House on Castellamare

Though I haven’t driven the hillside roads for over twenty years, I make the combination of turns automatically and park in front of the house that had been so familiar from many visits to Mary’s. The lobster knocker is still on the front door yet I doubt that Laurel was able to keep the place. I know she said she was going to get a job but, as I stand waiting for a response to my ring, I give it a 50/50 chance that she will be answering the door.

After Mary died I lost contact with Laurel, her 45-year-old daughter. On visits Laurel nursed tall plastic glasses of wine, pretending to the world that they were iced tea. Mary felt it was somehow her fault, by staying in a bad marriage, that Laurel became an alcoholic and had developed such an out of bounds personality. Mary went to Alanon meetings and strove to live her own life filled with music, friends and politics. Mary was a real lady.

Twenty years had not dimmed my memory of the room just on the other side of this dusty front door. Straight ahead was an inviting sitting area. White easy chairs and a long white sofa clustered around a glass coffee table. The walls were lined with grass-cloth and large oil paintings, a white-washed cathedral ceiling covered the airy space. Sitting on the sofa among colorful cushions I would admire the harmony of the room that brought me a sense of well-being. The black grand piano, music rack stacked with pieces Mary was practicing, gave a special dimension to the room. A brocade-edged Japanese shade veiled the glass wall to the outside patio whose potted plants danced with the shadows of a tall Eucalyptus tree. The end on the patio gave view to an expansive of Santa Monica Bay. Mary would serve us an appetizer overture in the living room and then invite us to the patio-view dining room for a symphony of deliciously orchestrated foods.

I am turning away from the door when I hear rustling inside the house. The door opens and an old man looks at me inquiringly, then, “Oh yes, indeed, Laurel lives here. Come in, be careful.” He means, don’t fall over the stuff on the floor. A penetrating cat box smell so foreign to Mary’s house fills the air. He clears a space for me to sit on the sofa, the same spot I had so often occupied when visiting Mary. I sit in shock.

The room is the same, but not the same. I think I see the same sofa and easy chairs, the same coffee table in front of the sofa, the same piano and the lamps on side tables. They are all at the same places but covered with piles of clothes and stacks of books and papers. The room looks covered with a thick blanket of gray sediment. The Oriental shade barely lets in light. When Laurel limps in, I feel I am on the movie set with Miss Haversham. Only her voice and her wild enthusiasm are the same. We make small talk but I am emotionally paralyzed. I am glad Laurel has a home. I stay only a few minutes.

Mary’s beautiful environment has undergone its inevitable sea change. Without her, the vibrant coral reef she had created has died away. Each little piece of earth is only on loan to its current occupant. It’s an important reminder for me who do love places.

Autobio. Wk 12
Flashback

By Carolyn
Aka. CC

The Mourning Dove

She was sitting less than five feet away from my open kitchen window. A speckled brown and grey mourning dove was eating the lemon basil plant in my window box. I spoke calmly to her. She stopped eating and looked in my direction, unafraid of my voice. I asked her about her family.
“Any eggs in the nest? Where’s your mate today? You like the flavor of basil?”

She bit off another leaf, her eyes focused on me as she chewed the tiny leaves. Was that her way of answering me with an affirmative? I imagined an egg-filled nest somewhere. Perhaps her mate was protectively watching us. It looked like she hesitated a moment before lifting her wings and flying away from the window. I wished her a good day, a life-long mate and a nest of healthy babies. And I said a quiet “Thank you.”

And I was reminded of my mother.

The entire time that the dove and I were conversing I felt my mother’s closeness. Mom loved birds. She knew about many species and their habits, what their eggs and nests looked like; she could even imitate their songs. Her favorite birds were cardinals and mourning doves.

Her favorite birds made their presence known on a May morning nine years ago, the day my mother died. First, my sister noticed them as she removed my mother’s earthly possessions from the Alzheimer’s wing of the nursing home, my mother’s last address on earth. As my sister carried each load to her car, a bright red cardinal sat near the door singing his song. After the cardinal sang, a mourning dove echoed from a distance. This was repeated with each load that she carried out the door. Almost like they had rehearsed it.

My brother recalled hearing an unusually large chorus of mourning doves that morning, as he approached our Dad’s home, to tell him about Mother’s physical death.

I was two thousand miles from my family when I got the call in the pre-dawn hours. I began making flight arrangements. I spoke with every member of my immediate family that day several times. My sister and brother shared their stories with me. I felt strangely alone and far from my family. As I prepared to take my daily walk that day, I secretly hoped that God would give me a sign, too, something to help me feel close to family, and close to nature.

I had never seen or heard doves along my usual walking path. But that day was different. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. From roof tops, in trees, and on the telephone lines, mourning doves serenaded me. I stopped. Still unbelieving, I listened to their soothing song and said a quiet, “Thank you.” I no longer felt alone.

After Mom’s funeral, my sister and I stayed with Dad for a couple of weeks. To continue our daily walking routine, we walked to the cemetery, about a mile away. As we made the journey, we noticed a bright red cardinal playfully darting from tree to tree along the route. He accompanied us every day, looking like a young bird who was trying out his wings for the first time. Was he on a mission, to remind us of our mother’s protective presence, her new life free of disease, and God’s peace? Without a doubt.

I looked for the dove to return to my window box. She did not return that day. Perhaps she will come again to eat the basil. Perhaps she will bring her mate with her next time.
But if her mission is finished, she gave me moments of memories back to a fragile time when God’s messages came to us in the form of birds, one of his smallest creatures.


And perhaps that is enough, like the doves that serenaded me that day on the walking path, nine years ago. Their mission was complete with that one performance. They sang just for me…….one time only.

RUSS MEETS AN ANGEL

Only a few months before a young father was killed running across the freeway from the inside lane where his car had broken down and now here we were, stranded with a flat tire on the inside lane of the 5 southbound between El Toro Road and our off-ramp – Alicia Parkway.

“I’m going for help,” my husband proclaimed, “and I know I can make it if I run.”

My eyes measured the distance from our car across five lanes of traffic – the newly opened El Torito restaurant directly across from our car. It was too far. The Saturday night traffic was extremely heavy. What if he tripped? He’d have no chance.

We’d been sitting there for over two hours, thousands of cars and trucks had whizzed by. It was 1980. There were no cell phones. And certainly no Good Samaritans either.

Our three little ones were home with a sitter who expected our return before 10:00 p.m. And now it was midnight. What must she be thinking?

“You are NOT going to run across the freeway! There aren’t long enough breaks between the cars. You’ll never make it! Absolutely not! Somebody has got to stop!”

Another 15 minutes. “I’m going for help.” “No way!” “I’m going for help.” “You are NOT!”

Another 15 minutes. This time his fingers pulled down on the door handle, “I’m going for help.” I grabbed his arm, “NO!” The door slowly opening, “I’m going. I’ll make it!” “You are not!”

Suddenly it occurred to me! “I think we should pray for God to send us an angel, just like he did for Betty and her friends when the guy in the dolphin shorts showed up to change their tire!”

“Sure, go ahead and pray. Why not?” my doubtful husband responded.

“You’ve got to believe God is listening or it won’t do any good,” I instructed.

He closed his eyes and we held hands. “Dear Lord, please send us an angel.” I begged.

“That was sure simple,” he observed.

“Here’s hoping,” as I held back tears.

Unbelievably, a car pulled up behind us within five minutes. It was a white Mercedes. An elderly man with white hair, a white suit, a white belt and white shoes walked along the freeway fence and my husband rolled down the window. “May I be of help?” the stranger asked.

“We’ve got a flat and I can’t fix it because we don’t have a handle for our jack,” Russ lamented.

“We’ve been sitting here nearly 3 hours and you are the only one to stop! Thank you so much!” I added.

“Well, let’s go see what I’ve got in my trunk that might help you,” he offered with a confident little smile. Russ and I exited the car and walked along the fence to the rear of his car. When he opened the trunk we both gasped. A more immaculate trunk was never seen! It was carpeted in white! And it was lit – our cars never had such a luxury. And there was nothing in it but a two-foot long screwdriver that ended up fitting our jack perfectly!

As Russ changed the tire, I stood against the fence with the man. The roar of the passing traffic was tremendous, but it was awkward to just stand there silent. Time for some small talk I decided.

“So, what kind of business has you out so late?” I queried. He was plainly a wealthy businessman.

“Insurance,” he answered with an ever-so-slight smile.

“Hmmmm. Well, I’m Judy and my husband is Russ. What’s your name?”

“Hal.”

“Hmmmm. As in “Hallelujah?”

His reply was a sure, slight smile. I didn’t say another thing. I was in awe of the all-white man, in the all-white car, with the all-white trunk and the 2-foot screwdriver with the sparkling clear handle.

Russ finished up with the tire and thanked the man for his help. As we drove off, Russ was laughing, “Do you believe that!”

“He was an angel, honey, sent by God to help us. Could you believe that screwdriver! I didn’t know they made screwdrivers that big!” I exclaimed.

“I know white belts and white shoes are in, but that was something else!” he howled with glee!

At last, I thought, my husband has met an angel.

#####

“And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.” Matthew 21:22

Charles

“Charles, hurry!” my mother said. “Run over to Miller’s field and tell Daddy to go to town for the doctor. Be quick now!”

She sounded like she was out of breath and kind of scared, so I took off running down the path without a word. I ran across the bridge over the irrigation ditch and into the first field. The sun beat on my head and made me feel dizzy, but I didn’t slow down. I could see my dad in a field that seemed miles away. I jumped over the furrows that lined the rows of sugar beets and was glad the crops hadn’t been watered yet. Panting for breath, I reached Dad and stuttered my mother’s message. He threw down his hoe and ran for my uncle’s house with me running behind. When he saw that both the car and the truck were gone, he kept on going out to the road that led to town. I dropped behind because I was worn out.

Now I could walk slow and think. For a few days my mom had stopped going to work alongside my dad in the fields. It was fun having her around. She played games with me and I didn’t have to look after my little brother because she was there. Not that I minded taking care of Gene. I was proud when Mom told relatives that though I was only six, I took good care of my three-year old brother. When I carried water to my parents in the field, I held Gene’s hand tight and dragged him across the bridge over the ditch. He screamed and yelled that I was hurting him, but I never let go once because I was scared we would both fall in. I thought of this as I neared our house, and I looked back to see my dad standing by the side of the road waiting to hitch a ride into town. I knew he had a long wait. Cars didn’t come by very often. While Dad waited there, he didn’t know that he was wasting his time because back at the house, things had begun to happen.

I hadn’t even crossed the first field when Mom received strong evidence that there would be no doctor assistance with this birth. For all the years I’ve known her, my sister has chafed at waiting, and she didn’t wait that day. Her premature appearance on the scene turned my mother into her own midwife. She had no idea what to do. She said later that the actual moment of birth was both terrifying and triumphal. “Oh my God!” she shouted to no one in particular as she looked down at the emerging baby. “It’s a girl!”

She had no scissors, so she tore the umbilical cord. Then she jumped from the bed and ran across the room to a dresser where she had stashed a tiny, pink shirt. Ah, proof at last that she was the mother of a daughter after two boys: the baby was dressed in pink!

Nineteen years later, my mother would visit this same daughter at the birth of her first baby in a Denver hospital and be hit with this complaint: “Mom, you always told me that labor pains were nothing, that you forgot them the minute you saw your baby. Well, my baby is two days old now, and I think I still bear a slight grudge against him from all the hours of agony.”

Mom threw her mind back over the years, and finally told my sister:
“Well, I guess maybe I forgot to mention that all my babies were born within 45 minutes.”

The German movie actress, Marlene Dietrich, was popular the year of my sister’s birth. Even though Mom didn’t care much for her, overbearing in-laws pressured her into naming the new baby Marlene. It’s strange that she gave her baby a name she disliked so much, since she herself had always hated her own name: Bertha.

My sister was a serious child who looked at the world through somber, solemn eyes. In later years, when my mother described her daughter’s infancy to friends, she always said, “My little girl never cracked a smile.” Then in her defense, she hastened to add. “It’s because she was born in the 30’s. Depression babies are always sad!”

My mother’s sister lived on a nearby farm in those days. When Marlene was a month old, we went to stay with the family to help with the fall harvest. I was still chief baby sitter for my little brother, but now there were two girl cousins my age to play with.

One day Mother tended to the baby while my Aunt Molly prepared the noon meal. Gene was already in his highchair at the well-laden table, and ten hungry farmhands were due to come in for dinner in 15 minutes. My cousin, Lorraine, was helping to set the table, and she put a platter containing a huge stack of sliced bologna on the table right in front of Gene. He reached out, took a slice of meat and folded it. Then he bit a hole in the middle. My cousin’s laugh always sounded like little tinkling bells to me, and now I heard the tinkle in the kitchen where I was stacking plates for the table. I knew Gene had done something cute because he was always a clown. With a new audience to appreciate him, he outdid himself. When my aunt went into the dining room later, she found a hole chewed into the middle of every slice of lunchmeat on the platter.

When Marlene was three months old, my parents packed all our belongings into a borrowed truck and prepared to move. My father, Alexander, had been studying pre-law at Denver University when he married my mother. His older brothers refused to help him continue wasting his time on education and tried instead to set him up in farming. He was simply not cut out for that life. When relatives in Nebraska said there were jobs to be had, we were on our way.

A few miles from our destination, a car shot out of a hidden driveway and rammed our truck, which fell into a drainage ditch at the side of the road. Do I really remember the incident or was it told so often as family lore that I only think I do? I see myself lying on the dirt bank as my baby sister floats toward me. She is near the shore, so I reach out and pull her from the water, just as my screaming mother runs up and falls on her knees before her bedraggled baby.

For years after that, when our Sunday school lesson told of the baby Moses in an ark of bulrushes being fished out of the river by Pharaoh’s daughter, my mind substituted my baby sister floating down the river and being fished out by me.

My parents saw all their worldly possessions flow into the stream that day, but we were alive and ready to begin a new life.

My father was a very practical man. He was the only one of eight children and the youngest to finish high school and go on to college. My mother said he was valedictorian but my mother had my father on a pedestal higher then a doctor or a teacher who in her mind could do no wrong and if she had believed in god dad would have been one rung above. She admired him and doted on his accomplishments believing that any first generation American child of immigrant families whose parents could barely speak English was beyond remarkable if they graduated high school and went on to college. In nineteen-nineteen there were strict quotas against Jews so high grades were imperative and difficult to achieve while working and studying.

My parents were married in June of nineteen thirty during the depression. My father had a job as an accountant while studying for his CPA degree. My parents discussed the fact that there were so many families that were jobless so they both agreed that my mother by giving up her job as book keeper and buyer could create an opening for a man. Chauvinistic of course but he truly meant well. Besides my mother was perfectly happy to stay home and start a family. While my father was a workaholic, my mother was a non assertive person with very little ambition. Her favorite pastime was playing cards “What makes you happy mom?” I asked. “If my family is happy then I’m happy” she replied. My very sweet mother had no sense of self. My father allowed himself to relax on Sundays after playing handball, going for a swim in the ocean and then coming home after shopping at the bakery for hot bagels and blueberry muffins. After lunch he would find the sunniest spot on the back porch and share the lounge with his cats and read the N.Y. Times cover to cover.

Every summer my father got the wanderlust to travel. At first he went to Switzerland on business while my mother stayed home. Eventually they traveled around the world on Pan American Airlines. On the way home from ever trip my dad would be looking at brochures planning his next vacation. And though my mother would have been happy spending her summers in the Catskill or playing Mah Jong and cards at the Brighton Beach Baths once my family moved the first time to Morocco, for just over three years and then three years after that we moved to Rome, Italy for four years and Germany for one, there was no way on earth my mother was going to stay home. So happily they packed their bags and visited where ever we lived. But remember that my father was an A type personality, a true workaholic so while my mother sailed across the ocean to Italy on an eight day journey, my father worked in his office for seven of those days, and then flew across the ocean in one day.

He was a very soft spoken and tolerant man, and though he had strong opinions he was never one to force them upon you. Instead, in one sentence, he would make a poignant statement. He was not a preacher and never wasted words on what to him was the obvious. When discussing ethics he would say “at the end of the day when you look in the mirror be proud of the face looking back at you.” When discussing money he drummed into our heads that when someone says the check is in the mail “don’t spend the money until you have the cold cash in your pocket.”

However there were two things he couldn’t forgive. One was never repaying a debt. My uncle Harry once borrowed ten dollars and never paid it back, My father never gave him so much as a dime. My other uncle Sidney borrowed thousands of dollars, was never denied the money because my father explained that Sidney always paid him back.

My father would never make plans with people he believed to be inconsiderate and those who were constantly late he felt were too self involved to care about other peoples feelings. “People who are always late aren’t worth waiting for.” I learned the lesson and am almost as fanatic as my dad.

In nineteen sixty seven my husband was assigned to take special classes in film making for the military and we chose San Diego State. My parents came to visit us in October just as we were settling into our home. On Tuesday, October thirty first my dad volunteered to take the children to the Halloween Carnival at their school and promised to be home by four that afternoon. When my father was late my mother immediately began to panic. He never did come home. Four days later the description of a John Doe was sent to police stations in the U.S. My father had decided to take the bus from downtown San Diego to the border in Tijuana. He apparently had a heart attack and died. There was no wallet and no Rolex watch and nothing whatsoever to identify him. We all survived his loss by rationalizing that my dad died doing what he loved best.