I See Dead People

Part of "all this crap" that my mother is eager to get rid of is all of her scrapbooks.  As someone who clings tenaciously to every. single. photo. that has ever been taken of my family, I can't understand this disinterest in photographic memories, but...whatever.  It's her life and if she doesn't want to remember it fondly with the help of photos, I'm happy to take them all off of her hands.   (Maybe if I get to be 93, I won't care any more either.)

Yesterday I brought home the scrapbook I made for her after our trip to England and Amsterdam.  I have a duplicate scrapbook, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with hers, but it's just not in my DNA to throw a perfectly good, lovingly assembled scrapbook!

I also brought home book of photos of family gatherings over the years, starting in 1937, when the only photos were taken of my mother's entire family.

(My mother is the one circled in red.)  When asked why they had so many children, my grandfather is said to have explained that he loved his wife so much he just couldn't keep his hands off of her.  There actually were eleven children in all, but Ione ("Nonie"), who would have been the third child (my mother is the 7th), drowned when she was a toddler.

By 1981, when we started having family reunions, there were only 7 Scott children left.

Now only my mother (2nd from the left) remains.  I know it is sad for her to look at photos like this and miss all of her siblings.  But whenever she talks about how old she is, it's nice to give her this comparison

My aunt Marie, in this photo, taken in 1987, is 10 years younger than my mother is in this recent photo, so she has definitely "worn well" !!

It is both fun to remember the reunions, but also sad to see those who are no longer here.

My cousin Shirley (shown here with Peach), for example, who died several years ago of lung cancer.  She was a "oner," her own unique person, and the heart of these family reunions.  She had a hard life and in the end found peace in spiritual things, very close to Native American values.  At this particular reunion, she led a drum circle, and officiated at the wedding of Cousin Bruce and his wonderful wife Eileen.

At this reunion in 1982, my cousin Clancey (now also dead) got drunk and started pushing and dragging people, clothed or not, into the hotel pool.  Soon everyone was getting into the fun.  In this picture, Ned is pushing Paul into the pool.  Now, of course, Paul is no longer here either.

There have been so many reunions over the years...possibly not anymore for a long time, but I like to think that every time one of the family dies, there is a new reunion happening in the next life.  There are some dead people I really, really want to see again.

Best Visit. Ever.

My favorite moment of this visit happened today at Costco, of all places.  I was pushing Brianna in the shopping cart.  Lacie, who had been in the cart too, was a bit fussy, so Laurel took her out and walked off in search of peanut butter.  Tom and Walt were off getting paper products.  Brianna was being cute and suddenly she grabbed my arm and hugged it. She looked up at me and I said, "I love you."  She smiled and said "I love you too."  Worth traveling 800 miles for!  And l, of course, feeling like a soft marshmallow inside, I ended up buying two books for the girls.

We started the day at the beach, around 11 a.m.  Bri's play on the monkey bars required assistance from lots of people.

Lacie sat on the lawn while people played with her and Laurel took pictures.

Tom, Bri and Walt headed off across the grass to see if they could get Bri's ladybug kite to fly, which they did.  Bri's interest in it lasted about 20 seconds, then she and Alice Nan went off to chase birds while Tom and Walt were left holding the kite.

Bri eventually came back to the grass for lunch.

Eventually, everybody started getting sleepy and it was time to go home, briefly.

Around 4 p.m., we met Laurel again, at the mall in front of Starbucks.  We were tasked with keeping Bri occupied while Laurel interviewed a prospective nanny.  The three of us (Walt, Bri and I) invented a new game: "wack a finger."

Then we met Tom again at Costco to go shopping for staples and to hit all the free samples, which Bri loved

.

It was the first time Lacie had ridden in the cart.  I pushed the girls around while Laurel went off to look at dresses for the girls to wear to Fiesta Days this fall.

When we finished at Costco, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner...

Then we all said goodbye (since we are leaving tomorrow morning) and Walt and I headed off to meet Alice Nan, Joe and Joe's son-in-law and granddaughter (2 weeks older than Lacie) for a brief visit.

The evening ended with Alice Nan and Walt having a lengthy phone chat with Norm, who sounds just fine, thank goodness.

This has been a whirlwind trip, but one of the best visits I've had since Brianna was born.  I'm so glad we came.

 "I remember this being more fun when I was 11," Tom said.

The Family Dinner

I keep a database of all these entries, and, certain that I had written something like this before, I did a search on "dinner." I was surprised at how many entries I had written which included either the topic of dinner, or dinner photos.

Viewers of Anderson Cooper's new show (I am not one, but happened to see it today) have apparently been invited to take a pledge to have one family dinner a week. While this is a great movement, I find it so very strange that anybody has to encourage families to have meals together.

I am a throwback to a former generation, I guess!

When I was growing up, there was no question about whether we would eat together. It was never even a discussion. No matter how uncomfortable meals could be, when my father was in a bad mood, meals together (breakfast and dinner) were just assumed to happen.

Holidays were for the special dinners, when the good china and good silverware came out, when we had the special tablecloth and a fancy dinner. When we at around the dining room table.

(I was going to include a photo here, but my photos are packed up and upstairs, in preparation for the installation of the Pergo....on FRIDAY!!!!)

When we had our own family, there was never a question about whether people would get together for dinner. And at holidays, we joined with grandparents and celebrated.

Thanksgiving

When my aunt Barb was in the hospital and often didn't know anybody, the way we communicated with her was through a family dinner.

When Nora came to visit us, we had a family dinner.

When our first Brasilian "son," Eduardo, came back for a visit, we had a family dinner.

I loved it when, this past week, Tom talked about remembering our family dinners, especially all the laughs we had with the big turntable in the middle of the table that was forever knocking over somebody's milk.

So I find that the idea that a television host has to encourage families to eat together once a week is something that makes me very sad.

I think this also is connected with the recent media-created "feud" between Chefs Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen. Bourdain was talking about how Deen's simple fat/sugar laden recipes were causing the death of Americans. I have watched both chefs and the kind of cooking that Bourdain does is just not done by most people any more.

Go into any supermarket and just look at the percentage of heat-and-serve foods vs the "prepare it yourself" ingredients and while there is probaby more "prepare it yourself," the vast assortment of things that you just have to take home and heat up in order to serve a "home cooked meal" tells me how much people actually cook any more.

Look at commercials that show mom putting frozen blobs on a cookie tray to serve her children "home baked cookies." And that's what they are -- home baked cookies. Everybody knows that an essesntial ingredient of all home made cookies is the love that goes in along with the vanilla and salt. Pillsbury doesn't add the love, and kids are growing up not knowing the difference.

I can remember a lot of unpleasant dinners in my lifetime but many, many more pleasant, fun dinners. I loved nothing more than having too many people squeezed around our dinner table whether for a holiday, or a regular evening dinner. Walt and I still eat dinner together at the same table, and I still cook (though I, too, have been seduced by convenience food sometimes more than one night a week), but I miss those big family dinners. A lot. They were so much more than just eating a meal together.

---

Oh yeah...and to see if he actually reads this...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE!

---

LOL...I just realized that I did do a previous entry on family dinners....one month ago!!

"The Talk"

We had "the talk" today...the talk everybody is supposed to have, preferably younger than mid-60s to 70s, but definitely the one while you're still breathing, the one about the money and your "wishes" and all that good stuff.

This time it was a family talk. We met Jeri, Phil, Ned and Marta at Crepeville for brunch. Phil was getting ready to get on a train to take him to the airport for his trip home to Boston. Jeri still had another couple of days to stay here. Marta was getting ready to take Ned "somewhere" for his birthday, later this week. Marta had suggested that we get together for brunch before "the talk."

After brunch, we came home and sat around the table (Marta cleared away a corner of the piled up junk--I didn't realize we were going to make this a table talk!) and Marta took charge. Smartest thing Ned ever did was to bring Marta into the family!

Having recently been through the settling of her step-father's estate and seeing how difficult it was because of the things that had not gotten done, she knew all the questions to ask and all the pokes to be made. She went down the list about where is this and where is that and what insurance did we have and what did we want for health care and burial and did we have an attorney (no).

Walt, bless him, is extremely organized and he had written down everything and put it in a folder. Me, damn me, can't remember diddily so I knew that there was "something" somewhere, but didn't remember what or where. But now everybody knows what is where and who does what. Marta is going to find out the name of her mother's attorney and we will make an appointment ASAP. We agreed Walt's sister (a bank trust officer) should be the executor of our estate and if she can't, Tom. Marta and Ned, because they are here and not 3,000 miles away will have our medical power of attorney. Jeri will play Amazing Grace at my funeral. ;)

When "the talk" was finished, everybody felt MUCH more comfortable about our inevitable demise and there was nothing left to do but move furniture. With Ned and Phil here, Walt took advantage and had them move some furniture into the garage. We are another step closer to being able to paint the living room before tearing up the carpet and putting in the new Pergo.

After Jeri got home from taking Phil to the train station, Walt showed her our China pictures and then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner. This place has the best curried duck, with almost more duck than we had at our Peking Duck dinner, and all for less than $10...plus Walt eats there a lot, so they toss in a free dessert for us.

The restaurant is next door to the theatre, so we went and saw The Help. I'm not sure it is one that Jeri or Walt would have chosen, but it was that or Conan the Barbarian, I told them. I liked it very much because I had read the book. They said they sorta liked it, but I don't think they were as taken with it as I was.

When we came home, Jeri was determined to make friends with Polly. We learned that Polly, who is basically a slut, can be bought for treats.

Of course all bets were off nce she'd taken the treat, and when Jeri got out of the chair and stood up, forget it! But for one brief moment, Polly allowed herself to be manipulated for food.

Yeah--I can relate to that.

Family

I've been thinking about the Sykes family ever since Alice died. The Sykes family, and families in general. One thing that I always admired so much about the Sykes family is the close bond they had. In all the years that I have been in and around this family, I have never seen them NOT close to each other.

It's something I never had the chance to know. Karen and I were not close growing up. We shared a room, but that's about it. When she got to be an adult and admitted she was a lesbian, it was during an age when there was something shameful about that and so she kept away from the family. It was only the last time I saw her when we had such a good time and I thought maybe we could finally be friends, as adults.

My mother's family was always very close. Even though her older sisters were adults and out of the house before my mother was born (and her oldest sister had a son older than my mother), there was just a real bond among all of them and their parents. Many of the cousins were part of that closeness, but because of my father's contempt for my mother's family, I was not in that inner circle. I listen to Peach and Kathy talking about their childhood memories and those were so far from mine. I didn't know many of my aunts, and none of my uncles, and only came to know them more closely after I had grown up.

So encountering the Sykes family was something I'd always wanted...that closeness. I always explained the closeness as because they were four against the world, after Walt's father died. And they succeeded. All of them.

Through the years, whenever we had a party, you could be certain that a good part of the time would be spent with Alice and her three kids standing in a circle laughing and talking. It wasn't a closed circle, but sometimes it felt that way.

As Alice got older her kids rallied around her. I cannot tell you how many times Walt has flown to Santa Barbara on a moment's notice in the past few years to be there to support his mother. Often he would spend several days just sitting with her, watching her sleep, but it was important that he be there.

Before she moved to Santa Barbara, and after she had to give up driving herself, Walt would include her in things we were doing. This meant he had to drive 40 minutes to get her, 40 minutes back to Davis, then we would do that thing we were going to do, whether it was a show or dinner or whatever, and then he would make the 80 minute round trip all over again to take her home. He never complained.

When she lived in Sacramento, she and Alice Nan, who also lived there at the time, spent a lot of time together. It's interesting that in my entry yesterday I mentioned that Alice Nan was her best friend...and then when I saw the obituary they had written, it also says that Alice Nan was her best friend. It was so true. They shopped together, had lunch together, went places together. They even bought a condo together. Then Alice Nan was transferred to Santa Barbara. A few years later, Alice moved down there as well and Alice Nan went to visit her most days a week. She always saw the best in her mother, always saw signs of good days, of alert days, of growing strength. She brought things to cheer up her room, made her take part in activities, frequently ate dinner with her in the dining room.

Every time she went into hospital, Alice Nan was her champion, the one who took on the nursing staff and made sure that her mother had the treatment she needed. (She was so diligent in making certain her mother was treated right that she got under the skin of one of the hospitals, whose staff ultimately said they would only take Alice as a patient if the family promised to stay away.)

As Alice's world got smaller, Alice Nan was there more often, and several nights a week would be there when she was getting ready to go to sleep. The two of them would say prayers together and it would help Alice calm down and be ready to sleep.

Alice Nan was so fortunate on Alice's last day. The convalescent hospital had been on lock-down for two days because of an infection that was spreading. Another hospital was on lock-down too. They were trying to prevent the infection from getting to all the patients. Alice Nan went to leave some clean clothes at the front desk for her (she took her laundry home to wash for her each week) but the attendant at the desk told her she could go back and see her mother. She sat with her and said prayers, like they always did. When the nurse saw her she told her she would have to leave. It was shortly after that when she received the call about her mother's condition, and then the later call about her death.

There is no need for any of her children to feel any guilt about how they treated their mother. I can't think of anything more that they could have done for her, and they all did it with love and without complaint, even when it involved dropping everything and traveling the length of the state to be with her.

The closeness extended out to their cousins, Ernie and Gerry, each of whom lived with Alice for a time when they were growing up. Gerry now lives in Long Beach, south of Santa Barbara and will be there for the funeral on Monday. Ernie and his family are flying out from Washington, DC to be there for the Mass as well.

The thing that I have said here, time and time again, is that it gives me the greatest pleasure to see that Tom, Ned and Jeri have the same closeness that Walt, Norm and Alice Nan have.

When I watch all of them is when I miss my sister, and I wonder if we really could have finally developed a close relationship, if she had lived.

It makes me feel sad when I hear of families who are estranged and who haven't spoken to each other in years. There is something special about "family." They are the people who know your whole history, the people who will nod knowingly when you talk about the time some uncle did something crazy, or when parents fought, or that silly recipe that your father made that turned out to be inedible. It sounds like a little thing, but the special memories in our lives are made up of "little things" and it's lonely when there is nobody who remembers them with you.

I had a taste of that several years ago. Peach and I hadn't seen each other in literally decades, but she and Bob came to dinner. We spent the evening laughing about silly family things and it was an amazing feeling. She was the only one who came close to knowing the whole of me in a way that nobody other than family could.

I envy what Walt, Norm and Alice Nan have and realize what a wonderful thing Alice did to nurture it.

POW Memories

I was cleaning up some stuff in my office today, when I came across a journal that I had written when I went on a week's trip with my mother and her (now late) husband in 1991. We went up the coast to Bandon, Oregon and ultimately met with a lot of other family to celebrate my Uncle Bill's (Kathy's father) 70th birthday. (Good lord, Walt is older than that now!) I talked about it a bit in 2002 and mentioned a conversation I had with my uncle Scotty, but also said that I hadn't been able to find the notes that I took at that time. Well, now I have and I'd like to record them.

By way of introduction, this is an uncle who had never really spoken to me before, but we found ourselves seated together at the far end of the family table and he began telling me about his experiences in a prisoner of war camp in World War II. It killed me that I had NOTHING to take note with--no paper & pen, no recorder, not even a camera that would record video. When we returned to my mother's RV after dinner, I raced into the thing, dug out my laptop and wrote as much as I could remember. Here, unedited, is what I wrote...

I think I knew he was a P.O.W., but I had never known much about it and there we sat, the two of us, oblivious to the rest of the table, and Scotty talked on and on about his experiences in Germany in WW II.

He was shot down over Germany and spent 9 months in the camp. I can't remember where he was at first (a name I couldn't pronounce and don't remember hearing before), but he was moved to Nuremberg and then marched 100 miles to (Musberg?). On the march he befriended an older German sergeant, about 55 years old, who was in no shape for a 100 mile march. The sergeant was trying to find a truck to hop aboard, and Scotty signaled to him to let him (Scotty) carry his (the sergeant's) pack, which he did.

After they got to Musberg, they were sitting around cooking C-rations when this sergeant and another officer walked by. The sergeant shoved his hand in Scotty's pocket and walked on. Scotty put his hand in and found an egg and 2 onions. Nobody in the camp had even SEEN an egg, much less one, in literally months and he said "you wouldn't believe what I went through to cook that egg without anyone seeing me." The next day on the march he ate the onions, though "we weren't supposed to eat vegetables because they put human manure on the fields, but I ate them anyway."

Another tale was when one guy was going around with an empty can trying to collect a spoonful of powered milk from everyone in the camp. The deal was that there was a guy who said he would masturbate in 3 minutes and if he was unsuccessful, he would contribute a whole can of powdered milk. The whole camp gathered in the bathroom to watch and the guy did masturbate in 3 minutes...and then asked if anyone wanted to bet another spoon of milk for him to do it again (nobody did).

There was a German sergeant they called "Mr. Stoop" who had, it is reported, strangled 3 American POWs with his bare hands. But Scotty ran into him one time and the guy gave Scotty a cigarette. After the camp had been liberated by Patton's troops, they lined up all the German officers and paraded the POWs past them to indicate which were the ones who had done them wrong. The sergeant who had given Scotty the egg, "I think was taken into another room and given a medal; everyone liked him," he said. But Mr. Stoop was not to be found. Later they found his body in one fiend and his head in another some 12 miles away.

They were liberated by Patton's troops, as I said. Scotty said that this one day he and his friend decided to take a shower. It was the day for officers to shower, but he and his buddy had not showered in something like 6 weeks, so lined up with the officers (I am not clear on whether they were without clothes or not--they must have been because Scotty said that you couldn't really tell the officers from the enlisted men--they had to argue to get the group in because there were 2 too many and the officers weren't going to give Scotty and his friend away). Anyway, they had to cross a courtyard beneath a guard tower to get to the shower, and as they were making their way across the area, Patton's troops in tanks arrived and opened fire on the guars in the tower. Scotty said, "if you've ever seen men trying to dig instant foxholes in concrete, this was it!"

After the liberation, Scotty's friend came across an English soldier who was roughing up a German housewife who hadn't really done anything, but who was German. His friend tossed the Englishman over the bridge, 40 feet to the water below.

He said that he weighed 174 when he went into the service and 138 when he came out of the camp, but returned home on a troop ship on which the baker had just quit. There was a sign up that there would be no bread unless someone volunteered to take on the job. Scotty said he had worked as a baker when he was about 12, so he agreed to take on the job. He was so good to the troops that he ended up with a key to all the store rooms, full run of all the ship's stores, and his own private stateroom. And when he returned to Galt, he weighed 174.

I don't know if all this reads interesting in the telling, but the best part of it was that it was fascinating, and it was just Scotty and me talking and I think that it was the first conversation I have ever had with one of my uncles about anything. I left the restaurant feeling as if I had discovered an uncle--and feeling that this was the best night of the whole trip.

NOTE FROM TODAY: Scotty and I never had another conversation and he died a few years after this incident took place. But I will treasure it always as a wonderful night.

A Double Header

I feel like we've been to a double-header today! The morning was quiet enough, ending with taking Polly for her weekly torture--3 hours at Petco. I had arranged for Ashley to bring her back home again, since we would be at a family reunion.

The reunion was held at the home of my cousin's daughter (is that my second cousin or first cousin once removed? I can never remember). Anyway, Denise lives in a beautiful small home in Petaluma that has a fabulous garden that my mother has been raving about for years.

Unfortunately, I didn't see too much of the garden. It's terraced up the back of a hill and I could see everything in bloom farther up, but I'm such a klutz and nearly fell off my Birkinstocks just getting to the first level, that I didn't go up farther.

This wasn't one of the blow-out reunions where people fly from halfway across the country to attend. With very few exceptions, everyone who was there was directly related to my cousin Shirley (well, we all are, but I meant her daughters and their spouses, brother and grandchildren). That was a pretty big group right there. But there were a few of us "not quite so closely related" people too, like Peach and Bob and their daughter Karen.

But we were there to do a little visiting, barbeque some bratwurst and have a quick dinner. There are already plans for next year's reunion, at a place several miles north, in the redwood country. The plan is for it to be 3 days and the facility has cabins and kitchen facilities and all that sort of good stuff.

We couldn't stay long because of the concert tonight by the Preoccupied Piers, which was being held from 6-9 at a pizza parlor in Davis. We knew we would be late and would miss the first set by Adrian West. Not only were we getting to town at 6:30, we had to stop off at the house first and feed the dogs.

We got to the pizza parlor just as Adrian was finishing his set.

It was like old home week. I swear I knew 1/3 of all the people in the place. My friend Ruth, with whom I have lunch at a downtown restaurant every two weeks, was there; my Lexulous buddy Jess was there. The kids' old math teacher was there. Walt's sister was there. Lots of old Lawsuit groupies were there. Paul's old boss was there. Some other people I knew in town were there.

I even saw one of the midwives I used to work with, who had been taking her grandson to get some ice cream, heard the music and came in to see what was going on. Aiden, the grandson, had never seen live music being played before and was mesmerized.\

Unforunately, the midwife, who was always one of my favorite people and whom I have not seen in a long time, managed to leave before I saw her. I would like to have spoken with her a little bit, but I'm glad that she at least stopped in to see what all the commotion inside the pizza parlor was!

Walt's sister had a great time, dancing with Ned and with Jeri at various times.

Marta sang a love song that she dedicated to Mr. Tashima, their high school math teacher, because she said that she and Ned had fallen in love in his class. (I can't remember if Ned got good grades or not in that class!)

It was just a really fun night. It's always fun when the kids get together to perform again. One of my favorite things this time was looking down on the floor and seeing the band members' children sitting there watching.

We came home to happy dogs. Today Buttercup began eating like a real dog. She takes so much of Bella's food that I finally gave her her own bowl today (I think Bella got most of that too, but Buttercup is on her way to being a toddler, not just a baby).

We Must Do This More Often

Today was another one of those lunches with people I used to see frequently and rarely see any more. And at the end of it, we said the same thing everybody else has said -- "This was such fun, we must do this more often."

Maybe this is what happens when you get older. Suddenly you realize that you miss the people who used to be close to you years ago.

Today's lunch was with Cindy (my dentist) and Roberta, with whom Cindy and I used to work, and with whom I share a birthday. I told Cindy it was nice to see the lower part of her face, since it seems that all I have seen of her in a long time was the part that goes above the mask she wears in the office! She arranged lunches for the three of us for many years around the time of Roberta's and my birthday. But we hadn't done it in several years.

Cindy had prepared a fabulous spinach salad for lunch and we sat there getting caught up on our lives and our children, until her daughter called. The daughter, who is attending the university here in town, lives in a duplex that Cindy and her husband own. There was an electrician there to do some work and the daughter had to get to class. Cindy invited Roberta and me to continue our lunch, have dessert, make coffee if we wanted, and let ourselves out when we were finished, because she had to go to the house.

So we did that. We continued our visit, had dessert and then left, with promises to get together more often.

This "we have to do this more often" is already coming around for a second date very soon. Ruth and I, who went to the Chinese buffet last week, will be having lunch again next week here in Davis and my friend Kathy, from La Leche League and PFLAG, will be having lunch at Sacramento's Olive Garden again the week after that...and the week after that is Cousins Day. The weekend of the 13th I was just invited to a party for a woman I went to high school with--I haven't seen her since 1960.

I feel almost as social as my mother! I actually have a FULL calendar! I love it.

In the evening, we were scheduled to meet Ned & Marta; Tom, Laurel and Bri; and Jessica with her toddler Jack at Sudwerk for a birthday dinner. It was going to work out fine. We would meet them at 6 and I could still get to the theatre in time to review Kiss Me Kate at 8.

Only traffic and weather slowed Tom & Laurel, so they called and we rescheduled until 7:00, by which time Sudwerk was filled and we had a half an hour wait for a table. Just looking at how crowded it was, I could tell I wasn't going to get dinner. But I did order a plate of mini crab cakes (4 of them, about 1-1/2" across each) and a glass of water.

Tom finally arrived and the old man and his sons had a good time visiting with each other.

Bri and Jack enjoyed each other too.

Just about the time the waitress finally came by to take our order, it was time for me to leave, so I took a picture of everyone, gave hugs all around and went to the theatre.

Walt made it to the theatre just at the end of the first act, so it's good I didn't try to have any dinner. I got myself a cookie at intermission and came home to have some leftover chili in a tortilla for a late dinner.

But I think Walt had a good birthday, all things considered. He had lots of e-mails wishing him well, a call from each person in the family, a visit with Char in the afternoon, checking out her cousin's new bookstore downtown, and then dinner with everybody...and he had a nice nap during Kiss Me Kate. What more could a 70 year old want, except maybe a nap?

The Piano

The piano is leaving next weekend. It's a piece of our family history and it's going to be strange to see it go.

I still remember the night we bought it. We had gone to dinner at the home of our friends Andrij and Lilea (either that or we went to a restaurant and went back to their apartment afterwards). I remember they lived near the railroad tracks in Berkeley. They were moving and had to sell their piano and wondred if we wanted to buy it. I think we had bought our house in Oakland by that time. I don't remember having the piano in our rented house. That would mean that I was pregnant with Paul at the time. I remember that we paid $100 for it.

I can still see our kids, very small, pounding on the piano, where it sat in our dining room in the house in Oakland. I remember trying to pick out pieces from books of sheet music, dusting off whatever I remembered of my 2 years of piano lessons.

It's been in our living room here in Davis since 1973. I have many times wanted to chop it up and throw it out because it takes up SO much space in the room and is hardly payed at all any more.

Jeri got lots of use out of it during her 12 years of piano lessons. Walt would occasionally sit down at it and play the finale of Iolanthe (I think that is the only thing I've heard him play on it).

I remember the kids using it for Egg Nog Galas at Christmas time (check the first part of the video).

As the kids got older, the piano solos turned into combos with everyone playing the instruments s/he could play.

I remember Jeri and our guest from England, Fiona, playing duets on it while Fiona was staying with us. In the foreign student years, when our house was usually filled with young people from all over the world invariably somebody would sit down and play...or a couple of people would pound out an energetic "Heart and Soul" duet.

I remember Paul spending hours creating music on the piano. He never took lessons because he wasn't patient enough to learn music, but music was just in him and it eventually had to spill out onto the keyboard of the piano. Nothing complex, but simple tunes that he would play over and over again.

I remember the time my father got his friend, the piano tuner, to come and tune the piano. He had decided to give us the tuning as a gift. What a nightmare! The piano tuner had had a stroke and only had the use of one arm, so my father was going to be his second hand, but my father had very poor fine motor skills, so it was like getting help for watch repair from Oscar the Grouch. The two men were at it all day and so late into the night that I finally went to bed and left them at it. They were gone in the morning (I think I heard later that they left around 3 a.m.). The piano got tuned, but I don't think the two men ever spoke to each other again. The problem was that the piano was so old that every time the guy went to tune a string, it would pop and he'd have to replace it.

I had it tuned again sometime within the last ten years. It was when Steve was coming to Davis to give a concert and was going to be staying with us. I knew I had to have a well tuned piano for him.

I don't think the piano has been touched, much less played, since that time. As you can see from the photo, it is used today more as a place to display photos!

Getting rid of the piano is the first step toward finally tearing up the puppy urine soaked rug and replacing it with Pergo. I can hardly wait. I don't dare invite anybody into the house because it smells so bad, but it's gone way beyond simply shampooing the rug.

The piano is going to a good home. And it's actually staying in the family. Ned's sister-in-law, who has two small children, is taking the piano and I hope that the instrument will give them as much pleasure as it has given us over the years.

The Family Vacation

The Today Show did a segment on family vacations, specifically the vacation memories of the hosts. It sent me back down memory lane remembering the family vacations of my youth. We never went camping but my parents were big on going to vacation resorts. We almost always brought my father's parents with us.

I have a very, very vague memory of going to Verdier's Resort in, I believe, Sonoma County. My only really clear memory from that vacation was eating oatmeal with real cream for breakfast. It's still a favorite taste, though I haven't had it in forever.

I think this photo was taken at Verdier's. I'm 2-1/2, according to my mother's note on the photo. I think it very strange that even at 2-1/2, I was so imressed by the real cream in the oatmeal that 60 years later I still remember it! I was obviously setting up to become addicted to food at an early age!

The above photo was taken at Sunnyside Cottages at Boyes Hot Springs. I can tell I'm 7 years old because my hair has been cut...it was Shirley Temple curly until I was 7 when I finally begged my mother to let me have it cut. Then it turned straight until I was in my 30s.

My father made this wading pool, which we could bring with us to play in in front of our cabin. It consisted of a wooden frame (painted red, I remember!) and a canvas liner that roped to the frame. I remember we got a lot of use out of that pool. We also went to the nearby hot springs, where I learned how to swim in the big pool and also remember going in the hot pool, which smelled strongly of sulfer. Two strong memories from days at the big pool are listening to Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" over the loudspeaker and eating ribbons of taffy in chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavor. Again, another strong food memory!

We went to Sunnyside Cottages for several years in a row. Our neighbors, the Calegaris, also came with us. We had small cabins with ice boxes in the kitchen (they delivered a huge block of ice to the kitchen once a week). My mother always remembers the day she got Karen and me all dressed up to go to church and then left us outside while she got ready. When she came out, Karen was sitting in the dirt, pouring sand over her head.

Sunnyside Cottages was also the place where my mother went berry-picking with friends and ended up standing in a hornet's nest and getting stung many, many times (but, she is proud to report, didn't spill any of the berries she had in her bucket!) I also rode a horse for the first time at Sunnyside. I almost never got to ride horses because rental was so expensive.

This was our cabin at the Konocti Harbor Inn on Clear Lake.

This is my grandfather, my parents, and my sister. We went here at the height of my Judy Garland craze and when I read that they showed movies at night in the open area courtyard, I joked about it being a Judy Garland movie....and lo and behold, the movie of the week we were there was The Pirate, not one of her best movies. My father never forgave me for the fact that he had to watch The Pirate on vacation!

From a certain age (and I don't know what that was...perhaps 10 or so), I routinely spent 2 weeks every summer with Peach in Citrus Heights while her sister Mandy was spending 2 weeks in San Francisco with Karen. Then we'd switch--Mandy and Karen would go to Citrus Heights for 2 weeks and Peach would come with me to San Francisco. Peach still remembers the summer that I met her now-husband's best friend Duane.

According to Peach, Duane was apparently smitten with me but he was a motorcycle rider and my father had a fit when he learned I had ridden on Duane's motorcycle and forbade me to ever ride on it again (being the obedient child that I was, I never did ride on it again). Peach tells me that Duane never married and she is convinced that he's still carrying a torch for me. (I could extinguish that torch real quickly by sending him a current photo!)

Sunday Supper

When I set dinner down in front of him tonight, Walt said that it certainly looked special. I'll admit that it was a step up from a casserole or spaghetti, and did require a bit of creativity and effort, but I didn't think of it as "special."

(lamb chops, sauteed mushrooms, scalloped potatoes)

When I was growing up, Sundays dinners were special. On week days we had meatloaf or casseroles or hot dogs or pizza or something of that nature. My father was often out of town overnight and when he was gone we sometimes we had things like scrambled eggs or even pancakes. (I loved those dinners because they seemed somehow "naughty" ... eating breakfast for dinner.)

But if we were going to have roast beef or leg of lamb or something more expensive, we would generally have it on Sunday.

We didn't eat Sunday dinners in the dining room, but at the kitchen table like other meals (unless we were having company), but Sunday dinners just seemed special.

When I moved out of the house and started attending the University of California, I became very active in the Newman Club, a place where Catholic students could gather and socialize. It became my home away from home.

One thing the Newman Club had was Sunday suppers. A wonderful Russian woman, Mrs. Balakshin, cooked dinner for all the Newman Club members who wanted to get together and eat on a Sunday night.

Oh, we didn't have roast beef or anything like that, but Sunday suppers were a chance for us all to get together. The priests would often join us.

I remember a time when Mrs. Balakshin was sick and we decided we'd cook the dinner ourselves rather than cancel Sunday supper. I took on the task of making spaghetti for everyone. I was not a cook at that time and I certainly didn't understand the principles of cooking for a crowd. The only thing I remember from that embarrassing incident was that the water in the huge pot had not come to a full boil when I added the spaghetti, but in my haste to get dinner ready for the people who were getting impatient, I went ahead and added it anyway. By the time it was cooked, it had congealed into this one big mushy ball that nobody could eat.

I don't remember what we ate that night, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't spaghetti!

When we got married and started having kids I had this grand plan that we would have Sunday suppers. When we bought our house, we had a perfect dining room, and I had inherited a great dining room table when my grandmother died.

Somehow that idea never became a habit. I'm sure we ate in the dining room often, but we never created the kind of ritual of "Sunday supper" that I fantasized about when we started having children.

We had special dinners for birthdays and when guests came and other special occasions, dinners that were held in the dining room with the good china and the good silverware, but nobody ever felt bad because they were going to be gone on Sunday and missing a special dinner.

I sat down after dinner tonight and watched Brothers and Sisters, a show which seems to take place mostly around the family dinner table, always fraught with angst and argument and hurt feelings. And I thought maybe...just maybe...not having established a ritual of the family Sunday dinner wasn't such a bad idea after all.

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This is one of the portraits taken by volunteer photographer Ron Pluth at Petco yesterday. I knew the SPCA wouldn't be using them for the Petfinder web site since Harry had been adopted, but I asked Ashley if I could have copies for my records. I love this picture, especially of Harry.

On the First Day of Christmas...

...my family gave to me...

a lovely Christmas dinner!

Tonight was the Cousins Christmas, which Kathy and her husband Fred hosted. They have moved since the last time we visited their house and the neighborhood was all decked out in its Christmas finery.

Our Cousins Day group was there, along with Peach's sister Mandy...

...and her husband Gordon and Kathy's sister Kelly...

(on the left)

...and her husband Denton...and my mother, of course.

We brought the puppies and they were the hit of the evening My mother was very happy to sit and cuddle one while I fed the other.

But most of the time they just lay in their bed just looking cute.

We did that gift exchange thing with white elephant gifts. Like Charlie Brown on Halloween, Kathy got a rock...

...and Walt ended up with a basket shaped like a sleigh, so naturally we had to take pictures of the puppies in that.

So I our Christmas season is off with a bang. It was such a lovely evening! Tomorrow we head off to wine country with some friends. We are staying at a B&B that is supposed to have wifi, so I don't anticipate any break in journal entry posts, but on the off chance that something goes wrong and there is no journal entry, that's why