my best friend
Seventh grade started at Del Mar junior high school, and terrified, I spent an hour doing sit-ups the night before, because I just knew I was too fat to go. The next morning, I tried hiding my disgusting body with a buttoned up yellow cardigan and sat with my hands between my knees on the bus that stopped in front of my driveway. Continue reading “thinking about Lindy” »
How about Jerry Colonna?
My dad worked in the radio business, and he brought home a lifesize plastic fake jukebox record player, a fabulous little space man who came to live with us. Its silver plastic chrome lit up bright red when I plugged it in next to the green couch, one speaker blaring. Continue reading “the coolest” »
My parents and me arriving in San Francisco
Mental illness is much bigger than most of us. Hospitals are full of clinically diagnosed people like my best friend, who spent her entire life in them and knows nothing else.
We have undiagnosed mental illnesses that cause those who suffer from it to self-medicate, with substances like drugs and alcohol. There’s behavioral mental illness, like gambling and overeating. Many of us suffer from more than one kind. Continue reading “mental anguish” »
Hastings cutoff was a tragedy
Every Californian knows the Donner Party’s unsuccessful struggle to get over the winter Sierra mountains of 1846 and 1847. The party believed that taking the Hastings Cutoff would save them three hundred travel miles, but that was not the case. Hastings deceived pioneers. Hastings had never traveled the route, but he made bogus maps that many pioneers tried to follow, and he made money writing his map. It was not a short cut. Cannibalism and horror are the Donner party’s story because they believed Hastings. Continue reading “The ultimate deception” »
health helicopter
Second husband had an aneurysm yesterday, and was flown from Alaska’s Prince of Wales (POW) Island to Seattle by helicopter or something dramatic like that. His children from multiple marriages were present at his side, including mine, and he’s sounding perky, like he’ll make it. Continue reading “Divorce Effects” »
I call her Lindy
Nobody expected my best friend Lindy’s crack-up to last her lifetime, plucked and placed behind double locked doors in various California mental hospitals. Nothing I do changes what happened to her. Her six other sisters didn’t wind up that way. Lindy never learned to function, outside of grabbing a dinner tray, going through a meal line, and returning for dessert. Continue reading “Why I wrote a memoir” »
water is everything
The recent Butte fire was so devastating to Calaveras County with 71 thousand burned acres, and 500 people losing their homes. Three hours west in the Bay Area, people barely heard about Butte fire, and the Valley fire from Lake County got more attention.
When I got back from a week’s evacuation, I ‘unfriended’ people from my facebook account because they didn’t ask what went down with my family’s evacuation. I am no longer interested in facebook friendships. People who care about me would let me know they cared about how we dealt with the fire. Maybe that’s not true. Oh, well. I’ve got fewer ‘friends.’ Continue reading “Friending and Unfriending” »
Deep feelings need honest music, a line between loneliness and a hopeful language. Can I repair something that was never there in the first place? I cannot control what others think and do, but I try to manipulate the way others see me. Continue reading “responding to ‘persuasion’” »
West Point made it
We lost power and experienced mandatory evacuation for a week. Now survivors stand around our town feeling stunned that the place wasn’t demolished by the flames.
The Butte fire ferociously erupted three weeks ago, and over 500 Calaveras county homes were burned to the ground not far from West Point. Some of us can’t believe we’re so lucky. Continue reading “surviving Butte fire” »
