More Purple

Foreclosures, job losses, anti-Semitism, hate speak, divorce, amber alerts… Too much horrible stuff, and unfortunately, that seems to be what most of the media and many people want to focus on. One could be led to think that nothing good is happening anywhere, and yet there is good – lots of it. Many people are happy; even if their life situations aren’t idealic or even, in some cases, good. Two recent events have proven to me that I have grown, that I have actually been able to take past unpleasantnesses and turn them into the proverbial lemonade.

The first was a youth production of Les Mis Company in Los Angeles. In the production was the 16 year old daughter of my ex-husband’s second ex-wife (I am the first). Attending the performance were said ex-wife, our mutual ex-husband, and his wife-to-be number three. The actress’s biological father was in attendance as well, though his current wife was not there as she had already seen the production and only the biological parents are required to attend all 400 performances.

There was lots of laughter and happy bantering and one would think we were just a collection of good friends out for a nice afternoon. Which, I guess, we were. We are a motley crew who like each other and get along. We have defied the odds.

The second event was the wedding of communal ex-husband, who has proven his desire to keep trying this well-worn institution. Ex-Wife Number Two will more than likely marry again as they are both incurable romantics who want to be in relationships. I am an incurable hermit who actually enjoys being alone.

When my ex-husband called to tell me he was dating someone who he discovered I knew (though not well), I was excited and happy for them both. I liked this woman a great deal when I met her a year earlier. When he called again months later to say they had decided to get married, I, in a moment of insanity, invited myself to their wedding (I did NOT attend wedding number two – too close – not enough time had passed).

After hanging up and realizing what I had done, fear, regret, and nervousness began to bubble up. Several days later I finally called back, apologized, and offered to rescind my self-invitation. I did not want to cause any unpleasantness. I was told that because Third-Wife-To-Be liked me, she was fine with my attending. Her parents were a little confused, but not so uncomfortable they couldn’t accept it.

Despite the tangled web of relationships, all the players from all the various marriages do get along. After my divorce, the most important factor to me was that whatever woman Ex-Husband dated and perchance married, MUST love, appreciate, respect, and enjoy our daughter. It is an added bonus, through lots of personal growth work that I was determined to get along with them as well (though I didn’t have to LOVE them).

Ex-Wife Number Two liked and still likes our daughter. They still spend time together in person and on the phone. In the early days that made me a neurotic and jealous. What if Offspring liked Wife Number Two better? But the loving, kind, and thoughtful relationship which was, I had to constantly remind myself, a requirement of mine for a second wife for Ex-Husband was a much better option than the alternative. There are a plethora of examples of blended families that are disasters, and I have heard too many stories of blended families who appear to be doing fine, but when un-blending occurs, leave behind casualties called children. Children who have been thrown into a difficult situation to start with, but then come to grips with it because they are kindly embraced by the new spouse should not then be abandoned by said EX-spouse. It is horrible.

The 16 year old daughter of Ex-Wife number two has known my ex since she was three. They lived in the same house for many more years than his biological child had. Ex-Step Child is still important in both Ex-Husband and Offspring’s lives. Ex-Step Child is the only sister Offspring has known, and even though they have neither parent in common, which if fairytales are to be believed should be a difficult and disastrous relationship, they get along. They love and appreciate and enjoy each others’ company. Ex-Step-Sister flew to New York for Offspring’s college graduation and we all had a fantastic time together.

Ex-Step Child was, of course, also at the wedding though her mother was not. Too close. Not enough time had yet passed. The wedding was fantastic. It was fun and enjoyable to spend time with old friends, and to enjoy this new familial blending.

Ex-Step Child wore purple which is the preferred color of the bride. In a conversation in her and Ex-Husband’s apartment she said to me “There is not enough purple in the world.” When she made that statement, there was a look of pure delight on her face and true joy in her voice. Purple to her is an indication that all is right with the world. Purple is the proof that all is well.

Offspring, who was listed in the wedding program as ‘the best person/daughter’ also wore purple as did the mother-of-the-bride and the matron of honor, though the bride – because this is her first and hopefully last marriage – wore white.

I donned a purple blouse because I agree, we need more purple in the world.

Memories...light the corners of my mind... :)

• • by Susan Cameron

    Another day, another semi-rant. I'll be taking a break from the Brit blog I've been contributing to and working on my own again, but meanwhile, here's a modified version of the cautionary tale I posted to them about my old home town...

• on August 24, 2011 at 10:42 pmSusie C.

  Ah, Detroit, my home town. Former Arsenal of Democracy, economic powerhouse, Paris of the Midwest — tree-lined boulevards, stately mansions, working-class neighborhoods full of clean and tidy homes, one of the top educational systems in the nation, beautiful parks, world-class museum…

  It took less than fifty years to turn into a shithole.

  You can find what they call “Detroit ruins porn” on the internet — the graffitied burnt-out remnants of fabulous buildings designed by famous architects. You can find virtual tours filmed by thrill-seekers from their car windows, taking their lives in their hands by driving through streets no sane person would walk on. You can type in “Detroit City Council” and listen in disbelief at what passes for urban governance.

  Or you can take my word for it when I tell you about the time I had a sawed-off shotgun stuck in my face, or the time two men with hatchets chased me out of my seat on a city bus, or when another man pulled a pistol on me while robbing my place of work and told me to take off my blouse (I refused and lived to tell the tale). Yes, I do have a peculiar sense of humor, which is one of the many reasons I hang out on this blog. Gallows humor is one useful survival tool, as most of you are all too aware.

  Anyhow, I took a final tour of my old stomping grounds years ago. Houses I’d rented flats in — burned to the ground, basements filled with soil, grass growing where they’d been. Trees busting through curb and gutter. Quail and rabbits spooked and running in front of my car. Urban prairie and gutted houses. I drove downtown. A skyscraper I’d worked in was boarded up with plywood. The Ford Auditorium on the riverfront — boarded up. I parked the car and walked to Woodward Avenue, walked to the middle and stood there, hands on hips. Where I was standing would have been the equivalent of Trafalgar Square. Traffic lights blinking red and green — no traffic anywhere as far as I could see. A tumbleweed rolled past me. The twelve-story department stores were boarded up. The only businesses open were pawn shops and stores with platinum wigs and such for hookers. I must have stood there for five minutes, watching the few people on Woodward being very careful not to look at me. Of course! Crazy-ass white woman, hands on hips — obviously a cop sent out as bait! I drove away, flew away, and haven’t been back since.

  So why am I posting this? It’s not self-pity, believe me. I have a life that’s so great it’s almost beyond belief. I’m saying very few people in Detroit fifty or sixty years ago would have imagined what it is today, and very few people in England have a clue just how bad bad can be.

  Just all of you cops.

  Actually, there are young white hipsters moving downtown these days, artists and musicians, restauranteurs and urban farmers, attracted by low commercial rents and housing so cheap it’s almost free. I wish them all the best, and hope they make it. But me — I still remember defensive driving, Detroit style. See a red light way up ahead? Slow down, keep driving, try to time it so the light is green when you get there. That way snipers on rooftops can’t pick you off easily at the red.

  You can buy a three bedroom house on the street where I grew up for $3500 — about 2100 pounds. Other streets on the east side have houses for sale for a couple hundred dollars. You could emigrate there and help be part of the repopulation effort, but I don’t think you’d find a club you’d like to belong to.

  I just figured I’d throw in a boots on the ground perspective. Erm, please excuse me, I feel that twitch coming back…
• copyright 2011 Susan Cameron
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Festival 2011 - The Doctor is In

I’m sitting Gary’s booth at the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts, wondering what kind of story I can write about this year’s Festival experience, when a woman stops in front of me and starts stretching. She bends from the waist, forward, backward and sideways.

“My back’s bothering me,” she tells me.

I say I’m sorry. Maybe that was a mistake, because she takes that as a cue to tell me more.

“I hurt it last month at my son’s graduation…” and she is off and running.

I learn that she is a single mom and a teacher who got divorced when her son was little. She swore to herself she wouldn’t date until her son was out of high school, a vow she almost kept. There was that one time when another teacher asked her out and she thought what the heck, it was just dinner. When he wanted more than dinner, she backed off. Then there was the guy from another city who stood her up on the first date. She thought he was a real jerk until she found out he died right before their date. She sighs and says she is done with men, even though her son has now graduated. Still, she was having dinner by herself tonight when a man at the next table started chatting with her, telling her how he lived in Laguna, he was really, really rich and he’d love to spend the evening with her. She passed on the invitation, but now she is wondering if she should have said yes.

“What do you think?” she says. “Do you think he really is rich?

I shrug.

“Well,” she says. “It’s been great talking with you.” She puts out her hand. I shake it and nod, afraid to say a word for fear of triggering another story. She asks where she can get a cup of coffee and heads off in the opposite direction.

People tell me things. My mother was the same way. Perfect strangers would unburden themselves to her. I’m contemplating whether this is a genetic predisposition when an old man saunters up to me. He’s looking for a neighboring artist who isn’t here tonight.

He looks sad and disappointed to have missed his friend.

“I just moved back to the area,” he says. “I’ve been away a long time. Do you live in Laguna?”

“San Clemente,” I say, not imagining that this will spark a memory for him. He tells me about a fine young woman he knew who moved to San Clemente and was lost to drugs there.

“What would make a good Christian girl ruin her life like that?” he asks me.

Somehow I feel a little responsible since I live in San Clemente, but I say I don’t know. He launches into the whole story. I squirm in my chair, wishing someone would come with a question about the art. I could probably answer an art question. Finally he is done with his story and tells me it was wonderful to meet me. He asks for directions to the bathroom, and I send him on his way.

I’m feeling a little like Lucy in the Peanuts comic strip right now. Like I’m sitting in the psychiatric help booth and the sign says the doctor is in. No one has offered me five cents for my advice, though.

A man with a big potbelly and a bulging shoulder bag looks at the art and then inches up to my chair. The chair is high, so when someone stands next to you, you are eye to eye.

He wants to talk cameras. Since I’m tending a photographer’s booth, I expect this line of questioning. I can tell people what camera Gary uses, but after that I plead ignorance.

Potbelly tells me about the 44 cameras he has and all the lenses and how all these cameras are antiques now because they’re film. He asks what I think about using his lenses on new digital cameras.

I say, “I’m not a photographer.”

“You didn’t take any of these pictures?” he says.

“No,” I say and then I make my fatal error. “I’m a writer.”

What do you know? He is a writer, too, and a filmmaker and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His ex-wife writes children’s books and he has accidentally illustrated one of them. Accidentally, because she just needed some sketches to show the publisher what kind of illustrations she had in mind and the publisher liked his sketches so much he published them in the book.

He starts coughing during this part of the story and fishes through his bag.

“My acid reflux irritates my throat,” he says as he pulls out a cough drop and pops it into his mouth. He sucks it a second to lubricate his throat before he continues the “conversation” about writing.

“I can think up stories,” he says. “But I have trouble fleshing them out.”

Here I make another serious mistake.

“I’m the opposite,” I say. “I have trouble coming up with the story.”

He brightens as if he is having one of those aha moments everyone talks about. Suddenly, he is suggesting a collaboration. He does the story. I do the fleshing out.

“Do you have a card?” he says.

Good grief! What have I done?

“No,” I say, hoping my terse response will tell my whole story, one that needs no fleshing out.

His hand is back in the bag and he’s pulling out a card for me.

“Here,” he says. “You send me all your material and I’ll come up with a story.”

I have to admit it is tempting. I’ve been trying for four years to find the story that will connect all my bits and pieces into a novel. Still…

I take his card. It says he is a nuclear design engineer, not a storyteller.

“That’s not my writing card,” he says and plunges headlong into how he has a patent for nuclear waste disposal and he also developed a way to get energy from seawater, but that patent belongs to the government. His design has been fitted on a spacecraft that landed on Titan. In case the craft landed in seawater it could make energy using his device, but it landed in mud so no one knows if it would have worked.

I might have this all wrong. My attention has wandered to the people going through the bin who might actually be interested in art. They walk away as Potbelly is finishing up this part of his life story.

He’s pawing through his bag again, but comes up empty this time.

“I really need a Kleenex,” he says. “Do you have a Kleenex?” Apparently we’re good buddies now.

I search my own bag under the chair for the little Kleenex pack I always have. Don’t all therapists have Kleenex handy?

I give him a tissue and he blows his nose. I pray he doesn’t consider me such a close friend that he will hand me the used Kleenex. Fortunately, he sticks it into his bag with his business cards and his cough drops.

“Thanks,” he says and looks at his watch. “Say, which way is the Pageant of the Masters?”

I point the way and he is gone.

It’s time for me to close up shop, so I lock up the cupboard and grab my purse. Walking to the shuttle stop I search the faces of the people I pass. What’s your story I wonder? Then I remind myself I’m off duty now. The doctor is out.

Copyright 2011 by Liz Zuercher

Angry Enough to Write

by Susan Cameron

I was going to write something new specifically for Tasty Sauce, but once again I got caught up in Inspector Gadget's blog. This time the topic was a 6-year-old gypsy girl named Dawn being repeatedly raped by her father. Dawn's mother had been given to Dawn's father by HER father as payment for a debt. The police had removed Dawn and turned her over to Social Services; the Crown Prosecution Service said there wasn't enough evidence to convict her father; Social Services put her back in the house. More cops with more horror stories chimed in. Bear with me:

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163 said on July 31 @2:43: "A long time ago, it would have been 1994 or 1995, I found a kid, about two years old, at a house where a drug dealer had been in a fight with another drug dealer. With an axe. There was claret and syringes everywhere. Mum, who was a tom with an epic crack habit, was wandering around in a main road with the baby.

I took the kid into police protection. The world went mad. Like I was some sort of lunatic. I was in my twenties and gave a shit. The social worker, who released the kid back into the mum’s custody sharpish, told me “not to project my middle class values” onto the family. First time I’d been told I was middle class, funnily enough, because my avowedly working class parents would have done exactly the same thing."

(my response)

This got me thinking about a man long ago who projected his supposedly "middle class values" and didn't feel the least bit ashamed of it.

General William Napier, an administrator during the Raj, had this to say to the Indians about the practice of suttee, according to Wikipedia:

"This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

My understanding is that suttee pretty much disappeared on Napier's watch.

Hanging has gone out of fashion, but wouldn't it be nice if the Prime Minister and Members of Parliament collectively said:

"The raping of children is your custom, as is trading and selling female relatives as property, and robbery, and burglary, and mayhem. But our nation has also a custom. We arrest, try, convict and sentence to prison anyone caught doing any of those things. We shall therefore begin a prison-building project, and keep you in those prisons until you are long past breeding age. Let us all act according to our customs. And, by the way, you might want to leave while you still can."

But, no. If anything, our leaders have spent the last few decades apologizing for western civilization's rules, laws, customs and expectations, not defending them. You know what I'd really like to hear, just once?

"Listen up. I'm supposed to respect your cultural differences, but you don't actually have anything resembling a culture. I could find a superior culture growing in the tank of a portajohn in the Mojave desert in August. You have the human compassion and morality of a rabid wolverine. I don't care about your thoughts and opinions any more -- I ate a bowl of corn flakes this morning that was smarter than you. Here's the deal. We have a pile of laws, most of which are variations on this theme: Do unto others as you would have them do unto to you. This is the one sentence that separates civilization from barbarism. Violate this fundamental principal, and we will remove you from our civilization. Got it? Don't worry. If you don't get it, you will understand SOON."

Okay. I'm stepping away from the keyboard. I believe there is another glass of pinot with my name on it in the kitchen. Apologies for the length of the comment, but I swear, it's either post this, or blow up at random like a badly wired IED. Thanks in advance for your tolerance.

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And now I thank you for yours. It's too bad something has to make me angry enough to write, but if that's the rocket fuel I need, so be it!

copyright Susan Cameron 2011