Journal 6/25/08

A Jigene post reminded me of the extremes the media goes to when covering the passing of a fellow journalist.

A year or two ago, The Modesto Bee carried an interesting obituary on one of its reporters. The obit covered all the obvious who, what, and where. But the obit writer seemed compelled to add a "why" to his piece. He detailed the girth of the man, the huge amounts of food he consumed, his lack of exercise, and his non-stop smoking addiction.

At first I thought the editor should have been more careful in selecting the obit writer. Then I thought the editor should have deleted the uncomplimentary aspects of the story. Then it occurred to me the editor probably wrote the obituary. Tired of the smell of stale cigarette smoke on the writer, angry about all the missed deadlines because the reporter had taken a second lunch hour, and embarrassed about having a representative of the newspaper appearing in public with egg yolk, spaghetti sauce, and strawberry milkshake splattered on the reporter's sweaty shirt, our editor finally got even.

Maybe journalists should have contracts which allow them to write their own obits -- minus death date, etc.-- and be allowed to tell what they want the world to remember about them.

From my side of the curtain

I keep hearing people complain that television and computers are the reasons family members no longer communicate with each other. I think the communication problem is because there are too many bathrooms in homes nowadays.

Remember having to ask everyone in the house if he/she needed to use the facilities? Then, just as you were getting into the tub, a younger brother started pounding on the bathroom door. That always started a dialogue at our house. And all the pounding and yelling eventually brought my mother down the hall to join the conversation.

One bathroom for four kids and two adults also taught us about honor. The shower curtain was pulled to give each person privacy. No one on either side ever peeked.

If we'd had today's typical 2.7 bathrooms for every 3.2 people, I never would have been conscious of the genuine misery my five year old brother Joe endured when he was afraid of germs.

"Let me in!" he would plead. "I have to go to the bathroom!"

I'd unlock the door, pull the shower curtain closed, and yell, "Okay!"

Then I'd hear him washing his hands. (Though no one ever peeked, one couldn't avoid listening.)

"Thanks," he would sigh. "You know how many germs can get on you all at once? Zillions and zillions."

"If you make me get out of the tub again just so you can wash your hands, I'm going to pull your hair out," I'd say.

"Can't help it," he'd answer. "Germs can do worse things than sisters can."

"Don't bet on it," I'd threaten from my side of the curtain.

But I finally gave up locking the door when I was in the tub. My brother would have kicked the door down to get at the sink and soap. And my dad would have torn us apart if my brother's Roy Rogers boots had left a dent in the door.

Again and again from my side of the shower curtain I'd hear Joe's warfare against the germs. I realized his fear was real, and we talked about it from either side of the curtain.

Years later Joe explained the germ problem. We were seven years apart in age, but apparently Mother had used the same story to explain the "Birds and Bees." (Joe called her version "Germs and Sperms.") Mother had said that sperm were so tiny, they were like germs. Joe, with his own logic, concluded that sperm, like germs, were everywhere.

"Mother was expecting Susie then," my brother told me later. "I saw what germs had done to her. I didn't want that happening to me!"

If we hadn't shared that bathroom, I would have seen Mother rubbing his chapped little hands but never connected his phobia with our mother's unique style of sex education.

The house was small, but we knew each other well. We were a family.

Journal 6/18/08

Today was my second day of physical therapy (after the total knee replacement) and it's going fine, except for the part where the therapist pushes on my knee in an attempt to get it to bend, possibly farther than it has bent since I was 10 years old. (Remember how limber we were as kids?) Anyway, she got it to 108 degrees today which is pretty good.

When I first went in on Monday, I was thinking that I was a pretty sad case. Then a kid on crutches comes in. He's about 14 years old, way too skinny, wearing a baseball cap, and he has on a shirt that says, "Bone Cancer Sucks." His mother is with him. She looks like she's been run over a couple of times. But she also looks like she gets up everytime. She's carrying an inflated butt doughnut (the kid barely has any meat on him, muchless any fat on his butt) and she has a bucket, apparently for when he throws up. They have the looks of people who can't stand more questions from strangers, and they've had just about all the sympathy they can handle.

I smile and nod. They seem relieved.

I was the last person out of PT before the lunch break today. When the therapist asked how I was doing, I told her about having seen the kid on Monday.

"Yeah," she said, "he's just finished ANOTHER round of chemo."

She went on to say that when she was taking her training at San Francisco State, all of her patients were in the pediatric oncology section. "The kids were dying," she said, "but the doctors insisted on their going through physical therapy. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't push those kids, not when they were already in so much pain. I had to switch departments."

Kids and cancer. I get so sad, I want to scream.

I read something the other day that said cancer may be caused by things our GRANDMOTHERS were exposed to. How you going to overcome that?

Excuse me for a minute. I've got to scream.

Heidi

Kids have always been an important part of our lives. When our daughter was about 15, we started missing having little kids around.  If Heidi hadn't stopped by now and then, I suppose we would have had to rent a kid. (She was five years old and didn't drive "yet," she would have added.)

I realized that our daughter Deb had grown up when she refused to accompany us to "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," or to picnic at Micke Grove so we could see the new sea lion.

"Go without me," Deb said.  But it's not much fun without a believer.  And by the time we suggested "Snow White" to Heidi, she''d seen it -- twice.

Heidi had visited on a Saturday as we were moving rabbit cages from the barn.

"Where are the lambs?" Heidi asked.

"They've gone to the butcher's," I said.

"Why?""

"The butcher cuts the meat into lamb chops," I said.

"What meat?" she asked.

"The lamb meat."

"Oh," she said.  "I didn't know lamb chops came from lambs."

After a while she asked, "What's for dinner?"

"Roast beef," I said.  "Roast beef I bought at the grocery store."

That seemed all right.

"Are those Debbie's cows over there?" Heidi asked.

"No," I answered.  "They belong to the neighbors."  I pointed to their house.

"When do they milk their cows?" she asked.  I guess she hadn't looked closely at these "cows."

"These cows don't need milking," I said.

"My teacher says 'The farmer milks the cows.' When do the neighbors milk their cows?"

I remembered from Debbie's kindergarten days that a teacher's word is more valued than anything said by parents, department store Santas, or a friend cleaning a barn.

"Your teacher is right, but farmers milk girl cows.  These are boys," I said.

"I'll ask my teacher," she said.

"Good idea."

"What is the neighbor going to do with cows that don't have milk?" she asked.

"I don't know," I lied.

When I was growing up our phone number was 79 M,  and the city 15 miles away was "long distance." 

And that's what my mother whispered, as if on stage, doing an aside.  "Long distance," she would say.  "Don't forget you're talking long distance.  This is a long distance call, you know.  Your father will die of prostration if we have long distance calls on the phone bill!  Long distance.  Your call is long distance!"

In those days, phone reception was a little fuzzy anyway.  Add my mother to the frenzy, and there really wasn't much sense in risking a 15-cent toll call.  It was easier to send a letter.  (What were stamps then?  About three cents?)

So my parents were letter-writers.  Mostly they wrote to their parents.  And their parents wrote back.  When my sister was born, I remember a letter from Granny (Mother's mother).  It said, "Four and no more."

Shortly after that, my father took off a Friday afternoon and spent the weekend with an ice-pack in his lap.  And he didn't want any "damn kid bugging the hell" out of him, even though bugging the hell out of him was pretty much where we excelled.  

I even heard him mutter, "None of them even look like me," which unfortunately was not true. I looked a lot like him.  And Gene, even at three years old, looked just like Daddy's father, possibly the person from whom my father had learned his communication skills.  "Shut the damned door.  Were you raised in a barn?"

It seemed an odd question for him to ask.

Anyway,  Daddy rarely used the phone.  He didn't even call the relatives in Texas to let them know we would be coming for a month-long visit in the summer.  And from the looks on their faces, I'm pretty sure he didn't write letters ahead of time either.

We spent most of the vacation with Uncle Quincy and Aunt Irma in Dallas.  They didn't have children, and I'm pretty sure it was because they didn't want any.  But they were wonderfully gracious in housing, feeding and entertaining us.  Uncle Quincy wasn't a drinking man, but he did put in long days at work while we were there.

The only "moving pictures" we have of our family are thanks to Quincy and Irma.  Gene had blond hair and blue eyes then.  The movies show Mother and Daddy as young, healthy, and hardworking people, up to their eyeballs with raising kids. 

 In fact, my parents in those photos are younger than my daughter is now.  It was a very different world.  No cell phones -- not that Daddy would have used one.  I would like to hear his voice again, even if it were just,"Get the hell outa the way.  Can't you see I'm trying to watch the Friday Night Fights?"

But I do have my brother Gene who takes his son to Wrestle Mania, or some such thing.  And Gene rants and raves quite a bit like Daddy, except when Gene rants and raves in writing, he speaks with a Korean accent.  Daddy must be shaking his head, saying, "Who the hell would of thunk it?" 

Sort of Like Recycling

"Don't make any more garbage this week," my husband said.

"Are you referring to my cooking?" I asked.

"No," he said.  "The garbage can is full, so don't make any more garbage."

"I don't create garbage," I told him.

"I know that,"he said.  "I just don't have any room outside, so don't make any more garbage inside."

Garbage pick up day is Thursday.  This was Friday.

For lunch I served him noodles.

"Where's the tuna?" he asked.

"In the pantry," I answered.  "I didn't want to throw a can in the garbage."

"Where's my milk?" he asked.

"Couldn't risk an extra carton," I said.  "So we're having lime Koolade."

"I don't like this," he said.  I didn't ask if he meant the lime drink, the naked noodles, or going without his milk.

"Not making garbage is a family project," I said.

"What are you giving up?"

"Paper towels and paper napkins," I said, wiping my mouth on my sleeve.

"I'm going to the store for a candy bar," he said.

"Be sure to eat it there," I said.

Later he phoned from the office to ask what I was doing.  

"Not making garbage," I said.  "It kind of messes up my schedule.  I'd planned the whole afternoon around making garbage and now I don't have anything to do."

He claimed he had another call and put me on hold.

Things I Can't (or Don't Want to) Get Used To

1.  Looking up in order to look my granddaughter in the eye.

2.  People who "just love the hot weather."

3.  Paying for a roast beef what I used to pay for a tank of gas.

4.  Paying for a tank of gas what I used to pay to rent a house for a month.

5.  Checking caller ID even though I already know who's calling.

6.  George Bush (both of them).

7.  Having to ask someone under 20 years old to program my cell phone for me.

8.  Sodas in cans or plastic bottles.  (Yeah, this gripe goes way back to when we could cash in our RC Cola bottles for 12 cents of gas, which usually lasted us most of the week.)

9.  Having wrinkles on my hind end.  (No, I did not sunbathe in the all together.)

10.  My daughter's age.  A couple more years and she's going to be older than I am.

The Ranch

The following is something I wrote quite a few years ago, but I think it's still relevant.

   We've lost the ranch.  The odd thing is it didn't go anywhere.  I still see it from my window.  The land stretches out there, now a chilling reminder of four farming generations.

     Parents, grandparents, and great-grandarents aren't actually seen in the orchards, but their presence is felt.  They lived the American ethic of hard work and continued a lifestyle centered around each season which was preparation for the next season, the next year, the next generation.

     There's a tremendous sense of failure in being the last farmers in a family line.  The banks try to dehumanize the pain by calling it a "paper loss." But just as ancestors are more than old family photographs, land is more than a notarized piece of paper.

     The banker can't see the ranch from his window.  He'll come out occasionally in an attempt to match the physical to the surveyor's paper image.

     He's already sketching improvements.  He's drawn plans to replace a two-acre vineward with almond trees.

     "More efficeint.  Better for the cash flow," he says.  (Two acres of 288 will make only a trickle of difference in cash flow.)

      The banker at his desk sees the vineyard as lines out of balance.  I see vines, stakes, and the day we planted.  My husband and I had spent the morning at the mortuary, picking a casket for Papa, and then we'd gone to Park View to buy a grate site.  We came home, changed into our work clothes and went out to the open field.  The land had been ready for a month but we had been at Stanford Hospital almost daily.  The root stock was pushing buds; it was late spring and planting had to begin.

     Pedro, Ted and Bino had started planting early that morning.  No one said more than a few words as we joined them.  A neighbor stopped by and found that he too couldn't express his grief.  He dropped to his knees and worked with us as we cried together and planted the vineyard.

     The paper description doesnt' show happy, crisp Sunday mornings with cousins and friends resting coffee mugs on the hood of the truck after we had picked the grapes.  There's no official notation indicating the autumn evenings we watched a harvest moon rise over that vineyard.

     Within a few days a part of our life and history will close.  But we'll always be connected to the land.  Locked in the land is our daughter at five years old, being overpaid at a dime an hour as she "helped" her grandfather plant replacements for trees that had died.  My husband's youthful energies and dreams are out there.

     We're a part of the past.  We leave the ranch to men who farm from offices instead of homes.

     From the window I see we've lost the seasons.  Harvest is finished.  Who will prune the trees?

     

    

"You now have a blog." What? How did that happen?

    This is all my brother's fault.  "You're not doing nothin'," he said.  "You got plenty of time on your hands."

     My hands should have gone around his neck while I was still taller than him.

     So the idea is to be creative?  Be real?  (They aren't always the same.)  

   Be cheerful?  I just had a friggin' knee replacement.  (I'd never even used the word "friggin'" before that surgery.)  

     So, here I am, looking at a white screen which isn't unlike the old days of white typing paper. Where do blogger persons, oh, it's probably a unisex word "bloggers," get all those colors and photos?