ACCEPTANCE

          I’m reading a fascinating memoir, Unorthodox,  by Deborah Feldman. I’ve always had an interest in people from other cultures - in this case she was raised as a Hassidic Jew – because I like to see what we have in common and how we differ. Today, doing laundry I thought about how women (and some men, or course) all over the world wash clothes and that it isn’t so much what we do that makes us different from each other, but what we think.  And even then, what we think is pretty similar. We want to live up to our own expectations, and we want to please those we respect (or fear), we want to be acknowledged, accepted, praised, loved. 

          In Feldman’s case she had to act according to a strict code of behavior that discouraged her from reading, something she loved. Circumstances beyond her control meant she was raised by her grandparents out of sense of duty, so she never felt truly loved or wanted.  And yet a fire burned within her which ultimately produced her wonderful book.

          I know that growing up I was always seeking my father’s approval and most of the time I thought I fell short.  He was a stickler for perfection, from the way he wanted me to make my bed, in the military style, to remembering to turn off lights when I left the room.   He had certain standards of what he considered beautiful and explained that beauty meant a symmetrical face, wide cheekbones, a long neck.  I fell short in the cheekbone department but fortunately I had big eyes and after years of orthodontic torture, straight teeth.

          As I got older my mother let me know how proud she and my father were that I had become a poet, a noble calling that I had in common with my father’s petite English mother.  And they were proud of me when they saw me working at the Sand & Sea Club, organizing and coordinating events.  I’m glad I made my parents proud.  And yet, I still remember the dozens of times my father asked incredulously why I would ever want to leave Santa Monica, where the weather was rarely too hot or too cold. Did he really not understand that weather wasn’t that important to me?

          I’ve always wanted to please the people in my life – family members, teachers, boyfriends, girlfriends, co-workers. I want to be liked. I want to feel needed. I like being part of a group, a team. I liked being in Brownies when I was little, and in the Duprees in high school. Tomorrow I get to emcee at our church talent show, and read two poems. I’m happy to feel that I’m “one of them.”

          I’m not a risk taker. I’m not a rebel.  My mother had to “kick me out” of the house when I was nineteen, saying, “Little bird, fly out of the nest!”  She was dealing with my father and his affair, she didn’t want to be wondering where I was at two in the morning.

          I didn’t voluntarily leave my first house in Topanga either. When I returned from having my wisdom teeth out my roommate’s dogs had trashed the house – my bed was a muddy mess.  In her defense she was stranded in Santa Monica and PCH was closed due to landslides, but the point is, I might have stayed there forever if I hadn’t been forced to get away from her and her druggie friends.

          Most big changes in my life came involuntarily – having to leave Ten Speed Press when I got hepatitis from Roger; divorcing Roger because he chose to go to Israel and live on a kibbutz; staying until the very last day when the Sand & Sea Club closed; leaving our home on Quartz Mountain to move to Texas because we couldn’t afford it anymore.

          And yet, with each change came new people, new experiences and new things and people to love. Oh, I suppose if I really scrutinized the choices in my life I might see that in some instances I was the one to initiate change. But not often.  This is why it’s so hard for me to be an independent writer and teacher, sending out proposals and crossing my fingers that someone will want me and my skills.

          I think of my friends, who of course are all intelligent, kind, enlightened individuals I admire – otherwise they would not be my friends. I want them to get the praise and recognition they deserve for their humor, determination and myriad talents.     I really do have the best, most interesting friends. I include in this group my husband who sees the world through such different eyes, it’s amazing we can communicate at all.

          The Unity church is big on stressing that we’re all one in this world together, bound by our humanity.  To emphasize this, we were divided into two groups and sang two different songs simultaneously. But as we did, I kept thinking that being part of a group automatically separates you from the other groups.

          So is my need to be accepted by my group really a desire to separate myself from the big, ugly, scary world of nasty mean, narrow-minded people who think differently than I do? 

          I hope not. If you put me in a room with any person on the planet I’ll sure I can find something in common with her (him?) because after all, we’re only human.

LOVE POEMS

I was sick for two weeks, then spent a lot of time working on my memoir.  This week I started teaching a new Creative Nonfiction class through Club Ed. Part of this week's assignment is to write a love letter to yourself from either an historical person, fictional character, animal or inanimate object. So here's mine, in the form of a poem:

A LOVE POEM FROM MY STAPLER

For Valentine’s Day 2012

I never liked being brown.

I wanted to be black

like the other Swingline Staplers

on the shelf at Palisades Stationers. 

How happy you made me

when you picked me up

and stroked me and said softly,

“I think this one’s cute.”

I remember you taking me out of the bag,

placing me on your mission style desk

beside the lovely Japanese cream and sugars jars,

with their geishas and swirling clouds.

It made me feel so glamorous.

Our first years together on

Pacific Coast Highway

I was happy to staple the timecards

from Marina Nautilus,  every two weeks

when you cut the pay checks.

The years in your condo

I liked looking out over the living room

to your kitchen wall where the big mirror

reflected my image back to me,

it made me feel less lonely.

Then, twenty years in the mountains.

It took a while to get used to the elevation

and the cold. I remember that first winter

when you were reluctant to turn on the heat.

In 1994 you wrote an ode to me

and I knew then that we were a perfect match.

You forgave me for growing old, you even liked

that I wasn’t perfect anymore.

And now, in Texas, I wait on the shelf

beneath your keyboard, looking at your shins,

watching as the dog plops down on the carpet,

and the cat pads past on her way to the couch.

I love you Mary Lee. I am yours

always. You are my owner and I am

your stapler, ready to bite into

whatever papers you decide

should be joined, like man and wife,

like brother and sister, bound together

always or until trash day comes

and you decide otherwise.

RED

          There’s a triangle of red on the J key of my ergonomic keyboard.

It isn’t blood, it’s nail polish but it looks like blood that has had a chance to dry - burgundy, maroon. The rare times I decide to paint my nails I can’t sit still long enough to let them dry completely.

          This red reminds me of the perfectly round drops of blood on worn wood floors of my apartment on

Pacific Coast Highway

. No matter how hard I tried squeeze my innards as I made my way, half-asleep, from bed to bathroom, the drops escaped. I remember the “th-wump” as the tampon fell out of me, completely saturated. I’d have to grab hold of the slippery string to keep it from falling into the toilet and plugging up the pipes. 

          How much blood did I lose, in my thirties, the prime of my life, my sexual peak?  I remember the day I was in Fireside Market, leaning on the shopping cart with cramps so bad I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stand upright in the checkout line. I’d bought a paperback of The World According to Garp. This was before the movie with Robin Williams which I believe is one of the rare occasions when a movie does justice to the book.

          I came home from the market, retreated to Earl’s enormous king-sized bed which nearly filled the bedroom in that little noisy apartment where cars whizzed past twenty hours a day. In the few quiet hours, between 2:00 and 5:00 AM, if I happened to get up to pee, or change a tampon, I could actually hear the ocean, I could hear waves breaking on the sand. 

          The only other time I remember quiet was that winter it rained so much the highway flooded, whole portions of bluffs simply melted onto the highway, like chocolate cake batter. Jane and I had to work, one Monday, to get the payroll done.  She parked in Santa Monica Canyon and walked to the Club and I simply walked from my apartment past the Nugent’s house, through Tee’s parking lot. We spent a couple hours adding up time cards, filling out the ADP sheets. Then we literally went out and stood right in the middle of the closed highway. The sun was out by now and maintenance crews hadn’t yet arrived to clean up the mess.     We stood in the silence of that sparkling January day, taking in the beauty of the Malibu mountains, the wide white sand, and an ocean that was slowly calming, like a baby recovering from a crying fit.  The beach was littered with all sorts of driftwood and debris and we, two young blondes, strolled down the highway feeling as if we were the first white people to ever set eyes on that magnificent bay.

PET PEEVES

          I gave my adult students the assignment to write about a pet peeve. I find that I have a whole menagerie of peeves and find it interesting that so many of them are traits or habits possessed by my husband.

          Why did I choose to marry someone who would constantly get my hackles up? The simple answer is I was lonely, horny and tired of being single, so when I met a nice-looking, employed man, my age, with a clean car, I was drawn to him like a meat bee to a picnic. 

          So you won’t think I’m totally heartless, the deal was clinched when I met the rescued cat he brought from Texas in a U-Haul. And when he got tears in his eyes talking about his daughter . . . I was a goner. 

          However, if we hadn’t gotten married after only knowing each other four months I wonder if we would have gone through with it. At first I found it so charming that we had different tastes in food, I took a picture: his whiskey, my tequila; his steak, my tofu; his mayonnaise, my hoisin sauce; his potato chips, my dried seaweed.  I was forty-one years old but as excited as a seventeen-year-old thinking how marvelous it would be to change his diet, in effect, change him.

          Of course it never happened.  Twenty-years later one cabinet holds his nuts, crackers, chips and coffee creamer while across the kitchen another cabinet is my Asian pantry.  The refrigerator crispers hold green, orange and red vegetables he never eats.  And yet, I continue to let myself be irritated by his diet and worry about his health.  When he dips a fork into the mayonnaise jar and spreads it on a saltine, then tops it with a slice of summer sausage my whole body trembles.

          Then there’s the dishwasher.  I have this “thing” about order. I love to open drawers and see everything placed like a puzzle, in individual compartments I’ve devised from various sized boxes. This is the case in my desk, my dresser, and all the drawers in the kitchen. Every item from a roll of tape to a shoelace has a place and everything sleeps peacefully until I need it.

          So, it follows that when I put dishes in the dishwasher, I place like with like, dishes with dishes, glasses with glasses, forks with forks, etc.  This not only presents a pleasing picture when I revisit it, but makes putting away more efficient.  Perhaps I over anthropomorphize – but how can I not? When I hold the cup Katherine and I purchased together on

Montana Avenue

twenty-five years ago, I remember that day. Everything I own has a story behind it. I didn’t create the story.  I’m not that crazy!

          Now, before I tell you this, I want you to be sitting down and preferably holding on to something: when I open the dishwasher after John’s cleaned up the kitchen here is what I see: chaos, the aftermath of a tornado, or what would happen if a super hero tossed everything in the air and let it land willy-nilly.  Sometimes small glasses are actually upside down.  He prefers the top rack, so he doesn’t have to bed over. This means it’s overcrowded with plates, cups, spatulas, knives, all going in different directions, some diagonal.

          He does use the basket for flatware, but flings them face down so that fork tines are inevitably wedged in the basket and have to be forcefully yanked out. Plus, I never know which is a fork or spoon because upside down they all look the same.

          I’ve made it a habit to clear the dishwasher when he’s not within ear shot, so I can apologize as I take all the items out and position them back in drawers and cupboards.  I imagine how happy they must feel being reunited.  The stack of salad plates, a nest of bowls, that lone hand painted Chinese bowl with the adorable children in their little caps!

          John is not going to change. Neither am I.  If I want something done my way it’s up to me to do it.  If he does it his way I live with the results. As he says, “the dishes got clean, didn’t they?”

          I nod in agreement as he walks back into his off-limits office and closes the door.  When I do the laundry I’ll deposit his clean socks on the stack of banker boxes that line the hall, the stack he was going to take to storage three weeks ago.  But that’s another issue. . .

         

         

RINGING IN THE NEW

          Because I’m really a cat, I have a problem with this whole time thing. To me every day starts with the day growing light, having to pee, reluctantly drawing myself out of the dreams that entertained me through the night. Then I’ll remember there’s a dog who needs a walk.  My morning companion will put her sweet little face next to mine and let me inhale her feline sweetness before letting me know she wants to check out the day.

          And so it goes – breakfast, lunch, dinner, conversations, laundry and other satisfying household chores, forays into literature or interesting articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Kerrville Daily Times.

          Some days are hot, some days are cold. Some days are both. Perhaps because I’m myopic, I concentrate on what’s immediately in front of me and let the blurry future spread out in big, expanding circles 

without trying to focus on what may or may not lie ahead.     

          So, when it comes to the end of the year I don’t really set goals, make resolutions, and let go of the past. I do, however, read through my Daily Reminder before I place it on the shelf along with all the others, going back to 1973.  I transfer major events to my Master Chart, which goes back to the beginning of my life and add the books I read to my ongoing list. 

          It used to be I saw a lot of movies, when I lived in Los Angeles, in the 1980s. I had a lot of sex then, too. My life was concerned with finding a husband and having a baby but due to karma, or fate, or an inability to distinguish love from lust, the husband and baby eluded me.

          Now I have a husband who tolerates my quirks, checks on me when I’m napping to make sure I’m not dead. Instead of grown children I have cats and a stinky dog who, on our afternoon walk, found a dried up lawn to roll in.  Following behind him as he pulled me along the sidewalk I couldn’t help but find it endearing to see how happily he pranced along, glad to be “in disguise,” and found it hard to stay mad at him.  Before coming in the house, he loved the rubdown I gave him.  I carefully avoided the shiny black growth on his leg, now big as a ping pong ball, and the “little warty thing” on the top of his head. I saw how white his muzzle has become. 

          He doesn’t know it’s January 1^st. Nor does my cat, lying on the couch with her stomach full. She just let out a big contented sigh.  I can hear John bringing the plants back inside after two weeks on the patio. He says it’s going to be twenty-nine degrees tomorrow morning.  I’m prepared. My long-johns and thick socks are folded on the end of the bed. 

          As usual I’ll reluctantly bid farewell to my dreams filled with a cast of interesting characters and steep mountains and/or ocean views. I’ll be one day further from my birth and one day closer to my death. I’ll try to be graceful as I traverse the high wire of my life, keep my balance and not look down.

WHERE I AM

          I am sitting at my desk, in my office of the house we rent in Kerrville, Texas, United States, planet earth.  I am sixty-two years and 213 days old. My first residence was on

Overland Avenue, Los Angeles

; then a rented yellow house in Rustic Canyon, followed by the house my parents built in 1955. I lived there until I was nineteen-years old. Then I moved into a white shack next to the Malibu Feed Bin where I met Charles Manson who didn’t impress me one bit.

          From there I spent several months in an apartment in Venice that had a salami monster under the floor.  Then Tom and I moved to Beverly Glen Canyon where I’d hike up my antique white nightgown to climb the dusty hill, and walk across a wooden plank to the artist’s studio, which had no running water. If I needed to pee, I squatted outside. When our landlord got busted, Tom and I fled to North Hollywood and lived in a house with linoleum floors and ate fake turkey on Thanksgiving. We’d become vegetarians because after Tom got out of the draft—he only ate grapes for a month–his sister, to celebrate, presented him with a bloody steak, so he swore off meat. 

          A pink summer cottage in Mount Shasta followed. I baked bread, listened to Joni Mitchell and cried. Tom needed to have his wisdom teeth pulled so we stayed with my sister in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, in the basement apartment of a mansion owned by her best friend from school.  When Tom went back to LA to try to get a record contact, I went to Wales to visit Katherine and got a telegram saying I had to move out. 

          I sublet a room in an apartment on Potrero Hill from a meditator who decided I was a whore because I had three different guys visit me that month. I moved into the living room of an old mansion on

Laguna Street

where we all shared the kitchen and bathrooms. I got strep throat and herpes and a yeast infection so I returned to Rustic Canyon, worked for two months at United Professional Planning, met Roger, went to Wales (again) and fell in love with him through letters.  

          I stayed with him on

Hearst Street

in Berkeley until I found an apartment in San Francisco near the Opera House that had cockroaches running up and down the walls.  I found a kitten but it was schizo so I gave it to the SPCA. I got strep throat (again) and this time Roger felt sorry for me, so he let me move in with him.

          Somehow he met a guy who let us live for free if we managed an apartment building where one of the tenants was a drug dealer who never paid his rent. After we evicted him we found the balcony covered in dog shit, and crayon marks all over the walls, boxes of sugary cereal under the sink, and bullets in the refrigerator.

          For a while we lived on the ground floor of a lovely sunny house on Benvenue with lavender wisteria dripping over the wide front porch. But after my tonsillectomy they found I had hepatitis, so I returned to Rustic Canyon and once again my mother nursed me back to health.

          I rented an apartment on

Yale Street

in Santa Monica with a sauna and a pool and when Roger said he was in love with me I told him he had to marry me.  So we got married and rented an apartment on

4^th Street

in Ocean Park until we thought we should buy a house, which we did, in Olivenhain, four miles from Encinitas in San Diego County. It came with a pool, twenty-one fruit trees and grapevines where I found him sound asleep one morning.

          Seventeen years later he told me he had been addicted to Demerol but then I didn’t know what was the matter. One day he confided he’d been working for the Israeli secret service and could fulfill his obligation by going to Israel, living on Kibbutz, and I could come too, if I would convert.  I looked out the window toward the lovely view of Rancho Santa Fe and looked at my cats lounging on the floor. I knew I could leave the house but I could not leave my cats, so I didn’t go with him.

          Once again Mother came to my rescue. She found me an apartment in Santa Monica, a sweet, old two-story with a courtyard and found me a job and for the next thirteen years I worked at the Sand and Sea Club. I fell in love, had my heart broken, became a “real” poet, became an aerobic teacher, wrote a novel. Nine of those years I lived in an apartment on PCH, became a Laker fan, then bought a condo because Mother thought it was time I had some financial security. She gave me the down payment.

          When the Club closed I drove up to Ahwahnee to visit an ex-boyfriend. Sitting on his boat, in the middle of Bass Lake, I looked at the pine-covered mountains and sunlight sparkling on the water and decided to move to Oakhurst.

          After a year I met John, got married, moved into the house he had rented in Yosemite Lakes Park. Then for seven years we lived in a shady white chalet. I did community theater and John looked for the perfect property for us to build a house.

          Eventually he found it: seventeen acres of manzanita, bull pine, huge oaks and the most beautiful views of the high sierras, the San Joaquin Valley and the Coastal range. I was so happy there with my cats, my above-ground pool, the steep hills, wildflowers I knew by name. But we lost our jobs, lost money, lost my father, lost our home.

          We moved to Texas where we are now, where I am now, just before dinner on a Thursday night, with an unknown number of years spread before me, a blur, a mystery. And Mother, who always came to my rescue, is now in an assisted living facility overlooking Santa Monica Bay. She suffers from long-term and short-term memory loss and eats lots of chocolate because, as she told me today, if she’s going to die, she wants to die happy.

THE YEAR IN BOOKS

          After losing our house and my father in 2010, 2011 was a year of gains – people, places, adventures. Not least was purchasing a Kindle. Of all the books I read in 2011, only two were book-books.  The rest came to me over the air, magically, at the touch of a button.  I read in bed, on the couch, waiting in doctors’ offices, at the airport and on the recumbent bike at the gym. Some samples didn’t quite grab me but I may reconsider.   

          I’d love to hear your recommendations.

NON-FICTION

Excellent: In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta Ahmed, a female doctor’s year in Saudia Arabia; Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, a World War II survival story. 

Good: The Autobiography of Ben Franklin; Animalish by Susan Orlean about her love of animals; The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett, on writing; In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, American ambassador to Germany on the eve of WWII; Time to be Earnest by P.D. James, a memoir; Bossy Pants by Tina Fey, a memoir; Like Fallen Snow by Ruth Rosenthal, stories from her life.

Samples not finished: Gotham, a History; Prime Time by Jane Fonda; Walk with Me by Mike Birgiglia; Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, A History of the World in Six Glasses;  If You Ask Me by Betty White.

FICTION

Excellent: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, Ethiopia in the 1960s; People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, follows an ancient manuscript back to its creation.

Good: Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks; Driving on the Rim by Thomas McGuane; The Little Bride by Anna Solomon; The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett; Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larson; Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls; Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton; Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson; Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier; Room by Emma Donaghue.

Couldn’t finish: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.

Samples not finished: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett; The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides;  Everywhere That Mary Went by Lisa Scottoline; V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton; Fearless Mrs. Goodwin; The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbach.

Kindle also has some fun games that help wake up my brain when I get tired:  Scrabble isn’t as much fun as playing with friends on Facebook; Everyword Crossings sometimes stumps me; my most recent free purchase is Jig Saw Words, check it out!