Abandonment

California Girls State

My teachers at Manual Arts High School voted me to represent the school at California Girls State.  It was exciting for me and great fun as well as educational.    I remember experiencing the dorm life at Davis University and touring the State Capitol.  We had a wonderful advisor who told us that everyone wants to run for president but if we wanted our group to be represented, we should pick other positions as well.  I ran for State Superindent of Schools and won!

My mother had asked my uncle to drive me to the Greyhound bus station in Culver City and I remember him saying he wouldn’t be able to pick me up to go home but it didn’t really register with me.  When we returned from our trip, everyone got off the bus to waiting arms and big hugs from mothers, fathers, and families.  I remember all the happy voices and although I didn’t see this one reunion, a mother’s voice said,  “Welcome home, we missed you.”  Her voice was strong and loving and I was bewildered because there was no one waiting for me.  I had to act quickly to approach a girl I knew to go to a relatively nearby school, Jordan High School.  I asked her if she could ask her parents to give me a ride home.  Fortunately, they agreed without asking me any questions.

Many years later when I had retired from teaching, I worked as a volunteer docent at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.  I learned about the hardships suffered by the Japanese Americans during and after WWII.  My parents were always at odds with each other and separated during the time I was in high school.  I realized that it took courage for my mother to ask her brother-in-law to give me a ride and a tremendous sacrifice to give up a week’s pay so she could stay with my little brother and I could go on a trip to Sacramento.

To this day, I am occasionally visited by voice that says, “Welcome home, we missed you.”

The Rosie Project

Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman

I recently read The Rosie Project, a Sun City book club recommendation, and I loved it!  It is Graeme Simsion’s debut novel and a breakout success.  Movie rights for the script have been optioned by Sony Pictures.  Publishing rights have been sold to publishers in over 40 countries for $1.8m.

It is the story of Don Tillman, a genetics professor with undiagnosed Aspserger’s syndrome searching for a wife.  He creates a 16-page doublesided questionnaire to narrow his search.   Roseie Jarman enters his life asking for help searching for her biological father.  Although she lacks any of the attributes he is looking for in a wife, Tillman is enticed into helping her and many hilarious adventures ensue throughout the novel.

The frenzied bidding for publication rights is evidence that Simsion has touched many lives with his novel.  It is more than a romantic comedy and the overwhelming accolades have amazed even Simsion.  The Rosie Project facilitates conversations about Asperger’s and autism and also gives hope for those who are socially awkward, reluctant to participate in conversations, and often miss social cues.  The book engenders kindness and compassion in all of us.

 

 

Young Face of Poverty

Money for a Can of Coffee

One day a small child knocked at our door and asked my mother, “Can I have money for this?”  He was holding up a new can of coffee with hands unsteady under its bulky weight.  I saw his mother watching through a window across the street.

But this child came years too late. Life had already stripped from my mother the colorful fabric of joy, the sheer fabric of spontaneity, and the soft fabric of compassion and replaced them with hard gray armor.

A sometime husband, meals to cook for three small children, garment district sweatshops and the bundles of work she brought home on the bus to earn seven cents for each stitched zipper had darkened her outlook and wrung out the kindness that was there before.

Hurrying home in the dark with groceries, a neighborhood thug knocked my mother to the ground and grabbed her purse.  We saw her bruises and heard her complain about the broken jar of mayonnaise.

So when this hurt woman and gentle child met, her response was cruel and cutting.  “No!” she shrieked, and the boy was chased off the porch by a slamming door.

Now decades later, I still remember that little boy and wonder how many doors he tried before ours, and since.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

A Marriage Proposal

I attended a ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Smith Center in Las Vegas several years ago and although the performance was flawless and beautiful, a young man appeared immediately after the company took their bows and asked us to stay a couple of minutes.  He recited this sonnet and asked a young lady from  the cast to join him.  He bent down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage.
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
The purity of his love compensated for his unpolished delivery and awkward cadence.  I don’t recall any parts of the ballet performance but I remember a beautiful heartwarming and heart-stopping moment.  And then she said “Yes!”

More Free Writes from 1996

Crossing Paths

August 11, 1996

I met Austin on an Air France flight from Paris to Chicago, a successful businessman who owns a company that makes infant products.  He is an American success and yet spoke to me of things closest to his heart, his daughters.  His oldest daughter has a master’s degree in sociology and was dating a waiter.  I asked Austin if maybe this waiter had other goals as many waiters do, such as night school and a brighter future.  Austin said no, he is definitely a born loser, and he rides a motorcycle.  He said to me, “I raised a flower…”

Austin’s second daughter is a social worker who always reminds him of his wealth and the poverty of others.  He says that he does not want to be ashamed of what he has achieved.  He grew up in the Bronx and for at least 20 adult years put in 12-hour days.  Now that he owns a company, has  a nice home in Connecticut and a vacation home in Florida, he wants to enjoy the good life without feeling guilty.

I believe they all, waiter included, achieved success and happiness in their lives because the lines of communication were clearly open.  Austin is a sensitive and caring person and they all have good solid hearts.

August 12, 1996

Celeste is a Parisian citizen with a U.S. work visa.  She works for a wealthy family in Manhattan as a nanny.  Although she has some college credits, she enjoys the couple she works for and their two children, ages 3 and 9, and knows her position is less stressful than teaching a roomful of children.  She drives for the family and does the cooking.  I asked her about health and retirement benefits.  She said that she has health and retirement benefits, four weeks vacation per year and is well paid.  She has her own apartment and shows up for work at 8:00 a.m. and leaves at 7:00 p.m., just like a regular job.  She was returning from a visit to Paris to see her family and was happy to be coming home to her Manhattan family.

August 13, 1996

One of my goals was to try escargots in Paris.  The only dream I had during the entire vacation was about slimy snails inching their way across a dirt path, their antennae actively moving as they advanced with quiet determination.  The snails were served in a wine sauce sprinkled with herbs.  While they were tasty, I don’t think I need to have them again as there are other, more delicious dishes to be had.  One of the people on the tour told us about going to a fancy restaurant in the States and ordering escargots.  Theirs were in the shell and she had to use a small fork to get the snails out.  Unfortunately, she flipped her wrist a bit too much and the snail went flying out and onto her nephew’s new shirt.  He wore the shirt backward during the rest of the dinner.

August 14, 1996

My favorite dining experience in Paris was in a cafe located near the Eiffel Tower.  The maitre d’ looked as if he should be working at a pizza parlor or an Italian restaurant.  He was round and jovial and seated us promptly.  The waiter was also pleasant.  My daughter’s geography teacher had told the class that the French do not like Americans.  She said it’s better if you say you’re from California, then Hollywood.   We always returned greetings in French and could easily say bon jour or bon soir.  We thanked them, merci, and learned new words such as addition for the check.  When I go  back, I will have a better French vocabulary.  I will sit in a cafe for as long as they let me and watch the world go by as I write.

August 30, 1996

I don’t know what it is about cucumbers, but every time I bite into one, it makes me feel so good.  Sometimes I slice them up and marinate them in salt, vinegar and sugar.  Or I’ll have it like the Mexican vendors serve them, peeled but not sliced, coated with lemon juice and salt.  Of course, they’re wonderful in salads.  One day I found myself wondering again why I liked cucumbers so much.  I think it is because as a child, we had cucumbers in the garden and I was able to pick them off the vine, scrape off the thorns, and eat them on the spot.  I also remember the freedom of  playing in the mud, making mud pies, and getting dirty that are part of my cucumber memory.

A Writing Exercise:  YOU ARE INVISIBLE

If I were invisible, I would check out all the places that say Forbidden, Do Not Enter, or Keep Out, and then I would go to the board rooms of the largest corporations to listen to their conversations, then the State Department, the Pentagon, and perhaps even the White House, out of curiosity.  I would go to the payroll departments of these places to see what the salaries are like.  I would also go anywhere else that I perceive to be forbidden to me because of gender, race, lack of credentials, money, or status.

When I tired of these concerns, I would go to Hanama Bay in Hawaii, don my invisible diving gear and wade past the tourists who are snorkeling and feeding the fish by hand and go deeper and deeper enjoying the silence and marveling at the schools of silver fish with blue and red lines and the reflection of the sunlight on their bodies.  I know I would encounter brilliant colors and be dumbstruck by the infinite variety of sea and plant life.  I would go deeper and deeper and try to adjust to the darkness.

As sure as I am sitting here, not invisible, I know that I would soon find on the ocean floor near the life that dwells at the bottom, tin cans, inner tube tires, fish knives, old shoes, beer bottles and drums of toxic waste with deadly liquid leaking out from corroded containers.  I would not waste my time pulling my hair in rage or crying out in pain at the evidence of human encroachment and stupidity, but I would hurry back up above the surface and join a world that needs me in a visible state, needs me to turn on a light or break a wall or open a door or make a passage for someone else.

I know that I will at times discover that the walls were created by me and not by anyone else; at other times I will be locked out by walls that others have placed in my path.  I will say to myself,  “I might as well be invisible — nobody sees me and nobody hears me.”  But at the end of my life, I would like to be able to say, “At least I tried.”

Free Writes

Half Page a Day

I took many writing classes and attended a couple of writing conferences in the 80s and 90s until I realized that maybe I should stop.  Teachers mostly encouraged us to write every day.

July 4, 1996

I used to live in a rear house on Harvard Blvd. with my two sons.  During one summer, the owner hired Lee and Han, both originally from Korea, to paint the front and and rear houses.

One Fourth of July, Lee and Han invited us to see the fireworks display at Santa Monica Beach.  When we got to the parking lot, Lee tried to pay for the parking with a fifty dollar bill.  The attendant asked, “Don’t you have anything smaller?”  Lee asked me why they print money in fifties if you can’t use them.  We all sat on a blanket and waited for the fireworks to start.  When they did, we noticed that Han hugged the ground, and he curled up with his body shaking.  We went home shortly after that.  Lee had told me earlier that Han was an orphan.  We knew that day that he had to have been closer to bombs and gunfire than he had cared to tell.

July 20, 1996

There is a salad that I love called Tabuleh.  (I’ve seen it spelled tabbuli.)  It is a Middle Eastern dish and is made of bulgur, garbanzo beans, parsley, mint, green onions, olive oil, lemon juice and other optional ingredients such as tomatoes and olives.  I never would have been introduced to this dish if it hadn’t been for a potluck dinner I attended about 24 years ago when my sons were in a day care center. Because we live in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, we tasted a variety of dishes that originated from all over the world.  I think that if we ever have world peace, it will have started, at least in part, because of potluck dinners.

July 24, 1996

My mother did not like to wash dishes.  When she did, it sounded like rocks in a polishing tumbler.  I washed dishes the same way, clattering and banging dishes together until a neighbor slammed his window down in disgust.  Shortly after that, I read somewhere that you tend to do things the way your parents did unless you make a conscious effort to change.

My daughter says that we wouldn’t lose so many dishes if I’d only change my attitude toward washing dishes.  I tell her it’s a matter of statistics.  Since I wash dishes more often than she does, of course I break more of them.  She’s not convinced.  We use Corelle dishes for everyday use — they aren’t supposed to break — but I’ve managed to break a few of them as well.

July 26, 1996

When I was in Paris in 1968, I purchased an expandable bag that looked like fishnet, of the type commonly used by Parisians to carry their groceries home.  Because of that bag, people would walk by and ask me for the time, “Avez vous l’heure?”  I sat on a bench reading a French newspaper and a very lonely old man started talking to me about how his wife had died, hitting her head against the bathtub.

In San Francisco, we knew a man named Kato-san who greeted me by saying, “Excuse me.”  He thought he was saying “Good morning.”  He had reason to go to the San Francisco General Hospital with his wife one day.  He wore casual clothes and rubber thongs and wore his keys on a black cord around his neck.  Employees at the hospital would walk by and nod in acknowledgment.  He finally figured out that people thought his cord was a stethoscope and that he was a doctor.  Funny how these fleeting glimpses, these first impressions, these things we carry are interpreted by the world at large.

July 27, 1996

I have friends and I have best friends.  Ultramarine blue, violet, and orange are my friends.  Cerulean blue, crimson red, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and Hooker’s green are my best friends.  They taught me that I have more choices than I ever thought possible — beyond primary, secondary, and tertiary — the palette has no limits.

If you wet the watercolor paper, add blue for the sky, run brushstrokes of red, yellow and brown in small amounts and fast, you can have the beginning of a beautiful sunset.  Blue alone will give you a clear sky.  Take some tissue and lift out some of the color and you can have clouds.  Hooker’s green is for the trees that meet the sky.

Conversations with Sons and Daughter

My Children’s Voices

Ken at age six:  “How did they put the barbarians in my skates, Mom?”

“Ball bearings, I’m not sure.”

“Good-bye.”

Kenneth at age 10:

On the day of the President’s inauguration, Ken came home from school and said, “Mom, did you see the ignorance?  Did you know the hostages are loose?”

Kenneth at age 12:

When Kathy accidentally sat in battery acid, Ken ran all the way to the Los Angeles City College tennis courts to tell me what happened, a run of over a mile.  A hero for the day.

Mark at age 11:

Mark came home and said, “vivacious”, “precarious”, and then said he was eliminated from the spelling bee with the word “gallant.”

Mark at age 16:  Listening to music through a headset, shaking his hips.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“DINNER’S READY!”

You don’t have to yell, Mom.”

Teenager Kathy: 

We observed high school girls on stage.  I commented that they looked so pretty and slim.  Kathy said to me, “You’re pretty, Mom.”

A Teddy Bear’s Farewell

Leaving for Work

I must have written this in 1983, overwhelmed with emotion.

My daughter is six and she does cartwheels on the lawn when she’s happy.  Mention a hot fudge sundae and her eyes light up and she licks her lips.  She asked me how to spell “great” the other day and when I told her, she said, “What a co-in-ci-dence — ‘great’ and ‘girl’ both start with ‘g’.”  She is missing her two front teeth, but that doesn’t stop her from smiling — her dimple instantly getting deeper on her cheek and her whole body glowing with a splash of happiness.

Kathy was particularly sad one morning as I said good-bye and walked out the door for work.  (Her grandma takes care of her.)  Tears were streaming down her face.  My eyes were watering too.

She couldn’t face me anymore so she stuck her teddy bear through the drapes and all I could see was a smiling stuffed bear waving its hand good-bye.  It wasn’t a vigorous wave, nor a tentative one, but a sure and steady, back and forth wave.  My face was frozen and expressionless, my heart crusted with iron and my robot’s feet led me clumsily to my car.  It was while driving that my defenses collapsed and I kept seeing a teddy bear waving good-bye.

I arrived at work red-eyed and red-nosed, a bundle without a form.  I will always have misgivings about that day because it was the day I turned my back on my tearful little girl and traded in a sunlit world of spontaneous and joyful laughter, dimpled smiles, and cartwheels on the lawn for a darker, grownup world of artificial lights, cues, and directions.  It was the day I didn’t need a script to play the part of a mother with a broken heart.

The Nod

Importance of Affirmations

I was in Mrs. Smith’s piano class in the seventh grade.  At the class recital, I played a piece called “Riding on a Camel.”  When my teacher first gave me the music and read the title, several of the boys in class howled in laughter.

In the audience, another music teacher listened to our recital.  He was quiet and didn’t smile at all.  After my recital, I remember him nodding approval.  It is the memory of his nod that I have held suspended in the vast universe of my brain for over 50 years.

Los Angeles, California

Palm Trees in Los Angeles

I lived in Los Angeles most of my life and found this journal entry from the early 80s.

I am reminded each day of the dangers of city living as I read and hear about rape, theft, gang violence, and drunk drivers.  I have myself been a victim of thefts and burglaries in Los Angeles.  However, it’s not hard to see the positive things about L.A. and see what a strong backbone the city has.

I remember a Japanese relative who flew into LAX on a clear afternoon.  He commented that one of the first things he noticed about the city as he was landing were all those funny looking palm trees all over the city.  I guess he was accustomed to seeing palm trees on postcards from Hawaii or some island retreat.

The good things in L.A. begin and end with the people. I have shared wonderful conversations and meals with the people in my neighborhood.   At school events such as international day and office potlucks, I tasted pancit and lumpia from the Philippines, tamales from Mexico, Korean bulgogi, and Polish and Arabic dishes.  As I drive through my neighborhood I see many houses with identical types of plants — geraniums, carnations, and  succulents.  I bet that these plants were shared among neighbors who exchanged and nurtured the cuttings with great care and  patience.

There is a street I used take, Kingsley Drive, on my way to work.  A young man would be working almost daily landscaping his front yard.  One day I saw him plant a small jacaranda tree in front of his house.  The last time I drove by, there was a jacaranda tree in front of four houses.  I like to imagine that the neighbors met and became good friends. Maybe the young man bought the trees at a discount and being the only one with a pickup truck, offered to make the purchases and deliveries and they all got together for a tree-planting day.

I love the people of L.A. and their different ethnic backgrounds.  I like the weather and the variety of lifestyles possible.  I could easily spend the day at the beach one day and go hiking in the mountains on the next day.  Fact is, I  love the city of L.A.  There is something bold and brave and exciting about a city that sends up palm trees as emissaries to the sky.