It’s clear I loved my father
I’m emotional because of this horrid anniversary day. Forty-eight years ago my father put a gun to his head and died. It’s irreversible. I’m the last family member to endure this day. Anyone who copes with suicide understands the devastating rip of losing our love. Continue reading “commemoration” »
fire took it all
Lynn and Charlie lost nearly everything in the 2015 Butte Fire of Calaveras County. They physically survived and for awhile lived in a tent city at the frog jumping fairgrounds. Fortunately an insurance settlement allowed them to buy another home in nearby Amador County and relocate within the year.
Their story is better than most, but it’s so sad. Our fire anniversary is coming up. Anniversaries are often cause for reflection. I had a reflective conversation with Lynn and Charlie yesterday at their nearly empty new house, with no trees and neighbors who can see into windows. Far cry from acres of shady privacy.
“You see things like this happen to people on TV when they lose everything. We see and feel sad for them, but turn back to our own lives. The intensity of their loss has to be lived to be believed…I am never going to be the same.”
Lynn lost her genealogical heritage in the fire, revolutionary war antiques and precious things in keepsake boxes stored away for future generations, gone.
I was moved to write poetry for her.
Blessings to all who lost so much.
2015 Butte fire legacy
my jeweler friend no longer works
a blobmelt inventory breaks her heart
incomprehensible to those who weren’t evacuated
transform twenty minutes before the house burns down into an ugly nightmare
only rubble survives its raw beauty
cherry-pick my jewelry box when my brain says
“I’m coming back”
who wears melted gold around her neck when its clasp no longer opens?
what does the new back look like?
how does a dish cope in a new shape?
will the teacup hang without its handle?
rusty hacksaw suspends in burnt wood
where is the bed when only its twisted box springs remain?
remember heat snap shards in gray ash dirt
water turns to mud where there was once a garden
haunting history
My brother played the bagpipes with The Prince Charles Pipe Band. He walked Ring Mountain playing his pipes at sunset, as if he belonged in Scotland. Neighbors remind me of his haunting silhouette during those years. Since he didn’t live to be an adult, bagpipes remain for me as a symbol of love and strength and loss. Continue reading “bagpipes, love and loss” »
first crop 2015
Last night I dreamt I was in a rehab, no particular type. I’m sitting in a straight back chair with a binder full of notes on my lap, deciding what to keep and toss. A surfer type of middle-age man enters the room, complaining how he struggles with his girlfriend, how their relationship is different because he is in rehab.
I said, “Since you’ve made your statement in a public place, I feel ok giving my opinion. It seems to me you need to change your behavior in order to change your thinking.”
Then I woke up. Continue reading “behaving like an adult” »
in less than a month they fly away
My twenty four year-old son sent me a text photograph with a nest full of robin’s eggs. Then he sent a shot of the hatched robins in their nest. Ten days later, he watched the birds fly away. He watched the last bird fall from the nest and fly away, and observed that the nest was truly empty. Continue reading “eggs to flight” »
this is the plant that rules my county
Last year’s Butte fire changed more than the Calaveras landscape. Mountain Ranch was destroyed by fire, and commercial medical marijuana growers bought up burnt land for their billion dollar crops. Billion dollar crops in a county that can’t get out of the red. The new ordinances don’t look very promising for increasing revenue. It’s a trip to watch drastic changes occur in a matter of weeks.
Continue reading “Medical Marijuana rules Calaveras County” »
being with someone
Lindy’s house felt like vacation every seventh grade weekend, and kept me away from my family. She and I wore paisley print dresses and mock turtlenecks with semi-short skirts to our knees, hooked sandal toe nylons onto garterbelts, wore straight hair, imitated Cher, with thick “I got you Babe” bangs that squared off our faces, striving to look like that perfect blonde girl on Breck shampoo bottles. Continue reading “wack” »
doorknob kiss
Summer came and I sang nonstop because grass was so green and sky was so blue. My seventh grade best friend Lindy and I hung around Tiburon’s Angel Island ferry dock, at Main Street’s Penny Arcade behind Bird and Hound Clothing. Continue reading “kissing a doorknob” »
we get to live with this
Breathtaking mountains and affordable land make Calaveras County attractive to people like us, which is why we moved here thirteen years ago. West Point currently welcomes Dollar General, trying to revive our depressed town. Land’s purchased and zoned. Impending forces create a fantasy that the store will be the answer to our financial woes. The store is known for selling mostly candy and soda. Calaveras County is super poor, and needs revenue. Many residents love this new business. Not me. Continue reading “box store won’t fix our town” »
Stinson Beach is the most beautiful beach in the world
When my parents weren’t tanked, we had plenty of fun times growing up in Marin County back in the day. We drove up to the Russian River and canoed around, carried kites and hiked straight up from the house up into our hills, pulling apart rusty barbwire fences and squeezing in between, cutting through pastures on the way. My father loved hiking, and we made up funny songs as we walked, poems and skits for each other, gut busting laughs. It almost seemed to make up for unpredictable drunk ugly. Continue reading “fun times” »