I dreamed instead of learning math
Mrs. Fagg was my junior high home economics teacher and got me serious about sewing. I loved making gingham aprons for my mom and my grandma, and embroidered little designs on the pockets.
Our school chorus took a trip to Sacramento in a yellow bus and sang at a state level singing competition. I sang a solo opening of “Do Re Mi.” and we won a gold lapel pin with a design of the state. Continue reading “defining early priorities” »
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” »
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” »
this glass is from my church
Our family sat on the left Gospel side of the Episcopal church, third row from the front. I tried to keep my back straight up and my posture righteous, because old people needed to rest their butts. I sat beside my grandpa when he visited from Los Angeles, , staring at his left hand with a missing thumbnail resting on top of the pew rail. He’d lost half of his thumb in a sawing accident, so weird. He stood tall, with his hymnal open, singing baritone with all his heart, perhaps recalling his minister dad back in Minnesota when he was a kid, and then growing up to be a deacon in Washington D.C. when his daughters were small and he went with my mom up to New York for all of her operations after she was burned=
My grandpa filled up with strength, surrounded with lush purple energy and blues mixed with gold hills of Tiburon, and the grey of Richardson Bay. I sensed his personal conviction that God was good and loving service to his family and friends made life worth living. He was a good man and his happy heart showed.
My mother kneeled during church prayers, resting her rump on the pew. My mom whispered her hymns, and kept pace with what was going on, but didn’t seem as committed as her dad.
I still go to church and sit in the same spot. Familiarity and common prayer calm me down. The family tradition still matters.
Goodbye
My family pulled the Pontiac into Marin County’s Bel Aire Estates driveway in 1956, and Helen watched us unload our car. She was my age and we grew up together. Continue reading “Helen tribute” »
I hope she climbed onto the rainbow
Aunt Pru was my namesake, my mother’s sister, and she died of lung cancer fifteen years ago this month. I’m remembering her. Our powerful relationship through the years was mostly good, but we had serious confrontations, too. This story is about the mystery unfolding for me at end of her life.
Aunt Pru was a master gardener, and her yard showed her loving efforts with loads of colorful flowers.
The day she left on a rainy Saturday, my seven year-old son, Joey and I drove over to her house that afternoon to say goodbye. I shared a memory about how my cousin and I sang the folk song, “500 hundred miles’ as a duet when we were young, and how Aunt Pru loved to hear us sing it. I wondered whether or not my cousin and I would sing it for her one last time, at her deathbed.
“How many miles to Heaven?” Joey asked me. I still don’t know an answer.
Heading down the hill toward San Rafael, we felt enchanted to witness a massive complete rainbow that extended across the sky, and it seemed to end above my aunt’s house.
She was unconscious when we arrived, and I sort of remember singing with my cousin. I do remember taking my aunt’s hand, saying, “There’s a rainbow over your house right this moment. I want you to get on it.” She passed away later that day, and we still feel her loss.
As I drove to my teaching job the following Monday morning, I was thinking of Aunt Pru, missing her. I also remembered about how much I love lacey old-fashioned white iris and their delicate beauty. I earnestly wished to see some of those beautiful iris on my commute, but didn’t see any, so I thought no more about it.
Five hours later after teaching my last class, I stood at the art room sink, cleaning up after students. One of my students burst into the room, holding an entire blue iris, complete with roots, that he plucked out of someone’s yard on the way to school. He walked over to me and handed it over without any explanation.
In church the following Sunday, my rector gave a sermon. He started it by saying,
“The goddess of the rainbow is the iris.”
Everything lined up for me when he said that. The warm presence of life, the flow of cosmic energy I do not understand. I don’t have to understand.
Truth does pass all understanding.
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” »
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” »
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’” »