Before the Fall

Once again the fall nip is supposed to be in the air. Here in
San Diego, we are getting ready for another run at Indian Summer. After the last few weeks I just hope it isn’t Indian Summer as hot as Punjab curry. I have had enough heat, enough fire, and enough excitement to last me well past the first of the year.

It is that time of year when all good goblins put their best feet forward. They will see how beggardly their parents will let them be. The parents will jockey to see who can buy the best chocolate. Then moms and dads will grab the kids’ bags to make sure the kids don’t eat it. This is a perverse holiday.

In our little corner of the world, my granddaughters will trek to see gramma and papa. Their nana and maybe other grandpa will come and, this year, we will have the last great-gramma and the step-gramma in attendance too. We will all ooooh and ahhhh over the little girls and sit down for a twilight supper before begging at three or four of my neighbors’ houses.

Adults will outnumber kids three to one. That seems like an appropriate ratio to me. I have herded those cats by myself and wished I was at least 6 people!

The fun begins for us with Morrigan’s birthday in September. Morrigan’s mom has a birthday the week after. Then Audrey celebrates in October and her dad’s birthday is two days before hers. The fall birthdays scoot right up next to Thanksgiving and then the race is on.

When I was raising my two urchins, I never thought about how fast time was going. I thought that if I survived from wake up to bedtime I had completed a productive day. Some weeks I didn’t even remember what happened between Sunday and Friday. It is still a blur. Now, I have trouble remembering what happened between 1990 and 2003.

I know I had a life before the grandgirls arrived. I just don’t remember it being much fun.Did I mention I have the cutest, smartest, sweetest grandgirls ever? Did I mention the two oldest ones have taken the kindergardens at there various schools captive and will not let them go? Did I mention Hillary Clinton better get elected now because in another twenty-some years she won’t stand a chance?

I am looking forward to seeing my little ones all dressed up. I think we are looking toward one three-year-old Dorothy Gail, one five-year-old Princess Audrey Leia, and one very precocious bride. Did you know opera gloves come in a size 3?

It is Halloween again. It was just Halloween yesterday. The little girls were shorter and a little rounder. There was more baby in each face and I had less white hair. The years are going way too fast. I am jealous of the slow summer days of my childhood. On those slow, sweet days I wished only to be 18, then 22, and, later, for my kids to be grown.

Now, they are grown and parents themselves and I am 58 and looking at more than half my life in a rear-view mirror. I wonder when the memories will start to really fade. I wonder if my mother’s Alzheimers disease will hit me or miss me. I wonder how I can bridge a gap with my sister that is entirely of her making. I wonder when I will forgive myself for not being perfect and, sometimes, not even being very good. I wonder when I will figure out what I can and cannot control.

It’s Halloween again. I think I’ll bake biscuits for dinner.

MAndatory Down Sizing

The fires seem to have died pretty much of their own negative energy. The Eastern front still blazes but the people who know about such things have released most of us back to clean the ash from our swimming pools and dust the furniture. Of course, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who have no homes to go back to.

In 2003, the devil wind blew a blanket of fire over Scripps Ranch. 300 of my friends and acquaintances lived through the angst of insurance companies, house plans, contractors, refurnishing, and readjusting to a life with all new things.As they were all rebuilding their lives, I am sure not many of them saw the fire as a blessing and an opportunity. As I was waiting for the news wags to say I could go home, the thought occurred to me that it would not be so bad to have to start over. I have collected too much crap anyway and I am not good at culling it. A good firestorm could wipe out all evidence of conspicuous consumption and I could start anew. But the garage has to burn first. I would be really pissed to lose my old oak furniture and still have that hell-hole garage left standing.The surprising thing to me in 2003 and again this week was not how much I tried to load into the car but how little. Of the thirty-some samplers on my walls I pulled down only 4 and two of them were stitched by my daughter. I pulled down the old photos from the rogues’ gallery—the ones I have yet to scan into digital format. I took my dog, my Lladro, and my new sewing machines. I took the back-up computer, our medicine, and this time a variety of clothes—just in case I might have to go to work from an alternative venue. Last time I didn’t pack a change of underwear.So, those few things must be what I value. Maybe now is a good time to rid myself of a bunch of the rest. I wonder if I can.

Armageddon

The last 48 hours have been full of all kinds of emotion from resignation through elation with stops at dispair, fear, anger, powerlessness. I fight with emotion as a matter of course. I am much more in tune with chocolate and cheesecake than with living through a situation over which I have NO control whatsoever. All of San Diego County has been pretty well out of control for the past going on three days.

In 2003, a devil wind blew sparks all over our little corner of paradise. When the wind changed 300 of my neighbors were homeless, many escaping without so much as a change of underwear. The last of those friends’ rebuilt houses were completed this winter. We don’t take a wiff of smoke on the breeze quite as cavalierly as once we may have done. The dark cloud rose to my view at noon on Sunday. The tell-tale scent wafted in sortly after.

From the most reliable reports so far–and it is early to claim this the gospel–a power line blew down in the super-high winds off the Nevada desert. We call them Santa Ana. The charged wire set off a brush fire that the wind fanned. Flames danced away from Witch Creek in a macabre dance played out against the horizon. The smoke rose black against a crystal blue sky and soon there was only smoke, and heat, and dancing orange tongues.

255 thousand acres later, charred earth, disembodied chimneys, and the skeletons of houses litter the paths of the Harris fire, the Witch fire, the Palomar fire, the Cuymaca fire, and several others whose names I heard and left to the wind and the talking heads. In a 24 hour period, 250,000 people packed their dittie bags and left their homes. Lucky ones went to relatives and friends in safer parts of the city; others hunkered down in front of television screens in hotel rooms; most found refuge in the highschool gyms, church halls, and the football stadium. And we waited for the wind to change.

This is a recounting without a purpose well defined. I am proud of my community. We, for the most part, evacuated our homes without much argument and went to higher ground. A few of us took a stand for home and hearth. The one’s whose homes still stand take credit for their diligence and offer it as proof that they were, indeed, right to stay. The ones who bet wrong are burned or dead or put too many other lives at risk. We name heroes too easily. The fool on his roof with the water hose is, indeed, just a fool on his roof–risking others’ lives for a pile of bricks and sticks. This is not to my mind a fair ante on a fool’s bet. I am proud of all of us who gathered our dogs, cats, and gerbils; two cases of photos; and the backup disks from our computers –having watered the houseplants just in case it would make a difference–struck out into the great unknown.

I have heard of no dischord in the refuge centers. The evacuations were orderly if tedious. Everyone seems to be making the best of a really bad situation. Now I am one of the fortunate ones who stayed the day and night with my son’s family and am home again. The immediate danger is past for my little universe. The fires still rage uncontrolled, but the people who know such things say there is little danger to me or mine. But still my hands shake. Still my eyes tear up and it isn’t the smoke in the air. Still, I sigh from the depth of my being and I don’t even know what my prayer is. I am safe. I have been safe all along. I have not felt safe. I do not feel safe yet.

I watch the destruction in real time on TV. The flames are dancing house to house, hilltop to canyon and up the next ridge. I am home and thousands of people will not go home again. I am in my own familiar space and others have no idea whether they will have a familiar space to return to when the sun comes up again. And having passed the night, we all wait to see what happens when the wind turns.

Communication 1-A

Mom died in February. All 5 of us–me, my sibs, and mom’s husband’s daughter–agree on the dispensation of the property. We even agree to have one, well really two, one of us and the one of her, deal with the legalities of the transaction.

So, why in Hell have I heard not a word from my sister about whether the house is on the market, whether judge signed the executor papers and had them annointed by the court, or the result of two months of notices to creditors? Did I mention my sister prides herself on being a communicator? 

I am a coward sometimes. The last private conversation I had with my sister ended with her accusing me of prying into her business because I looked at a website that estimated the value of her house. Somehow that is invasive, inappropriate, and probably un-American. I missed pointing out the part about public record and that I read the Sunday Home section so I know, not only approximately what her house is worth, but also that the website undervalues it. What’s more, I don’t give a shit about either. I just wanted to see the satelite photos of places I had lived.

That same conversation had her telling me I didn’t have to be defensive–I hadn’t felt defensive until she said that–that and a couple of hundred words that I won’t retell although they are burned into my memory.

The result of the conversation is that we are not talking. Not talking is different from not speaking. Not speaking is an active avoidance. It implies an attitude, a hostility. Not speaking is an active protest. We just aren’t talking. I don’t talk to people who don’t respect or trust me. Did I mention I am consumately respectable and trustworthy? I just don’t have anything to say.

The reason I have nothing to say is that she offered up that our failure to communicate is a familial failing–she is a wonderful communicator. She communicates for a living. It is only me–me and my brother (she avoids talking to our other sister)–who have problems with her superior tone and condescending air. We just don’t know how to talk to each other and that is our parents’ failing.  Having spent a good portion of my adult life in therapy of one sort or another, I expressed a willingness–no, I expressed it as a committment– to work on that with her any time, any place–AND SHE DECLINED.

General thoughts on teen angst bullshit in the advancing years

At 58 I thought to have escaped the ravages of teen angst.  AH, not so easy in this world of mine. The teen-age stuff just breeds over the years until it is so ingrained that dumping the BS way of thinking is virtually impossible without severe professional intervention. Having had severe professional and chemical intervention, I thought I had bought a get out of jail card. Nuh-uh.

So, fourteen of us go to Europe. All of us have traveled together in various combinations for years. We all agree that the only way traveling together works is if we are all on our own while we travel together. That means we have some things we may do together or not as we please. The one binding premise is that we will dine together in the evening. The ship messes up the dinner arrangements. One of our A-types intervenes and 12 of the 14 end up at one table and the one couple who prefer to dine with company—any company—are seated alone at a very intimate table for two. I sent Himself over to participate in the dinner rearrangement—he did not participate. He understood his assignment and chose not to engage. My feelings are hurt. I don’t know how to ask how this arrangement came about and why type A thought that would be okay. Did I mention my feelings were hurt?

Remember, that I agree with the together-but-separate philosophy. And I still feel like the last one chosen for the softball team. I still feel like the little girl who had to wear corrective shoes while everyone else wore cute sandals. I still feel like the only one whose mother made her clothes—and didn’t pay very close attention to style. What is the thing that sends me into the paroxysms of old shit and back into the willingness to be less than I know I am just because someone else behaves insensitively?