Blurb & Bourbon

 

Want a hardcover copy of your blog, cookbook, family photo album, collected poems, travel journal or whatever? How about hardcover copies (with dust jackets, even!) to give away as gifts? Check out www.blurb.com.

Oh my, I’ve had fun for the past 24 hours. I dragged out all of my photos for 2003, which fortunately I had on a “picture CD” as in 2003 we did not have a digital camera. I’ve made what I hope will be a very nice little 28-page family photo album for that year, with text and some good page layouts. That’s the cover of my album, above.

There’s a tutorial video on the website, and it’s actually quite good. I finished putting the album together just a little while ago, uploaded it, and ordered one copy which should be here in about 10 days. Highly recommended for those of you who take wonderful photos and write terrific stories, as well as those of you who are wonderful cooks. You know who you are! Even if you take mediocre photos and write only mildly entertaining captions for them, here’s a newfangled way to make an album without going to the Hallmark store. The possibilities are endless. Check it out.

In other news, the afternoon was made brighter when neighbor Linda hallooed across the fence that she had fresh mint grown in her own backyard, as well as some Maker’s Mark bourbon with which to make mint juleps. Linda and other neighbor Glo came over forthwith to sit on our back porch under the ceiling fan and partake of same.  Linda, bless her, had brought everything in a well organized paper bag, including ice cubes!  That’s a registered dietician for you. The juleps were delicious beyond description, and we have agreed that this may become a weekend ritual for at least as long as the fresh mint lasts.  Here’s to us.

Dust

Once I make up my mind to do it, I love dusting the bookshelves in my room.  It takes a while.  I have to pick up this book and that, planning to read or re-read.  There are so many photos and little things on the shrine-like shelves that I have to pick up and think about, too.  And next to the shelves are the little chairs on the wall, each with something special on the seat.  One has a wonderful bird’s nest that we had in our patio garden in Mexico.  Another has two black, faceless angels.  We have a thing about faceless angels around here.  She started it, and now I like them. 

Anyway.  Catherine, our 80-something widowed next door neighbor, is dying in a hospice room at St. Mary’s, up the road from us.  We went to see her on Monday, but she is in a coma.  It will be any time now.  Dusting, I thought about her and how she used to bring over something Greek that she had cooked for our dinner.  How she listened to Rush Limbaugh turned up full volume, but she openly envied our having each other to love.  I thought about how I could have been a much better friend. 

My hand fell upon a collection of Jane Kenyon’s poems, called Otherwise.  I remember that book arriving in the mail about this same time nine years ago, when we were living in Mexico and my mother was dying.  I took it with me when we went for the day to the balneario, a collection of swimming pools perched on a short cliff overlooking the beach where cows and horses strolled along the Lake, and the mountains on two sides.  The book fell open to this poem, and I cried out in recognition as I read the first lines.  I put it here today in memory of my mother and in prayer for Catherine.

She is like a horse grazing

a hill pasture that someone makes

smaller by coming every night

to pull the fences in and in.

She has stopped running wide loops,

stopped even the tight circles.

She drops her head to feed; grass

is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.

Master, come with your light

halter.  Come and bring her in.

--“In the Nursing Home” by Jane Kenyon, from the book of her collected poems titled Otherwise.

A Lucky Mother

I can’t write about my mother on Mother’s Day. My daughter? Oh, yes. The person who makes me such a lucky mother.

Here’s what Tara has always been and is now:

Creative. Hundreds of examples, but one I remember clearly is the time when she was about 8 and I was sleeping late on a Saturday. When I roused myself, the dog was licking my face. And clipped to the dog’s collar was my wedding veil, complete with big lace bow. When I rubbed my eyes, I realized that Spooky was also wearing big white polka dots all over her black fur (they were supposed to be price stickers from an upcoming garage sale). Tara had dressed up Spooky and paraded her around the neighborhood, to great appreciation that I heard about later.

Smart. When she was 2 ½, she knew our full names, our street address, city and state, our telephone number, and the name of the ad agency where her daddy worked. “Hello,” she said to a strange man in the airport waiting room. “My name is Tara ________. Want to see me do a puzzle?” Whereupon she whipped out a puzzle designed for much older children and slapped it together before he had a chance to say “No, thanks.”

Somewhat shocking. (Same flight; different puzzle.) Tara is putting a puzzle together on her tray table when half of it accidentally falls off onto the floor of the plane. “Shit!” yells out the adorable toddler to the quietest passengers on any plane that ever flew.

Funny. No one can make me laugh at myself harder than she can.

Generous. The first indication was the sign she hand-printed for Santa Claus when she had just turned 4. “Santa Enjoe yor Cookes. Tara.” Five minutes later, it seemed, she was baking cookies for firemen, serving the homeless, helping old ladies (besides us), always choosing the perfect gift for someone, and endlessly giving of her time to provide company and comfort to those who need it.

Happy. She makes the deliberate choice, more than nine times out of ten. In recent times, that has included having cancer, being rear-ended twice in a month, having her identity stolen, and being laid off. “I’m getting sick of counting my blessings,” she said not too long ago. Laughing.

Loving. I can’t adequately describe how loving she is to her mothers, her other family members, her friends, and animals.

Loyal. Got some faults? If she loves you, and there’s a good chance she does, Tara will stick by you anyway, and will never badmouth you behind your back.

An excellent teacher. A couple of years ago, her other mother and I were privileged to sit in the back of one of her college classes and watch her teach. I was terrified that I might be called on, but so proud of the way she drew everyone else out and made them think and respected them that I could have put my head down on the desk and cried.

Faithful and full of faith. Several years ago, after a long and thoughtful search, Tara converted to Judaism. At the beginning of a religious service, there’s a prayer that includes, she explained to me, bowing to your angels. I’ve watched her, and I think she can see them. I know they see her.

Happy Mother’s Day, Tara Cat. You’re the best kid ever.  Love you past the moon, the stars, and all the planets.

Do Not Send

Something really chapped my cheeks today, fried my eggs, and definitely pushed my buttons. This isn’t what I was planning to write about for my next post, but here goes.

Someone I consider a friend and a person who should know better forwarded me and about 50 other people an email that was extremely bigoted and, if the truth be known, originally created by someone who is obviously not of high intelligence and incapable of logic. It managed to be offensive about race, politics, and religion all in one fell swoop. Rather than let it go, which I might have done a few years ago, I responded in a way that made it crystal clear how offended I was. And then I got even madder.

I’ve had it with people mindlessly firing off forwarded emails:

(1) that they obviously do not understand and haven’t thoughtfully considered.

(2) to absolutely everyone they know, whether or not that person might be offended.

(3) that contain no logic of any kind.

(4) that try to build fear and hatred.

Then there are the emails sent out to one and all in a person’s email address book, along the lines of “Your cat will die if you use such and such a product on your floors,” “collect plastic bottle caps and when you redeem them a cancer patient will receive a free chemotherapy treatment,” and of course “Obama is not a US citizen.” College graduates blithely pass such nonsense along to all their friends. I’ve even received emails that say “I don’t know if this is true or not, but….” Here’s a concept: if you don’t know if it’s true or not, why are you passing it along? If you use email, you should also be Internet-savvy enough to check out anything that seems amazing or incredible in some way at www.snopes.com or some other solid fact-checking service.

Whatever you do, don’t send your narrow-minded, bigoted, hate-filled, illogical crap to me. Because I’ll just think you’re stupid. And I’m lifting 10-pound weights these days. Don’t mess with me.

Hurray For All Of Us

The Reflection at tonight’s Celtic service made me think of our fitness trainer, Jim.  In only three weeks, we have become devoted to him.  Jim knows his business and is able to teach what he knows in a very clear manner.  He’s watchful, making sure that we don’t hurt ourselves and that we don’t slack off from what we are capable of doing.  He doesn’t let us get away with a thing.  And when Jim says “Great form!” or “That’s kickin’ it, Sharon!” or “Excellent pace,” I straighten up and reach higher and move faster and try harder.  He’s a cheerleader, Jim is, but his cheers are sincere and they mean something.  No automatic “Good job!” from him.  (Oh, the ubiquitous and too-often patronizing  “Good job!”  A lot of mothers and teachers tend to roll those out like jellybeans, just for breathing in and out.  It’s another version of “Have a nice day.”  And I think that deep down the kids know it.  How about something specific?)

I was thinking tonight about all the times that we just want someone to notice how hard we’re trying to do something that’s difficult for us, or just need someone to confirm that they love us, or think we’re smart, or look good today, or were seen doing a kind thing.  Some of us are lucky and we get that kind of validation often.  And others, many of whom are trying hardest of all, almost never do.  When that happens to children whose parents weren’t their cheerleaders, I think it leaves scars for life.  In their secret hearts, nothing they do is ever good enough.  But I think no one ever outgrows that need for spoken validation, no matter how self-confident and unbreakable they may seem to others.  Sometimes I’ve found myself jealously guarding my praise.  Why should I give support to someone who doesn’t do the same for me, or who seems to get “too much” from someone other than me, or who “should know” that I love them or am grateful for them?

Tonight I’m hoping to remember to be on high alert for any opportunity I may have to be someone else’s cheerleader.   For one thing, when I see him on Tuesday, I think I’ll thank Jim for being such a good one.

Further Adventures In Measuring

Conversation on the way home from working out today:

Me: I was going 178 steps a minute during the intervals! That’s a lot of steps per second!

She: Yeah, about 50, right?

Me: Heaven help us.

She: I oughta get a job at Home Depot. Everybody’s windows would be mismatched, decks would be either be 3x3 feet or taller than the house, contractors would quit in disgust, Home Depot would go out of business….then I’d write a book titled How To Be A Math Genius, by Sheila.

Me: This is going in my blog.

Missing LA

We saw a wonderful movie, The Soloist, the other night. I demand that you see it, too. The performances by Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. are not to be missed. It’s a true story, based on newspaper columns about a homeless musician by LA Times columnist Steve Lopez. And like so many true stories, especially true stories set in Los Angeles, it is indeed stranger than fiction, and ugly and piercingly beautiful at the same time.

I didn’t grow up in Southern California, and probably only drove through there once with my parents on the way to Texas, back in the 50’s. I remembered the palm trees, the riot of color in flowers, plants, and stucco, and the Hollywood Hills where we stopped and visited cousins. I didn’t see it again until 1963, when I visited the 18 year old college boyfriend who would later become my husband. We went to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, matching our hands with the sidewalks prints of the stars, and Disneyland. Bob’s parents lived in San Marino, home of the John Birch Society and rich people who weren’t movie stars. They had a Thunderbird. That was class.

When Bob and I married in the Summer of 1967, I moved to LA and began a close but uneasy relationship with the city that was to last the better part of 30 years. The marriage, also uneasy, did not last, so it was the City itself that remained a part of my life. I met She in the “Greater Los Angeles Area” as the multitude of cities that run together for hundreds of square miles are called. And we moved from there to Mexico in 1998.

Until I saw the opening scene of The Soloist, I wasn’t aware that I love LA. In fact, I would have laughingly denied such a thing, maybe even snorted in disgust, and millions of others would understand why I always considered it to be a place I lived because I had to, not because I chose to. But I looked at that iconic shot of the LA skyline, and I realized that the City was like a close but somewhat obnoxious and irritating relative that I never realized I loved or missed until it was too late.  I do love LA. I even miss it. It’s inextricable from the story of my life, and it’s inextricable from the story of this country.

Somehow I always felt that LA was a living being, breathing in and out (never mind the smog), the mountains and the hills, the Pacific Ocean and the freeways and the swimming pools and the Santa Ana winds and the millions of lights all a part of that living, breathing thing, and that all of our lives were acted out on millions of little stages. I have been as lonely there as the last person on earth, standing at the edge of the continent; and I have been as happy there as someone blessed and kissed by God and sent out to play in the sun.

Bob and I lived, for a week, in his bachelor apartment down the street from the Ambassador Hotel, where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated the following year. (Martin Luther King was assassinated that year, too. The principal at the school where I was teaching would not agree to lower the flag to half staff.) 

Like many other Angelenos who are not at all wealthy themselves, I have spent a lot of time in fabulous homes with fabulous views and incredible art work and electric gates, and have never been envious because the people who owned them were just like me except with money and maybe not as happy.

I was there for several major earthquakes, and each time I wanted to move that day and never come back.

My skin has tanned next to countless swimming pools all over the Southland, while I read a book to the background music of The Beach Boys.

I’ve sat under a full moon on a warm night and listened to some of the world’s greatest music at the Hollywood Bowl and the Greek Theatre.

I’ve known LA characters with strange lives and storytellers and musicians who would blow your socks off with crying and laughing and loving.

The night my daughter was born, I leaned against the car in the hospital’s parking lot and looked up at the moon and all the stars in the bright October sky.  Even today, we say “Love you past the moon, and the stars and all the planets.”

I’ve spent Sunday afternoons in the patio of a crumbling old Mexican restaurant with a group of gay women, drinking margaritas and listening to a “girl” band composed of women in their 70’s and 80’s.

I’ve worked in the middle of Hollywood, the beginning of Beverly Hills, and the beach, driving by just-shot-to-death bodies on my way to the bank at noon, fleeing from major riots, getting stalled on the freeway at rush hour because of bomb threats and police car chases and horrible car crashes and nothing at all.

I drove past the LA County Jail every single morning while OJ Simpson was incarcerated there, and gave him the bird each time.

I’ve awakened in the middle of the night and not known why until I realized it was because of the  deafening silence when the nearby freeway was shut down due to a major accident.

I’ve raised roses and wisteria and hibiscus and geraniums just by sticking them in the ground.

I’ve lived alone with my young daughter in the same neighborhood where the Night Stalker roamed, and slept with the windows open anyway because it was so hot. 

I’ve lived on the beach and just blocks from the beach in LA, and sometimes I wish I still did.  But only if I could have what I have in my life right now, and life would never change and it would always be precious, and the sun would always set blood red above dark blue waves and wet hard sand, and the land and the mountains and the sea and the stars and the freeways and all the millions of people would breathe in and out.