"Swinging Along the Open Road, in the Fall of the Year...."

About thirty minutes north and west from here one reaches the old vineyards, some 75 years old, interlaced with the new, some just ready for planting. My friend Elaine and I took a drive Wednesday to soak in the beauty. We met few cars but many bicyclists on the rural roads. I couldn't help remembering the old camp song "Swinging Along." I croaked and "ah"ed while she drove.

It was a delightful adventure. Not quite like October in Maine or Colorado, and not as orange as Hope Valley on the Eastern Sierra, but boasting a palette all its own.

Celebrating the Old

Pull off to the right on Highway 12 about half a mile east of here and you see old gnarled
grape roots, some looking 100 years old, in stark contrast to the acre upon acre of new Sonoma grape vineyards, the money crop replacing apples and pears. Last Tuesday four of us ventured out to take photos.  I love the weathered texture of the old roots and the stories they tell, so why not extend the same generosity to myself? I came home and wrote the following:

Who Is That Old Woman?

Who is that old woman?

Sleeps in my bed

Eats at my table

She is not me.

Sure, she lives in this house

Naps in this recliner

Drops unread newspapers on my floor

But she is not me.

Downs pills for heart and belly

Drinks decaf coffee, one cup

Checks batteries in her hearing aids

Tut, it is not me.

No dog or cat snuggles her feet

Incessantly freezing

Looking ancient, toenails yellow.

Alas, she is not me. 

Drooping eyes squint at the tv

Breath jagged, footsteps wary

She rises to pee in the night.

For certain she is not me.

And when she crawls back in bed

No other curving back warms her breast

No tender hand strokes her thigh

Still she is not me.

For I am twenty years younger.

I climb ladders to pluck pears.

I play Little Sir Echo with the Great Horned Owl.

I relish workouts at the gym.

I prune sixty roses in spring

I divide 300 iris in August.

And when fall comes, as it is now,

I embrace the persimmon and paint up a storm.

Often I melt at the tender smile of my lover

Who forgives and forgets my inadequacies.

In whose eyes I am perfect and still sensuous

As she struggles to steer her walker to bed.

The old lady who lives here knows none of this.

She grumbles and growls at her frailties.

She grasps railings stepping cautiously

She decries her loneliness at night.

Perhaps when winter comes I will

Get up my dander and ask who is this interloper?

Like a guest who smells like a fish in three days

She is surely not me. 

Make New Friends, But Ke--ep the Old...

As the refrain goes.

When I moved up here eleven and a half months ago I was cautioned by other Oakmont residents to expect my bay area friends to drop off.  "The commute gets old" they said. To my delight, experience has proved them wrong. Many friends make it here often to touch base, to visit, to paint, to check up on their old friend. Even the realtor, Jackie, who sold my Oakland house.  This delights me beyond measure. 

Beth, smiling from above,  one of my painting buddies, came up last week to take me to the eye doctor, taking a day off work to do it. Now if that isn't caring I don't know what is. Here we are at Cafe Citti right down the road a bit stuffing ourselves with Italian food. 

Other loyal friends call all the time. Whee. 

My Steinbeck course is winding down and I have learned so much.  He would say my phalanxes are working, for without them one can not exist. My friends are what keep me smiling, including my new Oakmont painting friends with whom I'm sharing an art exhibit here this weekend.

Red and yellow color is beginning to glow on the grape vines. My friend in Maine sent me this photo of pumpkins there, but they are in good company here. 

GRIEVING FOR GOD

Each day in the Senate chambers Barry Black, the senate chaplain, delivers words to remember. His prayers grow more political and memorable as the government shut down continues.  “Save Us From Our Madness” he implores.  So far the Tea Partiers scoff him, but like so many others I cherish his words of wisdom, delivered with passion.
Last Sunday’s outstanding presentation at Oakmont’s Sunday Symposium (Herb Silverman, Candidate Without a Prayer) brought to the foreground once more my own closet behavior about being an atheist.  Not that I don’t fess up to it when asked, but neither do I proclaim it, whereas Herb proudly appeared in his favorite attire, a t-shirt with a happy face proclaiming “Smile, there is no hell”.  Herb, a Jewish atheist from New York, retired as a mathematics professor from a university in South Carolina. He applies mathematical logic to the question of God and the bible.  He is a hundred times more comfortable with his position than am I., but then I am no mathematician.

As a child, I clung to the concept of God and Jesus, like the paste I made with flour and water for my paper dolls. I think I learned all this dogma from the crumbling brown Sunday school a few blocks away.  I think Magnolia Presbyterian was on its last legs and mostly run by volunteers who tended to be evangelical. It closed down when I was about ten, leaving a big hole in my life.  My parents were not athiests, but neither were they church-goers. Sometimes we sang “Jesus Loves Me” on car trips, but I think it was because it was a simple ditty. Likewise my big sister kindly put up with my eccentric belief system, but then she was always kind to accept my eccentricities. No one stopped me from saying grace before meals, or kneeling to say prayers before bed, but I was very much alone in this. I surely needed the crutch. My belief seemed like the most stable element in my strange and highly dysfunctional household.  Also, memorizing things came easy for me, so I always got the most stars for quoting bible verses.

I remember about age nine making a private  appointment with my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Hansen.  She was a kind, rich, stout lady and it took a lot of courage on my part to ask to see her alone.  “I wake up a lot in the night with dreams” I told her. “They seem important and I can’t figure them out”, I confessed, “and then in the morning try as I might I can’t remember them.”  I felt guilt ridden, struggling to hold back the tears.

Her response was serious and comforting. “Don’t worry, Bonnie, if God wants you to remember them he will tell you when you grow up.”  What a relief I felt. Small wonder that forty years later as a psychotherapist one of my favorite activities was helping clients interpret dreams.

When at 15, my father died of a sudden heart attack I turned even more deeply toward God. I prayed and prayed to God to help me understand. Lo, he never did.

Though out college and my early career years I was drawn to the episcopal church, mostly because I loved the ritual and the music.  I thought of it as a sanctuary and a place of safety and beauty.  I loved singing in the choir. It helped that I had the good fortune to have ministers who inspired me and accepted my homosexuality. I would turn to them in times of illness or life crisis.  One is still important in my life today.

Sometime in my late thirties or early forties I began to question my belief in God. Though I occasionally said prayers, I thought of myself as a phony, or fraud, because I only half-believed in what I was doing. I couldn’t stand the feeling of deceit. I liked to think of myself as still spiritual, but I slipped comfortably into non-believing.

Ironically, when Lee and I joined the ranks of AA, I became obsessed with honesty and the remnants of pretending to be a Christian melted away.  But it wasn’t until my sister died that the final something in me “clicked”. One might even say it was a spiritual experience. All at once I knew in the deepest part of me that there is no God.

           I’m indebted to you, Herb Silverman, for through your humor and mathematical applications you force me to hold up the magnifying glass to my own belief systems.  I’m indebted to you, too, Barry Black, for the eloquence of your words in challenging the Senate to look at their own behavior. 

          Even in my most religious days I never embraced the concept of heaven or eternal life, but living without God is a big loss.  I miss the comfort.  I miss the beauty.  I grieve for you, God.  Whoops! How can I grieve for you if you don’t exist?

Smiling For The Camera But Coming From the Heart

Challenging my mind is what the Osher Lifelong Learning class on Steinbeck is doing right now. I wonder what the great author would think knowing I downloaded Grapes of Wrath on my kindle rather than purchasing it in printed book form? I am once more obsessed thinking about phalanxes, schools of now extinct sardines in Monterey Bay, and how phalanxes work in N. Korea.
One thing I know for sure, the phalanxes were NOT working at SeaTac airport when I flew in and out of Seattle two weeks ago. Because of my atrial fib I needed a wheelchair on both laps of the journey to transport me and my suitcase to and from the Marysville shuttle.
What should have been a snap was a giant snafu, causing me to miss the shuttle on arrival and almost miss my plane home. "Can you help me?" I pleaded over and over, my voice getting more desperate on both ends of the transportation nightmare.  It seems that each airline has a contract with one of many wheelchair services, and that only the designated wheelchair pushers are allowed to service the disabled, and then only from certain locations. There was no shortage of wheelchairs, just pushers. How can that be when folks are begging for jobs? My friends Sue and Jeanne who live here inform me that SeTac is so impossible for wheelchair availability that when they want to go to Seattle they instead fly to Bellingham, rent a car, and drive back.
In the end I was rescued by the kindness of strangers, but only after extreme duress; once by a clerk in a clothing store, who pushed me for 25 minutes to make the second shuttle after I'd missed the first one, and on return, when in tears I pleaded with a baggage clerk.
"What am I doing wrong?" I wailed. Seeing as my tears were getting attention, I exaggerated them somewhat. There must have been ten of us waiting in wheelchairs, but no drivers, and my plane was due to leave in 17 minutes. Then a tiny Asian baggage handler for Alaska air lines stepped up and said, "Your'e doing nothing wrong and I'm taking you!"  She proceeded to call the plane and have the pilot hold it on the tarmac, which indeed is what happened. Sincere thanks to the generosity of strangers and big ugly boos to whomever in Seattle is the culprit making this mess.
The purpose of my whole trip was to visit my dear relatives in Vancouver who are no longer able to travel due to the Canadian Health financial penalties for the very old to be out of the country, hence making trips to the states prohibitive. Though I love Seattle and it is the city of my birth, I'm on a rampage now to boycott it. The visit with cousins, however, was precious, and I'll try to forget about the ugly SeaTac experience. We stayed in a lovely B&B in White Rock, just above the border, and experienced true Canadian hospitality. Below, Bonnie and cousin Vi, almost 90, lastly my niece Cheari, and cousin Dollie, 98.  Their memories and smiles far exceed mine.

Life, Death, and Memories In Between

Returning from Canada this week, a quick trip to celebrate the lives of my precious living cousins Dollie (98) and Vi (soon to be 90) I learned of the death of my friend and neighbor of fifty plus years, Kay Gilliland. I've written a tribute here to Kay in the last year (and painted her twice, unsuccessfully) so Kay knew of the high esteem in which I held her. Still, her death leaves a hollow in my gut even as I celebrate her life. More about the Canadian cousins and the arduous journey via wheelchair in future weeks.

Some weeks ago a new Oakmont friend, Elaine Stanley, graciously invited me to be her guest on a history cruise on FDR's yacht, the Potomac, anchored in Jack London Square in Oakland.
Elaine is a volunteer docent on the ship. She instructed me to find a seat in the big black

leather chairs on the fan tail, a place FDR himself loved to sit. For me it was and will be a day imprinted on my heart forever: a magical day in which the sun glistened intensely on the bay waters, sailboats and merchant ships abounded, and I was flooded with over fifty years of memories of sucking in that view from my home in the hills.  Here is Elaine getting ready to lead a tour. My connection with Roosevelt was always personal. He was the only president I ever heard of growing up, the war having started when I was eleven. His two Seattle granddaughters attended my public grade school In Seattle, Magnolia, and we were once visited by the great man himself. My vision of him is sitting in the back seat of his convertible, slowly waving his hand at us (complete with cigarette holder) as the car slowly drove by. Of course none of us knew he was unable to walk. And once when Lee and I visited Warm Springs, Georgia, and I saw his actual leg braces  and crutches, my esteem tripled. Eleanor, meanwhile, has inspired me all my life. She is beloved in women's circles for her vision, her courage, her leadership and her life story. Catherine even has a cat named after her! Eleanor was afraid of water, having survived a near drowning in childhood, and though she entertained many times on the Potomac, she never sailed on her.  FDR on the other hand, treasured his time on board.  Kings, queens, and Churchill were among his guests, as well as his Scottie, Fala, of course. So I had a day of a living history tour, topped off by a trip under the Golden Gate. At one point the Oracle sailed right past us. A catamaran ten stories high on your starboard is not an every day occurrence. Circumnavigating back to Jack London square a huge Madsen swished by us. Altogether, a day of memory and joy.

Travels Here and There

The apple pears continue to harass me, or rather picking up the litter each morning does. Here is my attempt, in haiku, to address the problem:

          Besides night, who comes?
          Shakes my Asian pear tree
          Till the fruit exhales.

                   Rotting fruit galore
                   Bees and free loaders abound
                   Do I deserve this?

                         Be gone with you tree
                         Enchanting in spring you are
                         A manace in fall.

Next week instead of writing my blog on Friday I'll be eating fish and chips and fresh caught salmon in Canada and the Pacific Northwest as I visit my Vancouver relatives. Meanwhile, what I know about dahlias I could put in a thimble. A virgin photo trek with a newly formed group here

to Aztec Dahlia Gardens in Petaluma last Sunday produced some fun and photos. I guess I was as interested in the bugs on the dahlias as the flowers themselves, a few that are as big as dinner plates (the flowers, not the bugs).  While others continued to struggle with selective focus I doodled with pen and paper and colored pencil. Not my forte, but good practice. Maybe it is good to get my focus off of Syria.
Have a good week, and God Save the Queen.