GRADUATION DAY

My daughter graduated from high school last week.  We weren’t sure she was going to graduate until the very last day of school, so no invitations were sent out and a lot of stressful scrambling took place trying to lasso relatives.  Most kids take for granted they are graduating but for Krista this was an extra special event because she struggled so hard to make it happen.  Her dad and I had feared the worst.  If she didn’t graduate she would be banned from sharing this important ceremony with her friends.  But she made it.  And we were all there, even her beloved relatives from out of town.

The last time I attended a graduation ceremony was for my nephew 10 years earlier in this same school.  My daughter was 8 and my son was 7 at the time.  My sister also had a 7 year old son and a 2 year old daughter.  We sat high up in the bleachers admonishing our younger ones to sit still and act solemnly (Ha!) during the ceremony.  Now my beautiful daughter is an adult (18), sitting in the rows of chairs waiting to be called to receive her diploma.  Our young sons are now big strapping, handsome teenage boys and the baby girl is a lovely young lady.  I kept putting one foot in the time portal, seeing my kids as they were back then, all cute and innocent, and coming back into the present to see these tall beings on their way to adulthood. 

I don’t remember it being this crowded last time.  (Population explosion?)  The parking lot was full 45 minutes before the start of the event and we were forced to scrounge for parking spots way, way up the street.  Then there was a huge line to wait in that wrapped all the way around the parking lot.  When we finally got inside the gates, we discovered there was nowhere left to sit.  The fence in front of us was covered with graduation balloon bouquets.  At first we stood at the fence, batting balloons out of our faces, trying to look for Krista.  Then we found a different area of fence with no balloons and, although we had to stand, had a clear view of the field of chairs and giddy teenagers.  Poignant speeches were made and one by one each name was called and students lined up to climb the stage stairs and accept their diplomas.  What a thrill to see Krista’s beaming face as she walked to the stage.  After everyone’s name was called, they were instructed to turn their tassels to the left side and then everyone threw their hats high into the air, a symbolic gesture as proof they were now graduates.  Krista ran to greet us at the fence for copious hugs, kisses and picture taking.  She was ecstatic to see her cousins, aunt and uncle.  The cousins jumped the fence and took turns taking pictures together.  Then Krista disappeared for a while, swallowed up in her group of joyous friends.  Our relatives had to leave; it was still a school night for them, and we searched the sea of young faces for our daughter.  Of course this was a once in a lifetime, monumental occasion, one she should be allowed to relish without hurry, but we were late for dinner reservations and her dad was worried about his car getting towed.  This explains his odd behavior.  I watched from the sidelines in amused horror as Mike ran frantically through the field, hands waving, looking like a Tasmanian devil as he yelled, “KRISTA!  KRISTA!” at the top of his lungs.  Of course she was mortified.

We took her to our favorite restaurant, The Brigantine, and showered her with graduation balloons, flowers and cards.  It was late, we were starving and exhausted, and elated.  Also relieved.  Very, very relieved. 

Happy Graduation Day, Sweetheart.

My Son My Hero

My Son My Hero

This past Mother’s Day, my son became my hero.  I was lying in bed watching CBS Sunday Morning when I heard pots and pans rattling around downstairs.  I fought the temptation to get up and see what was going on and told myself to relax and enjoy the moment.  About an hour later, my bedroom door burst open and he yelled, “HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!” then laughed at my startled reaction.  He announced he had made breakfast and presented me with a giant pancake, a perfectly cooked fried egg and coffee.  He even remembered my favorite green Tabasco sauce for my egg.  The pancake was the biggest, thickest one I’d ever seen and he proudly pointed out there were apple slices inside.  He had set his alarm that morning and googled the recipe.  It was truly the best pancake I’d ever tasted, maybe because of the hands that made it or because I suddenly felt so special.  We sat in my room watching the rest of the news show and eating our feast.  Then he politely took all the dishes downstairs and cleaned the kitchen.  Does it get any better?  In the afternoon, I asked if he would go for a bike ride with me.  I’m sure he didn’t want to but felt obliged since it was Mother’s Day.  It was a warm, sunny day and we rode from our house, down a bike path which took us under the freeway, along the sparkling lake.  We rode the fun, scenic bridge over Lake Hodges, then uphill to the Rancho Bernardo Winery.  They were having a craft fair and there were lots of booths to visit and a band playing in front of the tasting room.  I bought a glass of champagne for me, a soda for Kyle and cheese sticks,  We found a place to sit by the fountain to have our snack and listen to the music.  The bike ride was strenuous on the way there but blissfully downhill all the way home and I relished the warm sun on my arms, the wind in my hair and the view of the lake.  Also it was exhilarating going downhill as fast as I dared (which is not that fast but still fun).  We stopped at the little farmer’s market close to home and sat in the sun listening to music while Kyle ate a lemon Italian ice.  We had just enough time when we got home to clean up and get ready to go out to dinner with his dad and sister.  I will never forget the time and effort Kyle put into making my day special.  It was a treat to have him spend the whole day with me, just the two of us and that pancake served to me in bed was a dream come true. 

And that’s why my son is now my hero.

Accidental Snake Slayers

Lake Perris

Split Stop

Diane&Scotchelo

lots of rocks

 It all started out so innocently.  Another perfect, sunshiny day, riding horses around Lake Perris.  Because our horses are gaited, we had no problem riding around the entire lake in a few short hours.  We couldn’t have asked for better weather and soon found our perfect split stop at a picnic table under shady trees.  We watched the sun sparkling on the lake while our horses munched grass and we clinked our plastic glasses filled with bubbly.  Champagne and granola bars...lunch of champions, or snake slayers, but more on that later.  We passed by another picnic spot where two people and a dog sat at the table.  Wait, what?  We had to do a double take at what appeared to be a dog sitting at the table between a man and a woman.  It was so cute and we should have taken a picture.  

The next attraction was a person climbing a sheer rock wall.  At first I thought some parent was not doing their job very well because the person looked like a small child.  You know how  things look much smaller in the distance?  This person was pretty high up on the wall with nothing holding him there but his shoes and a rope he was clinging to.  His friends were standing below, urging him on.   He looked like a fly stuck on a wall and my palms started to sweat just watching his attempt to pull himself up the smooth and very vertical rock face.  We continued climbing up a narrow trail that brought us out on top of the dam, then down the other side and back in the direction of our trailer. We were laughing and talking, enjoying the day, when Peggy suddenly halted her horse and turned to me saying there was a big, giant rattler in the road.  It was impressive looking, quite large, and a pretty reddish brown color.  It was stretched about halfway across the trail with no intention of budging.  “Should I throw a rock at it?” Peggy whispered.  

"I'm looking at you!"

 “Yeah” was my intelligent response.  I should have said, “No, throw daisy petals at it” or “lets sing it a song” but my horse has been known to climb boulders, hop sideways across a meadow and has broken my hand in his attempts to flee rattlers.  I just wanted it to go away.  Peggy got off her horse, picked up a rock and heaved it in the snake’s general direction.  To our great surprise and horror, the rock landed on the snake and it rattled, hissed, writhed, and looked a tad uncomfy.  Peggy and I sat there with our mouths open, not believing what had just happened.  We never meant to hurt it, just wanted it to move.  Peggy said she had the worst aim ever which I guess is why she hit it, because she wasn’t aiming at it.  We both felt horrible and kept apologizing to it.  I wanted to give it a hug, kiss it better and say sorry, (no hard feelings?), but decided this wasn’t the best idea and he probably wouldn’t understand anyway. And that’s how we became the reluctant, unwilling, accidental snake slayers.  At this point we decided it would be a good idea to forge through the bushes and up to the street, making a wide arc around our unfortunate victim, just in case retaliation was on his mind.  We yelled out, “Sorry Dude!” over and over again as we rode and hoped he would be OK.  I don’t like to see anything getting hurt and this put a real damper on the rest of our day.  My sincere apologies, Mr. Snake, once again, if you are reading this.  We promise not to throw stones at you ever again.

Sincerely,

D&P

A.S.S. (Accidental, oh, you know)

Photos by Peggy Jones
Snake photo from internet

Doris Martin

Doris Martin

It’s not often we get the chance to hear a firsthand account of World War II from the mouth of a survivor.  Sure, you can read books and interviews or learn from history books or TV documentaries, but to actually hear a survivor speak about their experiences in their own words is a far more interesting and emotional experience. 

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Doris Martin speak at the Escondido Library.  I had seen her here in 2009, was incredibly moved by her story and bought a copy of her book, Kiss Every Step.  This time I talked my 16 year old son into attending with me.  He was reluctant but I reminded him that this might be his only chance to hear a Holocaust survivor speak.  I was glad he agreed to go with me and hoped he would be moved by the experience and receive the message that intolerance breeds unacceptable cruelty. 

Doris is a Polish Holocaust survivor.  She is in her eighties now, born the same year as my own mother, and is very attractive and well dressed.  The vulnerability in her voice and her small stature make me want to run up and give her a big hug.  When Doris speaks, the atrocities she experienced some 70 years ago still make her voice tremble with emotion.  She has a thick accent and her English is a bit broken but she is able to convey her story with powerful clarity.  She is still bewildered how Hitler could have such hatred toward her and her people who had done nothing to him.  She cannot fathom how anyone could treat fellow human beings, including innocent children and babies, so cruelly.  She was torn from her family, forced into Auschwitz and then another labor camp where she was stripped of her clothing and dignity, beaten, kicked, starved, degraded and humiliated.  Her voice echoes the horror of having witnessed the senseless killing of babies and watching people being marched into the “showers” where they were exterminated.  Her life was spared many times during the course of the war, for reasons she can’t explain.  Her story is unique in that her entire family survived.  It is quite rare for an entire Jewish family to have survived.  All seven of her family members were separated during the war and survived in different ways, and amazingly, all seven returned to their family home after the war.  They had no contact with each other during those years and had no idea if their loved ones had survived.  The stories of each family member as described in her book are compelling.  It is hard to imagine surviving or even wanting to survive in such conditions for a short time, let alone years.  Imagine living in constant fear and dread, starving, cold, and subjected to constant horror, pain and humiliation.

I was impressed that the library was filled to capacity, standing room only.  People of all ages came to hear Doris’s story and many were moved to tears as they listened.  While Doris feels no hatred toward the German people, she cannot forgive Hitler for the pain and suffering he caused. She thinks of him as the devil. 

Amazingly, she encounters those who tell her the Holocaust never happened and she is making it all up.  This must be the ultimate slap in the face; to be a witness and to suffer such horror, then to be told it never happened.  She feels the importance of her speaking is to teach people that yes, this really did happen,  and to encourage tolerance among all people regardless of race or religion.  She held up pictures of the crematorium, and an amazing photo recently found on the internet, of a group of women getting off the train at Auschwitz.  There in the middle of the group was Doris.  She was standing in a group of women destined for the “showers” before she was sent to a different labor camp.  Her husband recently discovered the picture on the internet and she was just as amazed as anyone else to see herself standing there in Auschwitz at the age of 14.

Head Bump

My kids and I were in a cabin in Big Bear.  We were having a fun family vacation and I was proud that I was able to take them there by myself, find the cabin, take them snowboarding and enjoy their company by a cozy fireplace along with my home cooking every evening. 

I liked to get up early so I could exercise, shower and get breakfast started before anyone awoke.  Standing under the shower that morning, I leaned over for the wash rag.  The tub was slippery and before I knew it, I was pitching forward, arms flailing for balance.  I try to imagine what I must have looked like:  naked, wet body, feet flying out from under me, arms waving spastically. Not pretty.  I grabbed the shower curtain which crashed down with me as I fell face forward, smacking my forehead with a sickening thud against the closed toilet lid.  Ouch.  This seemed bad.  Was I dead?

After writhing in pain for some time, I stumbled out of the tub and looked at my face in the mirror.  You know those cartoons where someone gets hit on the head and a huge lump immediately appears?  Well guess what?  It really happens.  A large, red lump was swelling before my eyes right in the middle of my forehead.  Very attractive.  Oh yeah, and it really, really hurt.

It seemed serious.  Was I going to die?  What if I blacked out?  I was the only parent, the only one in charge.  What would happen to my kids?

Over the next few hours, my face sprouted annoying patches of jaundice yellow and festive black and blue circles around my eyes.  I looked like I’d been beaten.

Later, my sweet, sensitive son said, “Yeah I heard you fall.” 

“Well why didn’t you come check on me?” 

“I was tired.”

The Blob

It all started out so innocently, just a group of coworkers sitting around a large conference room table which served as our lunch break area.  An assortment of brown bags and lunch pails was strewn before us as we politely munched on sandwiches and discussed a variety of subjects. 

One 60ish gentleman was talking animatedly about something when he paused to blow his nose.  He honked noisily into his handkerchief, then wadded it in a ball, stuffed it in his pocket, and continued his speech, engaging eye contact with everyone around the room.  The rest of us sat there in frozen horror.  None of us knew what to do, for there, on the tip of the man’s rather large nose, was a perfectly round, large blob of something that had somehow missed his handkerchief. 

It was so large it couldn’t be missed, and seemed to take on a life of its own, bobbing up and down with every movement of the man’s head.  Clearly he thought he had our undivided attention, as we were all too stunned to move or look away, and he talked on and on for what seemed like an eternity.  I’m sure we all wanted to say something to stop this embarrassing display, but we were too shocked or revolted to do anything other than stare at the blob at the end of the man’s nose.  It was round and white and glistened in the sun shafting through the window.  I had no idea what the man was saying and could no longer focus on anything except the large, gelatinous blob dancing around the room.  Was the man still talking or had the blob taken over the conversation? I’m not sure, but this happened over 30 years ago and still sticks (ick) in my mind.

OLD RECORDS

A stack of old records in my office is a constant reminder of my dad and his music.    They are all perfectly preserved in their covers with colorful, bold pictures of the artists.  He loved big bands, classical, jazz, and Latin music. 

Dad was an accomplished trumpet player and even played with the Harry James Band a few times.  He was a member of the Reno Municipal Band and formed his own jazz group called the Dixie Cats.  On a typical evening at home,  Dad would flip through his collection, carefully stack several records on the hifi turntable, lift his trumpet out of its velvet case, and play soulfully along with the music.  Percy Faith’s Viva and Malaguena were particular favorites and this music stirs old memories, sights and smells.  Mom would be in the kitchen cooking dinner, sending wonderful aromas wafting my way and all seemed right with the world.

After the Christmas bustle, I treated myself to a record player so I could finally play these treasures of days long gone.  My sister was here for dinner and we both turned dreamy and nostalgic at the sounds of Harry James and Montovani.  

Miss you, Dad.