The homeless guy story

Starbucks is running a new campaign, inspired by President Obama’s call for service. If you pledge five hours of community service of any kind, you get a free coffee.

Here’s my first experience with community service. It was unplanned.

When I lived in the Bay Area, I drove into San Francisco to meet a friend after work. My friend worked in a fancy hotel. Though I lived a few minutes from The City, I avoided it because of the homeless. It tormented me. I couldn’t sleep at night when it was cold for thinking of them.

So I grimaced when my friend said he wasn’t off yet. There was a man with a guitar and a turned-up hat sitting on the sidewalk by the hotel entrance, where I was to wait.

He sounded pretty good.

I stood there a minute trying not to be noticed, but he shouted at me. He wanted to know my name.

He wrote an impromptu song about my beauty. This was his shtick, but it wasn’t very effective, based on the coins in his hat.

I didn’t have any money to give him. So on top of the pity, I had guilt.

Out of panic, I asked if he knew ‘Proud Mary.’ I thought I was brilliant. I was distracting him from noticing I wasn’t giving him money.

“Do you?” he asked. Shoot. Don’t insult me. “Sing with me,” he said.

So I sat on the ground next to him, backs against the wall, and said, “Left a good job in the city….”

We made more than a hundred bucks.

A happening

In my lifetime, today happened.

My daughter asked to miss school to accompany me to a brunch this morning, where people were gathering to watch President-elect Obama be sworn in.

It was an emotionally charged morning. I sat at a table between my parents, across from my grandmother and my daughter, and watched a black man become my president. I tried to eat, but I couldn’t swallow. I guess there was too much proud in my throat.

When the oath was finished, and President Obama said, “So help me God,” we cried. People stood and clapped. And embraced. Celebration drove a need to hold one another.

I love what happens to us during historic moments. We have happenings. People came together to watch Neil Armstrong set the first footprint on the moon. We came together to grieve on Sept. 11 2001. We came together today. We gather to watch, to rejoice, to share awe or fear, to support and to touch.

On the way home, my daughter, who is 14, said, “It must be a bigger deal than I can understand that he’s black.” What a beautiful statement of how far we’ve come.

It was only a year away from being in my husband’s lifetime that Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing racial discrimination in schools and employment — and in public. It wasn’t until 1965 that the Voting Rights Act enforced blacks’ suffrage. That was within my husband’s lifetime.

And now today happened. And my daughter doesn’t see a black man; she just sees a man.

Today, as always, I celebrate being an American. Today, as I do every four years, I celebrate the right to participate in my government. And today, for the first time, I celebrate that the people of my country chose to turn to a man for leadership, who in my parents’ lifetime would have been legally beaten in the doorway while watching his light-skinned brothers register to vote.

At dinner with my family tonight, I will raise a glass to the following people: every American soldier who has shed blood or was willing to shed blood protecting my right to vote, read a newspaper and choose my own church; Harriet Tubman; Dred Scott; Rosa Parks; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson; and President Barack Obama.

I salute their courage — and as I was reminded this morning — their hope and virtue.

How we met

I just drove my husband to the airport. The first time I laid eyes on him was in an airport.

Several Rainforest Action Groups from around the country were going to Hawaii for a protest. I was going as a newspaper reporter.

It was morning, almost 22 years ago, when I lay over a waiting chair at SFO listening to a bunch a hippies panic that their friend — the responsible one — wasn’t anywhere to be found.

I hoped he wouldn’t show, because we were on the same flight and I had a friend with a standby ticket.

At the last minute, a boy in a dress shirt and slacks with great need of a haircut came running into the gate, rugby duffel bag flying from his shoulder. His eyes were almost turquoise. I licked my lips. Then I got on the plane and slept for six hours.

In Honolulu we had to change planes before proceeding to the Big Island. To do this, we rode a tram across the airport. I hung back and watched the late but responsible friend interact with the hippies. He was attentive to everyone. He smiled when he talked. He seemed to be their leader.

I was thinking, he fits the description an interviewee gave me when I did a story on astrology a week ago. If there’s anything to it, he’s an Aries. I didn’t think there was anything to it, but I walked across the tram to where he was standing, (he had given a lady his seat,) and asked him if he was.

He was.

Then I took a shot at dumb luck. I put on my confident face and announced his birthday. Who knew my luck was so dumb? I hit it dead on.

Because I hoped he would follow me, I refused to tell him how I knew. I just walked away.

It worked.

link to photos

The mansion

My goddaughter called me this afternoon. She’s planning her wedding and wanted to know the name of the mansion where I married. She was 3 then, and served as my flower girl.

I loved the opportunity to tell her the story of that mansion, because it stars her mother.

In the late ’70s Linda Blair and Vincent Van Patten filmed a movie at this mansion. It was called Hell Night. There wasn’t much story. College pledges had to spend the night in the mansion, where a family was rumored to have been massacred. They don’t survive. It’s a slasher film with generous impalings and decapitations.

My goddaughter’s mother and I shared an apartment when we were 18. We had this plan that we were going to watch the movie at night, then drive over to the mansion, get out of the car and walk around the grounds.

The mansion is technically in a park, but it’s not the kind of park with a lawn and swings; it’s a forest with walking paths and a clearing up a winding drive for the mansion and gardens.

It always went the same way. We rented the movie, (at some point the video clerk started rolling his eyes at us.)  We watched the movie. We put on our jackets. Even if it was warm, we put on our jackets. It was part of the ritual.

We drove to the park. At the entrance to the estate, we looked at each other and held hands. We drove up the winding drive. We parked in the deserted lot.

We never once got out of the car.

Finally one of us would suggest we weren’t going to get out of the car.

We went home and watched The Three Stooges.

The Secret

Monday afternoons are girls’ time at my mom’s house. We sit around the table with coffee and something fattening. Some work on scrapbook albums, some just visit.

A few months ago my grandma was telling us about a book she had just read, called The Secret, (and by ‘read,’ I mean bought, put on the bookshelf and learned all about on Oprah).

She was explaining to us that you have to decide what you want and behave as if you already achieved your dream. She said we are magnets for positivity when we put positivity into the atmosphere.

“You attract what you put out,” she said.

“It’s true,” I said. “I attracted my husband by putting out.”

My mother-in-law’s story

We got a call from the East Coast tonight. My mother-in-law is in the hospital. Something is amok with her legs. We’re on stand by.

When she was a little girl starting elementary school, her father was captured as a prisoner of World War II by the Germans. A few years ago she gave us a tour of the small Massachusettes town she and her sister stayed in during that frightening time.

She started with the house — her aunt’s — and told us about her cousins, who were teen-agers and wore make up and heels. As she drove through the town, she showed us the path she and her sister took walking to school.

“This is where I hid my shoes,” she pointed.

Somehow she had acquired a pair of heels. Cluck-clucks, she called them. She wasn’t allowed to wear them to school, but she did anyway. She hid them by the side of the road and changed en route. If I remember correctly, the cluck-clucks were much too big.

Even as I sit here, a responsible adult with a history of mischief, I am stunned by elders who admit they were once naughty.

My favorite part of this story was seeing her face as she told it. She was 7 again, excited about forbidden shoes.

The dead boyfriend discovery story

I was 17, and it was just after New Year’s. My Best Friend, three friends and I were cruising around, up to no good. I was driving.

Near to My Best Friend’s house, we saw stationary police lights.

“Hey, this is one of those checkpoints they’re doing to catch drunk drivers,” one of us said. I don’t know if this was a new practice, or just new to us, but we were curious about it.

We approached, but, being teen-agers up to no good, chickened out and turned the corner a block early. We went to My Best Friend’s house.

After a period of restlessness, we piled back into my car and went to watch the police catch drunk people. 

It wasn’t a checkpoint.

There was a motorcycle on the ground, and a boy lying very still. We couldn’t get close enough to get a good view, but we parked and stared.

“Best Friend,” I started hestitantly. “Doesn’t that look like David’s bike?” David was My Best Friend’s boyfriend.

“I guess,” she said casually, “but he’s working tonight.”

I got out of the car and walked over to an officer. I found out that the motorcyclist wasn’t carrying identification. They didn’t know who it was. I didn’t look at the boy. I acted casual to My Best Friend, “Let’s go back to your place.”

When we got there, still trying to appear calm, I suggested we call the grocery deli where David worked and see when he gets off. His boss said he got off early; he should be home by now. I said, “Hey we have nothing better to do, let’s call him at home and see if he wants to join us.”

His sister said he wasn’t home. He was at work. Was he wearing the new helmet he got for Christmas? No. Does he have his wallet? No, he forgot it on the dresser. Uh oh.

I don’t know now how I got the nerve, but I mentioned there was an accident around the corner from his house. I remember saying, “It’s probably nothing, but there was a motorcycle there.”

It was him, and he was dead.

He was hit by a Greyhound bus, the driver of which hadn’t taken his insulin and was declared to be completely at fault. Apparently this approximates driving drunk.

A few days later My Best Friend and I were alone in the mortuary viewing David. He looked different, rubbery. My Best Friend was sobbing.

It was one of my first experiences with death. It was profound. He was just there the other day, and now he doesn’t exist. Where is he? And wow, David knows what happens when you die.

But I learned something, too. If blood isn’t circulating, hickeys are forever.

Archery

Three years ago I was substitute teaching some for extra money, (my real job is as a copy editor.)

One day I was at my old junior high school taking over a friend’s English class on what I still think of as the archery field.

The children were fascinated to know PE class used to include a week of archery. I was fascinated that anyone would think this was a good thing. Archery terrifies me.

And as so often happens, I started explaining, and it started sounding ridiculous to me….

Every year in spring Mrs. Tilson marched us across the campus in our little white shorts and bright yellow — which they cooled up by calling ‘gold’ — striped T-shirts. We stood with our backs to the busy street, facing blocks of hay with targets on them, and heard about the dangers of the feathers.

That’s right, the feathers.

‘Don’t get your fingers in the way of the feathers,’ is how the speech began. ‘When they whiz by, they’re like razors. They will cut your fingers.’

And then came the worst part. Mrs. Tilson told about the kid who held the arrow too close to his face, and when he released it, a feather sliced his eyeball in half.

In preparation for writing this entry, I Googled ‘archery dangers,’ ‘feather dangers’ and ‘archery safety tips.’

Guess what. Mrs. Tilson is the only one who knows about the feathers.

Dinner talk

My son reports that his high school drama department announced this year’s musical.  It’s called, ‘Once upon a Mattress.‘

“I know that one,” I said. “It’s the story of The Princess and the Pea.”

“It sounds like a porno,” he said.

“That version would be the story of The Princess and the Penis,” I said.

Drinking

I romanticize the idea of having a drink.

When I picture myself at a to-do in a cocktail dress with my heels going click click and my lips all slimy with dark lipstick, I’m slinky with a glass of red wine in my hand.

I see myself having macho fun at a poker table gripping a beer bottle by the neck.

And when i imagine a cold night by the fire, it’s complete with a hot buttered rum.

But I’m a lousy drinker. More than two and I’m sleepy, dizzy and starting a headache. And if I’m having two, I’d better have water in between.

I used to work at an iconic restaurant and bar across from the university in Boulder called The Sink. Fun fact: Robert Redford was once a janitor there.

At this bar there are murals and sayings on the wall, and the bartender supplies markers for customers to add graffiti of their own.

Someone once left a gem that struck a chord with me:

One to be social

Two for the toast

Three and I’m under the table

Four and I’m under the host.

The fight story

As far as fighting siblings go, I’m a lucky mom.

But last night while I was in the kitchen I could hear those voices that get right under the nerves between my shoulder blades. They use these voices when they’re doing their little dance between outright being bad and not making any effort to keep peace. It involves a ridiculous volley of saying the other person’s name in a warning tone, and making an overly innocent expression.

I can deduce what was going on. My son adores his sister, but he makes sport of annoying her. I’m pretty sure he was doing something with her calculator he thought was funny. He’s funny, but she doesn’t always think so.

My daughter is calm, patient and smart. She stands a lot of button-pushing before she responds, and that she does with flair.

The first time she lost her temper she was 4. Her brother was 6. I don’t know what they were on about, but I walked in the room to see her tiny hands fisted and her face red.

“That’s it!” she exploded. “The next time I have poop on my finger, guess who I’m gonna wipe it on.”

Clarifying

The saying, ‘righty tighty; lefty loosey’ always confused me.

Regardless of which way you turn something, either the top or the bottom is going left, and the other is going right.

So I raised my children with this handy saying: Clockwise tighty; counterclockwise loosey.

The earthquake

I live in Southern California. Last night we had a lengthy earthquake, and both of my children were somewhere else. It was a small quake — initially reported as a 5, then downgraded to  4.5 — but still the phone lines were clogged for a few minutes. Because of this realization, I was more afraid after the quake than during.

Naturally, I have an earthquake story.

It was October 17, 1989, and I had just been named the news editor of my college newspaper in Los Altos Hills, which is just south of San Francisco.

I was in a happy bubble as I drove home through the old-fashioned downtown at 5 o’clock. There were mom-and-pop shops with picture windows on both sides of the little streets. Knick knacks, ice cream, records — Los Altos is great for shopping.

Stop signs keep the cars moving slowly through the area, but the tailgating guy behind me was impatient. He would move to the side, as if to see if he could go around me. I remember I thought, ‘I’m a real journalist now. You can’t spoil my mood.’ But I knew he was angry.

At the third stop sign, I felt the car start to idle hard. This wasn’t unusual. Then it bucked a little, and I thought, ‘That guy got out of his car and started jumping on my bumper!’

As I turned around to scowl at him, I heard, ‘Get away from the windows!’ A woman ran out of a store into the street and stopped in front of me, holding her pre-teen daughter protectively under hunched shoulders. That’s the image I hold the strongest. That woman trying to shelter her daughter in panic.

I panicked too, trying to think if I had ever heard something like, turn off the engine or your car will explode; or roll down the windows or they’ll shatter. I thought it was The Big One I’d been advised to handle my whole life, and I couldn’t remember any of the advice. I shut off the engine and rolled down the windows.

I was one block from the intersection at the expressway, and I saw the asphalt there roll like an ocean wave, toppling the red-light signal as it changed to green and flickered out.

I had to drive around the downed signal to head into the mountains going home. That made me cry, but I didn’t understand why. I cried all the way home.

When I got there, I went directly to my phone — stepping over a bookcase, tapes, my little face-down TV — and called my parents. I was surprsied to get an open line. I kept my message brief because I knew the line would clog: I’m OK; I’ll call you tomorrow.

Then I called my paper’s managing editor. I was a journalist after all. ‘Mike, you’ll never guess what happened to me on the way home from your house! I’m heading to the campus.’

Mike argued with me, but I was a real journalist.

Finally he said, ‘Hey.’

‘What?’

‘Take your camera.’

It was a darn good thing he said that.

I interviewed and photographed students sitting on knolls, riding out the aftershocks removed from the danger of buildings. I captured the aisles of the library, piled feet high with books. I got some rubble that had been a chimney.

And then the sun went down.

I had never been in darkness so total. If I hadn’t had that camera, I don’t know how I would have found my car. I made the flash go off and took a step. I went flash-step all the way to my car. I must have been the last one on campus.

As I had expected, the phone was out by the time I got home. The couple whose basement I lived in lent me a lantern. They had a transister radio going upstairs, where they listened in silence as they swept up the remains of all their colored-sand art jars.

We learned it was a 7.1.

School resumed a few days later when the power came back, but on Oct. 18 the dedicated staff met unsummoned in the newsroom. We pulled out manual typewriters to put together a special edition.

Everybody wanted to tell his earthquake story. They probably still do. Me too, apparently.

The deer story

My son is  getting his driver license. (I learned at work that there’s no apostrophe s in driver license. Who knew?)

An unpredictable driver shook him up a little bit Sunday when he was driving me to Costco, so I told him this story:

When I was 20 I moved from Los Altos Hills, Calif., to Boulder, Colo., to go attend college where my new boyfriend lived. He flew out to my place; we loaded my Camry with all my belongings, and we got on the highway.

It was afternoon when we drove through Lake Tahoe, which was beautiful. Like any 20-year-old in love, I slowed down through that area to give The Boyfriend time to have the idea of an impulsive wedding. I was practically at a crawl leaving that town.

By nighttime we were driving through a whole lot of  nothing. I had never seen places like this, and was astonished to know they existed. With developers running out of room in the Inland Empire, I had the urge to send them a note.

I was driving because The Boyfriend had something he needed to study for regarding his master’s degree.

Suddenly a deer stepped in front of us and stopped.

I must have been going at least 90 mph. I may have been sitting cross-legged and using cruise control. I know that’s how I drove a lot of that trip.

Quickly I tapped the brakes and swerved behind the deer, who galloped off.

Dr. Oz says memories are tied to emotions. This says something about my state at 20. I don’t remember any fear, or even relief at being alive after.

The reason I remember this adventure is The Boyfriend put his hand on mine and complimented my driving.

Another PTA, another ousting

When my children were in elementary school, I ran an after-school journalism program there, and taught kids how to make their own newspaper.

Based on this, the PTA made me the publicity chair. This would prove to be a mistake.

One of the first events of the year was a fund-raising effort wherein every child was told to sell lots of wrapping paper. I’m against this. It happened every year.

Children who got at least 10 orders were treated to a pizza party with a magician.

At the PTA meeting the year before, the principal — about whom I have nothing nice to say — mentioned that the party was going on in the cafeteria when she took the regular lunch kids through, and she pointed out to them that if they had sold their share, they would have been enjoying pizza and disappearing quarters.

I found her strutting distasteful. I hadn’t let my kids sell anything that year, because it embarrasses me to put friends and neighbors on the spot. That stuff is expensive. I went home from the meeting and asked my son if the principal had done and said that.

“Yeah.” He didn’t care. I make good lunches. I always put a comic strip in there.

Back to the following year, when I had a position on the board. I let my kids participate in the thing because they wanted to earn the little portable TV they could get if they got 100 orders. They were going to pool their sheets and split the prize.

My friend from work ordered some peanut brittle, and I said jokingly that his order would save them from being paraded through the party, being the 10th.

I forget my collegues have the power of the press. This particular friend was no longer at my paper. He was now a section editor at the rival one.

He wrote a section-front editorial on the shameful goings on at my children’s school.

Well, I was in charge of getting the place publicity….

Our stint as babysitters

One week the studio where I used to do my dance workouts begged a boon from all the members. They needed people to donate time in the childcare room.

My son and I volunteered to do it for one morning class.

Early in the hour a little boy came to me with untied shoes. I knelt and tied them.

He smiled proudly, reached for the laces ends and pulled them both free.

I tied them again. He untied them again. This went on until I realized I was an idiot and sent him to my son.

Toward the end of the hour he came back to me with untied laces.

“Tie shoes please.” He could speak? Who knew? I tied his shoes.

He untied them while saying, “Imp.”

I looked over my son, who was smiling proudly.

Who’s the bigger imp?

The Little League coach story

During the years my husband was the stay-at-home parent, he coached our son’s soccer and baseball teams.

Another father was a Little League coach of badness. He demeaned the boys, and encouraged bad sportsmanship. When they were in the outfield they would boo and yell insults at the batter and pitcher.

He was friendly to my husband and me, but I always dreaded playing his team. It made me sad.

One cold night I was watching practice before one of these games. His team had already warmed up on the diamond. Parents were beginning to fill in the bleachers.

One of the dads sat next to me and made small talk. “Big game tonight.”

“Yeah, and the mood will be crabby over here, you know, with the usual tsking about how mean that coach is, and how negative the team is.”

I should really look at who I’m talking to. It was the other coach, come over to wish me and mine luck.

The diet story

There is an oft-told story in my family about my mother as a little girl, overhearing Nana saying she was going to diet.

My mother screamed and ran from the room. Nana found her crying on the bed.

“Don’t die yet! Please don’t die yet!”

By the time Nana was in her 80s, we were all saying it.

The Rose Parade story

Around when my grama rounded 80 years, I started thinking that she was getting old.

She gave the illusion otherwise.

I also started taking the comments she made about what she’s always wanted to do as some manner of bucket list.

Among those comments was the annual “I’ve always wanted to go watch the Rose Parade.”

I learned there was a trip planned through her church, wherein people spent the night in a church on the route, got a pancake breakfast and were sent into the morning for float watching. That sounded nice.

We knew all the families going. It was perfect. The kids were excited. I signed us up.

This was the year the parade was on Jan. 2.

We played Chronology, which was new to us, and Taboo, of which my daughter is the master. Woo hooo, great fun all around, and our octogenarian was a sport about sleeping on the floor while teens watched DVDs of Curb Your Enthusiasm a few feet away.

In the morning everything went to pot. It was cold, windy and raining. Nana was undaunted. She piled blankets in her arms and said Let’s go.

We were not in a church on the route. We started walking and it never ended. It was more than a mile. The rain was making our blankets heavy, and Nana can’t walk far, so it was slow traveling. Our hats, scarves and sweatshirts were useless in the wet. I wanted to throw the blankets down and leave them.

Finally we found our group on cold metal folding chairs in front of a bar, which was closed. Nana and I had to pee.

Someone pointed down the route. “Go about five blocks. There are port-a-potties.” Forget it. My pants were already wet, what harm a little more? At least it would be warm.

We sat to wait. There was no way to get warmth. The rain was coming down on us hard. Time dragged. Across Colorado Boulevard I saw RVs parked at a gas station. I fantasized about going over there and offering them a million dollars to share their accommodations.

After a while, my son said, “Is it going to be like this the whole time?”

I turned to Nana. “I’m not going to make it. Shall I go get the car and pick you up?”

Hell no. She wanted to see the parade. It’s shameful to be out-hardied by an 80-something.

My 13-year-old son and I left her and my 11-year-old daughter. On the walk back my son looked over his arms and feet and said, “I could not be wetter.”

“I could not be colder,” I said back.

At the church I called Nana’s cell to see if she’d reconsidered. The parade hadn’t started yet, but others had left, including my daughter.

When The Baby walked in she said, “I feel so sorry for the kids marching in bands today.” She and my son are both marchers. They started talking about how heavy and itchy the uniforms get when they’re wet, and what the water does to the instruments.

I tried Nana again. She was finally ready to cry Uncle. She had started walking.

I jumped in my car and headed routeward. When I got to the underpass, there were pylons blocking my way, and an officer pacing in the dry.

I got out and started moving the pylons. I was frenzied knowing Nana was walking — sopping, cold and carrying that leaden blanket. She is simply not as strong as she is stubborn.

The officer made to stop me. I shook my head. “My grama needs to be picked up. You wanna stop me, you’re gonna have to shoot me.”

In hindsight, that was more dramatic than was warranted.

He squinted against the rain and made out a white-haired figure struggling our way. I got a by-your-leave and went to her.

The next year, on Jan. 2, I went over for breakfast. She was there in her chair watching the Rose Parade on TV.

She didn’t complain, just like she never complained once on that rainy day.

I could not be regrettier.

click here for photo

I’m a snubber

I see people I know, and I don’t say anything.

My mother scolds me.

Here’s my longer-than-it-needs-to-be defense.

I remember everybody.

People use my services. For instance, My Oldest Friend is on Facebook. She remembers nobody. I get e-mails everytime someone tries to friend her that say, “Who is this? Tell me everything.”

Her yearbook is no good. She doesn’t want a face. She needs me to say, “She was in our English class in 10th grade. She was a little odd and always came over with her hand out when we had food. You’ll remember her from the eighth-grade dance when her nipple was exposed.”

The problem is that most people don’t remember me.

When I go into my tiny town, I recognize everyone. Today I stopped at Rite Aid on my way to work because I lost my sunglasses. I knew the name of the lady standing next to me choosing candy, and the name of the guy ringing me up.

I see my kids’ classmates, my own high school classmates, friends of my parents, and other parents from sports teams, PTA and band boosters everywhere. I remember their names.

I don’t always remember where I know them from, which is the other problem.

Also, I’m shy.

So people in town, hear me out. I would love to say hi to you, but I don’t think you know who I am. Please say hi first.

I swear I’m friendly.

I don’t want to be a snubber.

The hamster story

I don’t go out on New Year’s Eve. I’m afraid of drunk drivers.

I like to work a jigsaw puzzle and watch the Twilight Zone marathon.

One year my husband was in Los Angeles at a Grandaddy concert, and the kids and I were in the family room, on the third floor of our house, working a jigsaw and watching the Twilight Zone.

I heard a crash from the second floor.

My son had gotten three hamsters for Christmas, which, added to our cats and dogs, completed our personal food chain.

We found an upturned cage, and among the three of us were able to capture Brave Sir Robin and Sir Lancelot. This was no small feat. Those dudes can scurry.

An hour later we found the third. He was on the first floor at the bottom of the stairs in a dog’s mouth.

He was wet, and his front leg was broken, pointing the wrong way.

It was 8 p.m.

The nearest animal hospital that treats hamsters is an hour’s drive. I don’t see well in the dark, so I avoid driving at night, but I was trapped.

When we got there, the veterinarian Googled ‘hamsters broken bones,’ split a piece of McDonald’s straw lengthwise and fashioned a splint, and sent us to a drug store for baby Tylenol. I paid $60 for this assistance.

At 11 p.m. we were homeward bound. I was in a state of panic. I couldn’t focus on the traffic. I had my children in the car. I couldn’t shake the image of that leg jutting out an angle. I was on the freeway on New Year’s Eve.

During this time, King Arthur chewed the straw off.

We got home at 11:56 p.m. The leg was sticking out again. He wouldn’t take the Tylenol.

Within a week he was fine.

Knocking on sunshine

I’m not a fan of the knock-knock joke.

The first half is a pointless script. It’s a ritual. Don’t waste my time.

If there were some method by which you could say the third line and see if the other party could guess what you meant to add to it to make it funny, that would would be a better joke. I’m in.

But today on my morning radio program a guy called with one and cracked me right up.

Then I was driving home listening to old episodes of Barney Miller on my car’s back seat DVD player, and Nick spent the whole show trying to get someone to say ‘Who’s there?’, which I thought was funny, and which reminded me about the morning joke.

So I walked in the door and said to my husband, ‘Knock Knock.’

He said, as you know, because it’s the pointless ritual, ‘Who’s there?’

“Smell mop.”

He responded and I waited. He cracked up.

My son came in. I told it again. He called in my daughter. I told it again.

We were all cracking up in the kitchen.

In the middle of dinner I couldn’t stand it. I called Mom.

She said hello I said knock knock.

The family was laughing. She was laughing.

I had just spent two hours in the driving rain and stifled traffic, but there was sunshine in my home.

I love me a knock-knock joke.

Naming babies is dangerous

As you may remember, I was born with a terrible name that inspired comments from adults and teasing from the mean little people at my elementary school before I changed it.

No, I will not tell you what it was. It’s too heinous.

After yesterday’s post, I replied to Fred‘s comment asking what name he had planned if he had had a girl: Alice St. Eve. Beautiful.

And happily, it reminded me of a story.

One of my many aunts was set to deliver long enough into my childhood to be wary of names that fueled mean little elementary-school people. (Likely my troubles weren’t on her mind at all, but this is my blog and I can’t pass up the opportunity to make everything about me.)

She was having a girl. On arrival, my aunt announced she had found a name that was lovely and tease-free: Summer Eve.

Guess what product was introduced on store shelves a week later.

Naming the baby

My grampa and I were close. He did little things all the time to show me he loved me.

For instance, whenever he knew I would be stopping by the house, he went up to A&W and got me a vanilla shake. I only like chocolate shakes, but I so loved that he did this for me that I never told him.

He used to say all the time, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

My first baby was due on Dec. 20, and Grampa had brought my family to Colorado to be with me. They got there Dec. 13, just in case.

By the 23rd I was jumping in the snow, trying to hurry things along.

Grampa came out with a cup of coffee and sat down to watch me. “What will his middle name be?”

“It’ll be my husband’s name, unless he’s born on the 28th. If he’s born on your birthday, Grampa, I’ll believe fate wants him to have your name.”

Grampa made me stop jumping. “Hold that kid in five more days!”

My son was born the next day.

While I was in the bed, my husband filled out paperwork.

“I named him after Grampa anyway,” he announced. That baby-naming maverick.

But the truth was, I was happy he wanted to make Grampa happy.

I would do anything for him, too.

Lyrical confusion

When I was a teen-ager I used to stay at my grandparents’ a lot. One night Nana and I were in the kitchen, and I had one of my Beatles cassettes in her ghetto blaster.

I was singing along to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. “…A girl with kaleidoscope eyes. Aaaaahh.”

“Did they just say what I think they said?”

“Probably.”

“What strange lyrics,” Nana said. “People will write songs about anything.”

This was some 25 years ago. Recently we were listening to the song again and she said, “This is that strange song about the girl with colitis.”

Her memory is better than her hearing.

Boyfriends in bands

I already told you an ex-boyfriend of mine was a part of Green Day. This post is about a different boyfriend and a different band.

The first love of my life was a blond dreamboat named David Lowy. Everybody mispronounced his last name as Lowery.

He was working in the student store the summer I took biology, and I don’t remember a thing about that class except watching the clock, waiting for my flirt break.

The eye batting worked, and before you could say ’osmosis’ I had my very first boyfriend. I caught him right before my 16th birthday, and would have kept him forever, I think, if he hadn’t been my first.

A couple months into my junior year I got greedy. I was wanting to sample more of the selections at the buffet. In fact, I thought if I didn’t kiss the boy who sat behind me in history class I would just burst.

Almost 10 years later I was living in Boulder watching Letterman, and he introduced a band from my hometown — where everybody knows everybody. I squinted at the set, which we had salvaged from an alley where someone was throwing it out.

The front man looked like David! I didn’t know he was a singer. Then again, he used to croon Sinatra with my mother in the kitchen while she was cooking.

When they finished, Letterman introduced the members, starting with the front man — David Lowy. Bonus bragging rights for me. I ran out and bought the Cracker cassette, Kerosene Hat.

Another 10 years went by and I was back in my hometown. Scotchie, who I just really want to be as cool as, was telling me one of his favorite bands is Cracker.

Rockin’ good. I did some name dropping and got major cool points with Scotchie. I e-mailed him a picture of David me in 1985. I asked him if he wanted my autograph.

About two years ago I got a birthday e-mail from David, who had found me on Classmates.com.

Know what? The Cracker guy is David Lowery.

Finding Christmas

A few Christmases ago I announced there would be no gift giving.

My children’s perspective on the holiday was awry.

They had become shallow and greedy. Christmas turned them into brats.

My son said, “But you’re taking away the best part.”

I raised a brow and he added, “ – the giving!”

Too bad. We were going to have a real holiday with a fire, caroling, charades and togetherness, and we were going to appreciate it with a good attitude, damn it.

This is when I discovered I truly am the boss. Everyone said OK.

I planned a Dec. 23 evening of caroling at hospitals, followed by egg nog and baked goods back at home. I invited the friends and neighbors of my parents, my kids and myself. It was glorious.

Christmas Eve I put on a turducken feast with the whole family — cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. There were hugs and games. Norman Rockwell had nothing on me.

Christmas morning brought the crowning glory of the whole year though, and it was a surprise to the boss.

We were lingering over the dregs of breakfast, and my mother was fussing with the remaining bacon. She was trying to give it away. Then she wanted to consolidate it to the potatoes plate. It was becoming disruptive.

I got irritated. I asked her to leave it lie.

Finally she said, “Heck with it.” She scooped all the bacon off and flipped over the platter. There was something taped to the bottom of it.

We looked at it and frowned. We looked at her. She just sat there. We looked at one another.

My grama reached out and took it. It had a line of hand-written music notes. There were shrugs and more looking around.

My mother just sat there. Nana passed it on.

Halfway around the table it got to my kids. They looked at it and read aloud by humming Deck the Halls in unison. Musicians and show-offs the both of them.

My mother finally spoke. “I thought you would go to the piano and play it.”

She was disappointed? We were all excited, what’s to complain?

We all ran to the hall. There were boughs of holly decked there. Tucked inside one was a slip of paper. It had a four-word crossword puzzle drawn on it.

Nana solved it. The four words led us out to the patio fountain. We found another clue there and a small basket of wrapped treasures. The hunt was afoot.

The six of us ran from clue to clue, puzzling them out as a team. Sometimes there were treasures too.

One of the clues was a rhyme about pressing against light. When we put the clue against a light bulb, invisible ink came to the fore and revealed the next destination.

Each was challenging and clever. Each played to a different family member’s strength.

It was more fun than opening gifts, which we returned to the next year, because doing Christmas right was too much work.

My son’s birth

When I was seven months pregnant with my son, people not only thought I was ready to deliver, but that I likely carried twins.

By the time I was in my ninth month my size was downright unreasonable.

My bottom left rib hurt. My back ached all the time. The baby kept getting hiccups. I was a  miserable pregnant lady.

More than once I thought raising the child had to be the easy part.

A week before I was due I heard “Silent Night” sung in harmony from  my porch. My parents and grandparents were standing in the snow, announcing their arrival from California.

The due date felt like it would never come. Then it passed right by.

On the morning of the 23rd I had my regular appointment with my CNM  (a midwife with medical training who works out of a hospital.) The hospital was in Denver, an hour away. After a nap at home, I woke up to an invitation to lunch at The Harvest.

Oh boy! A carob shake was in my future.

Ooh. Cramp.

Throughout my shake having, I had periodic pains. This is the last thing I wanted to say out loud in front of my mother, so I sneaked looks at my watch and kept track of how far apart they were. I watched the little airplane second hand fly around the map of Southern California on my Swatch.

After a time my dad said, in a ridiculously loud voice, “How far apart are they?”

Imp. Observant imp.

For dinner my mom and grama made albondigas. There’s good eatin’ when Mom and Grama come by.

Come dinner the pains hadn’t grown much larger or closer. But toward the bottom of my bowl I had one great big pain that didn’t stop.

I ran to the downstairs bathroom. There was something yucky and shake-like in my future.

Dad was there. I ran upstairs to the bathroom. Mom was there. Halfway down the stairs I couldn’t go up or down. I sat and screamed. Mom came out.

My husband got me into the bathroom and called the midwife. She said to draw a bath, light some candles and have some wine. It was time to relax. It would be a while.

I tried. Couldn’t. I was still with the big pain that didn’t stop.

Mom was all a-dither. We went to the hospital.

As we entered I started in with ‘I want an epidural,’ (I say ‘started in’ as if I hadn’t been saying it for nine months already.) I said it to the people in the lobby, the guy in the elevator and some nun handing out booties she’d knitted.

I was told it was too early. Hours of badness passed. I kept saying it.

I threw up my albondigas.

Finally I hit the magic number of dilatedness and my midwife came. I told her I wanted an epidural. She said it was too late.

Hours of hell passed. At some point I escaped everybody and locked myself in the bathroom. There was a lot of door pounding. I sat in the Jacuzzi and ignored them. I hated my nurses. I hoped their dogs died.

When I came out I was in trouble and didn’t care.

My midwife told me to push. There was no urge, but I pushed. I kept pushing. I got in trouble for pushing when I wasn’t having a contraction.

There was a break between my contractions? I had only felt one long pain since dinner.

At 6 in the morning, because it was either pass that baby or die, my body let that baby out. He was purple and limp. Me too.

I sound heartless, but I didn’t listen for the cries, or notice the glances of the staff looking at a seemingly dead baby. I couldn’t tell it was over. I was still with the pain.

As they worked to get him breathing, I began to feel some relief. I later learned my son broke both the hospital’s record for head crown size and my pelvis.

Now we’re both fine, but can you imagine my panic when I learned I was pregnant with my daughter?

The woot bew story

My cousin Sterling and his bride Alison arrived today.

He’s turning 32 next month, but I still see him as a 4-year-old who hums the theme to Star Wars and can’t say the R sound.

Our grampa used to tease him. One afternoon Sterl wanted a root beer.

Grampa waxed confused, “Woot bew?”

Sterl was patient, “Not woot bew, Grampa, woot bew.”

Everyone tried not to laugh.

“I’ve never heard of that. What’s woot bew?”

Sterl got impatient, “Not woot bew, woot bew!”

“Honey? Do we something called woot bew?”

Tonight I asked Sterl if he remembered this. He remembers hearing about it. He’s still a little sore.

My husband said, “One day you’re going to do it to your kids.”

“I know,” Sterl said. “And that’s why.”

Pay it forward, baby. Ya gotta get revenge somewhere.

Whoops

My daughter and I went to the grocery store, and there a was an advertisement on the cart with a woman’s picture on it.

The woman had on a tragic hat, her head was painfully cocked and her eyes were opened unnaturally wide.

I don’t know what the ad was for, but it was distracting in its bizarreness. We almost walked into a rack of fruit.

My daughter said, “Do you imagine that woman saw this photo and approved it? Like, she had a choice, and said, ‘This is the image of me I want people to see?’”

I was wondering the same thing, and was trying to think of how to answer as we approached the kiwis.

I looked up to select some. Guess who was behind us.

I gave my daughter a small kick and a frown, and indicated the lady with my eyes, as if to say ‘ixnay.’

It seems impossible to me, though, that this doesn’t happen to her every time she shops.