Category Archives: family

https://115journals.com/The Crying Cure

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Regular readers of this blog know that I have been dealing with a serious family illness, that has left me “stranded” in an exquisitely beautiful mountain village, which I sometimes have called Shangri-la. (see 115Journals.com and enter Shangri-la in the search bar.)

Recently, we have made progress. The illness itself is difficult to diagnose and treat. Factoring in medicare didn’t just double the difficulty. Quite possibly, it quadrupled it. Every time we turned around we had been dropped from MediCal, once because we were signed up on July 30, with an end date of July 31. Yes, both were in 2014. Or MediCal was refusing to fill a prescription because there was no TAR -whatever that is – or the doctor had upped the dosage but MediCal disagreed. Even Kern County Health which we transferred to has a limit of 5 prescriptions a month, so we had to choose the cheapest one and pay cash. At least one life-threatening situation and hospitalization ensued. And let’s be frank, some of our medical practitioners seemed to know less than we did.

After a particularly rocky interview with a “specialist” on Skype, we discovered she was actually a nurse practitioner. Time to call in Blake, the patient’s father who has equity in his home. Time to call on connections. And so we found Dr. B and ponied up the cash.

Let’s be clear, my people have earned over $300,000 a year and paid taxes accordingly – prior to 2008. Thanks to banks that were too big to fail, my people failed, lost two homes, their savings and their retirement investment. Obama bailed out the big banks. The little guy not so much.

Dr.B.came up with a diagnosis in an hour and a half and the chief drug necessary to control it. “Bread and butter”, he said. Then he refused to let Blake spend the patrimony and referred us instead to a resident he supervised who would accept the medicare plan. After a month’s wait, during which time Dr B insisted we call as necessary; otherwise he would be annoyed, we met Dr. P and Dr. Y who listened intelligently and knew how to carry treatment forward. Today, we ran up against a problem and Dr. P. answered our query immediately.

So I fired off upbeat email reports to 5 family members, all of whom are far away and to 4 friends. Then I got really sick.

Has this happened to you? You hold things together at work or at home for a long time, go on vacation and spend two weeks in bed?

Sure I had a good excuse, the temperature dropped suddenly up here at 5,500 feet and the furnace pilot light was out. I don’t actually get a cold at change of season, I get a headache and then a very bad muscle spasm in my lower back. No appointment was available for treatment until Saturday. That’s tomorrow, friends. Exercise quells it briefly, then it comes raging back. Ditto hot Epsom salt baths, heat, positive thinking and long walks. Pain killers don’t seem to touch it. The one thing that works longest is a good hard cry. First I have to find privacy, not so easy when you’re living in other people’s houses. Then just let go.

Just now having cleared the air with copious tears, I went to the general store, ostensibly looking for a mallet and unconsciousness. I found extra strength Tylenol and Newcastle Brown Ale.

Hate California. it’s cold and it’s damp

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People make assumptions about Canada and Canadians. It’s always cold there and its people are hardy.

No and no.

Okay so there’s the odd crackpot who does the Polar Bear swim on New Year’s day. Or dashes naked from a hot tub to roll in the snow, but these people are usually Canadian/ something, often German, Swedish or even English, like my ex-husband who raced on an ice floe in his late 70s. (To  race an ice flow, you lie partly on it in a wet suit and propel yourself down the river with your lower body.) See romtrenD.ca /phots

Most of us Canuks are used to central heating, a real furnace that runs as and when according to a preset thermomstat, fueled with gas or at the worst oil. Gone are the 50s when you had to stoke the fire at night and stir it up and add coal in the morning. In the country, if the oil truck doesn’t make your delivery, you fire up your wood stove and when he finally arrives, the doors are all open and the indoor temperature is over 90 F.

That’s the way my Grandma liked it. If you had a cold, you’d just go to her house, drink tea and sweat. She was cool and collected, not a hair out of place, in her flowery, well ironed house dress. “Are you warm enough?” she would say and put another piece of wood in the stove.

I have an abiding fear of cold as does my daughter. She says it’s because she was born in Toronto near the end of January and immediately taken away to a cold nursery. She blames me for that. (Well, she just points out that that is how her baby self saw things and please don’t tell me that she wouldn’t be able to remember. She clearly does.) But the more I cried to see her, the more they said I couldn’t see her. Something of a standoff. But after a good deal of shouting from the head nurse -at me-, my crying baby girl appeared.

I know. Times change just not fast enough.

I myself was born in an unheated farmhouse bedroom at the first of May during a snow storm – snow will do that in the mountains – a small baby and early.

In fact I think we could have both been born in the middle of a heat wave or in my grandma’s hot kitchen and still be cold.

My daughter’s father contributed his hardy genes to our son, leaving her his allergies and Roman nose.

So here on the mountain, the weather changed. And Clara’s house where I am living has a heater, but the pilot light is out. You probably know how to relight a propane pilot light. We don’t. We wait and wait for the gas company. They don’t work Saturdays.This morning it was 64 in the house and the next time I looked 63. Outside, it was just over 50, no joy in the sun.

I was sick. With a change of weather sickness. Not a cold. With me, it starts with a vicious headache and then settles into a fierce muscle spasm, in this case in my right hip, the muscle you use to lift you leg from the gas peddle to the brake. Inconvenient on mountain roads, also for getting in and out of bed, putting on shoes and going upstairs. The pain was so bad that I was nauseated. I stay in bed, reading, under a pile of covers. Gradually, I begin to rally, but….

So I says to Clara,” Clara…” She has her back turned as she washes dishes and she jumps violently. It’s hard to know how to get the attention of the hard of hearing. “Clara, can I put on a fire. It’s only 64 in here?’

“Are you cold,” she asks. .

I am wearing a woolen hat, a pair of woolen tights, a wool turtleneck and a think terry cloth robe with a hood.

“It’s just because you’re sick,” she adds

“I’ll look after it,” I insist, but she is out the door to get the firewood off the deck. There is a pile of smaller wood and branches on the ground. I gather up some. Then I retrieve some of the crumpled packing newspaper. Viola, I have a fire. I’ve had years of practice.

“It won’t last,” says Clara, her voice dire. Then she adds gloomily, “I can’t stand being hot.” She retreats to her bedroom, where she has been reading in her dressing gown all afternoon. But now she shrugs it off in preparation.

Gradually, as I dust mop the floors, the temperature rises to 68. At home I call my landlord at 68 and he turns the furnace on. At 68 at home, I am freezing. Here I feel myself unwind and enjoy the warmth. Of course I have to be five feet from the massive fireplace to do that.

Clara has just moved here from Vegas where, even in 110 degree heat, it never occurred to her to put on the A.C. When she had guests, she would make an exception, but turn it off at night, despite the fact that none of the windows opened. Recently, on a day when it hit 90 here on the mountain, the realtor, who sold her the place, asked me how we were enjoying the air conditioning. Not!

Amazingly three days ago, I drove Clara to Santa Clarita. Getting out of the car, she assured me it was a hundred, just like Vegas. Santa Clarita is an hour and several thousand feet of altitude down from where we live.

I am writing this in the house in the pines where I have a heater going near me.

I know room mates require diplomacy, especially when they own the house.

Oh, did I say, I also took us to the El Tejon Outlet centre, newly open off the I 5 on the way to Bakersfield. There I bought a winter jacket with a faux fur hood. I just wore it over here on the golf cart. Hardy I ain’t.

Family – a committee designed by a camel

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camelI saw a sign in a gift shop the other day, which read,”If he said he’d do it, he’ll do it. Don’t keep nagging him every six months.”

This summed up my relationship to my husband when I was married. It remains a bit of a problem even now. Yes, I can rely on my children’s father — eventually.

I’ve led a selfish life for years now. At least three. At 75, I stopped volunteering. For 10 years prior to that I headed the shipping committee for a charitable organization. We shipped books and t-shirts around the world, making a good deal of money for the club. My committee worked well; I left the other 4 alone to do their jobs. Trouble was the committee that managed the club didn’t extend the courtesy. I knew what we needed to cover orders, but I wasn’t allowed to order goods. That meant I ended up taking the flak when the club in Sydney or Warsaw didn’t get what they ordered. So I figured 10 years is enough and quit. As it turned out supplying instruction books wasn’t that important and trade died off. Recently, I got an email from the management asking if I could remember how many books we last had printed and by whom. I ventured that all relevant invoices had been filed. By me. Of course. But I had not committed that information to memory.

My trouble with committees is the only good ones are run by me.

As the mother of young children I ran the committee. My husband made decisions about gardening, the pool, the sailboat and the cars, but I made all the important ones. Mostly, things worked well, although my adult children seem to remember my style as autocratic. Well, what working mother’s isn’t? My son was once asked by a friend whether I denied him dessert if he didn’t eat his vegetables. He said, “No, she just threatened to kill me.” Nonsense. I never said that. He misinterpreted my look.

As they grew up, I had to back off the dirty look and bring my at-home leadership  style into line with the more laisez-faire one I used supervising the teachers who worked in my department. Vegetables were the least of my concerns. One of my teenagers was driving. They went off to an alternative school. It was the late 70’s – what drugs were they taking? Etc. But Blake and I soldiered on, trustfully in that laisez-faire way and nothing terrible happened.

Just when I had settled down to living for myself, I was suddenly drafted back to family duty.

How surprising! I had made it through the helpful grandmother stage, relatively unscathed. True I had to fly across the continent to do that, 2 or 3 times a year over a period of 25, but I read  bedtime stories and babysat and helped boys learn to swim and drove them to school and went camping with them. Now they were both adults. I was complacent. All future trips would be recreational.

Not. Illness struck and serious illness at that.

As soon as daily hospital visits ended, it began to be clear that 3 people really can’t live in 950 sq. ft. with 1 bathroom. Then the family grew, exponentially for a while and then shrunk back down to 4. Mother-in-law had come to live in the mountain village too. So that is how we 2 mothers came to live at the Reality Hotel – see previous posts- and later in the house she bought.

I learned pretty darn quick that my habit of declaring absolute opinions didn’t go over well. There were serious medical decisions to be made and apparently, the principals had to be given equal voice. Apparently, I had to back off and take a lesson from Marshall McCluhan, “I don’t necessarily believe everything I say.”

Meanwhile my new best friend was my son-in-law’s mother, Clara, who has a style all her own. She packed up to move by first pulling everything out of closets, cupboards and drawers and only then did she begin to put things in boxes. We heard daily reports of the chaos. When the house deal finally closed 7 weeks later and things began to arrive, Clara unpacked in exactly the same way. She emptied box after box and sat things everywhere. At a modest estimate, she has 2000 decorative objects, and she can tell at which thrift shop she bought each one. My room was the only sanctuary, since all I had fitted in one 23 K. suitcase.

Organization is my middle name, so I had to keep a tight rein on myself. I let myself wash each piece of china and re-stack it in categories. When Clara put a couple of mugs in one cabinet, I allowed myself to put the rest in there -at least 60 of them. Gritting my teeth in impatience, I awaited further clues. The plates, the pans, the glassware and the pantry have now been allocated.

Meanwhile I have taken it upon myself to initiate floor care. The highlight of my day today. That laminate shines up really well. I know pathetic. But there’s still no television in the house and the night life here consists of Madd Bailey’s Bar, live music Fri to Sun. Food can be ordered up from Mommy’s Roadhouse.

Or you can sit on the porch and watch the moon rise over the mountain.

So much for growing rigid with age.

The title makes no sense unless you are familiar with the saying, “A camel is a horse designed by committee” and maybe not even then.

 

 

 

 

Life is a Cabaret, Old Chum. Come to the Cabaret

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Cabarethttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOamKxW844

Georgia celebrated her birthday this week. I had bought tickets to Cabaret at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada. I told her where to find them in my apartment in Toronto. They weren’t where I thought they were, but she called me on my land line and I told her to look under the paper weight and there they were. I had invited Blake to go with us. He had agreed to drive. And Georgia asked her daughter to go with them on my ticket.

When I bought the tickets in May, I thought to myself that it would be a treat to compensate me for the end of summer, as well as a good way to celebrate my younger sister’s birthday. Blake, my ex-husband, has known us since we were 16 and 10 respectively and we three always enjoy each others’ company.

Only problem – I am here where summer seems never to end and a typical morning greeting is “another beautiful day in paradise”. You hear that a lot in Southern California, but never more than here high in the mountains, a place which the  Chumash called the Center of the World. It is a town built around a golf club and its sole industry is leisure. Some people actually set out at 5 a.m. to drive down to work in the cities, even as far as Los Angeles, but many more do not. They get up early to play a round of golf and only then do they eat breakfast at the club house. They are resolutely friendly, waving as they pass you in their golf carts.

Others are economic refugees, here because you can buy a house for less than a hundred thousand or rent one for less than a thousand. There are many musicians and many free musical events. They will insist on playing without as much as free beer for their reward. There are talented writers and artists as well and festivals and events that showcase their work.

There are weekenders with big houses, executives, movie people, we suppose. We don’t meet them really.

And yet I missed Cabaret.

Georgia reported that it was wonderful, the set amazing. Blake took them to a good, untouristy restaurant for lunch.

I am suddenly struck by homesickness.

The maple tree across the street from the duplex where I live will have turned red by now. The one in front will soon turn yellow. The swallows will have left on or about August 28th. The geranium on the front porch -did anyone water it?- will be dying back even if they did. Tall grasses beside the bike path will be dead. Crows will be calling more than usual. Perhaps like the swallows, they are coming south.

It goes down below 60 F here at night. The cool air comes down from the heights above as soon as the sun goes down. I close the window before dawn. But by the time I go out the door, it is beginning to get hot, reaching the upper 80s by afternoon. And it is dusty. That’s the nature of a desert climate, even a high desert with pine forest. It’s rained once in the three months I’ve been here. A short trip on the golf cart leaves me, the cart and whatever I have with me -groceries, my laptop, my laundry caked in dust. In Bakersfield, an hour north, the valley floor kicks up so much dust that the mountains beyond look misty.

My Grandpa Munn couldn’t bear to leave his home, a farm in the mountains in Quebec. He would pine away when he did, growing more silent and pale as time wore on. The longest he was ever away was a week, but to him it felt like eternity. I’m not that homesick. I didn’t even notice it until I missed Cabaret. And these mountains are very like his mountains,so they are like that early home of mine.

Besides I’ve had the good fortune of having to be here amidst such beauty and in the middle of my family. Why complain?

The north seems to built into my bones. I miss the quickening of fall.

Life after the Reality Hotel (just when I thought it was over)

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view from Kodiak #4One summer when Blake and I were still married, we visited my Nanny on her hilly farm in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Hay season is late there and the fields get only one crop. Now it was ripe, but rain was forecast. My grandmother’s hay was already in a neighbour’s barn. She rented the land out now that my grandfather had passed -at the advanced age of 78. Would Blake, she asked, go up the hill and help her sister Eva with her crop. He set off immediately and didn’t return for many hours. When he did, he was very excited.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “There was an 88-year-old woman driving the stripped- down model T that served as a tractor. An 84-year-old woman was on the wagon packing down the hay and a 78-year-old man was pitching it up.”

We stared at him. He waited for our response. Well, yes, Blake. What else did you expect? That’s who lives there, Aunt Eva, Aunt Betsy and her younger husband, Ralph. They were no doubt happy to have help, but they would have managed on their own.

These were my people. My grandmother lived alone on the farm, out of sight of all her neighbours until she was 93, hauling in sticks of wood for the stove as necessary.

So I should not have been all that surprised when duty called just after my 78th birthday and given the stock I come from, I shouldn’t have doubted that I was up to the task.

I contemplated this as I flew home on the golf cart in the semi-dark, high desert cold, last night, barely able to see the other unlit golf carts who had also outstayed the light. I thought about it as I wrestled one plug out of the battery charger and forced the right one in. And I’m the old girl with such weak wrists that I have to waylay strange men in the street to open my wine bottle.

I also find myself driving mountain roads like a budding James Hunt. They call the part of the road just outside the village the S curves. This is misleading. The entire road is comprised of S curves, all the way down to the Mount Pinos turn. Until you get to know it, you don’t actually know whether the loop with go right or left. The road is narrow, but well marked and there are lots of turnouts, but after 3 months, I seldom need to let the cars behind me pass. Then the road opens out into a straight stretch down through Cuddy Valley. Do you remember the Waltons? This is where they lived, here in Kern County, California, not in the Carolina after all. Lately, my country driving skills have kicked in there and I have a problem sticking at 60 mph.

One quibble: should 78-year-olds sleep on the floor? Fine, I like a firm mattress, but getting up at 3 a.m.? First, you have to think about it. Turn on your knees. Plant the tops of your feet on the floor as you kneel on the mat. Push up with your hands and feet. Stand still until you get your balance. Find the flashlight. Follow its beam.

the podFor we have left the Reality Hotel, Clara and I. We have moved into her house. At last! The first 2 nights, we had a sofa, its matching chair and a mat on the floor. We borrowed sheets and blankets. Yesterday, 4 chairs fell out of the furniture pod when we unlocked it and behold there is a kind of  breakfast bar just like a table built into the kitchen island. Now I can stop eating breakfast while watching Clara sleep on the couch. If I am very lucky, or possibly, very good, I will find a bed in my room when I get back tonight. Various teenaged guys are willing to give up Saturday of Labour Day weekend to unload the pod, piano and all. Then perhaps on Monday or Tuesday, pans and dishes may materialize. At present, I make my porridge in the aforementioned hotpot https://115journals.com/2014/08/22/3024/and eat it from a styro-foam bowl with a plastic spoon.

view #2 from Kodiak

Return to the Reality Hotel

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Village in Sierra MountainsWe had to vacate our rooms at the Reality Hotel. There was a big car show up here called “Run to the Pines” and our rooms had been reserved by car show enthusiasts weeks before we arrived. What to do?

“No problem,” said the manager of the three room Reality Hotel. “I’m going away, you can stay in my house.”

She was glowing with pride and generosity. It would be her pleasure to share her home with us. Moreover, we already knew her housekeeper and house-mate, the red-haired Jody, who cleaned our rooms. Now it is true that we are getting cut-rates for our beautiful rooms – mine is about $33 a night, which of course I can ill afford – but Jody is clearly part of the Gudenuff cleaning company. I don’t expect to get my bed changed any more often than I would change my own, but she has changed it three times since July 7th. The comforter, I avoid like the plague, although it’s pretty enough during the day.

So we moved.

Picture us: 163 years old (aggregated) with suitcases, at least 20 shopping bags, pillows, a box of food, a refrigerator bag, a walking stick, a litter box and a cat that has to be medicated to travel. Clara is between houses and much of her stuff is what remained in her ex-house after the movers left. As we carry stuff down the steep stairs from our second floor room, we joke that we will start a moving company called “Slowbutsure: the careful movers”.

At a certain point, Jody has to clean our not yet cleared rooms, so I start throwing money at her and she helps out. She probably would have anyway, but a bill or two makes her happier.

The house is beautiful as advertised, perched on a side hill with a fabulous view of mountains. And a steep set of stairs up to our rooms. Once again the friendly redhead helps out and we schlep our goods in.

However — there are either 3 or 4 additional cats. One is a recluse who lives in the en suite off Clara’s room. Two roam the house and I believe there is another that never leaves Jody’s room downstairs. The smell of cat pee welcomes us in. I can’t even find most of the litter boxes, but I clean the one I find. It is several days before I find the main one, which is clearly in Jody’s domain, but, being Canadian or just too darn cowardly, I do not clean it.

Clara’s girl cat lives in her bedroom, but the boy cats know that and begin spraying EVERYWHERE.

My room has an A.C. unit in the window. I can’t open the window and the A.C. works at gale force.

Clara asks me to open her bathroom window for the cat recluse next morning and I find myself in a cloud of dander and fine cat hair – cat down?. My skin begins to feel hot and prickly. My eyes burn. Tiny cat hairs constantly end up in my mouth. I shower often, only to discover that something -the softened water perhaps – gives me a red rash on my upper arms. In desperation, I ask Jody how to turn the shower head from stabbing to gentle. This she can do.

I was looking forward to watching television. The first time I try, I push what would be the up-channel button on my remote control and lose all reception. Jody doesn’t know how to fix it. Nor does she know the password for the internet, having forgotten it years ago.

No problem. Everyday we have to drive to Bakersfield. Down through the beautiful pine- covered mountains into the scrub-covered mountains, down through Tejon Pass to the desert mountains and then through the flat land of the Central Valley. Foodland. Finally we reach Bakersfield where 90 degrees is a cold snap. It takes an hour and more. As soon as I step into the Prius, my lower back cries, “Not again”, but you know what, out of the house, I no longer sneeze and clear my throat.

One night I stupidly leave my chicken salad on the counter and the long black cat with a white mustache eats it. Clara is having a shower and doesn’t hear the resulting furor, but she confides to a family member that Joyce doesn’t like the cats. That night, I find the same cat with his nose in my water glass. I keep my door shut, but he lurks around the corner and dashes in between my feet. I have to wave a sweat shirt under the bed to drive him back out.

Still he bears me no ill will, asks me to open the door, thanks me and comes when I call. I wouldn’t want the mountain lions to get him. Would I?

For the interim, however, I have a phone with a Canadian long distance plan and I do a mental health call when I wake up to brace myself for another day. It’s not just the cats, it’s living out of a suitcase. Drawers are great. You pull one open and there you see clearly visible clothes in neat piles. A suitcase you have place on a flat surface, a low one in my case since I can’t actually lift 23 kilos. Find the right zipper. Open it. Ah!!!! There they are -neatly rolled clothes in 6 layers. I was sure I put the underwear in this corner. It isn’t there. Carefully I begin removing each layer. Always I have two thirds of the clothes out by the time I find what I need.

“I’m sick of camping,” Clara confides.

On Sunday while I am deeply embroiled in family matters at the house in the pines, Clara arrives to announce that she has moved out of the house because our host returned unexpectedly. Host said she would sleep on the couch, but Clara can’t let her do that.

“Why not?” I think to myself.

So between 5 p.m. and dinner, I hie myself back in the Prius out past the s-curves, up the hill and on weary legs, up the outside stairs and pack. I notice that Clara has not packed our food. I pause, covered in sweat and consider crying. Then our host shows up and helps me carry six grocery bags, two suitcases, the food box, the refrigerator bag….. meanwhile talking gaily about her vacation. I can make no sense of anything she says I am so utterly bushed. I do manage to convince her that her house is lovely and that I am full of gratitude. She replies that we have left a wonderful feeling behind. Okay!

Dinner at the house in the pines somewhat restores me.

Afterwards a beloved family member carries everything in the Prius and in Clara’s car back up to the second floor of the Reality Hotel.

The cool evening air coming down from the mountains blows in one door and out the other, sweet and pure. I put my new tiny plastic hot pot ($13) on and a minute later, I have a cup of tea.

O Reality Hotel, why did I ever knock you?

Reality Hotel: Kern County, CA

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golf cart drawingWe are universally addressed as girls, although the universe here is miniscule. We don’t actually play golf, so our storage area holds just our purses. In the two weeks since I learned to drive a golf cart, I have become a go-cart cowboy.

We are actually girls despite our combined years – 163. So, by the way, is your aged mother/aunt/ grandma. My grandma remained one until she was over 90.

The golf cart we take to whatever restaurant we can find open in this sleepy mountain village is only half the fun. Which is saying a lot. Taking a left turn on a steep downgrade is as exciting as Magic Mountain.

The other half of the fun is living in the Reality Hotel, so nicknamed by my sister, Georgia,who willfully misread my email telling her that I had moved to the PMC Realty Hotel. It suited our theatre of the absurd experience here.

The Reality Hotel is comprised of three second-floor rooms linked by a balcony and situated above the realty office. My friend Clara, who lives next door, is waiting for a house deal to close in Las Vegas prior to taking possession of a new home here. Did you know that house deals can fall through on closing day? Well at least they can if they involve reservists and Veterans’ Affairs. There is a new deal but … One way or another, Clara’s new home will not be hers until August 30th. Neither will the spare room with my name on it.

Clara has the best room in the Reality Hotel. It has a kitchenette with a little wet bar sink, a microwave and a tiny fridge. She and her cat also have a private bedroom and a flat screen television with a DVD player.

My room next door has no such amenities, but it is large, and well carpeted with balconies on both ends. I can leave both doors open to catch the breeze. If there is a breeze. Most mornings it is 80 degrees inside by 10 a.m. It can get well up into the nineties by late afternoon. There is a ceiling fan over the bed, which  is mostly for show. There is a portable fan that works much better, however. The good news is that the cool air falls down from the mountains after 7 p.m. I shut the front door at night, but leave the sliding door to the front , stairless balcony open. Whatever climbs in through that window, Bruno the Bear included, is going to get a very rude welcome.I’ve got at least that much repressed rage going on.

So you get the picture, high desert with no air conditioning. Most people here don’t have it. After all it only goes up to the high 90s here, whereas in the valley it gets up to 110.

I have whined on about the no phone, no internet and analogue TV set in previous posts, so I won’t bore you with that again. I can always jump into the golf cart and come to the house in the pines or go to the internet cafe -which serves nothing and is often locked, but the signal works on the deck. Clara has her first cell phone, a Verizon phone of course. We AT&T-ers are fresh out of luck. I am teaching her to use it and so, I am able to send a text from time to time.

Using Clara’s kitchenette has its own difficulty. Clara always locks her screen door so that Jasmine doesn’t escape. Then she falls asleep. It’s hard to knock on screen and Clara is hard of hearing. I stand there teabag in hand, but, hey, it’s not so bad if you put into room temperature water and leave it for 20 minutes.

Because where else can I get hot tea? Well, at the amazing bakery, which makes to-die-for croissants. The bakery is open from 7 to 2 Thursday to Monday. Then there is La Lena, the Mexican restaurant. Amazingly you can get hot tea there as well as beer with lime, but it’s at the other end of town.

That brings up the question of what to eat and where. It is possible to eat cheese enchiladas three times a day at La Lena. That hard working family does not work on mountain time. They work seven days a week, breakfast through dinner. The pizza restaurant is open from 2 to 7,  later on weekends, closed on Wednesday. Their chicken Caesar is made with pre-frozen cubes which puts it a step down from La Lena’s meat. Mommy’s Roadhouse downstairs from Madd Bailey’s bar does a decent Angus burger and closes Wednesday. Then there is the club house which is open for breakfast and lunch every day, but serves dinner only from Thursday to Sunday. In other words, it is closed Wednesday night. The best restaurant is Silva Bella, although the chef leans heavily on milk and the prices are high. If you want to eat on Wenesday, however, that’s the place.

If you are working with food allergies, you are up against even if it isn’t Wednesday.

At least once a week, sometimes more I eat at the house in the pines and cook a family meal that often as well.

I am happy warming up leftovers from the house in the microwave or tossing a spinach salad, but Clara -not so much. Often I eat my gluten free breakfast and then drive her to the club where she eats scrambled eggs and I drink tea. If I order toast, I get a special commendation from the wait staff.

So here upon this bank and shoal of time, we wait for the resolution of our various problems. We wait at the Reality Hotel.

What’s that song: They’re living it up at the hotel California…… Then isn’t there something about “You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave.

hotel California

 

The Princess and the Spell

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princess in distessThe kingdom had shrunk and yet the Princess Caoilainn and her consort, Caoimhin, had found refuge in a high corner of enchanted forest. The wood elves kept watch over them. The ravens and eagles acted as sentries to warn of danger. The lumbering bears prowled the perimeter. The deer and horses, skittish by nature, sounded alarms. But none of these were proof and protection against the ancient curse that was laid on the princess  before  birth.

Once before the curse had struck her down and only the kiss of Caoimhin had brought her back from death. The wizards had worked hard to find the antidote and it seemed for a while they had succeeded. Then it struck again.

Caoimhin, distraught, sought to give her into wizard care again. Different wizards for the old ones were far away. She railed against him for his betrayal as she was carried off.

He summoned the queen, her mother, from a far off kingdom. She answered the call swiftly. Together surely with the wizards’ help, they could defeat the spell.

They journeyed down and down from the mountain, deep into the hot centre of the earth where the new wizards held sway. Caoimhin knocked at the gate. He asked for entry.

The door keeper said,”I will ask the princess if she wants to see you.”

But the princess was so deeply cursed that she rejected Caoimhin. The queen, she allowed in. The queen found her daughter much changed, head bowed, her body wrapped in white, cold in this hell hole. She held her sad child long and hard. When they sat down Caoilainn sat beside her.

Dance princess“Wrong!” the guard shouted. “Other side of table!”

Caoilainn began to rage. The apprentice wizards and the guards had rules she did not know. Sit here, wash there. Eat here. Ask nicely. Be good. She would not, she shouted. She would not bow. She had not forgotten she was a princess. The giant guard threatened to take her away.

“No,” she said. “You will not. I’ll go myself.”

Riding home, the husband and the mother considered this curse. Its origin. The mother wept with guilt and grief. The husband regretted what he’d done.

“She cried out for help,” the queen said. “She is getting help.”

At home in the enchanted mountain valley, the queen saw the beautiful things her daughter loved: the talismans, the raw jade, the lovely furniture rescued from the palace. She remembered her exquisite taste, her deep learning, her beauty and her charm. The queen heard the finch’s melody, saw the deep blue sky, the immense green pines, the mirrored lake and grieved that her daughter could not.

She travelled daily down to the centre of the earth with Caoimhin and begged for entry. Only once more did she succeed. Again Caoimhin was left standing  outside the gate- alone and sadly loitering. Then the princess decreed there would be no more visits.

“We’ll get on with life,” they vowed. They tried to eat and sleep and take the air, let the sun warm their faces. To no avail. There was no life without the princess.

Then she who had rejected them sent a message asking help to summon the other wizard who had brought her back before. At last Caoimhin could act.

What that loving wizard said to her they never really knew. Later Caoilainn  said it was just his voice that brought her back, trustworthy and assured.

By then the potions made by wizards of the hot and guarded cell had begun to work and the princess had grown calmer.

“Come take her home,” they said.

She was angry still but not at Caoimhin. For two days she railed against the guards and lesser wizards, at the lack of loving care. She talked of other people there, wounded beyond bearing, sometimes locked in solitary cells but caring for each other.

Then one day she said, “It worked.” She was herself again.

She made decisions. She forswore her title. She would make no further claim to royal power. She would sit in her window weaving tapestries. She would rest and love her husband. She would complete her healing.

lady weavingThe young princeling rode up from the coastal lowlands. He lived there in the guise of a merchant, for the merchants now ruled the land. Caoilainn rejoiced to see her son. There were tears and there was laughter.

Now they recognized the spell as they never had before and they had powerful allies to guard against it. Nothing is ever sure, but the queen had seen with future sight a very, very old woman wearing her daughter’s face.

 

Bouts of Joy

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Not us. Another group of haymow jumpers

Not us. Another group of haymow jumpers

Back in the Sierra Nevadas, having exhausted myself walking up the mountain at 7,000 ft., I came down to the village to walk beside the lake, really a pond that holds the water for the fire department. One side of the water is thick with cat tails and behind there is a slope covered with deciduous bushes of different hues, including a soft red. Suddenly, I had a flash of standing beside the Indian River with my grandmother, Gladys, when she was the age I am now and I was 42.

She and I had found ourselves single and living alone that summer. Her son had gone off to live with his best friend’s wife, best friend having passed to his reward. Gladys had left the farm and gone to live in a small house on the Quebec/U.S. border. Meanwhile, my husband, daughter and son had gone off in their own directions. Gladys and I were heart-broken and yet she still made me laugh.

She recalled a day in her first home, a farmhouse. It was spring cleaning time and she had hired a French Canadian girl whom I remember later as Aunt Kate. Kate was cleaning upstairs, when she suddenly came rushing down yelling, “Gladness, Gladness, the house is on fire.” It burned to the ground. All that was left was a stone-lined cellar hole. Gladys roared with laughter as she imitated Kate.

They didn’t lose everything. The “men” -two of them would have been about 12- must have smelled the smoke or heard the sound of pots smashed together that called them back. They rushed in and grabbed the first thing the saw, the big round oak table, which immediately got  jammed in the door. Gladys screamed and yelled. They pushed and shoved. Finally the door jam yielded and the table flew out, but precious time had been wasted. Other men began to arrive and grab what they could. Some things Gladys loved were lost and the family of 6 was homeless. But in the country, someone can always squeeze in a family of six.

Twenty seven years later, the family had changed shape. My mother, who was 13 when the house burned, was married as were her next three brothers. But there were still three children at home, more or less the same age I was and I was 19. This house, too, caught fire. Once again the men seized the oak table first. Once again it got stuck in the door and Gladys screamed, “Leave that damned thing to burn”. Gladys never damned anything. It was the worst word to her. They didn’t leave it. See above.

The third house was built by the community across the road from the second one. The porch was smaller but screened. There was a coal furnace in the cement cellar and no longer needed to be insulated on the outside with banks of sawdust. And there was an actual bathroom. Until 1955, the old out-house had stood at the back of the wagon shed and only little children could use the commode inside. Gladys was very happy there. Her kitchen stove had a wood side for heating and an electric side for cooking. She had hot and cold running water, which ran into a claw foot tub. Many a visit, we sat at the much despised round oak table and laughed.

We laughed about the time that four of us, aged 11 to 13 decided to jump in the hay. It wasn’t a dangerous sport once the new hay had been harvested, but it hadn’t. All there was in the mows was last years hay, so low in the mow that it could be pulled down through the lowest door. Moreover it had compacted and was hard.

I was 13, Evelyn and Ted, twin aunt and uncle, 11 and Percy, 10. The boys dared us to go out onto the side beam that led across the mow from the barn floor (ramp) and jump from there. Sure, we girls said we can do that. The boys went first, sliding on their bottoms far across so as to leave space for us. I went next, noting as I began that it was at least 20 down. I could barely move. Finally, Evelyn began the crossing. We were all scared but she was terrified. She didn’t want to lose face in front of her brothers and once, embarked, she couldn’t go back either.

My sisters, Georgia 7 and Anne 5 stood watching on the barn floor.

I was sweating and gripping the beam. First Ted and then Percy launched himself off into the air with a bloodcurdling whoop. They would crash together, I thought. Both disappeared. A few seconds later their heads appeared as they dug themselves out of the dusty hay.

I knew I couldn’t do it. “Go back, Evelyn,” I cried.

“I can’t move”, she said. Me neither, I thought.

I studied the mow. The boys were urgently calling us to jump. “It’s fun. It’s not so bad.” My stomach heaved. I had to go to the out-house. I jumped.

The worst part was drowning in hay dust and desperately scrambling out. But now we had another problem. Evelyn was deaf to our pleading. She was weeping in terror and hiding her face in her shoulder.

“Go get Ma,” Ted yelled to my sisters. They clomped off down the wooden ramp. Crying and yelling ensued while we waited. Then Gladys was there with her small grand daughters, wiping her hands on her apron, and clearly not happy.

“What in the name of heaven were you kids doing out on that beam?” We always jumped from the barn floor and never into low hard hay. “Get back here,” she screamed at her daughter.

“Can’t,” said Evelyn,” Can’t move.”

“Well, then jump!”

Evelyn protested she would die if she did.

“Well, you’ll die if you don’t, Evelyn Grace. I’ll come out there and give you such a clout…”

Evelyn threw herself headlong, screaming, and landed on her face. We pulled her out and I dusted her off, but she continued to scream that it was all our fault. The boys and I ran across the hay, through to the mow over the cowshed, down the trap door, out through the empty cow shed and up around the barn. There on the dirt ramp, stood Gladys, her face in her apron, laughing so hard her body shook. My little sisters, who were totally unused to laughter, clung to her skirts.

 

 

Bulletin from Shangri-la #5: village life

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Village in Sierra MountainsMy mother was gravely ill for several years before she passed. She took comfort in the idea that God never closes a door without opening a window.

My own experience was summed up in a recent cartoon. Two women are lunching. One says to the other,” I find that when God closes a door and locks all the windows, I can still squeeze in through the dog door.”

But black humour aside, great misfortune often produces blessings.

One upside to the economic crash is that my family and I found ‘Shangri-la’, a mountain village in the Sierras. (Notice how canny I am about not naming it or providing its co-ordinates. Get your own great misfortune.)

For all I know people may live to be several hundred years old here as they did in James Hilton’s fictional paradise in Lost Horizon, high in the Himalayas. Certainly there are a lot of older people here, retired cowboys, architects, doctors, executives. Many working visual artists and an unusual number of professional musicians surviving the music industry’s transition. They can’t seem to get even free beer for plying their craft, but it doesn’t stop them from gathering and playing their hearts out.

After a previous -but lesser- misfortune, I moved to a country village in Ontario, Canada. For one thing it was cheaper there and things were on a human scale. You could park anywhere at no charge. I was right at the centre of town, a no-stop-light intersection, beside the church and the post office and across the road from the only store. I could walk out to the country in 4 directions in less than 15 minutes. One Christmas Day, I picked up a parcel from Belgium. My Newfie dog could wander in the field behind me at will. I went to buy a saw at the store one day. The Korean owner asked me what I needed to saw. I said ” A piece of wood this big.” I was mending a door frame. “Take it and bring it back when your done,” he said. The guy in the Mt. Albert hardware store always understood what thingamagig I needed and generously explained how to install it. I even had my own barn. Lots of storage there. And the tallest TV antenna tower for miles around. It soothed my soul. And set me up nicely for the real estate crash that coincided with the necessary selling of the house.

But it wasn’t Shangri-la. I was an in-comer for the entire seven years I lived there. The long term residents still mistrusted me, although they welcomed me at church. Like the other in-comers I commuted to work, although unlike them, I did not drive a big rig. Some of them thawed when one of my seven cats took to following me and the Newfie every time we went for a walk. “Oh, you’re the woman who walks her cat…”

In this Sierrra Shangri-la, everyone speaks to us. Getting croissants or the mail has to be leisurely. Dogs and people waylay us. It’s true that my son-in-law knows all the musicians and golfers, my daughter knows the musicians and everyone who goes to the daily tai chi and yoga classes, they both know all the artists, and the Vegas mother-in-law talks to everyone in the casinos, so of course she talks to everyone in the village. You simply do not pass anyone without speaking.

Worn out by the short walk “downtown” -it is high, remember- I collapse into the big chair, my feet up on the big hassock. The door is open to the breeze on this warm day. The pines are sighing, whispering, a song of deep contentment that I have brought with me from my childhood when we picnic-ed under them.

Life on a human scale! This is bliss.