Women Without Tangible Filters

The Silver Surfer, Huck Finn and Bilbo (Cas)

2015-03-24T20:43:00.002-07:00

It was 1973 and I was five and I believed I was fully prepared for any encounter life could offer me. I knew this was true because on this particular morning I had not only woken up on time, eaten a hearty breakfast of french toast with peanut butter, washed my hands and face, brushed and braided my hair and scrubbed my teeth all without being prodded, but on this auspicious day my favorite Cubs t-shirt was clean! I put it on with Toughskins, my red Keds and my little league ball cap confident the day would be spectacular. I headed out to kindergarten in the same manner I was accustomed to, my Scooby Doo Mystery Machine lunch box in one hand (with my name on it in permanent marker because it looked just like Toni Erickson’s) and my Silver Surfer backpack over my shoulder. Whatever confidence I felt that morning, would not prove to be adequate weaponry for the battle I meandered naïvely toward.

It was a requirement that I bring a book from home for free reading period which I was more than happy to do. There were books to borrow in the classroom, but I had already read all the Winnie-the-Pooh and Beatrix Potter books that Mrs. Olsen kept. I could, after all, read any book I chose because Grandma and Grandpa had not only taught me to read when I was three, but the past summer they had taught me to use the dictionary. They emphasized how important it was to look up words I didn’t know whenever there were no adults around to ask for definitions. “Definition” was a word that meant the statement of the meaning of a word, phrase, or term. I was truly ready to conquer with knowledge like this in my tiny noggin.

The book I brought on this enlightening day was called Huckleberry Finn and it was written by a man named Mark Twain, but that wasn’t really his name. His name was Samuel Clemens, but this didn’t matter much because I could never meet him or write to him because he was already dead. Grandma told me that. Mark Twain was a term used by people who worked on steamboats and Mr. Clemens had worked on steamboats on the Mississippi River. Grandpa told me that.

The book was very hard because Huck lived a long time ago and talked very differently than people do now. It was also difficult because Huck was older than me and understood things that I couldn’t. I was on chapter two. Within five minutes of the free reading period, I read a word spelled b-e-t-w-i-x-t. I did not know what that word meant. I looked for a dictionary. It was on Mrs. Olsen’s desk. I asked to borrow it. She asked if she might be able to help instead. This seemed reasonable and like her job, so I asked her what “betwixt” meant. She asked to see my book. Then she said she was keeping my book and that I couldn’t read “books like this”. Mrs. Olsen wouldn’t give back my book, either. I know because I tried pulling it out of her hands, but she was bigger than me and this didn’t work. So, I informed her that she was breaking the law and violating my rights. My rights, I knew, had been outlined by a man named Thomas Jefferson in a different book that I had not read yet called the Constitution. I pretended like I had read this book and told her that I was pretty sure she was going to jail because of the Constitution and I got really mad.

Mrs. Olsen sent me to the Principal’s office. This was bad. I had been there once before and he mentioned that it wasn’t good at all for kindergartners to have to talk in his office. He had said that he hoped we wouldn’t have to talk in his office again. I had really hoped so, too, but it didn’t work and there I was. The secretary in the office told me she had already called my mother and that I should sit and wait for her. This was really bad. She had called my mom the last time I was in the Principal’s office for beating up a second grader in my brother’s class because he had called me a “kindergarten baby” (which my brother told him to do) and I beat him up pretty badly (which my brother knew I would) because he wouldn’t say “Uncle” to a girl (which my brother encouraged him not to). I had gotten in a lot of trouble and I was miserable imagining a repeat.

When mom got there she was mad, she had a conversation in the Principal’s office without me and then took my arm and marched us back to my classroom. She asked Mrs. Olsen to speak with her in the hall and to bring my book. Mrs. Olsen told my mother that she believed certain books should not be read ever and that I most certainly shouldn’t be reading the likes of these books without adequate supervision and besides it had way too many words outside my vocabulary level. It was really never a good idea to be confrontational with my mom; she was wicked smart and stunningly quick on her toes with comebacks. In this moment mom paused and glared at Mrs. Olsen. That meant she was going to get mad, but I still wasn’t sure why. Then mom narrowed her eyes and spoke rather quietly, almost slowly, AND APOLOGIZED!! I was stunned, and like Huck a bit clueless. Mom said, “I am sooo sorry. I had quite unforgivably and negligently assumed that you were capable of providing adequate supervision and that like me, you were eager to help my child encounter challenging vocabulary and new relevant ideas. I was utterly and completely mistaken.” Sorry? Mistaken? What was she talking about? What had I done? I was nowhere near as shocked as Mrs. Olsen, she seemed completely out on her feet…from an apology(!!!)…what if mom would have given her a full strength come back? I must be in a great deal of trouble if my mom was apologizing to my teacher. Mrs. Olsen said that I could be assigned to another teacher. Mom said that it was very nice they were on the same page about something and that I had in fact already been assigned to another teacher. Then she said “Good-bye” over Mrs. Olsen trying to say anything else.

We went to the car in silence and after we drove a few blocks I asked if mom was really mad. She said she was furious and that we were going to Grandma and Grandpa’s. The longer she waited to talk, the worse I felt. There generally seemed to be some sort of elusive mathematical equation between how long mom took to be calm enough to talk to me and how much trouble I was actually in. At Grandma and Grandpa’s, mom told me to go sit in the kitchen, the three of them went into the library. Mom was yelling….a lot. So I cried. After a few minutes, Grandma came in and asked what was the matter, why was I crying, had it been a really emotional day? What was she talking about, I wondered, emotional? Well, yeah. Fear of getting in trouble was an emotion alright. I told Grandma I was scared of how much trouble I was in. She laughed and hugged me and said, “Oh Honey, you’re not in trouble, here have some pie.”

It would be a few years before I really understood what had happened, what censorship was and why it was dangerous, and perhaps a few more years before I fully understood sarcasm. Eventually, I got a grasp on all of it. Many years later, I had a child of my own and so we fast forward to last week, 2015. My son is in third grade at what we believe is a pretty progressive school, one we have been really pleased with all through kindergarten to second grade. Third grade in our state is controlled, dominated and fully redirected toward state standardized testing which different schools handle in a variety of ways.

Last week my son came home and told me his teacher told him he couldn’t bring The Hobbit to school for free reading anymore, because he had to read a book from the list. My hair prickled, my teeth clenched and my hands formed fists. I took a breath. “What list?” I asked calmly while suppressing images of book burnings and fascism. “There’s a list of books that have the right vocabulary words for me” he informed me. Okay. Stay calm. This is the 21^st century, we aren’t censoring books, there is a rational explanation and I will get to the bottom of this. He asked what he should do. Nothing, I told him, I’ll talk with the teacher. He wanted to know if he should bring the book tomorrow. I told him that of course, he should.

There was a rational explanation. It turns out a computer has generated a list of books that are recommended for having vocabulary words that will help get kids prepared for the state standardized test, which seems innocuous enough on the surface. The Hobbit isn’t on it for third grade. Or any Tolkien. Fair enough, I would admit Tolkien is well above a third grade reading level. There is no C.S. Lewis, no Phantom Tollbooth, no Roald Dahl, no Spiderwick Chronicles, nothing from Chris D’Lacey’s Dragon Fire series…(yes, there is a trend in his favorite reading taste) I will be completely open, I don’t give a flying rat’s patootie about scores on standardized tests. As a former educator, I can assure you they have no bearing on academic or, more importantly, life skills. Struggling students may test well and gifted students may test poorly, happens all the time. Here is the real dilemma, what are we saying to our children about life, learning and basic joy if they are only allowed to read books that might improve a grade standard test score? Really what is the difference between full-on, backward thinking censorship of ideas and this new “list of grade level vocabulary appropriate books”? I have read the list and there are great books on the list, many my son has already read or might enjoy. My issue is simply that there is a very thin line between actively and with malicious calculation excluding ideas (and people, and cultures) and merely not including them…on the list.

A Sacred Space of Honor (Cas)

2014-03-12T20:54:00.001-07:00

I have been studying the Inka Medicine Wheel for the past year with a dedicated and inspiring tribe. Several months ago we had the honor of hosting a Pampamesayok Shaman from the high Andes of Peru. Q’ero elder, don Juan Gabriel Apaza Lunasco came to Tucson to do ceremony and teachings with our aspiring tribe of Shamans. I was lucky enough to get to share in a short conversation with him through his translator about some of the key differences between our cultures. Don Juan Gabriel speaks a blend of Spanish, Portuguese and Quechua. His traveling companion Caroline, translated for him and for us in turn.

Don Juan Gabriel asked me specifically why I thought Americans were filled with so much self-doubt and mistrust of self and of others. He said the presence of these feelings were not only tangible, but in certain places inhibitive and even oppressive. He wanted to know why these feelings are so prevalent here. I thought for a moment about where does our self-doubt originate and my mind scrolled quickly through my life at every age and the lives of those I know and love. I realized that many of us may not have actively chosen this, but developed it as a defense mechanism.

I replied that from the moment we arrive here we are tested and questioned and required to prove ourselves. Tested as to whether we deserve to be in the right class or on the right team.Constantly asked to prove our credentials, our prerequisites, our heritage, our background, our training, our sources for any shred of information we may possess. We have to acquire the right licenses and permits for nearly everything we do. In the “Land of the Free” nothing is actually free; no one lives anywhere in the U.S. unless they or someone on their behalf has paid for their space, and their food and all the resources they need on a daily basis.

I shared just that much, but my mind continued racing to all number of other ramifications from prolonged exposure to this cultural tendency while Caroline translated my response. I thought about how so few people just sit down together to converse and simply share ideas and observations, instead our meetings, engagements and social interactions all have to have a predescribed purpose or useful function. Or, how when anyone does want to share their vision, they are expected to provide data and accurate predictions for applications and an annotated list of socially acceptable research documents, instead of just purely inspired gifts of the imagination.

Caroline had finished speaking and don Juan Gabriel was replying, looking and talking directly to me and holding my hand. I knew I would need everything translated to me by Caroline, but I really felt that I was already receiving the physical energy of his words and the information in them. I felt a calmness that seemed to have always been calm and I felt a great openness and hopefulness in my heart. I would learn later that much of the Quechua language had this exact sort of--for lack of a better term--musical quality to it… the sound of the words resonated vibrationally with the spirit or meaning of the words. He stopped speaking and Caroline translated, but he continued to look at me and hold my hand while I heard the English version.

He had said that in his home for every generation as far back as anyone could remember, each group of elders had cleared and cleaned all of their own hucha (heavy energies or, by our standards, maybe negative karma) and given it as a gift to the Earth to be composted and returned to balance. Then they had created a reverent space to receive the next generation. They had dreamed and imagined and therefore created a sacred and honored space of hopefulness and expectation to accept the gifts and wisdom and new medicine of the incoming generation with open hearts. With gratitude and with great love, they gather these gifts and integrate them into the community.

We all three smiled at each other, breathed deeply with a sigh that clearly said, “I see” and then laughed for a moment. Don Juan Gabriel thanked me and I thanked him, but it was only a seed he had given me to meditate on for a while. Where here we seem to be saying to each other and our young people, “Prove right now why you think you have any right to be here!!”; the Q’ero are saying, “Here you are, finally, we have waited for all of time just for you to arrive. Thank you for coming, we are deeply honored that you are here!” The vast difference is almost too great to fathom. The impact of how you might respond to the world and how you would feel about yourself and others had you known that kind of acceptance is astounding to even consider. Maybe we could try to just a little. Remind our families that simply their existence is the greatest gift we have ever received. Arrive at a meeting with a friend with no other agenda than pure gratitude for some time to interact with them. Love our children for exactly who they are in this moment, not as what we may think we want them to become. Walk into any situation with an open heart and an open mind waiting to see what gift it will bring. Breathe in deeply and feel yourself belonging, here, in this sacred place of honor.

Slipping filters while shopping, or continuing adventures in (un)awareness

2013-12-26T09:00:00.003-08:00

All of my posts here are carefully edited to present my best self—or at least as good as it gets. On the following occasion, I heard the jewels of my starry crown come crashing to the concrete floor of Costco.

I was rushing through the biggest box store on my own, with just a few items bouncing around in one of their monster carts. I maneuvered to a short check-out lane, pacing a woman pushing her overflowing cart to the same spot. A photo replay could have told which of us had been first, but I was not feeling gracious. I had wedged this last errand into a too-short window before a long-delayed lunchtime. That was an unusual and bad choice for me as I eat like a toddler: a little bit at a time, but all of the time. I aligned my cart a little closer to the conveyor belt to indicate I had reached some invisible marker first. She gave me a sour shake of her head, so I gently nudged the end of her cart with mine to assert my right to precedence. She bumped my cart back and we began snipping at each other. Her husband walked up with a few items to add to her cart—another point against her, by all the holy rules of grocery engagement—and I turned to glare at him. I thought uncharitably that he looked very much like Mr. Toad of Toad Hall and that he and his fishwife made a fine pair. He looked from her to me with a dog-like tilt of his head and raised both hands to pat the air before saying, “Ladies, ladies…” We both glared at him in turn but he smiled gently at us both. She looked down and a warm wave of shame enveloped me. After an uncomfortable moment I said, “I am sorry, this is not who I am, this took way longer than I expected and I am just so hungry. She said, “You know, I get that way, too, that’s why I carry almonds with me. Would you like some?” I said yes and she drew a plastic baggie of nuts from her purse. I cupped my hands to receive them, but she reached over her cart to push six almonds into my mouth, one-by-one with a pause in between while I chewed and swallowed.

Soon after, another lane opened and we had an “After you, Alphonse” exchange before one of us took it. My blood sugar up and my shame firmly pushed down, I watched my adversary-turned-ally finish up first and walk away with her--as it happened--quite lovely husband.

Elemental Travail: Adventures in Chemistry Class

2013-08-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

A friend asked if I could find an article she’d written long ago for our high school newspaper. That led to an evening of nostalgia spent leafing through creased and crumbling issues of “The Talon” and poking around online to track news from the past. It saddened me to find that one of Santa Rita’s superstars, chemistry teacher Mr. W. A. O’Donald, passed away almost a year ago. He was in all ways an excellent teacher and is a significant figure in my academic folklore.

Mr. O’Donald was tall and, in the early ‘70s, balding and filling out a little. He wore a white button-down shirt and a tie every day. Every day he reminded us to read the bulletin board by the door. On the last day of the second semester final he walked over to it and pulled from under a thumbtack the scoring key for the final we were about to take. It had been up there for a month. He would toss small sueded rubber erasers at the daydreamers. He never missed; each time they landed gently on the top of our heads. I would add mine to the line of them waiting on the edge of the demo table and return to my desk in the second row where I sat by alphabetical assignment.

One day I was thoroughly absent while sitting in class and sensed that I’d been asked a direct question. Mr. O’Donald repeated, “What is delta T?” Marc (yes, the same Marc often featured in this blog) saw my blank look and whispered across the aisle, “Change in temperature”. I looked equally vapidly at him. Marc leaned a little more over his desktop and whispered again, louder, “Change in temperature.” Confused and irritated, I turned to look at Marc full face, “WHAT?” Marc laid his forehead on his desk as Mr. O’Donald thanked him ever so insincerely for his help.

I am a wool-gatherer still, but Mr. O’Donald did cure me of one miserable study habit. After announcements one morning early in the year, he handed a beaker of clear, colorless liquid to the student in front of me and directed her to assess it without comment and pass it on. She held the beaker chest high, waved her hand over it and then turned to give it to me. I was always a little stuffy so I raised it close to my nose and took a hearty sniff. I coughed, gasped, choked and teared up, barely managing to set down the ammonia-filled beaker. Mr. O’Donald asked the class, “Anyone else fail to do the homework on the preliminary identification of unknown substances?”

I read assignments after that and tried hard to focus on lectures, but lab-times remained trials to me, Mr. O’Donald and Marc, who for some inexplicable reason had volunteered to be my lab partner. I didn’t blow anything up, but nothing glass made it through the hour. Mr. O’Donald kept a slip with my name on it ready so I could go pay at the bookstore for the latest broken beaker or retort. I never wondered until today why my particular fines had to be settled that very period. Test tubes I got for free, although the time spent sweeping them up from the floor meant I was usually in detention for chronic tardiness to my next class.

The only time Mr. O’Donald edged toward overt frustration was the day I broke the piston burette mounted to the wall of our station. I had run a sponge over the countertop but there wasn’t quite enough room under the burette’s lower spout for both the sponge and the back of my hand. The whole apparatus exploded off the wall. Splinters of glass flew everywhere, fortunately without injuring me or my long-suffering lab partner. My parents were used to the supplies and equipment fines but their reaction to one for $125.00 was fierce. By common consent thereafter I was restricted to observing and writing up lab results.

Similar challenges awaited my U of A chemistry professor three years later, but sadly, he fell far short. This anonymous individual did not have Mr. O’Donald’s rapport, sardonic humor or endurance and so I do not have a bachelor’s of science degree.

A Truly Kinder and Gentler World (Cas)

2013-05-24T20:35:00.001-07:00

My six year old son wants a paper route. The kind my husband and I had when we were kids; getting up early every morning, picking up a delivery of local daily newspapers and rolling them all up individually with rubber bands, hopping on our bikes with our delivery tote bag and tossing newspapers up onto subscribers front porches. There is no need to explain to you just how many of those details are total fantasy now a days. There are not a lot of real papers left to speak of, children go virtually nowhere unsupervised anymore and I am pretty sure OSHA would crack down on kids handling their bikes one-handed while they flung the papers with their other hand or some other thoroughly ridiculous detail of the operation. The world sure was safer and happier when we were kids, right?
        Not to be deterred by any of these insignificant details, my son set about writing his own paper and rolling it up into rings cut from repurposed toilet paper rolls and compiling them into a grocery tote bag so I could walk with him while he rides around the neighborhood delivering to people we know. Sure, why not? It will be a good writing exercise if nothing else. He can “pretend” to get some “real world” skills, I can support that experience. He decides on an afternoon delivery time of which I fully approve and he dives into his work. Paper (from the already used on one side box) and markers in hand he draws boxes around different stories, some have drawings or illustrations meant to represent photos of the news, some have wiggly lines that might represent the content other than the headlines, but most entries are just the headlines. He occasionally asks me to properly spell words for him, but for the most part is working hard and very independently for a long time.

        After several sessions of this style of working, my son sits down at the table where I am working and he has a notepad and a pencil.
“Are you going to interview me for your paper?” I ask.
“No,” he says, “Maybe later. Right now, I was hoping you could tell me some stories from the real news.”
“What do mean “real”?” I ask.
“Well, like the thing Saturday to stop Monsanto from making poisonous food, tell me about that again, for my paper.”
“Okay, GMO Free Project of Tucson is Hosting a March Against Monsanto at 10 am Saturday in Reid Park.”
“GMO’s are terrible poison and so people who don’t want to have to eat them will go to Reid Park on Saturday and rally with what? Like signs or something?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Do you know other news? Do you know what happened in Oklahoma?”
“I do. There was a huge tornado in Oklahoma and a lot of people lost their homes, got really hurt and a lot of people died.”
“So now they need what like, love and some new homes and stuff?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Okay.”

        Back to work he went. Incorporating his new “real news” items into his newspaper. All the while, I am still smugly thinking about the much more charmed and freedom filled life I had as a child and how it is so “nice” that my son gets to “practice” his real world skills in the safety of our own home. Then I got my copy of the paper. Sure enough, a story about the event at Reid Park, “NO GMO’S RALLY AT REID PARK” with a drawing of protestors holding signs, one sign says, “Real Food, thank you” with a smiley face. Another one about the tornado with a drawing of a tornado an upside down car and an upside down house, the headline “A Tornatoe was in Oklahoma, please send them your love, your money and some hope.” There were ads; “Listen to Alice Cooper on the Muppets or the radio” and “Buy Books at Bookman’s or Antigone (drawing of books)”. There were some factoids; “The Cheetah runs 75 miles per hour” and “Second graders at Montessori Schoolhouse are studying Mexico (drawing of a mariachi band)”. There was lots of inspirational ideas and anecdotes; “Plant trees (drawing of trees)”, “Be KIND (drawing of hearts)”, “Learn at School, I did!”, “Adopt Today, Cuddly (drawing of a puppy)”, “Ride a Bike”, “Give Poor People Money, here or in Africa to buy food”, “Summer is coming (drawing of him in a pool)” and “Surprise your kids with popcorn and a DVD like Star Wars”. There was a trivia section querying whether chickens eat cows (they don’t) or if cats are vegetarians (they aren’t). Finally, there was a section on the bottom that said, “Please pay 300 pennies for this paper if you like or do 300 nice things or give even more money to someone who is doing nice things like the Center for Biological Diversity or the Food Bank thank you oh and be happy.”

        He handed me my copy and informed me that mine was free because I am helping him and because I already do lots of nice things. I read his paper and I started thinking about my paper route when I was a kid. I hated it really. Most days it was okay, if the weather wasn’t terrible, but it was Iowa so the weather was usually terrible. I never got to sleep in because even on weekends people wanted their papers before 6. I always got it right onto their porches and people would still complain it wasn’t good enough and short me when it was time to collect payment. People wouldn’t pay; seriously, they wouldn’t answer the door for an 8 year-old paper girl to give her the $3.50 they owed for 6 am porch delivery of the daily paper!! A lot of the people were just plain mean and most days I daydreamed about my nice warm bed and wished I was still in it. Worst of all, I always knew the news!! I started my day with it. Granted, the Sioux City Journal’s headlines in the 70’s were nowhere as bad as what is plastered all over news stations and the internet today, but bad news still got the front page and there was plenty of it. Maybe we weren’t reveling in our freedom and happiness back then, it just sounds more appealing when you retell it.

        Personally, I would much rather read a paper like my son’s everyday. His world really is a kinder and gentler world. He focuses on solutions and cooperation and really believes in kindness and beauty, that’s the kind of freedom I want!

Clueless in the Canyon (Lynn)

2013-05-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

The mosquitoes are back—early this year, it seems. I acknowledge their role in the ecosystem but I am not an eager advocate of their right to reproduce and am always sorry to see their return. At dusk tonight I tossed some ‘natural’ larvacide pellets into our backyard pond and ran back into the house, but not before suffering a retaliatory attack that left me madly scratching my arms and ankles. While dressing my wounds with lavender lotion, I remembered a spring evening about ten years ago when Marc and I had visited the Four Corners National Park. We had enjoyed our day wandering through pit-house ruins and cliff dwellings on the mesa and we looked forward to an evening tour of some thousand-year-old petrogylphs hidden in the Canyon de Chelly. These walks were held nightly in the spring months and were restricted to those in the company of a Navajo guide.

This night’s escort was a frail-seeming, elderly man who met our small group of tourists (all strangers to Marc and me) at the trailhead as the sun set and a full moon rose. He was dressed in a loose, long-sleeved, high-buttoned shirt he’d tucked into his wrinkled, worn jeans that were in turn tucked into loosely tied sneakers. Our guide leaned on a tall wooden walking stick as he introduced himself as “Norman”, gave us a little background about the petroglyphs we were all anxious to see and then quietly assessed our general fitness for the three-mile walk. Almost everyone had suitable footwear, but since the day had been clear, hot and dry, we were all in shorts and most of the women wore tank tops. He mentioned matter-of-factly that although at this elevation there was only an occasional scrub oak and sage bush, the canyon floor was heavily vegetated and that meant mosquitoes would be plentiful and aggressive. Although we were redolent of coconut sunscreen, no one had any insect repellant.

Norman was too self-contained for any overt exasperation. He offered us what he said (with a sideways smile) was an ancient Indian preventative for insect bites. He clipped a few leafy branches from a sage bush with the blade of a jack-knife he’d taken from his pocket. Since I was standing nearest to him, he handed the first, strongly scented branch to me. I rubbed it furiously over my bare arms and legs, thinking the plant’s efficacy must be in its essential oils. Norman watched me in silence for a very… long… time, and then turned to the next person and handed her a branch. She wafted it elegantly about her face and shoulders. Everyone else followed her example. I drifted to the back of the group as we walked down the hillside, deeply grateful for the increasing darkness.

As it happened, I remained bite-free through the tour--if not from the aromatic sage, then no doubt because any mosquito alighting on me would surely have been incinerated from the heat of my flaming embarrassment.

Not Entirely Clueless with a Cellphone: Adventures in Stereotypes (Lynn)

2013-04-27T09:25:00.001-07:00

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It is a truth generally acknowledged that a woman gives directions based on landmarks, but there are many of my sex who give directions in the manly manner. Not for us is the feminine discursive, “It’s just a skosh beyond the big chicken statue by the garage with blue roof.” The figurative approach may be a regional rather than sex-linked trait given the friendly loquacity of rural Midwesterners and Southerners as opposed to laconic New Englanders. Women and men in those locales commonly offer such help as “It is aways yonder just by ol’ Dalton’s place, you’ll see the turn right there by the barn he was always gonna pull down before it fell down.” In either case, I belong to the clan that trusts cardinal directions and reasonably estimated distances will indeed get you there from here. You could plan an invasion with the specificity I provide. Pinpointing our location for the AAA service for a minor roadside emergency last week after my parents' customary survivalist stock-up at Costco and a long morning of doctor’s appointments should have been easy-peasey.

“Was I in a safe location?” AAA rep Nadia asked after two dropped connections on my rudimentary flip phone. Yes, at least the car was. I had left it parked in a roadside pullout at the bottom of the cactus-studded, no doubt rattlesnake-crawling, scrubby, shrubby desert hill that stood between me and a steady cell signal. I was confident that my parents were sitting on the shady side of the car enjoying ice cream from the cooler on the back seat. I was reasonably sure that my 82-year-old father would not wheel his walker to back of his Honda CRV and unload two hundred pounds of dog food, kitty litter and potting soil to access a spare tire none of the three of us could mount.

In years past, the AAA dispatchers knew me immediately by voice because I was frequently on the outside with my keys on the inside of a prudently but prematurely locked car. Since cars have long come with clickers, Nadia and I had to run though the name and number protocol. She assured me help would soon be on its way, just as soon she could tell the tow trucker where we were. Pinpointing our exact location became a Pythonesque contest for points scored as Nadia and I strove toward our common goal.

I opened with “The car is one third of a mile inside the east entrance to Saguaro National Park West. It is on the north side of the road at the first marked pullout in the park.” Nadia responded. “So, you are just east of Old Soldier’s Trail?”

I explained that Saguaro National Park is bisected by the City of Tucson. One half is at the foot of the Rincon Mountains on the east side of the valley. The other half is on the west side of the valley, on the far side of the Tucson Mountains. “We are closer to Picture Rocks, which is a community on the other side of town just west of the west boundary of the westside park.” That was far too many ‘wests’—“Oh! You are just outside of the entrance, near Kinney and Sandario?” “No, that’s on the (inward wince) west side of the park. I’m just inside the east boundary.” There was nothing I could add, there were no distinctive features beside the road dipping and curving below me. There wasn’t much traffic, either, although the few cars passing below me were zipping through the desert as though it were an amusement park. Again I hoped my parents were staying off the road.

A short pause ensued before Nadia said, “Aha! Then you are at Gates Pass on the southeast side entrance.” Oh, damn, I’d forgotten that existed, I hadn’t been there since high school. I said, “We’re on—I mean the car itself is on—Picture Rocks Road, I’m not, I can’t get a signal in the valley, I myself am about 400 yards up a hillside. But Picture Rocks the road is the only one through the monument that goes to Picture Rocks the town. That’s the road we’re on.”

Another silence on the line made me fearful that Nadia was offended by an emphasis misinterpreted as snottiness, but no, the call had been dropped, again. As I walked gingerly around prickly pears casting for a signal, I tried to see through the brush that obscured both the car and the road below. If I didn’t speed things up a bit, my father would inevitably go for the buried spare.

The third call connected and I rushed through the protocol. “Can you get me to Nadia?” A new female voice, Sandra, said, “Ma’am, I have computer captioning of your previous service ticket. I see a tow truck has been dispatched to the Sandario and Kinney intersection. Which quadrant are you on?”

“None of them, we’re not there. We’re on the other side of the park.”

“Are you on Old Soldiers’ Trail?”

“No, no, no, not Saguaro Park East, the east side of Saguaro—wait, wait, forget that, and forget the whole park part.” I took a calming breath. “We are on Picture Rocks Road, about a mile southwest from the Picture Rocks and Ina Road intersection.”

“I see Picture Rocks intersects with Kinney Road.”

“Yes, yes, it does, but we’re about fifteen miles (heaven help me) EAST of that intersection. I'm sorry, I don’t have GPS. Maybe we could just ping my cell phone?”
Sandra said, “Ma’am, that is for serious emergencies only, I’m sure a flat tire does not rise to that level of need. The service rep will certainly find you on Picture Rocks Road. The driver will call you when he is—.” The call dropped for a fourth time.

It was indeed up to him (or her) now. I couldn’t be sure I’d get any call up on the hill any more than down at the road level and my parents had been alone far too long.

As I scudded down the rock channel I’d scurried up, I thought about the limits of language and technology, or just maybe of my ability to use either. I was inclined to blame the technology. I loved my car clicker but had decidedly diminished affection for my flip phone. As I neared the pullout, I saw the CostCo contents neatly stacked by the open tailgate of the CRV. The spare had been changed by a rancher who had pulled off the road because her huge battered pickup had radiator trouble.

The Good Samaritan and I reloaded the boxes and bags and we were soon rolling down Picture Rocks Road. A call from the AAA tow truck driver came in as we exited the park boundary. He had been delayed, but was now approaching the Kinney and Sandario intersection. I thanked him and said all was now well and goodbye. Modern technology eases our lives in myriad ways, but a little mechanical tech in the form of a jack, a four-way tire iron and an old-fashioned neighborly chat had saved this day.

Clueless in the Clinic: Basic English Vocabulary (Lynn)

2013-04-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

After a few sessions in the cancer clinic, friends-and-family become accustomed to the dynamic of the treatment area. It’s like being in any waiting room, except that it is hyper-clean and there are really decent snacks for everyone. Strangers show each other small courtesies, and soon everyone has a sense of community. You know almost instantly who wants to be left alone, who wants to chat, or who truly needs a listener.

But you don’t learn everything all at once.

My father was one of the patients in the recliners this afternoon who were variously reading, resting with eyes closed or outright snoring. The nurses and support staff spoke softly with those who were awake, addressing everyone by name and all the while setting IVs, reading orders, and running through checklists. When a woman two chairs down the row of recliners awoke and said she was cold, the nurse nearest to her--busy with another patient--said she’d be right there, in just a little bit. There were all kinds of wraps everywhere, so I picked up a printed fleece lap-blanket that was hanging over the pony wall to tuck around the chilled patient. An older woman sitting in the corner chair beside her companion who was half-way through her treatment said, “Get her a warm one.” I looked at the target of my intended assistance. She in turn looked sleepily back at me, and then we both silently considered the fleecie in my hands. I thought surely it would be warm enough, the room wasn’t generally chilly, but of course I could have no idea how the drip was affecting her. I put the fleecie back on the wall in search of a better blanket. There was a heavy, crocheted afghan folded on an empty chair so I reached to fluff it up and over her. Mid-stretch, I heard my advisor repeat, this time with just a touch of asperity, “Get her a warm one.” I let the afghan fall short between my hands, looking at it, thinking, “But this would be good, it’s heavy and dense and, well, a little scratchy maybe, but it’d be plenty warm”. Now wishing I’d just attended to my knitting, I heard once again the short, sharp command from the corner, “Get her a warm one! A warm one!”

Fifty-five going on six, I stood in that aisle clutching a heap of unworthy afghan and teared up like a scolded child. My father laughed, saying, “Lynnie, go get one from the cabinet over there”. As I turned to see the gray metal cabinet with top vents and a black electrical cord coiled on its side, the glorious light of comprehension dawned at last. “OH, you mean a WARM one!”

Now I know where they keep the toasty, HEATED blankets.

A Poem for the Ayni Despacho Ceremony (Cas)

2013-03-15T16:22:00.003-07:00

Ayni Despacho Ceremony for
the Healing of the Winds of the Four Directions

During a recent ceremony hosted by the amazing Shaman Women Healers at the Harmony Hut, I extracted statements and intentions about each of the elements included in the gift mandalas the group was creating and I commemorated the event in this poem.

Ayni Despacho Ceremony for the Healing of the Winds of the Four Directions

This pulsing vein of creation

that began as only a vision of our Ancestors

and now is strong enough,

palpable enough

to root us solidly to the core of the Earth,

to make us whole and substantial,

vital

anchored equally to the tangible and the intangible

inviting us to become authentic

by realizing our imagination

and the pure intention we invest into it

will one day be our Descendants

and all the parameters of their world.

Honoring the power and potential

of that divine vision and hopefulness

Hope becoming source and sustenance,

the seed of transformation,

Transmutation from energy forms

from luminous beings

to pure Love and Light.

Mountains of Joy, Prosperity, Abundance.

Mountains of Beauty, Inspiration, and Balance

abounding elevating purifying

and blessing our existence as

this momentary indulgence

the Universe playing a human game

being Sun fed, warm Earth cradled, loved.

Recognizing the equality of all beings

as sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers,

blessed children and sacred grandparents,

teachers, lovers, angelic guardians.

Blessed by all the sweetness

by the mere essences that are truly all sustaining

by sharing and generosity

we gratefully experience excess

gratitude creating

healing and health

by giving love

creating belovedness

feeding the Earth that feeds us.

The path up the majestic Mountains

an Invitation

ascending to the peaks of wisdom

to our highest selves and our highest good.

Honoring rhythm and change

we are movement, we are the dance and

we are the chaos

in pure beauty and

intoxication with divine Earthly bounty,

benevolence and Love, Love, Love.

In wild abandon and gyration

into Energy, expanding and multiplying.

By honoring source, by gratefully accepting

the unlimited variety offered to earth’s children

dwelling on the nurturing belly

of the valley basin encircled by Guardian Mountains,

shaded, watered, fed and washed

by sacred voices in the clouds,

warmed and energized by Father Sun,

dreamt and foretold by Goddess Moon,

here now, breathing, thankful

accepting responsibility

Inspiring our own Words into Dreams,

Ideas into Reality,

Imagination into Blessed Wholeness,

This Gift for our Descendants

Shamanic Bat Journey (by Cas)

2012-10-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

image from ucsantacruz.ucnrs.org

One of the big attractions to living in the southwest is definitely the spirit of the place. That spirit energy draws all kinds of beings to Tucson. The mixing, melding, merging and mingling of many viewpoints, cultures and lifestyles is the bounty of the Naked Pueblo. I love being able to go to the opera one night and an All-Souls puppet making workshop the next. Being able to attend a Noam Chomsky lecture at the U and being able participate in a Despacho Ceremony for the winds of the four directions of Tucson. Tucson is a rich combination that appeals to the high intellect and to the profoundly spiritual. What better way to experience both than a shamanic journey with 45,000 Mexican Free-Tailed Bats?

On the one hand you have one of the biggest colonies of Tadarida brasiliensis, who, according to Wikipedia, “are about 9 cm (3.5 in) in length, and they weigh about 12.3 g (0.43 oz). Their tails make up almost half their lengths. Their ears are wide and set apart to help them find prey with echolocation.” What kind of prey? On a nightly basis they eat pounds of moths, beetles, mosquitoes, flies, wasps, and ants. Pounds of them!! Not to mention spreading pollen. Tons of desert cacti and succulents depend on them. If you enjoy rum or tequila, thank the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat for pollinating the sugar cane and the agave!! Now, let’s add to that the fact that Shamanically Bats represent rebirth, intuition, dreaming and vision. Bat spirits are capable of imparting to you great gifts including; the ability to see through illusion, create true community, transformation and prophecy!! All this AND they are MAMMALS THAT FLY!!! Bring on the Bat Journey!!

We gathered together about an hour before sunset at the walking bridge on the Rillito River near River and Campbell to meet up with Alyson Greene, who envisioned, created, offered and guided this journey. (Here’s a link to her account of our evening…http://shamanacircle.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/sacred-nature-adventures-beauty-bats-and-blue-lotus-tea/ ) A group of a dozen of us then walked down into the wash north of the bridge and settled ourselves comfortably on the sand. We formed a circle, shared sage and essential oils to open ourselves to the spirit of the bats. We took a short consciousness journey together to connect with our guides and receive some clarity about our adventure. After we checked in with each other we then made ourselves extremely comfortable, most of us lying down on our backs on blankets spread over the sand to begin journeying with our eyes open, Alyson’s drumming and wave after wave of thousands of bats waking up and heading out to hunt and pollinate for the night.

Whenever I have journeyed, the beginning of the experience is always a battle with my cognizant self that starts questioning, “How do you know this is real?” If I engage that thought with possible replies like; “How do we know if anything is real?”, “What is “real”?”, “Maybe I did too many drugs twenty years ago and this is all residually enhanced.” or “How do you prove experiential knowledge?”… (you get the idea)…then I inevitably miss relevant portions of the journey. I have learned, gratefully, to simply reply to my own negative thoughts with, “This is my reality…here…now” and quiet that distraction as quickly as possible. This mental exchange occurred as the bats activity began to intensify and spirit gifted me with another musing, “If animals could speak to us, would we understand anything they had to say?” and so I listened. Watched and listened.

Prior to the journey experience itself, I brushed up on my scientific bat knowledge a little. I was mostly interested in learning about echolocation and how different bats ears are from ours. The one piece of information that really stuck with me was that our ears are actually pretty similar; some humans can even use a form of echolocation, but that the sound that bats emit as their echolocation beacon is not detectable to human ears. Wait what? Not detectable? Nearly the first thing I think of in regards to bats is that distinctly bat sound, you know the sort of clicking almost electrically kinetic chirp clicking noise that is BATS. Turns out that their actual echolocation noise is at such a high frequency that humans and even most dogs can not hear it. But we hear bats, right? So what are we hearing? I listened, I watched and I listened. They are talking! Like any other communal mammal they were communicating with each other. The more intensely I focused, the more visual the connections between the bats became. Mostly they were webbed together by intricate lacings of pale green glowing lines which were easiest to see directly above us and harder to maintain visually if I followed the bats movement into the sunset. Every once in a while one of these lines would grow thinner and thinner almost as if it was being stretched and then it would quickly glow a bright pink and the two bats at either end of the pink line would move closer together, remedying something between their connection.

As I mused on the nature of what these various connections might mean, I was graced with visits of spirits very dear to me. Some of whom, I have only ever known as spirits and others of whom I have known in various states of existence. In a communal way, they had very clear messages for me. Some simply by their presence reminding me of all of the astounding transformations of which we are truly capable. Others spoke directly to me about very specific fears I am currently facing and very specific paths to overcoming those fears. Some named individuals who are willing and ready to work with me and some illustrated resources that I already have in abundance and have been neglecting to recognize on my own. Seems a lot like creating community, breaking down illusions and aiding in transformation…did the bats do this? AND THEN A BAT LANDED ON MY BELLY!!! The bat seemed to weigh nothing, adjusted its wings, twitched its little head and was gone again. Yeah, that happened. I glanced at how really close to us a lot of the bats were coming, several more came extremely close to me, but the one who had landed on my belly really defined the entire experience for me. I was entranced and deeply charmed and saturated with gratitude.

The experience continued, Alyson drummed on, others were still journeying, but I was content. I watched with complete admiration and joy, relaxed and at peace. I appreciated how mammalian these bats remained in flight, flying a bit kinetically like I imagine I would when I dream of flying. I turned my head more often and watched how the thick black cloud of bats faded and diminished and were ultimately absorbed in the glowing red light of the sunset. Individual bats moving together becoming one mass and then becoming part of the horizon of it all. Every once in a while we are given a little glimpse of the big picture and this time I had bats to thank for it, as if I wasn’t already infinitely indebted to them for their assistance in tequila creation!!

Adventures in Culinary Alternatives...

2012-10-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

I had talked a few months ago to a friend who uses a common, regulated medicinal herb for chemo pain relief about its possible use as an alternative to the narcotics that my husband, Marc, takes for chronic pain. My friend offered some of his supply for a trial, although he had nothing to suggest about how to use it other than by inhalation. That is not an option for Marc because his illnesses already affect his respiratory system. My friend nonetheless kindly gifted me with about half an ounce of loose, tiny leaves, all wrapped up in a white paper towel and then again in a beat-up plastic baggie. I put the baggie in my purse and drove straight home, feeling at once culpable, vulnerable and empowered.

When I got home that afternoon, I told Marc about my proposed experiment and laid the baggie on the bar in the kitchen. Marc said nothing at first, and I saw expressions of incredulity, censure, wry gratitude, and finally, curiosity cross his face. Neither one of us was terribly well informed, although years ago I had held a similar baggie briefly in my hand after picking it up from the lavatory shelf in the U of A women’s room. Before I could determine what it was, a coed had burst into the room, grabbed the baggie and darted back through the door as it swung.

After staring at the small packet on the kitchen counter for a while, we engaged in a lengthy, wide-ranging debate, one that is obvious and no doubt universal among those seeking alternative medicines. At last we decided to leave all options open for a while (including just throwing it out) and I stowed the baggie deep in the tea cupboard, with half a grin for that small joke.

Weeks passed, and although several chances arose where we could have run the trial, the herb was still not in a usable form. Each time, Marc took the usual narcotic, and I felt bad each time about my failure to follow through. True, I’d come home with the product; done some initial research (finding out that in addition to steeping tea, one could also could brew a beer, but baked goods were best because fat was the most efficient processor of the therapeutic ingredient), and I’d think about it periodically before getting distracted by something. I have a habit of beginning but never finishing a project, but in this instance, I’d faltered partly because I’d read that the effect is slow to manifest and the potency difficult to measure. On a recent, particularly bad pain-day, I finally took action, deciding that I would prepare something called “bud butter” to have on hand. Spreading that on cinnamon toast might be the best option: it was lower calorie than brownies, and easy for Marc to prepare if I was not at home.

While Marc was sleeping, I put a pound of butter in a pot on the back burner of the stove to melt, and rummaged through the cupboard looking for the plastic baggie. In my kitchen, everything once opened gets transferred into one size of zip-lock bag or another before I toss it in the pantry. Now I pulled out a small (unlabelled, but then nothing ever is) baggie of loose leaves wrapped in white paper and poured it into the blender to grind up and add to the butter as the Internet recipe directed. The recipe said to simmer for twenty minutes, until the butter turned green. This particular pot of butter was a red-gold brown and I wondered if I'd let it go stale. Perhaps it was a different variety. In any case, it smelled heavenly—slightly spicy and not at all cloying, as had been the hazy atmosphere of the rock concerts we’d attended years ago or of the annual open-air blues festivals at Reid Park. Marc, awakened from his nap, came into the kitchen. After one or two hearty sniffs he asked why was I making apricot decaf on the stove rather than steeping it in the electric teakettle.

Somehow that misstep soured me on the whole endeavor, and this project joined the myriad others left undone. I do have fruit-flavored butter for coffee cake that I might make soon, but the other ingredient has been returned to my friend. I’m sure I returned the proper baggie. There are no others, labeled or not, in that cupboard now. None at all.

Benevist Tribe

2012-07-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

“With whom do you believe your lot is cast?”

~ Adrienne Cecile Rich, May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012

When I was an undergraduate, I wrote my senior thesis on Adrienne Rich. Back in those days very few people had computers and very few of those had internet. So, I went to the library and read books for my research. With little expectation of reply, and on the advisement of the head of my department, I also wrote Adrienne Rich a letter. On paper, with a pen, that I mailed, in an envelope with a stamp. I explained how much I loved her work, that I was writing a research thesis and I asked her a few questions. She replied. She answered my questions, was intrigued by my thesis and agreed to correspond during the semester to help with my research. In all, I received six letters from Adrienne Rich. I cherished them all, but the final one was a trophy. I sent her a copy of the finished paper and she sent me back a rave review including the statement that was really the jewel in the crown….”I have rarely read an analysis of my own work that prompted me to look at my motives or techniques in a new way. Everything you wrote was true, it is all there. The beauty of great art is what you can find in it with the right set of eyes.” Now, I’m not an idiot; I know as a teacher myself that she was trying to be encouraging to a young writer, but that really didn’t diminish it for me in any way.

“With whom do you believe your lot is cast?” became my personal koan. When Adrienne Rich asks this question, answering it implies that I am in fact of a kind. Throughout my twenties, there were plenty of days that the belief I was of a kind was really all I needed. Knowing that I was not without peers…somewhere, even if I hadn’t met them all. Sure there are still questions. Does my kind leave or stay, fear or triumph, love, change, believe? The certainty was only that there were others like me and that we are named together. I set about finding those answers. I found quickly that people were eager to “help” me define/marginalize myself.

“You graduated Summa Cum Laude? So you’re one of those brainiacs.”

“You’re a vegetarian? So you’re one of those grass eaters?”

“You’re a research educator for Environmental groups? So you’re one of those tree huggers?”

“You’re a feminist? So you hate men?”

“You’re an artist? So you’re crazy?”

It is quite strange really how even when we hear these societal labels and know that they are inaccurate; we are still curiously intrigued by the groups that embrace these epithets. In a kind of no-I’m-not-a-dirty-hippie-but-I-would-still-rather-hang-out-with-them-than-YOU way. So I spent a decade or so exploring all these things that society told me I was. It went okay. On this circumvented path I did in fact meet many of my true kind. People who I love and cherish to this day. My tribe. Not necessarily the people I was born closest to, but those I was destined to know. Then somewhere in my thirties I quit searching and started rooting. Or as my mom explained it to me, “Somewhere in your thirties you get to stop apologizing to everyone for who you are, because I guess they figure out that you have been this way for this long it’s probably not a phase.”

Rooting for me was literal and figurative. I actually set about putting things with roots into the ground and I began to look for ways to make the lives closest to me better. I did less to work on national issues and more to work on local issues. I realized at some point that anywhere you were, there are likely to be problems. You can complain, leave or start working to fix things. I work hard within my family and my community to live simply and sustainably, but many days I still feel like those of us who care about the health of the planet, the beings on our planet and our fragile ecosystem on the planet are fighting insurmountable forces of destruction. If we continue playing by the rules of the existing paradigm we will fail, exhausted by quenching the fires and solving the problems other people have started.

A good novel or a good koan is something you revisit at various stages in your life. Rich herself revisited this line in some of her later poems. Different seasons in life generate different responses to the line. I am 44 now and only recently I am drawn to recognize an optimism in the statement that is inherent, basic, and yet I overlooked it in the past. “With whom do you believe your lot is cast?” My belief. My choice. My destiny to shape and form as I see fit. Okay, okay, my lot is cast, but I decide with whom!! On a really optimistic day, maybe I even decide the parameters and boundaries that shape everything about my existence.

For example, do I want to continue to live in a world that doesn’t even have a vocabulary word for the concept of living non-violently? Do I instead want to give away all the power of my personal intentions and just use a phrase that makes me utter into existence that exact opposite of my intentions every time I say it? Come on…”non-violence” is close enough, right? It is okay if we accept a world that can’t even define our dreams, let alone envision them as reality…right? No. It is not right and it is not okay. I decide with whom my lot is cast and we will name ourselves.

This word is going global… Benevism! Benevism (benivzm), [noun, from OE. b‹oeacu›n, bén, cogn. with ON. bón, bœn (Sw., Da. bön):—OTeut. *bôni-z; perh. from root ba- ‘cry’]. Def: doing good works, acting in a manner that benefits and promotes the health and well being of others, blessed action.

So… creating the world we want instead of having our energy taken from us combating the world we don't want. Focusing thoughts and actions toward doing good for others, for the planet and for future generations. Adrienne, I believe my lot is cast with Benevists… and I am not a tribe of one.

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-change/

Highway to Hell

2012-07-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Highway to Hell

“I’m on the highway to hell/

No stop signs, speed limit/

Nobody’s gonna slow me down…”

I recently moved from Tucson, AZ to Felton, CA, and now live with two friends, a cat and two snakes in the middle of a redwood forest near the ocean. I found a job as a nanny nearly right away, but the family that I fell in love with requires quite the commute. I drive from Felton (which is near Santa Cruz) to Menlo Park (which is 45 minutes inland from San Francisco). For those of you, who haven’t driven that, it is an hour of driving, without rush hour traffic, which is exactly when I make this hellish pilgrimage, dreaming of the lack of idiots when I reach my Holy Land, the Place of Toilets and Coffeemakers.

When driving in Tucson, I rarely viewed the level of idiocy in my fellow drivers as I do here in the sunny California. Sure, there were the jerks who cut people off, the thoughtless people who drove too fast, and the old people who drove 15 miles below the speed limit and should have had their licenses taken away twenty years ago. You would see the hippies who don’t seem to know the laws of the road, and the teenagers driving recklessly to the mall, high on newfound privileges. Before leaving Tucson, I was the driver who was a little distracted; admittedly, I have received a photo radar ticket with a picture of myself, speeding whilst talking on the phone. (I do not talk or text while driving now: BIIIIIIIG ticket for that in CA.) Honestly, I’m still a little bit of a distractible driver, moving and driving more frequently hasn’t really changed that, though I do make an effort.

In California there are these varying driver types, but…times a billion. Somehow, putting these people in Lamborghinis and giving them a freeway with a 65 mph speed limit makes them catch a bad case of road rage with a symptomatic lead foot. And with a speed limit of 65, that means you can go 90 mph, right? At first I was appalled, and then vowed to be the superior driver, safely staying in the left lane with the semi-trucks and smart people who follow the speed limit and are terrified of missing their exit.

Slowly but surely though, through various circumstances, mostly sleeping in and running late to work, I began to speed. I only went five over at first, rationalizing that no police officer would pull me over for five miles over if there were Camaros going 90. Now I max out at 15 over on stretches of road I know there won’t be any cops, and that’s only because I’m not sure my old beater can go any faster. Then came the first mild cases of road rage. I would only mutter enraged comments and glare, quelling full out shouting and the urge to flip them off, trying to stay the better person; desperately clinging to my superiority and dignity. This suppression of my true feelings rapidly diminished and then altogether disappeared, culminating with me speeding down my single lane neighborhood street at 10 p.m., narrowly avoiding an elderly couple walking their dog. I was blasting music with the windows down, and as I braked, I hit my maximum road rage potential. Forgetting my windows were down, I shouted, “Why are you f***ing walking your dog at 10 o’clock at night?” I immediately realized what I had done, and was completely and utterly ashamed of my actions: it was official, despite my embarrassment, I had risen to maximum Lamborghini-level road rage, and I could only hope for redemption for my vehicular sins. Despite my horror, I have only become guiltier. I have now topped my previous road rage shenanigans: I have officially raced an old lady on the freeway.

What’s interesting is, despite driving with thousands of people down highway 17, and thousands more on freeways 85 and 280, I occasionally see the same cars whose commute seems to match mine. I see the Prius with the R2D2 keychain hanging off the bumper; the blue car with the TARDIS license plate, and the same semi truck that always almost plows me into smithereens when I merge onto 280. There is one more car, however, that I see consistently on the 280, right before I exit into Menlo Park: the gold Jaguar. (I like to say Jaguar like Benedict Cumberbatch says it in the British commercial: “Jag-u-ar;” it seems so…British, I guess. So sue me, I’m an anglophile. Here’s the link if you want to listen to pure liquid sex. Best. Voice. Ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWMTMjzaik )

The gold Jag-u-ar is driven by possibly the most fancy, stiff, cream-of-society elderly woman, whose up-do is coiffed perfectly in a swirl atop her head so delicately it looks like pure white cotton candy. Her lips are precisely coated with bright red lipstick that manages to look elegant instead of trashy. She wears a giant necklace of pearls everyday and it looks classy and 1950s instead of goofy like it would look on us if we tried for that look. I can only imagine what the rest of her outfit looks like. Probably wonderfully 1950s retro, all powder blue jackets and matching skirts that look professional and feminine at the same time. There is always a tasteful broach on her lapel. She does not know what a wrinkle is. (Yes, I have swerved while staring at this perfect woman. She defies reality.) I have seen this woman 5 times on the 280. And there is one imperfection that drives me into a frothing rage: she is a HORRENDOUS driver. She is, unfortunately one of many amongst the elderly population who should have to take the driver’s test again down at the DMV. I don’t know if she’s just used to having a professional driver and she only drives to work when her driver has the day off, but she is AWFUL. I often get stuck behind her in the lane right before our mutual exit, and she starts out going the speed limit and slowly works her way to 70, the 75, aaaaaannnd suddenly we’re at 85. Then, it’s like she notices how fast she’s going and places her leaden foot on the brake, slowing down to 55 mph. That’s ten miles below the posted speed limit. On a freeway. IN CALIFORNIA.

Dear Reader, if you don’t hate me already, then surely you see my point of view? Surely there are those amongst you who run late to work regularly and despise getting stuck behind slow drivers, even if they are intimidating and highly fashionable matriarchs of society? It’s about then, when I am stuck going ten to fifteen mph below the speed limit that I decide to change lanes and speed up to the posted limit to get around her. But then, and I swear on all that is holy, it’s like she sees my banged up little Subaru sneaking around her and she can’t have my little POS car get in front of her gold Jag-u-ar AND SO SHE SPEEDS UP TO 90 MPH. 90 mph!!! She went from 55 to 90 mph so as to not have my car cut in front of her pretentious golden Jag-u-ar. So, in a valiant attempt to remain a solid law-abiding member of society, I swallow my rage and get back in line behind her, patiently speeding up and slowly down as her highness pleases.

Nope. This is false. I did not do this. Honestly, after living in California for a mere seven months, this course of action does not even occur to me. I am livid with rage and there is a red haze of fury obscuring my vision (and ethics). I speed up to 95 mph, nearly merge into a semi, and zip around through two lanes of traffic, finally sneaking in at the very last second to merge riiiiight in front of dear Mrs. Jag-u-ar. I am absolutely giddy with success. Landing a job almost right away when I move to California doesn’t hold a candle to cutting in front of this woman right as we get off on the same single lane exit into Menlo Park.

Is this enough? Have I won at this point? Has it gone far enough? Does my sense of right and wrong, and safety that my mother instilled in me from a very young age kick in? Do I listen to the rational internal voice lecturing me on social morals (that sounds suspiciously like Julie Andrews), telling me to stop being a complete bitch?

The answer is no. My victory is not complete without giving her a taste of her own medicine. My one concession is that I do not break the law while doing so. I make sure that, for the whole fifteen minutes we are on this single lane road, she is stuck behind my busted up, muddy, scratched, bent bumper that has black duct tape holding the rear headlight in. Not only is her beautiful Jag-u-ar stuck behind my ass, but I am very carefully going precisely 10 under the speed limit. (I am able to do this without too much question because we are in a school zone, even though no children are present.) My success is made even more sweet when the one lane road, that usually turns into a two lane road, has road work and remains a one lane road for considerably longer than I had anticipated. Glancing at the clock and seeing my 10:00 a.m. deadline for arrival rapidly approaching, I took pity on the cars stuck behind my prey and I very carefully adjusted my speed to a mere five miles below the speed limit. When the roadway finally allows her to go her own way, and I turn down a neighborhood street to my job, she speeds up and roars towards her destination, no doubt filled with a similar seething ire I had been feeling at the beginning of this regrettable escapade.

As I arrive at work, and finish my coffee, I feel a tinge of remorse. I did cause a great many people to go agonizingly slow just so I could terrorize an elderly woman. But this twinge is overwhelmed and drowned by my satisfaction. I won! And, because of this, perhaps you will dislike me, or condemn me, or even feel the need to tell me the error of my ways, hoping to enlighten me, or…geez. I don’t know. I feel a little bad, honestly, I do. Maybe I am a horrible person, and maybe California is a cesspool of aggressive, mean, brutal drivers with no regards for kindness or safety. I won’t defend myself. I am guilty.

I’ve seen this woman a few other times, and I make sure to stay out of her way, just glancing to confirm that the gold Jag-u-ar is spotless and she is as perfectly coiffed as the day I saw her first. I hope she gets to her destination safely, and that maybe someone criticizes her driving habits in a constructive way. Or maybe she should just hire a driver that never takes the day off.

Do you know what I mean, or the return of the gesticulation

2012-06-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

I attended an art opening recently, meeting people I hadn’t seen in decades. The sponsor, who had been my high school drama teacher, greeted me with a warm smile. As we chatted, she asserted that I hadn’t changed at all. Not a bit. At all. At first I was dismayed, thinking that my tailored knit ensemble and understated jewelry had failed to redefine an awkward teenager as a sophisticated gallery-goer unlikely to topple the statuary. I mumbled something I couldn’t hear over an inner voice clamoring, “Oh my God, tell me you’re kidding!” and launched into an anecdote illustrated with a thorough and varied assortment of gestures, hoping that I was communicating just how much her tutelage had meant to me. In the late hours back at home, I realized that my over-enthusiastic display had surely fueled her assertion that I remained as I had been decades before.

I have always relied more on gesture than on speaking, as if communicating a request for the salt across the table depended on the frantic illustration of a lunatic mime. Even as recently as last night, I dipped my hand in a bowl of red salsa as I was describing a poster I’d seen to my dinner companion. This habit of out-sized gesturing is of such long standing that a Humanities professor once clasped my hands between his, saying, “Now talk” and when I was struck dumb, laughed, released them and added, “Hmm. I just wanted to see if you could. Guess not.” I felt a certain vindication in later years when an emphasis on gesture was promoted as a key strategy for teaching English as a second language. My gesticulations, bobbing and dancing around through years of teaching seemed to keep my elementary students’ attention, although they may have been placing bets on how soon and with which piece of classroom furniture I was most likely to collide.

One would think that such a dependence on kinesics would have made me a better student-actress in high school than I was. Our early training was in mime, and I began to shape objects in the air even in casual conversation. I prefer to characterize my over-the top moments onstage as a soul-deep desire to get my point across rather than a bone-deep klutziness. I was the Blue Fairy who leapt for the papier mache tree trunk near the footlights as part of a musical number in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream and toppled it and myself into the front row of the audience. In another play I was a burglar hoping to avoid capture by jumping head-first into a large barrel that I did not see had been placed too far upstage. When I vaulted in it, the barrel tipped over and wedged itself between the back wall and the stage risers with me thrashing around inside it. A third time, I was prancing off stage as the Mother Bear of the Goldilocks trio and bounced off a pillar in the wings. Our teacher-director was impressed that I stayed in character as I plopped down on my backside to the cement floor, still Mama Bear wringing her hands under her chin.

A few years later my love of the communicative arts re-emerged in my teaching. Students love stories, and over the years I’ve taken a few workshops to refine my skills. One of these gave me just a taste of pure glory. It was held at a mid-town hotel. There, in a banquet room adjacent to the bustling dining area, a staff member from the Arizona Theatre Company was using Alvin Schwartz's “Tales to Tell in the Dark” to play theatre games with the Tucson Tellers of Tales group. In one of the sessions, a small group was to mime the events of a story told by a single narrator. My character was the vengeful victim of a bully who’d died the week before. Not satisfied with just seeing him buried, I went to the graveyard on a pitch black night with the wind rising and the trees flailing (other gamers surrounding me, moaning and waving their arms about). I kneeled on his grave, working up the nerve to stab through the mounded dirt to ensure that my tormentor was truly dead and I was finally free. I looked up to see my fellow work-shoppers encircling me, drawing closer, moaning louder, reaching in and pulling away. I was so lost in the story that after plunging my butter knife deep into the pillow on the carpet (I was supposed to mime catching my coattail under the knife and so believe that the dead bully was pulling me down to join him), I dropped to the floor wailing in terror. The wailing tree spirits went silent. The lunch-time traffic in the restaurant across the hall stopped dead. The restaurant manager came in to have a word with the director. The clatter and bustle next door slowly resumed, and the workshop participants drifted back to their seats.

I got up feeling sheepish and in a secret way, just a little satisfied. Ah, the power of the perfect marriage of motion and emotion. Surely you see what I mean.

Clueless in the kitchen, or adventures in food service

2012-06-02T15:50:00.003-07:00

At home, a clean, well-lighted place

I have been maneuvering through daily life one-handed for the past three weeks after washing a wine glass in too big a hurry. This brings to mind similar accommodations after my mishaps long ago in restaurant kitchens. There were cuts and punctures (by which I discovered your living bones are actually pale green), burns or scalds (as on the eve of my wedding) and electrical fires (just two, but one was truly spectacular, with orange flames rising behind a chest-high bank of drawer-like ovens and bursts of sparks reflecting off steel-paneled walls).

Commercial kitchens are all straight-lined, right-angled steel and tile and the managers of those in schools and hospitals take the health inspections seriously. Early in my days as a part time galley slave I discovered that some retail restaurants can be vastly more casual about them. The two cafeterias I worked at while still in school were hygienic opposites. My mother was the kitchen manager of the one, and held herself, me and the entire staff to an “eat off the floor” standard of cleanliness. I doubt that eating from any surface at the other location was a truly prudent choice.

I was unsettled by the state of that kitchen from the moment I walked through it to reach the closet-like office in the back. There was standing water in the pock-marked concrete floor. Water bugs scurried ahead of me to dark corners where, I found out later, they hung out with the rats--all of whom had been given names. Every counter I saw was sticky, every cook’s apron was stained and smeared. The interview with the heavy-set, balding manager was brief (“You’re tuberculosis tested? You’ve had a tetanus booster recently?”) and paperwork for a transfer completed. Whatever misgivings I had, economic expediency meant that come August when my sophomore semester at the U of A began and we were newly installed in married student housing, I needed to transfer to this more conveniently located branch. Doing so meant I could maintain my latest promotion (from line-server to 3rd cook!) together with its nickel raise past minimum wage, I could get there on a Suntran bus, and perhaps I would not be the only new employee. From the look of the place, no doubt a whole new crew was being hired.

Although I’d taken the bus home from the dorm every Friday afternoon during my freshman year, I was anxious about riding the bus four miles one way after a one mile walk from married student housing to the bus stop three nights a week. As it happened, the commutes to what I later named the E. Coli Kitchen were uneventful. The adventures were all onsite.

Patrons were fewer, generally older, and obviously poorer than the clientele I’d known. The older staff greeted their regulars with a fierce, defensive recognition of their common struggle to make do and get by. In a mix of compassion and carelessness, they combined questionable leftovers into menu items unsanctioned by the out-of-state corporate officials and offered these at lower prices. I could not reconcile this rough friendliness in the front of the house with their unconcern for anyone’s immune system in the back. I hoped that no one lingered over their meals. The safest course was to eat while the food was still well above the 140 degrees that inhibits pathogens.

The cooks’ intent was patently kind and I cannot say these plats du jour were inherently unwholesome, but their preparation was alarming. The cooks stopped short of actually smoking while handling the food, but any soup seasoned with fire-purified ash would have been safer than the one made with vegetables taken from the tub stored in the walk-in refrigerator under seeping boxes of raw chicken. As third cook it was my duty to keep that cold box clean, and that first night I wondered how long just ago my predecessor had been fired—or had quit.

My matter-of-fact re-organizing and scrubbing of the walk-in seemed to please the head cook. Trouble was, I was only there from Friday to Sunday. When I walked in for my second weekend shift, she jerked her chin over her shoulder toward the walk-in from where she sat on a milk crate in the back doorway, saying, “Hey, Miss College, grab a rag and get to. It’s been waiting for you all week.” Now I wondered how and with what the health inspector was being paid off. It couldn’t have been free meals.

Every Friday night for six weeks, I closed my eyes to the pervasive dirt, grease, and spills in the kitchen. The soured, always matted floor drains were harder to ignore. The walk-in, as foul as it was, became both my duty and refuge. Hiding out in there meant I could avoid inadvertent comparisons to my mother’s kitchen that might land me in even more unpleasant cleanup. It helped, too, that the particular dank odors of the cold box were subdued in the still, cold air, that 40 degrees is not all that cold, and that the freakish metabolism of a nineteen-year-old allowed me to stay there for a long time.

On my last night, I spent most of my shift in the walk-in as usual. I threw out the latest round of unidentifiable fermenting objects. I sorted the remaining pans and used a big black Sharpie to label them with their contents and the date after first sealing them in fresh, tight plastic wrap. I wiped down each rack after first peeling away the thin but perversely elastic layers of congealed sauce that stretched from rod to rod of the open shelving. I scrubbed the crusted floor so that it could actually be seen to be tiled, although the grout remained black. At length, I scooted the scrub-bucket of bleach and detergent through the doorway toward the pot station and pushed my hip against the heavy door to close it. The door latched to with a satisfying click as I leaned back on it. While resting there I saw a giggling, shrieking line-girl run past me, followed three steps behind by a maniacal pot-boy swinging a drowned rat (Fred?) by the tail.

I walked slowly to the office, where I set down my apron on the manager’s desk. He raised an eyebrow, saying, “Couldn’t take it anymore, hunh?” I mumbled something pleasantly innocuous, but I recognized a strange new emotion as I made my way through the parking lot to the bus stop. I could not remember feeling contempt for another living person before.

Loving Greta

2012-04-04T22:51:00.001-07:00

Spring and all of her lovely rituals are upon us. At our little adobe abode that means planting seedlings, adopting desert tortoises, weeding, renovating the chicken coop and thinking about new baby chickens. It is impossible for me to look at little pullets and not remember how all this chicken keeping began…

Loving Greta

The first time I walked into Sunny’s yard to meet my charges, I thought of you, “You’re bigger than I had expected.” Chickens had apparently shrunk in my memories of farms in Iowa. I didn’t realize when I thought that, how much bigger you were than expected. We took you home, we made you comfortable, we started watching you like children at a circus, and then I fell in love with you. With chickens. With all three of you, but mostly with you, Greta.

The day I gave you dried apricots because they were one of my favorite treats and I wanted to be generous, you responded to my generosity by promptly burying the apricots. Enough said. Your message seemed clear; we were much different than I had naively assumed. You were a chicken and you did not care for the things I cared for. The next day I watched you dig them back up and gobble down your now ant covered treat. Enjoying them far more than I ever could. That was the day I fell in love with you. The day I realized that you had so much more to teach me than a television or a newspaper and that I should spend my morning cup watching you.

I learned your voices and your personalities and your spirits. When we brought new smaller chickens home; I watched Betty intimidate them and keep them corralled, I watched Rita pick on them to maintain the all important pecking order, and I watched them run to you for shelter. I could hear your cluck become more gentle and easily imagined the words, “Ooooh, it’s okay, they’re only teasing, they’re not so bad and one day you’ll be bigger than those old bitties.” Which wasn’t entirely true for all the younger ones, but you were right about Hortence and Dottie. You were right about Myrtle. I think secretly you were happy that Esther stayed small and still needed your protection.

The day I saw her protecting you, my heart broke. It is hard enough to be the lunatics who take their chicken to the vet. It is much harder when the vet tells you there is nothing left he can do. I took you out to see one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen, with tiny fragmented clouds each glowing a different color: orange, purple, cerulean, poppy red, bleeding yellow, dying violet, blooming bougainvillea. At some point I learned that chickens see more spectrums of color than humans and I can wonder for the rest of my life what that sunset looked like to you on your last day here.

I wonder a lot of things now that you are gone. I wonder if you like the chicken statues I painted and placed under St. Francis over your grave. I wonder if the other chickens are jealous that I still sometimes spend my morning cup with you. I wonder mostly about how ridiculous this world is. How we learn some of our biggest lessons from some of the smallest creatures. How truly tiny you felt the last time I held you, and still so much bigger than I ever expected.

Two Poems About My Son

2012-03-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

As a mother and a poet, my son's life is often a favorite subject for my poetry. Here are two poems featuring him and written about a year apart. Looking back on changes even at his still very young age can wash me with melancholy, so I try to focus on the joys, the blessings and the beauty we have every day.

Feather Sail

Perhaps tomorrow

we will still build a sailing ship together

on the couch with your Chenilly blanket

perhaps the wooden frog will be our passenger

with Edie and Peep, the stuffy chicken and chick.

You may use the Lakenvelder hen’s feather

you found in the chicken coop

as a sail again,

the protoceratops as an astrolabe,

the bugle as a telescope,

all to guide us on our journey

across stormy seas

to exotic lands;

Mr. McGregor’s garden with Peter,

or the bowling alley with bumper lanes,

or to your friend Calder’s house in Santa Fe.

You may pull in the feather sail

and cuddle close to me

as we rock and sway

bravely through a hurricane.

You may raise the feather sail

and bring our ship safely back to shore.

Perhaps tomorrow we may do it all again,

but perhaps it was only for today.

~ Cassandra Wensel-Kanne 2010

Diana Fritillary

Your hand

you are four years and eleven months old

and your hand

reaches toward mine,

gently stops me

from turning the page.

Tears are seeping

out to the banks of your thick lashes.

“Momma, look at that butterfly.”

The tears fall and you hold back a sob.

You point shakily at a

Diana Fritillary

Orange fenestration, fire,

chocolate and fragile edging

spots deviating down in size

painted delicately in the

upper corner of the page,

"Momma, it is so beautiful

that it is opening my heart

and making me cry."

So, I kiss your forehead

and you say,

“Momma, can you see it?

Can you?

Can you see it with your heart?”

Can I see anything with my heart?

Could I ever see anything with my heart?

I look at the butterfly

painted on the page,

the striking repeat of the pattern

the bold contrast of color.

Then I look at you

wipe the tears from your cheek,

I see the monsoon rains on the desert

and the moon just beginning to wane

on the night of your birth

I kiss you again,

look into your vulnerability, your hope,

your perfection

I see every star in the night sky

reflected on the surface of your tears

“I can, my love, I can see with my heart.”

~ Cassandra Wensel-Kanne 2011

“It was about yay long”… an incidence of overly graphic gesticulation

2012-03-21T10:48:00.001-07:00

Most of the stories I tell on myself are vintage, maybe because time heals all winces. Yesterday at Marc’s physical therapy appointment, though, I was reminded that I can still embarrass myself any time, anywhere.

Marc and I both are infatuated with the marvelous medical benefits of physical therapy, and with our vision and grace impairments, have had frequent need for it. The PT facility Marc is going to now is in a store front on Grant Road. It is a large box of a room, with a network of paths to the weight stacks, massage tables and the traction station (or as every single patient there calls it, the rack). There are a few curtained alcoves for consultations and the more intimate procedures, but most frequently one exercises or is treated out in the open.

The waiting area is small and usually crowded. I sit and read or knit and chat. Yesterday there was only one place to sit, beside an older man wearing a paper mask. I plopped down to the right of him, settling in for the morning (Marc’s therapy takes a long time) with my tote and purse and books and Tupperware cup of yogurt’n’twigs. I usually wait until the crowd thins out before breakfasting, and since a lot of people have coffee, I don’t think it’s too rude. I acknowledged my seatmates with a smile and began to read. The masked man on my left said quietly, “Don’t worry, I won’t make you sick, I’m waiting for a marrow transplant and have almost no resistance because of the chemo.” I wanted him to be comfortable, so I said, “Oh, no worries, and I won’t make you sick—I’ve been away from my school for about six months, so I don’t have any kid-germs that will hurt you…”

He went on to describe his condition in some detail. It sounded increasingly grim until he said the disease had been arrested and the weekly therapy helped his breathing. I was so relieved to hear that he was not actually moribund that I rushed to praise the benefits of PT, how it had evolved over the past twenty years, and oh, the tools available nowadays! How useful they are and how downright elegant they can be. Why, I had been given the simplest of devices for my wrist. “It was a simple plastic rod, about yay long (holding my forefingers about eight inches apart) and about an inch and half in diameter (circling my right forefinger and thumb) and you grasped it by the base (sliding those fingers in mid air across an imaginary cylinder) and just shook it back and forth (vigorous twisting of my right wrist). It was just so effective, it was really worth the few minutes it took every day”. I’d kept my eyes on my hands to be sure my gestures were truly illustrative. I must have communicated something unintentional--I heard a snicker to my right and when I looked back to my left, that poor man, who could hardly breathe in the first place, had turned bright red and his eyes were watering. He said simply, “I imagine so.”

The story really should end here, but… I was able to escape right at that moment because Alex, Marc’s therapist called me over to explain how I was to assist Marc with his last set of home exercises. I bounded up, grabbing my purse for us to pay and leave, but as I crossed the room, I tripped over a small, short-legged trampoline leaning up on the wall next to them. Alex and Marc each caught an arm to pull me up before a full face-plant and I tried fiercely to listen to Alex, ignoring the laughter behind me.

Ok, instructions received, and final exit papers signed, I rush to just, please Lord, get out of there when Marc says, “Oh, I need my jacket!” He walks over to the reception alcove, but I know he is not going to be able to navigate the still-crowded seating area, so I push past him to pull his jacket off the wall hook. It’s the kind of hook that is wedged between horizontal slats and it comes off with the jacket. It bounces into the wastebasket in the corner. Alex calls, “Just leave it, I’ll get it later.” As I bend to retrieve it, I push Marc into the lap of the man who’d been sitting to my right. At least it wasn’t the masked man. Marc stands up and I straighten up at the same time and we bounce off each other. Alex comes over and leads Marc out of the chair maze, saying “You two do realize that this was your last authorized visit, don’t you?

Later, when I was pretty sure the waiting area would have new clients, I went back to retrieve my tote.

Funky Shui’d

2012-03-07T17:46:00.005-08:00

      Three people living in a tiny house can accumulate clutter almost faster than the human eye can detect. I will literally get a surface clear of any schmoo piles (technical term for piles consisting of mostly mail, paperwork and project materials), get items in said piles distributed to their proper places, and not even have time to turn my little bright eyes around before the surface is re-cluttered with someone else’s project or work. This constant battle with clutter and the seemingly unrelated challenge of trying to live for the first time in our 23 year relationship on only one income, led me to start delving into Feng Shui. So to be clear, three people living in a tiny 860 square foot house is NOT the cause of my feeling cramped and three people living on one income so I can enjoy the blessing of staying home with my son is NOT the cause of me being frugal. Nay, nay I say to that far too pedantic assessment…being un-Fung Shui’d is the problem!! My stuff being in the wrong places is the source of all our woes!! So, I needed to start reading up on all of my zones, and Chi, and my Ba’Gua (map of your energetic stations), and which elements are most beneficial where…and then let the Fung begin!!

      I entered into this endeavor with the adamant commitment that this is not about buying new stuff or discarding treasures, but about moving my existing stuff to the most energetically beneficial place. Sure, sure, I’ll throw out some clutter, donate some unused things, but NO PURCHASES!! Well, okay except the books on Fung Shui. I have to buy a couple books on Feng Shui, right? A-Ha, I’ll go to Bookman’s and use trade book credit!! Genius!! Step one, hit our book shelves and seek out some triviality or excess to trim. Three bags of books and magazines, awesome!! Step one completed and behold…more space already…aaaahhh! This is going to be great!! More Fung to be had.

     Flipping through the books to choose one, I see all kinds of easy ideas and tantalizing pictures of uncluttered spaces. This is going to rock hard!! Like spring cleaning with a spiritual purpose. Free up our creative energy, our money flow and our cohabitation energy all at once. Here I insert the image of an abundant garden surrounding a gleamingly clean and beautiful as well as functionally arranged home where my husband plays music with a big smile on his face, my son is joyfully busy at a big art project and I sip my tea while I sketch them both. This is reasonable, right? Plus, it is going to be easy as heck!! Move a couple throw pillows, dust the family photos…that sort of thing. Or…

     Wait, what do you mean my toilet is my Wealth and Prosperity Gua? Well, that sounds bad…of course I can’t move my toilet. Can I? No stop, stop, that’s ridiculous. How do we fix this? And what’s this, my bed is facing the wrong direction? Well, okay, but it’s not like it can fit any other direction in my tiny bedroom. Entryways are supposed to be clear? Really? Who doesn’t just dump their stuff there? Everyone does that. The worst thing for your Children and Creativity Gua is red and fire…so the giant red wall around my fireplace in the center of that Gua is…? Alright, I guess there is Fung Shui meaning that you got to build your house from the ground up with these properties in mind and then there’s…I don’t know…Funky Shui, which is what all the rest of us can do. Okay. I can compromise. Some good energy is better than none. Plus, who could possibly be so effed up that they would need to reconfigure all nine areas of your Ba’ Gua? I mean come on…if your health, finances, career, knowledge, relationships, family, friends, and emotional well-being ALL suck you might need more than Feng Shui. You might. I’m still pretty sure I can fix up all my minor stuff with the right portions…selections…morsels…of Fun Shooway!!

     So, okay what’s the most important thing? Family right? Absolutely!!! Turns out, I don’t even need to worry about the Wealth and Prosperity Gua because that’s all about having more than you need. Needs being met, enough money to pay the bills and not stress out, that’s right here in the Family Gua!! Perfect. My Family Gua is in my kitchen, well that certainly seems ideal! Let’s do this. Wait, what? Hmmm, metal it seems is bad energy in the Family Gua. How do you not have metal in a kitchen? Sink faucets, oven, knives, GIANT METAL UNDERCABINET VENTHOOD!! How do we fix this? Oh wait, sink is okay because even though it’s made out of metal it inherently possesses the energy of water which is fine for the Family Gua, whew! The oven? Actually fire, which is GREAT for the Family Gua! That GIANT METAL UNDERCABINET VENTHOOD that vents nowhere because it’s under a cabinet…that sticks out an entire foot past the stove in our teeny tiny kitchen…that has always been a friggin’ nightmare to clean? It has noxious Chi. Maybe I can mask it. Stick some red (representing fire) glass (representing water) tiles on it. Might have to buy those. What would that look like? Well, I am not the only one who lives here so, I ask my husband what he thinks.

“Why don’t you take the hood out? It’s ugly, vents into your face if you ever turn it on, s'a bitch to clean. Pull it out. All you need there is a light.”

( Hood of Noxious Chi )

What a great idea! I guess I was thinking I would pull it out and the cabinet underneath would be beautiful and magically there would be a light there. Turns out, no. It does instantly look more spacious and inviting in my tiny kitchen, but clearly this upgrade is going to take a little time and probably a little money. A little track light, some nice fiery toned glass tiles to add that good fire energy AND be easy to clean. Yeah, I like that idea. Track light, new wiring for the track light, tiles, ooh...I could get those at Fractured Earth, some grout that matches the cabinets, maybe some plexiglass to make a custom cover for the light…. I have to go the hardware store and maybe drop a couple of books off at Bookman’s before they cost me any more money!!

( Ta-Dahh! )

Adventures in Elementary Sciences

2012-02-20T12:58:00.000-08:00

Communicative technologies have made everyone a critic, appreciative, admonitory or simply off the wall. Educators at all levels have always been evaluators, trained to give useful feedback. My fifth of seven principals would always give his staff “two to glow and one to grow”. Dr. O administered our back-to-basics curriculum with a tight focus on procedures and schedules. Time on task was paramount, with little allowance made for distractions.

My library lessons went over well enough, but my sketchy grasp of everyday physics created a number of inadvertent diversions from the “feet flat and eyes forward” mindset of both the student body and staff. One time I carried a clipboard and freshly sharpened pencil through a swinging door and ended up with the pencil point embedded in my behind. Another time I rode a ladder in my workroom down from its top step to the floor below while stacking puppet boxes above the library workroom cabinetry. Even though the library was in the middle of the building, and isolated behind two sets of doors, the commotion was enough to bring the nearby kindergarten teachers and the entire office staff running. My assistant, Pat, however, remained at her desk. She greeted the would-be rescuers with, “She’s most likely ok. I don’t even go check anymore if it’s just a bunch of noise and a few squeals.”

Bumps and bruises were commonplace, but my pride suffered even more frequently. Shortly before Dr. O left, another teacher and I decided to spruce up the teachers’ lounge, unpainted in 1995 since the original coat laid down in 1983. Dr. O approved the project as long as it didn’t take in-school time or involve on-duty personnel. My co-worker and I would provide the labor after school and the district supplied the paint—standard contractor’s issue in five gallon plastic tubs. While my partner was taping the cabinet and counter edges late one afternoon, I decided to stir up the paint where it had been delivered to just inside of the cafeteria doorway. The floor in that room was linoleum; better to mix the paint there than risk the carpet in the lounge. That did mean, though, that I had to get the tub across the hallway, also carpeted. The bucket was too heavy to carry, so I looked around the cafeteria for options.

The custodian’s long, low floor cart stood next to the milk refrigerator. I pulled it to the doorway to the hall but forgot to set the brake (a little metal flange that flipped down to compress the tire’s tread enough to prevent its turning) on the second of the two front wheels. I swung the paint bucket by its handle up to the cart but not quite high enough. The lower end of the bucket collided hard with the flat base of the cart. The cart rolled away, the lid flew off the bucket and five gallons of Navajo white billowed onto the blue carpet. At that moment, Dr. O stepped out of the front office eight feet across the way to see me standing ankle deep in thick, creamy paint. With no word of censure, he swallowed hard, sighed and radioed to the custodian. “John, please come to the front office and bring the shop vac. We need to assist Mrs. Finkelstein—again.”

Accelerated Adaptation

2012-02-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

I always think I have enough skill to carpenter, plumb or paint as needed around the house. We own few tools, though, and I’ve had little training so this unshakeable faith continues to mystify Marc, my family and the nearest emergency room staff. After one adventure at our second house, though, the only thing injured was my pride. I wanted to build something—a bookshelf, probably. There was a four foot pinewood board in the back yard shed, a cross-cut saw and a sanding block. So what if the final product wouldn’t make it into “Fine Woodworking Monthly”, I could still get ‘er done. I marked a 6 inch cutting line about 1 foot from the end of the board and upended it on the concrete driveway in the back yard. I steadied the top end with one hand and sawed briskly for a moment, but the board kept skittering over the pavement. I braced the board with my right knee. That worked for an inch or two more until the saw bound in the cut. This time, I decided that going horizontal would be better, so I put the board across a metal picnic table we had tucked under the eaves of the back-room. Again I secured the board with my right hand. It slipped and slid all over the table top, so I swung my left knee on the near end of the board to weigh it down. I pushed down on the board’s far end with my right elbow and managed another inch or two before my strength failed. Our scrappy back yard was scattered with landscaping bits and pieces, one of which was a cinder block pushed up against the fence. It had a center hole just wide enough to wedge the board into. I shoved the board through it and hefted it on the table. I climbed onto the table, straddled the block with my shins tucked under me, and triumphantly completed the cut. I looked up to see Marc leaning against the brick wall of the back-room, weak with laughter. “Watching you for the last ten minutes was like watching the evolution of man.” he said, “I was looking around for the monolith".

There Just Might Be an Alternative to Euthanasia

2012-01-24T10:12:00.000-08:00

As the “mother” in our maiden, mother, matriarch trio, I will occasionally be writing about being a mom. Yes, this is a story about a five year old. Be forewarned it is also a story about cats. That’s right, I’m that lady…the one sitting next to you on a crowded plane talking, talking, and talking about kids and cats!! This story actually begins way back when my son was born, our cat Yeats (a.k.a. Buddha), fell madly in love with him. She had always been a loving cat, but more of a watcher than a participator where children were concerned. She was 17 when my son was born and the two were inseparable. His fourth word was “Buddha”, right after “moon”, “Momma” and “Poppa”. If that weren’t remarkable enough, she would actually come running to him whenever he said her name. A cat, an old cat, who learned to come when she was called. They had three and half lovely years together before we lost Yeats to old age and several months later her lifelong companion Keats also passed on. We had had them both since they were kittens. They spent nearly all of twenty one years together and their loss left a big hole in our family. We have two other cats, Tennyson and Poe (you’re seeing a pattern?) and a dog named Xana. We also have a yard full of chickens. None of them have the same relationship with my son that he had had with Yeats. However, my husband and I were not all too eager to get new pets. We had no intentions of “replacing” our beloved cats.

So nearly two years passed, all the while with my son asking nicely for a new kitten…a cuddly kitten…one that would be his. It was really a fair request. Our other pets were older, set in their ways and not prone to playfulness. Occasionally Poe would chase a laser light for Thackery and often Tennyson would snuggle with him during a movie or a nap, but neither were kittens anymore. Every time he sought one of them out and carried them to a nice spot to cuddle, my heart would break a little bit watching him get one or two pets in before the cat lost interest and left him alone; he would look at me and say, “I miss Buddha.” You can only say, “Me too, baby”, so many times. Then my beautiful indigo child found the phrases that persuaded me over to his way of thinking.

“Momma, do you know that at the pound some kitties die before they ever have a home?”

“Yeah, I did know that. That’s sad, huh?”

“Do you think that in the spirit world Keats and Yeats are sad about those kitties that could be living here with me to love them?”

Yeah, whatever, judge me all that you want, but you would have been off to the pound just as quickly as I was. And even though you are sitting there all judgey right now, I will give you some very helpful advice…NEVER (in case there is some confusion here…NOT EVER, AT NO TIME, UNDER NO CONDITIONS, NOT ON YOUR LIFE!!!) take a child to the pound with you. You may all on your own, not even be able to withstand the abject desolation. You may all on your own, leave with more companions than you intended, but if you take a child…multiple adoptions are guaranteed. You were warned.

I had no one to give such sage advice. In fact my husband and I reasoned that, of course, Thackery should come. After all, we were getting him a kitten, it should be one with which he had a connection. That’s rational. Ration and reason are useless tools when facing a room full of desolate kitties in tiny cages all desperately in need of a home. We began by asking to see the actual kittens, ones that were obviously only a couple of months old. He selected kitten after kitten to “meet and greet”, only to be told that they were already adopted. So, we learned to decode the all important paperwork at the front of the tiny cages. (Or, so we thought.) We started to look at cats whose paper work said 6 months old, 1 year, 18 months, 2 years…reasoning that they would still have many kitten like qualities and let’s face it, once you go through those doors - no vaguely sentient human being is leaving without saving someone. When Thackery says, “These two look like Keats.” Yes…he said TWO, two 1 year old tortie calicoes sharing one of those tiny cages. One up at the front of the cage reaching her little paw out and one curled up at the back of the cage trying very hard to be ignored.

I speak fluent cat-ese, so I will translate the next portion for you. Imagine a polite British accent and sunny voice for the soon to be named Wordsworth and a British, less sunny, rather stiff and grumpy voice for the soon to be named Coleridge. Wordsworth with her paw through the cage gives a little sorry-to-interrupt-you cough and says, “Oh, excuse me, very kind and busy people. You seem to be quite civilised individuals and I was wondering if I could perhaps persuade you to lend some assistance. You see, my cell mate and I are here utterly by some horrible, egregious error and we were truly hoping that you might be capable of remedying our unpleasant situation. Perhaps, speak to someone on our behalf and get us released from this obviously inappropriate environment. What say you kindly gentle folk?” Meanwhile, at the back of the cell, Coleridge glances our direction with a slight humpf of derision and says to her companion, “Give it up old Sot!! They are fekking PEOPLE!! You have been at this for a fekking month, when will you learn old girl? People don’t give a rat’s brown arse about us and they obviously never will!! Uncultured, boorish, crass philistines wouldn’t recognise true aristocracy if we were free from this hellish prison and could bite them on their arse!!” Nearly at once, a volunteer ushered our two new family members into the meet and greet room where, if it is possible for something to occur faster than instantaneously, Thackery fell madly in love.

Once out of the tiny prison, Coleridge warmed up slightly. “Perhaps you aren’t quite so horrible as other humans, let me just make a little comfy spot here on your lap (knead, knead, knead). Cough, cough,…don’t presume that my purring has anything to do with some sort of affinity for you, just an uncontrolled biological response. Yes, you may pet me if it is absolutely necessary.” Wordsworth became positively giddy. “Oh, isn’t this lovely? Are we going home with you then? That would be divine. Yes, I looove tummy rubs, Let’s play over here…and over here…and oooh look at this. Pet me more, pet me more!!”

“We’ll take them.” We said to the volunteer who was pleased and went to get their paperwork. Their non-existent paperwork. “Did you bring their papers in with you?” he asked. We had not. He went searching and came back quite dejected. “You can’t adopt these two,” he said. Oh no, we thought, had someone already adopted them, as well? It was explained to us that no, no one had adopted them or could adopt them; that little cough that they had developed was probably upper respiratory infections (URI) for which they don’t offer treatment at the pound. The two had been scheduled to be euthanized, in fact, immediately. That is where their paperwork was and if we would be so kind as to hand him the kitties, that’s where they were headed.

These two kitties that we are holding and petting and loving? Hand them to you to be killed? Right now? Take from the hands of my angelic child the kittie he is holding on his lap and dangling a little bell for and giggling with? Just rip the kittie away from his adoring gaze and give her to you to be murdered?

Coleridge said, “Silly, silly volunteer. I have only had the pleasure of this family’s company for a few short minutes. I, who generally abhors humans, know that since our plight has become known to these kind people, it is not bloody likely that we will be going anywhere with you ever again!!” Wordsworth said, ““Euthanized” sounds quite unpleasant indeed. Thank you, but no thank you!! We will quite happily be going home with this lovely family, hopefully by tea time, they look as though they make a lovely tea and crumpets!!”

The following TWO HOURS was spent filling out paperwork (one stack for each cat – each stack thicker than my mortgage paperwork) to file for a “Special Needs” adoption. The special need being a long overdue visit to the Veterinarian. We scheduled an appointment for them both at Acacia Animal Hospital on Campbell while we filled out and signed document after document. “In the event that this animal is too ill to treat and must be euthanized, I will not bill the county for the cost.” Sign one, sign two. “In the event that this animal’s treatment costs exceeds my ability to pay, I will not bill the county” Sign one, sign two. “In the event that the necessary euthanization of this animal causes trauma to me or my family, I will not bill the county.” Sign one, sign two. “When this animal is deemed healthy, I will incur the cost of have them spayed or neutered.” Sign one, sign two. You get the idea. After my hand was numb from signing, I gave them $15.00 (they were a Monday, two for one special!!) and took my kitties to a kind a loving vet.

The vet determined that they were only 8 months old, ran tests for any serious and potentially contagious diseases, started them on antibiotics for their URI, loaded them up with fluids and healthy vitamins and sent us home with organic shampoo and conditioner to get them clean. It took several visits to the vet to get them healthy and I will admit it was not cheap, (although many vets, Acacia included, will give you discounts for rescuing shelter animals), but we are over the moon happy to have our two new family members, home, healthy, happy and thriving. They were thrilled to be able to come home with us at all, even when they were convalescing, not too mobile, coughing and sneezing and having to be bundled up in warm places all day. “Cough, cough…yes, yes right kind of you…sneeze, sneeze,…quite civil and all…yes, another blankie would be most appreciated, good chap...organic oatmeal and aloe shampoo and conditioner? Well, maybe just one little warm bath...cough, cough.. much obliged.”

Now that they are well…all is right with the world. They are excessively loving and cuddly, “Oh, I say…you’d like to carry me about like a babe in arms? Well, isn’t that lovely? Quite kind, I’ll just use this opportunity to clean my paws, thanks so much.” “Hmmm, sleeping were we? Mind if I just join you…how about right here under the covers with you? Were you using these pajamas just for yourself? Plenty of room for us both, you’re quite obliging, much gratitude.” In addition to that they are obviously still kittens. We invested in several new kitten toys to keep them engaged and give the older cats a little break from their near constant capacity to play. Thackery is radiant in their love.

Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted me to add “Perchance you have a smidgen of room in your home, a little bit of money you’ve been saving for a rainy day, a nice quilt folded up on the end of your bed waiting for someone to nap upon it? Get off your arses and head over to the animal prison and save a life or two today!!”

Adventures in Babysitting

2012-01-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

I was an early entrepreneur. I sold greeting cards door-to-door in the military housing neighborhood on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base when I was in elementary school and marketed awful perfumes that a friend and I had distilled with unlikely ingredients and by no recognizable method to my classmates. I did extra chores for a nickel or a dime, and began sewing for hire in junior high. I was known as the family banker, someone who could be persuaded to pull a dollar or two from the stash in my Bible. I couldn’t wait to start what I saw as the lucrative career of babysitting, the venerable economic mainstay of tweens and teens.

My avarice was tempered by some degree of kindness so I had a fair amount of business. My first bookings were overflow requests for my older sister. I scheduled as many evenings as I could at a rate of 60 cents an hour, a ten cent premium charged not on the basis of my junior high school Red Cross certification but because I could make minutes into pennies.

One of my mainstay clients was a sweet southern woman whose husband was the base psychiatrist. She was a compulsive talker who would review the same information each and every time I came over. One night, after her typically interminable directions and rambling, she drifted toward their front door. Her husband, who almost never spoke to me, took me by the elbow into the kitchen. There he said quietly, “I was counseling a young airman today who had a violent outburst. He has threatened to kill me and my family. The APs have him now, but if anyone comes to the door tonight, don’t open it.” Then they left. That was the longest evening of my life. Every scritch of a tree branch on a window, every pop or crack of the house settling had me clinging to the ceiling like Sylvester, the cartoon cat.

When my family moved off base, I lost my clientele of officer’s and higher-ranking NCO’s wives and had to rustle up new business. My clients now were single mothers who lived nearby our house in our working-class neighborhood of new tract-development houses. I walked to their houses; there was no father or husband they could send to pick me up and take me back home.

There was one confusing evening when a young widow for whom I was sitting was preceded home by her date, who leaned on the door jamb and told me to go home because the mother would be home shortly. I couldn’t keep him from entering the house—I didn’t try—but there were two toddlers and a baby asleep down the hall so I stumbled around, not actively refusing to leave but nonetheless remaining until I saw my client standing in her own house. She did indeed arrive about half an hour later, as drunk as he and with a couple of friends in tow. I left, unsettled about leaving the kids and about the ways grownups entertained themselves.

I was still saving some of my earnings with a hazy idea of college tuition in mind, but would occasionally splurge on record albums. High school studies should have taken more of my attention, but I maintained my babysitting contacts, and worked every day of the summers that I could. Later that year, I was baby-sitting for a working mother of two little boys. I remember the tedium of daily lunches, Mr. Rogers and naptime. The boys had a few toys, but were often bored, so I made up a few games, and once went through the hall closet looking for creative play materials. I didn’t know quite what to make of the 8 mm projector and some film canisters, one of which was labeled, “The Twins and the Banana”. One of the days was enlivened by a tornado touching down on the far east side of Tucson. I heard later that it took the roof off the science building of my high school. Meanwhile, three miles away, I took the little boys into the bathroom and had them play in the tub. When the water got cold, I wrapped them in towels while I drained the tub and ran fresh hot water into it. Adding bubble salts the second time kept the boys entertained long enough for the storm to pass.

I was losing the will to be self-employment by the summer of 1972. I was working then as a wildly underpaid housekeeper for a woman who asked if I would sit for a friend of hers who had three small children later that week, adding that her own ten year old daughter, Sara, could co-sit with me. This would be handy, partly so the daughter could see how it was done and partly so my employer could join her friend for a night out as I’d be taking care of her child as well. This was illustrative of the generally Dickensian nature of this woman. Not only was she paying me an exploitive 25 dollars a week for full housekeeping: laundry (including ironing school clothes for the little miscreants who took their cotton shirts from the closet for summer play), vacuuming, dusting, and toilet scrubbing, but she required me to prepare lunches and start their dinners before I left for the day. Nonetheless, an extra few hours on the end of this week would be a few more dollars, so now I had plans for my Friday night.

That evening I had four children to look after, but they were good natured and easy to amuse. I had put the littler two into their bunk beds, and was diapering the baby when the power failed, as it often did in Tucson during the summer monsoons. I managed to get the diaper pins fastened by feel, which is pretty much how one does it in any case. I held the baby up on my chest and carried him up the hallway. I called for Sara to come to the kitchen and stay there. We found two squat candles in a drawer. I handed the baby to Sara, lit the candles from the gas stove burners and set them on the table. The baby slept in my arms as we sat in the flickering light, me telling Sara any story I could remember from the Andrew Lang fairy books. After a bit, I went to check on the toddler boys. I wasn’t gone more than two minutes when Sara began screeching. I ran back to the kitchen to see the curtains above the sink on fire. Sara had carried the candle to the window to look at the trees flailing in the wind and rain. I hauled Sara out of the room, and almost threw the baby into her arms. I told her to go stand on the porch and I ran down the hall to roust out the boys. It took forever to awaken them; I largely dragged them down the hall and out the front door. I growled at Sara to keep them on the porch and ran to call 911. The phone was in the kitchen, but so was the fire. I looked from one to the other and decided to address the blaze rather than pick up the phone. A wet dishtowel served to douse flames of a fire larger that it would have been had I simply thrown water from the sink on it in the first place rather than staging a wholesale evacuation, but still small enough to make the telling of this modest adventure longer than the experiencing of it. I retrieved the children from the porch just minutes before the return of the adults. I was grateful that they were matter-of-fact about the blackened curtains, agreeing that getting the kids out of the house had been the proper course of action and that I should still be paid.

Those summers impressed on me at long last that working for ready money with near-slave labor was not going to pay for college or much of anything. In fact, independent sales as a tween and kitchen duty as a teen-ager snuffed out any desire for the rewards of capitalism. I set my sights on academic rewards and steady government work.

Life in the Village

2012-01-01T12:17:00.000-08:00

Long ago, my husband, Marc, and I lived as almost starving students in a Quonset hut that was part of Polo Village, the U of A’s married student housing facility. We’d married earlier than we’d planned to get access to one of the limited number of available units, but the absurdly low 47 bucks a month rent and food were about the only living expenses we could cover. We were content without other not-quite necessities such as a phone or a car. We admired Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth Catalog and wanted to co-evolve as well as two previously well-sheltered suburban kids could.

Daily life in the Village resembled camping in many ways and was just about as secure. Few people even bothered to use the simple spring locks on their front and only doors. Most couples had dogs that wandered the neighborhood and cats that availed themselves of unscreened windows necessarily left open for ventilation. The dirt and dust drifted in constantly from the unpaved streets. The gaps in the cave-like arc above us meant we were wet when it rained, and sweaty when the summer sun burned down on the ribbed steel panels that were both wall and roof.

We had to adapt to being very, very close to nature while living in that 400 square foot hut. After about six months there, I reached up to a shelf I’d nailed to the kitchen wall and when I had my copy of The Joy of Cooking” in hand, threw it across the room with a shriek to raise the dead. It was a book in form only, just cover boards over a mass of moiling little black bodies. There were no pages left under or around the hundreds of cockroaches. Another time I was taking a shower in the minuscule bathroom when the two foot square metal floor pan broke from the rusted screws that fastened it to the painted greenboard of the stall. It dropped to the ground below, with me—so not like Aphrodite-on the-clam-shell—riding the pan down the seven or so inches to the gravel beneath the plywood floor. A trickle of water falling from the still-intact showerhead dripped on me as I watched a variety of displaced insects and small reptiles hop, slither and scurry away from my wet feet.

Our miniscule rent would have kept us in Polo Village far longer had it not been for my mother-in-law’s aversion to vermin. Mother Harriet visited us frequently, but for over two years was unaware that we were not as animal-free as our allergies would demand. We set humane traps in hidden corners, but like rodents everywhere, our cohabitants seemed to be born knowing how to lift the peanut butter bait with impunity. I tried to capture a few field mice using rubber gloves and spaghetti tongs. That resulted in a net loss of territory in the pantry and of dignity later in the Student Health Office when I asked for a check on mouse rabies.

We lived in a tacit truce with our house-pests. They had the advantage of numbers since our allergies negated any possibility of population control via a cat or terrier. As I long as I put every bit of our food in glass jars or the refrigerator, the mice (thankfully, they were just that, no rats were involved at any time) could have the seeds that blew in the windows or grew under the floorboards. They were pretty well fed in any case. Most nights, a scratching run, run, pause, run, pause, run followed by rustling plastic would remind me that yet again I had left the bread out on the counter.

Perhaps my continual carelessness made them bolder as well as fatter. One time I was sitting with Mother Harriet at my Formica dinette table wedged in the alcove defined by the curve of the wall when her expression froze. She was staring at the upright piano only five feet across the room. A plump brown mouse was bobbing up and down on the middle volume pedal. It scrambled across the indoor/outdoor carpet and literally over Mother Harriet’s sandaled foot. She shuddered violently and started screaming as the mouse slid under and out of the door.

One week later, Papa-Bob and Mother-Harriet picked us up for Sunday dinner back

at their house and on the way, turned up a side street off Speedway. As Papa-Bob drove north, Mother Harriet asked how did we like the small red brick house on the right? I said that it was a cute little place. “Glad to hear that”, she said, “You’re moving in on Monday.” My in-laws made it a point of honor not to interfere, but a Jewish mother is an irresistible protective force. We lived in that cozy little bungalow, roach and rodent free, through graduate school.

Shotgun Wedding Sans Pregnancy

2011-12-23T07:06:00.000-08:00

Last week I was wrapping a wedding present (knives, no couple just starting out ever buys themselves a decent knife set) and reminiscing about my own early marriage that, against early odds, has endured 37 years.

We had several strikes against us to start. Not just extreme youth, but two cultures and one food service job between us added to the peculiar realities of my young husband’s chronic disability had friends and family placing bets on our timeline. Even we had no intention of marrying while still in our teens, but the unexpected availability of married student housing at the University of Arizona prompted a hurry-up wedding to beat a 'be married or miss out' deadline.

Couples and families often waited for years for one of the scarce married student housing units, especially after the restriction to veterans only was lifted in the sixties. Marc and I were finishing our freshman year in 1976. Each of us lived in on-campus dorms during the week and went home to our parents’ houses on the weekends so I could work and Marc could study—he is visually impaired, and managing that disability in a college setting sucked up huge amounts of time). We were not only planning on graduate school, we were both on ‘the five year plan’ since we had both changed our majors. With such long-term plans, we figured we’d eventually want to take advantage of the ridiculously cheap but limited number of WWII era apartments, so in March Marc added our names to the long wait-list.

On the last day of his finals in June, Marc wandered into the student housing office just to see where we were on the list. The clerk said, “Well, I have a unit available unexpectedly, and I can’t reach anyone on this list. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re married, you can have it next week. Marc called me later that night when I got from the cafeteria in a mall on Tucson’s east side where I worked on the weekends to ask, did I want to get married a little earlier than we’d planned, say on Monday?

I took a bit of persuading, not for the eventuality, but for the timeline. My parents were mightily unhappy, certain that this meant I’d never finish my degree, but the two families put a few hurried plans in place: Marc’s mother, Harriet, had been told ‘Judge Fenton did a lovely ceremony’, so she arranged a 10:00 appointment in his chambers down at the Pima Courthouse. I gave notice at the restaurant, planning a transfer to the Speedway location, but not really following through. All that was certain was my last night at work would be that Saturday. Marc’s father took him to get the license and the rings. I hemmed a never-worn pink prom dress. After my mother saw me reading the ingredient list on the Ovaltine jar and heard me wondering aloud how simple vitamins and minerals could possibly affect ovulation, took me to my first GYN visit for a hurry-up, double-dose regimen of birth-control pills.

On Saturday night, I was ‘striking the line’, i.e. carrying the serving pans from the steam tables to the pot-boy in the kitchen. On my third trip, I backed through the swinging door with the double-decker mashed potato pots (the lower one held about a gallon of hot water insulating the upper pot with the spuds). Someone had spilled oil, gravy, I never knew what, on the tiled floor and down I went, losing my grip on the pots on the way. The mashed potatoes were at this point room temperature so their heavy warmth after they plopped onto my hair and my face, and down inside my uniform was rather pleasant; the boiling water from the steam jacket splashing all down my left side was anything but. Someone ripped off my white nylon uniform before I could stand. I remember sitting up to hook my thumbs under the waistband of my nylon slip and drag it off, along with the stockings we were required to wear. Unfortunately, that action took the blistering skin on my thigh and calf along with the clothes, so I was a starchy, sticky, oozy, half-naked mess when bundled into an ambulance and taken to St. Jo’s hospital, a half-mile away.

While I was being cared for in the emergency room, my father, still gruff and disapproving of the whole endeavor, called Marc, saying bluntly, “There’s been an accident, Lynn’s in the hospital. We’ll call you when we know more”, and hung up. Marc told me later that he walked outside his parents’ house and sat on the curb with his head in his hands, imagining everything from car accident to assault, and thinking back on a short life long on disappointment and concluding, “Good lord, I just can not catch a break.”

I left St Jo’s around midnight wrapped from ankle to hip in white gauze and high on Percocet. Sunday remains a mystery to me still, but early on Monday morning, I swallowed some more painkillers and the Orvo-whatever, washed my hair, slathered on the blue eye-shadow we all wore in the ‘70s, and struggled into that pink dress. I managed to get it up, down and mostly around all the bandages on my left side. My parents, my little sister and I met Marc, his brother and parents at the fountain in the courthouse and we all crammed into the same elevator to the third floor office. Judge Fenton bustled in the room to perform the ceremony in a rushed recess between two murder trials.

I was only hazily aware of the whole event, woozily clinging to Marc’s arm while Judge Fenton, kept emphasizing ‘this is forever, it is not easily undone, it’s a commitment’, etc, all the time looking pointedly at my dress, which with all the bandages, was very full about the middle. I wanted to say “Hey, Bud, I am so not pregnant!”, but my obvious nausea from all the meds was additionally misleading. I managed to say a simple “I do”. At that moment, the summer heat in the stuffy chamber overwhelmed my mother and we all rushed to the cluster of overturned chairs where she'd fainted.

We’d planned a family dinner with presents and cake at my parents’ house but first was a side trip to the GP for a check on my burns. When Dr. Grossman saw that the emergency treatment Saturday night had been….inexpert…, he said, ‘I’m so sorry, this is going to hurt’, braced his left hand on my forehead (!!?), and with his right, ripped away the gauze stuck to the wounds in one rapid sweep. More painkillers before leaving that office made the mini-reception a blur. Neither of one had a driver’s license, so my new father-in-law took us to the El Dorado Hotel as planned for the three-day, no-refund honeymoon he and Mother-Harriet given us. Since I couldn’t even walk, Papa-Bob helped Marc get me to the honeymoon suite and then brought us pizza for dinner. By Thursday, I was mostly mobile and almost drug-free, so we asked our parents to take us, our books, bicycles and an upright piano to the as yet unseen ‘housing unit’ west of the U of A Medical Center we’d scooped.

In the quiet of our first summer night in our new home, I looked at the rusty steel walls and plywood floor of our new home and reflected that some women marry for money, whereas I had apparently moved heaven and earth for a 400 square foot, roach-infested Quonset hut.