Looking up my Past

  I remember taking a long look at my friend Jane’s life.     She was a pediatrician at my younger daughter’s medical group.     We met because her daughter and mine were friends and we saw each other through that venue and then as the girls were on the same soccer team and became friends, as they lived very near us, and Bill (her Bill) began commuting to chorus with my Bill.     A few years ago, they moved to Ashland, Oregon, but immediately Bill got lung cancer and they were stuck up there with Jane taking care of him. We visited him a few times up there.     After he died, she moved back to be near us, where she has remained.     She still wishes she had kept her former house, because she could not buy it back, but her present place suits her better anyway.     She survived breast cancer herself years ago, and I was one of her friends who was there for her, which is when we really became closer. Now she is in a monthly ...

  When I went back to Berkeley after my dad died, I quickly discovered a connection with Sandra Bryson.     She is a therapist, and she and I became friends as she was changing from being a potter to becoming a therapist.     She was upbeat and our daughters hit it off right away.     Eventually, for a few years, we were close, and at that time I babysat Chloe when her parents went to France for two weeks, and later she babysat Nate and Jessi for two weeks.     Ramiza helped when she could, as she was still near us.     We realized that we were not so close as junior high approached, and Jessi went to High school at CPS and Chloe went to public school.     Both were the right choices for them, but by then I was tired of Sandra’s upsets around her kids and all the drama.     I backed out of the relationship, except seeing Phoebe a couple of times a year and giving Christmas and birthday presents to the kids. ...

  When we were young, in Virginia, our parents paid for us to go to a concert in Richmond.     The acts included The Big Bopper, Little Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, The Everly Brothers, and others.     We were taken to the place and our parents would pick us up after.     I suppose they went to a restaurant or dinner club.     There was no cell phone, no way to get involved if we needed them, but we were ecstatic.     We felt so mature and had a lot of fun.     I especially liked the Big Bopper and the Everly Brothers.     We stood in our seats and razed the roof.   Many of those acts died on a plane shortly afterwards.  Other times they might take us to a show in Tappahannock, ten miles away.  I saw some Elvis Presley movies, and a couple of Debbie Reynolds films.  In our town of 500, there was no movie theater or place to socialize.  We had to have parties in our homes...

  My father loved his bosses at Levi’s, especially Peter Hass.     I know he had disagreements, and he could be vocal about them, but basically, they gave him everything they could.     He ended up a senior vice president of Operations, and I think he never could have been president.     They wanted someone with a business degree, good parentage, and someone familiar to their class.     My father was uneducated, no BA or MA, and he was working class through and through.     But also, he had a wife who had no education, and she had never worked after she married my dad.     But more importantly, she was a drunk, due to whatever reasons, the cancer, the life she had to put up with.     And there was my brother.     Eventually he sobered up, but he never held a job when was sober, he pretended he had businesses and interests.     So maybe it was my brother’s, my mother’s and my mixed heritage tha...

  My mother was weak, in a traditional way, even though she had many admirable qualities.     She didn’t work, she didn’t find relief in work, and her many activities that were not work did not net her any favor among men.     She did what was often lauded in her era, and yet she missed the boat about controlling her own life.     Because of that, I was handicapped.     I floundered myself in taking on gender roles.     I was female, so I supposed to take my cues from my mom, but she was so afraid of many things, and she had no power.     I loved my dad, and I looked like my dad, but I wasn’t my dad.     I also was supposed to move myself into the middle class, but all I really did was make myself an outcast.     I was only comfortable with my friends who were lower class, and I often refused connections with others.     I knew what I was:     I was halfway between lower class and mi...

  Lena and Dan Barron were friends of my father’s from Levi’s.     They got along well.     They were from Virginia, so They knew each other’s territory.     Dan had been a football coach at William and Mary, but he slept with a friend’s wife, one who had two little children, so he messed up his career, and ruined the wife’s.     Lena was cast out and not allowed any visitation.     When Lena and Dan married, they moved across the country, and Dan became a part of Levi’s.     We knew none of this for years, only that they had two boys, the older of whom was a type one diabetic.     My mother and Lena worked in a shop in San Francisco one day a week, selling things for diabetic camp.     My mother, as usual, was very interested in kids.     She adored both boys, and as they were a bit younger, she made the most of it.     It was after both boys had grown up that Lena confided that she...

  I remember my friends Raymond and Viola, the parents of two daughters.     The older of whom was considered very beautiful, the younger of whom was considered homely.     This is because the older favored the mother, who was a beauty, dark haired and sprightly, and the younger, one year older than us, was quite unlovely, like her father.     Patsy, the older one, went to college up north, and there she found a man who she later married, though it didn’t’ last. They had two kids.     Nancy married her college sweetheart at VPI, and eventually they had a daughter Stacy.     These two people became important to my family, as, after college, they came to California and stayed with my parents, and my dad helped Nancy find her first job.     She was into textiles, and she went from success to success.     Her husband John was an architect and he worked for the city of Hayward.     They were frequent guests ...

  I remember How much I used to believe in my father, and, also, of course, that I changed my mind over time.     I realized gradually, as all kids do, that my dad was someone I found wonderful but also difficult.     He preached about democracy, but he ruled our lives with an iron fist.     I guess he was right to move us, but it turned out very badly in the end, what with my mother’s cancer, my isolation, and the slow disruption of our lives.     I left home, and really didn’t come home again in my old way.     My brother, after high school, did not go to college at all, and slowly fell into an alcoholic stupor.     My mother recovered but became an alcoholic.     My father was my world, and when I could no longer look up to him, he was a fallen idol.  He worried about money, and that fact ruled his life.  He was a true person of the depression.  He might have gone to college, but ...

  When we went to Massanetta Music Camp every summer, we were filled with love for the chorus, but even more, we were in love with our freedom.     For a week we could listen to not only our peers, but also our hearts.     I loved certain young men, without feeling bound to them, except for my final boyfriend, Garnet, who was a year younger than me.     He made me feel beautiful and beloved. I went with him two summers and have never forgotten him.     Perhaps because he was so direct and without guile, I trusted every word he spoke.     I think we were about the same age anyway, as I was very young in my class, and he was older in his.     He had this amiability that I adored.     So, unlike my own family, who were all so intense and serious.     We got along without all the usual stress and ups and downs.     I lost the only person who was guileless.     I never had a boyfriend lik...

  I loved how my parents were so busy and happy in Virginia.     They often took the train up to NYC and ate at fancy restaurants and saw amazing musicals like “My Fair Lady”, “Camelot” and “Annie, Get your Gun”.     There is a story that my mother fell asleep during “My Fair Lady” and missed the whole play.     We never got to go with them, because we were little, and my parents did not want us to be exposed.     I think I envied them, and yet I did know that I wasn’t able to be out that late.     Also, I was the oldest, and everything had to be okay with my younger brother, and he was not interested in such things.     My Husband Bill had completely different experience.     He traveled to NYC with his parents and grandparents, also by train, and they let him, and his sister, be the center of attention.     He got to wait after the show for autographs, and he had lot of stars, like Ethen Merman, Julie...

  I wonder how my parents saw the parties and goofing around that they did?     Were they just too inebriated to understand what they were doing?     My father went along with things, but my mother seemed out of it completely.     She had a deep need to be liked, and she wanted that liking to take the form of being enamored of her.     Her stock in trade was being attractive, and it didn’t take much for her to be plowed under.     I saw it as revolting, and my mother thought she was being the most attractive woman in the room.     I also think she didn’t care, when she was looped, about what was proper or not.     After all, she had grown up on a farm, was out on her own at 15, had lost the love of her life in her teens. The price she paid was being attractive to men.     She just floated around men looking for someone who would take care of her.     And my father did.     He was a l...

  There was a funny thing with our friends the Sims, when I was little, and another when I was fourteen.     When I was little, the girls, who were older, took a baby in a bassinet around the yard and took off her pants and poked her with a stick.     Us younger kids didn’t know what to do, but we knew it was wrong.     I’ve never forgotten it, after all these years. Then when I moved to San Mateo at fourteen, they were staying nearby, and we were talking about the movie “Psycho”.  I had of course not seen it, and had no desire to do so, but when the girls were alone with me, they told me the story, and I was appalled.  We were staying at a motel until we found our house, and the shower in the motel scared me to death.  Again, they had managed to terrify me, but without my parents caring at all. These were two scary girls, tall and still blond, and I was five feet tall.  But no one would have believed me in eithe...

  When I first met my husband, I remember being enthralled by my husband driving.     He had a bunch of nervous habits, which I didn’t quite understand at the time, but I did love the way he often licked his lips and his habit of brushing his lips with his hand.     These are signs of love, and I still find them adorable, almost fifty years later.     I think what makes people fall in love is not big things, but it’s the little things that make a difference. Another thing I like is his rumbling of his hair.  It should be annoying, and in a way, it is, especially as he now has very little hair on top, but the truth is, his habits are endearing, not all of them, but a lot of them. I also love his habit of sneezing, but he hates it.  When I sneeze, he insists I cover my mouth, but he never does.  He seems to think it’s awful of me, but not necessary if he sneezes.  And it doesn’t bother me, except that it’s so unfai...

  I want to talk now about Garnett Ryland III.     He was my first real boyfriend, when I was 13 and 14.     He was a year younger than me, and extremely adorable, with dimples, great features, curly hair and million-dollar smile.     We met at school, and He was shy, as was I, but we stuck together all year and finally kissed when I was almost 14.     I was crazy about him. He was in our musical summer camp, and we saw each other almost every day.     When we parted I thought of nothing but him, and the next summer, we reunited for the summer, me living in the Welford’s 17th century house, and him nearby.     But after than next summer, we never met again. I wish I could say I met someone nearly as nice, but maybe not.  I was demoralized, because I was on the opposite coast, and we had no way of really staying in touch.  This was way before cell phones and digital devices.  So, we’ll never re...

  I am thinking today about Warren Farrington, my crush in second grade.     I carried his books home for him, and that is about as far as it went.     I knew he was red haired, like my brother, and that he tolerated my book carrying for his own selfish reasons.     He was amiable, and I was, at the time, very outgoing.     It worked.     About as much as anything can at that tender age. I knew then that I was heterosexual.  I have been ever since, and nothing has really disturbed that sense of direction.  I’ve been attracted to women, but each time it was because thy were more masculine that most males.  So, I didn’t bother to tear them apart.  I never wanted a woman in sheep’s clothing. After than first taste of Warren, I graduated to my friends’ Sweethearts.  Usually, they were out of my league, but I wasn’t really concerned.  But then, in Jr. High, I fell for my first r...

  My Mother’s mother was so busy that I never really Knew her well, but I do remember the farm and watching her kill chickens and that she never raised her voice.     She died of melanoma when I was twelve, and I remember her in the hospital and holding her hand.     That time with her was a great gift to me and I’ll always remember it. But Today I want to talk about my father’s parents, who were very important as well, especially when I was a kid but also, they lived until my early twenties, and late twenties in my mother’s case.  The first five years, when I lived in Kansas City, my grandparents took care of my brother and I many times.  My grandparents had a small white framed house outside of Sedalia, Missouri, and It was rural then.  There were neighbors up the road, and sometimes we visited them.  We went nowhere with them, just played outside and inside the house.  My grandma had little things for us to pl...