Goin' Home

My family has its roots in Marin County, that bucolic area across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It's a place where people joke about martinis and beemers and liberal kooks.

Our roots, however, go far deeper than gazillion dollar homes and faux hippies. Our great grandfather, Josiah Kirkpatrick, after walking across the country on one leg, with his little daughter, our grandmother, in tow, was the teacher in a small schoolhouse in Olema, and lived with his daughter and his second wife (the first having died) in a house that now backs up onto a trailer park. We had many family reunions over the past twenty years, in that trailer park (until their rates rose so high we couldn't afford it any more).

In about 1941 or 42, my grandmother and grandfather, their children all grown, moved out of San Francisco, where they had been living, and bought a small house in Inverness, where they lived until my grandfather's death in 1958. The tiny house was situated on an acre of hand and my grandfather raised corn and other crops, he had chickens, and I remember my grandmother's strawberry patch, right outside her kitchen window, and the wall of blackberries that grew along one side of the property. I would pick ripe berries and bring them in the back door of the house, where there were Lorna Doone cookies, and smash the berries between two cookies. (Most of my fond childhood memories seem to center around food.)

Peach's father built a house on part of Grandpa's property, and our Aunt Betsy and her husband, Dave McClure had a house on another part of the property. Betsy and Dave later moved to Dave's ranch on land that is now part of the Point Reyes National Seashore, overlooking McClure's Beach. Yes, they were part of that McClure family.

When Cousins Day was over, Pach, Kathy and I went "home" to Inverness. Actually, our trip started in Point Reyes, which is the next town to Inverness. When we were growing up, it was barely a bump in the road, but now it has been "kitsch-ified" and is a new trendy place to be. We were meeting Kathy's younger sister, Kelly, who had brought with her half of Aunt Barb's ashes (the rest having been buried with her husband in Reno). We were going to send the rest of Barb to rest in the waters of Drake's bay.

But first, on the way through Inverness, we drove down the road where Grandma and Grandpa's house had been. Kelly was born after Grandpa died and about a year or two before Grandma died, so she never knew them, and had not seen the old farmhouse.

It looks completely different now. It's hard to find the house that we knew, it's been expanded so much. But as we drove up to the back of it, we saw a woman just parking her car. We told her who we were and she invited us in. It turns out she was a woman named Annie Hallatt, who makes and sells masks out of her shop in Berkeley, Masque Arrayed. She was thrilled to have us tell her our memories of the house and I promised to send her photos of what it looked like back in the 40s.

Peach, Kathy and I stood in the kitchen and tried to remember where things were when we were little, as there has been lots of remodeing and expanding done--but you can still look out Grandma's windows and see where her strawberry patch would have been.

(that's Annie on the left, and Kelly is the blonde)

We showed her the tall tree under which Grandma and Grandpa's ashes are buried.

When we left, we had Kathy stop the car by the fence that hid what would have been Betsy and Dave's house and Kelly took a picture of Peach and me under the tree where we spent many hours, sitting, eating apples, and talking, when we were little kids.

(In fact, this tree is the reason I wanted a nice climbing tree planted in our front yard here in Davis--I remember fondly those tree sessions with Peach 55-60 years ago!)

Finally we turned our wheels out to Drake's Bay, where we put Barb in a little cooler and started walking out past where people were cavorting on the beach.

Then we each grabbed handsful of ashes and waded out into the water to send Barb to her final resting place.

We all felt so "right" about what we did, and a sense of peace knowing that at long last, Barb -- all of her -- is at rest. And it was important that the four of us all did it together.

When we finished, we walked back to the parking lot and had a lunch at the cafe there, then turned our wheels home. I think we were all on a high with weather and ocean and camaraderie. It was worth getting home from Cousins Day several hours later than usual!

Cousins Day Drop-Ins

Yes, Virginia, there is an entry for today. It's very late this time (for reasons I will explain in tomorrow's entry!)

Our September Cousins Day is now in the bag and we have all gone home wreathed in smiles.

Our arrival at my mother's was a little later than usual because we stopped to pick up a few things in Vacaville on the way. This particular Cousins Day was to celebrate my mother's 89th birthday, so Peach and Kathy had ordered an "incredible edible" bouquet for her, a lovely arrangement of fruit.

Since it was so late, we skipped our usual coffee and chit chat and went right to lunch and did the chit-chat over salad and rolls. It had only been a couple of weeks since our last Cousins Day (the short interval due to wanting to celebrate my mother's birthday), so there wasn't a lot of catching up, other than reports on how the wedding had gone.

(I had thought ahead to that report. and so for my mother's birthday gift from me, I had a bunch of photos printed and put in an album so we could show Kathy and Peach our favorite moments.)

When lunch was finished, the table was cleared and the cards came out. We were almost finished with our first game when the phone rang. My mother answered and it was my new son-in-law asking if we were up for guests. My mother said "SURE" enthusiastically and asked how soon they'd be there. He reported that they were just parking in front of her house at that moment, so they were there two minutes later...

...and we got a report on their brief honeymoon and the trip up the coast. They would be flying out that night, so could only stay a short time, as they had to return their rental car and get to the airport.

Jeri did, however, take time for a little bit of margarita.

When they left, we went back to our game. This was definitely Kathy's Cousins Day. I won one game. Peach one won game, and Kathy won about 5 or 6 games. I knew the first time I picked up my cards for the very first game that this was not going to be my day. I was right.

But you don't play cards on Cousins day to win money (unless you're my mother, of course), you play for the camaraderie and the more we can hurl invectives at each other, the more fun it is.

We quit playing about the time McCain was giving his boring speech (I fell asleep) and we all were out for the night around 10:30 (except for nightowl Kathy, who was probably up until about 2 a.m. working a puzzle).

This morning we got up and had breakfast--eggs, bacon, English muffins, and a nibble on the incredible edible.

And then off for today's adventure, for which you will have to wait for tomorrow's entry.

Housecleaning -- the Other Kind

That I don't like housekeeping comes as no surprise to any regular reader of this journal. But not only do I not like housekeeping my house, I'm not too fond of housekeeping my computer either.

Today was spent organizing the hard drive and "doing stuff" with the wedding photos and videos.

To my surprise I discovered I only had 1 gigabyte and a bit of free space. I started out, six years ago with 125 gigabytes and only recently I had about 20 gigabytes. Clearly it was time to get serious about housecleaning.

(Of course this is housecleaning you can do while sitting down watching television!)

It took all morning to move 7 gigabytes of photos off of my hard drive and onto a stack of CDs. But it did free up lots of space. Now I have to clear off videos and I might actually get into double-digit space again.

While I was cleaning, organizing and arranging, I decided not to truncate or excerpt bits from Jeri & Phil's ceremony to fit into Flickr's 1-1/2 minute restriction. The ceremony, from start to finish, is 16 minutes, so it's even too long for YouTube, so I uploaded it to Blip. Anybody who would like to see it can follow this link.

"Anonymous," who read my previous entry about my friend who refused to come to the ceremony because she thought it was "too frivolous" wrote: Your friend missed a wonderful, moving ceremony. I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes and smiling from the pure joy I feel from watching this.

That's exactly how I feel. This was a very meaningful ceremony but even watching it I had to admit that had my friend been there, she probably would have left the first time someone laughed. There were lots of laughs in the ceremony, which is not to say that they were finding the whole thing funny. The laughs came out of love and, yes, commitment.

But then my friend also disapproved of Walt's sister's wedding, which was held in a Catholic church, which was conducted by a Catholic priest, but because he invited the bride and groom to share in the consecration of the bread and wine, she pursed her lips tightly and said she was glad she hadn't been there because she would not have approved.

Not sure exactly what would constitute the perfect wedding for her!

But it was her loss. We had a great day and watching Phil looking like the cat who swallowed the canary all day long was good enough for me!

(Did I mention that at the conclusion of the ceremony the two of them held hands and went racing across the grass and the sand and into the ocean?)

One of the things I did in all of this organization 'n' stuff was to start separating out the videos of the wedding into little clips that I can post to Flickr and here. (Today's clip is Jeri telling the story of how she happened to get the dress she bought.)

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I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I just discovered a blog site called "No Blogger Left Behind." For a mere $250, you can take an on-line course for how to write a popular blog. There's also a 30 minute "Webnar" (I guess that's a seminar on the web), which is valued at $500.

Good grief...I thought you just threw up a blog and wrote stuff. You know--the "if you write it, they will come" school of blogging. It seems to have served me well for the past 8-1/2 years.

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Tomorrow's entry will be late. It's Cousins Day again. Yeah, we just had Cousins Day a couple of weeks ago, but it's my mother's birthday and we wanted to be sure and celebrate. How often do you have an 89th birthday?

The ceremony

This is the 16 minute video of Jeri and Phil's wedding ceremony.

Click To Play

lin

I originally ran this in January of 2001, when I had far fewer readers. I am re-running it today because when we returned from Santa Barbara there was a message from lin's daughter that her mother had died on Wednesday. We had talked a lot about lin during the wedding festivities and how if it weren't for lin and the children's theatre, Jeri and Phil would not be getting married. I can't think of a better way to mark her passing than by re-running this tribute to the woman who changed our children's lives -- all of them.

(Note that I have not updated the information and it says that Jeri is "getting a degree in music" which she obviously did long ago1)

Her name was ms. lin McElroy (the "l" was always lower case, and there was a heart dotting the "i"). She was big and brash, with bright red hair, a great sense of fun, and a tremendous love of kids. Our paths crossed when she directed a production of The Sound of Music. The neighbor girls were cast as two of the VonTrapp children and I learned that so many children had come out for auditions that lin decided to work with a double cast, so that more children could have the opportunity to participate.

When the show ended, I introduced myself and told her that if she was ever interested in forming a children’s theatre, I’d be happy to help. With that simple exchange, The Sunshine Children’s Theatre was born. SCT wasn’t destined for greatness. It never made any big headlines, but it changed the lives of so many children who participated.

lin had the crazy idea that the kids could learn to do it all. They were actors, technicians, designers, choreographers, and costumers -- sometimes all at once. She believed in giving children the tools and the knowledge and trusting that they would not let her down. They never did.

The company consisted of children between the ages of 5 and 12. There were no age divisions. 12 year olds were best friends of 6 year olds. The older kids were the ones climbing up into the catwalk to hang lights, but even the youngest could wield a hammer or help paint the stage before a performance.

Some parents felt there was an excessive time commitment for their children, but ours thrived on it. They practially lived at the theatre. In an age where some young adolescents were wandering around looking for mischief to do, our kids were learning how to hang lights, spending long hours rehearsing scenes, or hammering a set in place. We never had to worry about where they were when they weren’t at home. They were always at the theatre.

In its five-year history, SCT put on several productions, including an original musical, Go Go, the Blue Gorilla, where Ned got his chance to sing and dance, in a role that could have been written for him. Our kids began to find their niche in the company, with Paul moving into the leading roles, while Jeri and Ned loved the backstage work, though they also acted. When Jeri was too old to be part of the acting company, she became the technical director.

When lin finally left town, the theatre company was stranded. By this time there was a board of directors in place, money in the treasury, and a staff of experienced young members, but there was nobody who could replace lin, nobody who was as dedicated to the theatre experience for children

It had long been a dream for the kids to do a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. After much discussion over the next three years, the young actors decided they really wanted to do that show, and that the could do it without lin. They arranged to rent the rights to put on the show. Jeri agreed to be the director. She and other kids took on the tasks of lighting design, set design and building, costuming, choreography and musical accompaniment.

David as Linus; Paul as Charlie Brown

They worked long and hard and in the end put on a professional show that was created entirely by adolescents. At its conclusion, they donated all the proceeds to a fledgling high school theatre group and closed the books on the Sunshine Children’s Theatre.

Tom as Schroeder

ms. lin McElroy changed our children’s lives. Jeri has been working as a theatre designer and technician since she received her Master of Fine Arts degree--and is now getting her degree in music; Ned is now the producer of a morning radio program; and Paul, until his death, continued to perform.

It all began with an audition for The Sound of Music and a woman dedicated to allowing children to live up to their potential and to follow their dreams.

Category 1

Like Hurricane Gustov, the hurricane of activity that has swirled around Santa Barbara since Thursday is gradually being downgraded. Over at Nancy's house, the last of the Bay Area contingent left early this morning, leaving only Meghan to return to Boston and the bride and groom to leave on their honeymoon (they will be spending 3 days at Big Sur).

Here on this side of town, the Sykes/Baur family was also fading away, with two headed back to the Bay area and four headed down to Long Beach.

This was the real date of Walt's mother's birthday, so her family all met at Maravilla to have one last breakfast with her.

After a half hour "Hour Baur" Walt and I finally made our way out of Maravilla and over to Phil's mom's house (or the one she is renting)

(this photo doesn't BEGIN to do it justice!)

We found everyone lounging by the pool and I was regretting not having packed a bathing suit with us. The water looked so inviting and I seriously considered jumping in, clothes and all.

Instead, I sat inside with Nancy and Cathy, had some lunch (someone is going to be eating tri-tip roast for the next week, methinks!), read through the wedding guest book(s), and eventually played that rematch game of pool with Cathy (I won...ahem). I have to admit that I was rather proud of myself that several of my shots actually went where I intended them to.

Tom had called and suggested we stop by around 3. We had to return his mixer, with which I had made all those cakes, bring him a gift that my mother's friend had forgotten to give him at the wedding, deliver all the old kids' books that I had unearthed for Bri, and, of course, to have one last visit with our granddaughter.

This was not a good day for Bri. Daddy uses some interesting moves to calm her down. It doesn't last long.

In addition to all the activity over the past couple of days, she is teething and she hasn't been sleeping much at all over the past many days. Consequently her parents haven't been sleeping well over the past several days either.

It's also been pretty warm and their air conditioner doesn't cool down the whole house. I know how she feels...I don't handle hot and sweaty all that well either. They finally decided to pack her up and head down to the beach, where it would be cooler.

We didn't join them on the beach trip because we had to get back over to Maravilla to meet Alice Nan for dinner with their Mom. The birthday girl wore her birthday crown to the dining room and waved at people with a move that would do Queen Elizabeth proud. When time for dessert rolled around, the wait staff all stood around her and sang "Happy Birthday" to her as they delivered a piece of cake to her.

As we were returning to her room, Jeri called to say she and Phil had forgotten to take Ned and Marta's camp stove with them, and asking if we could go back to Nancy's to pick it up, which we did.

We will be off early tomorrow and headed for home. We to get the yard ready for the fence builders, who arrive on Wednesday and get the dogs to the kennel so they don't drive everyone crazy when the jackhammers start breaking up the concrete.

Gosh, this has been a fun weekend. It's going to take awhile to come down from this! But Thursday is Cousins Day, and that will help!

Such a wonderful full life

I woke up this morning and realized that the shower cake, for last weekend, had been decorated and eaten.

The wedding cake had been decorated and displayed. It didn't collapse before the wedding, and almost all of it got eaten.

I had decorated my very last wedding cake and the kitchen was all cleaned up.

So what did I do this morning? I decorated another cake! This one was for the celebration of Walt's mother's 95th birthday. It was a rare occasion to celebrate with both branches of the Sykes family, the east coast (Ernie & Lucille, Stacie and son Hazen, Jeri and Phil [who is looking like the cat who caught the canary today!]), and the west coast--the southern contingent (Gerald and Melissa, Tom and Laurel, Alice Nan and Joe), and the northern contingent (Walt and I, Norm and Olivia) plus Jeri's godmother Jeri and her two sons and Phil's mother, sister, nephews, and uncle. I had thought I would make a small layer cake, but ultimately made a huge sheet cake and there is almost none left over.

We wondered how Grandma was going to be today, after her big day at the beach yesterday, at the wedding, but she was in great spirits! I haven't seen her so animated in a long time.

We had reserved the clubhouse at Maravilla, where she lives, and the room was decorated with the displays of pictures of her life, which Norm and Olivia had made up when we celebrated her 90th. Included are some cut out posterboard figures of her at various ages and we compared "Baby Alice" with "Baby Bri."

Bri was actually in good spirits for most of the evening.

with Aunt Lucille

Ernie and Lucille had brought her some gifts, one of which was a book, which Bri devoured hungrily.

She's either going to be a voracious reader, or a goat.

Young Hazen and his Mom arrived a bit late, and brought Grandma a birthday crown and a bouquet of Tootsie Pops.

Her kids (and ours) sang the song they made up for her 90th birthday, updated to today. It goes on for many verses, but the chorus goes

Grandma, Grandma Sykes
Tomorrow she'll turn 95
Have you ever seen the like
Of such a wonderful full life.

She smiled throughout and clapped at the end. It was really very special. (Yes, I have video.)

It was just a lovely chance to spend some family time, all together. When it was time to take her back to her apartment, she waved like a Grand Diva waving to her adoring fans as she was slowly wheeled, backwards, toward the door.

It was time to leave, we knew, because Bri had hit the wall. Even Phil couldn't charm her when she got tired.

It was very special for us all to be here to celebrate another milestone birthday. We all promised to be here in 5 years for her 100th.