It was a beautiful Easter Sunday in 1980 when I lost my best friend. I was thirteen and we were outside on the sidewalk together while I roller skated, doing my turns and twirling, showing off in short shorts and knee socks. Tina followed me wherever I went, because she adored me and I felt the same about her. She had been in my life for six years and we went everywhere together, loved the same foods and loved to play games outside.
I lived in a small town with small neighborhoods, so it was easy to hear my mother’s voice as she called us in for meals. We crossed the street to head for home when I heard her call out at lunch time. “Come on”, I yelled to Tina, who was about ten feet behind me. As I skated back onto the sidewalk, I turned in time to see a blur of shiny chrome bumper and Tina briefly airborne. I heard a dull thud as her body hit the pavement and I was suddenly frozen. The driver slammed on his brakes, but Tina never moved after that. A middle-aged man jumped out of the car, panicked, asking me where my mother was so he could tell someone what had happened and call the police. I was unable to move, unable to respond to the man. Unable to do anything more than point a shaking finger toward my house down the street.
The man who killed Tina returned with a policeman who started to lead me home. That was when I suddenly found my voice and reacted, weeping, clawing and kicking at the kind policeman who kept murmuring “It’s okay honey, I am going to take you to your mom.” “No!” I screamed. “I’m not leaving her.”
I would not get up from where Tina lay until my mother, out of breath and crying as hard as I was, showed up to take me home so the proper people could be called and Tina’s body removed. My mom tried hard to get me to eat, to watch a movie, to do anything to try and take my mind off what had just happened. This only made me angry so I told her and everyone else to go away and leave me alone. My dad called the house, telling me how sorry he was but I didn’t want to talk to him either. The person I was most angry with was myself: I had made Tina come with me to watch me roller skate. I scolded myself that should have stayed closer to her while I skated and she followed. She was only six years old. I should not have let her walk behind me. If I hadn’t been so careless, she would still be alive.
As if God felt my anguish, He turned on all the faucets in the sky and it rained hard as we buried Tina a few hours later. I sat on my knees in front of her grave, clutching her favorite toys, her bone and her food dish, ignoring everyone’s pleas for me to come inside. I heard the thunder and felt the rain mingle with my tears as I told my best friend goodbye for the last time.
11 July 2009
28 April 2009
Time to grow up and put on my big girl panties
I bought my first home in February this year. Certainly I am thrilled to finally be a homeowner, but let's just say I've had a few more setbacks the past 2 months than I'd hoped for. Before February, I didn't know anything about which kind of grout to choose to tile my master bathroom (that the idiot previous owner did himself which was not up to code and un-usable). The whole thing had to be redone--a nice $3500 project. I never paid attention to the details of baseboards,, crown molding, door locks and which brands were best. Until this year, my shopping trips were all about clothes, shoes and jewelry (I confess to being a huge "jewelry whore"). Now probably 90% of my shopping trips are to Home Depot and Lowe's. Instead of choosing the perfect skirt, I choose the perfect window blinds. I made sure I bought everything I could that was energy efficient (lightbulbs, front-loading water-saving washer & dryer) and now that I actually have to pay a water bill, find myself becoming annoyed if someone in my home runs the water or takes a shower too long.
Some of my setbacks have consisted of the washer & dryer originally in my townhouse both dying of old age after exactly one wash and one dry--the dryer even burning holes in several of my shirts (boy did I cuss about that!) Thank god for Craig's List. My air conditioning, I discovered after our first 90-something degree day recently, is not working so I have to call my Home Shield company since I paid them to have a warranty on appliances in the house for the first year. And I will have to make a third trip tomorrow to Lowe's involving one shower door that we keep getting wrong (first time it was the wrong dimension, second time it was mislabeled and I got the wrong style). As soon as we get the door right, my new bathroom will finally be ready to use.
Two weeks ago, I lost my job due to cutbacks at my company. Not a great time for this to happen since I'd only made my first mortgage payment. I'm trying not to freak out and so far am doing okay....probably thanks to my "happy pill", Wellbutrin, that I've been on the past month. I am hoping this will not last long and I finally find that dream job of working out of my home.
In spite of feeling broke as a joke and being so familiar with hardware stores I can memorize what's on most of the aisles by now--I am still thrilled I never have to pay someone else's mortage again; never have to deal with my landlord taking his sweet-ass time to fix a leaky roof; getting that $7000 tax credit for first-time buyers (thank you Obama!); AND I'll get a healthy tax break next year. I feel like a true grown up now!
29 January 2009
“Free Food?”
After a 20-year study in my working world, I have come to the conclusion that the mass consumption of free food by employees definitely happens in each and every workplace in America. I used to think, in my patient-care days of nursing, it was prevalent mostly in environments such as this, where most shifts lasted twelve hours and on a good day, you were lucky to get a full 30-minute lunch break. Some shifts, all you had time for was to pee in order for your bladder not to expand to the size of a Winnebago and cause premature dribbling at the tender age of 30.
In the hospitals, doctors brought in leftover sandwiches, chips, cookies and soda from their meetings. Sometimes the food was particularly appealing from drug reps visiting the premises. The food was placed on the main table of the nurses’ station where the rest of the staff devoured it like wolves. This I excused as being understandable, given our brutal shifts on particularly busy days.
I changed nursing paths six years ago and began working in my corporate office, doing nursing behind a desk and telephone with normal business hours. We have a lunch room with a number of food choices on the first floor and many other people bring their lunches from home. There are snack machines on every floor and somewhere on one of the floors on any given day, you can be assured there is a potluck for a wedding, resignation, commitment ceremony, or the birth of another baby. There is always some reason to celebrate with food.
The piranha-like feeding frenzy I experienced in my hospital jobs continues in this workplace whenever free food is left over in meeting rooms. It doesn’t seem to matter if people come to work in the morning on an empty stomach, or if they’ve just polished off the Big Boy breakfast special from Old Country Buffet—it is always the same: People descend like locusts upon any kind of food left behind. I can practically see clouds of dust puff up and disappear in the ensuing mass of people on their way to the main meeting room on our floor where leftovers often lurk. All it takes is a simple e-mail to announce “Food left over in Room 430”, “Food left over in break room”; even “Food left over in restroom” would probably be met with the same crazed response. I watch this phenomenon with the same amazement I had the first day I started work in this office building six years ago. I still haven’t figured out what the primary motivation is for this, except to surmise there is something infinitely appealing about the two words “Free food” to so many employees, regardless of what the item is or from whence it came.
You are probably asking, am I exempt from this? My answer is yes and no. I will admit I have been among the masses at times, but I pride myself in at least having some decorum, such as not piling my plate with food until it resembles a small volcano, not taking home several plates full “for my family and dog” and not going back for sloppy seconds (or even thirds) as I have seen so many people do on a regular basis. I always know which ones it will be. I have them bookmarked in my memory to observe when they inevitably re-appear at the table picking at the crumbs, chicken bones and random bits of kale scattered forlornly on the tablecloth.
I am also extremely choosy about whose food I am eating. Maybe other people don’t have the same neuroses I do. I have issues with large potlucks, not knowing who cooked what dish, what is in it and most importantly, what that individual’s home looks like or if his/her hands were clean when the dish was prepared. It makes my skin crawl when I spy a dish, inquire who brought it and am told, “Oh (Bettina) (Sylvia) (Rico) or (Portia) made that” and I have no idea who this person is, let alone his/her sanitary practices. Needless to say I paste on a smile and pass by with my one slice of pepperoni pizza from Costco and salad prepared by me. Many people are not discriminatory; that is what both amazes and disgusts me the most: I have seen pieces of bread with the furry beginnings of mold left by the toaster in the break room, boxes of stale crackers brought in and left on the counters, plates of runny brie left out for half the day and other horrors; yet they will still nearly all be consumed by the day’s end.
I have made a point, just for fun, of timing the initial receipt of the “Free food” e-mails with the rush of bodies by my cubicle on the way to locate the food, and found the average response time to be less than five minutes. I think I’m going to buy a stopwatch to get the exact number of seconds as well.
The workplace, when food is involved, has been and remains a source of both disgust and amusement for me. Do I have a life, you may ask? The answer is yes, I do. I also like to have fun during the eight hours a day I am sentenced to this workplace and until I land my dream job of working out of my home-- sitting at the computer in my underwear if that’s what I want---then this will be how I entertain myself during these dull, dark work days of winter.
After a 20-year study in my working world, I have come to the conclusion that the mass consumption of free food by employees definitely happens in each and every workplace in America. I used to think, in my patient-care days of nursing, it was prevalent mostly in environments such as this, where most shifts lasted twelve hours and on a good day, you were lucky to get a full 30-minute lunch break. Some shifts, all you had time for was to pee in order for your bladder not to expand to the size of a Winnebago and cause premature dribbling at the tender age of 30.
In the hospitals, doctors brought in leftover sandwiches, chips, cookies and soda from their meetings. Sometimes the food was particularly appealing from drug reps visiting the premises. The food was placed on the main table of the nurses’ station where the rest of the staff devoured it like wolves. This I excused as being understandable, given our brutal shifts on particularly busy days.
I changed nursing paths six years ago and began working in my corporate office, doing nursing behind a desk and telephone with normal business hours. We have a lunch room with a number of food choices on the first floor and many other people bring their lunches from home. There are snack machines on every floor and somewhere on one of the floors on any given day, you can be assured there is a potluck for a wedding, resignation, commitment ceremony, or the birth of another baby. There is always some reason to celebrate with food.
The piranha-like feeding frenzy I experienced in my hospital jobs continues in this workplace whenever free food is left over in meeting rooms. It doesn’t seem to matter if people come to work in the morning on an empty stomach, or if they’ve just polished off the Big Boy breakfast special from Old Country Buffet—it is always the same: People descend like locusts upon any kind of food left behind. I can practically see clouds of dust puff up and disappear in the ensuing mass of people on their way to the main meeting room on our floor where leftovers often lurk. All it takes is a simple e-mail to announce “Food left over in Room 430”, “Food left over in break room”; even “Food left over in restroom” would probably be met with the same crazed response. I watch this phenomenon with the same amazement I had the first day I started work in this office building six years ago. I still haven’t figured out what the primary motivation is for this, except to surmise there is something infinitely appealing about the two words “Free food” to so many employees, regardless of what the item is or from whence it came.
You are probably asking, am I exempt from this? My answer is yes and no. I will admit I have been among the masses at times, but I pride myself in at least having some decorum, such as not piling my plate with food until it resembles a small volcano, not taking home several plates full “for my family and dog” and not going back for sloppy seconds (or even thirds) as I have seen so many people do on a regular basis. I always know which ones it will be. I have them bookmarked in my memory to observe when they inevitably re-appear at the table picking at the crumbs, chicken bones and random bits of kale scattered forlornly on the tablecloth.
I am also extremely choosy about whose food I am eating. Maybe other people don’t have the same neuroses I do. I have issues with large potlucks, not knowing who cooked what dish, what is in it and most importantly, what that individual’s home looks like or if his/her hands were clean when the dish was prepared. It makes my skin crawl when I spy a dish, inquire who brought it and am told, “Oh (Bettina) (Sylvia) (Rico) or (Portia) made that” and I have no idea who this person is, let alone his/her sanitary practices. Needless to say I paste on a smile and pass by with my one slice of pepperoni pizza from Costco and salad prepared by me. Many people are not discriminatory; that is what both amazes and disgusts me the most: I have seen pieces of bread with the furry beginnings of mold left by the toaster in the break room, boxes of stale crackers brought in and left on the counters, plates of runny brie left out for half the day and other horrors; yet they will still nearly all be consumed by the day’s end.
I have made a point, just for fun, of timing the initial receipt of the “Free food” e-mails with the rush of bodies by my cubicle on the way to locate the food, and found the average response time to be less than five minutes. I think I’m going to buy a stopwatch to get the exact number of seconds as well.
The workplace, when food is involved, has been and remains a source of both disgust and amusement for me. Do I have a life, you may ask? The answer is yes, I do. I also like to have fun during the eight hours a day I am sentenced to this workplace and until I land my dream job of working out of my home-- sitting at the computer in my underwear if that’s what I want---then this will be how I entertain myself during these dull, dark work days of winter.
16 December 2008
Christmas is here--- already!
I haven't written in awhile; a lot going on in my life but I wanted to share a Christmas family memory from 30 years ago. My family and I still share this story and laugh about it every year. Please enjoy--from the Stone/Erwin archives! (god, it sounds scary to say "30 years ago"---am I that old already??)
When I was eleven, I had an extensive Barbie Doll collection, complete with a splendid house and furniture. I had snapped a photo of the entire group of dolls I arranged on my bedroom carpet, trying to use up the rest of the film on my little Brownie so I could get it developed by Christmas time. My family had begun a tradition of passing around Christmas photos from yesteryear to view and comment on, and the following year this photograph showed up in the batch of Christmas 1978 photos. When it reached my mother’s hands, she looked up with a completely confused look on her face and asked, “Who are these people?” I looked to make sure she was serious and indeed she was. I don’t even remember what was said, because there was so much laughter and howling from the rest of us. The situation became even more hysterical when she realized one of my shoes was noticeable in the photograph, looming gigantically over the backs of the dolls. Since that Christmas, someone in our family every year will send a photograph Christmas card to everyone else, with the scribbled notation, “Who are these people?”
If any of you have met my mother, you know this is definitely not a fictitious story! Maybe next Christmas I will write about the year my aunt, (who was still a drinker at the time) got soused and irate during our family game night, playing Trivial Pursuit. It was not funny at the time but it sure as hell is now! Stay tuned for that one.... and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah to all.
When I was eleven, I had an extensive Barbie Doll collection, complete with a splendid house and furniture. I had snapped a photo of the entire group of dolls I arranged on my bedroom carpet, trying to use up the rest of the film on my little Brownie so I could get it developed by Christmas time. My family had begun a tradition of passing around Christmas photos from yesteryear to view and comment on, and the following year this photograph showed up in the batch of Christmas 1978 photos. When it reached my mother’s hands, she looked up with a completely confused look on her face and asked, “Who are these people?” I looked to make sure she was serious and indeed she was. I don’t even remember what was said, because there was so much laughter and howling from the rest of us. The situation became even more hysterical when she realized one of my shoes was noticeable in the photograph, looming gigantically over the backs of the dolls. Since that Christmas, someone in our family every year will send a photograph Christmas card to everyone else, with the scribbled notation, “Who are these people?”
If any of you have met my mother, you know this is definitely not a fictitious story! Maybe next Christmas I will write about the year my aunt, (who was still a drinker at the time) got soused and irate during our family game night, playing Trivial Pursuit. It was not funny at the time but it sure as hell is now! Stay tuned for that one.... and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah to all.
16 September 2008
Camping diary
Since we are fast approaching the 1-year annivesary of the devastating San Diego fires, I decided to add my journal I'd written over the weekend we were in the desert before it all began.
October 19, 2007
We’re on our way to the desert, someplace called Aqua Caliente which is supposed to have hot springs to swim in. I haven’t been camping for a decade, I just realize that. “Why?” Mary wants to know. I shrug and say it was not exactly fun to go alone so I gave Thomas, my “Ex Jackass”, all the camping gear we’d had together when we split up and he left Phoenix. Not a part of my life I care to reminisce about-- but at least I acquired all the kitchen gadgets, some of them very expensive, during our year of cohabitation. Mary is driving the first half of the trip. She asks me if the CD she chose to play is all right. “You can play anything you want--just don’t get us lost, that’s all I care about,” I answer. It’s very warm out, bordering on hot, so I’m glad I packed shorts and a swimsuit. We try to save on gas by not running the A/C in the car until we have to. I hang my foot outside the car window, until it starts to go numb and I have to change position. I open my book and start reading. “You’re lucky you can read in the car,” Mary remarks. She’s one of many I know who gets motion sickness if she tries it. Soon I am lost in the story of a girl who thinks she’s gotten miraculously pregnant by her long-dead boyfriend though there’s much more to the story….
Sure enough, we’re about 30 miles off our route. I sit up in my seat and realize we’re almost in Ocotillo Wells. “Babe….where are you going?” I inquire. Mary admits she might be lost. I know what “might” means; it means “we are lost.” She could get lost in a pickle jar, as I often tell her. Sometimes it’s funny but other times simply annoying. Now it is crossing over from being mildly funny to the annoying part, especially because it’s getting dark and even more difficult to see anything out here. “Where’s the map then?” I ask, and Mary looks blank. She thought I had one. Biting back a sarcastic retort, I simply ask her to pull over at the next gas station or convenience store. Luckily, we find some very nice people with a very nice map—expensive as hell! But it’s water resistant, large enough print that I don’t need my readers and most importantly, gets us on the right track again. I open the driver’s door and slide in before Mary can say anything. Jackie is behind us in her camper. “I’m a bit of a lead foot, but I’ll use the cruise control,” I tell her. I am openly rubbing my ass before I close the car door because it’s sore from the drive, and at this point I don’t care who sees me. We take off again with our new map ready to find our campsite.
I love desert sunsets and especially the nights-- all the millions of stars, so close you feel like you could reach up and pluck them onto your fingers. This is always a treat, because we don’t see this much where we live in the city. I can’t wait to get to our destination so we can pitch our tent and look up at the stars through the skylight in the top. Plus my butt and back are still killing me. Then I realize it’s already gotten dark already and we have to pitch our tent.
We are listening to a song by Pink, “Just like a pill.” I’m not much of a Pink fan, but I do like this one. Obviously another angry breaking-up, I- hate-you- song. Depending on your mood, those can be fun. “I can’t stay on your life support, there’s a shortage in the switch//I can’t stay on your morphine, ‘cause it’s making me itch//I tried to call the nurse again, but she’s being a little bitch”///So I can run, just as fast as I can, in the middle of nowhere//to the middle of my frustrated fears and I swear///you’re just like a pill//instead of making me better//you’re making me ill,” I sing along. Mary always wants to know how I know lyrics to songs. “Do you look them up?” she wants to know. “No,” I answer. I know she thinks I’m weird. Like remembering names, dates, ages and events, I have this freakish way of remembering most song lyrics or movie quotes after only hearing it a time or two—I don’t try, it just happens. I’ve had many friends give me many different kinds of shit about it so I am used to it.
We’re finally here and I can get out of that car. First thing I do is pull down my pants and pee sitting on the edge of the car door where you step up. This is a great trick I learned while hiking in Hawaii where there was no bathroom in sight. Much easier than squatting and getting it everywhere; this runs right down into the dirt and is quite neat and efficient. It is already getting very windy with an oncoming Santa Ana, and I’m afraid we might have a hard time of it putting up the tent. We’ve brought several lamps, some of them very bright, but we still need something larger to shine on the area where we’re tent pitching. “I know---let’s put my car’s headlights on the area”, Mary says. I told her to make sure she doesn’t have it on that long, or she’ll have a dead battery. She pooh-poohs me and says it won’t be on long enough to cause a problem.
I warn her it’s been many years since I’ve pitched a tent (the Ex-Jackass did all of it when we camped together), but after looking it over I realize it’s not that hard. Jackie has her own camper and is therefore exempt from having to put up with sleeping on the ground. Thank god we have an air mattress! My back couldn’t stand it otherwise, nor Mary’s. “We’re old,” we say and laugh. Then we get the tent out of the box, (borrowed from our friends who are avid campers), and realize it is only a 2-man tent, NOT a 4-man as they’d said they would leave for us. “It’s a good thing you two like each other!” Jackie laughs when she sees how small the tent is. We decide this will make the trip even more interesting and figure as long as we have enough room to turn over easily and keep a few things in there with us—like water, toothbrushes, toilet paper, our flask and my ugly night guard I have to wear for my TMJ, we’ll be okay. Once we have the tent up, we realize that is definitely ALL we’ll have room for. And one “house rule”: NO farting inside the tent.
Thirty minutes later, I return to Mary’s car to turn her headlights off. I decide to try and start the engine just to make sure….and it’s dead. It will barely even turn over. I will not say ‘I told you so’ to her; instead I ask if she has jumper cables, which she does not. Neither does Jackie. I have some in my car which I suppose I should have brought—but we are not in my car. Another thing to remember ‘next time’ I think to myself as we start walking around asking other campers for cables. No one nearby us have any, either, which surprises all of us. Finally I announce I’m hungry and we need to build a fire and eat—the cables can wait for the following day. Mary is immediately agreeable to dinner, because she knows how I get when I’m hungry.
I cook dinner for all of us—hamburgers—and it’s a good thing I made the patties so large to begin with, because about a quarter of the meat has broken off during cooking and dropped through the rungs of the grill, which are widely spaced. “Where’s my Worcestershire sauce?” I ask, and then realize we’ve both forgotten it. I absolutely adore Worcestershire sauce and eat it on lots of things, including scrambled eggs. Oh, well, no matter. Then we realize we’ve both forgotten the salad as a side dish and also the potato salad we bought. “All right, next time we’re both making a list of what to take, because we obviously both have the short-term memory of a sieve!” I exclaim as we all laugh and poke fun. I’ll just finish my burger and pour some more wine, and that will be my dinner. Oh, and of course the toasted marshmallows for dessert!
I’ve gotten the process of roasting marshmallows down to a fine art. I can eat mine either way-- charred or toasted brown with a gooey center, but I prefer the latter. “You aren’t allergic to marshmallows, are you?” I ask Jackie. The woman is amazing; she has allergies to foods Mary and I would have never imagined: Corn, peanut butter, all fish (not just shellfish), chocolate, milk, and almost anything spicy. Fortunately she is okay with marshmallows, though she admits she often takes a Benadryl and eats certain offending foods anyway. She laughs that her allergies drove her partner crazy, as Lois loved to cook and ran the gamut from carefully cooking around Jackie’s allergies to getting downright frustrated by them. “Bitch, why don’t you just die already?” Lois had grumbled to her once when she longed for the spicy foods she loved to cook. Jackie laughs at the memory of how patient Lois tried to be until she’d finally become irate.
I roast Jackie’s and Mary’s marshmallows first; they’re easy and like them charred. Then I sit patiently and turn the giant fork I scored on and found at another empty campsite, toasting my marshmallow until it’s perfectly brown on the outside and melted on the inside. Mary stops after two, but I have four. Jackie’s cocker spaniels sniff around us, looking for crumbs and finally settle in our laps.
It’s late, close to midnight. The three of us sit around our fire, smoking some of our stash we’d brought, staring up at the stars in the otherwise inky sky. I find the Big and Little Dippers, but I can’t find Orion tonight. Usually I can find him easily. “I know why you can’t find him tonight!” Mary teases me. We’re amazed that the sky is so clear, yet none of us can see the moon. We finally go to bed and snuggle under the blanket, where I continue to stare up through the skylight hole in the top of our tiny tent, loving the stars and the sheer quiet until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
October 20 (4 a.m.?)
Something wakes me, and I can’t figure out what it is right away. I realize Mary has awakened, too, hearing the same sound. I realize a few seconds later I must look ridiculous, sitting up abruptly like a dog that’s just heard a noise with one of those startled, half-barks they will emit. The tent is so small my head practically pokes out of the skylight, and the whole thing makes me start laughing and I’m unable to stop right away. Then I am snorting, realizing I must still be indeed a bit altered. It spreads to Mary, who starts laughing as well. Finally we both realize we are hearing the wind which has increased, coming down from the nearby mountains with a “whooshing” sound. It is amazing how much it has picked up since we first went to bed; our tent is even rocking and swaying. We also notice all of a sudden how bright it suddenly is outside, like a spotlight. “What is that?” Mary whispers, and finally I climb out of the tent to see that it is a half moon but brighter than any half moon I’ve ever seen. Then I realize the reason we couldn’t see it earlier was because of the high mountains it was hiding behind when it first rose. Except for the wind, there is no sound; it is like an amazing vacuum out here.
In the morning, we chase some annoying kids out of our campsite who are walking right through by our tent before 7 a.m. to play in the area. “Go play somewhere else, please”, Jackie tells them and I high-five her after I climb from the tent to stretch and un-kink my body from that little tent. “We must buy a 4-man tent before we do this again,” I tell Mary and she agrees. We’re small, but apparently not small enough.
We hike in the morning before it gets too hot, and it’s already well on its way--94 degrees by 10 a.m. We make sure we take a long swim and fortunately Jackie has full hookups and A/C in her camper, so we retreat there for part of the afternoon, playing cards.
This evening we grill steak and chicken, this time on a grill Jackie brought so we don’t have the same issue as last night. But we have a nice roaring fire going again, as it gets chilly out here at night. Jackie speaks often of her partner Lois of 27 years, whom she lost six years ago to cancer. “Breast?” I inquire carefully. “No, lung,” Jackie answers. “Lois smoked like a chimney.” She talks of their life together, their vacations together, their families and backgrounds, Lois’s love of cooking, how they dealt with conflict, and how Jackie cared for her while in Hospice at home in her last weeks. Mary and I don’t speak, we listen attentively. Hearing Jackie’s stories of their life together feels like taking lessons in love.
Oct. 21
It is literally 20 degrees cooler today here, when the news had said it was to be even hotter than the day before. We are grateful for the weatherman’s misinformation and take a longer hike today before we pack up to leave. Most people have left early in the morning, so we’re some of few people left. The ranger man, Mark, finally shows up as he’d promised the day before to give Mary’s car a jump, but we have already taken care of it. We found a very nice Hispanic man with a huge Toyota truck who gave us a jump and tried to refuse the 20 dollar bill Mary insisted he take. “Buy a case of beer with it!” we told him and he finally accepted.
The three of us have a 20 minute conversation before departing the campground as to where Jackie can stop to gas up her camper, which is dangerously low. Our original plan was to go back the way we’d come in, “the short way”, Jackie calls it, on the 78 back through Ramona and on to Santee, where she lives. But I look on our map and find the nearest station is 25 or so miles to Ocotillo. Jackie is worried most of the trip that she may run out of gas, but I am confident she won’t. We drive as slowly as possible so she can drive her camper slowly; the winds have picked up again and are going full force. She tells us later she was driving white-knuckled the whole way due to the winds blowing her camper so hard.
Once in Ocotillo with full gas tanks, we realize the 8 freeway is very nearby and decide to go home that route. We have been completely incommunicado all weekend, no cell phone service, not even any radio until about halfway home. As we near the San Diego area, I begin seeing the sky darken and look a strange orangey-red. “It’s probably just city smog and maybe some clouds,” Mary says, but I disagree and feel apprehensive: the sky looks exactly as it had four years earlier with the Cedar fire. Then I see a distinct plume of smoke south of where we’re driving. “That is a fire, Pumpkin”, I tell Mary. We drive on, at the time having no idea what we’re to be met with upon returning to the city. Once home with the news on, I feel a chill as I realize the impact of the split-second decision we’d made to drive an alternate route instead of back through Ramona, where the Witch fire had probably just begun before we set out home. I silently thank God and continue to watch the news, forgetting my tired back and smoky hair.
October 19, 2007
We’re on our way to the desert, someplace called Aqua Caliente which is supposed to have hot springs to swim in. I haven’t been camping for a decade, I just realize that. “Why?” Mary wants to know. I shrug and say it was not exactly fun to go alone so I gave Thomas, my “Ex Jackass”, all the camping gear we’d had together when we split up and he left Phoenix. Not a part of my life I care to reminisce about-- but at least I acquired all the kitchen gadgets, some of them very expensive, during our year of cohabitation. Mary is driving the first half of the trip. She asks me if the CD she chose to play is all right. “You can play anything you want--just don’t get us lost, that’s all I care about,” I answer. It’s very warm out, bordering on hot, so I’m glad I packed shorts and a swimsuit. We try to save on gas by not running the A/C in the car until we have to. I hang my foot outside the car window, until it starts to go numb and I have to change position. I open my book and start reading. “You’re lucky you can read in the car,” Mary remarks. She’s one of many I know who gets motion sickness if she tries it. Soon I am lost in the story of a girl who thinks she’s gotten miraculously pregnant by her long-dead boyfriend though there’s much more to the story….
Sure enough, we’re about 30 miles off our route. I sit up in my seat and realize we’re almost in Ocotillo Wells. “Babe….where are you going?” I inquire. Mary admits she might be lost. I know what “might” means; it means “we are lost.” She could get lost in a pickle jar, as I often tell her. Sometimes it’s funny but other times simply annoying. Now it is crossing over from being mildly funny to the annoying part, especially because it’s getting dark and even more difficult to see anything out here. “Where’s the map then?” I ask, and Mary looks blank. She thought I had one. Biting back a sarcastic retort, I simply ask her to pull over at the next gas station or convenience store. Luckily, we find some very nice people with a very nice map—expensive as hell! But it’s water resistant, large enough print that I don’t need my readers and most importantly, gets us on the right track again. I open the driver’s door and slide in before Mary can say anything. Jackie is behind us in her camper. “I’m a bit of a lead foot, but I’ll use the cruise control,” I tell her. I am openly rubbing my ass before I close the car door because it’s sore from the drive, and at this point I don’t care who sees me. We take off again with our new map ready to find our campsite.
I love desert sunsets and especially the nights-- all the millions of stars, so close you feel like you could reach up and pluck them onto your fingers. This is always a treat, because we don’t see this much where we live in the city. I can’t wait to get to our destination so we can pitch our tent and look up at the stars through the skylight in the top. Plus my butt and back are still killing me. Then I realize it’s already gotten dark already and we have to pitch our tent.
We are listening to a song by Pink, “Just like a pill.” I’m not much of a Pink fan, but I do like this one. Obviously another angry breaking-up, I- hate-you- song. Depending on your mood, those can be fun. “I can’t stay on your life support, there’s a shortage in the switch//I can’t stay on your morphine, ‘cause it’s making me itch//I tried to call the nurse again, but she’s being a little bitch”///So I can run, just as fast as I can, in the middle of nowhere//to the middle of my frustrated fears and I swear///you’re just like a pill//instead of making me better//you’re making me ill,” I sing along. Mary always wants to know how I know lyrics to songs. “Do you look them up?” she wants to know. “No,” I answer. I know she thinks I’m weird. Like remembering names, dates, ages and events, I have this freakish way of remembering most song lyrics or movie quotes after only hearing it a time or two—I don’t try, it just happens. I’ve had many friends give me many different kinds of shit about it so I am used to it.
We’re finally here and I can get out of that car. First thing I do is pull down my pants and pee sitting on the edge of the car door where you step up. This is a great trick I learned while hiking in Hawaii where there was no bathroom in sight. Much easier than squatting and getting it everywhere; this runs right down into the dirt and is quite neat and efficient. It is already getting very windy with an oncoming Santa Ana, and I’m afraid we might have a hard time of it putting up the tent. We’ve brought several lamps, some of them very bright, but we still need something larger to shine on the area where we’re tent pitching. “I know---let’s put my car’s headlights on the area”, Mary says. I told her to make sure she doesn’t have it on that long, or she’ll have a dead battery. She pooh-poohs me and says it won’t be on long enough to cause a problem.
I warn her it’s been many years since I’ve pitched a tent (the Ex-Jackass did all of it when we camped together), but after looking it over I realize it’s not that hard. Jackie has her own camper and is therefore exempt from having to put up with sleeping on the ground. Thank god we have an air mattress! My back couldn’t stand it otherwise, nor Mary’s. “We’re old,” we say and laugh. Then we get the tent out of the box, (borrowed from our friends who are avid campers), and realize it is only a 2-man tent, NOT a 4-man as they’d said they would leave for us. “It’s a good thing you two like each other!” Jackie laughs when she sees how small the tent is. We decide this will make the trip even more interesting and figure as long as we have enough room to turn over easily and keep a few things in there with us—like water, toothbrushes, toilet paper, our flask and my ugly night guard I have to wear for my TMJ, we’ll be okay. Once we have the tent up, we realize that is definitely ALL we’ll have room for. And one “house rule”: NO farting inside the tent.
Thirty minutes later, I return to Mary’s car to turn her headlights off. I decide to try and start the engine just to make sure….and it’s dead. It will barely even turn over. I will not say ‘I told you so’ to her; instead I ask if she has jumper cables, which she does not. Neither does Jackie. I have some in my car which I suppose I should have brought—but we are not in my car. Another thing to remember ‘next time’ I think to myself as we start walking around asking other campers for cables. No one nearby us have any, either, which surprises all of us. Finally I announce I’m hungry and we need to build a fire and eat—the cables can wait for the following day. Mary is immediately agreeable to dinner, because she knows how I get when I’m hungry.
I cook dinner for all of us—hamburgers—and it’s a good thing I made the patties so large to begin with, because about a quarter of the meat has broken off during cooking and dropped through the rungs of the grill, which are widely spaced. “Where’s my Worcestershire sauce?” I ask, and then realize we’ve both forgotten it. I absolutely adore Worcestershire sauce and eat it on lots of things, including scrambled eggs. Oh, well, no matter. Then we realize we’ve both forgotten the salad as a side dish and also the potato salad we bought. “All right, next time we’re both making a list of what to take, because we obviously both have the short-term memory of a sieve!” I exclaim as we all laugh and poke fun. I’ll just finish my burger and pour some more wine, and that will be my dinner. Oh, and of course the toasted marshmallows for dessert!
I’ve gotten the process of roasting marshmallows down to a fine art. I can eat mine either way-- charred or toasted brown with a gooey center, but I prefer the latter. “You aren’t allergic to marshmallows, are you?” I ask Jackie. The woman is amazing; she has allergies to foods Mary and I would have never imagined: Corn, peanut butter, all fish (not just shellfish), chocolate, milk, and almost anything spicy. Fortunately she is okay with marshmallows, though she admits she often takes a Benadryl and eats certain offending foods anyway. She laughs that her allergies drove her partner crazy, as Lois loved to cook and ran the gamut from carefully cooking around Jackie’s allergies to getting downright frustrated by them. “Bitch, why don’t you just die already?” Lois had grumbled to her once when she longed for the spicy foods she loved to cook. Jackie laughs at the memory of how patient Lois tried to be until she’d finally become irate.
I roast Jackie’s and Mary’s marshmallows first; they’re easy and like them charred. Then I sit patiently and turn the giant fork I scored on and found at another empty campsite, toasting my marshmallow until it’s perfectly brown on the outside and melted on the inside. Mary stops after two, but I have four. Jackie’s cocker spaniels sniff around us, looking for crumbs and finally settle in our laps.
It’s late, close to midnight. The three of us sit around our fire, smoking some of our stash we’d brought, staring up at the stars in the otherwise inky sky. I find the Big and Little Dippers, but I can’t find Orion tonight. Usually I can find him easily. “I know why you can’t find him tonight!” Mary teases me. We’re amazed that the sky is so clear, yet none of us can see the moon. We finally go to bed and snuggle under the blanket, where I continue to stare up through the skylight hole in the top of our tiny tent, loving the stars and the sheer quiet until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
October 20 (4 a.m.?)
Something wakes me, and I can’t figure out what it is right away. I realize Mary has awakened, too, hearing the same sound. I realize a few seconds later I must look ridiculous, sitting up abruptly like a dog that’s just heard a noise with one of those startled, half-barks they will emit. The tent is so small my head practically pokes out of the skylight, and the whole thing makes me start laughing and I’m unable to stop right away. Then I am snorting, realizing I must still be indeed a bit altered. It spreads to Mary, who starts laughing as well. Finally we both realize we are hearing the wind which has increased, coming down from the nearby mountains with a “whooshing” sound. It is amazing how much it has picked up since we first went to bed; our tent is even rocking and swaying. We also notice all of a sudden how bright it suddenly is outside, like a spotlight. “What is that?” Mary whispers, and finally I climb out of the tent to see that it is a half moon but brighter than any half moon I’ve ever seen. Then I realize the reason we couldn’t see it earlier was because of the high mountains it was hiding behind when it first rose. Except for the wind, there is no sound; it is like an amazing vacuum out here.
In the morning, we chase some annoying kids out of our campsite who are walking right through by our tent before 7 a.m. to play in the area. “Go play somewhere else, please”, Jackie tells them and I high-five her after I climb from the tent to stretch and un-kink my body from that little tent. “We must buy a 4-man tent before we do this again,” I tell Mary and she agrees. We’re small, but apparently not small enough.
We hike in the morning before it gets too hot, and it’s already well on its way--94 degrees by 10 a.m. We make sure we take a long swim and fortunately Jackie has full hookups and A/C in her camper, so we retreat there for part of the afternoon, playing cards.
This evening we grill steak and chicken, this time on a grill Jackie brought so we don’t have the same issue as last night. But we have a nice roaring fire going again, as it gets chilly out here at night. Jackie speaks often of her partner Lois of 27 years, whom she lost six years ago to cancer. “Breast?” I inquire carefully. “No, lung,” Jackie answers. “Lois smoked like a chimney.” She talks of their life together, their vacations together, their families and backgrounds, Lois’s love of cooking, how they dealt with conflict, and how Jackie cared for her while in Hospice at home in her last weeks. Mary and I don’t speak, we listen attentively. Hearing Jackie’s stories of their life together feels like taking lessons in love.
Oct. 21
It is literally 20 degrees cooler today here, when the news had said it was to be even hotter than the day before. We are grateful for the weatherman’s misinformation and take a longer hike today before we pack up to leave. Most people have left early in the morning, so we’re some of few people left. The ranger man, Mark, finally shows up as he’d promised the day before to give Mary’s car a jump, but we have already taken care of it. We found a very nice Hispanic man with a huge Toyota truck who gave us a jump and tried to refuse the 20 dollar bill Mary insisted he take. “Buy a case of beer with it!” we told him and he finally accepted.
The three of us have a 20 minute conversation before departing the campground as to where Jackie can stop to gas up her camper, which is dangerously low. Our original plan was to go back the way we’d come in, “the short way”, Jackie calls it, on the 78 back through Ramona and on to Santee, where she lives. But I look on our map and find the nearest station is 25 or so miles to Ocotillo. Jackie is worried most of the trip that she may run out of gas, but I am confident she won’t. We drive as slowly as possible so she can drive her camper slowly; the winds have picked up again and are going full force. She tells us later she was driving white-knuckled the whole way due to the winds blowing her camper so hard.
Once in Ocotillo with full gas tanks, we realize the 8 freeway is very nearby and decide to go home that route. We have been completely incommunicado all weekend, no cell phone service, not even any radio until about halfway home. As we near the San Diego area, I begin seeing the sky darken and look a strange orangey-red. “It’s probably just city smog and maybe some clouds,” Mary says, but I disagree and feel apprehensive: the sky looks exactly as it had four years earlier with the Cedar fire. Then I see a distinct plume of smoke south of where we’re driving. “That is a fire, Pumpkin”, I tell Mary. We drive on, at the time having no idea what we’re to be met with upon returning to the city. Once home with the news on, I feel a chill as I realize the impact of the split-second decision we’d made to drive an alternate route instead of back through Ramona, where the Witch fire had probably just begun before we set out home. I silently thank God and continue to watch the news, forgetting my tired back and smoky hair.
15 August 2008
21 July 2008
Blood
When I was fourteen, I thought I hated my mother. Her rules, her nagging and her helplessness and passivity drove me crazy. Years later, I realized she was not who I was most angry with: It was my father.
I am not a victim of sexual abuse. I am not a battered child. I suppose I am damaged nonetheless, as we all are in some way because of our parents. My scars are not visible and therefore not always understood by other family members who have asked me, “Why are you so angry with him?” My father can be very funny; with a sharp wit I appreciate and have inherited. The flip side of this is his destructive anger and self-pity that over the years he has succeeded only in turning inward.
The summer I was fifteen, my father got a DUI and sank into a depression after his fiancée broke up with him. She was the first serious relationship he had had since my parents’ divorce years earlier and he took it hard. The trouble was, he also took it out on my brother and me, sometimes with verbal abuse, a few times with the backside of his hand. My mother had encouraged us to visit him more since he was “so lonely.” For years, she had no idea what really went on during these visits. At times, Dad appeared to cheer up and take us out for ice cream, but the good times were often suddenly replaced by random outbursts of anger directed at our mother or his ex-fiancée; or in the form of road rage in traffic. My brother and I would shrink into the car seat, wishing we could simply disappear, and I felt like a small child again with no control over anything—even being able to say “Stop the car and let me out.”
Things came to a crescendo one evening when I arrived home after school and found myself locked out of the house—someone had forgotten to leave the key in the usual place. My mother worked 40 miles away and I knew I could not call her from her nursing shift without causing problems. Our neighbors were away, so I kicked out a basement window and squeezed into our house. I figured I would pay for the cost of the window and all would be okay—but my mother thought otherwise when she saw the damage and called my father to tell him what I’d done. She realized her mistake too late as he stormed over a short time later, taking all his rage and anger, all the injustices he’d felt that year, out on me. He was six feet two and over 200 pounds, and I felt all of it as his hand connected with the side of my face. I still remember feeling my head bounce off the front door I’d cowered against and my mother screaming in the background for him to stop.
Later that evening, he asked to see me. I stiffened and told my mother I didn’t want to. “I will go with you and I promise he won’t hurt you again,” she assured me. Once there, my father astonished me by crying openly and promising he’d never touch me again. He didn’t. He was more affectionate after that summer and tried to make up for things by buying me expensive clothes and jewelry. I recognized even in my late teens he was giving what he was capable of, but what I needed most I had never gotten.
As he has aged, my father still has a good sense of humor and is still very generous. But he still drinks and has become passive-aggressive with his anger. It is still too hard for me most of the time and the gap between us has widened. I e-mail him occasionally and see him once a year. I think he is disappointed with this, but it is what works for me.
I’ve often asked myself: Do I love my father because of who he is, or because he is my blood? Because loving your family is what you’re “supposed” to do? I think I know the answer even if I cannot say it.
When I was fourteen, I thought I hated my mother. Her rules, her nagging and her helplessness and passivity drove me crazy. Years later, I realized she was not who I was most angry with: It was my father.
I am not a victim of sexual abuse. I am not a battered child. I suppose I am damaged nonetheless, as we all are in some way because of our parents. My scars are not visible and therefore not always understood by other family members who have asked me, “Why are you so angry with him?” My father can be very funny; with a sharp wit I appreciate and have inherited. The flip side of this is his destructive anger and self-pity that over the years he has succeeded only in turning inward.
The summer I was fifteen, my father got a DUI and sank into a depression after his fiancée broke up with him. She was the first serious relationship he had had since my parents’ divorce years earlier and he took it hard. The trouble was, he also took it out on my brother and me, sometimes with verbal abuse, a few times with the backside of his hand. My mother had encouraged us to visit him more since he was “so lonely.” For years, she had no idea what really went on during these visits. At times, Dad appeared to cheer up and take us out for ice cream, but the good times were often suddenly replaced by random outbursts of anger directed at our mother or his ex-fiancée; or in the form of road rage in traffic. My brother and I would shrink into the car seat, wishing we could simply disappear, and I felt like a small child again with no control over anything—even being able to say “Stop the car and let me out.”
Things came to a crescendo one evening when I arrived home after school and found myself locked out of the house—someone had forgotten to leave the key in the usual place. My mother worked 40 miles away and I knew I could not call her from her nursing shift without causing problems. Our neighbors were away, so I kicked out a basement window and squeezed into our house. I figured I would pay for the cost of the window and all would be okay—but my mother thought otherwise when she saw the damage and called my father to tell him what I’d done. She realized her mistake too late as he stormed over a short time later, taking all his rage and anger, all the injustices he’d felt that year, out on me. He was six feet two and over 200 pounds, and I felt all of it as his hand connected with the side of my face. I still remember feeling my head bounce off the front door I’d cowered against and my mother screaming in the background for him to stop.
Later that evening, he asked to see me. I stiffened and told my mother I didn’t want to. “I will go with you and I promise he won’t hurt you again,” she assured me. Once there, my father astonished me by crying openly and promising he’d never touch me again. He didn’t. He was more affectionate after that summer and tried to make up for things by buying me expensive clothes and jewelry. I recognized even in my late teens he was giving what he was capable of, but what I needed most I had never gotten.
As he has aged, my father still has a good sense of humor and is still very generous. But he still drinks and has become passive-aggressive with his anger. It is still too hard for me most of the time and the gap between us has widened. I e-mail him occasionally and see him once a year. I think he is disappointed with this, but it is what works for me.
I’ve often asked myself: Do I love my father because of who he is, or because he is my blood? Because loving your family is what you’re “supposed” to do? I think I know the answer even if I cannot say it.
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