GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN


Fun is in the experience of the participant. Therefore I shouldn’t be surprised that many of the things I find fun tend to bewilder others.

When I was young walking to the Santa Fe Public Library was fun. Reading a dozen books a week was fun. My mother was not thrilled that I always had my nose stuck in a book. Hiding out from my mother was fun. Climbing cliffs was fun. Digging caves, building tree houses, and riding my bike was fun.

School was not fun. The only fun I had at school was taking tests that felt more like doing a series of challenging puzzles than work. Skipping school was more fun.

Social interaction has not been fun at any stage of my life. After I was married when I had to visit my in-laws I used to sit in the corner of their living room doing crossword puzzles when people dropped by. My mother-in-law did not understand my antisocial attitude. Nor did I understand how rude my behavior was until years later.

Social occasions are still not fun for me. People tell me that socializing is probably good for me, so I participate from time to time. I put in my hour of making small talk then I disappear. As a lifelong introvert I get my energy from being alone. Extroverts get their energy from being with people. Most people are a mixture of introvert and extrovert.

Scrabble is always fun. Tournament Scrabble is more fun even though I lose more games than I win. But I enjoy the process of playing and being challenged. Very little small talk, and I get endorphins, those feel-good hormones, from playing Scrabble.

Driving used to be fun for me. Not so much anymore. I still enjoy road trip movies. I even enjoy car commercials; the moving background soothes my restless spirit. Riding in any thing that is moving is fun for me. Even escalators are fun. I love the idea of hang gliding and bungee jumping and The Amazing Race on TV.

Computer games have been fun for me from the beginning. I enjoyed introducing several of my grandsons to computer games. Their parents never forgave me even though one of the grandsons now works for Microsoft. I still enjoy computer games.

Writing is something I’ve done for a lot of years and it seldom used to be fun. It was part of how I earned my living. Therefore it was work. Getting published was the only part that was fun. And I did far more writing than publishing.

These days I write because it’s more fun than not. I find that fact incredible, but know that these days I’ll seldom do anything more than once that doesn’t have some element of fun in it. I continue to write. Therefore I must be having fun.

EMERGENCY

I ended up in the emergency room of Highline Hospital a few nights ago. I’d been living with an increasing pain on the left side of my lower back for the better part of a week, but had assumed it was a pulled muscle so just went about my business as usual.

I live with a certain amount of pain on a daily basis and this time of year my fibromyalgia acts up anyway. Chronic pain ends up being something to manage, not something to get rid of, so I just endure it with the help of OTC ibuprophen. I have heavy-duty prescription medication available but I don’t enjoy just sitting around happily drooling.

So I hurt a lot, but not being over-medicated means I can write, and drive myself to swimming. Both things are important to me. I’m not used to living with acute pain.

The night before I went to the emergency room had been hell even with Vicodin, so not wanting to go through another night like that, I had to decide what to do. And, smart as I think I am, I couldn’t figure out what to do. I was in too much pain to drive myself anywhere, but it didn’t feel like it was a genuine 911 emergency.

When my children were little and I was busy writing I used to tell them not to bother me unless it was a breathing or bleeding emergency. I did not have that serious an emergency so after a few tears of self-pity I got on the phone.

I ended up having to get permission from two consulting nurses to allow myself to think about calling one of my kids to take me to the hospital emergency room. Not easy to do. I like to think of myself as being capable and independent. I don’t know how to be sick. The last time I went to the emergency room was ten years ago.

Michael came and drove me to the hospital. It took an hour to get some relief from the pain, then came a series of hurry-up-and–wait tests. I sent Michael home. He is dealing with another flare-up of his Crohn’s disease. Two hours later I got the diagnosis of acute pylonephritis (bad kidney infection) for myself. I was relieved to know what the problem was and that it wasn’t something more serious or mysterious.

Deborah came to take me home. By the time she got there I was feeling no pain (temporarily). The next day I felt okay enough to drive to the pharmacy, but was pretty shaky by the time I had to wait for a half hour and was ready to pay for the prescriptions. In retrospect I obviously was less capable than I thought because I could not remember my credit card pin number.

Fortunately my fingers finally remembered on my third try. Good old muscle memory! I came right home, took my medications (antibiotic and Vicodin) and went to bed where I belonged.

P. S. I’m getting better every day. Thanks for asking.

SMALL TALK


We talk of the weather – how awful, how nice.

We talk of the neighbors in search of more spice.

We talk of the congress as if they were lice.

We talk of our fortunes – a throw of the dice.


We talk of our hairdos how good or how bad.

We talk of the movies – the fun and the sad.

We talk of the parents the mom and the dad.

We talk of the lovers we wish we had had.


Should we talk of the leaders we think we deserve?

Or talk of the money we ought to conserve?

Should we talk of the world we would like to preserve?

Or settle for small talk and gossip with verve?

FOOLS AND CHILDREN


They say God protects fools and children. It’s obvious to me that I’ve been operating as one or the other most of my life. After all, life is a risky business.

When I was thirteen I lobbied hard to come up to Washington state and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce. I talked her into hitchhiking from Marysville to Everett to ballet class once a week “I’m a good judge of character,” I told her.

When I was fourteen and back home again I used to sneak out of my window at night and ride over to the movie theater on the wrong side of town. I got creeped out a few times, but never frightened enough to stop.

When I was fifteen my mother, younger brother, baby half-brother and I were living in a primitive cabin on a cliff overlooking the Pacific north of Arcata, California. My brother, thirteen-and-a-half, and I had carved out a rough trail down the sandy bluff to the tiny beach 600 feet below. We talked my mother into going down with us for a picnic one day. I assured her I could carry baby Russell. “No problem,” I said. And so I climbed down and back supporting Russell on one hip while clinging to sketchy handholds and bushes. No problem.

At the age of seventeen, having just graduated high school, I traveled to Chicago on my own, found a trainee position, and a tiny basement apartment on Michigan Avenue, promptly got fired, and found a less demanding job as a waitress at Stouffer’s Tearoom. I also, on one of my late night walks, acquired a stalker who wanted to take me to Florida with him. I went home to my mother instead.

Marriage and motherhood tied me down for a few years, and I became an armchair traveler courtesy of the public library, but I never passed up any opportunity for adventure with or without the kids. I wore out a Chevy station wagon in those years.

After a divorce, travel was high on my list of priorities. I picked up hitchhikers on a trip back from Los Angeles (a story for another day). I racketed around the greater Seattle area to singles dances at night after the kids were in bed. I answered singles ads in The Weekly for a while, after which I taught an Experimental College class titled “Playing the Personals.”

On a trip to see a friend in Salishan on the Oregon coast I stopped my car on a steep driveway and had to step outside the car for a moment to push the buzzer to get the gate raised. As the car began slowly drifting backwards I flung the door open and myself inside just in time to brake to a stop. One of the scarier moments of my life!

Other than the trip down the bluff with my baby brother and hitchhiking with cousin Janyce most of my close calls only risked my own neck. Then I agreed to lead a small group of writers on a trip to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. As group leader I assumed responsibility for those who traveled with me, but did not understand how challenging that would be until I encouraged one young woman to ride the subway back to Chapultepec Park after a group excursion there one afternoon. I felt sure she could handle any problems, but four hours later when she still hadn’t returned I was in a torment of worry. After another hour and a half she returned happy and full of stories. “I knew you could do it,” I told her, vowing to be more cautious regarding other people in the future.

I should have understood from that experience how worried my children might be when I began traveling around the states and Canada all alone in a small RV, or took off at Christmastime to travel by local bus without reservations in Mexico and Guatemala. But I was as clueless as ever as I accumulated more adventures and close calls. I even left for seven weeks in South America without much of an itinerary and without any way for my kids to contact me. This was before the age of cell phones and e-mail, but my kids were busy with their own lives and it never occurred to me that it might be important to stay in touch.

Although these days I’d like to think I’m neither as foolish nor as childlike as I’ve been throughout most of my life, the feedback I get from family and friends suggests that I’m still more delusional than not. And when I lock my keys in the car, set off the smoke alarm regularly, or trip over the hem of my long skirt and fall down, it’s a good thing that I can trust God to continue to protect fools and children.

DUSTY CONSPIRACY


I got my hair cut today. “Your hair, it’s so thick,” the stylist said.

I found that hard to believe, because I keep losing hairs, dozens of hairs daily, all over the place. My place mostly – where the dust not only grows thick, but also thumbs its nose at me when it thinks I’m not looking.

And snickers. It snickers at night when it thinks I’m sleeping.

If you watch the commercials on TV, dust is portrayed as this fluffy thing that can easily be persuaded to surrender if you use the right equipment. That’s just not true. Dust comes in many forms. The fluffy stuff is the easiest to catch, even when it morphs into dust bunnies that hop away and hide out under the bed.

But, besides fluffy dust, there’s cluster dust; cluster dust is dense and clings to rugs. And there’s sticky dust; sticky dust is found in the kitchen. It conspires with kitchen grease to glue itself to surfaces adjacent to the cooking areas such as the hood over the stove or the top of the refrigerator.

The worst stuff is more like powdered milk that accumulates on surfaces. You can move it from one surface to another; you can seldom really get rid of it entirely. Some of it can be vacuumed up, but a residue always lingers. So, when I’m dusting, I have to dust each surface at least twice.

My daughter claims that my dusty problem is due to the fact that I don’t dust often enough. It’s true that I only formally dust twice a year. So, who, besides her, says that twice a year isn’t often enough?

Twice a year is also when I dust my bathtub. Let me explain. I swim daily and take showers before and after each swim so I seldom need to use either tub or shower in the bathroom. So, assorted dusts build up in the tub – mostly what looks like the debris from a windstorm along with discarded hairs and cluster dust.

I’m beginning to develop a theory about cluster dust; it’s just another conspiracy. It’s obvious the dust clusters are held together with all my lost hairs. Do you suppose the clusters are the offspring of intergalactic aliens getting ready to take over the world clinging to hair, to the discarded flotsam and jetsam of humankind? Maybe that’s what the nightly snickering is really all about.

PAIN POEM


Pain carves my face like a pumpkin, a toothless rictus to frighten children.
Pain corrodes my day, drills deep into my psyche, shattering emotions

Bone scrapes on bone
Nerves scoured raw misfire
Muscles clench and spasm
My body is a prison

Pain trumps all else


Every night pain claims me for its bedfellow, a sadist making himself at home.
Wrapping arms of barbed wire around my torso, pain drags me down

Breathing fire on my neck
Splintering vain resistance
Shredding my sleep
No respite anywhere

Pain trumps all else


On the other hand I witness Sister Meg, silent tears streaming down her face,
Transfigured, offering her suffering as a joyful sacrifice.

Glorified, accepting pain
Clutching her rosary beads
Seeking only God’s will
No energy wasted

For Sister Meg pain does not trump God.


As for me pain remains a bully, a tyrant, a thief stealing my patience
A ravenous beast, pain devours my will and flays my soul

I bitch, moan, whine, and complain.
I resist. I fight. I medicate.
My agnostic self suffers
But not in vain

My poem trumps pain

FATHERLESS DAYS


“Don’t you miss not having a father?” The question came at me from time to time as I was growing up – mostly from my schoolmates.

“How can you miss someone you never knew?” I’d reply, shrugging off any deeper implications of the question. Not aware there were any deeper implications.

So, I grew up in a one-parent family and that one parent was often missing in one way or another much of the time. I heard references to my father from my mother from time to time. Mostly about him being an alcoholic and an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman. Explaining somewhat why she left him when I was five years old, and again more permanently when I was six.

By the time I was a teenager I was aware that he lived in Seattle where I had been born. We lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in a kind of religious cult community. The cult was benign as cults go. No sensational drama, just lots of prayer meetings, and constant entreaties for “love gifts.” My poor mother never failed to have a dollar or two, which we could ill afford, to “gift” to the wealthy leader.

When I was fourteen I lobbied hard to come to the Northwest and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce in Marysville. Successful in my scheming, I had my first airplane ride to Seattle in 1949. My father picked me up at the airport. I had no memories of him, just my mother’s comments. The plan was for me to stay with him for a few days before my aunt and uncle from Marysville could drive down to pick me up.

He lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Tacoma where I slept on the couch. He commuted by bus to Seattle where he worked at Rhodes Department Store on Second Avenue in the appliance section. He ate all his meals out. So, for those few days we’d catch the bus after breakfast for the hour-long ride to Seattle. I went to work with him each day and just hung around the store in the mornings. After a quick lunch my father would give me a few dollars and point me in the direction of one of the downtown movie theaters where I would spend the afternoon.

I’d meet him back at the store by closing time and the two of us would walk down First Avenue to one of the card-room/taverns for dinner before catching the bus back to his room in Tacoma. My father was a taciturn bookish man in contrast to my loquacious mother, but he told me some things about himself those few evenings we were together.

His philosophy of salesmanship: “I give them information and let them make up their own minds.” No wonder he was unsuccessful. He talked a little about growing up an only child in Clarkston, Washington with a mother who did not like children. When he asked his father why he stayed with her, his father said, “Mabel sets a good table.” We talked of books, of philosophy, of metaphysics. He smoked a pipe.

Having so often heard my mother mention his alcoholism I was surprised I didn’t see him drinking since I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath every day. But he did not seem to be impaired in any way. Years later I realized what I’d smelled was bay rum aftershave lotion. And I found out that he was a periodic alcoholic; every six months or so he would go on a bender and on occasion have to be hospitalized.

He came to Marysville to visit several times during the school year I was there, and seemed to be painfully shy and awkward around people. No wonder my mother, out of patience with me, would complain how much like my father I was. Taciturn. Bookish. Awkward around people. The legacy of my absent father.

In early summer I spent several more days with him before flying back to Santa Fe. One Saturday he took me to the Woodland Park Zoo where he took some pictures of me. Photography was one of his hobbies. We also visited The Smith Tower building.

Ten years later I returned to the Seattle area with my husband and children and would invite him over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. When his mother died he moved back to Clarkston and eventually started keeping company with a next-door neighbor somewhat older than he was. Miss Lou invited the children and me to visit him east of the mountains and we usually did a couple of times a year. He was happy.

Eventually he got sick with cancer of the esophagus, and was hospitalized in Spokane. I drove over, stayed in a cheap motel, and visited him every day. One day when I arrived I was told that he had almost died during the night and had had to be resuscitated. When I went in to see him he looked panicky. The cancer made it difficult for him to speak, but he clutched at me and I leaned closer to hear him. “They are trying to kill me,” he whispered. And I realized that he had misinterpreted the violent efforts to revive him.

He died shortly thereafter. He was 69. After the funeral my brother and I helped sort out his parent’s house where he had lived. I got some furniture and books and papers that I loaded into my station wagon to take back to Seattle.

By that time I’d become aware that having been raised without a father had set me on a path of searching for a father in every man I met. Part of what I’d been telling myself for years was that I had no memory of being loved. Not by my mother. Not by my seldom-seen father. Explaining in part my unhappy life.

During the next year as I sorted through his papers I found lots of photographs. One that had been taken at the zoo when I visited him. Another, more important one, taken by someone else shows him squatting down on one knee in front of a fir tree. He’s clutching a five-year-old me on the other knee. We both are grinning like idiots.

I could no longer believe that I had never been loved.

SKYVIEW LODGE – VACANCY

In 1944, before the end of World War II, before travel became The Travel Industry, Santa Fe, New Mexico’s only claim to fame was that of being the oldest state capitol in the USA. The influx of weekenders from Los Alamos less than an hour’s drive away may have been the forerunner for the tourist business that turned Santa Fe from a quiet adobe village into a high-priced highbrow mecca for the moneyed traveler, or hideout for Hollywood’s rich and famous. Now it’s advertised as “The City Different in the Land of Enchantment.”

I was nine, my brother a year and a half younger, when my single parent mother began to rent out rooms in the house we leased on Hillside Avenue. Our rented rooms were always full in the summertime. After the war ended people began traveling again, traveling by automobile since gasoline was no longer rationed. At that time Santa Fe had no motels, just a few old hotels downtown, and little parking on the narrow streets.

Our success in renting rooms in our home led my mother to buy a two-story adobe building with ample parking on Cerrillos Road – the main thoroughfare from Albuquerque in those days. After a few renovations we moved to Skyview Lodge which became a “motel” offering two efficiency apartments around the back (one with a double bed, the other with two). In the front off a large entrance hall there was a tiny room with a single bed, another two rooms with a double bed apiece and a shared bathroom up the stairs. My mother’s bedroom was behind the front desk, and upstairs, also sharing the shared bath were another four rooms of various sizes.

My brother and I got the smallest bedrooms in the place in the summertime, and during the busiest weekends even those got rented out. He and I would sleep in the tiny lath house outside the kitchen door, or in bedrolls on the roof (flat and tarpaper-covered). In the wintertime we each got our pick of any bedroom in the place.

Those summers we usually rented out at least ten beds every night. I remember this because every day during the tourist season after the guests had gone it was my job to strip twenty sheets and pillowcases off the beds. I dragged them along with the used towels downstairs to the kitchen where our Maytag washing machine waited for the first load of the day. The machine kept going all morning as I loaded sheets and towels into the washer to agitate, and then, dripping wet, into the separate spin compartment, and finally into the wicker laundry basket. I carried the basket, heavy with wet laundry, into the backyard where I hung them neatly over the parallel rows of clotheslines securing them with wooden clothespins.

After half a dozen loads were flapping in the wind to dry my brother and I would walk down to the corner soda fountain – a limeade for me and a chocolate milkshake for him. Then back to work. Within an hour the sheets had been whipped dry by the wind and smelled of sunshine (with a faint whiff of adobe dust). The sheets usually came off the line as the fluffy white clouds popped up over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains promising a refreshing half hour thunderstorm later that afternoon.
Once or twice each summer the rain came before all the sheets were completely dry and some of them had to be returned to the beds slightly damp as we only had one set of sheets for each bed. It seldom rained at night, but when it did it was my job to knock on the doors of two of the upstairs rooms and apologize to the guests as I physically moved the beds to place cooking pots under the known leaks.

Each afternoon my mother and I made the ten beds together – tucking the pillows under our chins to slide the pillowcases on. My mother usually did some cleaning in the morning and either my brother or me ran the Electrolux vacuum cleaner hauling the awkward machine up or downstairs daily. My brother emptied the wastebaskets while my mother and I folded the fresh towels to stack neatly on the foot of each bed. By four pm when travelers began looking for a place for the night we were ready to flip on the neon sign that announced Skyview Lodge – Vacancy.

Mother showed the first rooms – often renting some, but she usually went to bed around eight pm. Although I was only eleven years old that first year, I attended to the desk in the evening, showed the last few rooms, quoted a price (between $1 and $4) per night, made change, registered them, and hopefully before midnight could turn on the red neon “No” which informed late travelers that we were full. The following morning my mother was often astonished to find out how much money I had charged for the less desirable rooms. “It was late and ours were the last rooms in town,” I’d explain – having obviously grasped the concept of what-the-traffic-will-bear long before I’d heard the term.

My brother and I got a dollar or two each week as allowance for our help. Once a month I got an extra fifty cents for waxing the spacious hardwood entry hall with Johnson’s paste wax. I was supposed to buff it by hand but preferred to do it by foot as it was fun to skate around in my stocking feet until the entry hall gleamed.

Within five years the classic motel business was thriving and Cerrillos road became motel row with King’s Rest, Desert Chateau, Cactus Lodge, and their ilk offering private cabins with carports. Our spartan rooms with shared bath “up the stairs” couldn’t compete. Then my mother got pregnant and remarried when I was almost sixteen, and I stayed on for a short time at Skyview Lodge renting a few rooms each night and doing the laundry each day until school started and I moved in with an aunt.

Skyview Lodge eventually was sold, and became a youth hostel for many years.

After I married and had children our family either slept in the back of our station wagon or in a big canvas tent when we traveled.

Then came the day on a business trip to California when I decided to rent a room for the night instead of driving straight through. So strange to be paying money out instead of taking it in! And the price, even at the budget motels, gave me a stomach ache. I never did get used to paying for a place to sleep at night. The legacy of having grown up on the other side of the desk in the travel industry!

ANATOMY OF AN ESSAY


I’m peacefully driving along the street and am suddenly attacked by the title for an essay. At the next stoplight I scribble it down on the stack of scratch paper on the passenger seat. Percolation begins -- subconscious in charge.

I finish driving to the swimming pool. As I dog-paddle back and forth in the lap lanes, related words and phrases bubble up into my consciousness. My fraying memory puts in for battle pay. I resort to a variety of tired mnemonic devices to help me hang onto whatever bits I can until I finish my swim. Finally, back in the car, I jot down the word salad as best I can. I drive to the grocery store and then home. I pull into my parking place and collect my notes to carry upstairs.

Once inside the door, I turn on the computer, open up Microsoft Word, and, using the hunt-and-peck system, begin to keyboard the notes, often finding them completely illegible. I save the keyboarded notes, hang up my swimsuit, and put my groceries away. All of a sudden I seem to be brain dead, so I close down Word. I tell myself I’ll work on the writing after lunch.

Life gets in the way. Three days later, writing class is galloping toward me. I do not know what happened to the week. It doesn’t matter as the deadline demands action. I encourage myself to sit down at the computer and open up Word and the saved essay notes.

I sit there and reread what I already have. It’s anemic, inadequate, lackluster at best. Whatever made me think this topic was substantial enough for even a lightweight essay? But, over the years I’ve learned that writing is more about the willingness to continue to engage with the material than it is about inspiration. So, I sit there and sit there and sit there.

Eventually I eke out a paragraph, or two, or three. I surprise myself with a cogent thought, or two, or three. I keep at it until it begins to approximate the idea I started out with. Maybe this will work after all.

I cut words and phrases. I look to make sure I have as many action verbs and precise nouns as possible. I remind myself to narrow the focus, be specific, and find places to use dialogue. I add examples and anecdotes. I look up dog-paddling in the dictionary; is it one word or two? Is it hyphenated or not? Back to the dictionary; does mnemonic mean what I think it means? How the hell do you pronounce it, anyway?

I finally reach the point where it’s not necessarily good, but good-enough. I print out copies, and drag the essay, freshly killed, to class.

Listen up, now!

WANDERLUSTING


This time of year a plague of symptoms assails me: itchy feet; compulsive daydreaming; restless nights. I’m obviously spring feverish, drunk on sunshine (or the lack of it), longing for a road trip. Just call me wander-woman, a kindred spirit to the legendary rambling-man. Wander-woman wanderlusting.

I wax nostalgic for the days I lived in a vehicle and could leave town when things didn’t suit me. For over seven years I lived in a 19-foot Itasca Spirit designed for weekend outings -- not for fulltime living. I slept in a bunk over the driver’s cab, and there was no room for nocturnal pacing much less room to swing a cat even if I had had one. (Not that I would actually do such a thing!) There was, however, a decent kitchen including oven, and a full-service bathroom on board.

Then my former mother-in-law offered me an older 21-foot motorhome with an actual double bed in the back, and much more suitable for a full-timer. So, I sold my Itasca Spirit and, for another five years, continued to travel around the country in more comfortable style.

I thought of myself as technically homeless, my address just a post office box. I stayed overnight in RV parks, state parks, and the friendly driveways of friends, friends of friends, and various aunts, uncles, and cousins. I also visited my two brothers from time to time. When in the Seattle area I parked in what my oldest daughter-in-law called “the mother-in-law driveway.”

I spent twelve years wandering these United States, mostly in the west, writing and teaching adult education workshops during my travels. I earned a marginal living between workshop fees and book royalties, and it was a satisfying life. Some people felt sorry for me, but I loved my gypsy lifestyle.

Then my books went out of print, my motorhome needed more and more repairs, and the price of gas kept climbing. A serious problem since the motorhome only got five or six miles per gallon at best. So I was content to move into senior housing, but every spring I hear the call of the open road. I remember with pleasure the faint odor of skunk roadkill, the postcard glimpses of the ever-changing landscape, the adventure of the challenges of everyday life.

On the other hand, these days I can hardly afford the gas for my ten-mile daily roundtrip to the swimming pool; traffic has gotten worse by the year; and I’m better at being an armchair traveler. My travels to the library to get books on true adventure feed my gypsy soul, and quiet my wanderlust.

Almost!

TWEET ME NOT


I’m no technophobe, but please don’t tweet me, text me, or “friend” me. As far as I’m concerned those are all forms of cyber-bullying. I love my computer (that I mostly use as a fancy typewriter), am content with my basic e-mail, and obsessed with the occasional computer game, but I only have a dial-up connection to the internet.

The tweets of Twitter do not intrigue me. I do like epigrams, and the challenge of reducing one’s message to 127 characters has some appeal, but I suspect few tweets attain epigram status. Texting with its arcane abbreviations and acronyms just seems juvenile at best.

Facebook and its kin are mysteries I’m not interested in solving. I don’t need friends that badly. I ignore those requests that purport to be from friends or relatives. The one request I did respond to in a cursory way resulted in my e-mail mail list getting compromised.

I tried to set up a web page for myself, but even the sites that claimed to be user-friendly, quickly attained enemy status in my hands. I had to settle for doing an idiot-proof blog that lacks the bells and whistles of the web page I originally sought.

Computers, smart phones, and their apps have taken over the known universe. Google is now a verb, and, despite the recession, sales of I-phones, Kindles, and their ilk prosper. Newspapers are shrinking both in number, and in their physical dimensions. Libraries are short on actual books, and long on audio books, DVDs, computers, and e-books. I’m conflicted because, despite my antipathy for tech talk, I do love Google.

I’m beginning to think that the issue for me is not just the pervasiveness of technology in my life, but the change it demands from me, and, worst of all, the rapidity of that change. Just as I think I’ve got some computer thing mastered they change the format, the protocol, or the password. I’m often asked by my computer, or whatever is dictating terms, to authorize “updates.” I don’t want updates. I want down-dates; I want boring dates; I just want things the way they used to be.

Nevertheless, although I think movement for movement’s sake is what passes for some tech progress these days, the tsunami of change has already wreaked its havoc, and now some of us have to pick up the few pieces we understand and get used to it.

Until I do that, please do not tweet me, text me, or friend me. I’m not feeling all that friendly these days anyway.

THE APRIL FOOL CHICKEN


One spring morning I walked into our suburban house just as Richard, my seventeen-year-old son, dashed past me out the door. “Where are you going?” I hollered.

“Gotta pick up my chicken,” he said, saying something about a friend who had a bantam rooster needing a good home. He revved up his ’56 Chevy and screeched out of the driveway.

“Oh sure,” I muttered, reminding myself that it was April first -- April Fool’s Day. I thought no more about it until the middle of the night when I heard this terrible noise outside my window. The middle of the night turned out to be pre-dawn -- four AM. The terrible noise turned out to be the promised chicken.

At breakfast I turned my bleary eyes on Richard and said, “Why?” pointing toward the sliding glass door to the patio where the colorful rooster could be seen strutting around as if he owned the place.

Richard met my gaze. “You know I’ve always wanted a chicken,” he said, as if it was something that all teenage boys wanted.

“I have never heard you mention this before,” I protested, trying to ignore the fierce stare of the beady-eyed rooster outside

A few months later Richard graduated from high school and moved into a tiny apartment with his buddy Mark. Guess who got temporary custody of the April fool chicken!

That evil-eyed rooster continued to wake me up in the middle of the night. Richard continued to promise that he was looking for another “good home” for the chicken. That chicken continued to terrorize all of the neighborhood cats and dogs that dared to approach our backyard for the next year and a half.

I finally sold the house and moved into a small apartment. The April fool chicken moved across the back fence into the yard of a neighbor who had grown fond of it.

I’d been looking forward to a different kind of alarm clock – one I could actually set and control. The first night in my new apartment I suddenly woke to a strange noise. I looked over at the clock. Four a.m. The strange noise was silence. Even stranger was the fact that I found I sort of missed that feisty April fool chicken.

THE SCREAMING IN MY HEAD

I’m listening to someone explain or complain, lecture or pontificate, or just ask
stupid questions. “Fool, fool, fool,” I mutter under my breath. Then, the screaming
inside my head starts. I obviously do not suffer fools gladly. I do suffer from the
screaming inside my head.

Other people cannot hear the screaming. I usually do not look like I’m hearing screaming either. I usually look like a somewhat grumpy senior citizen – a fairly quiet, somewhat grumpy, senior citizen. I think the screamer has always been there, sitting in judgment on my fellow man. It’s automatic. I don’t remember turning it on, so I don’t know how to turn it off. Personally, I’m used to it by now, but knowing about it might help others understand why I tend to avoid social gatherings and people in general

In high school I often zinged fellow classmates with stinging remarks. I thought I was just being clever until a friend warned me: “If you don’t stop being so sarcastic you’ll end up with no friends at all.” At home both my mother and grandmother would say, “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all.” So, I didn’t. I didn’t say anything at all much of the time. Ultimately I developed a reputation in the family for being “silent and sullen.”

I’ve been wondering why I have the screamer in my head, and think I’ve pretty
well figured it out. It comes from too many years of not complaining in situations where
complaint was called for -- too many years making the best of unacceptable things -- too
many times where I made excuses for bad behavior both my own and that of others. Too
many times when I was trying to be nice, and stifled myself (and my true feelings), lest I be rude to family, friend or stranger.

I once made the mistake of mentioning the screaming in my head to a table of
cousins at a family reunion. Louise, who has a mean streak, made wisecracks at my
expense. Harriet was curious and kept asking me if it was happening “right now?” Her no-win question was really annoying. If I said “no” she might assume she wasn’t a fool. If I said “yes” she might assume I thought she was a fool. I finally learned to deflect that kind of question by saying “not yet” with a hint of warning in my voice.

Ruth, who tends to be compassionate, asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I laugh,” I said trying to turn it into a joke.

I keep wondering if I had told Louise she was rude and offensive, and told Harriett her question was insensitive at best, and told Ruth, “yes, it hurts,” if those expressed truths might have diminished the screaming in my head.

But here I am years later still afflicted by a grudging niceness in the presence of others. And still afflicted by screaming in my head.

GREETINGS FROM GUATEMALA

Am settled in for the next 8 weeks. Trying not to fall down in the cobblestone streets and uneven sidewalks. It's been colder here than usual, but there are more hours of daylight and plenty of sunshine each day. The nylon windbreaker I brought for wearing to and from the airport in Seattle is now a 24/7 garment. I even wear it to bed over my nitegown! Guatemala not only has no central heating, it has no heating at all (except in the fancier hotels).

Fortunately I packed a small space heater down here some years ago and my friend Sarah stores it for me when I'm gone. It's been chugging its little heart out every night. My days are busy with important things like Scrabble with John, and lunch out with other friends.

Hope you all are warm and happy for the new year Love Jean

THE DICTIONARY CHRISTMAS


In September 1944 a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman had stopped by to show our family his treasures none of which we could afford. But there had been this library-sized dictionary weighing at least ten pounds that I coveted in a silent and intense way. Even though we were poor, I may have mentioned something about how useful it would be for the whole family.

That family consisted of my mother, my younger brother and me. We lived at 355 Hillside Avenue in Santa Fe, New Mexico just beyond where the pavement ended. We were poorer than most of the kids in the private religious school I attended, but not poorer than many others in the area. I had just turned nine and Christmas was mostly the lackluster school pageant and gift exchange.

At home a pinyon tree sat in a corner of the living room flanked by two small painted wooded Mexican chairs with rattan seats. The previous Christmas the chairs had held a doll for me that I neglected and may have lost, and a bear for my brother that he still slept with. We had decorated the tree one evening, stringing white popcorn together with a large needle and thread to drape back and forth across the branches; we also pasted construction paper strips in bargain-table colors (no red and odd shades of green) into loops to make chains. As the twenty-fifth approached a few tiny packages and Christmas cards clustered around the white sheet at the base of the tree.

Then one day I saw that my little chair held a huge rectangular gift, wrapped in shiny pink paper. My mother loved anything pink. I knew the gift was for me and I hoped I knew what it was. Maybe, just maybe…

So, for the first time I could remember, I eagerly anticipated Christmas morning.

Two days before Christmas, my mother of gypsy habits and rampant impulsivity had heard that the geometry teacher from school was driving to Los Angeles for Christmas. Suddenly she decided we just had to visit her sister Ruth who lived there with her family. Mr.Chidester was a hapless soul who never had a chance once my charming mother set her sights on his transporting us to California.

In a scant hour we were packed up and picked up and off on another of her last-minute adventures. Neither my brother nor I had even met Auntie Ruth; we didn’t know our cousins or uncle; we did not want to leave home. “It’ll be such fun,” my mother kept saying.

I remember us driving straight through, stopping only once for several tedious hours for Mr. Chidester to take a nap. .

On Christmas Eve day we arrived on my aunt’s big fancy house doorstep. Of course Mother had not bothered to inform Auntie Ruth that we were coming. I felt the terrible awkwardness of it all as Auntie Ruth said and did all the right things, but her lack of sincerity was palpable to my sensitivities.

At least my cousin Joanie, six months older than me, was honest in her impatience with her mother’s “poor relations.” I suffered through the fuss to get us settled for the two nights we would be there and the patronizing small talk of the dinner table. The following morning as they opened their lavish display of presents, my mother, my brother and I received hastily wrapped gifts. We had brought nothing for them, of course. All I could think about was my big shiny pink package waiting at home.

My present from Joanie was a copy of Heidi. Although a book was normally the best sort of present for me, as I opened it up I saw a bookplate on the inside front cover declaring, “This book belongs to Joanie Stanton.” My humiliation was complete when I saw her smirking face. I said the obligatory thank-you, but couldn’t wait to leave the next morning.

Mr.Chidester’s car finally liberated me from the horror of family obligations. The drive home was still tedious but made bearable by putting distance between Joanie and I. It seemed as if we had been gone weeks instead of just four days

Home at last, the first thing I did was to tear into the shiny pink paper despite my mother’s entreaty to be more careful and save the paper for next year Of course I got my much beloved Webster’s Unabridged dictionary. Pure joy! And I’ve been wallowing in words ever since.

At the time I couldn’t understand how come my worst Christmas ever had produced the best gift of my whole life. Later I realized that it was a perfect real life mixed bag-- bittersweet and satisfying all glopped together.

THREE MINUTES A DAY


In wintertime I am sad, so SAD. My life is complicated by SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – where the lack of daylight pushes me inward towards hibernation. The lack of daylight conspires with the lack of sunlight to increase depressive tendencies. So I’m at the mercy of both the rotation of the earth, and the weather.

The rotation of the earth is totally reliable and predictable; the weather is capricious and fickle. However, once the winter solstice occurs around December twenty-first, there begins a slow creeping towards spring, and hope begins to bloom in my heart.

According to the weatherman, we get three more minutes of daylight every day no matter what the weather. Not much to begin with, but it adds up. Three more minutes of daylight every day means over twenty minutes a week that becomes an hour and a half per month. So eight hours of thin dreary daylight in early January turns into a full-bodied extravaganza of DAYLIGHT for over sixteen hours daily by the summer solstice around June twenty-first.

I comfort myself with those three minutes through January and February. I also appreciate every scrap of anemic sunshine over the winter months; the sun comes out and I scream, “YES!” If I’m driving, I pump my fist, yes; otherwise I do a little sun dance. If the sun stays out long enough for me to bask, I bask blissfully.

I usually don’t really begin to feel better until near the spring equinox in mid-March when I stop counting the minutes. By April, sunshine and daylight pull me from bed earlier and earlier each day. I have more energy. Suddenly, I’m an optimist.

But in January I count the minutes like pennies in a piggybank. One of the ways I have dealt with SAD in past winters is to go to Guatemala for two or three months where sunshine and good friends who play Scrabble help to pass the time. When I must stay here I do have a lamp that simulates daylight; I increase my vitamin intake; I see my therapist more frequently. All these things help, but I never stop pining away for true spring.

Some winter days seem interminable, but, paradoxically, I never have enough time to do everything I want. On the other hand, the weeks and months and even seasons often seem to speed by. All except for winter with its three-minutes, three-minutes, three minutes of daylight rationing. Hang on! Here comes another three! Can spring be far behind?

CHANNELING CAT


I’m not much of an animal person, but I sometimes exhibit a cat persona.

In the late afternoon or early evening, depending on the time of year, when the sun streams through my bedroom window and pools on my bed I seldom pass up the chance to curl up and float -- basking like a cat on a windowsill.

And although I could stand to lose a pound or fifty, I, as my long-suffering friends can attest, am a finicky eater. I’m allergic to garlic and fish; I hate onions and have become expert at picking onion fragments out of otherwise acceptable meals – an Asbergerish obsession. I also find the texture of some foods can be a deal-breaker. Yogurt, for example, is just plain icky; I’m creeped out by slimy things.

At a potluck if I can’t easily identify the ingredients in a dish I will ask others to sample it for me. When I can I bring my own food taster; Morris, the cat, would expect no less. Those friends who are cooks often volunteer to prepare a separate batch for me sans garlic, sans onions. I do try to be properly appreciative, but I do miss the onion-sorting-out process. Nobody seems to understand that I like to play with my food.

Like many cats, I can be civil, but it would be a mistake to call me civilized. I usually have soft paws, but have not been declawed. You cross me at your peril.

I’ve been told I have an aloof manner and an abrupt style. In any social situation there comes a point where I’m simply done. When that happens there are no niceties in my leave taking. I just turn my back and. cat-like, slip away

Like most cats I have my idiosyncrasies. I’m fond of water and I love swimming. Perhaps I more resemble an otter in that regard.

People have often suggested I get an animal, a cat perhaps, as a companion in my old age. Two reasons it never was a viable idea: One: I was responsible for raising four kids; I no longer want that kind of responsibility -- or any kind of responsibility. Two: I don’t want to share the rest of my life with a feline scene stealer. I have enough trouble getting the proper sort of attention for myself as it is.

I once saw a reader board that announced, “Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.” I’m currently interviewing for staff positions.

MARKING TIME


Mark came to visit me a few days ago. Mark is the second oldest of my seven grandchildren, and the one person these days who really has time for me.

He’s someone I can comfortably be myself with. No walking on eggs. No fear that he might feel embarrassed by me -- just a sense of mutual okayness and a willingness to tell each other the truth.

Mark is twenty-three and kind. He never mentions it when I doze off for a minute or two in the middle of a Scrabble game; he accommodates himself to my slow pace as we walk; he answers my stupid computer questions without making me feel stupid.

Mark had a hard time of it growing up, but when Mark is unhappy he doesn’t whine about it. What I desperately want for Mark, of course, is the same thing any halfway decent parent or grandparent wants for their children or grandchildren. I want Mark to be happy.

And I can no more tell him how to do that than my mother could do so for me. I was near forty when I learned how to make myself happy. And, accepted that it was my job to do so.

I remember Mark as a reasonably happy toddler some twenty years ago. At that time I was living in what Mark’s mother called “the mother-in-law driveway” outside their home. Mark would come out to visit me and I’d sit him on my lap where I introduced him to the brightly colored DOS computer games that I enjoyed – Cosmo, Duke Nukem, Word Rescue.

Mark’s parents, my oldest son and daughter-in-law, were less than happy with me about turning him on to the seductive world of computer games. My own mother never did get over the idea that the comic books I feasted on every Saturday morning in Dickie Pitman’s garage would corrupt me in some sinister way. Perhaps they did.

Anyway, as it turned out, Mark makes his living these days working in computer gaming systems. And he has become my go-to guy for computer problems. I probably take advantage of him for that.

But when we’re together we talk about books and politics and the difficulty of finding the right sort of friends. Not just someone to play Scrabble or Warcraft with, but someone worthy of sharing our honest feelings with.

After Mark left I was wondering if he knew how much I appreciated him in my life.

So I wrote this piece to tell him.

A HALLOWEENIE ROAST


I hate Halloween! If I had a porch light I’d keep it dark on All Hallow’s Eve. I’d outlaw candy during the whole month of October. I might even ban pumpkins.

I know it’s un-American to have a “Boo Humbug” attitude. Even Christmas has its “Bah Humbug” champions in Scrooge and the Grinch. But Halloween, which started out as a perfectly respectable pagan harvest festival, was first co-opted by The Church into All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve. Here in America Halloween has been further co-opted by Hallmark and Disney into the orgy of materialism we have today. Halloween is now big business, second only to Christmas for compulsory holiday spending.

Halloween’s “trick-or-treat” rituals teach our children to be extortionists or petty terrorists. Greed is encouraged as some parents drive their children to affluent neighborhoods to acquire better loot. We lament childhood obesity yet feel obliged to spend money we can’t afford on empty calories for our youngsters. We costume our children in store-bought images of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the devil, yet are horrified and bewildered when our teenagers identify themselves as Goths and venerate vampires.

I’m not against childhood fun and “Let’s Pretend” and dressing up. I’ll even admit to having a soft spot in my heart for a really good pirate, as well as enjoying Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Years ago when my children were young I usually went along with their Halloween plans. I helped create costumes and carve pumpkins; I walked or drove around on trick-or-treat excursions. I grudgingly bought candy to hand out to strangers.

Back when I was a child myself our family didn’t do Halloween; we had a harvest fest at our church school instead. This anemic get-together was eclipsed by Santa Fe’s weeklong fiestas that have been celebrated since 1712. The best part for me was the giant marionette effigy called Zozobra, known as “Old Man Gloom”. Zozobra was burned the second week of September to conclude the celebrations, and, as he writhed in the great bonfire with spooky shrieks and moans, all the gloomy worries and troubles of the previous year were symbolically burned up in the flames.

The burning of Zozobra is a tradition both exciting and practical, unlike our North American Halloweens. After I began traveling in Latin America I discovered other autumn traditional events equally interesting and integral to their culture.

In Mexico November 1st is known as El Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints Day) and November 2nd is El Dia de los Muertos (All Souls Day). El Dia de los Muertos is more commonly known as The Day of the Dead and it is believed that the souls of the dead return each year to visit with their living relatives to eat and drink and be merry as they did when they were alive. The whole family treks to the graveyard with favorite treats of their departed family members and they have a picnic together in loving memory.
In Guatemala The Day of the Dead is celebrated similarly, but with the addition of plenty of firecrackers. As a matter of fact any day in Guatemala is an occasion for much noise and firecrackers. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the fact that Guatemala has known civil war much of the last hundred years, and shooting off guns was common.

Most autumn celebrations are full of noise and light – firecrackers to scare away evil spirits; bonfires to warm living souls before the cold and dark of winter settles in our bones. I have no trouble with these rationales for Halloween.

Jack-o-lanterns are fun and pretty harmless; I appreciate the creativity and whimsy. The rest of Halloween I find disturbing without reason. Halloween encourages the worship of materialistic false idols.

Give me Zozobra who still suffers for our sins every September in Santa Fe, or a cheerful Day of the Dead family picnic in the candle-lit graveyard.

I’ve recently become intrigued with a weeklong Labor Day event in Black Rock, Nevada. It’s called Burning Man and each year over 40,000 people come together in the desert to create a temporary community that bans commercial transactions and encourages barter. Burning Man sounds like a merger between Woodstock and Zozobra. My kind of hedonistic and artistic expression.

I’ve just added, “attend Burning Man” to my bucket list.

HIDING OUT

by Roberta Jean Bryant


Growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico I had two favorite hideouts. Indoors I’d take a blanket and pillow and a stack of library books into the high top shelf of my bedroom closet where I’d have to shinny up the doorframe to gain access. Outdoors I’d take my books and climb up into the backyard tree house -- both happy places where my mother couldn’t find me.

Hideouts have been an integral part of my life ever since. As a teenager my mother was running Skyview Lodge (an early version of a motel for summertime tourists). It was two stories tall with the Southwestern pueblo-style architecture that featured a flat tarpaper roof. My books and I would migrate up top when there were chores to be done.

When I was eighteen I rode along with a friend and her mother to Chicago. After they left I stayed for my first solitary travel adventure. I got a trainee job and hid out in a Michigan Avenue pea-soup-green basement room where I shared a bathroom with the tailor shop down the hall.

The next year in college at Highlands University in Las Vegas (New Mexico not Nevada) I had to live in the women’s dorm with a doors-locked curfew at ten o’clock. I’d sneak out of the dorm several nights a week to hide out at Storrie Lake with my boyfriend and a shared sleeping bag.

We later married and my hiding places grew increasingly desperate in my increasingly manic-depressive life. In manic phase I’d shriek at the children and leave the house to huddle around the corner near the garbage cans until I could “get a grip.” Depression was a gray hideout all its own.

Years later when I began to earn money from my writing I made a down payment on a large station wagon to ferry the kids around in. The station wagon became my favorite hideout and my symbol of independence.

Divorce brought me a nine months reprieve from daily motherhood and a place of my own at the Blue Ridge apartments; finally, a place of my own, and no need to hide anywhere else. Then, a return to motherhood, and my car became my refuge once again; my car, and my queen-sized bed -- half for sleeping and half serving as a makeshift desk.

My next move was into a small office suite on Eastlake just north of downtown Seattle. I decided to temporarily sleep on a futon in the larger room where I held classes until I could afford a separate apartment of my own. With the doors locked and the drapes closed I had once again a place of my own. Eight and a half years later I discovered that temporary had obviously meant eight and a half years of camping out in my office.

Deciding to actively promote my second book, I closed down my office, put furniture in storage, and bought a small RV that functioned as a hideout on wheels. I became an itinerant teacher, working my way down the west coast presenting workshops in the major cities, attending American Book Association conventions, doing book signings in independent bookstores.

I figured if I couldn’t eke out a living, or got tired of all the driving and phoning, I could always return to Seattle and open up an office again. I knew how to do that. In the meantime I was living out my teenage dream of traveling for a living. My hope chest had been a cardboard carton full of travel folders. Marriage and children had sidetracked me for several decades. When I was back in the Seattle area I parked in what my oldest daughter-in-law called the “mother-in-law driveway.”

I loved my vagabond life. For twelve and a half years I loved my vagabond life. I finally had reached retirement age, was tired not so much of traveling as the upkeep and breakdowns of an aging vehicle, and put my name on a waiting list for senior housing.

My final hideout is my senior housing one-bedroom apartment; third-floor western exposure. All I see out my windows are trees and sky and occasional spectacular sunsets. People tell me the place is tiny, but having lived in a small RV for years, it still feels spacious to me. I feel like I’m living in the best of both the hideout worlds of my childhood. It’s clean and warm like my closet shelf, and hidden in the trees to give me a perfect tree house perspective.