Catherine Sevenau's Blog: Writings~Rambles~Rhymes, page 38

Wait! What?

This May was a big month in the personal arena. My check-off list: ✓ Found my driver’s license that had disappeared three months ago ✓ Auto registration tag came, stuck atop the eight others ✓ New passport arrived, not that I plan to wander away anywhere ✓ Renewed driver’s license: took the test, had new photo, 15 pounds wider […]

3.7 Nana

We had a boxer named Nana. Debbie wanted a puppy and when someone at Chuck’s job brought in a passel of puppies he brought one home for her. Debbie got to name her. She was good with us kids, and careful around Randy and Laura when they were little. She wasn’t allowed in the house […]

Through Any Given Door, Part II (in full)

the mid-story… Through Any Given Door, a Memoir Part II Torn Pictures San Jose, San Francisco, Hawaii 1954 – 1958 (herein presented in full, sans photos) ~~~~~~~~~ 1954 • San Jose, California ~ I’d reach up and rap the doorknocker twice. I’d say, knock, knock. She’d say, who’s there? I’d say, Cathy. She’d say, Cathy who? I’d say, Cathy […]

2.39 Kakaroach

1958 • Oahu ~ Claudia and Mom stayed in Hawaii for four months after I left, walking the beach, sightseeing, going to movies, swatting mosquitoes and smashing cockroaches. No matter how carefully my sister cleaned, how much she sprayed, or how many she nailed with a magazine—from tiny clear insects to four-inch black beasts, all with […]

2.38 What Did I Know?

1958 • Honolulu ~ I remember a Friday afternoon soon after what happened with Bobby: a girl and I were playing the cigarette game on our way home from school, racing and keeping score of who stomped first on the empty packs of Kents, Kools, and Lucky Strikes flung from car windows and littering the […]

2.37 Let. Me. Go.

April 1958 • Hawaii ~ I remember that Saturday afternoon. I don’t know where Mom and Claudia were, probably off to the commissary for groceries or cigarettes, so Bobby and I were alone in their apartment. He was propped up with pillows at the head of the bed. I sat on the bottom corner, shuffling cards, […]

2.36 I Remember Bobby

1958 • Honolulu, Hawaii ~ I have other memories of Hawaii. I remember Bobby. He was blonde, tan, and handsome, a Georgia cracker with a slow Southern drawl and a boyish, white-toothed smile, a swabbie in bell-bottoms of pressed blues or crisp whites. He was nineteen and in his third year in the Navy, married […]

2.35 With Open Arms 1958

1958 • Whittier, Southern Californa ~ On February 1, 1958, Betty married Tony Duchi, the handsome admirer she’d met at Kinney Shoes the prior summer. The first time she laid eyes on him she fell in love with this man who was her measure, who adored her, and who would protect her. Dropping out of Whittier […]

2.34 Christmas Eve

1957 • Honolulu, Hawaii ~ I remember that Christmas Eve. I wanted us to have a tree, so I made it from a beautiful branch of dark wood I found near our house earlier that day. At each tip where its small thorns crooked out I stuck a sugared gumdrop, then carefully bow-tied the mid […]

2.33 Come Hell or High Water

Nov 29, 1957 • Honolulu ~ I remember the Friday afternoon the hurricane hit. I was walking home with a girl from school who’d invited me to her house, me doing a small skip alongside her, happy to have made a friend. I heard it before I saw it. I turned my face to the […]