depth is relative
I just woke up from a dream I’m calling putting together what I no longer want. The majority of the dream takes place in an ex-friend’s home. I’m dealing with a kid she decided to raise, who shoots salted sprinklers inside her house. My husband Fred and I are trying to maintain the situation, waiting for my ex-friend to return home from her new marriage.
What’s interesting is that we are no longer friends in waking life. She divorced her second husband two years ago, and found a third husband who lives in another state. She doesn’t want to continue our friendship. Apparently, I am part of past memories she wants to forget. Continue reading “Putting Together What I No Longer Want” »
“Never write anything on paper because it can be used against you,” Mom warned me as a child. I was twelve when my sixth grade teacher told me to start writing a journal. She gave us little blue lined notebooks and time to write in them each day. I was prepared to lie about my life. I really wanted to write my truth, however, so I wrote about what was going on at home, booze, loss, blood and heartbreak. My dad was an alcoholic and soon went to a hospital, and his brother committed suicide because he couldn’t stop drinking. We lived in a periodically insane alcoholic world of never knowing when things would explode. I felt mortified every time I thought about Dad’s recent black out and how he drunkenly fell down at the local pool shredding his elbow. I overheard a woman call me ‘the drunk man’s daughter’ and I never wanted to return to the pool or take another breath on this planet.
This is a story about Lucky, my cat from 1982.
The Old St. Hilary’s Catholic Church in downtown Tiburon, California is the most recognized historical structure in town. It is no longer only a Catholic building, but stands for history of the old days. Tiburon Landmarks Society commemorated the building with a project. They recruited local volunteers to needlepointing local wildflowers designs on kneelers for each of the sixteen pews. Since the Tiburon Mariposa lily on Ring Mountain became protected as an endangered flower the same year my brother died, and was represented as one of the flowers on the kneelers, I volunteered to make a kneeler, but the coordinator gave me a blue iris design instead. I didn’t really care, I just wanted my work to be in the old church. 
