a moment in the day: a shot

I'm just pulling the garbage out of the can to get it ready to take it to the curb when my sister texts: "Hey mom and I are gonna have a shot for dad in a min can you too?"

It's August 11. Five years—five unbelievable years long—since our dad left this world. My mom loves good tequila and doesn't drink it much, but she has a nice bottle that she and Edina once in a while, for a special occasion or remembrance, will take down and pour a shot and toast.

I start going through the cabinet. What can I use? There's an open bottle of red wine on the counter but it's 95 degrees out at seven in the evening, and somehow a shot of something hard seems less of a fireball to your stomach than red wine right now. The phone—the land line, we only talk on the land line—starts ringing and I run through the house to grab it. Mom's on the other end, ready with her little shot glass with Edina close by. I tell her I'm looking for what to use, and I pull down from the high cabinet in the kitchen the bottles my hand can reach. 

A pretty blue bottle that turns out to be gin. A brown bottle that looks to be less than a shot's worth of rum. Mom says that Edina says that I can use "three fingers of milk" if I want. That sounds better than the gin.

"I've got Cointreau!" I say and find a pretty shot glass in the lower cabinet and pour. 

I don't know where to go for this moment. I don't want to stand in the kitchen next to my garbage bag. I go out into the dining room, then through to the edge of the living room. There's nothing of Dad in here, but Mom and Edina are waiting, so I stop, and I realize that what I was doing was moving toward the spot in the corner of the living room with Nicholas's painting and Nicholas's ashes, one loss pinch-hitting for another.  

I say, "OK!"

"I'm clinking with Edina," Mom announces. And then, "I'm clinking the phone!"

I clink the phone. "I'm clinking the phone!"

The phone's plastic so it's more like a clack.

And now a sip. Sweetness that tweaks at my nostrils and burns down into my stomach.

"Edina shot," Mom says. "I'm sipping."

"I'm sipping," I say.

"You know, your dad liked Cointreau," Mom says.

And I am so happy. I didn't know that. Or if I knew that, I forgot it. I just remember that when Dad was drinking he liked Scotch, which we don't have. 

I raise my glass to the fact that Dad liked Cointreau.

After we hang up the phone and Mom and Edina go off to make nachos, a fitting dish for a Dad day, I linger to sip a little longer, not yet ready to get back to taking out the trash.

a moment in the day: sherlock

"This episode has gone off the rails," I say when we pause the show to duck into the kitchen for seconds on dinner.

As I scoop and microwave and pour, Stephen is talking about how he remembers from the first time we watched the series, back in the summer of 2020, that it starts out fun and then goes increasingly off the rails. I remember that during that first time around, I enjoyed the show overall more than he did, that I tolerated, and at times enjoyed, the over-the-topness and progressive ludicrousness way better than he had.

This particular episode is off the charts off the rails, with preposterous twists and overblown adventure sequences and a gathering cruelty in the plot that, instead of being entertaining, just makes us both feel squirmy and disturbed. I think if not for my insistence that we see the series through, and maybe the beautiful, odd charisma of Andrew Scott, Stephen would have switched to something else long ago.

We get our seconds and head back to the bedroom. Settle in. Press play again and the action continues. And when the strains of that delicious soundtrack swoop in, I could almost cry with longing. 

This second binge of Sherlock is about to be over, and I don't want it to be over. Because back in the summer of 2020, my dad was still in this world. And through all his struggles with the cancer, I was talking to him on the phone every day. Stephen and I were watching Sherlock and he and my mom were watching Elementary, the other modern Sherlock Holmes TV series. I would tell Dad he should watch Sherlock and he would tell me I should watch Elementary. And in the end, neither of us did either. We never had time to make that swap and talk about the shows the other of us knew better. 

But just the talking that we did do, about the thing the other of us hadn't yet experienced, was enough that now, four years later (can it really be four years later?), all I feel, while I'm watching Holmes and Watson do their thing, is him.

Three moments in three days: dream

In the dream, I'm walking out of the theater and into another large space, open, like a convention center or an airport, high ceilings. And coming toward me going the other way is Kathy. She looks the way she used to look except her hair is pure blond, no pink. She's waving hello to someone in the crowd around us, still coming at me but not like she notices me or not like she wants to see me. 

When she passes, I follow. "Kathy, I want to talk to you!" 

It's coming up on a year since she died, and both of those facts are unbelievable to me.

As I follow, the space around us draws wider and emptier, the people disappear. Nothing all around, just Kathy and me.

I don't know what I want to say to her when she turns. I ask her how she is. I ask for a hug. I ask if she's seen my dad.

"Oh yeah," she says. "He comes here, too."

***

Next night, I try to go there again. I lie in bed and picture the place, the high ceilings, the nothing all around. Try to dream my way back there, but it doesn't work.

***

Next night, I try to go there again. I lie in bed and picture the place, the high ceilings, the nothing all around. Try to dream my way back there, but it doesn't work.

My dad

I lost my dad a year ago. Not long after, my aunt asked if I was going to write an obituary. What I wrote was mostly that, a little bit upside-down from the traditional structure, but something that pulled together who he was, at least to me. I thought today, on the anniversary, I would post that here.

*

Don Chandler Little was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 6th, 1945, and grew up in Maysville, Kentucky, the only child to Frank Chandler and Stella Aline Little. As a kid, he loved playing baseball with the neighborhood boys and listening to games on the radio. In the summers, the family would vacation in Florida where Don would play golf with his dad, check out the Daytona Speedway, and lounge on the beach, devouring paperbacks one after the other. In high school, he played French horn in the band and landed the lead part in his senior class play, Mr. Coed.

When he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from the University of Kentucky, Don was awarded a Corning Glass fellowship, which gave him the chance to travel the world. He saw Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Israel, then headed to Europe. In Brussels, he took a pause in his touring to work at the local Corning Glass offices to earn some extra traveling money. Stopping one day into the First National City Bank, he was waited on by Kathy Cooke, an American living overseas with her Naval family. He asked her out and the rest is history.

Because Kathy invited Don home to Holland to meet her family. "I know what's going to happen," she said. "You're going to meet my sister and fall in love with her."

And he did.

And he did.

Lucy Cooke and Don Little met in mid-January of 1968. Their first date was Chinese food in London's SoHo in February. In April, they were engaged. Statistics on marital success based on longevity of courtship be damned.

They returned from Europe and were married on August 24th, 1968. Don had landed a job at Arthur Andersen and Company but first headed off for a few days' honeymoon, followed by a trip to his boyhood home in Kentucky to visit the local draft board. Unsure how to classify the young men who'd been awarded Corning Glass fellowships, the draft board had given each a business deferral, but now that Don's fellowship had come to an end, that classification changed. To 1A: draft immediately.

"Your wife doesn't happen to be pregnant, does she?" a woman working in the draft board office asked him.

She explained that if his wife were expecting, he'd be eligible again for a business deferral. Eugenia Bain was born approximately nine months later.

Statistics on domestic success based on preparation and planning be damned.

In August of 1971, Don still working for Arthur Andersen, they moved to Melbourne, Australia, where their second child, Edina Kathleen, was born, in September of 1972. They lived there until May of 1974, when they moved back to Washington DC, and then, a little later, Southern California, welcoming son Frank Chandler in July of 1976.

By then, Don had left Arthur Andersen and was working for US Rentals. The family of five became a family of seven with the addition of Carmen Garcia and her two-month-old baby Liz. In the early Eighties, Don started G/L Systems, which provided payroll and other accounting services to local businesses. The family continued to grow, welcoming the next generation: Amy Bullard, Alex Bullard, Abigail Bailey Little, and Hana Tateno.

In Don's business G/L Systems, which he ran for almost forty years, he described himself as a "one-stop comptroller." But what else was he? Husband, father, grandfather (known to his grandchildren as Pops). Lover of sports, particularly ice hockey and baseball. Avid reader. Punster. Clever namer of pets. Ardent scholar of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Ardent enthusiast of tasty things including frozen yogurt, milkshakes, Junior Mints, Heath Bars, Klondike Bars (his last discovered treat), and Lucy Little's excellent cooking. Lover of music. A storyteller at heart. A true gentleman. A computer whiz who was known to review new programs for software creators. The dad who did his kids' taxes for years even though taxes were his least favorite activity in accounting. Bringer of surprise bouquets of flowers. Orchestrator of cunning and elaborate gift schemes. Sporter of the most dashing beard. A quiet force who knew his mind and spoke it well. A generous person. A respectful person. An authentic person. The perfect emblem, in this daughter's opinion, of what a man should be.

in honor of father's day: a couple old diary entries about my dad

In honor of Father's Day, I thought I'd look back into some of my early diaries and pull out some passages about him, like I sometimes do. But I think I've used up all the fun material I have in my kid diaries about him so I thought I'd look through a few from when I was an adult, and I found two passages to share. The first, from 2012, was about a phone conversation he and I had when I was writing an ebook about how to be an accountant. One of the things I had to do in writing the book was interview three different accountants and edit the interviews to have them tell their story in their own words. I can't remember whether Dad didn't want to be one of those profiles or if I chose not to use him because we have the same last name and that would look like cheating (probably the latter) but I called him to get a good rundown on the subject.

The second entry, from 2007, was from when Dad and I discovered the computer game Second Life. Actually, I misspoke in the entry and called it New Life. If you don't know what it is... well, I think I explain it well enough in the entry, actually, that I'm must going to shut up and let my thirty-eight-year-old self do the work.

~

July 24, 2012

I forget what day it was, but I had a long conversation with Dad, like an hour, about accounting. He explained so much and make things actually kind of clear to me—his way of explaining was so good, and I wished I could have interviewed him. Because he was that good—he explained it so well but also made it interesting, was voicy about it. Was kind of the perfect combination. He called himself a one-stop-comptroller… or something. A quote I actually pulled and used in my intro. The way things morph and change, who knows if all the work I did on the book so far will even stay, but it felt good at the time, finding an intro out of the blue, after talking to Dad. And just a nice time talking to Dad.

October 9, 2007

So I couldn't call Dad on Saturday but we had a long conversation. So nice. I keep thinking about how little I see him. Well, he's got this game he's playing right now, on computer, called New Life. Where a world is created and you get to be a character and go around in this world. Well, it seems there are over 9 million people in the Linden world. And Dad's one of them. And now I am and now Stephen is. 

 
It's too cool. A lot of fun and interesting but also, and for me mostly, it's this way to hang out with my dad and it's almost like being with him. The first morning I was on Orientation Island and just walking around but then Dad friended me and sent me a teleport to the house he's building and all of the sudden I was "there" with him. He was all gray at first. Took a while to fill in. But then we were talking. And for me, instant messaging is pretty foreign, so this was a big step up from email. And talking back and forth about this thing he's interested in, and he was showing me his windows and how he'd made the texture in Paint Shop Pro. 

We wanted to find out if my body would just sit there in suspended animation when I logged off, so Dad logged off and then came back. He's Lundon Little. I don't know how he got Little for a last name and there was no Little in the list when I chose. I chose Willikers Littlething. Willikers for the old nickname he had for me and still sometimes uses.

My brown-haired purple shirted character stood there and waited for him and when he returned he seemed to sort of leap into existence, and at first he was gray and at first he had a woman's body and these prominent boobs. Then it morphed into the character of Lundon Little and the color came in. I told him about the boobs. He said, what, I had boobs? And I laughed. You click one thing and the character puts her hands on her belly and throws her head back and laughs. You hear it. That was so funny again I had to say something about it like, "Oh my god, that is so funny!" And then Lundon Little laughed. Hands on the belly and head thrown back and laughing. The two of us laughing in real life and laughing in cyberspace, sharing a laugh together.

a moment in the day: moon

It's 7:54 on July the 20th, 2019, and I'm sitting in front of my laptop computer in the thick air-conditioner air, waiting for the big moment.

I had set my iPhone alarm clock so I wouldn't forget to watch at just the right time. Fifty years ago right now—or two minutes from now—Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon.

I have a Youtube video all ready to go. So I can watch the moment on my laptop  (a thing Neil Armstrong never knew about when he was walking around on the moon) via the internet (a thing Neil Armstrong never knew about when he was walking around on the moon). I googled the exact time and then used the internet to convert Coordinated Universal Time to Pacific Daylight Time (there are a lot of things I did tonight that would have blown Neil Armstrong's mind back when he was walking around on the moon) so I'd know exactly when I would need to be watching this thing in order to honor my membership in the American Society of Nerds (if there were such a thing, Neil Armstrong would surely have been a member).

I click the play arrow. I throw it into full screen mode.

The muddy, contrasty video opens up on what is apparently NASA: three big screens taking up most of my screen, the middle one showing a huge map in alien neon greens, and in the lower corner a spread of small computer consoles with men working at them, bathed in mauve. A muffled voice says, "Neil, this is Houston, loud and clear."

My nerd heart leaps.

I watch the little figures at their mauve computers move at the bottom of my computer, and then one of the big screens before them blinks. My computer blinks from the earth to the moon. The color disappears and it's all black and white and gray. Shapes that mean nothing to my eyes.

A voice says, "And we're getting a picture on the TV."

The first images I see from the moon are upside down. I only know this because the voice on the TV tells me so. When they flip right side up, I still don't know what I'm seeing—just gray, contrasty shapes—until something starts to move and I start to make out what's going on. It's Neil Armstrong's shape emerging from the rocket.

I was born on June 14th, 1969. Mom and Dad always say they held me up to the TV so I could watch. Of course I have no memory of it. I have no memory, even, of the last telling of that story. Who was it who held me up? Mom or Dad? Whenever I think about the story, it's always "we" in my head. Was I fussy or quiet? Did my eyes connect with the shapes on our TV or was I looking off elsewhere? What was I wearing? I mean, I was just over a month old. Was I naked? Was I mooning them watching their man on the moon?

On my computer, Neil Armstrong is descending the ladder. As he steps down onto the surface of the moon, I don't know exactly what time it is because I'm in full-screen mode—it could still be 7:55, it could have nudged past to 7:57. I watch the almost indistinguishable shapes of rocket ladder and spaceman. His big, bulbous space helmet. "It's one small step for man," he says, and I wonder, did he practice this speech in front of the mirror as he was shaving in the morning before takeoff? "One giant leap for mankind."

"I think that was Neil's quote," the TV voice says, "I didn't understand it."

I think the thing that has always stuck with me about the moon landing, personally, beyond the wonder of humans first doing this thing that was so seemingly impossible and magical, is that my parents held me up to see it, that the moment for them was as much about their first baby as it was the near reaches of outer space.

Or I could be projecting a little.

I pick up Nicholas and hold him up to my laptop screen as Neil Armstrong walks around on the moon. Nicholas is unimpressed.

a moment in the day: short story

I'm up before six, sitting at the computer. In a few minutes I'll have to run down to wake Stephen up and then in about forty-five minutes, we'll leave to pick my parents up at the hotel and take them to the airport after a glorious three-day birthday visit of eating and talking and eating and talking.

I'm reading a random short story in an online literary journal. This strikes me as strange, suddenly. That my mind is on something other than their impending departure. That I'm not sitting here pining in advance of the leaving.

I've been known to pine in advance to crazy degrees. Like for the weeks leading up to the visit. Every night, dreaming that I'm in California visiting them, or they're in Portland visiting me, and it's the last night, and tomorrow they'll be gone.

Sometimes I have the goodbye dream when no trip is even on the horizon. Sometimes night after night for a ridiculous number of nights. I get why I was so obsessed in my early adulthood, when I really didn't love my life on the road, and coming home to visit family was the big bright spot in my year, but it's weird to finally have a life I really like and still pine so hard for that other home.

This short story is organized into bite-sized pieces jumping forward and backward through time. The family is like mine: a mom, a dad, two sisters and a brother. Except that they fight all the time.

Weirdly, I didn't even have the dream last night, on the last night. Is that what being fifty is like? Have I finally, finally grown up?

I realize it's after six, so I run down quick to go into the bedroom and turn off the sound machine and stop Stephen's soft snoring. Forty-five minutes, and we'll leave to take them to the airport. I go back upstairs and sit back down in front of the computer. I finish the short story. I don't know why the ending makes me cry.

Lu

When I was a kid, I had a baby doll. Her name was Lucy Barker.

She was named after my mom's first and middle names (from before Mom married Dad and got a maiden name to replace the middle).

I also had a second baby doll. She was smaller and had a beanbag body and a plastic head.

Her name was Little Lucy Barker.

I wish I could claim to have named both. As a kid, I remember I was proud to have two dolls named after my mother, who was, as you must know, the Very Best Human in the World.

It was my dad who suggested those names. He was also the biggest pet namer in the family. When we got two kittens he named them too:

Two-Lu and Tre-Lu.

I swear he didn't always name everything after my mom, but like with the dolls, I loved that the kitties were named after her. The way Dad named things, it felt like the perfect expression of love: simple and funny and joyful.

I never did have any kids to name anything, but I'd like to think if I were mulling names, my dad would say, hey, I've got a suggestion.

We kids, as young adults, used to laugh about how we often called my parents' home "Mom's house." Sometimes mothers get all the accolades. In 2001 I stayed there for Christmas, and I learned that my two-year-old then-nephew Maxx (now Amy) called it, "Lulu's house."

I said, "Maxx, where does Pops live?"

Expecting the answer to be Lulu's house.

"In the office."

On his birthday, early journal entries about my dad with the spelling errors intact and my commentary in blue

1979

May 16—I got the new hamster today he has funny ears. My Dad gave me the idea to name him Bunny. He had long ears. The hamster, not my dad.

1982

September 5—By the way I am 5'1 brown hair brown eyes, slim built like my dad, and I look like a hardymon. Hardymons were my dad's mom's side of the family.

October 6—I was home from school sick.  I taped my music.  We had a birthday party for Dad.  We did a skit.  No one liked it.  I went to piano lessons.

1983

January 21—Heather & I went downstairs (Almost 12:00) to make a special drink for the McLittle Theatre's party. Dad came down & Heather saw his Head Around the door & screamed. I turned & saw Him & screamed. Our drink is milk vanilla extract & sugar.

March 20—We made mom & dad lunch while they were out. We made Salad, Hours durves, & an Entrée (crab & chease in French Bread). Heather went home. I saw "News Break," a fiction T.V. movie about an explosion. It was neat.

April 7—I'm also running against Julie F. for Hattie Bates (play) I'll tell you if I ever get to do tryouts. I was trying out for the lead in the class play even though I was the shyest kid in class. I went to Mrs. Lindstroms for a workshop but she wasn't home. The 2nd draft papers are due tomorrow. Dad typed my whole paper out for me on his computer! I wrote it & he copied it. I have the best dad in the world!

April 8—We had try-outs. (Class play stuff again) I got in the top 3, Julie, Audra & me to try out again next week. Mr. A said I did excellent! and everyone commented me. When I "interrupted Clapper" like dad said, Mr. A gave me the "O.K." sign

(The fact that Dad coached me - and particularly the suggestion that I interrupt the "Clapper" character, was why I ended up getting the part.)

1984

Well, it was Friday the 13th, today. Because I forgot to set my alarm, the night before, I woke up at 6:30 because my mom came in, thus gaining a half hour of valuable sleap. Because of my lateness in awakening, Dad drove me to school at 20 min. to 8:00, instead of the usual 7:15 buss. First period, Algebra, was fine. Next, Geography, I had a map test. I hope I did well. English was nice, as usual. Then, at lunch, I went to the lecture hall to get ready for my mime final. Odallas Lopez, another doing hers today, met me at the door. The last, Bart McHenry, came, a few minutes later. We did our faces and waited tensly for showtime. Being first, I did my mime, the Golfer, to the tunes of "Chariots of fire", "The Lone Ranger" & that little ditty you hear when something bad is coming in a cartoon or movie. The Odallas and Bart followed. French was fine. I got a critique paper. At home, We ate from McDonalds. Then I & Edina, went to Foot Hill's Drama production of "Up the Down Staircase" which was excellent. Back home again, I put my purse upstairs, Called Gayle to talk over araingments for tomorrow & went back down. Comming into the pool room, I heard sounds of music and dingings. Dad had the Jukebox on, playing pinball and so we ended the day with a long round of pinball (He got over 1 million on one game) to the jukebox. Whoever said that Friday the 13th was bad luck? Well, days like these really show me one of the meanings of life.

9/19/84 (10:02) We (mom, dad & I) have just sat down to watch the 1st St. Elsewhere of the year. Dad & I just worked on many computer things. He made me copies of each Toybox disk & a Dos 3.3. Now, we're working on a copy of the apple writer-disk. Toybox was a novel I was writing. 

Oct 7, (9:46, PM) Dad and I went to a football game today, (Rams against Atlanta) It was a great game. It was really close all through the whole game. Today, was when I was first introduced to "the wave". It was really neat. At the end of the game, the score was Rams-28, Atlanta-27 and there was about 7 seconds to go. Atlanta had the ball and had perfect position for a field goal. The croud shouted the seconds outloud but it was no use. They won. We all watched the debate of the President Reagan and Walter Mondale. From what I know, Mondale seems far better than Reagan but, most of the time, I don't know what they're saying.

Dec 9, 10:20, PM. Dad and I went to the best Rams' game today. Of course the Rams won (They played the Houston Oilers) but, that's not what made it so exciting. One player, Eric Dickerson, broke a record today, made by O.J. Simpson some 15 years back having something to do with how far he runs in a season. We were yelling 'Er-ic, Er-ic," until our throats were raw. I cheered and screamed so much. It was also the last season game except they won and get to go on playing. We drove home in the convertible with the top down. It was the greatest game!  

1985

4/20/85  Saturday. A long entry about other things, and then... Afterwards, the whole family plus Tina Anderson went out to see Beverly Hills Cop. I absolutely loved it. But, half way through it, of course, I had to go to the bathroom. I held it until the movie was over. Then, I learned that we were not allowed back into the theatre. We had to wait until we got home. When Mom, Dad, and I got finished with the toilets, back home, Dad turned to me and said:

“Mom and I agree that there is no feeling as good as a good pee.” 

 I agreed

Father's Day diary entries early in my life (or the entries from the dates most close to Father's Day) with spelling errors intact and my own commentary in green

1978

June 8—A Boy was wating water and throwing rocks at Me Mara and Edina.

In my early days, I often only wrote once or twice a month. Most of these early year entries are not on Father's Day but whatever came closest. I have no idea what wating is supposed to mean. 

1979
June 27—I got a permonent (perm) my first.

1980

There was no June entry at all for 1980.

1981
June 14—Today I'm 12. I got a radio and a disk. I also got a bra but it's the wrong size so I have to change it. I still nead to change my personality at school. Maybe everyone will forget it, and I can start over next year. Wish me luck!

No Father's Day entries yet, but I was sure not to forget writing on my birthday.

1982

Ah, the first actual father's day I wrote on - yay!
June 20—I got 2 new coins from Isriel, from Shena for my collection.

OK, so no mention of Father's Day or Dad. Sorry, Dad. 

1983
June 19, 20, 21—I was at home at Heathers and back home again. I saw Heathers new house. I finished Marna and started Misty.

Annnd another entry that encompasses Father's Day that didn't mention Dad at all. I found time to write about the two stories I was working on (because obviously I was a great writer) but I couldn't find the time to sneak in a "Happy Father's Day"? Hey, Dad, did I mention I'm sorry?

1984
June 19. Alot has happened since my last entry. On Friday, we had our last Amnesty meeting [the one club I was in, in high school, Amnesty International]. I had to say goodbye to Jason Lamm, who was the one we always called mouth, and Kevin who we called Speady Gonzales and Tim, and Bob and that red-haired kid who's always there. Of course, I'd see Paul today. Over the weekend, I met Heather's friend, Chelle. She's really neat and we all had a great time. I had my algebra final yesterday (I bombed) and World Cultures (C) and English (?) today. On Friday night I was really angry. I had a period. I had to say goodbye to Mr. Ward, today. On Friday, he gave me, as a gift and a reminder of everything, one of his lunch bags & he autographed it. I gave him a short letter today thanking him and telling him how beneficial it has been having him as a teacher & a friend. On the weekend we found an injured duck & today we found a baby bird. We took the duck to the wild animal care center & the bird's still here.

OK, am I ever going to bother mentioning my poor, neglected father in here AT ALL? For the love of god. This is supposed to be a blog post about my dad! How can I do that if I spent my entire childhood being an ingrate of a daughter?

1985

OK, finally! Jeez! Here's the first time I get an actual Father's Day entry in my youthful career as a journaler. Better make it count!

June 18, morning— Day before yesterday was, infact, a most peculiar day. Peculiar? Well, filled. I can say that for it. It was a very filled day.

First, I did a little writing. I wrote a little card-thing for dad. It read:

“F is for the fairness you give

to us when we fight.

A is your amusing humor,

R is you’re always right.

T is for your teaching us;

always do your best.

E is for just everything

R is for the rest.

Happy Farter’s Day.”

a moment in the day: decision

I'm driving Stephen to work, and we're making a decision, even though we're not saying so. Noni's funeral in Arlington. Maybe I made my decision earlier, sitting in front of the computer, looking at prices for flights, doing the theoretical math in my head of airfare plus hotel plus transportation plus eating out plus eating out, but a decision isn't really a decision until you say it out loud.

Stephen and I drive in silence under pink and white blossom trees. Once when I was a kid, visiting Noni and Coco in Virginia, we went to Winchester for their famous Apple Blossom Festival. Beautiful old, Colonial buildings and block after block of flowering trees. That's all I remember from that time. That, and the continuing notion that all things lovely and exotic could happen in the company of Noni and Coco.

My memory of that time - and all those wonderful childhood times - is more like a picture postcard than a movie in my head, now. A picture of a moment. Or rather, it's just a picture of a picture of a picture of a moment, and even though I know that every time you remember something, you're only remembering the last memory of the memory before it, I make my memory take another picture of Noni and Coco and all those flowers, for safe keeping.

It's not really just about Noni, of course. Going out for the funeral would be a chance to be with these people I rarely see - Mom and Dad, aunts and uncles, cousins. A decision isn't really a decision until you say it out loud, and so, driving under the pink and white blossom trees, I make my decision: I'm going to let Stephen say it.

He gives a little sigh. "I guess people who are maybe thinking about buying a house should be careful with their money."

I just say, "Yeah."

We pull up at the curb and I let him out. I tell him to have a good day. I head to the grocery store.

On the radio, the classical station is playing that show where they examine the music of the cinema, and today's topic is leitmotif. Recurring musical phrases that embody certain characters or themes in a film (or opera, for that matter). They're playing a piece from Star Wars. An ominous repeat of a single note, then a trio of notes - big John Williams orchestra with the march of an Imperial army underneath. Darth Vader's theme. Just the thought of the great battle of the Rebel forces against the evil Galactic Empire makes me start to cry.

a moment in the day: dream

I wake up before the alarm goes off, and the last bit of dream sits here, on my pillow. I've dreamed it almost every night for the last month, in some way or other. Dreamed it for the few weeks before I flew to California and I've been dreaming it since I came home. Always the way with one of these California visits. In the dream, it's my last night there and I'm going to have to leave again.

It's weird to me how hard I grieve for that part of my life that's far away. Not weird that I miss my family, but how much. With how good I have it here. A good and interesting man as my husband, a good job, my friends, my endless, beloved projects. My doggie. It's not like before, when every time I left my family in California, I was heading off to an existence that felt crushingly boring and distinctly not mine. But no matter what I have here in this lovely Portland life-after, there's that one deep hole I can't fill.

A week and a half ago, the Saturday of Noni's memorial, stepping up to Mom and Dad's door, me with my good shoes in one hand, Frank and I were talking about death. Partly because of Noni, yes, but also, I think, partly because Frank has a daughter now, and children are the markers of the swift and endless passage of time.

"I think about how I won't exist," he said, "and I think about how I won't exist forever. All that time going on forever and ever..."

He was freaking himself out just thinking about thinking about it.

Though I believe, like my brother, that after I die, my consciousness won't continue, won't go to some heaven or into some new body, death isn't the forever that obsesses me. Walking up to Mom and Dad's house with my good shoes in my hand, I was thinking about my life - all that time - how little of it will be spent with this handful of the people I love most.

The other night, back here in Portland, Stephen and I sat up in bed doing what we love to do, watching an old movie. It was The Merry Widow, with Jeanette MacDonald shrouded in black tulle and Maurice Chevalier singing, "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

Late, ten thirty at least, and I started to doze, just a moment. Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier were embracing, and then my eyes closed and I started to dream. Dreaming about that same hug, but instead of MacDonald and Chevalier, it was Mom and me.

a diary of dad

For Father's Day, I thought I'd pull out a quick moment from an old diary, like I did for Mom on Mother's Day. Well, I fell down the diary hole and came out with a few more than one. One of the interesting things to me about this little series is how much my voice changes from April of 1983 (I was 13, about to turn 14) to March of 1985 (when I had learned about things like using big words and metaphors). Also, get ready for some poor spelling. I think I get that from my dad.

From April 7, 1983

The 2nd draft papers are due tomorrow. Dad typed my whole paper out for me on his computer! I wrote it & he copied it. I have the best dad in the world!

From January 13, 1984 [the pool room is the room in our house with a pool table in it]

Comming into the pool room, I heard sounds of music and dingings. Dad had the Jukebox on, playing pinball and so we ended the day with a long round of pinball (He got over 1 million on one game) to the jukebox. Whoever said that Friday the 13th was bad luck? Well, days like these really show me one of the meanings of life.

From October 7, 1984

Dad and I went to a football game today, (Rams against Atlanta) It was a great game. It was really close all through the whole game. Today, was when I was first introduced to "the wave". It was really neat. At the end of the game, the score was Rams-28, Atlanta-27 and there was about 7 seconds to go. Atlanta had the ball and had perfect position for a field goal. The croud shouted the seconds outloud but it was no use. They won. We all watched the debate of the President Reagan and Walter Mondale. From what I know, Mondale seems far better than Reagan but, most of the time, I don't know what they're saying. 

From December 9, 1984

Dad and I went to the best Rams' game today. Of course the Rams won (They played the Houston Oilers) but, that's not what made it so exciting. One player, Eric Dickerson, broke a record today, made by O.J. Simpson some 15 years back having something to do with how far he runs in a season. We were yelling 'Er-ic, Er-ic," until our throats were raw. I cheered and screamed so much. It was also the last season game except they won and get to go on playing. We drove home in the convertible with the top down. It was the greatest game!

From March 3, 1985

We awoke early this morning. Coco, Noni, and My Dad were going to take a balloon ride and we were going to watch. The balloon rides were given my a woman named Dawn who is a stunt-woman. She did stunts for the Steve Martin movie, The Jerk.

Dawn and her partner brought the balloon in a truck. They pulled it out and layed it on the ground. When she took down names of the ones who were going to fly, she said, "we have room for one more." Mom strode over to me and asked, "Do you really want to go up?" because, I had wanted to. "Yes," I said, and, finaly, she allowed me to.

Dawn and her partner began, then, to fill the balloon with air. It filled very quickly, puffing out, enlargening. It was soon fully filled and lying on its side, and then they warmed the air. Dawn pressed a button on a metal device at the top of the basket, and flames shot out of the device, up into the balloon. Slowly, the balloon began to rise, until it was floating above the basket, huge and colorful.

I stood and looked at it. It was huge, squares of rainbow colors running diagonally all over it. The basket looked rather small—very small, and Dawn stood inside it, occasionally turning on the gas to heat the air. We ran over to it, and grasped a strong hold onto the basket, to hold it down.

One by one, we boarded—Coco, Dad (holding his video camera in one hand), myself, Noni. Kathy filmed us from outside, and Dad from inside the basket. I grasped one corner and readied myself. I couldn't believe I was really going.

Thunder blasted above me, as the fire tumbled into the balloon, once again heating the air, and the others backed away from the balloon. Edina, Frankie, and Sal were shrieking things. Mom was yelling for me to "hold tight", as were others So, I hugged tightly to the strip of basket that descended to the balloon. But, I didn't feel at all scared. Excited, I did feel.

We lifted. I felt the gravity drain away. We ascended into the sky, the peoples, cars, houses below us getting smaller. Frankie was running after the balloon as we floated further up.

We began to move across the sky. The fog that had been spread across Canyon Lake was not here, in Peris. The mountains were smeared with snow on their pointed peaks, jutting upward like dunce caps. Canyon Lake, surrounded by hills, was filled with feathery white fog—a bowl filled with whipped cream. The cities below looked like toys—the cities of the train sets Dad and I were going to build, once, long ago.

holiday catalog day

Two days to cram in the week's work at Powell's before Mom and Dad arrive and I take the rest of the week off. This two days happens to include the launch of the Holiday Catalog, which means approximately 55 staff favorite titles chosen to be displayed and sold at thirty percent off. Looking at it here in the glow of my computer screen, that just looks like some innocuous number, 55, but it's a huge endeavor. In the Green Room, it means reducing by half our display of author events books, moving into that open space half of our bestsellers and filling three cases with the Holiday Catalog books. In the Orange Room, this year, it meant completely reconfiguring the layout of about a third of the room, moving tables and spinner racks, taking books from this table and loading them into this display case, and vice versa. [I didn't have to move furniture - my hands were always on the books.]

This year, too, the morning was compounded by another huge display promotion switching out, and it was my job to take care of both. And to assist in the changing of signage posted and hanging in various places where the Holiday Catalog was going. I had help from some excellent coworkers, and still I worked pretty nonstop from seven in the morning to six-thirty last night to get all the books out, the signs up and four window displays put in place.

Holiday Catalog launch is always equal parts stress and exhilaration for me. No, maybe more exhilaration. There's something about running up and down the back stairs, pushing cart after cart down those corridors. Something about the pass of hundreds of books across my hands.

When I got home last night, Stephen had cheese waiting. We got in bed and put our feet up and watched Shirley Temple shorts.

Today: going in an hour early, maybe staying an hour or two late. Dealing with all the carts of books I abandoned at the end of yesterday. Overstock that needs to be put away, books that need to be relabeled for different sections. Posters advertising the Holiday Catalog need to go up. A hundred plus shelf talkers need to be notated with shelf locations and distributed. The books I order need to be tended to.

Then straight from work to an art opening and then home. And then home. Stephen and me and Nicholas and more cheese and a glass of wine. And then Mom and Dad.

care package number two

Don't suppose it would make as pretty a picture as the avocados and vegemite (and wouldn't be quite as delicious) but a second care package came in the mail, this one from Dad, and it's just as good. My taxes, done by a generous accountant Dad who I happen to know hates doing taxes. So, let me say it again. Have I said lately how great this man is? Have I said it often enough?

Thanks, Dad.