Brenda Wilbee: Tea Time

White Face Woman: 1 of 7

2012-02-11T12:33:00.000-08:00

At the height of the starvation, several Sioux maidens consented to become wives of the Red Coats who courted them. Major Jarvis was the first to take a Sioux wife. She was the eldest child and daughter of Plant by the Water (Mai-co-ju).

There were many beautiful Sioux maidens, who, when seen, would leave a lasting imprint on mind and heart. White Face Woman was said to be the queen of all. Not only her looks—her whole being was magic.

How the major first saw her is not known, but the general belief is that he chanced upon her at a watering place where she had discarded her robe and, in a nearby stream, was washing her hair. Never a day passed that the Major did not make two or three visits to White Face Woman. He was in great difficulty because of the differences in tongue. His heart cried out to tell of the love blazing within his core.

Through a Metis woman, an interpreter, bound to secrecy, the Major spoke and with no long courtship he and White Face Woman became man and wife. “If this man promises to see that my little brothers and sister have something to eat twice a day, I will become his wife,” bargained White Face Woman.

In all her eighteen summers she had known the white men as a man to fear, night and day. He was a spirit man not of this world—out to destroy her race and take away all that the Indians loved and lived for. Who knew, but that tomorrow these Red Coats, like the American Long Knives, would renew the Big Horn battle here? Was it not because of the white mean that all this hardship had fallen on her people?

Had not the Sioux made sacred treaties with the Long Knives that were then shamelessly broken because of the red iron, gold, on Sioux land? The chiefs had lost faith in the Spirit men.

The decision to marry the major was a terrible sacrifice, for herself and her kin, for White Face Woman. To look at the lean faces of the two brothers and little sister and to see her father return home late, empty handed, demanded something from her. So she gave that something from her heart.

The marriage of White Face Woman to a chief of the Red Coats was the talk of the Sioux. It was the first case of its kind in Sitting Bull’s band. Speculation as to what it might lead to was rife among the people of the hills.
A large tipi, with all the furnishing, was erected for White Face Woman within the stockade of the post. Her two brothers and her sister spent time with her there the whole day.

Never lived a happier man than the major. Seldom a day passed that the couple did not ride out to the beauty spots in the hills—when they returned White Face Woman would be laden with flowers. When those hunting chanced upon them they would hear them laughing—their mirth was over each trying to pronounce words of the other’s language.

There were pleasant outings when the major and his wife dressed in her finery of fringed and ornamented white tanned dresses. In his best uniform, he made round and round the great circle of the Sioux camp with her, greeting the Indians with a nod or salute. When he made such a show of his wife, the people said to themselves, “How this man must love his wife—but what a strange way to show it.”

White Face Woman: 2 of 7

2012-02-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

Though the Sioux were in the midst of uncertainty, want, and suffering, life went on. There was love, song, laughter, and play. There was feasting, marrying, and dancing.
The country was teeming with big game and fowl. Wild vegetable and berries still grew. Yet the passing of the buffalo, the staple of the Indian world, was the death blow that killed the Indian would and left the Indian lost.

There were many social affairs in the Sioux nation—various kinds of dances and games. Every day some kind of social function took place. There was no time to cry.

One of the best shows to strengthen the spirit of every Indian is the warrior’s parade. It puts hope, determination, and perseverance into the Indian.

All the warriors, arrayed in their costumes, bearing their banners, their ponies painted, parade the circle of the camp singing their war songs and firing guns. One Red Coat said, “When Sitting Bull puts on the Warrior’s Parade and the firing of Custer’s rifles, we feel very small. Yet we stick out our chest and put on a bold face, while our knees shake and strike each other.”

White Face Woman: 3 of 7

2012-02-11T12:06:00.000-08:00

The major and his wife had now been together a couple of weeks. He lay awake at night planning their future. The West would break his wife’s heart—the West was her heart and love her home. He would teach her to be his ideal woman and wife. He would mold her purity and innocence to make her as happy as he could. He had capital and a substantial allowance from his father in England. He would build a Western home and stock it well. Indians would be their servants.
Poor Major—man proposes, God disposes. Laugh today, cry tomorrow. Word reached the post that a dance called “The Night Dance” was to take place early in the evening. The Major, anxious to do what he could for his wife’s pleasure, took her to the dance.
White Face Woman refused to go into the hall, an enclosure of trees, and said she wished only to look on from the outside. So they did. There was a great crowd of Indians, Metis, Red Coats, and non-descripts. Those in the hall were dressed in their best and were restless and excited.

The dance began. The announcer called for “men’s choice for partners” and the usual bowl of fruit sauce was handed to each.
The lady was invited by the gent touching her foot with a touch from his foot. If the one invited refused after the fourth invitation, he or she would be splashed with the fruit. At the end of the round, if she danced, the lady had to kiss her partner. If she refused, down came the sauce on her head.

Every Indian knew the rules of this Night Dance and those who disapproved should never have gone to the dance. It was for this reason White Face Woman went as a spectator, in spite of the major’s urgings to go in and join the fun.

To the surprise and discomfort of White Face Woman, a young man came out and invited her for a partner. She nearly blacked out. Her husband was amused and delighted to have his wife invited and he urged her repeatedly to accept. With some confusion and hesitation, at the last moment she accepted.

How gracefully White Face Woman danced—in perfect time with the drums—was long remembered. The major moved in closer to see his wife. So did every spectator. Every eye was on her.

The dress she wanted to save was of white antelope skin, with porcupine quill work dyed in many fancy designs and colours, even down to the skirt sweeps and fringes. As she danced, the shells jingled and sparkled in many colours. Once she had her foot in it, she went through dance, eve to kissing her partner. It is the practice of the Sioux to try the heart of a man—even so far as to court his wife. So the major was now under trial.

He was watching only his wife and therefore did not see the other partners demanding the customary kiss and getting it. Before the kiss was over, he moved quick as a cat to his wife, half dragged her out, and directly led her home. Some of the men laughed loudly, while women groaned, and the Red Coats cursed under their breath.

White Face Woman’s little sister and two brothers ran and clung to her skirt, but quickly let go and ran when she commanded “Kikla” (go home!). Before they were out of sight, the major, crazed by jealousy, thrust his wife to the ground twice.

When the woman rose the second time her right hand thrust a knife against the major’s side. A fire blazed in her eyes, while a strange light shone in those of the major. There the two stood, staring at each other like fighting cats. Then the husband loosened his steel-like grip and said almost in a whisper, “Eu-pi” (come) and led her home.

Back of them, those with understanding, read the scene and whispered, “Ho.” Many spent a sleepless night. The Red Coats did not fall asleep till three in the morning—because of their major. The night watch had a bellyache and the major lay dozing alone in the adobe building, in his office.

When the five o’clock bugle blew, two of the tipi poles that regulate the top flaps of the tipi to let out the smoke were see leaning against the stockade and White Face Woman was not to be found.

The major went wild. All the others tried to look innocent. The Red Coat who drew all the blame was the night guard. His only defense was his bellyache. “In less than one minute,” he said, “that woman can set her poles and climb over.”

White Woman Face: 4 of 7

2012-02-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

In all her life, White Face Woman knew only tender love. She never knew harsh discipline—only gentle correction. That is Indian child training. The Indian completely won his child’s love and friendship without the rod. That is the best and easiest way. This form of child training became ineffective after the Indian child was compelled to attend the white school.

Today a terrible thing had happened to White Face Woman, an adult woman. She was publicly assaulted, not by a parent, or kin, but by a stranger with whom she had bargained, when he swore by heaven that he loved her. “This very night,” she swore, “I escape, or die by my own hand in the attempt.”

She kept a sharp watch and when the guard entered the outhouse she moved quickly. In less time than it takes to tell, she was climbing the stockade. Someone was steadying the poles she used in climbing—she did not look back to see who it was till she reached the top. Throwing her robe over the sharp pointed poles of the stockade, she rested on it, and looked down.

There she saw a Red Coat, in his underwear, still holding her ladder and smiling up at her. Returning a big smile, she whispered, “Tokala Nehima” (the Secret Kit-Fox) and dropped over the wall. (This Red Coat, J. H. Thomson, married a Sioux maiden, Pretty Smile, and lived wit her at Wood Mountain, where both lived and died of old age.)

Someone caught White Face Woman as she dropped. She nearly fainted. She thought it was the major. When she turned with a drawn knife, she saw the young brave who had caused all the trouble.

Without a word to the man, she quickly ran home with the man at her side. He carried a Custer rifle. When entering the Sioux camp, White Face Woman ordered him to “go get your pone and come to me. You are escorting be back to the Black Hills country.”

Several people were moving about when White Face Woman and her escort left camp separately. The woman’s pony, Warrior, a splendid animal, a noted runner with great endurance, was acting strangely. He pranced more than usual and was constantly looking about, as though looking for someone to attack. He gave his mistress comfort, confidence, and strength to bear her great trial and lighten her heart. A mile southeast of the post, she and her escort met; from there they went with some speed southwest. The country ahead, for fifty miles, was rough, rolling hills and made good cover.

White Face Woman packed a buffalo robe, a large sheet of smoke tipi leather, and a flint bag in which sinew, awl, fire implements, and medicinal stuff were contained, also a wooden bowl, a cup, and a bone spoon in another bag.

Her escort rode a beautiful pony, as proud looking as his master. This pony, too, had great speed and endurance and was thoroughly trained for hunting, buffalo running, and war. Along with the Custer rifle, he carried bow and arrows. His pack consisted of the same articles as that of his companion. He picked the route and called the pace. Neither carried any provision. Lightly and smoothly they lope, walked and loped, never trotting. Thus they traveled till they crossed the international boundary. Then, for White Face Woman’s sake, he called a halt for the day.

A useful temporary shelter for an individual could be made when needed. Green creek willows were used—ten, or more, the size of a man’s forefinger and 10- or 12-feet long, the butt ends were sharpened. They were set in the ground in a circle, or an oval, to fit one’s length. The willows were bent and locked down to one’s sitting height by twisting opposite together, two at a time, lacing them crisscross. This frame was covered with a hide, or sheet, and a draw cord around the lower edge could tighten into a snug little shelter.

White Face Woman: 5 of 7

2012-02-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

There was quite a stir and excitement when news of White Face Woman’s disappearance reached the people. Some women cried and others rejoiced. Major Jarvis went from camp to camp—from lodge to lodge—looking for his wife. He lost his proud military bearing—he had a forlorn look not good to see. Even some who hated him for his conduct felt very sorry for him. For three days he searched. When he learned that the young brave who had caused his jealousy had also disappeared, he gave up and was seldom seen. Within a year he resigned. Some said he went back to England to try to forget the woman he loved, hurt, and lost because of his weakness.

NOTE by Brenda: Wm. Jarvis did not return to England but continued to serve the Force, and was stationed in the Yukon during the 1897 Gold Rush.

The evening White Face Woman made her getaway, she asked her escort who he was and why he broke the rules of the Night Dance by going outside the dance hall to pick her for a partner. “You have caused me terrible trouble, unpardonable trouble, that I should make you pay for with your life,” she said, this in anger, after pondering over the affair all day. She might have killed the young man had she thought of it before.

But he had come to believe that she loved him, too, as he loved her, because she so readily accepted his attentions. He was a handsome fellow of twenty-five summers, with a powerful and graceful build, but he was as shy as could be. For awhile, he lost the power of his tongue, surprised, and shocked at White Face Woman’s temper and questions.

Finally he spoke. “My name is Calling Elk. I am twenty-five summers now. My father’s name is Red Eagle. He is head of the Tribal Lodge. My mother’s name is Scented Wind. I beg your forgiveness for what I have done to you. The reason I did what I have done is because of my immeasurable love—to save you form a hard and lonely life, because I love you. We Dakota people are not certain of tomorrow. Your sister and brothers, for whom you traded yourself, a thing he had rightly guessed, may be forced to flee to the open spaces tomorrow—if so, do you think you could remain behind with that chief of the Red Coats?”

No answer came from White Face Woman, so he continued. “I am diseased with an incurable sickness—shyness. I have never spoken to, or courted a girl in my life. I could not go near you, though I loved you. But yesterday I lot my head completely and did what I did.”
Calling Elk had his head partly turned from the woman as he spoke, so he did not see her amused smile. “Another reason,” he continued, “is because the Great Spirit made us Indians as common men, a flock to band together, to be picked and chased by another flock. So I did what I did because I love you.

“I will not try to win you by trickery and lies. You see what I am—the outer part of me. I have nothing to interest you, but I did what I did because I love you.” The speaker cleared his throat to speak again when White Face Woman burst into loud laughter. Calling Elk flushed, his face as red as blood.
Very early in the morning, Calling Elk awakened the woman and set before her roasted venison and a bowl of saskatoons. They were near Eagle Flock (the Plentywood, Montana country, in a direct line to the Black Hills of South Dakota, the location of the Oglala Sioux Reservation. It was safe for daylight traveling, there being rough country ahead.

General Miles was patrolling the boundary country, on the watch for Sitting Bull. Secret Indian war parties were moving everywhere. The country was still dangerous. Calling Elk had to be more careful than usual with this woman in his care. Although the country he was crossing was new to him, he had learned the lay of all the large creeks and rivers on his route and was confident of his way. General Miles’ scouts were Indians who knew the country thoroughly and they were to be found.
About the end of July, White Face Woman reached to the end of her trail, the Oglala Sioux Reservation. There she found her relations who lived as treaty Indians. Calling Elk, too, found relatives and went to live with them.

White Face Woman never met Calling Elk till at the Night Dance—had never even heard his name. Yet in her haste to escape from her husband, she called on him to escort her out of the country.

She knew the moral laws of her people. Once a girl parted from her people with a man, she was considered a loose woman and nothing on earth would change their point of view. Yet, under the circumstances, in the heat of her anger and shame, hurt and desire for revenge, she did not stop to reason. Or did she have an independent mind of her own?

Calling Elk was handsome, quiet, sensible, pleasing. She found him master of himself, a very proud looking person, but the appearance of pride was deceiving. The Indian ruled the world by a socialist form of government and wealth accumulation could not fit in. A man was considered independent when he was strong of arm, able to put an arrow deep into a buffalo and own a good fast pony. Calling Elk possessed all these—he had made a name for himself as a warrior.

Little by little, White Face Woman learned to know the man who suddenly changed her lie and she found herself drawn to him slowly., Two years later, the marriage of Constable Calling Elk, of the US Indian Police Service of the Oglala Reservation and White Face Woman was announced.

A little adobe house stood a mile from the agency. Beside it was a garden—in the yard a flock of children. A woman dressed in calico, wearing an apron, moved busily about the home, humming a song:

“I married him without love

For that I suffered greatly—

I am leaving him for you.”

White Face Woman: 7 of 7

2012-02-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

Sioux Indian Police, 1882, Oglala Reservation

White Face Woman lay on her death bed. She was given up to die. All the medicine men for miles around had failed to restore her. Her husband, still wearing the star on his breast, sat by her bed, broken-hearted—waiting for her die.
   It was near sunset and visitors for the night would soon be coming. A stranger, covered with trail dust, stood at the door. Calling Elk greeted the man and motioned him to a chair.
   The stranger was a Cheyenne Indian, by his clothing. He was a handsome-looking man. Neither spoke for some time. Finally, the stranger spoke in very good Sioux, saying, “I am a Cheyenne. I wish to find the home of one named Come Out Like A Bear.”
   Calling Elk answered, “The man you are seeking lives near. But, friend, it is getting late. I wish you would stay over night with me—I have a tipi out there, furnished with bedding, where you can rest quietly.” The Cheyenne accepted. Calling Elk set before the man a cold bowl of pork and beans, hardtack, biscuits, and coffee—it was the government ration.
   An hour or so later the Cheyenne asked, “Has someone doctored your woman? I can see plainly the spark of life in her body is waning.”  “Are you a medicine man?” asked Calling Elk excitedly.
   The Cheyenne answered with a nod.
   “Too bad,” said Calling Elk, “I have nothing wherewith to employ our service. I have only one horse left, but that is for police service. I must hold it in case my wife lives. Too bad.”
   Again the Cheyenne spoke. “Friend, the pay a medicine an requires is not for gain. It is part o the offering to the spirits we are commanded to ask for—I see you still have something of very great value that I will take as pay for curing your wife.”
   Excitedly, Calling Elk looked about the house, but could see nothing of very great value. “Friend,” he answered, “I love my wife. Act quickly.”
   Never before had three persons been known to live so happily as White Face Woman and her two husbands. White Face Woman had a maid—her husband’s hired man. Both husbands worked as government employees and rapid improvement toward a new way of life was made.

NOTE: The parents of White Face Woman returned to the United States and were enrolled in the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, at Poplar, Montana. There, one of her brothers, William Derby, became Chief of Police. All are now under the sod.

Six Orange Crates and Epiphany in A Fortune Cookie

2012-02-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

Wayne and me Spring 1970

Eighteen years old and headed for college--that was years ago. At the time I was living in Mesa, AZ, and on "move in" day at Grand Canyon College (now a university), my best friend Wayne rolled into the driveway with a borrowed VW van. I had everything ready for him: six orange crates packed with everything I owned.

Since then I've moved a gazillion times, each time with an ever increasing accumulation of life's flotsam. The last time I moved, I got rid of an antique piano and six bookshelves of books, untold bins of research, sacks of clothes I no longer wore, pictures, paintings, pots, pans, canning jars, salves and ointments that my youngest swore were around before he was born.

I'm moving again, and again weeding. I've tossed at least 300 books this time around. I've tossed hundreds of files, box after box of ever more research, garden boots, clarinet music from junior high (goaded by my youngest who says I'll never again play music so littered with black notes), even paper dolls I've been hauling around since I was ten years old and living in Northern California.

Each time I've gone through this process, I've inevitably thought of Wayne and that beastly hot day in Phoenix when he helped transport my six orange crates of belongings into a small dorm room and the rest of my life. Where did all this stuff come from? What happened to the days when I needed so little to create a corner of home for myself?

Where did all this come from?

The recession's hit a lot of people hard, me included, and from time to time I've felt a bit blue. But not long ago I found this epiphany in a fortune cookie: Accept something that you cannot change, and you will feel better. I thought of those six orange crates and how happy I'd been. Why feel blue over a recession? Especially since once upon a time, eighteen years old, I'd felt so happy, and with so little? I called Wayne. Which is why I'm selling my house for what I can get and boxing everything else up for storage: Wayne will invest what I can salvage.

People ask, "But where will you live?" I actually have three places I can go before heading for Banff the end of March to drive summer tour buses:

1--with a friend on Drayton Harbor;
2--in a cottage on Storm Lake;
3--at my youngest's condo overlooking Lake Whatcom.
Okay, 4--my mother.

The more common question has been, "But what if the market doesn't turn around?" They're asking, What if the midnight hour should strike?

I know exactly what will happen. Should midnight strike and I lose everything, I'll still have six orange crates and not just Wayne but many friends. And I'll be bouncing down some freeway or the other, off to some kind of "college"and the rest of my life, where it truly takes very little to create a corner of home for myself.

Wayne and me, 2009, and 4 of my 6 orange crates, 2012

Guest: Lori Hutchinson, Educator

2012-01-26T11:25:00.000-08:00

Dr. Maya Angelou: An example of life lived to its fullest.

by Lori Hutchinson

When I was growing up, I never took the opportunity to read any of Dr. Angelou’s work. I knew she was a renowned poet and writer, but I was not aware of the greatness of her personal story or her many talents. When I decided to finally read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I was blown away. Dr. Maya Angelou is more than a poet and writer; she's an all-around role model for wisdom and life achievement.

Dr. Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. When she was three years old, Angelou’s parents divorced. She and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, where racism and hatred for blacks was rampant. Angelou experienced the effects firsthand, something that shaped her strong determination for peace and good works.

When she was eight, Angelou moved back to St. Louis with her mother. It was here she experienced something that nearly stole her soul; sexual molestation and rape by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. After the family went to court over the incident, her mother’s boyfriend was murdered by several angry family acquaintances. In the aftermath of these events, Angelou stopped speaking to everyone but her older brother, Bailey.

Angelou and her brother were eventually sent back to Arkansas to live with their grandmother. To help break her out of silence, a friend of Angelou’s grandmother, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, encouraged her to read works of literature out loud. It worked.

After experiencing several firsthand events of racism, Angelou’s grandmother began to fear for the children’s safety in Arkansas. She saved up enough money to send thirteen-year-old Maya to California, where Angelou’s mother had gone to live. Angelou's teenage years, living with her mother, was when she finally began to gain confidence and courage.

Immediately upon arriving, she was awarded a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. Although she loved the arts, she dropped out within a year to become, at fourteen years old, San Francisco's first African-American female cable car conductor. At sixteen, she became pregnant—although she managed to graduate from high school just weeks before giving birth to her son.

To support him, Angelou worked as a waitress and cook, but her passion for the performing arts soon became her means of support. Throughout the 1950s, she studied dance and performed in several plays, including a European tour of Porgy and Bess. She recorded her first album, Calypso Lady, in 1957. In 1958, she moved to New York City where she joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild.

Always looking for opportunities to make a difference, Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt, in 1960. There she worked as the English-language editor of The Arab Observer. She next moved to Ghana where she taught at The University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama and worked as editor of The African Review. While in Africa, Angelou studied and mastered several languages, including French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic. This is also where she met Malcolm X.

In 1964, she moved back to the United States and began helping Malcolm X with his Organization of African American Unity. After Malcolm X’s assassination, Angelou was appointed as the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On her birthday in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. A poignant moment in Angelou’s life.

In 1970, Angelou’s famous bestselling book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published. This was the beginning of a momentous and historic career. Today, Angelou has published more than 30 bestselling titles. In addition to writing books, she's also written scripts and scores for television and film. Her script for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia was the first script by an African American woman to be filmed, and it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Angelou has also acted, directed, served on two presidential committees and received dozens of awards and honorary degrees. Today, Dr. Angelou is a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

It’s awe inspiring to read about this gifted teacher, role model, survivor, artist. Maya Angelou is a woman who’s truly taken life by the horns. If you’re a parent, mentor, or teacher, I encourage you to introduce the youth in your life to Dr. Angelou. She’s a real-life example of making good with the time we’re given on earth.

Lori Hutchison teaches high school English and owns the site Masters in Teaching. In her spare time, she enjoys writing guest blog posts about various topics of interest; especially teaching! www.mastersinteaching.net

Sources:

http://mayaangelou.com/bio/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou

Learning To Think

2012-01-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

In going through some very old files while getting ready to move, I came across two things that meant something to me: One, a sketch I’d done of John Cabot in the late 1960s and, two, essays I’d written for my civics teacher in grade nine at Slausen Jr. High in Ann Arbor, MI.

I sketched a lot growing up and was sad when, having moved to Arizona for health reasons my senior year of high school, my mother threw out my art work. To her defense, there was quite a pile in the basement of our Iowa house. The two years I was at Maurice-Orange City High School (my sophomore and junior years), I took Drawing; and this consisted almost entirely of sketching classmates very quickly. We might go through five or six models in the course of one hour. I suppose, if I were my mother, I’d have given the whole stack a toss, too. Still, I’ve often wondered how good I was. And so discovering “Giovanni Cabot[t]o,” I was surprised to see I’d developed a serviceable skill at least.

My second satisfactory find was a sheaf of essays written for my ninth grade civics teacher at Slausen Jr. High in Ann Arbor, MI. I’ve always credited him for teaching me how to think.

He did this by handing off a list of famous quotes and requiring weekly opinion essays utilizing one of these quotes. “Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you” sort of thing. And so we’d write, he’d rebut, we’d rewrite, and he’d rebut our response. A single essay could go back and forth several times before being accepted, and not until he felt we’d sufficiently clarified and articulated our position. In this sheaf, I became intrigued by an essay using Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal.”

“All men are created equal,” I began, quoting Jefferson in his preamble to the Declaration of Independence. “But what does it really mean? I believe that when Jefferson wrote this, he meant that all men were born with the desire to have liberty, an opportunity to live, and to seek happiness.”

I went on in what is clearly a very un-Republican way of thinking with respect to government. The government needed to afford opportunity for everyone, I wrote. Not just the lucky few. My teacher's rebuttal was extensive. “Why should the government supply these opportunities? What status is there in being a ‘mere working man’? If liberty is inalienable, how come some are taken away—or never granted by some governments? Why does democracy tend to not try to take them away, but rather to protect them? Or does it?”

I struggled to clarify. “It is up to the government to supply jobs, or how would anyone earn a living? The country would rot away. It is up to the government to keep it strong. One way to this is to have jobs for everyone.”

He pushed back. “Why can’t the government merely see that private industry is prosperous enough to have jobs for all? Isn’t this what we want?”

I had to rethink my position. Finally, I wrote: “I think it’s up to the government to create an environment where job opportunities abound and where everyone can earn a livable wage.” I remember being pleased with myself, the clarity ringing clearly in my brain. I’d gone from vague to specific. Government providing jobs, no, but an environment for jobs? yes—two very different things. This teacher not only taught me how to think—but how to say it.

I’m approaching sixty. These essays and drawing are more than forty-five years old. Do I throw them out? They’ve served their purpose, I know. I can’t imagine anyone else being interested. But still, their discovery reminds me of who I am. An serviceable artist. An articulate thinker. What if I forget? I am pushing sixty.

I think, if it's okay, I’ll hold on a bit longer. Maybe when I approach eighty, I’ll discover them again. And again be surprised.

Old Letters and New Revelations

2012-01-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

People ask all the time, “How ever did you do it?” when referring to my being a single parent of three kids, ages 1, 3, and 6 for seventeen years. There's an assumption I did do it.

The kids are grown and gone and two of them have kids themselves. Today it's January 2012 and I'm selling my house—and, consequently, going through old files. I just now came across a folder of Heather’s work. She was six when I left her dad, and she's suffered the most—her age of course, but the deeper impact undoubtedly was the responsibility I'd placed on her. Worse, because she gave me no trouble I tended to leave her to herself; there were so many other things to do.

One of my most painful memories of her childhood was of her breaking her knee. I was gone. She was out riding her bike and was a few blocks from home when a neighbor kid, just to be mean, plowed right into her, dropping her straight down on her knee. Knee broken, she somehow managed to get the bike and herself home, hopping all the way, and get herself into my bed. She instructed her little brothers to pack it with ice and waited. And waited.

I was at a writers conference an hour and a half away. No cell phones then. When I finally returned, she’d been in pretty brutal pain for hours, watching her knee swell despite the ice and aspirin. I bundled her into the car and over to emergency, where they splinted her leg and suggested a surgeon. Amidst my sea of guilt, I was thunderstruck at how stoic and smart she’d been.

So, no, I didn’t do it. I couldn’t be everywhere—physically, emotionally.

In this file of Heather's today I found a pile of letters she'd been asked to write. “Are you wondering why I am writing you a letter? It’s because Mrs. Morris is making us. We have to do this every week on Friday and it has to be returned, signed by you. If we bring it back on Monday we get 25 points. For every day it’s late, we lose 3 points. I know you hate reading and signing letters...”

She’s referring to the inundation of paper work I was constantly receiving from the schools for all three of my children; everything had to be reviewed and signed and returned and, yes, I hated it. The clutter of it all in my head—while struggling to get the bills paid and food on the table and attend all the other things needing attention—was too much. I didn’t mind reading the material; it was the borage of signing and keeping track and reporting to the teachers ad nausea that I minded. Why all the falderal? When I was a kid, we did our homework and that was that. None of this running back and forth between home and school. As a kid, it would have driven me nuts. As a mother? It was all so meaningless and just one more thing to do.

But reading Heather’s letter today, away from the pressing needs of yesterday, I realize that my irritation had been hard on her. Not only did she have the responsibility of orchestrating the paperwork—her grade depended on it—she had my resistance. Stoically, she'd soldiered on. I'm bothered by this.

A second realization. “...it’s not my fault,” she wrote. She tried so hard not to burden me. A kid shouldn't be asked to do this. Parents should be able to deal with it. Plain and simple. I couldn’t.

But if this first letter bothered me, it was the one dated October 9, 1989, that has really upset me. In the middle of her narrative, Heather wrote: “Now, I’m supposed to tell you what I’m doing this weekend. I’m going to Dad’s. I don’t think you care what we do.” Right in the solar plexus. Because I did care. The reports on weekends with Dad, though, usually triggered rage, disgust. My children’s lack of care was so profound and I so helpless that early on I’d begun to steel myself and eventually trained myself to remain passive when hearing about it. In later years? when they could fend for themselves? For instance, refuse to sleep in urine soaked sleeping bags? By then it was a habit to simply listen, to remain disengaged from their lives outside my sphere. Today I realize that Heather interpreted my passivity as “not caring.” I am remiss in the obvious and hidden as well.

Over the years I've often looked back to see if I could have been a better mother, better able to handle the crises, the mundane, the day-to-day. Every time I end up concluding that, no, I couldn't. I'd given it my best. Even though I knew at the time it wasn't enough.

So to answer everyone’s question, “How did you ever do it?” I am here and now answering anyone asking that I didn’t, obviously, and that my children suffered for my lack.

But here’s the twist. Heather and her brothers seem to have forgiven my faults and negligence. And if I ever doubted it, one of Phil’s letters also came to light today, alongside Heather's. Apparently some really big crisis occurred in March 1999. I have no memory of it, there were so many. This one must have been a doozy, though. Phil was 21. He writes:

I had no idea this was going on, you say this started on the 30th? I have already prayed for you, and prayed again. Mum, I don't want you to scare me like that again. You have been so strong for all of us our whole lives. I am not telling you to be strong now, because I can understand, no, I can’t, but I simply ask that you allow us to be strong for you now. Tears run down my face as I hear your distress, think about the beautiful things. Any year now you may be holding a grandchild in your arms. You can teach them to love themselves as you have taught me. Sending my children to grandma’s house is something I have dreamed of my whole life, to let them experience the love and encouragement I was so fortunate to have….Please always remember that I love you and that I, we, will be strong for you…

Their whole lives saw us lurching from one upheaval to the next while I struggled with poverty, poor health, and all the attendant worries that come with parenting. My faults speak for themselves—not keeping my distress to myself is just one. But if my children can forgive me? I didn’t single parent well to be sure, but it seems I did it well enough.

So here's my final answer to anyone asking "How ever did you do it?" My answer is simply this, "I didn't. But sometimes forgiveness intervenes."

Kezia Hephzibah and Ana Papaionnon, Professional Squatters and More

2012-01-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

Jacob Marley, the Christmas Carol

I wish I had a picture of Kezia Hephzibah. But I only have one of Jacob Marley from the Christmas Carol. Keziah, not to be confused with any other Kezia Hephzibah, and there are others, perfectly innocent. This one comes attached with her daughter, Ana. Both are large. Ana is quiet--but she quietly, coldly backs her mother in court. Kezia is loud--over the top aggressive and foul-mouthed. She talks swiftly, words a hurricane, in something resembling a New Jersey accent. She explodes in your face.

People in Bellingham, WA, would love to have a mug shot of her, too. I don't. We don't. And so Kezia's still ransacking peoples' lives and leaving a wake of destruction in her path, and just this week someone asked, "Hey, you ever hear any more of Kezia?" and in the mail arrives a letter from an attorney in Rhode Island, asking me to give him a call.

For all of you who're wondering what the woman and her daughter are up to now? Here's the update.

Oops, a catch-up first for those of you who've somehow missed out on this fantastic story. Here it is; I'll try to put it in a nutshell.

A year and a half ago my son advertised in Craigslist for a renter. Enter Kezia and daughter Ana. Long story short, they refused to pay rent, slapped a restraining order on Blake for going over to introduce himself and trying to see what could be worked out, and filed so many false police reports that the police finally quit coming to my door--my door because Blake couldn't live in his condo: Kezia was. The story gets worse, "same song, second verse, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse." The details can be found in the Bellingham Court House under the pleadings of Blake Kent vs. Kezia Hephzibah.

Very quickly we realized that this is what Kezia and her daughter do. Establish residency, refuse rent, slap on restraining orders, file false police reports, write threatening letters citing "violation of landlord/tenant RCW code," take you for whatever you've got, and try to get your butt tossed in the klink. For Blake, it could at times be funny. He'd cross the Canadian border back into the States and the guard might say something like this: "Theatre class in Vancouver tonight, Blake? Or was it theology night?"

"Theology, Sir."

"Well, you're supposed to be in Bellingham violating your restraining order."

Or, it's me answering the door to the sheriff, again. "Where was Blake last night?" he'd ask. A nice man, a sexy man, so nice and sexy that I'd have married him on my next trip into the court house if he hadn't have been wearing a wedding ring. So instead I'd say "Chicago." Or "Thailand." Or "Colorado." Which at any given time was where Blake was. Mr. NiceMan Sheriff would then give me his sexy smile, pull himself off my porch, and amble to his car. "See you next time," he'd say, grinning still, ducking into his car.

The whole police department eventually figured out going after Blake was a waste of time, that it was distracting them from catching the violent amongst us, like the guys who shoot the mothers of their children or beat up their girlfriends and leave them for dead. Not someone who's knocking on his own front door trying to figure who's living there.

One time Blake and I were waiting for yet another court hearing over the restraining order or collecting rent (who can keep track?) when Mr. NiceMan Sheriff and a pal sat down at a table next to us. "You ever meet Blake?" I asked Mr. NiceMan Sheriff.

This miserable story nearly ended with Blake's goose cooked. Which is what it seems Kezia was after. Blake and I were in Alaska. He was helping me install a window in my old Gold Rush cabin when he got a recorded message from the Bellingham courts "reminding" him that he had a court hearing the next morning over a violation of his court order. If he didn't show up, they'd swear out a warrant for his arrest.

Huh?

Apparently, by sending her a copy of the summary judgment he'd won against her for $1,000, which he was required by law to do, Blake was also by law in violation of the restraining order. Wow, who would have thought? In America?

It just so happens that when in Skagway, Alaska, I hang out with the mayor's mother. So Ginny called Tom. Tom called Bellingham. Blake sent a friend in his stead and was granted a two-week reprieve based on Tom's intervention. For the next week, though, Blake called every attorney in B'ham. He was going to go to jail, every single one of them said. He'd violated the restraining order--which, incidentally, had an addendum attached to it by Judge Mura saying that although legal technicalities hindered him from throwing out the retraining order it was unfounded. Blake carries it with him to all job interviews. Still...that said, justice could only be served by Blake going to jail it seems.

He finally called the judge who was to hear the case. How Blake secured five minutes of the man's time, I don't know, but he did, and in five minutes Blake's goose was out of the oven. He did have to fly from Alaska to Belllingham, though, his dime (more expense thanks to Kezia), and show up for court, but in court the judge threw the case out of court. Finally, a year after it started, it was over.

So now I get a letter from an attorney in Rhode Island asking me to please call him at my earliest convenience regarding a landlord/tenant situation involving guess who.

Rumor around here was that once Kezia and her daughter were removed from Blake's condo, they moved in on an old man and were suing him for a portion of his estate. Not true. Though court records do reveal another landlord/tenant issue. Another rumor floating around town was that Kezia and Ana had finally moved on--Wyoming this time. What's known for sure is that they're now in Rhode Island raising Cain.

A rental agency put Kezia and Ana, via a Craigslist ad (all starting to sound familiar?) in a rental unit of a single mother. I used to be a single mother--raising three children on my own for seventeen years. I can't even imagine tangling with such a force back then. The attorney says Keziah was asked to leave; her deposit and first month's rent was returned. But she didn't leave, of course, and is busy slapping on the restraining orders. Of course. The attorney on the case managed to get them squashed and is preparing for a hearing on January 23rd to begin the long process of having Kezia and Ana removed. Again.

If I were the single mother, I'd be a wee afraid. She swore in court that Blake broke into "her" condo, opened the glass doors, and left. That he came in and put a rock in the toilet. That he entered, made himself a peanut butter sandwich, left it there, a bite out of it. That he'd snuck in and unplugged the frig, ruining her food. That he'd stabbed her frying pan. That she had to search "her" condo every time she entered lest he jump out and murder her. That she had to pray each and every time she entered "her" condo that his demonic spirit be vanquished.

Yes, I wish I had a picture of this woman. So does Bellingham. And when I called the District Court in the RI city hearing the case, asking for more information? The clerk knew instantly who I was talking about. "Oh, yeah, odd last names, causing trouble wherever they go, yeah, here's the information." So I'm guessing people on the east coast are wishing they had a mug shot of Kezia, too.

First question: How can we even begin to say we live in a free country when we're slapped with restraining orders, endure false police reports, are forced to spend thousands to keep out of jail, and must endure someone uninvited in our private homes?

Second question: Why can't women like Kezia and Ana be stopped?

Third question: Last week a TV protagonist asked a TV antagonist of Kezia quality, "Aren't you tired?" Aren't Kezia and Ana tired of moving from state to state, looking for their next mark, pouncing and choking the stuffing out of the innocent? They live in constant transiency, constant animosity, constant litigation and strife their bread and butter. When do they rest? When do they play? Laugh? Aren't they tired?

Fourth question: Who's really suffering here? Blake? The old man? This single mother? Blake's gotten over the shake-up. In time the single mom will too. Maybe even me. But Kezia and her daughter will again be on the run, again crisscrossing the country, again singing the same song, second verse. They don't travel lightly. Each new run for fresh bait is another chain of Jacob Marley fame. Fettered to ill-gotten gain, they carry the increasing weight and length of their need to destroy, never seeing the self-imposed prison of their own sad, boring, tiresome, and shadowed lives.

Jacob Marley woke up too late and did what he could to warn Ebenezer Scrooge. Is it already too late for Kezia?

Final question: Is this why Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies? A kind of Jacob-Marley-come-back-before-it's-too-late?

I don't know. I'm just asking.

My Struggle to Understand the Republican Response to the Congressional Cutbacks and Another Plea To Fast For the Hungry

2011-04-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

I have many Republican friends and some family, none of whom can be considered dispassionate about human rights or hard-hearted when poverty and want falls into their laps. And so I am grateful to these friends for their responses to my Facebook Note and earlier e-mail entitled "The Tea Party is Over." And their explanations as to why they continue to choose to support the Tea Party agenda despite my passionate request to fast for the hungry--a movement initially started by MoveOn.org in protest over the proposed budget cutbacks. The explanations, though appreciated, confound me; and I want to share these responses for I am struggling to understand the thinking behind them.

I'm a woman who's lived in poverty all her life, some years better than others, some worse. It's my hope that moderate Republicans and Democrats and everyone in between will listen to what I have been witness to and to seriously consider fasting for the hungry. Mostly, it's my hope that everyone will pick up the phone and talk to their representatives about this, and ask them to balance the budget not on the backs of the poorest of poor who did nothing to create this mess but the backs of the wealthiest who do not pay their fair share of taxes and corporate America that started this mess in the first place.

You're been tricked.

The most common response I've received is that I've been tricked and should watch Fox News. I'm confounded because all you have to do if pick up the phone and talk to your representatives, Republican and Democrat. They've got the cutbacks in their hands, on their desks, and can tell you exactly what they're supporting, not supporting, and what they're willing to capitulate on. Or not. There's no denying the cutbacks and Congress is even now pushing through a bill that goes even deeper for 2012.

Time for tough love.

Another common response is that they've personally known hard times but have never asked the government for help. It's time, they say, for a little tough love for those who do ask. I'm confounded by this as well because

1) lucky you, life's dealt you a winning card; you should be grateful, not judgmental.

2) it must mean I need tough love--specifically hunger--because I am currently using food stamps and have drawn unemployment after being replaced at work by a 20-year-old.

3) finally, tough love as I understand it was designed for people who refuse their advantages to make something of themselves. Ingrates who sneer at the face of grace and turn on their benefactors. Not for people with a special needs child requiring costly medical care, people who've lost their jobs and can't find another, people who work multiple jobs without benefits and still can't make it, people who find themselves divorced and without resources. What advantages have they thumbed? Luck simply turned, as it can and does.

It's all a lie fed to you by the left-wing media.

This probably confounds me the most. Congress is threatening to shut down parts of the government on Friday if they don't get to balance the budget on the backs of the poorest of the poor rather than the backs of the wealthiest and corporate America. In what way is this the liberal media spoon-feeding lies?

It is my own conclusion that we've got a war against women, children, the elderly, and the sick--and that conclusion comes directly from the fact that the crippling of these people is not balancing the budget, not even close. It will account for less than 1% of the deficit. If GE Capital, who made billions and paid no taxes (they were even given a $3.5 million tax credit this year while millions went hungry) was required to pay the same kind of taxes the rest of us do, problem solved. But the current Republican congress does not want to do this. It doesn't take a liberal media to tell me that Congress is not interested in balancing the budget as much as it is in going after our most vulnerable. Otherwise just balance the budget on the back of GE and be done with it.

Do you honestly think MoveOn.org cares about these people?

I am confounded because 1) what's happening clearly reveals that many Republicans don't care and so it's a wobbly leg to stand on when throwing this particular javelin; and 2) whether MoveOn.org and other organizations now participating care is immaterial. They're doing something.

We're Christian and we value life.

I have to admit this so confounds me that it makes my head spin. The contradiction cries from the very rocks. So if you value life why you aren't you supporting the hungry? If you're Christian, why aren't you doing as Jesus says, feeding the hungry? I'm really trying hard to reconcile this. Maybe my Republican friends, with all due respect, honestly feel there are no poor. There are only the gullible, people like me, who foolishly believe the liberal media's lies and trickery. Yet there are many Christian organizations who are supporting the fast in protest against these budget cuts. Numerous church organizations and prominent ministers have called on Washington to stop this.

Following is a CNN report. Also a March 29 article written by Mark Bittman, food editor for the New York Times. Scroll past if disinterested, but the references to Christian involvement I personally find gratifying. But then maybe the liberal media is making all this up too. Tricking us into thinking Jim Wallace is involved,Tony Hall, Bread for the World?

See? It's so easy to dismiss what we don't want to hear by calling it a lie. Nevertheless, I've highlighted some of the religious references.

Washington (CNN) - Several leaders of progressive organizations announced Friday they will join a group of 6,000 [as of today, 22,000] participants in fasting to protest budget cuts that would affect those living in poverty in the U.S. and abroad.

Executives of MoveOn.org, Service Employees International Union, the Center for Community Change, and ColorOfChange.org are among those that have jumped onboard. They will protest the proposed cuts with fasting, advocacy, and prayer, Tony Hall, former Ambassador to the United Nation Agencies for Food and Agriculture, told CNN.

The group said in a statement that their protest focuses on the proposed budget cuts that would eliminate $7.6 billion from domestic programs that impact low-income women and children. Other cuts would potentially eliminate feeding programs for 18 million of the poorest and hungriest around the world, and could cause low-income seniors to lose their monthly nutrition assistance, the group stated.

Hall and Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners, announced the fast Monday with support from a broad coalition of religious leaders. "Everybody who is fasting believes in fiscal responsibility but not in making cuts that will hurt the poorest of the poor," Ambassador Hall said, adding that he advises people to contact their representatives and pressure them not to cut funding for the poor and hungry.

"At a time when billionaires are getting massive tax cuts and Wall Street profits are sky high, balancing the budget on the back of the most vulnerable in America is simply immoral," Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn.org said in a statement. "I am fasting because this budget will leave pregnant women and children hungry, sick people without healthcare, children without pre-school and students without teachers-while giving tax breaks to those who caused this crises."

Mary Kay Henry, President of the Service Employees International Union, Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, Ritu Sharma, president of Women Thrive Worldwide, Rick Jacobs, Chair and Founder of Courage Campaign; Joaquin Guerra, Executive Director of Presente.org will be among the participants.

As the situation progresses into next week, Hall will call on members of Congress to join in the fast.

New York Times: Why We’re Fasting
By MARK BITTMANcongressional budget office, Food Stamps

I stopped eating on Monday and joined around 4,000 [that number is now up to22,000--Brenda] other people in a fast to call attention to Congressional budget proposals that would make huge cuts in programs for the poor and hungry.

By doing so, I surprised myself; after all, I eat for a living. But the decision was easy after I spoke last week with David Beckmann, a reverend who is this year’s World Food Prize laureate. Our conversation turned, as so many about food do these days, to the poor.

Who are — once again — under attack, this time in the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted “Welfare Reform 2011” bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I’m sticking to those related to food.)

These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending.

Beckmann, who is president of Bread for the World, made me want to join in just by talking about his commitment. For me, the fast is a way to demonstrate my interest in this fight, as well as a way to remind myself and others that there are bigger things in life than dinner. (Shocking, I know.) I expect I’ll learn something about patience and fortitude while I’m at it. Thirty-six hours into the fast, my senses are heightened and everything feels a bit strange. Odors from the cafeteria a floor away drift down to my desk. In the elevator, I can smell a muffin; on the street, I can smell everything — good and bad. But as hungry as I may get, we know I’ll eat well soon. (Please check my blog for a progress report.)

Many poor people don’t have that option, and Beckmann and his co-organizers are calling for God to create a “circle of protection” around them. Some are fasting for a day, many for longer. (I’m fasting until Friday, and Beckmann until Monday. And, no, it’s not too late to join us.)

When I reminded Beckmann that poor people’s hunger was hardly a new phenomenon, and that God hasn’t made a confirmed appearance recently — at least that I know of — he suggested I read Isaiah 58, in which God says that if we were more generous while we fasted he’d treat us better. Maybe. But a billion people are just as hungry, human, and as deserving now as the Israelites were when they were fleeing Egypt, and I don’t see any manna.

This isn’t about skepticism, however; it’s about ironies and outrages. In 2010, corporate profits grew at their fastest rate since 1950, and we set records in the number of Americans on food stamps. The richest 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all American households combined, the effective tax rate on the nation’s richest people has fallen by about half in the last 20 years, and General Electric paid zero dollars in U.S. taxes on profits of more than $14 billion. Meanwhile, roughly 45 million Americans spend a third of their posttax income on food — and still run out monthly — and one in four kids goes to bed hungry at least some of the time.

It’s those people whom Beckmann and his allies (more than 30 organizations are on board) are trying to protect. The coalition may be a bit too quick to support deficit reduction, essentially saying, “We understand the need for fiscal responsibility, but we don’t want to sacrifice the powerless, nearly voiceless poor in its name. As Beckmann knows, however, deficit reduction isn’t as important as keeping people from starving: “We shouldn’t be reducing our meager efforts for poor people in order to reduce the deficit,” he told me by phone. “They didn’t get us into this, and starving them isn’t going to get us out of it.”

This is a moral issue; the budget is a moral document. We can take care of the deficit and rebuild our infrastructure and strengthen our safety net by reducing military spending and eliminating corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich. Or we can sink further into debt and amoral individualism by demonizing and starving the poor. Which side are you on?

If faith increases your motivation, that’s great, but I doubt God will intervene here. Instead, we need to gather and insist that our collective resources be used for our collective welfare, not for the wealthiest thousand or even million Americans but for a vast majority of us in the United States and, indeed, for citizens of the world who have difficulty making ends meet. Or feeding their kids.

Though Beckmann is too kind to say it, he and many other religious leaders believe that true worship can’t take place without joining this struggle: “You can’t have real religion,” he told me, “unless you work for justice for hungry and poor people.”

I don’t think you can have much humanity, either.

Democrats want a one-world order, controlled by the Muslims.

I have to quote this to get it right: "The liberal left wing [d]emocrats would love a one world order with the radical Muslims in control, then you won't need to fast because you will be classified as a[n] infidel and won't live long enough to fast. I prefer to worship the One True God and not George Soros."

This is too muddled to sort. Who's George Soros? The guy who played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary? Isn't this the American way? Isn't this what we're cheering about for Egypt? George Soros, isn't he the one who ponied up for education? Providing the largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest? This is a bad thing?

Are people are actually worshiping him?

As to Muslim rule, is this a throw back from Obama's father being an African? Surely not.

As to what fasting for the hungry has to do with any of this, someone needs to fill me in.

I'm grateful this came from one my readers and not a friend. Yet the broad-sweeping generalities--all hodge-podged into one sentence of vitriol--begins to explain a life-long question I've had regarding the German Holocaust. How could a Christian nation pick certain subcultures within their nation to blame for all their economic woes? And then systematically eliminate them? Without a hue and cry being raised off the streets? 11 million people! My God! I cry. So many Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, mentally ill, people protesting this! People ask, where was God? I ask, where was a nation? 11 million people! And so I'm beginning to understand. Let your government demonize its chosen patsy to be sacrificed on the alter of economic woe, and then deny the reality of growing inhumanity all around. In our case, demonize the poor (40 million by the US census of 2010), deny the laws being leveled against them, ignore those who are affected, turn a blind eye--consciously or unconsciously--to the growing obvious, and then attack or diminish those who speak out.

My dilemma.

Clearly, I am much confounded and much conflicted as to why my perfectly wonderful friends don't see this. I've known their compassion and generosity and understand the depth of their commitment to justice and what is right. It drives me crazy and breaks my heart.

Mark Bittman of the New York Times asks, "Whose side are you on?" He chose the side of the hungry, not because he's a "liberal" and espousing "socialism" but because, he says, it's the humane thing to do. I too have chosen. The other day I drew my line in the sand and began writing about the cut backs because I cannot not speak up. I choose to follow Christ's most adamant commands: Feed the hungry, take care of the sick, and bind the wounds of victims who've been beaten and left for dead--even if they are from Sumeria and we despise everything about them. I find it interesting that Jesus had more to say about the poor than anything else combined. His final words to Peter were: Feed my sheep. He must think their care important. Yet there are so many Republican reasons why 40 million Americans living in poverty should not be acknowledged or aided and further burdened.

My conclusion.
The conclusion I am coming to is that my friends and many other Republicans simply don't know this as reality. They can't. They've never met the poor, or been poor, they've never seen their children go hungry, never watched someone die due to poor medical care. Their life experiences leave them out of the loop when it comes to hard core poverty and the brutal, bitter winds that drive the poor and hungry down a road into deeper deprivation, where there is none to help. I would like to introduce them to my side of the tracks. For I have been there, and still am in many ways.

All my life I've lived in poverty. At one point I was juggling 7 part time jobs and have never had a job with work-related benefits. It's not that I'm unintelligent. Or lazy. Quite the contrary, there was nothing I wouldn't or couldn't do. But it was never enough.

I raised three children on my own. I wrote for magazines and newspapers. I wrote radio scripts. I wrote nine books. I spoke at conferences and other venues. I went back to school (first to get my undergraduate degree and then my masters). I taught at two universities ninety miles apart. I rebuilt my Volkswagen engine when the head gaskets blew. I sold our bodies for science at the University of Washington's medical research center. We stood in line at the food banks, the clothing bank. When we couldn't get to the food bank, I starved myself so my children could eat. They were never dressed as well as their friends and Heather recalls sitting alone while her classmates enjoyed pizza--I didn't have the $3.50 required for her to participate. There were no movies for us, or eating out, or the kind of holidays their friends enjoyed: Hawaii, Barbados, Disneyland. They felt left out. And they were. In one house we lived in, the boys popped down a hole my father cut in the kitchen floor to a wee bedroom he created for them in the basement--accessible before only by going outdoors, down, and around. My daughter undoubtedly suffered the worst, for much of the work fell to her and what little energy and attention I had was diverted to the boys--a mistake. I did it because my daughter was capable and stoic. I doubt she had a childhood because of it and I blame myself for it. She also physically suffered because I couldn't afford the doctor and so administered her allergy shots myself--using the needle over and over again until she could no longer bear it and we'd get a new one.

The worst: My children never had my undivided attention. They lived under the cloud of my anxiety and, too often, the downpour of tears and crankiness that comes when frustration is huge. I was the Jack of All Trades and so therefore did none of it well. But all that I did fell short. I begged, borrowed, and once stole. I sold apples, as Alice Walker puts it, on the street corner. I did it with chronic health issues that eventually evolved into an immune disorder that disabled me when the boys were in high school.

Why was life so hard that it nearly killed me and then crippled me? No sooner would I hear of a social resource, free children's shots for instance, than it was yanked out from under me--Reaganomics in full blown hatchet mode, axing any and all social services that would have alleviated so much. I wobbled from one hope to another--my emotional support for disappointment coming from the "trailer trash" of society. The downtrodden, the suffering, the overlooked--the "lazy." People who "deserve" their deprivation, who need "tough love." The very people the congressional budget cutbacks are going after again. People like me. And so I take this personally. I have banged my head against cupboard doors until bruised, bitten my hands in agonized wailing until blood ran. I've rocked and moaned with no words to throw against heaven's door. Years I lived like this.

But my life was a walk in the park. I at least had medical insurance. I had an ex-husband who, when coerced and taken to court, coughed up some child support. I had parents who at times subsidized my academic scholarships so I could continue in school. I'm sorry to report that some of my friends were not so fortunate. They lost their children to drugs, violence, gangs, and prostitution. Their kids dropped out of school, got into trouble, ended up in jail and who's paying for their keep now?

Penny wise and pound foolish, budget cutbacks of the '80s did not serve society well. We should take note, and learn. If you're really interested in efficient economic spending, wouldn't it be smarter to help support struggling families now than pay for incarcerations down the road?

An editor of mine once said, "No one ought to suffer so much." He was a Republican, but when witnessing my life and those of my friends his compassion eclipsed political views.

Asking again.

And so I'm asking that compassion eclipse political views. I'm asking moderate Republicans and Democrats and everyone in between to rethink this, join the fast, and ask their representatives to dismiss the cutbacks so undeserving. And if you just can't bring yourself to believe the "liberal media"? Believe me. Listen to me when I tell you that poverty is unrelenting and that without help there is no way out of the hole. I am grateful to those who helped me, Republican and Democrat friends alike. Very few poor are so lucky. It takes a village and government aid is sometimes all people have.

Please call your representatives and ask them to let you know who they're cutting and by how much. And then let them know you'll be fasting for the 40 million! who will be hungrier for it, and ask them to require corporate America to bear the burden of the deficit they created and not those who had nothing to do with the mess we're in. They may, they just may, change their minds.

At the very least, the hungry will know someone cares. That spells the difference between hope and despair. Sometimes, this is all we need.

Link to join the campaign:
http://pol.moveon.org/pac/budgetfast/?id=26743-17669847-Cz_6nVx&t=1

Homeless and Hungry in America Today

Destination: Skagway, Alaska

2010-05-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

My “half-my-age” son, Blake, insisted I apply for a summer job in Skagway, AK, as a tour guide at Jewell Gardens. He was up there last summer and is up there again this summer driving tour buses. He got it into his head that I’d love it, do well, and probably make some pretty good money in tips. "For someone your age," he tells me, "you look hot." Do I feel insulted? or not? More importantly, he felt it would do my two-year unemployment stretch of depression a world of good. Get my head out of the impossibilities and into something fun. So I applied. Long story short, I’m headed for Alaska this Thursday morning.

Here’s the truth. I’m scared to death. I have to pay my own transportation and it ain’t cheap. Too, there is no housing. Apparently people just land and “stuff” works out.

“You remember I’m pushing sixty, right? I can’t do the camping thing. I can’t do cats and dogs if someone does take me in.”

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he says.

Here’s the kicker. There is no doctor, no pharmacy in town. I have to take up five months worth of medications.

He arranged for free housing with the preacher, at least for May. Okay, a compromise. A place to lay my head for a couple of weeks. So I’ll go and see if “stuff” happens. If not? I’ll just come back and consider the adventure one thing I can scratch off my Bucket List. I’ve always wanted to get up there.

My job is to take tourists through the gardens, a glass-blowing factory housed in the gardens, and help serve my specific group at the tea house, also housed in the gardens. All of which I can handily do, and which I will enjoy.

A forty-hour week, I'll have time to explore, hike, maybe take a train out to some gold-rush sight, and probably write. Write lot. Bill Jensen tells me he can't sell my Narcissa story until the whole thing is written. Geez, I knew I was a has-been. But not ancient! I mean, really?

Friends have suggested I blog about heading for the wilderness as someone "pushing sixty” and probably a little crazy. Like maybe post pictures of the moose that tripped and landed on my car. Or the bear that mauled my Toyota Scion I call Lunchbox while trying to get the oranges packed in the back. Actually, this did happen once upon a time, no joke, when I was a child and we were traveling through Yellowstone, hauling a trailer. But, hey, that’s another story.

To get there, I’ll be driving the AlCan highway. Here’s the route of about 2,000 miles.

Up the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia to my sister’s in Quesnel. Through some mountains to my cousin Carolyn’s house in Hudson’s Hope. Then a long haul through wilderness where I’ve been told the wildlife is unbelievable to Liard Hot Springs on the B.C./Yukon border. For $19 I can soak in the hot springs and pitch my tent with the bears. Last leg to Skagway takes me to Whitehorse where my son tells me I need to stock up on food. I’ll arrive Sunday night at the preacher’s home/hostel. My other son Phil is lending me his rather fancy digital camera, so I can take pictures along the way.

I am now officially jazzed.

So, see ya in Skagway!

The Olympic Flame Is Out...

2010-03-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

...and so last night my friend and I went up to join the thousands in downtown Vancouver to be "in the moment."

What a moment! The torch flame out, only one bridge into the city left open (too many people!), we somehow found free parking, and stepped into a slice of history where my countrymen were not only buzzed from their record-breaking Olympic gold medals but intoxicated in the aftermath of a hard-won hockey Gold, the heart-stopping, lose-your-pulse greatest game ever! Canada’s Sidney Crosby making the winning goal in an overtime shutout with the US!

“Ca-na-da! Ca-na-da!” chanted the surging crowd.

Madness! Euphoric madness! People dressed in flags, faces painted, fists in the air, horns going, the energy of pride, camaraderie, bursting into the air like the America’s “rockets’ red glare.” The Canadian flag very much there.

Oddly, Kay Dee, a displaced Texan, was more “in the groove” than me, letting out a shriek and a holler and a “Go Canada!” to passing strangers, fist-bumping people wearing flags like Super Man’s cape, high-fiving old and young. "Oh, Canada! Our home and native land! True, patriot love, to all our sons command..." she sang. Me, a misplaced Canadian living eight miles south of the border, I trudged alongside her with typical Canadian reserve but still managing to enjoy myself.

“Hey!” I grabbed Kay Dee’s elbow. “Take that girl’s picture!” Kay Dee trotted after Miss High Hair, me in pursuit. Epitome of grace, the lovely girl struck a pose. Cameras spontaneously flashed.

“Ca-na-da!

“Ca-na-da!
“Ca-na-da!"

All around me Vancouver’s majesty and beauty towered. Lights shimmered off the inlet. Flowers twinkled in the streetlight. I saw it all through the filter of time, as a child coming into the city to visit the dentist, running errands (like the day we bought a copper milk jug somewhere in the loop off Oak Street Bridge and Marine Drive), long days at Stanley Park, visits to grandparents, playtime with cousins. A whole history here of pleasure, a garden of adventure, a haven of allure. My city. My country. My countrymen. I suddenly missed my home and yearned for all the days when life was simple and predictably peaceful--but ripe.

“I have to have a flag,” I said. Everyone had flags.

We almost tripped over a pair selling them. Big ones, four bucks. Little ones, two. “Do you have a twony?” I asked. Kay Dee shuffled through my backpack where we’d put her Canadian change.

A flag now mine, I secured it to my backpack. Yup, I was getting in the groove.

“Not in My House, Not on my Land.” We came across two posters we didn’t understand, held aloft by stationary strangers, a fixed point in a sea of humanity. We stood in the surge, trying to figure it out. A tall man, blond, blue-eyed, dressed in red, and leaning against a lamppost, shouted down from his lofty height, “That’s our goalie! Roberto Luongo!”

“Not a protester?” shouted up Kay Dee.

“No! Our goalie!” He turned to sport his LUONGO #1 jersey. "Our goalie! He’s saying, ‘You can’t have the gold! Not in my house, not on my land!’”

“Oh!” shouted up Kay Dee and I, both thrilled to understand. I reached and offered my first fist. “Ca-na-da!” Touch. A fist-bump, a connection to humanity, a reminder that it’s people, not government, who live in this world. We belong in it together. To quote the Americans out of context, “We, the people…” When had I forgotten this? Yeah, go Canada! Go world!

I turned around. Kay Dee? Kay Dee? One minute I was staring down into the public ice rink, ten second later… Kay Dee? Seymour and Pender, this was where we parked. This was our agreement; go back to the car, start over. But she had the map.

“I lost my friend,” I told the stranger next to me. “Can you tell me where Seymour and Pender is?”

“Two blocks up, three blocks over. Good luck!” Another fist bump.Touch.

It took awhile to push my way through the curb-to-curb. Finally! But, wait, the entrance doesn't look right. I head down the slope into the garage. Nope. I'm turned around. Coming in the out. Typical. I start back up the exit. At the top do I turn left? right?

Miraculously—I do believe in God, I do believe in God—there she was, walking past the exit. “KAY DEE!” I bellowed. She whirled, saw me. Her face lit up, her arms went up. I chugged uphill, my own arms up, and just like all the slow-mo movies of lovers running through flower fields and blue sky, Kay Dee and I ran through concrete corridor and artificial light and happily threw ourselves at each other.

Headed back into the madding crowd, we tucked arms. “I don’t care if we look like lesbians,” she shouted, “we can’t lose each other again!”

I agreed.

We agreed too, to stop in at the Olympic Store, temporarily held in the Hudson’s Bay Company. I have to say, the Bay is my favorite store. In the olden days, this is where we'd stop in to use the bathroom—a huge, high-ceilinged affair, designed with black and white mosaic tiling, regal and majestic with tall mirrors, green fixtures, and golden taps. If my sisters and I were lucky, or if we were with an old auntie, hands washed and feeling better, we’d head for the basement where the food was. At the deli, Mum, or an auntie, would buy us “pigs in a blanket,” sausage rolls wrapped in flakey pastry—to be dipped, of course, in mustard. None of this exists anymore.

What exists was a long line just to get in. Kay Dee and I inched forward, peering in through the windows where Olympic jerseys and jackets littered the floor and looked too much like Ross’s Dress For Less to suit me. A madhouse once in and a push and shove through the throngs in search of an Olympic baseball cap, for Kay Dee’s husband, that wasn’t white.

“Hey, what’s this?” I squealed with delight. Maybe I’m in love with the Hudson’s Bay Company because I’m in love with their blankets. I grew up with the traditional white one, with its yellow, green, and red stripe, keeping me warm at night. Today I have two red blankets, with black stripes, a six-point and four-point. Meaning, once upon a time they cost six and four beaver pelts respectively. But here, on display and lined up in a row, mannequins sported a variety of coats and jackets created from the blankets. A contest, apparently. Only one was chosen for manufacture, a mere $695. Ouch. The fox, a lovely four-point coat, was not in the running. Too bad. Lose the fox, and I was in.

The bathroom is now in the basement, and is--no surprise here--now sterile and generic and very Ronald MacDonald in its sheer ordinariness. But surprise, surprise, coming back up the escalator, we found ourselves fenced off. What, what? We can’t get out? Help!

Finally! Whew! Back outside, the crowd was getting thicker, younger. A singular vulgarity suddenly interrupted world peace. “Fuck the USA. A whole new way!’ Okay, enough. We popped into Tim Horton’s to rest our aching feet, have some soup, a sandwich, decaf coffee. A security foursome was hunched over fries behind Kay Dee. Two officials with ear sets relaxed behind me. A trio of flag-decked kids tromped in. “Can I take your picture?” Kay Dee asks. We’re right back to goodwill, courtesy, and Canadian character.

The city could not have been prettier driving out, crossing back over the Burrard Street Bridge, cutting left onto Broadway, up Granville, cutting another left to Oak, up Oak, and then over the Oak Street Bridge—somewhere down beneath us a cluttered shop that sold my mum our pretty copper milk jug. An hour later I was in bed in the States. Outside my back window were the lonely but lovely lights of Cypress Mountain in the distance, twinkling in an inky sky, serene testament to two-plus weeks of peaceful world competition. Hearts were broken, records were made, all testimonial proof to ourselves that, despite the isolated jerk free to chant vulgarity in our faces, we can, we’re capable, it is possible, to achieve connection to humanity; we can override governments and barriers, reach across divides and shake hands, and fist bump the world that is us. Touch, feel, be. The flame might be out but, “Yeah, go us.”

The 2010 Games: Where Is Everyone?

2010-02-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

I live just south of the Canadian/American border, a woman with dual citizenship, and with family who live and work on both sides of the Peace Arch. Today, driving home from the gym where I work out at the senior center in Blaine, WA, I drove through the strangely deserted border town, puzzled by the lack of traffic that's been predicted for the Games. Which everyone knows is to be held in Vancouver--a city very few know I was born in. But considering the fact that the games begin today, I am wondering, "Where in the world are all these people who are to be storming this border?"

In Blaine and the surrounding area, we've gone through quite the uproar, getting ready for these hordes of people. The border has been expanded, more lanes put in, security beefed up, extra guards hired, the community disrupted, invasion of privacy accelerated. Heat-sensitive cameras look right into the houses that line the 49th parallel, and a student of mine at the community college said her father's complaints about having to pee and brush his teeth for an audience being a gross violation of his privacy were summarily dismissed for the "greater good." So what's this all about? This no show on the day the entire world chants "Let the games begin"? Is my student's father taking a pee in public for no good reason?

Puzzled, I drove out on the Drayton Harbor spit to see if any cars were lined up to go through into Vancouver. Amazing. There were cars piled up going into the States, but all lanes going into Canada? All green, a first in my personal history. I've been through this border a thousand times and have never seen all lanes lit to "go," with guards on duty and ready to pass people into the land of my birth. More astonishing, half of the lanes were empty--no lineup of any kind. Believe me, I can count on one hand and have fingers left over, and still give you an accurate count of how many times I've actually driven up and had my chat at the gate without have to wait my turn idling in line. Where in the world is everyone?

I'm going to assume traffic will pick up. A shame to be the prettiest city in the world and have no one show. And in case anyone's interested, the map below and to your left is the map of my family's connection to 2010's Olympic Games--and by working my way down the page you can see that I'm probably in pretty good position to tell you something of an insider's view. I can give you some background that I doubt NBC, ABC, or even CTV can share. Leave all the important stuff to them--like who wins the gold--and the trivia no one cares about to me. I begin at the map's top: Whistler and Squamish.

First, Squamish is headquarters to one of the four First Nations groups being represented at the Olympics. It's also temporary home for my youngest son Blake. He is finishing his MA in Theology at Regent College in Vancouver but will be putting a small dent in his student loans by driving a bus for the Olympic athletes. He writes from Squamish, where he and his buddies are housed in the old Love Boat and are being fed like paying customers: "My job is to go to the athlete's village in Whistler every morning and pick up athletes going to the slide center. That means I drive skeletoners, lugers, and bobsledders. Cool, huh?"

If that isn't enough fun, he writes: "Last night the Olympic torch came through Squamish so we went to the festival. They had the torch, music, a logging show, and lots of free coke (liquid type). I even got to hold the torch! So things are fun, I'm getting to know the other drivers from our company, and I'm practicing my French with all the French speakers on the ship."

Moving to the south end of the map... My daughter and her family live in Ferndale (near me in Birch Bay), but Heather actually works in Langley just over the border. She writes: "I cheered the torch on as it went by my office today- I'm excited!"

In between the bottom end of the map and the top you'll find Vancouver. I was born here, and went to the dentist here, but I grew up in Pt. Coquitlam, 18 miles up the Fraser River. The "Bay House" (two blocks from the border) is where I was taken right out of the hospital, just three days old, the summer my father built my grandfather a cottage on the bay. I consider this home, for after leaving Pt. Coquitlam when I was nine I became a vagabond, criss-crossing the continent on both sides of the border. The Bay House, torn down and rebuilt by my Aunt Thelma, remains the only consistent spot on the map of my life.

Currently, my immediate family (less one sister) lives near me south of the border (though two of my three children go to school or work north of the line). All of my extended family and big sister, however, live throughout the greater Vancouver area--and my lucky McMillin cousins also have a condo at Whistler. It has seemed very strange to me that people from all around the world will be converging on my turf, when I have spent a life time living everywhere but.

And yet, today, February 12, 2010, official start of the games, I see no one going "home." Really, where are they all?

Forget Forgiveness. whatever the heck it is, or isn't

2010-01-26T13:10:00.001-08:00

This last Sunday my youngest son was to preach at my middle son's church, and so I got a phone call from Evelyn, my middle son's three-year-old. Was I coming down to her house?

"Yes, do you want to play?" I asked.

"Yes, and we can sit next to each other. And hold hands."

You gotta love little girls. They're so relational.

And so I went down and spent the weekend with Phil and his family, held hands with Evelyn, and heard Blake preach.

The sermon was on forgiveness--a topic Blake and I go around and around on all the time. Just what the heck does forgiveness mean anyway? That it's important is without question, but what the heck does it look like?

I grew up with the definition that forgiveness is all about forgetting. And so I strove to forget every wrong ever done and all that got me was more of the same. Just try forgetting that cars come whizzing down the road. Forget, you're going to get creamed. Remembering, it turns out, is critical for survival. So scratch that definition.

Another definition was one that prescribes toleration. Let a man hurt his wife seven times seventy and seven times seventy the wife must tolerate. A long time ago I scratched that one out of sheer exhaustion.

Once I was told you can only forgive once you've moved on, but how do you move on without forgiveness? A conundrum. So scratch that one too.

The one definition that Blake and I both agree upon is Anne Lamont's when she says that forgiveness is letting go of the wish for a different past. Which is more or less what happened with my molestation the year I was seventeen, when I realized that to expunge that victimization would be to mar the beauty of life and love I'd also known that year. Which was significant. I actually got myself into a bit of an emotional panic when I realized what I was doing; and very hastily I embraced that old darkness as part and parcel of the light I still have. I said as much to Blake on our way out of church.

"And so now of the three biggies in my life," I told him, "it's one down and two to go." We both knew what I was talking about.

In regard to his dad, a man I most certainly wish I'd never married, my preacher-boy son said, "Well, whenever you wish you'd never married Dad, just take a look at Evelyn."

Ahh! And so as of last Sunday my new philosophy is this. Forget forgiveness. Forget whatever the heck it is, or isn't. Instead focus on the life and love that is, miraculously growing out of all that old darkness.

And experience the redemption.

Merry Christmas! Prickly Pear & Fruit!

2009-12-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

"We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We with you a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year!"

Christmas Day swiftly approaches but, because I was in Arizona for six weeks this fall, I did not make a Christmas card--and so extend instead to everyone on my list this snapshot of my five little elves and me, taken last Friday at my daughter's house. Merry Christmas!

The bad-so-sad news of 2009 was that my much loved Jeep died en route to Phoenix last October. I buried her under a rainbow in San Jose, CA, at a car cemetery called Pick and Pull. What a ignoble death to something so loyal and brave as was my jeep, 220,000 miles old. With the grand total of $241, which the junkyard, I mean cemetery! gave me, I rented another car and limped into Phoenix, distressed over not just the loss of my wonderful car but the financial difficulty this had put me in, now eighteen months unemployed. Blake, my youngest son, had this to say over the phone however: "Mum, you enjoyed sixteen years of a long and loving, monogamous relationship with that car. You loved that car. You will never love another car quite like that one. But, Mum, it's time now for you to start sleeping around." Perspective restored, two friends from high school helped me go car shopping. I now own a 2005 Toyota Scion which, after a few hurdles, runs like a charm.

The good news of 2009 is that my son and daughter-in-law have received word that we now have a Chinese baby to add to my grandchildren list. "Alice" was abandoned January 2 a year ago. The only information we have on her is from last August, and is cause for concern. She's already suffered two broken thighs and is suspected to have brittle bone disease. In my expression of worry over what this will cost emotionally as well as financially, my son said, "We could not hear of her and not go get her." My other son said, "Think of what her life would be like if left in China."

I did think. A few years ago Blake was in China teaching. He knows what her life would be like. I do too because Blake flew me over for ten days. I saw the plethora of beggars in the streets, suffering all manner of deformities and disease. Blake never passed a single one without dropping to his knee and rolling wadded-up yen into the beggars' cups. He touched them, spoke with them, let them know he saw them, that he cared. Would Alice, without Phil and Katie in her life, grow up with nothing to look forward to but broken bones and perhaps the streets?

And so Phil and Katie are waiting to go get her, and I suspect that our little Alice will bring the same wonder and joy to my family as did my little sister fifty years ago, born with a severe heart defect. For you cannot live with an ill child without seeing a bit of God. I once heard a minister say God does not intervene in the affairs of the world. I agree that at times he seems to utterly vacate, to leave us entirely to ourselves (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!) But my sister, born to die, undeniably brought the divine into our home. Sometimes life is not so much how much we can get out of it but how much we can put into it.

The highlight of my year was the momentous--but wonderful--journey to Arizona this fall, forty years after first moving there as a seventeen-year-old kid. I drove down through California and stopped both coming and going to see friends at the ranch where I lived as a ten-year-old and in San Jose where I lived as a young mother. These are friends who are the same wonderful people they were "way back when" and it did me good to bask in their love and our memories of each other. In Phoenix itself I was surrounded by numerous friends--from the church I once attended, from high school, from college, from when I worked at First National Bank of Arizona. How is it, I kept wondering, that friendship can survive long years apart? I don't know. But I am grateful.

I sign off with a picture or two taken of my Thanksgiving morning. My friend Wayne (BFF from high school) planned it all. His sister Carol and I arrived at his house at the same time, breathless and happy, nine o'clock sharp. I'm gluten intolerant and all fall Wayne had been introducing me to various grains indigenous to the Southwest Natives that are gluten free; he surprised me Thanksgiving morning by preparing breakfast appetizers of tepary beans and two new grains. Carol and I lapped them up and I thought, isn't it wonderful to have such two fine friends?

Anyway, we headed out for our hike up South Mountain to see more petroglyphs (I have fallen in love with the ancient symbols) and to eat a breakfast of prickly pear cactus fruit. I've never enjoyed a better Thanksgiving. Do you see Wayne teaching us how to get past the prickles to the fruit? Now isn't that a metaphor for life?

It's good to have Thanksgiving right before Christmas, instilling a sense of gratitude for family and friends. There is no better gift, I think, under any tree. In that spirit, then, I wish all my family and friends everywhere a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Please link over to this delightful card, sent to me by Jeanne and Lizz. I forward it on to you all.

Christmas Carol--a la Jim Carrey

2009-12-15T09:13:00.000-08:00

If anyone is debating whether or not to go see the Jim Carrey version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, go. Or at the very least read my son's review of the film posted on his blog.

I think I actually felt snow falling on my face in the theatre, the 3-D was that good. The film itself, though, is one I'd use in my English classes, getting the kids to write compare and contrast essays between two presentations of story. This is a must-see, must-have movie that no one can tire of. b--

Copy and paste the link below to get to Blake's blog:
http://www.heartbeknowledge.blogspot.com/

Post Traumatic Stress, A Curious Animal and Petroglyphs

2009-11-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

Post-traumatic stress is a curious animal, like a bobcat lurking in the shadows, snarling, pawing the air. It circles, keeping you in its sights. Sometimes you can stick your fingers in your ears and go la-la-la-la-la and it goes away, but eventually the yellow eyes of the past don’t slink into the shadows anymore. The pointed tips of the ears instead lay straight back, and the beast crouches and crawls across the stones of time toward you. You hyperventilate on the fear but you know if you run, it’ll leap out of the past and take you down.

Last spring and finding myself mired in a dark place of emotional and creative paralysis, I remarked to my youngest son, “I wonder if I have some kind of PTSD.”

Blake is twenty-nine. He has blue eyes. When he is happy, they lighten to a bright, translucent color that reminds me of an Arizona swimming pool. When thoughtful, they turn a deep navy, and you can almost see his prodigious mind pulling data from every nook and cranny as he thinks and the color deepens. The day I blurted out my rather off-the-wall and oh-so-casual comment—oh, BTW, maybe I have post-traumatic stress—he slid his eyes toward me. They were a deep navy blue. “Perhaps in more ways than one,” he said. Ah…a circle of bobcats. And so I came to the Arizona desert to see what they would do.

They actually ganged up on me.

So much so that a few days ago I checked out two books on post-traumatic stress disorder from the Glendale public library.

Have you ever been in a natural catastrophe? the authors ask.

Check.

Were you ever sexually assaulted?

Check, check, and check.

As a child, were you physically maltreated with excessive beatings or spankings?

Check.

As a child, did you ever witness beatings?

Check.

Have you ever been kidnapped, abducted, raped, burglarized, robbed, or mugged?

Check to all of the above—if we can count my ten-year marriage and the seventeen years of single parenting that followed.

Were you ever injured in an accident?

Check.

Have you ever been involved in a situation in which you felt that you would be harmed or killed?

Do I have to answer this?

A single “yes” is enough to tuck me snugly into the DSM-IV’s category of PTSD. No wonder I’m overwhelmed. There are other questions, of course, and my continued “yeses” should perhaps alarm me, but for the first time in my life I am actually beginning to feel quite normal—normal, that is, for someone suffering several layers of post-traumatic stress. The circling chaos, closing in on me in this desert where so much pain lives, actually holds a pattern, so say the books. A kind of dot-to-dot, if you will, a carbon footprint of the traumatized that I, and anyone else traumatized, can find comfort in for all its tragic commonality. The books go on to say that by learning to recognize these patterns I, and everyone else, can gain mastery. A bit like learning how to parse a night sky, I think, into Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper… the North Star, that glimmering beacon of hope that’s always led the oppressed out of slavery to the past into a future unfettered.

My first observation upon recognizing that I actually do suffer multiple traumas is that not all my trauma carries the same import. For instance, my crippling anxiety over tornadoes is only triggered by certain weather conditions. Most of the time, I don’t even think about tornados. I only fall into hapless panic when the barometric pressure plummets a certain way and the smell of ozone stings my nose and constricts my throat. This simple discovery that I can sort and prioritize is a good thing. Because here in the desert it’s blatantly obvious that my sexual molestation of forty years ago, inflicted at the hands of my Christian doctor—feels like the lead bobcat of my original metaphor. Gain mastery of this crouching beast and I might find a way to contain them all.

So I came up with a plan to tackle at least this one cat. On the 40th anniversary of my initial sexual assault, November 11, I’d make a list of everything Dr. Mattson ever did to me, burn it, then get my high school BFF to take me up South Mountain, sacred to the Indians, where I could leave the ashes of my past in symbolic gesture and sit alone—and just “let” all those panic-instilling memories “intrude.” Sit and wait and just see what happens. Just see if the bobcat, ears back and crawling across the stones of time, pounces and takes me down.

I did need my BFF, though, to execute. In the old days Wayne had been the one to take me to the doctor. I’d get through by disappearing into my head, knowing that he’d eventually, if I could just hang on, get me away from it all. The idea of sitting alone in the desert with all those memories was so scary I couldn’t imagine doing it without him. What if I started to keen? To howl? What if I couldn’t find my way back? What if all those memories took up residence and never left, leaving me forever crazy? Yes, I needed Wayne.

He agreed.

This was the plan.

This is what happened.

On the morning of the 11th I was crying before I ever got to his house thirty minutes away.

“How are you this day?” he asked when I pulled up. He was standing in the driveway.

“I’m okay. Except do you have any cream? My eyes hurt.”

He studied my face. “Do you need eye drops? Or skin stuff?”

I pointed to my sore skin under my eyes. I knew I looked about ten years old than I did the day before. He disappeared, came back, handed me a bottle. “This is supposed to be good. Do you need to pee?” he added.

It was as though he had to do all my thinking for me, which was okay. I was so strung out with past and present running side by side in my head—like the old-fashioned hot wheels tracks, double lanes, Yesterday and Today—that I was feeling a bit schizophrenic and definitely unfocused. Willingly I threw organization of my bodily functions into his good care. “Yes,” I said. He pointed to the bathroom.

When I emerged—more grounded for having weighed myself and certainly annoyed, where had those two pounds come from?—he said, “Ready?”

I nodded. We climbed into his car, a Saturn I don’t mind telling you I’ve fallen in love with. Part of my trauma down here in the desert is the on-going saga of my car troubles and I have, from time to time, had to borrow Wayne’s. Climbing into his bells-and-whistles vehicle was like climbing into the lap of a familiar and over-indulgent lover. “We’re going to make a stop first,” he said, “a surprise.” I buckled in. A surprise?

While we wandered through the lovely streets of Ahwahtukee in South Phoenix, he gave me a history of South Mountain rising up beside us and the Indians who go back as far as the Hohokam, an ancient civilization that built multi-story apartments and ran miles of irrigation ditches that far surpassed anything Europe was doing at the time and which the city of Phoenix, to some extent, has appropriated. By the time we reached a small parking lot of the world’s largest park, and were ascending by foot a short trail his friend had put in, Wayne was talking of Marcos de Niza and look, here’s his name etched on the stone, with the date of 1539. I was amazed. Wayne’s summation of the various interpretations of history, the various debates regarding the name’s authenticity, where he himself weighed in on the argument, fueled my delight. “There’s more,” he said, and I trotted excitedly along after him down and around the trail to a rock face that took my breath. Petroglyphs of unknown antiquity.

“There is no Rosetta Stone for this,” he said. “We have no idea what the symbols mean.”

Squared-off spirals, “lizard” men, boxes in boxes, concentric circles, squiggles, all scraped into the desert “varnish” of the stone. What did they mean, these symbols? Perhaps they were simply names; perhaps warnings; maybe marks of possession. Or maybe they told a story. A sad story? I wondered. I didn’t want a sad story. Yet if sadness stood here, wasn’t the narrative testament to survival? Or perhaps these markings were here to celebrate a victory, some kind of triumph, to document achievement. Gradually I became aware of Wayne telling me about the descendents of these now silent authors, people who live on the Gila River Reserve and who still make forages into the many hidden parts of South Mountain where white men can’t go. They go, Wayne said, to practice their ancient rites, to seek the ancient gods. They take their own relics, and leave them. I thought of Chief Seattle’s grave in the Pacific Northwest and the many relics found there on any given day. “Just like you’re doing today,” Wayne told me. “Come on. Now that you’ve seen this and I’ve finished my lecture, we can go find a place for your ashes.”

We went to two more spots before he was happy. It was Veterans’ Day; the trails were busy. I needed privacy. We ended up where it was easy to duck off the main trail and scrabble up into the crevices of South Mountain just as the Hohokam must have done thousands of years ago. I had no idea where we were on the map, but kept after Wayne as he climbed up higher into a hot seam that, when I turned around, opened onto the desert and Phoenix sprawl. Forty years ago it had been nothing but cotton fields, farms. “Is this good?” he asked, tottering atop a boulder. He pointed out numerous small caves and tiny hollows in the rubble of stone where I might leave my relic.

“It’s good,” I said, my palm sweaty from the plastic bag I carried.

He disappeared, I was on my own. I found a hollow, hardly reachable, and I scraped my skin leaning over to dump the ash from my bag into the basin of this small enclave. Not much substance, I thought, considering the ash…and the damage it represented. For some reason, I suddenly felt protective, confusing the ash with the girl who’d been so wronged, the girl who’d been me. I understood my momentary confusion; violation of any kind is so easily internalized. But the ash was not me; the ash was Dr. Mattson—and his dark deeds. I leaned over and blew. The ash swirled deeper into the stone. I blew again, driving it up against the pocket wall. Let the Hohokam spirits take it, let God have this. Leave it in this sacred place that reaches back in time and still survives.

I clambered away, up the seam to a new place, and sat down into a place of three stones, a chair of sorts, the heat of the earth a cushion beneath me.

Can I name my thoughts? Describe my feelings?

Wayne came to check on me. Quietly he went away again.

My tears, for the first time, were not anything I fought to keep at bay. Let the bobcat take me down. But sitting in the desert, alone, staring down the beast that circled, yellow eyes on me, I kept thinking of the petroglyphs. Here was something seductively new, and my curiosity called me away from Dr. Mattson. Perhaps, I thought to myself, these ancient symbols were a mixed bag: good and bad, triumph and defeat, momentous and mundane, and why not? Is this not life? And were they any different, I wondered, than what had been scraped into the patina of my own psyche? And how, I wondered with a terrific jolt, could one excise the tragic without marring the rest?

I stood up in agitation. I started to climb over the stones. Had I really been hoping to cut from my mind this piece of my past? Cut it out as a surgeon cuts cancer, throwing out body parts and leaving behind devastating mutilation? How could I expect to do this without destroying everything attached to it? For despite all its hellish aspects, my first year in Arizona was the best of my life. A Charles Dickens’ “best of times, worst of times” sort of thing. Did I really want to rid myself of it all? In almost a state of panic I started back down the seam, but where was Wayne? I couldn’t find him. My heart started to pound. Where was he?

I descended farther, out to the open. Where is he?

He was sitting atop a high stone, hat on, about fifty yards off, guarding the entrance to my place. Down below bikers were wheeling along the trail. I began picking my way over. He spotted me and started toward me, directed me this way, that, until only a sheet of stone stood between us. “Are you all right?” he asked when I stepped over.

I was not. Trembling, I took hold of his shirt and pulled myself into his arms, nose in his chest. “No,” I whispered, so agitated I couldn’t think.

He tucked me in. “But was it worth it?” he asked.

I think it took all of twenty seconds to figure it out. The bobcat had not pounced.

It’s been a couple of days since tethering that bobcat to the sacred seam of rock in Phoenix, Arizona’s, South Mountain; a few days to get my eyes off the yellow eyes of the past and to see instead a wall of symbols that are scraped into the patina of my psyche. Unlike Wayne’s petroglyphs, I do, though, know what they mean. For here is the harsh and disfiguring damage from Dr. Mattson, a cruel and deeply offensive marking that can, I think, make even rock weep. It claims its space, alongside other trauma I’ve endured and have yet to sort through. But there are other symbols as well, etched with love not only by Wayne whose wisdom and kindness is a kind of North Star in my life but Gwen, too, and Jeff, Rita, Tom, Jonathon, Rachel, Rod, Uncle Bob and Donna, Rachel, Jody, Nancy, Carol, Linda, Cherry, Marie, Jamie, Peter, Dr. Ney, the little church we all attended, McClintock High where I graduated, Legend City, Big Surf, Jonathon’s white ’59 Chevy pick up truck, drive-in movies, scorpion hunting…

Sandblast Dr. Mattson out of my life? No wonder I was agitated. To do so would forever damage the surrounding etchings that better define me.

I followed my high school BFF down to the trail, leaving behind at least one bobcat tethered to ash and hidden in a place where God dwells. There were others, I knew, but I’d find a way to drive a stake and tether them too.

“What?” said Wayne.

I’d stopped. The desert was sooo beautiful.

Oases in the Desert

2009-11-09T11:03:00.001-08:00

My desert sojourn is proving not to be the one of arid stones and poisonous cacti that I’d envisioned and remembered but has instead come to revolve around the unexpected and very vibrant plant life that defines Arizona—life that for whatever reason I’d not appreciated when I lived here lo these forty years ago. A lesson that is taking too long to learn.

First there is the oasis of Glendale’s Public Library just 1.5 miles from the house I am renting. Botanical gardens, sculpture, peacocks, chickens, cooing doves—these greet me each day, the highlight of my hours. My soul often feeds in silence, and so I drive solo into the parking lot two minutes from my house and find myself a shady place beneath a giant date palm and wander all by myself through the slightly pink and wandering flagstone walkways that mosey people into the library. I pause to teach myself another form of cactus, Golden Barrel for instance, or to memorize the name of a tree so different from the Pacific Northwest. I stoop to smell a new flower, and pass chickens busy in the Lantana, a low green shrubbery that explodes yellow or orange flowers. Sometimes a rooster struts along beside me. Sometimes a trio of peacocks might lift their heads from the grassy lawn, or a male might lift and fan his tail, and preen in the sunlight. Sometimes, when inside and busy checking my e-mail or doing my job searches or looking for yet another Steinbeck book to reinforce the writing I am ostensibly here to do, I can hear them, the peacocks and the roosters. I bow my head over whatever it is I am doing and just “am.” A moment. A sound. A place. A peace that travels inward, burrows in, and seems to restore what I lost here when I was just seventeen—and could not find again in the misery that my life became because of it.

But I don’t have to be alone to gain the tranquility. My friend Wayne last week took me out to the botanical gardens in Scottsdale where I kept him busy identifying everything. A veteran mountain climber, desert hiker, with a lifetime of knowledge stored in his head like the gallons of water store inside Arizona’s giant saguaro, he is my walking encyclopedia. Plants, stones, birds. He knows everything. “What’s this?” I ask. “What’s that? So how does the Senora Desert differ from the Great Basin? Hey, what’s this little guy?” I’ve spotted a plain little brown bird hopping about on the ground, camouflaged by the dappled shade of a Giraffe Tree. “We call them LBBs,” he says and laughs when I look up puzzled. “Little brown birds,” he explains, smiling. “LBBs are any bird we can’t identify,” he tells me. Now I laugh. We, too, have LBBs in the Northwest.

It’s November 2, this day we are at the botanical gardens, and a sign tells me it’s a Mexican/Catholic holiday when the dead come back—Día de los Muertos.

“Did I tell you the story of my father and the Rufus Hummingbird?” I ask Wayne. He nods. “Let’s look for hummingbirds,” I either think to myself or actually say. “Perhaps my father will come back to me again and say hi.”

We find them in the butterfly and hummingbird garden—and though the hummingbirds are not like the ones back home, they are beautiful and busy. Lime green, wings a blur, bright color that flits with sudden energy and a buzz from one bush to the next while butterflies seem to bounce in the air around them. Wayne and I find some shade and sit. He is two seats away from me and one more time I find myself falling into a space of calm. A moment. A sound. A place. A peace that travels inward, burrows in, and seems to restore what the events of this desert stole. I watch the hummingbird; it is not my father’s messenger today. It is a bird of exquisite beauty finding nourishment in this oasis. I hear Wayne speak. “Do you feel the tranquility?” he asks in the delicious quiet.

I look at him, surprised at myself. I do.

His sister, three years younger than us, two days go took me out to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum an hour’s drive south of Phoenix. I immediately fell in love with the majestic, mysterious place, a patch of desert forest and flower in the shade of Magma Ridge, a craggy rock face that climbs straight up out of the desert, a timeless guardian to a dry creek bed that cuts through the rock at its toes. For me, though, the magic was in the eucalyptus—native to Australia but transplanted in other hot regions of the world.

Carol, knowing my affinity for these stately, white-trunked trees, simply took me into the gardens, past the water fountain, through the turnstile, beyond the gift shop, and into an oasis the Olympic gods could not have imagined. As we came onto a diverging trail, she turned me and simply said, “Look.” I was facing a forest of eucalyptus. “Oh, Carol,” I breathed in wonder. For here is another world. One step and anything can happen.

“Let’s save this to the last,” I tell her, so we take the main path then, up and around a man-made lake, a stony path that continues on up and around, passing under the Picket Post House that Boyce Thompson, one of the richest men in America by the time World War I broke out, built into the stony outcroppings; and then down, down, down, along a cliff overhang to the dry creek bed below. Wayne’s many LBBs skitter and hop, and fly into trees, the names of which leave my head faster than I can collect them from the signposts, and then, suddenly, a rock house.

We approach from one end and peer through two widows, two rooms, both opening into a third. We skirt and approach from the other side—and I find this stone house of more than a hundred years still sitting in the shade of trees, the names of which my mind has so quickly lost. Eternal against momentary, endurance against fleeting.

Once upon a time, the sign tells me, a family of five lived here in these tiny rooms. I can’t imagine. Cut off from the world, squatted along the creek now dry as bone. They’d made their living as truck farmers, watering their lettuce and kale no doubt from the creek. A place where strangers enter now, a place where the state of Arizona now grows herbs using sprinklers.

Carol and I left the little house and garden with reluctance. We came back up to the main gardens and exited through the eucalyptus forest; these trees cleaner and whiter than those I remember from California where, for eight troubled months in 1962, I’d lived as a nine- and ten-year-old. My sisters and I used to play under the taller, scragglier eucalyptus, and we'd walked beneath their high shading limbs with blind Uncle Earl, singing,

“Kuckabaro sits in the old gum tree,
counting all the gum drops he can see,
Stop, Kuckabaro, stop!
Leave one there for me!”

I wander now through similar gum trees, and I find that Kuckabaro still sings and still counts. I start to sing and Carol laughs. Names have been posted on each of the many varieties in this forest of eucalyptus gum. Red Gum. River Red Gum. Dark Gum. I pick up the fallen leaves and breathe in the stinging sweet smell, a smell I can, I think, get drunk on. A sting, yes, but intoxicatingly sweet. What would it be like, I wonder, to make love in such a grove? Engulfed by contradiction, yet entirely satisfied?

Let me take you back to Wayne and the botanical gardens and November 2. He and I, friends of yore, had only gone in a short ways when I bent over and felt the smooth leather of an agave cactus…then gingerly the tip of a single sharp quill that framed each frond. I pressed my finger into the stabbing pain, hissed, and yanked my hand back. I looked up at Wayne. Why is the desert so hostile?

I didn’t know Wayne when first stung by this desert, and he faded from my life as my unhappiness deepened. But when his grown up self squatted down beside me to point out the budding of a fragile blossom of the prickly pear cactus, the contradiction of hostility and beauty was hard to miss—in much the same way as the contradiction is hard to ignore in the eucalyptus’s stinging sweetness. When he stood, I wanted to take his hand, to acknowledge in some way the stirring metamorphous that was taking place. For this desert to which I’ve returned not only greets me with all its hostility but surprises me, too, with all the beauty I’d forgotten lived here. I find that I need not "forget" the brutality, but that I can integrate my history of both pain and pleasure in the same way the eucalyptus fills a breeze with stinging sweetness and the cacti can endure, content with blossom and thorn.

Even more encouraging is this: that with my friends and family who still live here and who still love me I have stumbled upon the shell of a stone house that once was me. I am at long last remembering who I was and can still be.

PS. Two books on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that I checked out of the library after posting this blog tell me that "lessons taking too long to learn" is not an accurate assessment; that the traumetized mind can only "learn" when ready, when the enviornment is supportive. These books also tell me that people sexually assaulted often view their lives as altered, and go through life as two people--the one before, a personality that fades from memory, and the one that is now and not a real, authentic self. This is perhaps what the stone house symbolizes for me. Clearly it was a return to pre-Dr. Mattson, pre-marriage.

Water Under The Bridge

2009-10-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

October 26, 2009
Forty years ago today I arrived in the Phoenix desert, a physically fragile seventeen-year-old, to live with family friends. I’d just survived a near-death experience; and a second hospitalization that followed on its heels suggested there was little the Midwest medical community could do for me, a severe asthmatic. Our only real option remaining was to check me into Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to see if the best minds in America couldn’t find a way to keep me alive. But then family friends unexpectedly stopped by for a visit, enroute to Phoenix for a new job at Arizona State, and invited me to come live with them. The desert was supposed to be good for people like me, and thus I arrived. Forty years ago today—October 26, 1969.

For me, there is much water under the bridge in this Arizona desert. To say that my year in Tempe, Arizona, was the best of my life is an understatement. Seventeen and finding myself suddenly healthy, away from home for the first time, and going to a high school that required nothing more of me than literature, sculpture, and music? Surrounded by new friends and, in today’s vernacular, stumbling onto a BFF? I wonder, do we ever recapture the intensity of being a teenager? A time of life when everything touches the soul so deeply? Is of such import? Perhaps this is why my concurring sexual molestation at the hands of the Christian doctor into whose care I’d been entrusted was so damaging, sliding my happy life sideways and then right off the road—though it was a long time before I ever came out of what feels to have been an emotional coma to the rubble I was in. Aware enough, though, that when I left the state five or six years later, I never spoke of Arizona again. Until my divorce at the age of twenty-nine. So much water under the bridge.

Two and a half years ago, though, nearly four decades of disassociation ended. How to describe this? Once, when cleaning out a closet, a dirty cast fell on my head. Whose broke arm had this been for? I’d wondered, thinking of my children. Blake’s? Phil’s? Heather had broken her leg; it wasn’t hers. Like the cast, my molestation fell out of a closet and hit me on the head. Not that I’d ever forgotten, far from it, but what was it doing back in my life? How did it get here after all this time? And why fall on my head now?

So after thirty-eight years of repressing Arizona I returned to the desert to reconnect with friends “who knew me then” and to face for the first time the trauma that subconsciously defined my life, now floundering on a bedrock of Self that had been smote and cracked, necessitating I live two lives of “then” and “now” with no real way forward. My BFF’s sister, the minister’s wife of the little church we all attended, and one of my youth group leaders took me over to the doctor’s office, now a parking lot for Scottsdale Hospital. Quite the crying jag. I’d never wept over this, but thirty-eight years of pain and confusion broke through some kind of emotional dam. My friends sat quietly with me, but in the murkiness of that gutting pain that caught me off guard and took my breath I sensed their love. How is it that in thirty-eight years of silence such love survives? I was amazed, and fortified, but still I felt I might drown and sink into some kind of emotional abyss, never to return. I could not stop crying, they could not help me—and then I remembered my BFF.

Wayne had been the one who’d begun taking me to the doctor all those years ago—never knowing, of course, what was really going on. I got through it all by picturing him in the waiting room, patiently waiting for me. I can see him still, sitting in a corner, opposite the receptionist’s window. I can see the pictures on the wall over his head, I can see the little table beside him full of magazines. He picks one up, takes a look, throws it back. He jiggles his knee. I only had to survive and he’d take me away. Is there a way to explain this man whose very presence evoked calm, whose smile and humor healed my soul? We certainly were not lovers, nor had we ever admitted any level of love for each other, yet it was evident enough to everyone around us that love was a living thing in our lives. And in all the years ever since? I’ve never heard or seen anyone with such an attachment. But it was by remembering this that I pulled myself together outside Scottsdale Hospital’s parking lot two years ago—remembering my old BFF who never failed to take me away from it all.

Back at home and all cried out, I was happy to have it out of my system at last and ready to begin the task of integrating my lost self with my real self, knitting together “then” and “now” into a cohesive trail forward into time. Not. Dr. Mattson continued to haunt me, as did my life after him—so full of anguish. For I’d I married badly in the Arizona desert, and immediately found myself trapped in a loveless and demeaning marriage. “Your body is not your own,” I was told, the Bible shoved under my nose to prove it. And indeed it was not. Nor was mind, my heart, or my soul. I only existed to be a Christian man’s domestic and sexual slave. Years later, still married, Oregon passed a law against marital rape. My husband was righteously indignant. I yearned to move to Oregon. Yes, a lot of water under the bridge in this Arizona desert.

So this September I found myself again planning a return to what had been the happiest time of my life and concurrently the most unhappy. Consciously it was to escape the rut I was in, an attempt to try and write, check out the job market, play with old friends—to put distance between my stagnant life where I could not find a job, could not focus long enough to write any one of a gazillion book ideas I had in my head…could not forget the desert of my life.

When Judith Couchman heard of my plans she wrote to remind me of the many Biblical stories involving deserts and exile…and forty days and forty nights and sometimes forty years. All were odysseys, she pointed out, taken by individuals, whole cities, entire nations. Always their journeys brought about transformation (http://www.judithcouchman.blogspot.com). I quickly added up the six weeks I planned to be gone. Forty-two days. Close enough. I added up the years. Forty. Right on the nose. Suddenly, my conscious decision to face the desert took on new meaning. This was a spiritual odyssey. Somehow, I think, I’d known it all along: I was desperately seeking transformation.

No one knows what Jesus suffered in his wilderness, or Moses on Mt. Sinai. Or Elijah in the cave at Mount Horeb. Joseph Campbell in his many books on mythology, religion, and psychology, writes that such wilderness journeys are life-threateningly tough. We can feel devoured, overcome, hopelessly lost. Such journeys require tasks to be completed, demons to be confronted, hurdles to be crossed. They’re journeys that require letting go of everything old to embrace everything new and unknown, and which exact self-examination that can border obsession. But not to worry, he writes, we’re all given “magical” help whenever we need it. Jesus received wisdom in the desert, Moses the Ten Commandments on Sinai, Elijah food at Mount Horeb. We too receive. The darkest hour is where we find the divine. All our stories, Campbell points out, tell us it is in the wilderness where we find new health and healing and hope.

Three days into my own journey and not yet at the desert, my faithful jeep of 220,000 miles died—leaving me stranded in San Jose, California, at the home of former friends. Do I go home? It was a viable question to ask. Retreat to safety and stagnation?

Or do I go on? Into the unknown?

Marilyn, upon whose doorstep I’d landed, said, “You need to go on. You can’t go back.” It was a little hard for both of us to miss the Biblical mandate or for me to miss Campbell’s “Call to Adventure.”

And thus I landed back in the Arizona desert just days before the fortieth anniversary of my initial arrival, no longer seventeen but fifty-seven—without a car and the house I’d rented dirty, no hot water, the toilets backing up. As my mother would say, a real fine how-do-you-do. Thank you very much God, thank you very much Joseph Campbell.

As with Marilyn in San Jose, I was at the mercy of former family and friends; as with Marilyn they rushed to help. The house I am renting is actually right next door to my former mother-in-law. In fact, it was Nelda who’d made all the arrangements. It was she who immediately lent me cleaning supplies, a radio, coffee maker, who brought over a Merry Maids mug ironically labeled “Savor your clean house,” and who just now brought over a microwave rice dinner she’d picked up for me at Costco. My old BFF Wayne jumped right in and lent me his car and agreed to help me find a new one. His little sister Carol had me over for supper and sent me on my way with more cleaning supplies and kitchen equipments: dishes, pots and pans, measuring cups, utensils. She came over the next day with a table and chairs and spent several hours cleaning windows and helping me settle in. Ten days into my wilderness venture I was unable to shake the loss of my jeep and the financial drain it was creating…but I was surrounded by love that overlooked decades of silence; in Nelda’s case, deep hurt. I, after all, had divorced her son.

When Elijah headed into the wilderness to seek the brook Cherith, God sent ravens to bring him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening. It wasn’t exactly a balanced meal but it’s a story that tells us there is provision in our desert experiences.

Yet on the thirteenth day of my exile I hit melt down, the many ironies and conflicts—and sheer weariness—catching up with me. My former mother-in-law and I went to church and afterward lunch (“You’re going to Baptist church?” my youngest son had asked the night before on the phone. “You’re going to a Southern Baptist church?), only to find Wayne on my doorstep when we got back. He’d left his cell phone in his car—which I of course had. He wanted the phone back. At the sight of him, hands in his pockets and patiently waiting, a stance I’d seen a hundred times when we were kids, tears stung.

“What’s wrong?” he wanted to know, his grown-up self greeting me at my door.

“Oh, Wayne, I’m having such a bad day.”

He sprawled onto one my couches, but not without laughing at the blankets I’d placed over them both. I amuse him with my leeriness of the dirt around here. His laughter made me laugh. “So what’s going on?” he asked, his summer-sky eyes seeking my face, the color and gaze a part of my past.

The car of course. That I was borrowing his, that I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm to find a new one, my awareness of taking so much of his time in looking. “I just want to buy a jar of peanut butter,” I said. “But there’s a whole row of peanut butter! So many different brands, different sizes, different ingredients. All I want is just a jar of peanut butter!”

But mostly, I told him, the whole molestation thing was hitting me hard. I didn’t tell him it had occupied my attention all morning while a Southern Baptist minister at times made my skin crawl with self-deprecating arrogance. I’d forgotten how some preachers can be this way, how some congregations can laugh, enjoy the comfort of their own superiority over the misguided and unenlightened world. I said instead, “Tomorrow will be the fortieth anniversary of my initial arrival here. Forty years. October 26.”

He expressed no surprise that I could be so anal about this. In reality I have both a calendar—which I remember keeping, and a journal—which I have no memory whatsoever of writing.

"And on November 11…” I had to look away. “I don’t know if I can talk about this,” I said.

“It’s up to you. I don’t know what you need. I don’t understand how this happens in the first place. I can’t tell you how to fix this.”

I slid my eyes sideways. He was watching me.

“November 11th,” I repeated, heart catching, fluttering like a butterfly in my throat, “will mark forty years to the day of his first assault.” I started to cry a little, and had to look away again. “It would have been better if he’d raped me,” I finally said. “I could have at least told someone about that. But…”

Everyone I know and everything I’ve ever read tells me the only way out of this kind of thing is to tell someone. Get the words out, put them somewhere else. Yet how, if I literally cannot talk about it? And truly, if it were that simple, I would have done it a long time ago. Joseph Campbell, I realized, was absolutely right when he said it could feel life threatening. “I can’t—literally I can’t—talk about this,” I explained to my old BFF, obviously with an emphasis now on the second F. “I try, but the words stick in my throat. So, on November 11th…”

“November 11th,” he said, thinking this all through. “That’s Veterans’ Day. There’s no trading. I don’t have to work.”

"This is what I’m thinking,” I told him, buoyed by his willing support with whatever and wherever I was going with this, and shared the plan I’d more or less come up with while sitting in Nelda’s church, the old Baptist hymns holding better memories than the preacher. How had I gotten through before? I’d asked myself. The answer was glaringly obvious. I’d gotten through because Wayne had been there. Waiting for me. Behind the closed door all I had to do was go away in my head and then come back when it was over, and he’d take me away, make me laugh again, plant me back in a world where life was good and wonderful and safe. I said, “I’m going to try and write this down, Really try. But then I think I’ll burn it all and make ashes, and put the ashes in a baggie. I don’t want anyone else burdened; it’s too terrible. But if I brought the ashes to your house? Will you take me up South Mountain? It’s pretty there. I like that part of the desert. I would feel good to just leave it all there. I can find a place to either bury it all or just let it all blow away in the wind.”

“I can do that.”

“But you can’t be there when I do it. I’ll cry. I don’t want you see me. But I need you close by so that if I start howling you’ll know to come get me. I need you to come get me. I’m scared of falling into an abyss and never finding my way out again.” With sudden clarity I knew this was my terrble fear. What if I reentered that place, one last time, disappearing deep into my mind in order to survive, what if this time I couldn’t find my way back out? For surely the River Styx runs through my psyche as dangerously and treacherously as it does in myth.

"I’ll come get you,” he promised.

Amazing how a plan can make all the difference! More amazing is how I can reach back in time and find my friend just as I remember him.

I actually slept well and in the morning, this morning, the fortieth anniversary of my initial arrival in the desert, I hurried over to Wayne’s house, driving freeways that never existed in our former life, actually looking forward to test-driving one of the cars we’d found the day before my melt down. He was waiting outside. “How are you today?” he asked when I jumped out of his Saturn, stretched, and all but jumped into his arms.

“I’m good!”

He laughed.

To the casual observer and perhaps even to Wayne the day was mundane enough. Test-driving one of two cars he thought reliable, taking it over to his mechanic, meeting Carol to celebrate and sign on the dotted line that made me the new owner of a 2005 Toyota Scion. But momentous, too, for all day long with Wayne—taking care of the car stuff, running errands, having lunch and laughing over the differences in our memories, making a date for him to come see me in the Pacific Northwest next year when the movie Eat, Pray, Love comes out—I couldn’t help but compare our “then” to “now” and think of all the water under the bridge. When all is said and done, it is my desert that forges our friendship. That's a good thing.

At one point in our running around and driving past something that astonished me, I asked, "What’s this called?”

He filled me in, then pointed out, “See the orange flowers, reaching up from the mounded foliage over there?”

"Yeah...”

"That’s Birds of Paradise.”

So that was Birds of Paradise. I fell in love.

He pointed out the sycamore trees.

They were like the eucalyptus.

"Do they smell?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

For forty years Arizona has been in my mind a barren landscape of sand and city concrete, blinding sunlight and unbearable heat, painted grass, plastic geraniums planted in artificial rows. Now? Today, I found myself suddenly planting a garden in my mind. I’d have Birds of Paradise alongside a lavender-like plant that I have growing in my own garden back home, but which also grows here. I’d put in some of that magenta bougainvillea—the torch kind, the kind Wayne really likes and which Sue Grafton writes about in her mstery series. The orange, the lavender with its silver foliage, the magenta…all back-dropped by an apricot adobe wall? How pretty is that? Add some prickly pear cactus off to the side, some saguaro strategically placed to add height.

"What are you doing?” he asked. “You thinking of taking some of that home with you?”

"What?”

"Birds of Paradise.”

"No! I’m planting a garden here!” and I laughed, surprised at myself.
It’s evening now. I look around this house I’ve rented. Everywhere I look, I see Carol and Nelda my mother-in-law (we agreed to drop the “former as too precise and probably not all that accurate)—the coffee maker, the table, the dishes, the mugs on the kitchen windowsill.

If I get up and go look in the garage, I’ll find my new car. It’s metallic gray, same color as the pots and pans Carol has lent me, a car picked out by Wayne. Even though he doesn't like boxy cars.

Yes, a momentous day.

I can think of another very similar day.

Not long after my divorce, maybe twenty-five years ago, I was having lunch at Seattle’s Shilshoe Bay with my friend and editor Jerry Jones and some our friends in the publishing business. It was one of those perfect summer afternoons, sun glinting off the water, boats of all shapes and sizes bobbing on the bay, good food, happy company. Afterward everyone dispersed, leaving just Jerry and me—and the swooping, soaring gulls that populate the waterfront. I was suddenly quite overcome with happiness to be divorced, to having endured the pain, to now have these friends, to be amongst people who admired me, who valued me. I threw up my arms and spun around.

"Oh Jerry,” I told him, “I’m so happy to be alive!” and I hurtled into his arms, surprising him and beside myself with gratitude and love.

His snort is actually a delightful sound, one only he can make, a sound I still hear it in my mind whenever I think to listen. That day he snorted loud and laughed hard, and let me wallow in my happiness.

Today is kin. I’m not on the waterfront, no seagulls caw in my ears. I am in the desert. Where much water lies under the bridge.

But water, I'm finding, that can nonetheless nourish my soul.

When The Net Appears

2009-10-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

ODE TO MY JEEP

“Just go!’ my youngest son said, silencing my many fears and worries over my odyssey to the Arizona desert where I was going ostensibly to write and get way from fifteen months of unemployment. In reality I was headed for more of a spiritual odyssey than anything else. You see, I think I’m actually in full-blown post-traumatic stress—paralyzed by forty years of accumulated anxiety. Time to go back to the desert where life first slid sideways. Time to try and let go of old trauma so I can find a new beginning.

“But what if my Jeep dies?” I asked Blake. Too Cool is the coolest car I ever had. After eleven years of junkers that only a single mother of three can afford, in 1993 I bought myself a brand spanking new Jeep Cherokee Sport. Together and over the last sixteen years we’ve put on 220,000 miles. Every winter for sixteen years she’s taken me skiing, never a moment of fear, not even when we once slid into a ditch. Out she chugged, kids squealing in the back seat. We’ve been to Banff in the Canadian Rockies too many times to count, roamed the prairies, just the two of us, driving Big Bear’s trail, connecting the dots on my great-grandfather’s whereabouts as a Mountie during Sitting Bull, poking our noses into gullies and following old rivers and finding all kinds of surprises.

"Just go, already!” said Blake.

So I packed up Too Cool and headed south, to the desert, to sunnier skies and family and friends who, despite the forty years, still love and care for me. And where I hoped to undergo some sort of esoteric experience of “letting go.”

She started to overheat while driving into San Jose, California, where I’d once lived and where I’d scheduled a stop to visit my old Bible study teacher, a woman who’d tempered the wind for me in dark years of fundamentalist Christianity and other troubles. Controlling the hot engine by turning the heater on full blast, I limped into Marilyn’s place, one sweaty gal and a wee bit worried. Was it safe to drive on to Phoenix where the temperatures would be even hotter? Even if I could, could I cope with the heater going full blast, the temperature outside 100 degrees?

Weekend coming up, Marilyn’s husband Fred advised me to get the car into a mechanic. They called their son-in-law, a former mechanic, to recommend someone else to take a look at my hot Jeep—how ironic her name is Too Cool. Four and half hours later and Friday at five Michael and Company had no idea what was going on. I’d have to bring her back Monday morning for more poking around.

So instead of one night with Marilyn and Fred, I spent several, stranded and at the mercy of these long-ago friends to house, feed, and help me cope with mounting angst. Their love, rooted decades ago, blossomed—their graciousness a fragrance I find hard to describe. I began to hope that Too Cool might be all right after all, for how could bad things happen when I had such good friends? But Monday morning the nice man behind the counter said his only option was to pull the engine, another six hours of diagnostics—and that would only buy me a diagnosis. From there the cost would continue to go up; he was thinking cracked gasket and other mean-sounding things. I was sick to my stomach.

Someone once told me you can’t love things, only people. But I love eucalyptus trees, I love the falling snow, and the first robin in spring. And I love that Jeep. Just three months ago I’d refused to pay $200 to replace a broken seat belt buckle. Too Cool blue-booked out at 300 bucks, and it was hardly worth it, but I found myself okaying the additional $600 diagnostics and called Marilyn to come pick me up.

When she arrived, we sat in her car while I fought tears. She quietly suggested I change my mind and junk the car. It was a punch in the gut to an already sick stomach. “At least take some time to think about it,” she said. So I went in, got my keys, and followed my friend back to her house in tears, only to find that Fred agreed. Junk the car. I called my children.

“Look, she’s served you well,” the youngest said, the same young man who told me, Just go! “We knew she had to die sometime.”

“Yeah but you told me not to worry!”

“Right, don’t worry.”

My middle son said, “Mum, this really should come as no big surprise. You need to cut your losses. Everything will be okay. It’s all just logistics.”

My daughter simply said, “Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” I like her response the best.

I called my best friend from my high school, senior year, seventeen in Arizona, hoping Wayne's humor and smart mind might save me, save my car. “I’m the only dissenting voice,” I told him.

“And why are you dissenting?” he asked when I gave him the particulars. “It’s sixteen years old. It’s a Jeep. (Like Jeeps totally suck.) It has 220,000 miles. You’re lucky you’ve gotten this far.”

“But what if I try to drive it to Arizona at night?” I wasn’t going to give up. “When the temperature is cool?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Absolutely not. That’s not going to happen.”

How do you even junk a car?

Fred and Marilyn found some phone numbers, a task I seemed incapable of doing. We finally settled on Pick and Pull, an offensive name as far I was concerned; but they offered to pay me $241. Not quite Blue Book, but enough to let me rent a car for the rest of the journey—or get myself home. Marilyn pressed. Forward, not backward. This is a spiritual odyssey. It’s about letting go, new horizons. It’s about trust. True… And I really did expect to let go of things along the way—things like ideas, not my car! I see now it was a rather transcendental view, sounding good on paper and even in my head, but when the rubber, so to speak, really met the road? My car? I had to let go of my car?

When Too Cool was still brand new I’d bought her a fancy ski and car rack. The ski rack had been taken off sometime last summer to load lumber and was still at home in the garage. The car rack, years ago, had gone to my son-in-law—though I maintained dibs whenever I needed it. He’d dutifully removed it from his car back to mine less than a week ago. How was I to get this back to him?

Fred made a cardboard box out of recycle in his garage and we all went down to FedEx and I shipped off all that would remain of Too Cool. It was like removing a wedding band and sending it off to the next of kin. We then stripped Too Cool down to her skivvies and headed for Pick and Pull, gray clouds gathering and clumping like knots in the sky, rain trying to spit against the cracks lacing my windshield.

I parked on the street. Fred and I went in. A rather efficient, cold-hearted operation. I handed over my car title, the man no older than twelve tapped on his keyboard awhile, printed out a check for $241, thirty pieces of silver, and passed it to me over an industrial desk. He and Fred went to “check her in” and I sat numb in my metal chair.

I did not expect to see Too Cool again. But there she was, right there at the foot of the stairway when I went out, right in my face, red ink scrawled all over her windows, a humiliating end for such a faithful car. I looked away, blinking hard, almost ashamed that I could do such a thing, and I walked a little faster, a growing sense of betrayal somehow lodging so firmly inside my chest that my heart actually hurt. By the time we reached the street, tears stung. Fred--an arm around my shoulder and quick hug--said, “Look.” Spilling out of the steely gray swarm of clouds hung the two ends of a brilliant rainbow that arched the expanse of heaven. “Does that say anything to you?” he asked.

Did I say this was a spiritual odyssey? Even a hardcore atheist has to be hard pressed not to see a sign of hope in such a universal symbol.

It’s been four days now. I write from the desert, where I did arrive safely; and I find myself once again trusting long ago friends to take care of me. The house I rented is dirty, there’s no hot water, the toilets back up. And I have no car of. But Like Marilyn and Fred, my former mother-in-law and my friends from high school have pitched in with grace and goodwill. Cleaning supplies, kitchen equipment, Wayne's snazzy wheels on loan. Old habits die hard, though, and I fret over my finances and what kind of car I can buy on an unemployment check. I wake up nights in a cold sweat, dreaming I’m back to the old clunkers I used to drive.

“I just can’t go back there,” I tell Wayne. “I just can’t.” I don’t tell him I’m in the throes of flashback time, so many flashbacks to car failure and danger it’s like watching my grandpa’s old movies. Jerky. Moving too fast. But instead of images of my dad as a boy, it’s all my old cars falling apart. I see myself pumping gas by Seattle’s Kingdome and watching it pour right out the bottom of my camper van. I’m climbing a summit in the Santa Cruz Mountains and losing my clutch, rolling backward, nearly off a cliff. I have to get a kid to the doctor and the car won’t start, again! I shut my eyes to block the jerking kaleidoscope of memories.

“I can’t, I just can’t go back to all that, Wayne.” He tells me not to worry, he won’t let me buy a car that isn’t reliable, and while he doesn’t think it can be done on my budget he’ll find a way, he’ll make this work.

This much I know. Wayne will never lie to me. In the old days he never knew the dark trauma of my early days in the desert forty years ago (something I will probably never share with the world) but he was nonetheless aware of how troubled I was at times. He not only made my life work, but he gave me the best year of my life. So this much I know. Wayne will never lie to me. Never. I suddenly discover that I have at least this much trust.

In San Jose I’d asked my son Phil, “Do you have any last words before I take Too Cool to the junkyard?”

“I don’t know… It’s been a good ride?”

Yes, it’s been a good ride. And though it stings like hell to say goodbye, it is goodbye. Time to let go. Time to trust friends, and to thank God for letting my faithful car die under a rainbow.

Rest in peace, Too Cool.

Family and friends are the sunrise on a new horizon.

P.S. After writing this I found myself in tears again. The son who insisted, "Just go" told me on the phone last night, "Look at this way, Mum. You enjoyed a long and monogamous relationship with that Jeep. You loved her. You'll never love another car like her again. But now I think it's time to start sleeping around. You got to start looking for one that will at least do."

I laughed.

It's All in the Feet. Oh, yeah, don't forget the tongue...

2009-10-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Introducing Nathan, my second grandson, seven years old, and hooked on Wii. What was I doing when I was seven? Mmmmm.... Grade 2 and board games. Actually, Nathan and his little brother Jamie are only allowed to play once a week; it's a big deal. The tiny voice you hear in the background? Evelyn Rose, three years old.

Leap and the Net Will Appear: On Aging and Going Places

2009-10-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

I used to wonder why old people talked incessantly about the past and their health. Now I know. That's all there is.

Their present is awash in physical diminishment. Their future is all about down-sizing and giving up and letting go. No scenic tours anymore; it's a one-way street on a dead end. My old Uncle Tim, who lived to be 104, used to say that if you could eat, sleep, and poop you had nothing to complain about. I don't know. I think old sucks...To stay sane, old people have to focus on the past! They have to talk about their health; together they solve issues their doctors can't or won't.

The whole thing depresses me. I'm not ready to sink into the past, to down-size, give up, let go--be content with eating, sleeping and pooping. I still want to "seize the day," do something wild, exciting, make plans like I was twenty, go places, "live it up." I am not this person in the mirror! I am not this person who keeps talking about gluten intolerance, or who gets excited over Dr. Oz and discussions about blood pressure.

Did I say the whole thing depresses me? I think if I have to live another year like the one before, stuck in my tiny house, the skies endlessly gray wherever I look, my only company being the aging woman in the mirror and my only diversion the relentless task of searching for jobs that don't exist, I will go stark raving mad. Truly. Really, how pointless is it to be fifty-seven years old in a state where "young" is cutting edge, there are only 14,000 jobs, and 360,000 unemployed? The definition of crazy, I've heard said, is doing the same old thing over and over and expecting different results. Can I really expect to continue what I'm doing and not go crazy?

So I've been toying with the idea of going to Arizona for awhile. Why? I don't really know. I just feel compelled. It's like I have to do something. Anything. Yet it's irrational because I have little money and no place to live down there--and figuring it

all out boggles my mind! But can I really afford to stay put, fretting over my falling face, talking about my health, and looking into extended care insurance? This is a shrinking world with nothing more to look forward to but Medicare.

I have to ask--Instead of down-sizing, giving up, and letting go, why can't I be like my niece Jamie, who just took off across Canada, BC to Newfoundland, with just her thumb and a couple of friends? Why the bloody heck not?

The answer of course is that I have the weight of age in my soul, Jamie does not. She has a whole future ahead of her. She doesn't need to carry the worry over money like me. She's got her eye on Newfoundland, not Medicare. So this lack of money at my age is a big deal. Being unemployed for 15 months is an even bigger deal. It means that my savings has been leaking like a helium balloon and, last time I checked, I did not have a fairy godmother with a lovely magic wand and handy helium tank.

There are of course a host of other problems that weigh me down. Like an old Jeep with 220,000 miles on it--and no air conditioning. In Arizona! And what about my medications? How will I get the hormones refilled? The thyroid? See? Old people talk about their health all the time. And now that we're back to that, I might as well confess that my aging brain slows down on the necessary logistics that have to be worked through, spinning around and around like the "wheel of death" on my Macintosh computer. Like I said, mind boggled. With no way to reboot.

Yet I used to do this kind of stuff all the time. Never thought twice. Just packed up and took off, went wherever my little heart fancied. And in cars a who

le lot less reliable than my sixteen-year-old Jeep. A whole lot less. People used to think I was nuts. Hey, give me this kind of crazy any day. Simply never occurred to me back then to distrust myself, or my ability to conquer whatever problem I might encounter. But now that I'm aging? This unrecognizable, slow-chugging brain of mine finds it almost impossible (certainly difficult) to keep new fears at bay, the logistics sorted, everything logically pursued to resolution. Really, what the heck am I doing? This more or less sticking out my thumb and heading for Newfoundland?

Ah, but into all this mental chaos and soul-searching doubt and high anxiety and suffocating fear that doesn't become me arrives my youngest son, temporarily camped at my doorstep because he has a squatter who's taken up residence in his condo. "Just go," he tells me. "Just do it!"

"But--"

"Just do it!"

My friend Heidi has a magnet on her frig. Leap and the net will appear. This is, of course, a divine principle better known as "faith

and trust" in the language of Christianity. For some reason, though, right now it's easier for me to believe a magnet. So Heidi--who's always leaped and always landed on her feet--and with a whole shiny life to show for it--lent me her magnet. So between reading it a dozen times a day on my own frig and my son's "Just go, do something different, hit the road, take off..." I have been doggedly plotting my course for Arizona. Reserv

ing, of course, the right to escape at any time back into my dull routine of getting old and endlessly applying for jobs that don't exist while staring at the gray skies of our Pacific Northwest and watching the new Dr. Oz show. "You don't really have to go, you know," I tell myself. "You can stay put and avoid all this headache and irresponsibility." But Blake counters, "Yes, you do!"

So I've been wading into the tangled mess of logistics, this nest of impossibilities compounded by scams on Craigslist, moving forward one step at a time (still reserving the right to retreat!) until, wow, last night, things actually started to look up. As of last night I have someone to stay in my house; as of last night I have a place to stay in Arizona. In fact, a whole house to myself--always a plus. In fact, right next door to my former mother-in-law! It's magic. A whole huge tangle of logistics nicely unraveling and magically knitting themselves into place. Dare I say net?

Leap and the net will appear. Yesterday afternoon I leaped. By nightfall I had

a net. Here's how I made the plunge.

It was a glorious fall day. Blake, still temporarily camped out on my doorstep and both of us suffering agitation over the latest shenanigans of his squat

ter, went out to burn off excess energy and begin the odd jobs that have to be done to get the house ready for fall--and my Jeep for the trip I still wasn't sure I was going to take. While Blake straightened up the garage, mowed the lawn, and painted the house trim (winter's howling wind and driving rain having peeled the paint to bare wood), I scrubbed and cleaned the inside of Too Cool (the ancient Jeep) and began loading her up. Bedding, groceries, camping chairs... Maybe it was the chairs. One is for me, the other for Carol. Carol is Wayne's sister. Wayne is my high school buddy of forty years ago and way

back in the day, forty years ago, we now and then let her tag along. Now she and I are hoping to go camping. Maybe it was the chairs, maybe the sunny, blue-sky day, maybe the company and support of my son, at any rate I was suddenly visualizing future instead of past. I was going to go to Arizona come hell or high water. True, no one to stay in my house yet. And true, no place to live in Arizona. Yet. Oh well. I made a U-turn and got off the one-way dead end. Sticking with the bigger metaphor--I jumped.

"What should we do now?" I asked Blake, tasks done and feeling good for having made up my mind at last.

"You need to go for a motorcycle ride."

"Are you crazy! I can't drive that thing!" Thing being the huge black motorbike in my driveway.

"I'll drive you. I'll take you for a spin through the neighborhood."

"I'm too scared."

He gave me that look that said "you're always scared."

I got the point. "Okay," I said slowly, trying out the idea in my head. I skipped a little, my body catching up to the notion. "Okay!"

"Okay then! Go get a sweater!"

He helped me into his leather coat, zipped me up, then jammed his helmet down around my head. My ears folded over down around my chin somewhere. "Hey! What do I do about my ears?"

"Wiggle the helmet, work them back into place!"

I did...and why can't a face lift be so easy?

I held my chin up to get the buckle snapped into place. I heard a click. Blake gave the strap a tug. I was in. He rotated the visor down over my eyes.

Wow. It was like being inside a fish aquarium. No bubbles, though. No hiss of a pump. Just an odd silence. He swung onto his bike. Patted the seat behind him. I swung on, not as gracefully but I did swing, and grabbed him around the middle.

"Scoot back a little!" he hollered off his shoulder.

I scooted.

He scooted back into me, tucking right into my arms so I could feel his whole body connect with mine. Twenty-nine years ago we'd held this position for nine months. How had this wonderful grown son of mine once been an embryo of life inside me? Not even a heart beat and now making my own heart thud in steady excitement? Vroooom! Off we went, rumbling out of the driveway, this thing called time a very funny thing indeed.

"Slow down!" I screamed.

I raised him well. He slowed down and only once "gunned" it, me screaming my head off the whole time. Felt like I was a hornet headed anywhere.

"Take my picture," I ordered when we got back, adrenalin still going, my body feeling the thrill of being alive, awake to the possibilities of life and energized by the release of fear and

worry and my "old peoples" shrinking world of aches and pains and nursing homes lurking on the horizon.

He took my picture. I don't know what's up with the hair--or the Karl Malden nose, but know that I'm grinning ear to ear. See me?

The picture means something to me. Something about riding a motorcycle with my son suggests I've got a long way to go before getting old. It hints of adventure every woman should heed before eating, sleeping, and pooping becomes enough.

Leap and the net will appear.