More Journal Excavations

Riding Season Begins with the Banana Woman

Feb. 8th, 2004 |

It's February, the camellia outside my living room window is blooming. The flowers are a surprise and a delight, when everything else is still gray and either soggy or desiccated depending on its nature. I noticed the flowers yesterday when I stepped out for the first ride of the season. They were peeking out of the shiny green leaves of the plant, so soft and pink and perfect, they didn't look real. The day was sunny and warming by ten a.m. The sky was blue and only a few clouds scudded by, not your typical Washington-in-February day. We decided to carpe the diem and head out for a ride.

I haven't been up on the blue dragon since last October. Every time the weather has relented and I had a shot at riding weather, reality, a.k.a. my job, got in the way. T. has had to ride without me for the few times he has gotten out to freeze in the breeze. So it was with both anticipation and spookiness I suited up to embark on my second season as a 'bikesta' (rhymes with gangsta but rides a motorcycle). I have put on just enough weight during the hamster hibernation season to render my chaps miserably tight which made me really cranky for A)putting them on and B) now having to get them back off.

Not wanting to A) freeze my chubby rear off or B) miss the ride, I unpacked my new bright yellow Triumph one piece all weather suit thinking I'd give it a go. I cut off all the tags, laid it on the bed and began to dress in layers of clothes to avoid freezing at speed on the bike. On went woolly long johns, woolly socks, blue jeans, and a warm woolly shirt. By the time I got the first two layers on, I was breaking a sweat. I found a warm gray jacket, zipped it up over the woolly shirt, got a little warmer still and started to investigate the mechanics of the bright yellow one piece all weather suit. The zippers on it are three miles long-each--- and open from the ankles to the neck. You'd think it would have had those zippers that you can run from either end but no, these ones start at your ankles and each leg has its own personal zipper. The front of the thing also features enough lapped over patches of Velcro to close up a circus tent water tight. Once I managed to rip the Velcro apart and then convince it to stay that way by standing on the legs of the suit and pulling it apart up to the neck, I started on the zippers. The directions say right there in enthusiastic black and white script "Easy step in, easy on and easy off." Right. Staring at the suit, unzipped and ready to step in it occurred to me that getting back out might be a fairly ferocious undertaking, so with a sigh, I peeled off at least one layer and made that final pit stop.

I stepped back up to the suit, seriously sweating now and laced into my riding boots. I stepped in, I bent over, I zipped up the zippers, ankles to ears, and belted the belt of the suit over my woolly long johns, my jeans, my woolly undershirt, my woolly shirt and my woolly coat. The suit was obviously made for a man much taller and wider than my 5 foot four inch height. There was enough excess suit, even over the various layers of me to make another whole rain suit for a really big dog. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, "You look like the Michelin man after too many bananas." There were bags and bunches of fabric, the bulk of the too long sleeves was rolled up each arm making it look I was carrying the life preservers from the Titanic over the end of each arm. Still, I was more worried about the Washington State winter cold than the goofy looking banana-yellow woman staring back at me from the mirror. I straggled valiantly out the back door towards the garage where the bikes were parked and waiting. I was hot and getting cranky and all the bunchy sagging fabric was making walking a real chore and causing enough plastic rubbing racket to scare my cat into full-fledged hair up hissing fit when I lurched into his patch of sun and woke him up.

Staggering into the garage, I found my winter gloves and tried to pull one on over the life preserver arm. Nope, the top of the glove wouldn't fit over the wadded up fabric. That did it. The banana suit from hell got peeled off one long zipper at a time and chucked into the corner accompanied by a serious string of bad words. My husband was smart enough to not say one single word. He warmed up the bikes and stayed out the fire zone while I grouched and grumped and pulled on my old rain paints to cut the chill over my leather chaps. I pulled off the woolly gray jacket and put on my lined

black leather jacket and my helmet over a warm hat and headed out the door. By then I was so hot and so cranky over the suit from hell, hat I forgot to worry about riding and the old: how will I do? Will I fall down? Will I run into the side of a car? Will a car run into the side of me? What if? What if? I completely forgot to review my whole novice rider litany of things that could happen. That litany accompanied me every day for about the first 4500 miles of my riding career so being aggravated right out of it was a good thing.

The temperature was creeping up into the high forties when I pulled on my warm winter gloves over my now regular sized arms, crawled onto my warmed up bike and pulled up the kick stand. We headed out into the sunny day, both bikes purring like big cats. Surprise! It was great, it was wonderful and it was like last summer's hard earned 5500 miles were just clocked yesterday. I remembered all over again why I love riding and I can hardly wait for more sunny days to invite me to get out and ride.

We both noticed we stayed warm the whole day, neither one of us got cold anywhere but our noses. We had so much fun we scrapped the original plan of a quick trip down to the coffee shop and home, we wound up staying out and riding all over the county for the whole day and didn't drag ourselves home until the day started to head towards evening and take on a distinct chill.

And the yellow suit? Well, maybe I'll put it in that cute little bag in came in and carry it on trips. It could come in handy, there's probably enough room in it to camp overnight with all my luggage and a camp stove if I have to. You might want to look out if you see a woman flapping down the road on a bike like a load of wet wash in that suit. You could be seriously injured if you laugh so hard you run off the road.

And So It Begins, Men and Motorcycles, Summer 1997

 It's July. The middle of July, after the summer rains have ended. The weather is hot and the sky is hard and blue for days on end. The northwest summer has arrived and I find myself flying up the road in my sky blue car to meet a man in Anacortes, four hours away from Olympia, Washington. He has a motorcycle and he has been riding on it somewhere in the west for the past two weeks. He is my best friend and I miss him. Somehow, I have convinced myself that is a good thing to do and it will be fun, but there is a part of me in here huddled in the back of my head somewhere screaming behind my eyes saying, "Big Mistake! Turn around and go home you idiot!"

But I don't go home, there isn't much home left to go. The ruins of a marriage to a man who stepped out of it a long time ago for someone else wait behind me. We both agree, I will finally give up and move out of my husband's house as soon as I can save up enough money. It has taken me years to figure it out, sometimes you can love someone but love is not enough. My friend B. explained that concept to me and it took awhile for it to sink in but she was right. So here I am with nothing much left to lose and a lot of mixed up feelings in my head and heart.

Aida is on my car tape player, Elton John's lusty version and it is great to listen to while I rocket up the freeway. It's close to sunset, about 9:00 p.m. and there are deer on the verge of the freeway, beautiful but a scary sight on an interstate. I finally slow up, leave the free and find the motel where we are to meet. It's not a palace but it's not a rat bag flea trap either. I see a big black Harley out front as I get out of my car. He hasn't been here too long because I can hear the engine clinking as the metal cools, those little pops and pings you get from things contracting after a long hot day. He comes out of the room and sees me and I am just flooded with the worst mix of feelings. I feel like a shy five year old. I am all but rubbing my toe on the parking lot asphalt, suddenly bashful.

He grins from one ear to the next, he looks like a racoon with a fierce tan across his cheekbones and forehead, but where his sunglasses masked his eyes there is shockingly white skin. It makes me laugh to see him in this sort of mask and we hug awkwardly. I drag my stuff inside and we settle down on the bed to talk and watch television in dual confusion, exploratory and tentative with each other. I am not comfortable here and I am feeling awkward and a little spooked. Will I have to fight this guy off? How well do I know him after ten years of friendship? He's never even kissed me, and here we are in a motel, for crissakes. I think this is beyond tacky and I desperately wonder what was I thinking when I agreed to this trip but I keep my mouth shut and ride the feelings. I feel like a real cheeseball when I try to explain somehow that I am not into the whole rip his clothes off and rip my clothes off and get all sweaty thing. This man is a gentleman, I can tell he had high hopes and expectations too, riding around the west alone thinking about his dream girl waiting for him in a motel when he got back, but he doesn't press the issue and we finally fall asleep. I'm tense and in full pajama regalia and  about as snuggly as a fence post, but I finally drift off. We roust ourselves out in the morning and pack up, walking down the road to find espresso in the warm sunny morning, smacked now and then by a cool breeze that runs it's fingers inside my sweater and through my hair.

The car and the bike caravan together out to the ferry boat landing and I park in the long term parking, leaving my little blue car and taking just my back pack and the helmet I am handed. I crawl up on the back of the bike and we roll down the road to the long lines of cars waiting to embark for the San Juan Islands. I am swaggering a little in my boots, shades and helmet perched up behind him in his leathers on this big, big black Harley. People look at us with envy and respect, it's different on a bike. You are not invisible anymore and I wonder why?

Rolling on to the boat we haul around to the sunny side, settling in for a long breezy ride out through the beautiful islands, past Shaw and Lopez and Upright Head, where nuns in wimples from the priory on the island are taking time out from herding sheep and instead running the dock. It makes me laugh to see them in habits and safety vests tossing hawsers and directing traffic. A good omen for this beautiful day. Finally putting in at Orcas we climb on the bike and hurtle off first before the herds of waiting cars. Throttle wide open and roaring up the hill and around the corners. It's cold! In and out of the trees and the meadows, my nose is assaulted with smells and I go from shivering under the evergreens to basking in the sunny meadows as we going sailing through twisty corners and fly past struggling bicyclists burdened like pack animals on their way to campgrounds.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Doe Bay, it happens. I can literally feel myself re-inflating. I feel like a squashed beach ball with a new patch. I am ready to shout for joy but settle for pounding him on the back, this girl is NOT DEAD! She's in here, ten years of hell fall off the back and I am filled with bubbles of sun and happiness and peace and hope. I feel like I could float right off the back of the bike except my teeth are chattering so hard they pretty much counterbalance the bubbly feeling allowing me to crawl off the back and up the stairs of the B and B.

My first Bed and Breakfast, the Kangaroo House. Kangaroo house is run by a couple of terminally cheerful retired US Forest service rangers. The rooms are Victorian and charming, each one is different and has a girl's name. Our room is right next to the bathroom which is rather handy, and I feel smug until about ten o'clock that night when some huge fatty goes in and lets loose with the remnants of his dinner and we get to hear it all through the paper thin bathroom wall. This is so teenage potty humor hilarious and mortifying that we both roll on the floor with tears in our eyes, hands over our mouths trying not to laugh out loud at the hideous sounds emanating from the window and through the wall.

In the afternoon I discover the ultimate Bath Tub. The bathroom at the K House is huge and vaguely western influenced with a lot of knotty pine, brass and ruffly cotton curtains. This tub is the stuff Cleopatra's dreams are made of, this is the tub Miss Kitty of Gunsmoke fame must have lolled in. It has four claw feet, it's about a foot off the floor and I can lay full length in it, up to my ears in warm water and just soak in bliss. It's warm out and warm in and completely wonderful. I soak for an hour until I'm waterlogged. When I get back to our room, he decides to go for a run and I go out on the deck to read.

When he comes back he is visibly upset and I follow him up to the room to try to figure out what has happened to our wonderful weekend. Turns out testosterone  has reared its ugly head again. I don't want to sleep with him and he is not happy. I am not willing to be anyone's fantasy girl ever again, I'm not giving in, I'm not ready for this after ten years of treachery and shifting currents, I don't know how to trust anymore and I'm not even sure I want to remember how. I never promised a sexual fantasy weekend to this man. I thought we were friends and meant the world to each other as friends and I'm standing my ground this time. Maybe it would be easier to just give in and go along; after all I grew up in the sixties and know that going along part way too well. But not this time, this man means too much to me and if he wants just a quick roll in the hay maybe I'm wrong about him.

He is acting like a spoiled brat and I finally have had it with the attitude and pick up one of the big fluffy pillows on the bed and just haul off with everything I've got and clock him upside the head with it. He looks shocked, stunned and then he starts laughing and grabs a pillow of his own. Two grown people are having an epic pillow fight and we fall down laughing and winded when it's over. The air is cleared and we are able to talk about our expectations and I feel better. I am beginning to feel the edges of happy again and recognize it as something that might still be in the world.

In the evening we decide to walk the mile or so to town and dinner. A guy picks us up, a retired air force officer, and we hear his life story on the way downtown. It makes me want to live here too. He dumps us off in front of the fire station and we wander around town until we find a restaurant with a downstairs deck and a large gaggle of locals all lounging and drinking and chatting each other up. We are happy to be here on this patio overlooking a hundred miles of sky blue ocean and pine topped islands that look like god just spilled them out of his pocket on a walk through the joint, like so many bread crumbs. We drink too much hard cider, getting slightly drunk and everything gets way too important and funny.

Somehow we straggle back up the road and past the K house to the little beach at the end of the street. We walk through a neighborhood that looks like a subdivision --only it's on the corner of heaven and paradise, and suddenly get burped onto the tiny rocky beach. It is just sunset. Down the beach to the left is a long dock about a football field away, and on the dock is a black Labrador running up and down and silhouetted against the sky. The sky has suddenly turned into a bad Hawaiian post card and it's streaked with pink and purple and yellow and the clouds down low look like lavender pillows against the water. I can't believe it. I'm sitting on this log, slightly high and it's turned into a cheap romance novel when I wasn't looking. I look over at him and think, I guess I should just get this out of the way, so I kiss him.

It is awful. We are both so out of practice after so many years in broken impersonal marriages. He is one of those fishbowl kissers-- like falling face first into a fish bowl with lips. I sit back, open my eyes and relay the information to him that he is a truly terrible kisser. I am appalled at my sudden need for honesty. Does this mean we are going to be just friends because no electric sparks snap into the sunset and it isn't wonderful the first time? Poor guy, what has he ever done to deserve me? We try again, half laughing, not wonderful but definitely better. We straggle back to the B and B in the dark and fell asleep until the fat guy lets loose, all the fresh air and stress of the dance between us wear us out and we finally fall asleep together, snuggled up, not a fence post in sight.

Sunday, we hop on the bike and spin around the island, me leaning on him with my hands in his pockets, We stop and walk around, holding hands and just loving being together on the bike. We ride the twisty tight steep road up to Mt Constitution,. At the end it spits you out on top of the island. You can climb the WPA built tower and see half of forever including Canada, America and at least three volcanoes on a good day. I am amazed to see Mr and Mrs America stopping us at every turn to ask about the bike and talk about riding. I didn't know until then that there were bikers that weren't bad boys, and everyone loves a Harley. A lady stops to talk to me while I sit on the Dynaglide, waiting for him to come down the hill. She tells me she envies me and as soon as her kids are gone, she is going to hit the road too. I hope she doesn't wait until then; life somehow gets away from us when we aren't looking.

We roll back to the ferry docks, Sunday afternoon, sad to be going back to reality again. We sit on the boat and talk. I tell him something has changed in me and I will never settle for anything less than exactly what I want again. It's like the scene from Pretty Woman when she tells him what she wants. He takes in my list, looks at me and says, "That's all doable." He understands that for me the sexual side of this relationship will be the icing on the cake and I'm not in a hurry. It's like riding on that big fast motorcycle, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

I'm really sad and feeling lost when we part, I have trouble taking my arms back and putting them and me in the car and heading back south. But something has begun on that bike, something special and good and I'll sing along to Aida all the way home. And when I'm there and it's late in the afternoon and I'm all alone, I'll listen for his bike to go roaring past the house on the way to wherever it is he goes, knowing it won't be long until I'm up behind him again waiting to go wherever the road takes us.

Flying through Oklahoma

 A lot of my journal back then was dedicated to a new universe, motorcyles and motorcyle pieces and the world I saw when I joined the pack

MOTORCYLE THINKINGS  Summer 2004 

How do I explain about the 7-11's? I never thought when I climbed aboard the Flying Dragon and rode 5000 miles that convenience stores would become oases that I looked forward to seeing. I have always had a personal antipathy bordering on loathing for 'convenience stores'. I must have been frightened by a potato chip bag and a six pack as an infant, but I generally tend to dislike the clientele and the content equally.

In a junk food heaven there would be rows of these stores, all staffed by industrious families of newly arrived immigrants living out the American dream, and speaking marginal English--even in the wilds of nowhere North Dakota, the template is the same. Shining rows of cellophane bags and wrappers full of chemicals and sugar with a higher fat content than a hog farm, all jammed into a 12 X 12 building. Not a piece of fruit or a vegetable in sight--with the possible exception of a can of V-8 with the vegetables safely trapped and hermetically sealed in a can. Strangely, there are always a few loungers around, regulars in greasy jeans, chatting and shopping. Who ARE these people? What do they do all day? The anthropologist in me is fascinated.

Don't get me wrong--I'm an all American girl and I love junk food too, but when I've been riding and riding and riding, I want to reach and touch more than sugar in 2000 shapes. On a bike you can't exactly carry around a tomato or two, I discovered within two days of a long trip on my bike that carrying food on a motorcycle is problematic. A) you can never find it when you want it B) you can't eat really well with a 70 mph wind attempting to grab everything out of your hand on its way to your mouth--and C) you can't really let go of the throttle long enough to snack in a meaningful fashion.

And while I'm whining--the scenery around a 7-11 isn't exactly dedicated to visual pleasure. Ah, yes, a gum spattered curb to sit on and gasoline fumes and miles of hot smelly asphalt, bonanza days when there was a bench next to the garbage can.

BUT these stores do have vast supplies of ice cold Gatorade and other sports drinks. Riding across Idaho in 110 degree heat, Gatorade became my staple drink. I discovered I could jam a bottle into the area between my handlebars and windshield and if it had one of those little pull up tops, I could actually drink it as I went instead of wearing the fluid as an accessory. I also found on chilly afternoons if I emptied a bag of M and M's into my sweatshirt pouch I could haul them out a few at a time and get most of them in my mouth. I am sure there are happy little furry rodents all the way through Wyoming who found the ones that flew off into the bushes and they experienced the thrill of chocolate for the first and last time--until I pass through there again.

These stores often feature an aisle or a row of Made in China tacky artifacts that purport to be created by the nearest tribe of Native Americans, working this week in the best of plastic leather and plastic glass beads. I stood in more than one of these stores staring in just plain stunned silence at the sculptures; artfully carved in plastic wood with plastic wolves and plastic bears cavorting in loving families on little flowered plastic bases. I never saw anyone buy the stuff although I always watched to see, someone must or it wouldn't be there, right? Convenience stores are the best place to find really tacky post cards to send home, the ones that make your family wonder about your declining taste and judgement and perhaps think you've been out there on the road way too long.

There is something to be said about these stores as experienced from a bike saddle, when your butt is burning and you cannot find one single position to sit in for more than 3 minutes without howling into the wind. It's pretty wonderful to haul into a hot, stinky, greasy, plastic wrapped gas station-convenience store parking lot and crawl off the bike. Stepping inside the air conditioning is enough to make you weep with joy and there is nothing like a bottle of 7-11 water poured over your head just before you get back on and ride when it's so hot the tar is bubbling. That ice cold Gatorade tastes better than beer right about then and you forgive them everything in that rosy moment.

Excavated Writing. Looking from November to February, written in 2003

The season comes on slowly; all the leaves have dropped but the last few that cling with gray tenacity to the viney fingers of the pear tree. The season grows wetter each day, piles of late raked leaves stick together like bits of wet brown paper.

My garden has become old. The wrinkled bag lady heads of the last rough sunflowers and mums are brown and twisted, their stems sticking up like bony arms. It is tempting to go out into the garden and tidy, to pull and clip and prune. But the blowsy dead foliage warms and protects the living garden, all the little secret hearths hoarding next year's treasures under the ground.

I love seeing the birds the cold weather has brought. Seedpods sway like lumpy lollipops under the tiny nuthatches and chickadees weight. Raucous Jays pounce on the sunflower heads. Spent Sunflowers look like drunks lined up in the garden ; still standing but leaning to the side more every day. The Jays quarrel and wrestle constantly scattering more seeds on the ground than they manage to take. Juncos on the ground busily clean house and nothing is wasted.

The rain and fog have set in earnest, green moss grows on the concrete pavers in the garden and with every freeze more chips spall from the rosemary pot to the path.

It’s only November but already I look forward to late February when I will be in barn boots in the wet, poking around anxiously to see whose nose is appearing; who has made it through and who has not. I will be making mental lists of chores and hatching plans drinking tea in the kitchen overlooking the garden. Outside the white sky turns itself inside out again.

"Searching for the great white bargain, but finding only the whale of discontent."

Covid Poetry I

feeling odd lately and I'm going back to writing to process this confusing new world.

I am lost

In an antique side show

In an antique carnival.

The carnival is closed

No barkers in the stalls

are convincing customers to invest

In things they didn’t know they wanted.

Like goldfish,

 that will die in

their white take out cartons

and badly made bears

that came from china.

Canvas triangles flap over me

 little dead flag hands

mixed with strings of dizzy lightbulbs,

all swinging in the lazy wind.

Candy wrappers and bits of cardboard

go skirling down  the rows

to be caught by  the fence

and the ugly confetti wind.

The rides are dark,

no pretend boats

no pretend airplanes

no horses, or elephants, or ostriches

or hippos or carriages with benches

for the little kids.

Everything that circled its tail forever

doesn’t.

But we will tell each other about

the beauty and the lights and the dizzy

of a Ferris Wheel when you’re in love at 15.

We’ll remember the noise of the gears,

 and the grease

and the laughter

and the lost children

and the games of chance we couldn’t win.

We’ll say to each other

 “Remember the merry-go-round

and the popcorn?”

And  then we’ll say,

“Remember what it was like before

The year that Covid came?”

A Round About Christmas Lesson

This is a Christmas story, in a roundabout way, maybe a long and tangled way all the back to 1954,but I think it's the best way

When I was five, and I’m sure I would have insisted I was five-and-a-half, my father’s parents came from their farm in Illinois to our house in Southern California to spend Christmas with us. My dad was in the Air Force, stationed at March Air Force Base, about a twenty minute drive from our Victorian Farmhouse on the corner of 6^th and C street in the sleepy farming  town of Perris, California; which is how we wound up moving there in 1950.

 

This is our beautiful house in 1962. When our military family transferred to  Germany it was rented and the renters chopped wood on the hardwood floor in the living room, ruining it. They also destroyed  and  It took 2 hard years to bring it back, but we did.

Getting my grandparents visiting from so far away was so exciting my brother and I couldn't stand still. Finally, mom said it was time to meet the train. We piled into the car, a lumbering dinosaur sized  blue Dodge Sedan, and headed up Highway 395.  The train came in to San Bernardino, about a 45 minute drive away in those days when 50 miles an hour was considered speedy. 

An actual family photo of the Super Chief in which my Grandparents were riding.

We got to the train station and my father asked  which platform the Super Chief from Chicago was arriving at? We bounced and hopped and jumped and made our way there firmly in tow. We stood on the platform and continued to bounce up and down with joy. until the train came thundering in right at my fingertips it seemed.  In my memory that train was  a steaming snorting steel monster that both fascinated me and scared me badly until I was about 12. 

I remember at 5, walking down the platform holding my mother’s hand tightly, scared of the noise and the big trains all around us, huge snorting engines, whistles, porters with carts with metal wheels and so many people! Suddenly the undercarriage of the train would hiss and disgorge a cloud of steam all over of us and then sit there humming like a cranky dragon. 

Grandma and Grandpa Groves

 I forgot the train because there they were! Stepping down from the train, Grandma held her handbag over one arm, she always called it her pocket book, and her train case was gripped firmly in the other hand.  My grandpa Floyd always wore a gray fedora and a badly fitting sport coat when he came to visit, which he took off as fast as possible. In my memories he always has a cigar clamped in his teeth.  When he wasn’t shoveled into the dress up jacket, my gramps wore bib overalls and one of those train engineer hats with a bill. He was a farmer, he was big and gruff and I loved him.

Grandma loved his dogs and his cigar, but he has a pipe in this picture.

Soon we were home and into the magical whirl of Christmas and Christmas morning.  That year I got a Jenny doll, a six inch tall inexpensive knock off version that didn’t have rooted hair or shoes that would come off. She was hard plastic, her shoes were painted on, her arms and legs were jointed and her eyes opened and shut. I adored her and the first thing I did was brush her beautiful blonde hair that wasn’t rooted. It ripped right off her head and left a fuzzy yellow covering and a tiny top knot. I remember being terribly shocked by the wad of blonde wig in my little brush.  I loved her anyway.  She had a satiny bonnet with red ribbon strings and I took it off and on and off and on and each time, I asked my grandpa to tie it in a bow for me. He did this patiently for a while and then he sat me on his lap, untied my shoe and proceeded to teach me to a tie a bow knot, telling me I needed to learn this here and now.  My grandfather was famous for his cranky foul temper and to this day it puzzles me and delights me that he patiently explained the mystery of a bow knot and helped me learn to tie my own shoes and my doll’s bonnet strings that Christmas morning so long ago.

I always had Buster Brown shoes

Fast forward to July, Christmas firmly in the rear view mirror and summer heat and sunshine are now the order of each and every day.  Jenny’s bonnet and alas, her dress, have been mislaid and she spends the day in my pocket wrapped in an old handkerchief of my father’s. I was sitting on the wide, cool cement front step leaning against the porch post and playing with my Jenny, attempting to wrap her hanky into some new and fetching article of clothing and enjoying doing nothing. 

 I was banished because my mother was having a lady lunch with her best friend, Nina Nelander, the City Librarian, and Nina’s best friend Sue. They were both from upstate New York and I loved the name of their town, Fishkill.  As an Air Force kid I was probably more in touch with geography than a lot of my peers, and I knew from my mom showing me on a map that Fishkill was clear across the United States and that it was near where the scary Headless Horseman was from. I was watching for Sue because I found her fascinating.

This is actually Jenny, wrapped in one of my father's hankies. Yes, I still have her.

Sue was an albino, she had white hair, white skin and pink eyes and she looked rather like a beautiful tall rabbit. She couldn’t see very well and she held things close to her eyes to see them. Thinking back, I imagine that bright California sun was torture to her in every way, but she never showed it. The gate creaked and Sue came up the walk way to the porch and asked me what I was holding. I showed her Jenny, feeling embarrassed that she was only wearing a handkerchief. She held my little doll up close to her eyes and turned her way and that, looking at her carefully. She finished and wrapped Jenny tightly up and handed her back to me with a smile and a thank you and went on into the coolness of the house. I didn’t think any more about it because grown-ups were just strange anyway.

Perris was a pretty old town and this hotel, closed by the time I we showed about 75 years later was still standing on Main Street. One four way stop sign and one street of retail. It was great.

I spent my early childhood in a very small town where everyone knew everyone else. For example, my friend Gayle’s dad worked at the grocery store and my friend Linda’s dad, Mr. Bliss, was the postman.  Nonetheless I was more than a little surprised two months later when Mr. Bliss pulled his station wagon up to our mailbox and called me over from my spot in the shady yard where I was playing with who else? Jenny.

Me

“Roxy! I have a package for you!” I remember being completely gobsmacked. A package for me? I was a kid, who would send me a package?  I opened the creaky iron gate and picked my way with bare feet, always, through the nasty patch of prickly goats heads thorns that grew everywhere. He handed me a shoebox tied up in white string, and sure enough there was my name and my address right on the box!  I ran through the gate and into the house calling for my mom, dizzy with excitement. She was puzzled too, but she got the scissors and cut the string and I lifted the top off the box.

Inside, packed in tissue was an entire wardrobe, handmade and beautifully cut and stitched for a bald six inch tall doll with shoes that didn’t come off. I remember the contents of that box like it was last week. The top layer was a black velvet cocktail dress with a matching brocade coat. There was a bridal gown and a veil; there was a negligee and a robe, and pants and shirts and suits and even little hats, sun dresses and swimming suits and slips and underwear, there was everything I could ever dream of.

Jenny tonight

Sue, who saw with difficulty, saw something in that scruffy little barefoot blonde kid on the porch with the bald doll and made that entire wardrobe by hand and sent it all the way from Fishkill to Perris for me. She made it for me.

I still have that bald little doll with the blonde topknot although those clothes are sadly gone from everything but my memory. But what is not gone is the lesson I learned from Sue.

Since that day I have known the greatest joy in giving is to give with no expectation of return. To simply know you have brought joy or hope or something positive and unexpected to someone is enough, and that in the end makes this a roundabout Christmas story.

Roller Coaster Poster

It has been an insane, strange and entertaining couple of weeks. I will say, I have not been bored once and the roller coaster ride is not over.  Those of you who know my fellow artist, and sister from another mother, Cha Davis, know she is fighting multiple myeloma and as Hunter S. Thompson might have put it, it’s been a long strange trip….

Cha has been true to herself and to us, with her fierceness and determination to keep painting, stay independent and brook no crap from anyone. She is brutally honest and takes no prisoners, including Teutonic type thug slug doctors.(oh yes, she did.)

This ride has been a roller coaster from my end; I cannot even imagine what it is from the driver’s seat, more about that in a minute….

Cha’s bone pain level went as high as Willy Wonka’s elevator and she wound up in hospital for about nine days in rotten shape. After dealing with helpless stethoscope carrying marshmallows in scrubs, we finally figured out there is such a thing as palliative care, a team that is focused only on pain. The big guns were called in and that made a huge difference. She’s baa-ack…

The fabulous dragon lady has returned to her lair now, with the pain under some control, and she is trundling to radiation a few times a week to slow this shit down if we can. Cha’s friends, Lita and Louise and I, declaimed ourselves her family, and we have never skated around the fact that this is cancer and we know how it will end up when the fight is over. I have learned so much from this experience. To be honest with my fear and feelings and not spout aphorisms, like you’ll be better soon; or this will pass.

I think the best thing one can do for a person with an illness like this one, a bitter horrible illness that hits a person you love, is to let them say what they need to say, don’t hide from their truth, and listen to what they need from you and give it with an open heart.

I have to say I’m awfully glad Cha is home because although I love her dearly, giving her giant Maine Coon cat a shot twice a day for his diabetes and hacking out the cat box, was wearing me down. Besides which Sam and Mr. Dinsdale only put up with me and fell into her arms when she got home. I’m sure they were claiming they’d never eaten or been petted since she left. Fat liars.

Actually the night before she got home there was a party as Sammy’s house. I got there to shoot up Mr. D. and found catnip splattered all over the bedroom and the cardboard cat scratcher pretty much resembling brown confetti with cardboard bits everywhere. A good time was had by all obviously. They got the catnip out from under the sink and partied like it was 1994, no shame or hangovers either, hairy little shits.

So, Cha was home, the cats were happy and I was going to take her to her radiation appointment Monday. I drove to her house to pick her up, wondering what the hell all those people were doing standing around in the yard? And the air was full of black smoke too. I got out of the car and gaped like a drunken flounder, the front of her house was smashed, crashed and trashed. She had decided to move her station wagon, Hester, forward a few feet. Her foot isn’t working quite right and she couldn’t hit the brake, instead the car caromed into the porch, hopped up and crashed into her house. Cha broke her house. Cha was fine and the car was fine, she was horrified but okay. Her neighbor  backed the car off the porch, enter me, stage right.

It’s actually hard to take something like that in. The front window had turned into a guillotine full of glass and the front door frame literally broke in two. The storm door was ripped in half and wedged open and a small chest of drawers was literally stuck in the wall, like a cartoon splat. All the cupboards on the other side of the wall in the kitchen got knocked over and everything fell out everywhere. I forced my way in and crawled over the tipped over counter into a cloud of flour and rubber tire  smoke. Assessment: Nothing on fire, no uncontrolled flow of water or electricity. I opened the windows and got the entrance clear and got a rattled Cha back in bed to rest. I spent the next six hours picking up dishes, pans, groceries, and cleaning the wreckage enough to let the landlord in to assess the mess. My favorite part was a wine glass holding up a shelf full of dishes which didn’t crash, thank you wine glass.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Do you know how hard it is to get double paned broken glass out of a window frame? Don’t even try it. Poor Cha, through this ruckus, stuck in bed, completely mortified and unable to help.  The boys next door (22=boys) got their pickup, a Sawzall and a come-along and pulled the wall out of its bowed in position. A sledge hammer brought the door frame straighter and the door would almost close.

I got my weed eater from home and cleared a path to the back door and about 8 p.m. we had the place buttoned up (thanks to my husband for his help) and the front tarped over. Her landlord is an amazing guy, didn’t turn a hair and didn’t freak. I got ice cream at the store for Cha. Ice cream makes everything better it seems, so I went home and had a bowl full of my own.  

The next day, I went back with the mop to lend a hand and keep Cha from overdoing it, we both hate it when our space is wrecked, although in my case that might be hard to believe from time to time.

Cha kept trying to apologize for all the work I was doing. I know the feeling when the Universe seems determined that the lesson is to learn is to accept with grace the love and care you are given. When you are independent and fiercely so, that’s a hard one. I know when Terry was hurt that was the hardest piece for me, to accept with grace what was given freely.

One day at a time

Commercial inserted here:If you love Cha’s work, please buy some now, she really needs the money to replace pieces that got carwhacked in the kitchen. Gallery Boom has a bunch and more is coming.

Here’s the last thing, when my friends say, you are working too hard, take care of yourself, yada yada yada, I would ask them to remember when my sweet husband almost died 12 years ago in a motorcycle accident, if it had not been for the deep and constant kindness and giving of friends, I would not have made it to today, I’m simply paying it forward. I help Cha because I can, and because so many helped me. It’s not a burden; it’s a privilege and a price I pay with gratitude, but bitch, if you hit another house you are so on your own!