Day: December 29, 2022

As my eight year old grandson, Huck, has a passion for snakes, and knowing that I had a weakness for all tortoise related creatures, I was coerced into watching a documentary on reptiles with him. 

Last week, a special friend of mine gifted me with an expedition to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

This afternoon, as I stepped out of Trader Joe’s heading for my car, a robust, shining African American man came out at the same moment, flung his arms open wide and said ‘What a beautiful day!

Once upon a time ago I created and directed a children’s theater company in Charleston, South Carolina.

The runniness of my morning egg triggered a rumbling in my memory banks.

In between life…as in taking a break from brain, I watch people….and specifically zero in on one particular person at a time who catches my eye and I wonder what it would be like to be that person.

The Jewish mafia shook up my life….for one day.

This afternoon I stopped at Santa Monica Seafood to see what was what in the way of dinner. 

From John Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’ (thank you, Mom, for imprinting my being with poetry and literature galore!). These words ran through me in broken intervals for those eight years of being a gypsy:

In Hinduism, Brahma, the creator, sits on a lotus.

In 1970 I was working the night shift at a state institution in New Hampshire.

The road that leads from my bluff to civilization, swerves by a view of a canyon that opens on to the sea. Every single time I drive past this canyon, I flash back to a memory from my girlhood in India.

The term ‘swami busters’ crossed my path a few days ago and amid sparkles of internal laughter, memories of adventure and friendship flew front and center.

Yesterday a child came out to wander, caught a dragonfly inside a jar….

Mom, is that you?

The heat. The planet. The animals. And us.

The summer of ’69 found me working on a brain tumor ward in a hospital in Colunmbia, Missouri.

Queen Elizabeth gave me a silver boat.

In the early 80’s, therapeutic massage was infiltrating communities all over the country that prior to this time had only associated massage with parlors.

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Whilst visiting a particular art exhibit on Saturday, a flood of feelings for the beauty of a time long ago and laughter.

Des Moines, Iowa, May 23, 1918

It hardly seems fair that on top of the multitude of morphing body parts and systems, that as we age, our looks slide into peculiar variations on a theme.

The smell of eucalyptus trees, especially in the rain, and often mixed with burning, seeped into every cell, every day, when living in our mountain school in South India.

In 1960 my family found itself in Jerusalem, as my father was known for his negotiating skills and had been called to help with ‘something.’ 

In 1977 I lived in a cottage on the shores of a wild lake in Minnesota with my husband, our baby daughter, our husky and our collie.

The heat is coming.

The ants are on the move.

My cellular calendar tells me HARK! Family birthdays….of a grandfather that I never knew and a sister that I adored, both lighting candles and toasting in other realms.

Inhabit the garden.  Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them.

There’s no place like home.

In 1991, after driving a U-Haul truck from Charleston, South Carolina to New York City with 14-yeqr-old daughter, and young golden retriever riding shotgun, we found our new mini nest, which was dark and dusty but going to work.  While daughter hooted and howled in upset, golden retriever and I took a walk around the block.

Yesterday afternoon, scurrying around the corner of Wilshire and 4th Street in Santa Monica, through a demonstration for Iranian women’s rights, I time travelled and bumped into a woman from a Dickens novel.

The summer of 1968. On the most idyllic two hundred acre farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whose main house had been an inn during the Revolutionary War, I worked as a nanny to four children, four horses, and a wacky pregnant Gordon Setter named Sita.

Every single morning, at the exact same time, a little bird perches on the exact same spot on the tippy top of a bush outside my window, facing the ocean, and she seems to meditate

A word that reverberates as never before, and seems to be growing in its familiarity and power, is Grief.

Having spent the last hour efficiently, delightfully, rearranging a few thises and thats in my abode, it was time to hop into the shower

Somewhere in my meandering,  I heard the words, “I’ve known him since he was an egg” and my imagination was off and running.

Here I am, living on the coast of la mer magnifique (Mom, are you closing your eyes tightly and shaking your head?) and yet its every sunset reminds me of evenings perched on the rolling dunes of Lake Michigan.

Ten years ago, or so, Francie’s Magic Cookies were happening. They were in eleven Whole Foods, they were flying off the shelves and creating magic…yes, for real.

Once upon a time ago, as in the 50’s and 60’s, when Christmas trees were painstakingly decked with shiny balls, and homemade styrofoam or felt ornaments with sequins stuck hither and thither, TINSEL was the main event.

The transportive might of music, once again awestruck.

During the 60’s, my mother’s passion for experiencing New York’s cultural offerings exploded  during Christmastime and always began with an expedition into the city for Menotti’s ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’. This morning, with the first voice of “Amaaaaaaahl” on my player, the red breasted bird that lives in yonder tree, that I have named ‘Jane’ for my mother, few over to my window and  listened with me.

Tenafly….”ten swamps”in Dutch…. ‘yes’, I thought. 

In the early 60’s when my mother informed me that this was the meaning of the word. ‘How perfect that we had landed here, strangers in a strange land that does not want me…swamp times ten, ’ I thought.

1962, October, the Cuban Missile Crisis was happening, the SS France was only six months old, “The Music Man” with Robert Preston was playing everywhere, and they all came together for our family in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a magnificent storm with thirty foot waves.

Walter, Walter shining bright!

Your birthday! 

I can only imagine that you have found the perfect cloud to rally your friends around for rampant FUN.

What a blessing it is when someone prances into one’s life bringing laughter and vibrant electricity!

P-22

“What’s in a name? That whcih we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

Sakiko, how can I thank you? You were not soft and fuzzy and your disapproval of me was visceral. You joined the family when I was 15, and as you had achieved phenomenal status in the world of opera through intense discipline and ‘no nonsense’, you had little patience for my sensitivity and non traditional inclinations. 

My music of the morning appeared out of nowhere and played itself. It clearly wanted to be heard and as yesterday’s partial eclipse illuminated some buried boxes, perfecto.

Oh WOE!!!! You did it again!

What did I do?

You dropped the baby in the wrorng family. You need to pay attention!

Somewhere in my travels these words ….’Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you’….and so last night I happened to watch “Elephant Whisperers” on Netflix and was transported, viscerally and sensually back in time to a place where adventure, family hooplah, wonder, beauty, wisps of fear,  passion for wildness and tangible LOVE for elephants crept into my young self.

Vermont and fall seem to be joined together…trees bursting into flaming hues in the news and advertisements…come, come….hence another rebellious episode with my rascal comrade in all things not allowed.