Balancing on the Pitty Pot

Compulsive (or perhaps boring) as I am, April 15 holds no dread for me, for I usually have my taxes filed at least a month in advance. Thankfully I have no ancestors who died on the Titanic on this date in 1912. Still April has come to be the hardest month of the year for me. It used to be my most favorite month but now its the month I struggle hardest to pull myself off the pitty pot. Its not only filled with sad personal grievances, including the birthdays of my deceased partner Lee and my niece Jill, it’s the month allergies hit me hardest. Now days, rather than rejoice, I look sadly out the house windows at the beautiful gardens it has taken me four decades to cultivate. Just now there must be thirty iris in bloom (the whites and yellows come first, the darker ones will explode soon) and from my bedroom window I can count at least 100 buds on the roses. I mostly wear a breathing mask just to get to the car port. Poor Bonnie. In desperation for my compromised breathing I’ll be getting a big shot from the doc this afternoon. That will help a bit. This indoor confinement usually lasts till the end of July. What a downer! I remind myself how much I love to read and paint, two activities I can limit to indoors. I think about the contaminated air in Japan right now and those poor folks. I play all kinds of mind tricks, but still my head screams “NO FAIR”.

So it was with pure joy that I welcomed a visit last week from my fun loving friend Nancy from Denver. Nancy entertains me and plays indoor word games with me. Sometimes she lets me win. She even went to watch my pilates class. One of the best things we did was to attend the exhibit Pulp Fashion at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. It featured the Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, a Belgian painter who interprets early European paintings in paper. Somehow she makes paper look like cloth. Its fantastic, and runs through June 5. A must!

Thanks Nancy, for making my day.

Going, Going, G---o---n---e...

I can't help but wonder what's next. Maybe a hidden nuclear fallout shelter? Now that the dust has settled the big pile of concrete rubble does not give us much insight into the lives of folks who were doctors or nurses or patients there. For that matter, there could be a hidden tunnel from my property to enter the debris. Only the deer and a curious wild cat would discover it, as I've never ventured to the front of my three and a half acres. Too much poison oak, and an occasional rattler. As long as I have lived in this house, which is almost 50 years, the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital has stood as a tall landmark in the valley about two miles to the south outlining the horizon between me and the salt flats of San Francisco bay. I’ve had a perfect view of it, but only occasionally visited sick and retired servicemen hospitalized there. I wonder why? Before that the beautiful rolling land was a country club and golf course which fell to disuse in the Great Depression. In ’42 a military hospital was needed. Needs change as do parties in power. A magnificent hospital was erected on the bucolic 186 acres. It served thousands of wounded. Now empty since the 1993 base realignment legislation, the stately eleven story concrete building has become a victim to abandonment and politics, so that demolition was the only logical answer. Like perfect clockwork, some 800 pounds of dynamite accomplished that task at 12:10 pm today. I counted eights blasts, (though the tv saids 12) and then it was gone in three seconds. As I watched from the deck I thought of what memories those walls must hold. Stationed nearby, my good friend Ruth Talley, now in her nineties, once served in the Waves as a 2^nd class personnel officer for service women assigned to Oak Knoll. She was billeted on the grounds in an old psychiatric hospital. “I took care of the girls in the barracks,” she laughingly recalls.

When she was about seven, dear surrogate daughter Catherine, daughter of an army officer, did not want to take a school spelling test for which she was unprepared. Her mom hauled her, over protests, to the hospital. They had at first ignored her complaint of feeling ill until they discovered a high temp. She had put the thermometer in her Oma's tea to avoid school. At Oak Knoll they feared meningitis and performed a spinal tap, not believing her even after she confessed. She was a mighty scared and unhappy kid. No more will she drive by and shudder at the memory.

If you or anyone you know has personal memories with Oak Knoll I'd welcome them.

One day this sixty year old house where I sit writing, like the hospital, will fall from use and be demolished. I wonder if all this land will someday return to its native habitat of redwoods and streams leading to the bay, or if it will become military bases for space shuttles or the like? Perhaps aliens will inhabit it! Its intriguing to speculate.

Enjoy the photos.

Facing Your Fears #2

FACING YOUR FEARS #2

Lee’s mother was an incredibly brave woman, having left home at 14 to housekeep and baby sit for strangers in order to send wages home to her mother.Perhaps it was not so uncommon in those days.

Hardly the shrinking violet, she married Lee’s dad at 16.Life was hard, but she plunged ahead with courage. Still there was one thing she greatly feared: if she bore children in a hospital the hospital would somehow mix up the babies.So she chose to bear both kids in the bedroom at home. No one was going to switch her babies! If the weather in Berkeley in 1920 and 1925 was anything like today she would have needed all the doors and windows wide open, as I have just now.

Amazing. Its 80 degrees outside and our thirteen days of rain have dissolved into sliding hillsides, gigantic weeds, and pulsating pollen counts. Not only is it April Fools Day but today is the one year anniversary of my blog. It has been a joy, as well as a piece of learning. I encourage everyone I know to try it. As of two weeks ago I have my new 27” IMAC up and running, and I am even learning to use Skype. Thankful hugs to Sheila, Peggy, Beth, Cheari and Jan for all the tutoring.

I dedicated my first story last year to my life partner, Lee, who would have been 86 today (or perhaps tomorrow). Why the choice?When her brother died in his forties she choose to honor his memory by celebrating her own birth day on his birthday, thus giving her both April 1 and 2. I was touched by her gesture, though I failed to comprehend it, since the stories I heard of his behavior in childhood were not exactly to be cherished.Perhaps they were just big brother antics? I never knew what it was like to live with a brother. Things like throwing her china doll through the living room picture window were not unusual. Never having had either a big or little brother such things are out of my realm of understanding.

As I recall my big sister was forever kind and helpful, cooking me special treats, loaning me her doll, and patiently tutoring me in math, my worst subject.

I understand April Fools Day is celebrated all through the Western world but the exact origin is vague. For me in childhood I would begin calculating jokes to play on family members about the third week in March for there was a family tradition to see who would be the first in the morning to catch another in a tall tale. If the victim believed you the game would end with “Caught you!” I would rehearse stories in my mind so they would almost sound real, but end with a whopper of a fish tale. It was such a fun challenge that it tweaked my imagination and delight. And yes, I miss it.

Has anyone caught you in a trick today? If so I hope it was a whopper and produced generous laughter.

After The Rain

I painted the picture above from a photo I took in Leon, France. I recall it had just finished raining and the little boy seemed untrusting of his footing. I remember his wanting to hang on to his mother’s hand, but her hands were already full.

In so many ways it has been a lost week for me. It seems like the rainstorms, so unusual for us, will never stop. Of course in my personal fog (more on that later) it brings memories of Seattle. Across the street on 26^th Ave. West where I grew up till age 12 was a large wooded area, eventually sloping down to the railroad tracks and Elliot Bay. An overgrown deeply rutted road, long unused by cars, ran through it, leading gently downwards to what was then Pier 91. During the depression homeless men from many parts of the country would jump the freights, sometimes cutting through the woods up to our house, on the edge of the bluff, asking for food in exchange for work. I remember them as polite and grateful for a piece of white Langendorf with sandwich spread, which was mostly mayonnaise and dill pickle. Sometimes my mother, sensing their pride, would have them sweep the small front porch.

When I think of it now, “the woods” as I called this area, was not a very safe place to play for a little girl alone. Yet I was most content there. The alder and madrona and bracken fern sheltered me from the heaviest downpours. I knew how to avoid the stinging nettles. I made countless secret paths through the salal. In the spring I was mesmerized by the gigantic banana slugs and the hatching tent caterpillars. In my child’s world I thought I owned these woods. As soon as a heavy rain would start I would don my dark brown three button galoshes and head for the abandoned road, for the best mud puddles were to be found there. Splat! Splat! Such joy. With my toe I would carve rivulets, delighting in the process of making new channels for the water to flow. The rain was my personal friend for it led me to intimacy with nature. Most of all, it was such fun. I wish I could remember and relive that special joy, but alas, I can’t.

How changed I am now. Two days of rain and my chin is in my lap. Since this has been going on about two weeks my spirits are in the pits. Also my memory is on sabbatical. Perhaps it is waterlogged like my long awaited blooming iris, which now resemble mush. Last Tuesday I missed an important meeting, having it on my calendar for next week instead. And for over a week I’ve been searching for the bill for my house taxes, due April 10. I remember putting the bill in a special place so I wouldn’t loose it. Yikes! I’m clueless.

Wednesday morning I took some serious tranquilizers and a bunch of other meds at the periodontist’s orders, for I was having surgery to do a sinus lift .

I don’t remember much of Wednesday at all. It seems my left sinus was hanging down like an old lady’s boob. I do remember thinking I wish it were a face lift on the outside, not the inside. He filled the vacant hole with cadaver material. Yikes again.

The weather man predicts sunshine by next Monday or Tuesday. Then it will be time to put on a happy face, lift or not.

Emotional Reprieve

I skipped Rob’s funeral on Wednesday to attend Bouquet’s to Art at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. He would have approved of my decision I know. This year’s show was breathtaking, inspiring, blasting with creativity as always. Somehow the cosmic Gods were with us: the Bay bridge, usually jammed at the commute hour, was smooth and welcoming. To my shock we arrived at Golden Gate Park 45 minutes early, and found street parking generous. Before the museum opened we watched a Japanese Tai Chi Master lead a solemn group on the lawn. The timing was touching, as our hearts were hurting with the trauma going on concurrently in Northern Japan. My companion on this art trek was my good friend Jan Matsuoka. Jan has family in Japan. She is as smitten with flowers as am I. After the show we had a yummy vegetarian lunch at Green’s, gazing at the Golden Gate between bites. The chocolate cake was the best! It was so good for us both to have a day of serenity and reprieve from what is going on in the world. .

Sunshine and Shadows

When one lives on the income from their investments, as I do, life is a little tenuous. Sadly financial decisions become more challenging when one does not have a partner to bounce things off on, and where monthly income yo-yos up and down, sometimes dramatically. Last month when I considered on impulse signing up for the French Escapade trip to Provence in May, the first thing I did was to call Rob, my broker, for advice. We’ve been at this management/decision-making task for about twenty years, even though he is much younger than I. At times he feels like a wise old father, at other times like a caring adult son, but most of the time I think of him as a trusted friend. Well, trusted, and caring both. He has guided me through the deaths of my mother, my sister, Lee’s mother, and finally Lee. It’s been a rich and tender relationship for us both, even though we have little in common in the usual sense of things.

As always he listened carefully to all the pros and cons, checked the market, my portfolio and speculated on the economy. Only then did he advise me what to do: “Go for it.” I made the decision the next day, and just yesterday Sandy advised me the final leg was confirmed (2^nd class, 4:57 pm-8:11pm TGV train from de Gaulle airport to Avignon, $162.)

The day I made the trip decision Bob advised me thoughtfully how he would juggle things a bit to make all the expenses come out ok.

When I called him two weeks ago to confirm stock arrangements he had hardly any voice, but he assured me it was because of a problem with a stopped up ear; that he felt just fine.

A phone call today at 10:30am from his boss advised me that Rob died this morning at 9:15, in his sleep. Just recently he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to go to Hawaii to learn to snorkel, which he did with his wife and adopted daughter. I guess he too decided to “Go for It.”

Rob has been battling pancreatic cancer ever so bravely for over three years, going in and out of remission. From first diagnosis, Steve Jobs has been an inspiration to him.

Last week I was rejoicing that Kodi, my dog, did not have a terminal disease. Suddenly my mood is reversed. My spirit is truly sagging, and it feels like a black cloud moving in on me. The photo above was taken a couple of weeks ago from the deck when a storm was coming in. I hope I can put on a happy face for those coming to my art show this weekend, and if I can’t that they will forgive me for the tears that are currently under all the happy flowers and children I paint.

Looking Back and Facing Forward

This has been a week of worry followed by rejoicing. A welcome letter came yesterday from a client of many decades ago reminding me of the God, Janus, the powerful Roman God of gates, doors, beginnings, endings, and time. What a talented guy. He could see both ways, it seems.

As I sat on pins and needles waiting for the results of a blood test for my dog Kodibear (whose name is in the title of this blog) I felt terrified that the results would be positive that the radical hair loss on his ten year old tail meant he had canine Cushing’s disease, not a happy diagnosis. Was it a genetic defect of his special heritage (half Siberian Husky, half traveling salesman)?

What would I do without my big mush-pot guard dog?Would I even want to live here on this remote hilltop?

Were she still alive, what would Lee say, for after all he was her special love and constant shadow the last six years of her life?

I tried to wait patiently seven whole days for the results. Finally the doggie dermatologist called. “Negative!” Suddenly a big rock was lifted from my chest. The hair loss on his tail is completely cosmetic. It looks pretty bizarre, but since he does not care, neither do I. We can grow older and balder together.

Suddenly I was able to read, write, and paint again. I had denied to myself that the anxiety was what had immobilized me.

So now I’m madly getting paintings ready for the two day annual show at my gym March 12 and 13. I’ve scrounged the cabinet drawers sorting possibilities from rejects. So far I have 57 matted and ready to go and I’m not even to the bottom of the pile.

Whereas I’ve never painted a picture of Janus, I did include in the for-sale stack the painting above of a statue of a very happy God (anonymous to me) which l painted near the beach on my first trip to Bali.

He’ll remain nameless for now, but he matches my mood.