I'm Behind - A Snippet

The menu called it Mac is Back, but it wasn't exactly the veggie mac-and-cheese I'd envisioned.

It's short for macro, the waiter informed us, which is like a calorie but isn't.

It was delicious, even though I apparently missed the point of it all.

Random Thoughts on Politics in March

I am trying to avoid a Donald Trump post as fervently as I am trying to avoid a Donald Trump Presidency.  There's nothing I can say that hasn't been said before. I could link to Colbert or Romney or Trump himself, but why?
*****
Daniel Hernandez, the one-week-on-the-job intern for Gabby Giffords, the man who literally held her head together in his hands while we waited for the first responders, the President of the Sunnyside School Board here in  Tucson, author, activist, and general all around great guy is running for the Arizona State Legislature.

He'd have done it sooner, but he wasn't old enough.
*****
Mitt Romney is being brought out to lead the Establishment Republican advance against Donald Trump.

I'm not sure that this is anything more than a public announcement of the paucity of viable alternatives to the current front runner.
*****
If Ted Cruz invokes God one more time I promise to scream.

Loudly.
*****
I've begun to inquire about Bernie Sanders and guns.

Guns in Vermont are for hunting; but in L.A. are for killing (Jul 2015) felt simplistic and self-serving until I did some research.  According to the FBI, there were 2 gun murders in Vermont in 2010; there were 1,257 in California that year. 

I'm moving on to wondering about protecting manufacturers from being sued.  I'll keep you posted.
*****
I'm glad that Ben Carson will take his many talents  and put them to better use.  

If you click on the link, you'll hear him as a young pediatric neurosurgeon kvelling over the remarkable plasticity of a child's brain, as the children on whom he'd operated frolicked at a picnic around him.  All of a sudden, his calm tone feels appropriate.
*****
I'm still trying to find something that Marco Rubio can point to as an accomplishment.
*****

  

Love of Reading Week

Prince Elementary School asked if I'd like to be a Guest Reader.  I couldn't say YES fast enough. And so,  early in the morning,  I found myself in the most well behaved third grade classroom in the universe.

I'm not kidding, denizens.  These scholars were bent over their notebooks, concentrating on the problem sets, then seriously discussing the varieties of the graphs before them.  There was no fussing, no kibbitzing, no jostling.  There was only working.

Math ended, books were replaced, and the students assembled on the carpet while I assumed the chair of honor.  While the rest of the class joined us, we looked at the pictures in Grandfather Twilight,  a children's go-to-sleep book with the most beautiful illustrations. We talked about books and pictures telling the story as well as the words, or even, in this case, without the words at all.

And then we read an excerpt from the D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, stories these children had never heard.  Finding an appropriate story was tough; there's a lot of illicit sex and murder of relatives.  But Zeus and Hera and Io was benign enough to share with 8 year olds.  The D'Aulaires gloss over how Io came to be with child, concentrating on Hera's anger and Io's life as a beautiful white cow.

I read about Hermes boring Argos to death and about Hera putting Argos's hundred eyes on the peacock's tail feathers and about Io jumping over the Bosphorus, which translates to cow ford, in case you are as interested as they were.  In fifteen minutes we explored an old saying, talked about Tucson's zoo's peacocks, whose feathers did look just like eyes at the end, and learned a little geography.

It was time to move on to kindergarten, and Caps for Sale.  It's a book I enjoyed as a child, a book my children adored, and it is now a book that several kindergarten classrooms filled with refugee children can laugh at, too.  "You monkeys you... You give me back my caps" is a refrain that kept them giggling and engaged.

Then we turned to Grandfather Twilight, and as I turned the pages more slowly they drew nearer and nearer as the old man's journey through the glade and out to the sea quieted them.  They murmured about the beautiful illustrations, just like their older schoolmates. They saw how the pictures told the story, noticing that some of the pages had no words at all and it was still called a book.

Though they all thanked me as I left the classrooms, the thanks really should have gone from my heart to theirs.

Rest In Peace, Liz

She died doing what she loved, where she loved.

I can't get past she died.

She was my first Mom Friend in Marin.  Big Cuter and her son bonded over fat fantasy novels and Magic Cards.  Smart boys in a culture that valued sports over the life of the mind, they had feet firmly planted in both camps.  CYO rules precluded my son from joining his friend's team, but their rivalry played itself out on the courts at the middle school and the town park.  She convinced me, newly arrived from Chicago, that the boys would be perfectly safe if left alone while they played.  "You don't live in the city any more!" became a recurring reminder.

I believed her because we parented similarly; her children were as polite as mine.

Big Cuter and her son were tortured by the teacher from hell, and she and I stepped in to remedy the situation.  She took math and science, I took English and history, and we spent hours making that classroom resemble a place of learning, counteracting the teacher's need to diminish and demean the students.  She assured me that the situation was an anomaly.  She refused to countenance my desire to switch to a private school.  She reminded me that we could make a difference, and we did.

She decided that there were twins who needed to be friends with Big Cuter, and she made the arrangements so that could happen.  She was sharing her son's new friend with two other youngsters; it was the most generous gift we received in our first few months in a new town.  She truly believed that there was enough love to go around.

She organized incredible outings and events; her kids' birthday parties are the stuff of legends.  Only Liz could convince a group of moms to double as pack mules, riding our bicycles laden with supplies for miles on unpaved paths all the way to the beach.  Only Liz would think to use the middle school field for a birthday food fight.  Only Liz, of all the moms, stayed and played poker with the kids when Big Cuter's outdoor birthday party was rained out.

Only Liz......  there are so many Only Liz stories.

She rode her bike a gazillion miles, traversing terrain previously visited only by mountain goats and sherpas.  She swam, naked, from Tiburon to Angel Island, emerging victorious and unclothed, with a smile on her face.  There were others in the pack, but I'm certain that she had the biggest smile of them all.

She let me snuggle with her little one (who's a big one now), let me tease her about her perpetually bare feet, let her promise to always hug and kiss me, no matter how old she was, because Liz understood that I'd left all the babies I knew behind in Chicago, and that loss was tearing at my heartstrings.

I did mention that she was the most generous person I knew, didn't I?

And today, Big Cuter called to tell us that she is gone.

A world without Liz is a world which is missing a shining star.  She was funny and smart and direct and profound.  She grabbed the world by the throat and never let go.  She loved and was loved.  She will live on in our memories...... but damn, a world without Liz is a strange place, indeed.

Rest in peace, my friend.

A Bad, Bad, Cold

I am rarely ill.  Hearty peasant stock is how our family refers to the fact that TBG is laid prostrate with what barely bothers me.  If I do come down with something, it doesn't last more than 24 hours.  I go to sleep and wake up refreshed and healthy.

Would that that had happened last night.

Instead, I was up every three hours, medicating and whimpering and coughing and achy.  TBG knows not to disturb me when I'm in this state; where he requires hugs and rubs, I desire to be left alone. Don't touch my fevered brow.  Just let me wallow in self-pity, and then heal.

Unfortunately, I didn't heal last night.  I woke up this morning just as congested as I was when I lay my head on my pillow last night.  I'm alternately sweating and freezing.  I can't fall asleep, but the words I'm reading in the library book are swimming in my brain, not really making connections.  I keep forgetting who the characters are.

I've picked up the pre-ordered groceries.  I'm doing laundry.  These chores were required by time and circumstance.  The fun stuff I had planned - squats at the gym, re-potting the tulip bulbs I'd forced inside, organizing the yarn and its concomitant supplies, sweeping the clutter off the desk in hopes of replacing it with some kind of order - all that is still available to be done.... if only I could muster the energy.

So, the sun is shining, the pool is welcoming and I'm slumped on Douglas-the-couch, coughing and sniffling and generally feeling wretched.  I don't think it's the flu or anything more than a common cold.  I don't think I'm going to be sick forever.  I imagine that tomorrow or the next day I'll wake up with a clear head and all the energy I need to do what I need to get done.

Unfortunately, right now that's in the future.  My present consists of super soft Kleenex and a good book I'll probably have to reread if I want to remember any of it at all.

Thanks for listening to me whine.

Blank

That's what I am.  Blank.
Empty.
Scraped raw.
The tears have stopped but the ache inside is pulsing.
I could take another Ativan.
I could wallow in the misery.

No.  I will not allow him to win.

I will stop trying to let my fingers figure it out on the keyboard, because I am tired of dwelling in this space.  I am going to the garden store and I am going to buy pretty things and then I am going to play in the dirt.

I'll be back on Monday with a lighter heart.

For now, hug those you love and hold them tight.  Tomorrow is not promised; make the most of today.

And, Once Again, PTSD Rears Its Ugly Head

It was a bright, sunny morning as the stranger and I left the gym.  I was feeling strong.  I was walking well.  I listened as she retold my story through her eyes - watching me over the years in the gym, seeing me on tv, thinking of and praying for that sweet little girl - and then I drove home.

Something was nagging at me, so I called Little Cuter for a pick me up quickie, bur she was debating taking a long, healing nap beneath her desk, battling a-flu-that's-going-around, and I fell quickly into Mommy mode.  Take yourself home. It's a public safety issue; you are infecting the others.  I never sent you to school when you were sick.... and YES you can have a note from your mommy.  TBG joined in at the tail end, just in time to hear about triumphs in the potty.

We hung up smiling, and though I pouted when I saw that the jump into the pool with my sweaty, worked out, self was thwarted by the pool guys, lovely gentlemen who had just started their weekly maintenance.  I took a shower, but it didn't do much to quell the tempest that was gathering in my brain.  TBG was napping; I came to Lenore the Lenovo to figure out what I was feeling.  I was just beginning to let my fingers do the walking when BLEEEP  BLEEEEP BLEEEEP interrupted my reverie.

We have had issues with both our alarm and our fire detectors; the sounds are the same.  With rising ire, I located the source of the noise, called the alarm company, and was walked through the dismantling of their box.  I unscrewed and unplugged and climbed up and down the ladder and then asked TBG a scheduling question  and all hell broke loose.

All those tears I'd been shedding as I started to write before the bleeping, all the missing Christina-Taylor tears, all the scared to death and cold on the cement tears, all the loss and the sorrow and the unfairness of it all came roaring out of the center of me.

Unfortunately, TBG was the only one around.

One good turn begets another, and soon we were competing for loudest and saddest and then, when he caught up to me and we both realized the cause, we were competing for emptiest soul.

We're fine, now.  Please don't worry, not even a little bit.  Unfortunately, we are getting pretty good at shortening the episodes and acknowledging the chemical reactions behind the metallic taste in my mouth from the adrenaline as the PTSD kicks in and the brain is overtaken but a force stronger than I am, most of the time.

It's not as bad as it could be. It happens ever less frequently.  It still sucks.

Enduring Characters

Phrynne flew off to America in her bi-plane, and TBG and I had to accept the sad fact that we had watched, albeit unknowingly, the last episode of the last season of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.
We were bereft.

We felt this way when Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night and then Studio 60 vanished after their short visits, too.  We kept the characters around, whether the television was on, or not.  We watched live sports and wondered what Dan might have to say on the subject, as if the fictional talking head might appear at any moment on our screen.

Well drawn characters do this to us, and they always have.  Just ask TBG about his burial plan; you can read the description he recites from memory in Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter:The Martian Series.  In the actual event of his death, wiser minds will surely prevail.  Still, I have no doubt that someone will mention the marble slab and the door, bolted only from the inside.

Jo March's adventures in writing sit in a small corner of my brain every time I type to you.  I see her, long dark hair pinned up, fingers blue with ink, knees to her chest in the corner, scribbling furiously. I can sometimes channel that energy.  My fingers fly over the keyboard, trying to catch up with themselves as my mind smiles at the words appearing on the screen.  I'm as happy to press Publish as Jo was to mail off her manuscript; she's often with me as I hit the final Enter.

And I remember how sad I was at the end of Little Women.  Sure, there were others in the series, but I wanted more of the very same.  And so, in the 6th grade, a friend and I started reading it in a continuous loop.  Three times.... six times.... over and over and loving it more with every iteration.  When the Cuters were small and requesting the same book over and over and over again, I took a deep breath, remembered the March girls, and started again... "Pickle things you never see....."

Right now two 30-somethings are intoning ".....like pickles on a Christmas tree!"  and that's exactly the point.  Good characters become part of the ongoing story line of our lives, even if those characters are green and knobbly.

*****

Waiting for FlapJilly to come back and read it, too!

Old Fashioned Gardening

If you are still freezing, caught in the grip of a polar vortex, I apologize for this post. We, the gardeners of Tucson, are in lust, thanks to the luscious, warm sunshine. With temperatures in the 70's and 80's, it's hard to stay inside.

Unfortunately, the garden store's offerings reflect the calendar more than my desire. They had petunias and calibrocha and violas and gazania, but they'd been there all winter, too.

I bought some, because I needed something to plant with my new bag of soil , but I left the nursery resigned to the fact that I would have to repot and deadhead and prune rather than plant anything new and exciting.

Kneeling on my Happy-Birthday-Mommy-present from many years ago, I swiveled around, in search of a trowel.  The first one (bottom right) had too large a scoop; the second one had a string through the handle..... 

and that was the end of gardening for a long while.

I sat in the potting shed and looked around.  My parents were everywhere. Not only in the ancient trowel with the Daddooooo-drilled hole-in-the-handle for the hanging cord, but in his ball peen hammer, my most used tool.

I tried to open the potting soil with the point of his weed killer, and I failed.

I took some time to admire the fact that he had painted not only the handle, but the business end of the tool, as well.  Was it Rustoleum or was it a flowering of his inner artiste?  

Probably, a little of both.  

 Having failed with the pointed pick, I resorted to G'ma's utility scissors.

They live in my potting shed these days, but anyone who was ever in my mother's kitchen remembers cutting chicken parts and opening jars with these scissors.  Sixty-some years old, and they made fast work of the built-to-last- bag.

My 25 year old bonsai shears have been repaired twice.

The kids and I bought the sign

 when we were in LA for Sammy's Daddy's Bar Mitzvah.  It sat proudly among the tomatoes and the squash and the lettuce on Long Island, and came back with me to California. Now, we are in Tucson, Daddy, and......

after a moment or two with one another.....

 I placed the newly planted (soon to be) hanging basket on the seat of the Testa Rossa he made so that Big Cuter could have his own Ferrari, and a fancier one than Dad's, at that. 

My father was everywhere, from the license plate he found for Big Cuter to the key chain he received in return.

I saved them both, just as he saved this ruler -

the one both my brother and I 

used in elementary school.

It was a simpler time; the smallest unit we needed was the inch.

Mail was delivered into this -

which also moved from Oceanside, New York to Tucson, Arizona

along with all those tools

and all those memories.

It may be too early to do any real planting, but it's never too early for remembering.

Tucson's Jewish History Museum

Scarlet and I went to the Grand Opening Celebration of Tucson's Jewish History Museum on Sunday.

 The building started life as the first Jewish synagogue in the city.

It went through several other uses, including a squatters' hovel, 

before being refurbished with beauty, outside

 and in.

We skipped the speechifying, 

opting to stroll the neighborhood of small, older, refurbished stuccoed homes. 

We did wait in line as small groups were admitted to the small sanctuary, 

once the home to Tucson's only congregation.

As anyone who has ever belonged to a modern synagogue will not be surprised to hear, 

it was soon joined by another congregation, made up of those disaffected with the first.

Time passes, but nothing changes.

The open room contains the bare trappings of its religious heritage,

pews and a small bimah (podium) which seemed inappropriate to photograph, 

and artifacts from the time of its creation.

The photographs and medals and letters were explained with modern technology,

but some items spoke for themselves.

This goat cart belonged to the family which spearheaded the synagogue's creation.

I'm not sure how it's relevant to being Jewish in Tucson, 

but I've never seen a goat cart and it made me smile.

 This manicure set journeyed from the Warsaw Ghetto to the desert Southwest.

In itself, it's not that much different from the tools used today.

The fact that they were important enough to be carried to freedom gave us cause for pause.

 These are the ladle and cup of a Jewish prospector.

Nicknamed The Wandering Jew, he established several mines in the area.

No, I didn't think about Jewish miners before this afternoon.

Their presence shouldn't be a surprise, but it's never been part of my narrative.

History is catching up with me.

Artifacts from 1976 made the curatorial cut. 

So did this picture drawn by another founding family member.

I'm not sure of its historical significance, 

but it fit right in with the rest of the afternoon.

It was a slice of Tucson, where the personal is lovingly shared,

an event filled with people of a certain age greeting even older friends, 

of multi-generational Hispanic families and of hipsters on bicycles 

and of children who wanted to be anywhere but there.

Parking was easy, admission was free, and there was a small but lovely gift shop.

We finished the tour in under an hour, and left with smiles on our faces.

It was totally Tucson.

Happy Birthday, G'ma

This is how she looked when she met my father.

This is how she looked when she lived in Tucson.

I never knew the first woman.

I enjoyed meeting the second woman, 

the one whose memory was failing but who always knew that I loved her.  

Some things never changed.

There was always a straw in her Diet Sprite.

Her purse was always over her shoulder (see blue strap, above).

She was cold, but never wore a hat - "I don't look good in hats!"

There were some things she never forgot.

Good grammar was imperative and bad grammar demanded correction

Yellow was her favorite color and  chocolate was her favorite food.

Wrinkles and sagging hems were unacceptable; she made her opinions known even when she was no longer in charge of choosing the outfits herself.

.

Today would have been her 93rd birthday.

I'd have brought her a prune danish for breakfast, accompanied by a gardenia corsage on the tray.

I'd have taken her out for a tuna-and-tomato-on-toast for lunch.

We'd have shared shrimp for dinner.

We would certainly have stopped for some chocolate ice cream along the way.

By the end, there were no books to share nor Scrabble to play.

There was her shell and her soul and the connection between the two became more tenuous with every passing day.

But now, on her birthday, I remember the smiles and the advice and the kisses.

Oh, the kisses.

She had the softest skin to receive my love.

I'm kissing the air right now, sending the love out into the ether.

Wherever she is, I know she's feeling it.

She's my mom.

We're attached, forever.

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

I hope that there is chocolate in heaven.

Campaign 2016 - A Sudden Realization

I'm actually interested in the outcome.

I watched in horror as the clown car careened on a path to self-destruction, finding that the RNC was not as terrified as I was, listening to them vowing to support the candidate, whoever he might be, even when it looked like the candidate would be Donald J Trump.

I watched and listened and I really didn't care.

I tried to justify supporting Hillary, even when I didn't trust her. As the long, oh so very very very long run up to Iowa and New Hampshire and when did it become a surprise that Bernie would do well in a neighboring state....  I still really didn't care.

I wasn't worried, after all.  Hillary was the only Democrat anyone could find and she handily trounced any and all of the clowns in nationwide polling.  I could vote without doing anything more than my usual exhortations to Get Out and Vote and be satisfied with the outcome.

Now, Ted Cruz is polling better than Donald J Trump and Bernie is a real presence.

Now, I have to pay attention.  TBG wonders if I would vote for Senator Sanders; "I'm certainly not voting for Ted Cruz!!"  The fact of the conversation itself was noteworthy.  There was tension in our voices.

Senator Sanders thinks my husband sucks.  He's tarring all of Wall Street with the same broad brush, and it's sweeping all nuance out of the way.  His position is actually one which TBG could embrace; he's in favor of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act (click here for the explanations) and begins his position paper with a phrase I've been hearing from my husband for more than a decade:

1. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger, riskier, and more ungovernable than ever(.)*

Why can't my open-minded, socially conscious, fiscally responsible spouse hear the argument?  I think it has something to do with the way the message is delivered.  In this instance, context is everything. 

I'm involved in the conversation, now, at least with the Democrats.  There is research to be done.  There are opinions to be sought and decisions to be made.  It's going to take time and effort and energy, all of which I'd hoped to avoid.

Still, as I told Big Cuter tonight on the phone, it's a nice problem for me to have, especially on the eve of G'ma's birth:

When I was faced with a ballot featuring unknown names running for a variety of judge-ships, G'ma's advice was simple:  "Always vote for the women and the Jews."

 I promise, Mommy, I will.

May We Have the Herding Group in the Ring, Please?

Waiting for the pool to warm up.  Cleaning the kitchen after an evening and morning of cooking and baking.  Folding towels while Perfect Patty folds the bike shorts (a talent which escapes me).  One's mind tends to wander while performing mindless tasks.  Supreme Court nominees, nail polish colors, flowers for the containers outside...... there was nothing of great import running through my brain until TBG changed the channel and there it was:  The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Little Cuter loved watching this.  We'd record it and spend hours reviewing the coats and the tails and the gaits.  Her green, hard cover Ultimate Dog Book was by her side; confirming the announcer's descriptions.  We had allergy restrictions so dander was always an issue, but that didn't stop us from admiring the collies and the St. Bernards and the other fluffy four footed creatures prancing on the green carpet.

Murphy, the world's stupidest dog, usually curled up on the couch next to us. He was sweet and loving but definitely not show dog material.  There wasn't very much going on behind his eyes, not much beyond sit-and-stay and Murphy-there's-cheese-on-the-floor.  G'ma tried to teach him to fetch, and after 45 minutes of laughing and coaxing and guffawing and tantalizing she threw up her hands and agreed : This is a dumb dog.

We loved him then and we love him in memory. That seems to be the dominant emotion at Westminster, too.  Everyone loves the dogs and the handlers and the judges.  There's no snarkiness, beyond reminding humans that terriers have minds of their own, and don't take kindly to intrusions.  "They allow you the illusion of assuming that THEY are living with YOU, when it's obviously the opposite."

There are Bergamasco, sheep herding dogs, who live in Brooklyn and poodles who live on hobby farms.  There are dogs created for specific jobs - Bouvier de Flandres as a milk truck dog - and dogs whose sole purpose in life seems to be to snuggle.  There are furry dogs who don't shed but need lots of grooming, and short haired dogs who freeze in Minnesota.

There are biblical dogs, like the Canaan dog, who were wild and then domesticated.  There's nothing extra on that breed; it's been fine tuned over the millenia.  That's not the only ancient dog showcased at Westminster.  The are records of Cardigan Welsh Corgis as far back as 1200 BC.

I want them all. Even the ones who shed, the ones who need lots of exercise, the ones who are determined to train me as I try to train them.  I'm not sure that I'd feel the same if they actually arrived om my doorstep, but it's shows like these that make me rethink my decision to pare down my responsibilities.  It would be nice, I tell TBG, to have four feet and a wagging tail to greet us as we came through the door.

He reminds me that we have a dog - our granddog, Thomas Hawkeye, the multi-ethnic rescue hound SIR and Little Cuter keep around for Grandpu to take on walks.  "When we miss him, we can visit him.  When we're done, we can leave."

That's our plan for now, anyhow.  After all, he's the perfect beast.

Cautious Optimism
by JPetersenPhotography.com