MY 2016 ELECTION CHOICE

I have been keeping my opinions about the upcoming Presidential election off the internet because I don’t think Facebook and Twitter are the proper forum for those discussions.  However, I have been silent for too long.

I am voting for Hillary Clinton.  I am not voting for her because I like her.    I am voting for her because I need to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

Donald Trump is a misogynistic, racist, narcissist.  He has shown these qualities again and again.  This week’s revelation about his attitudes towards women should not come as a surprise.  He has been married three times.  He has had affairs.  He gauges a woman’s value on her beauty and the number on her bathroom scale. He insulted a respected female journalist because she “bleeds.” 

He has promised to make Mexico build a wall along the Rio Grande, but walls do not work.  Just ask the Roman emperor Hadrian or the builders of the Berlin Wall.  He insulted the judge in the trial against Trump University because he is Hispanic. He has threatened to round up Muslims and deport them.  If you think this will make us safe, you are wrong.  It will only give fuel to those fanatics who already hate us for injecting our culture and politics into every other country on Earth. He has contributed to the systemic racism in this country by questioning the birthplace of President Obama. He made fun of a man with disabilities, mocking him for his speech and mannerisms.

Trump does not care about the good of the country.  He only cares about aggrandizing himself.  He has made obscene amounts of money and taken every tax loophole to avoid paying taxes because he is “smart.”  He rejoiced at the shootings at a gay nightclub by tweeting, “I called it.”  He is “the only one” who has answers to some of our nation’s stickiest problems.  He called on the NRA and the Second Amendment supporters to “solve the problem” of Clinton’s candidacy.  He has stated that if he loses the election “it was rigged,” and called on supporters to “watch” the polling places for irregularities.

So if you don’t want this vile, obscene person representing our country for the next four years, you MUST vote for Hillary Clinton.  If you haven’t registered, get it done, and exercise your right to vote.  If you are registered to vote, you can’t stay home, vote for a third party candidate, or write in Mickey Mouse because you are throwing away the chance to defeat Trump.  And, lastly, if you are intimidated at a polling place, call the police. Don’t let threats keep you from casting your vote.  

MY BUCKET LIST

Before the Hollywood movie coined the phrase “bucket list” mine was already started.  I made it in my seventh grade year. 

I was a geeky, mousy, bespectacled girl with crooked chipped front teeth and clothes a decade out of style.  Just the kind of kid who bullies target, and that year, I was unfortunate enough to have the locker right next to the biggest bully of them all.

Chuck was a handsome, athletic guy whom everyone admired and feared.  I usually cut him a wide berth.  In the fourth grade, he punched me in the head so hard I saw stars and had a headache for days.  After that, I learned to keep my head down and my mouth shut to avoid Chuck and his friends, but then fate placed us side by side in the seventh grade locker room.

Every day I was subjected to his taunts and his physical threats.  I tried ignoring.  I avoided going to my locker.  I did everything I could to keep from antagonizing him, but three times a day, there we were, side by side, a disaster waiting to occur.

Finally, one day in the spring, I went to get my books for the afternoon session.  “Get out of my way, Molesteeth,” I heard Chuck say as he pushed me sideways.  I stumbled and fell against the open locker door, slicing my arm open on the cold gray metal.

“Goddamn it, Chuck, why don’t you leave me alone!” I screamed into the now thinning crowd of students.  I went off to class, wiping the blood from my arm.

Later that day as I was sitting in my Language Arts class, an announcement came over the intercom.  They were calling the names of people who were to go to a meeting of the student discipline committee.  I was stunned when they called my name.  Mrs. Carlson glared at me and I felt the mocking eyes of my other classmates as I gathered my books and slinked from the classroom.

When I arrived, Chuck and the rest of the student government from the 7th and 8th grades sat behind a table.  They were to be my judge, jury and executioners.  I was told the nature of my crime.  I was to be punished for swearing in the hallways.  Since I rode the bus home and could not do after school detention, I would spend my lunch hour in the library for two weeks.

I was ashamed and embarrassed as I left the room, but on another level I was relieved.  Two whole weeks without having to hang around the play ground, alone and friendless.  It would be a vacation for me.  Two whole weeks to read.  I couldn’t think of anything better.

While serving my detention I discovered in a closet in the library filled with stacks of old National Geographic magazines.  I spent my days, flipping through them, discovering all the wonders of the world outside my tiny rural home.  They sparked my imagination and fueled my desire to get away from its limiting boundaries.  I saw for the first time the treasures of King Tut’s tomb, the grandeur of the Parthenon, and the mysteries of the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan cultures.  I read about Africa and the Far East and I saw people of different colors than my own.  I wanted to get to know them first hand, and I promised myself I would get there someday.  I made myself a list: The Pyramids and the mysterious Sphinx in Egypt, Teotihuacan and Chitzen Itza in Mexico, and Macchu Picchu in Peru.  I would see those places before I died. 

A few weeks later in Language Arts class, Mrs. Carlson suggested we draw a picture of a place we wanted to go.  I took out my colored pencils and I drew the Pyramids standing solid and red upon the sandy banks of the Nile.  As she came by to see how we were progressing, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Delores dear, igloos are white.”  I looked up and realized that she a totally ignorant product of my home town.  Not only did she not recognize the Pyramids but that a whole year had gone by and she did not know my name.

Years passed without me reaching my goals.  There was school and life to deal with and my husband didn’t seem to share my dreams.  After we divorced I was looking for something to do.  I was looking for a singles group and found the Single Boomer’s Social Club on Meetup.  They seemed to be doing a variety of activities, so I applied for membership.  As part of the application process we had to write our “Bucket List”.  All these memories and the still burning desire to see the places I had first discovered in detention came back and I wrote them down: Egypt, Greece, Italy, Macchu Picchu.  And when the leader wrote back that Macchu Picchu was on her list too, I joined the group.  Mary Ann and I became friends and on October 21st we left for Macchu Picchu. 

We flew to Lima and spend a days in the capitol of Peru.  We visited grand old homes and visited a Paseo horse ranch.  We watched a display of these beautiful horses followed by a delicious meal of Peruvian foods.  Then we traveled up to Cuzco to get acclimated to the altitude for a few days.  We traveled by bus to the Sacred Valley of the Inca and visited the famous market at Piasic.  The following day we traveled to Ollyantambo to see the Inca fortress there.  I walked up to the top for a view of the lovely valley and walked the beginning of the Inca Trail.  The following day we boarded a train and to one of the most popular World Heritage sites. 

After arriving in Aques Calientes, we took another bus up thirty switchbacks to Macchu Picchu.  I stood where the ancient Inca’s stood and I marveled at the stone terraces, carved with primitive tools and set without mortar, which have stood in spite of the elements for thousand years.  I breathed the air they breathed and walk the stone walk ways they walked.  I climb as high as my body allowed in the thin atmosphere.  When I could go no higher I whooped allowing my voice to echo off the mountain sides.  I thrilled at achieving my goal. 

While I stood there, I was grateful for Chuck and Mrs. Carlson, because without them, I would not have become the person I am; the one who sets goals and takes chances.  The person who travels and learns.  The woman who continues to grow and work toward achieving those bucket list goals.  The human being who gets to whoop from mountain tops.

Food

I have been working on dieting and exercising since the first of the year.  It is hard going because I love to eat and I hate the gym.  So much of my life has been about food, that to leave it out is like taking away a little part of myself.  I look at my yogurt and granola or my wassa bread with peanut butter and harken back to the days when my family’s kitchen was filled with the smells of cooking.

 “These are people who like to eat!”  my mom always quipped whenever there was a gathering of my large, noisy extended family.  It was true that every family event and holiday was celebrated with food and beverages.  Family pictures were taken around tables laden with holiday fare.  We celebrated weddings with food.  We mourned each passing with food.  Every holiday had its own set of food traditions.  So it is no wonder that many of my early memories are about eating. 

Even when we weren’t celebrating our everyday activities were scheduled around meals.  Usually my day started with breakfast cereal and Tang.  I especially relished Cocoa Krispies drenched with the cream which Mom skimmed off the top of our household milk.  I would eat my breakfast, listening to the radio while Mom drank her coffee and smoked.  Then I would sit on top of the heat vent until it was time to catch the school bus.

In the summers, lunch was the big meal of the day.  Mom spent all morning making it.  We always had beef and potatoes, some type of vegetable and bread and butter on the table.  Mom made a sheet cake every week because my dad liked to finish off the meal with dessert.  My mom, dad and I were joined by my Uncles Harold and Howard and I remember feeling that I was competing with them for the food on the table.  And if I didn’t take seconds, I was somehow letting my mother down.  On Sundays, Mom made fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy and some special dessert.  My Uncle Dale would join us on Sundays and the men ate heartily while my mother nibbled on bony chicken backs.  She always said she liked the backs, but inside I knew she was leaving the choicest pieces for everyone else.

My mother was a great cook and she seemed to enjoy it.  She was in her element when she was in the kitchen.  I often joke that she could serve the multitudes with six loaves and two fishes.  It didn’t rattle her when Mary and Walt or the Martins would show up unexpectedly.  She would just add another can of this or that, and pull out some pickles and extra bread and we would eat in style.

The same went for holiday dinners.  Thanksgiving and Christmas were always celebrated with turkey.  I remember big birds filling the entire stove.  One year she sold enough Tupperware to earn a double oven range.  She kept that avocado green monstrosity going for days prior to the event.  On the day of the feast, she would rise before the sun came up to prepare all the dishes for our dinner. She loved having a household full of company.

One of my best food memories took place during a family funeral.  My mother’s brother had died of cancer and in the way of my large noisy extended Italian family, food needed to be prepared.  The post funeral get together was being held at the home of my mom’s oldest sister, Katie.  Aunt Katie and I shared a birthday and we had a kind of bond I didn’t have with a lot of the other family.  When I told her I wasn’t interested in attending the funeral she asked if I could stay at the house with her to prepare the food.  While my mom had always shooed me out of the kitchen, but Aunt Katie let me stay as we fried up what seemed like a dozen chickens and made several huge bowls of spaghetti.  We chopped potatoes for potato salad and Aunt Katie even asked my opinion on the dressing.  Then we boiled corn on the cob until the windows wept.  Katie was the patient teacher my mother was not. 

I wish I had had the time and skills to share cooking memories with my children, but I was too busy with life and school.  We ate a lot of fast food, because, unfortunately, I never learned to cook.  Probably my mother’s reluctance to get me involved played a big role in that.  She used to shoo me out of the kitchen because I slowed her down.  She had no patience to teach me anything, so I confined my cooking to mud pies and magical potions.  After I was married, I taught myself to make a few things.  I can cobble together a meatloaf from scratch and my holiday lasagna is famous, but there are few things I can make without a recipe in front of me.  I don’t find joy in it like my mother seemed to. 

In my family food was the foundation of love.  My mother’s family was never people who shared their feelings but the time and care it took to make those meals was an external manifestation of their emotions.  My daughters and I have family food traditions, like Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas lasagna, but my offerings always seem so dull compared to fare my mother and aunts always had to offer.

The interesting thing for me is that my daughter Robin is now the family cook.  When she was ten or so we sent her to live with my mother for the summer.  My mother, who had no time for teaching when I was little, taught Robin all the skills she had never given to me.  Robin comes up with elegant recipes of her own creation.  I told her that soon she is going to have to take over the family get togethers because she is so much more skilled than I am, especially with gravy. 

My love affair with food came from heartfelt beginnings and giving those feelings up to lose weight has always been challenging for me.  Changing food from a loving friend and companion to something necessary for life and energy is a difficult transition for me.  Each day I have to remind myself not to overeat and turn away from the goodies which would cause me to stumble.  When a basket of cookies arrived at the office the other day I had to tell myself that one cookie would make me feel worse rather than better.  I tried to be noble and set a better example for my employees by declining the goodies.  But I would have killed to have a cookie. 

Lelia

Leila Fern Beyers became a part of my family when I was about seven.  Lelia had gone to nursing school at St. Alfonsus Hospital in Boise, Idaho.  She was a classmate of my cousin Sharon, and somehow, I don’t remember the whole story, Lelia was introduced to Sharon’s brother Wally.  My mother once said that when Lelia met Wally she set her sights on him, nothing was going to stop her having him.

What I will remember most about Lelia was her smile and laugh.  Her smile split her face wide and her laugh came from down deep.  I loved the way she would throw her head back and cackle.  She was smart with a quick and wicked sense of humor.  She loved a dirty joke and swore like a sailor.  I thought she was beautiful.  I followed her around, emulating everything she did.  I wanted to be just like her.

I was scheduled to be the flower girl at Wally and Lelia’s wedding, but an unfortunate case of mumps felled not only me but my other cousins Reggie and Lark.  We were relegated to the sofas while the rest of our extended family went off to the wedding.  There was a rush to replace Reggie, who was to be an usher, and me, but Lelia took it all in stride.

I saw Wally and Lelia frequently when I was growing up.  They would come to Twin Falls to visit Aunt Mary and Uncle Walt or we would go to the big city of Boise to visit them.  I remember staying with them for the Idaho Centennial.  We were all decked out in our pioneer clothes.  There was a houseful of people to feed but Lelia held center stage and got everyone fed and where they needed to be and on time.

When I was eight Lelia and Wally’s first son was born.  Brad was a noisy bundle who everyone was enamored with.  I was so jealous of him.  He was quickly followed by Brent.  They were like little brothers to me, beloved but bothersome.  Lelia was a strict but loving parent.  She rounded off the sharp corners of my cousin Wally.

Our families continued to spend family holidays and hunting trips together.  I remember being stranded in an unexpected snowfall in the Idaho South Hills.  My mother was frantic and I was scared we would turn into the Donner party, but once again Lelia was cool, calm and collected and we got home without any incidents of human cannibalism.

Time goes on in rushes.  I was newly married when my dad developed cancer.  Lelia provided my mother with a home away from home while my dad underwent his cancer treatments in Boise.  My husband and I had just arrived from Seattle for my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary at Mary and Walt’s.  We had barely made it through the door when Lelia came running up the stairs to meet me.  “I have to talk to you,” she said, grabbing my arm.

She took me back outside and we walked the backyard as she filled me in on my dad’s condition.  She let me know the truth because she knew my mother had been sugar coating everything.  She said, “I needed you to know before you see him.  It is bad,” she said.  I will forever appreciate her candor and honesty in a difficult time.

We stayed with her one weekend when my husband and I came down to see my dad.  Again she and I went for a walk.  I told her about the difficulties I was having with my life and my marriage.  She listened and while I don’t remember her giving me advice, she didn’t criticize me or downplay my feelings.  She was just there when I needed someone to talk to.

After my dad passed, Wally and Lelia divorced.  I sent her Christmas cards for a few years and then we lost touch, but I never stopped thinking about her.  I was so happy when I saw her at Wally’s funeral a few years back.  She looked frail but her bigger than life personality was still in place, punctuated by her infectious laugh.  She gave me her address but my Christmas card when unanswered.

I was surprised when Brad called me last fall to let me know Lelia was ill.  His call gave me a sense of foreboding.  I went to visit her at Swedish Hospital not knowing what I would find.  Even though she was thin and her hair was grey, but the smile and the laughing eyes told me Lelia was still in there and fighting.  We spent an hour catching up on life, discussing medicine, and enjoying a laugh.  She told me that she thought about me often and I told her how much she had meant to me when I was growing up.  She was a big sister, confidant, and surrogate mother rolled into one.

Lelia passed away on February 27th.  I found out though Brad’s Facebook post.  It was accompanied by a picture of Lelia in her hospital bed, smiling that big smile and waving to the camera.  I was shocked to see her there.  I broke down weeping at my desk.  The world is a little emptier without Lelia’s infectious laughter and her big heart.  I am glad I got to visit with her a few times while she was here in Seattle.  I feel a sense of closure but deep sadness for the loss of another tie to my past.  

Pleasure

For my writer's group, this month's prompt was pleasure and I found it to be a difficult subject.  I started with a list of ten things which give me pleasure.  It reminded me of the things I love to do and at the same time it made me nostalgic because I do some of the items on the list so rarely.  I struggled with writing something positive and uplifting and all I came back with was pleasures that I have gone without.

Everything changed tonight as I left the community center in the city where I live.  It was about 6:30 and the sun had just dropped below the horizon.  The western sky was still bright yellow above the hilltops.  The yellow faded to green and then to azure blue.  As I turned south the sky continued to darken and there was a sliver of silver crescent moon hanging in the sky.  I looked up and saw two large stars above me, and from the southeast the lights of a jetliner headed north into the airport.  When I turned east the sky was dark indigo.  I had viewed Mt. Rainier there not an hour before.  There were cars moving through the parking lot but I was unaware of them.  It was as quiet as evenings are in this area.  I rejoiced of the beautifully sunny afternoon and the cool blue evening which it had given birth to. 

The view tonight was a reminder of the beauty of my home.  I fell in love with this place in 1962 when our family came here for the World’s Fair.  My aunt and uncle had a house above Eastgate in Bellevue and at the time there was nothing behind it but forest.  I walked out their back gate and into a dark green cathedral of cedar and Douglass fir.  My footsteps were muffled by a thick layer of needles and when I had gone far enough that the houses disappeared from view, I had a close encounter with the deer which populated the forest.  I wanted to stay there forever.  I set a goal of living here and after I graduated from college I did just that.

I love this wondrous place I live.  It is alive with nature and the changing seasons.  I am never so aware of that as when I visit the Olympic National Forest.  I love to walk on the beaches between Kalaloch and Forks.  The eerie seastacks stand on the beach like Titan sentinels.  I love the piles of drift wood and the dark red sands of Rialto Beach where I stood one one late summer afternoon counting two dozen bald eagles in the surrounding trees.  I love hiking the trails of the Olympic National Forest.  There life is primitive.  I love the quiet, deep green of the moss and the rushing sound of waterfalls.  And round every curve there is something new.  I love the tiny black winter wrens and the variety of pale fungi which decorate the trees.  I love rounding a curve in a trail to find deer and elk, so calm and trusting that they don’t run, but stand looking back at me with dark, fluid eyes.

 

I especially love soaking in the hot pools at Sol Duc at dusk, looking at the tall hills surrounding me.  I sit there in the heat smelling the sulfured waters.  I watch the swallows dive for insects overhead and I listen to the silence of the forest.

Back here at home I love the magic Mt. Rainier.  I saw a peek of it as I drove to the community center tonight.  It sat there stark white against the darkening blue sky.  The girls used to tease me about how I would always point “The Mountain” out to them.  It never bores me because each time I see it, it is different.  Interestingly though after living in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 30 years, I have never been there to see it close up.  I just like to watch it from the distance.  I love how it hides behind the clouds and other times like tonight when it is “out” you can see it all.  I love how sometimes it is topped with a little stratus cloud like it’s wearing a hat and how sometimes in the evenings it lights up like a giant strawberry sundae.  It seems to move with me wherever I go.  Sometimes it looks far, far away and other times it is huge and right there.  I understand why the Native American people thought the gods lived there.

I have written before about my lifelong love affair with birds.  I always like to see something new but it is also fun to see old friends like robins and mallard ducks.  I am also always on the lookout for animals in the forest, sea creatures on the beach, and sea mammals when I can see them.  When birding in West Seattle this fall we spotted a pod of orcas playing tag with the Vashon ferry.  I stood in awe of these gentle creatures as they breached and blew their way across the Sound.  It reminded me of a salmon fishing trip we took to Victoria many years ago.  The fishing had suddenly dried up and we were about to head back to shore when our boat was surrounded by the dorsal fins of orca.  I crawled out on the prow of the boat feeling the sea spray on my face and hoping I could touch one as they passed.

When the girls were in co-op preschool we took trips to the beaches around West Seattle in the summer.  I remember one of the kids finding a moonsnail.  I always find the shells but to find one alive was memorable.  I sat on the beach surrounded by ten five year olds watching the huge mollusk squeeze himself back into his shell, his exeuded water pouring across my hands until he was all in, slamming his opeculum door after him.  I made sure to put him back into deep water so he wouldn’t be attacked by the marauding gulls or crows.  We did the same with the crabs, sea stars, and anemones which we also discovered during our adventures.  And that memory took me back to all the wonderful family vacations to the Oregon Coast, walking wild beaches with the wind in our faces, picking up agates and shells and exploring tide pools with Sarah and Robin.  I haven’t been there in eleven years.  It seems time is too quickly passing me by.

Today, as I walked out the community center, I felt the beginning of spring.  Through this dark winter, I have missed all the colors and the beauty of my home.  I want to get out and enjoy those things, using them to wipe away my winter funk.  It has been too easy lately to focus on the negatives; the parts of my life that will never be the way I want them.  However, I know that to find true pleasure all I have to do is look outside my patio door and enjoy a hummingbird at my feeder, the tender shoots of hostas in my tiny garden, and the quiet beauty of a Pacific Northwest evening.

Gilligan’s Island

At the far southern end of our family farm, stood an old weeping willow tree.  I don’t know why it was there alone, so far from anything else.  Perhaps it was the presence of the stream which flowed next to its roots.  Maybe in the past a small house had stood there.  The tree had a broad grey trunk which was knarly and split.  The cracks formed proper foot and handholds so it was easily scaled.  Three large branches came off from a center crotch, where I could easily sit and survey my kingdom.

On hot summer days, I would crawl out on the low branch which hung over the stream and watch the water slide silently by over the dark green moss.  I imagined myself hanging in a hammock on a deserted island somewhere, far from the dullness of my southern Idaho life.  Over the years I collected cast off pots and pans to cook imaginary meals.  These were stored high up in the tree along with my collections of rocks, shells, and bones.  I even had a pair of thongs hidden in a knothole so I could wade in the icy stream without cutting my feet on the stones which lined its bottom.  Part of the year the area around the tree was green and grassy, and I would lay there watching puffy white clouds scud across the azure sky.

I don’t remember when I first started going there alone, but I must have been young, maybe eight or nine.  I would take the half mile walk down the gravel main road, cut across the dirt tractor path and scurry under the fence to my imaginary kingdom.  Other days when I wanted a longer journey I would travel east on the mile road to the longer tractor path between the fields of wheat.  I would walk along kicking up dust to the end and then traverse the fields to another fence which I could easily step over into my secret world.  If I went that way I had to jump the stream which seemed to appear from nowhere under the fence to get to my secret hideaway.

I nicknamed my place Gilligan’s Island.  There I would play out the various roles of Gilligan, the Professor and Mary Ann.  When I tired of my island, the tree would become the center of intrigue as I solved mysteries with The Man from Uncle or traveled into the unknown with the crew of Lost in Space.

My mother never understood.  “Why do you have to play so far from the house,” she would yell at me.  “How would I know if anything ever happened to you?”  I would answer her question with silence.  I didn’t know why, but to me it was safer there.  There no one knew my secret.  No one knew that I played all the parts.  No one else heard the dialogues that I carried on with my imaginary friends.  No one knew that I was crazy.

At least that is what my immature mind told me.  I had seen my grandmother’s craziness; how she talked to herself.  I saw the family’s shame about her.  I was doing the same thing and I didn’t want people to be ashamed of me.  I carried enough shame for all of them.

“It isn’t good for you to spend so much time alone,” Mom would say as she shooed me out of the kitchen.  “Why don’t you find some friends to play with?”  I would stand on the step looking at the grey, dusty farmyard wondering how I was supposed to do that.  The kids at school didn’t like me; there was something wrong about me which made them avoid me and bully me.  Maybe it was my crooked teeth, or my glasses, or my old fashioned hand-me-downs.  Maybe it was my shy nature or that school was too easy for me.  Whatever it was, I couldn’t fix it.  So I keep my head down and my mouth shut.  I tried not to be in the way.

I would have liked to have had playmates but the only families with children in our area lived miles away and Mom was too busy with her cooking and cleaning to take me anywhere.  And she was in too much denial to see me clearly.  It was as though she believed that magically I was going to become popular and find friends.  Friends who wanted to play at being shipwrecked, or lost in space or hunting down nefarious bad guys. 

As I got older the imaginary games stopped. The shells and stones were scattered.  The thongs disappeared and the pots and pans were smashed by the cattle which grazed there in the winter.  But the tree was still my secret place; a safe place where I could go to rant at God.  I would sit in the crotch of the tree, trying to understand why any kind of God would let one of his own have such a miserable life.  I would think deep thoughts about the purpose of my existence.  I would construct elaborate scenarios for my escape from my deathly dull hometown.

I still had no friends and I hated myself.  I was still a shy, bespectacled bookworm.  While other girls were talking about fashion and I was still forced into my cousin’s hand me downs.  Other people were dating and I was sitting at home on the weekends with my clueless parents, using books as my new imaginary friends.  I was still avoided and bullied at school for being different and if I complained about my ill treatment I was criticized by my mother for things I still had no control over.  Only the stream knew how often I wished I could drown there.  Only the tree knew of my wish to fall to my death from its branches.  I would lie on the grass and look to the sky wishing to be carried away.

After my father died and my mother decided to move to town, I went to the tree one last time.  This time I drove my car down the gravel main road and parked on the tractor trail.  It was harder to shinny under the fence and when I stood up, Gilligan’s Island seemed much smaller.  The tree had lost a large branch to a storm.  The ground was bare and lifeless from overgrazing.  Only the sky and the stream remained the same.  I remembered when this place was my whole world.  I remembered the battles fought, treasures found, and tears shed there.  On the breeze I could hear my mother’s voice calling me in for dinner.

When I reminisce about the farm I think of Gilligan’s Island.  The knurled weeping willow, the cool mossy stream, the clear blue sky.  It was my magical place of refuge and reflection.  It was a silent place where the impossible could be possible.  It was the place where I could truly be myself as I searched for myself.  It was a cathedral of wood, water, and air, and some days when life is too busy and complicated I long for the solitude I found there.   

Traditions

I was driving around Federal Way the other day when my daughter Robin called me.  “What Christmas traditions should I be sharing with my children?” she asked.

What do you mean?” I asked distracted by my driving.

“I mean, should I take them to church even though I don’t believe in it?  How will they know how to behave in church if I don’t teach them?”

“I don’t think you should take them to church if it isn’t something you believe in.  That is kind of hypocritical don’t you think?”

“Well yes, but I can’t answer their questions about Christmas.”

I sighed.  “Look I can’t drive and have this conversation.  I will think about it and call you later, okay?”

On the drive home I started thinking about Christmas, its traditions and what I really believe in.  I was brought up in a noisy, Italian Catholic family.  My mother shopped for Christmas all year long and started decorating and writing up her Christmas cards right after Thanksgiving.  Along with the tree decorated with a mish-mosh of homemade decorations and old store bought balls, the garishly painted Nativity scene she and I had made when I was about nine was always on display on the buffet.

Together we baked cookies and Mom always had plenty of her special pickles stored away. The week before Christmas my mother cooked to feed our huge extended family.  On Christmas Eve there was feasting, drinking, loud talk and laughter, and after dinner was the sharing of gifts which I never enjoyed because the gifts were always a disappointment to me.  My mother bought what she wanted regardless of my desires, but I did love opening my stocking for the small treasures it contained.  After the whole Christmas Eve extravaganza, we donned our new, scratchy Christmas finery and headed off to Midnight Mass.  And while I found the whole day to be quite overwhelming, and spent most of the time hiding behind the tree, these are my childhood memories of Christmas.

After I got married and my father passed away, the traditions changed.  My mother often came to spend Christmas with us, arriving just after Thanksgiving and staying on through the first of the year.  We continued to put up the tree and send out the early Christmas cards.  We celebrated Christmas Eve but the gatherings were smaller and much more sedate, even after the girls were born.  Midnight Mass was replaced by Christmas Eve service with my Presbyterian husband.  I enjoyed the music and the pageantry, but my faith in organized religion had faltered.

In the year 2000 my mother died.  Sarah was 18 and off to college.  Robin was in the midst of a gargantuan teenage rebellion.  They couldn’t be in the same room for more than fifteen minutes without swearwords and objects flying.  Tom and I decorated the house alone and I slogged through the preparations.  Every item I held reminded me of my mother, especially the nativity scene which was now mine to display on the buffet.  We decided to change things up and celebrate Christmas morning.  I broke down sobbing over pickles as I prepared our Christmas lunch.  When we sat down as a family, the food was hastily eaten.  The gifts were quickly unwrapped and then the girls ran out the door to spend the rest of the day with their friends.  Tom and I cleaned up the dishes and tissue paper and sat staring at the TV the rest of the day.

We carried along with this new tradition as our family grew again.  Robin got married and our grandson Caleb was born.  We returned to the Christmas Eve dinner and gifts.  Sarah and Robin continued to rub and chaff against one another.  As soon as the food was consumed and the gift wrap disposed of, they would run off to their separate lives.  Tom and I would go to the Christmas Eve service and then we started going to the movies on Christmas Day.

Tom and I divorced four years ago and when Christmas came along, I asked myself the very questions Robin had posed to me on the phone that day.  What did I believe?  What were the most important traditions I wanted to share with my grandchildren?  I was brought up Catholic and converted to Presbyterianism, so I speak Christian.  My mother’s garish nativity scene and the Christmas story are a strong part of my tradition but I choose to find God in the power of the ocean, the cool green of the forests, and in the ever surprising variety of nature.  So my pagan tree with its mish-mosh of old ornaments, birds and lights appeal to me.  I take my grandchildren to the Nutcracker every year where they enjoy the music and dance and the Mouse King cookies at intermission.  I get my music and pageantry from attending the Messiah.

The sharing of food and the opening of gifts Christmas Eve remains the biggest part of our family tradition, and while the girls still do not get along that well, they want to be here with me.  I enjoy watching my grandchildren’s faces as they open their well-chosen gifts and their stockings for the treasures they contain.  Afterwards my girls head back to their lives and I sit in the dark with a drink watching my favorite black and white version of A Christmas Carol.

With all this in mind, I called Robin back.  “What memories do you have of Christmas?” I asked.

She started to cry as she recalled Christmases with my mother.  She remembered her grandmother’s cooking, especially the pickles.  She fondly remembered my mother’s crazy Christmas tree with all of its tatty homemade ornaments which the girls were allowed to take down and admire.  She recalled all the family Christmas Eve dinners, reading the family Christmas books and watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

“Then those are the traditions you should share with your children,” I said.  “Part of the joy of the Christmas holidays is nostalgia for the memories of the past.  Hold on to them, and then make your own new traditions based on them.  But remember traditions not set in stone.  They will change as your family grows and changes, but if you build a firm foundation then your children will also have a life time of Christmas memories to share.  And one day, that horrible Nativity scene will all be yours.”

She groaned and together we started to laugh.

Donny

When I was little, I didn’t understand that my parents couldn’t have children of their own.  I grew up surrounded by busy adults who had no time for a little girl and her play and I was lonely.  So every night when I went to bed I would pray for God to send me a baby brother or sister.

Then one day God sent Donny.  The story my mother told was that she had received a call from Judge Zoe Ann Warberg in the middle of the night.  The judge told her that six children had been abandoned by their mother in nearby Burley, Idaho.  The judge wondered if my mother and father would be willing to take one of them in.  My mother agreed and Donny came into our lives.

Donny was five when he came to live with us; a year older than me.  He was a dark haired boy with freckles.  I remember him wearing jeans with suspenders and a plaid shirt.  I was thrilled with my new big brother.

My parents set about making him fit into our family.  They cut his hair and bought him clothes and shoes.  They turned the old glassed in porch into a bedroom just for him. He was included in everything.  There is a professional photo of us together when I turned five.

In another photo, we are having a tea party in the living room, and another shows Donny and I wearing the matching cowboy and cowgirl costumes we received for Christmas.  Donny’s was black with chaps and mine was red with a short skirt.

I was happy to have a brother but on some level I was jealous of Donny.  He got to play with trucks and guns and Lincoln Logs.  Donny was allowed to go out on the tractors with the men and to help feed the cattle.  He was not marked by the shame of being a girl.  Sometimes my dad would let Donny sit with him in the evenings.  He helped Donny with his homework.  I thought my dad liked him better than me.

My mom’s seemed intent on wiping away everything which made him different from us.  I remember they took him to see Dr. Luke and he had an operation.  Every night for a while, Mom would make him lie on the kitchen counter while she tended to him.  When I asked her what she was doing she said, “We had to have him circumcised.  What kind of nasty people don’t have their sons properly taken care of?

Over the next year, the temporary placement turned into a pre-adoption.  I am sure there were a lot of legal hassles.  The children’s mother had run off with a milkman and the father’s whereabouts were unknown.  The state would have had to sever parental rights to free up the children to be adopted.

One day Donny and I were playing in our favorite hideout behind the sofa.  A friend was having coffee with my mother and I heard my mother say, “I don’t like them to play together out of sight.  I am afraid of what he might do to her.  You don’t know the things that went on in that family.”

Then one bright summer morning I awoke to a scene.  It was unusual because in my family we didn’t have scenes.  My mother was crying in the kitchen.  Her white hairbrush with the black bristles lay on the linoleum kitchen floor. My usually silent and calm father had beaten Donny with it.  “Pack his suitcase and take him back,” my father yelled.  “I will not be spoken to like that in my own house.”

“But he is just a little boy,” my mother pleaded.

“He told me he didn’t want to live here anymore because our house is full of bugs,” my father said.  “I work hard to put a good roof over his head, and if he doesn’t want to be here then he can leave.”

I remember my mother crying in the car all the way to Twin Falls.  I remember the dark wood paneling of Judge Warberg’s courtroom and how our footsteps echoed in the empty space.  I remember Donny’s room being empty when we got home.

Our family never spoke of Donny again.  It was like he never existed, but things were never quite the same.  Every day for a year I got off the school bus to find my mother in bed with a sick headache.  I stopped believing in bedtime prayers, and I accepted my lonely isolation.

Something else changed in me as well.  My mother claimed she told me I was adopted when I was four.  It must have been about the time Donny came to live with us, but I don’t remember her telling me. I might have blocked it out, because I must have understood what it meant for me.  After Donny left, I worked very hard at being good.  I didn’t talk back.  I didn’t break things or make scenes.  I did everything my parents asked of me without question.

I wanted to be very, very good, because I had learned an important lesson from Donny.  If you are adopted and you are bad, they can send you back.

Silent Bob

When I think of my father I see a cowboy hat.  He had a really nice Stetson one he wore for special occasions but mostly he wore a battered straw one for working out in the fields.  It was sweat stain through the crown and misshapen.  When he took it off, his bald head was white compared to his sun tanned face.  He never went anywhere without a cowboy hat and a pair of cowboy boots.

I didn’t know my dad well.  He was a man of few words.  His childhood was marred by poverty and his parents’ mental illnesses.  There is a single picture of him from elementary school.  He was rail thin with a stock of black hair which fell over his forehead.  All the other kids in the picture were holding the gifts they received for Christmas.  Whenever Dad would look at that photo, he would point to himself and say, “See.  All I got for Christmas that year was a handful of marbles.”  It was the most he would ever say about the past.

My dad worked hard to make sure we never went without.  In the summer he worked from dawn until dusk on our family farm.  There were always crops to sow and harvest, alfalfa to cut and bail, and animals to be tended to.  He was a frugal and thoughtful farm manager.  He planted and worked the cattle by the almanac and listened to the farm report on the radio every morning.  I never knew where money came from but we always seemed to have what we needed.

Dad didn’t think too highly of women and farm work.  Mom and I were rarely called upon to help out in the fields.  One summer, however, we were short-handed and Dad needed someone to help with the haying.  He let me get behind of the wheel of his huge old rusted John Deere tractor.  I had to use both feet to put on the brakes.  I did pretty well for a while but at the end of one field I turned too sharply and got the trailer bed stuck on one of the back wheels.  The hay teetered ominously behind me and I couldn’t go forward and I certainly dare not go back.  Dad ran up beside me and put the tractor in neutral.  “Get off and go to the house,” he said.  He never asked me to help with anything ever again.

On our farm we raised Black Angus cattle and in the spring the new calves were delightful as they scampered and cavorted around the fields, but I wasn’t allowed to work with them either.  Dad said they could smell I was female and my presence would stampede them.  That confused me because I found the cattle to be calm and patient in my presence.  When his back was turned I would sneak down to the corrals and sit in the manger while they ate.  I loved to scratch the bull’s curly head; his slick black nose nearly resting in my lap.

When I was a freshman in high school I joined the local 4-H group.  I wanted to work with the animals and I wanted to be a part of something.  I told Dad I needed a calf to raise for the fair.  He picked out a steer calf for me and put it in a separate paddock from the rest.  Every weekend I asked him to help me get a halter on the calf so I could start working with it for fitting and showing, and every weekend he said he was too busy.

Soon spring was coming and the calf was getting larger.  I went to the monthly meeting of the 4-H group and they announced they would be coming to everyone’s homes to see how well we were getting along with our calves.  I hadn’t even had a halter on mine.  I told Dad the following night at dinner that I really had to work with my calf.

He looked at me over his mashed potatoes. “That calf is too big for you to tame now,” he said and went back to eating.

I was dumbstruck.  I was angry.  I had asked for his help and he never had time for me.  I swallowed back my feelings and after dinner I called the 4-H leader.  I gave him no explanation when I told him I was quitting.

When it comes right down to it, my dad never was much of a teacher.  He did however teach me was that guns were dangerous.  One day he took me out to teach me to fire a shotgun.  He put my heels against a bale of straw and when I fired the gun the kick knocked me backwards over the bale and I landed on my butt.  I don’t think his intention was to scare me but even now I can’t stand the sight of a gun.

One winter night, I woke up with the feeling something was wrong in our house.  I found my mother at the back door in her nighty.  A cold wind whipped through the open door. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing, the dog went out and won’t come in.  Go back to bed,” she said, but there was something wrong in the way she said it.  Then I saw the flash of the butcher knife she held in her hand.  I inched my way back to the living room.  She and I stayed like that for an eternity until car lights flashed in the driveway and my dad came through the door.  He had been out in the snow, barefoot and bare-chested, carrying his shotgun.  “He got away,” was all he said.  He picked up the phone.

He told the sheriff my mother had seen a man looking through the bedroom windows.  She had reached back and shook my father awake, telling him, “Bob, there is a man out there.”  My dad jumped out of bed, grabbed his jeans and the shotgun from the closet and took off into the night after the Peeping Tom.  He had followed the man’s tail lights and tracks in the snow until they came to the main road where he lost him.

When Dad hung up the phone, he asked Mom what she was doing with the knife she still had in her hand.  “I was worried he would loop around and come back.  If any part of him came back through that door, I was going to cut it off,” she said giggling nervously.  She handed the knife to my Dad.  “What did the sheriff say?”

“He will be out in the morning to look around,” Dad said.  “Let’s all go to back to bed.”  I lay awake all night thinking about guns and evil doers in the darkness.

Years past and I went away to college.  I graduated, got married and then month after my dad walked me down the aisle he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  He had several surgeries the last of which was to remove a tumor from his spine.  He became paralyzed and spent the last few months of his life in a bed at the VA hospital.  His last day was spent in agonizing pain.  When he begged to go home, I did what my mother could not.  I gave him permission to do so.  He passed away that night.  He was 54 years old.

I will never know his motivations for the things he did.  He could be stern, and there were times I thought he should have whipped me raw, like the time I drove the car into the root cellar, but he didn’t.  Sometimes he did things I thought were cruel, like drowning a litter of sick kittens, but he was tendered hearted, too.  He cried when our Australian shepherd was hit by a car.  He cried the day his mother died.

Silent Bob was a good man.  He worked hard so I could have more than he did.  He protected my mom and me from that stranger in the night.  He loved the land, and his cowboy hat and boots were his connection with that Western heritage.  He had a soft side which he protected with a wall of silence.  His reserve left an emptiness deep inside me which echoes with the pain of a million unanswered questions.

        

Lions in the Desert

Dr. Eleanor Shields was a piece of work.  She had become a vascular surgeon in the days when medical schools only admitted a couple of women a year.  After med school she had served in the military and then settled in Las Vegas after her retirement.  She enjoyed telling us about the Las Vegas celebrities she had become chummy with, but why she was on the teaching faculty was beyond my comprehension.  In six weeks I had never learned a thing from her.

Dr. Shields was a short, grey haired opinionated woman, with the abrasive personality of a drill sergeant.  She threw me out of an operation one day because I couldn’t name all the branches of the carotid artery; not that I wasn’t relieved to have been dismissed. Another day at the VA she told me to write up a history and physical, but to use another student’s notes because the other student’s were better than mine.  I felt like a pound of chopped liver, cut and wrapped.

One day after vascular clinic, I was surprised when Dr. Shields called us all together.  “I want to take you all on a field trip tomorrow night, if you are free.  Meet me at the Las Vegas Zoo at six.”  She winked at us, “I know someone and we are getting in for free.”

The following evening, I drove my little Suzuki Swift along US 95 headed northwest out of the city.  I hadn’t ever ventured into North Las Vegas, so I was feeling nervous about getting lost.  The road was lined with cheap hotels and deserted looking auto body places.  Dead looking Joshua trees and creosote bushes made up the rest of the landscape.  Finally I spotted the sign and pulled off into the open space which served as a parking lot.

The zoo was surrounded by a rusty red brick fence which someone had designed in a mission style.  The walls were the exact same color as the hard pack grainy soil they sat upon.  Dr. Shields was already there with several of my classmates.

When we entered the gate, the first thing which struck me was the smell.  The aroma of animal waste in the 115 degree heat was overpowering.  I was disgusted.  This place was little more than a roadside animal attraction.

The paths we walked on were the same hard packed red earth of the parking lot.  Hot, bored animals lay about in traditional barred cages.  Even the ring-tailed lemurs were still in the late afternoon heat.  Chickens and peafowl scratched in the dirt and the ever present whine of cicadas filled the air.

As we walked, Dr. Shields prattled on leading us to the far left corner of the enclosure.  I couldn’t see why she was leading us to this smelly dusty edge of the zoo until I saw him move.  With fur which blended into the tawny dust of his enclosure was a lion.  He was old.  I could tell because he acted as washed out as the color of his mane.  He lifted his head and yawned displaying broken yellowed fangs.  His pink tongue popped out and he licked the end of his dry, cracked nose.  Then his head sank back to his crossed paws.

Dr. Shields sat down on the bench next to the enclosure.  “His name Charlie and he is my patient,” she said.  “I was at a party at Wayne Newton’s one night and someone told me Charlie was sick.  No one seemed to know what was wrong with him.  So I came out and watched him for a while.  We got some blood tests and I figured out he had Cushing’s disease.  We got him on medications and now, he is so much better,” she said proudly.

I stared at the ancient lion wondering how she could think he was better.  He hadn’t moved a muscle.  His fur was dry and dusty.  I wondered how much longer he had to live.  And even more I wondered why his owners didn’t  get a proper veterinarian for him.

I turned to try to remove myself from the stench and the heat.  The sun was beginning to set behind the Spring Mountains.  The sky was taking on the purple, orange and mahogany bands of evening in Las Vegas.  The hills were bare of vegetation so I could see their sharp edges backlit with the golden setting sun.  And then I heard it.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard the roar of a lion.  Behind me I heard Charlie start to huff.  I heard the far away lion again and then with a deafening roar, Charlie answered.  I turned and he was standing up, facing the setting sun, intent and listening.  His yellow eyes reflected the sun’s dying rays. Then he opened his mouth and roared again.

I heard Dr. Shield’s say, “Those are Siegfried and Roy’s lions.  These guys do this every night.”

Far away the rich, performing lions answered.  I was suddenly in the middle of the Serengeti.  The temperature dropped a few degrees as the violet hills merged with the plum-colored twilight.  The buzz of the cicadas ceased and nothing was left but the roaring across the valley.

They were still at it as we started to leave.  I stood by my car mesmerized.  I listened and watched the gloaming until it was nearly dark and the roaring had ceased.

On the drive back to my apartment, I thought about Dr. Shields.  Perhaps she had a grain of humanity in her.  Maybe she was a healer trying to help in the only way her life toughened exterior would allow.  Perhaps she too had stood listening to the call of lions in the desert and been moved by their calls in the twilight.  But I knew better than to ask her.

Resolutions

I have a difficulties managing my time.  I have so many things, human and not, pulling at me.  I feel sometimes like that rag on the rope in the middle of a game of tug of war.  I am pulled left, then right.  I hover for a bit as each team struggles for traction and then the jostling begins again.

I had such great plans four years ago when I wrote my novel.  I was going to find an agent who loved it and it would become an instant bestseller.  I would be able to walk into my local Boarders and see my name on the shelf besides Jodi Picoult and JK Rowling. However, getting a book published it not all that easy, and after a lot of time, stamps, manila envelopes and rejection letters, I put my novel in a drawer (with a back up in my safety deposit box) and succumed to the pull of the other parts of my life.

In the meantime I started working on a memior.  I was a 36 year old medical student with a husband, two children, a dog and a mortgage.  I thought my struggles balancing my academic experiences with being a wife and mother made for an interesting story.  And it is.  However, again life interviened and I lost momentum.  The memior is about 3/4 finished.  The rest should be easy and, if I could get it published, there could be a sequel of my days in residency. 

I really don't know what is keeping me from my writing.  I mean afterall, I only have a full time medical practice, three grandchildren who I adore, and a desire to travel before I get too old and decrepit to go.  There is also the rejection which is a difficult thing for me to handle.  I think part of the reason I stopped writing was the cool reception my novel and my memior received at the last writer's conference. 

But this is a new year and a new world.  I am going to look into the various options for epublishing my novel.  My Borders store is gone with a lot of other brick-and-mortar stores.  I believe that epublishing is the way of the future.  I love my Kindle.  I am also going to explore self-publishing because I still dream of seeing my name on the cover of a book. 

I am going to finish my memior.  This is going to take some sacrifice.  I am going to have to give up the hours I am wasting on Facebook.  I am going to have to use my free time more thoughtfully and not give into the push and pull of life.  So the new year starts here.
  

The Winter of our Discontent

Discontent is a Pacific Northwest winter—grey and chill. The sun barely rises over the horizon. On dark and gloomy days, it seems to never appear at all. Those days are without hope of light and warmth. I have often felt my life would lie in that dank fog forever, moss covered and mildew ravaged.


If you Google the word discontent there is a picture of me. My mother said I could always find the fly in the ointment. Therapists have said I have low grade depression. I think of myself as the human equivalent of AA Milne’s Eeyore. I can always see the bad in any situation.

I have found happiness to be a fleeting thing. There is a chemical rush, a steady flow of serotonin and norepinephrin coursing through the brain making everything vividly colored and dazzling. A new love, a new possession, a trip to a new place, or a career change can do it, but when the rush is over there is nothing left in its place but discontent.

It is not like I enjoy my negativity. All my life I have been looking for something positive and uplifting. The problem is that I haven’t been able to pinpoint what that something is, so the search has been frustrating, leading to many deadends and disappointments. I have sought faith, only to become disenchanted with religion. I have sought my passion for medicine only to be stymied in my ability to provide it by bureaucracy. I have tried on relationships, only to find imperfections in the people I love.

Not that I have had many relationships. Men are visual creatures and I was not born possessed of beauty. I was teased and bullied over my lack of looks and my mother, the one person who should have thought me beautiful, found fault with me at every turn. Because I believed I was unattractive and unlovable, I made poor decisions. Instead of valuing my assets, I ignored them. I became a quiet, grey mouse relegated to lurking in corners and grabbing at whatever tidbits would fall within my reach. I was not content with the scraps, but I didn’t think myself worthy of better.

When I left for college I thought I would meet men who would value my brains since I was not disposed of beauty. By my senior year I was fast becoming an old maid. I hadn’t dated in four years of college. And then Tom came along.

My mother didn’t like him. One night she asked why I was wasting my time with him. I answered her honestly; there was no one else to waste time with. So in the end I married him. I was unhappy for over 30 years. The relationship was unrewarding. He took credit for everything I did, including going to medical school. I was supposed to make him look good, while in the privacy of our home he treated me as dispassionately as he did the furniture. I told myself to be content with the neglect of my husband because he was incapable of giving more. I subjected myself to a life of grey, dull discontent. For years I made excuses for him, while quietly hating him. Then one day I had enough. I could no longer be content with his coldness. I moved out.

I have a new home, which I chose, surrounded by my books and music. I have given up chasing after happiness. I no long desire its ups and downs. Today I am only seeking contentment. I want to be comfortable within my own skin.

I am still working on finding the positives in life rather than being overcome by the negatives. I may still be that quiet grey mouse but that is an asset rather than a liability. I do not have to settle for tidbits. I know I am capable of getting what I want. Someday I hope to be able to look in the mirror and see my true self. I my only desire is to move away from the cold, bleak winter of discontent. I want to see the beautiful reds and golds of the autumn of my life and enjoy their beauty in peace.

Rhiannon

Music has always been a big part of my life. My daughter says you can always tell what CD I am listening to by the tunes I sing when I think no one else is listening. Sometimes a song gets a hold of me, winds itself around my soul and causes me to make a change in my life.


Several years ago, I was partner in a small medical group. I had been out of the office for some surgery and behind my back the other three partners decided to sell out to a large hospital group. I felt betrayed by these men I thought were my friends. As we got closer to the merger, my anger became over powering.

One night I was watching a concert on PBS by the rock band Fleetwood Mac. While watching the concert I realized that this was the same great music I had enjoyed so much while eating pizza and drinking beer in college. I couldn’t believe the music was actually the product of this one group, but then again they had three different vocalists. I went out the following day and bought their greatest hits album.

When I buy a CD, I put it in the car and it can stay there for weeks. Fleetwood Mac’s ballads of love and betrayal began to throb in my head. The pounding rhythms of The Chain and Go Your Own Way spoke to me. One morning after a particularly ugly meeting, I got in my little blue Z-3. I turned the CD to the song Rhiannon. The raspy growl of lead singer Stevie Nicks, mirrored the frustration and anger I was feeling. I drove from Tacoma to Federal Way at 75 miles an hour, screaming the words of the song.

“Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night, and wouldn’t you love to love her. She rules her life like a bird in flight, and who will be her lover? All your life you’ve never seen a woman, taken by the wind. What would you say if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?”

During those dark and difficult days, Rhiannon became a real person to me. She looked a bit like Stevie Nicks, her long blond hair blown by unseen tempests. Rhiannon wore a long black dress, fitted at the waist. Tassels hung from the sleeves. The dress floated as she twirled. Rhiannon was a strong woman, who knew her own mind. She became my mentor and I emulated her. I would be assertive in this unhappy situation. I would allow myself to use the power of my anger, but I would not let my anger become me.

With this image of Rhiannon I began to tell myself a story. It was a love story between this strong, assured older woman and the handsome young man who would become her secret lover. The story moved from my imagination to my computer, and to escape the trials of my work place, I began to write their story. Within months I had written a novel .

While I wrote about Rhiannon, something changed within me. As first novelists often do, Rhiannon was imbued with parts of me. I began to glory in those strengths, and by the time the book was finished, I had made a decision. I couldn’t care for people properly if I was feeling angry all the time. I would leave the big hospital group. Their brand of cover your ass medicine with 7.5 minute office visits was never going to work for me. I decided I would open my own practice, where I could care for patients the way I felt they deserved to be treated. But I had no idea where to start.

I was driving down the street one day, with Rhiannon still playing in my CD player. I saw a real estate sign at an office park and something told me to call the man whose name was on it. Soon we were looking at office space. Then, over lunch one day, I ran into a woman who used to work for us. She had been involved in the healthcare industry for a long time. She told me how to start getting insurance contracts set up and helped me apply to the government plans. She put me in touch with people who knew insurance billing and computers.

I went back to counseling and my counselor gave me the name of her attorney. The attorney told me how to get out of my non-compete clause and helped me get a state business license. She gave me the name of an accountant. When I wasn’t working or writing, I spent all my free time making phone calls, and right after New Year’s in 2006, I handed my resignation to my employer. Three months later I opened my own practice.

“She is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness. She rules her life like a fine skylark, and when the sky is starless. All your life you’ve never seen a woman, taken by the wind. What would you say if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?”

Rhiannon the song led to Rhiannon the mentor who morphed into part of me. The song lived in my CD player for the better part of a year, and the words still sustain me with their authority and hope.

Success

The summer was growing short and my chance of going to medical school was diminishing. A distraction arrived when my mother and aunt came to stay for the 4th of July holiday. The three of us had just arrived home from shopping when the phone rang.

“Hello,” I said juggling a bag of groceries.

“May I speak to Debra Kraft?”

“Speaking.” I shuffled the bag onto the kitchen counter.

“This is Dagmar Coperhaver from the University of Nevada, School of Medicine. We have had an opening for the upcoming class and wanted to know if you were still interested.”

“Oh, my God! Yes! Yes, I am still interested. I had almost given up. Oh, my God. What do I have to do?”

Dagmar laughed. “Well, orientation starts August thirtieth and we recommend you come a week early to get your housing, financial aid, and other details taken care of. You won’t have time once classes start. So, can we expect you? Or do you need to give it some thought?”

I thought for thirty seconds. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

“Great! I will send you out financial aid materials and an orientation packet. Call me if you need anything. Oh, and, by the way, congratulations.”

“Thank you, thank you, oh my God, thank you,” I screamed into the phone.

My hand was shaking so hard I could barely get the phone back in the cradle. I turned around. My mother, aunt, and the girls were all staring at me. I am sure they thought I had taken leave of my senses. I grabbed the girls and danced them all over the kitchen. I had no idea how I was going to get in Reno in six weeks and at that moment I did not care.

I was still flying high when Tom came home from work. I grabbed him by the shoulders as he came through the door. “I got accepted at the University of Nevada. I have to be there the end of August. Isn’t it great!”

He looked at me with an empty, flat expression. “Well, I just can’t do this right now. Can’t you call and tell them you will have to wait until next year or do it by correspondence or something? I can’t leave.”

I dropped my arms to my sides. “If I don’t go now I’ll lose my position and I have to start all over again.”

Without another word he took the newspaper and walked downstairs. We didn’t speak again for many weeks.

I spent that time trying to figure out how I was going to get to Reno with a reluctant husband, two kids, a dog, a rabbit, and a guinea pig. I considered many options. I could leave them all behind and move into graduate student housing for a year in hopes Tom would come to his senses. I could rent an apartment for the kids and the animals and leave Tom in Pocatello. We could sell our house and buy a new one in Reno and try to act like we had a normal life. After communications resumed, we decided on the latter.

We flew to Reno and saw twenty-four houses in two days. We looked at places which should have been demolished. We looked at houses which violated every building code known to my engineer husband. All we wanted was a house in our price range which had decent paint and kitchen tiles which weren’t smashed out by sledge hammers.

There were some nice neighborhoods, but we couldn’t afford them. There was one house on the edge of the neighboring town of Sparks which was a possibility, but it cost too much and the wall paper and carpets were hideous. We left town without making an offer.

I began to panic. I needed to be in Reno in two weeks and I still had nowhere to live. I started thinking about campus housing again, but the medical school started a few weeks before the rest of the university. I would have to find somewhere to stay until I could move into the dorms. It was then that I had an idea.

We had purchased a small tent trailer when we moved to Pocatello. I would park it in an RV park until I could move to campus. It was warm enough in Reno and the trailer had a propane heater if it did get chilly. I could cook simple meals on the stove. I had light and a table to study on and most importantly a bed. Besides, it would just be for a couple of weeks.

Two weeks later, I loaded the car with all the things I would need to become a full time student once again. I hooked up the trailer, and drove Sarah, Robin, our pets and plants to my mother’s house. That night my mother told me she thought I was crazy, but at long last she acknowledged my dream. She said she would do whatever it took to support me. I stayed the night and left for Reno the following day.

It was a long drive across the brown sagebrush desert. I played music full blast to keep myself awake. I worried the car or trailer might breakdown. I was afraid my marriage was over and I had totally blasted my family apart.

I arrived in Reno late in the day and checked into the Shamrock RV Park. I hooked up the power and the water. I used the payphone to call Tom and my mother. I showered in the RV park common bathroom and cried myself to sleep. Little did I know this would be my home for another six weeks.

When I was twenty one, it was a lousy year

I stepped off the elevator and into the cool, semi-darkness of the SUB study lounge. I was wearing jeans and an ISU sweatshirt I had picked up on line. I hoped no one would notice that it was one not available in the bookstore in this decade. In my hand was the Starbuck’s chai latte I meant to throw out before coming here. Starbucks existed in this time but only in Seattle. I hoped no one noticed.
     As I expected, my younger self was sitting in the large leather chair in the corner. She was dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a peasant shirt she had embroidered herself. Around her hair she wore a blue bandana and a thin necklace of love beads adorned her neck. A battered book bag stood beside her and a bright pink pop can sat on the side table. She was reading a textbook with a yellow marker in her hand. Every now and then she would look up and gaze out the windows across the way.
     I strolled across the room experiencing déjà vu. This place held so many memories. The good and the bad. I took the seat next to her. “Hi, Debi. My name is Dr. Dorothy Tate,” I whispered.
     “Hi,” she said. She looked around the room for an explanation. “Do I know you?” She must have mistaken me for a faculty member.
      “Debi, this is going to sound strange, but I am your future self.”
     “Right.” she said sarcastically. “And this is Candid Camera. Listen I am really busy and …”
     I raised my hand to interrupt her. “I know it sounds strange but I have come to share with you some wisdom I have learned along with way.”
     “Okay, joke’s over.” She turned her back to me and opened her book.
     “I know what you carved on the top of your dresser.” Her head swiveled around. “I know about Donnie. And Cynthia.” Her mouth fell open. “And I know what is going to happen to you in the future.”
     She picked up her Tab cola, took a sip and gazed at me suspiciously. “If you really are my future self, how did you get here? I mean isn’t there some rule on Star Trek about not changing the past. And what about the space-time continuum? I mean, this is cool and all, but I don’t think you ought to be here.”
     I set my Starbucks cup on the mahogany end table between us. Her blue grey eyes took in the unfamiliar logo. “I think in the latest Star Trek movie Spock proved you can meet past versions of yourself without causing a universal cataclysm,” I said. “I came here to share with you some universal truths I have learned over the years.”
     Debi began scribbling flowers and mandalas on her yellow spiral notebook. We always did this when we were bored in lectures. “Before you start, I want to ask you a question,” she said. “How old are you?”
     “Fifty-six.”
     “Man! I always thought I would be dead before the end of the century. Am I really going to look like you? I mean, your hair isn’t even grey.”
     “And I am probably a lot fatter than you thought you would ever be,” I said smiling at her bluntness. Debi blushed and started a new drawing. I changed the subject. “I know you are struggling and you feel lost about your future. I am here to let you know that you survived.”
     “How do you know what I think?” she asked, her face a mask of defiance.
     “Because 35 years ago I sat alone in this study lounge wondering if any of it was worth it. I wondered why I was stuck taking rinky dink classes in a major I didn’t want. I wondered what happened to my dreams. I was directionless and thinking I should just kill myself and get it over with. I have come to give you some advice and some hope.”
     “Why do you care? No one gives a shit about me,” Debi said, her eyes filling with tears. “Mom doesn’t care about anything I want. Dad just doesn’t care. And Tom…I don’t know about Tom. I mean the Tates are a great old family and they have all the culture and stuff I want, but I haven’t heard from him in weeks.” Debi rubbed her reddened watery eyes. “Damn contacts. They keep floating off.”
     I want to hug her and tell her everything would turn out alright, but that is a lie. “So, first piece of advice. Listen to your gut. If something inside you is screaming, no, listen to that voice. It is the genuine you telling you the right thing to do.”
     “But If I do that people might get mad. I don’t want to make anyone mad.” Tears continued to flow. I handed her one of the tissues I had packed in my overstuffed pockets.
     “Second piece of advice. As the song says, ‘You know you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.’”
     “You know that song?” Debi gave me a watery smile. “Garden Party, right?”
     I nodded my head. “Ricky Nelson. 1972. It might sound trite but it is true. If you go around trying to make everyone else happy you will end up miserable because you are putting their needs before your own.” I watched her write Garden Party in the margin of her notebook.
     “How am I supposed to get the things I want if I have no one to help me?” she asked.
     “That is my third piece of advice. Life isn’t easy.”
     “Well no shit!” she said loudly. She picked up the crumpled ball of tissue and threw it at me. Other students gave us a dirty look for disturbing their concentration.
     “I know you are feeling frustrated and angry. You have every right to feel that way. You don’t know yet that it is life’s adversities that make us who we are. They are the furnace which tempers us and makes us stronger and more resilient.”
    Debi leaned back in her chair crossing her arms and ankles. “Now you are talking in riddles. You sound like just like Gandalf talking to Frodo. I just want to know what is going to happen to me.”
     I smiled at her. “Thanks for the compliment. Wait until you see the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the Rings. You are going to be blown away.” I took another sip of my latte, and wiped the foam from my upper lip. “I suppose wisdom does speak in riddles. I can’t give you specifics about the future. That would disturb the space-time continuum.” The corner of Debi’s mouth turned up, but she continued to sulk, so I leaned forward to catch her eye. “You need to know that you aren’t going to die from loneliness. Your life will eventually be what you want it to be even though the path is going to be difficult. You are a smart, talented, caring person. Surround yourself with people who support you. Those are the people who truly love you.”
     Debi looked down at the battered watch she wore on a thick leather strap. “Is that all? I have cell bio lab to get to.” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “God, I hate that class.”
     "I know. You get an incomplete and have to take it again.”
     Debi’s grew wide with horror. “Really! I have never done anything like that in my whole life!”
     “See you are a bit of a rebel.”
     “Far out!” she said, smiling broadly. Another student shushed us from a corner. Debi gave him a dirty look. I was amazed at how her feelings showed so fully on her face and in her body language. I thought about my own carefully controlled emotions. I too had things to learn.
     “Well,” I said, clearing the lump in my throat. “That brings us to my next bit of advice. It comes from a book which is not yet written but I think you need to hear it anyway. Have you got your pen? The author says, “Never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.” She gave me a blank look. “It means you will never fill the hole in your soul with someone else. Mom taught us to depend on other people for our happiness and, Debi,” I gently touched her hand noting the calluses on her fingertips and the chewed fingernails. “You can only find that happiness within yourself. Play your guitar. Read good books. Listen to great music. Find the things which truly make you happy and hold tight to them. Oh, and take ornithology next semester. You will fall in love with bird watching.”
     She wrote BIRDS in capital letters in the corner of the notebook page and followed it with a question mark. She peeked at her watch again. “I really have to go.”
     “Okay. Last piece of advice. This one comes from another wizard you are going to love. He said, ‘It does no good to dwell on dreams and forget to live’.” I stood up to take my leave remembering to take my Starbucks cup with me. “I am leaving you for now but remember to follow your gut, take care of yourself, don’t depend on others for your happiness, dream but do not get lost in those dreams, and most importantly, life isn’t fair. Now, off to class with you.” I walked back toward the elevator.
     Debi grabbed her books and bag and chased after me. “But you didn’t tell me what I should do about school or Tom or anything.”
     “That would disturb the space-time continuum, wouldn’t it? Terrible things have happened to wizards who mess around with time. Good luck!”
     I gave Debi a wink and a wave and stepped into the elevator.
     “Hey,” she called after me as the doors slid shut. “What did you say your name was?”