The Dear Son

The dear son stopped by on his way home from work as an educator at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Here he is dressed for work on July 9, his first day on the job.

Like many recent college grads, he is not earning enough to afford an apartment on his own. (His museum gig pays only $10/hour and is only 30 hours a week, so he also waits tables three nights a week.) He splits his time, as he has done since age 4, between his father's house and my apartment. But when he's staying at his dad's, he still sometimes drops by for an after-work Corona, as he did this afternoon, or for dinner between the museum and the restaurant, as he did yesterday.

Always so good to see him, if only for a few minutes.

Today he brought me a watercolor he had painted during his free time at the museum. The young ladies who hold similar positions with the museum are always busy with crafts, so he thought he'd do something besides twiddle his thumbs too. It's a colorful scene with an oil island, a palm tree, a sailboat, a tanker, and a yellow umbrella--in short, just the gorgeous sort of view he sees every day at the museum. If you're going to have a job with down time, this is the place to have it, situated as the museum is right on the ocean.

The Secret Life of Bees

I just finished what will most likely be my last book of the summer, unless I start one this evening and polish it off by tomorrow. "The Secret Life of Bees," a novel by Sue Monk Kidd, has been a book I've been meaning to read for quite some time. Boy, did I pick the right time to read it!

It takes place in 1964, the year of so much change in this country, including the Civil Rights Act. Set in South Carolina, it is a beautifully written novel about a 14-year-old white girl who runs away from home and lives with three black sisters in a town two hours away. It is a heartwarming story of a girl's search for her mother and for the mother within, it is about the deep love of a group of women. I cried, thinking of my own dysfunctional relationship with my mother and of my longing for a group of female friends--or even one female friend--who would be close at hand and near to the heart.

Yes, there are people who care about me, who love me, of course there are. That was surely made evident at my birthday party. But when I'm feeling down, there is no one to call and say, "Hey, could you come over. It sure would do me good to see you." Most of the friends who came to my birthday party I had not seen for a year or longer. They aren't the guy or gal next door. Or even if they do live within an hour's drive, they are married or otherwise engaged. Just dropping by without a meeting scheduled weeks or months in advance is something of a fairy tale. By that time, the sadness for sure would have passed, the intense need gone.

I thought of Taffy, the golden retriever-mutt I had as a child. Oh, dear, love-bucket Taffy. I was physically beaten and emotionally tormented by the other children. I didn't have friends. My brother and I often fought. My parents weren't available for talks. But I had Taffy. I remember so clearly, lying with my head on her chest and sobbing. And she would lie there, beaming love, letting my pain soak into her and transforming it into love. Oh, Taffy. How I would love to have such a dog again.

No Right to Judge Me

Yesterday I said some things to my mother that I've said before, that never brought about any change in the past, but foolishly I said them again, thinking I might get different results this time. Isn't that the definition of insanity--doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? (But what I've always wondered about this definition, too, is isn't that the recipe for perseverance too?)

I was weary, for the millionth time, of hearing of her pills and going through the I-need-my-pain-pill drama. She is totally concentrated on getting her pill, and cannot focus on a conversation that is not pill-related. Pills are the most important thing in her life. I pointed this out to her for the umpteenth time, and of course she denied it, saying such bullshit about me being the most important thing in her life when she can't even remember what I told her about two seconds ago because she wasn't listening, she was thinking about her pills. She goes through this big thing that she's going to forego her 2 o'clock pill, that she's turning a new leaf, that she's getting off pain meds, something I've heard too many times and I never believe, just like all the other things she says she's going to do but never does--attend activities at her assisted-living facility, go to church, write a letter to Marge, call her friends in Wisconsin, exercise, on and on and on.

Twenty minutes into her life-changing resolve, she was at the nurse's station, whining and carrying on about wanting her Vicodin--this after she had gotten a new morphine patch just a half hour before.

So today I went back for more! What a ridiculous person I must be. I felt sorry for her. I felt guilty. In fact my main emotion associated with her is guilt. She would like me at her side every moment of every day, and I feel guilty that I'm not there because she's a lonely, old lady who has dug the hole she's in and she's unwilling or unable to step out of it.

I brought my laptop to show her photos of my birthday party, Aaron's graduation, my tomatoes, whatever else. We sat in the non-smoking patio, and I plugged the laptop into an outside socket. I had showed her only one or two photos when she started in about her pills and about how she needed to have a nurse look at her toe because she needed the bandage changed sometime today. I told her it was only 1:30, and the day was still young, plenty of time to change her bandage. But she carried on about it, her mind on her upcoming 2 o'clock pill and on someone fussing over her toe.

The day before I had told her that we do not have a relationship because it's very hard to build a relationship when 75 percent of our conversations focus on her pills. I said what she and I have is not like what Aaron and I have. From a baby on, I was forming a relationship with him. She and I have never had deep conversations, she was never someone I could go to as a child or as a woman with a problem, we've never had laughs together. There is no relationship. She is my mom, there is no one else who will take care of her, and so she is here in California. To that she said, "Didn't I tell you how much I liked driving in your car on the way to the doctor?" What planet is she on?

So today I got angry with her. I said I'm so tired of this, of all this pill drama, that it's like being with an alcoholic who is just thinking about his next drink. A woman who was sitting near us on the patio said to her husband, "Some people just have no compassion" and then she went on to say things in a similar vein. I turned to her and said, "You don't know me. You don't know anything about my situation. You have no right to judge me, just as I have no right to judge you." Still she kept it up.

I fought back tears, saying aloud to myself, "I can't take this anymore. I just can't take this."

I told my mother I would see her late in the week. Not tomorrow, not Tuesday, not Wednesday, but Thursday to take her to her doctor's appointment. I need a break from her drug addiction that prevents any kind of a relationship. I don't want to become like my brother, hating her. I have to find some way to distance myself from her, to think of her as a drug addict and to realize that this behavior is due to the drugs. Of course, I knew her before pain meds, and she was self-absorbed then too. But the drugs have made it so much worse.

For Tim and Emily's 15th Anniversary

As some of you know, over the years I have written poems for friends' birthdays, graduations, baptisms, and weddings. I even have a site, theweddingpoet.com, on which I bill my talents and services.

Following is a poem I wrote for my friend Tim and his wife, Emily, for their 15th anniversary. I am including this here to show that I can adapt my style and my perspective to echo the world view of the poem's recipients. Tim and Emily are very Christian-oriented with a conservative, though still loving, philosophy. If you look at the sample poems on theweddingpoet.com, you'll see that those posted are sexier and more playful. But this style seemed to suit Tim and Emily better. After interviewing Tim, I created this poem for them:

The Hand of God

for Tim and Emily on their 15th wedding anniversary, Aug. 28, 2008

How foolishly we go about our busy lives,
focusing on bills and deadlines,
little dramas and big,
thinking that we mortals make things happen,
that we control how each moment will unfold.
But Tim and Emily smile at a deeper truth,
seeing the hand of God
behind all their blessings.

More than two decades ago,
Tim was a high school grad,
eager to start his first semester in Texas.
But in a dream, angels whispered to him,
“Good things await you at UOP.”
Unlike so many of us
when our inner knowing points the way,
Tim didn’t second guess this heavenly nudge
but promptly told his befuddled mother
of his change in plans.

For his first few years in southern Cal,
he might have wondered, Why am I here?
But God doesn’t work according to our schedule,
but in accordance with His own mysterious plan.
Eventually, the hand of God led Emily to Tim
or vice-versa.
Tim pinned three gold roses to Emily’s breast,
their initials entwined,
their love sealed in a pin.
A coincidence, some might say,
a young man’s silly whim.
But Tim and Emily recognized the hand of God,
guiding a No Cal boy south
and keeping a So Cal girl close to home.

Tim prayed, “If Emily is the one,
please prepare a clear path for us, O Lord.”
God spoke to him through a stirring in his soul,
the hand of His heavenly Father
upon his shoulder:
“The path is before you, my son.
Take the next step.”

Tim then turned to Emily’s father on Earth
to ask for her hand in marriage,
a tradition stretching back to Abraham’s days,
a very long line of yesses
to which Emily added one more.

By water and jungle and lava flow,
Tim asked Emily to be his bride.
Beams of sunlight set her face aglow
as she, too, said “yes.”
The hand of God-as-Artist
painted a spectacular scene
on which the moment played out
to the glee of their captain and fellow boaters.

From this love have come three children,
the three gold roses on Emily’s pin come to life
in Jillian, Madison and Dutch.
A coincidence, you say.
Three, a common number, you scoff.
But Tim and Emily look into each other’s eyes
and give a wink.
For surely it was the hand of God,
all these many years ago,
that urged Tim to buy that pin
and not another with a single rose
or with two, one to symbolize him
and one for Emily.
Instead the hand of God was at work,
and the voice of God said,
“Choose this one, my son.
Three, you know, is a sacred number in heaven,
and for you and Emily so will it be on Earth.”

Orchid Love

For my 50th birthday, chick cabin friend Susie (center of photo) gave me a gorgeous orchid. It was displayed on my kitchen table for a month, exhibiting its beauty to the world.

Then the time came for a change of venue.

Often I take evening walks in the neighborhood, sometimes with my son and sometimes alone. I love this area with its Craftsman houses and Spanish-revival architecture. Usually I walk all the way to ocean and back. On one such occasion, I noticed the row of orchids on a porch in the 200 block of Molino. I thought, Here lives someone who knows how to care for orchids, how to make them bloom again.

And so, when my orchid was on its last burst of blooms, I put it in a red bag and wrote a note to this orchid-loving stranger. Then I set out on a walk.

When I got to the orchid house, I rang the doorbell. Two exuberant labs pounced at the door, followed a short time later by their cell-phone-chatting owner. He opened the door, but continued to talk, so it was a good thing I had written him a note to explain the situation, how I had admired his orchids when I had passed his house on my evening walks, how I had received this orchid for my birthday and had enjoyed it immensely, but thought that now it was best to give it to someone who knows how to care for orchids after their first bloom. He did not say to the person on the other end of the line, "Oh, sorry, but I'll have to call you later. Someone just brought over an orchid for me." I had thought that maybe he and I could talk about plants for a while. Oh, well.

This is similar to the reaction my fellow carolers and I have received at some houses. People continue to talk on their cell phones or watch TV rather than come to the door and listen to something they will most likely never experience again in their lives.

Don't get me wrong: I am not voicing disappointment, and I certainly was not insulted. It's just interesting. As friend Bev, a 75-year-old with the attitude and umph of a woman a third her age, always says, "People are interesting." She doesn't get upset, just acknowledges their strange ways as an anthropologist from another planet might.

And I'm smiling now, knowing that Susie's orchid is surrounded by others of its kind and so, seeing its brothers and sisters in their full regalia, will be more likely to show its stuff again too. Perhaps I'll even spot it blooming when I pass by the house on an evening walk.

The Papyrus Story

Pictured here is a silver pepperomia and a papyrus. But not just any old papyrus. This papyrus is part of a legacy.

The story begins decades ago when I was a little girl in Wisconsin. My father had a garden and numerous houseplants. I, too, loved plants, but I especially loved my father's papyrus. They seemed exotic, the plants behind which Moses had been hidden as he floated in a basket in the Nile River. My father had gotten his papyrus after WWII when he lived in Florida and opened a florist shop. This, and his stint in the military, were the only two times in his life when he was not under the control of his mother and/or tied down in a hopeless marriage. Sure, after he and my mother split up, he remarried, and he seemed happier with Lyndall, but I didn't really see or hear much from him during those two decades or so before his death, so I can't be sure. But he always spoke of Florida as if it were a wonderful place. (Whenever I have been in Florida, I haven't found it wonderful, but then different places hold different messages for different people.)

So, I started raising my own payrus plants as a little girl. I do not know if papyrus are the only plants that propogate the way that they do, but I find their ways fascinating and I am always ready to tell someone the wonders of the papyrus. So, here goes.

Papyrus grow in water, and so, in contrast with any other plant I've ever known, when you take a cutting of a papyrus, you do not put the end that is closest to the roots in the water to grow new roots. Rather, you cut the stem and place the crown of the plant in the water. Of course this makes sense once you consider the life of the papyrus. When its stems, or stalks grow tall enough, they become wobbly and top-heavy. As this happens, the stem bends toward the water and eventually the crown rests on the water. From the crown, then, grow the new roots and a new shoot--the makings of a new plant.

Every time I have moved--and I have moved many times--I have taken cuttings from the mother plant and started new plants at my new location. The only break in this pattern was the summer of 2005 when I spent three months camping and traveling the back roads across the continent to Nova Scotia and back. Before I left, I placed a few cuttings in a large container of water in a section of the shed on the property I was renting to a tenant in Yucca Valley. By the time I returned, the hot desert air had zapped all the water from the container. The cuttings were crispy.

I called my former landlord and asked him if I might take a cutting from the papyrus I had planted in front of that apartment. That's how I started the plant that I have now on my back step. It is the great-great-great-however-many-times-great-granddaughter of the plant I had as a little girl.

At my 50th birthday bash, I asked friends to take cuttings of my papyrus, as a way of sharing my love of this plant and as a way of safeguarding the legacy. This way, if my cuttings ever get fried or I am on the road without a place where I can care for a plant, I will know that the papyrus pageant continues at someone else's home.

My Garden's Bounty

For years I have harbored subversive thoughts about growing all my own food, cutting out the corporate agri-businesses with their genetically modified organisms, pesticides, insecticides and overall evil ways. What could be more disruptive of the status quo and the powers that be than becoming self-sufficient, able to provide for my basic need--food.

Instead of waiting until I have a proper piece of land, I bought a container, filled it with soil and plunked two tomato plants in it. The container is just outside my back door, against a concrete wall, setting on the concrete corridor. In short, I have no unpaved land on which to grow my food.

Although the teardrop yellow tomatoes have been going strong for a month now, the other plant has been slow to bring forth its bounty. Yesterday, however, I picked my first red tomato. I shared it with the dear son, who had dropped by for a meal after his job at the art museum and on his way to work at the restaurant. He halved the beautiful red orb. What a treat to eat something I've been fussing over for more than a month.

Also pictured here is my cactus and rock garden because not all plants have to have a purpose beyond being beautiful. Not every member of the vegetable kingdom has to be consumed. Some are just there for the sheer joy of growing and soaking up the sunshine.

Monrovia Canyon Park--waterfall trail

On Friday I participated in a meetup.com event, one of a handful since signing up. The others: a magic show-medieval dinner, complete with wenches; a boat tour of the Port of Long Beach; and a book-discussion group featuring David Sedaris' "When You are Engulfed in Flames"--a fun read, but not meaty enough for a book discussion, at least by my standards.

The Friday meetup was a hike at Monrovia Canyon Park. The Deer Park trail was billed as seven miles and moderate, but I got a mile into its 35- to 40-percent grade and told my companions to go on without me--just like you hear of people nobly saying to their comrades when the food has run out and they're down to eating the sled team.

I walked easily down the mountain and then began ascending a less-taxing trail along a stream bed to a 30-foot waterfall. I disrobed my feet and let them cool in the waters. Ah, a real treat on such a hot day. As is my long-held tradition, I took shots of my left foot with water. I have shots of my left foot and water all around the planet. Sort of like, no, I didn't have a traveling companion, but my left foot was there--see!

Taking the Bus

Although I lead a low-carbon life, I am taking even more steps to lessen my carbon footprint.

For decades, I have shopped at thrift stores and yard sales. In addition to adding funkiness and uniqueness to my possessions, this saves a whole lot of energy and resources. The items have already been manufactured, so no additional energy or natural resources are expended to furnish me with a a blouse or a pot or a book. Then the transportation costs are greatly diminished. Instead of something being transported all the way from China, the only transportation is the few miles the original owner drove to the thrift store to make the donation and I drove to make the purchase.

And since 1985, I have not commuted to work. Except for two classes that I taught at Cal State Fullerton and a few short-term ad-agency gigs in Orange County, I have lived in the same city in which I work. And much of the time I work from home, conducting business by phone and by email.

Now I want to go a step further. This semester I plan to take the city bus or bicycle to my Tuesday-Thursday classes at Cal State. I made a trial run this morning. The bus picked me up a few steps from my apartment building and dropped me off about two football fields away from the department office. This is much closer than I can usually park. Also I just have to show my Cal State ID card and my passage is free through the end of September. After that, it's less than $2 round trip.

My friend Bob is letting me borrow his second bicycle, but it is a real chore. I have ridden it a few times and it is like pedaling through molasses. I asked my son to give it a whirl, and this healthy, strong 22-year-old said he had the same impression. Perhaps I will give the bike back to Bob and spend the money necessary to purchase a good bike. But for now, I am satisfied with the bus.

I Can't be Your Everything

I bought new pajamas for my mom yesterday and brought them to her at the nursing home this afternoon. Just one of scores of action items I take care of for her every week.

She asked if I had seen my son. I said that I see her much, much more than I see Aaron. She said the only things she looks forward to are physical therapy and seeing me. I said that I cannot be her everything.

Then she always asks me about work. After 30 years, I think she finally knows that I'm a writer, but she still doesn't get the whole freelance thing. When I told her I was going for an interview for an article I'm writing, she said she hopes I get the job. She just doesn't get it that, even if the article that I write is accepted, it is only one article. It is not a job.

She also doesn't understand that, unlike her roommate's daughters, who have husbands and money, I do not have a support system. When I am not working, I do not have a husband who is working. Her roommate's daughters can be there every day for hours on end because they don't work. This does not compute.

The Life of a Freelance Writer

I have often seen the ways the world breaks down--some people into one camp and all the rest into the other. This is true with travel: The world is comprised of those who travel and those who don't, or only do so reluctantly or with complaints. The world also breaks down into those who are in relationships and those who sleep alone every night. And the world splinters when it comes to work too: those who have 9-to-5, weekends-off, the-company-pays-me-whether-I'm- really-working-or-simply-goofing-around kind of jobs and those who are freelancers or otherwise self-employed.

Just as the travelers can't understand the homebodies and vice-versa, and just as the loved cannot understand the lonely, so, too, the corporate- or government-kept cannot understand those who are continually scrambling for work.

Since I left a monthly lifestyle magazine about a month ago, I have been spending about 30 hours a week looking for work. In short, I spend a great deal more time looking for work than actually working. I left the magazine because I was its Cinderella--doing all the work and getting paid next to nothing to do it. Some months I made less than $10/hour, a wage I have not made elsewhere for almost three decades.

When I left the magazine, I had already signed a lucrative contract with a German medical firm to the tune of $5,000 a month for PR and marketing work--the best gig I have had since I edited the acupuncture magazine in the early '90s. I was on a three-month trial. After much foot-dragging, hoeing and humming, the Germans decided to drop me. Not because of the quality of my work, not because of my work ethic or my ideas--indeed, they picked my brains before giving me the boot. No, just because they decided to employ their friend instead. Those in the corporate mind set probably think, "Well, you had a contract. You should sue for breach of contract." The time and energy involved in such a strategy does not put food on the table. I know that, and doubtless the Germans know that too.

So for the past two weeks, I have been sending emails and clips to every editor I ever worked for, every writer whose manuscript I ever polished. Then I've cracked open Writer's Market, the freelancer's bible, which lists thousands of consumer and trade magazines, their editors, contact information, what they're looking for and how much they pay. I've queried trade publications dealing with the business of healthcare to greeting cards. I've sent clips and queries to Selling Halloween and Selling Christmas Decorations, two publications that, you guessed it, go to companies that focus on putting us in the holiday mood. I've also approached two lifestyle magazines in this area.

One of the lifestyle pubs pays well--a dollar a word--so I am really trying to get something going with it. I submitted 15 very worthy ideas, all but one was nixed. I spent an entire day talking with business owners in the magazine's demographics to solicit ideas. And today I drove to south Orange County to conduct interviews for a 500-word story that may run. This is the first time in decades that an editor has asked me to write a story "on spec," which means that if he doesn't like it, I don't get a penny. So, for this magazine alone, I have already invested 14 hours. I have not yet written the article, and I don't have a dime to show for it. And may never have a dime to show for it.

I am a good writer. I've always been a good writer. I'm a hard worker, and I've always been a hard worker. Why is it, then, that I see such lousy writing in publications, but I have such trouble landing a steady gig? It really is exhausting sometimes.

More on Mom

Well, I am working at putting into practice something Eckart Tolle recommends in his most recent book, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose." Instead of bemoaning an activity you do not enjoy, become fully present to it. If you are fully engaged, there is no room for complaints.

So, when I visited Mom this morning, I worked on being fully there, rather than splitting myself into the participant and the commentator/criticizer/frustrated daughter. This helped somewhat. More practice is necessary.

A Good One From George

Here's a recent quote from George W.

"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century." - George W Bush, August 15, 2008

Unbelievable! Does this man spend even two seconds a day in self-reflection?

My Least Favorite Thing to Do

Let me be perfectly honest: My least favorite thing to do is to spend time with my mother. She requires daily attention in the running of errands, consulting with doctors, interfacing with Medicare and healthcare administrators, taking her to appointments, providing her only social contact. She is an anchor about my neck, and I don't know what to do about it.

She was never there for me as a child or as an adult, so no real relationship was ever established. There was no give and take, no heart-to-hearts, no fun, no laughter, no shared interests, in short, nothing on which to establish a relationship. The only relationship was that when she needed something, I was there. And so when she wasn't bathing or eating or drinking, I rescued here and brought her to California. Hardly a day goes by without me regretting that decision.

Not that I know what else I could have done since no one else would have taken care of her, and the nursing home to which she was discharged after her hospital stay in January would not release her to independent living. Even if they had, I would have had to run back to Wisconsin for the next big drama.

I have been so eager to leave So Cal for so many years. It is increasingly difficult for me to find freelancing work. Cal State has cut my classload. Things are drying up. I would like to leave in December, after the fall semester has ended. But what to do with Mom?

Two weeks there was a mix-up with her meds at the assisted living facility. She didn't get her pain meds, and she was going into heavy withdrawals when I arrived at her apartment about 9 p.m. She was spasming and twitching and shaking like I have only seen in movies about heroin addiction like "Sid and Nancy." I took her to the ER, where she was diagnosed as having had a mild heart attack. No surprise, as the spasming was more exercise than she's had in years.

She's now at a skilled nursing facility where she gets physical therapy. The therapist got my mom to tell the truth, whereas she is always lying to me. For months I have smelled her from time to time and have asked about her bathing. Turns out, as I suspected, she was lying to me, as she lies about so many things--something which also does little to build a relationship. She actually hasn't been bathing.

Yesterday when I left her, I checked her dirty clothes bag. Only one outfit in it, despite her having been at the facility for a week and a half. I had thought the outfit hadn't changed, but that was sometimes hard to tell, as she always wears a jacket. Even though I had brought about a dozen outfits for her, she had only changed clothes once.

Add to this mix the fact that all her investments are tied up in Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Countrywide mortgages. Yikes! I am working with a broker to sell these off, but they're in very small bundles, which is not attractive to most investors. I am hoping for the best, but if all her investments go belly up, then my mother will be underfoot round the clock, living with me in my small one-bedroom apartment. That situation would make me do something I have skillfully avoided all my life: Take a corporate job that will get me out of the house for at least 10 hours a day. Yikes, trading one hell for another.

Big Oil Protest

This afternoon I walked the mile to Temple and Ocean to participate in an anti-big oil protest. Didn't seem right to drive to an anti-big oil protest, right! A beautiful day, the kind that makes me think I could easily spend the rest of my days in Long Beach. The protest took place in Bluff Park, overlooking the blue, blue waters of the Pacific.

Over the course of two hours, perhaps 25 people showed up. Mostly middle-aged and elderly folk, though there were a few young anarchists/punks. Three of the four protesters were friends of mine: James, Diana, TJ, and Peter Matthews, who has been running for Congress on a progressive agenda for a quarter century and will be a write-in candidate to oust Laura Richardson in the upcoming election. It's times like this when I think, "Maybe I am out of the mainstream. I mean, out of a town of 480,000, if four of 25 protesters are my friends!"

Funk Fest Smuggling

Last night Aaron and I attended the Funk Fest at the Greek Theater. We had attended last year's Funk Fest that featured the iconoclastic George Clinton. Funk is such fun, unassuming music. We would like to make this a mother-son tradition.

Because the Greek does not allow ticket holders to bring food into the venue, I smuggled our dinner in. I bought chicken salad, fancy olives, tortellini salad, Greek salad, blueberries, and miniature cheesecakes at Wild Oats; transferred them to ziplock bags; placed the bags inside two larger bags; and strapped the bags to my inner thighs. Then I covered the contraband with the only loose skirt I have--a gift from friend Helene in Nova Scotia. Thanks, Helene! To make extra sure I would not be detected, I tied a long scarf around my waist and wore some outrageous earrings that always attract attention.

We had a scrumptious dinner, much better and much cheaper than the lousy, overpriced hamburgers and hot dogs the stands were serving up. Later as Aaron purchased his third $12 beer, I said that next year I should forget about the food and duct tape bottles of beer to my thighs. Aaron responded in his usual style, a quick-witted comment ready at any moment, "I'm sure you'd meet a lot of guys that way."

My Birthday Bash

So wonderful to introduce everyone as most of my friends had never met one another.
Thanks to Bob, who graciously offered his house as a gathering place. Thanks to Heather, who flew in from Denver, and Mark, who flew from San Francisco for the day. I really appreciate your efforts. I want to also say a special thanks to Dennis, Aaron the son, Tyler, Bryant, Jessica, and Aimee, who made the most amazing and surreal collage from the photos, glitter, glue, and rhinestones that I provided. I have the collage hanging on my bedroom door. Yippee!

Los Osos Oaks State Reserve

This past week I took a short camping trip in the Central Coast. I camped at San Simeon State Park, approximately seven miles south of Hearst Castle, a campground where I have stayed on at least three other occasions. This time, it was a bit crowded for my tastes, as I have often had the entire upper campground to myself. Not this time.

Perhaps with the economy in trouble, Americans are rediscovering camping. After all, it's far cheaper than a motel, that is, if you don't go the RV route. In some ways, I welcome this trend, as I have been sorely disappointed when I have queried my students in recent years as to their camping experience. Only one student in the past five or six years has ever camped--and he was an Australian. So, perhaps Americans will once again become the outdoor explorers. We'll see.

Of course, though this may be a wonderful thing on a mass scale, for me, the long-time camper and seeker of solitude, it definitely has its drawbacks. I was, however, grateful for the getaway, as the Central Coast of California is truly spectacular. Golden hills interspersed with greenery. Miles of protected beaches.

The highlights of this brief jaunt: watching the brown pelicans swoop and dive at the San Simeon pier, gazing at the stars, and the Nit Wit Castle, also known as the Poor Man's Hearst Castle in Cambria--a folk art amalgamation built by a cantankerous man who had the good fortune of being the town's garbage collector and so he used what he collected to build his eccentric abode.

For anyone who travels to the Cambria area, be sure to visit Nit Wit. It's well worth the $10 tour.

Another gem I discovered: Los Osos Oaks State Reserve in Los Osos. I have camped very near this reserve at Montana de Oro many times, but never saw the sign for the reserve. I was heading back to LA when I spotted it and so I checked it out. So glad I did. I had the entire reserve to myself. It was filled with the twisting, turning limbs of hundreds of old California oaks, that enchanting species of tree that does not just grow vertically but often takes a rest and grows horizontally for a few years before ascending once again. I took trail after trail in this Hansel and Gretel woods. What a magical place!

All These Things

The following is a short story I wrote as a gift to my son upon his graduation from college:

All These Things

Once, so long ago now, her son lay in an incubator, a precious baby-blue- and white-striped incubator hat pulled over his teeny ears. Precious because his mother said the hat was precious. Believing it was, made it so. That’s why, when he graduated from the incubator into the seemingly unenclosed world, she asked for the hat. She wanted to keep this little thing forever.

This was against hospital rules, as the hats were sterilized and used again for other incubator babies. But she insisted, and a nurse, perhaps one who also knew that some things that are meaningless to most of humanity are precious to a few or only to a single person, this type of nurse handed her the hat as if she were giving her illegal drugs, quickly, slyly, so that no one would notice her indiscretion.

And so Heidi kept the incubator hat that Aaron had worn as a jaundiced newborn in a box high in a closet. No one knew what this little hat meant to Heidi, just as no one knew of all the other things in her life that were precious, just to her: the orange tree she could see outside her kitchen window that seemed more like a friend than a member of the vegetable kingdom; the potted plants, one on each step, that led to her above-garage apartment some years later, plants that seemed to welcome her home at the end of a long work day: and a small pool of rainwater in which she saw the full moon reflected. So many things like these were seemingly there just for her, since no one else seemed to notice them—the dew on her mailbox, the light in an empty storeroom, an afternoon breeze that caused the grass to tremble, the evening sun on a factory wall, the headlight illuminating a row of cardboard boxes. Only Heidi stopped to take in this beauty, to thank whomever might be listening for the beauty that surrounded her. And so if she were the only one who noticed, was that such a huge leap to think that this dew, this light, this empty storeroom, this breeze, this grass, this factory wall, this collection of boxes had been created for her alone? Not such a leap, if you were Heidi.

Throughout his childhood, Aaron shared his mother’s slant on the world. He talked of faeries who lived underwater in secret caves, while his mother saw them illuminating the branches of a tree underneath which she slept one night at El Capitan State Beach and cavorting under a waterfall by which she hiked in the redwoods near Shelter Cove. He saw a ghost sitting on a chair outside the bathroom, while on the same night, Heidi dreamed of the same woman sitting in a chair.

Aaron and Heidi were kindred spirits and often when one had an experience alone, he or she thought it had occurred with the other person present. Aaron always included Heidi, even though she wasn’t with him, and Heidi always included Aaron, even though he wasn’t with her.

This was natural, since they shared a lot of interests. Heidi liked hole-in-the-wall restaurants, art museums, architectural tours, good coffee, reading, travel, witty conversation, prairie dogs, little boxes, hedge hogs, lichen and moss, philosophical discussions, the pursuit of knowledge, oddly shaped and strangely hued cacti, silliness, and gnomes. And sure enough, so did Aaron.

He did not, however, share her love of maps or of bizarre corners of the world like Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave bounded by Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea, or Point Roberts, an American town on the southernmost tip of Tsawwassen Peninsula in British Columbia. Heidi was fascinated by these geopolitical anomalies. Aaron wasn’t. This is something Heidi could not understand—her son’s lack of excitement over cartography and tiny outposts of humanity separated from their motherlands. But somehow she forgave his lack of interest in such things. Perhaps there was something amiss with him. Perhaps, she thought, this is the one chink in his perfection: his disinterest in geography. No one after all is allowed perfection, so this was Aaron’s failing.

Otherwise, he was simply amazing, as Heidi’s friends were quick to tell her. One friend who was 11 years Heidi’s junior and was about at her wits’ end with lousy guys had gone so far to contend, “You’ve created the perfect man, Heidi. It’s just that he’s nine years old and your son.”

Mothers need this kind of feedback to keep their own superlatives in check. Once in a while Heidi would step back from her son and eye him as one might a painting in a museum. “Yes,” she’d say after a moment’s reflection, “he is quite wonderful, and I would think so even if he were the clerk at Vons’ son.

This perfection began at a very early age. As a newborn, Aaron chose not to respond to sounds. As Heidi washed dishes, sometimes a pan would clang against the counter or a bowl might drop near his little head. Aaron was never startled, though sometimes he’d smile. A hearing specialist at UCLA determined that his neurons were firing just fine, he wasn’t deaf. She concluded that he just wasn’t ready to participate in the stuff of everyday existence, but, for now, preferred to ignore the outside world. Hmm, Heidi thought, isn’t this the state to which all mystics aim? And here was her son, already there before he hit two months old.

To give credence to Heidi’s theory, Aaron would often sleep in his baby seat with his forefingers lightly touching his thumbs, the position Heidi had learned to maintain during Zen meditation. When she told his father about this, he the atheist thought nothing of it. It was merely a random reflex like a dog running in its sleep, he said. But Heidi would look at Aaron as he slept. She knew differently. She knew he was receiving messages from the beyond and did not want to sully himself yet with the muck of this planet.

Heidi also watched Aaron as he began to crawl and to walk. Every so often, he would interrupt his play to lie face down and close his eyes for a minute, sometimes less, then bound up again, ready for action. When Heidi asked him what he was doing, Aaron said, “Praying, Mommy. What did you think?” He continued to prostrate himself before who knows what god until he was maybe five years old.

A year before he reached the cessation of prostration, he did something Heidi always thought of as his Jesus-instructing-the-elders-at-the-temple moment. Heidi and Aaron had just purchased a chocolate buttermilk bar at Lina’s Donuts. As they were heading out the door, Aaron turned and with a wide, sweeping movement of his hand, as if to encompass all those before him, he said, “Have a happy life!” and then marched off toward Heidi’s VW van. The old men who cut up the world as they drank round after round of coffee paused for just a moment to take in this young boy’s wisdom.

“Have a happy life, son?” Heidi asked.

“Yes, you, too, Mommy Dude,” Aaron said with conviction. “You have a happy life too.”

Heidi knew that her life was happier because of her son. She loved him so much that she wanted to tell him about the little things that no one ever talked about: how for a long while she had been mismatching her socks, failing to notice the subtle distinctions in their black-on-black patterns; how she had thought a brightly colored water tower was a hot-air balloon; how she had bumped into a tree while telling two guys who were drinking on their roof to be careful; how she had thought a dog statue in a plot of petunias was a real dog and had always thought it strange that the animal never moved; how holding a cup of hot tea against her cheek made her feel deeply loved; and how cupping her hands over the rim of the cup and breathing in the steam transported her to a jungle. She wanted to tell him of the joy she felt each day when she saw the tomatoes on the vine outside her back door or when she sat on the porch and took in the sanctity of objects, sensing something living within the sidewalk, cars, FOR RENT signs, and the garbage. Heidi wanted to tell Aaron how much better coffee tasted in a ceramic cup and how good it felt to hold her palm over the bubbles in a Jacuzzi and how she really liked the sucking of hungry koi fish on her hand, even though she jumped and shrieked when they did this. Heidi thought of how many hundreds—no, thousands—of these things she would like to tell her son, but just blurting them out didn’t seem right and listing them seemed even less right. Perhaps art might work, she thought.

She would write a short story for her son and through the words hint at all these things. And so she sat down to write: Once, so long ago now, her son lay in an incubator, his precious baby-blue- and white-striped incubator hat pulled over his teeny ears.