con't...

Construction debris – boards, nails and grey clods hardened by mortar – awaited them like land mines in unfamiliar territory. He liked the idea of a brand new house, so unlike all the old houses where they had lived before. He was proud to live in a house with modern appliances, with a chocolate brown refrigerator, and matching dishwasher, stove, and built-in oven. But he missed the tall trees, the thickets, and the wet grass around their old house in Utah.
His father was anxious to level the mound of topsoil that had been dumped in the front. Shoveling it into the wheelbarrow was something that he and his father could do together. They took turns carting the dirt around to the back yard. He liked flattening the dark soil with a garden rake and the patterns of neatness that it left. He thought about the stubborn cowlick to the right of his widows peak that refused to lie flat, even when he combed it wet.

When the monotony of the garden tasks bored him, he left to throw clods and stones, aiming for a bucket or a board on the slope behind the house. He was getting better and better at it. His father promised to buy him a new baseball mitt, and practice with him, just as soon as the yard had been landscaped.

Returning 'home'

He woud turn twelve that fall. Ever since he could remember he had learned to call San Francisco home, though he had never actually lived there. His father, who had grown up in San Francisco and left during the war, was pleased as punch to finally be returning ’home’. His mother, on the other hand, who had always been so proud of her pre-gold-rush San Francisco roots, was more reticent. Her career as a commanding officer’s wife was now over and she hadn’t even started looking for a new job. Since they were staying in a loft motel just off the bayshore freeway their first month back in California, there was no rush yet.

He and his older siblings were all happy to be there. The intimacy of family life in two small motel rooms with a kitchenette, the air conditioning, the swimming pool, coupled with the imminence of settling into a brand new house, and beginning a new school and made life seem secure, and exciting.

Nunzilla

Big boys don't cry

They hadn’t always lived on Harborview Drive 1295. The street hadn't even existed before the early sixties when roads were ploughed and asphalted in preparation for yet another new housing development. Within no time this new road would be lined with ranch style houses, one-story suburban classics, with used brick trim and pastel stucco. Here in the dry grasses along the crest of the San Francisco East Bay, the shiny new splitwood roofs were all that protected them from the blazing California sunshine. No trees had been planted yet, but there were some native, low-growing live oaks on the back slopes, and some plane trees just off the dirt road to the pauper burial grove in the valley below. That's where he went to play, in the shade of the trees that had been there for so many years.

...to be continued

Under a sun hat

I sense that her weaknesses are in fact her greatest strengths, not morally or ethically mind you, but that her survival instinct is based upon a fundamental weakness. Unfortunately, I also sense that because my investigation - regardless of any evidence it offers to the truth of my hypotheisis - is ultimately threatening to her, I have become an unwanted witness of her life. This is why she has closed all doors to me, and why her allies have been sent to complain that I ”analyze everything about her” in a tone that is as threatening as it is threatened. She is actually a passive terrorist.
She has never been a femme fatale - though I suspect that she auditioned for the role at some point. Femme malade is perhaps a better epithet. One of her sisters died during the polio epidemic in San Francisco during the depression, and it could well be that she too suffers from the residual symptoms of grief, or some other chronic obstructive disease like tuberculosis. Over the years she has learned to ride on it [her disease], to break it in and exploit it, like a wild buck. Her husband has buried his own grief in hers. That's perhaps why he is more than happy to fulfil her doctor's expensive prescriptions for fresh air in a bungalow on a secluded South Pacific beach, or from a deck chair on a Carribbean cruise …loaded with romcom and chicklit obsession novels.

Mother daughter and me

I could tell that the show was in part for my benefit - the somersault, the cartwheel, and all the aborted attempts to stand on her head. Charmed no end by this toddler, I had to share my delight with her mother who also stood nearby. I noticed that the mother was observing her daughter as though she were reading a book, silently seeking protection from the world - and probably from me - by burying herself in identification with its narrator. The young girl was her possession and her extension. I could see too that mother and daughter both sought my approval. Though this mother never acknowledged it, I am sure that every inflection of my voice was registered.

All of a sudden, the little girl jumped up on a chair in front of me. Eye-to-eye, but too close to focus, we rubbed noses. As she backed away I could see that the chair had disappeared and that she wasn’t a little girl any more, that she was in fact just as tall as I was, grinning from ear to ear with a mouth full of braces. What a sweety I thought to myself.

The next thing I knew she was running out the back door in tears, crying ”Mommy, mommy why do you keep coming in and out”. I also began to wonder where and why her mother had suddenly disappeared. With hardly a chance to reflect on the chain of events, I heard the young girl call out: ”Mommy, why do you keep running in and out, it’s making me so sleepy.” This was the first time I had ever heard my niece speak Swedish. (While Swedish is her mother’s tongue it is not her own native language.) Given the intensity of this young girl's pursuit, I thought to myself that she must have confused the Swedish word for ’tired’ with the word for ’sleepy’. But to tell you the truth I was still so very sleepy and tired myself when I woke from this dream, that we are all certainly one .

Withdrawal

I remember how happy I was to have finally met the bitch – face-to-face, eye-to-eye. I had heard so much about her, about how ugly she was, that I was actually surprised to find that I liked her. I let her hang around my apartment for a while. Then one day, sensing that she was wet behind the ears and way too demanding, I brought her down to my storage space in the basement. In retrospect I think that I did that to protect her. Furthermore, a friend whose opinion I respected at the time, complained that she was barbarous and uncivilized. Since I wasn’t sure I understood what he meant by that, we withdrew. I didn’t bring her up again until he had - for all intents and purposes - disappeared for good.