S. Kay Murphy's Blog, page 13

PSA

I'm interrupting my previously scheduled blog post (about my further adventures in Salinas) to bring you a public service announcement. It's the same one I've made before... but bear with me.

About an hour south of Salinas is a small community known as King. In it, just off Highway 101, is a fairly large truck stop, and in the middle of the truck stop is a fairly small eatery called the Wild Horse Cafe. (Thus the rearing horse in the photo above.) This was where I stopped for breakfast at 8:00 this morning. You know when you walk in the door of a cafe of this type that if you see plenty of battered trucks outside and plenty of dusty boots dragged up to the counter inside, you're going to get some mighty fine breakfast (which I did, quickly and with salsa on the side).

You also know, in a place like this, you're probably going to see signs like this:


This picture says it all: "God, Guns & Guts Made America Free/Let's Keep It That Way" over a background of our flag, a bald eagle and a man toting a long-barreled gun.

I had already become aware of the shooting in Dayton when I checked my phone at 5:30a.m. for news. Since my son now lives in Dayton, Ohio, you can imagine what reading that news did to my heart rate, which only slowed down a little after he immediately responded to my text message to say he was okay. He followed that with, "Yeah, it's crazy; I've been to that bar before." That's when the tears came. No, it wasn't my son this time. But it could've been. And certainly, it was somebody else's son, somebody else's daughter.

By the time I sat down to coffee, scrambled eggs and home fries, I was determined to take as many deep breaths as might be necessary to get through my breakfast without crying in a small diner surrounded by strangers. Then the gentleman sitting in the booth behind me suddenly jumped up and shouted, "There's been another mass shooting! This one's in Dayton!" He held his cell phone aloft and looked around for a response, whereupon the gentleman sitting one booth away replied loudly, "And they wanna take our guns away? Not mine they don't."

Sigh. 

Not satisfied with that response, the phone wielding gentleman then approached three weathered crop beaters sitting at the counter and showed them the news. One of them glanced at the phone, then leaned into the anxious man's side and began to tell him quietly that he could not trust at all what he saw on the news. "A lot of times they just make that stuff up," he said emphatically.

I wish, oh how I wish, that I were making this up, that this were a fictional story that just came to me while I sat in that isolated diner losing my appetite.

Nope, not a chance. It happened just like that, folks. The first man finally sat down and continued to stare at his phone, occasionally blurting out further details as he continued reading about the carnage.

And I sat. I remained anchored. Time ticked by. What I wanted to say was, "No one wants to take your guns, sir, unless you have an AK-style weapon that you're planning on using to kill people who don't look or think like you." But I didn't. Like our lawmakers, I simply sat and did nothing.

So, since we're still not going to change anything in America in regard to guns, here's my advice:

From now on, whenever you travel to a public place, whether it's a mall or a school or a nightclub or an outdoor concert or a museum, always check for exits when you arrive, as I did this weekend at the Steinbeck Festival. I found the back door of the center easily, saw that it led to an enclosed patio, and determined that, with some effort, I could go up and over the wall if need be.

If you have young children, explain to them that if someone begins shooting, they are not to wait for you, they must run as fast as they can as far as they can away from the gunshots and not stop to look at anything or anyone. You can always be reunited with them later if you manage to survive. If you don't survive, well, the sooner they adjust to someone else looking after them, the better, I suppose.

If you're still of the belief that a man with a gun can be stopped by another man with a gun, please keep in mind that yesterday's shooting occurred in Texas, an "open carry" state. The perpetrator opened fire on women and children and old people. Where were the men with guns to stop him?

Speaking of that, decide in advance if you would really risk your life to save someone or you're just going to run. You'll lose critical seconds being indecisive. I will not forget the interview with the woman in El Paso who said, 'I was trying to help a very elderly woman, but she just couldn't move fast enough, so I left her behind, because the shooter was getting closer.'

I honestly had to ask myself how I would feel if my daughter sacrificed her life to save an old woman, which, believe me, I'm pretty sure she'd do, because she has this thing for old people, and she's pretty badass and stubborn--if she didn't take out the shooter with her teacher voice--"Put that [expletive] gun down right now!"--she'd find a way to help the old woman. But at what price? If the old woman survived, her family would have her for a few more years. If my daughter were killed, she'd be lost to her husband, her children, her eventual grandchildren, and a mother who would never know joy again.

But these are the moral dilemmas we must sort through in advance. Because when the bullets start flying again--and we all know it's only a matter of time before the next mass shooting occurs, maybe in your town, maybe in mine--we will not have time to consider escape routes or reflect upon who is needed more in this life. We will have a handful of seconds to react. We'd best be ready.

Cayucos

The ocean, for me, has a healing quality just as powerful as walking in a forest among tall trees and birdsong. If you've read The Dogs Who Saved Me , you know that I grew up near the ocean, and when I was younger, in my worst times, I retreated there--first by bike, then later by car.

That didn't change when I grew into middle age. I still went to the ocean for solace, even though I lived much farther from it, and nowadays the bit of the ocean I visit isn't in Southern California, it's along the Central Coast. If you've never been there, just trust me when I say, it's a magical place. If your soul needs healing, go there.

When I decided to attend the annual Steinbeck Festival, I thought I might stay over in Cayucos on my way up to Salinas. If you're unfamiliar, Cayucos is the little town just north of Morro Bay. It's the home of the Brown Butter Cookie Company, and the beach front boasts a long, beautiful pier that stretches out into deep water.

The last time I drove to Morro Bay, up Interstate 101, it took me seven hours--a trip that should take five hours if you slow down a bit to appreciate the ocean out your driver's side window. So this time, I drove the back roads--through Palmdale, up, around, over and across on several two-lane highways, just me and the agricultural trucks rolling along. It was great. With all the meandering I did, it still only took me five hours, and I drove some beautiful country roads, especially when I got closer to the coast.

At 4:00p.m., I checked into my very clean and spacious room at the Cayucos Beach Inn, took a quick shower, then walked downtown--a half-mile stroll--for dinner.


The restaurant I had intended to patronize was closed, so I strolled another quarter mile to the Cass House. This is what I ate:

Focaccia baked on site with warm, rosemary-infused olive oil and sea salt 
Roasted cauliflower in lemon yogurt with toasted almonds, mint and pomegranate vinaigrette  
Flourless chocolate torte with sea salt
Just to be clear, I only ate half the torte. I saved the other half for the next day. Needless to say, I was a pretty happy, relaxed camper when I strolled out onto the pier after dinner. From there, I could see all the way down the coast to Morro Rock in Morro Bay.


I slept deeply and comfortably that night. The next morning, Friday, I awoke to fog shrouding the town and the beach. Hurrah! This is my favorite weather for walking the beach. I went down about 7:00, and, no surprise, on the wide expanse of beach I found dog prints right away. Through the mist, I could make out the outlines of a few canines and their humans. And then, looming up from the sand, I saw what might have been a rock... but very well could have been a sleeping dragon.


Since I am currently working on a children's series that includes a dragon and is loosely set in Cayucos, I took this sighting as a very good sign.

If--when--I return, will the dragon still be there? I do not know. I do know that I will not wait long to walk on the beach again. That hour ambling along the sand, peering into fresh tide pools, greeting the happy dogs who greeted me in return, listening to the susurration of the surf's rhythm toward me and away, healed my soul a bit and gave me as a take-home gift a basketful of tranquility.

Valet

Will someone please help me disrobe?
Okay, sorry for the racy first line. I didn’t mean it. Well, I mean, I meant it, but just… don’t volunteer until you know what it entails.
Also sorry for the title to this post, because I don’t mean “valet.” Google is telling me that my request is actually for a “lady’s maid” (because only MEN can have valets [insert angry emoji face here]), but, let’s face it, I ain’t no lady, and a “maid” (sheesh! What a term!) is certainly not what I want. Not really. I just want someone to assist me in getting ready for bed at night. Because, oh my dragons, by the time I finish with the nighttime routine for my fur crew, I’m too tired to do it myself.
At 8:00p.m., I take Thomas outside for maybe the last time of the evening. Maybe not. He may need to go out again in an hour if he’s too scared to… um… accomplish the task we set out to accomplish. That could happen if any neighbor on either side of me or behind me is in his/her/their yard doing anything (or nothing at all; he sniffs from the garage door—if the coast isn’t clear, he doesn’t advance). And by ‘taking him outside,’ I do mean going out there with him. Every time. Lucky you, all of you with dogs who can open the back door at 8:00p.m., tell your dog to get out there and get busy, then close the door and go back to watching TV or Netflix or Amazon Prime or the new political drama unfolding on Facebook.
Oops. I digress.
Anyway, since we’ve lived here (in Calimesa, in a “senior community” of “manufactured homes”), Thomas no longer has his seven-foot-tall block wall to shield him from possible intruders, so he doesn’t feel safe going outside alone (unless it’s 2:00a.m., at which time he is so happy to be outside trotting and sniffing, he’s been known to do zoomies). So I go out with him, in summertime, swatting at mosquitoes for the 15 minutes it takes him to get on task, in the winter, bundled in a jacket, hood up, staring at the stars until my neck hurts.
Thom gets a Greenie when he comes back inside, and the girls (Purrl and Jenny, who are cats, if you’re new to the blog) get a few treats. Dry cat food bowls are topped off (because heaven help us if a cat reaches that critical point sometime in the night when she can see the bottom of her bowl). Purrl is still on a diet, so hers must be measured carefully. Jenny is remaining thin on her Cannidae and Blue Buffalo diet, so I can just dump hers in—but I have to stir it around with my fingers. Why? Because she drools while she eats, so all the crunchies on the bottom of the bowl are all stuck together.
Waters are also topped off, but while I’m in the master bath, I floss and brush my teeth. (That’s right, floss. My dental hygienist loves me.)
When Thomas finishes his Greenie, if he hears me brushing my teeth, he knows it’s story time, and he runs happily to the carpet outside the bathroom door and plops himself down like a kid in kindergarten, so excited for what’s coming next.
What’s coming next is me stretching myself on the floor beside him, giving him pets and scratches and a back massage while I tell him his adoption story. It starts like this:
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, you were the most beautiful dog at the shelter. But it wasn’t always so….
I’ve told him the story so many times in five and a half years, I’m sure he has it memorized.
As you can imagine, doing this activity at the end of the day—after I’ve cleared the sink of dishes and locked all the doors and turned off all the lights save the lamp next to the bed that I read by—can induce a certain level of relaxation (in me, if not in him). Of course, Thomas is a dog, after all, so he’s always coated with a certain minimum of grime, which means when the story is finally over, I have to find the energy to get myself up off the floor, get my hands washed, and then get ready for bed. But by that time, I just want to lie there and go to sleep.
So here’s my thought: This is the “generation of convenience,” as I recently learned on NPR. There are people who perform the service of doing things for others so they don’t have to be inconvenienced—like fetching your favorite fast food and bringing it to you or picking up your dry cleaning or, as my daughter continues to remind me, grocery shopping for you and delivering the groceries to your home. Why can’t there be an app that I can use to summon a lady’s maid? Remember all those scenes in Downton Abbey with “Anna” helping “Lady Mary” remove her clothes and jewelry and prepare for bed? That’s all I need. Just someone to pop over, untie my shoes, take out my earrings, brush my hair out, and help me get out of my jeans without falling on the floor. (Yes, it has indeed happened in the past, and I have no doubt it will again.)
Is that too much to ask?
I’m going to tag this post with “Entrepreneur.” Wait ten seconds, then look online; I’ll bet someone will be on Gofundme asking for money to start a "Lady's Maid" service.

Back East, Part II

St. Michael's parish in Mitchell Township. My ancestors helped to build this church. They are buried next to it.
(Scroll down for Part I of this thread if you haven’t read that bit yet.)
Do you know who your great-great grandparents were? Do you know their names and where they lived?
Most people don’t. In the years that I spent researching Tainted Legacy, it occurred to me more and more that I had never thought past my grandparents. (I suspect my mother was always secretly glad of that, since she didn’t want to talk about her grandmother to anyone before the family secret was laid bare by her curious and persistent daughter.) Genealogy, in the pre-discovery-of-Bertha-Gifford days, was boring to me. I mean, I knew that my ancestors had come to America from Ireland—Dad never let us forget it. But, let’s face it; those were dead people. What did they have to do with me? Sigh. What a self-absorbed little ingrate I am at times.
I began to change in my thinking during long conversations with my cousin, Danny Fiocchi. We talked about Bertha a lot because I was immersed in writing the book and then I was immersed in finding a publisher. But those talks eventually led to him sharing about discoveries his brother Mick had made about the Murphy side of our family. After Tainted Legacy was finally published, I began traveling back to Missouri every summer to promote the book, give talks on Bertha, roam around in cemeteries where Bertha and others are buried, and visit all the new friends and cousins I made during the writing and research. And with every year that passed, Danny encouraged me to take a summer out and head up to Wisconsin to visit one particular graveyard up there.
Well, Danny my love, I’ve finally done it. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, that you are no longer around so that you could’ve gone with us—although I felt your presence with us every step of the way, let me tell you.
This is me, standing by the headstone--how grand it is!--for Jeremiah and Elizabeth Murphy.
My great-great grandparents, Jeremiah (Jerry) and Elizabeth (Betsy) Murphy traveled—somehow, dear lord, making that rough trip over the ocean—from Ireland to the baby country of America. After living for a time in Massachusetts, presumably to work and save their money, they made their way to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and then set out to find land on which to homestead in Mitchell Township, walking the twenty miles out into the country to find the perfect spot. And they found it, boy howdy, they found it.
Cousin Mick was our tour guide when we drove out to Mitchell. From his careful study of plat maps and other historical information, he has been able to determine precisely where that early Murphy family built their home (which is no longer standing). Oh, the countryside there! The green rolling hills and fertile soil, the trees and trees and more trees! (Actually, the trees are so thick, they have obscured a view of where the house would have stood. Had I taken my hiking boots with me, I would’ve been game to tromp on through.)
Can you imagine it? No paved road, no electricity, no phone lines, twenty miles from town. “Yes, dear, I think you’re right; this is the perfect spot for our new home.” Of course, they had to get a house built before the winter came on. I hear Wisconsin winters can be a bit chilly….
The courage of those two! Oh, wait, did I mention that five of their six children had already been born, and that Jerry and Betsy were nearly forty by the time they booked passage on a barge to travel down the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, then travel by steamboat across the Great Lakes to Sheboygan? Yeah. And then the seven of them walked to Mitchell Township. (“Mary, keep on eye on your little brother! You know John is always running so far ahead I can’t see him!” I can just hear Betsy….)
But I know something about wanting a better life for your children… and how you just gird yourself up and then keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how tired you are…. But hey, I’ve always had the comforts of electricity and a car and running water and a functional indoor toilet. Well, most of the time, anyway.
Two years after homesteading, Jerry and Betsy gave birth to their youngest son, Peter Henry Murphy, my great-grandfather. My dad was named after him. He would later marry Julia O’Brien, and the two would have ten children, including my Grandpa George. George and his wife, Delia, had seven children, including my father, who was also born in Mitchell Township.

Beneath this humble stone lie Peter and Julia Murphy, my great-grands.
Knowing all this history (which has been gleaned from multiple sources and carefully set down for the family by Cousin Mick), I stood over the graves of Jerry and Betsy, Peter and Julia, with profound humility and gratitude. Our family, down through the generations, has never lacked for work ethic. We have always been less interested in amassing wealth and more interested in the values of family and home life. Well, and the value of a good Irish whiskey, let’s be honest.
I am grateful as well to Danny and Mick, who gently encouraged me over the years to take this trip until I finally did it. There is a sense of respect that is cultivated in learning of one’s ancestry, one’s own personal history. Thank you, Jerry and Betsy, for agreeing together to leave one beautiful land to come to another. It is an understatement to say that I am privileged to be here because of the sacrifices you made.
Peter and Julia Murphy, my great-grandparents, with their youngest son between them, surrounded by nine of their ten children.

Back East, Part I

I spent some time in Wisconsin and Illinois last week, and I have some thoughts on that trip. But today is Father’s Day, so this first part is going to involve tattling on my dad.
My dad was born in Wisconsin but his parents moved to Illinois when he was a wee lad, and my dad grew up in the area of Highwood and Highland Park (roughly 25 miles west of Chicago). At one point, they—and by “they,” I mean Grandma and Grandpa Murphy plus their seven children—lived in this house:



I know this because my sweet cousin Donny scooped us up the morning after we arrived in Illinois and drove us on a tour of Highland Park, Highwood and Fort Sheridan—where my dad would have gone when he enlisted in the army. (Yeah, it was a goose-bumpy moment, to realize we were traversing the same ground he would have covered as a gung-ho twenty-two-year-old who was eager to get overseas and serve his beloved country in WWII.)
Donny showed us the house, and we had a conversation about what it must’ve been like for nine people to be living there—with the only bathroom being an outhouse in the back yard. (Side note here: How on earth did mamas potty train babies when they had to run them across the yard to get them pants-down-and-seated in time?)
But what really made me happy was when Donny drove us to this hill:



I had to get out and take a photo, and I hope you can see from the photo how steep the hill is. Now close your eyes and imagine two things: 1. The hill is covered in snow. 2. There is no rock barrier between the bottom of the hill and the lake (aka, "the big lake," Lake Michigan). Hold that thought.
When I was fifty-ish, it occurred to me that, since my father had died when I was only eight years old, and for other reasons which are just sad and don’t bear repeating here, most of my impressions of him had come from my mother, who, as it turns out, wasn’t the most reliable narrator of my dad’s life story. When I had that revelation, I wrote to my dad’s sister, my very sweet Aunt Betty, and I asked her to tell me about what my dad was like before he married my mom. I’m going to skip over the back story of everything that happened to that letter after it arrived in Illinois and was passed from aunt to uncle to cousin and back again, and just say this: Some months later, a CD arrived for me in the mail. On it were the voices of my Aunt Betty and my cousin Mick, the latter interviewing the former about my dad. Since then, I’ve wept my way through that CD numerous times—all the more so because Aunt Betty has now passed. But my favorite story involved that steep hill… and my dad… and a sled… and my Aunt Betty. Here is the story in Betty’s own words:
“There were nine of us stuffed in that little brick house--Mom, Dad and seven kids. One winter Saturday morning Mom had things to do so she told my older brother, 'Pete, you can’t go any place until Betty is dressed. You take her with you today.' Little did she know what a treat I was going to have!I was four or five at the time and Pete was three years older. He grumbled but he got me dressed and set off with me and a sled. ‘This is going to be the most exciting day of your life,’ my big brother promised me. ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. All he’d say was, ‘You’ll see when we get down to the lake.’It wasn’t that far a walk. Soon we came to the bluff overlooking the lake. There was a path that Highwood people used to get down to the lake. Pete stopped there and told me, ‘Listen to every word I say. I’m going to lay down on the sled. You lay on my back and hold on for dear life because it’s going to be a rough ride.’ I grabbed on with two hands. Once he made sure I had a good grip, off we went bumpity bumping down that cliff and out onto the lake. We flew through little whiffs of snow. The cold air was blowing on my face so hard I had to put it down on Pete’s back, but I kept lifting my face up because I wanted to see everything. We went far out onto the lake. ‘How far can we go?’ I asked my brother. ‘Until the ice cracks,’ he said. I wasn’t scared. I just thought, ‘Okay, he knows what he’s doing. He’s my big brother.’ Just as I thought that, the ice cracked. Peter quickly turned the sled sideways. We flew that way for a while because we were going so fast. It was a long walk back, and I was tired by the time we got to the shore.When we got home, my mother said, ‘Look at your rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes!’ Pete hadn’t told me not to tell, and I didn’t notice his frantic signals. I said, ‘Oh, Mom, I had the best time!’ As I told of our adventures, my mother’s smiling face changed like a witch woman’s! Peter had to go to his room. I felt terrible that he got punished.”
This story is all the more endearing to me because every time I hear it, I think of all the times my big brother—three years older—placed my life and limb in jeopardy by pulling similarly dangerous stunts. Just as Aunt Betty trusted my dad, I trusted my big brother to always keep me safe, and he did. For the most part….
How fun it was, though, after hearing that story for so many years, to stand at the top of that hill, look down to the lake, and imagine the wild ride down and the slide across. At least my brother had the sense to always warn me: “Don’t tell Mom!”

Remembering Barb

Sam Maloof with one of his iconic rocking chairs. Photo from Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts.

In the late 1990’s I began writing a weekly column for the Colton City News newspaper. The gig lasted for several years, and I loved every minute of it (except, perhaps, the Sunday evening deadline). I met a handful of my readers along the way because they reached out to me via letters to the paper or by finding my website and emailing me. Barbara Tinsley was my dearest and longest enduring fan. She passed away in March.
I wish I still had Barb’s original email. I don’t know what the subject line said—something about my column, I suppose—but the body of the email was relatively short and to the point. She told me she enjoyed reading my columns, and that she’d been close to canceling her subscription to the paper, but my columns had given her something to look forward to each week in the little “throw-away” paper, so she kept paying for her subscription, and she hoped they were using some of that money to pay me. I assured her they were, and I thanked her for reaching out. Some months later a particular column resonated with her—I don’t remember which one—and I heard from her again. My daughter and her very young children were living with me at the time, and I wrote about our joy-filled chaos quite often. Barb responded by exchanging emails with me about her own children and grandchildren. Like me, she didn’t feel she’d been the best mother in the world, and she hoped to make up for some of that by being a fabulous grandma.
Over the years, our email exchanges became longer and more personal. After 9/11, I began signing all my emails to friends “Love, K.” When I signed off in this way to Barb, she wrote back immediately to let me know she wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She wasn’t raised by parents who said “I love you.” She hadn’t married a man who said it. She felt the words were something people said frivolously or superficially. “We are friends,” she wrote, “but does that mean we love each other? I don’t know.” After that, she began to sign her emails “Fondly, Barb.” So at least she was fond of me.
Barb and I stayed in touch even after the owners of the newspaper stopped paying me so I stopped writing my column. I met her in person for the first time when she came to a book signing for Tainted Legacy. Somewhere around that time, she mentioned wanting to take the tour of Sam Maloof’s home in Alta Loma (aka Rancho Cucamonga). We planned to go together, and my oldest son, also interested in Maloof’s brilliant wood-working, came along. I have many pleasant memories from that day, and no photographs, I’m sorry to say. We enjoyed every minute of our conversation over coffee beforehand, then the tour, then walking in the gardens of the estate. We promised each other we would plan similar outings in the future, my son included. Although Barb and I met for lunch two or three times in the years after, we never did visit any of the places we’d talked about going together.
When Barb moved from the Colton area to Hemet after her husband’s death, I didn’t see her again. My life was busy back then with teaching, writing, book promotion, helping with my grandkids, sorting out my quirky dog, and occasionally finding the time to hike. I just never made time for the long drive out to see her, and she was getting older and was no longer comfortable with driving long distances.
I was hopeful, though, when I moved to Calimesa a couple of years ago. Hemet is 30 minutes away. I shot off an email to Barb to ask if we could meet for lunch, though I hadn’t heard from her in quite some time.
She never answered. Then, finally, just after New Year’s, I received an email from her. The subject line said “I found you.” In the time that I hadn’t heard from her, she’d suffered a series of strokes. “I’m writing this on an iPad my son gave me to keep me occupied,” she told me. “I’m getting better, but I’ve had to re-learn some things.” It was a short email with quite a few errors—something unusual for Barb, but not surprising, given the circumstances. And she signed it, “Love, Barb.”
Over the next weeks, we corresponded, and her writing improved as she explained that, when she came out of the hospital, she needed more care, so her son moved her up to Petaluma, where he lives. Definitely too far for us to meet for lunch. But at least we were exchanging family news again.
I asked Barb for her address, and I sent her a Get Well Right Away card. Two weeks went by, then the card was returned to me. I thought maybe she’d given me the wrong address, so I called the care center to make sure I had it right—and, I’m not going to lie, to see if I could get any information about her. That’s when the very kind woman on the phone let me know they had returned my card because Barb had passed away the week before the card had arrived.
I’m not going to reiterate that sentiment about spending time with people while you have the chance. Good writers show, they don’t tell, and I want to continue to make Barb proud of me when I write.
She had a good life. She married a good man, and they were married for decades. She had children and grandchildren, and she continued to be involved in their lives as long as she could be. She was in her 80’s when she passed away.

Some years ago, when I lived in that sweet cabin in the wilderness, I started writing these blog posts, and I let Barb know how to find them. She was thrilled. And if I didn’t post anything for a while, she sent me a quick email to nudge me. I loved that.
One more thing I have to add is this: Barb and I were very similar in our tastes in reading and writing and art and ethical, appropriate behavior. But we were far, far apart when it came to the political spectrum. Early on, we both acknowledged that fact—and afterward, we never discussed politics, which worked beautifully for our relationship.
Here’s to you, Barbara Tinsley! Cheers and Godspeed and now that you have passed, please feel free to meet up with my mom and dad and have some chats with them about books and art and me, of course. I’ll see you again eventually. I have no doubt of that.

Old Glory

My father used to hang our flag out on those particular days of the year set aside to honor patriotism or American troops—Veterans Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July. Early in the morning he would go to the hall closet, push aside the winter coats, extract the flag from where it had been languishing in a dark corner, and carry it to the front porch. My sister and I would follow him out and watch as he carefully removed the sheath that kept our flag protected from dust and debris, then, holding it high so that it never touched the ground, he would carefully slip the wooden dowel into the permanent metal holder he had bolted to the porch post, slowly rotating it so that the flag unfurled. It was such a precise and deliberate routine, I almost felt like saluting or placing my hand over my heart.
By the time I was a teenager, my father had been dead for years. No one put our flag out anymore. My generation was the one that burned the flag, or tore it in strips to make hair ties or bandanas, or sewed it upside down on the backs of military fatigue jackets. Our irreverence was monumental because our rage had reached monumental proportions. We were angry at the politicians we hadn’t elected and didn’t support, the ones who were sending teenaged boys off to fight a war in a country that was so far away we’d never even heard of it. We were even more angry when we discovered that those same politicians had been lying about what was really going on.
Many times, in those years, I thought of my father’s tender unfurling of the flag and his fierce patriotism. Had he lived to see the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the similar death of Kennedy’s brother Robert five years later, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. that same year, the rioting and chaos in this country and the mass slaughter on both sides in the Vietnam War, it would have broken his heart. Through it all, I have no doubt that he would have continued to bring out the flag on those special days, to hold it high and honor it.
Last night I fell asleep listening to the rain and thinking of my father. This morning at 6:30, when I was certain the storm had passed, and the sun began to rise on a gorgeous day, I went to my hall closet and retrieved my flag, carrying it to the front porch and slipping it into the stanchion on the post there. As I write this, I can see it through the glass panes of the kitchen door. A light breeze wafts through, and the stars and stripes flutter. Sixty years past, still angry at the state of the union, but never having lost my own sense of patriotism, I am proud to repeat my father’s routine. Sixty years on, when I am dead and gone, may Old Glory proudly wave still.

In memoriam: Dennis Shore

Back in the mid-1970’s when I was still a child…. Okay, when I was still child-like—I sang in church a lot. So much so, in fact, that, in order to increase the repertoire of songs in my song list, I needed to find someone who could play guitar for me. You may already know that I play… a little. But as I have always said, my instrument is my voice. I know enough chords to get me through quite a few tunes, but there were songs I just didn’t have the expertise to play. Which is how I ended up with Rick Linstrom playing lead and Dennis Shore playing bass for me. Or “Mr. Dennis,” I should say.

Rick was a dear friend from my high school days. We had Biology together in summer school, and the guy made me laugh every. single. day. (Not an easy thing for anyone to do in my days of serious depression.) Eventually we both attended Calvary Chapel of Riverside—oops, I mean, Harvest Christian Fellowship (before it was the mega church it is today), which is where I did most of my singing (in addition to weddings, funerals, and the occasional potluck or baby shower). Rick is a seriously good axeman, and he brought along Dennis, whom I had known of in high school but didn’t know well.
We decided immediately that Dennis would need some augmentation to his name, since my husband’s name was Dennis, and things would just get too confusing. So I added the “Mr.” Seemed humorous at the time, but as I got to know him over the months that followed, the name fit him perfectly. He was a big man who deserved—but never demanded or even expected—big respect.
He was a gentleman all the time. The kind that opens doors for others, says please and thank you, rinses his own dishes when he’s finished eating, even if he’s hanging out at a friend’s house. Without saying a word, he would always carry my guitar along with his. Always. He read the paper, knew what was happening in the world and could talk about it. And he loved pizza. He showed up to practice one afternoon carrying a pizza. If you’re envisioning a big man with a baby face and apple cheeks carrying a pizza box, you’ve got everything right except the object in his hand. He was carrying a round pizza pan—because he’d made the pizza at home, just needed to throw it in my oven for a while to cook it. Seriously. Dennis Shore was a Renaissance Man before anyone knew it was cool to be such a person.
He was jovial and sweet and caring. Rick was all those things, too, and both guys brought a certain light into my life that was warm and luminescent and healing.
My husband hated that I sang with them. I don’t think the guys ever knew, but my old man disapproved of our time together practicing, of the songs we rehearsed (and sometimes performed, when we could get a gig)—hell, he disapproved of my use of the term “gig” to describe being scheduled to “share music” at church. It added to the tension in our already tension-filled marriage, and eventually the band broke up.
After that my husband and I moved away, and after that, we broke up, too. Rick and his wife also divorced, so life took all of us in separate directions. For decades.
At some point, I found Rick again, and was happy to know he’d gotten remarried and was still playing music. But I didn’t reconnect with Mr. Dennis until a year ago. I saw a comment he made on Rick’s Facebook page, and I couldn’t believe it was him, after all those years. I messaged him. He messaged back. Some weeks later, we met for lunch. My oh my, what a reunion!
I would’ve recognized the big man anywhere—still with the baby face and the apple cheeks. Still with the smile while holding the door for others as he came into the restaurant. I was thrilled to hear he’d met someone and married. He spent most of lunch talking about how much he loved his wife and how blessed he felt to have her in his life. His path up until recent years had been difficult and treacherous at times. ‘But now I’m settled,’ he told me. ‘My focus is on my family.’ His dad had multiple health issues at the time, and Dennis was making regular trips out of state to care for him. He continued doing so until his father passed away.
Not long after his father passed, Dennis did as well. To say I was shocked is an understatement. He’d told me about some health issues his wife had been having, and he asked me to keep her in my prayers. He never said a thing about himself. He died suddenly several weeks ago. That lunch—the first time I’d seen him in nearly 40 years—was the last time I ever saw him. We’d talked about meeting again, but we never made it happen.
Life holds no guarantees, my friends. Dennis was a year younger than me. He seemed fine when I saw him. I am grateful—oh, so very grateful—for that gift that was given me—the chance to tell him how much his friendship back in those difficult days meant to me. I had never properly thanked him for showing up, making me laugh, bringing pizza, picking up after himself, and being a beacon of light in my storm-tossed sea. That day at lunch I got to say all of those things. We hugged good-bye, and the last thing he said to me was “Let’s do this again soon.” I wish we had.


L to R, Rick, me, and Mr. Dennis Shore

Tardy

It has been well over a month since I told my cousin I would post something new to the blog, "probably today." I know you've been waiting, checking periodically. So has that one guy, who disagrees with most everything I say and believe but still reads the blog religiously. Go figure.

Anyway, I meant to write that day after we talked, dear Cousin-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless-At-His-Own-Request (just so you know that, yes, I mean you). But that day became busy. And then... a friend died suddenly, a friend I went to high school with who was younger than I am. I will write about Dennis in an upcoming post.

And then another friend died who was also someone who read my blog regularly--from the time I began writing it years ago. I will also write about Barb in an upcoming post. Everyone should know who Barb was in the world... and to me.

And Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, an introvert's best friend and hiking partner, has been sick. We negotiate this dark path periodically; he stops eating, becomes lethargic, and I enter a sort of fugue state, unable to fully engage with the world or my work until he finally perks up again, decides to get happy, eats all his food, wags his tail, and makes me cry with joy that he will be around "just a little longer," as I beg him to be. These episodes seem to be brought on by severe stress. For several consecutive days last week, the neighbors were having a patio cover ripped out and rebuilt. It was loud. It was scary. There were strange voices right outside our windows. Poor Thom. But he's baaaack as of last night! Eating his food, rolling over for belly rubs, rudely sniffing at Purrl's bottom (which she will tolerate but New Cat Jenny will not).

New Cat Jenny, as I write this, lies curled in a kitchen chair below the window through which the hummingbird feeder is visible. This is our routine: We wake early, everyone is fed (including the birds outside, for crying out loud), Thomas and I walk (if he's feeling up to it), I eat breakfast, then I park myself here at the kitchen table with the laptop. Jenny curls into 'her' chair, gives herself a thorough bathing, then goes to sleep for an hour or two while I write.

And yes, surprisingly, I've been writing, trying to average a thousand words a day on the second book in my middle-grade urban fantasy series. In recent days, the writing has been tough--only because I've had to give a ten-year-old boy a concussion, send him to the hospital, and have his beloved dog seized and placed in quarantine by animal control. I know. It hurts just hearing the summary, doesn't it? And you haven't even met Nathan yet. But every story--even if it's for middle-school kids--has to have conflict. No worries; bad boys got us into these troubles. A good boy will get us out.

When I finish writing for the day, if I haven't already walked Thomas and the weather is nice but not too hot and he's feeling good about life and not to terribly frightened, we take a long hike out in the countryside, where I take deep breaths, smell the wildflowers, enjoy the sun on my face, and remember good friends.

Cheers to them! And to you, my dear reader, for caring enough to appreciate the words and pictures humbly offered here. Let's chat again soon!

Wild Geese and Cairn Builders

Lordy, I love that photo. Sometimes the sky just stops me in my tracks. It's impossible to capture the full beauty of the sweeping vistas I often see when walking Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, but on this walk, when we spotted this beautiful "horsetail" cloud, I had to stop and give it a try. We had already had a few adventures on our walk (explanation to follow), and we were almost back to the truck, but Thomas was patient, as he always is, when I dropped his leash and gave him the "wait" command. Oh, how glad I am I snapped the photo. It nicely commemorates a truly wonderful walk.

One week before, I had taken my dear friend Liz on somewhat of a wild goose chase--which turned out to be quite literal, in the end--out to Banning, our neighboring town. We didn't find what we were looking for, so on the way back to her car, I turned the Subaru up a remote dirt road to show her one of my favorite places overlooking Bogart Park in Cherry Valley. As we stood on the ridge-line gazing at the sky, she said, "What's that?" We both looked to the south and saw a cluster of something in the air. As it drew nearer, we could make out that it was a small flock of wild geese. "Twenty-two," Liz counted. "But they're not flying in formation."

No, they were not. They were doing something I've never seen wild geese do before; they were riding a thermal, catching the warm air rising from the canyon wall we stood upon and letting it lift their bodies up and around in slow circles. I've seen hawks do this a thousand times. I have never had the opportunity--the downright blessing--to watch a flock of geese do the same, each moving in and out from each other like graceful dancers in a tightly choreographed routine. The sight was astounding. And I had left my phone in the car. So no photo, no video. I could have tried to run back, but Liz and I decided we would just seize the moment and watch. We stood there, nearly silent, for a quarter of an hour, feeling the sun on our faces, watching the spectacular show, each grateful to witness the once-in-a-lifetime show.

It rained in the ensuing week. On the first dry day, I took Thomas out to one of our favorite hiking spots. On that day, for some reason known only to him, he decided to leave the wide dirt road and follow a coyote trail. Since I knew exactly where we were in relationship to the road and we weren't in dense brush, I let him, just following along, letting him meander as he stopped from time to time to sniff. As we came over a hill into an open space, this is what we saw:


Can you see the small white mound on the left side of the picture? I had to wonder what it was; we were far from the road and following a pretty faint trail. Turns out, it was a cairn.


Well, now. Someone else had come this way (unless the coyotes are now using cairns to message each other in some way--I don't know; they're pretty smart).

As we strolled, we saw another cairn--


and another.


I smiled to think that someone else had wandered off the beaten path ("Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" is what you're thinking, no?), probably with a dog or two, and had stopped, potentially to let the dogs run free for a moment, and had used the time to make his or her mark, to place a few stones atop one another to indicate "I was here."

While I try always to "leave no trace," I didn't mind this sort of thing. In some way, it warmed and comforted me to know another human had roamed these same quiet hills, no doubt in contemplation, as I was, of all the beauty.

We walked on. I led Thomas to a fire road that I knew would take us back to the main road to follow back to the truck. We strolled along, Thom trotting along quickly now in anticipation of home and treats. Dense chaparral lined the road on either side of us. Around a bend we went, and exactly where the two roads intersected stood a lovely lady coyote.


She looked healthy, with a gorgeous coat and round belly. And she stood in our path huffing quietly--not quite a bark; more of a "hubba hubba." It is, after all, coyote mating season, and, well, Thomas is one good-looking guy. Interestingly, he didn't seem fearful of her at all, just a bit wary.


We stood. What to do? She was blocking the road. So I took out my phone. Which is when she stepped off the trail. I didn't want to frighten her (or myself) by making any quick movements, so we inched along until we could see her again, standing in the wild grass, watching. One picture. Two. Three. And then she was gone.


I wished her luck in finding a mate with good genes (and a good sense of humor, number one on my own list of 'good traits in a man'). And then we headed toward the truck, stopping one last time to take the photo of the horsetail cloud.