IF I KNEW YOU WERE COMIN' I'D'AVE BAKED YOU A CAKE
Ah, Cooking! Cooking is something I do, that I have not always done well...Cooking is an up-and-down sort of activity for me. Baking is too.
Cooking and Baking begins for girls at a very young age. My sister and I were in the kitchen all of our young lives. We were cutting things up and setting tables, and clearing tables, and washing dishes, and drying dishes. Sometimes we were boiling things. But, you know, I don't quite remember actual "cooking". My mom did all the real 'cooking'...
We could decorate the cookies or the cakes, but she baked them. I don't think she actually taught us cooking! Or baking! I may be wrong about that, but I'm sure I would remember...
Did I earn a Girl Scout badge for cooking or baking? I think I did! So, someone must have taught me something! But, Who? and, When?
It was not until Nursing School that I learned anything about cooking, and then it was in the Student Nurse Kitchen. I was known for making delicious meals out of nothing. I must have watched my mom. I was somehow able to take items like eggs...or, small slices of cheese and old rye, and some mustard, and make a wondrous grilled cheese sandwich! I felt quite capable of graceful survival in the adult world! There were always peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...tuna noodle/somethings...hamburgers...omelets....
So, OK then. Nursing School was over. I had a room-mate: Pamela. She had an apartment, and was going to marry Richard. To prepare for this domestic disaster, she and I were teaching ourselves to cook. Two brilliantly intelligent young ladies. For sure we could decipher recipes! But, No go. We were Burners. We both burned things that would have been edible. had we not burned them. We were usually reading books when we should have been watching the clock or the stove or something in the kitchen....
Now I moved in with Barbara. Pam and Richard had gotten married. I think she eventually cooked things...Barbara definitely cooked things. She was an incredibly eclectic and even eccentric cook. To this day, she definitely cooks the most unusual dishes possible. I was unlikely to learn cooking skills at Barbara's. I mainly ate vanilla/orange ice cream push-ups and steak, medium rare. Ice cream and steak were two foods I had never had enough of as a child. I was making up for that deprivation...and, salads. Lots of salads.
Next, I was with Robert and Tio Rico. We ate roasted potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted beef, boiled-to-death cabbage, salads galore, and roasted chicken...then I married Robert. We moved to Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, it turns out that Women Cook....
They cook and bake and preserve foods as well...three times a day, regularly. These Wonderful Women were fully judgmental of each other all of the time, but, for some reason they were charmed by my ignorance about Being A Good Wife. It fit their construct that too much education was harmful to a young girl. I agreed with everything they said. I suddenly wanted to learn Everything There Is To Know About Cooking And Baking and Preserving Foods.
This sudden conversion on the Road to Portage was a true Miracle! Here is what I learned:
How to cook all meats: roasting, braising, frying, sauteing, brining, smoking, salting, mince-meating: every which way to work with meats!
How to make butter, cottage cheese, farmers cheese, ice creams, sherbets, cream cheese, clotting cream, Scottish crowdie, potted cheese, basic fondue; egg and milk custards of every flavor...custard pie!... so many ways to prepare milk products!
How to bake unleavened breads: baking powder biscuits, Irish bread, cream scones, popovers, johnnycake, Boston brown bread, muffins, zucchini bread, banana bread, persimmon bread, corn bread, orange bread: all the breads people really love!
Leavened breads: mainly, plain whole wheat and plain unbleached flour white bread...: the fresh out-of-the-oven-must-eat breads!
Vegetables: fresh from the garden, in-season, root crops, and Wisconsin bounty: corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, pickle-cukes, cabbages, especially for sauerkraut: preserved in these ways:
Pickles, especially bread-and-butter and dill, piccalilli,dilly beans, chow-chows, crock pickles, beet pickles, icicle pickles, watermelon pickles, even pickled nasturtium buds!
Relishes: carrot relish, green tomatoe relish, raw cuke relish, horseradish relish, red pepper relish, zuke relish, hot dog relish!
Tomato catsup and Wisconsin mustard! ...Apple cider Vinegars and Tarragon Vinegar...how to make vinegar from the wine "mother"...
How to can Veges...tomatoes, green beans, corn!...How to use the pressure canner to can every vegetable in sight!
Drying veges: shelled beans, snap beans, beets, carrots, corn, onions, garlic, tomato slices, summer squash, winter squash, and pumpkin strips...
How to maintain and store vegetables in a fruit cellar, which had already been built into Bumpity Road Farm's infrastructure, where we lived...
How to use potatoes: scalloped, fried, boiled, mashed, pancaked, made into 'flour' as a thickening agent, potato kugel...How to crock-up and brew and store sauerkraut!
Most importantly: how to raise all these vegetables in a Garden!....when to till, when to sow, when to fertilize, when to harvest...even how to save seed!
Fruits! pies! let's start with Pies! : shoofly pie, mince meat pie, mock mince meat pie, rhubarb and strawberry pie, blueberry pie, strawberry, ground cherry pie, gooseberry pie!
Now, Jams: apple-ginger, apple-pear,, apricot, blueberry, persimmon, peach, plum, rhubarb, watermelon, pineapple, elderberry rhubarb, sour cherry, cinnamon ginger peach, rose hip tomato, damson plum, raspberry, strawberry, loganberry, black cherry, blackberry, fig,...all, wonderful jams!
Marmalades: green tomato, three fruit, orange, honey orange, orange lemon, lemon...Butters! apple, concord grape, dried fruit, gingered tomato, apricot conserve, pear, plum, peach, chestnut...the Relishes! Cherry, sweet fruit pickle, spiced crab apple, lemon....
Conserves: raw pear, raw apricot, apple pear, ground cherry...and even...Fruit in Spirits! tutti frutte, brandied dried fruit, brandied fresh figs, cherries!...
I learned all the ways to can fruits in simple syrups and how to can and process them...all the ways to dry fruit slices and leathers...all the fruits that could be stored in the fruit cellar...
Jellies: apple mint, mint, raspberry geranium, quince apple, tomato, sweet pickle, lemon honey, cinnamon, cranberry, green grape, lemon, wine, mixed berries, rose hips...
Fruit Shrubs! yum!...alcoholic and a lot like liqueurs! blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, angelica, current...and cordials... quince, elderberry, especially! Oh, and Ginger Brandy, Mead! and the best of all, Dandelion Wine...then, the basic grape juice, so fresh and sweet!...other juices: plum berries of all kinds, peach, pear, tomato, nectarine, apple...and how could I forget Switchels! those molasses and vinegar refreshing drinks served to quench the thirst of the farmers and their hands out in the fields!
Steamed Puddings! I still have my two molds...filled with fruits and nuts and flour...Figgy Pudding!
Jellos! molded with and without fruits and vegetables in layer after layer...Tomato aspic! Chicken aspic! Salads...iceberg lettuce and cukes and tomatoes from the garden with canned slices of beets carefully dried and laid on the top...
The Baked Goods: fruit breads sopped in brandy, apple pan dowdy, cobblers of berries, peaches, apples, corn breads, ginger bread, cookies galore..especially oatmeal and chocolate chip, toffee bars, persimmon cake, my favorite cake of all: Lightning Cake, upside-down cake, coffee cakes, shortbread, sponge cake, angel food cake, devils food cake, cinnamon rolls, bread pudding, rice pudding, and, the Family Favorite: Wisconsin Too-many-eggs Bumpity Pound Cake...divinity fudge, and the best old-fashioned white cake recipe in the world...! The frosting! the wonderful fruit fillings...and poppy seed filling...poppy seed cake...
I know this list sound quite impossible...but you are looking at eight years of incredible Teachers...the Women of Wisconsin. I believe the Women I learned to cook with, for they always cooked and preserved with me, to "show you, Katey!", were the Best of the Salt of the Earth...
I never cooked and preserved and baked as much again as I did in those eight years...I've written down all their recipes in two note books: Putting Things By, Tried and True, and Baked Goods, Tried and True...I have never forgotten everything they taught me...every food I ever cooked for the rest of my life so far, was influenced solely by them...my gratitude to them is forever...
....especially to Aunt Verna...she was a very, very tough old farm woman, who sorrow had made bitter. but, she was always wonderful to me, and taught me everything to do to be a farm wife! even how to milk a cow!...She is a 'story' all by herself....
I wish I could say I learned a whole lot more about cooking over the years, but I didn't!
I did learn many recipes for Mexican foods from the Migrant Worker Women in Cambria, Wisconsin, where I ran the Migrant Family Health Trailer for four summers in the 70s...
Also, in the mid-70s, I learned quite a few Cuban dishes from the Cuban Educators in the Bi-lingual Programs my husband-at-the-time directed in Chicago, Illinois...
Then there was Uma Balusubrahman, a SouthEast Indian woman who lived with us for a year with her husband, Balu, who taught me all her Punjabi curries and masalas and the cooking techniques of India...
All these cuisines are still at my fingertips whenever I want to cook them...they are natural to me now...
But, ah...poor baking! Baking takes Time...it really does...I filled my life with so many activities, with tons of work, with so much child-rearing, so much reading and school and avocations... that there was rarely time to bake... By that time the 80s came along: my oldest daughter became the Family Baker instead...and she's really good!
Then, an unusual phenomenon began, which has persisted into each live-in relationship I've had since...until this latest one...where I have to learn to cook again - all the time - cuz he doesn't...for years:
I married, or lived with, other people who also could, and who Wanted-to, Cook! They all Wanted to cook and bake Way more than I did, in fact...one husband, all the 80s...one boyfriend, all the nineties...and my last husband, since 2001, have all been Avid Cooks, and have all, to a man, taken over the kitchen for over Half of the Cooking! They all have deferred to me for special dishes here and there, and for Huge Feeds... but, in the main, they have become good cooks over time, and just...well...they were just...the Chefs. I am relegated to Sui chef most of the time...I am allowed to cook and bake occasionally though during any month, mainly for dinners with others, or for big events...and, of course, over the weekend when I'm home...
It was a bit nice not to have to cook all of the time...but I sometimes missed it, and could get back into it again in a flash...if my men would have let me! well...careful what'cha wish for! Now I want to just Write all the time! But! gotta cook Dinner!....
I have a Huge Collection of Cookbooks that I have read as if they were novels...Food Porn, my friend Lee used to call it...but, I love to read recipes and books about food, or see films about food, and so on....I watch the Italian Cooking Shows when I can on TV...Lydia is my favorite...I've taken to more Mediterranean cooking over time...Algerian, Italian, Greek...delicious, fresh foods...
Cajun and Southern Cooking...o yeah, joe! My dad's love for the foods of his youth in Louisiana led to my mom's cooking foods that I'm Sure no one else in St. Charles, Illinois was Ever cooking! She never taught us this cuisine, but I saw it prepared for all those years, and picked-it-up by myself here and there as the decades went by. I can turn out a Fantastic File Gumbo in about six variations. a good jambalaya. great black-eyed peas. fried-breaded okra and fried green tomatoes that will knock your socks off. collard greens and ham hocks that will make you beg for more. my sweet potato pie is passable. hominy grits are just normal, which is better than horrible, I guess. sometimes they taste horrible. I do poached eggs on them with a slice of honey-cloved ham. fried Southern-style chicken. praline ice cream. It's some spread...I once prepared this meal for a friend dying of cancer, at his request. I taught his kids how to do it. They chopped all the veges and meats and shelled the shrimp for the gumbo, and I taught them how to make a roux correctly. They were happy and so was he!
So far, that's how cooking has gone for me...It's odd. I still have the talent of my Nursing School days of being able to make a good meal out of practically nothing at all! It's a talent that has served me well, especially in the lean times, when all I could afford for the Kids and me was simple, nutritious foods. We all made it through, healthy, tho not indulged!
But then, that is probably truly what any 'good' cooking is all about...foods of any kind, any culture, prepared with love...
making love...out of nothing at all....
2/29/12
AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT is the second in the autobiography of a Catholic Girl in this series...it's a story of a time when I thought as a child, of course...but now I am a woman....
AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
When a form asks me, 'Religion', I begin to feel very irreverent, a bit claustrophobic, and a lot like running down a church aisle screaming while tearing off my garments. That is, trapped. which is how I feel in religious buildings of all kinds. I do not belong in them. so why am I here in one?... I write: 'Other' at times. Other times, I leave the space blank. And then, 'NA'. I have never written any thing disrespectful. I have never written 'too cowardly to write Heathen'...although, I probably should...
For many years, once I say that I have had no formal Church affiliation since I was nineteen years old, people have asked me, as if it was their right to know, "Do you believe in God?" I have actually answered, most of the time, that the "...question of God doesn't interest me. How I can live a good life every day, that interests me." It's been 'interesting' that most people do not carry on any further conversation with me after I say that. It's not the answer they expected, maybe. Or maybe, they just don't want to get into it: assuming I said I was an Atheist or an Agnostic, which labels I've never related to either... Several former students of mine are praying for me pretty regularly, as they believe I am a Heathen, a Non-Believer....I thank them for their prayers, without sarcasm or question...
I was raised from Day One as a Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church and my Family were one Family. No matter where we moved or lived, there was the Catholic Church, and we belonged. We were of the One, True Church. Other people were Protestants and Jews. They all believed in One God, like we did, but they didn't have the One True way to honor that God, and were not doing the rituals right and so on. We were taught this in all seriousness. This was very sober stuff. We were set apart, God's Chosen, not to be confused with the Jewish Chosen People, who had killed Jesus. Had there been any Jewish kids around, I never got to meet or play with them. Protestant Kids were also frowned upon, as not-being-good-influences. As I result, I was totally enamored of even the Idea of Jewish and Protestant Kids. They were the Exotic Humans in my limited world...no one ever even mentioned other faiths...Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Janes, Animists...all the other ways of approaching the idea of God, were completely unknown to me.
We were taught in school from first grade on, by Catholic Nuns. I was around Catholic Nuns until I was twenty years old These women had more authority in my life than my mother did. it was rare for her to discount any thing, any tiny thing, a Catholic Nun said. In charge of these Nuns, was the Pastor of the Parish. He was usually an older guy, who was thought of as pretty holy, on account of having been a priest for so long. Every Parish also had a younger Priest, who was kind-of in training. No matter how he really looked, he always was seen as handsome, in those cute robes and gear, and he was always "very modern", while the Pastor was "very traditional". The more liberal Parishioners loved and respected the younger guy; the more straight-laced and conventional Catholics loved and respected the older guy. Neither of them could do any wrong. This was known by everybody. World-wide now, it's been 'outed' that many of these men did a great deal of harm, psychologically and sexually. So did a lot of those 'Brides of Christ'...but, back in the day, they were all demigods to us!
We had "Catechism" class every day in school, right up through high school. This was a little, jam-packed Blue Book from out of Maryland, so, called: the Baltimore Catechism. In this book were all the Absolutely Factual Truths about the Catholic Church, that any Catholic should know, and they we kids had to memorize, slowly but surely. If items didn't make sense in this tome, we were taught that it didn't matter, since you had to accept every page and passage of that book "on faith". without 'faith', you were one lost soul, and certainly not a Catholic. There were lots of rules to memorize and practice faithfully as well...
Most of the rules involved Sin. Sin was largely a very long list of all the things you had to do, and if you missed doing them, you sinned. Then there was an even longer list of all the things that were absolutely wrong, which were totally Sins as well. You weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays. Eat any food on Sunday before taking Holy Communion. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Have 'Impure Thoughts'. Do 'Impure Things'. Disobey your Parents, Priests, Nuns, Teachers, Cops, American Authorities of Any Sort, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, the Bus driver, or the Babysitter.
You were not supposed to eat too much. drink alcohol. smoke cigarettes. be out past the time your parents said. play with non-Catholic kids. listen to rock and roll or R& B. You couldn't study Communism. You could learn a little about Socialism (mainly the rights of workers). You were never going to use Birth Control or have sex before marriage, so there was no sense in learning about it. you were only going to have lots of Catholic babies, so there was no reason to ever consider dating any body of any other Faith on the planet. You were not going to have 'impure thoughts' ever, do matter how your hormonal-driven body was feeling about it, so masturbation was not going to happen. Jesus was especially interested in Pure Virgin Young Ladies.(no sense asking about Mary Magdalene....)
You were obviously never going to murder anybody, especially conceived Catholic fetuses, no matter what. You were only going to murder people in Just Wars, like WW 2 and Korea, wars the Church approved of. You were never going to learn the history of the Catholic Church except as a wondrous Story of hundreds of very holy people, called 'Saints', and pretty holy people called 'Blesseds'...any brutal years of Roman Catholic Control over the peoples of the earth, like the three hundred plus years of the Inquisition... The eight hundred plus years of the Dark Ages..the looking-away during the Holocaust... the regimes of corrupt Popes and other Clergy and Catholic Kings... the reasons why Protestantism began anyway...these incredible historical episodes were discounted and sometimes even denied. The Church, through the Pope, was actually 'Infallible' in matters of anything of religious context. By extension, I guess, The Church had tons of rationalizations to justify these periods of Religious Oppression...anyway, we were not to be that interested in learning about all of these barbaric episodes in the RCC reign. To question the Church was to show a really sinful lack of Faith. And, Faith was blind, deaf, and dumb to all worldly concerns, history, values, mores, and traditions.
So, that's just how it was. I'm not going to argue it. it's just the way we were taught, from grade-school on up. Only, there are a Lot more Sins and Omissions....the List is endless, detailed, unsparing, and absolute....
Some of the Rituals were pretty cool though. They were, in the main, in old Latin, a lovely language, that spoke to how long the RCC had been around. Masses were daily, but you only had to go on Sunday. Not to go on Sunday was a 'mortal sin', just like eating meat on Friday. 'Mortal Sin' meant you would go straight to hell, no matter how great you had been before you 'committed' that Sin. It was irrevocable, except if you went to Confession, where it would be forgiven, as would be your 'veniel' Sins, the smaller Sins on the long lists...anyway, the Mass Ritual and the candles and the flowers and the hymns and the organ music were nice....
Special Ceremonies, like your First Holy Communion, Confirmation, and Weddings, were very ritualized with even more traditions, prayers, flowers, candles, hymns, and special outfits to wear. These events could take all day...Sad ones, like funerals and Good Friday (death of Christ on the Cross), Holy Saturday (Christ waiting to arise from the tomb), and Easter Sunday (Jesus Arises and goes to Heaven 'whole'), took days...Lent, before this last event, took forty days, in which you were supposed to 'give up' somethings...like dessert, or going to movies, or, you'd keep your room cleaner, or even 'fast' a bit....in honor of Jesus spending forty days fasting in a desert once....Christmas took about six weeks, from the beginning of Advent, four weeks ahead of Christ's Birthday, to twelve days after, when the Three Kings came to visit him with gifts and so on....
These Big Times were surrounded by smaller ritual times, like Saint's Days and Holy Days of Obligation, and, of course, every Friday not-eating-meat and Sunday Mass. Then there was Confession, which you had to do if you had committed a Moral Sin, and should-have-done if you were doing venial sins all of the time, which, of course, you were...You were expected to do a formula of prayers and a list of Sins for the priest, who would forgive you your Sins, totally! And, you'd have to do a Penance. A Penance was usually some prayers to say if your sins had been venial. a Lot more Prayers to say if your Sins were Mortal. Then your Sins, forgiven forever, would be wiped away, and you were told to "Sin no more." Which wasn't going to be to easy to do, since you always knew you could go back to Confession and the slate would be cleared again.
Extreme Unction is a Sacrament, like taking Holy Communion. Holy Communion means taking the Body of Christ directly into your self and your very Soul, through a piece of bread or a flour wafer that has been infused with this incredible Blessing by a Priest. You have to be fasting and reasonably sinless to take this Sacrament, and many Catholics love it. They also often check to see who is and who is not taking Communion at a Mass, for the obvious variety of reasons...Any way, Confession is a Sacrament too. And, so is Extreme Unction...
Extreme Unction is the one Sacrament I was considering doing up until the last few years. This one is a chance, while you are dying, or before you are possibly going to die, or, even after you're dead, to 'go-out' as a good Catholic This way, at the last minute, literally, you can get to go straight to heaven, or at least avoid hell, and wind up in Purgatory, where you'll wait for awhile, feeling pretty OK, until you can get into heaven somehow. Any way... If you can, you do one more Confession and take Holy Communion. Then very ritualistic and actually beautiful Prayers that sound ancient and giving, are said over you, and you are annointed with Holy Oil on your forehead and hands and feet. That's why it's the extreme, last, unction, anointing. Lately, I've decided to have family do somthing like that for me if I'm obviously dying, in whatever way suits them and me at the time...
One more thing I forgot, is Confirmation: that's when the Bishop, who's in charge of all the Catholics and Priests and Church property in a region called a Diocese, comes to your Parish and 'Confirms' a whole lot of kids, and some adults, who are also confirming that they will be Catholics, for life. You repeat a whole lot of promises to the Roman Catholic Church, about how you're going to be Catholic for the rest of your days. It's a serious business, but in my day, it could happen as early as age eight, and your white First Holy Communion dress was 'let-out' for you to wear again for your Confirmation. It was a little early to make such a serious choice, but, that's how it was done for me!
Benediction was a hugely important Ritual for me...Incense was a total high for me, and, I suspect, for many a Catholic child through, veritably, the adult population! the larger candles, the march around the church with special vestments by the priest, the more-altar-boys than-usual in attendance...it was a ceremony loaded with pomp and ritual and 'high' smoke and gold and Latin and Mystery...
Besides singing in the choir, which I loved doing (I would do anything, and I mean Anything! to SING!), Benediction was the bomb. I loved the experience, which was, of course, a trance state of the highest sort!
While I was at (Catholic) Nursing School as an older teen, I joined the Young Christian Nurses. This was an extension of the Young Christian Students, who I had belonged to when I was in High School. This had always been a chance to try to get into the more 'modern' Catholic agenda, about Workers' Rights, and Human Rights, and Catholic meddling in politics and so on. I loved it. It also was a great chance to meet Catholic guys who were a little more humanistic. I had several crushes and some serious flirtations, all very proper of course...and, in Nursing School, it meant a night out of the Dorm with no curfew! I really enjoyed the discussions for a long time. We more with-it young Catholics were going to change the world!....
Of course, I mean no disrespect. I really don't. It is not my business to be unconscious to the importance of Religion to so many of this dear planet's people. This little tale is just about exactly what the Catholic Church was like to me, as a kid from birth until age nineteen... At age nineteen, I walked out of my last Catholic Church service, a Sunday Mass...."When I was a Child, I thought as a Child..."
All my life I had been a True Believer. Christ, and God the Father, and the Mother of God, Mary...I truly loved them all. They were more than Family to me... only, at age nineteen, I realized that the Church was not the answer for me about, How do I live a good life? How do I live this one life of mine?....
I have been answering that question best I could, or, more likely, simply living with that question, all the rest of my days....the answers, any at all, have all been rewarding. The questions have not been tortuous. They are merely questions. Living life well and kindly, it turns out, is not truly that complex. Just, hard to do all the time....
For me, the labels have no meaning. I am a self, joined in humanity and culture and human habit to this planet for this lifetime. That is enough for me. For others, I know, much more thought and desire and effort and direction and faith are necessities. Not for me, that's all...
My idea of God is all of everything around me, living and non-living. this planet and its air and earth and water and life are enough for me...perhaps that is a Heathen, a Pagan spirituality...the name of the way to an idea of God,that is, what 'Religion' I 'belong to'...truly doesn't matter. Not for me....
I am on this planet for this one life.
I will be true to this one life.
I will join in compassion with all living on this one planet.
I will attempt to stay aware in this compassion. to be kind.
I'll do this life by love.
There. I see it:
My religious preference?
It is Love.
That's what I do....
When a form asks me, 'Religion', I begin to feel very irreverent, a bit claustrophobic, and a lot like running down a church aisle screaming while tearing off my garments. That is, trapped. which is how I feel in religious buildings of all kinds. I do not belong in them. so why am I here in one?... I write: 'Other' at times. Other times, I leave the space blank. And then, 'NA'. I have never written any thing disrespectful. I have never written 'too cowardly to write Heathen'...although, I probably should...
For many years, once I say that I have had no formal Church affiliation since I was nineteen years old, people have asked me, as if it was their right to know, "Do you believe in God?" I have actually answered, most of the time, that the "...question of God doesn't interest me. How I can live a good life every day, that interests me." It's been 'interesting' that most people do not carry on any further conversation with me after I say that. It's not the answer they expected, maybe. Or maybe, they just don't want to get into it: assuming I said I was an Atheist or an Agnostic, which labels I've never related to either... Several former students of mine are praying for me pretty regularly, as they believe I am a Heathen, a Non-Believer....I thank them for their prayers, without sarcasm or question...
I was raised from Day One as a Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church and my Family were one Family. No matter where we moved or lived, there was the Catholic Church, and we belonged. We were of the One, True Church. Other people were Protestants and Jews. They all believed in One God, like we did, but they didn't have the One True way to honor that God, and were not doing the rituals right and so on. We were taught this in all seriousness. This was very sober stuff. We were set apart, God's Chosen, not to be confused with the Jewish Chosen People, who had killed Jesus. Had there been any Jewish kids around, I never got to meet or play with them. Protestant Kids were also frowned upon, as not-being-good-influences. As I result, I was totally enamored of even the Idea of Jewish and Protestant Kids. They were the Exotic Humans in my limited world...no one ever even mentioned other faiths...Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Janes, Animists...all the other ways of approaching the idea of God, were completely unknown to me.
We were taught in school from first grade on, by Catholic Nuns. I was around Catholic Nuns until I was twenty years old These women had more authority in my life than my mother did. it was rare for her to discount any thing, any tiny thing, a Catholic Nun said. In charge of these Nuns, was the Pastor of the Parish. He was usually an older guy, who was thought of as pretty holy, on account of having been a priest for so long. Every Parish also had a younger Priest, who was kind-of in training. No matter how he really looked, he always was seen as handsome, in those cute robes and gear, and he was always "very modern", while the Pastor was "very traditional". The more liberal Parishioners loved and respected the younger guy; the more straight-laced and conventional Catholics loved and respected the older guy. Neither of them could do any wrong. This was known by everybody. World-wide now, it's been 'outed' that many of these men did a great deal of harm, psychologically and sexually. So did a lot of those 'Brides of Christ'...but, back in the day, they were all demigods to us!
We had "Catechism" class every day in school, right up through high school. This was a little, jam-packed Blue Book from out of Maryland, so, called: the Baltimore Catechism. In this book were all the Absolutely Factual Truths about the Catholic Church, that any Catholic should know, and they we kids had to memorize, slowly but surely. If items didn't make sense in this tome, we were taught that it didn't matter, since you had to accept every page and passage of that book "on faith". without 'faith', you were one lost soul, and certainly not a Catholic. There were lots of rules to memorize and practice faithfully as well...
Most of the rules involved Sin. Sin was largely a very long list of all the things you had to do, and if you missed doing them, you sinned. Then there was an even longer list of all the things that were absolutely wrong, which were totally Sins as well. You weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays. Eat any food on Sunday before taking Holy Communion. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Have 'Impure Thoughts'. Do 'Impure Things'. Disobey your Parents, Priests, Nuns, Teachers, Cops, American Authorities of Any Sort, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, the Bus driver, or the Babysitter.
You were not supposed to eat too much. drink alcohol. smoke cigarettes. be out past the time your parents said. play with non-Catholic kids. listen to rock and roll or R& B. You couldn't study Communism. You could learn a little about Socialism (mainly the rights of workers). You were never going to use Birth Control or have sex before marriage, so there was no sense in learning about it. you were only going to have lots of Catholic babies, so there was no reason to ever consider dating any body of any other Faith on the planet. You were not going to have 'impure thoughts' ever, do matter how your hormonal-driven body was feeling about it, so masturbation was not going to happen. Jesus was especially interested in Pure Virgin Young Ladies.(no sense asking about Mary Magdalene....)
You were obviously never going to murder anybody, especially conceived Catholic fetuses, no matter what. You were only going to murder people in Just Wars, like WW 2 and Korea, wars the Church approved of. You were never going to learn the history of the Catholic Church except as a wondrous Story of hundreds of very holy people, called 'Saints', and pretty holy people called 'Blesseds'...any brutal years of Roman Catholic Control over the peoples of the earth, like the three hundred plus years of the Inquisition... The eight hundred plus years of the Dark Ages..the looking-away during the Holocaust... the regimes of corrupt Popes and other Clergy and Catholic Kings... the reasons why Protestantism began anyway...these incredible historical episodes were discounted and sometimes even denied. The Church, through the Pope, was actually 'Infallible' in matters of anything of religious context. By extension, I guess, The Church had tons of rationalizations to justify these periods of Religious Oppression...anyway, we were not to be that interested in learning about all of these barbaric episodes in the RCC reign. To question the Church was to show a really sinful lack of Faith. And, Faith was blind, deaf, and dumb to all worldly concerns, history, values, mores, and traditions.
So, that's just how it was. I'm not going to argue it. it's just the way we were taught, from grade-school on up. Only, there are a Lot more Sins and Omissions....the List is endless, detailed, unsparing, and absolute....
Some of the Rituals were pretty cool though. They were, in the main, in old Latin, a lovely language, that spoke to how long the RCC had been around. Masses were daily, but you only had to go on Sunday. Not to go on Sunday was a 'mortal sin', just like eating meat on Friday. 'Mortal Sin' meant you would go straight to hell, no matter how great you had been before you 'committed' that Sin. It was irrevocable, except if you went to Confession, where it would be forgiven, as would be your 'veniel' Sins, the smaller Sins on the long lists...anyway, the Mass Ritual and the candles and the flowers and the hymns and the organ music were nice....
Special Ceremonies, like your First Holy Communion, Confirmation, and Weddings, were very ritualized with even more traditions, prayers, flowers, candles, hymns, and special outfits to wear. These events could take all day...Sad ones, like funerals and Good Friday (death of Christ on the Cross), Holy Saturday (Christ waiting to arise from the tomb), and Easter Sunday (Jesus Arises and goes to Heaven 'whole'), took days...Lent, before this last event, took forty days, in which you were supposed to 'give up' somethings...like dessert, or going to movies, or, you'd keep your room cleaner, or even 'fast' a bit....in honor of Jesus spending forty days fasting in a desert once....Christmas took about six weeks, from the beginning of Advent, four weeks ahead of Christ's Birthday, to twelve days after, when the Three Kings came to visit him with gifts and so on....
These Big Times were surrounded by smaller ritual times, like Saint's Days and Holy Days of Obligation, and, of course, every Friday not-eating-meat and Sunday Mass. Then there was Confession, which you had to do if you had committed a Moral Sin, and should-have-done if you were doing venial sins all of the time, which, of course, you were...You were expected to do a formula of prayers and a list of Sins for the priest, who would forgive you your Sins, totally! And, you'd have to do a Penance. A Penance was usually some prayers to say if your sins had been venial. a Lot more Prayers to say if your Sins were Mortal. Then your Sins, forgiven forever, would be wiped away, and you were told to "Sin no more." Which wasn't going to be to easy to do, since you always knew you could go back to Confession and the slate would be cleared again.
Extreme Unction is a Sacrament, like taking Holy Communion. Holy Communion means taking the Body of Christ directly into your self and your very Soul, through a piece of bread or a flour wafer that has been infused with this incredible Blessing by a Priest. You have to be fasting and reasonably sinless to take this Sacrament, and many Catholics love it. They also often check to see who is and who is not taking Communion at a Mass, for the obvious variety of reasons...Any way, Confession is a Sacrament too. And, so is Extreme Unction...
Extreme Unction is the one Sacrament I was considering doing up until the last few years. This one is a chance, while you are dying, or before you are possibly going to die, or, even after you're dead, to 'go-out' as a good Catholic This way, at the last minute, literally, you can get to go straight to heaven, or at least avoid hell, and wind up in Purgatory, where you'll wait for awhile, feeling pretty OK, until you can get into heaven somehow. Any way... If you can, you do one more Confession and take Holy Communion. Then very ritualistic and actually beautiful Prayers that sound ancient and giving, are said over you, and you are annointed with Holy Oil on your forehead and hands and feet. That's why it's the extreme, last, unction, anointing. Lately, I've decided to have family do somthing like that for me if I'm obviously dying, in whatever way suits them and me at the time...
One more thing I forgot, is Confirmation: that's when the Bishop, who's in charge of all the Catholics and Priests and Church property in a region called a Diocese, comes to your Parish and 'Confirms' a whole lot of kids, and some adults, who are also confirming that they will be Catholics, for life. You repeat a whole lot of promises to the Roman Catholic Church, about how you're going to be Catholic for the rest of your days. It's a serious business, but in my day, it could happen as early as age eight, and your white First Holy Communion dress was 'let-out' for you to wear again for your Confirmation. It was a little early to make such a serious choice, but, that's how it was done for me!
Benediction was a hugely important Ritual for me...Incense was a total high for me, and, I suspect, for many a Catholic child through, veritably, the adult population! the larger candles, the march around the church with special vestments by the priest, the more-altar-boys than-usual in attendance...it was a ceremony loaded with pomp and ritual and 'high' smoke and gold and Latin and Mystery...
Besides singing in the choir, which I loved doing (I would do anything, and I mean Anything! to SING!), Benediction was the bomb. I loved the experience, which was, of course, a trance state of the highest sort!
While I was at (Catholic) Nursing School as an older teen, I joined the Young Christian Nurses. This was an extension of the Young Christian Students, who I had belonged to when I was in High School. This had always been a chance to try to get into the more 'modern' Catholic agenda, about Workers' Rights, and Human Rights, and Catholic meddling in politics and so on. I loved it. It also was a great chance to meet Catholic guys who were a little more humanistic. I had several crushes and some serious flirtations, all very proper of course...and, in Nursing School, it meant a night out of the Dorm with no curfew! I really enjoyed the discussions for a long time. We more with-it young Catholics were going to change the world!....
Of course, I mean no disrespect. I really don't. It is not my business to be unconscious to the importance of Religion to so many of this dear planet's people. This little tale is just about exactly what the Catholic Church was like to me, as a kid from birth until age nineteen... At age nineteen, I walked out of my last Catholic Church service, a Sunday Mass...."When I was a Child, I thought as a Child..."
All my life I had been a True Believer. Christ, and God the Father, and the Mother of God, Mary...I truly loved them all. They were more than Family to me... only, at age nineteen, I realized that the Church was not the answer for me about, How do I live a good life? How do I live this one life of mine?....
I have been answering that question best I could, or, more likely, simply living with that question, all the rest of my days....the answers, any at all, have all been rewarding. The questions have not been tortuous. They are merely questions. Living life well and kindly, it turns out, is not truly that complex. Just, hard to do all the time....
For me, the labels have no meaning. I am a self, joined in humanity and culture and human habit to this planet for this lifetime. That is enough for me. For others, I know, much more thought and desire and effort and direction and faith are necessities. Not for me, that's all...
My idea of God is all of everything around me, living and non-living. this planet and its air and earth and water and life are enough for me...perhaps that is a Heathen, a Pagan spirituality...the name of the way to an idea of God,that is, what 'Religion' I 'belong to'...truly doesn't matter. Not for me....
I am on this planet for this one life.
I will be true to this one life.
I will join in compassion with all living on this one planet.
I will attempt to stay aware in this compassion. to be kind.
I'll do this life by love.
There. I see it:
My religious preference?
It is Love.
That's what I do....
2/28/12
KEN...is about Sword Practice of Japan...which I now no longer practice...having changed-over to the Practice of the Pen...Here is the Key to the words in the piece: KEN is sword practice...KATANA is the sword...MICHI is a way - The Way...RONIN is an unemployed Samurai "adrift at sea"...BUSHIDO is a Warrior Way: determined will to die...HAGAKURE means "Hidden Under Leaves": a mid-17th century military document about going beyond life and death...BUN BU CHI means the sword and pen in accord...SHIINAI indicates bamboo slats and leather sword... and BOKKEN is a wooden sword...
KEN
the question
when there is no other answer
Way of Ken
Brush on Paper moves
the ego
shatters
Ronin
seek the inner seas
Bushido
determined to die
the strike
the struck
Hagakure
Shinai
Bokken
in one heartbeat
Katana
Brush
all rise in Michi
Bun bu chi
One
2/27/12
THE WAYS OF HERBS AND THE BLACK OBSIDIAN is a simple article about using 'Simples' - the Herbal Medicines and Treatments that grow in your own region of the planet...to heal...to help...to cure: to make Life a Better Place for you body when it needs help....
THE WAY OF HERBS AND THE BLACK OBSIDIAN
"I take my place with the Woman in the West"...this line is from a song of the late Kate Wolf's, a song honoring the four directions...I love the the lines of this verse from that song, that ask, "Show me...the Way of Herbs, and the black obsidian"...for the "medicines" of my childhood through this very day have been the 'Simples', the farm-wife herbs, the 'old-wives'-tales herbs of the European tradition. Spreading seed and folklore, by wind and by anecdote, these herbal ways, and the herbs themselves, traveled and covered the whole colonized continent I live in.
I am grateful that they did, for had they not, I may not be well and alive today...
I was a "Navy Brat"...that is, I spent all of my early developmental years as a child of a naval officer. We traveled all over the USA to bases on which my Dad served, and all of our medical care came from those excellent naval hospitals and clinics. This was good, and not so good. We had the best of technologies used for us, but many of these were new, post-WW2 medicines and procedures, in the civilian population...especially antibiotics. I was sick often as a child, and many, many high doses of antibiotics were used to cure me. I was only around ten when I had my first massive reaction to an antibiotic: Penicillin.
A hospitalization for respiratory distress was the result, with hives all over my body being my main focus: painful stuff! Oatmeal baths! Calamine lotion painted all over me! Fun!...Every antibiotic after that episode was a crap shoot! One made me vomit, a lot...another gave me blurred vision and a rash...it was clear that I was not going to do well with antibiotics too often...
Although my mother always gave us chamomile tea and honey with lemon when we had "colds. and Mellisa leaf tea with sassafras for fevers. and cod liver oil for vitamin A....we otherwise had no other medicines that I can recall, except these antibiotics...o, except Aspirin for pain every so now and then...
I was eighteen when I had a massive reaction to Penicillin. I had a urinary tract infection, a 'bad' one, that was cultured as being susceptible to Penicillin. My doc decided that my first reaction may have been dosage related. He decided to give me a small dose in the emergency room, where they could monitor me in case I had a reaction, and they'ed be able to treat it at once. I agreed. The infection was very 'bad'... So, they gave me the dose, and I sat waiting in the gurney...a nurse was with me...a very serious case came into the ER...the nurse asked how I felt...I felt fine..she asked if it would be OK to check if they needed her for the people coming into the ER - it had been a car accident...I said sure. She left...
a few minutes later, I was not feeling fine. I was feeling horrible! The room was closing in on me. I couldn't breathe! I scooted off the end of the gurney...and fell at once to the floor, straight forward, with a crash! The crash brought in the whole team, they told me later. I had 'coded'. In other words. I was dead. They were on me at once, and shocked my heart back into life and gave me breath again. I woke up with tubes in every which way all over me. The doc came in and looked at me soberly. "You're very allergic to Penicillin.", he said gravely.
So, what were my options for treating infections going to be?...I decided to try to go the herbal medicine route as much as possible...to use alternative medicines and treatments and preventive substances and techniques as much as I could. This wound-up being a Very Good Call...most of my life, these practices have served me well...except when I've needed surgeries...but this is a bit of the story of how these wonderful plants, these herbs, have aided me and even cured me over the years....
Infections...fortunately, very few...the couple of further Urinary Tract Infections I ever had were treated well with goldenseal and cranberry juice...I made it a point Never to 'sleep' with any one who had ever had a sexually-transmitted disease, in case they were a carrier. If this sounds a little harsh, just think about the thought of an antibiotic killing you...sobers you up real quickly, huh! Though I have a positive PPD - meaning, I am carrying a walled-off TB bacillus or two inside of me somewhere, (having been exposed as a Public Health RN), I have kept my respiratory health as good as possible with prevention and immune-boosting herbs through the years...and have been lucky the little TB Devils haven't found lodging in me yet! The 'cure' is antibiotics...I need to avoid these as long as I can! I use goldenseal and calendula creams for local infections of skin and mucus surfaces, like cuts, and in the mouth and so on...so...so far, so good...
I raised my kids on all the herbs I was using as well...especially after they all had Penicillin for the first time, as little tykes..they all had mild rashes from the stuff...I decided to try to avoid antibiotics with them if at all possible. When they had ear-aches, they were treated with warm herbal oils, when they had 'colds', yes...chamomile tea with honey and lemon. fevers?...yes, mellissa and sassafras...the whole routine I practiced for my self...amazingly, they were very, very healthy for most of their childhood. Their food was simple and nourishing, and Western herbs kept their infections at bay....
Once, I decided to prove to an MD that my herbal ways worked as well, in the right situations, as his modern medicine could...maybe even better!
I had cut off part of the end of my left thumb in the jointer, doing woodworking...it was a clean cut, with healthy granulation tissue...I decided to treat it with raspberry leaves, comfrey leaves, and calendula cream. Here's what I did:
I washed the wound very well with soap and water. Then I packed the wound with clean raspberry leaves and held them in place to staunch the bleeding for a half hour. When I removed them, all the bleeding had stopped. I packed the wound with crushed boiled comfrey leaves. then I applied calendula cream over the packing. Then I applied a sterile 4 by 4 with pressure tape...Before I dressed the wound, I showed it to my MD friend, who had come by to see Pop's and my Woodshop...he was very, very concerned.
He informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I needed a skin graft on the thumb wound, and infection control to prevent the graft from breaking -down. I bet him a year of one-lunch-a-week-'treat', if my methods didn't do a better job than a graft ever could. I bet him that there would be no scar...he took the bet, and made me promise to see an MD at once if the skin integrity got bad...I promised...
Of course, he lost the bet...Daily dressing changes and reapplication of calendula cream each day was all I had to do. I didn't even have any pain in the area. None at all! The comfrey leaves slowly flaked off. under where they had done their work, was pink, clean, unscarred lovely thumb! When I showed him my herbal magic cure, he just shook his head...and told the story to everyone who would listen! My skeptical Expert Witness!
To this day, I still use herbal tinctures and teas and tablets and capsules...Difficult as my health picture continues to be, the European herbs have been kind to me...I really believe they have prevented infections and pain and illness over and over again for me...that belief has been key to what health and energy I have...and I have had more than my share of good, healthy, energetic days!
I've read a great many books and articles on Herbal Alternatives and even took a course in Herbal Ways and Practices here and there in California...I learned enough to know: use what grows in your part of the world...and use only clean, healthy, safe plants and their parts....
A word about the Obsidian in this story...I see that deep, black-glassy mineral shard as all the harm that could come my way...a metaphor for all the pain and illness and roads to death that have happened and are possible in my life, as in any human's....
The Herbs I see as the green hope of Life, standing warrior-like against the sharp shards of darkness that profound disease and pain could bring. Living Breath Of Heaven in each leaf, each stalk, each seed, each twig...
Gratitude is what I feel...
To the Way of Herbs -
Sisters Standing with me...and, as an all too earthly counter-balance...
The Black Obsidian....
2/24/12
WHATEVER SHE HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR HAD BECOME ANARCHY is the longest short-story I ever had inside of me until SAM CULLISON'S FINE MIND came along, much later...it's bleak but hopeful...in the ways life can often be...it's futuristic in a very familiar way, as you'll see...it's how I would like to be if life was like it is in this future...that may never be...I certainly hope....
WHATEVER SHE HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR HAD BECOME ANARCHY
Whatever she had been looking for had become anarchy. It was all falling apart, and everyone knew she was too old to be of use, even if she knew that wasn’t true. She could do wound care, and she could teach people to take care of the wounded. She could give the shots, if there were any shots. No one seemed to know if there would be any sterile bandages and tape and so on. She could boil the cloths and tie them. Just kept repeating: you could boil the cloths. Someone shouted at her about how there was not gas or electricity, so how could you boil water? There are other ways to get fire, she said patiently, you need to have things really clean. Well, it wasn’t going to happen, that was for sure. Just a lot of shouting orders and gunshots and chaos. This was all no good, no good. Useful stuff was being broken and people were running off with guns and knives and food and sodas. Broken glass everywhere. Bodies, some still alive, laying about everywhere. Helicopters with people shooting out of them, or falling out of them. She huddled in with her grandson in the shipping box with a blanket she had wrapped around him. He had peed on himself and so had she, so they were cold anyway, and would be again. This was America. This was not ever supposed to happen except in some movie. She had never watched such movies in the past. Too bad, maybe she could have seen some tips for survival. It was night though, and they did have a milk carton of water and a box of crackers left in the back pack. Maybe the morning would bring relief, or safety, or work, or sanity. But, probably not.
Now it was morning again of a great many days later. She was walking alone, because somebody had come and actually snatched her grandson: twelve years old, but small for his age. Still, they said, Get u p and fight. Then he was gone. She was walking with the other people who were considered useless, although hardly any one was doing anything remotely useful anywhere around her that she could see. There was no guard, just you got shot if you moved out of this line, it looked like. It was something to do, the walking. Everyone was just peeing and excreting while they walked, more or less, so everybody was filthy and smelly together. Water jars were passed up and down the line, and there seemed to be enough, but not clean at all. No food, of course. So people were dying right there, or at least falling over and getting pushed off the road. What a nightmare. What a nightmare. That was all that was going on in her head. Nothing to notice around a person: everything looked dead or dying. The sun was warm and the wind was cool, with a bit of soot in its eyes, as they used to say. No one was talking at all, really. That was a bit surprising. Well, maybe not. Being curious didn’t look like it would get a person an answer. An answer from what person? No questions seemed to fit the situation at all, anyway.
It wasn’t a good idea to think about where all her family and the friends, work folks, kids…where they all were. Survival is very limiting, really. It’s down to you and water and some food and not falling down. Food didn’t seem to actually be around. What happened to food anyway? Why were they all expected to march ahead…to where? For what? It was getting on to night. She reminded a person who looked like a guard that she had been, was, a nurse. Was there some First Aid station she could work in, or something like that? For the first time, there was an answer: Yes. What could she do? She told him about the dressings, wounds, cleaning people and so on. He said to come with him ahead, so she trotted behind him as fast as she could. Up ahead was a big tent with a few people in it, all clothed fairly clean considering the condition of all the marched people in line. The guard said, She’s a nurse and shoved her, actually gently, forward. Come with me a small young woman said. What can you do? she told her. The small woman said to clean herself and eat some bread and change her clothes to a sort-of tee-shirt with a blue circle on it like a wrong-color bulls-eye. She did those things in a dream state, trying not to look hungry or tired or weirded-out, all of which she sure was. In the tent it was warm with some kind of generator lights, and some care was being done for people who were not from the line. Maybe they were important people for some reason. Maybe they were some enemy, but who was the ‘enemy’ anyway? She had no idea at all. She washed her hands well, and felt suddenly like it was all a movie set, like Dr Zhivago when Laura goes to work as a nurse on the front and so on. Nothing at all was feeling real. It occurred to her that she hadn’t smelled anything, really, in some time. The foul smell was gone, and there was really no antiseptic smell either, or smell of blood or illness – just a fresh air – no, really, no real smell at all. It was quiet too. The shuffling line outside made a soft swish sound inside. Those miles of people were the ones who were not going to make it first. Was she safer than they were? The question didn’t seem very important.
Now she was given a cart that had gauze and wash clothes and water basins and disinfectant (the bottles said) soap and adhesive tapes of several sizes and paper disposal bags and plastic disposable gloves. All these rows of patients have dressing changes every three to four hours, she was told. They all need to live for The Plan. Be sure not to infect them, and report if they are infected. She nodded and began the work. There were about fifty of these patients, and all of the wounds were clean and seemed to be surgical lacerations: clean cuts, about six inches long and all butterflied with clamps or coarse sutures or staples. They all were pink, healthy skin with a little lump under them, which she was told was an ‘Insert’ that she was to wash ‘around, not over’. All the patients were conscious, but very quiet, with their eyes closed and regular breathing, as if they were sleeping. They were of all ages, and the ‘wounds’ were all in their upper arms, sometimes one, sometimes both arms. The beds were clean and white, and no patient seemed to be restless or taking fluids or foods, or peeing or excreting in any way – not even sweat. She began to sweat a bit, and wondered more, what world was this, and why was she still part of it all....
She remembered , suddenly, then constantly, her first real love: her first kiss just before her dad came to pick her up at the high school after the musical rehearsal…well, the first kiss that had really mattered – an electricity of feeling…and hugs and kisses – innocent in an oddly old-fashioned ways…the sparkle of the nights…the golden prom…canoeing on the living, silver river… singing and playing music together…his banjo, his silly jokes, his kindness…the feeling of belonging….how that had all been, near to fifty years before, was amazing to her in the clearness of memories. Hundreds of kisses and intimacies and “relationships” and children and stepchildren, and grand children and step-grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren had not changed the charge of those first encounter s with a true love. They had been too sweet and new to even make love: that was it: they were always new and unbroken to each other, because they had been, somehow, so pure in their wonderfully beginning-of-love. It was, then, no surprise that they were always still in love in their memories, with no ugly realities to disturb the shine of the dream. Now, in these terrible times, she was suddenly so hungry for that purity of new beginning that could not and never had been quite the same again. They would have been divorced by now, of course…the realities, the every day, would have taken them down that ordinary road. Still, she wished he was with her now. Somehow, it would have given her real hope in the humanity all around her…that such a love could have been…that she had left him so long ago, and yet, had never ever left him at all…and she needed him now…and that need was not going to be met ever again....
There had been so many loves, and so many fussings and fuming about ‘relationships’…it was all the kind of humanness you could be when you had enough to eat and to drink and clothes and shelter – those four “musts” that hundreds of millions of folks just had never had and sure never would have in a world like this one, where she was, a dressing-changer for dressings in a sci-fi flick from olden times. It was clear that this couldn’t be real, either. It was off kilter, these clean, warm people and the inserts under the unconscious skins…there was certainly no vibe of caring or compassion or kindness or even pity in this tent-place. Who were these ghouls anyway? Fear kept her quiet, and memories, she hoped, were going to keep her sane....
She had lost the last husband (she came from California, where people had more than two husbands more often than in other states, it seemed), to plain old death from old age. That muted that sadness a bit…he had certainly been the best of the bunch. They had actually had a really ‘good’ marriage, given the huge invasions of viruses all over the planet, taking out folks faster than they could identify and stop them. Damn parasites, that’s all they had been, and the planet spawned them like fish eggs over their hosts and hosts of humans in a human sea of, well, just too many, too many…humans….It almost seemed OK to have thousands going down to “flues” every day and everywhere…as long as you didn’t know any of those poor souls. Then it turned out that they were the lucky ones....
The killings of people for food weren’t new – that was old history. The bombing of hundred of blocks of old and young people who were just there, not aggressing anyone…that was older even still. To lose all your past…all those you loved: to have so many people…into the thousands daily…all losing their loves and their pasts all at once…that, now, was a very terrible thing…so many loves, and they were all gone, from the first to the last. There would not be another. She couldn’t imagine a context, a real place, where love could be in this morass of fear, and death, and constant pain. No more kisses, canoes on sweet rivers, dinners by candlelight, intimacies shared....
She rubbed her eyes quickly and was almost angry. How stupid to be thinking of love when all around her very self were strange unknown possibly-humans, but who could tell...She was changing the dressings by the dozens every hour – for how long? There were no clocks. Everybody in the Tent place seemed unhurried. No one mentioned in passing that they were hungry or thirsty or in need of any rest. She was! Forcing a smile that she hoped didn’t look like a grimace, she touched the sleeve of one of the medical-appearing guys who looked most normal. I’m thirsty and hungry, she said softly… Food and water are in the other tent! (He looked surprised). She left the tent, wondering if she would be shot, but nothing happened. No one even looked up at her. The silence was really most strange of all…The line was gone completely outside of the tent. There were no bodies or cries for help. Just silence all around.
In the other tent, there was a table and many chairs. Some of the tee-shirted people were eating and drinking slowly and quietly. No one looked at her at all. The table had a huge pot of broth, warming on a few small flames, and loaves of normal, everyday wheat bread. There was water that looked clean which was miraculous all by itself. There were cups and bowls and spoons of paper and plastic, and bins to throw them away in. It was so strange to think that the lines of people had all staggered past this food and water, not knowing it was there… She drank and ate slowly like everyone else was, mainly so that she wouldn’t up-chuck all these riches! It was the children she really could not think about… and her old loves, all good, some wonderful. She could think about them in the abstract, somehow, because they were all old or dead now. Like herself, they had lived lives, where at least they had been some idea of human, had a chance to love. The many, many children dying all around: Her heart broke over and over again for them all without end. Her heart would soon be sand. The children had no future here and now…she had no future here and now.
Hours passed and days passed….at times more people pass by. Sometimes, one would look into the tents with an ancient curiosity…wondering how and why and, even, whether they were there. The people saw them eating, but didn’t even try to get at the food…the guards were too many. The risks, impossible. And the food was fresh. She ate at least one time a day. Sometimes two times a day…how? No one asked. No one asked anything….she certainly did not. Death and questions seemed to go together…there was no reason to try to know anything.
Surely there would be someone she knew, someday, who would pass by, and would see her and call her name….but it did not happen. Day after day...
Then, of course, life turned on a dime, as it often does....
She was approached by the ‘Head’ of the Team, the ‘team’ she was working for, it seemed. He was not an unkind man, and he had spoken to her often, the oddly formal chit-chat that told her nothing, as it apparently was meant to do…he told her that she and he and several other ‘medical workers’ were going to be on a ‘mission of mercy’ to a nearby camp. There were prisoners of war there, he told her. When she asked soberly which ‘side’ was which, he only smiled sadly, saying, that’s classified, missus…she did not ask again. They left that very day, with medical and other supplies packed and carried by some of the men in the old way, by hand.
Out into the road they went. She could help feeling apprehensive and unhappy. There had been such strangeness and no human comfort in the tents, but the road was the most insecure place on her earth left, and no one seemed any more secure on it than she was….the road meant being alone, even with her comrades of the tents on the road with her.
Nothing they passed was familiar. No buildings were standing intact. Very little useful was left anywhere, yet there were scavengers everywhere, picking up nothing at all. No one looked necessary. No one bothered them at all. The guards saw to that. Simply being well-fed put them apart from all around them. They were alive. The others were the walking dead. That was now a ‘given’ in life…if this was life....
The other camp was very far away. It had not been clear how they arrived at the right place to be, since it was now dark. No one had lights or torches or anything. Still, there was another camp, much like their own, so far back down the road. The people at this camp looked the same as their people. So, was this the ‘enemy’? or, were these friends? It did not matter, of course. She was going to be caring for endless wounds, and no one would question her usefulness. That was her work now. Cleaning skin and bone and pain and covering skin and bone and pain to heal this person, then this one, then this other one….she began her work as soon as they arrived, and no one greeted her or stopped her.
A little later, and they sat to eat. The food was fresh and good and simple and small, as always. The Head sat next to her. You are tired, he said simply. Yes. Go to bed now. He was kind. She went to the women’s tent. On the way, she peered with old curiosity into the tents around her, simply from fatigue and habit. One had men sitting with guards. There was a face then. She recognized the face. From long ago. It was the face of her First Love.
Cold like ice arrested her unconscious footsteps. She looked into his face. And he looked into hers. Yes. They were in this place. They were in the same place. Both did not move one muscle. But agony paled each pair of eyes. A guard felt the pain and turned to her. Go to your tent, he told her. Yes, she said. I am. And so, she left for the women’s tent. There was hope now. And fear now. The fear was greater than the hope.
She had not slept well. The morning was like all the others. She did not pass the tent where her true and first Love was the enemy or a friend. There was no way to know. Only that he was there and she was there. There was no other truth than this…
The ‘Head’ sat down abruptly next to her, with his traY of food. There are enemy here, he said. And, there are friends. The men’s tent…friends. Prisoner of War. He didn’t move a muscle in his face. Still, the words stung with hope. Why are you telling me this, she asked. Then he smiled. It was the first smile come her way in a long, long time. Reasons of my own, he smiled. Not your business. Then, as abruptly, he stood up and walked away from her and from the tray of food. She ate the rest of the food off his tray.
The next day was odd. The ‘Head’ didn’t talk with her again. But, he did hand her a piece of paper with a time on it. 1AM. She didn’t know what he meant, but decided to be at the tent door at 1AM. It was no trouble. Women got up at night to go to the John all the time. They didn’t necessarily come back, not for a long time, or at all….he was there. Come on, he ordered. She followed.
Without hesitation, he went to the men’s tent. He spoke with a guard. Who went in. the guard came back with the man she saw as her First Love. It was him. Their eyes were locked into no time on earth. Come with me, the ‘head’ ordered them both. They followed him. Not touching. Into the forest, such as it was. Burned and wood carelessly cut. Deeper in. where it was not safe at all…take off your clothes, he ordered her true love. And then, he took off his. You wear mine, he ordered. And I wear yours. Shocked, the man she was loving again did as the ’Head’ said. Now, the ‘Head’ told him. Go to the medical tent. Sleep with them tonight. Do whatever they say in the morning. You, he told her. Go back to the women’s tent. In the morning, pack my gear with him for him. Go back to ‘Home’. No one will stop you. They know their orders.
You are going to be a POW? She was anxious suddenly. Yes, I will watch the enemy inside. You are to say nothing. When you do, either of you, you will die. Be together. It’s the better deal. He was gone as suddenly as they had come into the forest. She and her First Love stood. Helpless in their love. He took her hands and kissed them…she kissed him on his forehead. They walked out of the forest. Not a word said. They went to their tents. In the morning they went back to ‘home’. There, they went into the hospital tent, where she worked. Without a smile, the new ‘Head’ welcomed them. You will work together. He told them. Teach him what to do. Report to me after eating time.
They did as they were told. He learned rapidly and well. Their hands touched gently from time to time. They feared to say a word, though no one seemed to even see them. Finally it was meal time. They both ate slowly and carefully, as everybody did. Then, he touched her hand. We tell them we are husband and wife he said, simply, and without a smile. Yes, she answered quietly. We go to the family tent then, he told her. She nodded. This was not the world they had been through. It was not the world they wanted. But somehow, they were together. This might be called hope…
That night was a beautiful night. It was not as they would wish. The tent was full of couples and children. Everything private was under blankets and was very quiet. But there was joy, because humans needed joy, and love, and she and her First Love needed each other for joy, for love. There was hope as well.
This is not a story that ends well. It is the end of a world, and end of a civilization. The end of cultures and, in time, of the race that was called humans…the implanted humans survived longer, or course, than the humans on the road. The enemy and the friend became interchangeable…life went on in strange and angry and subdued ways, as it always had…
And what of love? Love had always been human. She and he were only human, and frail. Love was strong between them, though. Death did not find them easily or take them meanly. Where there was love, there was always hope as well. It made no difference at all. Except of course, to those who will not stop love in themselves. She and her First Love were of this sort of human. They hoped. It was their way.
When they end came, they were, of course, together. They were, of course, old. They died within breaths of the other. The ‘Head’ honored them with a small ceremony before they became ashes. He spoke for a short time of their devotion and the work in the tent. He spoke of what being human used to be. They were among the last. Everyone listened without understanding, but with respect. This was a new time. She and he had become old. No one became old anymore. It was a new day. The humans went out into the sunrise that had always been, and went to work.
THE END OF THE WORLD AGAIN is a story about an old man's life and death...and what death means, as best as I can tell...I use the lives of two men who I've loved very, very much to create the one fellow...so it's fiction...only it's not....
THE END OF THE WORLD AGAIN
There is no sense to this. It's not about reality. It's about how the world comes to an end whenever some body dies. how it's not true for the rest of us. But: that one view of the world and the past and the present and the, also unreal, projection into the future: dies.
I wonder about such notions....
My friend Pete, my good friend who is dead for these two years now, is a great example of this line of questioning in my head....
Here's a bit of Pete's world...as I recall it, that is....others may tell you a different story....
Pete knew every thing there is to know about how to fix the world. he was a philosopher. a dreamer. and inventor. I used to watch him on his old wood shop machines. think about how they didn't have guards on them anywhere. how you could cut off a finger. which, in fact, Pete had, a few years back. his only comment at the time had been that it was lucky it wasn't a finger he actually needed. Pete considered himself a very lucky man.
He could bake bread. on account of, he had been a kid who volunteered toward the end of WW 1. They had put him into the Field Bakery. the shells would be whizzing by while he kneaded the dough to make the morning bread. he liked to say he was the last of the Dough Boys, because he had been a Dough Boy for sure. he still baked a loaf of very white bread, one a day.
Traditionalist. that would describe him. and Patriot would too. Especially in music. old songs. lots about America. his America, from way back... He played an old banjo that had never been worth much. now that he was dead, it was worth less, money-wise. only he could coax music out of that old hide. I had tried to learn on it. it sounded tinny when I plucked at it. in Pete's hands, it sounded like a trio on the TV. that good. Pete could play everything. blues. R and B. folk. jazz. anything before 1960. after that, he drew the line. The Decade The Music Died, he called it. well, there were hundreds of tunes before that. he knew them all by heart and hand...
Then, there were his gardening ways. traditional garden. lots of bug spray and herbicide spray and nitrogen spray, too. everything in rows so straight. plumb-lined them with chalk on the ground. all labeled. all weeded. all the time. watered overhead, 'the way God intended'....snails caught in beer saucers and dump all drunk to death into the compost the next morning. compost pile carefully tended. whole garden spic and span....tradition in the crops, of course....rows of carrots, string beans, sweet peas and shell peas. onions and radishes. ollala berries. raspberries. strawberries. potatoes. gladiolas. dahlias. roses. daisies. and a whole huge patch of saved Bantam Gold seeds of corn, dried on the cob in the wood shop. for the family Corn Feed late in the summer ahead....and, in the Greenhouse, orchids for his daughter...
The wood shop. he had never tired in the wood shop. he had been a Master of Wood since he had been a young lad. there were thousands of trees that had gladly given their warm and living trunks to Pete to cut into board feet for furniture and knick knacks and decks and porches and houses and doors and windows and lighthouse fences and boats and canoes. Pete could design and make everything with wood and he did. He milled and built and and designed and crafted four out of five days of the weeks for over seventy years....his hands were almost made of wood themselves, so close he was to woods...especially walnut and oak...
Sea Shanties. He recited and sang, a bit off key, Sea Shanties. He sang them to his grand daughter, who learned them all. He loved Gilbert and Sullivan too...especially the HMS Pinafore... he loved any songs about the sea. He loved everything about the sea and about boats...
He had been a nautical engineer...he built boats and parts of ships and propellers and hulls and masts. He built with the Sea Scouts and with cities and with the Navy during WW 2...he was happy building boats and repairing boats...he knew everything there was to know about boats and boat engines....
He had been raised on a island with a Lighthouse on it in the Bay where he lived. He knew all about the workings of The Light. how it functioned. how it was tended. how to keep all the glass clean. He knew how to keep a light house ship-shape in every way....he knew the birds of a Light Station. the loneliness. the beauty. the happiness of the work. tending the light. keeping the codes of a light house keeper. the log...
he knew the diaphone fog horn. the only man left on the coast of California who knew how to run it and maintain it and repair it. they video-taped him doing all the work needed to keep a diaphone fog horn going, so next generations could do it when he was gone some day. they held Fog Horn contests at the San Francisco County Fair (you heard me right) where people would get a day and night out at the Lighthouse in the Bay if they mimicked the fog horn sounds exactly right...
Pete got about a hundred folks interested enough to come and clamber onto an old whaling dinghy with him at least once a week, and go out into the harbor to the Lighthouse Island and refurbish every building inside and out, every piece of machinery, every bit of concrete, and every fence in sight. and, the diaphone fog horn. and, the entire Light itself...He led every work group and directed everyone until they dropped from exhaustion, at which point, he'd take the tiller and steer for home with his tired crew. He spearheaded the place becoming a Bed and Breakfast to maintain it's upkeep...in fact, its very existence....and he taught everyone which recipes to use to feed the people who paid good bucks to enjoy the little gem in the bay that he had created.....it's still there today...still thriving under his light....
Of course...this is only a list. a list of things he did....he cooked, for example, stuffed cabbages, when he had guests over for dinner...made divinity fudge that would make your mouth sing...he preserved berry jams and jellies from his garden....made 'abble skiver' dumplings with plum jam in them...what does that tell you about him? what kind of man was he, to do these things well?....
He had huge bar-be-cues in his back yard by the creek during the summer. especially on the Fourth of July. when he would also shoot off huge illegal fireworks up into the trees over the creek. thereby terrorizing all the neighbors and his guests....
What does that tell you about him?
He told poor but extremely funny jokes. many of them were politically incorrect. he did not go to church. when he got mad, he did not take God's name in vain, ever. he didn't tell jokes about God either. The Garden was his Church...when we would meet for pancakes, called "hotcakes" at seven in the morning on Sundays, we would eat, clear-up, and then he'd intone, "time for church! let us pray!"....and down to the wood shop or up to the garden we would go...to work!
He had loved his wife. who died mysteriously. he had loved many women before she died. after she died, he made friends with women. But she had been his everything... he was very, very kind to women. rarely judged women. put them mainly on pedestals of varying heights all of his life...was rarely upset with anything women did. considered them, even his own daughters, as being rather mysterious. not of this world in the same way men are...when younger, I had thought this old fashioned. the more I have known women over the years, the more I have come to believe and think as Pete did. he was right. besides, women, he had found, did not want anything but kindness and love. he knew how to give that with dignity and grace.He especially loved to have meals with women friends...any time...anywhere....right until the end of his days....
To be admitted, he was frugal about some things. about others, he was too generous...with his time, he was profligate. he always said yes to every request for help. to every invitation. to every one who would ask of him. He helped and taught and gave away to hundreds of people...and never made a fuss about it....
He had also, at one time, been a lithographer. a salesman. he had been a proud worker...then his work became unwanted and un-needed in the modern world. he lost his pride in work that took his creative edge away. Still, he worked and did his very best. and every one knew that. he was his own code of behavior. no boss could bully him into doing well. he did well, simply because that is what he always did. well as he could...
His relationship to men: business-like. He worked with men. He loved good workmen. Men who did not work were dismissed as "Bums". Color. Race. Religion. Politics. none of this mattered to him. the character of the man was all to him. A good man was a friend. A bad man was not...life on this level was simple for Pete.
He was a true Patriot. America was simply "right". the government was often wrong. Liberals were sometimes wrong. Conservatives were rarely wrong. Wars were right if America was in them. Right for our side. foreigners, as a mass, were wrong. individual foreigners were often right. strident folk of all ilks were wrong. reasonable people were right...life on these levels was simple for Pete, as well....
Does this tell you of his world? If I tell you that he cried for a long time when any friend, especially a woman friend, died....would that help you to understand him? When I tell you that he built a gate for Dixie to come through into his garden, to make it easier for her to bridge the space between them, would that tell you who he was as a man? If you saw him picking flowers to take to the hostess who invited him to dinner, would you find that poignant? would it tell you what he was thinking as he arranged them in the nice vase? If I tell you that he longed for true love all of his days, would you think that strange, for such a practical man? a loyal man. beyond belief-loyal...
And the animals! all of them, he called "Bums"...but this time, with a fond look on his face. he spoiled every animal that came his way...he was mainly a dog man...when his dogs died over the years, he buried them in his garden with little headstones... when he took in all the dogs of the neighborhood for visits, would you think him soft? how about the raccoons he fed in his living room?....the feral cats?....
Cutting wood for the fire. pickaxing holes to plant his lilies...saving the bulbs for his dahlias and glads each fall, for the next Spring...keeping a place in his "dessert pouch" for sweets after meals...hanging off the very most frail branch to reach a piece of fruit...winding up the compost turning barrel he'd devised...rigging and jigging and whirly-gigging wood to do whatever design he had in his head...piloting any boat in any sea with no more fear than any water creature...crafting thousands of hard-wood pens on his lathe for the "fighting boys in Kuwait" well into his mid-nineties...if you saw any of these parts, how would you...how could you...tell of the Whole?....
Music was his soul. Sometimes his soul was sad, and he didn't play his banjo or sing then....most times, though, he listened and listened to music...music beat with his heart like a blood stream...he could not live without music. When he played his banjo and sang: it was true Magic...
These are the questions I think about:
when Pete died, every single thing I just told you about him died with him....so...
did that world come to an end? just that one world?.....
the workshop still stands, but hardly any one works there any more.
his banjo sits unplayed in his middle-daughter's living room.
the garden is not as it was when he was it's keeper. tho everyone works in it now and again.
the lighthouse Bread and Breakfast is still going strong...his Monday Morning Crew still goes out in the old whaler and keeps up its maintenance regularly.
his daughters and grand kids and his few male friends and his many women friends still recall him with much love...
But, you see, don't you? A whole world...a planet of huge proportions...died when he died.
Every thought he ever had. each feeling. all the wonderful things his hands had done. his bright and bonny mind and every idea. design. plan. reflexion...all the music in his head and hands. all the skill. gone....
Given all the rains he lived through....given all the suns that rose and set in his life...
where did he go?
where did his world go?....
I am given to wondering about such things.
Pete would say that people who analyzed life were always asking "wither do I wander?", but that really they were just "wandering while they withered!" he found that notion very, very amusing. he would always laugh at that thought. as he would at all of his jokes....!
It is an amusing thought....really....
I find my self giggling at that thought....and now...
laughing...really, really...
laughing!....
There is no sense to this. It's not about reality. It's about how the world comes to an end whenever some body dies. how it's not true for the rest of us. But: that one view of the world and the past and the present and the, also unreal, projection into the future: dies.
I wonder about such notions....
My friend Pete, my good friend who is dead for these two years now, is a great example of this line of questioning in my head....
Here's a bit of Pete's world...as I recall it, that is....others may tell you a different story....
Pete knew every thing there is to know about how to fix the world. he was a philosopher. a dreamer. and inventor. I used to watch him on his old wood shop machines. think about how they didn't have guards on them anywhere. how you could cut off a finger. which, in fact, Pete had, a few years back. his only comment at the time had been that it was lucky it wasn't a finger he actually needed. Pete considered himself a very lucky man.
He could bake bread. on account of, he had been a kid who volunteered toward the end of WW 1. They had put him into the Field Bakery. the shells would be whizzing by while he kneaded the dough to make the morning bread. he liked to say he was the last of the Dough Boys, because he had been a Dough Boy for sure. he still baked a loaf of very white bread, one a day.
Traditionalist. that would describe him. and Patriot would too. Especially in music. old songs. lots about America. his America, from way back... He played an old banjo that had never been worth much. now that he was dead, it was worth less, money-wise. only he could coax music out of that old hide. I had tried to learn on it. it sounded tinny when I plucked at it. in Pete's hands, it sounded like a trio on the TV. that good. Pete could play everything. blues. R and B. folk. jazz. anything before 1960. after that, he drew the line. The Decade The Music Died, he called it. well, there were hundreds of tunes before that. he knew them all by heart and hand...
Then, there were his gardening ways. traditional garden. lots of bug spray and herbicide spray and nitrogen spray, too. everything in rows so straight. plumb-lined them with chalk on the ground. all labeled. all weeded. all the time. watered overhead, 'the way God intended'....snails caught in beer saucers and dump all drunk to death into the compost the next morning. compost pile carefully tended. whole garden spic and span....tradition in the crops, of course....rows of carrots, string beans, sweet peas and shell peas. onions and radishes. ollala berries. raspberries. strawberries. potatoes. gladiolas. dahlias. roses. daisies. and a whole huge patch of saved Bantam Gold seeds of corn, dried on the cob in the wood shop. for the family Corn Feed late in the summer ahead....and, in the Greenhouse, orchids for his daughter...
The wood shop. he had never tired in the wood shop. he had been a Master of Wood since he had been a young lad. there were thousands of trees that had gladly given their warm and living trunks to Pete to cut into board feet for furniture and knick knacks and decks and porches and houses and doors and windows and lighthouse fences and boats and canoes. Pete could design and make everything with wood and he did. He milled and built and and designed and crafted four out of five days of the weeks for over seventy years....his hands were almost made of wood themselves, so close he was to woods...especially walnut and oak...
Sea Shanties. He recited and sang, a bit off key, Sea Shanties. He sang them to his grand daughter, who learned them all. He loved Gilbert and Sullivan too...especially the HMS Pinafore... he loved any songs about the sea. He loved everything about the sea and about boats...
He had been a nautical engineer...he built boats and parts of ships and propellers and hulls and masts. He built with the Sea Scouts and with cities and with the Navy during WW 2...he was happy building boats and repairing boats...he knew everything there was to know about boats and boat engines....
He had been raised on a island with a Lighthouse on it in the Bay where he lived. He knew all about the workings of The Light. how it functioned. how it was tended. how to keep all the glass clean. He knew how to keep a light house ship-shape in every way....he knew the birds of a Light Station. the loneliness. the beauty. the happiness of the work. tending the light. keeping the codes of a light house keeper. the log...
he knew the diaphone fog horn. the only man left on the coast of California who knew how to run it and maintain it and repair it. they video-taped him doing all the work needed to keep a diaphone fog horn going, so next generations could do it when he was gone some day. they held Fog Horn contests at the San Francisco County Fair (you heard me right) where people would get a day and night out at the Lighthouse in the Bay if they mimicked the fog horn sounds exactly right...
Pete got about a hundred folks interested enough to come and clamber onto an old whaling dinghy with him at least once a week, and go out into the harbor to the Lighthouse Island and refurbish every building inside and out, every piece of machinery, every bit of concrete, and every fence in sight. and, the diaphone fog horn. and, the entire Light itself...He led every work group and directed everyone until they dropped from exhaustion, at which point, he'd take the tiller and steer for home with his tired crew. He spearheaded the place becoming a Bed and Breakfast to maintain it's upkeep...in fact, its very existence....and he taught everyone which recipes to use to feed the people who paid good bucks to enjoy the little gem in the bay that he had created.....it's still there today...still thriving under his light....
Of course...this is only a list. a list of things he did....he cooked, for example, stuffed cabbages, when he had guests over for dinner...made divinity fudge that would make your mouth sing...he preserved berry jams and jellies from his garden....made 'abble skiver' dumplings with plum jam in them...what does that tell you about him? what kind of man was he, to do these things well?....
He had huge bar-be-cues in his back yard by the creek during the summer. especially on the Fourth of July. when he would also shoot off huge illegal fireworks up into the trees over the creek. thereby terrorizing all the neighbors and his guests....
What does that tell you about him?
He told poor but extremely funny jokes. many of them were politically incorrect. he did not go to church. when he got mad, he did not take God's name in vain, ever. he didn't tell jokes about God either. The Garden was his Church...when we would meet for pancakes, called "hotcakes" at seven in the morning on Sundays, we would eat, clear-up, and then he'd intone, "time for church! let us pray!"....and down to the wood shop or up to the garden we would go...to work!
He had loved his wife. who died mysteriously. he had loved many women before she died. after she died, he made friends with women. But she had been his everything... he was very, very kind to women. rarely judged women. put them mainly on pedestals of varying heights all of his life...was rarely upset with anything women did. considered them, even his own daughters, as being rather mysterious. not of this world in the same way men are...when younger, I had thought this old fashioned. the more I have known women over the years, the more I have come to believe and think as Pete did. he was right. besides, women, he had found, did not want anything but kindness and love. he knew how to give that with dignity and grace.He especially loved to have meals with women friends...any time...anywhere....right until the end of his days....
To be admitted, he was frugal about some things. about others, he was too generous...with his time, he was profligate. he always said yes to every request for help. to every invitation. to every one who would ask of him. He helped and taught and gave away to hundreds of people...and never made a fuss about it....
He had also, at one time, been a lithographer. a salesman. he had been a proud worker...then his work became unwanted and un-needed in the modern world. he lost his pride in work that took his creative edge away. Still, he worked and did his very best. and every one knew that. he was his own code of behavior. no boss could bully him into doing well. he did well, simply because that is what he always did. well as he could...
His relationship to men: business-like. He worked with men. He loved good workmen. Men who did not work were dismissed as "Bums". Color. Race. Religion. Politics. none of this mattered to him. the character of the man was all to him. A good man was a friend. A bad man was not...life on this level was simple for Pete.
He was a true Patriot. America was simply "right". the government was often wrong. Liberals were sometimes wrong. Conservatives were rarely wrong. Wars were right if America was in them. Right for our side. foreigners, as a mass, were wrong. individual foreigners were often right. strident folk of all ilks were wrong. reasonable people were right...life on these levels was simple for Pete, as well....
Does this tell you of his world? If I tell you that he cried for a long time when any friend, especially a woman friend, died....would that help you to understand him? When I tell you that he built a gate for Dixie to come through into his garden, to make it easier for her to bridge the space between them, would that tell you who he was as a man? If you saw him picking flowers to take to the hostess who invited him to dinner, would you find that poignant? would it tell you what he was thinking as he arranged them in the nice vase? If I tell you that he longed for true love all of his days, would you think that strange, for such a practical man? a loyal man. beyond belief-loyal...
And the animals! all of them, he called "Bums"...but this time, with a fond look on his face. he spoiled every animal that came his way...he was mainly a dog man...when his dogs died over the years, he buried them in his garden with little headstones... when he took in all the dogs of the neighborhood for visits, would you think him soft? how about the raccoons he fed in his living room?....the feral cats?....
Cutting wood for the fire. pickaxing holes to plant his lilies...saving the bulbs for his dahlias and glads each fall, for the next Spring...keeping a place in his "dessert pouch" for sweets after meals...hanging off the very most frail branch to reach a piece of fruit...winding up the compost turning barrel he'd devised...rigging and jigging and whirly-gigging wood to do whatever design he had in his head...piloting any boat in any sea with no more fear than any water creature...crafting thousands of hard-wood pens on his lathe for the "fighting boys in Kuwait" well into his mid-nineties...if you saw any of these parts, how would you...how could you...tell of the Whole?....
Music was his soul. Sometimes his soul was sad, and he didn't play his banjo or sing then....most times, though, he listened and listened to music...music beat with his heart like a blood stream...he could not live without music. When he played his banjo and sang: it was true Magic...
These are the questions I think about:
when Pete died, every single thing I just told you about him died with him....so...
did that world come to an end? just that one world?.....
the workshop still stands, but hardly any one works there any more.
his banjo sits unplayed in his middle-daughter's living room.
the garden is not as it was when he was it's keeper. tho everyone works in it now and again.
the lighthouse Bread and Breakfast is still going strong...his Monday Morning Crew still goes out in the old whaler and keeps up its maintenance regularly.
his daughters and grand kids and his few male friends and his many women friends still recall him with much love...
But, you see, don't you? A whole world...a planet of huge proportions...died when he died.
Every thought he ever had. each feeling. all the wonderful things his hands had done. his bright and bonny mind and every idea. design. plan. reflexion...all the music in his head and hands. all the skill. gone....
Given all the rains he lived through....given all the suns that rose and set in his life...
where did he go?
where did his world go?....
I am given to wondering about such things.
Pete would say that people who analyzed life were always asking "wither do I wander?", but that really they were just "wandering while they withered!" he found that notion very, very amusing. he would always laugh at that thought. as he would at all of his jokes....!
It is an amusing thought....really....
I find my self giggling at that thought....and now...
laughing...really, really...
laughing!....
THE PACK was written in 2010, to reflect on my perceptions of my Three Children at the end of the first decade of the 21st century...it's already dated...but it was written at a good time in their lives and in my life...and so it is a nice snapshot of that time and our time together in the space that is Close Family...the Pack....
THE PACK
My children have definitely been adults now for a long, long time. they are more my comrades now then my 'children'. my youngest will be forty this year. I'm sixty-five now... I have eleven grand kids. one great-grand kid. three step-children. eight step-grand-children. We are, my children and I, adults together. I work for my son in his school. a small Academy of thirty students ages four though seventeen. my daughter-in-law works there too. as does my second daughter, part-time. I teach five of my grand-children their English and Social Studies in this great school. I enjoy working there. my son and his wife and my daughter are hard working. my oldest daughter is a teacher, too. I am very fond of my two son-in-laws as well. they are more like sons to me. my children's families all live within a one and a half mile radius of my little apartment. We are truly a Pack. We have, more or less, always been together, my three kids and my self.
Here they are, in order of birth. They are equal and entirely different people in my thoughts. I love them all completely as they are, in every way. I am loyal to them and to their children and grandchildren...for life...
Krai Anne is the eldest. she was a big surprise. her father and I were on our honeymoon when we found out. really! that we were pregnant. we laughed and laughed. I was very stomach-contents challenged during that pregnancy. at just before eight months, my bag of waters 'broke'. I waited two weeks, and then she was born. under six pounds. her paternal gramma offered the family plot in case she didn't make it...I was immediately her champion and defender. she was going to make it, by god! I breast-fed her every two hours for months. she didn't sleep even a few hours, for months and months, before she would be screaming for more! by the seventh week, tho, she was at her correct weight. my sensitive little survivor!
Krai had trouble in school with some dyslexia...but she loved school so much, her hard work always saw her through...she really loved learning! She went all the way through college without stopping...got a great high-B average...in all her courses, especially the ones dealing with human life and love and development...that's what she was all about...still is....she learned piano...was a really good figure skater...fun to watch on the ice...good at it - lots of lessons...always worked hard for her dreams....still does....
She got into religion big-time as a little kid...actually went into the Baptist faith for awhile with Mrs. Vader in her pink Cadillac picking her up every Sunday...until they scared her too much about hell and all...so she became a full Catholic. and there she stays. She's raised her kids Catholic as well....
Krai Anne has always been the one who was attached to my very self out of a need that came from her first year on earth, I think. she has always had expectations of me that I know I have not met. Loyal to me, tho I am not the perfect mother she had in mind. always has had in mind. she is gracious and always kind to me and to my life partners. but she is private about what she really feels. always.
She always, always loved babies...children under six or so are her favorite, I think. she is magic with very small people. feeds, nurtures, and teaches them perfectly. devotedly. proudly. and very, very, well...her BA is in Human Development, of course....she always said she would take care of children as her life's work. from the time she was a little child. that, and small animals...mainly cats and dogs...kitties and puppies....she is a true earth mother.....
Krai is also very sensual...loves rich, good foods...is sensitive about eating meat...has raised her kids, generally, vegetarian...has definite opinions about pediatric and general medical care. about how to raise kids. about nutrition. she'd like to get an MA in that direction: caring for the more difficult kids...the ones who need 'counselling'....she knows how to be a good wife with her husband. how to have a party for fifty people. how to limit a teen-ager. how to handle a substitute teaching job with difficult kids. definite ideas. she has my habit of being very strong in these areas of life. and then breaking down in private right into tears over the many, many pressures in her chosen life.
Krai Anne and her family love being outside on the water...camping out of their camper...being on the road to adventures...she's the caretaker of all their vacation dreams...loves her time out with her family...especially in the water....
She has a black thumb with plants. She loves to dress in new, nice clothes. she wears jewelry and clothing that her husband likes. she is the best baker and dessert-baker especially, in the whole family. she can be very judgemental. hates criticism against her self, with a passion. reads. stresses with a capital S, over the lives and the education of her children. can be too controlling of their behavior at times. always very, very loving with her kids. very physical and warm-hearted in her own unique way...she is close to a few. very loving with a few other people then family. very traditional though. Devoted to the entire Family and its many extensions as a way of life. she loves all the holidays and traditions and Family gatherings. contributes generously and devotedly to all these occasions. throws huge parties for every occasion, with her equally family-centered husband. works her self to exhaustion to make good times for others...it is her way.....
Krai is the most Midwestern member of the family culturally. she would have been very happy in Wisconsin or in Illinois in a small town. she likes Stockton, where they live. it has her modern-small-town ways of family life. but I think she would bring her Midwestern ways anywhere she was. she is true to herself. as we all are. all four of us....stubborn too...stubbornly her own self. determined to be her own self. true to the pack's ways in this manner.....
She and her dear husband Bill, who is like a son to me, have four children. Bill is the step-father for her first two. but he is exactly like any father in every, every way. and full of love for her and for his family. he works hard at construction work of all kinds. and does well. he works cars all the time too....he plays golf, and boats, and water boards...is generally athletic. great guy. of course not perfect. but very kind and giving. and does his best. very lovable guy. with the whole family. all of us. I'll tell you about the kids another time. this is just about my kids. and their spouses. a bit.
Sabra Elizabeth. my Sabra Bethy. she was born three weeks late...a little yellowish with fingernails growing. slow about being born! and quiet. she would only cry a bit - "hinking", the Wisconsin mom's called it - for her breast milk every three hours or so...slept like a little log, in between. I'd check on her to be sure she was still in the crib. she was that quiet!...I would have to say that her quiet, which marked her early years quite a bit, was a portent of the Huge Storm her later childhood would be...but who could see that at the time? There they were, her crying-all-the-time older sister, by eleven months...and the barely 'hinking' little sister...two very different little girls. right from the start....
"Sabra Bethy, you're the one! You make bath-time so much fun! Sabra Bethy, I'm awfully fond of you! Sabra Bethy, you're so fine, and I'm oh so glad you're mine! Sabra Bethy, I'm awfully fond of you"....I used to sing that song to her all the time. I wanted her to feel special, being the second child...I had always strongly felt that I was favored by my parents over my sister, Pat...who I still think was not treated well by them as their second child, even after all these years of hindsight....Sabra was sweet as a teddy bear when she was a kid. she was fun and joking all the time, especially with her brother Chris. they were sort-of joined at the elbow...often to the exclusion of their big sister, Krai Anne...she was giddy with jokes and fun.
She was a great little artist, her whole life. she eventually was enrolled in the Oakland Arts Magnet school as a kid. she and her brother loved that school. it suited their wild and creative ways. In high school, she won the award for four years of excellence in art. as a Senior, she was named one of the fifty best Seniors in Art in California, and was featured in a gallery show for that. years later, when she was twenty eight, she went into college...and worked hard to get her BA in Fine Arts, with a focus on Ceramic Arts...my little artist is still an artist...teaches Art in her brother's Academy...teaches well...creative and kind and firm and capable and always able to make Art out of nothing at all....
Sabra was very bright, but didn't work her best in school. she was too playful. later, she was to preoccupied with her alternative life-style with her peers. she graduated OK from her private girls' high school. she had sung in the elite schola and in the chorus. and, of course, there was her wonderful art. it was not until her late twenties that she excelled in school, when she was ready. Sabra has always had her own ways of accomplishing life. her own explorations of life. always with an amazingly creative edge...
Sabra went through very, very sad years. she was deeply into the drug culture of her generation...deeply into the people who either thrived, superficially, or floundered in that culture. she lived that life for many years...her late teens into her twenties...and had two boys born with a drug dealer who was loaded with manipulation and charm...both the boys were adopted in an Open Adoption by psychologist parents. those 'Boys' of Sabra's are still involved, with their adoptive parents, in our full family...on and off, as their psychologies demand or as they seem to need...there's more that could be said about all those years...but much of that is Sabra's private memories...only she should tell them...it is a wonderful story in so many ways, tho very, very difficult.....
Sa is still such a strong and out-there sort of person. vigorously involved Mama to her dear little girl Katie, with her husband Mike...they are strongly 'alternative' in life style...also extremely hard-working and responsible people, all at the same time...Katie is growing up all creative and well-cared-for and, well...she's being raised with so much good thought and honest love...it's all lovely to be around. lots of family and friends love to be in their home with them. it's such a welcome and cozy and real place to be. they are so generous and kind as well. so real. Sabra has always brought home stray animals to care for...and she has championed people during their 'stray' periods of life...sometimes happily...sometimes not so.... Sabra is always trying to get to the reality behind every interaction and event in her life. she is thought-full about life. and open as she can be. she had her dishonest years. now she moves in fields of truth as freely as she can...my capable, creative second daughter....
what else...she sings...well! many of them are songs I like a great deal...she was, and still could be, a wonderful and natural horse-back rider. we used to sponsor a horse for her. being with her horse as a teen was one of the more natural outlet's she had....she swims like a fish...more like a seal....she and her brother and sister were all on a swim team for a way-long number of years as kids, while I was working...so, she is good in the water...loves to canoe and camp out too... we spent so much time camping out when the kids were little, that they all know how to 'do' camping very well! and, they all still do...quite a bit! like me, she and Mike are raising their Katie with lots of activity instead of parking her in front of a TV or computer all day...good for her and for him! good for Katie!
Sabra's art is quite wonderful. original and free - not blocked...a left-hander....she is generous with her creative work...enjoys gardening. enjoys preserving foods...cooking for drop-in guests...she has always been very, very good with animals, especially dogs and horses...she worked as a vet's assistant for over a decade...she's also a splendid and natural masseuse...we all crave her massages...and is a wondrous nanny, a real pro! also a reader, of course....
Sabra's Mike is a very private person. he's opened his heart to be with this pack. he's a truly good guy. and a car man. and a motorcycle man. he lives his 'alternative life style' with a certain dignity. he's opinionated and generous and he adores his Sabra and Katie. he would give his life for them. he already has. he is good to his mother-in-law. that's me. and, he is dear to me....
Chris was the first boy born into the Everitt family in two generations. as our 'baby' child, he was certainly spoiled, although he never perceived it that way. I certainly tried to make sure that he did all the chores and learned all the skills to take care of himself. he still is probably the best (and only) ironer in the family, and can clean house with the best of 'em...still, my son is all Man. and that's a fact.
As a boy he was very, very playful. a jester. an extremely creative artist. in every media...even ceramics and fine wood and stone carving... good with music - especially writing songs and playing the guitar. He used to call me into his dark and dangerous work-room next to his bedroom with these serious words: Mom, I've written a new song. want to hear it? I would drop everything and go into the inner sanctum to hear his latest creative endeavor. there would be no second request if I did not! also a reader, of course...
Chris was always very lucky. other kids would find change on the ground. he'd find twenty dollar bills. but mainly, all his jobs, from the time he was young, were all hard work. and he never flagged at earning his pay with truly hard labor. he was such a playful child, that it was amazing how seriously he took on responsibilities...especially his patriarchal roles. For, my son is a Father and Leader to many, many people. not only to his learning-challenged older son and three young triplets. but to all the men and women who work for him, whose families are as important to him as is his own. he calls these men and women his brothers and sisters. and they are as devoted to him and to their work with him as their Boss...
He had a full scholarship for tuition to SF State U in San Francisco, for his art. Like Sabra, he had won the Four Years of Art Excellence Award from his private high school. he had been in the Jazz Band there. his friends were in that band. otherwise, he was a bit of a loner. he has always been a bit private. even in his life for the last twenty years, which has been completely filled with dozens of people every day! he didn't take that scholarship, because he decided to continue to grow as a Martial Artist in Bok Fu Karate...as an instructor at first...then as the owner of a five school Martial Arts School System: West Wind Schools...in his early twenties!
West Wind Schools is a very unusual place. it's the longest-'running' martial arts studio in the East Bay of the SF Bay area...it's made it through recessions and staff changes and lots of ups and downs...with a strong core of men and women working together to keep it vital and functional...for twenty of those years, under my son's direct ownership and leadership. he works hard and they work hard for him...obtained his black belt in Taiwan; and became certified as an Iaedo Instructor in Japan...understands much of the languages, cultures, arts, writing, and folk lore of those two countries...his students and instructors and he are wonderful to watch in tournaments and demonstrations...so creative and skilled!
Now he and his intrepid wife, Heidi, are the Principal and Assistant Principal of West Wind Academy. That's their great private school for thirty kids ages four through eighteen, teaching them all their academic subjects and karate every day. I work there as their English-Social Studies Teacher daily. Sabra works there twice a week as the Art Teacher; Heidi teaches multiple subjects and works hard and loudly to be sure the school and its students and its parents and its staff stay on the ball with enthusiasm and dedication. and, Chris orchestrates the whole school, making sure it's creative, dynamic, and as excellent as it can be...while insisting on the work being as fun and real as possible! the kid's families are all involved in the dojo...so it's a real 'family' all on its own...I teach five of my grand kids there...so it is a special place indeed....
Chris does all this while keeping active in his Fine Arts on a continuous and highly creative level of work...while continuing to write and sing and play his music, accompanying himself on his guitar...and still finding time to read. to create Asian-inspired gardens at three different sites...to build with wood and stone...he is an amazing ball of energy....but then, all three of my alpha children are...that's clear to see...when he was to be born, an East Indian friend told me his 'fortune'...that he would always be lucky, but would always have to work hard for his 'luck'. she was right...but there again, all of the pack works 'hard' for their 'luck' in life....
Like his sisters, Chris and his family love swimming, being on and near water...camping...going on adventures...staying away from the TV set...being outside and active...being totally alive in the natural world....
My daughter-in-law, Heidi. a volcano of a woman! fierce and fiercely loving. a dynamo of control and permission and goodness and when-she-is-bad-she-is-horridness! Intelligent Design. Creative Fire on Earth. that's Heidi. my son and his kids would be completely lost without her. the Pack would be diminished without her, my Baby Goose....
I probably have forgotten some of their accomplishments...like me, they have over-achieved way, way, way too much...they are very much into 'control' in their lives. like me, they deny this quality in themselves. they are incredibly strong. creative. extremely loving. fiercely loyal...
I would not be my self without these three in my life. period. "...and by song. by blood and by bone. I have wrapped their three lives around me...the taste of them. the smell of them. always be with me"...paraphrase of part of a song by Sinead O'Connor...fits.....
We are a Pack. there are no animals like us. maybe wolves are closest to who we are. every one who joins with us deals with alpha love and honesty so intense that it is like a fire. but the fire is very kind. very accepting of humanity. very life-giving...
My Pack.
Blessings
my blessing:
These Three....
My children have definitely been adults now for a long, long time. they are more my comrades now then my 'children'. my youngest will be forty this year. I'm sixty-five now... I have eleven grand kids. one great-grand kid. three step-children. eight step-grand-children. We are, my children and I, adults together. I work for my son in his school. a small Academy of thirty students ages four though seventeen. my daughter-in-law works there too. as does my second daughter, part-time. I teach five of my grand-children their English and Social Studies in this great school. I enjoy working there. my son and his wife and my daughter are hard working. my oldest daughter is a teacher, too. I am very fond of my two son-in-laws as well. they are more like sons to me. my children's families all live within a one and a half mile radius of my little apartment. We are truly a Pack. We have, more or less, always been together, my three kids and my self.
Here they are, in order of birth. They are equal and entirely different people in my thoughts. I love them all completely as they are, in every way. I am loyal to them and to their children and grandchildren...for life...
Krai Anne is the eldest. she was a big surprise. her father and I were on our honeymoon when we found out. really! that we were pregnant. we laughed and laughed. I was very stomach-contents challenged during that pregnancy. at just before eight months, my bag of waters 'broke'. I waited two weeks, and then she was born. under six pounds. her paternal gramma offered the family plot in case she didn't make it...I was immediately her champion and defender. she was going to make it, by god! I breast-fed her every two hours for months. she didn't sleep even a few hours, for months and months, before she would be screaming for more! by the seventh week, tho, she was at her correct weight. my sensitive little survivor!
Krai had trouble in school with some dyslexia...but she loved school so much, her hard work always saw her through...she really loved learning! She went all the way through college without stopping...got a great high-B average...in all her courses, especially the ones dealing with human life and love and development...that's what she was all about...still is....she learned piano...was a really good figure skater...fun to watch on the ice...good at it - lots of lessons...always worked hard for her dreams....still does....
She got into religion big-time as a little kid...actually went into the Baptist faith for awhile with Mrs. Vader in her pink Cadillac picking her up every Sunday...until they scared her too much about hell and all...so she became a full Catholic. and there she stays. She's raised her kids Catholic as well....
Krai Anne has always been the one who was attached to my very self out of a need that came from her first year on earth, I think. she has always had expectations of me that I know I have not met. Loyal to me, tho I am not the perfect mother she had in mind. always has had in mind. she is gracious and always kind to me and to my life partners. but she is private about what she really feels. always.
She always, always loved babies...children under six or so are her favorite, I think. she is magic with very small people. feeds, nurtures, and teaches them perfectly. devotedly. proudly. and very, very, well...her BA is in Human Development, of course....she always said she would take care of children as her life's work. from the time she was a little child. that, and small animals...mainly cats and dogs...kitties and puppies....she is a true earth mother.....
Krai is also very sensual...loves rich, good foods...is sensitive about eating meat...has raised her kids, generally, vegetarian...has definite opinions about pediatric and general medical care. about how to raise kids. about nutrition. she'd like to get an MA in that direction: caring for the more difficult kids...the ones who need 'counselling'....she knows how to be a good wife with her husband. how to have a party for fifty people. how to limit a teen-ager. how to handle a substitute teaching job with difficult kids. definite ideas. she has my habit of being very strong in these areas of life. and then breaking down in private right into tears over the many, many pressures in her chosen life.
Krai Anne and her family love being outside on the water...camping out of their camper...being on the road to adventures...she's the caretaker of all their vacation dreams...loves her time out with her family...especially in the water....
She has a black thumb with plants. She loves to dress in new, nice clothes. she wears jewelry and clothing that her husband likes. she is the best baker and dessert-baker especially, in the whole family. she can be very judgemental. hates criticism against her self, with a passion. reads. stresses with a capital S, over the lives and the education of her children. can be too controlling of their behavior at times. always very, very loving with her kids. very physical and warm-hearted in her own unique way...she is close to a few. very loving with a few other people then family. very traditional though. Devoted to the entire Family and its many extensions as a way of life. she loves all the holidays and traditions and Family gatherings. contributes generously and devotedly to all these occasions. throws huge parties for every occasion, with her equally family-centered husband. works her self to exhaustion to make good times for others...it is her way.....
Krai is the most Midwestern member of the family culturally. she would have been very happy in Wisconsin or in Illinois in a small town. she likes Stockton, where they live. it has her modern-small-town ways of family life. but I think she would bring her Midwestern ways anywhere she was. she is true to herself. as we all are. all four of us....stubborn too...stubbornly her own self. determined to be her own self. true to the pack's ways in this manner.....
She and her dear husband Bill, who is like a son to me, have four children. Bill is the step-father for her first two. but he is exactly like any father in every, every way. and full of love for her and for his family. he works hard at construction work of all kinds. and does well. he works cars all the time too....he plays golf, and boats, and water boards...is generally athletic. great guy. of course not perfect. but very kind and giving. and does his best. very lovable guy. with the whole family. all of us. I'll tell you about the kids another time. this is just about my kids. and their spouses. a bit.
Sabra Elizabeth. my Sabra Bethy. she was born three weeks late...a little yellowish with fingernails growing. slow about being born! and quiet. she would only cry a bit - "hinking", the Wisconsin mom's called it - for her breast milk every three hours or so...slept like a little log, in between. I'd check on her to be sure she was still in the crib. she was that quiet!...I would have to say that her quiet, which marked her early years quite a bit, was a portent of the Huge Storm her later childhood would be...but who could see that at the time? There they were, her crying-all-the-time older sister, by eleven months...and the barely 'hinking' little sister...two very different little girls. right from the start....
"Sabra Bethy, you're the one! You make bath-time so much fun! Sabra Bethy, I'm awfully fond of you! Sabra Bethy, you're so fine, and I'm oh so glad you're mine! Sabra Bethy, I'm awfully fond of you"....I used to sing that song to her all the time. I wanted her to feel special, being the second child...I had always strongly felt that I was favored by my parents over my sister, Pat...who I still think was not treated well by them as their second child, even after all these years of hindsight....Sabra was sweet as a teddy bear when she was a kid. she was fun and joking all the time, especially with her brother Chris. they were sort-of joined at the elbow...often to the exclusion of their big sister, Krai Anne...she was giddy with jokes and fun.
She was a great little artist, her whole life. she eventually was enrolled in the Oakland Arts Magnet school as a kid. she and her brother loved that school. it suited their wild and creative ways. In high school, she won the award for four years of excellence in art. as a Senior, she was named one of the fifty best Seniors in Art in California, and was featured in a gallery show for that. years later, when she was twenty eight, she went into college...and worked hard to get her BA in Fine Arts, with a focus on Ceramic Arts...my little artist is still an artist...teaches Art in her brother's Academy...teaches well...creative and kind and firm and capable and always able to make Art out of nothing at all....
Sabra was very bright, but didn't work her best in school. she was too playful. later, she was to preoccupied with her alternative life-style with her peers. she graduated OK from her private girls' high school. she had sung in the elite schola and in the chorus. and, of course, there was her wonderful art. it was not until her late twenties that she excelled in school, when she was ready. Sabra has always had her own ways of accomplishing life. her own explorations of life. always with an amazingly creative edge...
Sabra went through very, very sad years. she was deeply into the drug culture of her generation...deeply into the people who either thrived, superficially, or floundered in that culture. she lived that life for many years...her late teens into her twenties...and had two boys born with a drug dealer who was loaded with manipulation and charm...both the boys were adopted in an Open Adoption by psychologist parents. those 'Boys' of Sabra's are still involved, with their adoptive parents, in our full family...on and off, as their psychologies demand or as they seem to need...there's more that could be said about all those years...but much of that is Sabra's private memories...only she should tell them...it is a wonderful story in so many ways, tho very, very difficult.....
Sa is still such a strong and out-there sort of person. vigorously involved Mama to her dear little girl Katie, with her husband Mike...they are strongly 'alternative' in life style...also extremely hard-working and responsible people, all at the same time...Katie is growing up all creative and well-cared-for and, well...she's being raised with so much good thought and honest love...it's all lovely to be around. lots of family and friends love to be in their home with them. it's such a welcome and cozy and real place to be. they are so generous and kind as well. so real. Sabra has always brought home stray animals to care for...and she has championed people during their 'stray' periods of life...sometimes happily...sometimes not so.... Sabra is always trying to get to the reality behind every interaction and event in her life. she is thought-full about life. and open as she can be. she had her dishonest years. now she moves in fields of truth as freely as she can...my capable, creative second daughter....
what else...she sings...well! many of them are songs I like a great deal...she was, and still could be, a wonderful and natural horse-back rider. we used to sponsor a horse for her. being with her horse as a teen was one of the more natural outlet's she had....she swims like a fish...more like a seal....she and her brother and sister were all on a swim team for a way-long number of years as kids, while I was working...so, she is good in the water...loves to canoe and camp out too... we spent so much time camping out when the kids were little, that they all know how to 'do' camping very well! and, they all still do...quite a bit! like me, she and Mike are raising their Katie with lots of activity instead of parking her in front of a TV or computer all day...good for her and for him! good for Katie!
Sabra's art is quite wonderful. original and free - not blocked...a left-hander....she is generous with her creative work...enjoys gardening. enjoys preserving foods...cooking for drop-in guests...she has always been very, very good with animals, especially dogs and horses...she worked as a vet's assistant for over a decade...she's also a splendid and natural masseuse...we all crave her massages...and is a wondrous nanny, a real pro! also a reader, of course....
Sabra's Mike is a very private person. he's opened his heart to be with this pack. he's a truly good guy. and a car man. and a motorcycle man. he lives his 'alternative life style' with a certain dignity. he's opinionated and generous and he adores his Sabra and Katie. he would give his life for them. he already has. he is good to his mother-in-law. that's me. and, he is dear to me....
Chris was the first boy born into the Everitt family in two generations. as our 'baby' child, he was certainly spoiled, although he never perceived it that way. I certainly tried to make sure that he did all the chores and learned all the skills to take care of himself. he still is probably the best (and only) ironer in the family, and can clean house with the best of 'em...still, my son is all Man. and that's a fact.
As a boy he was very, very playful. a jester. an extremely creative artist. in every media...even ceramics and fine wood and stone carving... good with music - especially writing songs and playing the guitar. He used to call me into his dark and dangerous work-room next to his bedroom with these serious words: Mom, I've written a new song. want to hear it? I would drop everything and go into the inner sanctum to hear his latest creative endeavor. there would be no second request if I did not! also a reader, of course...
Chris was always very lucky. other kids would find change on the ground. he'd find twenty dollar bills. but mainly, all his jobs, from the time he was young, were all hard work. and he never flagged at earning his pay with truly hard labor. he was such a playful child, that it was amazing how seriously he took on responsibilities...especially his patriarchal roles. For, my son is a Father and Leader to many, many people. not only to his learning-challenged older son and three young triplets. but to all the men and women who work for him, whose families are as important to him as is his own. he calls these men and women his brothers and sisters. and they are as devoted to him and to their work with him as their Boss...
He had a full scholarship for tuition to SF State U in San Francisco, for his art. Like Sabra, he had won the Four Years of Art Excellence Award from his private high school. he had been in the Jazz Band there. his friends were in that band. otherwise, he was a bit of a loner. he has always been a bit private. even in his life for the last twenty years, which has been completely filled with dozens of people every day! he didn't take that scholarship, because he decided to continue to grow as a Martial Artist in Bok Fu Karate...as an instructor at first...then as the owner of a five school Martial Arts School System: West Wind Schools...in his early twenties!
West Wind Schools is a very unusual place. it's the longest-'running' martial arts studio in the East Bay of the SF Bay area...it's made it through recessions and staff changes and lots of ups and downs...with a strong core of men and women working together to keep it vital and functional...for twenty of those years, under my son's direct ownership and leadership. he works hard and they work hard for him...obtained his black belt in Taiwan; and became certified as an Iaedo Instructor in Japan...understands much of the languages, cultures, arts, writing, and folk lore of those two countries...his students and instructors and he are wonderful to watch in tournaments and demonstrations...so creative and skilled!
Now he and his intrepid wife, Heidi, are the Principal and Assistant Principal of West Wind Academy. That's their great private school for thirty kids ages four through eighteen, teaching them all their academic subjects and karate every day. I work there as their English-Social Studies Teacher daily. Sabra works there twice a week as the Art Teacher; Heidi teaches multiple subjects and works hard and loudly to be sure the school and its students and its parents and its staff stay on the ball with enthusiasm and dedication. and, Chris orchestrates the whole school, making sure it's creative, dynamic, and as excellent as it can be...while insisting on the work being as fun and real as possible! the kid's families are all involved in the dojo...so it's a real 'family' all on its own...I teach five of my grand kids there...so it is a special place indeed....
Chris does all this while keeping active in his Fine Arts on a continuous and highly creative level of work...while continuing to write and sing and play his music, accompanying himself on his guitar...and still finding time to read. to create Asian-inspired gardens at three different sites...to build with wood and stone...he is an amazing ball of energy....but then, all three of my alpha children are...that's clear to see...when he was to be born, an East Indian friend told me his 'fortune'...that he would always be lucky, but would always have to work hard for his 'luck'. she was right...but there again, all of the pack works 'hard' for their 'luck' in life....
Like his sisters, Chris and his family love swimming, being on and near water...camping...going on adventures...staying away from the TV set...being outside and active...being totally alive in the natural world....
My daughter-in-law, Heidi. a volcano of a woman! fierce and fiercely loving. a dynamo of control and permission and goodness and when-she-is-bad-she-is-horridness! Intelligent Design. Creative Fire on Earth. that's Heidi. my son and his kids would be completely lost without her. the Pack would be diminished without her, my Baby Goose....
I probably have forgotten some of their accomplishments...like me, they have over-achieved way, way, way too much...they are very much into 'control' in their lives. like me, they deny this quality in themselves. they are incredibly strong. creative. extremely loving. fiercely loyal...
I would not be my self without these three in my life. period. "...and by song. by blood and by bone. I have wrapped their three lives around me...the taste of them. the smell of them. always be with me"...paraphrase of part of a song by Sinead O'Connor...fits.....
We are a Pack. there are no animals like us. maybe wolves are closest to who we are. every one who joins with us deals with alpha love and honesty so intense that it is like a fire. but the fire is very kind. very accepting of humanity. very life-giving...
My Pack.
Blessings
my blessing:
These Three....
2/22/12
ALL THE CHILDREN came to me this afternoon as a Poem/Lyrics...it's written for a friend...but I see where it is truly how I feel about motherhood - and grandmotherhood and greatgrandmotherhood, for that matter...and I really believe many women who 'have' Children...or have 'lost' Children...or who 'Teach' Children, feel very much like this little Piece, in their hearts and memories....it's not sentimental: it's real....
ALL THE CHILDREN
All the Children that I've known
Who held my hand cross every street:
I take them cross my heart and hold them
Close enough to hear their's beat
I've had Love so much for givin'
Couldn't give it all away
Take this honey - Drink this water -
I will sweet your tears away
____________________
CHORUS
You are wrapped around my bones
You're in my blood you dearest Two
I am the Mommy of your Spirits
I am always there with you
____________________
There is more to Life than living
On this planet every day
I can feel you all around me -
Keep you safe most every way
I'm your Mommy for forever
There will never be one night
Or one day that you can't call me
And you'll be there in my sight
_____________________
CHORUS
____________________
Love's not only welcome feelings -
Tho welcome is with open arms -
My love's there to keep your Spirits
High - to keep you from all harm
In my Dreams I see you happy
In my Thoughts you run and play
I will call you home at nightfall
I will be your guide all day
_____________________
CHORUS
____________________
THE BETTER PART is Lyrics I just wrote for Martha Lane Matheson, our Song Bird who sings with us often...it's about her wonderfully Giving Personality...and I hope she and her very talented Accompanist, Frances, will find and perform it's sweetness and sauce, in their own torchy-style!
here's a song I just wrote for you and Frances to do...i'ts about you and your personaliy....it's based on the New Testament Story of Jesus visiting his friends Mary and Martha...remember that one? I always thought Martha should have defended herself and told Jesus what's what!....My empathy is Totally with Martha, obviously!!!!
THE BETTER PART
CHORUS (sweet-slow and bluesy....)
And he said to me: Martha Martha
Can'tcha see she has chosen the better part
Martha, o Martha
Can'tcha see she has chosen the better part
I said: Yes Lord. I can see that, Lord
Mary has chosen the better part...
But look at me - come on and look at me
Don'tcha know what I'm worth anyway?
Can'tcha see all I'm worth, anyway?
___________________
(verses at a faster intensity - jazz pace)
Mary brings flirtations
Mary brings you praise
She brought you flowers yesterday
All perfumed-up for days
But she can't warm you when you're cold
And feed you good and right
An' when she turns her back on you
You'll cry alone all night
____________________
CHORUS
____________________
If she be lightning I be rain
Sweet rain to keep you fresh and kind
If she be sleet then I be soft sun
Soothin' hard times in your mind
She's at your feet - laughs at your jokes -
But when you're sick she can't be found
I'm bathin' free your fevered brow
I'm turnin' clean cool covers down
____________________
CHORUS
____________________
So give me all your pain and glory
I can take All Life in stride
Remind yourself when you're all sad
That you have Mercy by your side
I am Water I am Bread and I am
All you'll ever need
Mary needs some growin' up, babe -
Or she'll never love like me
_____________________
CHORUS
____________________
2/21/12
THERE IS A HOUSE IN NEW ORLEANS is Completely Fictional...totally...there...now I won't be in Trouble...tho being In Trouble is half the fun of Mardi Gras...o let's simply forget what is real and what is not for these few days in the deep South...let's just go about havin' a really great Bon Bon Temps!....
THERE IS A HOUSE IN NEW ORLEANS
My cousin Pete would kill me if he read this. It's his confession, rather than mine, is the reason. He was much older than I and should have protected me. But he didn't, and I think he still feels a bit guilty for it. He once ever wrote me that he hoped his hadn't "...ruined my life." I had answered him back in a huff, busily explaining that it would take a lot more than our little adventure to "ruin my life' - that in fact, my life was totally fine, although that wasn't quite right either. What he did was open my life to a LOT more possibilities, and that most folks just Dream about those possibilities rather than living them through, or out, of whatever their fantasy or life-dream had been....
So, this is all about New Orleans. New Orleans about a half century years ago, that is...
Ahhhh, New Orleans....
The clarity of hard shadow and hard sunlight on shuttered walls. The poetry of magnolia blooms luring a girl with their sugary sweet perfumes. The crunch of tiny river shrimp in young teeth when you are hungry for delight. The press of hot, sexy bodies when you're dancing slowly to glow-worm jazz wails. The sheen on the water of a deep south lake in the morning with the shore birds on wing. The smells of foods and bodies and streets and incense in the French Quarter in the twilight. The swish of the silk cape that Cecelia wore. The ribbon of her dark black hair in a sultry breeze. The tinkling sound of demitasse cups of strong, black, thick coffee at The Three Sisters. The dank and disturbed feel of the moss hanging off the cypress. The colors and frightening twine of the parades in the streets below...
New Orleans at Mardi Gras....
The Plane Ride....I was nineteen years old. No matter how much older you are than nineteen, I am sure you remember being nineteen. It may have been a terrible year. It may have been a beautiful year. But, for certain, you can recall how it felt to you, how you felt. The world was opening up to you, for better or for worse, and you were opening up to it. If sorrow happened, if great loss happened, then that hardness of life stayed with you, and you know where it is inside. If all the possibilities of the wonder of life and love opened to you without struggle or pain, then you had a lucky, lucky start into the Big Bad World. Look back, and you can see yourself there...
Looking back, I was going forward into the world, confident, smart, lovely, lively, and possible.
I had left behind a narrow, small town and its people and its ways, or so I thought. There had been pain and loss in doing that, but I shut it up in a box and threw away the key, or so I thought. At nineteen, healthy and so alive, I was sure, very sure, that the future ahead was bright for me, and I had all the right stuff to make it all happen! I saw change as a huge wave, and I was on the crest of it, and I would not be ever beaten by it into the sands below. Nineteen, and all the drama and the stage and all the parts were mine! Never before or since has this clarity been owned so thoroughly by me.
So, then, The Plane Ride to New Orleans, to visit my darling old cousin Pete, was charged with immense excitement and possibility for me! I was invited to Mardi Gras! I was leaving the Chicago Area and Nursing School and Loyola U classes for a week of, (I hoped!) worldly debauchery or, at least, Much Fun! This plane ride was obviously the beginning of a True Adventure!
Everybody, it appeared to me, was drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and they were all in various states of high euphoria! The plane was loaded with Revelers on their way to the Big Wipe-Out Party of the month, in exotic, beautiful New Orleans! We were all leaving snow and slush and bone-chilling winds, and cabin-fever depressions. The Cure was just a plane ride away! I plunged myself into the melee of dancing-in-the-aisles young studs and willing young ladies. I even affected a slightly different accent, so as to sound less obviously mid-western! I batted my eyelashes! I laughed loudly at immediately forgotten jokes. I was already having So Much Fun!
Two young men became my favorites as the journey progressed through the mile-bending skies. They were Northwestern friends, and were competing vigorously with each other for my maidenly attentions. They flattered, cajoled, acted upon the stage with great abandon! They were erudite, respectful, silly, attention-seeking, attention-getting, bold, sincere, all at the same time and in sequence. I fell immediately in love with them both! By the end of the journey, phone numbers and names had been carefully written, folded, and placed in safe places. We were going to meet, and often! They would save me from my old (nine years older...) stodgy cousin! We would go dancing in jazz dives, cavorting on the waterfront! We were the Three Musketeers of the Mardi Gras! I prepared to introduce my new fellows to my cousin Pete, as soon as we disembarked! He, of course, would be pleased not to have his little cousin tied around his neck day and night. We would both have an "out", yet I would have my chaperon when in need. The perfect scenario was planned and ready for its execution!
Happily, we three toddled off the plane together. Right there, waiting was Pete. Running up to him, I gave him a big cousinly hug. Which he, very unexpectedly, returned with a huge crush of my exuberant self, into his arms, with a very sexual kiss on the lips! I was completely discombobulated. This was my 'old' cousin Pete, for heavens sakes! A bit taken back, I turned and introduced him to my two new 'friends', who were justifiably looking a little confused. "This is my Cousin, Pete. Pete, these are my friends. We're going to get together here in New Orleans sometime, when you and Cecelia want some time without me around!" I spoke lightly, but very clearly, to make sure that my new fellows weren't going to bolt. Cuz that's what it looked like they were going to do. They were looking straight at Pete, who was looking straight at them. It was a challenge over territory, Me, to be precise. I was very confused myself! What in the world was going on with Pete? Firmly, he informed us all that All of my days and nights were planned, and we would be too busy for me to see any "friends". Then, calmly and firmly steering me away by his hand on my elbow, he called out, "Nice to have met you.". I was half-turned back, calling myself! "See you guys soooooooon!" to a pair of upturned faces with frozen smiles, who I sensed I was never going to see again! What was up with Pete? I asked him.
He tersely replied that he had been disappointed to see me with 'Two Men', who were obviously strangers, and he hoped I hadn't given them his number. I muttered something to cover that one, and he went on. "Cecelia and I do have too much for you to do to find the time to party with strangers. Your Mother would be upset with me if I didn't chaperon you better than that." Well, that took care of that. If he was going to tell on me to Mom, my gig was up before it had even begun. I resigned myself to a "good time" with my 'old' cousin and his even older girlfriend. I was determined to enjoy myself anyway. This was going to be an Adventure, wasn't it?
My cousin Pete was, and has always been, a very attractive guy, mind you. He's very tall, thin, fit, nicely dressed at all times, somewhat conservative in tastes, with a big, generous smile and a good, German Catholic disposition. He was, in many ways, a bit prudish and old-fashioned, but, he did 'go with' Cecelia, and had done so for years. Cecelia was a lovely, exotic lady, older by quite a few years. Her family were an old Creole Catholic one who had lived in New Orleans forever, we were told. She lived with her mother, and was not going to marry until her mother died. We of the Midwestern Clan were in total awe of her. And, we couldn't figure out what she saw in Pete. I mean he was a great guy, but she, she was Foreign, to us, and therefore superior to us in every way! I was very pleased that I would be spending a whole week with this woman, who, I was sure would introduce me to the proverbial 'ways of the world' as no one else could!
Pete actually lived and worked in the Famous French Quarter, too! He had been in the army in New Orleans, years before, and had fallen in love with the old city, especially. His house was on the very edge of the oldest streets of the city, and he could walk to his office in the main square of the wonderful and exotic Quarter. Cecelia had a Boutique Gift Shop right there on the Square too. This was going to be So Much Fun! On the way to his house by car, Pete was answering my questions, but he seemed a bit preoccupied. He finally blurted out that he intended to be my escort everywhere during the week, just as if we were dating or something. I took this lightly at the time, and said something like, well, yeah, but not like a boyfriend-girlfriend dating, right? right? He laughed, but didn't actually reassure me. I decided I hadn't heard him quite right. After all, this was sophisticated New Orleans! What did I know about its social expectations! I was just a small-town Illinois hick! Yes indeed I was...
The first couple of days in the old city were all sights, sounds, tastes, sensations! Especially, colors! All soft with the misty rains of February in the Deep South. Greens that were grayish as old lace. Blues all faded in the humid air. Black, very black, past the black of shadow. Stark, almost. White, very white, as if someone was painting it on over and over all of the time. Greens like Spring.
The sounds! Around the block came three men, all in costume. Drinking at noon! Staggering a little and happy as songbirds! As they rounded the corner..."I'd give my left nut for a ham sandwich!"....the drums and horns and woodwinds of the parades below the deck of the architecture office where Pete worked...their odd mourning, deep and sincere, right in the heart of such joyous jazz rhythms...the calls of the dock workers, late, late at night, calling out cautions and commands one to the other, with deep, soft tones of Louisiana delta men....
The tastes! The coffees, rich as sin in their tiny, eggshell cups...the river shrimp in their full, salty, crunchy little cardboard containers. The pastries and soft, soft breads, all melting into sugars and perfumes of sweetness, cloying and undeniable. the mounds of gumbo with unimaginable depths of flavor and succulence, down, down to the bottom of the bowels. The juleps! crisp and cool with the nibbles of mint on your lips all the day....
The buildings! the wrought-iron everywhere! The brick streets! the people! the parades! They all twined around each other... lively ghosts in full display, weaving in and out, in and out, until you were dizzy with delight and sensation...
And, of course, Cecelia. Ah, Cecelia. I could not get enough of Cecelia. I had a complete crush on her from the moment I first laid eyes on her. She was a Movie Star. A Stage Star. a Goddess. She knew Everything There Was To Know. I followed her around like a puppy, picking up any crumbs she threw my way, and hiding them in my pocket to savor later...Her clothing! She looked like a model from France, I was sure! (Although I had never seen a model from France...) All silks, and linens, and light wools, and Isadore Duncan scarves around her neck! And gold jewelry by the ton, all on her arms and ears and neck and even in her dark, thick, glorious hair! Her porous honey white jewel of a face, blemish-free
And yet, I was not to see her very often. She was cordial enough when we were all together, but I certainly didn't interest her...she was more interested in watching Pete while he was with me. She would arch her eyebrows up, one of them usually, and look, well, serious, in a bemused sort of way. I was starting to catch on that she was a bit jealous of the time he was spending with me! This struck me as pretty strange, as I felt I was hardly competition for a Woman of the World as she was! Also, I was totally out of my element in every, every way.
I had packed my lightest winter clothes, and they were too heavy for the sultry time of year. I was sweating really copiously much of the time, which was Not Attractive. My long blonde hair was not fluffy and lovely - it was dangling straggly and damp and my curlers at night were not correcting that problem at all. Also, the warm damp was contributing to my face breaking out in its monthly bloom of acne lesions...so attractive! I was basically not being entrancing. I was being nineteen years old, and a bit awkward, unsure, and besotted by my wondrous surroundings. The pinnacle was approaching! I was going to go to a dance with Pete and Cecelia - not a Mardi-Gras Ball, but big party on an Island in Lake Pontchartrain, with jazz bands and buffets and wine and everything! I dressed in my best sexy dress, modest of course, but stylish. I put on makeup carefully, my earrings, and heels, which I rarely wore. I was very excited! Off Pete and I went, but, no Cecelia. Pete said she was home with a "headache". No matter, I supposed. Surely guys would ask me to dance!
Well, this party was so very wonderful, I can still remember it like it was just yesterday night! The lake at night! the stars! the boat to the island! the band of dark, sexy, sensual musicians. the glints of light on the gold of the horns. the wails and sobs and compulsions of the music itself. and the dancing!...occasionally, some one would ask me to dance. But Pete always was giving me punch - laced with something, I hoped, although it didn't seem so. He was watching my every move. He practically followed me to the Ladies Room. I was starting to feel a bit over-chaperoned! What harm was a little dancing going to do? I was only dancing with him, and it seemed to me he was dancing way to close for a cousin. It was starting to feel a little erotic, and I was uncomfortable, a bit. After all, I was only a nineteen year old woman! My body was willing, but I had standards in place from my Catholic upbringing. I allowed my self a few little sexual twinges, but, shoot, this was my cousin breathing heavily around here. It didn't seem good. Still, we danced on. We looked, I noticed in the gilt and smoke of the mirrors on the wall, like a very well-suited, attractive couple...
Before I go here, I should mention something that had happened a day or two before. Every night at Pete's house, I slept on a cot on the sun porch. He slept in his own bedroom with a huge amour that I really appreciated. My sun porch little space was quite nice, though. Each night, I took a shower, and put on my way too warm, cotton nightgown...modest, I might point out. I set my hair in my curlers...I slept well, tired from all the sights and the sounds of the day. One morning, however, as I was just waking...
I was awoken completely, by my good old cousin Pete doing the crushing-me-in-his-arms thing, with the passionate kissing and everything. All that saved me was my awareness that I had to pee, and soon, that I was in curlers and even had acne medicine on my blemishes, and was sweating in a nightgown that covered me head to toe. The whole situation was just ridiculous! I, at once, began scolding him with injunctions about how we were cousins, First Cousins, for heavens sakes! And he was thirty years old. and, of course, I loved him as a cousin and all, but that was it. and what was he doing this for anyway? what about Cecelia, who would kill him and me too if she ever found out, and so on and so on and so on. I was jabbering so, that I got him to be pretty embarrassed and contrite. It was just having a woman in his house, he explained, quite sorrowfully. (I didn't know what that meant, and I didn't want to know.) He was very, very sorry. wouldn't happen again. promise.
I hadn't even felt flattered by this attention, much...it was a little flattering, and could be used in pretend situations, like the dance. I could pretend and he could pretend we were boyfriend and girlfriend, with no harm done...
We came 'home' from the dance. I was scooting towards my little porch perch, when he attacked again! Into his arms I was swooped and covered with kisses and kisses all over my face and shoulders! I was both very turned-on, as we used to say, and totally horrified. Finally, in honesty and in desperation I screamed, "Stop it, Pete! I'm a Virgin!" I was coming from a place where I just didn't want my very first sex act, the giving-over of my virginity, to be with my first cousin! It was Not the kind of memory I wanted to have for life! Then, to my complete shock and surprise, he started to cry, and cried out, "So am I!" I sat down, hard, on his hard, single bed.
I did not know what to say. He did not know what to say. But then he did say what he wanted to say. He told me that he was in love with me. He had been in love with me for a couple of years. He had looked into it. First cousins could get married in Spain. in the Catholic Church. (He assumed we were both Catholics. I had "fallen-away" from the Church just that year. By now, I was so besotted with all the experiences and sensations I was going through that I didn't know what to think or say anymore. I told him I had to get some sleep. I felt pretty vulnerable, tho safe enough. He was my cousin, who I had known since childhood. He wasn't (by his own definition), a rapist or something. He obviously sincerely loved me, although that seemed a little far-fetched. I was flattered a bit, too. What power my nineteen year old self had! It wasn't that useful a power, if it was attracting cousins and all, but it was power, all the same. Heady stuff. We would sleep on 'it', whatever 'it' was!
It was the morning of my last day in New Orleans. It was drizzling and very gray, a tattered gray, a despondent gray. We breakfasted quietly. We went out to coffee with Cecelia, who was solicitous and kind. Of course, I was leaving. That was a good thing. That's what was behind her eyes. I agreed with my eyes. Women have ways of speaking without talking. Pete drove me to the airport. He spoke seriously, the whole way, about how we were to marry. He would be in touch with me soon in Evanston, at the Nursing School. We would begin our courtship. Eventually we would tell our parents. I agreed nicely. To my very tired soul, I just wanted to get on that plane. New Orleans had conquered me. I was already writing poems in my head about the hundreds of sensations and all the experiences. I wanted to be back in the winter and the slush and to just write it all down, write it all down!
We were all subdued on the plane. The party was over. many of us slept. I slept the whole way 'home'...
A couple of weeks went by. I had received a post card from Pete, telling me he would be "back in town soon" and that we would talk. Instead, he finally called. He told me he had talked with his Mother about his plans She had been very angry with Me, it turns out! She had assumed that I had seduced her son, my noble cousin! I was furious! I didn't do anything wrong! What was going on! He said he would call again soon. He didn't.
I was actually glad it was over. I had no idea how to extricate myself from such behavior! I had no idea what had happened! not for sure, that is. I just thought, in my young, obscure, cloudy perception, that it hadn't been 'normal' in some way. I began dating people my own age, who were not cousins or strange guys in any way that I could tell. If they started behaving badly, I dumped them at once. I started to take some control of my own romantic destinies a bit. It was refreshing. I didn't look back.
Two Christmases later, I was married to my children's father. I was happy, with my new baby, my elder daughter, in my arms. We were at his mother's home, my auntie and godmother. She was cordial, now that I was safely out of action in her son's life...
I was playing a bit with the wonderful huge train set he and his brothers had down in the basement, still up and functional, tho their childhoods were long over. He came downstairs. We chatted lightly. Then he suddenly said, "I always knew you'd get married right away. You were so eager to be married." I looked at him, straight into his face. I said nothing at all. I went upstairs.
I will always remember New Orleans as it was then. My cousin never married. He and Cecelia are still together, in separate homes, though. He's in his seventies and she is in her eighties. I have no idea if he is still a virgin or not...
You know, there should be a New Orleans Jazz CD about in this house somewhere. I should play it, right now...
I think I shall....
My cousin Pete would kill me if he read this. It's his confession, rather than mine, is the reason. He was much older than I and should have protected me. But he didn't, and I think he still feels a bit guilty for it. He once ever wrote me that he hoped his hadn't "...ruined my life." I had answered him back in a huff, busily explaining that it would take a lot more than our little adventure to "ruin my life' - that in fact, my life was totally fine, although that wasn't quite right either. What he did was open my life to a LOT more possibilities, and that most folks just Dream about those possibilities rather than living them through, or out, of whatever their fantasy or life-dream had been....
So, this is all about New Orleans. New Orleans about a half century years ago, that is...
Ahhhh, New Orleans....
The clarity of hard shadow and hard sunlight on shuttered walls. The poetry of magnolia blooms luring a girl with their sugary sweet perfumes. The crunch of tiny river shrimp in young teeth when you are hungry for delight. The press of hot, sexy bodies when you're dancing slowly to glow-worm jazz wails. The sheen on the water of a deep south lake in the morning with the shore birds on wing. The smells of foods and bodies and streets and incense in the French Quarter in the twilight. The swish of the silk cape that Cecelia wore. The ribbon of her dark black hair in a sultry breeze. The tinkling sound of demitasse cups of strong, black, thick coffee at The Three Sisters. The dank and disturbed feel of the moss hanging off the cypress. The colors and frightening twine of the parades in the streets below...
New Orleans at Mardi Gras....
The Plane Ride....I was nineteen years old. No matter how much older you are than nineteen, I am sure you remember being nineteen. It may have been a terrible year. It may have been a beautiful year. But, for certain, you can recall how it felt to you, how you felt. The world was opening up to you, for better or for worse, and you were opening up to it. If sorrow happened, if great loss happened, then that hardness of life stayed with you, and you know where it is inside. If all the possibilities of the wonder of life and love opened to you without struggle or pain, then you had a lucky, lucky start into the Big Bad World. Look back, and you can see yourself there...
Looking back, I was going forward into the world, confident, smart, lovely, lively, and possible.
I had left behind a narrow, small town and its people and its ways, or so I thought. There had been pain and loss in doing that, but I shut it up in a box and threw away the key, or so I thought. At nineteen, healthy and so alive, I was sure, very sure, that the future ahead was bright for me, and I had all the right stuff to make it all happen! I saw change as a huge wave, and I was on the crest of it, and I would not be ever beaten by it into the sands below. Nineteen, and all the drama and the stage and all the parts were mine! Never before or since has this clarity been owned so thoroughly by me.
So, then, The Plane Ride to New Orleans, to visit my darling old cousin Pete, was charged with immense excitement and possibility for me! I was invited to Mardi Gras! I was leaving the Chicago Area and Nursing School and Loyola U classes for a week of, (I hoped!) worldly debauchery or, at least, Much Fun! This plane ride was obviously the beginning of a True Adventure!
Everybody, it appeared to me, was drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and they were all in various states of high euphoria! The plane was loaded with Revelers on their way to the Big Wipe-Out Party of the month, in exotic, beautiful New Orleans! We were all leaving snow and slush and bone-chilling winds, and cabin-fever depressions. The Cure was just a plane ride away! I plunged myself into the melee of dancing-in-the-aisles young studs and willing young ladies. I even affected a slightly different accent, so as to sound less obviously mid-western! I batted my eyelashes! I laughed loudly at immediately forgotten jokes. I was already having So Much Fun!
Two young men became my favorites as the journey progressed through the mile-bending skies. They were Northwestern friends, and were competing vigorously with each other for my maidenly attentions. They flattered, cajoled, acted upon the stage with great abandon! They were erudite, respectful, silly, attention-seeking, attention-getting, bold, sincere, all at the same time and in sequence. I fell immediately in love with them both! By the end of the journey, phone numbers and names had been carefully written, folded, and placed in safe places. We were going to meet, and often! They would save me from my old (nine years older...) stodgy cousin! We would go dancing in jazz dives, cavorting on the waterfront! We were the Three Musketeers of the Mardi Gras! I prepared to introduce my new fellows to my cousin Pete, as soon as we disembarked! He, of course, would be pleased not to have his little cousin tied around his neck day and night. We would both have an "out", yet I would have my chaperon when in need. The perfect scenario was planned and ready for its execution!
Happily, we three toddled off the plane together. Right there, waiting was Pete. Running up to him, I gave him a big cousinly hug. Which he, very unexpectedly, returned with a huge crush of my exuberant self, into his arms, with a very sexual kiss on the lips! I was completely discombobulated. This was my 'old' cousin Pete, for heavens sakes! A bit taken back, I turned and introduced him to my two new 'friends', who were justifiably looking a little confused. "This is my Cousin, Pete. Pete, these are my friends. We're going to get together here in New Orleans sometime, when you and Cecelia want some time without me around!" I spoke lightly, but very clearly, to make sure that my new fellows weren't going to bolt. Cuz that's what it looked like they were going to do. They were looking straight at Pete, who was looking straight at them. It was a challenge over territory, Me, to be precise. I was very confused myself! What in the world was going on with Pete? Firmly, he informed us all that All of my days and nights were planned, and we would be too busy for me to see any "friends". Then, calmly and firmly steering me away by his hand on my elbow, he called out, "Nice to have met you.". I was half-turned back, calling myself! "See you guys soooooooon!" to a pair of upturned faces with frozen smiles, who I sensed I was never going to see again! What was up with Pete? I asked him.
He tersely replied that he had been disappointed to see me with 'Two Men', who were obviously strangers, and he hoped I hadn't given them his number. I muttered something to cover that one, and he went on. "Cecelia and I do have too much for you to do to find the time to party with strangers. Your Mother would be upset with me if I didn't chaperon you better than that." Well, that took care of that. If he was going to tell on me to Mom, my gig was up before it had even begun. I resigned myself to a "good time" with my 'old' cousin and his even older girlfriend. I was determined to enjoy myself anyway. This was going to be an Adventure, wasn't it?
My cousin Pete was, and has always been, a very attractive guy, mind you. He's very tall, thin, fit, nicely dressed at all times, somewhat conservative in tastes, with a big, generous smile and a good, German Catholic disposition. He was, in many ways, a bit prudish and old-fashioned, but, he did 'go with' Cecelia, and had done so for years. Cecelia was a lovely, exotic lady, older by quite a few years. Her family were an old Creole Catholic one who had lived in New Orleans forever, we were told. She lived with her mother, and was not going to marry until her mother died. We of the Midwestern Clan were in total awe of her. And, we couldn't figure out what she saw in Pete. I mean he was a great guy, but she, she was Foreign, to us, and therefore superior to us in every way! I was very pleased that I would be spending a whole week with this woman, who, I was sure would introduce me to the proverbial 'ways of the world' as no one else could!
Pete actually lived and worked in the Famous French Quarter, too! He had been in the army in New Orleans, years before, and had fallen in love with the old city, especially. His house was on the very edge of the oldest streets of the city, and he could walk to his office in the main square of the wonderful and exotic Quarter. Cecelia had a Boutique Gift Shop right there on the Square too. This was going to be So Much Fun! On the way to his house by car, Pete was answering my questions, but he seemed a bit preoccupied. He finally blurted out that he intended to be my escort everywhere during the week, just as if we were dating or something. I took this lightly at the time, and said something like, well, yeah, but not like a boyfriend-girlfriend dating, right? right? He laughed, but didn't actually reassure me. I decided I hadn't heard him quite right. After all, this was sophisticated New Orleans! What did I know about its social expectations! I was just a small-town Illinois hick! Yes indeed I was...
The first couple of days in the old city were all sights, sounds, tastes, sensations! Especially, colors! All soft with the misty rains of February in the Deep South. Greens that were grayish as old lace. Blues all faded in the humid air. Black, very black, past the black of shadow. Stark, almost. White, very white, as if someone was painting it on over and over all of the time. Greens like Spring.
The sounds! Around the block came three men, all in costume. Drinking at noon! Staggering a little and happy as songbirds! As they rounded the corner..."I'd give my left nut for a ham sandwich!"....the drums and horns and woodwinds of the parades below the deck of the architecture office where Pete worked...their odd mourning, deep and sincere, right in the heart of such joyous jazz rhythms...the calls of the dock workers, late, late at night, calling out cautions and commands one to the other, with deep, soft tones of Louisiana delta men....
The tastes! The coffees, rich as sin in their tiny, eggshell cups...the river shrimp in their full, salty, crunchy little cardboard containers. The pastries and soft, soft breads, all melting into sugars and perfumes of sweetness, cloying and undeniable. the mounds of gumbo with unimaginable depths of flavor and succulence, down, down to the bottom of the bowels. The juleps! crisp and cool with the nibbles of mint on your lips all the day....
The buildings! the wrought-iron everywhere! The brick streets! the people! the parades! They all twined around each other... lively ghosts in full display, weaving in and out, in and out, until you were dizzy with delight and sensation...
And, of course, Cecelia. Ah, Cecelia. I could not get enough of Cecelia. I had a complete crush on her from the moment I first laid eyes on her. She was a Movie Star. A Stage Star. a Goddess. She knew Everything There Was To Know. I followed her around like a puppy, picking up any crumbs she threw my way, and hiding them in my pocket to savor later...Her clothing! She looked like a model from France, I was sure! (Although I had never seen a model from France...) All silks, and linens, and light wools, and Isadore Duncan scarves around her neck! And gold jewelry by the ton, all on her arms and ears and neck and even in her dark, thick, glorious hair! Her porous honey white jewel of a face, blemish-free
And yet, I was not to see her very often. She was cordial enough when we were all together, but I certainly didn't interest her...she was more interested in watching Pete while he was with me. She would arch her eyebrows up, one of them usually, and look, well, serious, in a bemused sort of way. I was starting to catch on that she was a bit jealous of the time he was spending with me! This struck me as pretty strange, as I felt I was hardly competition for a Woman of the World as she was! Also, I was totally out of my element in every, every way.
I had packed my lightest winter clothes, and they were too heavy for the sultry time of year. I was sweating really copiously much of the time, which was Not Attractive. My long blonde hair was not fluffy and lovely - it was dangling straggly and damp and my curlers at night were not correcting that problem at all. Also, the warm damp was contributing to my face breaking out in its monthly bloom of acne lesions...so attractive! I was basically not being entrancing. I was being nineteen years old, and a bit awkward, unsure, and besotted by my wondrous surroundings. The pinnacle was approaching! I was going to go to a dance with Pete and Cecelia - not a Mardi-Gras Ball, but big party on an Island in Lake Pontchartrain, with jazz bands and buffets and wine and everything! I dressed in my best sexy dress, modest of course, but stylish. I put on makeup carefully, my earrings, and heels, which I rarely wore. I was very excited! Off Pete and I went, but, no Cecelia. Pete said she was home with a "headache". No matter, I supposed. Surely guys would ask me to dance!
Well, this party was so very wonderful, I can still remember it like it was just yesterday night! The lake at night! the stars! the boat to the island! the band of dark, sexy, sensual musicians. the glints of light on the gold of the horns. the wails and sobs and compulsions of the music itself. and the dancing!...occasionally, some one would ask me to dance. But Pete always was giving me punch - laced with something, I hoped, although it didn't seem so. He was watching my every move. He practically followed me to the Ladies Room. I was starting to feel a bit over-chaperoned! What harm was a little dancing going to do? I was only dancing with him, and it seemed to me he was dancing way to close for a cousin. It was starting to feel a little erotic, and I was uncomfortable, a bit. After all, I was only a nineteen year old woman! My body was willing, but I had standards in place from my Catholic upbringing. I allowed my self a few little sexual twinges, but, shoot, this was my cousin breathing heavily around here. It didn't seem good. Still, we danced on. We looked, I noticed in the gilt and smoke of the mirrors on the wall, like a very well-suited, attractive couple...
Before I go here, I should mention something that had happened a day or two before. Every night at Pete's house, I slept on a cot on the sun porch. He slept in his own bedroom with a huge amour that I really appreciated. My sun porch little space was quite nice, though. Each night, I took a shower, and put on my way too warm, cotton nightgown...modest, I might point out. I set my hair in my curlers...I slept well, tired from all the sights and the sounds of the day. One morning, however, as I was just waking...
I was awoken completely, by my good old cousin Pete doing the crushing-me-in-his-arms thing, with the passionate kissing and everything. All that saved me was my awareness that I had to pee, and soon, that I was in curlers and even had acne medicine on my blemishes, and was sweating in a nightgown that covered me head to toe. The whole situation was just ridiculous! I, at once, began scolding him with injunctions about how we were cousins, First Cousins, for heavens sakes! And he was thirty years old. and, of course, I loved him as a cousin and all, but that was it. and what was he doing this for anyway? what about Cecelia, who would kill him and me too if she ever found out, and so on and so on and so on. I was jabbering so, that I got him to be pretty embarrassed and contrite. It was just having a woman in his house, he explained, quite sorrowfully. (I didn't know what that meant, and I didn't want to know.) He was very, very sorry. wouldn't happen again. promise.
I hadn't even felt flattered by this attention, much...it was a little flattering, and could be used in pretend situations, like the dance. I could pretend and he could pretend we were boyfriend and girlfriend, with no harm done...
We came 'home' from the dance. I was scooting towards my little porch perch, when he attacked again! Into his arms I was swooped and covered with kisses and kisses all over my face and shoulders! I was both very turned-on, as we used to say, and totally horrified. Finally, in honesty and in desperation I screamed, "Stop it, Pete! I'm a Virgin!" I was coming from a place where I just didn't want my very first sex act, the giving-over of my virginity, to be with my first cousin! It was Not the kind of memory I wanted to have for life! Then, to my complete shock and surprise, he started to cry, and cried out, "So am I!" I sat down, hard, on his hard, single bed.
I did not know what to say. He did not know what to say. But then he did say what he wanted to say. He told me that he was in love with me. He had been in love with me for a couple of years. He had looked into it. First cousins could get married in Spain. in the Catholic Church. (He assumed we were both Catholics. I had "fallen-away" from the Church just that year. By now, I was so besotted with all the experiences and sensations I was going through that I didn't know what to think or say anymore. I told him I had to get some sleep. I felt pretty vulnerable, tho safe enough. He was my cousin, who I had known since childhood. He wasn't (by his own definition), a rapist or something. He obviously sincerely loved me, although that seemed a little far-fetched. I was flattered a bit, too. What power my nineteen year old self had! It wasn't that useful a power, if it was attracting cousins and all, but it was power, all the same. Heady stuff. We would sleep on 'it', whatever 'it' was!
It was the morning of my last day in New Orleans. It was drizzling and very gray, a tattered gray, a despondent gray. We breakfasted quietly. We went out to coffee with Cecelia, who was solicitous and kind. Of course, I was leaving. That was a good thing. That's what was behind her eyes. I agreed with my eyes. Women have ways of speaking without talking. Pete drove me to the airport. He spoke seriously, the whole way, about how we were to marry. He would be in touch with me soon in Evanston, at the Nursing School. We would begin our courtship. Eventually we would tell our parents. I agreed nicely. To my very tired soul, I just wanted to get on that plane. New Orleans had conquered me. I was already writing poems in my head about the hundreds of sensations and all the experiences. I wanted to be back in the winter and the slush and to just write it all down, write it all down!
We were all subdued on the plane. The party was over. many of us slept. I slept the whole way 'home'...
A couple of weeks went by. I had received a post card from Pete, telling me he would be "back in town soon" and that we would talk. Instead, he finally called. He told me he had talked with his Mother about his plans She had been very angry with Me, it turns out! She had assumed that I had seduced her son, my noble cousin! I was furious! I didn't do anything wrong! What was going on! He said he would call again soon. He didn't.
I was actually glad it was over. I had no idea how to extricate myself from such behavior! I had no idea what had happened! not for sure, that is. I just thought, in my young, obscure, cloudy perception, that it hadn't been 'normal' in some way. I began dating people my own age, who were not cousins or strange guys in any way that I could tell. If they started behaving badly, I dumped them at once. I started to take some control of my own romantic destinies a bit. It was refreshing. I didn't look back.
Two Christmases later, I was married to my children's father. I was happy, with my new baby, my elder daughter, in my arms. We were at his mother's home, my auntie and godmother. She was cordial, now that I was safely out of action in her son's life...
I was playing a bit with the wonderful huge train set he and his brothers had down in the basement, still up and functional, tho their childhoods were long over. He came downstairs. We chatted lightly. Then he suddenly said, "I always knew you'd get married right away. You were so eager to be married." I looked at him, straight into his face. I said nothing at all. I went upstairs.
I will always remember New Orleans as it was then. My cousin never married. He and Cecelia are still together, in separate homes, though. He's in his seventies and she is in her eighties. I have no idea if he is still a virgin or not...
You know, there should be a New Orleans Jazz CD about in this house somewhere. I should play it, right now...
I think I shall....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
