A Superior Day

          Yesterday, we had a Snider family gathering. The day produced the first break from the oppressive heat we've had the last couple of weeks, with a plunge in temperatures to a nearly chilly 82 degrees, the kind of late summer day when I used to love to go to my boys' fall ball baseball games, where the idea was simply to play ball. It was there I had my first introduction to Jimmy Kidwell and his sidekick, Jason, who split their kneehighs and thus had matching socks, and who were the Laurel and Hardy of the team. When Jason's slide brought him up short of second and he scrambled on his belly the rest of the way like an elephant seal who'd missed the wave out, our reaction was laughter, not a desperate intake of breath to see if he'd beat the ball. During fall ball, I dozed in my low-slung lawn chair, feeling utterly one with the sun, earth, and humanity. 

          And I got close to that yesterday, too. Doug's brother, Steve, and his fiancee, Dee, had asked us to join them at Aunt Louise's in Hanford. Aunt Louise is Doug and Steve's closest living relative from prior generations, though they share no blood. The Snider family makes up in complexity what it lacks in numbers, and we spent part of lunch listening attentively as Doug explained some of the ties to us, again, he being the only one who has mastered the relationships. Doug and Steve's mother, Jannelle, moved in with her aunt when she was about ten, after her own mother died. Her brother, Jack, was raised by another family member. Their dad remarried and moved to Canada, and his son from that marriage would marry a lady named Colleen (hold on: this is important). 

           Aunt Louise is from Hot Springs, Georgia, and it was there she met Doug and Steve's Uncle Jack, and not too long after, married and moved to the West Coast with him. You might say she was (and is) smitten. I've also adopted Aunt Louise, as my resident mom. Like my own mom, she is spunky, bright, adventurous, lively, kind, and independent. When Louise and Mom met last Thanksgiving, they soon discovered, among other things, that their husbands had served with the Army in some of the same locations during World War II, and who knows, perhaps they'd been acquainted. Uncle Jack and my dad, Harp, both passed away in 2002. 

           Colleen and Louise are traveling to Europe together next spring, where Louise's daughter, Joan, and her family have lived and worked for years. Doug met Colleen not too long ago, when he discovered she lives in a small town near Bellingham, where he owns a home. Colleen is Doug's half-aunt-in-law and Louise's half-cousin-in-law. It's fun to unweave the threads of relationship, a little more complicated than second-cousins-twice-removed. What's more important, though, are the bonds. 

           When I first met Dee (Steve's fiancee, in case you've forgotten) I was alarmed by my reaction, and figured I'd better admit to it: I had an immediate and near visceral dislike of her. In my defense, I think maybe I felt protective of Steve, who's former wife announced to him over dinner, as they celebrated her (finally, after ten years in this country) getting her U.S. citizenship, that she wanted him to move out. That didn't make us any fonder of Dolores. I suspect, however, that what really lay at the basis of my reaction to Dee was that she was taking over my spot on the back of Steve's motorcycle. This is in no way petty: not everyone gets to ride with a national motorcycle racing champion who once had ladies from Fresno to Juneau swooning over him and his two motorcycle-riding Italian compatriots, until his limited Italian vocabulary ran out and his cover was blown. 

           It was and is clear that Dee and Steve care for each other, wounds and warts and all, just like the rest of us who muddle along wanting to care and be cared for, and that I'd better decide to like her, which, I must peevishly confess, isn't so hard at all. So, there we were at Appleby's, utterly freezing, as apparently their AC was still set for 106-degree weather, and enjoying the variety of conversations that rolled around the table, sometimes three or four at a time, and sometimes one. Doug easily won the brotherly competition by whipping his VISA out of his wallet and giving it to the waitress before we ordered--she thanked Doug and told us to take our time with lunch, as she was going out to buy the new lawnmower she needed. 

           After a leisurely lunch, Steve suggested dessert at Superior Dairy. I have known about Superior for years, but this was to be my first visit, and I was regretting having succumbed to taste-testing, the night before, the rocky road ice cream I'd bought for Doug. My own adopted daughter, Lori, and her friends and their kids have jumped on Amtrak in Fresno for an outing to Hanford at Superior and Courthouse Park, and as we drove around to the backside of the park, I looked for the fountain where Lori had taken the picture of Josie and Becca, butts up. It looked much smaller than I'd imagined and wasn't center stage, but I quickly put aside my disappointment. 

           I was horrified--or perhaps scared--as we entered Superior. The amounts of ice cream and size of sundaes were ludicrous, purely American, a shining example of why we are so obese. No way was I going to blow my weight-loss-producing new lifestyle. I ordered a single (not scoop, just single: this is important, too), which is expensive. But this is supposed to be amazing ice cream. My single arrived: five generous scoops of an odd shade of brownish-gray rocky road in a glass bowl. Aunt Louise's double arrived: the loveliest pink strawberry mounded on top of a sturdy base of rocky road. Others had eight-inch high sundaes. I disdainfully pronounced the serving sizes ludicrous. 

           Not long after, I'd worked my way through a good third of the most amazing tasting ice cream I truly have ever eaten--Baskin Robbins, Ben and Jerry's, Hagen Daz are no contest--and commented that this ice cream produces no ice cream headache. Steve's twenty-year-old son Gregory, who was sharing a banana split with his cousin, Katie, Doug's twenty-four-year-old daughter, said he'd taken so much ibuprofen that morning that he wouldn't know. Doug said his headache wouldn't get in the way, and Katie was smiling beatifically, despite hers. 

           Shortly, Doug had finished his hot fudge sundae with extra hot fudge and was very content, Aunt Louise had nearly worked her way through the strawberry, Katie had left Gregory to finish off their split, and Steve and Dee had given up and gone out for a walk. I had literally put down my spoon maybe once. I could not stop eating. I don't know what someone could have told me to make me put down my spoon. I ate the entire five-scoop single and probably would have licked the bowl if I'd been alone at home. I didn't feel grossly stuffed, but rather like I'd experienced Oz or Willie Wonka's chocolate factory or Mrs. Corry's magic sweet shop in Mary Poppins or just plain old Nirvana or Valhalla. 

           Time passing as it does, I haven't been to a fall ball game in eight years or so. I'll never get to eat at the Imperial Palace, the other renowned Hanford spot, as it went out of business before I made a point of it. Doug, Steve, Dee, and I have all been married and divorced at least once, and so our kids, too, have less than simple family trees. But on a perfect fall day, we froze and conversed and ate the world's best ice cream, and a passerby took pictures with the camera Dee had brought to record the gathering. We hugged and kissed all around and looked in each others' hearts and felt a little closer and a little more blessed than we already were and smiled as we drove home to our valley towns, commenting softly, like the perfect soft fall sun, about what a superior time it had been.

Helen

          Between blogs, I await inspiration. It comes like spitting rain (a new term Andrew and Emily have learned in their first year in Albany, NY, where it is included in the "potpourri of moisture" the local weatherman refers to)--not enough to do anything with. Originally, I wanted my blog to serve as a place to actually do some decent writing, without the exigencies of submission and rejection; of trying to identify a publication's style, audience, and preferred content; of following the submission guidelines perfectly; of writing the hook that will get an editor's attention--all in the attempt to break into the amorphous world of being published. 

           When I was in the MFA Creative Writing program, the professor of creative nonfiction termed my rewrite of one of my pieces suitable for a travel magazine, although she did say it had excellent descriptions and tangible characters. Her disdain was obvious. But I thought What's wrong with writing for publications read by millions? It held a lot more appeal than the literary journals so fawned over by "real" writers, and read only by few people. Okay, I'd probably like to be published there, too, and I celebrate every announcement on the MFA list.serv of a work accepted for publication in a literary journal, a prize won, a nomination for a well-known award.

           They say that once you start to make your name, the publishing world is somewhat yours, but meanwhile, the time it takes to submit compared to the time spent actually writing seems so lopsided, and the whole submission game is so annoying. Would I play it if I did have the time? Would I give up a lot of other activities now in order to have the time? I do think I still would like to publish a children's or young adult book someday. Meanwhile, I haven't blogged/written a thing, lacking the appropriate quantity of inspiration that will make me put everything else aside. Instead, I've found myself writing long comments on other people's blogs, thinking I should blog this topic. Thinking Okay, it's true, I really am not a writer, whatever that is. But, thoughts do go through my head, and I do want to share them with others. 

          So, I'm going to be like other bloggers I know and love who have no more time than I do and sometimes write incredibly literary and munchable blogs and others just plain old fun and interesting blogs, but who are out there blogging! So, here goes with some random thoughts... 

           A few weeks ago, my mom decided one morning to pop lots of ibuprofen and get out on the golf course. She's been a long time recuperating from a rather massive foot infection and subsequent surgery and trying to alleviate a low back issue. Our bodies just don't cooperate as much as we'd like as we get older. What is the definition of older, anyway? I laugh but curse the fact that no longer is bending over a simple matter but rather a five- or six-step procedure in each direction, down and up. And up doesn't always end up back where it was. So, Mom and ibuprofen golfed 9 holes and shot a 60, something some of us could never do--even if we did want to golf. Yesterday Mom said she'd played 18 holes this week and shot 120, adding that the first time she ever played 18 holes of golf, 30-plus years ago, she shot over 170. She added that she's feeling better than she has in a long time and is now getting up again at 6 or 7. Her rheumatologist said her body has needed a long time to heal from the foot problem and that she shouldn't even consider back surgery. That pronouncement seemed to help set Mom free, to allow her to to golf in spite of her back.

          I'm guessing the process of losing her mate, my dad, over six years ago now, after sixty years married and a life-long acquaintance, has also required a good deal of adjustment. Mom turned 89 this year. And in spite of all our history and all annoyances she causes me (not deliberately) and I have (deliberately as a teen, I'm sure) and do (hopefully not deliberately) cause her, and all the negative qualities I possess that I swear came genetically from her; despite that she drives me crazy at times (and I do her, I rather suspect), I want to be just like her when I am her age. I want to be stubborn and determined and independent. I want to pop as much ibuprofen as I need to, to hike up the mountain. I want to still read and write and discuss and make new friends and live in my own home and be adaptable and love and accept my kids and grandkids no matter what they do that I may not understand. I want to have a family reunion of four generations and be the oldest there and just as lively as everyone else (and hopefully, my four kids, rather than being together on the other side of the country, will be able to be together with us). I want to be humble and grateful and learn to accept help from those around me who so value my being in their lives that they don't think doing something for me means going out of their way. I want to have loved my mate so much that his absence from my life, if he dies before me, truly hurts, but put one foot in front of the other every day anyway, until one day, carrying on actually becomes, if not less painful, easier. 

           For a long time since Dad died, I've been angry at Mom. The differences and idiosyncracies of my siblings and I seemed more salient than ever, and once the memorials were over, we became even less communicative. Dad's ashes sat in a cardboard box in Mom's closet for months. More than ever, we seemed incapable of finding a time we could all get together. I wanted Mom to take over the family, to be our mother. Intellecutally, I knew her grieving would last a long time, but I wanted her to be the center of attention, leading the charge, as Dad had been. After all, Dad would sometimes get us together by saying Your mother would like you to.... 

          The day of Dad's first memorial service, I crawled in bed with Mom and told her I didn't want Dad to be dead. But she needed me as much as I needed her, and I couldn't be the child I wanted to be at that moment. I wanted Mom to show all her grief so I'd know which stage she was in. I wanted it to be as simple as the books can make it sound. I decided that because I had been pretty sure, on the last time I'd seen Dad alive, a little over two months before he died, that his body was giving out, getting through the grief was easier for me. At least, it must be, because I rarely cried or missed him after the memorials. 

         Mom didn't do anything you hear of people doing or that we sometimes thought she should do. We all "knew" she should wait a year to make a decision, but then we were ready for her to sell her house and move closer to her family. Sure, who would want to leave the 270-degree view of the Pacific that she has from her house, but, logically, staying didn't make total sense. But you can't have it both ways: it wasn't logical for me to say Mom should do this, while simultaneously admiring her courage and tenacity and vowing I want to be the same when I'm her age. 

          Mom grieved in her own way, which I sincerely doubt she had planned out, and which is the only way any of us can. She dealt with the blows, big and small, as they came, as we all do. I've been divorced over eight years from someone I spent only a quarter century with, not nearly the longevity Mom and Dad had, yet just last week, when we visited Stephen at his dad's, an incredible anger and revengefulness rose in me when I saw two pieces of my mother-in-law's furniture that I had especially loved. Grief isn't an emotion to be messed with. 

           When my siblings had both left home, I complained that I was stuck with our parents for two years by myself. I suspect that is not nearly as challenging as being the first-born with two novice parents. I had center stage and I suppose didn't always know what to do with it. But I also had hours of time with each of them individually, as Dad got up daily at 5:00 a.m. to drive me forty miles round trip for swimming practice, and Mom and I drove twenty miles home together daily, after my second practice of the day and her day at library grad school. Even if I can't quatify what we learned and tucked away about each other, I know a great deal of who I am came from those times I had with my parents. 

           The shadow of grief in and around Mom has become almost transparent. Over the last few months, she has been an incredible mother to me, and it is a case of be careful what you ask for: I am so grateful for her ear and wisdom, yet feel so silly for needing this at my age. I try to offer her what I have learned, too. We talk about womanly things that I don't remember ever talking with her about before, but even if we had, I probably would not have been ready to discuss such things with my mother. Mom enjoys life more again, it seems. It is not a burden she must endure because Dad would want her to go on. (When Dad was in the hospital in the induced coma designed to give his body a chance to rally, we'd laugh that if he awoke and saw us all standing around his bed, he'd chastise us for standing around doing nothing.) She has more joy in life again. She has uncapped her emotions, no longer afraid that they will demolish her. When my niece Lesley's baby was overdue, Mom agonized until Maizey was born and everyone was pronounced healthy. She acknowledges she doesn't like to drive far and willingly rides with others. She revels in waking early in the day again. When I called her after my first week of school, feeling guilty that I hadn't spoken with her in over a week, she immediately asked how the week had gone. 

           And I find myself missing Dad. Is it coincidental that my grief for him seems to be resurfacing? Is it that, as I've thought, I needed my energy to take care of Mom? Is it that I needed my energy for the grief left from divorce and caring for my children in the aftermath? Is it that I was too focused on meeting men and proving that I am lovable? Is it that, like those I accuse of the same, I don't want to deal with deep emotion? To a degree at least, Mom's rebalance sets me free to grieve for Dad, but I suspect that is only a small part of the picture. I do wish that I lived closer than a six-hour drive to Mom. But the distance does force me to spend more than a few hours with her. In July, I spent a week, a week I needed to be home with my mom. I'd like to think that I would have stayed that long even if Stephen didn't also live in the vicinity, but we both relished our time with him. 

          By letting me be her child, her adult daughter, mother to her grandchildren, and friend, by offering her ear and her honesty, Mom helped me heal my own wounds and sort through my own confusion. My mom is a genuis, beautiful, strong, drifty, stubborn, talented, a leader, a great friend, adventurous, rebellious, illogical, determined, intellectual, Harps' wife, Mom, Grandma, Aunt, Great-Aunt, Great-Grandma, sister, daughter, a politician, authentic, an activist, one of the first officers in the Women's Army Corps, principled.   

          "Helen," from the Greek, means "sun ray, shining light." Mom is both. It wasn't just hiking to Eagle Lake in Mineral King a few weeks ago, experiencing the High Sierra Trail through Doug's pictures of his trek with his son and buddies, and the sale at REI that inspired me to buy a new backpack last week so that I can spend the night on top of the mountains next year. As much as anything, it was the light that Helen shines in my life. 

            And I hope and think starting a new Anne Lamott book this week has rubbed off on my writing.

Wildflower Lessons

          My older son, Andrew, and I spent last Wednesday together. He and his wife, Emily, were in California for his spring break from medical school in New York, where winter, as usual, is acquiescing to spring unwillingly. We have had the finest spring in the Central Valley that I can remember in my thirty-one years here: day after day has been perfect, sunny, clear, warm, unlike our usual quick spring that soon launches into the hot days of summer, with an occasional brief, chilly respite in April and May before summer sets in to stay, until sometime in October. It helps that daylight savings is now set two weeks earlier than in the past, the longer days prolonging the peaceful joy of spring. Andrew and I spent several hours driving through the foothills, taking in the lush green, the clouds of wildflowers, the cows and sheep and goats and their numerous offspring savoring the plentiful grasses. 

          I had not intended the drive to be so long, but I do not know the jagged Southern Sierra foothill roads well yet. Nor did we mind. As the car climbed, and the road narrowed and twisted, and the color of the hills changed from yellow to gold to white, with blue lupine in the ditches along the road, we talked intermittently, normal for us. With my younger son, Stephen, conversation usually flows easily and satisfyingly, but with Andrew, it is more halting. 

          I find myself studying my children now that, for the first time, I cannot see them on a whim. Until now, at least one was always within a couple of hours drive, and if the other was further afield, it was never for more than a couple of months. Last summer, with Stephen’s college graduation and employment and Andrew’s marriage and beginning medical school in New York, my sons were simultaneously removed from my daily life. 

          I, too, chose then to move, to live with my partner. In retrospect, I sometimes think this was an unwise decision, but then I imagine the frustration I might feel alone in my house, knowing I could not just pick up on the weekend and drive southwest for a day with Stephen or northwest for a day with Andrew. Our roles have all changed, theirs more easily, I imagine, full of adventure and newness, though I am sure it has not been one hundred percent peaches and cream. I find myself at times at a loss in my new role. There is nothing specific to do: no diapers to change, no activities to drive to, no school work to oversee, no tuition checks to write, no group of their friends to take to dinner. 

          I know they need me as much as ever, to know I am here and love and support them, no matter what. They still call, still show their love and trust, with questions about insurance, landlords, and recipes, and reports on their week. But the challenge seems somehow so much bigger. Did I set a good example in life for them to follow? I talked with them about the importance of loving the only brother you will ever have, who will love you as no one else can. I talked to them about the importance of communication. I talked to them about not being afraid to change paths, to take risks. But did I demonstrate any of this adequately?

          I think I have only begun to learn about myself again in the last two years, after a hiatus of perhaps thirty years, that included only intermittent times of lucidity. I attribute this to hormones, depression, lack of self confidence, a failed marriage, no community roots, minimal communication within my family, and the usual demands of parenting and careers. Awaking today with restless legs (which thankfully usually only occur at night when I calm them with Requip), a clenched jaw, and a sense of frustration, I took a long, hot bath, on Doug’s recommendation. I am so guilty of exactly what I protest in others: bottling up thought and emotion. As I read Bill Hayes’ fascinating The Anatomist, a biography of Henry Gray, body and mind relaxed. After a shower to wash my hair, I told Doug I was going to excuse myself from coffee with him and his daughter, Katie, and stay home to write this, instead. 

          I am only beginning, still, to learn to identify what I want to do and to do it without guilt or anger. I seem to have spent much of my life protesting that I am ignored, but unable to state a priori what it is I want, until I dissolve in frustration, like a two-year-old, as my siblings and then-spouse so often told me. Doug and I each wish deeply that our marriages had succeeded. We each carry a desire for our children to be strong, healthy, independent, despite the wounds their parents have inflicted. We each believe the wounds may have been deeper had we stayed married, and that we married for the wrong reasons. And yet, here are our four incredible children, who but for our previous partners, would not be here, and they are, all in all, healthy, strong, and independent. They are who they are, and, I think, have learned from their parents' mistakes. 

          When I tell my sons I am so impressed and so pleased by their communication with their partners, they respond it was obvious that their dad and I did not communicate. In college, between them, they changed majors, traveled abroad, spent vacations with friends rather than family, all of which pleased me. For each, their partner is one of the centers of their life now, and when I think of Andrew and Emily, Stephen and Jessie, I feel the comfort and peace of the seamless universe. 

          That is what I felt driving with Andrew through the foothills. It is the first day I have spent alone with him since he was married last summer. During my February visit to New York, I spent more time alone with Emily than I ever have, and we came to know each other better. It was a pleasure, not a challenge, as they so clearly adore and care for each other, and she is open, sincere, and tender. 

          What I think I know about my son is that his life experience to now, with its successes and disappointments, simplicities and complexities, has fertilized the miraculous combination of genes that is him to grow a young man who can enjoy with his mother, for an afternoon, the sensual pleasure of nature’s rebirth in spring. His mother, still thankfully growing, can know, without regret or wistfulness, that Emily is the woman to whom he turns with his deepest self and desires.

Story Cloth

          Yeng Wednesday after school, I participated in a student study team, a gathering of teachers, counselors, the school nurse, and the school psychologist with a student and parents or guardians to discuss the students' strengths and weaknesses academically and socially and to try to determine a course of action to assist the student. In this case, the student is Hmong, a junior named Yeng. His mother and older brother were there. We have a Hmong counselor, who translates as needed, which is often, in addition to her regular duties. Connie—her name is indicative of a tendency among the Hmong when giving their children American names to use names that are straight out of the 1950s—was born here, but speaks Hmong fluently. 

          Yeng is among our most recent influx of Hmong immigrants from the refugee camps in Thailand. The supposed last 10,000 or so arrived about two years ago, thirty-plus years after the Hmong, who had been recruited by the CIA to fight the North Vietnamese, fled their mountain homes in Laos when the United States conceded its inability to "win" the Vietnam War. I am not well-versed in the details, but I do know that some Hmong still hide in the hills of Laos, while others face atrocities and death at the hands of the Thai. The "lucky" ones have finally been able to immigrate to the United States, mostly to California's Central Valley, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, where they become part of an immigrant community that has struggled to preserve its history and traditions, while becoming American. I suspect that within that community, there is now a certain snobbery toward the new arrivals, just as there is by Mexican Americans born here toward immigrants, legal or not, born in Mexico.

          True to a stereotype that has developed, I have erroneously expected all Asian students, whether Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, or Hmong, to excel academically. I honestly think it is the rare parent who does not wish for their child to excel, but often the wherewithal to motivate the child toward that result lacks. Discipline, consistency, valuing knowledge, realism, meeting basic needs, delusion: they can all play a role. As a teacher, I want to challenge each child to reach and possibly exceed their intellectual potential and to provide them the tools to do so—I honestly think these are the two main ingredients of teaching. The child and the parents or guardians have to take it from there, and if they do not, there is not much any teacher can do, except keep hoping that the parents will come around or, more likely, though still on the order of a miracle, that the child can divorce his goals and potentials from all negative, or absent, influence from home. 

          But how does the teacher know the child's potential when she can barely communicate with him? These students must both acquire English on a steep learning curve and study the other academic disciplines. In the beginning, they have two English classes daily, with our English language development (ELD) teacher, and often, as in Yeng's case, a third class, because they have not yet been able to pass the English portion of the high school exit exam. Their ELD classes are taught entirely in English, just as we teach French entirely in French from day one, as immersion is the best technique, the one that mimics how we acquire our first language. 

          Yeng does well in science and math, which is not unusual for second language students, especially if they also happen to like the subject matter. There is also a bilingual aide in those classes. Despite having numerous Hispanic and Hmong students with minimal English skills, I have had no such aides all year, and given the nature of the class, I cannot teach at a level below the skills required to pass the exam. The best I can do is try to dole out ample individual encouragement and feedback. Some students do well, because of internal motivation and, in some cases I think, a natural capacity for language-learning. I smile broadly when a student who has not uttered a word all year says, "Hi, Ms. Harper," or, "May I go to the restroom?" or when a student who could barely write two sentences completes an essay. These are huge first steps. 

          Yeng, however, shows no intiative, not unlike too many students. They do not like to read, and they do not like to think. I tell them they have not foud the right thing to read yet. I tell them their brain is a muscle that must be exercised to become stronger. I tell them to learn English, they must speak, hear, read, and write English. Occasionally one discovers I am right. 

          Does Yeng have a learning disability? We do not think so. He is getting reading glasses, which hopefully will help—if he wears them. I comment to the school nurse and psychologist, "If only we could superglue kids' glasses to their noses." 

          Shong I am enthralled by Yeng's mother, Shong Lee, her face, her comportment and demeanor. I do not know the Hmong forms of address—often father, mother, and children have different last names—so I shall refer to her as Shong. I listen earnestly to Connie's translations and Shong's responses, thinking surely I should be able to understand a word here and there; I am, after all, a language teacher. But I have to rely on Connie's translations: Shong is grateful that all of Yeng's teachers have come to the meeting: it is living proof that we care about her son. 

          Yeng's older brother listens intently and occasionally comments, but he seems more a witness. Shong agrees her son needs to take more initiative. She is worried, too, that he is beginning to hang out with the wrong sort of kids—we tell her he has cut class a couple of times, though for the most part he is never a discipline problem. Although 17, he seems immature, as if he could be easily swayed. 

           Still, it is the mother who fascinates me. Her face does not appear lined or worn, but it displays wisdom and experience. Her hands, the short fingernails with dirt stains under them, are lovelier than the hands of women who spend time and money on fake nails with intricately colored designs. Her dark hair, with a few strands of gray, is pulled back imperfectly, wisps allowed to float. It is not the glistening black hair of some Asians. Rather, it is an earthy black, healthy and thick and experienced. She does not look like some Hmong women, who seem like dolls, costumed by a child and placed in a child's fantasy that mixes time and place. She wears a dark blazer, perhaps put on over a simple cotton shirt and skirt in which she stooped in the field I assume she works in. The Hmong grow the best strawberries. Lately I have seen the Hmong farmers, men, women, families, stooped low over their expanding plants as the ground warms. 

          Shong knows that her son must acquire the skills to succeed here. She must feel at times a quiet desperation that she is not familiar with the system, that she cannot communicate directly with Yeng's teachers. As I look at her, I think she must have learned long ago to master her fears, when she crossed the Mekong River with her parents and siblings, seeking refuge in Thailand. She must have been born hopeful, or learned it. Perhaps marriage in the refugee camp and giving birth to her children there was no more than fulfilling cultural expectations, regardless of the surroundings. But she brought her children, with her husband, to this agrarian area, where there can be a sense of community among other Hmong and fields. 

          Still, America is a world apart from the lives she has known. Shong's eyes do not have the hollow look of one who is overwhelmed. They are the eyes of a woman who lives life, who accepts her deck of cards and plays it for all she is worth. This is what she wants for Yeng, to play his deck well. She is not with us, seated around this conference table, to ask for the moon or a bye. She wants only our honest assessment of her son and our honest suggestions, to help her comprehend what is expected of Yeng in order for him to succeed academically. 

          I imagine Shong as the daughter, new to America, unfrightened by the feast of options arrayed before her, not longing for the familiarity of the refugee camp, with its squalor, limitations, and threats, but ready to accelerate the metamorphosis of her life. If only the mother's hunger could be transferred to her son. Even a portion would do. 

          The next day we have a journal entry in class. Yeng appears to be writing.

The Survivor Staircase

          It is Mach 10, 2008. Today, the 9/11 Survivor Staircase was removed, to make way for redevelopment of the World Trade Center. I sometimes wonder if rather than a show of force and might the United States should not acknowledge and respect more the past. Memories should not always be erased, or displayed, as the staircase will be, in a museum, detached from life and history and remembrance.

           In France—at least as of ten years ago, when I was last there—gratitude is still shown, sixty years later, to Americans of any age for having freed France from the Nazi grip. War monuments preside over the countryside. It is at once an eerie and peaceful sensation to walk around and through a half-destroyed bunker on the Normandy cliffs and read the plaque on a monument to American engineers, as voices of children playing in the sand in the sun's warmth drift up from below, and the wind whispers through the grasses, of past struggle and horror, of calm and hope.
          Traditionally, the graduation announcements for the school where I teach carry a background picture of the original school, a lovely, ivy-clad, two-story brick building, which was torn down decades ago for the sin of not meeting new earthquake standards. Similarly, the City of Fresno tore down its original, dignified courthouse, toppling the cupola first, and built a gray, concrete, prison-like rectangle in its stead.
          Man keeps trying to conquer nature. We defy gravity, the ocean, earthquakes. The human mind is, indeed a wonderful thing, in its curiosity and intellectual capacity. Yet weeds emerge in sidewalks every spring, and the abandoned blacktop soon yields to grasses and wildflowers. Perhaps man needs to spend more time trying to conquer human nature, to explore more the capacity of the heart.

          At our local junior college, the proud, elegant, brick Old Administration Building, after some twenty-five years of court battles between preservationists and destructionists, was saved from the wrecking ball. Now students, faculty, and administration can again be part of a history, of a work of art, of the breezes and shadows that design the two interior courtyards.

           What do we learn in building on the discoveries and accomplishments of our predecessors, rather than replacing them in their entirety with our own? Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth is enjoying a resurgence of interest with the release of its sequel, World Without End, nearly two decades later. At the center of Pillars is the construction, over a period ofo four centuries, of a Gothic cathedral, a major player also in the sequel. Europeans have had the wisdom, even sometimes during war, to allow these architectural masterpieces to stand. What if all the cathedrals had been torn down? Our children would have had the cathedral-free day they begged for when we traveled in Europe, but our fourteen-year-old would not have had Pillars of the Earth to keep him (and his mother's mind) relatively happily engaged as he waited alone in Amsterdam, where he'd traveled by himself from Parirs, for the rest of his group. We do not know the impact our decisions now, to tear down or to preserve, will have on future generations.

        Before dignitaries, survivors, and anonymous onlookers, the Survivor Staircase was lifted and put on a truck to be moved to the 9/11 museum at Ground Zero. In the photos, one sees behind the stairs the surviving World Trade Center Towers. Are they not equally informative, the stairs that are detached from their raison d'etre and the still-standing skyscrapers?
          I've often thought 9/11 was an emotional upheaval for my dad, that it contributed to the winding down of his life over the next ten months. He believed so deeply in man's capacities in all realms, his capacity to think, to achieve, to feel, to overcome, to be human. I believe the Saint Louis Gateway Arch represented all of this for him. The company with which he spent his career, PDM, realized Eero Saarinen's design. Pre-computer, they fabricated the materials and engineered the arch's erection, using equipment they designed and built. Man's ability to create and to problem-solve thrilled my dad, and he thought it limitless. He held patents himself, that in our computer age I can search and print from the United States Patent Office website. If only I could, as I myself live through my sixth decade, search his mind.
          In City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center, James Glanz and Eric Lipton write that after the bids of Bethlehem Steel and US Steel, which were termed extortionist, were rejected, parts of the WTC were fabricated by a dozen steel companies around the country, in 1968. PDM constructed "the tridentlike forks, some of them fifty-five tons apiece, that would sit on the base columns and run to where the regular pinstripes began on the ninth floor.... It seemed that an entire nation had been mobilized to build the World Trade Center" (Glanz and Lipton 186-87). I have a hazy remembrance of looking at pictures of the remains of the WTC, of the "trident forks" still standing, of my father explaining that was the part PDM had built, of seeing in his eyes and on his face, hearing in his voice, what seemed a great, inexpressible anguish.
          Poseidon, the half-man, half-fish Greek god of the sea, and his son by the sea nymph Amphitrite, Triton, each carried a trident, a three-pronged ("toothed," in Greek), long-handled spear. Poseidon caused violent, earthquake-spawning storms by striking his trident on the ocean floor. He calmed the same storms by riding his gold chariot. He was the brother of Zeus, the king of the gods, the god of thunder and lightning. What gods watched on, incapable of controlling man, as the Twin Towers were struck and collapsed?
          In a rare stroke of fate, shortly after 9/11, my brother, sister, and I arrived simultaneously at our parents' home, our own family members all coincidentally otherwise occupied. We took our childhood places at the dining table, as though transported back decades, as though needing the reassurance of our childhood nuclear family.
          World War II must have shortened the lives of those it did not kill, of the American soldiers who, like my father, slogged through the sand and mud, heat and cold of Northern Africa and Italy, for years. Many, like my dad, made the best of it, camouflaged the drudgery and horror with plane rides over Africa, ice cream made in helmets, favors done for friends, whether with or against Army regulations. Military or civilian, whatever nationality or social status, the humans who struggled through World War II shaped our world. 

         It was as though a beginning. Peace has been tenuous since, and too often in too many places nonexistent. But by and large, humans are managing to muddle through, and there is always grace among us, the grace of an old person's wisdom; the grace of a child's innocence, whether rich or impoverished; the grace of nature and man's quest to understand and cherish it; the grace of human invention and man's quest to harness ideas to imbue, not destroy, life; the grace of creativity.
          To have left the Survivors' Staircase where it stood would have been the most powerful reminder of humanity in all its facets. When we are knocked about, knocked down, it is in the grace of this human spirit with which we are endowed that we climb from the suffering and tragedy and move forward. In doing so, we need to remember the past and build on it.

Women I Love and Admire

          I am drawn to survivors—usually, it seems, women younger than myself who, no matter, what are upbeat, laugh easily, have a lot of common sense, are determined, and are smart.
          I miss Megan, who moved to Washington with her family fifteen years ago; I've visited once or twice and we occasionally correspond. The child of an affair, she discovered both her mother and step-father, on two different occasions, after their suicides. She fled the abortion clinic when she was pregnant, married Kyle's father after their baby was born. After their second child was born when her father, a World War I pilot, was ill, Megan moved her family to Florida to care for him. When her husband wanted a divorce, she told him it was his job he was upset with, not the marriage. As though she were prophetic, soon he had a new job and they moved to a new community and home, which they love.
          I owe my friendship with Lori to a truck, a four-speed lowered Chevy S-10 I bought the boys when they were in high school. As we spent money to airbag the truck, get new rims, and other such transformations, my mantra was Trucks are to Stephen as baseball is to Andrew, both passions that fascinated and compelled each, and which demanded time and money. The airbag plan lead Stephen to Ray, with whom Stephen interned during his last two years of high school, and who was an inspiration for Stephen to also become a mechanical engineer. Lori moved from Ohio to marry Ray, and they and dogs lived in my cottage while looking for a home.
          Though their marriage did not last, Josie, born on my birthday and already almost five, is an indescribable child who brings constant joy to all of us. Lori has always battled debilitating migraines. After Josie's birth, thyroid cancer, which she has outwitted, was added to her challenges. She teaches part-time in order to be with her daughter, and I get to partake of their wisdom and fun Monday nights, when I stay with Lori and Josie—as Lori and Ray once did with me.
          Yesterday I felt wondrous, looking at Gabriela, Richard, and Josue, as we sang "Happy Birthday" for Josue's second birthday. Gabriela was the in-flesh example of God not giving us more than we can bear, she being able to bear and bear and bear and still have one of the world's best laughs. But when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year, I shook my fist at God, demanding to know if Gabriela hadn't already more than sufficiently proven her faith, fortitude, and wisdom. Like Megan, Gabi left home, where her parents did not behave as parents, on her own as a teen and traveled across the country to live with relatives. She once told me she still is driven to prove herself, because she was so often told she would never amount to a hill of beans. Professionally, she is a superb Spanish teacher. Personally, she is my foil when we travel—ready to try anything, adventurous, her laughter never far away.
          She married Richard, the love of her life, an extremely talented auto mechanic, possessed of a wonderful sense of humor, trusting, and respectful. They brought Gabi's half-brother into their home, so he could be educated rather than work on the streets of Mexico, as he had been doing. They were going to adopt her nephew, until the son's absent father refused. If that were not enough to break Gabi's heart, Richard was in a head-on collision. The doctors said he might not live, he'd never walk or talk. Gabi said no, held vigil at the hospital, found a facility in Santa Clara, took leave from work, loved and willed Richard to live and heal. It is one of the best parts of the school day when Richard, the house dad, and Josue come by my classroom to say hi. Though every step hurts, Richard walks, sometimes with and sometimes without a cane. Though his speech remains impaired, he converses without hesitation, and jokes that all his family now use his brain damage as the excuse for their own shortcomings.
          What is it that makes me too serious, too brooding, whom easy laughter eludes? Years ago the mom of a friend of my younger son and I were commenting that God really does seem to give us only the burdens we can handle, and we laughed ruefully that we obviously cannot handle much. I've seen this in students, too. What makes two young women I've known upbeat and functional, though their dads have been in prison most of their lives and they've had to help support the family, while another, whose mother was imprisoned, coped only with great difficulty?
          When my strong women friends, on rare occasions, lean literally on my shoulder, I feel blessed for being able to give a little back to them of the heavy doses of strength and optimism they inject me with daily.

Turtle Lessons

          I trudged along the beach. Doug, Puck-like, picked up and showed me another and another miniature shell, delighted by their sizes, colors, patterns.
          Driving south toward San Diego, sometimes on 101 through the beach towns, sometimes on 5, he'd told many an anecdote of a friend who lived there, a watering hole on this street, a job in that place. I'd listened at first, trying to take it all in. Then I half listened, politely. Then, I became annoyed.

          "Why didn't you ever move back to San Diego?" I asked. If I were a spiny anemone, my barbs would stick Doug when he tried to pick me up.
          "Because it's all the same."
          I jumped into the opening. "I can't stand San Diego. It's all the same. Every town is the same. The weather is always the same. It's boring."
          Ever the optimist and determined to bring the smile back to my face, Doug pointed out La Jolla cove. I, of course, stubbornly tried not to understand where he was pointing, and only after multiple questions for clarification did I acknowledge I got it. Deep into my two-year-old mode, I began to feel better when Doug had trouble parallel parking and when we—well, I, anyway, Doug tending to be less vindictive—could feel superior to the silly people watching the over-population of seals collected on the rocks.
          "Did you ever come here with Nikki?" Nice try. I was not going to reflect. 

          I looked at the small park on the cliff, similar to numerous such parks along the southern California coast. I was certain I had not walked here with Nikki in her motorized wheelchair, the ventilator rhythmically pumping. "No," I said shortly.

          Calm began to seep into me as we watched parents, children, and dogs examine the life in the tidepools below. I admired the fathers pushing strollers or carrying a baby in a front pack along the path and the pregnant mothers in the new fashions that acknowledge pregnancy rather than attempting to conceal it in a tent.
          As we watched a man in a wetsuit dive under large waves, I commented, "Those waves don't look very small to me." The point of the visit to La Jolla cove was to show me how it was just the type of placid water I'd enjoy kayaking in. We watched as the man grabbed the next wave and body-surfed to shore.
          "I've never seen it like this," Doug said. "This swell is huge." Aha—I could feel justifiably smug.
          We watched a couple sans wetsuits wade into the surf, then begin to swim toward the buoy. I wondered, just as I always do when I swim in open water, what was beneath, waiting to nibble at their toes. As if hearing my thoughts, Doug said, "The only supposed citing of a great white here was a hoax when a guy faked his death and disappeared."
          Adding to the sense of being in a Baz Luhrman film—a collage of high surf, swimmers, walkers in boots and sweaters, moms and dads and children and dogs tidepooling—a large turtle lumbered rather gracefully across the lawn. Children and adults flitted alongside, like water hitting hot grease. The owner could have made a tidy sum charging for pictures, were he not there to enjoy the day and the smiles, with his hard-shelled friend who perhaps doubled, as Doug surmised, as a chick magnet.
         Walking back to the car, I pointed to the building at the top of the hill. "We had lunch there once, when Nikki was first sick. It's where I first realized the importance of handicapped facilities. Sara and I couldn't lift Nikki from the toilet seat." Laughing had been a release for our frustration, sadness, and embarrassment for Nikki, as we had to leave the stall door wide open throughout. The memory started again the movie in my mind of sixteen-year-old Sara pushing her mother's first wheelchair—before the motorized one, before Nikki had a ventilator to breathe for her—driving it almost fiercely between the closely-spaced tables, bringing the patrons to a surprised pause.
          "Maybe that's why I don't like San Diego. All my memories here are associated with Nikki." 

          Doug agreed maybe that was it.
          We went to a birthday party for a friend that evening. Fifty-five and Alive was her mantra, since she'd had a heart attack a few months before and is now doing great, cause for celebration.
          The next day we met Ron, Nikki's widower, and his girlfriend, Connie, for lunch. Ron is moving on; he is relaxed; he laughs more. I know that Nikki is smiling: she so wanted Ron to move on after she died.
          On our next visit, I'll ask Ron to take me to the memorial bench he placed for Nikki by the lagoon. Maybe when I remember walking beside Nikki, to the accompaniment of the wheelchair's whir and the ventilator's whoosh, I'll feel the warm sun and cool breeze more than the melancholy.

A Year of Three Sunsets

          When I was at my mom's in Bodega Bay a couple of weeks ago, my son Stephen and I paused in our walk and stood with our arms around each other as we watched the ocean embrace the sun. We commented as always--for his Grandpa, whose ashes the ocean accepted five years ago, would want to know we were observant--on the green flash: there was none.
          Stephen went east for the holidays, and his brother, Andrew, who now lives in the east, came west. The times they are a constantly changin', and I find I really have no concept of time. As a child, the years were long. Neither summer nor school would ever end. Somewhere along the way, time began to move more quickly. College was too short. Moments with sick babies were too long, but their childhood flew by, and my children are adults. Now, time is. School years pass quickly, it is true, yet, in June I cannot say that it was just August, but only that another year has flown by, or flowed by, or climbed up and down the mountain by.
          After family holiday gatherings, my partner, Doug, and I turned northwest. For a few days we would have only each other, time to be, to be together, a space between our children's and their partners' comings and goings, which we more witness than facilitate these days.
          The first day was rainy, foggy, as we wove along 128 through forests dressed in moss for winter. We meandered up 1, stopping here and there to meander on foot. Leaving Ft. Bragg the next morning, we drove north to the beginning of the Lost Coast, where 1 turns inland, then turned back south. The Pacific was wild, the air pure, clear, cold. We picnicked facing the sun on a slope over a cove in which the waves crashed.
          Somewhere between Gualala and Jenner, we noticed cars stopped in various turn-outs. Glancing west, we too stopped. We stood and held hands in silence as the sun settled into the ocean. We turn so quickly, I said to Doug, Why don't we fall off the earth?
          The Bohemian Highway, eerie in the dark forest, took us to Occidental, where lights twinkled on the Old-West-meets-Victorian-style buildings of its one-block main street. We strolled down the hill for dinner at Negri's, by the Christmas tree, then back up the hill, in the chill night. We awoke to winter wonder, frost, and a day, if possible, clearer than the previous. It was Doug's turn to say farewell to his daughter as she left for Chile, while I remained in Bodega Bay for my son's return.
          As I walked my mother's street, a loop, I noticed a man with a tripod set up on the cliff, waiting, as our sliver of the earth turned away from the sun. As I walked the loop again, people by their windows, on the cliff, on decks, sat and stood reverently. I could not run up the front steps, as my joints are not fond of that, so I walked up them as quickly as I could and opened the front door to call to Mom to watch the sunset. She, too, already stood by her glass door. 

          It seemed as we stood on the small front deck that the whole world had stopped as we had, connected in a moment of pure calm, awe, as we watched the sun, ocean, clouds' majestic performance, as the world demanded wonder, compelled peace.