I didn't know. I didn't know I filtered my entire experience of me being me through a dark glass. Inside a dark lens, well, you don't even know it is dark.
I am not sure what my baseline is now but it is better, I think, than it was.
It used to be that when something happened to upset me, I would hunker down, assuming that misery was going to last and last and last. And then misery would last and last and last. Of course. You get what you expect. Or something.
Now, I'm muddled but in general my life is much better. I have a lot of grief. Everything about my life would be different if I had not been clinically depressed since I was about seven. Everything.
I would never have become a lawyer. I would never have had Katie because I never would have met her dad. I might have had and lost some other child, true.
I would have lived an entirely different life, one, I am pretty sure, that would have much less grief. I know everyone faces struggles in life. I don't suggest that I would have avoided heartache. It's just that everything would have been different. I'm just thinking about that. The new year or something.
I guess lots of folks engage in such reverie, the path not taken. Can we avoid our destiny? I don't think so. All the lessons I have had thus far in this life, they were lessons I needed. I guess I chose, sometime, to
I am not sure what my baseline is now but it is better, I think, than it was.
It used to be that when something happened to upset me, I would hunker down, assuming that misery was going to last and last and last. And then misery would last and last and last. Of course. You get what you expect. Or something.
Now, I'm muddled but in general my life is much better. I have a lot of grief. Everything about my life would be different if I had not been clinically depressed since I was about seven. Everything.
I would never have become a lawyer. I would never have had Katie because I never would have met her dad. I might have had and lost some other child, true.
I would have lived an entirely different life, one, I am pretty sure, that would have much less grief. I know everyone faces struggles in life. I don't suggest that I would have avoided heartache. It's just that everything would have been different. I'm just thinking about that. The new year or something.
I guess lots of folks engage in such reverie, the path not taken. Can we avoid our destiny? I don't think so. All the lessons I have had thus far in this life, they were lessons I needed. I guess I chose, sometime, to
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
I been wracking my memory
I've been wracking my memory for some new year's memoir. I have squeezed out a few.
Back before I married my kid's father, when I was still in law school but he was out earning a living, he bought us tickets to a New Year's Eve party in an old art deco hotel in St. Paul. There was going to be a swing band and a cash bar. I have avoided reasons to get dressed up most of my life. He-wh0-shall-never-be-named should have known from this single date that I didn't have the chops to be his wife. And I should have known that he was not the guy for me, also based on this single night. Maybe I'll write more about this evening some day but for this evening's trip down memory lane, I will limit myself to my standout memory from it. This particular New Year's, the hotel, the swing band, I think it might be the only date I've ever had on New Year's. I have spent many New Year's Eve's with people but this is probably the only one that required special shopping for evening wear. I actually had to buy a pair of high heels just for this night. Is someone ever going to explain to me why anyone wears spiky high heels to go dancing? I admit that I never have given high heels much of a chance. I don't get them.
Anyway. to the standout memory. We got dressed up, we drove downtown, we got a table, one of those little cocktail tables. And ordered drinks. Then we danced to that swing band. This was fun. Then he got way drunk. This was the night I realized he had a drinking problem. He kept drinking and drinking. I got drunk, too, but I remember dimly deciding that I was going to have to stop, that I couldn't possibly keep up with his drinking pace. I decided, right there in the old Commodore Hotel ballroom, with F. Scott Fitzgerald Daisies-wannabes and Gatsby-wannabees partying all around me, that I was going to have to discipline my drinking. I had this little epiphany in which I flashed back and realized that I had been more or less keeping up with him when he drank. In this little moment, I resolved to stop drinking when I was out with him. Later, when I would order cokes in bars, he used to get angry at me. He said spending a buck for a coke in a bar (this was the eighties) was a waste of money. I said spending if spending a buck for a coke was a waste of money, wasn't it also a waste to spend a buck on a beer? Anyway, I concluded, in the middle of my one New Year's Eve date, that my boyfriend was a lush. And I married him
Back before I married my kid's father, when I was still in law school but he was out earning a living, he bought us tickets to a New Year's Eve party in an old art deco hotel in St. Paul. There was going to be a swing band and a cash bar. I have avoided reasons to get dressed up most of my life. He-wh0-shall-never-be-named should have known from this single date that I didn't have the chops to be his wife. And I should have known that he was not the guy for me, also based on this single night. Maybe I'll write more about this evening some day but for this evening's trip down memory lane, I will limit myself to my standout memory from it. This particular New Year's, the hotel, the swing band, I think it might be the only date I've ever had on New Year's. I have spent many New Year's Eve's with people but this is probably the only one that required special shopping for evening wear. I actually had to buy a pair of high heels just for this night. Is someone ever going to explain to me why anyone wears spiky high heels to go dancing? I admit that I never have given high heels much of a chance. I don't get them.
Anyway. to the standout memory. We got dressed up, we drove downtown, we got a table, one of those little cocktail tables. And ordered drinks. Then we danced to that swing band. This was fun. Then he got way drunk. This was the night I realized he had a drinking problem. He kept drinking and drinking. I got drunk, too, but I remember dimly deciding that I was going to have to stop, that I couldn't possibly keep up with his drinking pace. I decided, right there in the old Commodore Hotel ballroom, with F. Scott Fitzgerald Daisies-wannabes and Gatsby-wannabees partying all around me, that I was going to have to discipline my drinking. I had this little epiphany in which I flashed back and realized that I had been more or less keeping up with him when he drank. In this little moment, I resolved to stop drinking when I was out with him. Later, when I would order cokes in bars, he used to get angry at me. He said spending a buck for a coke in a bar (this was the eighties) was a waste of money. I said spending if spending a buck for a coke was a waste of money, wasn't it also a waste to spend a buck on a beer? Anyway, I concluded, in the middle of my one New Year's Eve date, that my boyfriend was a lush. And I married him
where's my flying car?!
HAPPY NEW YEAR
The number 2008, it sounds, I don't know, off.
I crawled over to the Starbucks tucked inside my neighborhood Safeway, wanting out of the house but also not really wanting to go anywhere. If you could transport me, yeah, I'd like to be a lot of places. If I have to walk downtown to the train station, thanks, but I'm gonna stay home. Thank goddess the holidays are over.
I order my ghetto latte, my grande drip in a venti cup, which gives me lots of room for cream. I can eat fats. Carbs, I control. Fats, I eat.
I ordered the drink and while the kid is pouring, I said, almost under my breath, more to myself than the barista, '2008, it sounds so, I don't know, so, well, wrong."
The kid said "I know what you mean. If it's 2008, where is my flying car?"
Another perfect, meaningless moment in the golden tunnel. Happy 2008.
The number 2008, it sounds, I don't know, off.
I crawled over to the Starbucks tucked inside my neighborhood Safeway, wanting out of the house but also not really wanting to go anywhere. If you could transport me, yeah, I'd like to be a lot of places. If I have to walk downtown to the train station, thanks, but I'm gonna stay home. Thank goddess the holidays are over.
I order my ghetto latte, my grande drip in a venti cup, which gives me lots of room for cream. I can eat fats. Carbs, I control. Fats, I eat.
I ordered the drink and while the kid is pouring, I said, almost under my breath, more to myself than the barista, '2008, it sounds so, I don't know, so, well, wrong."
The kid said "I know what you mean. If it's 2008, where is my flying car?"
Another perfect, meaningless moment in the golden tunnel. Happy 2008.
starbucks sucks, don't it?
I like to go to Starbucks stores that have comfortable chairs. I know that Starbucks is consuming the urban landscape like PacMan eats those yellow dots. I don't think there should be a Starbucks on every corner. I want mom-and-pop coffeehouses to thrive. I worry about all those paper cups. I worry about growing the human addiction to coffee. If we are all supposed to become localvores, then some of us are gonna have to give up coffee. Starbucks represents much of what is wrong with our culture.
I get that Starbucks sucks. I really do. But my favorite local Starbucks has two plush purple chairs that are nearly always drenched in sunlight. I like to sit there and write.
And Starbucks drip really sucks. I am certain that Starbucks has deliberately chosen to make crappy drip, thereby encouraging folks to buy the more expensive drinks.
I just read a story on salon.com which suggests that Starbucks stores are actually good for small coffeeshops.
I get that Starbucks sucks. I really do. But my favorite local Starbucks has two plush purple chairs that are nearly always drenched in sunlight. I like to sit there and write.
And Starbucks drip really sucks. I am certain that Starbucks has deliberately chosen to make crappy drip, thereby encouraging folks to buy the more expensive drinks.
I just read a story on salon.com which suggests that Starbucks stores are actually good for small coffeeshops.
my next-door neighbors
On December first, a guy moved into the studio apartment next to mine. On move-in day, I heard a child's noise and I assumed that the child was a friend. I assumed just the one guy had moved in.
A few days ago, there was a knock on my door. It turned out to be the wife of the guy I saw moving in. She had propped open the storm door to her apartment, she could not get it to close and she sought my help. The door can be propped open by some kind of springload. In order to close the door after you have locked it open, you have to turn a little doohickey. As this woman explained to me, she is new in this country, from India and she could not close the door. You will help me, yes?
After I performed the small task, she asked me into her apartment. The room was empty except for one metal folding chair. I could not see inside the kitchen cupboards, into the closet or into the bathroom but in the main room, there was nothing but that folding chair. There was also a dancing dolly scampering around the room. A very tiny girl, no more than two-years-old but very small by my standards.
"You don't have any furniture?" I exclaimed. I guess I was rude but I was shocked. I had figured out, during the past month, that the apartment was occupied by a couple and a child. The child is noisy. The mother seems to lack confidence in her parenting. I don't know exactly why but I have a sense that she is overwhelmed. The kid is up at all hours. The kid is very noisy a whole lot of the time. I don't mind the noise. This is not a complaint about the child. I love the sound of children, the sound of the human racing leaning into the future. It's just that during the past month, this child has sounded way stressed and the mother seems to do odd things to cope. The mother takes the child outside the apartment, out onto the landing. Maybe the father wants a moment of peace inside the apartment? Our landing is not heated. It is cold out there. It just seems like an odd thing to do, to take a small child out into the cold night, into a dimly lit apartment landing, at midnight, especiallyl if the child is crying.
So. I've known for the past month that this family was living next door. I've been aware that they were recent immigrants. And I've made other assumptions. The guy probably has a high tech job. This is Silicon Valley and tech companies love to hire tech-savvy employees from India, to pay them less than they pay Americans. Silicon Valley is full of Indians. I've been told that osme of the best Indian restaurants in America are right here in Mountain View.
Even if we assume the guy next door is paid less than his American counterpart, we can also assume he is earning enough money to live on in America.
When I realized three people had moved into the one-room apartment next door, I told myself
A few days ago, there was a knock on my door. It turned out to be the wife of the guy I saw moving in. She had propped open the storm door to her apartment, she could not get it to close and she sought my help. The door can be propped open by some kind of springload. In order to close the door after you have locked it open, you have to turn a little doohickey. As this woman explained to me, she is new in this country, from India and she could not close the door. You will help me, yes?
After I performed the small task, she asked me into her apartment. The room was empty except for one metal folding chair. I could not see inside the kitchen cupboards, into the closet or into the bathroom but in the main room, there was nothing but that folding chair. There was also a dancing dolly scampering around the room. A very tiny girl, no more than two-years-old but very small by my standards.
"You don't have any furniture?" I exclaimed. I guess I was rude but I was shocked. I had figured out, during the past month, that the apartment was occupied by a couple and a child. The child is noisy. The mother seems to lack confidence in her parenting. I don't know exactly why but I have a sense that she is overwhelmed. The kid is up at all hours. The kid is very noisy a whole lot of the time. I don't mind the noise. This is not a complaint about the child. I love the sound of children, the sound of the human racing leaning into the future. It's just that during the past month, this child has sounded way stressed and the mother seems to do odd things to cope. The mother takes the child outside the apartment, out onto the landing. Maybe the father wants a moment of peace inside the apartment? Our landing is not heated. It is cold out there. It just seems like an odd thing to do, to take a small child out into the cold night, into a dimly lit apartment landing, at midnight, especiallyl if the child is crying.
So. I've known for the past month that this family was living next door. I've been aware that they were recent immigrants. And I've made other assumptions. The guy probably has a high tech job. This is Silicon Valley and tech companies love to hire tech-savvy employees from India, to pay them less than they pay Americans. Silicon Valley is full of Indians. I've been told that osme of the best Indian restaurants in America are right here in Mountain View.
Even if we assume the guy next door is paid less than his American counterpart, we can also assume he is earning enough money to live on in America.
When I realized three people had moved into the one-room apartment next door, I told myself
Saturday, December 29, 2007
beauty and the beast
Many folks don't know that Minneapolis often gets previews of shows that move to Broadway. The Lion King previewed in Minneapolis before it became a blockbuster in New York City.
My Katie was always interested in a career as a performer (until she switched to The Hotel School at Cornell where hospitality is considered a performance art). I spent beaucoup dinero on theater tickets over the years. Minneapolis, of course, is a great theater town. I took her to tons of stuff.
She applied to High Mowing, a Waldorf boarding high school (she got in but she wouldn't go). On the application, they asked the prospective high school student, to list the theater productions the student had seen. Just for fun, we tried to make a complete list. We got several pages into the attachment before we gave up. I still think that was an interesting question to ask an eighth grader applying to a Waldorf boarding school. Any kid looking at High Mowing came from a family that, um, cared deeply about the kid's education.
We had season tickets to the Children's Theater while it was still age appropriate. We went to everything at The Guthrie. We caught a smattering of every theater season, all over town. Plus music. Plus dance. Like for a couple years, Katie thought she wanted to be an opera singer. She discovered opera and boing! She was in love. So we had opera season tickets for a couple years. I even sent her to 'opera camp' one summer. Katie used to go to one of those summer camps for gifted students and one year they offered a stream called 'opera camp'. She found out that she loved the pomp and emotion of opera and she loved to perform but, alas, she was not a singer. After that, for many years, her career goal was to win three Tonys on Broadway. Margot, a Waldorf classmate, used to ridicule Katie for that goal. Margot, who also aspired to Broadway, some of the time, had taken tap dance her entire life because her mother believed you had to tap to get on Broadway. For Margot, in those days, Broadway was all about big show tunes and tapping. For Katie, the theater was more Tennessee Williams and William Inge.
Margot and Katie were the smarted kids in their Waldorf class. Everyone, really everyone, agreed. The girls were fiercely competitive with one another.
In Waldorf schools, each class puts on a class play in the spring. The 8th grade play is the biggest deal. For their 8th grade play, Margot got her wish to do Arsenic and Old Lace and to be the sister with the most lines because Katie had gotten her wish to be Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream in the 7th grade. Margot, of course, had also coveted Titania but Mr. Maier gave the role to Katie. Margot's mom was always frustrated with David, Mr. Maier. She believed that he favored Katie. Well, Jennie, if you are reading this (I am sure she isn't), I have news for you.
Waldorf classes always go on camping trips in the spring, too. For the 6th grade campout, the class had camped on the St. Croix River, up by Taylor Falls State Park. You could rent canoes at Taylor Falls and paddle down to Stillwater, an easy, beautiful way to enjoy the river. Katie had ended up in Mr. Maier's canoe and she had suggested that their canoe sing Broadway show tunes, challening one another to see who knew the most. At age eleven, Katie knew more show tunes than anyone, including David. After the trip, he told me about that day in the canoe with Katie, how much fun he had with her. And then David gave me a prescious gift. How I love me David Maier. "I probably shouldn't say this," he said, suddenly getting emotional as he recounted the singing game in the canoe, "But Katie is my favorite student. She is such a whole person, multi-dimensional. I forget sometimes that she even is a kid. She is right there with me, emotionally, no matter where I go. How did she come to know all those Broadway songs? She's not old enough to have that much history." I don't exactly know how she came to know all those songs. I didn't, like, play that kind of music around the house. I did expose her to movies. Maybe she picked up the lyrics from movies. My Katie has an awesome capacity to memorize and to mimic.
One summer, after her first year in college, she had a marketing internship at Jacob's Pillow, the first and most prominent modern dance festival in this country. The interns got to stay in cabins that were just like going to summer camp. Plus they got to see tons of the best modern dance on the planet, day after day an extravaganza of art.
One aspect of the marketing intern's job was to give tours. There were three marketing interns and each of them were supposed to take turns giving the tours because that was not the most thrilling part of the job. All the girls wanted to interact with the artists and their companies, to talk to the New York Times to place reviews of the shows. Nobody wanted to give tours to little girls who showed up with their mother's to dream about being a dancer.
The tours weren't exactly scripted but Jacob's Pillow's archivist had written out the tour. He was very concerned that the tour presented an accurate history of Jacob's Pillow. I guess if you are an archivist for an arts organization you, like, care about its history.
So. All three marketing interns had to learn the tour information and then the archivist had each of the girls take him on a tour. Katie had memorized the whole thing. By then, Katie had been in many plays so she was accustomed to memorizing. Plus David Maier had the children memorize many poems in grade school. To this day I am pretty sure Katie could recite Poe's Raven.
I miss her so much.
In her freshman year in h.s. (I know, my mind is rambling all over the place, weaving in and out of time), between Christmas and New Year's, I splurged and got tickets to see Beauty and the Beast, previewing in Minneapolis. It was her first 'Broadway' show. To me, it was just another night at the theater but for her, it was a romantic thrill. Broadway. The play we would see would later be on Broadway. It was just like going to Broadway, right mom? I was so glad I had bought those tickets. I had no idea it was going to thrill her like that. The tix were a Xmas gift.
Katie got all dressed up. My daughter was born to be glamourous. She came out of the womb caring about clothes, I swear to goddess. Over the years, every friend I ever had and all my relatives poked fun of us. How did I get a fashion hound for a kid? Where did she get it? As soon as she could speak, she had definite opinions about clothes. Basically, when she was around two, she declared that she would only wear pink and purple. And she wouldn't. Just before she made that pronouncement, the pink and purple thing, I had bought her an adorable pair of Oshkosh by Gosh blue overalls. Powder blue with a floral trim. There was a teeny tiny smattering of pink in the floral trim. Over and over I pointed out that pink in the floral trim, trying to coax her into wearing that outfit. She would not.
Another thing she did, from her earliest days, was she would try on all her clothes. As soon as she learned how to get clothes on and off, she could get untold pleasure out of trying on all her clothes.
And my Katie was always very fussy. She really is obsessive compulsive but when she was two, we didn't think of it like that. We, well, I, thought it was cute that she fussed. She could easily go through all her clothes, trying them on, discarding them, trying more. And then, get this, she would refuse to wear them again until they had been laundered.
'But honey," I implored, "you only had this jumper on for two minutes. It doesn't need to be laundered again. I won't waste the water or the electricity."
My Katie had an iron will. Always. That's why I know she isn't coming back to me.
I would haul her discarded clothes to the laundry room. Then I told her that I laundered them while she was asleep.
I miss her so much.
The night we went to see Beauty and the Beast, she got dressed up in a brown velveteen dress, knit and clingy. She put on darker, more dramatic makeup than I had ever seen before. She make little spikes in her hair, which was very short. The spikes did not have a punk/goth effect. The spikes were hot, grown up. In the dark eyeliner and eyeshadow, the richly dark lipstick, the dramatic rouge on her cheeks, she was a woman. A very attractive woman. During the intermission, as she walked through the lobby of the ornate showplace theater lobby, almost every head turned to watch the beautiful young woman. How did she know how to make herself look like that? And how had I failed to notice before that evening that my little girl was gone.
In 2003, as my fiftieth birthday approach that August, I decided I did not want to turn fifty, not without my kid. When she was a baby and I was still married to her father and I was very, very depressed, I got some therapy. Over and over, back then, my therapist asked me 'where do you see yourself when you are fifty, what will your life look like?'. It's a standard shrink trick. He couldn't get me to see happiness in my short-term future so he was trying to lift my thoughts to the horizon, to rise above my present misery. At this time, I was legally separated from her father and we were locked in a custody fight. I could not see beyond the custody battle. If I lost custody of Katie, I could see no future for me. So Dr. Engler tried to get me to see some kind of future. Why did he pick fifty? Everytime he asked me about what my life would be like at fifty, I said "Katie will be twenty one then, safe from her father. When I am fifty, I want to be dead." Gosh, I was so miserable.
Then, in 2003, I was turning fifty and Katie was twenty one, safe not only from her father but safe from me. Over and over in that summer of 2003, I replayed those sessions with Dr. Engler. Over and over I told myself that the time had come to end my life.
I was still in touch with Katie, just a bit. She said to me that if I was going to kill myself, would I send her my books? And I did. I sent her my books and every photo I had. I thought it made simple good sense. I was living, at the time, on Whidbey. I had only been living there a short time. Nobody around me would know what to do with my belongings after I was found dead. I thought it made perfect sense to ship everything off before hand. Now I can see that what I did was gruesome. It must have been really awful to receive that stuff. Plus I sent her all mementos, all my jewelry. Box after box, I grimly packed and shipped. In my suicide note, all I said was please mail my laptop to my daughter and I gave her address
Friday, December 28, 2007
deep cleaning
I never have company. I have lived in this apartment fifteen months and I have only had company once. I think this phobia got started, avoiding having people in my space, when I lost my daughter. I am pretending this is not my real life. Massive life dysphoria. Is that psychosis? Delusion? Whatever?
I think everyone pretends everything, making it all up. Shakespeare said it all. He said nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.
OK, if a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it fall, does it make a sound?
It's all made up. So why not make up happy? Is it that simple?
I own few material things. Everything I own, except for some cash in a checking account, is in my studio apartment. Seriously, I own hardly anything. In recent days, though, I have been feeling
I think everyone pretends everything, making it all up. Shakespeare said it all. He said nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.
OK, if a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it fall, does it make a sound?
It's all made up. So why not make up happy? Is it that simple?
I own few material things. Everything I own, except for some cash in a checking account, is in my studio apartment. Seriously, I own hardly anything. In recent days, though, I have been feeling
Thursday, December 27, 2007
my so-called life
I have been watching, on DVD, the short-lived television series "My So-Called Life". My daughter and I watched it, both of us rapt, when it was on. Katie was in the fifth grade and we both felt that it was close to what she could expect in adolescence. I remember, now, that Katie thought the mother was a super bitch; she probably was too polite to say the mother reminded her of me. Although I don't think of my daughter as very much worried about being polite to me, like, ever.
Anyway. I'm watching it. I comb the netflix database for television shows to watch.
It's ostensibly about high school but it feels a bit like my life. In the past year or so, I have tried some dating, after a twenty five year hiatus. I was more mature about guys when I was a teenager than I am now.
I watch DVDs sitting in my easy chair. I have a bunch of photos of my teenager taped to the wall. Some of the photos are ones from when she went to dances, coming down the stairs, her hair done up and lots of makeup. I am such a fucking moron. I thought I had tricked the Christmas ghosts this year. I thought I had sailed right through this one. I thought I was so clever, getting a bunch of netflix DVD's. I doubled my membership for this month, eight-at-a-time so I could anesthetize myself. Ha-ha-fucking-ha. Everything hurts. And I am eating bad food. And I skipped swimming today, always a bad sign.
I don't want to feel anything. I don't want to want anything. I don't drink alcohol or do drugs. If I can't escape with movies, I turn to food. I've been eating badly for a couple of days and I keep hearing myself resolving to go on a food bender. I guess it is okay to hate myself for a day or two but it's a slippery slope. What if I start sliding and don't stop? What if I outgrow my new jeans? I gave away all my jumbo clothes. I hate my so-called life.
Watching this show was a mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. It put me right back to living with my kid when she was in the fifth grade and I still thought I was going to have her forever. I shoulda seen that coming. Plus it hurts to compare my pathetic date life with the kids in the show. Does anyone, like, ever, get the dating/mating game right, and have, like a good time?
The show also reminds me of Katie's high school years. There is a great character in the show, Ricky, a more-or-less openly gay boy. This was the mid-nineties. Open homosexuality was pretty new. It is cool that they included this character in the show. Homosexuality was not new to me and the kid. My baby brother, her best uncle, is gay. And for a long time, my best friend was a lesbian named Joni and Katie thought I was gay. Gay was always cool for us.
Once, in her sophomore year in h.s., Katie asked a gay boy to one of those dances where the girls asked the boys. Rob was his name. Rob lived with his father because his mother threw him out of the house for being queer and his father openly despised him for being gay but at least he gave him shelter. And these ogre parents still popped for the fancy prep school, it's not like they totally abandoned the kid. And it was easy for me to be accepting of Rob's homosexuality, heck, he wasn't my kid, right? But still, Rob thought it was cool that Katie could tell me her date for the dance was gay. When he came to pick her up, I brought up his homosexuality. I was such a geek. Maybe he brought it up. Maybe he said it was a surprise to him that I didn't seem to care if katie went out with a gay boy and i said, well, wouldn't a gay boy be safer than a straight one? And I also told Rob to be patient, that once he got to college, being gay would get a lot easier. And he said that he sure hoped so and he was going to college in California. As I have watched this television series over the past few days, Rob has come to mind. I wonder if he is still on the West Coast. I recall that he was headed to a university in Redlands, California
Anyway. I'm watching it. I comb the netflix database for television shows to watch.
It's ostensibly about high school but it feels a bit like my life. In the past year or so, I have tried some dating, after a twenty five year hiatus. I was more mature about guys when I was a teenager than I am now.
I watch DVDs sitting in my easy chair. I have a bunch of photos of my teenager taped to the wall. Some of the photos are ones from when she went to dances, coming down the stairs, her hair done up and lots of makeup. I am such a fucking moron. I thought I had tricked the Christmas ghosts this year. I thought I had sailed right through this one. I thought I was so clever, getting a bunch of netflix DVD's. I doubled my membership for this month, eight-at-a-time so I could anesthetize myself. Ha-ha-fucking-ha. Everything hurts. And I am eating bad food. And I skipped swimming today, always a bad sign.
I don't want to feel anything. I don't want to want anything. I don't drink alcohol or do drugs. If I can't escape with movies, I turn to food. I've been eating badly for a couple of days and I keep hearing myself resolving to go on a food bender. I guess it is okay to hate myself for a day or two but it's a slippery slope. What if I start sliding and don't stop? What if I outgrow my new jeans? I gave away all my jumbo clothes. I hate my so-called life.
Watching this show was a mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. It put me right back to living with my kid when she was in the fifth grade and I still thought I was going to have her forever. I shoulda seen that coming. Plus it hurts to compare my pathetic date life with the kids in the show. Does anyone, like, ever, get the dating/mating game right, and have, like a good time?
The show also reminds me of Katie's high school years. There is a great character in the show, Ricky, a more-or-less openly gay boy. This was the mid-nineties. Open homosexuality was pretty new. It is cool that they included this character in the show. Homosexuality was not new to me and the kid. My baby brother, her best uncle, is gay. And for a long time, my best friend was a lesbian named Joni and Katie thought I was gay. Gay was always cool for us.
Once, in her sophomore year in h.s., Katie asked a gay boy to one of those dances where the girls asked the boys. Rob was his name. Rob lived with his father because his mother threw him out of the house for being queer and his father openly despised him for being gay but at least he gave him shelter. And these ogre parents still popped for the fancy prep school, it's not like they totally abandoned the kid. And it was easy for me to be accepting of Rob's homosexuality, heck, he wasn't my kid, right? But still, Rob thought it was cool that Katie could tell me her date for the dance was gay. When he came to pick her up, I brought up his homosexuality. I was such a geek. Maybe he brought it up. Maybe he said it was a surprise to him that I didn't seem to care if katie went out with a gay boy and i said, well, wouldn't a gay boy be safer than a straight one? And I also told Rob to be patient, that once he got to college, being gay would get a lot easier. And he said that he sure hoped so and he was going to college in California. As I have watched this television series over the past few days, Rob has come to mind. I wonder if he is still on the West Coast. I recall that he was headed to a university in Redlands, California
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
honey in the heart: wallace Stevens poem
I first wrote this on Christmas Day, 2007. It looks like I was happy. I am resharing it to share this beautiful Wallace Stevens poem. One of the many things that has fascinated me since moving to CA eight years ago is there are many CA artists I did not hear about growing up and being educated in the Midwest. Chicago is as cosmopolitican as any world class city but its educational system, including the very good undergraduate university I attended, seemed to ignore the West Coast.
I lived in Massachusetts a couple years and I did not have a similar experience. I knew about most East Coast artists from my basic education and avid reading and study of art. I had never heard of Wallace Stevens until I moved here. this is a lovely poem. Enjoy it. I have not changed my Xmas Day 2007 post, only added these paragraphs on top.
It is Christmas and I am happy.
Wow.
It is a bright sunny day in Northern California and inside me. I feel golden, mellow and smooth.
Honey in the heart.*
*This is a line from 'The Well-Dressed Man" by the poet Wallace Stevens. Here is the whole poem, a good one.
I lived in Massachusetts a couple years and I did not have a similar experience. I knew about most East Coast artists from my basic education and avid reading and study of art. I had never heard of Wallace Stevens until I moved here. this is a lovely poem. Enjoy it. I have not changed my Xmas Day 2007 post, only added these paragraphs on top.
It is Christmas and I am happy.
Wow.
It is a bright sunny day in Northern California and inside me. I feel golden, mellow and smooth.
Honey in the heart.*
*This is a line from 'The Well-Dressed Man" by the poet Wallace Stevens. Here is the whole poem, a good one.
After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this present sun. If the rejected things, the things denied, Slid over the western cataract, yet one, One only, one thing that was firm, even No greater than a cricket's horn, no more Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech Of the self that must sustain itself on speech, One thing remaining, infallible, would be Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing! Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart, Green in the body, out of a petty phrase, Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed: The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps, The aureole above the humming house... It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. Yes is this present sun. I wish I were a poet or a poetry professor or just a little bit more wonderful than I am. If Stevens gets it right and the mind can never be satisfied, and I guess I agree with him, what about the heart, can the heart ever be? I think yes.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
regarding comfort food
A long time ago, I had a best friend named Joni. Both my daughter Katie and I loved Joni. We also loved her partner, Cary. And they loved us. It probably doesn't need to be said but I will concede that me and my Katie loved Joni more intently than we loved Cary and Cary loved us less than Joni did. But, still, for several happy years, we danced daily in each others' lives and it was a kind of heaven. When we broke up, it was a hard break, almost as bad as a divorce. When it was good, though, it was very, very good. When it was good, Joni and I used to have wonderful, ongoing debates about things that really mattered. Things like comfort food.
Me, all my life I thought comfort food was anything that I liked to eat when I was feeling a little blue, any food that I used to comfort myself. Like chocolate. Or pizza. Or spaghetti. Donuts could be comfort good. Cookies. Making cookies would be both comfort food and comfort activity. Smelling cookies baking in my oven, mmmmm. Comfort. Until I met Joni, I thought I understood comfort food.
One of my favorite comfort food habit was high butterfat ice cream. Once in awhile, when my dear little girl was extra unhappy, I would announce that I thought we were facing a situation that called for high butterfat ice cream. We lived in Minneapolis. There was an ice cream shop in St. Paul that had, according to the local newspaper, the highest butterfat content ice cream in the entire Twin Cities. Normally, my Katie and me, we went to Sebastian Joe's, a local coffee and ice cream chain. Also, we could get into the white chocolate mousse with raspberries parfait at TCBY. But in an emotional emergency, we went for the high butterfat content ice cream. I have no idea what this fine establishment was called. We never went there unless we were under some kind of emotional siege. And the ice cream was not the only soothing thing about going there. We had to bundle ourselves into the car, we had to head over to St. Paul. We had to sniffle and indulge in self pity on the way over. Also, we had a long time to speculate on the flavors we would choose once we got there. I kinda stumbled into this parenting trick but the ride over to St. Paul was probably the most important aspect of this homemade cure for a little girl's heartache. Knowing that good ice cream was coming, Katie would start to let go of her sadness, telling me, chapter and verse, the entire litany of whatever it was that was bruising her. I listened to her in the golden tunnel. I was at my best as a mother when Katie was sad. My love for her would grow more intense. I lit up inside as I amped up my love, trying to will her back to happy. I believed then and I believe now that my amped up love on the drive over to St. Paul was what cured her. Not the high butterfat ice cream. But, still, the indulgence, the decadence, of that high butterfat content. Good times.
Then we met Joni.
Joni, a genius, was/is an expert on many things. One of her primary areas of expertise is food. Joni loved food. She considered herself a gourmet cook and an advanced gourmand. She's no longer my friend. I love her and miss her and I always will. But that's another story, or two or three.
The relevant point, related to Joni, is that one day she overheard me begin a spiel for my unhappy child, dangling the trip over to that special ice cream store in St. Paul because my Katie was unhappy. Joni asked if she could come along. She was surprised to learn that there was an ice cream store in the Twin Cities that she had not yet discovered. Joni, like all wisewomen, understood ice cream's curative power.
"Katie, my love, my plumkin, my kitten, my dove" I began, "I think we have a situation here that calls for high butterfat ice cream. What do you think?"
Katie always agreed to go for ice cream, no matter how upset she was. In these days. Things changed later. Joni had been babysitting and she was a bit upset herself, anxious that she had not been able to console Katie. When I walked in to pick up my kid, she burst into tears, telling me about the injustice that had befallen her that day.
Like I said, Joni wanted to come with us for the ice cream. Sure, I agreed, come along.
In the car, I chattered about comfort food. Just talking, being me out loud. Sometimes I would turn on my chatter to distract Katie. Quite a lot of times, this worked. She was often absorbed by my rambling nonsense.
Well, I'm losing steam here. I have a bunch of stuff I have to get done yet today. I'll fast forward.
We learned on this drive with Joni that, according to her, comfort food had to be white.
She insisted that chocolate ice cream could not be comfort food because it was not white.
I thought she was kidding. What about peanut butter toast? I asked, indignant. What about tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches?
Nope, said Joni. Comfort food has to be white or very nearly white. Mashed potatoes and gravy with turkey. Buttered toast (the bread had to start out white). Pasta with white sauce but not with red. A tuna melt could be comfort food.
How could ice cream, especially chocolate, not be a comfort food?
Joni was a wise, brilliant woman. This is the only area in which I detected her underlying insanity.
Sugar cookies were comfort food. Gingerbread was not.
We returned to the topic many times. I so wanted her to yield, to change her position. My old anxiety is rising as I write this. Joni and I have lost touch with one another (she lives in Sebastopol, it would be so easy to see her again)
You could count a bagel with cream cheese, even if you added lox, according to Joni, because it was mostly white.
My Katie adored Joni. Sure, a debate about comfort food is unimportant. Or is it? Comfort is a central aspect of mothering. It rocked the mother in me to have one of my core mothering tools challenged. I wanted Joni to see comfort food my way. I still do. How could she limit comfort food to white? Please take this back, Joni. By some miracle, find my blog, read this post and allow that peanut butter toast with tea on an overcast, rainy day is comfort.
Well, I guess Joni would allow that peanut butter toast with tea could be comfort. But not comfort food.
This is driving me crazy all over again.
Joni is wrong. Peanut butter toast is comfort food.
I never buy bread these days. I control my carbohydrate intake carefully to manage my diabetes. I go for weeks, months even, without thinking about bread or pasta. Lately, I've been craving something. Craving, craving, craving. Tidying my kitchen a day or two ago, I noticed that I have a jar of peanut butter, unopened, in the cabinet. Eyeballing the peanut butter was almost unconscious. The peanut butter began to work me. I have been arguing with myself about opening the peanut butter. I have looked at the nutritional information a half dozen times, noting how many crabs are in a tablespoon of peanut butter. After I look at the label, noting the carb count, I mentally picture opening the jar, eating a tablespoon of butter. And then what?
Me, all my life I thought comfort food was anything that I liked to eat when I was feeling a little blue, any food that I used to comfort myself. Like chocolate. Or pizza. Or spaghetti. Donuts could be comfort good. Cookies. Making cookies would be both comfort food and comfort activity. Smelling cookies baking in my oven, mmmmm. Comfort. Until I met Joni, I thought I understood comfort food.
One of my favorite comfort food habit was high butterfat ice cream. Once in awhile, when my dear little girl was extra unhappy, I would announce that I thought we were facing a situation that called for high butterfat ice cream. We lived in Minneapolis. There was an ice cream shop in St. Paul that had, according to the local newspaper, the highest butterfat content ice cream in the entire Twin Cities. Normally, my Katie and me, we went to Sebastian Joe's, a local coffee and ice cream chain. Also, we could get into the white chocolate mousse with raspberries parfait at TCBY. But in an emotional emergency, we went for the high butterfat content ice cream. I have no idea what this fine establishment was called. We never went there unless we were under some kind of emotional siege. And the ice cream was not the only soothing thing about going there. We had to bundle ourselves into the car, we had to head over to St. Paul. We had to sniffle and indulge in self pity on the way over. Also, we had a long time to speculate on the flavors we would choose once we got there. I kinda stumbled into this parenting trick but the ride over to St. Paul was probably the most important aspect of this homemade cure for a little girl's heartache. Knowing that good ice cream was coming, Katie would start to let go of her sadness, telling me, chapter and verse, the entire litany of whatever it was that was bruising her. I listened to her in the golden tunnel. I was at my best as a mother when Katie was sad. My love for her would grow more intense. I lit up inside as I amped up my love, trying to will her back to happy. I believed then and I believe now that my amped up love on the drive over to St. Paul was what cured her. Not the high butterfat ice cream. But, still, the indulgence, the decadence, of that high butterfat content. Good times.
Then we met Joni.
Joni, a genius, was/is an expert on many things. One of her primary areas of expertise is food. Joni loved food. She considered herself a gourmet cook and an advanced gourmand. She's no longer my friend. I love her and miss her and I always will. But that's another story, or two or three.
The relevant point, related to Joni, is that one day she overheard me begin a spiel for my unhappy child, dangling the trip over to that special ice cream store in St. Paul because my Katie was unhappy. Joni asked if she could come along. She was surprised to learn that there was an ice cream store in the Twin Cities that she had not yet discovered. Joni, like all wisewomen, understood ice cream's curative power.
"Katie, my love, my plumkin, my kitten, my dove" I began, "I think we have a situation here that calls for high butterfat ice cream. What do you think?"
Katie always agreed to go for ice cream, no matter how upset she was. In these days. Things changed later. Joni had been babysitting and she was a bit upset herself, anxious that she had not been able to console Katie. When I walked in to pick up my kid, she burst into tears, telling me about the injustice that had befallen her that day.
Like I said, Joni wanted to come with us for the ice cream. Sure, I agreed, come along.
In the car, I chattered about comfort food. Just talking, being me out loud. Sometimes I would turn on my chatter to distract Katie. Quite a lot of times, this worked. She was often absorbed by my rambling nonsense.
Well, I'm losing steam here. I have a bunch of stuff I have to get done yet today. I'll fast forward.
We learned on this drive with Joni that, according to her, comfort food had to be white.
She insisted that chocolate ice cream could not be comfort food because it was not white.
I thought she was kidding. What about peanut butter toast? I asked, indignant. What about tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches?
Nope, said Joni. Comfort food has to be white or very nearly white. Mashed potatoes and gravy with turkey. Buttered toast (the bread had to start out white). Pasta with white sauce but not with red. A tuna melt could be comfort food.
How could ice cream, especially chocolate, not be a comfort food?
Joni was a wise, brilliant woman. This is the only area in which I detected her underlying insanity.
Sugar cookies were comfort food. Gingerbread was not.
We returned to the topic many times. I so wanted her to yield, to change her position. My old anxiety is rising as I write this. Joni and I have lost touch with one another (she lives in Sebastopol, it would be so easy to see her again)
You could count a bagel with cream cheese, even if you added lox, according to Joni, because it was mostly white.
My Katie adored Joni. Sure, a debate about comfort food is unimportant. Or is it? Comfort is a central aspect of mothering. It rocked the mother in me to have one of my core mothering tools challenged. I wanted Joni to see comfort food my way. I still do. How could she limit comfort food to white? Please take this back, Joni. By some miracle, find my blog, read this post and allow that peanut butter toast with tea on an overcast, rainy day is comfort.
Well, I guess Joni would allow that peanut butter toast with tea could be comfort. But not comfort food.
This is driving me crazy all over again.
Joni is wrong. Peanut butter toast is comfort food.
I never buy bread these days. I control my carbohydrate intake carefully to manage my diabetes. I go for weeks, months even, without thinking about bread or pasta. Lately, I've been craving something. Craving, craving, craving. Tidying my kitchen a day or two ago, I noticed that I have a jar of peanut butter, unopened, in the cabinet. Eyeballing the peanut butter was almost unconscious. The peanut butter began to work me. I have been arguing with myself about opening the peanut butter. I have looked at the nutritional information a half dozen times, noting how many crabs are in a tablespoon of peanut butter. After I look at the label, noting the carb count, I mentally picture opening the jar, eating a tablespoon of butter. And then what?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
the mists of mountain view
Okay. The best swimming conditions are in full bloom. It is cold and wet. When rain hits the water in the pool, mist rises and then drifts away. Mist is rising and drifting all over the pool. The swimmers move the water, which causes mists. The rain moves the water, more mist. The drift of the mist is mystery. Almost no one swimming so the pool is relatively quiet, a kind of still. It is way cold out of the water. Pretty cold in the water. This is awesome swimming. I think all the swimmers feel like heros when they get out. Yes, it is cold rushing out of the water and into the heated locker room but it is exhilerating cold. I am in a heaven.
And there is more.
I caught a bus for part of the trip back to my apartment after my swim. I feel lazy when I take the bus but on some days, if we include my swimming in the calculation, as well as the walking I do for my transportation, I exercise several hours a day. I get tired. Sometimes I have to take care of my self and take the bus. I wish I would not feel guilty when I hop on the bus but I nearly always do. What do I expect of myself? That I should never ride, that I should only walk?
So. I rushed to catch the 12:01 #34 at the corner of Shoreline and Rengsdorff, which saves me a mile's walk. I was high from the swim, thrilled by the cold wet. It is so wonderful to be out in the rain and properly dressed. I had on a rain parka, the hood up. The parka was soaked. My bags were dripping wet. But underneath my self care of gloves, hat, scarf, layers, I was toasty. My nose is always red but with the cold, it must have been Santa Claus red. And sniffling. My nose sniffles when it is cold. I like the sniffles. Am I weird?
I kinda danced from the locker room to my bus stop. And then I had a few minutes wait.
Right at the corner, there is a storm drain. I watched water moving along the curbs from all directions, water making its way around most obstacles, the power of gravity drawing the water down down down to the drain at the corner. The drain was completely covered with leaves. The water was not running, it was moving drip by drip.
I kicked the pile of leaves away to get the water moving. What a thrill as the water gushed. I got it into my head that if I cleared enough leaves away, the backlog of water could all drain into the sewer before the bus came. I stepped down into the water, to get a better angle on all those leaves, kicking and digging with my shoes. My shoes got wet and then they got soaked. I got wetter and wetter. Colder and colder. With each of my whooshing efforts, the water moved faster and faster. I couldn't stop. It was so much fun. I got soaking wet.
When the bus came, I was sorry it had come so soon. I felt that with just a bit more work, I coulda had that storm drain running so smooth. Oh well.
When I was a little girl, I spent lots of time most summers in Mitchell, South Dakota. My cousin Joy was an only child. I accompanied her and my aunt to visit our grandmother each summer. It was actually a bit like my summer job. My job was to be Joy's playmate. Neither Joy or my aunt Margaret ever let me forget that I was there to be Joy's playmates. Joy seemed to think this meant she owned me, much like she owned her dolls and kittens. She tended to think she had a right to tell me what to do and she ordered me about like a living puppet. My aunt tended to think Joy was perfect, that I was imperfect and that Joy was always right and as the older child and the hired playmate, I was supposed to suck it all up. Sometimes, also, I was reminded that my mother had lots of kids back home and she needed me gone to save her some trouble, like I wasn't quite welcome at home, quite like I had been farmed out as a hired hand. I loved and hated these trips. I loved my grandma. I loved eating in restaurants on the trip there and back to Chicago. My aunt spent money a bit more freely than my folks. More ice cream cones. More movies. But I hated the way my cousin Joy, younger than me, was allowed to bully me.
Joy and I also had fun to. It gets very hot in South Dakota midsummer. Very hot. Like 109 degrees. It's pretty dry and much less humid than other parts of the Midwest where I have summered. Our all time favorite summer activity was went it rained, which it never did enough of. My cousin's father, my uncle Charlie, his people farmed in Indiana. I spent a lot of my summers on their Indiana farm, too. When it rained, in SoDak or Indiana, we put on our swimsuits, grabbed umbrellas and went out and played in the puddles. Water gushing at the curbside of streets gets dirty so we got plenty dirty. We had to hose ourselves down before being allowed back into the house. We loved hosing ourselves in the rain. We liked to stomp in the puddles as hard as we could, making the biggest possible splashes. Also, we like to sit down in the puddle streams and create bridges with twigs and leaves, create barriers and rivers in the street puddles.
I was reminded of these good times as I cleaned out those leaves waiting for the bus this morning. I kinda wanted to keep working, to let go of the constraint of staying clean. What difference does it make if I get wet and dirty? Why not enjoy that wet, dirty pile of leaves?
I came home and changed into dry clothes, retained my adult role.
And there is more.
I caught a bus for part of the trip back to my apartment after my swim. I feel lazy when I take the bus but on some days, if we include my swimming in the calculation, as well as the walking I do for my transportation, I exercise several hours a day. I get tired. Sometimes I have to take care of my self and take the bus. I wish I would not feel guilty when I hop on the bus but I nearly always do. What do I expect of myself? That I should never ride, that I should only walk?
So. I rushed to catch the 12:01 #34 at the corner of Shoreline and Rengsdorff, which saves me a mile's walk. I was high from the swim, thrilled by the cold wet. It is so wonderful to be out in the rain and properly dressed. I had on a rain parka, the hood up. The parka was soaked. My bags were dripping wet. But underneath my self care of gloves, hat, scarf, layers, I was toasty. My nose is always red but with the cold, it must have been Santa Claus red. And sniffling. My nose sniffles when it is cold. I like the sniffles. Am I weird?
I kinda danced from the locker room to my bus stop. And then I had a few minutes wait.
Right at the corner, there is a storm drain. I watched water moving along the curbs from all directions, water making its way around most obstacles, the power of gravity drawing the water down down down to the drain at the corner. The drain was completely covered with leaves. The water was not running, it was moving drip by drip.
I kicked the pile of leaves away to get the water moving. What a thrill as the water gushed. I got it into my head that if I cleared enough leaves away, the backlog of water could all drain into the sewer before the bus came. I stepped down into the water, to get a better angle on all those leaves, kicking and digging with my shoes. My shoes got wet and then they got soaked. I got wetter and wetter. Colder and colder. With each of my whooshing efforts, the water moved faster and faster. I couldn't stop. It was so much fun. I got soaking wet.
When the bus came, I was sorry it had come so soon. I felt that with just a bit more work, I coulda had that storm drain running so smooth. Oh well.
When I was a little girl, I spent lots of time most summers in Mitchell, South Dakota. My cousin Joy was an only child. I accompanied her and my aunt to visit our grandmother each summer. It was actually a bit like my summer job. My job was to be Joy's playmate. Neither Joy or my aunt Margaret ever let me forget that I was there to be Joy's playmates. Joy seemed to think this meant she owned me, much like she owned her dolls and kittens. She tended to think she had a right to tell me what to do and she ordered me about like a living puppet. My aunt tended to think Joy was perfect, that I was imperfect and that Joy was always right and as the older child and the hired playmate, I was supposed to suck it all up. Sometimes, also, I was reminded that my mother had lots of kids back home and she needed me gone to save her some trouble, like I wasn't quite welcome at home, quite like I had been farmed out as a hired hand. I loved and hated these trips. I loved my grandma. I loved eating in restaurants on the trip there and back to Chicago. My aunt spent money a bit more freely than my folks. More ice cream cones. More movies. But I hated the way my cousin Joy, younger than me, was allowed to bully me.
Joy and I also had fun to. It gets very hot in South Dakota midsummer. Very hot. Like 109 degrees. It's pretty dry and much less humid than other parts of the Midwest where I have summered. Our all time favorite summer activity was went it rained, which it never did enough of. My cousin's father, my uncle Charlie, his people farmed in Indiana. I spent a lot of my summers on their Indiana farm, too. When it rained, in SoDak or Indiana, we put on our swimsuits, grabbed umbrellas and went out and played in the puddles. Water gushing at the curbside of streets gets dirty so we got plenty dirty. We had to hose ourselves down before being allowed back into the house. We loved hosing ourselves in the rain. We liked to stomp in the puddles as hard as we could, making the biggest possible splashes. Also, we like to sit down in the puddle streams and create bridges with twigs and leaves, create barriers and rivers in the street puddles.
I was reminded of these good times as I cleaned out those leaves waiting for the bus this morning. I kinda wanted to keep working, to let go of the constraint of staying clean. What difference does it make if I get wet and dirty? Why not enjoy that wet, dirty pile of leaves?
I came home and changed into dry clothes, retained my adult role.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
pie on the mind
Last year, round about this time of year, I wrote about my cranberry pear pie. It was so much fun writing about that pie. I've been hoping to recruit the cosy comfort I got out of writing about pie last year. A gal in Denmark (or somewhere Nordic) actually wrote to me and said she was going to make that pie with her kids, although she was going to substitute something for the cranberries. Her favorite part of my recipe was loving the assistant chefs/children. I don't think any berry would be a good sub for a cranberry. A cranberry's tartness is special but what the heck. I hope she succeeded with lingonberries or something else red.
I have just remembered another pie I used to prepare. Cheese, tomato and onion pie. Sometimes when I served it, people suggested it was a quiche. If it does qualify as quiche, my cheese, tomato and onion pie would be the only quiche I've ever made cause I've never made one intentionally. Isn't this fascinating, me writing about nothing but still me having fun? Entertaining myself. There are lots of eggs in this pie.
So you make a pie crust. You don't need a top crust for this one.
Slice up a whole bunch of onions. A lot. If you can get a variety of onions, go for it. Use at least a pound of onions. Slice them as thin as you can. Well, if you are looking for interesting texture, you could vary the slices, some thick, some super thin. That could be interesting. Then you saute all the sliced onion in butter until the onions become translucent. If you don't know what I mean, keep sauting. Once the translucence occurs, you will know.
Drain the buttery yumness of those onions. It is nice to keep all the butter but resist this urge. If you keep all the butter, your pie will be messy, which is okay, I guess but if you are presenting this to honored guests, it is nice to fuss about appearance. Dump all the onions on your pie crust.
Oh, it is a good idea to prebake the crust, just for a few minutes at 350 degrees. This is a soggy pie. Bake the crust to keep it dry. Dry-ish. This is a gooey mess of a pie, it will be messy but prebake in hope.
Next, take all your evenly sliced tomatoes, lots of tomatoes, upwards of a pound, and layer them like bricks over the onions. If you like, you can hold back a bit of onion and put onion on top of the tomato but I prefer to end with tomatos on top. Later, then the cheese bakes, the tomatos peek through the cheesiness beautifully but you lost the peek-a-boo effect of the red tomatos under the cheese if you finish with onions. Try it both ways, find out what you like.
Then you take some milk (cream if you are feeling decadent and why not, you are already larded up with butter in the crust and butter in the onions, prudence no longer applies, go for the cream), about a cup of milk. One cup of grated gruyere cheese, one cup of swiss cheese. You could use other cheese, but stick with white ones, sharp white ones are best. Also hard cheese is good. I hate to keep dwelling on the gooeyness of this pie but the onions dripping with butter make for a wet wet dish. Hard cheese helps holds things together.
Beat the milk and cheese with a couple eggs. I haven't made this pie in a long time. I forget how many eggs. Actually, I am making up all the amounts given here, from ancient memory. I got this pie from one of Anna Thomas's Vegetarian Gourmet cookbooks. She called it 'savory cheese and onion pie' but I have always felt the tomatos deserved billing. If you care about quanitites, look for her recipe.
Sprinkle some parsley or chives over everything, just a little tiny bit. The green can be pretty.
I haven't made this pie in years. I stopped making it cause people would grouse about the cholesterol. It is no fun serving yummy comfort food just to hear whines about cholesterol. Itis particularly irritating to watch the whiners scarf this extremely delicious concoction down after their ungracious plaint. I used to want to snatch the forks out of their hands and take back this hot, creamy, cheesey, tomato-y delight.
A friend of mine told me a story awhile aback about the time he made a bunch of onion pizzas for a party. He said his guests scarfed down his pie. I bet they did. In my humble opinion, not enough people know how fabulous it is to combine hot cheese and onions.
One time, my sister, her husband and my niece went on a prepaid tour of China, the kind of tour where all your meals are part of a set package price. They were living in Korea when they decided to visit China over their Christmas holiday. I guess it is pretty cheap to get to China from S. Korea. The tour was going to take them to some rural areas, places where restaurants were no common. they were advised to take a tour with meals because in some places, it would otherwise be hard to find something to eat. So they signed up for some package. They spent two weeks crawling over rural China on a crowded bus, staying in farm houses. They had a good time. How could you not have a good time, traveling around China? The newness of everything would be awesome. One meal on this trip was particularly memorable. The meal consisted of onions and rice. As they gathered for their dinner and realized onions and rice was all they were going to get, their hostess explained to them that they were eating three kinds of onion.
I have just remembered another pie I used to prepare. Cheese, tomato and onion pie. Sometimes when I served it, people suggested it was a quiche. If it does qualify as quiche, my cheese, tomato and onion pie would be the only quiche I've ever made cause I've never made one intentionally. Isn't this fascinating, me writing about nothing but still me having fun? Entertaining myself. There are lots of eggs in this pie.
So you make a pie crust. You don't need a top crust for this one.
Slice up a whole bunch of onions. A lot. If you can get a variety of onions, go for it. Use at least a pound of onions. Slice them as thin as you can. Well, if you are looking for interesting texture, you could vary the slices, some thick, some super thin. That could be interesting. Then you saute all the sliced onion in butter until the onions become translucent. If you don't know what I mean, keep sauting. Once the translucence occurs, you will know.
Drain the buttery yumness of those onions. It is nice to keep all the butter but resist this urge. If you keep all the butter, your pie will be messy, which is okay, I guess but if you are presenting this to honored guests, it is nice to fuss about appearance. Dump all the onions on your pie crust.
Oh, it is a good idea to prebake the crust, just for a few minutes at 350 degrees. This is a soggy pie. Bake the crust to keep it dry. Dry-ish. This is a gooey mess of a pie, it will be messy but prebake in hope.
Next, take all your evenly sliced tomatoes, lots of tomatoes, upwards of a pound, and layer them like bricks over the onions. If you like, you can hold back a bit of onion and put onion on top of the tomato but I prefer to end with tomatos on top. Later, then the cheese bakes, the tomatos peek through the cheesiness beautifully but you lost the peek-a-boo effect of the red tomatos under the cheese if you finish with onions. Try it both ways, find out what you like.
Then you take some milk (cream if you are feeling decadent and why not, you are already larded up with butter in the crust and butter in the onions, prudence no longer applies, go for the cream), about a cup of milk. One cup of grated gruyere cheese, one cup of swiss cheese. You could use other cheese, but stick with white ones, sharp white ones are best. Also hard cheese is good. I hate to keep dwelling on the gooeyness of this pie but the onions dripping with butter make for a wet wet dish. Hard cheese helps holds things together.
Beat the milk and cheese with a couple eggs. I haven't made this pie in a long time. I forget how many eggs. Actually, I am making up all the amounts given here, from ancient memory. I got this pie from one of Anna Thomas's Vegetarian Gourmet cookbooks. She called it 'savory cheese and onion pie' but I have always felt the tomatos deserved billing. If you care about quanitites, look for her recipe.
Sprinkle some parsley or chives over everything, just a little tiny bit. The green can be pretty.
I haven't made this pie in years. I stopped making it cause people would grouse about the cholesterol. It is no fun serving yummy comfort food just to hear whines about cholesterol. Itis particularly irritating to watch the whiners scarf this extremely delicious concoction down after their ungracious plaint. I used to want to snatch the forks out of their hands and take back this hot, creamy, cheesey, tomato-y delight.
A friend of mine told me a story awhile aback about the time he made a bunch of onion pizzas for a party. He said his guests scarfed down his pie. I bet they did. In my humble opinion, not enough people know how fabulous it is to combine hot cheese and onions.
One time, my sister, her husband and my niece went on a prepaid tour of China, the kind of tour where all your meals are part of a set package price. They were living in Korea when they decided to visit China over their Christmas holiday. I guess it is pretty cheap to get to China from S. Korea. The tour was going to take them to some rural areas, places where restaurants were no common. they were advised to take a tour with meals because in some places, it would otherwise be hard to find something to eat. So they signed up for some package. They spent two weeks crawling over rural China on a crowded bus, staying in farm houses. They had a good time. How could you not have a good time, traveling around China? The newness of everything would be awesome. One meal on this trip was particularly memorable. The meal consisted of onions and rice. As they gathered for their dinner and realized onions and rice was all they were going to get, their hostess explained to them that they were eating three kinds of onion.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
meow
In June, I flew to Chicago to see my family, sister, brothers, nieces, nephews, mom. I had last seen them in February 2006, before I had lost any weight. By the time I saw them in June, I had lost seventy pounds. Yes, even with seventy pounds gone, I still had a lot to lose. And now, in November, yes, I've lost more and yes, I still have plenty more fat to unload. And I will. But still, seventy pounds is a big change.
So my sis picks me up at Midway and we saunter down to the baggage claim area. I had chattered, at length, to my sister, over the phone about my weight loss, my exercise, the changes in my eating habits. It was a big deal to me, right? And it should be a big deal. Losing seventy pounds is something I was rightfully proud of. I expected my sister to not just notice the big change in me (it has, ahem, been a year and a half since I had seen her, and seventy pounds!) but she said nothing. She fretted about the speed of the luggage arrival. She vented a bit about her recent week-long visit with our mother. She spoke of her children. I was like a kid waiting for Santa Claus. I engaged in polite chit chat but inside myself I was straining for the weight loss compliments. Finally, I brought it up myself, a little crestfallen that she had not said anything on her own.
"Well, let me take a look," she said, scanning her eyes up and down, scrutinizing me. She put her hand under her chin, with the forefinger pointed up, the gesture emphasizing that she was having to look hard to see the change in me. She had her arms crossed, resting the raised hand in the palm of the other arm. Her gestures were broad, as if she were intentionally emphasizing how hard she had to look to see a change. Her eyes went up and down the length of me a few times. Me, I'm a little kid inside myself, waiting for her approval, waiting for an extra scoop of ice cream. Please love me, sister mine. "Now that you have pointed it out, yes, I can say that I see a change in you. Before you looked very fat, you know?" She paused, signaling that she was measuring her words carefully, bending over backwards to find something nice to say. "Now you still look fat but you look ordinary fat. Before, it was grossly fat. Now you look good, you look like an ordinary fat person."
I swear to goddess that this is very close to what she actually said.
The visit that ensued between us was a disaster. I don't think she will be speaking to me again for a long, long time, probably not until I win a big lottery or something and she wants to hit me up for moolah. I'm serious. Her husband actually hit me near the end, hard enough to give me a bruise (which is not saying all that much, cause I do bruise like an overripe peach but still, he hauled off and socked me, he really did. Nobody has hit me since I was married and that wasn't okay either.)
At one point during the week, while I was driving, my sister in the passenger seat and my niece behind us, my niece said "Mom, if Aunt Therese is wearing size sixteens now, what size are you?" My sister evaded the query. But I can tell you what size she was wearing. She was also wearing a few sixteens. My sister has never been morbidly obese, as I used to be. And she is much bigger than me in general. She is much taller, more broadly built. As she has pointed out to me many times, Marilyn Monroe was a size sixteen. My sister is a Marilyn Monroe kind of size sixteen. Like all the women in our clan, she has a full bosom. She is very beautiful and not small. She likes to be down at size twelve, she is content at fourteen, she chafes at sixteens but at any of these sizes, my sister is gorgeous. Plus she is catnip to men. She has a voluptuous, sensual beauty that I didn't get. When my niece asked her mother what size she wears, I could have answered for her but I said nothing. My sister has a right to feel beautiful and to keep any secrets of vanity that she chooses. Isabelle, my niece, does not have our body type. Well, we'll have to see what her breasts do. Yes, Isbee buds have begun to bloom but it is too soon to see if hers will be humongous. Mine were humongous from day one. I swear that my first bra was a 36C. It aint easy being a 36C in the sixth grade, I can tell you. My daughter, she got the family bosom. Even when Katie was a size zero (and she was, when she was sick), she had a full bosom. It used to amaze everyone, that she could look like a skeleton and still have a full bosom. I wonder what Katie's body looks like these days. When last I saw her, she was very voluptuous and I am not using the word voluptuous to imply that she was plump. Not a bit. She was sensuously curvy and thin, with full bosom and hips. Until I saw my daughter evolve into a sensuous, voluptuous woman, I never really understood how some women were just naturally hot, giving off a ripe heat without trying. Katie has that kind of beauty. She was a hot, voluptuous woman the last time I saw her and I am sure she is even hotter and more beautiful now. And so does my sister. Is, we have to wait and see.
Well, I'm nattering aimlessly. The point here is that I am writing this with my brand new pair of size fourteen jeans on. True, I have a couple pairs of size sixteens that fit me just fine. It's also true that I can only stuff myself into one particular brand of size fourteen pants. But, oh my gosh, my fourteens are making me happy. I feel hot. I feel gorgeous. I feel beautiful. I feel young.
And I am dying to tell my sister about the size fourteen.
She is having Thanksgiving dinner with my dolly Dave tomorrow, my baby brother. I have called him each day this week to remind him about the size fourteens, to be sure he remembers to tell her.
Meow.
So my sis picks me up at Midway and we saunter down to the baggage claim area. I had chattered, at length, to my sister, over the phone about my weight loss, my exercise, the changes in my eating habits. It was a big deal to me, right? And it should be a big deal. Losing seventy pounds is something I was rightfully proud of. I expected my sister to not just notice the big change in me (it has, ahem, been a year and a half since I had seen her, and seventy pounds!) but she said nothing. She fretted about the speed of the luggage arrival. She vented a bit about her recent week-long visit with our mother. She spoke of her children. I was like a kid waiting for Santa Claus. I engaged in polite chit chat but inside myself I was straining for the weight loss compliments. Finally, I brought it up myself, a little crestfallen that she had not said anything on her own.
"Well, let me take a look," she said, scanning her eyes up and down, scrutinizing me. She put her hand under her chin, with the forefinger pointed up, the gesture emphasizing that she was having to look hard to see the change in me. She had her arms crossed, resting the raised hand in the palm of the other arm. Her gestures were broad, as if she were intentionally emphasizing how hard she had to look to see a change. Her eyes went up and down the length of me a few times. Me, I'm a little kid inside myself, waiting for her approval, waiting for an extra scoop of ice cream. Please love me, sister mine. "Now that you have pointed it out, yes, I can say that I see a change in you. Before you looked very fat, you know?" She paused, signaling that she was measuring her words carefully, bending over backwards to find something nice to say. "Now you still look fat but you look ordinary fat. Before, it was grossly fat. Now you look good, you look like an ordinary fat person."
I swear to goddess that this is very close to what she actually said.
The visit that ensued between us was a disaster. I don't think she will be speaking to me again for a long, long time, probably not until I win a big lottery or something and she wants to hit me up for moolah. I'm serious. Her husband actually hit me near the end, hard enough to give me a bruise (which is not saying all that much, cause I do bruise like an overripe peach but still, he hauled off and socked me, he really did. Nobody has hit me since I was married and that wasn't okay either.)
At one point during the week, while I was driving, my sister in the passenger seat and my niece behind us, my niece said "Mom, if Aunt Therese is wearing size sixteens now, what size are you?" My sister evaded the query. But I can tell you what size she was wearing. She was also wearing a few sixteens. My sister has never been morbidly obese, as I used to be. And she is much bigger than me in general. She is much taller, more broadly built. As she has pointed out to me many times, Marilyn Monroe was a size sixteen. My sister is a Marilyn Monroe kind of size sixteen. Like all the women in our clan, she has a full bosom. She is very beautiful and not small. She likes to be down at size twelve, she is content at fourteen, she chafes at sixteens but at any of these sizes, my sister is gorgeous. Plus she is catnip to men. She has a voluptuous, sensual beauty that I didn't get. When my niece asked her mother what size she wears, I could have answered for her but I said nothing. My sister has a right to feel beautiful and to keep any secrets of vanity that she chooses. Isabelle, my niece, does not have our body type. Well, we'll have to see what her breasts do. Yes, Isbee buds have begun to bloom but it is too soon to see if hers will be humongous. Mine were humongous from day one. I swear that my first bra was a 36C. It aint easy being a 36C in the sixth grade, I can tell you. My daughter, she got the family bosom. Even when Katie was a size zero (and she was, when she was sick), she had a full bosom. It used to amaze everyone, that she could look like a skeleton and still have a full bosom. I wonder what Katie's body looks like these days. When last I saw her, she was very voluptuous and I am not using the word voluptuous to imply that she was plump. Not a bit. She was sensuously curvy and thin, with full bosom and hips. Until I saw my daughter evolve into a sensuous, voluptuous woman, I never really understood how some women were just naturally hot, giving off a ripe heat without trying. Katie has that kind of beauty. She was a hot, voluptuous woman the last time I saw her and I am sure she is even hotter and more beautiful now. And so does my sister. Is, we have to wait and see.
Well, I'm nattering aimlessly. The point here is that I am writing this with my brand new pair of size fourteen jeans on. True, I have a couple pairs of size sixteens that fit me just fine. It's also true that I can only stuff myself into one particular brand of size fourteen pants. But, oh my gosh, my fourteens are making me happy. I feel hot. I feel gorgeous. I feel beautiful. I feel young.
And I am dying to tell my sister about the size fourteen.
She is having Thanksgiving dinner with my dolly Dave tomorrow, my baby brother. I have called him each day this week to remind him about the size fourteens, to be sure he remembers to tell her.
Meow.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
a tuna melt
I was diagnosed with diabetes in the summer of 2003. I don't think I have bought a loaf of bread since then. My metabolic system just can't handle the unnecessary carbohydrates in bread. Oh, sure, I have eaten bread since then, in restaurants or in a friend's home for a meal but buying an entire loaf of bread, given that I live alone, well, it was like making a plan to binge. My nutritionist advises me to limit my carbs to between 90 and 110 daily. I'd have to blow most of my carbs on a sandwich. Most of the time, I'll pass on bread.
Last Wednesday, while in the city for a weekly commitment, I was early. I am almost always early for everything. So I went strolling. And I read menus posted on restaurants. I almost never eat out in restaurants. I am disciplined about spending money and I can eat cheaper at home. And I am disciplined about what I eat; it is easier to eat healthy at home. I like to eat out, of course. I have read all the menus posted along Castro street, the main drag, of Mountain View. A small, stupid thing I do. So last Wednesday, I'm killing time, reading menus and other signs on storefronts when I read about a tuna melt.
I have not thought about tuna melts in years, certainly not since I gave up buying bread.
I wanted a tuna melt last Wednesday. Oh my gosh, how I wanted it.
But, as I have mentioned, I am a disciplined eater. I had already eaten all that I was going to eat last Wednesday. My inner voice, who was in a bratty mood, was petulant, whining as she demanded a tuna melt. I gave in to her quite like I used to give in to my dolly girl Katie. I promised her I would think about it, take it under advisement. Note: whenever Katie asked for things, especially when she had a bad case of the gimmees, I would say "I'll keep it in mind, I'll take that under advisement". This seemed to signal to her, when she was basking in greed, that I was going to give it to her and it would tend to shut her up. As she got older and wiser, she understood that I was blowing her off politely, that when I said "I'll think about it" I was mostly thinking "sure, honey, on a cold day in hell, I'll buy you that Barbie doll".
My inner voice is not as gullible as my little girl once was so when I tried to hush my longing for that tuna melt up, my inner voice grew more strident. She, me, really wanted a tuna melt.
The aforementioned tuna melt floated through me all week. When Wednesday came round again, as it did yesterday, as it does every week, I decided, in the morning, as I planned my food for the day, that I would have a tuna melt in that restaurant for dinner before my meeting.
And I did. Tuna melts. How can you go wrong? Tuna, mayo, cheese. All warmed up and gooey. It was delicious. A homemade one would have been better. A better tuna, a finer cheese, butter for the grill, better bread. But still, it was yummy. It was perfection. I savored every bite. And you know what? I am sated. I don't want another one. It's like that tuna melt is still satisfying me.
Last Wednesday, while in the city for a weekly commitment, I was early. I am almost always early for everything. So I went strolling. And I read menus posted on restaurants. I almost never eat out in restaurants. I am disciplined about spending money and I can eat cheaper at home. And I am disciplined about what I eat; it is easier to eat healthy at home. I like to eat out, of course. I have read all the menus posted along Castro street, the main drag, of Mountain View. A small, stupid thing I do. So last Wednesday, I'm killing time, reading menus and other signs on storefronts when I read about a tuna melt.
I have not thought about tuna melts in years, certainly not since I gave up buying bread.
I wanted a tuna melt last Wednesday. Oh my gosh, how I wanted it.
But, as I have mentioned, I am a disciplined eater. I had already eaten all that I was going to eat last Wednesday. My inner voice, who was in a bratty mood, was petulant, whining as she demanded a tuna melt. I gave in to her quite like I used to give in to my dolly girl Katie. I promised her I would think about it, take it under advisement. Note: whenever Katie asked for things, especially when she had a bad case of the gimmees, I would say "I'll keep it in mind, I'll take that under advisement". This seemed to signal to her, when she was basking in greed, that I was going to give it to her and it would tend to shut her up. As she got older and wiser, she understood that I was blowing her off politely, that when I said "I'll think about it" I was mostly thinking "sure, honey, on a cold day in hell, I'll buy you that Barbie doll".
My inner voice is not as gullible as my little girl once was so when I tried to hush my longing for that tuna melt up, my inner voice grew more strident. She, me, really wanted a tuna melt.
The aforementioned tuna melt floated through me all week. When Wednesday came round again, as it did yesterday, as it does every week, I decided, in the morning, as I planned my food for the day, that I would have a tuna melt in that restaurant for dinner before my meeting.
And I did. Tuna melts. How can you go wrong? Tuna, mayo, cheese. All warmed up and gooey. It was delicious. A homemade one would have been better. A better tuna, a finer cheese, butter for the grill, better bread. But still, it was yummy. It was perfection. I savored every bite. And you know what? I am sated. I don't want another one. It's like that tuna melt is still satisfying me.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
gosh golly
It has been so much fun to be back at the pool. Lots of people greet me with whoops of pleasure. All my homies had heard some version of what happened to me. Flattop had emailed me right after the conflict and I told him that the police had told me I was banned from the pool for life. The life banishment turned out to be cop bluster but my homies didn't know that. They organized a petition, to demand that I be allowed to return. Lots of them were willing to vouchsafe for me, even willing to say that if I had a problem with another swimmer, it was unlikely to be my fault. (and it wasn't my fault: that guy who slugged me was a newbie, nobody had ever seen him before).
Kay hugged me twice. Kay kept saying, in her cute, choppy accent, "You no kill somebody, why they no let you swim. Come on. You no kill anybody!" And, over and over she said, "So good to have you back. You swim with me."
Rebecca said "Ms. Pearls is back. I've missed you." Rebecca always notices my pearls. She says she imagines me swimming in them every time she sees me.
Lots of folks who knew nothing about my fracas had just plain old missed me. "Haven't see you in awhile! Nice to see you again!"
Those cops had made me feel like a slug, a worm, a crud. It felt so nice to be warmly greeted back.
Margaret, the head lifeguard, said "Welcome!" when she punched my ticket. Henry, the head recreation guy at the park system, the guy who had to let me back in, told me that as far as he and his entire staff is concerned, nothing ever happened. The slate is clean. Then he said he'd let Margaret know I was coming back so there wouldn't be a problem being admitted and I said "I don't embarass easy, Henry. If I did, I wouldn't be back at all."
Color me happy. It was hard to be banned from the pool but, gosh, I wouldn't feel as loved and popular as I do if it hadn't happened.
Kay hugged me twice. Kay kept saying, in her cute, choppy accent, "You no kill somebody, why they no let you swim. Come on. You no kill anybody!" And, over and over she said, "So good to have you back. You swim with me."
Rebecca said "Ms. Pearls is back. I've missed you." Rebecca always notices my pearls. She says she imagines me swimming in them every time she sees me.
Lots of folks who knew nothing about my fracas had just plain old missed me. "Haven't see you in awhile! Nice to see you again!"
Those cops had made me feel like a slug, a worm, a crud. It felt so nice to be warmly greeted back.
Margaret, the head lifeguard, said "Welcome!" when she punched my ticket. Henry, the head recreation guy at the park system, the guy who had to let me back in, told me that as far as he and his entire staff is concerned, nothing ever happened. The slate is clean. Then he said he'd let Margaret know I was coming back so there wouldn't be a problem being admitted and I said "I don't embarass easy, Henry. If I did, I wouldn't be back at all."
Color me happy. It was hard to be banned from the pool but, gosh, I wouldn't feel as loved and popular as I do if it hadn't happened.
a regular or harmonious pattern
My rhythm, my regular, harmonious pattern, has been restored. I feel the universe rocking me as I swim. I feel grounded once more.
Praise goddess. I get to swim.
Praise goddess. I get to swim.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
another poem
For My Daughter
When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.
When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.
--David Ignatow
When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.
When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.
--David Ignatow
So What
So What by Kim Addonizio
Guess what. If love is only chemistry--
phenylethylamine, that molecule
that dizzies up the brain's back room, smoky
with hot bebop, it won't be long until
a single worker's mopping up the scuffed
and littered floor, whistling tunelessly,
each endorphin cooling like a snuffed
glass candle, the air stale with memory.
So what, you say; outside, a shadow lifts
a trumpet from its case, lifts it like an ingot
and scatters a few virtuosic riffs
towards the locked-down stores. You've quit
believing that there's more, but you're still stirred
enough to stop, and wait, listening hard.
Guess what. If love is only chemistry--
phenylethylamine, that molecule
that dizzies up the brain's back room, smoky
with hot bebop, it won't be long until
a single worker's mopping up the scuffed
and littered floor, whistling tunelessly,
each endorphin cooling like a snuffed
glass candle, the air stale with memory.
So what, you say; outside, a shadow lifts
a trumpet from its case, lifts it like an ingot
and scatters a few virtuosic riffs
towards the locked-down stores. You've quit
believing that there's more, but you're still stirred
enough to stop, and wait, listening hard.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
the summer of love
The 'Summer of Love' began in San Francisco, unleashing widespread awareness of the hippie counterculture. This refrain, from a song from John Phillips, of The Mamas and The Papas, evokes the mood of that time.
If you're going to San Francisco,
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
If you're going to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there.
This Sunday, September 2nd, there will be a free, all-day concert commerating the fortieth anniversary of The Summer of Love. I'll be there, maybe even with some flowers in my hair. I suppose the flowers ought to be real?
I turned fourteen in August, 1967. My baby sister, my only sister, was born that June. I already had four brothers. I had already lost two baby sisters to infant deaths. All I cared about that summer was Margaret. She and I shared a bedroom. All that summer, every single night, when she awoke in the night to eat, I got up, changed her diapers, took her to my mother's bed and went back to sleep. Then, after a short nap, I reawakened, retrieved my baby sister and tucked her back into the crib in our shared room. My mother never even had to get out of bed.
I started high school that fall, probably in late August, probably forty years ago this week. After less than two weeks of high school, I went to my mother and said that it was too hard for me to do get up in the mornings for school and I was going to stop getting up with the baby. My mother was furious. I was very ashamed of my selfishness. To this day, if you mention the Catholic girls' high school that I attended, Queen of Peace, in front of my mother, even with her dementia, she'll say "Oh, well, Queen of Peace, that is the school where the nuns taught your sister how to be selfish."
I was aware of hippies. I had heard of Haight Asbury. In general, I liked the idea of a counterculture, a peace movement in opposition to the Viet Nam War, free love, flowers and tie dye. But for me, the sixties were about caring for my baby brother Dave, born in 1964 and my baby sister, Margaret, born in 1967. I was aware of demonstrations, riots like the Chicago Democratic Convention (I lived in Chicago!) and Kent State. Me, I lived in a cocoon of loving those babies.
In June, 1971, I graduated from high school. A few days later, my parents had a divorce hearing that they did not tell us kids about. While I was at work at my summer job in the public library, mom showed up at the house with a moving van and took almost all the furniture in our home. And she took David and Margaret. She had told the divorce judge, under oath, that she would not remove them from the State of Illinois. Then, that very same day, she took them, disappearing for the next couple years. She took my babies away.
Mom had gone back to college while I was in high school. She liked to say that by helping her go to college (she could not have done it without my childcare), she would help me. I very seriously believed that I was preparing for my own future when I sacrificed extracurricular activities throughout high school (I would have loved to be in a school play, to be on student council, to work on the school paper but I could never stay after school, I had to get to the babies). I loved them like a mother loves her babies.
And then they were gone.
Just to show you what a dope I am, it wasn't until I was in my forties, my late forties, that I realized that mom had made sure she got her education and her divorce before I left home for college. She had carefully planned her escape on my back.
Oh my god, it damned near killed me the way David and Margaret disappeared from my life. I had never had any adults participating in my life, giving me guidance on how to cope with anything so there was no one around to suggest that my grief was normal, that my loss was real. I lost a couple years to that heartache. It was worse to lose my daughter but not by much.
I am going to the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Concert in Golden Gate Park this Sunday. The hippie movement kinda passed me by in a blur. I am curious to see who turns up. Will it be old hippies? Young people? I looked at the website and it looks like Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist, is going to be there. I was sorry to see that. I just want to hear music and watch people play frisbee.
If you're going to San Francisco,
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
If you're going to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there.
This Sunday, September 2nd, there will be a free, all-day concert commerating the fortieth anniversary of The Summer of Love. I'll be there, maybe even with some flowers in my hair. I suppose the flowers ought to be real?
I turned fourteen in August, 1967. My baby sister, my only sister, was born that June. I already had four brothers. I had already lost two baby sisters to infant deaths. All I cared about that summer was Margaret. She and I shared a bedroom. All that summer, every single night, when she awoke in the night to eat, I got up, changed her diapers, took her to my mother's bed and went back to sleep. Then, after a short nap, I reawakened, retrieved my baby sister and tucked her back into the crib in our shared room. My mother never even had to get out of bed.
I started high school that fall, probably in late August, probably forty years ago this week. After less than two weeks of high school, I went to my mother and said that it was too hard for me to do get up in the mornings for school and I was going to stop getting up with the baby. My mother was furious. I was very ashamed of my selfishness. To this day, if you mention the Catholic girls' high school that I attended, Queen of Peace, in front of my mother, even with her dementia, she'll say "Oh, well, Queen of Peace, that is the school where the nuns taught your sister how to be selfish."
I was aware of hippies. I had heard of Haight Asbury. In general, I liked the idea of a counterculture, a peace movement in opposition to the Viet Nam War, free love, flowers and tie dye. But for me, the sixties were about caring for my baby brother Dave, born in 1964 and my baby sister, Margaret, born in 1967. I was aware of demonstrations, riots like the Chicago Democratic Convention (I lived in Chicago!) and Kent State. Me, I lived in a cocoon of loving those babies.
In June, 1971, I graduated from high school. A few days later, my parents had a divorce hearing that they did not tell us kids about. While I was at work at my summer job in the public library, mom showed up at the house with a moving van and took almost all the furniture in our home. And she took David and Margaret. She had told the divorce judge, under oath, that she would not remove them from the State of Illinois. Then, that very same day, she took them, disappearing for the next couple years. She took my babies away.
Mom had gone back to college while I was in high school. She liked to say that by helping her go to college (she could not have done it without my childcare), she would help me. I very seriously believed that I was preparing for my own future when I sacrificed extracurricular activities throughout high school (I would have loved to be in a school play, to be on student council, to work on the school paper but I could never stay after school, I had to get to the babies). I loved them like a mother loves her babies.
And then they were gone.
Just to show you what a dope I am, it wasn't until I was in my forties, my late forties, that I realized that mom had made sure she got her education and her divorce before I left home for college. She had carefully planned her escape on my back.
Oh my god, it damned near killed me the way David and Margaret disappeared from my life. I had never had any adults participating in my life, giving me guidance on how to cope with anything so there was no one around to suggest that my grief was normal, that my loss was real. I lost a couple years to that heartache. It was worse to lose my daughter but not by much.
I am going to the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Concert in Golden Gate Park this Sunday. The hippie movement kinda passed me by in a blur. I am curious to see who turns up. Will it be old hippies? Young people? I looked at the website and it looks like Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist, is going to be there. I was sorry to see that. I just want to hear music and watch people play frisbee.
Monday, August 27, 2007
full moon rising
There will be a full moon tonight, with a lunar eclipse around 2 a.m. Sigh. I want to view it from a beach. I hardly ever wish I had a car but I do right now. My walk on the beach in Santz Cruz yesterday has stirred an interest in the beach. There are lots of things I want to see in California. Having a car would enable me to get around more. I want to take long hikes in nature. Most public parks are not readily accessible by public transit.
I am full of unquenched desires today.
I have a growing appetite for walking. In the past year, I have walked a lot as transportation. I am fit enough, now, to walk several hours at a time. I am craving walks in nature. I am going to look for hiking/walking clubs.
I am full of unquenched desires today.
I have a growing appetite for walking. In the past year, I have walked a lot as transportation. I am fit enough, now, to walk several hours at a time. I am craving walks in nature. I am going to look for hiking/walking clubs.
under the boardwalk
I took a day trip to Santa Cruz today. I am a hick tourist from the Midwest.
Santa Cruz has a beautiful beach front. There's an amusement park, roller coasters, a ferris wheel, right on the beach. There is the Pacific Ocean. There is the beautiful beach, which was full of people. People actually in the water. Blankets. Sand castles. Music blaring on bad sound systems. Carnival games. Bad food.
When I was nineteen, I lived in Bogota, Colombia for a year, studying at Universidad de los Andes. For the first several months, each time I tried to imagine where I was in the world, inside my own thoughts, I had to picture myself in Chicago, my hometown and then mentally picture myself being not in Chicago but in South America. I had to 'see' Bogota, Colombia, South America on a map in my head and then place myself 'down' there. For many months, I had to make a mental leap, to know where I was on planet earth. Gradually, I was able to 'know' that I was in South America. But at the beginning, my frame of reference was the Midwest and I couldn't quite picture myself being based on another continent. It was an interesting disconnect.
I have a similar disconnect about living in California. I do live here. I really do. Right? Sometimes, though, I am still 'in' Chicago, as a child, imagining California. Like maybe as a teenager, reading about Haight Asbury District in San Francisco, I would imagine a far-off jewel-of-a-city with what I imagined hippies looked like. Or when I imagined L.A., it was all palm trees with an ocean in the distance. It was all distant, dreamy, unreal.
Well, California is distant, dreamy and unreal to me now, even though I live here. I am pretty sure that this is my true, physical-plane, material-based reality: I live in California. Not that it really matters. Who knows? Maybe I am a pulse of energy, lost in time and space and I don't have a physical existence. How can I be sure?
In my heart, California is distant, dreamy and unreal. But it is real. I am pretty sure.
So. I am pretty sure I really was in Santa Cruz, California today. I am pretty sure I had a great time. We actually did walk under the boardwalk. And I sang the lines I know from the pop song 'under the boardwalk' and I asked my friend to pretend that I was the first person ever to crack such a dumb joke.
Under the boardwalk, we'll be having some fun. Under the boardwalk, out of the sun. Boardwalk!
I had lots of fun today.
Santa Cruz has a beautiful beach front. There's an amusement park, roller coasters, a ferris wheel, right on the beach. There is the Pacific Ocean. There is the beautiful beach, which was full of people. People actually in the water. Blankets. Sand castles. Music blaring on bad sound systems. Carnival games. Bad food.
When I was nineteen, I lived in Bogota, Colombia for a year, studying at Universidad de los Andes. For the first several months, each time I tried to imagine where I was in the world, inside my own thoughts, I had to picture myself in Chicago, my hometown and then mentally picture myself being not in Chicago but in South America. I had to 'see' Bogota, Colombia, South America on a map in my head and then place myself 'down' there. For many months, I had to make a mental leap, to know where I was on planet earth. Gradually, I was able to 'know' that I was in South America. But at the beginning, my frame of reference was the Midwest and I couldn't quite picture myself being based on another continent. It was an interesting disconnect.
I have a similar disconnect about living in California. I do live here. I really do. Right? Sometimes, though, I am still 'in' Chicago, as a child, imagining California. Like maybe as a teenager, reading about Haight Asbury District in San Francisco, I would imagine a far-off jewel-of-a-city with what I imagined hippies looked like. Or when I imagined L.A., it was all palm trees with an ocean in the distance. It was all distant, dreamy, unreal.
Well, California is distant, dreamy and unreal to me now, even though I live here. I am pretty sure that this is my true, physical-plane, material-based reality: I live in California. Not that it really matters. Who knows? Maybe I am a pulse of energy, lost in time and space and I don't have a physical existence. How can I be sure?
In my heart, California is distant, dreamy and unreal. But it is real. I am pretty sure.
So. I am pretty sure I really was in Santa Cruz, California today. I am pretty sure I had a great time. We actually did walk under the boardwalk. And I sang the lines I know from the pop song 'under the boardwalk' and I asked my friend to pretend that I was the first person ever to crack such a dumb joke.
Under the boardwalk, we'll be having some fun. Under the boardwalk, out of the sun. Boardwalk!
I had lots of fun today.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
King Oscar in a can
Thinking about my dad and a joke he played as a boy on Chicago's South Side. Dad grew up in an Irish ghetto. His very first job, which he quit after a day or two, was delivering milk from a horse-drawn wagon. He had to get up at what he considered an godawful, early hour but he quite, he told us, because he had not anticipated that he would have to clean up horse dung. The combination of very early rising and cleaning up horse shit was too much for my adolescent dad.
Anyway.
Before he was old enough to get paid employment, dad ran loose in his tenement neighborhood with his 'homies', other Irish-American, Catholic lads. Good kids, basically, but, boys. They needed to stir something up.
One of my dad's first displays of poor public behavior involved going into a local shop and asking the shopkeeper "Do you have King Oscar in a can?" King Oscar is a brand of canned sardines. When the shopkeeper would say 'Yes, we do!" dad and his cohorts would squeal "Well, then let him out!" and rush out of the shop, thrilled at their own bravado.
I loved listening to my dad tell me any stories about his boyhood. He didn't tell many. Dad had beautiful blue eyes that never twinkled enough with happiness. His eyes had a happy glow when he recalled his rebel days and King Oscar.
I believe there was also a brand of canned tobacco named after a king. Dad also liked to go into tobacco stores and ask for the canned, king tobacco.
Yesterday, I spotted King Oscar in a can at Trader Joe's. I suppose Trade Joe's sells King Oscar all the time but I rarely shop for canned fish. When I saw King Oscar yesterday, I bought one can. My dad has been with me, smiling and happy.
Maybe I was thinking about my dad before I saw the sardines. I've been recalling an unhappy story about my dad. Which came first, the happy or the sad story?
My dad was a gambler. Every once in awhile, in the fifties and sixties (I was born in 1953), dad would blow his whole paycheck on the ponies. Harness racing. If ever there was a chump bet, it's harness racing. My dad was a chump gambler. When I was five years old, we had a baby girl, Mary Ann, who only lived two months. On the morning of her funeral, unable to cover the entire cost of the funeral, my dad stopped by my grandpa's house, the same tenement where dad had grown up, and grandpa gave him the money for the funeral home. Then dad went to the tracked and put the entire amount down on a horse, losing, of course. Dad said that he couldn't believe god would let him loose on the day he had to bury his baby daughter. Oh my gosh, the day of Mary Ann's funeral was awful. None of the adults in my orbit ever told me much of anything. Even Mary Ann's death was treated a bit hush hush, like the grown ups wanted me to pretend I didn't notice that my baby sister had ever lived or something. I sure wasn't supposed to act sad or anything and be a burden to my folks.
I was floundering with the loss of my baby sister (I had two brothers, thank you very much, I took the loss of my sister very deeply, sure that a sister would somehow bring me happiness)
trying to hide my sorrow as I was pressured by various aunts and uncles to do. We were all waiting at the house to head to the funeral home, waiting for dad to come with the money to pay the funeral home. We couldn't go without the money. How mortifying to not be able to pay to bury our baby. We kids weren't supposed to know about the money but we did, of course.
Dad was expected home long before he arrived. Then he walked in and ushered mom into the bedroom to tell her what he had done.
What a weak, foolish man.
My grandfather showed up with more money. The funeral went ahead. Dad's gambling took the sting out of losing my baby sister. Even though I was only five and I was not supposed to know what was going on, I did know. I remember being very angry at my dad for causing us more pain on that dad. Somehow, in my five-year-old mind, his gambling away the funeral money tore me apart as much, if not more, than Mary Ann's death.
In recent days, I've been thinking about my dad's choice to do something to hurt himself and his whole family on such an unhappy day. Suddenly, I have great empathy for him. Suddenly, I think I understand why he did it. It was weak and foolish. It caused him a lot more pain. But focussing on the pain of his gambling might have taken the focus off the fact that our baby had died. The gambling pain took the focus -- and maybe some of the sting? -- out of our sorrow. I am pretty sure my dad had borderline personality disorder. It is so borderline to cause one's self pain as a way to spare one's self other pain.
I've also been recalling an incident that occurred after Mary Ann died. Maybe I was seven.
On a Sunday morning, as we scrambled to get ready for mass, Mom announced that she had no money and no food for Sunday dinner. She was hurt and angry. Dad had, once again, gambled his paycheck, although this was not voiced out loud by my mom. The fact of dad's gambling was always supposed to be hidden. In actual fact, until I was in my forties, I never once voiced out loud to any member of my family of origin that my dad was a gambler. We never discussed it, not once. The closest it got to being out in the open would be when mom would complain that she had no money for food in front of us kids. I think she was shaming dad. Or something.
Dad said "I have money, Mary Ann. Let me take the kids to mass and then we'll stop at the grocery store."
My dad rarely went to Sunday mass. Me, Chuck and Joe went to church with dad for a change. I don't know about my brothers but I was aware of the tension. I was very anxious that we were going to run out of food. I wanted what my dad had said to be true, that he had money and there was nothing to worry about.
So, we go to mass and then dad takes us to an unfamiliar grocery store, one I had certainly never been in before. He stopped in the meat eye and handled a packaged smoked butt, some kind of pork. I noted that he handled it, taking it up, putting it down. He didn't put it in the shopping cart. Then he bought something, a loaf of bread, I think. I remember eyeing the items he bought and thinking that he had not bought something that would add up to dinner. I dread the fight mom and dad were going to have about food and money. I felt so sorry for my dad, my mom, all of us. I felt so very bad.
I acted like I did not notice the contents of the shopping cart, keeping my eyes averted.
Dad put the grocery bag on the floor behind the driver's seat. We all piled in and went home.
Getting out of the car, dad lifted a smoked butt from the floor of the car and slipped it into the grocery sack. Aghast, I realized my dad had stolen that meat.
"Did you still that, dad?" I asked, horrified.
"No, no, that was already in the car."
It made me sick that my dad had stolen. And what I did might still be making me a little bit sick today. I pretended, right inside my own self, that I believed dad. I pretended I did not think he stole.
Now, in 2007, I don't really care if my dad stole a few dollars worth of meat. A gambler is a dishonest man. My dad would have stolen anything that he could get away with stealing. The thing about these memories that are bruising me even now is remembering how I created a fiction and substituted it for my reality. In order to survive childhood with my parents, I had to live in a world of artificial assumptions, lies, inventions and pretend I believed them to be true. I disciplined myself to belief that black was white, that up was down. In doing so, I built the foundation of who I am on shifting sands of falsehood and, in many ways, I am still living my life from such shifting sands.
I miss
Anyway.
Before he was old enough to get paid employment, dad ran loose in his tenement neighborhood with his 'homies', other Irish-American, Catholic lads. Good kids, basically, but, boys. They needed to stir something up.
One of my dad's first displays of poor public behavior involved going into a local shop and asking the shopkeeper "Do you have King Oscar in a can?" King Oscar is a brand of canned sardines. When the shopkeeper would say 'Yes, we do!" dad and his cohorts would squeal "Well, then let him out!" and rush out of the shop, thrilled at their own bravado.
I loved listening to my dad tell me any stories about his boyhood. He didn't tell many. Dad had beautiful blue eyes that never twinkled enough with happiness. His eyes had a happy glow when he recalled his rebel days and King Oscar.
I believe there was also a brand of canned tobacco named after a king. Dad also liked to go into tobacco stores and ask for the canned, king tobacco.
Yesterday, I spotted King Oscar in a can at Trader Joe's. I suppose Trade Joe's sells King Oscar all the time but I rarely shop for canned fish. When I saw King Oscar yesterday, I bought one can. My dad has been with me, smiling and happy.
Maybe I was thinking about my dad before I saw the sardines. I've been recalling an unhappy story about my dad. Which came first, the happy or the sad story?
My dad was a gambler. Every once in awhile, in the fifties and sixties (I was born in 1953), dad would blow his whole paycheck on the ponies. Harness racing. If ever there was a chump bet, it's harness racing. My dad was a chump gambler. When I was five years old, we had a baby girl, Mary Ann, who only lived two months. On the morning of her funeral, unable to cover the entire cost of the funeral, my dad stopped by my grandpa's house, the same tenement where dad had grown up, and grandpa gave him the money for the funeral home. Then dad went to the tracked and put the entire amount down on a horse, losing, of course. Dad said that he couldn't believe god would let him loose on the day he had to bury his baby daughter. Oh my gosh, the day of Mary Ann's funeral was awful. None of the adults in my orbit ever told me much of anything. Even Mary Ann's death was treated a bit hush hush, like the grown ups wanted me to pretend I didn't notice that my baby sister had ever lived or something. I sure wasn't supposed to act sad or anything and be a burden to my folks.
I was floundering with the loss of my baby sister (I had two brothers, thank you very much, I took the loss of my sister very deeply, sure that a sister would somehow bring me happiness)
trying to hide my sorrow as I was pressured by various aunts and uncles to do. We were all waiting at the house to head to the funeral home, waiting for dad to come with the money to pay the funeral home. We couldn't go without the money. How mortifying to not be able to pay to bury our baby. We kids weren't supposed to know about the money but we did, of course.
Dad was expected home long before he arrived. Then he walked in and ushered mom into the bedroom to tell her what he had done.
What a weak, foolish man.
My grandfather showed up with more money. The funeral went ahead. Dad's gambling took the sting out of losing my baby sister. Even though I was only five and I was not supposed to know what was going on, I did know. I remember being very angry at my dad for causing us more pain on that dad. Somehow, in my five-year-old mind, his gambling away the funeral money tore me apart as much, if not more, than Mary Ann's death.
In recent days, I've been thinking about my dad's choice to do something to hurt himself and his whole family on such an unhappy day. Suddenly, I have great empathy for him. Suddenly, I think I understand why he did it. It was weak and foolish. It caused him a lot more pain. But focussing on the pain of his gambling might have taken the focus off the fact that our baby had died. The gambling pain took the focus -- and maybe some of the sting? -- out of our sorrow. I am pretty sure my dad had borderline personality disorder. It is so borderline to cause one's self pain as a way to spare one's self other pain.
I've also been recalling an incident that occurred after Mary Ann died. Maybe I was seven.
On a Sunday morning, as we scrambled to get ready for mass, Mom announced that she had no money and no food for Sunday dinner. She was hurt and angry. Dad had, once again, gambled his paycheck, although this was not voiced out loud by my mom. The fact of dad's gambling was always supposed to be hidden. In actual fact, until I was in my forties, I never once voiced out loud to any member of my family of origin that my dad was a gambler. We never discussed it, not once. The closest it got to being out in the open would be when mom would complain that she had no money for food in front of us kids. I think she was shaming dad. Or something.
Dad said "I have money, Mary Ann. Let me take the kids to mass and then we'll stop at the grocery store."
My dad rarely went to Sunday mass. Me, Chuck and Joe went to church with dad for a change. I don't know about my brothers but I was aware of the tension. I was very anxious that we were going to run out of food. I wanted what my dad had said to be true, that he had money and there was nothing to worry about.
So, we go to mass and then dad takes us to an unfamiliar grocery store, one I had certainly never been in before. He stopped in the meat eye and handled a packaged smoked butt, some kind of pork. I noted that he handled it, taking it up, putting it down. He didn't put it in the shopping cart. Then he bought something, a loaf of bread, I think. I remember eyeing the items he bought and thinking that he had not bought something that would add up to dinner. I dread the fight mom and dad were going to have about food and money. I felt so sorry for my dad, my mom, all of us. I felt so very bad.
I acted like I did not notice the contents of the shopping cart, keeping my eyes averted.
Dad put the grocery bag on the floor behind the driver's seat. We all piled in and went home.
Getting out of the car, dad lifted a smoked butt from the floor of the car and slipped it into the grocery sack. Aghast, I realized my dad had stolen that meat.
"Did you still that, dad?" I asked, horrified.
"No, no, that was already in the car."
It made me sick that my dad had stolen. And what I did might still be making me a little bit sick today. I pretended, right inside my own self, that I believed dad. I pretended I did not think he stole.
Now, in 2007, I don't really care if my dad stole a few dollars worth of meat. A gambler is a dishonest man. My dad would have stolen anything that he could get away with stealing. The thing about these memories that are bruising me even now is remembering how I created a fiction and substituted it for my reality. In order to survive childhood with my parents, I had to live in a world of artificial assumptions, lies, inventions and pretend I believed them to be true. I disciplined myself to belief that black was white, that up was down. In doing so, I built the foundation of who I am on shifting sands of falsehood and, in many ways, I am still living my life from such shifting sands.
I miss
Friday, August 03, 2007
you can always go downtown
Seventies pop music is zinging through me. Yesterday, it was Dionne Warwick singing 'Do you know the way to San Jose?". Today, Petula Clark is belting out 'When you're alone and life is making you lonely you can always go, downtown!".
Maybe I could turn back the hands of time, go back to when these songs were on the radio and make different choices for my life. Gee whiz.
I am going downtown tomorrow. San Francisco. The city!
I don't think too many mothers in all of history have sung more to their children than I used to sing to my Katie. Sometimes I would get into a groove in which I would sing-song everything, rhyming almost nonstop for hours. I wrote many songs for her. I changed the lyrics to dozens of pop songs. Lots of parents do this. How I loved to sing to her.
Downtown was our first duet, the first non-kid song she learned. In the beginning, when she was barely two, I would sing 'when you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go . . ." and then I would pause, dramatically waiving her into the act. She would come in on cue and chirp out 'Downtown!'. She was so proud that she could sing a duet with me. At two she could tell that 'Downtown' was way cooler than 'Twinkle twinkle'.
My Katie was a funny kid. She liked to tease me.
One day I was chortling out 'Downtown', with her in a car seat, on our way home from daycare, when she was still two. She warbled 'downtown' on cue for the first couple verses. And then, with no warning, when it was her turn to say 'downtown' she said 'cookie monster'!
It was so funny that I had to stop the car to enjoy my laughter. She was over-the-moon with pride. Oh my gosh, it was her first perfect joke. She was wearing lavendar Osh-Kosh overalls, pink high top shoes and a pink floral print blouse with ruffles on the sleeves. Her hair was up in two tiny pigtails on either side of her head, with pink ribbons bouncing as she giggled. The bells on her shoes tinkled as she kicked in glee. I had to turn the car off and go around to her side of the car and smother her with kisses. To those of you wondering about heaven, this is one way heaven is.
Katie loved her frills and ribbons. I've never been much for feminine things but she always wanted to dress very daintily. As soon as she could voice a preference, she declared that she would only wear pink or purple. And she meant it. I could never figure out how she got her preferences. How did I give birth to such a girly girl?! Years ago, I had a business partner named Lynn. Lynn said that she thought I dressed Katie the way I really wished to dress myself. She said that she 'got' that I am a very feminine woman, even though I don't think of myself that way. High venus, she said. My Katie is high venus, that's for sure.
From that day onward, every time we sang our duet, Downtown, she said 'cookie monster' as one of the refrains. Most kids that entered our orbit learned to do the same, silly thing. In June, I tried to teach my two-year-old nephew Arthur to do this duet with me. And my eleven-year-old niece Isabelle sang 'cookie monster' to show Artie how it goes. It is a family tradition.
As Katie got older, like, she would ask me to tell her stories about when she was little. She loved it when I told the cookie monster story.
Katie must occasionally hear Petula Clark singing Downtown. She must remember our old duet. I can't imagine that she does not love me when she remembers. If I someday learn that my Katie has had children without allowing me to share in my grandchildren's lives, I don't think I would live a moment longer after I learned such a thing. All summer, I have been thinking Katie is having a child now.
We all know love is a risky business but, gosh, back when Katie and I were singing our earliest duets, if someone had suggested she would one day leave me, I would have said pishposh. I could not have believed such a thing could be possible. Tonight, the idea of risking myself to love is making it hard for me to breathe. I don't want to live in the world without love. Sometimes, I have absolutely no ability to believe that there is anything lovable about me. I poured the absolute best of me into my little girl. If that wasn't enough to earn her love, I must be unlovable.
What got me started? Oh, I remember. I'm spending the day in the city with a friend. Downtown. Well, sorta downtown. In the Castro. I'll make a full report. I try to always have a social date on my calendar, something always on my horizon, preciselly to get me through moments like this when I am heartbroken about Katie. Having a date on my calendar, knowing there are, praise goddess, miracle of miracles, actually people on this planet who want to spend time with me, well, it has saved my life, literally, on many occasions.
Note: Everyone, just about, in my whole clan has blue eyes. Katie's are very big and very brown. Until I gazed into her newborn eyes, I had never noticed that the diameters of people's eyes varied from one to another. The size of her browns was, unquestionably, larger than the size of my blues. I had always believed blue eyes to be the best. What a ridiculous notion, eh? But there you have it; I believed brown eyes to be dull. Oh no, No, no, no. Deeply dark, very large, limpid brown eyes are exceptionally fine. I am sitting here enjoying my memory of how happy her eyes were when she first cracked her cookie monster joke. I would give anything to see her eyes lit like that again. Anything. Maybe I am maudlin cause of my birthday. Let's see: there's the Xmas hellhole w/no Katie, there is her birthday in June and my birthday. I really hate myself this evening. Thank goodness I have face time with humans tomorrow. I been alone too long.
Maybe I could turn back the hands of time, go back to when these songs were on the radio and make different choices for my life. Gee whiz.
I am going downtown tomorrow. San Francisco. The city!
I don't think too many mothers in all of history have sung more to their children than I used to sing to my Katie. Sometimes I would get into a groove in which I would sing-song everything, rhyming almost nonstop for hours. I wrote many songs for her. I changed the lyrics to dozens of pop songs. Lots of parents do this. How I loved to sing to her.
Downtown was our first duet, the first non-kid song she learned. In the beginning, when she was barely two, I would sing 'when you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go . . ." and then I would pause, dramatically waiving her into the act. She would come in on cue and chirp out 'Downtown!'. She was so proud that she could sing a duet with me. At two she could tell that 'Downtown' was way cooler than 'Twinkle twinkle'.
My Katie was a funny kid. She liked to tease me.
One day I was chortling out 'Downtown', with her in a car seat, on our way home from daycare, when she was still two. She warbled 'downtown' on cue for the first couple verses. And then, with no warning, when it was her turn to say 'downtown' she said 'cookie monster'!
It was so funny that I had to stop the car to enjoy my laughter. She was over-the-moon with pride. Oh my gosh, it was her first perfect joke. She was wearing lavendar Osh-Kosh overalls, pink high top shoes and a pink floral print blouse with ruffles on the sleeves. Her hair was up in two tiny pigtails on either side of her head, with pink ribbons bouncing as she giggled. The bells on her shoes tinkled as she kicked in glee. I had to turn the car off and go around to her side of the car and smother her with kisses. To those of you wondering about heaven, this is one way heaven is.
Katie loved her frills and ribbons. I've never been much for feminine things but she always wanted to dress very daintily. As soon as she could voice a preference, she declared that she would only wear pink or purple. And she meant it. I could never figure out how she got her preferences. How did I give birth to such a girly girl?! Years ago, I had a business partner named Lynn. Lynn said that she thought I dressed Katie the way I really wished to dress myself. She said that she 'got' that I am a very feminine woman, even though I don't think of myself that way. High venus, she said. My Katie is high venus, that's for sure.
From that day onward, every time we sang our duet, Downtown, she said 'cookie monster' as one of the refrains. Most kids that entered our orbit learned to do the same, silly thing. In June, I tried to teach my two-year-old nephew Arthur to do this duet with me. And my eleven-year-old niece Isabelle sang 'cookie monster' to show Artie how it goes. It is a family tradition.
As Katie got older, like, she would ask me to tell her stories about when she was little. She loved it when I told the cookie monster story.
Katie must occasionally hear Petula Clark singing Downtown. She must remember our old duet. I can't imagine that she does not love me when she remembers. If I someday learn that my Katie has had children without allowing me to share in my grandchildren's lives, I don't think I would live a moment longer after I learned such a thing. All summer, I have been thinking Katie is having a child now.
We all know love is a risky business but, gosh, back when Katie and I were singing our earliest duets, if someone had suggested she would one day leave me, I would have said pishposh. I could not have believed such a thing could be possible. Tonight, the idea of risking myself to love is making it hard for me to breathe. I don't want to live in the world without love. Sometimes, I have absolutely no ability to believe that there is anything lovable about me. I poured the absolute best of me into my little girl. If that wasn't enough to earn her love, I must be unlovable.
What got me started? Oh, I remember. I'm spending the day in the city with a friend. Downtown. Well, sorta downtown. In the Castro. I'll make a full report. I try to always have a social date on my calendar, something always on my horizon, preciselly to get me through moments like this when I am heartbroken about Katie. Having a date on my calendar, knowing there are, praise goddess, miracle of miracles, actually people on this planet who want to spend time with me, well, it has saved my life, literally, on many occasions.
Note: Everyone, just about, in my whole clan has blue eyes. Katie's are very big and very brown. Until I gazed into her newborn eyes, I had never noticed that the diameters of people's eyes varied from one to another. The size of her browns was, unquestionably, larger than the size of my blues. I had always believed blue eyes to be the best. What a ridiculous notion, eh? But there you have it; I believed brown eyes to be dull. Oh no, No, no, no. Deeply dark, very large, limpid brown eyes are exceptionally fine. I am sitting here enjoying my memory of how happy her eyes were when she first cracked her cookie monster joke. I would give anything to see her eyes lit like that again. Anything. Maybe I am maudlin cause of my birthday. Let's see: there's the Xmas hellhole w/no Katie, there is her birthday in June and my birthday. I really hate myself this evening. Thank goodness I have face time with humans tomorrow. I been alone too long.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
the tortoise and the hares at eagle park pool
I don't know why but new signs have been put up at my pool. There used to be two designated slow lanes. Now there are four slow lanes. This small change brings me real joy.
It is stressful to swim with faster swimmers. I don't mind if the fast guys (the pushy ones are always male) pass me but the fast guys aren't satisfied just passing me up. They expect slow swimmers to get out of their way. If they are coming to the end of a length, they expect the slow swimmers to stop and wait for them to finish one length and begin the next. I understand that they get a better workout if they can keep swimming without stopping because, hey, I get a better workout if I keep swimming. I don't mind pausing once in awhile to let someone pass me but when fast swimmers get in the lane with me, I would have to stop quite a lot.
A lap pool is such a pond of humanity. How is it that when it comes to physical exercise that folks seem to assume that the faster athletes have superior rights?
These fast guys really drive me nuts. They are so macho.
It is stressful to swim with faster swimmers. I don't mind if the fast guys (the pushy ones are always male) pass me but the fast guys aren't satisfied just passing me up. They expect slow swimmers to get out of their way. If they are coming to the end of a length, they expect the slow swimmers to stop and wait for them to finish one length and begin the next. I understand that they get a better workout if they can keep swimming without stopping because, hey, I get a better workout if I keep swimming. I don't mind pausing once in awhile to let someone pass me but when fast swimmers get in the lane with me, I would have to stop quite a lot.
A lap pool is such a pond of humanity. How is it that when it comes to physical exercise that folks seem to assume that the faster athletes have superior rights?
These fast guys really drive me nuts. They are so macho.
a sacristy light
In Catholic churches, there is always a lantern lit to represent the eternal, living Christ. I don't know the customs of other Christian denominations.
I like the idea of an eternal flame. I have one lit for my Katie so she will be able to find me.
I like the idea of an eternal flame. I have one lit for my Katie so she will be able to find me.
the way to San Jose
I ran an errand in downtown San Jose today. I very much love the public transit here. Trains and light rail being my favorite. I love taking Caltrain to downtown San Jose. When I leave the station, I always pretend that the characters from East of Eden are sending off all that doomed lettuce. Abra, the sweetheart in the Steinbeck novel, is giving her man a hug. I imagine the rail cars packed with ice and lettuce, already beginning to melt and rot. I imagine the hopes of early agribusiness trying to figure out how to haul California's produce to the rest of the country. I swear I feel human striving as I listen to the train whistles. I wonder if humans were wise to try to ship West Coast lettuce to the Midwest.
My errand complete, I decided to walk to the San Jose Museum of Art. I had a vague idea which direction I should take and then I zigged and zagged my way there. I am curious about San Jose, the tenth largest U.S. city, much larger than San Francisco. Around these parts, when folks speak of 'going to the city', they invariably reference San Francisco.
The Dionne Warwick song 'Do you know the way to San Jose?' always echoes within me when I go to San Jose. I want San Jose to be a happy city.
There is a lot of public art in downtown San Jose. And there are many thoughtful pocket parks, tucked here and there. Many more palm trees in San Jose than in Mountain View. I feel more like I am in California when I am down there than I do at home. I stumble along San Jose streets and think 'gee, I guess I really do live in California now!' Every time I think this, I am just as happy as the first time.
Outside the museum, workers were installing a stage. When I left the museum, a rock band was playing. Rock music at four in the afternoon?! Of course, I swung by and danced a bit. I longed for a companion to hang out with me, to wait for the evening show, to dance with me.
As always, there are interesting, well-curated shows at the museum.
What experiences might I seek out so that I might feel like I have really experienced San Jose? I always feel like a dullard when I am there. There must be all kinds of things to do besides that art museum. But I don't know what that might be.
There's a jazz festival coming up.
Going to San Jose has filled me with a yen for California adventure. I long to go to a beach. I wonder which beaches are accessible to me on public transport? Ocean beaches, not the bay. The bay is just east of my home; I can get there by talking two miles. I want to stand at the ocean and feel queasy (being beside ocean has always made me queasy; the vastness dizzies). I want to walk on a beach with waves big enough to mist me if I walk close enough. I want to feel vaguely afraid of all that water.
And I want my Katie to come back to me. Whenever I remember that I live in California now, I next remember that Katie does not know where I live.
My errand complete, I decided to walk to the San Jose Museum of Art. I had a vague idea which direction I should take and then I zigged and zagged my way there. I am curious about San Jose, the tenth largest U.S. city, much larger than San Francisco. Around these parts, when folks speak of 'going to the city', they invariably reference San Francisco.
The Dionne Warwick song 'Do you know the way to San Jose?' always echoes within me when I go to San Jose. I want San Jose to be a happy city.
There is a lot of public art in downtown San Jose. And there are many thoughtful pocket parks, tucked here and there. Many more palm trees in San Jose than in Mountain View. I feel more like I am in California when I am down there than I do at home. I stumble along San Jose streets and think 'gee, I guess I really do live in California now!' Every time I think this, I am just as happy as the first time.
Outside the museum, workers were installing a stage. When I left the museum, a rock band was playing. Rock music at four in the afternoon?! Of course, I swung by and danced a bit. I longed for a companion to hang out with me, to wait for the evening show, to dance with me.
As always, there are interesting, well-curated shows at the museum.
What experiences might I seek out so that I might feel like I have really experienced San Jose? I always feel like a dullard when I am there. There must be all kinds of things to do besides that art museum. But I don't know what that might be.
There's a jazz festival coming up.
Going to San Jose has filled me with a yen for California adventure. I long to go to a beach. I wonder which beaches are accessible to me on public transport? Ocean beaches, not the bay. The bay is just east of my home; I can get there by talking two miles. I want to stand at the ocean and feel queasy (being beside ocean has always made me queasy; the vastness dizzies). I want to walk on a beach with waves big enough to mist me if I walk close enough. I want to feel vaguely afraid of all that water.
And I want my Katie to come back to me. Whenever I remember that I live in California now, I next remember that Katie does not know where I live.
