Author: melgrieves

The year I turned 14 seemed like every other boring year in small town Michigan, except for three things:

First, I finally made the official rank of puberty and started having periods. My sister Robin, six years older and wiser than I, had told me over and over, “Stop worrying, You’re just a late bloomer.” But I had worried anyway.

Second, Jackie Hampton moved to town and immediately I had a new best friend. Well, it wasn’t like I already had a best friend. I didn’t. But now I did. Jackie and I bonded over our tomboy status, opting to play sports rather than trade lipsticks and dance to the Beatles, like the rest of the eighth grade girls.

And third, my sister’s softball coach, as a favor to her, decided to let Jackie and me join the team, even though we were under age. The powers that be in the women’s fast pitch league declared you were not a woman until you turned 14. Jackie would qualify during the summer, but my birthday wasn’t until October. We didn’t expect to play, since all the women on this team were already out of high school, had played together for years, and were really good. You could say that Jackie and I were more like team mascots. Definitely bench warmers. But it would be cool to hang out with my sister and her friends, a chance leapfrog to maturity. It was going to be a great summer.

“I want to play center field,” said Jackie. Playing with the Sapphires was all we had talked about for two weeks while walking to and from school.

I considered Jackie’s long strides and strong arm. “You’ll make a great fielder,” I told her. I thought about my own skills. Great hitter, slow runner. “Not sure where Coach will put me. Wish I could just be a hitter and not have to take the field.”

Jackie snorted. She did that a lot. I was never sure if it was because of that long beak of hers, or just a bad habit. “Yeah, that’d be a dream job for you, Sandy. Mickey Mantle could play forever if all he had to do was swing a bat.”

We crossed Cedar Street and headed down the hill. This was the last time we’d take this route, moving on to high school next fall. Jackie slowed her pace, knowing hills could mean trouble for my weird legs. I’d learned from eavesdropping on my parents that my warped shins and pigeon-toed stance could have been corrected early on, but they hadn’t had the money. So I was stuck with being surprisingly slow for a wiry, otherwise-athletic kid. And of course, I got my share of cruel jokes from other kids about it. Jackie never mentioned it, she just accepted and accommodated me. That’s what best friends do.

School was dismissed early, so we headed to my house for our own version of batting practice, and to wait for Robin to pick us up and drive us to our first real practice with the team. Like Robin, most of the girls worked at local businesses now that they were beyond high school. Then there was Ancient Anna. Almost 40, but wow could she pitch. Jackie and I, the rookies, were the only ones with free time all summer long.

We plunked down at the kitchen table and I handed Jackie yesterday’s Free Press and a roll of black electrical tape. “We need some new practice balls. Get busy.” I showed her my dad’s method for making a ball out of tightly wadded newspaper wrapped with tape. I’d grown up learning to hit with these baseball stand-ins. The beauty was they didn’t go far—or break windows—no matter how hard you hit them, and they were smaller than a regulation softball, so when you came up against the real thing, it appeared huge and unmissable floating up to the plate. I was looking forward to facing Anna at practice and seeing if I could get a hit off her. Seeing her fastball from the batter’s box would be a whole different experience than watching it from the bleachers.

We hit tape balls for a while, grabbed a snack and planted ourselves on the front porch to wait for Robin. When her car pulled into the driveway, her boyfriend Jerry—not my favorite person—was driving and Robin sat in the passenger’s seat.

“Hop in the back,” she told us. “We’re late.”

I practically worshipped my sister for her athletic skills and popularity, but her choice in boyfriends disappointed me. I sensed tension between the two in the front, so Jackie and I settled into watching the scenery whiz by. The league ranged far, with games often taking place halfway across the state. Our team was one of the two based in Saginaw, and that’s where we headed for practice.

Everyone was involved in fielding practice when we arrived. The coach, a middle-aged man with a habit of speaking without thinking, hit fly balls to the outfielders, while Anna smacked grounders at the infielders. Coach pointed for Jackie and me to take positions in the outfield, and Robin trotted to her third base spot. As I expected, Jackie shined in the outfield, not only chasing down high fly balls, but also firing them back, right on the money, all the way to home plate. I did not fare so well. I was too slow to do much chasing, and while my arm was quick and strong for infield distances, I wasn’t good enough from the outfield to nail a runner at home. Coach moved me to the infield, where I did better, but not great. Shifting quickly to the left or right to gobble up a grounder proved difficult. If I got there in time, there was still a 50-50 chance the ball would skip between my bowed legs.

I had more confidence when we got to batting practice. Coach ran it like a scrimmage, with batters running the bases if they got a hit, and other players rotating around the field. Jackie and I had to wait until the rest of the team had their time at bat. I didn’t mind. I knew we’d have to get used to being bench warmers. I just hoped we’d get a few chances over the summer to play in a real game. Finally, Jackie was up. Anna’s offerings flew past her and reached the catcher’s glove before Jackie got her bat off her shoulder.  Coach told Anna to slow it down, which she did, and Jackie finally managed a few pop ups and foul balls.

Jackie shook her head as she passed me on her way back to the bench. “Holy cow! She’s amazing. Good luck, Sandy.”

It took me a few pitches to adjust to Anna’s speed, and it was indeed the fastest stuff I’d ever seen. Faster than Dad could throw a tape ball overhand, that’s for sure. Anna whipped her arm around in a calculated motion, releasing the ball just as it nicked her thigh. My first swing was so late, even I laughed. On the second swing I got a piece of it, but it went foul. On my third swing, I smashed it and took off running. By the time the fielder retrieved the ball and got it to Robin, I was grinning at her from third base. My first hit off Anna: a stand-up triple.

Coach clapped me on the back. “Hey Robin, look what your little sis just did. If we had a fence on this field, that woulda been outta here.”

I was grateful, and surprised, that for once he didn’t say what I was sure he and everyone else was thinking, that if I could run better I would have had a home run. Still, I was giddy over my success, and it lasted the rest of the night.

We all went to Howie’s Diner after each practice and home game, where the specialty was Coney Island hot dogs and shoestring fries. There were two big adjacent booths in the back and we took them over, sliding across the leather benches until everyone packed in. Here was where Jackie and I really got to know our teammates as the summer went on. I was shy and took it all in quietly, but Jackie joined right in with the teasing and banter. Coach said that Jackie and I were a reversed version of the most popular pair of pals on the team. Honey and Babe joined my sister as regulars in the infield, Honey at shortstop and Babe at second base. Honey was short and wiry, like me. Babe was tall and gangly, like Jackie. They were inseparable. But where Honey was the goofy-looking, outgoing joker of the pair and Babe was the quiet, wide-eyed blonde with the stunning cheekbones, Coach noted that personality-wise, Jackie was more like Honey and that I was the shy, pretty one, like Babe. I blushed at that.

He winked at Jackie. “No offense meant by that.”

“None taken,” Jackie shot back. “I think Sandy’s gorgeous, too. And I can’t help it if I inherited my dad’s nose. But it will come in handy for double-checking your booger bunt sign.”

Coach had a series of signals for batters. When he fingered his nose, that meant the hitter was supposed to bunt. Jackie had just tagged that particular sign, rather aptly, I thought. The two booths shook with giggles. Jackie may not have hit a triple, but she was a hit with the team in every other way.

About that time, a scowling Jerry showed up and stood near the door until Robin slid out of the booth to join him, asking Honey and Babe to drop “the rookies” off at home. I would never understand what my sister saw in that guy, and we were glad to stay longer at the restaurant and ride home with a happier duo, even if it was a tight fit for Jackie’s knees when we climbed into the back seat of Honey’s Mustang.

It was a warm, clear night and we rode with the windows open, the wind and the radio making enough noise that talking just didn’t seem the right thing to do. All my life I had loved riding in the back seat with my parents carrying on muted front seat conversations, so that if I wanted I could make out what they were saying, or turn it into white noise as I chose, as if they were the voices on the radio and I controlled of the volume knob. Riding in Honey’s Mustang was even better. Especially on such a sweet-smelling, star-filled summer night.

A full moon followed us, high in the sky. Bright white, bouncing over tree tops like a balloon tethered to the Mustang’s antenna. Dad called the June moon a Strawberry Moon. It meant we could expect to see strawberries soon in the roadside produce stands, farmers setting out their crops on tables at the end of their driveways, leaving a jar for folks to pay on the honor system. Strawberries were my favorite, the first fruit of the summer, harbingers of carefree days and stay-up-late nights. This Strawberry Moon was right on time. I thought of the summer ahead and could almost taste the freedoms that entering womanhood with my softball sisters would bring.

It turned out to be the winningest season the team had ever had. Coach was ecstatic and seemed to be taking games more seriously in August than he did in June. However, he did let Jackie play in a real game when her birthday came at the end of the month. She didn’t get a hit, but threw out a girl trying to stretch a single into a double, and for that received whoops and hugs from her teammates. Over the summer, we ate countless Coney dogs at Howie’s, laughed until we nearly puked them up, and criss-crossed most of the bottom half of the Michigan mitten. Robin joined us at Howie’s more often towards the end of the season and we saw less of Jerry, but Jackie and I still hooked a ride with Honey and Babe in the Mustang whenever we could.

Ancient Anna approached me about two things: babysitting for her six-year-old twins after the season ended, and learning to pitch. I’d gotten to know her husband and freckle-faced boys since they often watched her play from the bleachers behind my bench-warming spot. They were good kids, and I figured I could use the $2 an hour. But about the pitching, I wasn’t so sure.

Anna sat beside me on the bench and draped an arm over my shoulders. “Think about it. You get to bat and, on defense, you rarely have to leave the mound except to pick up a bunt or cover first or home. In those situations, there’s usually plenty of time to get there. And if you don’t…” She shrugged. “Nobody blames you because, hey, you’re the pitcher. Pitchers are heroes in other ways.”

I felt okay about Anna addressing my leg issue this way. She was a good mom, often to the whole team.

“Besides,” she added. “I think you’d be great. You already understand hitting, and that’s half the battle.”

I promised to think about it, flattered that Anna took an interest in me. Jackie had her mentors, too. Honey and Babe were determined to make a hitter out of her, spending extra practice time improving her technique. By the tournament time in September, she was connecting with the ball much more often.

The state tournament was a big deal for everyone, especially Coach. As we loaded cars for the Friday night trek to Traverse City, he repeated to all of us, “I think we can win it this year, ladies. I think we can win it.”  Full of hope, we piled into vehicles and headed northwest. Jackie and I had permission to miss school on Monday, and rode with Robin, who drove solo without Jerry. Hallelujah. Margo, our alternate pitcher, rode with us, and we would all share a room for two nights at the Bayside Motel. Which wasn’t exactly on the bay, but across the highway from the fair grounds, where an amusement park company had set up rides and game booths for a fall festival.

Our first game was at ten o’clock Saturday morning. Honey and Babe complained loudest about getting up early to play ball, but that was probably because they’d gone out drinking when they’d arrived the night before. “Not smart,” I said to Jackie. “Wish I could have gone,” she replied. We did feel more left out in Traverse City than during the regular season. For one thing, we had no hope of either of us actually playing, though we were still excited to be there and be part of the team. The stadium was huge, compared to the fields we were used to. There was a real dugout and a wall around the playing field, with real stands behind it. And great lighting. If we won the first game, we’d be playing that night, too. If we won that game, we’d get Sunday morning off and be in the final game Sunday night.

Anna pitched the first game against a team from Cheboygan. They had some talented hitters, so it was good planning by Coach. Mostly, he wanted her to be able to rest for the final game, hoping Margo would get us through the Saturday night game. We won the morning game, but not without some drama.

Robin was first at bat in the top of the seventh and struck out, rare for her. Since we were a few runs ahead, I wondered if she was just trying to get the game over with. Then suddenly she ran for the dugout and puked into an empty Coke cup. Showing her great mom instinct, Anna swarmed to Robin’s side and held her forehead while she vomited some more, just like Mom used to do when we were little. Then she walked Robin out to the parking lot. I was concerned, but wanting to give my sister her space, I followed them, far enough back that they didn’t notice me, but close enough that I could hear what they were saying. My old eavesdropping habit had taught me how to keep quiet and listen. But when I heard the word “pregnant,” I couldn’t help gasping.

Robin whirled around and narrowed her eyes at me.  “Don’t you dare tell Mom and Dad!” Then she cried into Anna’s shoulder.

Anna jerked her chin toward the dug out door. “Go tell Coach to have Margo pitch the last three outs.” When I didn’t move right away she added, “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”

Margo did her job and the game was over quickly. Some of the team stayed to watch other games. Honey and Babe invited Jackie and me to go shopping with them in the village, and we went, but my heart wasn’t in it. As the three of them explored one tourist trap after another, I hung back brooding, never giving an explanation whenever one of them asked what was wrong. Sometimes I can be so quiet it unnerves other people, most often when I’m concentrating on my thoughts. And I had scads of thoughts about Robin right then. I’d grown up with her being an important part of my daily life, yet sometimes she seemed like a stranger. We ate lunch and stopped back by the motel for a rest before returning to the stadium for our next game. The team from Jackson had lost their two best hitters to injuries, so Margo had an easy time on the mound and the game was over in record time. Most of the team headed for the fair grounds afterward to celebrate, but I just didn’t feel up to it and went back to our room where I could sulk in peace. I was sitting on the bed watching tv, rubbing oil into my new glove, when Robin came in and flopped on the other bed.

After several awkward minutes she asked, “Why did you get a new glove right before tournament? You should do that afterwards so you have the winter to break it in.”

I shrugged. “It’s not like I’ll get a chance to play here anyway.” I was worried about her. I was mad at her. I was ashamed of her. All at once. And I didn’t know how to say any of it. Instead I asked, “Are you and Jerry going to get married now?”

She sighed and lay back on the pillows. “I’m weighing my options.”

“Options? How many options can there be, Robin?”

She gave me a quizzical look. “How old are you now, kid sister?”

“Okay, okay. I’m not totally naive. You can get married or go away, have the baby and put it up for adoption. Either way you’re going to have to tell Mom and Dad.”

She turned her face to the ceiling and I watched tears slowly glide down her cheek and into her ear. “Jerry knows a guy who knows this doctor…”

I didn’t know much about abortion, but I’d heard enough to be scared. I stood and slammed my glove to the floor. “You can’t be thinking of that, Robin. It’s illegal. And dangerous. Girls die…”

 “I don’t want a baby, Sandy. I didn’t even want to do it with him. But he said he would break up with me and he promised to use protection. Finally I couldn’t say no anymore. Don’t ever let anybody do that to you, Sandy. Just don’t.”

All I could do was shake my head, not so much to say “No, I never will,” but more in disbelief at my sister’s confession.

 “And now he’s already dating someone else anyway and I’m in this mess.” She cried hard now.

I knew I should have gone over to her and comforted her somehow, but all I could say was, “How could you be so stupid?” Then I left to go find Jackie. Suddenly I felt like riding a different kind of roller coaster.

That’s right where I found her. She and several other girls stood in line to ride “The Big Dipper,” yukking it up and making a lot of noise. From the way she danced and clapped, I gathered Jackie was glad to see me. “Oh cool,” she said. “I didn’t want to ride with anyone else.”

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

Jackie giggled. “No. Honey and Babe had a couple beers, but they wouldn’t give me any. Said I may be woman enough to play softball, but not old enough to drink.”

“Glad they have some sense between them.” But I wasn’t sure I believed what she said.

Jackie snorted, like she was prone to do, and the rest of the team snorted back at her in unison. Then they all cracked up, still laughing as we climbed into cars and belted ourselves in.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jackie asked me. “You seem mad about something.”

“I guess I am. But I can’t talk about it. I just never want anything to do with boys.”

The car jolted forward and we inched up the first rise, clink-clink-clink.

Jackie grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. I wasn’t sure with all the noise, but I thought she said “Glad to hear it.” Then she screamed “HANG ON!” as we crested and started downhill.

It wasn’t the wildest coaster I’d ever ridden, but it was thrilling enough to take my mind off things. It started out easy, then gradually added quick turns that slammed us from one side of the car to the other. I was glad we didn’t have a third person in there with us. The way I was feeling, the bumps and jerks were good therapy. On the slow pull up the last rise I turned and looked behind us, taking in the sights, town lights sparkling on Grand Traverse Bay. I began to breathe easier. Then my gaze fell on Honey and Babe in the last car. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Honey leaned up and in, brushed Babe’s bangs back, and kissed her. On the mouth. Then nuzzled her neck before wrapping her arm around Babe’s shoulders and settling back down into her seat.

I flipped around to face forward again, more shocked than I’d been by Robin’s outpour. This is just too much, I thought. Too much to take in. Too much to deal with. I became aware of Jackie still squeezing my hand and wondered if she knew about Babe and Honey. I wondered what she meant about being glad I didn’t want anything to do with boys.  I pulled my hand away and we looked at each other for second. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, what she knew. I didn’t even know what I thought.

The car began falling, rattling down the steepest run of all, and I shot my arms up over my head and screamed and screamed, until we rolled to a stop where we had begun just minutes ago. Then I didn’t say much else the rest of the night.

The next morning we were all supposed to go to brunch together. Robin decided to stay in bed, said she needed more sleep. Anna and I knew the real reason was morning sickness. Coach told us how proud he was of the team and warned us not to eat or drink too much before the final game. He looked at Honey and added, “And no booze!” The game was scheduled for six o’clock and he wanted every one of us ready to play. Jackie went with some of the other girls into the village to kill time. I went back to our room to check on Robin. Even though I wasn’t talking to her, I still wanted to stay close. We spent an hour or so watching television, artfully avoiding the elephant in the room, and I followed along when she said she was going to the stadium to watch the runners up game. We sat with Coach and Anna.

“You look like hell,” Coach said to Robin. “What’s the matter?  You okay to play?” Robin didn’t look at him, but said she was fine, not to worry.

Honey and Babe didn’t show up until we’d taken the field for practice, and it was obvious they’d ignored Coach’s no-booze order. I gave the guy credit. Even with as much as he wanted to win the tournament, he benched both of them. He still had enough leeway on the roster to move girls around and sub others in without having to put me in the game, but Jackie was assigned to right field. We would be hurting, though, without Honey and Babe on offense.

It was a close game all the way. We traded the lead nearly every inning. Anna pitched her best, but the other team was full of great hitters, better than we’d seen all season. We would be up last, so at least we held that advantage.

We were tied 5-5 as the sixth inning got under way. Then two up, two down. It looked like an easy inning. The next batter got a solid hit to right field. It sailed over Jackie’s head, but she retrieved it quickly and fired it to Robin at third base with just one hop. I had to admit, she really was amazing. Still the runner was safe. Robin bent to make the tag, popped up quickly, then fell in a heap. Anna was the first one to get to her, knelt beside her and held her head. Robin came to within seconds, thankfully, but an ambulance was called anyway.

By the time I got out to her, Robin was telling Coach that she’d just fainted because she hadn’t eaten much all weekend. No big deal. But I’d seen the blood before Anna covered her with Coach’s jacket.

Coach made everyone except Anna and me back off. “Give her some air, folks. Ambulance is on its way.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Robin moaned.

“You’ll be fine,” Anna told her, then nodded reassurance to me, too. “Listen to me. You might have miscarried. They’ll check you out and you’ll most likely be able to go home with the rest of the team tomorrow. You’ll be fine.”

Robin started to cry.

“I’m going to the hospital with you,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, Margo can go. You stay here. Coach might need you.”

“I don’t care about the stupid game.”

“Well, the rest of the team cares. And Coach cares. Stay here.”

The ambulance drivers moved her onto a stretcher and I walked as far as the gate with her. “Robin, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what I said.”

Robin tried to smile. “I know, sis.”

When I returned to the dugout, the game was getting back into gear and Anna was back on the mound. But they all seemed to be waiting for something. Or someone, as it turned out.

Coach ran up to me. “Sandy, you think you can play?”

“What? Me?” I looked around the dugout. Just Honey and Babe sitting there now that Margo had left with Robin. I was too shocked to argue. “Uh, okay, I guess.”

“Take first base.”

To my great relief, the next batter popped up for the third out. But we didn’t score in the bottom half of the inning so it wasn’t long before I had to return to the field. Anna struck out the first batter and the second one flied out to left. The next two hit singles. So far I hadn’t needed to do anything but stand there. Okay by me. But the next batter zinged one my way. I actually got my glove on it. My new glove, my stiff, not-broken-in glove. The ball skipped off of it, and dribbled into right field. The two runners were on the move, with the lead one heading towards home. Jackie flew in from right field, scooped up the ball and threw with perfect aim to our waiting catcher. Nailed it. We went to the bottom of the last inning still tied.

Everyone congratulated Jackie in the dug out and I knew I should thank her personally, but I didn’t. And she was first up so there wasn’t much time to think about it. She struck out, but Anna got to first base safely. Then it was my turn. I looked to Coach before stepping into the batter’s box. Damn. He was giving me the booger bunt sign. Was he nuts? Even if I laid down a good bunt, chances are I wouldn’t get to first before the ball did. Sure, Anna would advance, but then we’d have two outs. Reluctantly, I followed orders and rehashed all of Dad’s bunting advice in my mind. My first effort completely missed. This pitcher had an excellent curve ball and I wasn’t expecting that much of an arc. My second effort went foul. Coach trotted in to the plate for a chat. Booger bunt was off, I could hit away. “Remember, Sandy. This place has fences. Knock it outta the park.”

Now I had just one strike left and with that big curve, these pitches were not only hard to hit, but hard to lay off of. I couldn’t be sure whether they would continue on a path to be called a ball, or sneak in over the plate for a strike. I struggled, but hung in there and fouled off three more pitches. I thought maybe I’d figured this girl out. Seeing that the left fielder was playing in, I opened my stance so I could pull the ball. If it didn’t make it over the fence, at least it would make it over her head and I would have time to get to first. A big, fat curve ball floated up to the plate. Things seemed like they were moving in slow motion. The ball looked like the moon just hanging there in front of my face. Wham! Solid hit, and the moon rocketed over the left fielder’s head, over the fence, and deep into the stands. There is nothing better than a walk-off homer. I couldn’t stop smiling as I rounded the bases as fast as I could, knowing it probably looked to the crowd like the saunter most home run hitters do when they know they don’t have to hurry but can take it easy and savor the victory. I was savoring it, though, and snapped a picture in my mind of the team all coming off the bench to meet me at home plate and hoist me onto their shoulders.

“Way to go, kid!” hollered Coach. “Looks like your sister’s got some new competition for clean up spot!”

My hero’s grin gave way as thoughts of Robin crowded back in.

• • • • •

On the back side of the motel was a deck, and from there the bay was visible. And that’s where Margo found me. She said Robin was going to be fine, that they’d called Mom and Dad and they were on their way to get her. Margo would drive Robin’s car back tomorrow. Anna came around to bring me some pizza and said she and her family were driving home that night and Mom and Dad could have their room.

She sat in the rocker next to mine. “Wild weekend, huh?”

I nodded.

“That was some homer, Sandy. You got the hang of those curve balls pretty quick.”

“She didn’t change them up much. Same thing each time. Wasn’t too hard to figure out.”

“So, you gonna take me up on my offer teach you how to pitch?

I let out a big breath. It felt like I’d been holding it in for days. “I don’t know Anna. I don’t know if I’m ready for this women’s league stuff.”

She got up to leave. “Well, you let me know, okay? I’d better go get the boys packed up.”

Jackie was the next one to find me. “I hear Robin’s going to be fine. Boy, that’s a relief. And congratulations on the game winning home run.” She stood next to the chair Anna had just vacated, as if she wasn’t sure it was safe to sit in.

Over the bay the Harvest Moon hung low on the horizon. Huge and red. Almost blood red. And so huge, so burdened, that it just couldn’t rise up in the sky to where a moon should rise. No Strawberry Moon, this one. Not pristine white and full of hope, but bruised with secrets it hadn’t asked to keep.

“Thanks, “ I finally murmured back to Jackie.

So she sat.

“And thanks,” I told her, “for backing me up out there with that throw to third.”

“Hey, no problem. That’s what best friends do.”

And then we were quiet together. We stared at the moon’s reflection on the bay, and rocked in our chairs, she tilting forward when I leaned back, our rhythm never syncing.

One of my first memories as a child was of the second floor Victorian apartment in the suburbs west of London. It was across an arterial street from a surface station on the Piccadilly and District lines of the London Underground system. The trains passed under the street and emerged alongside the apartment and we could see and hear them through our family room and bedroom windows. Double-decker electric trolley buses ran along the street, until they were eventually superseded by their diesel counterparts. London, like many cities, including Seattle, dismantled electric tram, streetcar and trolley systems, only to now replace them at enormous cost.

It was the early Fifties, war rationing was still in place and London was slowly rebuilding from the bombing. The country was struggling with IMF loans, currency was restricted for travel and incomes generally were slow to recover. As any visitor to London knows, its parks are a treasure and we made good use of them. Vacations would come much later. It was a surprise then, on Christmas Day in 1953 to receive a large box containing an electric train set. But wait, the rails are missing! At which point my father, ever the master cabinet-builder, produced a large sheet of plywood to which he had attached the oval track. And so I learned the thrill of watching the train go round and round in one direction. When I got bored with that, I would empty a tin of glass marbles into the oval. The track formed a half-inch smooth wall and by grabbing the edges of the plywood, I could swirl the marbles around as they bumped and jumped around each other. Nascar fans would understand.

Later, a school friend would interest me in train spotting. No, not the Danny Boyle movie! The UK railroad companies had been taken over by the government at the start of WWII, prior to being formally nationalized in 1947. The system retained it’s original regional organization in the form of six, then five divisions. Pocket handbooks listing all the classes of locomotive and their respective nameplates and numbers were published for each division and armed with these we found a vantage spot and waited. This was still before diesel or electric locomotives were introduced for mainline passenger or freight duty. As we observed a specific locomotive, we would neatly underline the number listed in our book and we pored over each others books for bragging rights. We kept it up for a few years, before other interests and boring diesel locomotives took over. Our favorite spot had been next to a freight marshalling yard, which came back into my life years later as it was also the location of my then girlfriend’s apartment. Visits were notable for the loud banging which extended late into the night as the freight cars ran into each other.

When I was ten and attending a boys only Catholic school, a senior teacher (and closet human being) led a trip from London, by train and ferry boat, to the shrine of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. A highlight was the first real croissant in Paris as we crossed between rail stations, followed by the interminable grind south overnight, eight to a compartment, with frequent stops while a track worker swung a hammer at each wheel to check for cracks. After arrival, the mood picked up as we made the first excursion, while sharing a bus with a group of girls our age and their accompanying nuns. Being that age, we sang songs with toilet jokes, to the great amusement of the girls if not their chaperones. Our teacher leader, now out of the closet, just laughed. The return train journey went by much faster as we snuck into the girls compartments and dodged the nuns.

Our family finally acquired a car when I was seventeen and eligible for a learner’s permit, evidenced by the mandated six inch red “L” attached front and back on the car. What UK train journeys we had taken by then were hardly memorable and are now forgotten. If we wanted to visit the far corners of the country, we drove there.

After getting married, my wife and I relocated to a country village eighty miles north-east of London where we could afford a new house. So started the daily commute by train back to our jobs in London. Catching the train involved a mad dash through the country lanes and a sprint from the station parking lot over a footbridge and, breathless, onto the train as it was about to leave. Adhering to the conventional wisdom that the only decent jobs were based in the city, we kept this schedule until the second national rail strike finally did us in. Two years after joining a manufacturing company in the nearby small town, I found myself transferred to Los Angeles as general manager of the US division. So much for perception.

When I returned to London on the occasion of my father’s passing in 1982 and was travelling back from a visit to my sister’s house in Wales, I took a train from Cardiff to London. I looked up from a book wondering if the train was ever going to leave the station only to find the scenery flying by. I had not even realized and I was back in London in two and a half hours. I have taken just one train ride since, in 2015, from Everett to Vancouver BC on Amtrak to board a cruise ship. It took over four hours for a distance 25% shorter.

When a trip with our elementary school age children to the Seattle Science Center coincided with the annual model train exhibition, the worm began to wriggle. First came the subscription to Model Railroader, then the book of layout plans, and finally construction. My eldest son was told to hold stuff while I did the fun part and the 4 x 8 foot standard club module took shape. It bent and swooped in a double figure of eight that would involve thirteen track switches and a ninety-degree cross-over. Boxes of parts were acquired, many from the electrical controls business that I now owned. Family members got on the bandwagon and train stuff became birthday and Christmas presents.

But alas, reality reared it’s ugly head. There was no time or space to accommodate the grand vision. The wooden frame work was turned on it’s side and banished to a corner of the garage where it remained  for the next thirty three years, neglected and gathering dust.

But here in Ovation, trains are never far from mind and so it is with the model railroad, enjoying its new found liberation and notoriety. Track is being laid once more, with the pending challenge of wiring the rail circuits through all those switches and reversed directions without shorting it all out. Don’t fear for your electric supply. It will be fused.

“I bet nether one of you know about Parma Violets. Well, they are very delicate, and they are what people give when they want to give something really special, when they’re in love, or someone dies….”  Zee Blakely ~ X, Y, and Zee 1972

There is no such thing as true violet eyes. What seems to be violet is made up of the deepest dark blue and flecks of green. I was surprised when I found that out. But despite that truth there was a myth that was in fact a greater truth and reality.  Her eyes were violet. Like violets of Parma, violet of legend when I finally saw them in person, they were the kindest eyes I had ever seen.

***

When I was thirteen years old and Marilyn Monroe was gone nearly a year, I was doing very badly in math at school.

“If you get a B on your next report card, your step-father and I will take you into Hollywood to see “How The West Was Won.”

“In Cinerama?” I had never seen a movie in Cinerama. The mere prospect of a night out, dinner at Musso and Frank’s, reserved seats AND a glossy program all about the movie caused my voice to reach and octave higher than Jane Powell’s.  I worked harder for that B than I ever had in school and forced my brain to embrace problems and figures that were like poison ivy to my grey cells.

Three months later I was sitting in Musso and Frank’s too excited to eat. Dinner half in me and threatening to not stay there I asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. I was excited about the movie yes. But what had my stomach riding the roller coaster at Pacific Ocean Park was what I had seen from the car as we drove down Hollywood Boulevard, the Pantages Theater all decked out for the arrival of the Queen of Everything! I slipped out the front door of the restaurant into the rare night air that only movie stars breathe and ran the six blocks from Las Palmas to Vine Street just to see the outer lobby of the Pantages. It was covered in photographs of the movie that was to open later that week. The movie everyone in the world had been waiting for over two years to see.  “The most anticipated movie event of all time” the adds read….and you see, up until then it was.

The splendors of Egypt seared my eyes in gold and sapphire, the might and grandeur of a plaster of Paris ancient Rome engulfed me, and everywhere HER. I only had a minute to look and it was almost too much to bear. How could Debbie Reynolds, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Carol Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, George Peppard and Carolyn Jones compete with this?  Was the West being stolen  from the Indians more important that the ancient Near East being lost to the Romans? I had two choices, pass out on the star strewn sidewalk or run back to Musso and Franks. I turned to run and instantly I saw the most incredible thing my thirteen-year-old eyes had ever beheld.  High up on the side of the Hollywood Taft building right next door to the Pantages soaring up into the starless inky smoggy night was a painting of HER.  It was seventy; no, it must have been a hundred feet high. She was seated on a replica of Tutankhamen’s throne in a green and gold crown, dressed in plunging neckline purple Irene Sharaff gown and holding the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypt across her bosom. Her violet eyes looking down upon me not with imperious hauteur, but with a kind of understanding as if she were the mother of all the lost boys in the world.

“We are going to be late….” A hand took mine. It was my step-father. He had known exactly where to find me.

***

“There are never enough hours in the days of a Queen, and her nights have too many…so I fill them with memories of what might have been.”  Cleopatra 1963

***

At seventeen I had my own movie studio. It was a super-8 movie studio named after the father of motion pictures David Wark Griffith, D.W.G. Studios it was called. I had saved up money from baby sitting and stripping and waxing kitchen floors for the women in the neighborhood to buy my movie editor, my first step to running a studio. Why the editor first? At fifty bucks it was the cheapest of the necessities I would need. Camera cost eighty dollars and the projector a whopping one hundred and twenty-five dollars so I figured if I had the editor first, I would be forced to save up the money to get the rest of the equipment. My stepdad and mom took pity on me and got the camera and projector for my birthday and Christmas that December.

My fist epic was an eighteen-minute version of “Antony and Cleopatra”. Surprise! The cast was made up of all the kids I baby sat. Cleopatra was eight years old and her brother at nine played Antony. The love scene was a little uncomfortable to say the very least. Unlike Elizabeth’s version my Cleopatra and her Antony came in under budget after two weeks in production at seventy-five dollars. And, I had to make that money back or the studio was sunk! So, I put on my post production, marketing and advertising hat and got to work.

I planned to run the film for three weekend showings on Friday and Saturday nights in our garage. I painted a huge reclining Cleo and put it on the roof of the garage with Christmas lights and papered the double car garage door with a sign. “Opening in three weeks the film the entire neighborhood has been waiting for!” I didn’t name it…cardboard Cleo on the roof said it all.  I sent out invitations to every person I had ever met. Then, almost as an afterthought I sent an invitation along with what I thought to be a clever letter to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in care of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. M.G.M. had been Elizabeth’s home studio for eighteen years. She was no longer under contract to the studio, but maybe they still forwarded her mail.

Three months later I came home from school to be met by my mother at the front door.

“What did you write in that invitation you sent to Elizabeth Taylor?”

“Oh, I don’t know…I told her about myself. I just wrote to her like she was just anybody. Why?”

“This came today.”  She produced from behind her back a robin egg blue envelope. On the back were three words. Elizabeth Taylor Burton in a simple dark blue font. Mom almost had to turn the hose on me to calm me down.

Thus, began an on again off again correspondence that lasted four years. The Burtons got an invitation to every film that came out of D.W.G. and lots of drawings. They never did make it to my premieres, but Elizabeth Taylor always supported my artistic endeavors with a kind note.

***

  “I’m an artist, I paint. Nobody buys. Then I turn out watercolors when I need grocery money.” Laura Reynolds ! The Sandpiper 1965

***

At nineteen I was a Theater Arts Major in Junior College. By twenty-one I came to the realization that I hadn’t the talent to be a good actor, let alone a movie star, I was smart enough to know that Hollywood was sure to break my heart.  But I could paint. So, after six months as an English major where spelling proved to be my downfall, I became an Art Major.

When I found out in 1971 that I was going to summer school in Guadalajara Mexico and that I would get to spend a weekend in Puerto Vallarta I got the great idea. I wrote to Elizabeth allowing the usual three months for the letter to find her wherever she was in the world and told her I wanted to give her a thank you gift for all her support. Would she send me her favorite photograph of her with Richard?

She sent the photo taken when they appeared on stage in Christopher Marlow’s Doctor Faustus at Oxford. I painted a very large portrait from that photo of them in costume, he as Doctor Faustus and she his Helen of Troy.  It hung in an English Pub in town until it was time to take the train from Mexicali to Guadalajara. The train left at night and there waiting on the platform for the three-day trip stood I with my suitcase and the Burtons all boxed up. I was towering at six feet three like mount Popocatépetl above a sea of Mexicans none taller than 5’6″. Everyone was looking at the giant gringo with the long hair and beard. I came to understand during my entire visit to Mexico what it must be like to be famous! Everywhere I went the locals were fascinated by me. Children called me “El Barbo” and ran up to me to tap me for luck.

I shared my little private Pullman room on the train with the Burtons. When the bed was made up the only place for them was in the bed with me. The first night crossing the Senora Desert was fine. But on the second night in the mountains it was insanity. Every time the train turned and twisted though the Sierra Madre mountains the Burtons would fall over on me. They kept me up all night.

I stayed with the Ramirez family in Guadalajara. They spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish. My American roommates translated so consequently I never learned any Spanish, except how to ask for scrambled eggs and even that I got wrong. Seems I was asking for “revolting eggs.  The house maids loved me and said my Spanish was more than funny. Senora Ramirez loved the painting, so it hung over her dining table for three weeks, until it was time to go to Puerto Vallarta. One night at dinner Senora Ramirez was staring up at the painting. Then she looked at me and smiled and said something in Spanish.

Before I could ask for a translation her eldest son who spoke English said.

“Mama says that like Elizabeth Taylor you carry love and your soul in your eyes.”

A few days later I flew over the mountains to Puerto Vallarta to surprise the Burtons.

Armed with a friend who spoke Spanish I found the Burton house on Calle Zaragoza in Gringo Gulch.  A pink bridge crossed the street connecting the two parts of the house and under the bridge was the front gate. No doorbell…just a rope with cowbells hanging down for anyone to pull. I was as nervous as a cat on a…. you know the rest. I pulled on the cow bells and nothing. My friend yanked on them and again nothing. We were about to leave when a voice came from the bridge above us.

“¿qué es lo que quieres?” We looked up to see a handsome young Mexican man who looked to me to be a dead ringer for one of Ava Gardner’s beach boys in “The Night of the Iguana.”

My friend explained in Spanish my story. He must have done a good job because the beach boy told us to wait and disappeared across the bridge into the main house. Moments later he appeared at the iron gate with two maids in tow.

He demanded to see the painting. I pulled it out of its travel worn box.

“aye qué hermoso!” the maids exclaimed and grabbed the painting and ran up the stairs into the house.

My friend translated to me as the beach boy spoke.

“I will see that Mr. and Mrs. Burton get the painting. They just left yesterday for London for the birth of Mrs. Burton’s first grandchild.”  He thanked me and shut the gate. I missed them by only a day.  I never saw the painting again.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the Burtons were in trouble and in a few years, they would be divorced. The letters from Elizabeth stopped and I understood why.

***

“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”  Elizabeth Taylor

***

Many years and three husbands later for Elizabeth I was working in the collections department at Macy’s in San Francisco. The big news was that Elizabeth Taylor was coming to promote her perfume “Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion”.  It was announced that for two hundred and fifty dollars you could have tea with Miss Taylor and about two hundred other people in the Macy’s cafeteria on the eighth floor. My card was maxed out and I had to work that day so there was no way I could see her, let alone meet her.  What would I say? “You don’t remember me but….” I didn’t want to be that guy.

When the hour arrived that she was due on the main floor I blacked out.  The next thing I remember is that I came out of my blackout standing very close to the stage and she was walking on to it. Everyone was screaming!

Over my lifetime I leaned many things from Elizabeth Taylor. I learned how to face life straight on and survive the hard times. I learned that it was a blessing to be different. I learned that kindness and honesty and being the real you brings unexpected rewards. I learned by watching her with Roddy McDowall, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Rock Hudson that loyalty is the hallmark of being a real friend. I learned how to use my eyes to speak when the world was too loud for words.

The day Elizabeth died she gave me her last gift. Just a month before I had angered the love of my life, Bryant Lanier so much that he had cut me off and ended our relationship. It was so final that I knew I would never again speak to the man I had waited a lifetime for. As time crept onward, I took on each day and climbed over it knowing from experience that I would survive …. And then Elizabeth died.

I heard the news getting ready for work.  No tears like for Marilyn when I was 10. Too much had happened for tears now. I went to work. Everyone I met that day said, “Elizabeth Taylor died today, why are you here? We thought for sure you would stay home.”  There was nothing else for me to do but live that day through and go on. I learned that from her, you just keep going on.

The following Sunday there was an email from Bryant.

“I haven’t thought about anything in the wake of Liz’s death but you, in fact I just made myself LOL. Wondering how long you’ll wear black!

They’re playing a nice tribute to her on the CBS Sunday morning show and,, if u get up in time..(9 AM ) I’m sure you’d love to see it ….

There may someday be plenty to says, and some things may go unsaid thank god…

Have a good day..

I love you

B

PS Call me when you get this.”

In an odd way, Elizabeth’s death gave me a second chance with him. I used to tell Bryant how much he reminded me of Burton because of their shared acting talents and personal demons.  I had Bryant in my life for nine more months before he went to join Elizabeth in the place where there are more stars than there are in the heavens. Three days before he died, he said. “You are my Elizabeth.”

As Elizabeth Taylor walked on to the stage that day at Macy’s back in the 80’s she was radiant. She waved out to the packed store. Then she turned and she saw me.  She smiled, and then she winked. That was enough.

Her eyes were like Parma violets, the very flowers I used to send to Bryant on his birthday.

My grandmother Maude had lots of funny sayings. “Maudeisms,” I now call them. I inflict them upon friends and workmates and feel tickled that I am keeping her irreverent humor alive. The world needs it. Just as the carload of old women used to need Maude to jolt them out of their somber quietness about 45 minutes into their Sunday drives. For that purpose, the ever-popular whoop of “Whoo hoo she cried and threw up her wooden leg!” usually did the trick. She never answered our questions about where such sayings came from. Maybe she didn’t know, but I’m convinced she simply preferred to keep them a mystery.

Maudeisms are one of the many things that my friend Beth and I laughed over and adopted for ourselves during the past 38 years, ever since we became best friends during our freshman year at the University of Michigan. We ended up living on opposite sides of the country and didn’t see each other often enough after graduating, and sometimes went a year without communicating. But all it took was hearing the other’s greeting of “Whoo hoo she cried…” upon answering the phone and we were smack dab right back into the thick of friendship, instantly, and as if we’d never spent a day apart.

Beth hailed from the Chicago area, her family being more well-off than mine with a long American history and full of college-educated professionals. My small-town Michigan roots featured an ancestry of German farmers on Mom’s side and English coal miners on Dad’s. My parents considered it a big step up to have bought a 100-year old house in Meekerville and to land jobs in the local auto parts factory. Maude, of the German farmer side, seemed happy to abandon farm life, divorce her cheating second husband, and move in with us to take care of the kids and house while Mom spent days and Dad spent nights working at “the shop.”

The first time I brought Beth home with me for a long weekend, I worried what she would think. I’d visited her family’s newly-built, lakeside home in Illinois and though welcomed warmly, had still felt out of place. I hoped my family wouldn’t embarrass me, and I hoped she wouldn’t find our old house weird and uncomfortable. In the 15 years we’d lived there, Dad had made some improvements, but Mom’s sense of décor lacked style and color coordination. And we had a lot of people living there. I wasn’t even sure where Beth would sleep.

Maude solved that problem. “I’ll sleep in the baby’s room on your old bed. You gorillas can have my room.” Maude made funny substitutions for ordinary words: gorillas for girls was one. Each morning she’d holler up the stairwell to the bedroom where my little sister and I slept, “Come on gorillas, your cocoa’s gettin’ cold.” And when we dawdled, “Some people die in bed, you know!” My little sister had just reached her teens, but Maude would call her “the baby” all her life. For Maude to offer to climb the stairs and sleep in the bottom bunk in the gorillas’ room, well, I was touched. And relieved. That meant Beth and I could luxuriate in Maude’s big double, peel back the emerald silk spread, sink into the feather topper, and raid her stash of DeMet’s Turtles and stacks of True Story magazines she kept in her top drawer.

Beth sat at Maude’s vanity table and twirled on the faux-fur-covered stool. “Your grandmother is really cool,” she said. “For a small town farm woman, she sure lives big in her own way, doesn’t she?” Before I could agree, she abruptly halted her rotations when her eyes fell on Maude’s portrait. “Wow, who painted that? Looks just like her.”

“I did.”

It did look like her; I was proud of that. I’d captured everything in the right proportion: her wide narrow half-smile (“Where did your lips go, Grandma? You look like Kermit the frog,” we’d tease); her long narrow nose with just the hint of a bump; her ivory skin and naturally pink cheeks, now wrinkled but still glowy; and her near-black eyes that always sparkled, sometimes with humor, sometimes with anger, and sometimes you couldn’t decide which. I’d painted from my favorite photo of her, standing tall in her favorite dress wool coat, light pink with dark sable collar, her wide but not fat body made even more impressive by three-inch patent leather heels.

Beth got up to take a closer look. “Really? You did it? I didn’t know you were an artist. Do you still paint?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes.” In truth, I hadn’t painted anything for over a year, since doing my oldest brother’s portrait shortly before he was killed in a car crash. No one had hung that painting. I wasn’t even sure where it was.

“And you’re not taking any art classes, are you? How come?” Beth was never one to just let a subject drop.

“Oh come on. I’m not that good. Besides, I’m going to be a journalist, not an artist.” I bit into a DeMet’s Turtle and grinned at Beth with chocolate-caramel-pecan teeth. “Want one?”

****

So it turned out that Beth loved my family, our house, my little hometown. And my family loved her. I left Michigan after graduating from college and she, after getting her PhD in microbiology elsewhere, returned to settle in Ann Arbor and run one of the university’s labs. Convenient for me in that whenever I made it back home to visit my family, I could also visit Beth. She would greet me at the airport, drive me to Meekerville, spend the night with us, and then reverse the procedure when it came time for me to head back to Phoenix or Seattle or wherever I was living at the time. I’d spend a night or two with her in Ann Arbor and jet off again. Other times she and I would hook up for a vacation together, take a trip up north to Mackinac Island, or tour the northeast in her VW Rabbit, staying with friends in all the big cities.

It’s a rare friend with whom I can travel and not wish the trip be shorter. And a rare friend who can melt into my family the way Beth did. To find both in the same person was a miracle. She would sit in the kitchen translating Mom’s measurements of gobs, plops and pinches, scientifically ferreting out the secrets to her baked beans and perfect pie crusts. With Dad, she compared notes on popular fiction and prodded him — okay, he didn’t need much prodding — to tell stories about his tryout with the 1936 New York Giants. My little sister said that when Beth was there it was like finally having an older sister who actually knew she was alive, and my older sister’s kids loved her as much as her own nieces and nephews did. Maude never failed to make us both laugh. She taught Beth how make a highball, play bridge and knit. And, of course, about a hundred Maudeisms.

The best trip Beth and I took together was the trip to Ireland. I’d been given a plum reporting assignment that required traveling to Europe, and she would be in Italy for a cancer research convention at the same time.

“Since we’ll both be there, let’s take a couple weeks off and tour Ireland,” she said over the phone.

“Me being in Germany and you in Italy is not exactly being in Ireland at the same time, Beth.”

“Don’t be so literal,” she told me. “We’re both flying through Heathrow, right? How hard can it be to add a flight to Dublin?”

“Shannon.”

“What?”

“Shannon. We’d probably have to go through Shannon Airport.”

“Hell’s bells, I don’t care which airport we go through. Don’t be throwing up roadblocks,” she warned. “It’s been a dream of yours to go there since that Irish lit class you took and we should just do it. You only live once. You want to be flying through London and not go to Ireland? That would be half-assed. And you know what Maude says…”

We said it together: “Never do nothin’ half-assed.”

The Ireland trip was memorable on several counts. For one thing, Beth was right. It had long been a dream of mine. An unexplainable dream, beyond romantic. Something about the Irish people, their words and art called to me. I felt silly telling that to anyone but Beth. And it made me leery of going, afraid the real thing could never measure up to my expectations. But somehow it did. The people, the scenery, the whiskey, the sweaters, the half-dissolved castles you’d suddenly notice, nestled in a field, when rounding a curve. Driving from one B&B to another was a great way to see the country, even if Beth did refuse to take the wheel once she was sure I could handle driving on the left side of the road.

“It’s pay back for when you made me drive all over New England,” she said.

I snorted. “Well, it’s a good thing I learned to a drive stick shift in the meantime, then, isn’t it?”

Funny that neither of us figured out what the knob Beth hung her purse on each day was really meant for, not until the last day of the trip. We were prepared to complain bitterly to the rental company that the stupid car took forever to get going in the morning, stalling several times and once nearly causing us to dump both it and us into Galway Bay. On that last morning it dawned on Beth. “Oh my god, it’s a manual choke!” We looked at each other, said “Well, huh!” in our best Maude imitations, and cracked up. No stalling on the road back to Dublin, but we did count eleven rainbows, three of them doubles and two triples.

We’d gone back to Dublin a day earlier than planned for two reasons. The room that houses the Book of Kells hadn’t been open when we were there at the beginning of the trip, and there was a painting in the National Gallery squirreled away in a dark upstairs room, away from harmful light, that the curator had agreed to let us view at an appointed time. Something about The Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864 by Sir Frederick Burton grabbed my gut. The contrast of the light, pure colors in the faces of Hilellil and Hildebrand and in their robes, against the dark stone of the stairwell. The inevitable loss and sadness. The way she turns her head, as if not looking at him will make the pain go away. Seeing it in person was worth the extra driving, worth everything.

We wandered through the public rooms at the Gallery after viewing Hilellil and Hildebrand, and I fell in love with the portraiture work of John Butler Yeats, especially the painting of his son, W.B.

Beth preferred the portraits done in sculpture. “I must say, though, I’ve never seen you look quite so alive as when you were studying those paintings,” she said later that evening, as we lay exhausted on our hotel beds. “Why aren’t you painting?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about it, but she was right. Seeing all that art had reawakened something in me. “I don’t know. Every time I try, it stirs up old stuff and I can’t put on paper what’s in my mind. It’s like trying to paint something while not being able to look at it.”

“Maybe there’s something in your life that you should take a new look at. Maybe you should see someone.”

It was getting dark and I could no longer see her face to see how serious she was. When I could see those green eyes of hers, I could always tell. “You mean see someone, as in a psychiatrist? Because I don’t want to paint? Is this my everything-has-a-scientific-explanation friend talking?”

“Just a thought.”

“And why is it such a big deal that I don’t paint? It’s not like I’m some social illiterate or psychopath. Painting or no painting, I have a life.”

“But life is not defined simply by not being dead.”

Now I was getting irritated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She took a deep breath. “Don’t get mad. It’s just that there are some of us who know and love you who think you have a gift and would like to see you use it. I think you’d get more out of life.”

I sighed and sat up. “It’s late. Let’s go get dinner.” We slipped on our shoes and headed out to see if Bewley’s was still open. I poked Beth in the ribs. “Besides,” I said, “I don’t recall anyone dying and appointing you my analyst.”

Six months later Maude died. It wasn’t a shock. She was 90 by then and fading. Except that I hadn’t been home in a couple of years, so it was more of a shock to me than others in the family, or to Beth, who had made it a point to go see her every now and then. Beth had attended Maude’s last birthday, which doubled as a family reunion. I had been busy with an assignment and couldn’t make it. She attended Maude’s funeral, because I couldn’t make that, either. Instead, I took the one day I had free and drove to Mt. Rainier to sit by myself, sketch book in hand, in a quiet spot where I could see wildflowers and glaciers and giant evergreens. But every drawing spiraled into dark angry strokes, tearing through two or three sheets of paper at a time. I couldn’t draw. I could barely cry.

Taking advantage of finally having no kids or parents to care for, Mom and Dad sold the house and moved to Arizona. That registered somewhere inside me as another loss, but I also felt relieved that I would never have to walk into that house without my grandmother being there. Another thing I could avoid looking at.

Beth sent me a box that Christmas. In it was a book she’d found called Ireland in Poetry, a collection of poems by Irish authors and paintings and drawings by Irish artists. On the cover was The Meeting on the Turret Stairs. The inscription she wrote read: “For Molly. In remembrance of an enchanting isle shared with the best of friends. Beth. P.S. Paint.” Her Christmas card said she had something else to give me, but she wouldn’t trust it to UPS and it would have to wait until she visited me in Seattle in the spring. What she brought with her were the portraits I had done of Maude and my brother Sherman.

“Where did you get these?”

Beth giggled. “You look absolutely flabbergasted. I consider this a success!”

I set the paintings against the wall and stood back. I’d not seen them in so long. There was Maude in her pink coat, dark eyes blazing. And there was Sherman, twenty-six years old, before his troubles got out of hand. Before he broke parole and fled to Nevada just because he couldn’t stand to stay in Meekerville a minute longer, before he took the wheel of some woman’s car and smashed into an oncoming truck. Before he broke my mother’s heart for the last time.

I looked at Beth and felt hot tears making their way to the surface. “Where?”

“Maude had it in her closet. The last time I was at your folks’ house, right after we went to Ireland, she dug it out and told me to take it and give it you the next time I saw you.” We exchanged looks. “If you ask me, I think she knew she wasn’t going to be around much longer.”

There he was, dark blue eyes staring back at me, the hero of my childhood. The brother I thought could do no wrong. Then, I would do anything to gain his love and approval and I stuck up for him when he went to prison—I was told it was for check forgery—even though I was disappointed and heartbroken, too. I still felt guilty for having fought with Sherman before he took off. I don’t remember what I was mad about. I just remember shouting at him, “I wish you’d hadn’t come back here!”

Beth interrupted my mental trip back in time. “What are you thinking about?”

“I don’t know. Strange how a family can go through such tragic stress and when we’re kids we know so little of the details, but feel so much of the pain anyway.”

“Mmmm,” she answered. “Maude said you probably had some thing to ‘finger out’ about Sherman.”

“God, even with the most serious of subjects, she has to say things that way, doesn’t she?” I looked at her portrait. “I mean, didn’t she? I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“We should make a list of Maudeisms, so we never forget them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We should do that one of these days.”

Beth’s visit wasn’t a long one, but she got to see the best of Seattle’s sights, and it didn’t rain more than half the days she was there, so she chalked that up to success number two. Not as big a deal, in her mind, as knocking me for a loop with the paintings, though. After she left, I put them both in my closet, behind the clothes that had gotten too small to fit, but that I couldn’t give up the hope of wearing again some day.

Beth visited me in Seattle one more time after that. But there were years inbetween. We both got busy with our individual lives, both ended up living alone, except for our dogs, in our own houses, she after a very long relationship with one decent guy and me after a series of hurtful, chaotic relationships with men that Maude would have labeled Charming Bastards. That was what finally sent me to seek the professional help Beth had once advised. I never told her the upshot of those years of therapy, the family discoveries we unearthed, among them the realization that my brother Sherman had molested both my older sister and me. My sister was old enough to have vivid memories of it; I do not. He got a fourteen year old girl pregnant, had a drinking problem, crashed more than one car and got into many a fight. When I “fingered this out” and realized all that the family had endured, I thanked God that we’d had Maude around to keep us laughing despite it all. To keep us sane.

Beth came to visit again just three years ago, thirty-five years after we met as college freshmen. She brought another painting, something she’d seen that reminded her of Ireland and thought I might like it. “It’s got that contrast thing going on that you like so much,” she said. It was a striking scene of a small, whitewashed house, bright in the sun, popping out amidst shadowy trees in the background and bushes in front, the greens so dark they were nearly black.

“It’s gorgeous,” I said. “I’ll hang it in the bedroom. It’ll look great in there. Thanks.” For the time being, I set it atop the bookshelf headboard and leaned it against the wall.

Beth had also brought news with her on this trip. We drove up to Snohomish to lunch at Mrs. Penneycooke’s Tea Room, the closest we could get to Bewley’s this side of Dublin. Over scones and a pot of Earl Grey, she told me.

“I have cancer, Molly.”

I stared at her.

“I’m going to have surgery as soon as I get back to Ann Arbor. Probably followed by chemo and radiation. It’s a strange tumor, in my abdomen, a kind that usually lodges in the lungs. They can’t figure out why I’ve got it where I’ve got it, but leave it to my body to do something new and different. Anyway, I’m hopeful they can get it all and that will be that.”

“God Beth. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. But you do have to promise to come visit me and you can’t wait ’til I’m well. You need to come when I’m going through chemo and feeling like shit.”

“Okay,” I agreed, already dreading it.

It was late November when I made the trip. We each spent Thanksgiving with our respective families, Beth’s sisters bringing their mother up from Chicago so that Beth wouldn’t have to travel. After they left, I spent a couple nights with her in Ann Arbor. I discovered that she’d saved the harder tasks for me, not wanting to bother her sisters with them. I hauled the artificial Christmas tree up from the basement, set it up and decorated it according to her instructions. I hung lights on the front of the house. I cooked chili and froze it in single Tupperware servings. I shopped and stocked her freezer, fixed a running toilet, and baked fruitcakes. (Fruitcakes??” I asked. “Yes fruitcakes!” she said. “I actually like the damn things!”)

The hardest task was accompanying her to her radiation treatment. “I don’t know which is worse,” she said. “The chemo makes me puke and makes my hair fall out. But the radiation burns my twat.”

“You sound more like Maude every day,” I told her.

The day before I was to fly out, we stayed home. We sat in front of the fire assembling a 1,000-piece puzzle, ate chili and fruitcake, walked the dogs, and settled in for a late afternoon nap on her extra long sofa, she on one end, I on the under, blanketed by afghans knitted with stitches Maude had taught her. We awoke to the vision of soft snowflakes falling outside the window.

“I think I will always remember this day,” said Beth. “Napping with dogs and people you love has to be the best thing in the world.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “Kind of great being over fifty, isn’t it? This is when you understand what’s really good in life.”

The next year at Christmastime Beth emailed me to look up a website featuring an artist’s sculpture work she was impressed with. “The characters are so great. They remind me of Maude. Look on there and tell me which one you like best, which one is the epitome of Maude.”

I looked. She was right. And the artwork was expensive. The university may have great benefits, but she’d returned to work just months ago and money had to be tight.

I called her. “You’re NOT buying me a sculpture.”

“Of course I’m not. I’m buying myself a present.” She sounded like Maude, when you couldn’t tell whether she was amused or angry. “You will inherit it.”

When I was silent, she added. “But of course, that won’t be for many years to come.” And then the conversation turned normal and we were our old selves.

I saw Beth one more time in Ann Arbor, last May. We had another perfect day together. She wanted me to cook up a “shitload” of lasagna to freeze for when her bridge club next met at her house. The cancer was back and now in her bones, and she was hoping the new chemo drug would make a difference. She couldn’t walk her dogs anymore, the neighbor did that for her. But she could sit on a kitchen stool and direct my efforts at constructing the most complicated lasagna recipe I’ve ever seen. Then she insisted on going to Zingerman’s Deli for lunch. And the rest of the day we spent sunning on the deck, since it was an unusually warm day. We sipped lemonade, we reminisced. She tried to talk about death, but I wouldn’t.

“Everybody dies of something,” she said. “It’s part of life. I went through all that anger and disbelief stuff the first time I was diagnosed. I guess this time I’m accepting of it. It sucks, but I accept it.”

I nodded, and tried to think of the right thing to say. Instead I changed the subject. “Don’t you have a bunch of chores lined up for me this visit?”

“You bet,” she said. “I’ll work you so hard you’ll be sweatin’ like Maude’s butcher.” She led me upstairs, slowly. “Did Maude ever say why butchers sweat so much?”

I flipped the mattress on her bed and put on fresh linens. She showed me the rooms she’d recently had painted in designer colors, and the refurbished bathroom. She’d had a lot done to the house recently. Strange for someone who thought she would be dying soon. She must have more hope than she’s letting on, I thought. Maybe she’s just trying to get my goat. She’d also had the kitchen updated and a new deck added.

“The last thing I need you to do is move that little table in the dining room up to the bedroom so I can put the Maude sculpture on it.”

Yep, I thought. She is trying to get my goat. So I complied and didn’t comment much on the sculpture. It did capture Maude’s spirit, though, and it was the one I’d picked out on the website. An old fat broad, braless, in her full slip, legs crossed Indian style, barefoot, riding a flying carpet and having a ball, grinning from ear to ear. Living big.

Just a few months later Beth reached hospice stage. Her sisters came to stay with her and keep her at home as long as possible. I was in the middle of repainting my house. She’d inspired me with her designer colors, and though mine were not the same, they were reminiscent of her palette. Phone calls were disturbing to her irregular sleep and meds routine, so I emailed. She could no longer type, but her sisters could open her laptop so she could see it, or they would read to her. They set up a page on the Caring Bridge website, where loved ones of people with terminal illnesses can leave messages and upload pictures. Beth’s page received entries from all over the world. She had touched many lives; so many people loved and admired her.

I wrote to tell her about my paint job, how it was obvious that she and I had much better color sense than my poor mother ever had. I tried to be cheery in my blog entries. I knew she would want that. I started that list of Maudeisms, even though I knew her sisters would probably find it appalling.

For any reason at all, and at the top of one’s lungs:
“Whoo hoo she cried, and threw up her wooden leg!”

Before leaving the house to work:
“Oh, it’s off to work I go with my name stamped on the tail of my shirt ’cause I’m a natural born ‘osshole’ and have to work.”

When teaching a kid proper bathing technique:
“First you wash down as far as possible, then you wash up as far as possible. Then you wash possible.”

When a young person gives you any guff:
“Just wait til you  get to be a hunnert years old.”

One I never understood until now:
“All my friends are dead or dying, and I don’t feel so good.”

That was as far as I got with the list.

A few days later I received a card in the mail, penned by one of Beth’s sisters. “Beth insisted I write this and mail it. Today we got her into the bath and I’m supposed to tell you that first we washed down as far as possible, then we washed up as far as possible, and then we washed possible. Thank you for your webpage entries. She still loves to laugh.”

I felt as if my whole life was in disarray. Having finished the painting but not having had time yet to resettle everything, or get pictures back on the wall, the inside of my house felt like my own insides. I took a sick day and stayed home to get things in order. I got out all the art I’d had up before the painting began. Most were photos I’d taken in Ireland and had framed. I made new, artsy groupings, starting fresh, with new eyes. I decided to frame the painting of the little whitewashed house that Beth had given me. Until the painting project, it hadn’t moved from the headboard. I found it, measured it, and went to buy a frame. While I was at it, I bought a frame for the one painting I’d done that I wasn’t totally dissatisfied with, a watercolor of a half-dissolved Irish castle. I spent the whole day framing, measuring and nailing things back up on the wall. I put the whitewashed house up in its new spot in the bedroom, then stepped back to gauge levelness. It was then that I noticed it wasn’t a house at all, but a small, unadorned church. I moved in close. The bushes in front weren’t bushes. They were tombstones. Beth had given me a picture of a fucking graveyard. I whirled around and smacked my elbow on the corner of the dresser. I dropped my hammer and it smashed my big toe. And the bawling finally commenced. I cried over Maude, over lost innocence, wasted years, and the big dog I’d had to put down because he also had bone cancer and dammit, Beth, I wanted us to be old broads together, riding around every Sunday hollering whoo hoo and what right do you have to die on me?

There had been a lot of crying during those years of therapy and bad relationships, but not much before or after. I was relieved to find that I had better crying skills now. A crying jag didn’t necessarily also mean a panic attack, though I still wouldn’t be able to get a mascara wand under my bulging eyelids the next morning. Beth died soon after that, and as days passed I tried to find the gifts in my life. She’d told me there are gifts in everything, no matter how sad or tragic. I’m still working on that.

I took Maude and Sherman out of the closet and hung them in the second bedroom, which I now call my studio. The Maude sculpture arrived yesterday, and that’s in there too. Maude grinning at me from her magic carpet. Just like her. Just like Beth.

And me? I think I have some painting to do.

Not to 2020 and the seemingly inevitable divisiveness.

I wonder instead how the world will find a collective humanity and embrace it. How it will retreat from the trend toward isolationism, nationalism and dictatorship. We all have a national identity that is precious to us but, first and foremost, we are citizens of the world. We all share the planet and we all originated in the same way. That some of us enjoy a quality of life that others cannot conceive, let alone aspire to, is mostly serendipity.

It would be entirely dishonest to characterize the United States as lacking generosity and compassion, but it would be fair to observe that our reputation has fared badly in recent history. Leadership that encourages bad actors and cruelty by repeated example at least comes with a simple fix that we all understand.

The real issues are global, entrenched and complicated, but not intractable. Firstly, we need to adopt a world-view and what better vehicle exists than climate change to get us started? After all, if we have irreversibly destroyed the livability of vast regions of the planet, it’s game over anyway. Nations will all be at war over what is left of drinkable water and habitable land. A dystopian fantasy? No, it really isn’t. And while on the subject of fantasy, let’s recognize one we hear often. The idea that individuals and businesses are better off without external interference in their freedom to do as they wish and that everyone thus benefits. Never mind that those claiming this freedom are demonstrable hypocrites. How many hermits living off the grid do you know? Quite simply, a functioning and prosperous society needs responsive and equitably-funded government to survive.

We all need to share. Our time, our resources and our goodwill. There has been a loss of positive guidance and example around the world from secular and religious leaders alike. The treatment of women in all societies is still unacceptable, albeit on a range of reprehensible to downright inhuman. In a connected world, any form of tribalism is intolerable, including single-issue politics and religious fundamentalism. The treatment of the poor and disadvantaged has to be improved dramatically, not least here at home. The statistics on US poverty, literacy and homelessness are, given the national wealth, a disgrace. Any notion that the country can be great as long as that situation endures is absurd.

Here is a suggestion for a 2020 resolution. Let us all work to take our inclinations to be fair-minded, generous and neighborly and spread them beyond Oak Tree.

Happy New Year!

So they say
I wonder this year
What I will take away

Will I finally let go
Of what if’s and might have’s
Move ahead with grace
Instead of “Should have’s

To be happy
In my own skin
Nirvana
But where to begin

Gratitude journals
Help for a while
And giving, sharing
Walks of a mile

“Is that all there is?”
Peggy Lee asked in song
It will have to do, I sigh
As life moves along…….

Was two weeks before Christmas and the house was quite quiet

Loud crunch sounds of chips while dismissing a diet

The stockings were hung on the back of a chair, still looking for

Decorations that were packed away somewhere.

But my mind was quite frazzled, wished I could think better

Not a single thought of what to put in a Christmas letter

The cats stared at me so sullen, with their usual wish

Give off of your duff and fill my food dish

Should I write about religion, so different it seems,

But they all say the same thing. Peace and love are their themes

How about politics, fake news, and headlines as such,

So many stars in the government drama, it’s a bit too much

On Donald, on Nancy, on Mitch so it seems,

Our government in action but too many teams.

So back to the ideas of what I should write,

The hatred, the division, the fear and the spite

No I need to find something that makes me feel right

About the misery of our world with no end in sight.

Global warming, pro or con, the scams and the calls,

It goes on and on, and we hide behind walls.

But now I have cleared the wreckage and clutter,

And see the true message that makes my heart flutter.

The joy and the happiness we’ve all shared this year

Should be cherished and remembered and passed on with cheer

Be thankful for health, for children, and homes

For reaching out to those who are all alone.

My mission accomplished I’ve written it right

Merry Christmas to all I’m calling it a night!

Hugging the fall trail

Clustered orbs of giant pearls

Snowberry surprise

It was a hot and moonless night in the badlands above Riverside. A parcel of land between March Airforce Base and the town down below where eons of weathering had created a wasteland of ruts and gullies where no one ever went. Except for teenagers that is. On summer nights They populated the old dirt road that lead up to the south east from ritzy Canyon Crest. Many a romance was born on that rise above the city, under the stars and with the glittering lights of the Inland Empire in an eternal blaze below. Few of them knew that on that same rise of land many an outlaw had dangled from an old olive tree until his eyes bulged and his swollen purple tongue popped out of a newly dead mouth. 

    Jake Finnegan was one of the few kids in town who did know the stories. But this night on the rising badlands he had no idea what was about to rise from the earth behind his old 1964 Crystal Blue Dotson pickup truck. 

Annie Ramirez straightened her blouse and twisted the rearview mirror to check her smeared lipstick.

“It’s okay Jake. I didn’t want to go all the way anyway.”

“Yeah” Jake said. Holding in the urge to say. “I wanna breakup anyway.”  He was not doing so well with the girls these days.

BAM! The truck rocked violently to the right and continued to rock for a good six and a half seconds.

“What was that?” Annie screamed.

“I don’t know.” Jake whispered. Some animal must have been running in the dark and didn’t see the truck. Jake rolled down his window and looked down at the ground then back to the rear of the truck bed. There was nothing there.

“Shit Jake roll up the window! You don’t know what’s out there. Let’s get outta here. “

BOOM! Another something hit the truck.

Jack simultaneously rolled up the window and started the truck pressing the accelerator to the floor. He glanced back in the rear-view mirror to see a huge dull ball of dust kick up from the earth as he pealed onto the old dirt road.  He looked ahead and realized he hadn’t turned on the headlights. “Shit!” He flipped them just in time to see the curve ahead at the edge of what was locally knows as Hard Sand Canyon. The truck lurched to the right and barely stayed on the road just making the curve, barely.

“Oh my God.” Annie said. “What do you think that was.

“I don’t know.” He repeated.

He glanced at the rear-view mirror.  He saw the pale eyes in dark sockets and the rictus smile. There was a passenger in the bed of the truck. 

“JAKE! LOOK OUT!”

Jakes eyes snapped back to the road ahead just in time to jerk the truck to the left just missing a coyote.

When he looked back in the rear-view mirror the passenger was gone.

Jake dropped Annie off at her dorm at UCR and drove the rest of the way home with the radio blaring “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder.  He lived with his parents who were away on a conference at Berkeley. As he drove up to 3205 Valencia Hill Drive, he felt finally safe.

The house was 7 years old, bought brand new it stood near the site of an old Spanish ranchero that had begun being  subdivide in the first decade of the 20^th century. There were rumors around the neighborhood that the house of 3205 Valencia Hill Drive was built over the buried foundation of the old Hacienda.

Jake stayed up watching the Tonight Show and then a part of a late movie just to try and forget those eyes he was now convincing himself were a trick of the mirror or his imagination. It must have somehow just been his own reflection…. Somehow.

He shut off the lights in the house and those in the upstairs hall and finally crawled into bed on the second floor just after 2am. He switched off the light by his Early American maple twin and as he had since he was three, pulled the covers up tight over his head.

There was a soft sound in the dark. Almost imperceptible. Like someone breathing.

“Stop it Jake.” He whispered.

The breathing stopped. Jake squeezed his shut eyelids tighter. 

It began at the bottom of the stairs. Boom. Boom, BOOM, BOOM! 

Someone of something was coming up the stairs banging on the walls. The House began to creak like an old ship in a storm. BOOM. BOOM. The thing was banging on the doors at the end of the hall and coming closer.

Jake threw off the blanket and sat up in terror. He switched on the light. It was icy cold in his room. He gasped as the banging hit his bedroom door. He could see the vapor of that gasp explode in front of him. He struggled up and ran for the door. He put his hand against it and grabbed the doorknob. If he opened it, what would he see?

“Please, please.” He whispered. “GO AWAY!” his shout shocked him. He flung open the door. The hall was ablaze with light. No one was there. He ran down the hall for the stairs and as he made his way he was tossed from side to side, bouncing off the walls. The whole house was pitching and rolling.  

He nearly tumbled down the stairs to the foyer. The first floor was lit up. All the closet doors were open. He ran into the kitchen; cupboards were flung wide. But not a dish disturbed. The house was moaning as if being tortured! Time to get out.

When Jake opened the front door and stepped out onto the lawn it was softly, soothingly quiet. It was warm summer again. He looked out over the open filed across Valencia Hill Drive toward Box Springs Mountain. The moon was just coming up over the ridge. He turned to look back at the house burning electric bright and silent.  After ten minutes he went back in and right to the phone.

“Annie it’s me…” he said as she picked up on the first ring.

“I know.” She said. “I saw him too. I’ll be right over.” She slammed the phone down.

She was there pulling up into the drive in under seven minutes. Still in her pajamas she jumped from her battered Renault and ran to meet Jake who waited on the porch.

“What do you mean you saw him?”

“When you were driving away. There was a man in the back of the truck. He waved to me. I tried to call you, but your phone was dead. Is he here?”

“Something is in the house. If we go in, you will hear it.”

“Okay…” Annie said tentatively. “but I don’t believe in ghosts. I think we should call the police.”

Annie walked into the foyer. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Is it cold?”

“Yes, it is. Come in and see.” As he stepped in, she looked around. Why are the doors all open and …? “

“I don’t know. Look Annie can you stay over. You can sleep in the guest room next to mine.”

“Why not in the same room?”

“I don’t think we should do that.”

“I didn’t mean THAT.”

“Neither do I. Look, you take the guest room and I’ll take my room and, in the morning we will compare notes. Its only a few hours away. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll sleep. “

“Okay, let’s just check to make sure no one is in the house. Got a baseball bat?”

“Yes.”

After a complete check, shutting cupboards and turning off lights. They locked all the doors and windows. And climbed the stairs. Jake checked the thermostat. It read 68 degrees. But still if felt bone cold.

“If you hear anything or get scared call me.” He said at the door to the guest room.

“Okay.” She opened the door then turned. “If YOU hear anything call me.”

“I will. Goodnight.”

“Let’s hope so.”

As soon as Jake closed the door to his room the cold was gone. The pressure in the room seemed to lighten. It was over.

A few hours later Jake woke to a white bright Southern California morning. He got up threw on his robe and opened the door to his room. Annie was sitting on the floor huddled wide eyed next to the door frame of his door .

“Annie what’s wrong? What happened.”

She looked up at him and he could see she was crying.

“He sat on the end of the bed all night. I was too frightened to move and call out.”

“Oh Annie!”

“He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

Annie closed her eyes then opened them to look at him.

“He said. ‘Go get Jake’.”

…….. or how a 36-year old learned the joys of camping. It was the fault of the kids, but you guessed that, didn’t you?

So, it started with this big-city boy finding his way to the Northwest with his wife and raising children in a street full of them. That led to making friends with neighbors for whom getting their shoes muddy was a lifelong habit. They were going camping with their three boys in a Washington State Park.

“Why don’t you come too. The kids can play together, it will be fun” they said.

I hesitated too long.

“Yes, please can we go?” the little traitors chimed in unison.

“Well,” I started to say, but stopped. I was screwed and I knew it.

Our camping equipment comprised a book of matches at this point, so we turned to the Coleman Company for a tent, stove, lantern, sleeping bags and a supply of gas bottles. Still not confident that sleeping on the ground would be fun, as promised, we added air mattresses.

We did at least own a VW bus at the time, which could swallow the gear, children and our sense of foreboding. On the appointed Friday morning, we set off in convoy behind the neighbor’s van en route to Salmon La Sac on the eastern foothills of the Cascades above Cle Elum. There we were joined by a million mosquitos, give or take. They would not make their presence fully known until dusk, when I had finally figured out the multi-part poles and the proper sequence for assembling our tent. Because, of course, instructions were for sissies. The prospect of starting over ruled out retreat as an option, although divorce was still on the table, I was informed.

Of course, the kids did have fun, as we allowed them freedom to explore and get dirty while we de-stressed to the sound of the rushing river and the smell of fresh air. But, by Sunday lunchtime, we were ready for a hot shower, broke camp and returned to civilization.

So started a regular summer schedule of mountains, lakes, beaches, high desert and old-growth forests. The Washington State Parks never let us down although the weather often did. Along the way, we abandoned the adult’s air mattresses in favor of cots, assembled a plumbing masterpiece to feed the gas stove and a gas hibachi from a five-gallon propane tank and added fishing poles, an inflatable boat and plastic containers of sundry stuff. Plus, tarps. Lots of tarps.

Thirty years on, we still share the stories of those trips with our camping partners. The mistake of camping at Deception Pass on a Memorial Day weekend and suffering through gale force winds and horizontal rain. We never camped earlier than the middle of June after that. Nearly stepping on a rattlesnake was a lesson to stay on the trails at Alta Lake. We learned that leaving harvested clams in a bucket of water overnight, to flush the sand out of their siphons, would amuse the ladies to no end in the morning.

Nature was never far away. The crows that would create such a racket at 5am or the pairs of eyes reflecting back when a flashlight was pointed at the trees near the tent. But we never encountered a large animal or any danger. While camping at Lake Wenatchee and in pitch darkness on the trail to the outhouse, we had occasion to look up at the starriest sky we had ever seen. It was breathtaking. It took a trip to the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii many years later to beat it.

We visited many parks, but we had our favorites; Kopachuk on Henderson Bay and Bowman Bay across from Deception Pass. We even had our favorite campsites at these two and would leave early enough to be sure of securing them. With experience came the knowledge of where to find the facilities with hot showers and the best places to create a blue-tarp city for the inevitable wet weekends. We discovered that if you played Trivial Pursuit in the dim light of a gas lantern, it presented an opportunity for our wives to substitute the junior level card set for the questions posed to them. We would find ourselves laughing hard and often.

It was an escape from busy lives, when the demands of a new business made extended vacations difficult. The children loved the relaxed parental rules and got along really well with each other. We were grateful to our Washington native friends for their wide knowledge of the State Parks and the opportunity to get to know our surroundings better. We knew that we would never now leave the area willingly.

The children have lasting memories too. None apparently more vivid to our daughter than when she was suckered into believing that she would be arrested by the Park Ranger if she and her brother didn’t settle down in the tent and go to sleep. Some grievances go deep it seems. We can look at an iconic photograph of the five of them in a circle on a beach digging a hole, one of them happily ignoring the advice to not get sand into the plaster cast on a broken leg. But now we see the doctor, engineer, state trooper, college administrator and forester. Married, with their own children and the inspiration to take them camping.