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!