Heartlight

Exciting things are happening here in the upper left corner of the USA.  Well, actually, not really...unless you count the fight over the Seattle Sonics (Oklahoma is trying to steal them, but the way I see it, it's a victimless crime), or the domestic terrorism of ELF as they burned a cluster of McMansions to the ground, leaving behind a for real carbon footprint.  These little sprites are not the brightest lights in the fairy kingdom.

So I've been working quite a bit, and have found to my dismay, that it really cuts into the MySpace time, and the writing, and the doing-nothing time.  (I'm still finding time to cook and eat, though, in case you're worried.)

I wrote the following slice-of-life piece a couple of days ago and wasn't going to post it because it seems self absorbed and narcissistic, but a good friend of mine reminded me that "all writing is self absorbed no matter how cunningly we try to hide it."  We can all agree that I wasn't very cunning, but damn! It's been a long dry spell..

Heartlight

I waited too long again. I do that a lot, in just about every area of my life. But today I waited too long to run. I kept thinking that the rain would die down, that we'd get that late afternoon reprieve, the one where the clouds lighten and become a glowing silver canopy as the sun sets. I kept myself busy while I waited, preparing dinner so it would be ready for the boys as soon as they got home from baseball practice. Every time I checked out the windows it was still raining, moving from a light drizzle to a downpour.

When it got to within an hour of twilight I said 'Screw it" and put my gear on. I left dinner on a low simmer, the oven preheated for the cornbread, strapped on my ipod and shut the door behind me. Geez! It was colder than I expected after a balmy couple of days. I went back in, grabbed a ball cap, did some stretching and hit the trail.

Soaking wet after a quarter mile, I took perverse pleasure in the soggy conditions. This right here is my private fast track to feeling superior, a way of separating myself from the wimps, the ones you only see on bright blue days, with their gym complexions and fastidious approach to the outdoors, as if it should be tidier out here.

Enjoying the sound of the heavy raindrops on the bill of my cap, I let my mind off it's leash, free to wander. I never know where it's going to go - sometimes it's straight goofy junk, like replaying an inane conversation from work, or planning menu's for the next week, and other times it goes deep and plucks out memories and important thoughts that I try to stamp into my brain as though they are a dream that I must record when I wake up. Today I skimmed over the muddy trail, thoughts trolling through my old stuff, like being young and embracing the twilight of winter and the dawn of spring. (I was a strange little thing – highly dramatic over the changing of the seasons).  And then I wondered why I'm always down a bit this time of year. I wonder what happened sometime back then. Back then. Hell yeah. What happened? Something...anything?

I remember when I was in my early thirties and finally seeing a counselor, I was frustrated at my inability to bring back some of the memories of my childhood. They were always there at the fringes, tantalizing me with hints of long past emotions and blurred images. For a while I wanted to be hypnotized and see what came out of it, but as curious as I was, I knew that a lot of fabricated memories have been born in the chair of qualified hypnotists.

And then I had this dream.

I dreamed that I was a cop again. I had been dispatched to a rural area where there was an old house with old orchard-type trees in the yard. There was a body in the tree nearest the house. The body was nestled on top of the branches. And I knew I had to go in the house to find out what had happened. The screen door was ajar and there were two sets of steps, stained cement steps leading to the cellar, and old scuffed linoleum ones leading up. It was lit by a dim bulb in the ceiling, the pull cord swinging back and forth. The house exuded evil, evil in the red walls and yellow ceiling. Evil in the darkness waiting at the top of the stairs. Evil in the methodical swinging of the cord.

I radioed in and told them I was entering the house, and I could hear the squawking back, telling me not to go in, I had to have back-up. I didn't want to wait. And then the clearly dead body joined in with the scratchy radio..."Don't go in the house."

My counselor almost laughed at the clarity in the message my subconscious was sending to my conscious - first class delivery. I didn't see it her way and argued. I said the evidence is in the house, I needed to go in. She said the evidence was the body, and wasn't that enough? How far did I have to go to know that something bad happened? It didn't matter what, the body was the body was the body and that's what you deal with. You don't always need to know what happened and might be better off not.

And I was running and remembering and I seized up. Oh, I kept my pace, but my heart I swear stopped beating and my chest swelled up to my throat so I couldn't breathe and the tears mixed with the rain and I ran and ran.

And there's the house where they never shut the TV off ever, and here's the droopy old horse looking at me hopefully for the carrot I sometimes bring him, and now I'm at the spot that is mind numbingly beautiful to me. Where morning mists gather over the meadow, and evening sunsets gild the treetops. Where I'd love to build a little hut and welcome spring surrounded by riotous frills of golden forsythia, early winter with the fiery decay of the vine maple's last glorious outburst, and in the between times admire the stark winter, burgeoning summer, and the blue jays swooping, squirrels chattering, and the lazy lope of the coyote.

Now through a tangle of woods where owls lurk and spring is just beginning to show in the swelling branches and tiny green leaves poking out of the stick like trees. The final uphill mile passes quickly, my thoughts swerving to my brutal first marriage and the song I'm listening to, that, stupid as it sounds, made me realize I could escape. It was a feel-good silly song of a man who leaves his life behind and changes his name. I remembered how happy it felt to sing that song back then, claim it as my own, make it my own. I don't remember going up the long steep hill and at the top I picked up the pace, the words to a different song pounding in my head. "I get knocked down, but I get up again, 'cause you're never gonna keep me down..."

Anthem for the survivors of extreme dysfunction. Or a great drinking song. Whatever.

Another corner, I checked my stopwatch. Good time. I opened the front door to warmth and the smell of a house ready for dinner.

Back to normal.  

Currently listening : Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: The Greatest Hits of Kenny Loggins By Loggins Release date: 15 June, 2000

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Molasses’ Got Nothing On Me

I did one of those things yesterday, where, when you're in the middle of it you just smack yourself upside the head and say, "What the hell was I thinking?"

I decided to go out and run a 10K, which for those who are metrically challenged, is 6 miles, something I wish I had remembered.  Now, I've been a runner all my life, but I have to confess to indolence these past three years.  Maybe it was because of this:

That's me nearing the finish line of that Mecca for runners the world over - the Boston Marathon.  (I didn't win, but I think I could have if I had forgone the four pound lobster dinner at Legal Seafood's the night before...)  Running in that race (regardless of how marginally I qualified) seemed a glorious way to end a mildly competitive running obsession, so after Boston I did what any washed up athlete does - I turned to competitive eating.  Oh, not really competitive, but I bet I could, you ought to see me dive into Thanksgiving dinner.  Or not.  I'm digressing again, aren't I? 

Back to running...these days I drag my big butt out and run two or three times a week in those lovely woods that I'm always going on about.  And I've been enjoying the running more lately because I was forced to take some time off.  Like many of us aging (did I really say that?) boomers, I had that 'ol cancer cloud hanging over my head this summer, topped off by a surgery this fall, where Franken-boob was born, compliments of a surgeon who sliced and diced one-fourth of that puppy out of there.  Needless to say, no jiggling or jogging for me for a few weeks. 

Sometime at week four or five post-surgery, I figured that if I donned three tight-fitting athletic bras like so much armor, I might survive a bit of running.  It hurt, but I did three miles. I kept at it about every other day.  And somewhere in there...in the woods...in my head...it occurred to me that I needed more goals in my life.  So I went and set one, silly me, which brings me to here, week eight post-op, where I found myself on a frost-bitten morning lining up for the City of Kent's Christmas Rush 10K Fun Run.  I like to call it the Frosty Ass Dash, but that's me.

It was 30 degrees F when I got there.  Now, the problem with a winter run is that you know you will eventually heat up, so you don't want to bundle up too much.  There we were, a thousand strong, wearing running gear instead of the Mt. Everest-rated down we actually needed, jumping up and down - looking as though we had all lost our pogo sticks but were determined to keep on bouncing without them. An announcement rang out, "There will be a ten minute delay to the race start."  The first thought I'm thinkin' after hearing that is that I saw a Starbucks three blocks away and it would probably be more fun to spend the next hour curled up with a paper and a Caramel Macchiatto.

And away they go.  I'm in the way, way, way back.

Thankfully, the gun sounded just before hypothermia set in.  And under the bright sun, with Mt. Rainier looking down on us, we hit the course of roadways and river trails.  I'm back in familiar territory here...this is the Kent where I grew up.  My feet took me across a bridge that I crossed thousands of times as a child in our Mercury on the way to the variety store or the AW Drive-In Root Beer stand.  I looked ahead and ferreted out the edge of the ravine I used to play in.  I see the neighborhood on the side of the west hill of Kent where my friend Vicky lived.  The steep slopes leading down to her house were perfect for sledding and inner tubing.  I remembered a miserable walk home in a snowstorm, finally falling through the door with a fever of 104 and a cough that led to pneumonia and a week's stay at the hospital.  I was a celebrity at school, the envy of my classmates for my neatly executed escape.  At Standring Memorial Hospital, I roomed with three women suffering a variety of illnesses and a shared habit for cigarettes.  They smoked.  In a hospital.  Did I mention that I had pneumonia?  Different times, those were.  Mrs. Oliver had the bed next to mine and creaked her way to an upright position each morning at 6 AM for her first smoke.  She was a garrulous old lady who put her mascara on with a comb, bracelets jangling as she applied it.  Her lipstick was bright red and she was kind, gifting me with a leopard skin bracelet so I would remember her.  I wish I still had it...I'm old enough now to wear leopard without feeling old.

I remember being embarrassed when a businesslike nurse walked in to check my chart and she asked if I had had a 'BM'.

"BM?" I said, confused.

"BM." She said.  No clarification.

"What?" Still confused.

"Bowel movement!"  She's short with me.

I still have no clue.

Yelling now, she says, "Poop!  Poop!  Have you gone poop?"

It seemed a little personal to be asking this question, but I nod yes, obediently.

She scowled and stalked off; muttering that she can't believe a 12-year-old doesn't know what a bowel movement is.

The Campfire Girls started their annual mint sale while I was in the hospital, and I was grievously disappointed that I couldn't sell them door-to-door like everyone else and earn a patch, or maybe win a prize for selling the most in our troop.  So I made a big sign and taped it in the lobby.  'FOR SALE - CAMPFIRE GIRL MINTS - $1.00 PER BOX - ROOM 109'  A constant flow of customers ensured me a patch.  I don't remember if I won anything, but I enjoyed the attention, my deep baritone of a cough eliciting sympathy and sales.

My mental wandering was cut short by the sound of heavy breathing and footsteps behind me.  The heavy breathing was my own, but the footsteps surprised me.  I was pretty sure that everyone had passed me long ago.  At mile four we finally looped away from the bitter wind on the west side of the Green River. (Yes, that Green River, dump site of Gary Ridgeway, GRK.  It's hard to believe it today, here in the sun, that less than a mile away...but Kent would rather forget about all that, so I won't mention it here.) I get warm and peel off a layer and tie it around my waist.  Gloves come off as well.  Mile five and feeling good.  Except for the whole gasping-for-air-thing.  And my right knee, left shin, neck, and Franken-boob.  Yep.  I feel good.  I have to pee.

With less than a mile to go, I consider my pace and position. I wonder if I should help clean up...maybe collect the cones that mark the course, or pick up the paper water cups the runners ahead of me dropped.  If I can't be first maybe I can be useful.  But the finish line loomed and I crossed it, slowing (it didn't take much) to a walk.  A bright-eyed volunteer cheerfully chirps, "Great job!"  And I wonder what it takes for her to say the lie.  I sucked.  We both know it.  And I thought about when I last ran the Frosty Ass Dash in 2002.  I ran it in under 48 minutes, an acceptable time.  On this day I added 12 minutes.  So I sucked...but on the bright side, it makes improvement a pretty damn easy job. 

I'll set another goal now, and work to get back to being in the top ten percent of my age group at these events.  I'm  liking this goal...it only gets easier as time passes.  All I have to do is hang on...the field of seventy-year-olds running 10 K's isn't too terribly big.

Currently reading : How to Train For and Run Your Best Marathon: Valuable Coaching From a National Class Marathoner on Getting Up For and Finishing By Gordon Bloch Release date: 05 August, 1993

21:21 - 27 Comments - 30 Kudos - Add Comment

A Thanksgiving Story (repost)
Current mood: peaceful

The Thanksgivings of my youth blend into each other in a pleasant mix of memories of my grandmothers crowded farmhouse.  Except for one.

I was in first grade and Thanksgiving was drawing near.  My teacher, Miss Watson, told us stories about the Pilgrims coming to America, suffering hardship, and being helped by the Indians.  The Indians taught them how to grow things in the new world, and shared food with them at the first Thanksgiving feast, which impressed me no end because it lasted three days instead of the measly one day that we got.

I had already heard a lot of this from my older sister, Angie, but it was nice to have her stories confirmed by a reliable outside source. I learned pretty young that the older kids sometimes made stuff up.  The Friday before Thanksgiving Miss Watson gave us my favorite kind of paper to work with so we could draw and write about Thanksgiving.  It was oversized paper and the top half was blank so that you could draw a picture, and the bottom half had lines to write on.  Each row had three faint blue lines so you knew where to start and finish your letters.  I took comfort in the guidance those wide spaced lines provided. I was proud of the way I could make all the circles, lines and hooks connect to make letters.  They were all pretty easy except for the small 's'.  Trying to fit those s-is-for-snake curves into the half-space allotted was a challenge, forcing me to scrunch over the paper, place a death grip on my 2 pencil, and embed my tongue in the corner of my mouth, squeezing my eyes nearly closed with the effort of concentration.   The shiny gold star that I got as payoff for my labors was a nearly perfect reward.  Perfect would have been an Oreo.

I traced my left hand with a crayon in the blank space the way Miss Watson wanted.  We were drawing turkeys - our spread out fingers making a tail, and our thumbs forming the neck and head.  We added stick legs at the bottom with a black crayon, and an eye, beak and wattle to the head with an orange one.  We colored the body brown and were allowed to color the finger-feathers any shade we wanted.  Four feathers looked pretty dumb to me.  I wanted to keep tracing my fingers in all the gaps out and upwards in a fan and color them all the bright colors I had in my box of Crayolas, but that kind of fanciful creativity was frowned upon by the Federal Way School District and required a boldness I did not possess.  Four lousy feathers...this poor turkey was never going to get a girlfriend.  But I diligently colored the feathers Turquoise Blue, Magenta, Goldenrod, and Violet and took the drawing home to my mother.

That night at the dinner table my father told us that we weren't going to be able to go to my grandmother's farm for Thanksgiving that year.  Her farm was 260 miles away, over the river, through the woods, and on the other side of a treacherous mountain pass.  Early snowfalls had dumped several feet of snow and more was expected.  So that was it.  No farm, no cousins, no Laddie, no Aunt Oneida, no singing Christmas carols while Aunt Pris played the piano, no turkey or pumpkin pie...the list went on and on.  It was inconceivable that we were to miss it.  Our kitchen was silent as we took it in.  Then the whining started in earnest. 

"But we'll miss grandma and grandpa!"

"What about Laddie?"

"What about Jeff?  And Dick?  And Jim and Kevin and David and Timmy...and Aunt Oneida?"

"We'll miss the snow at the farm!"

"And the turkey!"

"And..."

But my father jumped in at the mention of the turkey.  "Well kids, I've got a surprise about a turkey, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow.  And you have to quiet down."  This was said slowly in a low voice, so we'd get it.  We did.  Our attention shifted.

We remembered our mother at the head of the table.  She was silent, still weighing whether to be cheerful and stoic about not going, or have a complete emotional collapse.  After all, it was her family we were missing.

Deciding we didn't want to tip the scales towards a breakdown, we shut right up.  Breakdowns were not a pleasant way to spend a Friday evening.  If it happened, we always hoped for a short one.  A short one wasn't too bad, just some loud yelling and crying, and all we had to do was listen and not move or act like you didn't want to be there.  Moving attracted attention, and attention at that point in time was not a good thing.  She might see you move and then remember all the bad things you had ever done, kind of like God.  Then she would recount them all, wildly gesticulating as she did so, to emphasize your ultimate badness.  The finish was usually, "How could I have had a god awful kid like you?  What...did...I...do?"  The word 'do' was wrung out for several syllables and her voice covered an octave in range, punctuated with a sob at the end.  Feeling like the spawn of Lizzie Borden and Adolph Hitler, there was nothing to do in that situation but suck it up and take it. I know my brother and sister would forgive me for saying that I was always glad if it was them and not me.  And I know they felt the same.

But on that night my mother rose to the occasion and decided that she would play the part of 'lighthearted mother, flexible and merry in the face of disappointment'.

Saturday morning came, and my father told us that we were going to the B & I Circus Store to win a turkey.  He showed us an ad from the Seattle Times announcing that if you could catch a turkey, you would win it...for FREE!  There was a line drawing of a turkey being chased by a smiling man with his arms stretched out.  We got very excited about this because the B & I Circus Store was a fantastic place to go even if you weren't going to win a turkey!  You could look at the animals, ride a merry-go-round, eat a hot dog, and buy a hamster, a pair of jeans and a gun, all under one roof. 

An inveterate promoter, Earl Irwin, the founder of the B & I, brought in an orphan gorilla named Ivan a couple of years later.  Ivan was raised with children in a family until he was three years old, and then became a finger-painting feature attraction at the B & I Circus Store for twenty seven years until he was caught up in a custody dispute between the family that cared for him and groups who believed he should not be in a store, no matter how big his cage was.  The story was featured on national television and the ensuing battle bankrupted the store.  Ivan is now residing at the Atlanta Zoo and finally has a love interest, but Tacoma still misses him.  Every year or two an article in the Tacoma News Tribune happily recounts Ivan's politically incorrect life at the B & I Circus Store with a 'Where Are They Now' style update. 

When we pulled into the parking lot, we saw that there was a section fenced off, and a crowd at the fence.  Under the gray November skies the bright banners and smell of fresh popcorn made it feel like a festival.  My father signed up for the contest and while we waited we lined up at the edge of the makeshift arena, eating the popcorn my father bought for us.  I hung onto the fence, leaning through it to get a better look.  There were about a hundred turkeys milling about, thrusting their chests out as they nervously shook their wattles.  Then a man entered in the ring and scrambled after the turkeys.  The birds took off in a panic in every direction, madly gobbling and colliding comically as they flapped their useless wings.  There was a lot of laughter, hollering, and cheering from the crowd.

I saw my father at the gate getting ready.  To me, this was an ancient Coliseum, my father a gladiator about to enter the field of battle.  He jumped through the gate, targeted a turkey, and ran after it.  The turkey abruptly changed direction and my father continued straight, grabbing at empty air.  This act was repeated over and again, and I wondered how this herky-jerky guy chasing turkeys could be the same man who effortlessly made horizontal dives in the outfield to catch the ball.  The man who made every physical move a smooth and graceful action.  It couldn't be.  I began to fear that my father the mighty warrior might fail, and Thanksgiving would be celebrated without a turkey.  But just then my father figured it out.  He reacted to the turkey's movements instead of letting the turkey react to him.  He reached right out and grabbed one, gripping it tightly.  We were ecstatic, cheering wildly for his heroic deed.  I couldn't wait until Monday when I could tell all my friends at school that my daddy had won a real, live turkey!    

When my father proudly left the arena with his turkey, he asked the man in charge where they killed it for him.  The man looked at him and chuckled gleefully.  "Kill it?  We don't kill it...you do!"

My father protested, explaining that he didn't know how to kill a turkey.  The man just shook his head and said, "It's easy.  Take a hatchet and chop....  you're done!"  He pantomimed the motion and, having given my father the full B & I training program on the art of turkey slaughter, he turned away from my father and left him stammering, holding a live, squawking, struggling turkey. 

He sheepishly took the turkey to my mother, who was horrified at the idea of carting a live turkey home.  Her face was all set up to launch into a full-blown tirade about the situation, but I saw her visibly shift.  She remembered that she was playing 'lighthearted mother, flexible and merry in the face of disappointment' this weekend.  She said, "Well Ed, we better find a box for him."  And she laughed.

The turkey was put in the back of our old green station wagon and Angie and Paul and I kept turning around to watch him in fascination.  He looked back at us and gobbled.  We threw him some cold popcorn left in the bottom of the wrinkled bag.  My mother saw us feeding the bird, and wondered to my father if we should stop, because the butter in the popcorn might hurt the turkey  (the irony of the worry escaped them).  We gobbled at Tim (my brother insisted on naming him that), hoping to inspire the bird to answer us.  I couldn't take my eyes off the turkey.  He didn't look anything like my traced-hand drawing.  He had glossy dark feathers and a bald head.  The wattle was mesmerizing, because the uneven wobbly growth of skin was so bumpy and hideous.  I looked at his eyes and he looked into mine.  He had intelligent, knowing eyes.  I forgave him for the long, hideous wattle and thought that maybe since I didn't have a dog and did have a turkey that he would make a good pet.  I pictured us in the backyard, him doing a little turkey dance, and me flapping my arms and dancing with him.  I asked my parents if I could keep him.  My father laughed and said, "We're not zoned for turkeys".

That was the same answer I got when I asked for a horse every year for Christmas.  "We're not zoned for horses", he'd say.  That never stopped me from checking the backyard when I got up Christmas morning to see if there was a horse grazing on the back lawn.

I pouted and turned my back on the turkey. 

The turkey lived in a box in our garage for four days.  We fed Tim and tried not to get too close to his big beak.  I hated going into the garage to get canned vegetables for dinner or to empty the garbage.  His eyes reproached me every time I walked by.  At night when I was going to sleep in the quiet darkness I could feel him out there, serving his time until execution.  I tried not to think about it.

Tuesday night after work, I could see my father slowly steel himself to the task.  He read the paper, ate his dinner, and collected his resolve along with his hatchet.  He didn't want an audience so we stayed in the house until my mother started boiling water to help the feathers come off.  My father dipped the motionless bird in the boiling water and started plucking.  It was a mess and we soon got bored with watching.  The next time I saw the bird, it was naked like the ones from the grocery store.  My father was covered in sweat and feathers, and said he was glad to be done.

That night there was a shift in the weather.  A warm front came in and the resulting thaw cleared up the mountain pass.  The fifteen-degree swing in temperature allowed us to leave for my grandmothers' farm late that afternoon, maintaining our Thanksgiving tradition. 

Tim went in the freezer and was roasted for Christmas, served alongside mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing. 

Currently watching : Home for the Holidays Release date: 04 September, 2001

23:20 - 21 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

Georgia Giants

My son Colin has a pair of brown, size 14 Georgia Giant shoes. He wanted them, wanted them, wanted them for a long time before I broke down and got them for him. Whenever I'd drive into Redmond with him, he'd ask if we had enough time to stop by Work & Western Wear, a funky Western goods store that is a throwback to the days when Redmond was a farm and horse town, and the cavernous feed store was downtown right next to the railroad station. When we moved to the area some fifteen years ago, there was still a strong feel of the farm in town, before the Micro softies from up the hill discovered what an idyllic setting it was and razed the trees, built mansions of dubious taste, and imported Starbucks and shi-shi boutiques selling excruciatingly expensive riding boots that would never come within a thousand yards of horse waste.

Work & Western Wear has every kind of western gear known to man - cowboy boots, working boots and shoes, clothing, outback coats, Carhartt, Tony Lama's, belts, buckles, hats, cologne for cowboys, bolo ties, and spurs. A faded poster of Steve McQueen in a Stetson garnishes a window, its edges curled and torn. Most of the stock has been around since the Reagan administration, evidenced by the yellowed price tags with their series of stickers, each with a lower price. The store is owned by an oriental couple, distrustful of their customers and employees. It's always seemed odd to me, the juxtaposition of the wild, open west and the tiny oriental woman, scowling and watchful.  No "Howdy partner" and welcoming wave wait as you enter through the age-settled door frame.

I would take Colin in and he'd wander the store, starting with the hats and coats, then working his way over to the boots and shoes. While he wandered, I studied the women's section of the store, trying to picture myself in a fringed jacket and cowboy hat, ready to join Trixie Belden and the 'Mystery in Arizona'.  Eventually, Colin would call me over to look at the shoes he wanted, and I listened while he pleaded the case for the Georgia shoes, presenting solid evidence for why he needed them. I wasn't easy to convince because he had always worn tennis shoes, and I was worried he'd hate the Georgia's in a week and be stuck with shoes that wouldn't leave the closet. (The return policy at Work & Western Wear is that there isn't one.) He could work in them, he said, and the leather was strong and would last a lifetime. The most compelling argument was that his other shoes were worn out and a size-and-half-too small. 

So I bought him the Georgia Giants, and he has worn them to school as well as to work, on those lucky days when he can trade the strength of his youth for a job busting out sheet rock or ripping up old plumbing for a contractor friend.

I noticed this week that the Georgia's were scuffed and worn. It's been bothering me, those shoes. The rich deep brown of the leather was gone, they looked beaten down. I picked them up tonight and looked at them, noting the wear, but recognizing that it could be easily fixed. Without even thinking, I started the Sunday night routine of my father.

I went to the recycling basket and got a section of old newspaper and laid it out on the table. I put the shoes on top of it and went for supplies from the laundry room. Picking out dark brown wax, an applicator, a cloth, the old polishing brush, plus a toothbrush for the edges, I was ready. Carefully applying the wax, I remembered my father's old shoeshine kit, and the stories he told of shining shoes for a nickel during the depression. He was only ten or so, and he'd sometimes hitchhike fifteen miles away to find business. Then he'd tell me never to do that. Sometimes he talked about being in the Air Force, and spit shining his shoes for inspection. He'd tell it long, describing how to do it in painstaking detail.

My father polished his shoes on Sunday night, getting ready for the work week, and when I was old enough, I stopped watching and began polishing my shoes for the school week, learning at my father's side, rubbing the wax into my ugly saddle shoes and listening to his quiet voice as we worked. Sprinkled through his stories were his ideas on why it was important to have clean, shined shoes, running the gamut from the impression it made on others, to the satisfaction it gave to see the shine emerge from under the dull wax, as well as the fact that it protected your shoes and made them last longer. To a boy who grew up in the depression, that was big.

I thought of all that as I shined Colin's shoes, nodding my head along with the rhythmic slapping of the polishing brush. I thought of my own scuffed shoes and how my mother screamed that I was a disgrace to the family, and how I hung my head, caught between shame and hate because she made me feel so small and inadequate.

And how my father...my father taught me how to shine my shoes.

Currently listening : Shoe Shine Boy By Mills Brothers Release date: 31 October, 2002

22:00 - 26 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

Bergdorf-Goodman, or, I Think I Had an Affair with a Chair
Current mood: mellow
Category: Travel and Places

My traveling companion, the lovely Lady Deanna, was brave enough to pass through the hallowed portals of Bergdorf-Goodman's, bastion of the upper crust, the idea of which makes me shudder.  The result of her foray was appointments for two-for-one facials.  Two-for-one meaning that I would have to go. 

When Lady Dee excitedly told me of the bargain basement deal on a facial, I'm afraid I was less than joyful.  I said, "Yeah, it may be only $22.50 for the facial, but you'll have to buy all their products." 

"No, no, no," she said blithely, "We'll just tell them we'll come back later to buy…it'll be fun!"

Oh, but I knew better, dear reader.

In my heart I knew better.  In my heart, I knew that with a will like strawberry jello, the polished professionals of the Bergdorf-Goodman spa would have me made in a heartbeat,  easily persuading me to purchase enough skin care products that I could have bought my own small tropical island.  They would talk about me in the lunchroom, sneering over their chicken salad sandwiches and falafel at the ease in which they achieved their yearly sales goals three months early.  There are things I know, and this is one of them.

Arriving promptly at 10 AM for the appointments, I filled out forms, answered questions, and was grilled by the cosmetic equivalent of a felony crimes investigator so that it could be determined which products might possibly be able to bring my skin back from the brink of my own epidemiological hell.

.

Brock, a handsome young man, and Janelle interviewed me, good cop, bad cop.  Close up pictures were taken of my face and a computer analysis was done to see the extent of the damage.  Blue dots showed clogged pores, red dots showed sun damage, yellow lines showed wrinkles, and orange represented oil slicks.  My face looked like an explosion of confetti, but Brock and Janelle were certain that help could be found there at Bergdorf-Goodman.

Armed with the analysis and a myriad of products, it was determined that the facial could begin. Irena appeared from around the corner, garbed in soothing colors and possessed of a flawless complexion, to take me into a small room. Dimly lit, the light source was indeterminate, glowing objects spaced artfully in the room.  Directed to take my top off, cover with a sheet, and sit in a nearby chair, I complied.

Irena tilted the chair back so that I was nearly horizontal, the lines of the chair molding to my body.  In a delicate accent, she explained that the chair was designed especially for the spa, combining shiatsu, Swedish and a couple other kinds of massage that I wasn't familiar with.  "The chair is heated, and you will feel some pushing and squeezing," she said softly, "The chair will measure your spine and adjust to your body, giving you the care that you need.   Just relax and melt into the chair."

Under the ministrations of Irena, my face was pampered with tender fingers and exotic lotions.  And underneath me, the chair began moving, a fist first pushing the length of my spine, driving my body upward as it worked.  Then there was a squeezing of the calves, the sensation that of actual hands encircling the flesh and kneading, which continued to the upper leg and derriere.  With quickening speed, my upper torso was forced into a thrusting motion, impelling my head to tilt back, chin skyward, as though lost in a paroxysm of passion.  At this point, I felt the apparatus was perhaps a little too familiar, but it was too late to turn back, and the device continued its carnal assault, as I followed Irena's instructions and melted back into it.  I heard a soft oboe playing 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight' and smiled.  Perhaps thirty minutes, perhaps a day…a lifetime later, it rocked its way to the finish.

As the movement stopped, there was a low vibration…a humming, the sound of satisfaction, and I lay there in a warm cocoon while a clarinet wove the melody of  'There's a Place for Us' around me.  Irena quietly finished rehabilitating my face and softly asked if I'd like anything else.

"Irena…a cigarette would be just lovely."     

Currently listening : West Side Story By Leonard Bernstein Release date: 18 May, 2004

08:46 - 24 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

Space Flight
Current mood: contemplative

My father was telling a story, one I hadn't heard. It was about when he was doing top secret work for Boeing. He doesn't say it was top secret, he's not one to glamorize things, but I remember the period of time.  I thought it was strange that he and my mother went to Florida for a vacation. It wasn't a place they had ever expressed a desire to visit, and her state of mental health was pretty shaky, still in and out of mental hospitals.

It started when we were teasing each other about the slugs I've been battling all summer. Dad, mom and I were sitting at Starbucks chatting. We talked about killing the little beasts and my father said, "Well, you know...you kids never noticed that I torched 'em up and snuck them in your scrambled eggs."

"It's good protein, dad, and not bad tasting, just a little like chewing on tires. I got suspicious when we didn't have any hot dogs in the house and all the sudden there's meat in the eggs..."

"Ewwwww, yuck, you two! How can you talk that way?" mom said.

"We needed a straight man, dad. Perfect."

My mother made a disgusted look and my father repeated the words, "Torched 'em....crispy critters..."  His eyes wandered somewhere else.

He started talking. "You know, down at Cape Canaveral you had to go through eight hours of training before they'd let you even set foot in the lift-off towers. And four hours of it were with this guy who did safety training. That guy...every time he'd explain a safety procedure to follow he would say, "And if you don't? Crispy critters!" Because essentially, one wrong move, one lapse, one time you forgot to attach your anti-static belt or something else - the whole place would go up."

"Were you in 100% oxygen?" I asked.

"A lot of the time, and they taught us to assume that we always were, because sometimes you didn't know."

"Geez!  How'd that feel?"

"You got used to it, and it was pretty exciting to be there. I remember once climbing all the way to the top of the lift-off tower and looking straight down into the launch pad. I remember thinking that in less than two months that thing would be blowing right through here and heading into space."

He was lost in the remembering and I was lost in the imagining. Then my mother's shrill voice broke in, "Hey you two! Are you having a conversation all by yourselves?"

She's upset that she's not included, but honest to god, she has a hard time keeping up.

Dad says, "Well, you're listening, that's being part of it."

I'm happy inside that he doesn't let her cow him, make him stop like she so often does. I move my chair so that I'm a little closer to her, look at her once and smile so that she'll let us keep talking. I turn back to dad.

"What were you sending up there, dad?"

"Ohhhhhhh," he draws it out, "I really can't say...it's still not declassified."

My mother says sadly, resentfully, like a small child, "He won't even tell me."

"Well, he shouldn't. What kind of security clearance is it if you get to blab to relatives?"

"I can talk about it in three years," he finishes.

"That was when you told everyone you were going on vacation to Florida and you never said where, just at the beach, wasn't it? You were really working, weren't you?" I asked.

He nodded, and then I remember that he worked on satellites a lot. And I remember when I was little, the pride I took in my father's work, as any child does. I felt like a rock star when Apollo 15 went to the moon, and the Lunar Rover that bore my father's fingerprints successfully climbed over the rough terrain. The tiles on the space shuttles bear his print as well. And he spent years in an area they called 'the black box', where the engineers with the highest security clearances did their work in silence, a silence that continues. He didn't talk about work then, so we clung to the glory of the Lunar Rover, a fading photograph with the astronaut's signature hanging crooked on our basement wall. We watched the lift-offs for all the space flights on television, following the progress of the little capsules in prehistoric black and white special effects, my father explaining the principles of traveling to the moon, eyes on the vast universe.

And sitting there, in that moment, I realized that my father had wanted to fly away too...just like me. To the moon. To a place where he had freedom from the sometimes crushing weight of his life, the yearning a sickness in his gut, tying him up and choking him. So he sent bits of himself into space.

They're still out there...pieces of my father weightlessly circling the solar system.

Currently reading : The Right Stuff By Tom Wolfe Release date: 30 October, 2001

22:36 - 27 Comments - 26 Kudos - Add Comment

Root Beer Summer

I drove through the small town of Auburn last Saturday on the way to a baseball game.  These days you just glimpse the edge of town from the Valley Freeway as you sail by on your way to Tacoma or Olympia.  The only clue to its existence is the Tribal Casino and car dealer billboards.

 Back when I was growing up all the little towns in the valley were connected by a two-lane road that meandered through truck farms and cattle pastures.  You had to drive through each town to progress to the next.  It was like connecting the dots on my father's map in the glove box.

I had forgotten about Auburn's XXX Drive-In Root Beer Stand until it was right in front of me.  Back then it was a flat roofed building with a blue soffit along the edge that extended over the carhop area.  On top of the building was a huge orange root beer barrel, with cream colored bands and 'XXX Root Beer' written in yellow on it. At night it lit up with neon, making it the coolest looking building in town. 

Now, the orange is a faded mushroom color and 'XXX Root Beer' has been painted over with 'Big Daddy's Drive In'.  I thought about how my father used to back our black Mercury Monterey up to the far edge of the wedge-shaped lot and roll down the window waiting for Gloria to take our order.  And how one summer when I was small, the worlds of my brother and sister and I revolved around that root beer barrel just as surely as the moons of Jupiter revolve around that far planet.

Summers were a tricky time of year.  I loved the break from sitting in a classroom, and playing with the neighborhood kids from morning into the long northwest nights.  I relished going without shoes and feeling the wet tickle of the morning dew on my feet.   Being able to wear shorts or jeans instead of a skirt was another summer bonus.  I hated skirts because I had to be careful that the boys didn't see my panties when I twirled on the rings or slid into second base. 

Once, Bob McCullough, a tattler who picked his nose in class and didn't like me nearly as much as I didn't like him, told everyone that I had a hole in my panties and that he had seen my butt on the swings.  I hotly denied this on the playground and we nearly came to blows.  I complained to my mother about it when I got home and she immediately lifted up my skirt and proclaimed, "Well, good god, Julie, that's the biggest hole I've ever seen in a pair of underwear.  How could you be so stupid?  You must be the dumbest damn kid on the planet!"   I couldn't sleep that night knowing that Bob McCullough had seen my pink bottom through the hole in my underwear. 

The downside of summer was that it meant long days together with a mother we were afraid of.  She had always been subject to violent mood swings and Nerves (and that word is always capitalized in my head, because when she said she was feeling her 'Nerves' it meant anything could happen). 

The days were unpredictable.  One morning she might be happily giving the neighborhood girls baton-twirling lessons (she was a majorette in high school), animated and basking in the spotlight, and the next day she might not get out of bed, or would confine us to our rooms because we didn't move fast enough, or just make us so feel so miserable that we didn't want to be with our friends.  It was hard to make plans with the other kids for things like bike rides or picnics or parades because as soon as she found out about it, she found a way to keep us home, even if we had worked our hardest to be good.

We learned to keep secrets. We learned to hide, to lay low, and to time our requests with when she took the pills for her Nerves.  My favorite days were when she was in bed or taking a lot of pills, because I knew we had more freedom.  The days I hated most were the days when her face was small.  Her brows would draw down over her eyes and they would narrow, forming tiny slits, and her mouth would tighten into a thin, sharp line.  When she was like that we had kind of a duck-and-run way of getting through the day.  Stay out of her way.  Get what you needed quickly and go hide again.  Make sure you knew exactly where she was at every minute so you could scoot when you had to, and if necessary, leave a sibling behind as a sacrifice.   Eventually, she would pick a target and unleash her fury, sometimes pushing or slapping, but usually a venomous verbal maelstrom, closing with "you goddam son-of-a-bitchin kid I wish you'd never been born", at which point we were in perfect accord.  On those days we couldn't wait for our father to get home.

My father was an engineer for Boeing at the new Kent Space Center.  As the area's largest company, Boeing was a fickle employer, hiring thousands in anticipation of airplane orders and government contracts, and then going through lean periods when pink slips fell like Seattle rain.  The dinner conversation in those times was about which of my father's coworkers had gotten one, and if he was likely to be in the next batch.  The slips were handed out on payday, so any anticipation our family felt over the incoming money was balanced by the fear of that little slip of paper saying, "your services are no longer needed…"  

My favorite summer was when I was 9 years old and we never worried about pink slips.  Boeing needed its space engineers to do important testing.  Testing at night and on weekends.  Testing around the clock.  The engineers in my fathers group put in long hours and Boeing paid great overtime. 

We had money that summer.  A little extra cushion so that my mother could think about getting 'something for the house'.  She was happy when she could think about things like that.  When she didn't have to worry about how much milk we drank, or whether or not we'd have to take out a second mortgage.  That summer my father couldn't play on his softball team and dinners weren't at 4:55 PM.  Sometimes he was late and sometimes he wasn't there for dinner.  I loved those nights because we'd get to have Swanson's Chicken Pot Pies.  It was so hard to wait the 45 minutes for the pie to come out of the oven with its flaky golden crust.  You could get to eating it faster if you dumped the pie out of the little aluminum pan and split it apart, spreading it out over the dinner plate, but I would try to slide mine out so it was perfectly whole with no broken edges.  I'd gently break open a spot and the fragrant steam would rise.  I kept the pie intact for as long as possible but as soon as I burned my tongue I'd rip into it.  Then I would carefully put equal parts of crust and filling on every forkful.  Each morsel was an early epicurean's search for balance between buttery crust and savory filling. 

My real memories of that summer begin about a week after school was out.  One night at dinner, my father announced that he was going to read a book to us.  My older sister, Angie, my younger brother, Paul, and I snuck looks at each other and I knew we all regarded the idea with suspicion.  He had never read to us before, and at 11, 9, and 7 years old it wasn't like we were babies to be read to.  So after we were done eating, Angie and I quickly did the dinner dishes, singing the way that my mother liked us to, and then snuck outside to play S-P-U-D with Paul and the neighbor kids.  But then I heard the front door open and my father yelled, "C'mon kids, let's go!"   We wanted to know where we were going but he wouldn't say.  We didn't want to leave our game but didn't want to hurt his feelings, so we let our mother herd us into the car.  She got into the front seat, putting her purse and a new knitting project down by her feet.  My father headed the car towards the Kent Valley and took the country road that linked to Kent and the two-lane valley highway.  We drove along the Green River where the banks were overgrown with blackberry vines.  The vines were covered with white blossoms surrounding fuzzy centers.  The fuzz would soon turn into small, hard green berries and by mid-August would be large, juicy blackish-purple fruit that we'd harvest as a family and make into pies and cobblers.  The sweet twilight air carried the promise of those pies as we crossed the river and turned toward Auburn. 

We rounded the curve into Auburn, drove past the Red Lotus and the Elks Club, and then my father put on the left turn signal.  Angie and Paul and I looked at each other in wide-eyed excitement and we wriggled in the backseat, no seatbelts to curb our movements.    The big black Mercury swung into the parking lot of the XXX Root Beer Drive In and my father slowed the car down, deciding where to park.  I liked being in the car hop area, with it's poster menus and speakers to the inside of the restaurant, but my mother liked to be in the open, so he backed the car up to the edge of the lot.  A carhop in a brown uniform with a change belt around her waist showed up at our car with a big smile.  Her nametag said 'Gloria'.  My father placed an order for four root beers and Gloria returned with the root beers on a tray that attached to the car window.  We each got a frosty mug of foamy root beer and took the first satisfying swallow, leaving us with creamy mustaches to wipe off with our hands.  And then we heard my father's deep voice, "Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.  Chapter One.  The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow..."

It was magical.  My father read the words and they came to life.  He did different voices and accents for each character, and broke into a rough singsong chant at "Fifteen men on the dead mans chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum".  My mother knit as he read, a few rows into a vest she was making for my father in a shade of muddy oatmeal that I hated.  I liked to hear the click of the needles and watch the rhythmic nod of her head as she worked.  I wanted to knit and she had tried to teach me the previous year when I was eight.  I started a blue washcloth, but soon I had picked up so many stitches that it looked like an inverted pyramid.    Everyone in the family laughed at my clumsy work and mom said she couldn't figure