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

Talking Japanese With Cats

woodblock print, 1934 | Toraji Ishikawa

Plastic grocery bags, coupons offering two-for-one, old shoes dumped in the alley behind the house, broke-down stoves with oven doors hanging loose like panting dogs. All free stuff. Well, the stove was free, but hefting it onto the rotting back porch of the apartment my sister Ronnie was renting at the time, the one with the Murphy bed that wouldn't stay politely closeted, cost me a bottle of pain reliever due to back issues.

She’d decided to snag the stove after studying its abandoned hulk out her kitchen window, which charmingly looks out on garbage bins and incorrigible weeds, for a week and chatting with a guy she'd been eyeing at the coffee shop. He suggested by way of flirting (her words) that it might be fixable, offered to take a look, which involved three hours of hair styling and make up for Ronnie before he showed up in basketball shorts and a crummy "Huskers" T-shirt.

I was there when he arrived for moral support or to call 911 in case the guy went rogue, but I spent most of his quick visit staring at his poorly fitting false teeth. My sister's about as hot as crust on an oven rack so I went along with it in hopes something yeasty would arise with Mr. Fix-it, and truthfully, he had a full head of lustrous, better than George Clooney, salt and pepper hair.  

But me—I'm not too enthusiastic about junk. I figure, if it’s free, there’s a reason. My sister looks at life as one grand dumpster dive and can’t help herself, which is how I got Tiger, my orange and white cat, and she got three dates with a University of Nebraska college football fan.

The “garden” apartment where I was living at the time didn't permit animals and Ronnie called after work to let me know she was stopping by the "studio," as she called my cozy three-room apartment in an upscale complex. I've never been a cat lover, don’t enjoy the hair on the furniture and resent their insolent lounging about.

“Why the heck did you bring the thing here? I can’t keep him.” I huffed and opened the box. The thing jumped out and ran under the couch.

“See?" She looked at me like I'm both blind and dumb. "He likes it here already. Made himself right at home.”

I felt impatient, tired after a long day. This was not my sister's first free fiasco. We've been dysfunctional co-dependents since before it was cool. I've been through the foisting of second-hand desires before and I was sure he had mange. It would only be a matter of time until its fur was gone and his teeth fell out. I’m allergic to flea bites, for god’s sake.

“Where’d you get the damn thing?” I got down on my knees, rear in the air, peering under the couch, expecting claws and teeth, some kind of Wild Kingdom reenactment.

“You've got lint on your butt, she said to my backside. “He was free and you know how much I love free.”

“That’s not what I asked.” I stood up stiff, tottered.

“His name is really Tora. Means Tiger in Japanese.”

“Japanese? What? He escaped from a trade delegation?”

“No. I was having lunch with friends. Ardith was paying. You know how much  . . .

“I know you love free!” I stepped mincingly around the box, glared, kicked at it.

“That’s not what I was going to say.” She sounded hurt and made pouty lips. “I was going to say I love inari and this place downtown has the best, plus shrimp tempura, teriyaki chicken, steamed broccoli, white rice. Great lunch in a bento box. You ever have a bento lunch?”

“Give me a break. Are you telling me that what’s under my couch is an escaped entrée?”

“It’s not like that. Listen. My friend Ardith goes to pay and I’m getting ready to go out to my car. I found a place to park almost in front of the restaurant and there was still time left on the meter. My lucky day! Free. But, .. . ." She paused for effect, fluttered her false lashes. "I could see through the restaurant window the meter had expired and I didn’t want to get a ticket. That’s when I saw the sign ‘free cat’ with a cute picture. So, I asked the woman really fast about the cat and got Ardith to go out and put a quarter in the meter.

“You got your friend to buy you lunch . . . and pay for parking?”

“Not just lunch. There's enough left over for dinner. I got two meals out of it, actually,. They put the leftovers in take-out containers. Do you want some? Free dinner.”

“Veronica," I said, trying to be reasonable. "Why would anyone give away a perfectly good cat? What’s wrong with him? I mean besides the fact he's under my couch.”

“The woman at the cash register didn’t speak much English. The owner’s mother, I think. She was really old and wore those white socks with the toe split.” She glances down at her wedgie sandles and wiggles her toes to show off her purple polish and tiny daisy decals. “We used hand gestures. She said they already have a cat. But this one, Tora, means tiger in Japanese.

“You told me that,” I’m stood, hands on hips, looking with one eye at the gap under my couch and thought about the day that will live in infamy.

“He fights,” my sister said, all bright and cheerful like the cat also cames with a free samurai sword. “They tried for two years to get him to like their other cat, but the vet bills got to be too much. Since Tiger was the newest one, and they liked the older one better, they decided to get rid of him.”

“And you think I need a vicious tom cat?”

“It’s not like that. He just doesn’t like other cats in his territory, that’s all. You don’t have a cat so he won’t have anyone to fight with. Besides, you’re lonely. You need a pet. I worry about you. I really do. Bye the way, do you have an extra roll of toilet paper? I don’t get paid until next week and it would get me through.”

I stomped into the bathroom and fished out a fresh roll from under the sink, twirled it on my index finger before tossing it to her.

“What about my furniture? Does he shred things, too, I mean just to stay in shape for wrestling season?”

“Stop! The woman didn’t say anything about that. She said he’s a good cat. It’s just that he likes to fight. That’s all I know. I’m sure he’ll be fine. But, I gotta go. He was free and I just couldn’t pass it up.”

We’ve been together now, Tiger and me, for more than ten years. He has gotten a lot fatter and refuses to use a cat box. I bought a little house, which Ronnie calls the “asylum.” But, Tiger knows my ways and waits on the front walk for me every evening and greets me when I come home from work. OK, the truth is he meows until I top off his kibble bowl and set down fresh water and then ignores me.

Ronnie and I don’t talk about his assaults on other cats in the neighborhood or the birds he kills and leaves in front of the patio door, or the time he scratched the mailman. The Postal Service sent a note about mauling, but I didn't respond. He sleeps on my bed and purrs beside me when we go to sleep. I've gotten a bigger bed, but don't invite overnight guests, or encourage visits by people with small children.

Ronnie is pleased with our relationship, takes full responsibility for what she calls my “bliss.” I remind her he’s just a cat when she comes over to borrow things, which is to say often, and she never fails to mention he is . . . well, quite a bargain.

Hiroshige Woodblock Print, 

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)

Heroes Passing Through Our Valley -- U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine

In remembrance: Heard U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine passed away today. Had a chance to hear him read his poetry a few years ago and at 84 he was spry and funny, charmingly self-effacing.

They called him the father of the "Fresno School of Poetry," and there was a hint of scoffing from the Central Valley poets in the audience that such a thing as the Fresno School exists, and politely shunned the notion. Levine, however, who taught for more than 30 years in the English Department of California State University, Fresno, intimately knew the valley and it's people, it's music and majesty.

He read at American River College near Sacramento to a sold-out audience, announced he had just stepped down as poet laureate; his term ended a mere week before the reading. It was good to see him and visit with my ARC creative writing professors -- Traci Gourdine, David Merson, Harold Schneider, Michael Spurgeon and with friends from the Sacramento Poetry Center.

And, it was delightful to hear a poem about where I live, to hear words capture what happens sometimes in the valley on a hot summer day -- a whiff of salt reminds in an instant that something so powerful even the mountains have no word for it lies just beyond the valley's simmering bowl. I love this captured subtly, this shared intimacy with Levine about a place I know well, this recognition the ocean is only a heartbeat away.

San Joaquin Valley in late spring

Our Valley
By Philip Levine b. 1928 d. 2/15/2015

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August

when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay

of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard

when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment

you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost

believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,

something massive, irrational, and so powerful even

the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains

have no word for ocean, but if you live here

you begin to believe they know everything.

They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,

a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls

slowly between the pines and the wind dies

to less than a whisper and you can barely catch

your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.

It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside

and thought was yours. Remember the small boats

that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men

who carved a living from it only to find themselves

carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,

so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,

wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

My son Mark waiting in line.

My son Mark bought tickets to Philip Levine's 2012 reading as a Mother's Day gift. He said reading "What Work Is" convinced him we should attend the event.

He was right, but my son was disappointed Levine didn't read the poem that night. Here it is with thanks to my wonderful son, who knows about standing in line and what work is. The poem holds sentiments too many Americans share. 

What Work Is

By Philip Levine

    We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is—if you’re

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

Feeling the light rain falling like mist

into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother

ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,

and of course it’s someone else’s brother,

narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin

that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

a man is waiting who will say, “No,

we’re not hiring today,” for any

reason he wants. You love your brother,

now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,

who’s not beside you or behind or

ahead because he’s home trying to

sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.

Works eight hours a night so he can sing

Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him

you loved him, held his wide shoulders,

opened your eyes wide and said those words,

and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never

done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you’re too young or too dumb,

not because you’re jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,

just because you don’t know what work is.

 “What Work Is” from What Work Is. Copyright © 1992 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: What Work Is: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)

Red-tailed Hawk and a Fractured Valentine

I recently got an email from an old friend of my ex-husband,

who now lives in England. He inquired about John's whereabouts.

I wrote him back with the news.

Dear Dan:  Thank you for your kind note about John. I'll pass it on to our sons, Mark, 35 and Mike, 24. I know they'll appreciate your remembrance. They've taken the loss of their father hard and they're still getting over it. They were relatively young to lose their Dad and have been rudderless since, as I've been for the past few years. John was always so big and robust, wherever he went he filled the room. It's still hard to believe a mere virus could diminish him, take him away.

John and I had a challenging relationship, as you know, and we were not living together when he died. He died alone by choice and it was a month before his body was discovered. I regret the way he died and miss him very much. He was my biggest supporter and we all wish we had been there for him. But, in the end, big and gruff, he chased everyone away in his bitterness.

As you may have gathered, I'm a writer and have worked as a reporter for many years. My work has often taken me to remote locations. John was always there for the boys and they easily went back and forth between us. He was proud of my work and in many ways made it possible for me to do it. I now live in Sacramento and work as a writer and photographer specializing in environmental issues. After Mike graduated from high school, I began to take creative writing classes -- short stories, poetry -- and I began a novel, Adrift in the Sound, published in 2012, that includes several characters modeled after John.

I worked my day job and worked on the novel nights and weekends. It's set in Seattle in 1973, its about what happened after the "Free Love 60s" ended and a new era began -- end of the Vietnam War, Watergate Scandal, Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion, launching of the war on drugs, the Arab Oil Embargo, etc. The story is about Lizette, an addled street artist who hooks up with the Franklin Street Dogs, a ragtag tavern softball team, it's about the gritty drug scene and the pristine beauty of Orcas Island, its about John and me and the only thing that really matters. But, remember, it's fiction.

I struggled to find an ending for the story, but it eluded me. One night I had a dream, vivid and powerful. John and I were in bed on a sunny morning. We were young. In the dream, he went to take a bath and I went along to keep him company. In the dream every hurt, resentment, tension, grievance between us was resolved and in that moment only comfort, love and acceptance washed between us.

It was as if John came to me in person. It was 2 a.m. and by 6 a.m. the end of the novel was written, the story complete. I had a strong urge to call John, check in, see how he was doing, but put it off. As best the San Francisco Coroner can figure, he died the day I finished the novel. I believe the end of my story was his final gift to me, the gift of feeling his complete, untarnished love, and a gentle, resolved ending to a grating story. Sorry, but I can't go on telling. It makes me cry.

Gerald and Buff Corsi ©
California Academy of Sciences

At John's funeral, we had lots of chocolate and roses and friends from John's days in San Francisco's Haight Asbury. When it was over, I went outside and a huge red-tailed hawk swooped low and ruffled my hair then perched on a cornice of the building. You would think this an exaggeration, but I have witnesses.

The hawk was vigilant, as if guarding. It was still there after everyone left and I was alone with this magnificent bird, standing in front of an ornate and historic mausoleum. I hated to leave him there and my brother had to drag me away. We sprinkled some of John's ashes in the Panhandle at Golden Gate Park where he played baseball as a kid. I have kept the rest.

Find Adrift in the Sound here.