Bramblings

It was the Fall of 1994. I'd been renting a room from Cindy for more than a year. We got to know each other pretty well in that time. She told me a lot about her family, where she was from, what she aspired to do with her life.  At this moment in time, she says she is content with her night shift job.  There is so much about Cindy that eludes me.  For example:  While she would talk about her family, she only spoke about them in vague terms.  I'd come to understand where they lived, but she wouldn't tell me anything about their character other than that they were either nice or not nice.   I, on the other hand, spoke at great length about my own family, my background, what it was like to grow up in Northern California. Halloween had come and gone, and the nip of winter was in the air around Lacey, Washington.  There were days that seemed cold, while other days seemed spring-like, almost summery.  It was that time of the year when warmth gave in to the cold of winter's sl

 Perhaps the most influential person of my life was my paternal grandmother, Hortense Weston Lucas.  Everything about her channeled goodness, fairness, and a conservative morality that was very much a reflection of her generation. She was born in Salinas, California, to a father who worked the railroad that wound it's way through the northern California green.  Her father met her mother, Ruth, who was a student at Mills College, at a dance. Hortense was born in 1909. I am grateful for the years that I had to know her.  I am picturing her now, in my mind.  She always wore her hair in a Gibson bun.  I didn't even know what that meant until I looked it up one day.  The Gibson Girl look was very much a thing to fashionable ladies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the early mornings, I would watch my grandmother brush her hair, it went all the way down to her hips.  After brushing her hair, she would carefully mold it into the Gibson bun, pinning it into place with real

I'm exhausted. There are a couple of people in my life who are constantly seeking-out my advice. With the first, I'm simply faced with the realization that the person is an ask-hole. Friendships never start out this way with me.  I usually get to know someone as a result of some shared interest.  Perhaps we met each other at a volunteer event, or at a fundraiser, or a marathon.  I bump into them in a few places where it is clear that we have similar interests.  It's the way friendships normally unfold, with similar interests, similar paths in life. I deliberately start out with healthy boundaries, explaining that while I am a licensed therapist, I really don't allow for that talk in my personal life. Things progress nicely.  We're having fun.  Days, weeks, perhaps even months pass by while we're having friendly fun, and then there's a frantic call in the middle of the night.  The person is in crisis because of a (fill in the blank) problem and I'm the on

It started out like almost any other evening in late August of 1984. The sun had just set. This was usually the time when our mother would go out to water her vegetable garden, shrubs, and flowers. The summer months in Alderpoint, California, tend to be very hot and dry.  Today, like most summer days it is incredibly hot, even at sunset.  This is no different from the previous day or the previous weeks for that matter, going all the way back to the end of  May.  This day, this week, the past three months, are typical to the Southern Humboldt County area. Mom is outside, and we can see her watering the fox glove, hollyhocks, snowball bushes, and roses she's beautifully cultivated at the front of the house.  We can see her through the front door of the house, the living room door.  In the summer months it is always open in the late afternoon and early evening hours. In the small quiet of our house, we can even hear the water running through the pipes as mom does her plant watering. 

"Orval, you don't understand how she abuses me." This was my re-introduction to my Aunt Terry when I came home to visit my mother in the summer of 2005. "Auntie Terry, what do you mean?  My mother has provided you with a home.  She helps you out, financially.  How is she abusing you?" "You don't understand," she continued, "your mother emotionally abuses me.  She tells me I'm no good and she takes advantage of me.  She is very cruel, Orval." Aunt Terry began to cry. The first time I remember her tears, I was an undergraduate at The Evergreen State College when I was called upon to rescue her from her employers.  At the time, she explained to me that they were her captors, but, I remember the people I rescued her from.  They were two people of advanced age who were using wheelchairs to get themselves outside and around their house.  This is the same house that Auntie Terry had, over the years since her liberation from them, come to ref

 When I arrived in Olympia, Washington, I did so on the heels of a heatwave I'd left behind me in Alderpoint, California.  It was the summer of 1993, and I'd just completed my general education transfer certification at College of the Redwoods only weeks before.  It was now August, and by my arrival in the early evening, the welcome damp and cool of the Pacific Northwest came as a soothing counterpoint to the otherwise hot and miserable few weeks I'd spent with my parents in Alderpoint. I settled into the Melody Motel, the place where I'd decided to take up residence for the week while I looked for a place to live, a job, and an orientation to the next two years of my life as an undergraduate at The Evergreen State College.  When I arrived at the Motel, I checked-in and was directed to my room.  It was clean and tidy.  The decor reminded me of the great television shows I once watched with my grandmother.  You know, those shows from the 1960s that were once popular on t

The forests surrounding the town of Alderpoint, California, were a magical place for me to escape to when I was a child. Even now, I return to the memories I have of that place.  Whenever I do, I think of my escapes to the forest during the various seasons of the year.  With the exception of Winter, there were beautiful wildflowers that came with each. In the Spring, I would travel out Steelhead Road and head up into the hills behind the town garbage dump.  The forest in this area was a mixed deciduous wood, made up mostly of oak, manzanita, pepperwood and madrone, with a scattering of Douglas fir.  In this wood, there were several flowers that I would always search for in the Spring.  They are the buttercup, cat's ear flower, wild violet, mariposa lily and the cream fawn lily. Out beyond this wood was a beautiful meadow that overlooked an artificial pond that had been used in decades past for a lumber milling operation.  In those days, it was filled with the rusted derelicts of tr

Special note: Names, location, and composite descriptions of people have been changed in this story. They were friends from way back. Save me, somebody save me For a time, my father required us to spend time with her. Save me, somebody save me Whenever my father expected us to visit her, he'd play Aretha Franklin's Save Me Her name was Mamie. Whenever I hear that song, I think of her and of him and of the one day when I visited her. Alone. I remember it was November when my mother dispatched me to visit Mamie.  My father had spent the night on a bender, ending it with what seemed like an endless replay of Aretha Franklin's Save Me .  It was early morning when my mother finally put my father to bed and shut the record player.  She said to me, "Orval, you know your father wanted to go and see Mamie today.  You have to go see her." "Mom," I said, "that lady scares me, and she doesn't laugh.  She cackles." "Orval, someday you will be old,

On a warm day in the Fall of 1981, Linda Gunn arrived at Casterlin Elementary School near Blocksburg, California, a town located in the southeastern corner of Humboldt County.   I was standing where I usually stood on a sunny day, amongst the wild chamomile under the cottonwood trees that ringed the staff parking lot.  I liked this location because I could see what the staff were doing and I could also look out at the playground, snatching a minute here and there to run and play with my friends when I felt so inclined, but like much of the time I spent at that school, I often sat or stood under or near those trees, musing about how much more profound my day could be, if only it involved something more than just recess and the hum-drum recitations and memorizations of some of the material we were required to consume in third grade. And then Linda arrived.  She pulled up to me in her Volkswagen Beetle.  I could see the large guitar propped up in the passenger front seat as she slowed to

Special note: Names, locations, and composite descriptions of people have been intentionally changed in this story. When I was a kid, the Scholastic Book Club was one of the few bright spots that kept me motivated to learn, to dream and to hope for the future. The Club would periodically send out brightly colored advertisements printed on newsprint, the same paper stock that newspapers are still printed on today.  When my teacher handed them out to us, I would spend endless hours after school looking through that advertisement.  Scholastic printed paperback versions of classics that were much more affordable than similarly formatted versions of the same book in bookstores.   The Orange Cat Goes to Market was the name of the local bookstore in Garberville, California.  I loved going to that bookstore.  My parents would occasionally take me and my sister there.  We didn't go often, mainly because it wasn't the most affordable place to shop.  When I think back on those years now,

I think I became responsible for washing clothing at around the age of seven. It was 1980. I woke up one morning and asked my mom if she needed some help.  She brought me to the washing machine, an avocado green top loading Whirlpool model and showed me how to operate it. Before showing me how to operate the machine, she showed me how to separate whites, darks and what would be appropriate to wash together.  Then, she showed me the temperature controls.  Cold for colors.  Hot for whites.  Lastly, she showed me the load size, remarking that because there were four of us, she always set the machine for large loads. Before she went on to tell me about the detergents and liquids, she explained the importance of temperature and how colored clothing bleeds into whites.  She went on and on about the differences between cotton, polyester, nylon, wool and denim. Then, she explained the various powders and liquids to me. "Now, Orval.  For whites you must always set the machine to soak.  Whi