When my oldest daughter, Dallas, was eleven years old my mother took me aside and told me, “You’d better hope you never have a ‘normal’ child, because she isn’t normal now and never has been.” That may sound harsh, but my mother meant it in a good way.

I was seventeen when Dallas was born, and I was the youngest of our extended family. There were no younger cousins for me to interact with and no experiences with children or babies of other families. I knew nothing about what was normal for a child as far as development and/or behavior. Therefore, my mother, who had raised four children, knew what she was talking about. I didn’t truly realize how wise her words were until I was in my early forties and had the benefit of more knowledge and twenty-twenty hindsight.

By the time she was two years old, Dallas was talking as well as most kids of five or six, and, was more rational than most adults. If she was going to do something dangerous or, for some reason, forbidden, all you had to do was explain why she shouldn’t do it and that would be it; no arguments, no tantrums, nothing. I just accepted this as ordinary behavior. She also had a truly wicked tongue. Coming from a family that was pretty quick-witted, I just learned to accept this, too.

I should have known when she was four, that I was in for something more than the usual child/parent harassment. She didn’t whine, she didn’t throw tantrums, but she could cut you to the bone with a comeback.

We had been sitting on a picnic table in my parent’s front yard, when she looked at me and said, “Kathy, has anybody ever told you that you’re the prettiest mother in the world?”

I had no way to see it coming, so I smiled and said, “No.”

She grinned and said, “I’m not going to either, ‘cause you’re probably not.”

And I let her live to reach five.

By the way, I can never remember a time when she called me mama or mother or anything else, other than Kathy. I was fine with that.

Had I been thin-skinned, it might have been the beginning of the ‘Death-Of-A-Thousand-Cuts’, but, I wasn’t and I always laughed so hard that it would have been hypocritical to get angry.

When Dallas was about eight, we were living in a small house-trailer on my parents ‘farm’. I was working in the kitchen and was having a hard time reaching something on the top shelf and complained that it was the ‘pits’ being short. Dallas looked up from her book, sympathetically, and said, “Don’t feel bad, Kathy, a lot of famous people have been short. There was Attila, the Hun, Toulouse Lautrec, Quasimodo…”

Somehow I wasn’t reassured, if that was her purpose, to be compared to a short-list of history’s misfit’s and monsters. We both laughed so hard, we were crying.

A couple of years later, a friend had given me a gift of perfume, powder, etc., for my birthday. This had the potential for disaster from the moment I opened the package. I am one of those people whose body chemistry doesn’t seem to work well with most perfumes. This is a ‘bummer’, as I really love perfume. So, I put it on and went into Dallas’ room to get an opinion. I had liked the fragrance when I sprayed it into the air, so I was hoping that it would work for me. However, I had had it on for about five minutes, already, and when I asked Dallas what she thought, she took a second, looked at me, quizzically, and said, “From what bog did you cull that stench, my dear?”

She was right.

Dallas was always aware that you don’t use that kind of ‘wicked repartee’ on anyone who isn’t able to defend themselves, but, I did see her pushed into ‘going for the jugular’ once.

I was on an archaeological field trip while I was attending Colorado State University. I had to work (rent, groceries, etc), so I combined the class with work and cooked for the field crew that summer. I was able to bring Dallas along with me and it was a wonderful time for the both of us. By now, she not only sounded like one of the students at the university, she looked like one, too.

Sometimes, she hung out with the other students, while I was working, but, when it was really hot, she’d stay with me and read in the dining tent. She was eleven that year and was seriously into the Greek writers. At the time she was reading Aeschylus.

Bear in mind this was the summer of 1969 and the drug culture was pretty well everywhere. If you knew ten students, you knew, at least, three who were doing drugs of some description. One of the ‘three’ came into the tent where I was working on making a salad and Dallas was reading. He stopped by the table, where she was reading, and asked how she was doing. She looked up and replied, “Fine,” and went back to her book.

He stood there a moment, then, leaned on the table and said, “Do you want a ‘toke’?”

Dallas looked up, paused a moment and said, “No, thank you.”

I had picked up on the ice in her voice, and, I almost warned him. But, what the hell, I figured if he was stupid enough to mess with drugs, he deserved what was coming.

He had taken a step back from the table and seemed to be gathering up his muddled thoughts, now he pulled himself up into an upright stance, folded his arms across his chest and said, with some indignation, “You think you’re better than us, don’t you?”

Dallas calmly laid the book face down on the table, looked up at him, (by now, her green eyes had turned gray) and said, “Do you think I’m not?”

He swayed back, slightly, as though he had been struck. I heard laughter, and turned toward the sound; half-dozen students, and the professor for the class, were standing to the right and behind me. I had been so caught up in the scene in front of me, I hadn’t heard them. Obviously, neither had their stoned friend.

The next day they gave Dallas her own name tag, with her name and the subtitle, The Forty Year Old Midget. I never got the ‘midget’ reference, but Dallas and I both found it sweet that they wanted her to feel like part of the group.

There were many, many times, over the years, when Dallas and I sharpened our wits and our tongues on each other, to our delight. We found friends who, also, enjoyed the give and take.

There were many people who did not understand the relationship between my oldest daughter and me and, there is no way to explain it, exactly. She is not only my daughter, but my best friend and has been from birth. We are more closely attuned than any other two people I know. We have been known, in conversations with friends, to say the same sentence at the same time, startling everyone listening.

I hadn’t done a great deal of thinking about this until the year Dallas turned forty and I was fifty-seven. I called her and said, “Do you realize that in forty years, you and I have never had an argument.”

Her reply, “I haven’t thought about it, but, what would we ever argue about.”

A few weeks later, I was telling a girl-friend about the conversation and she asked, “What do you mean you’ve never had an argument? Never? What about when she was little; the terrible twos? What about adolescence?”

I had to confess; never. There were no terrible twos, no problems when she was in school, no trouble with adolescent angst, or teenage rebellion. We simply never quarreled about anything. Maybe it was because we were too busy enjoying each other’s wit and, maybe, a little bit of wisdom.

I'm a "foodie."

I didn't know I was a "foodie" until last week. In fact, I don't think I ever heard of a "foodie" before last week, but now that I know what one is, I confess, I'm a "foodie."

I was sitting on an airplane, coming back from Minneapolis and the nice looking, trim, 60-ish lady by the window started to tell me that she had been visiting her daughter as a birthday treat to help her daughter celebrate her 40th. I asked her if she had had a good visit and she said that she had and, in fact, her daughter and friends invited her to go to Paris in June, but she had declined.

"Why?" I asked. "It sounds like fun, going around France with your daughter and her friends."

"Because we have different ideas on what is fun."

"Well," I replied, "You could always do your own thing if you're not interested in museums and the like."

"Oh," she responded. "That's not it."

"It's not?" I said.

"No. Their idea of a good time is to go to restaurants, wineries, do some cheese tasting; basically just eat their way through and around France. They're what I refer to as "foodies."

I nodded as if I understood exactly what she meant. But in actuality, I knew in that brief conversation that there is no doubt, not a one, that I too am a "foodie."

Someone wrote and said they would like to see the organ at the Disney but could not get to L.A.
Attached is an uploaded picture of the organ.
My seat for the concert described in my piece was, as you look at the pipes, at the top, on your left, three seats from the closest pipe.

If you ever get to L.A., I recommend a visit to the hall.
Reiss

The Joy of Travel

I need to make one thing clear: I hate travel. The joy of travel is a myth perpetuated by a cabal of airlines, resorts, rental car agencies, travel writers and agents, credit card companies, banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses, with the aid of what used to be called Madison Avenue. You’ve seen the TV ad–ad nauseum. The beautiful, elderly couple (right out of a modeling agency), both trim and fit. He, with a touch of gray at the temples, looking like he just climbed Mt. Everest. She, blonde hair, unlined face, looking like she just swam the English Channel. (Actually, they ain’t so healthy. These are the very same people that are shown on the commercials during the evening news using Imodium, Correctol, Preparation H, Viagra, and hormone therapy just to keep going.) Anyhow thanks to (fill in the blank) this couple is on a tropical island, sipping exotic drinks, as they watch the blue ocean waves caress the beach.

Where did these people come from? Did they rush to the airport, finding no place to park, and then wait in long lines at the check-in counters and security stations? Was their flight delayed or even canceled? Were they finally squeezed into a plastic tube along with hundreds of other exasperated passengers, where they were served plastic food by barely responsive flight attendants? And when they finally landed (late) could they find their luggage? Did the local natives, eager to separate them from the wealth that Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney or you name it helped them amass, bombard them with offers of tours, taxi rides, and trinkets? When they arrived at their destination, did the resort mess up their reservation so that they were forced to stay at the seedy little place down the road? And when they finally ventured out to partake of the local cuisine, did they wind up spending the next two days in the bathroom trying to control the flow of fluids of varying color, consistency and odor that erupted from both ends of their bodies?

You wouldn’t know that there are problems associated with travel from the commercial. What the advertiser is selling is a dream not a product or a service and the people in the commercial are characters right out of a fairy tale.

Every one of us has experienced some if not all of the difficulties discussed above. Why then do we travel? The most common answer is: “travel is broadening”. But most of us (myself definitely included) go to some foreign land not speaking the language and not having had time to learn much about its history and culture. We spend most of our time there touring with our fellow countrymen and our interaction with the local populace is limited to halting conversations with waiters and the people behind the desk at the hotel. At the end of the trip the only thing that gets broadened is our bottoms and that’s from sitting on buses and planes and eating rich desserts.

There are other reasons for traveling. Some people lead such lives of quiet desperation that they need to get away even if the only adventure they find is being insulted by waiters in Paris. Some people want to go where it’s warmer (or colder). For many it’s the anticipation of the trip. Wasn’t it Shelly (or maybe Keats?) who wrote about the anticipation of the taste of the grape upon the tongue? These people love reading travel books and planning their itinerary. By the time they arrive at their destination, however, it’s old hat and they’re busy planning their next trip. (I bet that’s what the couple in the commercial did when they weren’t in the bathroom.)

I’ve met some people, particularly senior citizens, who have a list (mental or written) of places they want to see before they die. When they visit a new country you can sense them crossing the sites off their list. And, last but by no means insignificant, is the traveler who visits far off places so he or she can boast about the trip–the more exotic the location and the higher the cost, the better. The more subtle practitioners of this art never talk about the trip directly, but always seem to mention it as an aside in the conversation. “That reminds me,” they say, “of when we were in Africa.” They never talk about price but provide enough details (usually too many for the bored listener) to let the victim know that the trip would have put a measurable dent in the bankroll of Bill Gates. “We were on safari. There was a guide, clad in ermine, for each of us, and we rode on our own elephant, outfitted with a diamond tiara headpiece.”

If you want to have the same experience as most travelers, without even leaving home (and saving yourself mucho bucks in the process), just do the following. Pick an exotic locale that you always wanted to visit, say India. Find a DVD highlighting all the sights you are interested in. Turn up your thermostat to 120 degrees. Watch the travelogue in your living room while you and your significant other take turns obscuring one another’s view. Then call up an appropriately run down Indian restaurant with questionable sanitary practices and have them deliver their hottest dishes. Change into your elegant clothing just like our friends in the commercial. Eat the meal with gusto, imbibing Indian beer freely. With a little luck you’ll wake up, deathly sick, in the middle of the night. Then, while you are recuperating, spend the next few weeks actually learning about India by reading some travel books and a novel or two set in that country.

About a month later send your friends picture postcards of the Taj Mahal inviting them to a party. At the party, wait for your guests to become bleary eyed, and then show them a two hour PowerPoint presentation about India made up of pictures that you culled from the internet. Be sure to make appropriate comments throughout, such as, “this is where Ann Rosencranz fell and broke her ankle” and “right here is where Jim Guildenstern had his pocket picked.” At the end of the show, as your guests are writhing on the floor gasping for air, trot out brochures and maps showing your next trip: to Japan. By repeating this process several times you will get the reputation of a world traveler and be the envy of all your acquaintances (that is, of the few of them who are left). You will have beaten the system, but you may be subject to arrest and prosecution for undermining the world economy.

I found my eleven year old son James crumbled on the floor in the dining room, half hidden between the breakfront and the wrought iron railing that separated it from the living room. When only minutes before he had heard that Randy had been killed, he went where he could curl up, partially in full view and partially hidden. He sat rolled into a ball with his back against the wall, knees rigid and bent reaching his chin where his head rested. His arms were wrapped tightly around his ankles. He looked as though he was trying to reach inside himself to only an hour before when his brother, his mentor, his very best friend hugged him and kissed him goodbye.

In my despair I tried to reach inside of him, to help him, to tell him how I love him and how together we can get through this. I wanted to get down to his level by sitting on my knees and reaching my outstretched arms around him.

His eyes were glazed over with salt water tears that ran down his cheeks his chin and his nose. But his dark eyes glared at my face and screamed “don’t touch me!”