Am I Really Such a Bad Girl?

“Bad Girl! Your mind is in the gutter!”

I’m standing in my Tiburon backyard in summer shorts without a shirt. I’ve used a black eyebrow pencil to draw hairs all over my chest. It is circus day and I am pretending to be the hairy man.

Ms. Buckley, our short, matronly, gray haired Irish babysitter, grabs my arm and shoves me out of the yard into the bathroom. She hands me a washcloth saying, “Wash yourself and put on a proper shirt!”

What is wrong? We are starting the circus, Cousin Phoebe is wearing the red satin devil costume I made her put on. Brother Brian is putting toilet paper streamers on his bike and getting ready for the parade around the cul-de-sac.

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Discovering the Music — and more — in You

I didn’t know I was a gorilla until I saw it in my mother back in 1963.

Patty Green was spending the night with me and we were listening to the radio at about two in the morning. As KEWB channel ninety-one blasted rock and roll, and we heard the Dave Clark’s Over and Over and Over Again, and I decided to shriek the radio knob up five decibels when Dave repeated Over and Over and Over about fifty times.

Patty and I laughed hysterically about this when suddenly MOM slammed open my bedroom looking like a giant gorilla let out of her cage. She stood larger than life in the doorway, snorting from frothing rage as she hyperventilated and looked through bulging sleepiness. Her lurking stance reminded me of a jungle mother ready to kill her young. Patty immediately closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, and I closed my top eye as I lie there, watching Mom determine her next move.

Mom stumbled past the foot of my bed and over to my new ivory plastic clock radio with the red calligraphic dial face. She reached over and pulled the plug out of the wall and waved it in my face, spitting through her teeth, “If I ever hear another word out of you, you have had it.”

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Age Sometimes Does Not Equal Wisdom

Mrs. Mary Lou invited me to visit.

She lives in Tiburon and wanted to discuss plans for her daughter Vici’s birthday breakfast, a daunting preparation for the eighty-one year old woman. I offered to manage the breakfast because Vici, is my dear friend.

As the three of us sat together at Mary Lou’s long wooden kitchen table drinking tall glasses of lemonade and ice water, we discussed Vici’s party and then another episode in Mary Lou’s life became more important for her to share.

“Do you know what I saw shopping the other day?” Mary Lou began her tale about a completely bald twenty-five year old woman walking around, apparently recovering from chemotherapy. The young woman’s right breast was missing and she wore a tight, spaghetti strap tank top. The woman’s husband also walked proudly and respectfully beside her. “She had the prettiest face, and her husband was so nice to her,” Mary Lou observed.

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Playing Cards with Mom

“Split these two decks and shuffle this half.”

Mom faces me, a solid seventy-four year old figure, elbows bent, both hands moving and shuffling fifty four cards. Her long gray hair is twisted messily into a ponytail clipped up on the back of her head. She’s worn the same Indian print skirt for three days.

“The dirt won’t show. . . Twenty for you, I like to see you count them in fives and turn the last one over.” Once Mom gets going with “Spite and Malice,” the cards control the moments.

She’s going to whip me and I’ll owe her money. Oh, the pain. . . Where’s my wallet?

As she moves from Ace to Queen there’s no turning back. “If you take your hand off what you put down, it’s too late.”

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Right Before Your Very Eyes

I’d planned the presentation in my mind long before I actually went through with it.

When my son, Brian, turned twelve years old, I asked him into the bathroom and demonstrated how to unwrap a condom, and protect a banana.

“Don’t say a word,” I instructed him as I ripped open the Trojan wrapper and placed it like a cap over the top end of the fruit. My heart raced and I felt like an idiot, but also felt propelled into the truth of my son’s future relations.

Brian’s eyes saucered as I continued my speech.

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Sutter’s Gold Rose

Home smells like a Sutter’s Gold rose in Mom’s backyard.

Even though Mom didn’t water it; the crimson, orange, yellow, and gold glory grew over eight-feet tall, loaded with blossoms in Tiburon
during spring and summer.

Mom said the rose thrived on neglect, but maybe it was the Miwok Native American earth where Mom’s house was built that nurtured it.

Nestled in a cove of Richardson Bay, Mom’s house was tucked in at the bottom of a rock sprinkled mountain with a 360-degree view of seven Bay Area counties.

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Cheap Party

What to do for Brian’s fifth birthday party? I didn’t want to spend a dime on it because the neighborhood kids cared nothing for bowling or swimming. They wanted to run around and have a good time. I decided to make an old-fashioned birthday party, a la the 1960’s.

First, I enthusiastically suggested to Brian that we put together some fun, surprise activities, and he got excited about the word, “surprise.” I told him he could invite as many people as he wanted that were his new age, so he invited one little boy from preschool, and four close friends from our neighborhood.

When the day came, I’d prepared a schedule to last no more than two hours, because I knew I’d be ready for them all to go home by that point.

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NOT a Parental Win-Win Situation

I’m not proud about the Saturday night I drove my six-year old son to the San Rafael Bus Terminal and dropped him off saying, “Find a new mother.”

God knows why he pissed me off to the point that I put him in the old burgundy Corolla and drove north fifteen minutes to give him away.

I remember the dark night decades ago, my rage pounding through my foot to the gas pedal, pulling the car past the western shadows of Mt. Tam and feeling out of my mind, unable to call Brian’s natural father who never saw him and would never be there, hadn’t been there since I left him when Brian was six-months old.

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