I took a trip down memory lane last week by driving over Hecker Pass from Highway 101 into Watsonville, CA. This town is where my parents first retired after my dad’s time in the military. He went on to work at various jobs until he landed at Cabrillo College in the Community Services Department for the remainder of his working years. I attended my last three years of high school and all of junior college there. I also returned after nursing school in San Francisco for a few months until I got married and moved to Denver. I came home pregnant with my first child and waved goodbye to her father as he headed for Germany then I traveled there with a 10 month old baby. After five years of marriage, I returned a divorcee with two children for four years until I married again.
I’m not sure why I wanted to see all the different houses I’d lived in. Perhaps because there’s this big change in my life, and I wanted to return to a point in my past when I’d been in a similar precarious situation. Watsonville has been my touchstone, my grounding cord. It’s been the place where I’ve gathered myself together and shoved off again in another direction. I’ve been able to re-meet myself and my beginnings, see old friends and familiar places, reorient myself to who I am and where I might want to go for a next try at my life
But, I can’t return after 33 years; there’s nothing left there for me. I barely recognized the streets and the shopping centers. I did find the house I’d purchased on my own which reminded me of a kind of strength and decisiveness I’d forgotten I had at the age of 32. I sat in front of the dream house my mother had built on Pinto Lake, one which she can’t remember now because of her all-consuming dementia. I also found my dad’s grave and stood for a moment asking him to give me some kind of guidance.
What I’ve realized from my side trip is I wasn’t looking for a place all those years ago. I was looking for my roots, and the town wasn’t what I found each time I went back. My parents were what had given me the stability to find myself.
So I let the memory of my first driving expeditions with my mother fill my vision. She’d belt herself in and tell me where we were going and hope I made it. I remember her hands were gripped in her lap, and she’d hiss when I got too close to her side of the road. I can only imagine that sometimes she’d close her eyes to save her nerves.
She actually took me up the windy, switch-backed road of Hecker Pass as one of my driving assignments. Trucks routinely used it, and we faced many of them that first drive. I was moaning and groaning that I couldn’t do it. She must’ve summoned some super-mom strength and wouldn’t let me back down. “Just watch the center line of the road. Mark an imaginary point on the dash board so you can aim the car at that line and stay there. That’s the way you know you’re inside the line. Keep to it. Don’t let those trucks throw you off your aim.”
I remember aiming the first notch of the windshield wiper base at the center line, and I’d stay there. I didn’t have to keep gauging my distance from each of the trucks barreling toward me. I might have held my breath as each one blew past, but I held on, rather like holding to the middle of the road of life, I think.
As I stood by my father’s grave, knowing I haven’t finished grieving my loss of him for so many distorted reasons, I did remember one of his nightly remarks when I’d head for bed. Through the chirping, spring happy birds, I heard him say, “We made good memories today. More chances coming tomorrow.”
So many challenges seem to be heading straight at me. I can get so thrown off balance by bills I wasn’t expecting, downed trees in the driveway, roofing blown off the generator box and battery containers, frozen solar panels, and many more. Too many decisions line up in front of me: Do I move? Do I stay? What to sell? What to save? How do I make money to flesh out the minimal social security? And on and on. Some days, all I want to do is crawl back to bed and pull the covers over my head. I don’t want to think about anything.
I’ve tried screaming and shouting and whining and crying, but nothing changes my situation. Knowing where the center line is seems a better solution to stomping my feet and getting all bent out of shape because life isn't going exactly the way I’d planned. Remembering to make at least one good memory a day seems a bit easier than trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I did get a bit of the comfort I was seeking,and these memories are things I can carry forward as my life line into my future.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
To Dump or not to Dump
Alright, I admit it. After 33 years of marriage, you’d think I’d have realized it was me not him who had the most piles of inconsequential papers. Now my piles are having babies, and all are spilling out of the roll-top desk, covering most of my horizontal surfaces.
How I got to be a scrap saver has to be my next project toward enlightenment so I can stop my piles from growing so tall I‘ll shut out the darn light. And of course I’ll have to make an apology for all the huffy retorts to Y when he’d chide me for buying another file cabinet rather than cleaning out the ones that were overflowing.
Maybe my saving was because I was raised by depression era parents. After all, my father, for a time, was homeless with holes in his shoes and no coat in winter. My mom learned thriftiness to the point of fanaticism. The only influence keeping our home from resembling a hoarders retreat was that my mother actually used every scrap she saved. Between her follow-through and the military (we moved every 18 months to three years and were allowed only 3000 lb of household weight a move) we had a tidy house.
Before one such move, my 1st- Sgt, Marine Corps father took me through my top dresser drawers where I’d squirreled away all my precious bits of childhood paraphernalia. If I hadn’t used it or worn it in six months, out it went: broken necklaces, rocks, unfinished projects, one favorite sock. All had to go into the trash until I could reduce my favorite things into a shoe box.
Now I’ve got a three bedroom house chuck full of his and hers collections from the past with matching unfinished projects and things we might need for the future. I’m overwhelmed and can only console myself with reassurances that it’s not all mine. But I don't know what to do with his without going through it, unlike his promise that if anything ever happened to me he would cheerfully haul the contents of my office to the dump without looking at it. When he told me this, I was crushed, but I can see his point now. Fifty years of writing grows like Alice in Wonderland after biting a ‘grow’ cookie. In comparison, I do have more ‘stuff’ than he does. I’ll have to decide what to do with all the wonderful ideas I’ve saved for future reference, and before I eliminate any of his collections, I’m deciding to practice on my own. Thank goodness for Good Will and local thrift shops. Sending my prizes back into the world for someone else to collect eases the pain, a bit. Now all I have to do, after depositing my treasures at the back door, is stop myself from going in the front door to find other goodies.
How I got to be a scrap saver has to be my next project toward enlightenment so I can stop my piles from growing so tall I‘ll shut out the darn light. And of course I’ll have to make an apology for all the huffy retorts to Y when he’d chide me for buying another file cabinet rather than cleaning out the ones that were overflowing.
Maybe my saving was because I was raised by depression era parents. After all, my father, for a time, was homeless with holes in his shoes and no coat in winter. My mom learned thriftiness to the point of fanaticism. The only influence keeping our home from resembling a hoarders retreat was that my mother actually used every scrap she saved. Between her follow-through and the military (we moved every 18 months to three years and were allowed only 3000 lb of household weight a move) we had a tidy house.
Before one such move, my 1st- Sgt, Marine Corps father took me through my top dresser drawers where I’d squirreled away all my precious bits of childhood paraphernalia. If I hadn’t used it or worn it in six months, out it went: broken necklaces, rocks, unfinished projects, one favorite sock. All had to go into the trash until I could reduce my favorite things into a shoe box.
Now I’ve got a three bedroom house chuck full of his and hers collections from the past with matching unfinished projects and things we might need for the future. I’m overwhelmed and can only console myself with reassurances that it’s not all mine. But I don't know what to do with his without going through it, unlike his promise that if anything ever happened to me he would cheerfully haul the contents of my office to the dump without looking at it. When he told me this, I was crushed, but I can see his point now. Fifty years of writing grows like Alice in Wonderland after biting a ‘grow’ cookie. In comparison, I do have more ‘stuff’ than he does. I’ll have to decide what to do with all the wonderful ideas I’ve saved for future reference, and before I eliminate any of his collections, I’m deciding to practice on my own. Thank goodness for Good Will and local thrift shops. Sending my prizes back into the world for someone else to collect eases the pain, a bit. Now all I have to do, after depositing my treasures at the back door, is stop myself from going in the front door to find other goodies.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Suggestion and Direction
“Take a risk” my horoscope says for today. My heart chatters in my chest like false teeth in a cartoon. “What kind of risk?” I ask myself. What more of a risk is there than me deciding to stay in my mountain home and learn how to survive alone.
“Ooops, reframe, Earlene,” I tell myself. I think: learn how to survive on my own.
I thought I had survived enough risks what with Momma Bear and her two cubs trying to climb onto the deck. Luckily the new railing installed the weekend before Y passed by two of his brothers was strong enough to deter the invasion.
Reglueing the gasket on the refrigerator door after four weeks of waiting for help was daunting. Yet, I managed to keep the gorilla snot recommended to me by a helpful advisor off the floor and myself and to spread it along the gaskets lengths around the door so that sucker would know I meant it to stick.
Going to a community dance and working in the kitchen was risky for me, as was helping out at the community Christmas dinner. I was afraid I would appear disloyal to Y. My attending a wedding reception at a country club was also a step outside my self image of a newly widowed woman.
And then there has been climbing on the roof to clean the stove pipe, driving in Monterey and Bay Area traffic, and bringing out my first novel, The Marriage Bundle.
What other possible risk could the stars be suggesting?
I read the rest of the email that’s arrived this morning and find a forward from a friend. There’s a poetry reading scheduled at the Muse in Willits this Sunday. A local author is being honored and, afterward, anyone else is invited to read some of their work. My body shivers and my heart repeats its chattering in my chest. I have a chap book of poems called, My Family Album.
Interesting how a suggestion and a direction arrived on the same day.
“Ooops, reframe, Earlene,” I tell myself. I think: learn how to survive on my own.
I thought I had survived enough risks what with Momma Bear and her two cubs trying to climb onto the deck. Luckily the new railing installed the weekend before Y passed by two of his brothers was strong enough to deter the invasion.
Reglueing the gasket on the refrigerator door after four weeks of waiting for help was daunting. Yet, I managed to keep the gorilla snot recommended to me by a helpful advisor off the floor and myself and to spread it along the gaskets lengths around the door so that sucker would know I meant it to stick.
Going to a community dance and working in the kitchen was risky for me, as was helping out at the community Christmas dinner. I was afraid I would appear disloyal to Y. My attending a wedding reception at a country club was also a step outside my self image of a newly widowed woman.
And then there has been climbing on the roof to clean the stove pipe, driving in Monterey and Bay Area traffic, and bringing out my first novel, The Marriage Bundle.
What other possible risk could the stars be suggesting?
I read the rest of the email that’s arrived this morning and find a forward from a friend. There’s a poetry reading scheduled at the Muse in Willits this Sunday. A local author is being honored and, afterward, anyone else is invited to read some of their work. My body shivers and my heart repeats its chattering in my chest. I have a chap book of poems called, My Family Album.
Interesting how a suggestion and a direction arrived on the same day.
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