I write for a middle grade audience, magical realism, fiction, left my memoir for now. These stories are populated with children, some I imagine and the ones I see everyday and others hide inside me. The world is complicated, sometimes scary and as my main character will show you, full of pits, fiery mountains and saddened by loss. But because it’s Jess, loss is accompanied by learning and followed by joy. Ten and Eleven-year old Jess jumps right into all of it.
Jess is on the spectrum, with resource support at school, learning from the world around her, counselors, family and the animals. Jess will surprise you, disappoint, confuse and amaze you as she flees, walks head-on and learns on the page.
Her story worlds are based upon places I love, the things I think about with a little magic sprinkled in bunches of grass and holes in the ground. I hope my stories enliven children from 8 to young teen, and adults, entertain all with Jess’ quirky charm and her love of the natural world. One day you’ll meet Jess, her family and the world she creates and struggles to understand. I invent people for her to struggle with, big feelings for her to manage, confusion about important social issues. All with compassion. I hope to examine, explore and discover new worlds with Jess and feed my own spirit of adventure.
A World for Jess
I write for a middle grade audience, magical realism, fiction, left my memoir for now. These stories are populated with children, some I imagine and the ones I see everyday and others hide inside me. The world is complicated, sometimes scary and as my main character will show you, full of pits, fiery mountains and saddened by loss. But because it’s Jess, loss is accompanied by learning and followed by joy. Ten and Eleven-year old Jess jumps right into all of it.
Her story worlds are based upon places I love, the things I think about with a little magic sprinkled in bunches of grass and holes in the ground. I hope my stories enliven children from 8 to young teen, and adults, entertain all with Jess’ quirky charm and her love of the natural world. One day you’ll meet Jess, her family and the world she creates and struggles to understand. I invent people for her to struggle with, big feelings for her to manage, confusion about important social issues. All with compassion. I hope to examine, explore and discover new worlds with Jess and feed my own spirit of adventure.
BOOK ONE
When 10-year old Jess learns her mother isn’t coming home for the summer, Jess pretends she has died and digs a grave. Jess search for belonging takes her underground where she joins a community of burrowing animals, and whether real or not they accept her more readily her family above ground.
BOOK TWO
When her mother brings home a woman from the shelter, Jess becomes a homeless advocate to get rid of her. But things get complicated and she befriends the woman’s son, her mother falls in love and she steals a horse. Jess hoped her biggest problem would be being a good friend but now they all have special powers. Or do they?
From My Blog
Shortcode
- WILDCAT // April 12, 2022
Leave Me Alone, age 12 The empty roller bag twists to one side bucking like a resistant toddler demanding a mindful yank to settle it back on two wheels. With one final leg remaining before my return to the comforts of home, I search between the gates for a fresh salad. I haven’t flown in two years and wouldn’t have today, except I had an errand 1200 miles away, a delivery and same day turn around.
American airports reek of coffee, burgers, tacos, cinnamon buns and a stale swirl of garlic from dark corners where crowds gather drinking beers and eating pizza. Upscale dives in small airports, named Joe’s or Mama Mia’s, serve mounds of spaghetti with mixed frozen carrots and peas. Rolling past a restroom where sweaty passengers like walking zombies gulp artificially conditioned air with a twist of hand sanitizer, everyone moves fast here as if late for a flight or in the same race for last overhead slot.
Unable to slip out flow of the crowd to visit the only place with green salads and made to order sandwiches, I twist around, flip a U-turn. Then plopping into a booth seat, my bag seated next to me, I reel, feeling woozy. I haven’t eaten since last night and left the house at 3 am this morning. Maybe I’ll order breakfast, though it’s two in the afternoon. Under the table I drop my shoes onto the sticky floor. My imagination animates the linoleum with hundreds of thousands of germs, spiky Covid balls, so I hover my bare feet until my legs rebel then drop them on top my shoes.
I wonder what my little wildcat is doing? Hope she’s eaten by now. Low blood sugar doesn’t sit well on her. No longer my worry. Let it go. I exhale, channeling the wisdom of a 50-year friend and advisor, “Let her go. They’ll work this out on their own. You did the right thing.”
Did I? No one can know that. This very same friend didn’t want me to rescue my granddaughter as a toddler eleven years ago. Told me to let the system do what its good at, saving children, supporting and strengthening families. In this case, it was my family and I knew better. This family didn’t have it in them, no bones or muscle to build upon, nothing to strengthen. The baby’s father is my oldest and least capable son, and at the time, the baby’s mother was addicted to pain meds. No other family members stepped up. I was it. That’s what I told myself and told my sons, my husband, social services, the lawyer and later, told the child, my granddaughter. She called me Grand-mama, and I called her my little wildcat.
I retired from college teaching to become her mother. To become a healthy, productive and loving adult, like every child needs, a consistent, loving adult, dedicated and adoring. What if the loving adult is consistent and loving but has issues? Like being abandoned shortly after my own birth by my mother? Yep, we’re two insufficiently attached human beings, working to connect, in spite of having two bottomless pits of unmet need. By licking her wounds might I heal my own? That’s what I hoped.
A couple of years later when she was three, postmenopausal for at least five years, I had a full-on menstrual cycle. My doctor laughed, “Incredible.” “One for the books!” “Not surprising at all.” To me it was. I thought I had cancer. “You are nurturing a child. She has your hormones behaving like hormones after childbirth.” We called it our intense bonding experience. When she was six years old, we’d reached our developmental toddlerhood. We behaved like any mother and toddler with daily meltdowns. “No, no, no! Mine!” And that was me! But, seriously, she had meltdowns, too, huge ones and in public, no shyness or pride in that little wildcat, she’d scratch, scream, kick and twist about on the ground after a checker took her apple to weigh it. Then she tossed it across the room after it was handed back. Tantrums look dangerous on a six year old. Healing can re-open wounds. It was loud and bloody and I hated myself for hating her. Not her, her behavior, inappropriately immature at six. But, by then we were all-in, there was no turning back.
What had I done to deserve this? I never asked myself this question, because I’d stepped up, volunteered. I did what good people do, take care of their own. Counseling sessions, swim lessons, daily bike rides, never strapped into a child seat, but zipping along behind me on a scooter or a pedal-less strider bike until she flew past me, then refused to wait for me to catch up. That’s how we remained, her dashing past, never allowing me catch her. She’d noticed I grew slower as I grew older and as she grew older she became a speed demon, a show-off. Whether on a bike, on the water, running, walking or playing cards and at meals, she had to win. My wildcat had to show me how fast she could eat those noodles then how ruthlessly she’d toss the plate in the sink breaking every glass and bowl in the stack. But, most importantly she needed me to stay in the race. I was her person, and her designated loser.
Now, at age 12 and looking more like a woman everyday, she’s winning the race on breast size, hair texture and quality, gorgeousness of skin with feet growing faster than a golden retriever puppy’s. Starting middle school meant leaving our small rural school after nine years with the same kids since preschool to attend a big school with more children she doesn’t know than does. She had a handful of friends in our local school, but some moved others attend a different middle school. Intent on becoming someone new, mountain kids stopped talking to one another. Her version is that she is invisible and no one cares about her anymore. Isolation and disconnection is a common lament for insufficiently attached children. But she was also bucking for change, new social groups and for kids who shared her interests. I watched as she tucked her wildness away, as she grew disinterested in bike riding, running and swimming. She exchanged activity for closing down behaviors like shyness, hesitancy and victimhood.
In woodshop, the class she was so eager to begin that she practiced with tools at home, she begged for help on every assignment. Yet at home she used a belt sander, drill press, chop saw and band saw with confidence She re-built a wagon with wooden sides, a stool and little table. She’d arrived at some kind of crisis point, newly defined herself helpless and frightened and incapable. And with me she hit a barrier, an “I cannot take this anymore” stance. Out of the blue, she screamed, “You always have kept me from my real mother!”
I knew she hated me when she screamed, “I hate you.” Though, she’d said that hundreds of times, but when followed by violent and an outrageous trashing of photo albums, special toys, her doggie bed lamp and tossing her stuffed animals in the trash, I listened with new ears. She cut up her clothes and pulled childhood art off the walls. Maybe this how a wildcat does a hormone-infused developmental shift.
She hadn’t seen her mother since she was three years old for an hour visit on her driveway. Of course, I expected it would come up one day and now she’s all she’ll talk about. Revisiting her longing, her incompleteness in regular intervals, she re-stimulates my own deep seeded loss from way back. This time is different, more serious for both of us. Am I keeping her from her mother? Like a kidnapper? “You can’t really want to leave our home, me and your family to live with a mother you don’t know.” “Yes,” she said, “I do.”
She doesn’t know you either, I thought, but didn’t say. It turns out that her mother was waiting, hoping this day would come. She’d imagined this scene, “I’ll have my baby in my arms again.” She cried for joy at the thought. I imagined it differently.
Several states away, in a mobile home, 1200 miles from my granddaughter’s always- home, her mother lives alone and works nights as a dispatcher. “It’s time we get to know one another,” her small image nods on Facetime. “Please, Grandma,” they both begged.
I lived with my great aunt until I was five when my mother married and took me back. We moved 400 miles away and I didn’t see the person I’d believed to be my mother, actually my great aunt, except at Christmas and Easter. I didn’t remember living her for five years. Be it trauma or the workings of the mind of a young child, I lost those years. Though in photo albums I saw the three of us around the Christmas tree, riding my first tricycle and in visits from family that included my young birthmother. It wasn’t until age 30 that I got the whole story from my maternal grandmother. How could I not have known? Yet, there was a re-occurring nightmare of me slapping a hollow blue door, screaming, “Let me out” until I collapsed. Many of the puzzle pieces of my early life are still missing and I suppose I suffer some emotional wounds. The trauma of losing a mother as an infant, then losing her substitute at age five, is likely well-researched cause for concern. I have read about the trauma of loss and the disorders associated with insecure, insufficient and lack of attachment. They are better understood now than they were during my childhood. My family in the fifties wouldn’t have taken anything seriously enough to send me off to counseling. But, I’m okay. I survived my mother’s multiple marriages and divorces, violence, abuse, neglect and survived my working class upbringing. It’s likely that my mother and I never forged an attached familial bond, but she remains a consistent figure in my life, gave me a sister and two brothers and today, in her nineties, lives a few miles from my home. Growing up I may have handled life’s challenges less capably than well-adjusted friends, but I learned by watching, listening and storytelling, also called misrepresenting, lying and sneaky misbehavior.
I loved school and got my first job at age 12. I was determined to be independent, to make it on my own one day and not have a baby before 30. Then life being what happens while you’re off making plans, during college at age 19, I got pregnant. But, with no hesitancy and a clear sense of the future, I had and abortion, and did not become a parent until years later, at age 30, when I deemed myself ready.
My 12-year-old granddaughter has a chance. She has a chance to re-connect with the mother she lost, to sufficiently attach. There’s no guarantee, of course that either of them are up to the task that my mother and I managed to avoid. But, I have a husband, two sons and had a long and fulfilling career as a teacher. I am healthy, well and mostly just fine. My mother and I didn’t find the glue to cement our broken bond. My granddaughter and her mother may not either. But staying, hanging in there, counts. Being there through meltdowns, fights, challenging behavior, lies, tears, fears and confusions bonds us to those who stick around, stand up for us from time to time. Of course, not everything goes as well as we hope or have planned, especially when it comes to our expectations of others. Traits associated with executive function, self-regulation, resilience and self-awareness can lead to confidence and wholeness.
I flip over in bed, reposition my pillow and sleep fitfully for days after I left my wildcat with her mother. I feel as empty as the roller bag I returned home with, the one that once bulged with my big-girl wildcat’s softest and warmest bedding, books, drawing materials, a supply of vitamins and boxes of favorite snacks. She packed her own bag with clothes that currently fit, a few in the next sizes and new warm boots, gloves and a beanie. She’s visited snow but never lived in it. Now it’s time for both of us to practice letting go. I imagine her doing it more readily than I do.
As I shove the empty roller bag, now a huge wrinkled prune, into the closet, I remember a surprise I tucked deep inside, marked “Do not open until your first period,” a kit supplied with hygiene necessaries, samples and choices, a few special pairs of panties like old fashioned toddler training pants, a book about periods, suggestions for celebrations and rituals to do with Mom and girlfriends and a party kit with whistles and streamers to welcome her to womanhood. I’d been ready for this event, her significant moment and imagined sharing it with her since shortly after that day at 15 months old when I sang and rocked her to sleep after she cried herself into a puddle at the patio doors the day her mother left.
I generously offer this this small gift to her reclaimed mother, a special moment to share with our Wildcat as she manifests the Lioness that must surely dwell within. Best to you, Wildcat and your mother.
- Road Trip // April 17, 2021
Road Trip, re-do
In the backseat my grandchildren have disappeared. After two hours in the desert, Mojave then Death Valley, they aren’t looking out the window anymore calling attention to cactus or skinny coyotes on the horizon. It’s quiet in the backseat. At 11 and 14 years of age, a year of zoom and virtual school behind them, screens, texting and learning to attend with the washing machine cycling, pots and pans banging in the sink and Grandpa’s news blaring on the TV, they have learned to ignore what’s around them. But, we are on a car trip, dang it. Oh, well, they aren’t fighting. No line drawn down the middle of the backseat, slapping at one another or grumbling arguments. They are at peace, using their phones. There’s no wifi or cell service. So what can they doing with devices? Hers is an old phone, never had service. She’s in elementary school. We have a phone on our kitchen counter if she wants to call someone. When she goes to school in town, off the mountain, next school year we will get her a real phone. Logistics made simpler. She’ll be 12. Do kids start kissing at 12? On my mind these days, pubescent teens.
Stopping for a photo that looks like a sister in brother’s shadow, after some secret insult.
Big brother, little sister He’s got his camera, a home built robot car he coded and had perform everywhere we went. Like a Mars Rover it rumbled around the desert. The car takes the place of a stuffed animal. This is the first trip he’s made without one. I had to sift through her pack and remove several stuffies, made her choose just one. The car was packed to the roof. He slept on a sleeping bag on the floor of our room to avoid either his sister while asleep or Grandpa’s contact and my snores. Seems about right for his age, desirous of touch and squeamish at the same time.
Quite a Year
A month back we finished our Covid vaccines, had to get out of the house, do the trip we missed last March when over 60’s were asked to stay home. The road trip coincides with school opening so Liza will miss her first day in 6th grade. A First Day in April! What a year. She’ll go next week a couple of days and everyday the following week until the end of May. Ryan is homeschooling, thriving, taking a break from anxiety and the push of middle school. He came in first in the county science fair and was interviewed by judges at the state science and engineering fair this week. Has time to pursue his interests, go deep. He’ll try the local high school in the fall, where his dad, grandfather, great grandmother and grandfather all went to school. Go, Santa Cruz Cardinals! We’ll see.
Photographers
We all like animals, call out, “Lizard, whip tail? Its tail is longer than its body.” “Snake.” “Elk, prong horns, wild donkeys!” “Are donkeys and burros the same thing?” “Burros speak Spanish.” I loved the chuckwallas, to say the name a treat. Spiny Lizards reminding me of “Horny Toads” when I was young in San Fernando Valley.
Chuckwalla 
Spiny Lizard We all like taking pictures. Most of Liza’s selfies and Orion’s, long-studies before each shot. I rarely appear. Glen waits impatiently for the next sighting preferring the pure experience over documenting it.
Jess’ Grandma
We feel like a family. I sometimes say “Mom” when referring to myself. Because I am every single day. I didn’t capture this in Jess’ story. Her grandma isn’t her mother. She seems to hold her role precious, that of Grandma, or maybe is too tired of all the shenanigans to add to her workload. In fiction you can make different choices.
Jess, Book Two
I establish Jess and her acquired friends as each holding magical powers. I want them to become a team for Book Three and “save the day.” Taking a writing break to travel has me considering the pacing of the story, the way the magical powers take time to discover and use. I wonder if I am moving along too slowly as the emotional story takes hold. The character develops, changes and also acquires more abilities.
Do I show how confused she is?
Or shall I have her “grab and go” with her new magical abilities?
When I return home I have to get at those gophers that are ruining my orchard, nibbling away at roots passing through the original root baskets. They have been somewhat effective for over 10 years. The trees have grown slowly, leaves are limp and flowers have fallen off. Getting fruit to the kitchen is a battle every season. Now I carry Jess in my heart. Think of her tending to mole’s wound, mourning the losses and destroying Salvador’s traps. As I set another version of gopher trap, a spring loaded snare, she’s here. I know it horrible, killing them, but “have a heart” traps only make them suffer and die in the heat of a black plastic box after they enter. I don’t tend to the far gardens and orchard everyday. So they die suffering. I wish the owls and our local red shouldered hawk would eat more gophers. That takes me out of the picture. Sorry, Jess.
Jess digs a pit. Revise
I hope our readers are as attached to Jess as I am. But will they tolerate another family problem as the magic brewing underground goes untapped chapter after chapter? I brought it up often enough that I know what I must do. I’ll pick Book 2’s draft apart and reassemble it, sprinkling in magic from the first paragraph on, let it build.
- Creating the World // March 25, 2021
“Some days I just need to get quiet and stay out of the way.” from Courtney Martin’s blog, an interview with Liz Powell, palliative care nurse
Orion and Shelby, age 3 Some days I long to disappear. Instead of turning left and heading to New Leaf grocery store then driving through Lulu’s Coffee for an Africano to sip through a slit in the lid while driving, I’ll turn right. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll head north on Highway 1 and make my way an hour and a half north to San Francisco. I’ll stop for lunch, look in shop windows, get a haircut, drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, my short absence is a welcomed relief for all of us.
You likely know by now that I live with my grandchildren. Actually, two of my grandchildren live with me, here in my house, in our house, the retirement home my husband and I remodeled for the two of us to live out our final days. We have plenty of those ahead. We are in our seventies. We have been inside this lovely home ALL FKN YEAR. We live in the forest with two children, Grandpa, a non-shedding dog, five chickens, an outdoor cat, with birdbaths and bird feeders to fill, branches to drag and gardens to tend. The children’s Dad lives alone next door. ALONE. My daily life is consumed with activities toward nurturing four living beings, collecting eggs, sprouting seeds and asking the others to help me.
Pandemic Proximity Bonding
With social isolation during this Pandemic year the compressed nature of our household relationships includes less talk. We ask questions that no longer get answered. Want to make buttermilk biscuits for dinner, turn the compost, check the worm bin, feed the chickens, gather eggs, fill the feeders with seeds or check the dog for ticks? Want to help make dinner? Make it on your own? The kids are now eleven and fourteen, teenagers with budding breasts, size eleven hiking boots and eyes that roll, shoulders that tense and hands that dig fingernail moons into their palms. They tell dirty jokes, keep secrets and eat a lot. They wear the answers to my questions on their faces. My granddaughter typically wears “No.” My fourteen-year-old grandson dons a “yes” but doesn’t really mean it. I notice his hands, the pause in his step, the way he glances at his feet hiding his real feelings, keeping peace.
This year we have become experts at reading one another. We display moods with eyebrows, stiffened toes, fingers and a twirl of our hair. We fling hands to feign disbelief, laugh in disgust, slam the door, stomp a foot, shed tears, chortle out the side of our mouths and stifle giggles. Like a mother watching her infant sleep, keenly aware of every twitch, fisted hand, eye flick or purse of lips, we know one another. Oh I remember those creased puffy legs, knees to chest, pedaling feet, soft, pillowed toes. So sweet. Each dimple alive with meaning. Attention is the language of survival, reciprocity and love. Living close, cave-dwellers, sharing air, counter space, food, odors, music, temperature and energy all day long, week after week and month after month. We no longer require words. Like a murmur of birds’ in an un-choreographed sky ballet, we feel our way through the dance of each day, each of us an attentive parent.
I understand that teens need us to back off, to leave them be as they strive for independence. They push us away. But they want us to pull them close and squeeze them, too. It’s a time I remember. The way it felt, I felt. Confused. Teens circle, like a cat finding a spot of sun, flop on their beds, to think, imagine, fret and touch themselves. Privacy. My two make decisions everyday about the amount of school work they do, how much game time, which friends to call, side chats to engage in as the teacher plays a booming rendition of the War of 1812 during a lesson about U.S. History. Teens make their own decisions, but like all developmental shifts, they are not yet good at it. Who is? One foot planted on home plate, they dare take off. The young child still hovers inside, fingers twitching as they feel the blanket silk at their feet during the first of six zooms of the day, a stuffy perched next to the 11-year-old’s computer screen, she holds up to the screen. They demand to be left alone and need for a snuggle, my touch, giggle time and car rides for long talks to sort things out.
Push/Pull
On one of these car rides, doing some chores with my fourteen year old, I had an agenda. “Sex talk, consent and personal safety.” Destination? CVS. His topic was quite different. “Why do humans fear others that are unlike them? Why target Asians? Haven’t we done enough damage? Jeeze. I hate being a white man. We are the haters. How do I stop this?” How could I say, “sex is like offering a cup of tea” after that? I’d had it planned. So we drove along the shore stopped and watched the birds, waves and surfers. We discussed social equity and human nature, people who do the work, our change heroes. I praised his sense of justice and caring. We ate a scone, had coffee and hot chocolate, his with whipped cream that I dipped a finger for a taste. I told the tea story, a consent analogy.
He has a girlfriend he met in 7th grade. They talk every night. She’s coming to visit for the first time. So far they have seen one another for 15 or 20 minutes at a time, infrequently. But we are vaccinated, immune, and he’s a teenager who needs to socialize, so we agreed. When I asked what they were going to do he had no idea. I suggested a bike ride, a walk, art, cooking, watching a movie. He told me she’d be picked up in five hours. He said she hates hiking, bike riding, and does not like art. What does she like? Games on her phone. He doesn’t know. “She likes me.” Oh, does she now?
No Banana
Sex Education and Health is part of his home-school curriculum. I chose units online and we were to begin next week. But today we’d look at condoms. He’ll think I’m expecting sex during his friend visit. I talk about STDs, how condoms are used for any sexual contact, not only intercourse. I ask him to watch the video on Monday and read some articles and we’d talk afterwards. “You need to be comfortable using condoms so that when you are 20 and want to have intercourse, condoms are already your best friend.” He nods. “These are not for your girlfriend visit. These are for you as we get into our studies, so you are familiar.” OMG. Who am I kidding?
We locate the condoms on the “Feminine-Hygiene-and-Family-Planning” aisle. Neither topic directions for a 14 year old looking for condoms. Another customer stands reading labels, so we make a U-turn. I get some paper products on aisle 7. He goes to the toy aisle. Digging through a rack of stuffed animals with huge eyes, he actually puts one to his cheek, letting me know he adores it. I flap my hand and he puts it down. The student of feminine products has moved on, the aisle clear. Girls are giggling an aisle over. My grandson sneaks along the boxes reading, shaking his head, “ribbed for stimulation, lubricated inside and out, super sensitive, more sensation.” I open a box and look at a packaged condom feel how sticky it might be. It’s blue and slimy. He shakes his head.
“I tried these on a banana once in sixth grade. I don’t know how to choose.” He grabs a 3-pack, no super duper claims, “protection and safety,” cheaper than the others. I stick a tube of lubricant in my bag and he drops in his condoms and we go to check out. He looks back to be sure he doesn’t know the gigglers in the next aisle. He doesn’t.
At the check out counter he plays with a model race car. Seriously. He opens the hood. It’s both childlike and somehow sexual. The cashier, a guy tend years older than my grandson says, “Cool car,” and spins the wheel. Back in our car, I say, “at home you can try one on. May be a tidy way to pleasure yourself.” I said that, I did. “There’s so much we can do on our own. No STDs, no pregnancies.” I said that, too. He looked out the window.
Size matters, Grandma
Would we have done this trip together had it not been for the Pandemic? We stopped to browse at our bookstore afterwards where he found book about being a man in today’s society, about preference, gender, being sexual and kind. That’s how he describes the book. It must be our long-term proximity that accounts for my 14-year old participating so willingly. It’s a result of our familial bonding, or maybe sex is just so damn interesting. I smile as I think about us, a grandma and a teen talking sex, condoms, responsibility and equity. Back home he steps out of his room and says, “These are huge, way too big.” I didn’t think about size. Eee-gads. I send him a website on measuring for a condom, length and girth. “I guess size matters after all, Grandma.” He laughs.
The next day I get some singles, picked up a handful at the grocery store for him to try. Then, I wisely step back, get quiet and stay out of the way. His girlfriend comes tomorrow. I mean visits. UGH. We already had the STD field trip, So I’ll save the video for next week. Is there an age-appropriate field trip for a fourteen and seventy year old on our next topic, “Porn”?
- Mary’s Sweater // March 13, 2021
Extending my imagination to create a world for Jess is a delight, an honor. In Jess Book 1 I celebrate her playful way with words as texture, as scenery dotted with soothing and sometimes jarring rhythms. This is a selection, a writing practice from my journal that I offer to inspire writing for our Jess.
“Mary’s Sweater”
I think of myself as tall like Mary.
Both of us once slim.
I was never as smart or as tender.
She was an artist, painted animals, bones beneath soil, water landscapes and apple blossoms.
Paintings that unearthed stories, told new ones.
Mary was a passionate teacher, a dreamer.
She painted with her heart, understood things, felt them
When I put on her soft woolen sweater, zip it up, snap it closed
I become more tender.
Mary would have required pockets
Big ample pockets for hands and collections
I wore it home from Julie’s who thought it suited me.
It had been in her closet for sometime, since Mary.
Dusty Rose, a color I rarely wear, never.
I wrap myself in it to go to dinner
Below the table I bother with a crusty blemish near the zipper
In the flickering candlelight, it smells of pea soup with hock.
I imagine Mary in deep conversation, sharing pea soup
On the bank of the Thames, a museum reflected in wobbly water.
The museum I missed the time I was in Paris.
Pinching the stain between my fingers, I want it to be chocolate.
Tasting would tell but I mustn’t. Mary would lick her finger.
They’d talk about the ducks floating in the river, pale blue bills
Glowing like paper lanterns, their invisible paddling.
The wind came up the first week I wore it.
I snapped myself into it each morning, wool soft from washing
Poked my hands into the pockets, zipped a twenty into one for shopping
Mary’s would have held her passport, a tissue, and a square-sided coin
Clinking against a periwinkle shell rolled like a croissant, in lavender.
The pocket smells like crumbled rosemary, like Mary’s garden.
Wearing it, I scuff my feet, bend my knees at new angles.
Dip my shoulders one at a time, my hips and legs loose
as if held together by hooks and eyes, the top half of a snap missing
I falter and miss a corner as I round it and bump my arm,
I laugh like Mary, mouth open, head back, lips peeled, teeth dry
I close my eyes as I listen and consider. Mary did that.
“How, Grandma, can we deal with our homeless crisis?”
I answer, seeking my Mary voice, her lips form my words,
snapping and unsnapping the pink dogwood blossom,
dusky carnation sweater made of Mary, I open my mouth.
My granddaughter saw tents along the road, more each day, too many
I answer like Mary in her sweater, hands tracing the coin’s edges
“Today more than ever, buddy-girl we need you,
your imagination and your paying attention to the world.
It’s your heart wisdom that will turn things around,
creativity. You must keep seeing and wondering.”
She puts both hands in my pockets and smiles showing her teeth,
Tosses her head back. I like this soft sweater, the pockets.
I zip it around her, losing her hands inside the sleeves.
It’s Mary’s, who put a baby just this color in a painting
and a swimming green frog.
Come I’ll show it to you.
- Upside Down // March 1, 2021
2/10/21 Reflection
“He lifts himself into an upside down position on the couch, his legs cycling in the air, then stop, bent and relaxed. “I’m getting too long to go upside down on the couch.” His legs flop over the couch back. “But I have to do upside downs or I’ll stress out.”
I set a pillow on the floor next to an empty wall and suggest he try it. “Clean socks please.” I imagine with regular use the painted wall rubbed supporting this sacred place marred by dirty feet could start looking pretty nasty.
Self-aware for an eight year old, I learned from him everyday. Maybe today I’d call him self-absorbed, like myself, who as teenager falling asleep wondering how my hair would look when I got up for school. (fluff compared to his concerns) The first thing I did when I got up was look in the mirror. I wondered what others would see. Not my grandson. He checks in with himself for himself. “Do I need more sleep? Did I sleep well? Am I hurting anywhere? Takes a survey, belly, knees, back, headache?
He sits on the edge of the bed like an old man, readying to stand, readying to approach another day. Then fifteen minutes later, stands up and feels the floor against his bare feet, feels every fiber of the rug, grimaces at the cold bathroom tile. Some days it’s too much sensory input and he pulls his knees up and returns to bed. I call him again, to come downstairs as his breakfast gets cold. Most days.
Something snags his attention, an idea needing a solution. Often an architectural question he’s exploring, an engineering problem sits in the chute and must be solved before his mind can refocus on an any immediate request. Come down to breakfast.
“Your voice scares me. I can’t come down.”
Is he crying?
There’s that, his tenderness. “Honey,” I call up the stairs, ever so sweetly, “breakfast.” Each day I must break through a bubble of thin glass he’s blown around himself. I gently request his attention. “It’s a school day.”
How will this fast paced, loud, time scheduled, chock full of transitions world with more and more expectations embrace this brilliant, sensitive and reactive young man? He deserves a world that opens to him, offers him options. Can we support him, teach him what he must know and listen to what he has to tell us?
Will he thrive?
The world seems unready. He and I work to understand and set the stage, create space, identify the elements of a world that responds, that holds him dear, a world he learns to bear.
This is the world I’ll build for Jess, my fictional character. The world she stumbles through and finds her own way.
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Feb 21, 2021 － As I write my middle grade books, my posts share my thinking, real life and learning.SEO titleTitle Page Separator Site title SlugMeta descriptionAs I write my middle grade books, my posts share my thinking, real life and learning.
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BOOK ONE
When 10-year old Jess learns her mother isn’t coming home for the summer, Jess pretends she has died and digs a grave. Jess search for belonging takes her underground where she joins a community of burrowing animals, and whether real or not they accept her more readily her family above ground.
BOOK TWO
When her mother brings home a woman from the shelter, Jess becomes a homeless advocate to get rid of her. But things get complicated and she befriends the woman’s son, her mother falls in love and she steals a horse. Jess hoped her biggest problem would be being a good friend but now they all have special powers. Or do they?
From My Blog
- WILDCAT // April 12, 2022
Leave Me Alone, age 12 The empty roller bag twists to one side bucking like a resistant toddler demanding a mindful yank to settle it back on two wheels. With one final leg remaining before my return to the comforts of home, I search between the gates for a fresh salad. I haven’t flown in two years and wouldn’t have today, except I had an errand 1200 miles away, a delivery and same day turn around.
American airports reek of coffee, burgers, tacos, cinnamon buns and a stale swirl of garlic from dark corners where crowds gather drinking beers and eating pizza. Upscale dives in small airports, named Joe’s or Mama Mia’s, serve mounds of spaghetti with mixed frozen carrots and peas. Rolling past a restroom where sweaty passengers like walking zombies gulp artificially conditioned air with a twist of hand sanitizer, everyone moves fast here as if late for a flight or in the same race for last overhead slot.
Unable to slip out flow of the crowd to visit the only place with green salads and made to order sandwiches, I twist around, flip a U-turn. Then plopping into a booth seat, my bag seated next to me, I reel, feeling woozy. I haven’t eaten since last night and left the house at 3 am this morning. Maybe I’ll order breakfast, though it’s two in the afternoon. Under the table I drop my shoes onto the sticky floor. My imagination animates the linoleum with hundreds of thousands of germs, spiky Covid balls, so I hover my bare feet until my legs rebel then drop them on top my shoes.
I wonder what my little wildcat is doing? Hope she’s eaten by now. Low blood sugar doesn’t sit well on her. No longer my worry. Let it go. I exhale, channeling the wisdom of a 50-year friend and advisor, “Let her go. They’ll work this out on their own. You did the right thing.”
Did I? No one can know that. This very same friend didn’t want me to rescue my granddaughter as a toddler eleven years ago. Told me to let the system do what its good at, saving children, supporting and strengthening families. In this case, it was my family and I knew better. This family didn’t have it in them, no bones or muscle to build upon, nothing to strengthen. The baby’s father is my oldest and least capable son, and at the time, the baby’s mother was addicted to pain meds. No other family members stepped up. I was it. That’s what I told myself and told my sons, my husband, social services, the lawyer and later, told the child, my granddaughter. She called me Grand-mama, and I called her my little wildcat.
I retired from college teaching to become her mother. To become a healthy, productive and loving adult, like every child needs, a consistent, loving adult, dedicated and adoring. What if the loving adult is consistent and loving but has issues? Like being abandoned shortly after my own birth by my mother? Yep, we’re two insufficiently attached human beings, working to connect, in spite of having two bottomless pits of unmet need. By licking her wounds might I heal my own? That’s what I hoped.
A couple of years later when she was three, postmenopausal for at least five years, I had a full-on menstrual cycle. My doctor laughed, “Incredible.” “One for the books!” “Not surprising at all.” To me it was. I thought I had cancer. “You are nurturing a child. She has your hormones behaving like hormones after childbirth.” We called it our intense bonding experience. When she was six years old, we’d reached our developmental toddlerhood. We behaved like any mother and toddler with daily meltdowns. “No, no, no! Mine!” And that was me! But, seriously, she had meltdowns, too, huge ones and in public, no shyness or pride in that little wildcat, she’d scratch, scream, kick and twist about on the ground after a checker took her apple to weigh it. Then she tossed it across the room after it was handed back. Tantrums look dangerous on a six year old. Healing can re-open wounds. It was loud and bloody and I hated myself for hating her. Not her, her behavior, inappropriately immature at six. But, by then we were all-in, there was no turning back.
What had I done to deserve this? I never asked myself this question, because I’d stepped up, volunteered. I did what good people do, take care of their own. Counseling sessions, swim lessons, daily bike rides, never strapped into a child seat, but zipping along behind me on a scooter or a pedal-less strider bike until she flew past me, then refused to wait for me to catch up. That’s how we remained, her dashing past, never allowing me catch her. She’d noticed I grew slower as I grew older and as she grew older she became a speed demon, a show-off. Whether on a bike, on the water, running, walking or playing cards and at meals, she had to win. My wildcat had to show me how fast she could eat those noodles then how ruthlessly she’d toss the plate in the sink breaking every glass and bowl in the stack. But, most importantly she needed me to stay in the race. I was her person, and her designated loser.
Now, at age 12 and looking more like a woman everyday, she’s winning the race on breast size, hair texture and quality, gorgeousness of skin with feet growing faster than a golden retriever puppy’s. Starting middle school meant leaving our small rural school after nine years with the same kids since preschool to attend a big school with more children she doesn’t know than does. She had a handful of friends in our local school, but some moved others attend a different middle school. Intent on becoming someone new, mountain kids stopped talking to one another. Her version is that she is invisible and no one cares about her anymore. Isolation and disconnection is a common lament for insufficiently attached children. But she was also bucking for change, new social groups and for kids who shared her interests. I watched as she tucked her wildness away, as she grew disinterested in bike riding, running and swimming. She exchanged activity for closing down behaviors like shyness, hesitancy and victimhood.
In woodshop, the class she was so eager to begin that she practiced with tools at home, she begged for help on every assignment. Yet at home she used a belt sander, drill press, chop saw and band saw with confidence She re-built a wagon with wooden sides, a stool and little table. She’d arrived at some kind of crisis point, newly defined herself helpless and frightened and incapable. And with me she hit a barrier, an “I cannot take this anymore” stance. Out of the blue, she screamed, “You always have kept me from my real mother!”
I knew she hated me when she screamed, “I hate you.” Though, she’d said that hundreds of times, but when followed by violent and an outrageous trashing of photo albums, special toys, her doggie bed lamp and tossing her stuffed animals in the trash, I listened with new ears. She cut up her clothes and pulled childhood art off the walls. Maybe this how a wildcat does a hormone-infused developmental shift.
She hadn’t seen her mother since she was three years old for an hour visit on her driveway. Of course, I expected it would come up one day and now she’s all she’ll talk about. Revisiting her longing, her incompleteness in regular intervals, she re-stimulates my own deep seeded loss from way back. This time is different, more serious for both of us. Am I keeping her from her mother? Like a kidnapper? “You can’t really want to leave our home, me and your family to live with a mother you don’t know.” “Yes,” she said, “I do.”
She doesn’t know you either, I thought, but didn’t say. It turns out that her mother was waiting, hoping this day would come. She’d imagined this scene, “I’ll have my baby in my arms again.” She cried for joy at the thought. I imagined it differently.
Several states away, in a mobile home, 1200 miles from my granddaughter’s always- home, her mother lives alone and works nights as a dispatcher. “It’s time we get to know one another,” her small image nods on Facetime. “Please, Grandma,” they both begged.
I lived with my great aunt until I was five when my mother married and took me back. We moved 400 miles away and I didn’t see the person I’d believed to be my mother, actually my great aunt, except at Christmas and Easter. I didn’t remember living her for five years. Be it trauma or the workings of the mind of a young child, I lost those years. Though in photo albums I saw the three of us around the Christmas tree, riding my first tricycle and in visits from family that included my young birthmother. It wasn’t until age 30 that I got the whole story from my maternal grandmother. How could I not have known? Yet, there was a re-occurring nightmare of me slapping a hollow blue door, screaming, “Let me out” until I collapsed. Many of the puzzle pieces of my early life are still missing and I suppose I suffer some emotional wounds. The trauma of losing a mother as an infant, then losing her substitute at age five, is likely well-researched cause for concern. I have read about the trauma of loss and the disorders associated with insecure, insufficient and lack of attachment. They are better understood now than they were during my childhood. My family in the fifties wouldn’t have taken anything seriously enough to send me off to counseling. But, I’m okay. I survived my mother’s multiple marriages and divorces, violence, abuse, neglect and survived my working class upbringing. It’s likely that my mother and I never forged an attached familial bond, but she remains a consistent figure in my life, gave me a sister and two brothers and today, in her nineties, lives a few miles from my home. Growing up I may have handled life’s challenges less capably than well-adjusted friends, but I learned by watching, listening and storytelling, also called misrepresenting, lying and sneaky misbehavior.
I loved school and got my first job at age 12. I was determined to be independent, to make it on my own one day and not have a baby before 30. Then life being what happens while you’re off making plans, during college at age 19, I got pregnant. But, with no hesitancy and a clear sense of the future, I had and abortion, and did not become a parent until years later, at age 30, when I deemed myself ready.
My 12-year-old granddaughter has a chance. She has a chance to re-connect with the mother she lost, to sufficiently attach. There’s no guarantee, of course that either of them are up to the task that my mother and I managed to avoid. But, I have a husband, two sons and had a long and fulfilling career as a teacher. I am healthy, well and mostly just fine. My mother and I didn’t find the glue to cement our broken bond. My granddaughter and her mother may not either. But staying, hanging in there, counts. Being there through meltdowns, fights, challenging behavior, lies, tears, fears and confusions bonds us to those who stick around, stand up for us from time to time. Of course, not everything goes as well as we hope or have planned, especially when it comes to our expectations of others. Traits associated with executive function, self-regulation, resilience and self-awareness can lead to confidence and wholeness.
I flip over in bed, reposition my pillow and sleep fitfully for days after I left my wildcat with her mother. I feel as empty as the roller bag I returned home with, the one that once bulged with my big-girl wildcat’s softest and warmest bedding, books, drawing materials, a supply of vitamins and boxes of favorite snacks. She packed her own bag with clothes that currently fit, a few in the next sizes and new warm boots, gloves and a beanie. She’s visited snow but never lived in it. Now it’s time for both of us to practice letting go. I imagine her doing it more readily than I do.
As I shove the empty roller bag, now a huge wrinkled prune, into the closet, I remember a surprise I tucked deep inside, marked “Do not open until your first period,” a kit supplied with hygiene necessaries, samples and choices, a few special pairs of panties like old fashioned toddler training pants, a book about periods, suggestions for celebrations and rituals to do with Mom and girlfriends and a party kit with whistles and streamers to welcome her to womanhood. I’d been ready for this event, her significant moment and imagined sharing it with her since shortly after that day at 15 months old when I sang and rocked her to sleep after she cried herself into a puddle at the patio doors the day her mother left.
I generously offer this this small gift to her reclaimed mother, a special moment to share with our Wildcat as she manifests the Lioness that must surely dwell within. Best to you, Wildcat and your mother.
- Road Trip // April 17, 2021
Road Trip, re-do
In the backseat my grandchildren have disappeared. After two hours in the desert, Mojave then Death Valley, they aren’t looking out the window anymore calling attention to cactus or skinny coyotes on the horizon. It’s quiet in the backseat. At 11 and 14 years of age, a year of zoom and virtual school behind them, screens, texting and learning to attend with the washing machine cycling, pots and pans banging in the sink and Grandpa’s news blaring on the TV, they have learned to ignore what’s around them. But, we are on a car trip, dang it. Oh, well, they aren’t fighting. No line drawn down the middle of the backseat, slapping at one another or grumbling arguments. They are at peace, using their phones. There’s no wifi or cell service. So what can they doing with devices? Hers is an old phone, never had service. She’s in elementary school. We have a phone on our kitchen counter if she wants to call someone. When she goes to school in town, off the mountain, next school year we will get her a real phone. Logistics made simpler. She’ll be 12. Do kids start kissing at 12? On my mind these days, pubescent teens.
Stopping for a photo that looks like a sister in brother’s shadow, after some secret insult.
Big brother, little sister He’s got his camera, a home built robot car he coded and had perform everywhere we went. Like a Mars Rover it rumbled around the desert. The car takes the place of a stuffed animal. This is the first trip he’s made without one. I had to sift through her pack and remove several stuffies, made her choose just one. The car was packed to the roof. He slept on a sleeping bag on the floor of our room to avoid either his sister while asleep or Grandpa’s contact and my snores. Seems about right for his age, desirous of touch and squeamish at the same time.
Quite a Year
A month back we finished our Covid vaccines, had to get out of the house, do the trip we missed last March when over 60’s were asked to stay home. The road trip coincides with school opening so Liza will miss her first day in 6th grade. A First Day in April! What a year. She’ll go next week a couple of days and everyday the following week until the end of May. Ryan is homeschooling, thriving, taking a break from anxiety and the push of middle school. He came in first in the county science fair and was interviewed by judges at the state science and engineering fair this week. Has time to pursue his interests, go deep. He’ll try the local high school in the fall, where his dad, grandfather, great grandmother and grandfather all went to school. Go, Santa Cruz Cardinals! We’ll see.
Photographers
We all like animals, call out, “Lizard, whip tail? Its tail is longer than its body.” “Snake.” “Elk, prong horns, wild donkeys!” “Are donkeys and burros the same thing?” “Burros speak Spanish.” I loved the chuckwallas, to say the name a treat. Spiny Lizards reminding me of “Horny Toads” when I was young in San Fernando Valley.
Chuckwalla Spiny Lizard We all like taking pictures. Most of Liza’s selfies and Orion’s, long-studies before each shot. I rarely appear. Glen waits impatiently for the next sighting preferring the pure experience over documenting it.
Jess’ Grandma
We feel like a family. I sometimes say “Mom” when referring to myself. Because I am every single day. I didn’t capture this in Jess’ story. Her grandma isn’t her mother. She seems to hold her role precious, that of Grandma, or maybe is too tired of all the shenanigans to add to her workload. In fiction you can make different choices.
Jess, Book Two
I establish Jess and her acquired friends as each holding magical powers. I want them to become a team for Book Three and “save the day.” Taking a writing break to travel has me considering the pacing of the story, the way the magical powers take time to discover and use. I wonder if I am moving along too slowly as the emotional story takes hold. The character develops, changes and also acquires more abilities.
Do I show how confused she is?
Or shall I have her “grab and go” with her new magical abilities?
When I return home I have to get at those gophers that are ruining my orchard, nibbling away at roots passing through the original root baskets. They have been somewhat effective for over 10 years. The trees have grown slowly, leaves are limp and flowers have fallen off. Getting fruit to the kitchen is a battle every season. Now I carry Jess in my heart. Think of her tending to mole’s wound, mourning the losses and destroying Salvador’s traps. As I set another version of gopher trap, a spring loaded snare, she’s here. I know it horrible, killing them, but “have a heart” traps only make them suffer and die in the heat of a black plastic box after they enter. I don’t tend to the far gardens and orchard everyday. So they die suffering. I wish the owls and our local red shouldered hawk would eat more gophers. That takes me out of the picture. Sorry, Jess.
Jess digs a pit. Revise
I hope our readers are as attached to Jess as I am. But will they tolerate another family problem as the magic brewing underground goes untapped chapter after chapter? I brought it up often enough that I know what I must do. I’ll pick Book 2’s draft apart and reassemble it, sprinkling in magic from the first paragraph on, let it build.
- Creating the World // March 25, 2021
“Some days I just need to get quiet and stay out of the way.” from Courtney Martin’s blog, an interview with Liz Powell, palliative care nurse
Orion and Shelby, age 3 Some days I long to disappear. Instead of turning left and heading to New Leaf grocery store then driving through Lulu’s Coffee for an Africano to sip through a slit in the lid while driving, I’ll turn right. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll head north on Highway 1 and make my way an hour and a half north to San Francisco. I’ll stop for lunch, look in shop windows, get a haircut, drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, my short absence is a welcomed relief for all of us.
You likely know by now that I live with my grandchildren. Actually, two of my grandchildren live with me, here in my house, in our house, the retirement home my husband and I remodeled for the two of us to live out our final days. We have plenty of those ahead. We are in our seventies. We have been inside this lovely home ALL FKN YEAR. We live in the forest with two children, Grandpa, a non-shedding dog, five chickens, an outdoor cat, with birdbaths and bird feeders to fill, branches to drag and gardens to tend. The children’s Dad lives alone next door. ALONE. My daily life is consumed with activities toward nurturing four living beings, collecting eggs, sprouting seeds and asking the others to help me.
Pandemic Proximity Bonding
With social isolation during this Pandemic year the compressed nature of our household relationships includes less talk. We ask questions that no longer get answered. Want to make buttermilk biscuits for dinner, turn the compost, check the worm bin, feed the chickens, gather eggs, fill the feeders with seeds or check the dog for ticks? Want to help make dinner? Make it on your own? The kids are now eleven and fourteen, teenagers with budding breasts, size eleven hiking boots and eyes that roll, shoulders that tense and hands that dig fingernail moons into their palms. They tell dirty jokes, keep secrets and eat a lot. They wear the answers to my questions on their faces. My granddaughter typically wears “No.” My fourteen-year-old grandson dons a “yes” but doesn’t really mean it. I notice his hands, the pause in his step, the way he glances at his feet hiding his real feelings, keeping peace.
This year we have become experts at reading one another. We display moods with eyebrows, stiffened toes, fingers and a twirl of our hair. We fling hands to feign disbelief, laugh in disgust, slam the door, stomp a foot, shed tears, chortle out the side of our mouths and stifle giggles. Like a mother watching her infant sleep, keenly aware of every twitch, fisted hand, eye flick or purse of lips, we know one another. Oh I remember those creased puffy legs, knees to chest, pedaling feet, soft, pillowed toes. So sweet. Each dimple alive with meaning. Attention is the language of survival, reciprocity and love. Living close, cave-dwellers, sharing air, counter space, food, odors, music, temperature and energy all day long, week after week and month after month. We no longer require words. Like a murmur of birds’ in an un-choreographed sky ballet, we feel our way through the dance of each day, each of us an attentive parent.
I understand that teens need us to back off, to leave them be as they strive for independence. They push us away. But they want us to pull them close and squeeze them, too. It’s a time I remember. The way it felt, I felt. Confused. Teens circle, like a cat finding a spot of sun, flop on their beds, to think, imagine, fret and touch themselves. Privacy. My two make decisions everyday about the amount of school work they do, how much game time, which friends to call, side chats to engage in as the teacher plays a booming rendition of the War of 1812 during a lesson about U.S. History. Teens make their own decisions, but like all developmental shifts, they are not yet good at it. Who is? One foot planted on home plate, they dare take off. The young child still hovers inside, fingers twitching as they feel the blanket silk at their feet during the first of six zooms of the day, a stuffy perched next to the 11-year-old’s computer screen, she holds up to the screen. They demand to be left alone and need for a snuggle, my touch, giggle time and car rides for long talks to sort things out.
Push/Pull
On one of these car rides, doing some chores with my fourteen year old, I had an agenda. “Sex talk, consent and personal safety.” Destination? CVS. His topic was quite different. “Why do humans fear others that are unlike them? Why target Asians? Haven’t we done enough damage? Jeeze. I hate being a white man. We are the haters. How do I stop this?” How could I say, “sex is like offering a cup of tea” after that? I’d had it planned. So we drove along the shore stopped and watched the birds, waves and surfers. We discussed social equity and human nature, people who do the work, our change heroes. I praised his sense of justice and caring. We ate a scone, had coffee and hot chocolate, his with whipped cream that I dipped a finger for a taste. I told the tea story, a consent analogy.
He has a girlfriend he met in 7th grade. They talk every night. She’s coming to visit for the first time. So far they have seen one another for 15 or 20 minutes at a time, infrequently. But we are vaccinated, immune, and he’s a teenager who needs to socialize, so we agreed. When I asked what they were going to do he had no idea. I suggested a bike ride, a walk, art, cooking, watching a movie. He told me she’d be picked up in five hours. He said she hates hiking, bike riding, and does not like art. What does she like? Games on her phone. He doesn’t know. “She likes me.” Oh, does she now?
No Banana
Sex Education and Health is part of his home-school curriculum. I chose units online and we were to begin next week. But today we’d look at condoms. He’ll think I’m expecting sex during his friend visit. I talk about STDs, how condoms are used for any sexual contact, not only intercourse. I ask him to watch the video on Monday and read some articles and we’d talk afterwards. “You need to be comfortable using condoms so that when you are 20 and want to have intercourse, condoms are already your best friend.” He nods. “These are not for your girlfriend visit. These are for you as we get into our studies, so you are familiar.” OMG. Who am I kidding?
We locate the condoms on the “Feminine-Hygiene-and-Family-Planning” aisle. Neither topic directions for a 14 year old looking for condoms. Another customer stands reading labels, so we make a U-turn. I get some paper products on aisle 7. He goes to the toy aisle. Digging through a rack of stuffed animals with huge eyes, he actually puts one to his cheek, letting me know he adores it. I flap my hand and he puts it down. The student of feminine products has moved on, the aisle clear. Girls are giggling an aisle over. My grandson sneaks along the boxes reading, shaking his head, “ribbed for stimulation, lubricated inside and out, super sensitive, more sensation.” I open a box and look at a packaged condom feel how sticky it might be. It’s blue and slimy. He shakes his head.
“I tried these on a banana once in sixth grade. I don’t know how to choose.” He grabs a 3-pack, no super duper claims, “protection and safety,” cheaper than the others. I stick a tube of lubricant in my bag and he drops in his condoms and we go to check out. He looks back to be sure he doesn’t know the gigglers in the next aisle. He doesn’t.
At the check out counter he plays with a model race car. Seriously. He opens the hood. It’s both childlike and somehow sexual. The cashier, a guy tend years older than my grandson says, “Cool car,” and spins the wheel. Back in our car, I say, “at home you can try one on. May be a tidy way to pleasure yourself.” I said that, I did. “There’s so much we can do on our own. No STDs, no pregnancies.” I said that, too. He looked out the window.
Size matters, Grandma
Would we have done this trip together had it not been for the Pandemic? We stopped to browse at our bookstore afterwards where he found book about being a man in today’s society, about preference, gender, being sexual and kind. That’s how he describes the book. It must be our long-term proximity that accounts for my 14-year old participating so willingly. It’s a result of our familial bonding, or maybe sex is just so damn interesting. I smile as I think about us, a grandma and a teen talking sex, condoms, responsibility and equity. Back home he steps out of his room and says, “These are huge, way too big.” I didn’t think about size. Eee-gads. I send him a website on measuring for a condom, length and girth. “I guess size matters after all, Grandma.” He laughs.
The next day I get some singles, picked up a handful at the grocery store for him to try. Then, I wisely step back, get quiet and stay out of the way. His girlfriend comes tomorrow. I mean visits. UGH. We already had the STD field trip, So I’ll save the video for next week. Is there an age-appropriate field trip for a fourteen and seventy year old on our next topic, “Porn”?
- Mary’s Sweater // March 13, 2021
Extending my imagination to create a world for Jess is a delight, an honor. In Jess Book 1 I celebrate her playful way with words as texture, as scenery dotted with soothing and sometimes jarring rhythms. This is a selection, a writing practice from my journal that I offer to inspire writing for our Jess.
“Mary’s Sweater”
I think of myself as tall like Mary.
Both of us once slim.
I was never as smart or as tender.
She was an artist, painted animals, bones beneath soil, water landscapes and apple blossoms.
Paintings that unearthed stories, told new ones.
Mary was a passionate teacher, a dreamer.
She painted with her heart, understood things, felt them
When I put on her soft woolen sweater, zip it up, snap it closed
I become more tender.
Mary would have required pockets
Big ample pockets for hands and collections
I wore it home from Julie’s who thought it suited me.
It had been in her closet for sometime, since Mary.
Dusty Rose, a color I rarely wear, never.
I wrap myself in it to go to dinner
Below the table I bother with a crusty blemish near the zipper
In the flickering candlelight, it smells of pea soup with hock.
I imagine Mary in deep conversation, sharing pea soup
On the bank of the Thames, a museum reflected in wobbly water.
The museum I missed the time I was in Paris.
Pinching the stain between my fingers, I want it to be chocolate.
Tasting would tell but I mustn’t. Mary would lick her finger.
They’d talk about the ducks floating in the river, pale blue bills
Glowing like paper lanterns, their invisible paddling.
The wind came up the first week I wore it.
I snapped myself into it each morning, wool soft from washing
Poked my hands into the pockets, zipped a twenty into one for shopping
Mary’s would have held her passport, a tissue, and a square-sided coin
Clinking against a periwinkle shell rolled like a croissant, in lavender.
The pocket smells like crumbled rosemary, like Mary’s garden.
Wearing it, I scuff my feet, bend my knees at new angles.
Dip my shoulders one at a time, my hips and legs loose
as if held together by hooks and eyes, the top half of a snap missing
I falter and miss a corner as I round it and bump my arm,
I laugh like Mary, mouth open, head back, lips peeled, teeth dry
I close my eyes as I listen and consider. Mary did that.
“How, Grandma, can we deal with our homeless crisis?”
I answer, seeking my Mary voice, her lips form my words,
snapping and unsnapping the pink dogwood blossom,
dusky carnation sweater made of Mary, I open my mouth.
My granddaughter saw tents along the road, more each day, too many
I answer like Mary in her sweater, hands tracing the coin’s edges
“Today more than ever, buddy-girl we need you,
your imagination and your paying attention to the world.
It’s your heart wisdom that will turn things around,
creativity. You must keep seeing and wondering.”
She puts both hands in my pockets and smiles showing her teeth,
Tosses her head back. I like this soft sweater, the pockets.
I zip it around her, losing her hands inside the sleeves.
It’s Mary’s, who put a baby just this color in a painting
and a swimming green frog.
Come I’ll show it to you.
- Upside Down // March 1, 2021
2/10/21 Reflection
“He lifts himself into an upside down position on the couch, his legs cycling in the air, then stop, bent and relaxed. “I’m getting too long to go upside down on the couch.” His legs flop over the couch back. “But I have to do upside downs or I’ll stress out.”
I set a pillow on the floor next to an empty wall and suggest he try it. “Clean socks please.” I imagine with regular use the painted wall rubbed supporting this sacred place marred by dirty feet could start looking pretty nasty.
Self-aware for an eight year old, I learned from him everyday. Maybe today I’d call him self-absorbed, like myself, who as teenager falling asleep wondering how my hair would look when I got up for school. (fluff compared to his concerns) The first thing I did when I got up was look in the mirror. I wondered what others would see. Not my grandson. He checks in with himself for himself. “Do I need more sleep? Did I sleep well? Am I hurting anywhere? Takes a survey, belly, knees, back, headache?
He sits on the edge of the bed like an old man, readying to stand, readying to approach another day. Then fifteen minutes later, stands up and feels the floor against his bare feet, feels every fiber of the rug, grimaces at the cold bathroom tile. Some days it’s too much sensory input and he pulls his knees up and returns to bed. I call him again, to come downstairs as his breakfast gets cold. Most days.
Something snags his attention, an idea needing a solution. Often an architectural question he’s exploring, an engineering problem sits in the chute and must be solved before his mind can refocus on an any immediate request. Come down to breakfast.
“Your voice scares me. I can’t come down.”
Is he crying?
There’s that, his tenderness. “Honey,” I call up the stairs, ever so sweetly, “breakfast.” Each day I must break through a bubble of thin glass he’s blown around himself. I gently request his attention. “It’s a school day.”
How will this fast paced, loud, time scheduled, chock full of transitions world with more and more expectations embrace this brilliant, sensitive and reactive young man? He deserves a world that opens to him, offers him options. Can we support him, teach him what he must know and listen to what he has to tell us?
Will he thrive?
The world seems unready. He and I work to understand and set the stage, create space, identify the elements of a world that responds, that holds him dear, a world he learns to bear.
This is the world I’ll build for Jess, my fictional character. The world she stumbles through and finds her own way.