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.