Pages

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Still Crazy


“Still Crazy After All These Years” was playing on the car radio on the way to our usual Sunday breakfast.

“Story of my life,” Gary said.

I chuckled like I always do when Gary says he’s crazy. I don’t see it. To me he’s solid and responsible and hard working – not at all what I think of as crazy. But he does see things in a different way from most people, and that’s probably what attracted me to him in the first place. I have never been considered crazy. I’ve always been the sensible one, no matter how much I might have wished for a crazy streak.

Secretly, I always wanted to be a hippie, but my Midwestern sensibility would never let me stray very far. I’d try on long flowing skirts and beads and tie-dye, but I’d buy classic conservative clothes. No matter how much I wanted to feel right in the clothing of a free spirit, I didn’t.

I was geared toward the practical, making a living, following the straight and narrow path. But I didn’t feel complete or authentic that way either. My inner hippie might have been buried deep, but she still longed to make her way to the surface.

Then came Gary. He eased into my life. At first we didn’t think much of each other. He thought I was uptight and I thought he was kind of a jerk. The gal who’d tried to get us together gave up. A few months later we ran into each other in McDonald’s. I had on a hot pink mini dress and didn’t look so uptight. He was anything but a jerk and I thought maybe I’d misjudged him. He started calling to ask me out, but it was always at the last minute, and I already had plans. He took this as a challenge and kept calling. Finally, he was about to give up when in a last ditch effort he said, “You choose the date.” And I did.

On our first date he suggested we share one steak dinner. I thought he was a little cheap, but said okay, if I could have my own salad. Turns out one steak dinner for two was just right.

On our second date he suggested a motorcycle ride. I thought that was scary, but I rode behind him on his motorcycle anyway, my arms tight around his waist as we sped around the hairpin curves of Ortega Highway. I held on even tighter during the return trip down the freeway. I never would have done that on my own. He made me stretch my boundaries and my inner free spirit began to stir.

On weekdays he would be sitting on the steps by my apartment when I got home from work, and I started to look forward to rounding the corner and seeing him there. When the steps were empty, I felt let down.

Four months after our first date we got engaged. It wasn’t a particularly romantic moment. We were curled up on the sofa in his apartment, probably watching football, when he got up, went down the hall to his bedroom and came back with a jewelry box.

“Maybe we should get married,” he said, as he opened the box and showed me a wedding ring set.

I thought he was awfully casual about this proposal and wasn’t sure he was serious, but I said, “Okay.” Am I crazy, I thought? We barely know each other. But it just seemed right.

We bucked tradition and moved in together a few weeks later. People didn’t expect that of me. I was so conservative, such a good girl. That wasn’t the way good girls behaved in 1974. Who is this guy, they wondered?

My father came to stay with us for Christmas and met Gary for the first time - the business executive meets the artist.

“That’s an interesting guy you’ve got there, Elizabeth,” my father said, not knowing quite what to make of the man I was about to marry.

“Yes he is,” I said, thinking of all the ways Gary made my life more interesting, less ordinary.

Our wedding eight months later was unconventional, too. We had a beach party that doubled as a wedding. I wore a long cotton dress with cotton lace overlay, a puka shell necklace and a big white floppy hat. Gary wore a white cotton pull-on shirt with blue print material inset at the neck, yoke and sleeves. In the print Mickey Mouse cavorted in a field of flowers. Roger, the rent-a-reverend wore a wrinkled purple robe and a trio played Chicago’s “Color My World” as I walked across the patio on my father’s arm. While we made our promises to each other at sunset, strangers picnicked on the beach below and tossed a Frisbee back and forth. The mumbo jumbo, as Gary called it, was short-lived, but the party afterward lasted late into the night.

After thirty-six years, two sons, a business that’s had several incarnations, five houses, any number of family adventures, road trips and career twists and turns, we are still complementing each other, still filling in where the other needs us to, encouraging new pursuits and generally nurturing our spirits.

A few months ago our son, Eric, was at my computer desk and I heard him laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“This picture of your wedding,” he said. A friend had been clearing out pictures and sent it to me. I’d left it on the desk.

“Why is that funny?” I said.

“You guys were such hippies!”

I guess, whether I knew it or not at the time, my inner hippie had worked her way to the surface and stood smiling broadly with her kindred spirit in my wedding picture. Crazy!

Copyright 2011 by Liz Zuercher

Monday, July 18, 2011

Storytelling



I’m telling a story today.
Like all stories, it needs
a beginning,  a middle, and an end.

So, the beginning:

I pick up my pen, open my notebook,
place the pen on the page.
I wait for words to appear,
to crawl out from the tip of the pen,
cover the paper
like ants on a picnic blanket.
My pen is sluggish,
says she craves caffeine.

At Starbuck’s,
my pen and I run into a friend.
Oh, so good to see you,
but I can’t stop now.
I have to go.
I’m writing a story today and
my pen needs a cup of coffee.
So much depends
on this cup of coffee,
even more than depends
on a red wheelbarrow,
glazed with rain,
as someone once said.
So, I must go I say
two hours later.

The Middle:

My pen is alert now.
A double shot espresso macchiato
wakes one with a jolt
to the juices like a lightning bolt.
So, my pen poises
like a diver on board’s end,
bounces, plunges onto the paper
with a splash of letters
that scramble up and over each other
searching for a word, a thought, an image:
“Purple graham crackers floating in the air.”
Oh, glory, we're off and writing.

But wait! My pen complains that she’s hungry,
weak with the need for nourishment,
her inner resources famished, fatigued,
her literary allusions lost in illusion.
She says she’s faint, suffering delusions.
She needs lunch, just a little bite of something,
perhaps a graham cracker, preferably purple.

The End:

My pen needs a post-lunch nap.
A dream or two will do, she says.
An hour later,
she awakes refreshed and ready.
She taps out a few words,
then with a sigh, exhausted,
she says it’s cocktail hour.
She needs a glass of wine,
some soft music.

We can’t quit now, I wail.
What about those purple graham crackers?
What kind of story is this?
Perhaps, we should change direction,
take a road less travelled on.
It might make all the difference.
It’s worked for others.

Give me a break, she says.
Don’t worry, we’ll write
“…tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.”

Okay, I sigh,
but I think someone already told that story.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Changes Every Three Years

My life is about to change, again. I recently realized that my life seems to be split up into three year segments. Nine years ago I decided to out a long-term secret and complete the bachelor’s degree I had not completed in 1976 as my parents and grandparents thought I did, though from later conversations, I realized they were not so dumb. They knew. Parents always know.

Six years ago my daughter’s middle school principal brow beat me into getting my teaching credential, three years later I began to teach. Two years in middle school and one year in high school. I was burned out and ready to leave and at the same time my father’s heath was seriously deteriorating. I decided to take a leave of absence that turned into quitting.

The past three years have been about parents dying, trusteeship, and getting used to not working to anyone else’s schedule. Except for the homework assigned for my masters program in spiritual psychology which gratefully saw me through the death of my father, and the early hospice days of my mother who doggedly stayed alive for the one year anniversary of her husband’s death, my graduation, my sister’s 25th wedding anniversary, and my 40th high school reunion.

After the initial expected shock and loss and the acquisition of responsibilities I never thought I would have, I was content and peaceful. Things went relatively smoothly, and six months after putting it on the market, my parent’s home sold for cash with a 30 day escrow. I tried to consign their belongings, but when I heard that my parent’s beautiful formal dining set could probably get $700, I realized that I was not consigning furniture; I was consigning memories. As I just could not put a price tag on memories, what my sisters and I didn’t take, we gave to friends and charities.

During my final two days in the Sacramento area, a place I had visited monthly since June of 2009, I lost my driver’s license, which caused me to lose two hours as I sat in the DMV waiting for a chance to plead my case and get a new one, lost a casino chit for around $20.00 while I was in the casino bathroom – it just flew away – probably into the hands of someone who felt they’d hit a minor jackpot, and pulled cash out of an ATM but then left both the card and cash in the machine. I thought these things were funny and recounted them a number of times until my attorney looked at me and said in her gentle Texas accent, “You realize that these are all signs of stress.”

Everything worked out fine, and everyone involved in my foibles was great, but I am aware that my mind is in other places a lot of the time, and it’s time to bring it back into my body and to the present. But I’m not really ready to look at the pain that I can occasionally see poking out. I will be ready when I feel like I have the time and space to close the door on the world and do the necessary inner work. It might be a five minute conversation with myself, or it could be days in bed crying with a bucket of ice cream. What I do know is that there are three years of grief inside and probably other things that are stuck to them like a cancer attached to a spinal cord. I didn’t think I had any grief, I just assumed that I had dealt with it all piecemeal, over time. I felt pretty much unscathed.

What I know is that I got off light with the driver’s license, lost chit, and ATM card. I think the universe is being kind, but only if I listen. If I don’t, I have a feeling the next round could a bolder on the head. At least it will never give up on me and I know that once again, my life is about to change. And I look forward with some excitement to what the next three years will bring forward.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

How I Spent A Chunk Of My Tuesday

by Susan Cameron

Monday, the Fourth of July, was loads of fun -- food, friends, fireworks in Dana Point -- so here's my post, late because of the holiday. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it).


I read many, many (MANY!) things on the internet. One blog I follow belongs to Inspector Gadget, nom de plume of an anonymous police inspector who would be fired for blogging if he were caught. He wrote a post about a female police officer in Britain who sued her force, and won, after she failed a fitness test: https://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/police-riot-training-fitness-test-to-be-scrapped/ and I felt compelled to comment:

I read the original post and all 405 comments. Bad idea — I’m now a combination of appalled, sad, and above all, angry.

When my sister went through the police academy here in the states, it was run in a gender-blind military fashion. The training was physically and mentally intense, and all recruits were held to the same high standards. She was paired up with men of similar height and weight for the street fighting training and boxing, ran up and down the same six flights of stairs as the men did, needed the same high scores on the firing range, etc. The washout rate of both genders was high. I was so proud when I attended her graduation, and stayed proud as she rose through the ranks as the years went by. Because everyone in her force was required to stay fit and qualified, there was never any doubt that she belonged there and deserved to have her job. (This didn’t stop some fellow officers from hating the women’s guts just on general principles, of course).

Anyhow, as Fee said: “Well done, that woman. She’s succeeded in setting back the cause of equality no end. My mother’s generation fought to be judged equally, and to earn the same wage for the same work. Not so that lazy cows could sue an already skint police force because she (boo hoo, lovey) couldn’t cut the mustard.” Absolutely. Anybody who can’t do the job, shouldn’t have the job. Standards need to be met. Demanding special treatment demeans the others who CAN do the job and don’t need or want special treatment. If this particular constable was deliberately misinformed and set up by enemies within her force who wanted to see her humiliated, she should be embarrassed that she didn’t see it coming. She should have been fit, ready, locked and loaded and waiting for the sons of bitches.

One last thing. From the memory banks when I worked on a road crew:

Foreman: You’re working out real good. I was a little worried about hiring you, because we had a woman grade checker once, and she didn’t work out at all.

Me: Did you ever have a man who didn’t work out?

Foreman: Yeah, sure.

Me: Did you stop hiring men?

Foreman:……(laugh)…..Damn it, Susie!

Anyhow, folks, this is what I'm doing when I ought to be writing. Wait...I AM writing! LOL! Feel free to comment, and you'll be writing too! :)

copyright 2011, Susan Cameron