Angel Wings

My kids and I created our own Christmas traditions, and stayed home almost every year to enjoy them together as they grew up.  But, back in '98, my mom and sister took my kids on one of their favorite trips, to Disneyland for Christmas break.  Right before they drove off in my mom's car to head for the airport, my 8-yr-old daughter dropped back in the snow, to make me a snow angel, so I wouldn't miss her too much over Christmas.  This is the photo I took of her angel.

A few years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Tom Prasada-Rao music.  The first time I heard "Angel Wings," it became my favorite holiday song.  It also made me think of my daughter's snow angel from the Disney Trip.

Here is the link to Tom's beautiful song: Angel Wings

I wish a blessed holiday season to all my friends and family.

Fiction

When I was little, and first started reading books of any length, my favorite author was C.S. Lewis.  The Narnia Chronicles were books I read over and over.  My favorite character from those books was Fledge, the flying horse in The Magician's Nephew. 

When I first started writing, at about 8 or 9 years-of-age, I wrote poems.  This was the first poem I ever wrote on my own:

Animals live
Animals die
Who is there to cry
When people die
Many will cry
But hardly anyone cries
When an animal dies

This poem was written because I saw how nobody cared about a dog that had been hit by a car and was dying on the road in front of the church we attended one Sabbath.  This scene was how my writing voice was born.  I saw something that hurt my heart, I could not vocalize or cry about it, so I wrote it down.  My writing has followed this pattern ever since.  I witnessed or felt something, and I wrote it down.

As I got older, I sometimes wanted to try and write stories like C.S. Lewis wrote.  But every time I sat down to write, the words that came out were always autobiographical.  I sometimes felt like that meant I was a very selfish person.  I felt like I should be able to tell another person's story, or tell a fanciful story to make others happy.  I wanted to make up wonderful tales, and transport people to good places.  I could not do it, no matter how much I wanted to. 

I have, over the years, attempted to turn the words that kept trying to come out of myself into a work of fiction, where names and places and situations were changed up enough that no one would recognize anyone or anything, but the truth would still be there, buried under all of the changes.  This never worked.  These attempts to disguise my truth were dismal failures, and I knew it, even as I tried to do the writing.  I labored over outlines, changing names, making up fictional towns, and finally throwing it all away.  I decided I was not meant to write fiction, even though people like J.K. Rowling, and even one of my uncles, do exactly the thing I wish I could do:  they create fictional characters and stories in their minds, and are able to communicate those stories in written words.

I know my own voice, now, and realize I was never meant to write fiction, or write books, or write for profit, or even for an audience.  I had to write what needed to get outside of me, because it would kill me if it stayed inside.  And I had to get it out, even if no one believed me.  From my first poem on, the things I have written have been my only voice for the pain I carried. 

I'm glad I was not able to write fiction.  I'm glad I was given a voice to keep myself alive. 

Palette

Palette

My muse and I have had a love/hate relationship for many years.  Every time I write without the help of my muse, the words are difficult to find, and the writing never feels whole to me.  A couple weeks ago, I started the comedic "BB Gun Story" that I have wanted to write for years, and I can already tell it is going to take me a lot of work.  I was starting to feel angry at the part of myself that can hand me words so easily, impatient with my source of inspiration for abandoning me yet again, especially after we bonded so well during this past April's A-Z Blog Challenge.  I was troubled that my muse does not at all seem interested in making people laugh with words, like I am.  I pushed away the keyboard this morning, and said aloud, "What the hell is it with these damn tears you keep trying to hand to me?"

And I finally saw it:  my muse is not a rebellious teen, trying to fight me at every turn.  She is not a spoiled child, stamping her foot and pouting because I won't do what she wants with her words.  I have always known that writing is painting with words.  I just never stopped and realized what kind of paint shimmers on the palette held by my source of inspiration.  Every unshed tear I swallowed as a child was lovingly collected and protected by the one who gives me words.  Each of those words is a priceless treasure, a glittering drop of pain from the child I once was, and my muse has patiently held those tears, on a palette that I have not allowed myself to acknowledge, for my whole life.  In order to make peace with my source of inspiration, I am going to have to accept what the words from my muse are, and treat that medium with the compassion it deserves.  I know the palette is not filled with an unlimited supply of these drops.  One day, the palette will be dry, ready to fill with a new type of pigment.  Meanwhile, I am going to honor the words my muse gives me, until the last teardrop falls.

 

Cherished Object--For the CHERISHED Blogfest

My Grandad Smith had a small farm on a few acres in Pasco, WA.  I loved our visits to Grandad's place when I was a child.  He had a pasture behind the house that often had cattle or horses grazing on it, and when I was older, there were large pipes and sprinklers that irrigated that pasture.  But I have memories of the original irrigation method my Grandad once used, back when I was still a very young toddler. 

The Columbia River is the source of water that is used to irrigate the farmland around the Tri-Cities, WA.  Before the canals were created for irrigation, all of that area was a semi-arid steppe, basically sagebrush-covered desert.  Once the irrigation canals were built, water from the Columbia transformed parts of that desert into fertile farmland.  One of the original irrigation methods was called pioneer irrigation.  A piece of ground was sloped, and along the highest edge of that ground, water from canals ran in iron or earthenware pipes underground and came up into small basins formed in the earth at intervals along the high ground, with furrows dug from the downward side of those basins to let gravity usher the water into the pasture.  There were no faucets to turn off and on.  Instead, the canal water came up through a small pipe into the floor of each basin, and a wooden plug was placed into the hole at the bottom of the basin to stop the flow of water.  When one wanted to water the pasture, one simply walked the high slope of that piece of land, removing the wooden plugs so the canal water would come up into the basin, and flow through the furrow down into the pasture.

Some of my favorite earliest memories are walking with my Grandad along the edge of his pasture, watching him lift the wooden plugs from the small basins of earth, and seeing the water bubble up from the ground through the hole where the plug had been.  As I got old enough to pull up the plugs by myself, he would let me join in the act of making water magically appear out of the ground. 

Many years later, after my Grandad had died and the sale of his property was pending, I had to make my last visit to his farm, to say goodbye to the place I loved most on earth.  As I stood behind the house, looking across those few acres I loved, I suddenly remembered walking the edge of Grandad's pasture with him when I was very young.  I wondered what might have happened to all those wooden plugs, which had become obsolete so many years ago.  My adult feet carried me along the road at the edge of his pasture where my childhood soles had once walked alongside his large work-boots.  Weeds and brush had grown up along the edge of the pasture where the irrigation line had been, but when I stopped and looked beneath one large sage plant, I could just make out the packed edge of one of the old basins, still there beneath the overgrowth.  I started moving the brush aside, and that's when I spied one of the old wooden plugs, laying on the ground inside the dry basin.  As I picked it up, I was filled with emotion from the memories it held.  I finished walking the pasture edge, and at the end of that walk, I had found a total of eight plugs.  I placed them in my car, then turned and reluctantly bid that property farewell. 

When I got home, I set the wooden plugs on my counter, and wondered what I could do with them, in order to make something for myself and my children out of those special pieces of my childhood.  I did not want to carve or sand or paint them.  I felt that would destroy the magic I knew they still contained.  Then it came to me:  I could make crosses.  So, I made four wooden crosses of the plugs, one for me, and one for each of my three children.  I placed my cross above the front door of our home, and set aside the other crosses for each of my kids, to take with them whenever they flew my coop.  Those crosses I set aside are all in the homes where my children now live, and my cross remains above the door of my house.  It is a cherished object, two pieces of wood that still contain bits of earth from a place I loved, still contain traces of my tiny hands and the hands of my Grandfather.

As I took the cross down to take a close-up photo of it for this blog, I could feel the magic it still holds.  I was transported back to a time long ago, when a tiny child walked beside a man in an Oklahoma Tuxedo, making water magically rise up from the ground.  I cherish this cross.

Alf (Poverty and Homelessness, in the First World)

Alf

         

     Some family members and I were recently having a heart to heart about poverty in the United States, and it brought back a wave of memories for me, from a time when my oldest son and I were homeless in the Bay Area.  Most of this I have never spoken of to anyone before, out of shame, and out of the desire to forget it ever happened.  It was an extremely stressful time in my life that I had chosen to bury away in the far recesses of my brain.  There is a part of this story that is one of the deepest aches my heart carries, and to put it in words will make me relive that moment.  But instead of reburying it all again, I have decided it will be healing for me, and perhaps informative for others, if I tell this story, here in my blog. 
     The first time I was homeless was on the island of Kauai.  I was 19, and living there with my oldest son's father and another good friend.  While the situation was stressful and uncomfortable, and made worse when all of our belongings were stolen, there was a band of homeless veterans and assorted other folks on the North Shore who welcomed us to their campfires, and gave us a sense of community during that time.  There were prawns in streams to catch, tropical fruit everywhere to pick, and the temps were always mild, so living was not unbearable.  We sat around fires and talked of life, and survival, and made some decent memories in the midst of stress.  Our only real fear was being arrested for sleeping on the beach or in the parks.  Eventually, we got jobs and rented shacks, where we spent our days walking 5+ miles morning and night, to and from work.  Our nights were spent crashed on the wood floors of our shacks, waking up to do it all again the next day.  We worked hard, yet we found the easier pace of Island Time to be refreshing.
     Once back on the mainland, we rejoined the frenetic pace of the contiguous states.  My oldest son's father and I ended up living in an area along the California Delta.  I worked 16-hour days as assistant store manager for a fast food chain, and my partner worked in retail.  We lived in a pet-friendly apartment complex near our jobs, and had a kitten named Scallywag, a gift from my partner's mother.  In time, I found out I was pregnant with my oldest son, and near the end of my pregnancy, we rescued a puppy, and named him Alf.  Life felt survivable.
     Soon after my oldest son was born, we had to move, because we found out we had to have a two-bedroom home.  We could only afford the two-bedrooms in a rougher part of town.  Thankfully, the place we found allowed us to keep our pets. I now worked graveyard as a waitress at Denny's, so I could be home with my son during the day while my partner worked.  We were still treading water, but a downward spiral had begun that at that time I could not see, and had no way of knowing how to stop.
     When my oldest son turned two, the relationship between his father and I fell into disrepair, and eventually dissolved.  My biggest issue became finding childcare for my son while I worked.  Rent was 550.00 a month, and my checks, every two weeks, were about 130.00 each, not even half my rent when put together.  Tips varied, but the average was 20.00 a night, 5 nights a week.  I had no car.  After paying for rent and power, I barely had enough left to feed my child and critters.
     Living alone in that neighborhood was unsafe, but Alf took care of us.  His mother had been a Staffordshire Terrier, his father, a shepherd/lab mix.  Alf was a goofy-looking sweetheart, brindle in color, shaped like a shepherd, with one ear that never stood up, giving him a charming face.  He was always gentle with my son, who was his best buddy, but Alf could be ferocious if he saw or heard anything he felt might be threatening us or our home.  I felt quite safe with him around, and the security he brought was well worth the cheap dog food I bought for him.  As for the love he gave, that could not be quantified.
     Around this time, my sister went into the Peace Corps, and before she left for Honduras, she gave me her car, an older Mercury Lynx.  It was such a blessing to not have to walk miles to and from work anymore.
     During my night shifts, a paramedic started coming into Denny's after his shift ended, and he begin to interact with me a bit.  His mother and sister sometimes came in with him, and they all seemed very nice.  I started dating this man, and his mother and sister started watching my son for me once or twice a week.  I thought things were looking up.  This man took me and my son to see the trains in Martinez, to amusement parks, and to duck ponds and lakes for walks.  He talked of marrying me, and putting us on his medical insurance.  He painted beautiful word pictures of the life we would have together.  (A couple of years later, I discovered this man was never a paramedic, had never finished the 9th grade, and was already married to another woman, with whom he had a daughter.  I have no clue whose uniform and badge he wore during that first year I knew him.)  It would take me another two decades to fully understand my defective ability to read people, so 23-year-old me took this older man at his word, and let him into my life. 
    Some months down the road, things got rockier.  My car started leaking oil, more and more all the time.  I could not afford to get it checked.  About this time, I started getting violently ill, especially toward the end of my graveyard shifts.  At Planned Parenthood, I found out I was pregnant and was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of morning sickness.  My job eventually fired me for missing too much work because I was sick.  I went to sign up for food stamps, but was told by the worker that because I had been fired, I must wait 90 days before applying for any type of assistance.  My partner told me he would take care of everything, but soon afterward, I lost my apartment, and my son and dog and cat and I started sleeping in our car.  It was only supposed to be for a few nights, until my partner got the funds together for a place for all of us.  We parked my car in a visitor's parking place at the complex where my partner was still living with his mother and sister.  On the second night there, my partner's mother came out and told me I was too skinny to be pregnant, I must be lying to try and trap her son, and if I did not leave, she would call the police, and my child would be taken from me by CPS because we were sleeping in a car.      
     About now, many may wonder why I did not reach out to my family for help.  At that time in my life, I believed that my existence was a continuation of what I grew up with, a constant game I could never catch on to or win, where every decision I made was wrong, every word I spoke would be seen as a lie, every thing I loved was undeserved and would be taken away, my joy was evil, my needs were bad, and society, just like my father, would pounce on me at every turn I made, to make me pay for the very act of existing.  To me, that was the way things were. I did not even know it was what I believed.  It was just facts, like the sun rising everyday, or the sky being blue.  My life was a result of my badness, I was getting exactly what I deserved, and I must live with my mistakes, and never reach out to anyone for help.  Just like the sweet, clueless, gullible, eager-to-please child I had once been, I continued to think that someday, when I finally figured out how everyone else was playing the game, then things would start to work for me.  Until then, I believed I was on my own, and I deserved no help until I figured out how to play the game right.  A society that had no way of understanding how I had been raised, and family members who had no idea what my father had wrought, confirmed all of these beliefs with "tough love" words that reinforced my skewed view.  When I had made two different visits to my family in the Tr-Cities while my oldest son was a baby and later a toddler, my father made it clear that he and my mother would not watch my son for even one minute, so I could irresponsibly go off and visit friends.  Upon hearing that, I simply took my son with me to visit friends, careful not to make myself or my son a burden on anyone in my family.  Many times in my teens my father had said words like "No one can ever be accused of raping you, you are just asking for it,"  "I am spending no money on college for you, you are not worth it,"  "Any child you have is your responsibility, so do not ever come to me for help."  While no one else in the family ever agreed with him, or said those same words to me, I believed that must be how everyone felt.  So, I accepted what was happening in my life, and did not try to tell anyone what was going on, because I assumed I was getting exactly what I deserved.   I just wasn't sure what I had done to deserve it.  Once I figured that out, though, I believed things would improve.
     I remember once, my stepfather telling my stepbrother how I had not paid for car insurance because I was "...thumbing my nose at the system."  My inept ability to think or vocalize under moments like that kept me from speaking up to explain that I HAD no money for insurance, and had never figured out how to magically make needed funds simply appear.  With all of my warped beliefs back in '90, I decided that there was something intrinsically wrong with me, because I could not make 660.00 a month pay for 550.00 in rent, as well as buy food and pay for power and gas, and still have enough left for insurance.  Others must be doing it, so it was my fault that I could not.  My naive acceptance of this self-hatred hurts my heart now.  I was not bad, and I did my best not to hurt others.  I worked hard and tried to follow society's expectations and rules.  I hated myself for not having the common sense most folks seemed to have.  I failed to see that the only life-skills I had gotten from my father were how to silently withstand abuse, and how to hate myself.  I was very good at those skills.  Looking back now, I know that if I had called and told my Grandad that I was in need of help, he would have let me come live in his home until I got on my feet.  He had done this for other family members, including my mom, with me and my sister, when our parents divorced the first time, and my sister again while she attended college.  I know, if my mom had any way of knowing or understanding the situation I was in back then, she would have found a way to help me.  I also know now that I could have turned to my friend Vince, and his family, for help.  I had no way of understanding any of this in my twenties, though.  So, my son and pets and I became homeless.
     At first, I parked my car close to a playground near the hospital where my son had been born.  There were huge trees to keep the car cool enough for the dog and cat, a grocery store nearby to spend the last of my money on food, and a bathroom by the playground that my son and I could use.  A few days into this, my son started looking a bit grungy, so one morning, I figured out how to wash him over the drain in the bathroom floor, using a cup to pour water on him like a shower.  The warm water faucet in this bathroom worked, which was something we later discovered was not the case in every public restroom.  I washed his dirty clothes in the sink, and hung them from the car to dry.  He looked neat and tidy again, but I started to wonder how I was going to get clean. 
     I rigged up a cardboard box with dirt in it, on the floor behind the driver seat, so Scallywag had a bathroom.  Alf was fine with being walked in the park, and he enjoyed playing there with his boy in the early mornings, when no one else was around.  Those first few days were not so bad.  That swiftly changed.
     About 5 days into our stay, a man came and sat next to me on the park bench, where I was watching my son play with other kids on the slide.  The man started talking to me quietly, beginning with the words, "You need to be careful."  He said that my son had told some of the kids that he had no home now, and some of the neighbors were starting to be concerned about us and were going to call the police.  He said I needed to find a new place to hang out for a few days, and then move on to yet another place, and to keep doing that, because otherwise my son would be taken from me, and I might even be arrested.  He told me to stay away from shelters, because they were not safe for women and children, and I would probably lose my son if I went to one.  He told me where there were places around the county to safely get a meal once in awhile.  He said to always keep our dog close, that he looked like a good dog.  The man handed me ten dollars, stood up, and left.  He had said so much so fast, I sat in shock for a bit, then called my son over to the car, and we got in and drove away.  The car was low on gas, and was leaking about a quart of oil for every 10 miles it drove, so I was very worried about what we were going to do.  I remembered a gas card in my purse that my mother had loaned to me on a trip I had taken to see her and my stepfather.  I knew there was a gas station that accepted that card near the Antioch Bridge, so I drove there, and parked behind the station.  We listened to the radio, read a few children's books I had packed in the car, and as the sun set, we walked the dog and used the gas station bathroom.  I bedded my son down, and visited the bathroom a few more times, throwing up yellow bile because I had not eaten all day, and my stomach was reacting terribly to the stress, as well as the morning sickness.  That was a very long night, the beginning of some of the longer days and nights of my life.
     The next morning, I bathed my son in the gas station restroom, washed up a bit myself, used the gas card to get fuel and oil, and my son and I drove to Martinez, because I was feeling dizzy and weak, and the only hospital in Contra Costa County that accepted patients with no insurance was located in Martinez.  By the time we got there, I was barely able to walk.  I was severely dehydrated, but after receiving IV fluids, I felt much better.  We left the hospital that afternoon, and drove to Concord, where I remembered a park we had once visited.  I had the windows open at what I thought was a safe level, to keep all of us cooler, but I had not anticipated how tired our cat was getting of living in a car.  At an intersection stop sign, he leapt through the small opening in the window, and dashed down a street with very upper-middle-class-looking homes.  My son and I were devastated.  We circled that neighborhood for hours, calling for Scallywag, looking for him everywhere.  I secretly scanned the streets and gutters, worried that he might have been hit by a car.  We never saw him again.  We stayed near that neighborhood a few days, longer than we should have, and only left when I was quite sure the neighbors were watching us, and a police car started driving by us very slowly a number of different times.  The wind of optimism that usually spurred me on in the face of difficulties was nearly gone, and a kind of dull acceptance overtook me.
     The next few weeks and months were a blur of events that all ran together.  We used back roads to travel around.  We found places to get food, and places where we could park in shade for free.  I learned which fast food restaurants did not always lock their trash receptacle gates, so we could scavenge their timed-out food items.  I tried to use the gas card only once every four or five days, hoping my charges would get lost among the expenditures of the step-family members who were also using cards on that account.  Some gas stations had food marts, and I could buy a loaf of bread, some bologna, milk, dog chow, and ice, and my son and dog could eat for a few days without me having to search fast food garbage.  When I scraped together enough cash for tolls, we sometimes ventured closer to San Francisco, where there was access to more free meals, and it was easier to walk around with my son and dog, anonymously losing ourselves in the crowd.  I learned to panhandle near the BART Stations, and sometimes, if it was too late to walk all the way back to our car, we would spend the night in one of the station bathrooms.  My son would cuddle up under his blanket, Alf as his pillow.  I always wanted to sleep, always told myself I would sleep, but I never drifted off far enough to relieve my utter exhaustion.  I lost all track of days and dates.  Each day was spent surviving to the next meal.  Every moment was focused on evading the police, nosy people, and predators.  Each night was spent trying to figure out how I was going to get through the next day.  I met other homeless people, some openly homeless and hopeless, others (mostly those with kids), furtively homeless, trying to pass as a legitimate part of a society that would hurt them if they were caught.  None of us talked much to each other, and we tended to avoid each other if possible.  One homeless mother did tell me about a store-opening that was taking place.  There would be free hot dogs and soda, and she thought my son might enjoy that.  We did attend that store opening, and my son had a good time.  
     I had to keep returning to the hospital in Martinez, each time receiving fluids for extreme dehydration due to hyperemesis gravidarum.  This was our whole existence, our world, for months.  We made our way around the county slowly, eventually ending up back near the hospital where my son was born, this time at a park with some bushes next to tennis courts.  We slept out under those bushes, which was one of the few times I actually felt like I got real sleep, but waking up was terrifying, because I worried that in my sleep, a cop may have gotten close to us without me knowing.  We stayed a few days around there.
     One of those mornings, I woke to some labor pains.  I told myself they were Braxton Hicks contractions, but as the day wore on, they increased in intensity and frequency.  By afternoon, I started to get scared.  I was barely showing, and knew I was nowhere near far enough along to safely have this baby.  I was too scared to go through the process of finding a gas station for gas and oil, so I could drive all the way to Martinez.  Instead, I went to the ER at the hospital where my son had been born.  Even though I had no insurance, they took one look at me and admitted me right away.  The ER doctor ordered blood tests, fluids, and medication for me, and the OBGYN who had delivered my son was called in.  This obstetrician was a friend of one of my uncles, and had always treated me with kindness and respect.  He told me I was admitted for the night, and that my son could stay with me.  The contractions were starting to subside, but I was going to need to see him for an office visit, to have an ultrasound, and start some actual prenatal care.  I said I had no insurance, and he told me not to worry, that would be taken care of in the morning.
     I called my partner at home that night, and was glad when he, not his mother, answered the phone.  He said he would come walk Alf, and make sure the car was parked in a shady area.  He also decided to go with me for the office visit the next day, to see the ultrasound. 
     The next morning, the person who came to help me sign up for Medi-Cal was a lady who attended a church I had gone to a few times, soon after my oldest son was born.  It was the local SDA church, which my doctor also attended.  (It was through the SDA boarding school and medical school systems that my uncle, who is also a doctor, had met my OBGYN years earlier)  This sweet lady, named Kathy, remembered me from my church visits 3 years earlier.  She greeted me warmly before she sat down next to my bed to help me fill out forms.  As she asked me questions, I could see her face grow worried.  Finally, she put down her pen and said, "Honey, are you homeless?"  She whispered the words, aware of my son playing in the corner.  I decided to take a risk, and nodded yes.  She patted my hand, and said she knew how to find me and my son a place to stay.  I hoped this was true.
    Later that morning, I was discharged, and walked over to my doctor's office, which was next to the hospital.  Medi-Cal rules had changed since my oldest son was born.  I had to submit to a drug test and sit through an explanation about how to avoid gaining too much weight during pregnancy, neither of which applied to me in any way.  I did no drugs, and had done very little eating in the past few months.  Finally, I went in for the ultrasound.  I was very worried about the condition of the baby, and was sure that my next punishment for my sins was going to be finding out that my homelessness had harmed the child inside of me.  The ultrasound tech placed the goop on my skinny belly, and then put the transducer in place.  As he moved it around, I watched his face change, and my worst fears were confirmed.  Something was abnormal.  My mouth went dry from fear.  He continued to move the wand over my abdomen, starring intensely at the screen, then he stopped and clicked a still shot.  He looked over at me and spoke six words I will never forget:  "Do twins run in your family?"
     "No," my dry mouth croaked.
     "Well, they do now!" he said, with a big grin. 
     I spent the next 10 minutes or so saying "Oh my God," over and over, as we looked at two tiny babies, both in the upright position, seeming to be punching at each other as they obviously interacted together in their watery world.  It was an overwhelming experience.  The tech said one twin was definitely a boy, the other was most likely a girl.  I looked over at my oldest son in shock.  When I first found out I was pregnant, I had asked him if he wanted a brother or a sister, and he responded by saying he wanted a brother and a sister.  I now told him to look on the ultrasound screen, because he had gotten his wish.  Even my partner, who had acted distant and angry since arriving at the hospital the night before, seemed moved by the two babies on the screen.
     I was directed to an exam room to wait for my doctor.  My partner and son went to the waiting room.  My doctor came in grinning and congratulating me, but quickly switched into serious mode.  He told me to forget everything I had heard in the nutrition class earlier, because at 126 lbs, I was dangerously underweight for a twin pregnancy that was five months along, according to ultrasound measurements.  The nurse came in, and I was given a thorough exam.  I was anemic.  My teeth were loose and my gums were inflamed.  My toenails were loose and a few were infected badly.  I had a bladder infection, and most of my blood test numbers were way off.  My body had been leeching every last nutrient from me to provide for my pregnancy, but if I remained so unhealthy, I would lose these babies.  My doctor spoke of the extreme morning sickness as a sometime-sign and common symptom of multiple pregnancy, and he let me think that he was blaming my malnutrition on that alone, but some of his words betrayed his knowledge that I was homeless.  He wanted me on strict bedrest, and he told me that Kathy would help me find a way to make that happen.  He sent me off with bottles of iron and prenatal vitamins, and a prescription for Terbutaline, to control the preterm labor.  He told me to avoid anything with even minute traces of caffeine (including decaf coffee and chocolate), and he told me I must avoid stress, patting my arm as he said it, his eyes admitting that he knew how ridiculous this must sound to me in my current situation.  Then he sent me to meet with Kathy.
     Kathy had me signed up with Medi-Cal, and had gotten me vouchers to stay at a motel.  The motel was a place well known for drug busts and shootings, which concerned Kathy, but all I could think about was sleeping in a bed after taking a nice long shower.  In the past 3 months I had only showered once, in a boarded up old shower stall in one of the parks along the Delta, which I broke into and used as quickly as possible.  That had been about 2 months previous, so I was a mess.
     Kathy gave me the names of local landlords who accepted low-income people.  She told me I could qualify for assistance, because I was pregnant and it was a high-risk pregnancy.  She had gotten me an appointment to see a caseworker, so I would not have to risk increasing my contractions by waiting in line for hours.
     The next few weeks were a flurry of activity.  The motel, while scary to some, was a godsend to me.  My son and I were eventually placed in a one-bedroom apartment, although my new landlords thought at first that I was only expecting one baby, and did not know about my dog.  My son and I had a roof, and I was able to semi-follow the bedrest my doctor had prescribed.  My twins arrived, at 32.5 weeks, and were relatively healthy, for preemies who weighed only 5lb 3oz and 4lb 13oz.   My valiant car got me to the hospital to deliver my babies, and died right there in the parking lot, never to start for me again.  But even without the car, life felt better.  My mind began to come out of the basic survival mode homelessness creates.  I registered to vote once more, and watched local news on the tiny black-and-white TV the Salvation Army had donated to us, along with a couch and some dishes.  I was starting to feel like a real person again.  My mom came to help with the twins for a week, and the twins' father stayed over once in awhile to help, too.  I was starting to experience some of his abusive behavior, but my relief at escaping homeless life kept me blind to things that felt trivial at that time.  I was simply thankful to have a roof overhead.
     And now I type the paragraphs I have put off typing, have danced around and kept at bay, while writing all the rest of this tale.  Alf.  The dog who was my son's pillow on the floors of BART Station bathrooms.  The dog who kept worse things from happening to me and my son as we survived the streets.  Alf, the dog who was always faithful to us, was discovered by our landlords.  They came over to enter our apartment while we were gone.  Alf had learned never to make noise or bark at anything going on around our home, our car, or the public restroom where his boy was sleeping, but once somebody tried to enter his "den," Alf would let them know he was there, ready to keep them out.  When our landlords tried to open our door in our absence, Alf barked.  Our landlords did not finish entering our apartment that day, but they called me later.  I was told we must get rid of "that dog" within 48 hours, or I, my 3-year old son, and my preemie babies, would be out on the street.  They made it very clear that they did not care that it was Christmas time, they did not care that my oldest son had never known life without his dog, they did not care what would happen to me and my 3 kids if we had no place to live once again.  And I, who no longer had a car, could not figure out a way to survive homelessness with 2 preemies.  I racked my brain, but found no answers.  (There was no Google to access, and I knew nothing about tenants rights, or how to look for foster families that might care for a dog until it could be reunited with its family.  I have no idea if any such help even existed in December of 1990.)  Forty-seven hours later, I surrendered Alf to the local shelter.  When the receptionist there finally figured out, between my grief-wracked sobs, what I was trying to tell her I had to do with my dog, she told me I must pay a surrender fee.  I had no more words at that moment, because I had no money, and I could not simply walk outside and abandon Alf to the streets.  I think she sensed that I was at a breaking point, because she said, "Why don't we fill this out as if you just found him, and are bringing him here to save him."
     It felt like the ultimate betrayal of Alf.  I could not even leave him there with his own name.  His intake was done as a stray.  Nowhere could I put how good he was with my son, how gentle and loving he was with my preemie twins, how quiet he was, how he loved cats, how loyal he was, how he had a story that mattered.  The receptionist was compassionate, but a co-worker behind her said something about how some people should never be allowed to own pets, and with those words ringing in my ears, I hugged that angel dog, and left him, with a confusion on his face that will haunt my memories until the day I die.  Every tear I shed this second does nothing to ease the pain of that moment.  Alf.  I am so sorry.  Every animal I help now, every time I ferociously advocate for keeping pets with the people they are bonded to regardless of poverty or homelessness, everything I have ever done or will ever do in the rescue world, is dedicated to your memory.  Everything. 
     I called the shelter every day, asking about Alf.  One day, I was told he had been adopted by a family who lived on property out in Oakley.  I hope this is true, although it may have been the shelter's way of getting my desperate phone calls to stop.  They were definitely irritated by those calls.  Somehow, my son and I learned to survive without our angel dog.  In the years since, I have sometimes spoken of Alf, but I have never put the details of that last awful day into words until now.  Some of the hardest sentences I have ever written, right here.  A broken part of my heart that can never be healed, ever.

     Since moving into my current home, 23 years ago, I have never taken it for granted.  While 700+ square feet may seem small to some, to me, it is a palace.  The repairs my mom and uncle and friends and family are doing continue to make it more comfortable, and now I will be able to have family and friends stay over again without worrying about plumbing problems or a floor crumbling underfoot.  I will even be able to entertain guests, something I have not done in years because I have seen too many people turn on somebody, and try to get their house condemned.  It is one of the reasons some people are homeless, because someone they allowed into their lives decided to get their home condemned.  I knew better than to randomly trust people to come into my home as it started aging.  My neighbor across the street used to love to remind me on a monthly basis, back when my kids were young, how he and his buddies were going to find a way to make me lose my home.  The terror those words struck in me was awful, because I had been in the homeless world, and the idea that there were humans around me who were purposely plotting to put me and my children back in such circumstances was horrifying .  I would never wish such an existence on anyone, not even on that neighbor who made those threats.  No human should suffer such utter despair and pain.  People who purposely cause the eventual homelessness of others are some of the cruelest humans I have met.  The fact that they never have to see the final results of their behavior, or live in such circumstances themselves, only speaks to their ignorance and cruelty.
     For some, it may seem easy to look back at every action I took in 1990, and pick out each decision I made that was wrong.  Even I, with the wisdom of time, can look back and wonder at the things I did that contributed to my spiral into homelessness.  But such thoughts are irrelevant.  I truly was surviving in the best way I could think of, with what I knew at the time.  I like to think that, given a different father, my brain might have developed some logical social and reasoning skills.  I know, once I attended college in '08-'10, in that environment where knowledge was gladly shared, questions were encouraged, and no one around me pounced on my mistakes and made my brain shut down from fear, I was a 4.0 student.  I like to think this means I was not born with a dull mind, my mind was simply dulled by the circumstances surrounding my childhood.  With the gift of time, I have learned a lot about how my brain works, and what I need to do for myself to start healing.  This blog has been a huge part of that healing.  I will never reach a place where I do everything right.  Nobody does.  But I have finally let go of the self-hatred and silence that were continuing to damage my life. 
     I do not ever look at anyone who is homeless and think to myself, "Well, I got out, so you could, too, if you really wanted to."  During my time in the homeless world, I had some things that others do not have.  I had a car, and I had a gas card.  I had a person who gave me some advice in that first park where I was initiated into mainland, USA, homelessness.  I had a dog, who kept some very bad things from happening to me and my son, things that happen to other homeless people every day.  I did nothing different during the end of those three months to land myself in a motel, and then into an apartment.  A kind lady saw a need, and stepped up.  It could just as easily have been a person who might have called CPS, and my son, and later my twins, might have ended up in the system, while I might have lived the rest of my life on the streets, doing whatever it was I had to do, in order to survive.  (With the skill-set my father gave me, I know very well what I would have ended up doing.)  No, I did nothing to warrant my lift from homelessness, another person's kindness saved me, and that is how my life got better.  I will never twist that gift of kindness into something I use to slam other homeless people.   I was lucky, plain and simple.  Life is not fair.  It is more like a lottery.  Some folks get a bit more good, some get a bit more bad, some people fall on the extremes of the spectrum, and all of our actions combine together to cause ripples that create more good and bad.
     I have not been homeless since that time in '90, so I have no idea if things have improved for folks stuck in that existence, but when I read about spikes embedded in the concrete where homeless sleep, and old veterans who are arrested for feeding the homeless, and school lunch ladies fired for feeding hungry kids in their cafeteria, I am doubtful that anything has improved much.  When I hear a politician say that food stamps should not be used for purchasing any processed or canned foods, and anyone on food stamps should have to go back to the old ways of canning and baking everything, I shake my head, because the working poor do not have the time to live as our ancestors did, and zoning laws regarding livestock and gardens, as well as laws against things like capturing rainwater or living off the power grid, make canning and baking everything a family eats way more expensive than any poor person could conceivably do on a daily basis today. 
     On the other hand, I have read reports that the state of Utah is now providing permanent housing for their homeless, and if this is accurate, God bless them.  Just today, my friend Ginny posted about a woman with an apartment complex in California who rents exclusively to people who have pets.  Bless that woman, and all those like her.  Kindness, while rare, still exists.  It gives me some hope amid the current hostility that seems to abound in this country against the poor.  I hope the criminalization of homelessness has lessened, so that the fear of losing the only bonds of love one has left does not keep people from being able to reach out and admit they need help.
      I suppose I could have been unfortunate enough to have been born into poverty in a Third World area.  Of course, if I had been born there with my hip defect, my life would have been dictated by the acceptance and help I would or could have received from my village.  I probably never would have walked, much less given birth to any children.  My twins most certainly would not have stayed in the womb past five month's gestation, when I first went into labor with them, so they would not exist.  I would never have been able to walk hundreds of miles in search of food, so if starvation was my lot, I would have starved to death right where I was.  I would never have had to worry about being arrested for bathing in a river or sleeping under a bush or on a beach.  Of course, a warlord might have used me as a sex slave, rendering my existence hellish.  (If you do not understand the irony in that last sentence, you have not read my blog post A Thousand Words)  I have said this before, but I reiterate:  I despise the comparisons we use on each other to invalidate the horrendous circumstances many folks find themselves in, right here in the First World.  Suffering is suffering, no matter where it is happening.  To allow such suffering to continue, by letting ourselves believe it is somehow better than human suffering somewhere else, is cruel and ignorant.  Each of us could have been born anywhere.  None of us got where we are on our own.  The only answer to decreasing the suffering that exists worldwide is for each of us to try and help decrease some living being's suffering, right where we are today.  Suffering exists in this One World.  All of it is painful.

the end

"What did Santa bring us?"

  

"T": Three Views of One Incident

     This is a series of three views of one event in my childhood, the first draft of which was written in 2009, when I was attending BMCC.  The assignment, in Shaindel Beers' WR 242 class, inspired me to write the same story in first, second, and third person.  I found this intriguing, and it was the first time I ever wrote anything in second person.  I did not like writing that viewpoint, because it felt like I was telling the reader what they had to do, so I have not done second person stories since.  I discovered that I immensely enjoyed writing from the viewpoint of an animal, though, specifically a dog.  The dog's joy filled me, the minute I slipped into its skin to look at the world.
     This event, which happened around my 7th year of age, was monumental for me at that time.  It was the first time I remember actually seeing something, the way it looked from someone else's eyes.  It was a powerful moment in my development, because it cemented in me what my father had been trying to burn into my brain the first years of my life:  no one was going to believe anything I might say, even though what I wanted to say was the truth.  The frustration of knowing nobody was going to believe the truth was horrible for me.  Years later, when I watched the movie "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the "2+2=5" scene (See video link at the end of this post) made me feel the exact frustration I felt back when I was seven, while this event occurred. 
     This incident also began my deep, lifelong yearning to have a chance to explain to someone else how wrong their perception of my behavior truly was.  If I had physically been able to escape my father's presence at that moment when I was seven, and had the wherewithal and verbal capability to go down and explain to my neighbors what had actually occurred, I do believe their perception of me, and of my father, might have changed.  This desire to explain myself has followed me doggedly since that day, and is finally manifesting itself in this blog, and in all of the writing I am now making public.  My need to explain myself is, in my opinion, a basic human need that drives so much of what humanity inhumanely does to itself.  I wish society would not discourage the desire people have to explain themselves.  I allowed myself to believe there was something wrong with me because I felt this need, but there is nothing wrong with feeling this way.  Now, that I am finally explaining the reasons for things I have done, reasons that have been so mislabeled and misunderstood by others, I feel a great sense of relief.  Sure, there are folks who will still choose to disbelieve or discredit me, but that is not my issue.  If they must see me as a bad person, that is their problem, not mine.  Those who do decide to listen to my words, and try to see my life from my viewpoint, those people are the folks I appreciate, and whom I want to have in my daily existence.  They are the ones I want to reciprocate for, and will listen to when they take the time to explain their viewpoint to me.  When humans are allowed to explain themselves, it gives them a chance to see who loves them enough to listen, who cares about them enough to change a misperception once they have more information. 
     One caveat:  The disparaging comments I make in this story regarding the vegan diet are the viewpoints of a hungry child, and are not how I feel about the vegans I know now.



                                                            THREE VIEWS


                                                                 HUNGRY
     I got in trouble for throwing rocks at a dog. I was seven years-old, and we were living in some apartments in Hillsboro, Oregon.  A man lived in a house across the driveway from our complex. He had a fence around his yard, tall, with snug-fitting slats of wood.  Inside that fence, he kept a dog. It was a Basenji, which is a dog that does not bark like most dogs.  Instead, a Basenji howls and yelps and makes other weird noises. They are very athletic dogs, and enjoy jumping and running around. I knew it was a Basenji, because I heard my mom call it one.  But I did not know about Basenji behavior. When it yelped, I thought it was hungry. When it jumped up high, I thought it wanted out to get food.  This was because I was hungry, and I wanted out to get food.
     My father would not let me eat. My mother fed me, which is how I remained upright, but she worked many hours a week as a registered O. R. nurse who was on-call a lot, so my father watched me often.  He would not feed me. He would eat, staring at me while he did so, but I could not eat.  I could not ask for food or he would make me sorry. If he caught me sneaking food, he made me sorry.
     When my mother was home, we did not have any meat or sugar, or anything that tasted good to me.  My parents were strict Adventists, and worse, they were into a totally fat-free, vegan diet at that time.  I spent my days dizzy, my nights in horrible stomach pain, hearing the blood whoosh in my ears.  My hands often shook, and my father laughed at me because I had dark circles under my eyes.
     My father never let me leave our apartment when my mom was gone, but I could go into the small garage attached to our place. On a shelf in the garage, against the wall, in a plastic bucket, was the food for our cat. I couldn't eat a lot of it, because if my dad thought the cat was eating too much food, he might get rid of it, and I loved that cat. I had to be real careful not to get caught eating that food.  My dad was sneaky.  He loved to catch me doing something bad, like eating, and then he would smile before making me sorry. One time, I was so startled when he caught me sneaking something from the fridge door late one night, I threw up the food, which I had been shoving into my mouth, all over the floor.  My father was very mad. I never did that again.
     Whenever I went into the garage, I would sneak a handful of cat food, squat in the far corner so I could see the door to the kitchen, the door to the back alley, and the big door for the car, and I would eat the cat food, one piece at a time.  If my father came in, I dropped the food behind me into an old coffee can full of nuts and bolts.
     When I heard that Basenji yelping, I just knew its stomach must hurt like mine did. One day, while I was nibbling on cat food, I decided to share with the hungry dog.  I put the rest of the handful of cat food into my pocket, and waited until my mom came home and my father left for work.  I went outside, and slowly crossed the driveway. I got close to the fence, and the dog started yelping. There were no holes in the fence to push the food through. The wood went all the way to the ground, so I couldn't put it underneath, either. I stepped back, and threw a piece of cat food as high as I could. It went over the fence. The dog went silent, and I could hear him crunching. Then he jumped against the fence and yelped, so I threw another piece. This continued until my pocket was empty. I told the dog I would come back with more food soon.  And I did. For the next few days, I fed the hungry dog.

     One afternoon, my father came in the front door and glared at me. He yelled for my mother.  She came. He said the nice couple down the complex had asked him in to tell him something.  The man had seen me doing something bad. He had seen me throwing rocks at the neighbor's dog.  This nice couple was very disappointed in me, and never wanted me around their place again. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell the truth, and suddenly, in my mind, I saw what my neighbor had seen:  a girl throwing rocks at a dog.  Nobody would believe me if I spoke up.  And if my father did decide to believe me, he would realize I was getting into the cat food, and he would get rid of the cat.  I shut my mouth.
     My father tried to make me sorry for throwing rocks.  But I was never sorry I fed that dog.

                                                                TROUBLED

     You are happy when the new family moves in and you find out they are churchgoing folks, with a well-behaved little girl. They do not throw wild parties or play the TV too loud. In fact, the one time your wife visits them, to drop off some homemade banana bread, she doesn't see a TV at all.
     One day, around Halloween, you notice the little girl and her mother walking to the mailbox, and you tell the little girl to be sure and come by your place to trick-or-treat. She has a kind of dull look about her, and does not seem to understand your words. Her mother thanks you, then says that they do not celebrate Halloween or eat sweets.  "Oh," you say, and watch the little girl's face as it dawns on her that a chance for candy has just slipped by.  So you offer to give her some carrot sticks or an apple, instead of candy. The mother says "Thank you," and nudges the little girl, who thanks you, too.  Early Halloween afternoon, the father brings the daughter down to your place, and lets her have one carrot stick. He tells her to go home, and she does. He stays and talks for awhile, and seems like a friendly, charming man. You and your wife tell him to stop by anytime.
     After a few weeks, you start to notice some strange things about the little girl. She appears to be anti-social, never playing with other kids. She is always acting like she is hiding something, sneaking behind walls, crouching behind garbage cans, jumping like she has been caught with her hand in the cookie jar when you approach her. You can't prove anything, but you know that she is up to no good.
     Then one day, you look out the front window, and you see her throwing rocks over the fence at the neighbor's dog.  You know right then that she is going to be trouble.  Animal cruelty is a danger signal.  When you tell her father, he nods, and says he is sorry.  He tells you that his daughter lies and steals, and now this.  He asks if you will let him know if you ever see her doing anything else, and you say yes, of course, that's what neighbors are for.  He promises to keep her out of your hair.  As you watch him go, you worry about the baby your wife recently found out she will be having.  If a decent, churchgoing man like that has such a troubled child, it can happen to anyone.


                                                                     GAME
     The small female human is back!  He can sense her outside the fence.  Soon, little bits of yummy food will drop down.  He wiggles in anticipation, then leaps against the fence.  He hears a piece of food drop, sniffs it out, and scarfs it down.  Another one falls, and he dashes over to eat it.  The little nibblets taste like the food his adult male human gives to the furry female feline who lives with them.  His human won't let him have anything but the food in his dish when he is in the house, but out here, the presence of this small human makes furry feline food fall from the sky!  She is leaving, now, but hopefully she will come back and make it rain yummy bits again.

Orwell 1984: 2+2=4
Inch Worm: Two and Two are Four.  

"R": Recalling, and Writing, the Funny Stuff

I started writing when I was around 8 or 9 years-old.  Poetry is the form most of my first words took, and short stories/essays/journals ran a close second.  Most everything I wrote was tinged with sadness, but as I got older, I longed to write comedy.  Listening to my Grandad tell funny stories, reading Erma Bombeck, remembering moments that made me laugh, those were things I loved to do, and I longed to put humor on paper.  Alas, it was never an easy task for me.

While in college a few years back, during a writing course, I decided to write about a funny incident I once experienced, but it was laborious work, and even my writing instructor knew it was not one of my better creations.  I edited and rewrote that story many times over the next couple of years, but it never felt right.  My daughter, who has a gift for the comedic, did me a great favor by editing the first part of the story (mostly slash and burn of the extraneous verbiage), and then telling me to reread some Vonnegut, to remind myself how good comedy flows.
 
I am going to copy the finally-finished draft of that story, entitled "Ink," here today.  All those years of revisions have culminated in an acceptable story for me.  As I finish this year's A-Z Blog Challenge on April 30th, I am about to embark on the task of taking an oft-told family tale and making it into a humorous short story.  "The BB Gun Incident" is by far the funniest thing I ever saw, and I want to do it proper justice.  I hope my muse will gear up for some humor.

In honor of the moments that make us laugh, here is "Ink":

                                                                       Ink
                                                                        by
                                                                 Judy S. Lentz

     So, I bought a printer. A combination deal, with copy and scan capabilities. I had never heard of the brand before, but it was on sale and I was proud of myself for finding such a steal. I got home, took the printer out of the box, and successfully hooked it up to my computer, without needing any help from my offspring. I was happy.
      Two weeks later, a window popped up on my computer screen, warning me that the black ink was low.
      “What the hell?” I muttered, as I opened the printer and looked inside to see if the cartridge was leaking. It was not. I had only used it five or six times since I bought it, so I went in search of someone to blame. I figured one of my kids had printed out the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut, or detailed instructions on how to build a backyard skate park. One of them had used it, once, for a two-page report. I decided the internal thing that gauges ink usage must be misfiring, and closed the warning box.
      The next time I printed something out, I noticed that a couple of lines were lighter than normal. I opened the printer, took out the black ink cartridge, shook it a few times, and put it back. A box popped up, asking me if I had replaced the old cartridge with a new one. I clicked “yes.” When I tried to print out a new page, another box popped up saying the black ink was empty, and the last half of the page did not show up at all. I changed the font color to red, reprinted the page, and a third box popped up, warning me that the color ink was low. I swore, and my cats looked up from their various napping spots. I grabbed my purse and headed for the store to buy more ink. On the way, I came to the conclusion that this printer must have been packaged for sale ages ago, then stored in a hot location, so most of the ink had evaporated.
      I found the electronics department and pinpointed the cartridges I needed, but they had been stocked in the wrong section. The price underneath them could not possibly be correct. It was almost twice the price of the printer.
      Oh. I get it.
      I reluctantly purchased the ink and drove home. As I put the cartridges into the printer, and wasted precious ink on three pages of alignment, I could feel my blood pressure rise.
      My kids decided to do all of their homework over the next couple of weeks, and I used the printer a few times myself, so I was not too surprised when the “Ink low” box popped up again. I was one step ahead of that box, though. While shopping for food at the dollar store (last month’s grocery budget went to ink), I discovered an ink refill kit. I am from a long line of hard-headed people who have made their own necessities (mostly grain alcohol) for many generations. I can certainly refill a little plastic ink cartridge.
      The instructions were vague, but I understood the basics: poke a hole in the cartridge with a heavy duty needle (not included in package), squeeze the ink from a palm-sized plastic bulb through a long, tiny tube into the cartridge, remove tube, cover the hole with a little black sticker (included), and voila, brand new ink cartridge!
      The hole was harder to make than I anticipated, and once I was done, there was a crack running about a half-an-inch from the hole, up the side of the cartridge. I figured I could use the extra stickers provided to patch that up.
      I attached the long, tiny tube to the bulb of ink, as directed, and inserted the tube into the cartridge. I started applying gentle pressure to the bulb. It did not seem to be expelling any ink, so I pulled it out of the cartridge and held it over the instructions. I gave the bulb a gentle squeeze, and nothing came out. I put the tube up to my eye to see if it was obstructed. It looked clear. I held the bulb over the instructions again, and squeezed harder. A black drop of ink, the size of a poppy seed, formed on the end of the tube. Okay, so I just needed to apply more pressure.
      I reinserted the tube into the cartridge, and started pressing harder. I steadied the cartridge between my knees, and used both hands to squeeze the bulb. A few minutes went by, and the bulb had only given up a fraction of a dram. I needed to think of a better way to apply pressure to the bulb. Then it hit me. An “Aha” moment.
      The cats in the room jumped up and left. They, along with my kids, have an uncanny ability to sense my “Aha” moments. They do not appreciate these moments for the flashes of brilliance they can be. I guess this is not totally unwarranted. After all, there was the limb-trimming incident. And the electrical-outlet-fixing incident. The sliding-van-door-repair incident. Oh, and the burner-cleaning incident (“Stop, drop and roll” works). But my cats were wrong this time, I just knew it.
      I placed the ink bulb in my mouth (after all, aren’t jaw muscles the strongest muscles in the body?), brought the cartridge up to the tube, and held the cartridge steady in my hands. I clamped down on the bulb with my mouth, and felt the ink start to flow into the cartridge. HA! Up yours, printer people!
      In the microsecond it took for the bulb seams to split, two thoughts flashed through my mind: First, I imagined my smile resembling Heath Ledger’s smile in “The Patriot,” after his girlfriend spiked his tea with ink. Second, for the first time in my life I wondered what ink was made out of, and how soon it would kill me.
      My mouth instinctively dropped open, the flayed bulb and bitter ink spilling down the front of my shirt, my pants, my shoes, the chair, the carpet. I sputtered and wretched, trying to get the potentially life-threatening substance out of my mouth as fast as possible. Ink sprayed on the computer screen, the desk, the wall, the chair one of my cats had just vacated. The sputtering sounds I made brought my son rushing from his room. He looked at me, he looked at the mess, he doubled over in hysterics. As he stumbled back to his room, leaving me to my fate, a cat peered around a corner. I imagined I could hear it giggling, too. Go ahead and laugh, you little ingrates, you'll all starve when I die of ink poisoning.
      It is two weeks later now. Most of the ink is gone from my belongings, and my teeth are almost white again. (I resisted the initial urge to gargle with bleach.) My breath smelled like blackboard cleaner for three straight days. I did not smile for the first week after the incident, whether to hide my teeth, or simply because I was pissed, I do not know. My tongue got back to normal first. My gums and enamel, not so much. The only other side effect I suffered was some discoloration that would have made a lab tech do a double-take at a UA.
      I went back to the store and bought a single cartridge of black ink, which was cheaper than the “money saving” combo pack that includes color. We now print everything in grayscale. In eight or nine months, I should have enough money saved to buy a printer that costs more, but is made by a company that has been around longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly. The ink for that printer is cheaper. I checked.

Inscribed, on My Doorpost and in My Heart

    

     This is my front doorpost.  To some, this might appear unsightly, something that needs to be repaired.  To me, this is a very precious part of my home.
     Since I moved into this house 23 years ago, there have been many cats who have called my place home.  The first two were kittens that came from the last litter born at my Grandad's place while he was alive.  A couple more were cats that we chose to have as pets.  The rest were a mix of dumpees, strays, and feral cats, who found their way to my place.  I have also fostered a number of kittens over the years, and had a few retirees spend their twilight season with me.  Seven of my eight current cats are rescues (two of those are foster fails, whom I could not bear to part with), and the eighth cat is my daughter's 16 year-old gatita, Baby Moo.  Each cat was, and is, precious to me, from the foster kittens I bottle-fed and sang lullabies to as they curled up under my chin, to the ferals whom I never touched, but who would sit near me on the front porch and share eye-blinks with me.  There are also cats in the neighborhood that have a special place in my heart, and come over to visit me and my gato herd often.  All gatos are welcome at my home.
     One thing almost all of these cats have in common is my front door post.  Most every cat to have entered my life here at my home these last 23 years has stopped to stretch their back and sharpen their claws at that spot on my door frame.  The sound of claws on that wood is like hearing a favorite tune.  Whenever I walk over my threshold, looking at that spot brings warmth to my heart.  It holds deep meaning, almost like a mezuzah, inscribed by creatures who have inhabited my home and my hillside, many of whom now watch over me from beyond.  Sometimes, I reach out and run my hand over the roughened wood, and if a splinter pierces my finger, I imagine it is one of my gatos at the Rainbow Bridge, giving me a scratch from heaven.
     I love this spot on my door frame.  I love every cat who helped inscribe it for me.

Elias Disney

                                                                   Elias Disney
     I finally watched "Saving Mr. Banks."  I did it reluctantly.
     Disneyland was a part of my childhood.  I was born in Southern California, and spent the first handful of my childhood years living close enough to Anaheim to visit Disneyland on a number of occasions.  We also went there whenever we returned to see family, or when I had hip procedures done at Orthopedic Hospital.  Two of the Disneyland trips that stand out for me were the visits before my first and third hip surgeries, at two and six years-of-age.  I remember seeing the character Eeyore, interacting with Pooh and other Disney characters, on Main Street during one of those visits.  I saw the pin that held Eeyore's tail in place, and I decided he had been operated on at Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles by Dr. Craig, just like me.  I thought Dr. Craig looked like Walt Disney, and Dr. Craig had put pins in my hip.  Before one of my surgeries, while I was being led down the hospital corridors, the tail came off of my favorite stuffed animal, Ratty, and Dr. Craig performed a tail-reattachment procedure, which in my mind, confirmed my beliefs about Eeyore and Dr. Craig.
     My mom sang Mary Poppins' songs to my sister and I when we were tots.  I read a children's book about Walt Disney when I was about ten, and he grew mythically for me.  For many years, I carried the secret belief that Walt had not died when I was a year old, he had simply gone undercover as an orthopedic surgeon. 
     My last visit to Disneyland was in my teens, and the magic was still there for me, even though I no longer thought I believed in magic.  My mom and sister later took my three children to Disneyland over Christmas break in '98, and they had a great time, too.  It is, after all, the Magic Kingdom.
     When I first heard about "Saving Mr. Banks," I thought it was one of those movies that might expose the illusions I had built around Disneyland, and Mary Poppins, and Walt Disney.  I was reluctant to let go of those illusions.  So I did not watch the movie.  But my mom recently told me I should see it, and some of my favorite actors are in it, so I broke down and watched the movie. 
     I was not prepared for how it would make me feel, but it did not destroy any of my old illusions.  Instead, it matured them.  The next time I watch Mary Poppins, the character of Mr. Banks will mean more to me.  If I ever visit Disneyland again, when I look up toward Elias Disney's office window, that place will also mean more.
     All parents, at one time or another, break their children's hearts.  It is inevitable.  The damage can create waves of pain that echo for generations.  But sometimes magic happens.  Elias Disney probably believed he was raising his sons the way kids should be raised.  It is apparent that Walt and Roy experienced a lot of pain, though.  But out of that pain, Disneyland was born.  Elias Disney was an integral part of creating the Happiest Place on Earth.
     That, is magic.