Monday, November 23, 2009

What Christmas Means to Me, Now That It's Over

What Christmas Means to Me, Now That It Is Over


I don’t know what your mother was doing two days before Christmas, but mine was sitting at our kitchen counter sewing hand-crocheted dreadlocks onto  baseball caps she bought  for a dollar each at a True Value hardware store.  When my husband asked what she was doing, I listened as she told him the whole story, which had to do with her fall cruise to the Caribbean with her friend Louise.  My husband, leaning over her shoulder and frowning, didn’t have a chance to say a word before she said,” Believe it or not, I have requests for these.”  We believe it, having been through recent projects like dust gloves with red felt fingernails and oversized t-shirts decorated with  rhinestone studs. 

She worked in silence while I made a salad for dinner.  She did ask me if I would tie a knot in her thread.  Our hands are similar:  long, square-tipped fingers, liver spots and strong veins, knobby joints predicting a tendency to arthritis.

The miracle was that she was there, in my kitchen, spending the holidays with us.  The year she turned seventy-five, feeling old and alone, she wanted to move into our house.  I said no.  Now, two years later, I was trying not to be so abrupt and territorial.  I’m not sure what she was trying not to be.

.  “Did you enjoy the holidays?,” the checker at Safeway  asked me two days after Christmas.  Seven days  before,  she pleasantly asked, “Are you ready for the holidays?”

I would like to tell you about wonderful moments that occurred in the interim between putting  up the tree and taking it down, between getting ready for it and getting it over with.  The truth is that I am depressed about the holidays.  I was on edge with my mother.  I didn’t feel light-hearted about her presence.  It was more like an emphysema patient’s relationship with an oxygen tank.  I needed her for emotional survival, but her presence was a burden.  I know.  What an awful image.  What an awful way to feel.

Furthermore,  my relationship with my sister is in a state right now.  She called the Monday before Christmas in tears and fury:  “I don’t like him.  He’s too hard.  I don’t like the way he talks on the phone to his tenants.  He says I have alienated his children from him.  He has done that himself.  I can’t stand to be here another minute.  I hope I have the courage to leave him.”

I tell her not to run away; that she has to face him; to make lists; call three friends; call me if she needs me.  She never called.  I waited a week.  When I finally got her on the phone she said, “Christmas Day was low-key but pleasant.  We took a walk.”  There was silence from my end.  She finally said, “I’m so embarrassed about my outburst.  I must have been suffering from depression.  That’s all I have to say about it.”

I didn’t know how to respond to her; still don’t.  I feel shut out and tired of the pretense, yet afraid that without it we will have nothing, not even a pretend-Santa world.  Just the wind blowing down a cold chimney.

A few days before Christmas, I was giving my daughter’s friend, Sephra, a ride home, and I asked her if Larissa, her younger sister, still believed in Santa.  It seemed unlikely since Larissa is in the fourth grade.  Sephra, who is sixteen, said, “Nah, when Larissa was in first grade, my brother—the jerk—told her the truth.

Sephra’s father is a Lutheran minister and, as I drove past the stone church and pulled into their driveway, I wondered what, in this instance, the truth was.  For the world I grew up in, the truth was this:  there is not a literal Santa and everyone conspired to create and sustain the belief in this great collective lie.  There came a time when someone, a brother or a stranger, told us the truth, and we went from belief in a lie:  there is a Santa; to belief in a truth; there isn’t a Santa.   We were expected not only to survive this process but also to perpetuate it.

I remember the strength of my own belief.  When I was in first grade in a small rural school in northeastern Nevada, my father talked one of the ranch hands into playing Santa for our school Christmas party.  A fake white beard didn’t hide the familiar hare lip and nasal voice saying, “Well, little dirl, what do you want for Christmas?”

I blurted, “You’re not Santa.  You’re Cliff!”  But that was not the end of my belief.  The collusion was so deep that I was ready to accept  the party line:  The real Santa is at the North Pole getting ready for Christmas and Cliff is just Santa’s helper.”

It works. until the moment it doesn’t work

For me, Christmas is a psychological place that I enter, experience, and emerge from saying, “I’m glad it’s over,” just like you might say, “I’m over my cold now,” or “It’s finished.    I’m over him.”  I am glad it’s over.  I’m finished cooking and spending money and finished being in that place of memories, yearning, and the agony of belief and disbelief.

This is the most important part. Time and time again, we will have to alter our sense of what is true and what is real.  We will give ourselves over to belief and then we will withstand its destruction.

I use “we” and I should only be talking about myself. Like my belief that everything will be okay for my children. That just because Vallejo has one of the highest crime rates in the Bay Area, my son, who lives there, will be safe.  That when my daughter leaves the house in the rain and I say, “How will you get home?” and she replies, “Hitchhike,” that she is kidding.  Belief that our modest financial security can be sustained.  That when my husband says the  small company that he manages has been bought by a large corporation from Southern California and the specter of joblessness hovers in the room, I can't begin  to describe the sudden pull of disaster, the fear of loss of income, illness, powerlessness and death.

In one way or another, that’s what Christmas does to me every year.  Going through the process of affirmation of family ties, friendship, community, wholeness and harmony is an ordeal to be experienced and endured.  I am on the other side of it now, thumbing through seed catalogs, as a matter of fact.

Although it is only January, I know it won’t be long until I’m hearing the countdown of shopping days til Christmas.  The thought makes me anxious.  There’s no use planning a trip to Oaxaca or Squaw Valley for the holidays or even planning on donating more time to the Food Bank.  It’s my mother and my sister and my brother-in-law and my niece that I have to come to terms with.  What a skimpy little tribe.  How hard it is to make peace.




Monday, November 16, 2009

A Short Meditation on Going Gray

I'm sixty-eight today and this morning I considered, for about sixty seconds, letting my hair go gray.  Let's call it a Dorian Gray moment.

 If I were to go gray, I would have to start wearing inexpensive jeans bagging in the butt, organic cotton turtle necks (turtle neck.  I'm creeping myself out) in mauve or pea green;    a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon; a woven Fair Trade handbag from Peru, and dangly earrings from Zimbabwe made from recycled aluminum cans .  In a moment of joie d vivre I might be tempted to purchase a pair of R. Crumb slide-on Vans.

Fuck!  I'm not ready.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Notes on My Fiftieth High School Reunion: The Labor Day Parade


August 4, 2009
Elko, Nevada

“That was a quick fifty years, wasn’t it?”  Who said that?  We were standing in the parking lot across the street from the Crystal Theater, right where we were supposed to be, waiting to load up for the parade.  I think it was Fran Miller. 

“You were my first girlfriend,” said Frank Scott.  We weren’t wearing name tags, so we had to peer at one another and wait for the 68 or 69 year old person to announce him or herself.    Frank is about my height, thickened in the middle, just like me.

“You were sure a skinny runt,’ someone said to him, taking the attention from me.  Frank was not to be deterred.

  “Didn’t you come to one of the reunions in a black leather jacket?” Frank said.

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“Did you ever have a black leather jacket?”  Frank Scott was and is what you would call a pest.

“Well, I had a black leather coat once.”  I wasn’t going to give him an inch, although it is quite likely that during my beatnik period I could have come to a reunion  with  long, straight brown hair, eyes heavily lined with kohl, and a black leather something.

At lunch at Machi’s, when I invited myself to sit with Arlene, her husband, R.J. Demale; Fran, and Lyndia Dodd, I told them about the cotillions in seventh and eighth grade, upstairs in the Elks Hall, where we were supposed to learn to dance.  “I remember them,” Fran said.  “I was such a country bumpkin.”  

 If you were at the next table and heard Fran say that, you might think She still is.  You would see a stout woman with a bad haircut, not a stitch of make-up, still wearing the XL maroon t-shirt over her blouse, the ones that Ann Moren handed out before we got on the float so we would be in Elko High School colors.  You would have no idea of what a beautiful girl she was.

 On Saturday night at the banquet at the Red Lion,  Bernice McClendon brought a poster board collage of black and white photos from high school.  There is one of Fran in a short sleeved plaid shirt and jeans rolled up the way we did in the Fifties.  She smiles into the camera and she is magnificent.  I kid you not.  “Franny,”  I said.  I was standing next to her.  “See what a beautiful girl you were.”  She squinted at the photo, gave a nod of recognition to her strong, healthy young  self, smiled at me, and then turned to talk to someone else.

I continued at lunch with my recollection of the junior high dances.  “Well, at one of those dances, they paired us up and each  boy was to bring a box lunch.  Frank Scott picked me and he brought tuna fish sandwiches.  Everybody  could smell them.  I was so embarrassed.”

“Now when I see him, I’ll think of tuna fish,” said Lyndia, whose eyesight is so compromised that she probably does have a strong sense of smell.

“It was fun, being in the parade,” Fran said.  Lyndia and I agreed.  About twenty of us sat close together on hay bales, chatting and throwing candy to the kids lining the streets, most of them bringing plastic bags as if it were Halloween.   We felt like kids, too, as the truck and trailer slowly made its way down the length of Idaho Street.

I saw Ted Blohm smiling in front of his jewelry store and then recognized his wife, Lena, wearing a mocha-colored gauzy dress, still glamorous.  If you didn’t go to Elko High in the Fifties, you wouldn’t remember the year they married and how everyone talked about Lena marrying a man twenty years older than she—even though everyone liked Ted Blohm.

When we passed the court house, Lorrie Gilbert was on the reviewing stand, announcing for KELK.  “…and here comes the class of ’59.  It’s their  Fiftieth reunion weekend.  Let’s give them a big hand.”  She spotted me waving at her.  “Hi, Nancy!” she said into the mike.  That was fun.

Lunch at Machi’s was perfect.  “Divine order,” said Lyndia, who had worked for several years as a telephone psychic in Hawaii, when she was in the first stages of macular degeneration.  “That’s the way this day is.  Everything is just as it’s supposed to be.”  We were walking to my car.  I was taking them up to the Elko County Fair, apologizing for barging  in on their lunch.

Divine order.  I know there’s no way I will capture all the stories and anecdotes that will comprise our conversations over the next couple of days, let along begin to get more than bits and pieces of my schoolmates lives, fifty years after the fact.

During the parade, John Sala, on the hay bale next to me, casually mentioned that his son is brain damaged from a motorcycle accident.  I don’t know what John does for a living.  Maybe he is a mechanic.  He lives in the Bay Area.  I do know he has a rock and roll band.  His black hair (“Hell, it’s a dye job,” he said when someone complimented him) is combed exactly the same way as in his yearbook picture.

“Sold my last Harley in 2001,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“At sixty five I figured I was too old.”  He paused, “But I’m going to buy another one.”

“Good for you,” I said, not really meaning it.

I don’t think I had occasion to visit again with John during the weekend.  It was like that.  One or two serious conversations.  Mostly brief encounters.  We weren’t  Holocaust survivors or Viet Nam vets getting together.  Just the class of '59, marking the occasion, quietly honoring ourselves, each other, and the cowtown we came from and still love.


Monday, October 26, 2009

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning"

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.”
                        F. Scott Fitzgerald,  The Crack-Up

This is something I wrote in a journal I was keeping regularly for four or five years, during the time  that I was home with babies and we were doing our back-to-the-land act on an old Finnish homestead about nine miles east of Mendocino, California.

The evening that inspired these reflections was a great, boozy, and, as I look back on it, rather innocuous New Year’s Eve .  I say “innocuous” although I remember that it was the early 1980’s, a time when my husband was doing a remodel for the counterculture Zelda and F. Scott of the town and coke seemed cool.  The carpenters’ after work gatherings were often more than Miller Time.  As I look back on it, I survived the recreational drug era fairly unscathed.  I had two young children.  I have always fallen back on my own  reliables:  coffee, alcohol, anger and remorse.

This particular evening culminated in my walking home.  Not knowing where the car was; not realizing my husband had gathered the kids and gone home, assuming I would crash on the couch of our friends  in town;  somehow knowing I was too drunk to drive the seven miles of narrow paved road and two miles of dirt lane, even if I did find the car,  I decided to walk.

I arrived at our  white farmhouse in the clearing sometime after daylight, exhausted but sober.  A few months later I wrote this in my journal:

“The memory of walking home New Year’s Eve is starting to fade and it’s a shame.  It felt good to walk it off:  the cigarettes, the coke, the champagne, the last whiskey and soda or was it a half empty Heinekens I  left  on the Seagull bar; the half drunk remarks blurted at people I hardly knew; the completely drunken conversations I carried on with strangers.

I walked off all the restraints of the previous year.   All that fixing of food:  the breakfasts, the lunches, the lunches for school, the dinners for the kids, the second dinner for the tired husband.  Chewing my own way through the day, ruminating on past loves, silently chewing out my husband, nursing grudges, licking wounds, feeling the tension in my jaws.

I walked off the hectic traffic pattern that a year traces on a mother’s brain:  the trips up and down stairs, the dumping of garbage, the trips in the car to the laundromat, the health food store, the grocery store, and the kids saying at every stop, “Can I get out?  Can I get out?”

I walked through the tangle of my relationships with friends; the lifelines that started to kink, to confuse me about where the beginning was and the end, and why I  held on tightly, knowing my friends were my family.

I walked through the late afternoon dreariness that stopped my breath like a yawn and made me  hate myself for standing in the hallway talking on the phone, my two-year-old pulling at my leg while  I threaten her with a raised hand and squinty look as I tell someone, someone I don’t even like very much, how bored I am  and how mean my old man is, and then doubly hating myself for saying "my old man."

I walked long enough and late enough—no coat and high heels, five in the morning, no moon, mist heavy enough to call "rain." especially in the narrow parts where it felt more like a trail than a county road—that I walked out of the stupor and into an alertness that made me aware, not of danger, although a scream for help would have gone unheard, but of separation.  I stopped dead in my tracks and called my daughter’s name, and I was shocked to be so far from home.”




Sunday, October 18, 2009

I've Had Better Days


  “I’ve  Had Better Days”

I wish I knew Harry Reid.  There’s a story I’d like to tell him.  It’s about Senator Dean Rhoads and his wife, Sharon.  He knows Dean, who has been in the Nevada State Senate since 1985 and is as firm a Republican as Harry Reid is a Democrat.  You might imagine that each of them stays on his side of a barbed wire fence.  That’s not true.

Just a couple of weeks ago I ran into Dean Rhoads at the Tuscarora post office.  Although there are only eleven fulltime residents in town, if you can call it that, (there are no services),  the post office serves one of the biggest, best, and most authentic ranching communities in the West.  The Independence Valley begins about fifty  miles north of Elko and claims the hay meadows,  private holdings and public  grazing lands  that extend to the Idaho border.

 Two miles south of  Tuscarora is the Rhoads’ ranch, where Dean’s wife Sharon was born and raised.  I’ve heard it said that Dean Rhoads is the only member of the Nevada State Legislature who makes his sole living ranching.  You know, a working  ranch, not some boutique outfit.

When Dean came into the post office, Julie Parks, the current postmistress, and I were talking about Harry Reid’s re-election prospects in 2010.  I had just read an article in the Wall Street Journal claiming Senator Reid  may be in for a tough race.  “What do you think, Dean?” Julie said as she handed him a rolled up bundle of mail.

Before he could answer, I blurted, “It seems to me that Harry Reid forgets he’s from Nevada.”  

 “That’s not true,” Dean said.  “We’ve worked together  over the years on many ranching and mining issues.  He’s a good man.”  He said goodbye to Julie, nodded to me, and climbed stiffly into his dust-covered truck.  I got the message.  He wasn’t going to let me bad-mouth Harry Reid regardless of the barbed wire fence that separates them politically.


Well, I’ll tell you the story about Sharon and Dean.  Maybe you know Harry Reid. I think it would do him some good to hear it.

This happened a few years back.  After unpacking the car and getting settled in for the summer  in Tuscarora, I went to the post office to see my high school friend, Sharon Packer Rhoads, who was postmistress and well as  running the ranch by herself on the alternate years that the Nevada legislature was in session and most of the year Dean was in Carson City, the state capitol.

As always, I started the conversation by saying , “What’s new around Tuscarora?” 

She said, “Not much.”  Then, as an afterthought, she said, “Well, last August Dean was thrown from a horse and broke his leg pretty bad.”  She handed me the contents of my box: a stack of sale advertisements, a special hunting supplement of the Elko Daily Free Press, and a wad of papers addressed to Boxholder.   “He was out in the sagebrush nine hours before we found him.” She could tell by the look on my face that she better  tell me the story. 

She said they were gathering steers on the Wilson allotment. By midday, she and the two cowboys had brought in the strays and figured Dean would be coming along any time.


          “We didn’t know he was in trouble because his horse didn’t come back to the ranch.”  She               p        paused,  ”You know, like they do in the movies. It    just  stood by the horse trailer, up in    the          o         foothills, waiting for   a ride. “

What had happened, she said, was that Dean’s horse stumbled and pitched him into a scree slope.  His leg got wedged between two rocks, and, as the horse scrambled to get upright, it came down on Dean’s leg and broke it in two places.  This happened about nine or ten in the morning.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that somebody stopped by the ranch and said, “There’s a horse about eight miles back just standing by a trailer.”

Sharon said,   “We knew we better go look for him. I don’t know if you know that country or not.  The Wilson allotment is a stretch of land about twenty by twenty-five square miles.  We finally found him,” she said, “but it was very rocky and slow going.”

They got him back to the ranch and she headed for town in a big old  Suburban owned by a young couple living on the ranch, thinking her husband would be   more comfortable “because we could lay him out flat in the back.”

All the time Sharon was talking in a matter-of-fact way, she was occupied at the big work table where she sorts mail.  At this point she did pause, look at me, and said, “And then I got a flat tire.
         I’ve changed plenty of flat tires in plenty of vehicles, “ Sharon continued, “but I could not get that               hood open to get the jack.  I tried and tried and finally said to myself, ‘I’m just going to have to  r        drive it to Lone Mountain on the rim.’  Finally, about a mile and a half this side of Lone Mountain    s         some bow hunters came along, stopped, and changed the tire for me.”

I breathed a sigh.  She had gone the  twenty-seven  miles from the ranch to Lone Mountain.   She only had another twenty-five to the Elko General Hospital.  Imagining  poor Dean in the back of this big old ranch vehicle, I listened for the conclusion. 

Sharon continued:  “We get to the Emergency Room at Elko General and there aren’t any bone doctors.  They tell me that Dr. Wright is on maternity leave and that the other doctor won’t be in until Monday. We just ended up flying him down to Reno.  There were some more complications,” she said, clearly uninterested in turning this into anybody’s episode of General Hospital, western-style. “He has three pins in his leg, but he’s doin’ pretty good now. ”  That was the end of the story.  Sharon gave me a smile that said, “Gotta get back to work.”


          I went back  to the post office the next day, which was Saturday, to say hello to Julie Parks, who was, at that time, the part time postmistress,.  Julie was sorting mail, folding the canvas mailbags that go to  the fourteen mailboxes   of the ranches on this  particular rural route.  After we exchanged greetings I told her about hearing Sharon’s story the day before..  I shook  my head in wonder and admiration at their  toughness—no complaining, no dramatics

 Julie nodded.  “That happened on a weekday.  I think it was a Thursday.  Anyway, about 6:30 the next morning Sharon called me from Reno.  She wanted to know if I would work for her.”

“Hi Julie,” she said.  “How are you doin’?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “ How are you doing?”

“Well,” Sharon said, “I've had better days.”

I thought of Sharon's story after my conversation with Dean Rhoads and as I watched the way he grabbed the steering wheel of his pickup to hoist himself stiff-legged into his truck.

It seems to me it's a mess back in Washington right now.  Although we hear talk from Washington about"working across the aisle,"  when  compromise happens,  it's often portrayed as a defeat or a defection.


I think Harry Reid probably is proud to be a Nevadan.  When I read his official biography on the Congressional website, I was reminded of how much he has in common with Nevadans like Dean and Sharon.   I like to think that he would understand the essence of Sharon's story:  in the hard scrabble, high desert ranch life of northeastern Nevada, you toughen up; you don't complain, and true grit is not a cliche, it's a character trait you develop to survive.  You speak well of your neighbors and you are proud of what you have in common, not what separates you.




Monday, October 12, 2009

Smitty, Who Died in His Car Somewhere in Arizona

Smitty, Who Died in His Car Somewhere in Arizona

In Tuscarora, everyone has stories about characters who lived there. In Tuscarora everyone is a character. One evening last summer my friend James told me this story about a man who lived in the small stone building visible from the road as you drive into Tuscarora.

“Smitty was filthy and he was huge. He weighed at least three hundred pounds. He wasn’t educated, but sayings about life poured from him. He was one of the wisest men I have ever known,” said James.

“The stone house had no plumbing, no electricity. He used an old gas stove for cooking. The shelves on one wall of the room were filled with Duncan Hines cake mixes, at least fifty of them. Clint, who had the mail route, brought him jugs of red wine and cake mixes. Smitty baked them in 9 x 11 aluminum pans. When I went over there, even in the mornings, he offered me wine and cake.”

James smiled, unable to resist the effect of his story. Then he leaned forward. “You have to understand. He was remarkable. He was never mean-spirited. He was tolerant, accepting. I loved talking with him.”

I wanted to ask, “What were Smitty’s words of wisdom? What did he say?” However, I could tell by the way James shifted in his chair that all was not going to go well for Smitty. He couldn’t sit forever in that stone house drinking jug wine, eating cake, and saying wise things.

James continued. “One day he said he was going back East to visit his mother who was seriously ill. He did it. He got on a plane and flew back East.”

“Do you think he took a bath first?” I asked. “You know, got cleaned up?”

James thought a moment. “I doubt it,” he said.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He returned, but he wasn’t well. He was having a difficult time getting through the winters. So he took his two dogs and left, drove to Arizona, where he lived out of his car. He died in his car somewhere in Arizona.”

Monday, October 5, 2009

In the Business Office Chatting about Dying

In the Business Office Chatting about Dying

When I went into the business office to get the phone number of a potential part time instructor, I took time to visit with Betty. She handles our faculty insurance claims, among other things. She said, “I talked with Tom today. Actually, he called me twice. His voice was very weak. But he sounded sharp as a tack. He was worried about a medical bill that the insurance company hadn’t paid.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “Still taking care of business.”

“I know,” Betty said. “Anyway, I called Managing Underwriters and said, ‘Look, this guy is on his deathbed. Just pay the bill.’ Well, evidently they called him, and then he called me back to tell me it was straightened out.”

I don’t know what people are supposed to be doing with their dying breaths—contemplating mortality, reviewing their lives like Marley confronting the ghosts of Christmases past, or taking care of business, like Tom, my dear friend and colleague in the English Department.

I didn’t say any of that to Betty. What I said was, “Did you know Bill ?” Betty had finished making a copy of the applicant’s file, and we just stood leaning against the duplicating machine talking in lowered voices. It was a quiet morning. She had time to visit and so did I.

She knew exactly who I was talking about. “Yes, but not well ,” she said.

“I didn’t think I saw you at the funeral.”

“How was it?”

I could tell by her tone that she had heard about it and was interested in my version.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful...” I had already commented to my husband that when you go to somebody’s funeral you shouldn’t rate it like a movie. It’s not entertainment. “…and I think that they must have planned it together, down to every last detail. I suppose that’s one of the only advantages of dying a long slow death.” I’m pretty sure Betty could see right through my pseudo piety, especially when I said, “including the widow wearing red.”

“No!” she whispered.

“That’s what I mean about getting to plan your own funeral. Those two definitely had their own sense of style. I’ll bet that Bill said to her, ‘Now I don’t want to see you in black.’ It was a handsome coat, red wool felt with fringe on the bottom. She wore a black hat and black boots. I’ll have to say that I was a little worried about the brakes on the wagon. You know that cemetery in Willits is on a hillside. She was sitting up with the driver, holding a single white rose and she had her little black dog in her lap. Two brown mules pulled the wagon. Bill was laid out in a simple pine box. Anyway, when the driver helped her out of the wagon and before the pall bearers lifted the casket from the wagon bed, I just hoped there were good brakes and that nothing spooked those mules.” Betty didn’t say anything but she was clearly enjoying visualizing the details.

I changed the subject—sort of—by saying, “And then there’s poor Yvonne. Betty nodded in reference to the college librarian who, like Tom, is suffering the final stages of cancer. The past few weeks she has still been coming to work, pale skin and bones and quiet dignity. “Do you know what Tonia did?” I said, raising my voice a little. “ She announced to everybody that she had a get well card for Yvonne and to be sure to stop by her office to sign it. A get well card, “ I said. “Can you believe it?”

“Well Tonia doesn’t have a clue," Betty said as she handed me the copies I was waiting for, "and that’s all I have to say about that.”

The conversations around the duplicating machines, in the hallways, over coffee, they are often about death these days. That’s just the way it is.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Mini Memoir: My Dad Saddling a Horse


By the time I was five, I was riding some old ranch horse around the yard. When I was in first grade and we lived on the Seventy-One Ranch, I remember many days taking off on my own. By the time I was in sixth grade, I could saddle a horse myself. Before then, my dad would do it for me. Although he has been dead for many years, I think of my father with love, gratitude, and good memories, especially of those ranch years. One of my favorites is the memory of watching him saddle a horse for me.

I see him with the curry comb in his hand. I hear it scratch against the horse’s hide, and the slightly different sound as he combs the mane and tail. He brushes the horse’s back, reaches under the belly, softly crooning, “Whoa, boy. Easy now.” I hear his voice cautioning me not to brush the tender wedge of the horse’s withers. The horse might kick.

He throws on a blanket, releasing a whiff of horse sweat, smoothes and evens it, because another blanket will go on top, a fancier one. Somehow I know that he must smooth the blankets because a wrinkle could wear a sore on the horse’s back. Yet I don’t remember him saying this to me. Other than reminding me not to brush the withers, or, when I was very young, not to stand right behind even the gentlest horse, I don’t remember him lecturing me on how to saddle a horse. I think he knew that if he saddled a horse with care, attention, and love, then I would, too, when my time came.

He gracefully heaves the saddle onto the horse, the right stirrup hooked over the horn. He reaches up, lets down the stirrup and the cinch; sometimes the horse jumps a bit. When he reaches under the horse to grab the cinch, I think he is brave. I love the narrow leather cinch strap that he loops around and around, finally folding it through the brass buckle and giving it a firm tug.

I watch him undo the halter and buckle it around the horse’s neck, take the bridle and, with his left hand, guide it into the horse’s mouth, placing the strap around the horse’s left ear. I hear the rattling of the bit as the horse adjusts it in his mouth.

He walks the horse around the yard for a couple of minutes, maybe handing me the reins to do that job, which is to get air out of the horse’s stomach. He puts his hand under the cinch, feels the slack, and then tightens it.

He ties the reins in a knot, lifts them over the horse’s ears, and rests them on the saddle horn. The horse is still tied by the halter rope to the hitching rack.

Except when I was very young, he never helped me get on a horse. That was my job. I remember leading the horse to a rock, a hay bale, or even maneuvering the horse close enough to a corral fence so I can slide onto the saddle from the top rail. I am ready to go on my own, into blue skies and sage-covered hills of a Nevada morning. I like to think he watches me with love as I leave the yard.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Mini-Memoir: Ranch Food

Having spent much of my growing up years on ranches, I guess some would say I was deprived of fresh fruits and vegetables; however, I have such fond memories of canned food, especially canned grapefruit sections and canned kadota figs. Where was Kadota, anyway, the exotic place that produced those plump, seedy orbs in syrup?

The ranch commissary contained rows of syrupy fruits in cans: canned peaches halves and canned apricots were other favorites. I remember canned tomato soup and small cans of spinach, which my mother would dress with vinegar, bits of bacon and chopped hard boiled egg. I could easily imagine Popeye slurping canned spinach through a pipe.

I remember the DelMonte labels on canned cream of corn and canned green beans and Lipton’s canned cream of mushroom soup and cream of chicken soup that would go into casseroles with potatoes, which stood in a lumpy sack in a dark corner. Although some potatoes did come in cans, we didn't like them.

You should see the surface dumps here in Tuscarora: mostly rusted cans.

Monday, September 14, 2009

One-Page Meditations: Nature.

I am a country girl at heart and my heart is divided between two places: the basin and range country of northeastern Nevada and the Mendocino Coast of California.

The older affiliation is with the territory where I was born and raised. I have never really left it. All the years and trips going back to Elko, to my parent's small ranch on Thorpe Creek, their summer camp at Talbot Creek, both places at the base of the Ruby Mountains; and now Tuscarora and the stark beauty of the Independence Range. This is the place of my deepest sensory imprinting--the scent of sage, the surprisingly gaudy Nevada sunrises and sunsets, the sound and sting of winter wind; the feel of leather, a horse's sweaty hide, the weight of a horse's hoof in my hand; the taste of an alfalfa pellet, the nectar of Indian paintbrush, the sour, fruity taste of a wild rose hip; the bitter taste of a chokecherry before it is sweetened into jelly.

The Mendocino Coast reminds me of the birth of my children, the clearest connection with nature a woman can know; that is, until we experience dying. Here on the coast my senses are attuned to rain, fog, the deep whoosh of wind in the redwood trees; and the omnipotence of the Pacific ocean.

There is the solace of eternity in both places.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Falling Off the Wagon

Falling Off the Wagon: A Parable

You are the driver of a wagon, looking ahead, going down a road. You are also riding in the wagon, sitting on a pile of loose hay. The road is straight, curved, smooth. bumpy, wide, narrow: all the things a country road can be.

You keep falling off. You go along for a while and then you fall off. Sometimes it is because of the road, or maybe the horses shy at a rabbit, or the driver goes “gee-haw” without warning. Sometimes you fall off for good reason, sometimes for no discernable reason at all. You simply fall off the wagon.

You run to catch up, clamber back on, rearrange your body and your thoughts. You always feel good when you are safely back on the wagon, just you and the driver going down the road.

The next thing you know, you have fallen off again. You are surprised, irritated, frustrated. You have to catch up. Sometimes you panic that you won’t catch up. Sometimes you stop in the road and say, “To hell with it. I didn’t want to be on that wagon. I didn’t want to go down that road.” Then you run faster to catch up, get back on. You are desperate to get back on the wagon.

From a hillside high above the road you are a comical sight. There’s a long road and a driver and a wagon. There’s this person who keeps falling and running, climbing on, riding a while, then falling and running.

From a distance, it seems like a hard way to go down a road.

Monday, August 31, 2009

I, Too, Have a Hemingway Story


See September 25, 2012 revised version

Monday, August 24, 2009

Getting Stuck

Getting Stuck

Once, when I was fifteen, I got a tractor monumentally stuck. The summer of ’57 we moved from Elko to Deeth, which was the headquarters for the Marble Ranches. My dad let me work in the hayfields. I got to drive a buckrake. It was called a crazy buck, something rigged by the Grock Brothers, who had a garage down the highway.

The mower left long lines of hay and the buckrake would comb them up, put them in large piles, or take the hay to the haystack. It was really a great job. The meadow along the Humboldt River was fairly flat. You could lift the rake, put the tractor in third or fourth gear, and race your city slicker cousin Richard, who was also given a summer job by Dad, to the far end of the field and the next row of hay.

I got stuck by trying to take a shortcut across a slough. I should have stopped the tractor, gotten off, and inspected the swampy swale. Instead I charged ahead in third gear and sank halfway up the tires, wedging the rake in the embankment.

In the process of trying to get me out, two of the hay hands got their tractors stuck. Clay, the foreman, had to stop what he was doing, go back to the ranch and get the stock truck and tow chains, It took all afternoon to undo what it took me ten minutes to do.

You may think I caught hell for that. I didn’t. My dad wasn’t that kind of person. He knew I didn’t really know what I was doing. He probably felt responsible for sending me out there in the first place. The ranch hands didn’t care. They got paid the same whether they were haying or hauling the boss’s daughter out of a ditch. I stopped the operation for an afternoon. I’m sure the men had a good chuckle at supper that night.

So—what do I know about getting stuck? I didn’t understand what I was doing. I wasn’t paying attention to the lay of the land or to the piece of equipment I was operating. I was a girl playing at a man’s job. That’s the truth of it. But there’s another truth that has to do with being a writer.

I got stuck in a rut and cause a fair amount of trouble one July afternoon because I didn’t take the job or myself seriously. I was the boss’ daughter turned loose on a buckrake. “It’ll give her something to do this summer. It’ll be good for her,” they probably said. It wouldn’t have been feminine if I learned too much, if I really thought about the consequences of driving a tractor across that ditch. I also understand that my action could also be interpreted as youthful carelessness—regardless of gender.

But in finding some connection, I’d say it’s this: I didn’t believe that I should—and could-- learn the trade.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Anne Lamott and the Road to Paradise--or Not

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Anne Lamott and the Road to Paradise—or Not

Dear Virginia,

I said I would tell you the story of my tribulation, trying to get to Tuscarora at the same time I was listening to Anne Lamott reading Plan B—Further Thoughts on Faith. Because we both love Anne Lamott and are curious about her wonderful combination of craziness and faith, I took the time to record my misadventure.

Lamott herself was the reader, so it was like taking a road trip with a non-stop talker, someone so needy and neurotic and funny that I could not bring myself to eject her from the cd player. The consequence was that I made some stupid, unthinking decisions, practically ruined my new Suburu, and caused my husband go a little berserk.

Here’s what happened.

This was last Memorial Day weekend. The Tuscarora Artists were holding an Open Studio. It was a big deal, lots of advertising, even a Nevada Arts Council promotional grant. Joan and I had worked on a second series of the poetry cards, “Six Poems from Tuscarora.” She and Stan were already there, staying at the little summer place we’ve owned for years. I planned to meet them for the open studio and then stay on for a week or so.

I was filled with anticipation and loaded the car accordingly. Aside from clothes, books, writing materials and art supplies, there was a box containing six bottles of Roederer champagne in silver and gold gift wrap, a wedding present to be delivered to a family friend in Elko.

Friday I stayed at my son’s house in Carson City. I got an early start and was positive I would be in Tuscarora by noon. I bought the audio version of Plan B a month before and saved it for my road trip. Once I turned off Highway 395 and on to Interstate 80, I inserted the first disk.

Why are her words so captivating? For women roughly her age, like you and me, it’s because we share many of her issues. Also, we identify with her neediness—her need to think and write about herself, not because she is self-centered in an ordinary sense. It’s her burst of self-consciousness and uncertainty that we find both familiar and endearing. Remember when she isn’t even sure if her stuff is good enough for the dump?

Only when I passed Winnemucca and noticed that Golconda was ten miles away did I realize that I had to think about something besides Anne Lamott, her son, George Bush, and/or Jesus. I had a choice to make: should I turn off at Golconda and take the unimproved Midas road? Should I stay on 80 all the way to Elko, and then drive the fifty-two miles to Tuscarora, paved except the last seven miles of well-maintained county road?

I pulled into a rest stop a few miles before the Golconda exit. The high desert air was invigorating; the blue sky pure; and the mountains seemed familiar in a severe, primordial way. Actually, this particular range has always scared me a little. I didn’t even know its name.

Taking the Midas Road was the more adventurous choice, and I ignored the voice that sounded like a tiny husband sitting on my shoulder saying, “You’ll get a flat tire if you take the Midas road. Don’t do it.”

It’s not that I stood there thinking, “What would Anne Lamott do?” or, for that matter, “What would Jesus do?” although I was becoming a tiny bit peevish that I didn’t have a personal savior to help me through my worrisome days. I inhaled the Nevada air and found my inner ranch woman who said, “What the hell. Take the Midas road.”

I buckled myself back in the driver’s seat, inserted disk three and headed for the hills. You are probably guessing that I took the wrong road. Yep. All the time I thought I was on the Midas road to Tuscarora, I was on the Eden Valley road to Paradise. Here’s how it happened.

I had a cd going. I can’t exactly remember what Anne’s issue was, but I know I felt it would be rude of me not to give her my full attention. Also, I was talking on my cell phone with Joan. She was impatient, waiting for me to get to Tuscarora. There was a bus load of people from Reno who were on a Nevada arts tour. “A bus load” she said. “in Tuscarora!” Tuscarora has a year-round population of thirteen and ordinarily the only things you can buy are stamps at the post office.

“I’m coming,” I said. “I’m taking the Midas road. It’s quicker.” At the very moment I was talking with Joan and listening to Anne Lamott, I was turning onto a gravel road running parallel to the no-name mountains. Straight road, stark mountains. I know where I’ m going and I know who’s going with me, don’t I, Anne?

I must have clipped along for at least thirty miles, glancing at the mountains every now and then because there was something wrong about them, and looking for a sign. Yes, God and Jesus play such a huge part in Anne Lamott’s life that after the second disk, “sign” was starting to have a double meaning for me, too.

I could easily have gone the forty-four miles to Paradise Valley, Nevada without passing a soul on the road. Fortunately, I saw the dusty rooster tail of an oncoming pickup. I stopped, rolled down the window, and waved my arm. “Hi!” I said. “I think I’m on the Midas road. I’m tryin’ to get to Tuscarora. Am I on the right road?”

The driver, a ranch hand or a miner, gave me a kind look. “Nope. This is the road to Paradise. The Midas road is on the other side of the mountain.” His passenger looked straight ahead, probably suppressing a smirk.

The driver told me what I had to do, but I knew anyway. Turn around and eat his dust all the way back to Golconda, which I did. By this time I was well into the third cd. I may have turned her down, but I never turned her off. She needed me. She was on a cruise, obsessing about her body in a bathing suit.

When I got to Golconda, it was Groundhog Day, the movie. I had a choice to make: get back on interstate 80. Two hours to Elko and an hour to Tuscarora. Or take the Midas turnoff. I could clearly see the sign I had missed before: Midas 34 miles. My car was dusty; the windshield bug-specked. Tuscarora seemed closer, now that the mountains were on the appropriate side of my car. Yep. I took the road less traveled and regretted it.

Although I was pretty sure I was on the right road and there were signs pointing the way, my inner ranch woman had developed Lamottian insecurities. The signs became less frequent and weren’t confidence builders—little US Forest Service markers pointing to obscure destinations with stupid names like “Toe Jam Creek.” I was getting tense, but still listening to Anne Lamott.

However, I was getting weary of her fixation on George-the-devil-incarnate- Bush. I started talking back to my cd player. Then the next thing I knew I was laughing out loud as she described shades of feeling, from unconditional love to murderous rage, toward her teenage son. It’s the same honest study of the variety of parental responses that she so brilliantly describes in Operating Instructions, the first book of hers I read years ago. Okay, I tell myself. Stick it out with Anne. Trust you’re on the right road. You’ll get there.

Suddenly I see Willow Creek reservoir. Like an Old Testament wanderer in the desert, I see water. The oasis appears. It’s a miracle! Actually, it’s like that. You drive for about forty miles on a gravel road through a valley that’s not called “Paradise” adjacent to intimidating, no-name mountains, which are now on your left, as they should be, and then you move through an eternity of undulating sage-covered hills. The road becomes narrow, rutted, and curved. You can’t get too distracted because an idiot in a 4x4 truck or a hapless idiot like yourself in a station wagon could be barreling around the next curve and you will die in a head-on crash in the middle of nowhere. In the meantime, Anne Lamott is having a terrible time trying to teach Sunday school.

The end is near. I know where I am. I know where I’m going. I’m glad the road is rutted. It’s always rutted on the other side of the Willow Creek reservoir. Everybody knows that. I’m even excited about the swathes of Mormon crickets that now make the road crawl at various intervals. I imagine myself being able to tell Milt, our neighbor in Tuscarora, “Saw the crickets just the other side of Willow Creek.”

By now, I have had it with Anne Lamott. Had it! Why is she dumping one me? I have cellulite, too, and problems of my own. She has gone from being my best friend to another one of those people in my life who never listens.

Then I hear something—a pop and a hiss. “Fuck!” Anne Lamott also says fuck when she is anxious or frustrated. Jesus doesn’t seem to mind. I stop the car. Fortunately, I am not in a Mormon cricket zone at that moment. My first thought was that the rough road had caused one of the bottles of champagne to explode. I check the box in the back seat. Nope. I get out and walk around the car. I even get on my hands and knees and look under the car. Nothing was hanging loose. No oil pan in the dirt. I want to ask Anne Lamott if 2006 Suburus have oil pans, but, no, the car door is open and she’s still going on about herself.

Then it’s over. The end of the fifth cd. The car is quiet. My steering seems unusually difficult, but the ruts are deep. I see a familiar ranch and it is on the correct side of the road. I know I’m only five miles from Tuscarora, and I’m driving like the hounds of hell are chasing me.

It’s four in the afternoon. The first open studio day is done. The bus has taken the art-loving tourists back to the Red Lion Casino in Elko. As I pull up, I see Joan and Stan sitting on lawn chairs drinking gin and tonics. I can tell they’re glad to see me. They don’t even complain about the wave of dust I create when I pull into the yard. Stan raises his glass, “Ya want one?” and then points with his drink to my left front tire, “Flat tire.”

I realize that I have been riding the rim for the last ten or fifteen miles. Okay. This shouldn’t be a big deal. I got a flat on the Midas road. So, I didn’t listen to the tiny husband on my shoulder who now seems like a not-so-jolly green giant standing with his arms crossed back in California really pissed because everybody knows about these new AWD cars and you don’t get one flat tire you have to replace all four and you never, ever drive on a flat because that throws the finely calibrated steering mechanism out of whack and you might as well drive the son-of-a-bitch into the Willow Creek reservoir and go buy a new car.

Here’s how the story ends. I didn’t ruin the car. I did have to buy a new set of tires. The rest of the weekend was really fun. I did not have the religious conversion I was hoping for, in spite of all the signs. You know, headed for Paradise with Anne Lamott and then finding out you’re on the wrong road.

Love,

Nancy

Friday, August 14, 2009

If Grace Paley Wrote the Story of My Life

This is the story of one of the most important parts of my life, giving up a baby for adoption and then being reunited with her in adulthood. When I sat down to write, I found that I was channeling Grace Paley, which was okay with me. I love Grace Paley.


If Grace Paley Wrote the Story of My Life

It is the story of a young woman involved in the business of being on her own, even though her parents regularly send her money, and she mostly lives in her mind, thinking about what could be, what should be, what it is “to be or even not to be.” It is 1964, Sartre and Heidegger are around, and she is that kind of young woman.

She spends much of her time with a young man who also lives in his mind, plays the piano almost as well as Horowitz, and excels at math. Aside from reading the existential philosophers as well as Nabokov and Kant, the young man concentrates on his bad dreams, of which he has many. This goes on for about a year, during which time they get married because the concept of “living together” had not been perfected yet. Nor had access to birth control pills, for that matter, and one day the young woman discovers she is pregnant.

To some extent, this brings her to her senses. The young woman realizes that the young man’s bad dreams, while compelling, are his. She also realizes more clearly than she has ever realized anything in her entire life that this is not a suitable atmosphere in which to bring a baby.

When she considers the alternatives, none seem satisfactory. If she takes this baby home to her mother and father, she also becomes dependent, just at a point when she is in the business of becoming independent. Furthermore, she realizes that it is 1964, and that the baby would come with a heavy wrapping of unhappiness, obligation, and shame. She thinks her parents would be up to it, because they are not the turn-the-picture-to-the-wall types, but, frankly, on her own life’s journey, it seems like going backwards.

The young man feels that his house, while nicely furnished, is a terrible place for babies, and if she needs proof, look at him and his bad dreams. She thinks that it is best for the self within herself to have a chance to create itself anew, without, as they say these days, all that heavy baggage.

“The right thing to do is to give this baby up for adoption,” said this voice within her that grew stronger every day. It was a lonely voice, but it was hers. She felt like someone whose mind and body were in the real world making tough decisions.

Alas, after sending the baby out into the world on a wing and a prayer, being quite relieved that the young man decided to take his bad dreams elsewhere, she went back to being dependent upon her parents. Somewhat afraid of facing any more ordeals, she fell back into a family system and a cultural system that said, “You’re basically a good girl. Now settle down with a bone fide husband, have a couple of kids, and be grateful that you come from a nice family.”

She did all that. This time she chose a young man who not only had his own bad dreams-- which she was beginning to think that everyone had at least a few—but also wore plaid wool shirts, gave her a pair of sturdy hiking boots, which she took to mean that he wanted her to stand on her own two feet, and he was her soul mate.

As a matter of fact, he came right home from the office the day she called him and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but you know that baby I had thirty years ago? Well she just tapped me on the shoulder—so to speak—and said, “Hello there. Remember me? In case you were wondering, I arrived safely in Carson City, Nevada back in 1964, was welcomed by open arms. The genes worked well, by the way. These people, my mom and dad, have loved me dearly up to and including this very day.” Furthermore, the baby married her high school sweetheart and gave birth to the most adorable children in town, if not the seven western states.

The baby said that she had always been curious about the womb from which she entered forth and the young woman who owned it, even a little curious about the sperm who dated the egg, or the prick with the dick. (She had already been doing some asking around town and not come up with a favorable report on the paternal side.)

When the young woman heard all this, she was no longer a young woman. She was fifty-four and probably about as grown-up as she was going to be. The joy at this good news was so overwhelming that she almost had a religious conversion. She kept saying, “ Grace abounds,” and “Let God be the judge,” because those sayings, even though they were not on her refrigerator, seemed to express how she felt about this marvelous news. After all, the baby was having a good life, whether the not-so-young woman knew it or not; and, in spite of the small adult solitary voice that had told her those many years ago, “This is the right thing to do and you know it,” she had worried that she had done the wrong thing. In fact, she had spent a portion of every adult day of her life feeling bad about herself in general and judging herself harshly about this incident in particular. It came to about 10,950 hours.

Only two years previously had she been able to tell her children, then thirteen and seventeen, that she had given up a baby for adoption. This had been the result of working with a therapist who seemed to know her business and said, “It’s always good to be honest; what’s life without a few messes; and statistics show that when adopted babies get to be about thirty, they often start looking for their womb and its owner.” She was right on all counts.

The fifty-four-year-old-not-so-young woman felt great relief; her husband was happy for her. Her kids, who loved her but were rather shocked to find that their mother was a grandmother and they weren’t even dating, said, “So what other surprises do you have for us?”

“No more surprises,” she said.

Now the past was in the past, grace abounded, God was in his heavens being the judge, and the not-so-young-woman realized that what was ahead of her and the baby was the future, which included three very cute combinations from the gene vat who didn’t know what to call her and she didn’t know what to call them. “This is going to be interesting,” she thought and was glad that the world had lightened up a bit since 1964.

She and the baby started writing letters and talking on the telephone and everything was going along pretty well except I forgot to mention that the not-so-young woman had a mother who certainly deserves a story of her own, if not an entire prime time mini-series. When the not-so-young woman told her mother about the baby’s appearance out of the clear blue sky and the happy story she had to tell, she knew her mother would be filled with gratitude and joy She was.

The not-so-young woman had not talked too much about the amazing moment of meeting the baby, taking the picture albums to the restaurant and saying, “This is me as a baby. This is me on a horse. This is my mother. This is my father.”

And the baby going, “Wow.”

Basically, the not-so-young woman told her mother that the baby turned out nicely, was of the happy, curious type, whether due to genetics or upbringing. She also told her mother that she had reported to the baby, “There’s some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that there’s not much left in the relative department. The good news is that you have a biological grandmother up in Elko who is hot stuff in the mother slash/grandmother category and who would welcome you with open arms, I’m sure of it, and, by the way, she will want to know what size clothes the kids wear and if anybody needs her to knit a hat.”

Sure enough, just as the not-so-young woman had predicted, the biological grandmother met them at the door with open arms, took them on a picnic and out to dinner, got the kids’ sizes, fell in love with the whole adorable package, and quickly observed that the little girl really could use a hat.

What happened for the next year made the not-so-young woman so mad she couldn’t see straight. At the same time she said to herself, “I could have told myself so,” and “So, what’s wrong that the baby should have one of those biological grandmothers with open arms who knits, gets out picture albums, tells stories first and from her point of view when the baby asks, “So what was the young woman with the womb from which I emerged like when she was a teenager? Did she smoke cigarettes and drive up and down the main drag as I’ve heard they did in those days?”

The not-so-young woman was only guessing at these conversations because she was, in fact, an English teacher grading papers in northern California. But she knew a few things about the biological grandmother, having emerged from the above-mention’s womb and been quite familiar with the owner for over fifty years. For example, she knew that the biological grandmother would take this new title very seriously. If there were to be a contest for newly discovered biological grandmothers, she would be in the running.

Well, the not-so-young woman out in California grading papers began resenting the biological grandmother’s one hundred percent absorption in her new role, which included being the Sole Remaining Biological Grandmother, Keeper of the Historical Record, Visiting Dignitary to Represent Our Side of the Family, and the One Who Ought to Take Charge because the not-so-young woman was busy grading papers and, in her opinion, not so great in the take-charge department.

As a matter of fact, the not-so-young-woman felt like chopped liver. Even though she was having a nice correspondence and pleasant phone calls with the baby, and had put over ten thousand hours of guilt and remorse into this project, the biological grandmother was having all the fun. She was happy for the baby who had, indeed, discovered that the biological grandmother was hot stuff, but she was not happy that the biological grandmother was getting such a kick out of the whole thing. She felt small and mean-spirited, but she couldn’t help it.

The not-so-young woman was also annoyed and hurt that the biological grandmother didn’t get the Big Picture—that this was her story and it was a great story, somewhat like Days of Our Lives, where a young woman who Does the Right Thing is at last re-united with her baby. In the Days of Our Lives version, the biological grandmother stays in her rocker and says, “This is not my story and Fred wouldn’t like it.” (Fred, being her deceased husband who would have been filled with gratitude and joy that the baby had arrived safely in Carson City and was having a good life, but not wanted too much to do with the whole thing. He didn’t like big dramatic stories about wombs, especially his daughters’.) But Fred was deceased, and, in this instance, it was a good thing. No sense in making him uncomfortable or needing to remind he that, in some cases, he could have used an attitude adjustment.

So, as you can see, the daughter was torn. On one hand, here was this robust biological granny going to town with the situation, and this go-getter baby grinning from ear-to-ear. On the other hand, the not-so-young woman felt like someone had revised the script, given her a walk-on part, and then sent her back to California to grade papers.

The situation worsened. The biological grandmother, who had a hearing problem and had bought a hearing aid but inadvertently sat on it, could see that the not-so-young woman was upset but she couldn’t hear her. She simply responded with what she knew was true even if it wasn’t written on a refrigerator magnet. “I’m too old to change” and “Your father and I always loved you” and “We did the best we could.” The biological grandmother went about her business, but with a heavy heart and the not-so-young woman did likewise.

Finally, one day the not-so-young woman said some mean-but-having-a-grain-of-truth things to her mother in a voice so loud it got her attention. She went into the bedroom and put on her other hearing aid (she always had two of everything) and, although she wasn’t thrilled about the prospect, sat down and said, “What do you want me to do, unknit the knitting?”

“No,” said her daughter, “just listen to my story.”