Riding Carousels in the Garden

Don't know about you, but everywhere I turn, someone is either having or has just had a baby. It's an outbreak worthy of a public health alert, an echo boom of sonic proportions.

Perhaps it's just spring fever or the pastel chick and bunny themes or the Cadbury cream eggs lying in wait at the grocery check out stand that makes me think of babies. No, it's Easter and that means babies.

To name a few recent instances of fertility run amok, consider this: My Grandniece Adi was born in December and I was privileged to attend the birth. Ellen at work is sporting a darling baby bump and is due in a couple of months. My friend the Lovely Vixen, advice columnist Catherine Gacad, is due in a few weeks. Very exciting.

And, my friend, the travel writer Amy Gigi Alexander has just returned from an amazing trip to Morocco to resume her job as a nanny. She's working on potty training with her young charge and preparing for the birth of the family's next child in August, which eventually means more potty training.

Adi's first Easter bunny photo

So you get why I feel surrounded with discussions about this most delicate of human endeavors -- peeing in the pot. I've been credited with being a potty training expert, but it's not true. 

Once this tale of my legendary skills took root, however, it has become impossible to dispel. Women come to me wringing their hands, imploring me for answers. I insist I'm no guru on shaping toddler toilet habits. Not at all. But, in their anxious state, they never believe I don't know the magic tricks.

Tales of my unusual expertise began to spread after an adventure with my niece 25 years ago. She was a bit late coming to the level of control one desires in the civilized. At 3 1/2 she'd just let go of herself and then her mother would fuss and clean her up. Her mother was at wits end about what to do. Katy was indifferent.

Katy in complete control

About that time, my niece came to my house in Berkeley for the weekend and I took her, along with my son of about the same age, to Tilden Park to ride the steam train and carousel. My son had been trained since about age 2. I put training pants on Katy and told the truth. No diapers. If she had an accident, we'd have to go back home.

Gosh, we had a great morning. It was early fall and leaves flitted onto us as we rode in the little open train cars. We dawdled by the duck pond before making our way to the carousel. As we stood in line, she tugged my sleeve. She had to go.

I pulled her out of line and my son protested about losing his place. But, we ran hard to, it turns out, the crummiest public bathroom I can ever remember. The child really, truly, had to go. My arms ached from holding her over the commode so long.

Later, at home, we played and ate dinner, went potty before bed. She went home that Sunday afternoon and her parents later told me she never peed or pooped her pants again, ever.

What I get from this experience is that a child, like most normal people, will pay attention and conform to expectations if there's a compelling reason to do so. Once the desired objective has been achieved, it becomes clear that other objectives can be attained as well. Bye, Bye Pampers, hello pedicures.

Honestly, I did not train Katy to go potty, I showed her the benefits of doing so. She was ready to take advantage of the opportunity --

The best carousel ride ever!

Flattened

This morning I'm fighting off a bit of depression, going over things that aren't working in my life. If I focus on it, the list gets very long and the load of dissatisfaction grows heavy, too heavy to bear. But then I bounce back, well, claw might be a better word. Kinda like crawling hand-over-hand on slender vines while dangling off the side of a cliff. I glance down at the rocks and the sliver of water and keep pulling myself up, thinking about what a mess I'd make if I let go.

Before my surgery, right after Christmas, I had an amazing experience that helped put the perils of the abyss in perspective. Before Christmas, I'd been running around filled with the need to do this and that for the holidays -- clean, socialize, plan, wrap, visit, love, catch up, worry, intensely practice yoga, kiss, hug, dance, sing, sometimes even brush my teeth and comb my hair. Sleeping little, sometimes spinning my wheels, I was happily engaged. Confirmation of breast cancer Dec. 22 changed the tone of my holiday ruckus.

In January, two days before my holiday vacation ended and I went back to work, I went to bed, mind whirling, unable to sleep and found I couldn't get back up. It was like a lead weight pressed me down on the bed. The room spun. I was hallucinating wide awake, aware that it was happening, but helpless to make it stop. I checked the bedside clock, considered calling 911. I've never want to disturb emergency dispatchers at an ungodly hour, that is after dark. Just seems too presumptuous, but it felt like I'd lost my grip on sanity, what would I say? "Help, I'm nuts!". So I waited and the experience continued with increasing vividness.

I clearly saw my sons, everyone in the family -- my grandchildren, my nieces and nephews, my siblings, friends, co-workers, myself.

I realized everyone was growing and changing as I looked deeply into all our lives -- into the past, forward to the future. It became joyful and reassuring, kaleidoscopic, voyeuristic, and I also realized there's still much work for all of us to do, that it's getting done despite my impatience and meddling. I saw everyone handling their own life business very well, thank you.

I tried to shut down, go to sleep pinned to the bed as I was, unable to lift arms or legs, but couldn't. So I envisioned a warm and healing white light focused on my body. I often do this visualization during yoga meditation. 

Then from the left side of my mind came an intense white light, pure, strong and overpowering in its brightness. I stepped closer to it, looked for its source, for the energy behind the emanation, but could not penetrate the light, could not see beyond the engulfing brightness, and was afraid. I stepped back it gradually faded. Alone in the dark of my room I slept deeply, woke up feeling rested for the first time in weeks.

I don't understand this experience. I've never felt like that before. I've tried to explain it to myself -- fear and stress from having breast cancer and facing surgery, lack of sleep, too much yoga, over stimulation from the holidays, overwork to make the holidays special, worry, anxiety, anger, disappointment.

What I clearly saw is that everyone was growing into better lives, better selves, transforming in beautiful ways -- even me. It was reassuring to see and understand. I saw my work as a writer, met characters I want to know, learned stories I need to tell, sensed feelings I need to express.

It's a lot of work, my work, and I'm growing and changing. I felt washed with knowledge and amazement, cleansed with a deep understanding that everything is fine, working just as God has planned for me, our family, you, our world.

Say what you will about this experience. I don't feel fit to judge it. I can only report truthfully what happened on the other side and be amazed. When you have a moment to talk, I'm here waiting. Love you.

P.S. Nearly a year has passed since I saw the light. Went to the oncologist last week. She said, "You're cancer free." They caught it early through a routine mammogram, caused minimal damage to my body. She said, "You're a writer. You need to tell people routine mammograms save lives." In my case, the discovery did more than save my life. It cracked me open and gave me a glimpse of a new life. 

Grace and the People of Walmart

He wiggles his fingers through the sole of his work shoes, suggests I take him to Walmart to buy a new pair before he busses the dinner shift at a neighborhood restaurant. Parenting adults is a tricky dance, I always check myself—am I helping or enabling.

I try to remember my dead husband, how he’d say with assurance that poet Kahlil Gibran said parents are the bow, children are the living arrows they send forth, and wonder why this twentysomething kid can’t go buy shoes without my help, why he can’t be a straight arrow.

He knows time is short before his shift starts, that Walmart is a quick drive away, but I’m on to his ploy. I tell him it’s busy on Saturday. He says he'll pay for the shoes himself from the money he has saved from tips. I relent, stiffen myself for the people of Walmart, undoubtedly in full bloom on a holiday weekend.

I mentally prepare to run the gauntlet of morbidly obese shoppers blocking aisles with their carts, the disabled banking around corners in motorized chairs while holding barking Chihuahuas, teens mooning over engagement rings in the center aisle, transvestites with runs in their too-short pantyhose, middle-aged couples buying patio supplies and sex lubricant, children swaying an already broken birthday piñata. I park. My son struts ahead.

This time I don’t care about whether he’s embarrassed to be seen with me. I pick up the pace, find him in the work-shoe section, way in the back. He can’t find tred-safe black shoes in his size. I reach up on tippy-toes, hand him down a pair. He tries them on.

I hold myself back from checking the toe room like when he was a child. They’ll do, he says. We go to the check-out line snaking into ladies intimates. A woman with a mounded cart of merchandise signals us to go ahead, says, “If that’s all you’ve got.” My son, ever impish, looks over his shoulder says, “Come on, kids!” They laugh. I’m not amused.

While waiting, he strikes up a conversation with the woman in line ahead of him. He tells her he’s buying work shoes, works at a restaurant. She tells him her son works at Hot Wings in Chico, that he’s a student there. My son tells her it’s a great school, like he actually knows this.

He explains he’s just a busser, that he’s saving for a car. After the clerk rings up her order, she moves to the carousel of full plastic bags at the end of the counter, begins loading. My son asks the clerk how much for the shoes.

“They’re paid for,” he says and nods toward the woman loading her cart to leave. She scurries away before he can say anything more than “thanks.” He helps me to the front doors because my eyes are blurry, tells me under his breath, “I think I need to go to church.” I tell him: “You’re already there.”   

Waltzing With Birdie

Uncle Doug was a bachelor. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that greatly magnified his watery blue eyes. At 35, he was short, bald and chubby. After World War II was over and his typing stint at Fort Benning, Ga., ended, Uncle Doug came back home to San Francisco. A year later, he and my grandmother used the GI bill to buy a bungalow way up on the hill in Noe Valley. The three-bedroom house, with a tunnel entrance seemed like it was built on stilts, a promontory to the only world I knew – the Mission district down below, the neon Dutch Boy paint sign waving mechanically in the Potrero Districts, and ships, like tiny logs, anchored in the bay beyond.

My mother and father moved the four of us kids into the house’s cavernous basement when my father’s drinking led to the bank’s foreclosure on our tract house in Pacifica. Upstairs, Uncle Doug, Great Aunt Eva and my grandmother slept in the three small bedrooms, huddled together at the end of the long hall. Sunshine flooded in through three big skylights, which eased the despair.

Uncle Doug collected girlie pictures and pasted them into loose-leaf binders like recipes in a homemade cookbook. He kept them on his bureau with all the stats – bust measurements, age, height, weight, other magazines they’d appeared in. Before going to work in the afternoon, Uncle Doug would pace the floor of his bedroom listening to baseball games, calling the plays out loud before they were made. He had a record player and sometimes sang along with Frank Sinatra when the Giants weren’t at bat.

My grandmother said Uncle Doug had “shell shock” from his experience in the war. That was what made him so odd, she said. That was what made him talk to himself and pace like a big cat. My mother rolled her eyes and held her tongue whenever the shell-shock theory was presented. She leaned toward the brain-damaged-at-birth notion.

Sometimes Uncle Doug would go to the basement. There was an old, black upright piano in the back corner, shoved against the cement foundation wall. Our beds were arranged there too. He’d beat the keys, pound out hymns and sing in his thin tenor voice about the love of Christ. My mother would usually take us kids down the street to the park until the music died.

Uncle Doug loved to dance. He went folk dancing on his days off. He’d wear a plaid shirt and tie with a frayed tweed sport jacket. He had high blood pressure and anemia, which he tried to cure by eating raw liver. He picked the ear wax from his ears with a bobby pin and ate it. He smelled like the inside of an old shipping trunk. He never missed a day sorting mail. He turned over his paycheck to my grandmother without discussion.

Everyday payday, my grandmother would add things up and tell him how short we were. She’d go through the bills, figuring how much we could get away with not paying each month. Because we did have a car, we carried paper shopping bags with rags wrapped around the handles when we walked to the grocery store. The rags kept the weight of the food from cutting into our hands when we walked back up the hill. Sometimes Uncle Doug would take my bag and carry it for a while, adding the weight to his own load.

I never heard my uncle complain. He hugged us kids and tickled us, grabbing our legs just under the knee cap and wiggling them back and forth giving us what we called “shinnie, shinnies.” Once he took the four of us children to the Fun House at Playland-at-the-beach. Another time he took us to a roller-skating rink. One time we went with him to watch the Fourth of July fireworks through the fog at Marina Green. He spaded the garden when asked and carried my great aunt to the living room so my grandmother could change her bedding. Then he’d gently carry her back to bed again.

Sometime in 1958, when I was 10, my grandmother began to get phone calls from a bill collector. She’d argue and cry and hang up the phone. She and my mother would go in the kitchen and close the door. We could hear their agitated tones over the sound of the radio. Once I heard my mother say, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard! Is Doug out of his mind?”

Then I overheard my mother talking to a friend. She said Uncle Doug had signed a contract for Arthur Murray dancing lessons. They wanted the $1,500 right away, and Grandma had finally borrowed the money on the house to make the bill collector go away. My mother said they took advantage of Doug, that he wasn’t bright enough to understand what he had done.

Uncle Doug wasn’t home much after that. Once in a while he’d spend an hour with us kids. He showed us how to rumba and cha cha. I tripped over his brown wing tips trying to waltz. He had rubber footsteps he’d lay out for us to follow on the living room floor. He’d play Frank Sinatra records so we could dance. He bought a black tuxedo with a blue cummerbund. He started to smell like Old Spice and White Shoulders.

One day I found his collection of girlie pictures in the garbage can in the basement. Ants were crawling all over the women’s bare breasts. They got on my fingers and marched around my wrists. I shook them off. I closed the lid.

Not long after that Uncle Doug brought Birdie home to meet us. They were ballroom dancing partners, he said. Birdie showed up with false teeth, a lot of rouge and a powder-blue chiffon dress with a fake fur stole. Uncle Doug’s cummerbund matched the blue in her dress exactly. He put his arm around Birdie when they sat on Grandmother’s burgundy chesterfield. My grandmother flinched when Uncle Doug called Birdie “Mama.”

My mother said Birdie was as Okie as the day was long. Killed her first husband with greasy Southern cooking. My mother said the poor man died of a heart attack while they were in the act. To no one in particular, my mother pointed out that Birdie had six grown kids. My grandmother said Birdie didn’t have the brains God gave a parakeet. Birdie ran a mangle and folded sheets in a commercial laundry. Uncle Doug said he loved her.

They were married at Glide Memorial Methodist Church in 1960. The reception was held at my grandmother’s house. We served a buffet of boiled ham and potato salad in the dining room. Then they sprinkled cornmeal on the basement floor and we kids sat on the wooden steps and watched as Birdie and Doug waltzed and tangoed on the open space near the washing machine. My mother said the marriage would never last. My grandmother said Birdie was old enough to be his mother, that she’d die first and Doug would come back home.

Uncle Doug and Birdie bought a singlewide house trailer in a park in Santa Rosa. For years Uncle Doug took the Greyhound bus to San Francisco to sort mail at the post office at night. He bought Birdie a new washer and dryer. They made payments on a refrigerator-freezer combination from Montgomery Ward.

A few years ago I drove up to tell him my mother had died. He’s retired now. He has a deep scar on his cheek where they took out a cyst. His magnified eyes are dim and he has dandruff and gout. He asked me if he was mentioned in my mother’s will. I said no. He asked if I wanted to hear some Frank Sinatra. I asked if he and Birdie still danced. He said yes.

San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Punch Dec. 11 1994

We Are The World -- Even the Fish

If you take Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World” concept to heart than it’s not a stretch to believe that the health of the oceans is directly connected to the way we catch, farm and eat seafood. We are the guardians of our oceans, we have a say about what we eat. If we  fish too much, the food goes away. Eat a fish tonight that took decades to reach maturity and pretty soon your favorite meal is no longer available.

A new report from Monterey Bay Aquarium notes that a boat load of scientific studies show that despite the gigantic expanse of the Earth’s oceans, they’re increasingly affected by human activities. The aquarium's marine scientists say most commercially important populations of ocean wildlife have been in decline for decades. Food webs are weakening and marine habitats are being altered and degraded. While many human activities strain the marine environment, scientists say the primary factor in the oceans’ decline is our demand for seafood.

Love lobster? It takes six to eight years to reach marketable size. Average time it takes to eat one – about a half hour, if you’re being polite. Pacific lingcod eight and 10 years to mature, while spiny dogfish sharks often served as English-style fish and chips take 20 years to reach harvestable size. Beluga sturgeons, which take up to 20 years to reach maturity and can live to be 100, produce caviar (fish eggs) that sells for as much as $3,000 to $5,000 a pound. But don’t worry about the price. Over fishing, poaching and an active black market have about wiped out the species.

Throughout the world, total landings of wild-caught fish have been declining and now scientists are zeroing in on chowder houses. The idea is that consumers need to know what they’re ordering when they order “fish.” Some are farmed, some are tightly controlled in terms of catch, and some are the bounty of species that in the coming decades may no longer exist.

So, what’s a hungry seafood lover to do? I mean wasn’t buying dolphin-safe tuna enough? No, but the answer is simple mindfulness. It's not hard. The folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, as well as many others, offer pocket guides to ordering sustainably harvested fish, all tasty and good for you. And, like me, when you do break down and order grilled swordfish, know that the supply is not endless.

But, the experts say there are new signs of hope — we appear to have reached a turning point. On many fronts, new data point to a brighter future thanks to the actions of informed consumers, businesses, fishermen, fish farmers and governments. Through better science and monitoring, we understand more fully the effects that fisheries and aquaculture have on the marine environment. In several regions of the world, proactive fisheries management is preventing overfishing and allowing marine ecosystems to recover.

Here, here, and please – pass the tartar sauce!

Factoid: 900,000 - Metric tons of wasted fish - 28% of the annual catch gets tossed overboard because they are not the desired species.

Check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch online at http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

Swimming to British Columbia

We’d hold hands before falling asleep, twin beds pushed together, blankets mounded in the divide. Across that narrow separation, my grandmother told stories of when she was young, about times when she taught school in logging towns in British Columbia and lots of other things.

These tales from the turn of the century come to mind now for several reasons – I've been reading Alice Munro’s Selected Stories and find in these beautiful jewels reflections of stories my grandmother told-- turns of phrase, vocabulary choices -- evoking memories long put aside. And, since March is Women’s History Month, Facebook friends are focusing on women’s issues.

 For various reasons, I've been going through boxes of old family photos handed down to me, mostly without notes or orientation, leaving wide margin for my own invention. I find myself remembering and wondering, making up stories to go with the images from slender recollections. This story comes to mind, told in my grandmother’s dark, dusty bedroom on Elizabeth Street in San Francisco, the smell of face powder and cologne in crystal perfume bottles with fancy stoppers, providing aromatic atmosphere:

Dessalyn Matti King
Probably about 1910 to 1915

“It was a beautiful day. British Columbia was beautiful back then,” she said.

“When?”

“Probably about 1915, but don’t interrupt or I won’t tell the story." She gently squeezed my fingers. "Anyway. It was Sunday and I had the day off from teaching school. I taught the children in one room, in a log cabin. Most of them weren’t very smart and the rules for teachers were strict back then. I had to clean the schoolroom on Saturdays. I didn’t like that, but I did it. And, they wanted you to dress and talk a certain way.”

“Who?”

“Oh, the town’s people. The men who hired me. But, let me go on."

“Where did you live?”

“In a house they provided, of course. It was one room with an old wood stove for heating and I drove a car my father bought me, which they didn’t like. Most people didn’t think women should drive. But, I did it anyway. Do you want to hear this story or not?”

Dolly driving 

“I want to hear,” I said, but pulled my hand free. The unnatural angle of our holding made my wrist ache.

“I went hiking by the river and then decided to swim. I was near the chute they used to send the logs down to the water where they’d gather them up in big rafts and float them downstream to the mill. I didn't expect the men would be working on Sunday. I thought I would be alone. But, I heard a rumbling and saw big logs coming down the chute, straight for me in the water.

“I knew I’d be killed so I ducked under water and swam beneath the surface as far and fast as I could go. The sound of the logs hitting the river carried under water and made me swim harder. When I came up, I was far out in the river and the current had caught me. I was carried into the log jam. I grabbed ahold of the logs and pulled myself around, ducking under, swimming with them until I got myself close to the bank. I was afraid the logs would hit the rapids and I'd be crushed in the jumble. I got out just in time and had a long walk back to my clothes, but I lived through it.”

“Were you cold?”

“Don’t be a simpleton. Of course I was cold, and scared to death and glad to be alive.”

“I’m glad, too.”

Dessalyn in the doorway of the one-room
log-cabin school where she taught
in British Columbia.

“You shouldn't ever swim by yourself and you need to be a strong swimmer. You never know what will happen. Now, give me your precious little hand.”

My Grandmother, Dessalyn Matti King Wilson, was born in 1890 and graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in physics in 1910. She was 20 and there were no jobs for women in the field of physics in those days. She went to teacher (normal) school and by 1915 was teaching in one-room school houses in logging towns in British Columbia.

She said she did it for fun, which I took to mean the adventure of being a pioneer. She was the second youngest of 10 children. Her father was a prosperous merchant in St. Louis. All of her siblings were college educated, unusual for that era.

They called her “Dolly,” partly because she stood about 4 feet, 9 inches. She was pretty and quick. She liked to sing and dance and played a half dozen musical instruments, including honky tonk piano, which she played for me and my brothers and sister as we were growing up.

Dessalyn, first row center, with her parents and siblings

Probably about 1900

She liked girls who “stood up for themselves, had gumption.” She didn't like bawl babies, called girls like that "little calves." She loved to walk and smoke and cheat at gin rummy. She was an accomplished seamstress and made all her own clothes and ours until I went to junior high school and rebelled, because no one wore cotton dresses with big collars and crinoline petticoats in the early 1960s.

She wasn’t hurt by my decision. Instead, she took me shopping in downtown San Francisco wearing white gloves, patent leather shoes and ankle socks. She shopped at Hales, The Emporium, City of Paris and the White House, called the sales ladies “Petty,” and insisted they go into the stock room and bring out the best “goods.” She picked at the merchandise and complained about the quality and price, made a big fuss. Sometimes she'd call for the manager.

Out on the sidewalk with our bags, she'd excuse her behavior by say something like: "I'm a business woman and know good goods. I'm not going to let them cheat me." We'd walk to catch the J Church street car back home to Noe Valley and hold hands as we crossed Market Street, her fingers slender and childlike, but gripping my hand as strong as a jumberjack.

Historical Note: Most of the earliest teachers in rural communities of the West were men. When the teaching profession developed and required that teachers have some formal training, more and more women entered the field. Communities were happy to have female teachers because they would work for less pay than a male teacher.

They were often young  --  sometimes as young as some of their students  --  and did not stay for very long in one school if they could find another teaching position in a better location or which paid a little more. 

As the country moved West in the United States, the need for teachers, male or female increased. By the 1870’s, 25% of all American-born white women had taught school at some time in their lives. The community had an advantage in hiring a woman teacher, though. Women were paid 40-60% less than their male counterparts, making $54.50 a year to a male teacher’s $71.40 on average in the 1880s.

 https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/schoolhouse/008003-2100-e.html 

Frontier Teachers: Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West

 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/frontier-teachers-chris-enss/1100305442?ean=9780762748198&itm=1&usri=9780762748198

Information about the early days of logging in British Columbia and historical photos are archived online by the Campbell River Museum at http://www.crmuseum.ca/logging-jungles

Boiling piss on St. Patrick’s Day

Went to the grocery store to pick up corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day. A gaggle of old folks gathered around the meat cooler, turning over the shrink-wrapped meat, picking and choosing, taking their bloody time. What were they looking for? It’s all the same, right? Why are all the purchasers of this traditional Irish meat just old folks (me included)? Good questions. I’ll get to them.

In the meantime, here’s another question: Everybody celebrates St. Patrick’s Day, right? Green beer, green rivers in Chicago, green lights on the opera house in Sidney, green parades in Canada, green pubs in Buenos Aries where not a single person of Irish decent shows up. There are jokes on the Internet about drunks in yoga positions. “Kiss me I’m drunk or Irish or whatever” T shirts. On March 17 the whole world is Irish and few people know why.

Never mind. I’ll cook corned beef today in honor of the part of me that’s Irish, wear orange on St. Patrick’s day for the part of me that’s not. No one will give a rip about what I wear and I’ll wipe my hands on the seat of my pants while cooking – in my Irish way. People don’t know the history of what they’re celebrating, don’t care, they just want somebody to pass them another Guinness stout.

But, you see, just like every Hispanic is not Mexican, every Jew is not Polish, every Swede is not blonde, everyone of Irish decent is not Catholic. I’m Presbyterian, which has been an issue in England, Ireland and Scotland since before the 1600s

My ancestor Archibald Campbell, a stout member of the Church of Scotland, which became the Presbyterian Church, was beheaded on the 'Maiden' in 1661 for his religious and political beliefs. People in Great Britain have been killing each other for religious, economic and political reasons for more than 500 years. This conflict helped launch the founding of America.

The Maiden. Courtesy: National Museum of Scotland

“I love Highlanders, and I love Lowlanders, but when I come to that branch of our race that has been grafted on to the Ulster stem I take off my hat in veneration and awe." Lord Rosebery, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian, British Prime Minister 1894.

Until 2010 in America, I was part of this stem, this distinct ethnic group of immigrants identified since the founding of the nation through the U.S. Census as Scots-Irish. In 2010, Scots-Irish citizens comprised 1.05 percent of the U.S. population. The government no longer recognizes this minority even though more than a third of all U.S. presidents had substantial ancestral origins in Ulster, the northern province of Ireland.

President Bill Clinton spoke proudly of this fact, and his own ancestral links with the province, during his two visits to Ulster. Scots-Irish Presbyterians founded what is now Princeton University in the U.S. as a seminary for its ministers. Mark Twain and Elvis Presley were Scots-Irish, for heaven’s sake.

If this marginalizing of a minority had happened to Puerto Ricans, 1.52 percent of the U.S. population; Chinese, 1.12 percent; or Sub-Saharan Africans, 0.9 percent; there’d be a huge outcry from Americans. For the Scots-Irish—not a peep.”

Here’s a Wiki list of famous Scots-Irish Americans – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scotch-Irish_Americans that may be a surprise.

We’re talking a lot of history here. For example, during the American Revolution, Scots-Irish troops fought successfully to prevent the British from taking control of the Hudson River Valley during the Saratoga Campaign. George Washington said of the American troops who fought those fierce battles that, if the war was lost everywhere else, he would take a last stand among the Scots-Irish of his native Virginia.

The Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga by John Trumbull. The painting was completed in 1821, and hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D. C.

He saw the Highlanders’ heart, knew the Lowlanders’ tenacity. After the Scots-Irish successes in battle, Congress declared December 18, 1777, a national day "for solemn Thanksgiving and praise;" the nation's first official observance of a holiday with that name.

So, keep in mind that Saint Patrick’s Day is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. It’s also a feast day in the Church of Ireland. The church calendar avoids the observance of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those periods. St Patrick's Day is occasionally affected by this requirement, when March 17 falls during Holy Week.

So, not everyone of Irish descent is obligated to go to church or get drunk on Saint Patrick’s Day. Not everyone wants to wear green. Not everyone wants to kiss leprechauns or idiots who have no idea what the holy day of remembrance is about.

I guess it’s the loss of history, culture and tradition that bothers me most. People assume I’m Irish, which is true, but I’m also Scottish, which they don't seem to get. I’m a two-for-one American with history that literally stretches back to the late 5^th Century and some say the Campbell's are descended from the Briton Arthur the Hero King, the one in the Knights of the Round Table myth.

I guess I’m miffed because these days being Scots-Irish doesn’t mean much in America anymore. I get what's going on, but only pinch me for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day if you're looking for a fight.

Under every kilt are Irish genes.

Now, about that corned beef. Here’s the deal. The old people at the grocery store know best. They take their time looking for a firm, rounded cut of brisket with no sign of gristle and a good balance of fat for tenderness. They will, as my mother used to say, take the beef home and “boil the piss out of it,” throw onions, carrots, potatoes and cabbage in the pot.

The meat will be tender and sweet, make great sandwiches on rye bread the next day, and remind me and my family we are Scots-Irish, enjoying the leftovers.

Post a comment, I'd love to hear from you. Éirinn go Brách Ireland Forever!

Why Childhood Memories Matter

Sunnydale housing project, 1941
[Photo: SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY]

A child ran from the playground at Sunnydale Projects in the early summer of 1955, beating on doors, breathlessly telling grownups that I’d fallen from the monkey bars and couldn’t get up. When she finally found my mother behind one of the uniformly plain front doors, she explained and my mother came running. Trying to learn how to circle the bar and come upright like the older kids, I misplaced my hands on the bar and crashed to the ground, dislocating my kneecap.

I hobbled most of that summer from my bedroom to the couch. The doctor said my leg had to be immobilized and my mother made sure his orders were followed. There was no TV in most San Francisco homes. Commercial TV broadcasts didn’t extend to the West Coast until 1951. Instead, I colored, played with paper dolls, listened to the radio with my mother, and meditated on the swirls and flourishes in the burgundy oriental carpet. I went from cast to elastic bandages, my mother wrapping my knee tightly several times a day. Eventually I was allowed to walk without crutches, then permitted to go outside.

That’s how I met her. After walking dutifully for days around the projects, I went to a building beyond the view of our unit’s windows, and ran as fast as I could up and down the narrow sidewalks, testing my knee. A woman came out and asked my name and where I lived. I was only about six and answered truthfully. I went on running. When I got home, my mother said a nice lady had stopped by. My knee stiffened and I sat down, waiting for the wrath because I'd been running. The lady asked, my mother said, if I could come and play with her daughter, who couldn't go outside because she had polio and couldn't walk. I knew very well how that felt and agreed to visit.

This fuzzy, black and white, memory comes back to be because of a recent conversation with my niece. She lives in Orange County and just had a baby. She’s leaning toward not vaccinating her infant daughter. She asked me what I thought about that decision. Trying to remain supportive of her parental prerogatives, I said it was her decision, but the memory of the day I met my playmate kept coming up.

My mother dressed me in nice school clothes and walked me down the hill. We were welcomed, I went inside. In the living room was a large metal cylinder, horizontal sunlight through Venetian blinds striped the gray tube. Only my friend’s head extended beyond the enclosure, a mirror positioned above her so she could watch the room. Shocked, the girl’s mother sat me down at a children’s table. She brought me crayons and a stack of coloring books, children’s playing cards, board games. She explained her daughter, Eunice, couldn't walk or sit up, that she had to stay in her iron lung, but she could watch and she wanted to see me play. I caught her eye in the mirror, sensed Eunice’s wariness as it slipped into indifference.

Eunice’s mother fluttered about, brought me red Kool-Aid as I colored. She adjusted me in the child’s chair so I could be seen through the mirror. I don't recall her speaking. She just made animal sounds that signaled her mother when she needed attention. The polio vaccine had not yet been invented.

Members of Rotary International volunteered their time and personal resources to help immunize more than 2 billion children in 122 countries during national immunization campaigns.

It became available when I was about 10. We all got it, everyone, including my parents and grandmother. About 1962, people lined up around the block to receive the vaccine on sugar cubes in the Alvarado Elementary School auditorium in San Francisco. There were long tables of nurses passing out the doses to grateful families, every member chewing the sweet protection.

“I respect your decisions about what's best for Adriana and support you in whatever you decide,” I told my niece, knowing she will make decisions based on solid information and complete love. I told her I had my sons immunized because I'm old enough to remember when immunizations were not available, perhaps with the exception of small pox vaccine, which my mother received in the 1930s as a girl.

Today, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control says about 30 percent of measles cases develop one or more complications, including pneumonia, which is the complication that is most often the cause of death in young children. Ear infections occur in about 1 in 10 measles cases and permanent loss of hearing can result. Diarrhea is reported in about eight percent of cases. These complications are more common among children under five  years of age and adults over 20 years old. As a child, I knew children who were deaf from the effects of measles, the twisted beige wires of their hearing aids draped across their chests. There was no licensed measles vaccine in the U.S. until 1963.

“Your father had the most horrendous case of mumps I've ever seen in my entire life,” I told my niece, hauling up another memory. “His head was literally the size of a basketball. He was very, very sick for weeks, literally. Joyce, Steve (my siblings) and I also got mumps. There was no vaccine at the time. Joyce and Steve were very sick. My case was mild and only put me in bed for a few of days.”

Chicken Pox: Because there was no vaccine, we all had it, I said. My own sons had it.

Whooping Cough: There was no vaccine available and fortunately none of us kids got it

.

“If you've ever heard the sound of whooping cough, you'll know it. It's a horrifying sound,” I told my niece.

The CDC says: “Whooping cough is very contagious and most severe for babies. People with whooping cough usually spread the disease by coughing or sneezing while in close contact with others, who then breathe in the bacteria that cause the disease. Many babies who get whooping cough are infected by parents, older siblings, or other caregivers who might not even know they have the disease. Half the babies who get end up in the hospital, some die.”

In the fall of 1955, I attended first grade at Sunnydale School. My mother was president of the PTA. Eunice and I would have been classmates. She died that winter and her family moved away. My parents bought a house thanks to the money they saved living in the projects and we moved away too. But the memory of Eunice, her translucent face and wispy hair spread out on a pillow, her inquiring eyes reflected from the mirror above her head stay with me and flood back whenever someone talks about the dangers of vaccinating children.

I tell you about this conversation with my niece because I survived a time when common vaccines were not available and hundreds of thousands of children were damaged or died. I got my children immunized because in my view the risk to their health and very lives is too great to ignore. I tell you this in memory of Eunice.

How Anti-Vaxxers Ruined Disneyland For Themselves (And Everyone Else)

Riding Holiday Waves

We were late getting there, what with L.A. traffic and a not-so quickie in the truck stop restroom outside Los Banos. The paper towel dispenser was empty. We took the slow lane, didn’t zip up the highway. Why rush? he said and I agreed, air dried my hands out the window, trying to picture the people in San Francisco I'd never met.

By the time we landed on his mother’s doorstep, blankets and bags in hand, the family's faces were blurry, blank. I gushed about his mother’s amazing flat, the hardwood floors, the view of the bay, the double glass doors separating the living and dining rooms, skipped over mention of her recenly departed husband, his photo in the place of honor on the mantle. I fluttered, not finding a suitable perch. She said I had beautiful hands, asked me to sit, patted the spot beside her on the sofa.

His brother talked about flying in from the East Coast and how the guy next to him blew snot on the airline blanket and then spread it over his chest. He said the kids get up early, an unapologetic warning, before slouching off to the back bedroom to assess his wife's migraine. We got the living room fold-out without much padding, the inflexible frame now cutting into my spine.

At first light, she began setting the holiday table at a dogged pace. I watched with one eye, riding my attention up over the bunched pillow like a sneaker wave, spying on her as she fondled each dish. Against the foil light of dawn, she moved in sparrow hops from branch to branch around the room. 

She flapped a white table cloth, smoothed it with veiny hands, pulled brown napkin rings from a drawer in the battered sideboard, held a gravy boat up to the dim light, set it down. She stood hunched before the windows, wiping her eyes, twisting the wedding band around her bony finger, staring at the first hints of another day.

I ignored the warmth coming from behind, the knucklehead nosing my thigh. Clearly, his mother, lost in reverie, wasn’t blind. I nudged him away, suspected her hearing was pretty good, too. He kept nuzzling. I relented, arched my back, leaked tears, broke like a wave over the rising grief.

From "Hard Holidays" flash fiction collection, because holidays sometimes provide food for thought.

Intensly

“Never use so in a sentence. It sounds too girlish.” (college English teacher going over

one of my essays). The Cambridge Dictionary of the English Language

explains so as an intensifier when we mean ‘to such a great extent.’

Personally, I’ve never written or said: “to such a great extent,” but hey, these people are so smart, I’m sure they know what they’re talking about. The Cambridge folks say so is a degree adverb that modifies adjectives and other adverbs—providing a splash of intense color, so to speak, a pretty girl wrapping a hot pink scarf around her neck, for example. So becoming.

So, it happened again – twice in the past few days. I already told Facebook friends about the first time—took a quick tea break at work, looked up to see a Swainson's hawk land on the security light above me. Just now, standing on my patio, a small hawk swooped across my garden, to perch on my navel orange tree. Went to see if it was a Swainson’s hawk, but it flew away before I could be sure.

Hawks are beautiful, vigilant birds, but why now, why twice? Why me? I live in the city, for heaven’s sake. I’ve got way more to think about than the hidden meaning of birds – like washing socks or clearing the rain gutters of all these blasted leaves. Where are my work gloves and the ladder?

So, besides being a visual gift, I still wonder if this unusual and repeated animal presence symbolizes anything? Seeking answers, I consult the modern-day Delphi oracles. I go online. Internet shaman and soothsayers offer this: Hawks are messengers from the spirit world. They call on us to be observant, to look closely at our surroundings. Life is sending signals, things are changing and hawks tell us to pay attention so we can navigate the shifts.

There is no end to online discussion about hawks as omen – from Judaism, Hinduism to Native American lore. Most conclude: “The hawk comes to you indicating that you are now awakening to your soul purpose, your reason for being here. Hawks can teach you how to fly high while keeping you connected to the ground.”

Here’s more to noodle my twisted brain, which only wants to think about chores and what I’ve forgotten: “As you rise to a higher level, your psychic energies are awakening and the hawk can help you to keep those senses in balance. Its message for you is to be open to hope and new ideas, to extend the vision of your life.”

So, sitting in my jammies talking to you after a big holiday, apple pie crumbs on my chest, I wonder about flying, about looking down on the world, seeing everything in exactly the right place – hearts and hands, holidays and hurricanes. Then I remember I’m in California. We don’t have hurricanes. Hell, it hasn’t rained here in nearly three years. Maybe I should clean the garden rain gauge, all this hawk talk could be a sign.

So, the Swainson's hawk (Buteo Swainsoni) was listed as a threatened species in 1983 by the California Fish and Game Commission. The listing was based on loss of habitat and decreased numbers across the state. Either their numbers are increasing now or I'm very lucky to have not only seen one or two in the past few days, but also to have spent a good quarter hour with one -- a young, light morph female.

What messages do I need to receive? What has escaped my notice? Why do these sightings repeat? 

So, God, I’m waiting, listening with so intensified attention.

Lessons from my carpet guy

Damn sure right! I moved it all, everything I own into the backyard about two weeks ago. OK, not the china cabinet with my grandmother’s Bavarian china and my wedding Lenox and the odd crystal tid-bit pieces handed down through generations or the turkey platter that came over on the Mayflower, I kid you not. It came on the boat wrapped in a petticoat trimmed with tatted lace.

And, I didn't pack all the books and put the boxes out on the scruff we now call in that gentile Tidewater way “the back lawn” in drought-ravaged California. I moved almost everything out myself on a Thursday night, used a hand truck and force of will. Got help with mattresses, couch and recliners the next morning, expecting the carpet-cleaning guy to appear between noon and 2 p.m.

At 10 minutes after 12, the carpet guy was late according to my watch. I checked my calendar to find, actually, knees weakened by the realization, my appointment was actually the following Friday, as in a week away. When the blood rushed back to my head and I started breathing again, I looked around my empty house for someone to blame.

When I recounted this situation – everything I own in the back garden in a jumble – friends asked how mad I was, like I’ve got some kind of internal dial reading: annoyed, upset, steamed, hotter than a dropped penny on a summer sidewalk, Mount St. Helens flipping her lid.

Since I have no gauge to precisely measure dismay and no one but myself to blame, I remained calm and went out on the back patio to survey the wreck of my earthly goods – dusty lamps, ancient quilts, particle board end tables, a coiled and tied bulldogging rope, rocking horse, 5-foot tall candlestick holder, cassette tapes for a player I no longer own.

I rummaged around for a folding chair, sat down. I was mad, yes, but there was more in the gush of emotions--there was fear and disgust, a sense of the senseless. Since I did this to myself, I questioned my sanity, watched senility quietly stalking me, smirking through the hedges at my unsuspecting naiveté. I saw that mocking look hovering over the paltry trappings of my life, my household wreckage and quavered near tears. My heart spoke, pointed out my husband was dead, my children don’t love me and my life doesn’t amount to much. My heart has always tended toward the melodramatic. My gut said: "Get over it."

But truly chastened and humbled, I went back to work, joked about my stupidity with coworkers, explained why I couldn't call the carpet guy to come earlier, that I’d bought an online discount coupon for the cleaning and the company said they were very busy, but agreed to work me in. What I didn't tell them is that it had probably been five years since the carpets were cleaned, that addressing the grim of my life seemed pointless at this point, but there it was, everything I own sitting outside.

Perhaps this will make sense: I have grown sons who for this reason and that have moved in and out with bikes parked in the dining room and cherry and plum residue on their shoes that got ground into the carpet, popcorn kernels, spilled soda, grease and mud tracked in from east and west, cats that have spewed feline fluids, spiders that crept in and set up housekeeping, dust raised along the Western frontier.

There are cake crumbs in corners, rubber bits from popped balloons, curled scotch tape used to fix streamers to the chandeliers, scraps of shopping lists, toenail clippers slipped under the coach. In short, a full life lived boisterously and joyously in a little cottage by the river.

Bringing all the worn and tattered things I've accumulated and lugged around my whole life back inside, only to move them out again in a few days, seemed like a waste. I got a foam camping pad from the garage, made a pallet on the floor in my suddenly cavernous bedroom, bunched my favorite feather pillow around my neck and thought about my life, the things I carry—what to save, what to throw away. I thought about where I am, where I want to go, what I want to touch and see. What is me and what do I want to do about it?

I thought about Mary Oliver’s poem “Summer Day”: “Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

And I began to clean—baseboards, sooty air registers, bricks around the fireplace, chandeliers, light covers, switch plates, furniture legs, tables and chairs. I hauled the recycle bin from the side yard and began releasing things, then more things. I vacuumed nightly, with abandon, scrubbed the kitchen, cleaned the oven, washed bedding, hunted cobwebs, dusted window blinds. I fell exhausted each night on my pallet, got up in the dark, cleaned more in the rising valley heat.

Went to work, studied the garage mess before I closed the overhead door for the day. I questioned everything before the week was through, questioned each object to see if it was sturdy enough or pretty enough or held enough memories to fit my emerging plan for what I’ll do with my one wild and precious life. If I hadn't decided to get my carpets cleaned, I would not have thought about it.

Eric arrived to clean the carpets at the appointed time on the proper day, took one look around and said he’d seen carpets worse than mine, which I'm sure he tells every old lady with a cockapoo. I don't own one, but, I told him the truth: I do not love the carpets, don't worry about stains, that I didn't want the powder blue plush raised from the dead.

Today I’m moving the things I want or need back in. Summer is blowing away on fall winds, winter is kicking at the door. Leaves are streaming onto the clean carpet as I lift the objects I want back inside the house. On the newly polished dining room table are bicycle wheels, tires, inner tubes, a tire pump, spray on battery cleaner, a huge pipe wrench, hammers and a small stuffed panda. I ask myself again and wonder about you -- what will you do with your one wild and precious life?