Your Story Matters, Chapter 23, "Can I Hold Fred?"

 

Chapter 23

“Can I Hold Fred?”

I blog regularly and post on Tuesdays. 

Last week, I was burnt out, lost, and tired. I wrote a few sentences, declared it a No-Blog Blog, and took myself on an artist's holiday.

Sweetpea and I sat in the pickup truck where she could sit beside me instead of being separated by bucket seats. 

We parked by the Willamette River, close to the footbridge that spans the river. After walking across the bridge onto the park on the other side, we walked the path beside the river through the green lawn dotted with white flowers until we came to three snowy-white geese with fluffy yellow chicks. The geese were a surprise gift, as I had only seen ducks there before. 

The geese were my Fred, Julie Cameron's bunny. In The Artist's Way, she encourages creatives—which we all are, whether we claim to be or not—to take an artist's holiday. Creativity is a part of us. It can only be drummed out. An artist's holiday recharges our batteries and often inspires us to the next step.

You can go to a museum, a play, a movie, a fair, or someplace grand; all of these give us a recharge.

It can also be something simple.  Cameron often takes herself to the pet store to hold the giant bunny. 

"Can I hold Fred?" she asks the proprietor.

"I don't know; you'll have to ask Fred." (Or whatever Fred's name is)

Well, she held him, so he must have said yes.

When my girls were preschool age, and we had recently moved to San Diego, there was an aquatic store down the hill not far from where we lived. We would go there and look at the fish in the glass aquariums, and outside behind the shop, we would peruse the cement block ponds where they raised fish, large and small. 

My youngest daughter remained quite attached to aquatic animals into her adult life. Right out of college, she got a job at PetSmart, working with fish. Later, she had a mail-order saltwater animal shipping service. Then, she became the store director of a PetSmart store in California.

You never know the ramifications of a fun holiday.

 

Jo’s Commentary:

Remember Mrs. Banks from the movie Mary Poppins? 

We used to march around the room to the tune of, “We’re simply soldiers in petticoats,” and shout, “Votes for women!”

“Our daughter's daughters will adore us, and they will sing in grateful chorus, “Well done, sister suffragettes.’” 

Well then, there is the line, “Although we adore men individually, we agrees that as a rule they’re rather stupid.”

See what Mrs. Banks could get away with? And you thought it was a children’s movie.

What about suffragette Mrs. Pankhurst, who “has been clapped in irons again.”

Those suffragettes upon whose shoulders we stand fought to give women the right to vote. 

And now, dear ones, we come to an election where one candidate is already spreading the rumor that the next election will be rigged unless he wins. Then, it will be accurate. 

And, if he loses, he’s inciting his supporters to mutiny.

What do you think of this?

 

 

 

Your Story Matters, Chapter 22

 

Chapter 22

We Aren't in Kansas Anymore

 My mother's side of the family thought they were German. My grandparents came from Germany and joined a German community in Kansas. However, when my youngest daughter was growing up, she researched our genealogy and found we were Swiss. Maybe my grandfather was German. I never heard his story. 

When I learned about Hitler, I was ashamed of being German. However, when Neil and I drove from Germany to Switzerland, I found a Pharmacy with Hertenstein on the window—my grandmother's maiden name. 

While Neil and I were on his business trip in Germany, I suggested we drive into Switzerland, where blood never reached its shores—no shores; it is landlocked. At the time, I still thought I was German, and I knew that the Hartenstein’s had left Germany before the war because Mom was born in Kansas, and her mother, Great-Grandma Hertenstein, was the first of their children born on American soil. Her mother was pregnant on the boat. Imagine. 

We visited Lucerne, where we found a drugstore and the name Hertenstein, and where the incredible Rhine River tumbled voraciously over rocks, creating Der Rhine Fall. A glorious white swan stood at the cress of a water flow, withstanding the current. In Lucerne, Neil took his sat-upon glasses into an Optometrist's shop, where they repaired them for free.

Neil drove until we reached the end of the road facing the Alps, and coming back at twilight, we saw a little boy bringing home the cows. The air had that fresh, misty fragrance that comes after a rain. Droplets sprinkled our windshield, and through it all, we saw a little boy walking ahead of the cows with the cows following docilely behind. One of the cows trailed the others, and she was so pregnant she stopped, breathed a deep sigh, and labored on.

 We drove through the green countryside of Germany, where cows stood on green hillsides and yellow flowers dotted the green. Beside the roadway, immaculately manicured farms had their morning feather comforters airing out the windows. Off in the distance, we spotted a castle.

It was Neuschwanstein, "New Swan Castle," King Ludwig's castle and the inspiration for Walt Disney's castle in the Magic Kingdom. We hiked the hill from the parking lot to the castle while a horse-drawn carriage carried other tourists. While medieval looking on the outside, that castle has state-of-the-art appliances from the time it was built.

It had running water fed from a spring above and flushing toilets. The kitchen had a Leonardo De Vince-designed device for warming dinner plates. It was constructed from two pullies, with chain shelves between the two. Plates were loaded onto the chains, and the pullies pulled the contraption up behind the stove, thus warming the plates. 

King Ludwig adored Richard Wagner's operas, and many of the walls inside the castle were painted floor to ceiling with exquisite murals of scenes from Wagner's operas. It is said that King Ludwig was crazy, but I don't believe it. He loved beauty too much to kill himself, and then there is a mystery surrounding his downing in the lake while his psychiatrist lived—and there was money to be made. Dum de dum dum.

I was up before Neil one morning. I walked a path until I came to a cemetery awash in May flowers. Iron fencing enclosed many of the little plots, and there were so many flowers it was as though I was in a greenhouse. I watched an old man walk shakily to a faucet, fill a sprinkling can, and carry it to a grave, where he tenderly sprinkled the flowers.

I developed a bladder infection while in Stuttgart, and Neil and I went to a hospital. A young man, an orderly who could speak English, checked me in. I was embarrassed to tell him my problem. However, he told me his story. 

He said he was doing community service instead of being in the military, for he was a pacifist. After hearing that we were from Southern California, he told us that once, while surfing at La Jolla, California (right beside San Diego where we lived), he was hit in the face with a surfboard. He was taken to the hospital, where the doctors treated him so kindly that he vowed to treat others the same.

The doctor gave me medicine and said, "This is Wednesday. We'll bill you."

Imagine.

We were off to Copenhagen, Denmark (home of Legos), where I took a perfect picture of the Little Mermaid statue sitting on a rock in the bay. At night, we visited Tivoli, the exquisite mini Disney-like park under the romantic glow of a million (?) white lights.

In Amsterdam, we took a Long Boat through the canals and under the lighted arched bridges, and they served us so much wine and cheese that I could hardly walk off the boat.

We attended Holland's Floriade, a flower fair covering acres, where they asked if you wanted salt or sugar on your popcorn, and we walked around in the rain. 

This morning, Neil reminded me of the black horse we saw at the Floriade in Holland. I thought that horse was the most exquisite creature I had ever seen, totally black, head high, and with "feathers" on his ankles. I asked what sort of horse he was, and the man nuzzled by the horse said, "Dutch Horse." That didn't tell me much. I was in Holland, after all, but once back home, I looked up "Dutch Horse" and found it was a Frisian, a warm blood. (Frisians were favored by Knights of old for they are heavier than a light saddle breed, easy to train, and could carry all that armor they stuck on the rider and his horse. Think of Zorro's horse. We just watched the new Indiana Jones movie, where I recognized the black horse he rode galloping through the subway and down steps as a Frisian). The Floriade horse was tied to a long rope that extended to a canal boat. It was a demonstration to show how horses were used to pull the boats.

I just now looked up Frisian and found you can pick one up for $34,900.

That trip gave me a taste for travel, which I had the privilege of doing more of later.

From Abroad to My Backyard

Good Morning,

This morning, while tooding down the road toward town, I saw an airplane approaching the ground fast and steep. At first, I thought it was doing a touch and go, and then I saw that it was a bi-plane, pretty and yellow, spewing dust over a field—a crop duster. I hope whatever chemical he used was a good one, for sheep are often in that field, but they were elsewhere today.

The plane had an open cockpit, and it appeared that the pilot was having fun.  He would flow over the electrical lines, do a steep bank, turn and aim close to the ground again, and release whatever chemical he was dusting. Hubby and I had an aerial show.

 

Here is an offering from my grandson on how to find water in Africa. First, you must discover baboons, for they are skilled in finding water. And they like salt. So, you put some salt in a box with a hole large enough for a baboon to reach in, but he can't get his hand out since he doesn't want to turn loose of the salt. You cage him, give him more salt, and when he gets thirsty, turn him loose and follow him to water.

That sounds like a snipe hunt. When I was a kid, adults would send their kids off with a salt shaker, telling them if they sprinkled some on a snipe's tail, they could catch him. That occupied the kids for a while, and no one came home with a snipe.

"Any comments written while stoned will be called a high note." ( Not original.)

I posted Chapter 21, I Remember The Song of The Mediterranean, on Sunday, but I am leaving it for today. Next week will be Chapter 22, We Aren't in Kansas Anymore. 

Please scroll below.

Thanks for being here,

 Jo

Chapter 21, I Remember the Song of the Mediterranean

The weather is worth writing home about, beautiful, sunshine, and air pre-birth warm.The maple tree is forming a silky green canopy over the yard, and the dogwood tree is in bloom. It’s been one year since I began writing Your Story Matters.

I pushed my husband’s wheelchair outside and settled into a chair beside our outside table. (My husband in a wheelchair is a recent event.) In the spring glory of the earth, I began reading a hard copy of my book, Your Story Matters. It’s a final clean-up. 

I’m afraid my computer is becoming like Hal in the movie 2001 when Dave began dismantling him. This morning, my keyboard stopped working, and now collecting pages from my printer,  I find it has skipped pages.

And now, dear ones, for those who have followed me on this memoir, How-to, Mind, Body, and Spirit journey, let’s have fun and keep going. I won’t send you off anywhere else. You have been faithful readers, so let’s continue. 

The Next Chapter, Chapter 21 of Your Story Matters.

 

Revisiting Venice, Italy, cheered me. I hope it does the same for you.

 21. I Remember the Song of the Mediterranean

Isn't it strange, the moments we remember and those lost in the black hole of forgetfulness? Neil says some events are like writing them on paper and throwing them into the Grand Canyon.

That’s how I wrote this, not like a novel, as some suggest, but on scraps of paper. 

Moments plop into my mind, such as the topless swimmer in Greece, a young girl with small pointy breasts who stood proud, gorgeous, and not self-conscious.

We were the strange ones wearing tops to our swimming suits. Locals must have said, "There go a tourist."

Did I tell you we rented a Yacht in Greece? After hiking to the Acropolis at sunrise—beautiful—and as we were on jet lag up before the restaurants were open, we hiked up that hill and walked the steps of the ancients. Sunrise on the stones. We were photographed by another tourist with a video camera, a rarity in those days. 

When we returned to our hotel room, having maneuvered a taxi and the language and not in a rush to do it again, I stood at the window overlooking the rooftops of Athens. I weirdly thought they looked like Tijuana, Mexico. When I saw a brochure on the coffee table titled "Rent a Yacht," I pointed it out to the girls. 

We all agreed it sounded like a plan: a three-day tour of the islands, less expensive than a cruise boat.

Knowing me and my propensity to be seasick, I came prepared with seasick ear patches, so I decided to chance a water voyage. 

Within a couple of hours, with the food we had chosen loaded onto the boat and roses for me, we were boarding The Alexandria, named after the owner's daughter.  

Before boarding, I had placed an ear patch on each ear. Within the hour, while walking to the boat, my mouth was so dry I could hardly pull my tongue off my cheek. 

I slept on the way to Hydra, where Marilyn awakened me to what looked like Shangri-La. Orange, ochre, and burnt sienna houses crept up the hillsides in an awe-inspiring display of artistry. I sat up, sucked in a great gulp of air, overcome with the majestic view, and declared, "I'm not seasick!"

The captain drove straight into the center of the town and docked the boat, among others. He put down the gangplank, and there we sat the village at our feet. 

However, when I packed my bags, thinking I was leaving the hotel and not on a yacht, Marilyn said, "Those patches are too strong for you; take them off and wash your ears." 

I did, but double vision lingered for two days.

Later, I found that those patches contained scopolamine, a drug they used to give women during labor so they would forget the pain.

I remember a few things, how we had a perfect parking place and time to shop and walk the white stone steps of Hydra. As we lounged on Alexandria's rooftop deck, a cruise ship arrived, poured out passengers, and a short time later, sucked them back in, and left. We believed we had the better deal. 

The following morning, in Hydra, I was awakened to the clanking of soda bottles as donkeys carried them up the hill to shops. There were no vehicles. I remember the steward stacking up glasses, pouring champagne into the top glass, and letting it avalanche into the others.

Strange that we weren't hungry in Greece—that would come when we got to Italy—good timing, as we all loved Italian food. But Greece had the best yogurt, and someone served us fish on the wind-swept banks of the Mediterranean Sea. We bought a watermelon and carried it onto the boat. And the steward was insulted if we got our own glass of water. 

A crew of three served the yacht: the captain, his wife, the cook, and the steward, who had a motorboat on board. Since none of us knew how to water ski, he dragged us bodysurfing on our backs.

We couldn't sink in the Mediterranean Ocean, a fact I didn't know and had never experienced, plus the water was warm. 

I remember the song of the Mediterranean.  

It came faintly on the breeze at first.  As we approached an island, the sound rose to astounding heights.  It was a singing, ringing, buzzing sound that vibrated, riding the heat waves that shimmered from the island.

It appeared that the air was vibrating. As we got closer, I could identify the sound. It was the cicadas strumming their legs, and I wondered if the sound the Greek sailors of old thought that sound was the songs of the sirens, luring them onto the rocks. 

One night, when the kids were asleep on the upper deck, their chosen sleeping arrangement, the Captain and Steward invited me for a drink. We walked a trail along the edge of a cliff and came to a pub perched on its rim. We couldn't converse well as they didn't know much English, and I didn't know any Greek, but I learned that it snowed occasionally, and there, perched on the rim of that cliff, I had the worst drink of my life.

Four girls visited Venice, where we stood on a bridge overlooking the Grand Canal. Leaning over and looking into the water, we saw a gondola floating toward us, carrying Liza Minnelli and Walter Matthau. We yelled, "Hi Walter!" like teenagers, which one of us was. It probably wasn't anything to him, but it was astounding to us. 

Wonderful how miracles happen when you least expect them. My miracle happened this morning when I searched for a book from a stored box in the Wayback. I came upon an article I had written on Venice thirty years ago. 

You know you can get rummy on a trip, whether on a plane, train, taxi, or, in the case of Venice, a canal boat. We stood on a platform in Venice, spelled Veneziaon the map, expecting it to drive away with us when a boat appeared. 

Oh.

Walls of buildings surrounded us, buildings in ill repair, siding chipping away, facades careworn, green moss clinging to the foundations, and stairways going nowhere or disappearing into the water—ghosts of an elegant past. 

I thought, "How beautiful and elegant it would be if all was repaired, cleaned, and shored up." I felt like protecting it as I would a baby bird. It seemed so delicate a shudder of the earth would send it crumbling to the ground. 

Magnificent Venice. It must consider me an infant, for it has existed for centuries; I, only a fraction of one. But I hear it calling for help. I hear it whispering its secrets. How could anyone not love Venice?

We rode a gondola that first night, relaxing with no traffic sounds, only the whisking of gondolas, and off in the distance, a baritone voice sang an Italian serenade. We replaced travel clothes with dresses and rode in luxury, and from a bridge above us came a complementary hoot from a young Italian. 

Some think Venice is ramshackle and falling into the sea. It is sinking, but if one only sees the crumbling facades, one misses the magnificence of Venice. 

The following afternoon, while the girls went shopping, Marilyn and I sat at the edge of the Piazza San Marco, St Mark's Square, the center of Venice. In this piazza, my father once fed the pigeons. Someone took his picture and placed it on a postcard—or maybe it was only for us. No matter. We were drinking iced tea and champagne. (They serve it with potato chips.) A fellow beside us asked, "Do Americans always drink iced tea and champagne in the afternoon?"

We laughed and responded, "When in Venice, they do."

After we left magnificent Venice, with its gold leaf ceilings, we would see through windows as we toured the canals in our gondola, and there we found the four beautiful bronze horses of Venice. Legend says they were made in Greece during the time of Alexander the Great, the four horses of a chariot. They are a testament to survival. They had been stolen, survived emperors and conquerors, and returned to Venice, where they are magnificent still. I took a perfect picture of them, which I no longer have. 

We left on an early Tuesday morning aboard a speed boat to our next destination, the train depot, and eventually Rome. I stood on deck and watched the peeling buildings that appeared perfect. In two days, they had repaired themselves. The bridges and canals and pigeons were there, the little balconies with geraniums, the moss, and vine-covered buildings, and I wouldn't allow myself to feel sad, only the thought that I'm coming back, for I believe Venice exists only when I am there to see it.

We took the train to Florence and visited the Accademia Gallery, home of Michelangelo's David. He is the size of a two-story building, meant initially to be placed on a rooftop. And he stands on a pedestal, putting his feet at eye level. His feet seemed immense. He was a beautiful youth with determination in his eyes, and how Michelangelo carved such a fearless-looking figure is beyond me. I read someplace that he had first carved a wax model and placed it in water, and each day, he would carve the portion that floated above water. 

After visiting David, we had dinner where the chefs were in full view of us, and they could see us. 

One of the chefs prepared a heart-shaped pizza for my thirteen-year-old daughter. And many of the clerks often called my 16-year-old red-haired daughter "Bella Rosa."

From Greece to Rome:

The contrast of it.

From the Islands in Greece, where there were no vehicles, to Rome, a Metropolis where sirens sounded daily.

We entered a church, and as I was wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps, a lady motioned to me to cover up. Marilyn offered the scarf she used for a belt so I could hide those embarrassingly bare shoulders.

But then, I remember that Catholic women used to be required to cover their heads in church. If the ladies wanted to pop into a church for a moment but had no hat or scarf, they would lay a handkerchief over their heads. 

Would a Kleenex work? Who has handkerchiefs anymore? 

Am I being disrespectful? But for crying out loud, folks, be reasonable. God loves your beautiful hair and your beautiful body, and sex is not only for making babies.

We have sparkling moments, but if we bump into pain, we should address that, too.

Why?

Because it's all life.

I am swiping the page--red, pink, and yellow, and yes, weeds grow among the flowers--the weeds are beautiful, too—they are life. And with the passing of years, I understand that life isn't all manicured and perfect.

We visited the Colosseum, and Marilyn and I visited the Vatican, where we saw the Sistine Chapel. I was astounded to see that the paintings surrounding Michelangelo's famous painting of God bestowing life (or knowledge) onto Adam did not have the finesse of the central one of God reaching out to Adam. I'm sure someone else painted them, or Michelangelo did after he was bone tired from having paint rain on his head all day. 

And then the immensity of the Vatican hit us. 

It was too much.

There were too many religious artifacts, references to death and dying, filigrees, frescos and gold leaf, and paintings covering every square inch. It was, to us, an assault on the spirit.

We ran.

 

 

I rounded a corner in Hydra, and there was my daughter standing as though posed.