Coughing

I feel marginally better after a hot shower but still I sound like a seal with my barking cough. They say around here it’s Mountain Cedar but I feel like I’ve been invaded by a super nasty Texas sized virus.  On TV the weathermen are warning of 16 degrees Wednesday morning, bring in your pets! cover your plants! In Egypt, will forcing out Mubarek open the door to Islamic extremists? Will Israel be swallowed up? Will the United States be invaded, split into new territories that have no resemblance to the states they were before? Will women be required to cover their heads, stay home? With whom?  Where are the husbands? Forty percent of children are now born out of wedlock. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.  We’re doomed!  Oh, if I could just turn back the clock, how far would I turn it?  Back to the 1990s when we had such hope for our lives in Coarsegold, or back to the 1980s when I was happy at the Sand & Sea, or back to the 1970s when I was in love with Roger, or the 1960s when my friends and I were at school? Would I turn it all the way back to before I was born, so that I would not be born into a world on the brink of annihilation?  My dog is quiet, patiently waiting for supper. My stomach is starting to hurt. I’m hungry but I don’t know what I want. The freezer is full of food that doesn’t appeal to me. At least I have a freezer. At least I have food I don’t want to eat. At least I have eyes to see the food, hands to type these words. Gratitude, gratitude, we are told. Be grateful.  I’m grateful for the life I’ve lived full of friendships and days at the beach. I’m grateful for my husband who, tonight, is in San Antonio, right now drinking a beer with someone who’s flown from Minneapolis to see him. An excuse to get out of the snow? or is this the turning point for us? Are happier, healthier, wealthier days on the horizon?  Have we suffered enough?  Of course not. There is no end to suffering. With every attachment comes the pain of loss. But still. Some good is bound to come our way, eventually. So, I’ll plan to go to the local TV station tomorrow and talk about my upcoming class. I’ll put everything together tonight. I’ll get up and walk the dog, get dressed and just go. I’ll take a big slurp of cough medicine and put on my public face. I’ll be a trooper. I’ll walk the walk. And someone will hear me. Just like Eric heard me on the radio that night I did a reading for KXLU. He sent me a book and I showed it to Karen and they ended up getting married, for goodness sake. So, I cast my seeds. Some will be eaten by birds. Some will dry up and die. But some will take root. 

Teachers

I've had so many good teachers in my life, including my current writing teacher Skye Alexander whose birthday was Saturday. I wrote this poem in her honor. 

Teachers

          

Of all the teachers I have had

some were good and some were bad.

Mrs. Real was a big fat dope.

She knew I hated to jump rope

but made me do it anyway.

So I will not be giving her an A.  

Miss Gale was pretty, and something else;

she gave me confidence in myself.

At Paul Revere I had a crush

on Mr. Harlan. I’d turn to mush!

(Maybe because he smelled so good?)

And I liked Mrs. Herbst and how she stood

so straight and tall, like Julia Child.

My friends and I were quite beguiled.

I studied Chinese with Betty Kwan.

She said “you sound like real true Han.”

I learned aerobics from Laura Geisler

so in Kim’s class I was the meister

until Jamie Lee Curtis took my place;

I still can’t stand to see her face.

But I digress . . . what I’m trying to say

is that teachers have always led the way.

And now in Texas, I can testify  

I’m extremely thrilled my teacher is Skye.

Catching Up

          It’s nice to wake up happy.  The room is cold. I turn up the heat, get back in bed and turn on NBA TV to see that the Lakers beat the Nuggets. My biggest complaint about leaving California is that west coast and Midwest games are on too late. I can only stay awake for the first half.

          It’s 22 degrees. Frost covers our cars. I’m the only one out. I love it. No cars on

Riverhill Boulevard

. Walter and I can walk straight up to Springhill and stand right in the middle of the street, in the brilliant cold sunlight.  I imagine that I live in one of these big, two story houses, with real yards and expansive views.

          It was a good week.  I liked the eye doctor who didn’t try to talk me into bi, or trifocals. He said my vision will never be perfect, so I should go ahead and wear my 15-year-old prescription for the computer, the 4-year old one for distance, and no glasses to read.  I don’t feel foolish anymore, lifting my glasses to read food package labels because he took his glasses off to write!   

          It was embarrassing, when he was giving me that horrible exam where he’d say, “Which is better, the first . . . or the second,” because I was so hot in that little room, my face was steaming up the lenses. I asked him if I could take my sweater off (I had a cami on underneath) and he said, “No!”

          I did not get called to make phone calls for the Tivy High School graduation fundraiser. Either the coupon books didn’t come in yet, or the guy didn’t like me.  John said I can be a little intimidating. All I did was ask if anyone else was hot, in that tiny room with a space heater blasting.  He said, “I’d think a skinny little thing like you would be cold all the time.”  

          I found out that the article I wrote last weekend for Kerr County People was all wrong.  I’d gotten carried away with facts about Ford and the auto industry, instead of focusing on the person I was interviewing.  My writing instructor, who edits the magazine, came over and sat with me for two hours, explaining what the publisher wants. I learned a lot about journalism. For example an a-head is the headings that divide sections. In longer pieces there can be b-heads (sub-sections), even c-heads. Also, do not start a sentence with a number, such as “2010 was a very good year.”  I really felt stupid but she was encouraging and told me this will help my writing in general. 

          When I called the fellow back to get more information for a rewrite he said, “I feel sorry for you. I know what they want, but I’m not going to talk about myself!”  He was so adamant.  I strained my brain and this question came up: how do car sales people keep up to date when cars are changing all the time? This was a good question, it turned out.  There are twice a week meetings where the sales manager educates his staff. He constantly has to read trade journals, on-line articles, newspapers and information sent down from corporate. Plus, every sales person and service person has to take a test to be certified. I included this in my rewrite. Fingers crossed that it will be acceptable!

          I phoned Club Ed to see if anyone has signed up for my adult writing class and found out that, so far, seven have! (One man, six women). The class runs for 6-weeks, starting Thursday, February 3. Then, if people want to continue, we’ll do 6-more weeks, after spring break. My goal is to have an-ongoing class, like I did in Oakhurst.

          Last night I watched the last half of one of my favorite movies, “Heartland” from 1979. (I wonder if the title should have been italicized, not in quotes?) Rip Torn is a taciturn Scot who hires a widow (Conchetta Farrell) to be his housekeeper on his desolate ranch in Wyoming. Or is it Montana? It’s incredibly bleak. And sad. At the end credits, it was dedicated to ancestors of the script writer. No wonder it was so believable.

          And now it’s the weekend. John’s gone out for a few hours to explore. I’m going to finish reading Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier and begin The Finkler Question  which won this year’s Man Booker Prize. I like my Kindle. It’s like having a treasure chest.   

My First Wedding

                     

           
           

            January 18: On this date in 1975 Roger and I were married in my parents’ backyard.  We were supposed to get married on Friday and have the reception Saturday. His mother and grandmother had flown down from San Francisco.  I remember all of us walking up the steps of Monica City Hall, looking for the marriage office and then being embarrassed to find out we were supposed to have made an appointment with a justice of the peace.

            We took Roger’s mom and Gram back to their hotel and returned to my parents’ house.  Barney, a grizzled old guy who worked for my dad building cameras, and sipped vodka-laced peppermint schnapps all day to dull the pain of pancreatic cancer, was a member of the Unitarian Church. He called Reverend Pipes and scheduled him to come Saturday morning, before the reception.

            I wanted Greek food, so my mother and I spent the rest of the day making spanakopitas, smyrni meatballs, salads.  When someone remarked that the bread was delicious I told them, “That’s the wedding cake.”    

            Saturday morning I got my very short hair trimmed, curled, sprayed. Someone in the salon, hearing it was my wedding day, did my make up.  I wore the cream colored satin dress I had bought for $28.00 at a little shop on the

third street

mall, and beige high-heeled sandals. Roger wore his pin-striped suit and a red tie. We had just a few minutes with Reverend Pipes to fine-tune the ceremony. I made sure the word “obey” was stricken. My father wore his usual white pants and zories. My mother wore lavender. My eight-year old niece was the ring bearer. At our feet were Dickie, my parents’ miniature dachshund, and Sherman, their desert tortoise. 

             Roger and I had already lived together for three-and-a-half years,  in Berkeley. I always imagined we would eventually move up into the hills, get married, have kids. The year before he had returned from Mexico with hepatitis, which he told me he got from eating raw oysters.  He got a gamma globulin shot, so wasn’t very sick. I was supposed to get a shot, too, but the day of my appointment it was raining so hard I decided not go to. Later, when Dr. Stallone checked me out, he said my blood was clear. So we went ahead with my scheduled tonsillectomy; I was tired of getting strep throat three times a year.  Roger brought my little red black and white TV to the hospital and I watched the news bulletins of Patty Hearst’s abduction.  She lived just two streets away from us.

            I went home after the required hospital stay. My throat finally stopped hurting but I didn’t get my energy back. I remember walking home from work one day, feeling like my shoes were filled with concrete, and how difficult it was to walk up the stairs of our rented house. Then I started throwing up. Roger tried to take care of me but I could see it was a strain on him. I got up to go to the market.  I had to lean against the shopping cart to keep from falling down. When I got home he took one look at me and drove me right to the doctor.

            I was hospitalized for eight days. I remember a friend coming to see me, standing in the doorway. I didn’t want to be looked at. I felt that only a very small part of me was there in that hospital bed. It was as if I were gradually being erased.       

            Roger and my mother decided I needed to go to my parents’ house to recuperate.  I had no opinion. I only wanted to sleep. I flew to L.A. and stayed in the bedroom I inhabited from the age of six to twelve. The room I took over from my sister when she went to college was now a second office. My parents were busy hiring models and finding locations for the annual Ridge Tool Calendar.  

            On June 29^th my father rented a studio apartment on the eleventh floor of a building on

Ocean Avenue

. He covered one wall with mirror tiles and put Astroturf on the balcony.  This was the compromise my mother had struck with him: if he was going to have affairs, do it on Monday nights, and go to the apartment, so she wouldn’t worry, wondering where he was or when he was coming home. She signed up for a Monday Night French class at SMCC.        

            I flew back to Berkeley on June 30^th.  I was getting disability but Phil agreed that I could do some work from home, so I worked on sales figures and did a little invoicing.  He brought me the Olivetti Underwood with the little green keys. I loved that typewriter. When he got an IBM Selectric, he let me keep it.   Roger took another trip to Mexico. On July 12 he called to say there were forty imprisoned Americans on a hunger strike. I phoned writers I knew, and TV stations. Eventually it made the national news. My diary notes, “but they showed a hypodermic needle in the background.”   Nixon was being impeached. Inflation was at 12%.  My best friend’s father was on a fourteen-day drinking binge.

            Roger finally came home. But he was splitting his time between me and friends in Mendocino.  He informed me he had V.D.  On July 25^th I decided to move back to Santa Monica. On July 27^th Roger told me he thought he was losing his mind.

            I went to the bank and withdrew the $700.00 I had saved. Roger told me he loved me, that he would move my things for me, and would visit me every month.  He said he was sorry he continually disappointed me. I flew to L.A.  

            My diary lists day after day of being sick to my stomach.  My parents’ psychiatrist told them my father was on the verge of a great depression. The apartments I looked at were small and too expensive.  On August 8^th, Nixon resigned.  Finally on August 9^th I rented a one-bedroom upstairs apartment, with a pool, on

Yale Avenue

in Santa Monica. The rent was $210.00 a month.  Because I was still sick, my disability insurance was extended.    When I talked to Roger I told him, “I miss you when I go to bed.” He said, “I miss you when I wake up.”

            On August 16^th Roger arrived with my things, including our two cats, Button Chaser and Schnee.  We spent the next three days putting my things away, going to the beach, making love. Swimming in the ocean I felt that my illness, sadness, worry and fears were being washed away.

            Over the next two months, I found a part-time job. Roger continued to travel and write. On Halloween I was sitting on the floor of that little apartment, talking to him on the phone.

            “I really miss you,” he said. “I’m thinking about moving down there to be with you.”

            “You have to marry me,” I said.

            “What?”

            “I’m not going to do this any more unless we’re married. And my mom won’t give us money toward a house unless we’re married.”  There was silence on the other end of the line.  I stared at the orange shag carpet. I could hear my heart beating. Finally Roger spoke.

            “Okay,” he said.  And so, two months later we got married in my parents’ backyard. Of the fifty-eight people who came to the reception eleven are still friends.  Many of them I don’t remember at all.   Budd and Jo and Marc are dead. My father is dead. Roger is dead. He died last year, thirty-two years after we were divorced, just a year after his liver transplant.

           
           

           

           

One Reason Why Texas Suits Me

          I needed to change the name of my blog. Moving to Texas took me through the actual move and the first few months living in Kerrville. But the new year had come. I needed to think of a different name.

          On Saturday I went to J.C. Penney and bought a black sweater dress on sale for $10.80. I love a bargain!  That night I decided to surprise John and wear it out to dinner. I put on black tights, the dress (which has a cowl collar, long sleeves and comes to mid-thigh), and the black Tony Lama boots my mom bought me about eighteen years ago. (They’re still comfortable).  I washed my face, put on make up, fluffed my hair and looked in the mirror. I looked pretty darn good for a woman about to collect social security!  I said aloud, “Texas suits me!” and knew that would be the new title of my blog.

          I remember when I first started teaching in California, about twenty years ago, how horrified I was to see male teachers in baggy Bermuda shorts. What sort of example was this setting for the kids?  I always looked up to my teachers and particularly remember Miss Beverly Gale, my sixth-grade teacher, who was twenty-two and looked like Jackie Kennedy with her bouffant hairdo, stylish sheaths, and pointed pumps. When she first started teaching she would match her nail polish to her outfits. But after a while I noticed she stuck with clear because she didn’t have time to do her nails more than once a week.

          Miss Gale was a role model for me: she was smart and pretty. The two were not mutually exclusive.  A few years later I was wearing dresses custom made for me by my talented mother, who worked with my father all week and still made time to sew for me.  It was the mid-sixties. I remember a yellow gingham dress that I wore with yellow sandals that were not part of our dress code. I was sent to the office where I had to call my mom and ask her to bring my white flats.   Another time a teacher made me kneel down to see if my shirt hit the ground. It didn’t, so I had to have my mom bring a longer one.

          Boys were not allowed to have hair curling over their collars. I still have the clipping from a 1966 Palisadian Post, where students picketed with signs that said, “Jesus Had Long Hair”.  Girls could not wear pants. Very soon things started to change and I changed too. Working at Macy’s in San Mateo, the winter of 1970, as a Kelly Girl selling perfume, I was admonished because I wasn’t wearing a bra. By then I had thrown away all my bras and stopped combing hydrogen peroxide through my hair to make it blond. I had stopped shaving my legs. I wanted to be “natural.”

          That phase lasted until David Bowie and Elton John performed in outrageous outfits. I gave away my suede and gave up the dusty, commune look.  In London I bought a pair of mutli-colored, snake-skin platform shoes. Soon came the disco phase with satin and sparkles, followed by the big-hair, big-earrings, big shoulder-pad eighties.

          And then something happened. Suddenly it was okay to not change out of our work-out clothes.  Wearing Reeboks and Nikes meant we prized fitness over fashion. Skirts which had been extremely short in the sixties and seventies, then long in the eighties, disappeared all together from women’s wardrobes.  No more panty hose! My skirt hangers now held parachute pants, linen and corduroy, and eventually jeans. And I mean just jeans, mostly black, some dark blue.

          Back to when I started teaching in the 1990s – I had a purple sweater dress that I wore once and then hung in the back of my closet because, compared to the other teachers, I felt overdressed. Everyone dressed like a P.E. teacher.

          This was the way it was, then, when I moved to Texas. I did not own any dresses. (Caveat: I admit I have a box of “vintage clothes” that includes the dress I wore the day I met Roger in 1971, among other nostalgic items I don’t want to part with.)

          When I interviewed at the local elementary school, the principal, a petite blonde, was wearing  a little black suit. I felt a pang that took me back to sixth grade and Miss Gale.  Later, on my first trip to HEB, the “has it all” supermarket, I found that many of the women shoppers were well dressed, and well made-up. Nothing ostentatious, just tasteful, well-fitted, well-made clothing.  I wanted to look like them!

          Now, I won’t go so far as to say that everyone in California is a slob and everyone in Texas has class.  I have many well-dressed friends. And there are plenty of women in Texas who looked like they just rolled out of bed. But for the most part, there seems to be a sense of pride that is not vanity, but more a consideration for others.        

          Am I shallow? I think not.  I think that we make an impression on the people we encounter. And the impression I want to give is of someone who takes the time to present a pleasing appearance for those who cast their eyes upon me. That includes myself, who doesn’t want to look in the mirror and see some old, dowdy frump staring back.

Healing

Today was the coldest morning so far, because of the wind. Not even the deer were out when Walter and I walked the loop of Winged Foot to Rock Creek.  I wore spandex leggings, jeans, the top I slept in, a turtle neck, cardigan, scarf around my neck, parka with hood, knit cap, another scarf and gloves. My feet were in the usual dirty white walking shoes.  The wind bit at my face and snuck around my glasses to dry out my eyes.  Walter was oblivious to the weather, finding many interesting scents on grass and bushes, some took a long time for him to decipher.

My groin muscle didn’t feel too bad, this the 3rd day after feeling like I might throw up at Billy Gene’s Saturday night, not because the food was bad, it was great, but because the pain emanating from my left sit bone seemed to permeate my internal organs and turn my whole body to jelly.

The mystery is how I hurt myself in the first place. I’m figuring my muscles must have stiffened up from two-weeks of being sick after returning from LA.  The trip itself was stressful. My mother’s house was so cold I had to sleep with a blanket over my head, and get up before her to turn on a space heater in the kitchen.  I also don’t adjust well to time changes, so I’d wake up at 5:00 a.m. but stay up with her until midnight.

Landing in San Antonio my right ear would not unclog and the pain got worse and worse. I kept chewing gum, yawning, swallowing but nothing worked. I spent the next day sleeping. When one week had passed I went to a walk-in clinic where the doctor told me ear infections are rare in adults and that he could see scar tissue from the infections I had as a kid.   I took a slew of drugs and after a week started to hear clicking sounds in my ear.

In the meantime I remember stretching with the cat. Is that when I pulled my groin? Or was it when I tried to get out of bed and she wouldn’t budge and I had a hard time maneuvering around her? Or when I got back in on the other side and had to scoot over to my spot? Is this what’s meant by “getting up on the wrong side of the bed”?

No matter. The damage was done. I was half-deaf and half-crippled. “You’re old!” my husband reminded me.  Resolution: when I feel better I’m going back to yoga.  I remember a line I wrote in a poem, back in the 80s when I used to go to aerobic class, “All loose and smooth I stretch my forehead to my knees. . .” How wonderful it felt to be so fluid!  In those days physical and emotional pain came but it also flowed away. Now tension, worry, and anxiety form fists within my muscles with bony fingers determined to strangle me.

But I will fight! I will heal. I will get strong, and rise again. I can feel my torn thigh beginning to mend, valiantly re-weaving muscle cells. I can feel my antibodies on high alert, marshalling together to attack the evil viruses and bacteria that wanted to kill me.

Victory is around the corner. I must be patient, resolute and determined. I will dance again! And the music will sound lovely in both of my of middle aged ears.