The Burrow

I stopped yelling at the empty house and called Seret.  I never call Seret; when she didn't pick up I knew she was really really busy. Fearing that my rambling voice message was unclear, I sent her a rambling email. Could we stay?  Was one day better than another?  Did she want to come to us?  Fares and schedules and commitments were battling for space in my brain and that conflict was evidenced by my fingers typing nonsense.  It didn't matter.  I hit send.  I knew she'd understand. Then I called Little Cuter.  She heard it in my voice before I finished the first sentence, but she let me ramble on until I was spent.  Mom, do you want help?  This is part of my job.  I do this. Do you want me to do this for you? Yes. Yes. Oh, yes yes yes yes yes. By the time I got home from Pilates there was a screenshot of the answer on my cell phone.  I opened Lenore and the Allegiant website and typed in all the information in...

Except for going into Best Buy without a Cuter by my side, purchasing airline tickets is myleast favorite consumer activity. The prices change for no apparent reason.  Did something happen to the price of oil overnight to cause the fare to rise 10%?  Did flight attendants' wages suddenly spike, causing a massive overhaul of the cost to fly?  Suddenly, the flights that were about the cost of my first car are now approaching the cost of TBG's first Ferrari. Did I mention that those discounted tickets include only middle seats? The discount sites are all linked, which frightens me all over again.  I go through Orbitz, I make my selection.  Then, before I can exit the site, a warning flashes on my screen: Am I sure I don't want to check all the other sites, to see if I can save some big bucks?  Of course I do.  So I click through and now I have half a dozen more open tabs on my monitor.  They all reflect the same thing - there's only 1 seat left...

When I was little, she was soft and cuddly. When she lost weight for Brother 's Bar Mitzvah there wasn't enough of her to hug. I told her so. That's the sum of it. She spent her life trying to meet everyone's expectations. I never knew what her expectations for her own self might have been. I never thought to ask. She was President of every PTA at every school every one of her children attended. She was District President. She was asked to run for New York State PTA President and she declined. I was so proud that she'd been asked, thrilled that she'd be in Albany and meet legislators and influence policy. She wondered who'd take care of the kids while she was gallivanting around New York State. That was what she told us. I wonder if there was something else holding her back. I never remember her sitting at the kitchen table, talking with a friend. I don't remember her going to the movies, or out to a regular lunch date, or playing Scrabble with girlfrien...

The mango is part of the cashew family. Why does this feel like fake news ?  I want to believe it.  After all, I heard it on NPR. ***** Apparently, naked couples bungee jumping is a Latvian tradition.  There are things I'd rather not know.  This is among them. ***** Everyone told me to read Where the Crawdads Sing . I have a tendency to resist these suggestions, fearing the worst, but it greeted me on the library shelf, so I took it home and read it.  In one day, because I couldn't stop.  So, I've joined the crowd: Read This Book! And don't let anyone interrupt you in the last two chapters. ***** Yesterday,  I went to peek through the fence and check on the citrus tree. The normally locked gate to the street was wide open, trucks were parked on the grass, and there were worker bees on the 5th graders' roof, the one overlooking Grandma's Garden . Today, I drove right onto the grass, backed up to the garden's bench, and deposited two very...

Walking to Mr. 14's basketball tournament Friday afternoon, I saw a sign in a display case exhorting the reader to Play Outside An Hour A Day. With all the young athletes around me, I thought the message was a bit misplaced, but it did get me thinking about playing outdoors. Big Cuter was just 9 when we moved from the city of Chicago to the rolling hills of Marin. "Mom, I want to go outside," he said as I was unpacking boxes. I nodded and went back to the task at hand. A few minutes passed. "MOM! I want to go outside!" "So, go. There's the door." "But there's no grown up outside." I stopped in my tracks. A City Kid, my son had never been outside without adult supervision. This wasn't helicopter parenting; a stranger was on the roof of our Buena garage, peering into the backyard one summer afternoon. Our kids were streetwise, but they were also very young. So, when Little Cuter walked down our street later that week to visit a f...

He's been counting down the days.  He sends me postcards and packages, each one telling me how many days are left until his 65th natal anniversary. He's my little brother.  How can he be a Senior Citizen? He's the drollest human I've ever known.  Lazily daydreaming over lunch, he responded to Daddooooo's rather caustic suggestion that he show some spirit by going to G'ma's mounted pad of paper and coming back with the word SPIRIT pinned to his chest.  His response when I asked him why he had been in his room all afternoon, never replying to my lonely calls for company (yes, I did walk around my empty house wondering aloud if anyone was there) was classic:  I had nothing to say. He's one of FlapJilly's favorite people.  How can she know an uncle who lives in Maryland?  He drops in on occasion to say Hi!   His youngest lives in Chicago.  He does not like to fly ( silver tubes of metal should not be in the sky ).  He does like to driv...

I haven't felt this way in a very long time.  Coming out of the hospital, everything was scary.  Skinny white boys in hoodies crossing in front of my car gave me shivers.  TBG dropping a pan in the kitchen made me screech.  An unexpected touch made my skin crawl.  Everything was threatening. Over time, my fight or flight reaction calmed itself down.  Adrenaline's metallic taste didn't fill my mouth when seemingly ordinary events stopped me in my tracks.  Gradually, I reentered the world.  Lately, though, I've been finding that scratchy feeling at the back of my neck, a hyper-vigilance response to driving past an awful car wreck, hearing an ambulance's siren, turning a corner in the grocery store and finding a stranger staring at me.  It may have something to do with a fear of falling.  The first question I'm asked when I go the doctor these days is When was the last time you fell?  Not Have you fallen?  or How many ti...

Google is celebrating felafel .  The Google Doodle made me laugh out loud - little round balls of fried chickpeas encouraging one another to join the fun in the pita pocket lined with veggies.  There is no looming mouth full of teeth ready to destroy their happiness, there's only joy. That's exactly how I feel about felafel - only joy. We first met in 1969, the summer I spent in Israel .  We landed in Haifa after sailing across the Mediterranean from Greece.  The food on the ship had been recognizable; the food in Greece was not.  Italy had been strange forms of pizza and under-cooked pasta. Try to remember that this was 50 years ago.  Gyros were exotic.  Al dente was a concept yet to be embraced.  Fast food was a hot dog or a pretzel from a cart in New York City.  Otherwise, we sat down and ate at restaurants.  Israel was filled with street vendors.  Nothing looked familiar and everything smelled delicious.  We were fr...

Bubba bought me a piano when I was 6 months old, because "Every child should have a piano," (with the "Duh!" implied). I carted that piano around, from Oceanside to Staten Island to Chicago to Tiburon. I'd play it every once in a while, but it was mostly a remembrance of my grandmother's love. I kept it tuned, and watched Little Cuter enjoy herself immensely, sitting with perfect posture and curved fingers, making music. Moving from teacher to teacher until the last one left to run a nursing home business somewhere in the Midwest and her interests turned to other things, without her the instrument became a piece of furniture. HansO, our handyman-cum-twenty-something-role-model-and-friend, took it for his mother. It was hard to say goodbye, but I knew it would be loved. Besides, no matter how many lessons G'ma paid for, no matter how much I really wanted to learn, no matter how much I tried to catch the beat, it didn't take long for ...

There are long minutes of intense, concentrated, focused work interspersed with grown up conversation.  It's the perfect combination for me. She's wise about bodies in general and mine in particular, noticing things I feel but can't pin down.  It's never you are weak here ; it's always engage this and use the breath.  I'm using what I can until the rest catches up, and catch up it will.  Pilates is all about symmetry; it feels awkward to be left behind. Today, we reorganized a piece of equipment to accommodate my shorter than the usual client's leg length, and laughed about how proud of it all we were.  You Tube videos were mentioned.  Then she had me lay down and rest my legs against the re-positioned bar and I discovered that it's possible to rotate to turn out with ease when it's your lower calf and not your ankle bone resting on the steel cross-piece. Did I mention that she pays attention to detail? I'm usually sore when I leave, but ...

Parts of this have appeared in some form or other in The Burrow already. I've always liked Flag Day.  No parades, no speeches, just my flag outside my front door. ***** This is the weekend, in 2017, when Little Cuter and I helped Gabby celebrate the Commissioning of the USS Gabrielle Giffords.   It was a girls' trip to Galveston, a time to feel good about America, sunny days and balmy nights filled with liquid refreshments and many desserts, Jon Bon Jovi and my first experience of Mark Kelly's ability to command a room. They don't choose just anyone to command a  Space Shuttle, whispered the distinguished gentleman standing behind me in his be-ribboned Navy Whites. ***** Gabby was gorgeous and happily wind-blown that weekend, leaning against her handsome husband. I know the effort behind each one of the steps she took, from the bow to the stern.  She knew we were watching, and she didn't want to let us down. She marched on, smiling, unw...

Little Cuter wondered what books I liked as a child.  Answering her was a lovely trip down memory lane. Arlene and I read Little Women over and over and over again in the 5th grade. I wanted to be Jo March, sitting in my attic, writing a book, twirling my long brown hair as I thought. I wanted to marry Max Baer, the older, smarter, wiser, exotic, teacher. I wanted Laurie as my best friend, next door, loving me in a way I couldn't return, aiming his ardor toward my younger sister, a more perfect match for his sensibilities. I lived in her life for a very long time. The Pink Motel was a book from the Weekly Reader Book Club. The cover was pink and the mystery inside piqued my interest in the genre that has lasted for 60 years. The old lady who lived in the motel the kids and their parents inherit has become my role model. She was silly and engaging, unusual and crafty, willing to listen to the kids as if they were her peers. Plus, she believed in eating desse...

My grandparents wanted to send me to Israel.  My mom said my older cousin had to go first.  Of all the grandkids, we were the only two to benefit from their largesse; I don't know why the others were left out of their generosity. My cousin and her parents found a Teen Tour; my parents sent me on the same one.  We probably should have investigated the situation more thoroughly.  The introductory meeting was held in a close room, on folding chairs.  No effort was made to have us meet our fellow travelers; we sat with our parents, listened to the lecture, then left. The tour leaders had never been to Europe before.  They were a young married couple who were fighting out their early struggles in full view of 20 or so teenagers.  Not an easy situation for anyone, their behavior compounded by the fact that they weren't very smart people. They let our Israeli tour guides take us on an all day hike without telling us where we were going.  I'd h...

We had a friend, TBG and I, a dear, kind, thoughtful, funny, smart, devoted friend.  He cheated on his first wife with his second wife, who was surprised and angry when he cheated on her with his third wife.  Somewhere in there we lost the connection, right around the time that I realized that he would never change, that he wasn't someone I could trust to tell me the truth. He'd always take the easy way out - avoiding the subject, or me; lying; denying culpability; trying to cute his way out of situations he created himself.  We told The Cuters that he was fine for Saturday night, but when Monday morning rolled around he was the last person from whom to take advice. When Little Cuter began dating in high school, she knew to steer away from those who disappointed her.  She'd seen, up close and first hand, how some grown ups just repeat the same, self-destructive patterns. ***** I had a friend in high school who, when I rediscovered her a decade ago, proved to be...

It was a fundraiser for Mark Kelly's Senate race, on the Saturday of Wear Orange for Gun Safety weekend.  Or, as my favorite t-shirt at the event read: United In Favor Of Not Getting Shot.   Cameras and rapt attention greeted former Congressman Ron Barber (now Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick's District Director) who waxed eloquent and was waxed eloquently upon before Gabby got up to greet us. She's doing better every time I see her. The applause never gets any quieter. The candidate recited his stump speech, touching on all the areas I care about, getting a round of cheers when he mentioned science  and facts.   I'd heard it before, so I thought about the scene, instead.   I thought about how lucky we were to be there at all, watching the woman I saw sliding to the ground so many sunny Saturday mornings ago. I saw her watching her husband talk about their first date ,at a maximum security prison in Florence, and feeling the love....

I figured out that my new(ish) phone has an Add Text feature in the photo editing app. These are two volunteer trees, pooped out by some animal exactly where I'd have planted them myself. The photo seemed ripe for digital experimentation. Thanks for indulging me. But what I really wanted to show you is this. Driving out in the morning, I stopped to admire the healthy green glow of plants I'd nurtured for a decade or more.  There was nothing particularly unusual about the scene. This afternoon, pulling the trash can up the other side of the driveway, I saw this. Where there was nothing, there was now a stalk. My agave, a tiny fellow when we first met, has given birth.  I'm resisting the urge to identify the bottom of the shoot with my new toy. I'm trusting that you can see it nestled in the middle of very spiky protective aunts and uncles.  Up close and higher up, the nutrients are gathering.  Up there is the burgeoning flower....

She's tugging at my heartstrings, talking about child care and job choices and being rescued by Aunt Bea; not everybody has an Aunt Bea. They're laughing at her trademark I've got a plan for that , but it's obvious she has the smarts and the drive and the experiences to back them up.  TBG thinks some are economically unfeasible, and I'm not educated enough to argue the point.  I'm assuming they are as possible as almost everything in Congress these days; I look at them as Intentions in a Perfect World. I mean, really.  It's hard to argue with asking for two cents on every dollar over fifty billion dollars earned.  Can she really fund universal child care and pre-k and pay those teachers and care-givers the wages they deserve? I hope so.  It's a laudable goal.  I'm willing to let her try. That's Gov. Inslee's plan , my well-sourced husband told me, in no uncertain terms.  And he's done it, too.   It's my plan, too - bringing th...

It's a wildlife awakening around here. This daddy and his family live under the mesquite and saguaros in the wash below our house.  He and mama shepherd their dozen or so little Callipepla gambelii around the inskirts of our property, venturing close to the pony walls on the ground while Dad keeps watch from above. Mom was nowhere to be found this afternoon; I like to think she was leaving Dad in charge in a relatively safe space while she went off to munch on insects all by herself.   As much as I think that there is nothing cuter than scampering baby quail, parenting that many of them must be exhausting. The ground squirrels are busily defoliating the barrel cacti, leaving their detritus behind, sual. What was unusual was finding migrating ducks on the side of the pool today: If you're looking for a Zen moment, turn off the sound (it's the Stanley Cup) and watch these two catch their breath before moving on. Filled with calm and purpose, I came...

And this weekend the temperatures will be seasonably warm. I laughed out loud.  Anyplace else, they'd be opening shelters for the un-air-conditioned elderly.  In Tucson, it's seasonably warm. That means we look forward to temperatures in the upper 90's, sometimes accompanied by a slight breeze in the late afternoon.  With nary a cloud in the sky, being outside for more than a walk to the shady spot in which you left the car requires a hat and sunscreen and determination.  There's not much shade to be found; the leaves on the desert adapted trees have curled onto themselves, minimizing their exposure to the elements. It's a wise idea.  At this time of year I remember Sister's friend describing her summer in Tucson:  I can feel my cuticles peeling back into my fingers.  I can feel the air sucking me dry. I'm not complaining about guaranteed sunshine and weather I don't have to shovel or sweep or slip on.   I'm just explaining the situat...

JannyLou took me to the movies this morning; I must remember to reimburse her for the ticket.  Her usual movie partners are gone for the summer, so, on the theory that bad guys don't get up before noon, I agreed to go to a 10:35am show. So did a lot of other people with grey hair.  We had reserved seats, leather-like plush recliners with plenty of leg room between each row.... even when lying nearly flat.  I know this because I had a grand time with the design during the 30 minutes of commercials and trailers and rambling nonsense from a young woman neither of us recognized. JannyLou tells me that this is the usual state of affairs in movie theaters these days.  I may have to expand my horizons beyond  The Loft . I saw Elton John in a fairly intimate setting in San Francisco in the early 1990's.  It was a benefit for his AIDS foundation , and he spoke eloquently about the fact that he was still alive, while most of his compatriots were not.  Rock...