Women Always Help

it is a glorious day, sunny and warm. It's hard to believe that rain is due again by tonight. As I walked my dog down the street, I saw an elderly lady sitting on the corner across from us, her walker askew next to her. She was waving at a man in a truck who drove on by. I ran over; she was okay, but needed help getting up. She was on her way to the senior citizen's lunch at the local Community Center. I couldn't lift her and hold Ollie's leash and was just about to tie him to a pole when two other women on their morning walk saw what was going on and came over. One of them had a lovely Irish accent. As we got her up, she muttered, "It's always the women who help." We asked her if she wanted us to walk with her to the center, about a block and a half way, but she thanked us and insisted she would be fine. She had her daily route mapped out. I think we all sensed that she wanted to hold onto her independence and let her go. I walked on, but I turned around after a few feet and watched to make sure she got safely to the next corner. She did. It made me think: I'll be old soon - we'll all be old soon - and I also want to be independent. How will I afford it? Winning the lottery is not much of an option. I hope that there will be someone who'll offer to help me up if I fall and then let me walk on, alone and proud.

Another Funeral

I'm watching MSNBC's coverage as Teddy Kennedy's body makes the trip from Cape Cod to the JFK library in Boston, where his coffin will lie in state. Michael Beschloss said the images from the compound reminded him of that first time we watched a procession leave Hyannis Port, when JFK left to assume the Presidency. This is the bookend, the end of an era running from 1960 till today. It's not just that Ted Kennedy is gone, but that so much else, so much that has been part of the culture that shaped me and everyone else in their 40's and upward, becomes part of history as well. Our own deaths are somehow contained in this funeral as well as the Senator's.

Well, that's a perky little paragraph.

August Sunday

Usually, I identify with Morrissey when it comes to Sundays. They can make me feel sick inside, for no particular reason (Heads up, all you therapists!), especially when it's quiet on the friends front. But, add the right music and Sunday becomes a holiday. iPods are great things, but I love 'found" music, the kind that shows up on the radio as a happy surprise. I've had a good run so far this morning: Steve Earle, Van Morrison, Itchycoo Park and Lowell George singing Spanish Moon. I remember listening to that same song on my Robert Palmer cassette, and being eleven and wishing I could play piano like Lee Michaels. Do you know what I mean? I have no idea just how I found all that music; it certainly wasn't what my parents listened to. That's a lie: I know what it was. It was the radio, radio at all hours, through moves across country and stays on South Pacific islands. I'd stay awake in my dark bedroom listening to Handel's Messiah or Bill Cosby, or The Seeds -- whatever the late night DJ would play.

I can't listen to the news anymore: too much doom and gloom, too many talking heads batting nonsense back and forth. I need music. It turns a morning that could have become a pity party into brunch, with a cheese omelet, sourdough toast and sweet tea almost fixing themselves as I sing along.

What we learn in the middle of the night

I've been waking up around 3AM and rely on the BBC World Service to lull me back to sleep. I was listening to a discussion that featured a Turkish artist when I suddenly thought his voice sounded familiar. In my student days, I auditioned roommates and met a handsome and self-effacing guy who sat on my sofa and said he was a science major at Harvard, a concert-level violinist and had recently finished his first novel. Anyone who can say that and still seem likable is worth knowing. Andre moved in and that Turkish artist - famous now - was one of his closest friends in grad school. Two beautiful boys.

I moved to New York and lost touch with Andre, but saw him once years later, when I returned to the West Coast. He was kind enough to invite me to a party. I dread parties because I'm shy and am always sure I won't know anyone there, but I remember the strings of lights and good conversation. I didn't see him after that. I didn't think I was as interesting as the rest of his friends so I didn't call, but I thought about him every once in a while, like tonight.

I typed his name into the Google search box and learned that he died almost two years ago.

He was wonderful and I missed knowing him. Why didn't I keep in touch? Why haven't I kept in touch with so many people? I think it has something to do with my wandering childhood. My father's job was such that we never spent more than a year or so in a place before moving again. Just enough time to start to make friends and then lose them.

When my mother lay dying, she said to me, "You don't cling." It was a complement. I think that I never learned the art of holding on - or was too afraid that if I did, the other person would let go.

A Tragedy

Most of you will know that California is suffering through a terrible drought as well as a financial crisis. Watering of outside plants, etc., is restricted to two days a week, before 9AM. I barely water my back yard and it's been very hot, which means that a battalion of ants have recently come marching under my kitchen door, looking for water as much as the scraps of food Ollie may have dropped from his bowl during one of his picky eating sessions.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to find ants trailing up the side of the stove and circling the burners. I got out the bleach spray and cleaned, and the ants retreated. This morning, it was cool enough to make a cup of tea, so I put the kettle on. I let the tea steep, then poured milk into the cup. Black bits floated up to the rim: I figured they were tea leaves, till I looked closer and saw they were dead ants. I dumped everything down the sink, rinsed and started over.

The scouts drowned looking for water and then were boiled. There's the hint of a Greek tragedy in that, or a John Ford western.

Hard Times

If you ever need to cheer me up, just put on the DVD or CD of The Band's The Last Waltz. It's on now, LOUD, at the end of a terrible week. The week actually started ten days ago when the husband of a dear friend of mine was suddenly hospitalized. Today was his funeral. Her heart is broken and her nine-year-old twins lost their father. There is and was so much love in that family, something I never stopped to think about before all this happened. It's not just our own lives that we often take for granted. I can only imagine the sadness. There is no platitude anyone can say to make things better. There is nothing good about this. It's the kind of grief you don't get over. You figure out how to live with it in a kind of stutter-stop-start again. No one can help her with that, but she's got a lot of us who'll pitch in on all the practical things. We'll aim for the grace in casseroles and clean laundry, parts of the daily management of sorrow.

Cheesecake

I've got graham cracker crust on the brain. Maybe it's because it was my birthday a couple of days ago and I know that I shouldn't eat cake, so of course I obsess about it, or it's the cooking show on my TV this morning that was all about cheesecake and a chicken salad made with grapes and walnuts, both of which made me think of an old friend and things that happened a long time ago.

When my sister was dying, I found that all I could bear to watch were home improvement shows and cooking programs. I'm not sure why, but they were comforting and played like excerpts from someone's perfect life where things got done and people ate together and not only enjoyed the food but each other's company. Food connects me to a constant stream of memory. For instance, I'm eating a tuna salad sandwich as I write this and that same cheesecake friend and I split a tuna sandwich on the morning after we found out her boyfriend had been killed in a motorcycle crash. That's my memory anyway; I also remember her grabbing my hand and telling me that no matter what, we weren't using this as an excuse to go off our diets. She's also the first person who ever served me a chicken salad that contained grapes, and it was a revelation. That's when I began to understand that there was a world beyond limply boiled vegetables and special meals weren't just a grilled T-bone steak with frozen fries from the oven. My family never stayed in a place longer than two years and adapted to living in a number of exotic locations, but it seemed to me that making that salad expressed a real sense of adventure. Hard to believe I got that all from the contrast of sliced grapes, mayonnaise and chunked chicken, but there you are.

I'm not a cook, though I can cook some things well enough to be grateful when someone goes to the time and trouble of making something for me. That brings me back to the famous cheesecake with the graham cracker crust that my friend only made on special occasions. Good friends got one on their birthdays and she even made one once for a famous director's birthday shortly after she started working for him. He didn't appreciate it; he thought it was too personal a gesture. We're all a lot older and maybe wiser now, and I hope that director understands just how dumb he was. She showed a generosity of spirit that he lacked.