Compline

the kata of Compline

  Compline: prayer for the end of the day. From the Latin meaning ‘completion.’

We had a lovely mother-and-daughter team staying with us for a couple of nights. Airbnb has space on the review page to leave a private note to the host (that would be us.) The daughter of the duo was very kind and gently suggested that if we were going to throw a big party, we might want to warn our guests. Well, yes, that is very true. But we didn’t throw a big party. We just had some people over after Compline. We do it every month.

Slowly, at the age of 63, I am beginning to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t live the way I do. Compline dinner is automatic. I send out a group email to find out how many will be here. Celeste says she’s out of town, the Larsons are going up to Yosemite so they can’t come. And I forgot to ask Christina and Aaron but they know when Compline is and that the door is always open. And anyway, I counted wrong and ran out of pasta. I’m feeding children and have to remember how they can eat. Lauren doesn’t sing Sunday with St.Pauls any more but she still sings Compline. She left us for a paying gig at St. Mary Maytag (called that because of the way it looks.) But she and the precious Derek come just because. Friends ask very politely if they can bring their sweeties. When the Larsons aren’t with us, this crowd is 20 to 35 years younger than the hostlers of the Prancing Pony. And it’s all because of the service of Compline.

Within the Protestant confession of the Church Temporal many have Sunday evening services. The Baptists, some Methodists, Pentecostal and so many others come back to church on Sunday evenings for prayer and song to end the day. (Philip’s old home church, Bellepoint Baptist in Hinton WV, served the Lord’s Supper at the Sunday evening service.) Such is the service of Compline, one of the oldest offices in Christian liturgy, prayer at the end of day. With three chanted Psalms, collects (designated prayers spoken by the priest) and communal prayers, this ancient service is a balm to the soul and a cleansing for the mind. No one is going to ask you to confess, there is no altar call and you don’t show any bona fides at the door. Just come, sit and be. So why ain’t I there? Well..... it’s complicated.

I loved Judaism before I confessed Christ. And, as I always do, I went over the deep end in my understanding of whose text belongs to whom. Deep in my heart, dear, I would have Christian services completely devoid of any Hebrew scriptures. The Church Temporal have misused our Mother’s Scriptures for so long, I just don’t want us to use them. (I must state here that both Stephen Saxon and David SchIosser insist that there is plenty of Hebrew Scripture to share. But I do hold a grudge, and this one is against my own church.) It was in this frame of mind that I sat in the narthex (front hall) of St. Paul’s, listened to three sung psalms and decided that I didn’t like the Compline Service. But I like to cook and to serve through cooking. From this impulse came the monthly Compline dinner. 

So they walk in, come straight back to the kitchen, grab a glass from the collection under the Altar, pour themselves some wine and start talking. “What have you been doing?” becomes “What have you been singing?” Tonia tries to explain the story of the opera she is currently singing. (I humbly asked if it made more sense than “Forza del Destino,” and my very favorite soprano said, “Destino doesn’t make any sense at all.”) That’s how it goes at Compline Dinner, a whole lot of music talk, some politics and even horse racing, just a whole lot of talk and eating. Perhaps this was what concerned our overnight guests was a bunch of folks drinking and talking and making a certain amount of noise. Perhaps our guests dinners are more decorous. I never mean to offend.

So I promise that, from now on, when I have guests staying, I will warn them about Compline Dinner. I will say, “There are some folks coming over for dinner after an evening service.” That is all the warning they will get. This isn’t a big party, it’s just dinner and a lot of talk.

learning to read

learning to read

a kata for Janet B.

How does anyone learn to read English? this impossible mess of five different tongues: Anglo-Saxon, French, Danish, Gaelic, with some German thrown in for good measure. You layer these one on the other through consolidation and invasion like some linguistic pastry. Oh yes, then throw in a huge vowel shift in the middle of the 14th century CE and you get the beginning of English. Once folks start to write this madness, then we get to duke out the spelling. Kit Marlowe, Will Shakespeare and their fellow Elizabethan poets and playwrights just made words up. They spelt stuff the way words sounded when spoken. By the tine God’s Secretaries put their glorious minds to translating the Bible for James the First, agreed-upon spelling for English had calmed down a little. But grammar had not. Hell, we didn’t get a dictionary until Sam Johnson in the mid 18th century and the Oxford English Dictionary is still a work in progress,

So, considering all of this, how does anyone manage to learn to read this mad amalgam? To be very simple and rather cruel, by putting our heads down and learning by rote. There is no rule of spelling or grammar or syntax that is not changed or outright broken. There are so many diphthongs that phonics is a bad joke. (Just look at that word, diphthong. It comes from the Greek and means “two sounds or tones.” Yes, a Greek word in English. And how are we supposed to know how to spell the damn thing?) I came up in the transition between whole language to phonics. I didn’t read with any facility until I was in third grade and still read rather slowly.

But there is a key to these many locks and it is human speech. Talk to the baby, the toddler and all the other small people. When you are putting up your coat when you come home, tell them what you are doing and how your day was. When you are making supper, put an apron on them, stand them on the kitchen stool and tell them what you are doing and why. (If they are really little, put their bouncy seat on the counter.) When they are sitting in your lap, read to them, read to them, read to them. And here is the the dark secret, it really does matter what you read to them. The more different words they hear the better they will read.

Years ago I have said in this space, “Don’t ask two-year-olds which book they want.” You don’t ask them if they want a sweater because you are the parent and you know how cool it is outside, and that children would run around buck nekkid if they were left to their druthers. I repeat myself but it seems necessary. The first thing they want is the sound of your voice; and the second is content. They are bringing you the Barbie or a Thomas Golden book because that is what they know. But you know so much more than you think, read them what you want. Read up! and up must include poetry. Rhyme is the servant of memory, speak the rhyme and they will remember. It starts with the divine Sandra Boynton, “One hippo all alone, calls two hippos on the phone;” and then moves on to A. A. Milne, “George found a pen but I think it was the wrong one. And James sat down on a brick.” With Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses we get into wonderful story telling and vivid word painting: “Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. It flows along forever, with trees on either hand.” These worthies and their co-conspirators will teach English to your child and keep your brain from rotting. (Don’t forget Jack Prelutsky’s The Dragons are Ssinging Tonight.)

But one does not learn to read on poetry alone. So what prose does the proper parent read to the perfect child? Again, don’t read down. Save your sanity. Read old stuff. Read Edward Eager, E. Nesbitt and, I’m really not kidding, read Rudyard Kipling. Yes, he has a bad name because folks my age think of Kipling only as an imperialist. I fought with my father over Kipling when I was in high school. (By the mercy of Christ I was able to tell him that I finally knew better before he died.) The Kipling to read to young children is Just So Stories. These are animal creation myths and the language is a rolling river. How did the leopard get his spots? How did the rhinoceros get his wrinkled skin? And how did the kangaroo get his back legs? “Not always, oh best beloved, was the kangaroo as we now behold him. But a different animal entirely.” This language is as rich and complex as dark chocolate and it will prepare those young minds for what is to come.

I can hear you right now: “But they don’t like that old fashioned stuff.” They don’t know what they like and cannot like what they don’t know. It breaks my heart to see a lovely 11 year old boy, smart in so many ways, who doesn’t want to read anything more demanding than Wimpy Kid and Big Nate. That boy should be reading Asimov, Heinlein, Conan Doyle and so many others. But no one read him anything real and he was never asked to read anything real. He should have read Treasure Island and Haroun and the Sea of Stories in fourth grade so he will be ready to read Shakespeare in high school. “As long as he’s reading” simply doesn't work. It doesn’t turn him into a reader; it turns him into someone who can take the damn test without knowing the glories of his mother tongue. It is bad enough that all the girls in his class read faster and more deeply than he does. 

So read to him, read to her and read good stuff, real stuff. We have saddled these beautiful young minds with the most difficult language to learn. It doesn’t make sense, it breaks every rule it makes. But oh my dears, English is a thing of surpassing beauty and, with it’s vast vocabulary, it can describe the width and depth of the human imagination.

“Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention”

Henry V: Act 1, Prolougue.

Die Fledermaus

Dear Lord I cannot write,

What shall I write?

Cats are impossible to draw. Dürer couldn’t do it, Da Vinci couldn’t do it. These worthies were so hung up on the complexity of feline musculature that they could just couldn’t get the skin or fur right.

Long ago, at his place in the Creamery, Bodega, Wally Hedrick gave my father a spectacular compliment. “Rudolph was the best draftsman I ever knew.”  Yes, my bad Daddy could draw like God and here is an example. This is a watercolor of a neighbor cat named Chacoo and it was painted in the late 1970’s. I will stand flat footed and say, “This is the best thing of his I own.” The story of why the early intimates of Robert Parker Jenkins called him Rudolph is too long to go into now. 

There she is. It’s 2:30 am and there she is with her wet little nose and a purr that could wake the dead. Rosalinda wants attention. She wants skritches and belly rubs and she is going to get them. No aloof haughty feline is our girl. She wears a diamond necklace and sings the Czardas at the bedroom door when it is closed against her. For the first three months she lived here, we could not touch her. Hell, we couldn’t touch any of them. Usually cats in this house don’t get their war names until they have lived with us for a while. (Our precious Rocket J Baby was not with us long enough to get a war name. I was pushing for Red Sonja.) But these three got their real names right away.

It was time for kittens so last early June we went to the house built by PeopleSoft for the Humane Society, just off of Hegenberger. It’s where we got Geoffrey and Jōshū. It is where we got Ramses the Charioteer, son of Seti the Great. But now Ramses was gone and I needed a new black cat. And he came with a package of two sisters. The three of them were part of a litter of 13 and they were pretty feral. Gabriel is not all black. He is a tuxie and his black is denser than any cat I’ve seen. (Even Pirate Jenny looked brown in full sunlight.) So we bring these three crazy kittens home and I put the carrier on the counter. I open it up to check on them and Gabriel von Eisenstein comes flying out, like a bat. Well, if he is Die Fledermaus (the bat) then his sisters must be Adele and Rosalinda.

(Please find three impossible kittens. Adele is on the left in tweed and Rosalinda is in the white opera gloves. Gabriel is in the middle and butter would not melt in his mouth.) These guys were nuts. At first they hid, then they learned to romp and slowly, very slowly they decided we were kinda ok. Rosalinda has to be kept out of certain rooms because she still can make messes. She really didn’t want me to tell you that.

Dogs are loyal, brave and helpful. They will take the medicine from Anchorage to Nome. They will wait for their masters at the train station, they will spend their nights on the graves of their lost ones. They have hunted with humans since we were humans. The bond between us and them is undeniable. So what is it about cats? Yes, they control vermin, think of Dick Whittington. But cats have always been suspect. They are accused of being witches’ familiars and through them, in league with the Devil. Yes, in Egypt, Bastet, the lioness/cat goddess, has been worshiped since 2800 BCE. But they are sly and slinky and insinuating. They require very different care than dogs and will they say thank you? No they will not. In fact when they can be gotten into the carrier to take them to the vet, they will sing your funeral all the way there. But they are furry and cuddly and very purry. They tear ass around the house in the middle of the night, either alone or in pairs, for no apparent reason. They will sing the songs of their people loud enough to wake your guests. Yet no house of mine can be without a cat.

So we love them, we can’t help it. I can’t help it.They are so very hard to draw or paint. Tomorrow morning, there she will be, with her wet nose and purr that would wake the dead.

Placerville

Placerville

Labor Day Weekend 2017

A choir retreat. Christopher wanted us to do a choir retreat. Well, we had waited long enough to have him as our director, so I was ok with humoring him. But I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. Retreats are for “team building” and we were already a team. Yet the new boss said retreat and we agreed to retreat, in Placerville El Dorado County, at the end of August. This rash decision was made at the end of May.

Some of you might not know El Dorado County California. It is a beautiful place that reaches from Folsom (yes, that Folsom) up to South Lake Tahoe. It is rugged, it is steep and in August it gets really hot. But we decided to go there in May and had no idea that the Bay Area would suffer its hottest summer in decades. When it’s 102 in Oakland, 106 in Placerville seems a little extreme. Just days before we were to head up the Hill, some amongst us opined that staying in our slightly cooler home might be a good idea. Then came the voice of reason, remarkably, out of the tenor section. Joshua said, “They know how to deal with heat better than we do.” And so it was.

The house itself was large and had been added onto several times. You walk into what was a front parlor and is now a dining room. To the left was the kitchen and, down a narrow hall, one of the three ensuite bedrooms. This Vickie and Richard had held for us, the late arrivals. They had their own as did Christopher and Tonia. The single people, three of each, had dorm rooms. (This is not to suggest that Joshua is single, just that Stacie did not join us.) There were also old powerful air conditioners everywhere, noisily pumping out blessedly refrigerated air. See, Joshua knew of what he spoke.

The traffic on Friday was just wretched thus we got to the digs late. And we had dinner. The house that Christopher found was very nice with a big kitchen wherein we would make our meals. Sharon, divine alto and organizer extraordinaire had all the food responsibilities worked out. I made chicken and a big salad. (I think not enough.) So when we finally chugged into the parking in front of the house, people were really relieved. Supper had arrived. We chatted and had cocktails, we dined and chatted and then the games came out. I am very bad at games and retired early. The Iron Dragon went on till 1 am and still wasn’t done. Being a slug, I slept late and only emerged from my luxurious nest because I heard the smoke alarm in the kitchen. After donning my house dress, I went into the same kitchen and gently asked if Richard and Sharon were burning the house down. They insisted that they were only making breakfast on an unfamiliar and rather recalcitrant stove. I always believe what my friends tell me.

The primary reason for the retreat was lots of rehearsal. We had a lot of music to work on but where were we going to do it? Showing off his organizational chops, our fearless leader cut a deal with Church of Our Savior, a lovely and old (established in 1861) Episcopal church who very sweetly allowed us to rehearse there in exchange for us singing at the Sunday 10:30 service. Church of Our Savior doesn’t really have a choir so we got to sing for a very appreciative congregation. One woman went so far as to worship at 8am and then return at 10:30 to hear us. The church was a whole short block from our digs. Oh life is so hard.

We are very spoiled by the acoustics of St.Paul’s, with its brick walls and wood interior buttressing. But at Church of our Savior we had a real treat, we were able to sing together. At home, the sops & altos are behind the pulpit, basses and tenors behind the lectern and the altar is in between. Thus it is very hard to hear each other and, for those of you who don’t sing chorally, hearing each other is pretty important. In the plaster and wood of the Placerville church all of the choir are on the lectern side and Christopher stood behind it. The higher voices turned toward the lower and we could really blend. That place has such nice sound. We worked on the music for the next day, we looked at music for the upcoming season and had the Monteverdi “Vespers” dangled in front of us. Sweet Jesus I do want to sing that thing. 

We broke for lunch, came back for another session and then broke for supper. Sharon made an elegant “salade nicoise” and then the games came out again. I tried to participate, I really did, but I’m just no good at games. We rose on Sunday morning, prepared, walked over to the sweet little church and did our St. Paul’s best for our gracious hosts. For those of you who are not familiar with the Episcopal Liturgy, here is how it breaks down. The choir comes behind the Cross, followed by clergy, all singing the opening hymn. Once in the stalls, there is a Collect, readings (one from the Hebrew Scriptures, one from St. Paul and, after singing the Sequence Hymn, one from a Gospel.) Then the sermon, Prayers of the People, the Confession, the passing of the Peace and announcements (this can take a while). Once the cats are herded back in their pews, the Offertory is sung by the choir. And then we celebrate the Eucharist. The Communion anthem is sung after the choir takes the same. All of this sounds rather complicated but it unites the Episcopal Communion. Different churches have their own traditions, some more high Church and some less. But the order of worship binds us to the Body of Christ and each other and that really matters.

After service we retired to the church hall, in the basement of Church of Our Savior, for coffee and chatting. We were supposed to be visiting with our hosts and some of us tried. But, we are a limited company and all ended up at the same table, planning where to go for lunch. Sharon did a whole lot of work on this trip and found a lovely little bistro on Placerville’s historic main drag. Part of this place’s real attraction is that they saved their little old downtown. The storefronts are preserved. What one does with the interiors is up to the shop owners. Thus gift, antique, book and hardware shops are right next door to restaurants. “Heyday Cafe” at 325 Main St. took very good care of us, putting multiple tables together to accommodate our large party. We had splendid service and very nice food. As usual, at least for this trip, Himself and I were late. We drove rather than walking over the freeway bridge and getting to parking took too long. My excuse is that old man Art Ritus was really kicking in but I should have walked. 

Here is an important thing about the Heyday, they will do separate checks. We are talking five or six checks at our table alone. (If anyone tells you that separate checks can’t be done at “fine dining” establishments, give them a big Bronx cheer. If the Heyday in Placerville, El Dorado Co. CA can do it, so can they.) The food was fresh and very good. They have a good beer and wine list. We had a lovely meal and then asked to settle up. That’s when it happened. We were informed by our head waiter that our lunches had been paid for. WHAT? Yes, all of our lunches, all of our drinks, all of our everything, had been paid for by an anonymous member of the Church of Our Savior. We couldn’t even say thank you.

When Philip and I first drove into town, I noticed a brew pub on the town side of the freeway. I have learned never to let a beer establishment go un-investigated. So, after our miraculous lunch, Joshua joined Philip in some beer tasting. The place is called “Jack Russell Brewery” and although it doesn’t have the charm of the old buildings the beer is good and the service is lovely. Philip and Joshua tasted and talked music, which I always love to hear. But then the subject turned to baseball and I wished I’d brought something to read.

Back at the ranch everyone was packing up. Hugs, kisses and wishes for safe travels were exchanged and we went our separate ways. Most everyone were taking the direct route, being the 50 to Sacramento and then either the 5 to Stockton or the 80 thru Vacaville. But we needed to pick up wine at Van Ruiten in Lodi and we needed to drive the Delta. I always need to drive the Delta. From Lodi we were supposed to pick up the 12 east and then a left onto the 160 and thence to the 4. That is what we asked Applemaps. I’m not really sure how we got where we did but it was a wonderful drive on a very narrow road  with water on either side. In fact the entire Delta trip was surrounded by water. There were white herons, red winged blackbirds and other marsh birds that only Alison and Liz know. All I know is that I love driving the California Delta, be it the 4, the 12 the 160 or nameless back roads . The sky is big, the land (what there is) very flat and a river runs though. 

We left out water reverie at Antioch, joined the hoards on the southern/eastern 4 heading toward the 80 and home. Some of you may have noticed that I always title a highway or freeway. This is an L A thing. To the north it stops somewhere around the Ventura Co. line, and to the south just beyond the Orange curtain. I don’t know why we speak this way, other areas have great big awful freeways, other places are ruled by their commutes. We title our great roads, the Santa Monica, the 405, the 210 (Foothill). It’s just the way we talk and others can always tell where we’re from and they laugh.

Sharon called our retreat “summer camp for grownups.” And so it was, a wonderful weekend of singing, great company and almost enough food, in a beautiful place. Christopher was right. We did need to go to Placerville in August.

The Lost Cookie

How in fact does one bake a memory? I am finding this out.

In or about 1960 CE, my grandmother Julia Regusic Davidovitz would come to visit with us in our flat on Hayes, between Cole & Clayton, usually at Easter. It was right across the street from my first grammar school. We were in the upper flat, a classic San Francisco apartment with two bedrooms on each side of the hall, the toilet separate from the bathroom, and a sunroom at the back. The place was really quite salubrious especially on a junior high school teacher’s salary.

When she came to visit Grandma Julia would take over my mother’s small yellow kitchen and cook. You might think that I am a force of nature but that’s only because you never met my Grandma Julia. She went out to the back garden and planted zinnias, she and then come back into that little kitchen to make sarma (stuffed cabbage) and other Yugoslav delicacies. And she made sweets. Among others she made very particular orange-flavored crescent cookies. 

Like so many memories made of taste, these cookies are essential to my early life. I know how the dough should smell, I know how the cookies should feel in the mouth and what sort of sweet they should be. And, because they are so connected with her, I never tried to make them. Neither have any of her daughters. Not Mary, her eldest daughter and one of the greatest hostesses I’ve ever known. And not to my mother Katherine who taught me everything I know about making salad and pie.

 

 Please find the aforementioned Katherine

The recipe and its methodology went with my grandmother into the arms of Jesus when she was only 69 years old. (They eat really well in Heaven.) For decades I either ignored or was too afraid of the orange crescents to ever attempt them. But now, at 62 years of age, I find myself wanting to make these orange crescent cookies. Yes, but how?

‘To the internet, and beyond! I began by just looking up recipes, first for sour cream dough; I quickly knew that that wasn’t what I wanted. Cream cheese was the answer. It was Alice Medrichs (an important chocolatier, writer and all around smart foodie) whose cream cheese dough I found. If she says that a particular recipe is the very one, who am I to question? And so I began, with very basic instructions for one of the elemental cookie/savory doughs in all of Central Europe, the search of the lost cookie.

3 1/2 cups of flour, equal parts (12 oz) butter and cream cheese, a little salt and not enough sugar (more about that later). It sounds so simple. When I started to blend the elements a certain if very gentle smell came to me, rich and slightly sour. And once the orange zest was added, there was what I was looking for, there was the smell I remember. Having worked with doughs that need to be kept cold, I knew what to do, and that was to put all parts into the kitichenaid, blend it up, roll it up into a tube and put it in the fridge overnight.

As said, there was not enough sugar in this, the first iteration, but there was cream cheese and orange zest. When I opened the dough tube I smelled that combination and knew I was on the way. (But, dammit Alice, there isn’t enough sugar in your recipe. Not for cookie use. Rather than three tablespoons I need at least a third of a cup.) So I made three different bakes of this terrifying cookie. 

The first bake was undercooked and nowhere near flavorful enough (not enough marmalade). The second bake was better but still not enough marmalade. The third actually worked except the sugar (read: marmalade) baked onto the cookie sheet and made the cookies very difficult to scrape loose. The folks at work wolfed them down even as I bleated that these weren’t right yet. The dough needs to be rolled out thinner. It’s naturally dense (you know, cream cheese and butter) but it needs to flake up more. And I’m a pie and biscuit maker, this I can do.

There is another element to this story. I look like Grandma Julia. When I was young, she lived in Las Vegas with Uncle Danny and Aunt Charlene. Yet many people in Sierra Madre remembered her and they would tell me how much I looked like Julia. But she was Grandma and my 10 year old mind did not want to look like Grandma. And then the pictures showed up. An image of her just before she came to the US, at about 16. And in her wedding picture, wherein my Grandfather Rudolph looks almost pleasant, there is my face. There is the rectangular forehead, the broad cheeks and the stubborn chin. My mother says she had a lovely soprano but I cannot remember her singing. I did become quite proud that I look like her. The eyes were always wrong though, I have my father’s eyes. 

So here is the key. I am her age and so proud to be one of her grandchildren. And of all of them I am the most interested in home cooking. I make sarma, I throw a mean Easter and now I am willing to pick up the gauntlet of the orange cookies. I pick it up with gratitude and all love. Thank you so, Grandma Julia.

 strength for the journey

When I kneel at the Altar rail Mauricio or a lay Eucharistic minister comes over, displays the Host and says, “The Body of Christ.” In many Episcopal and other Protestant churches, this statement is followed by, “Strength for the journey.” Going up to Portland to actually lay eyes on our Kirk, to visit Julie, to meet new babyWren and love her older sister Mathilda, has given us strength for the journey.
Ever since we learned, a little over two months ago, that Kirk’s cancer had turned so badly that the most drastic response was necessary, I have been crying. The tears have been sitting right behind my eyes, like water behind a dam. One Sunday I was crying so much I didn’t go to church because I couldn’t sing. Taking the breath necessary to make the sound brought on the flood. Philip went in and out. Some days he just sleepwalked, going through the motions and only breaking down when he got home. We traded off coming apart, trying to address the possibility of losing of our darling Kirk. With that on our hearts we planned to go to up to Portland to visit our young family.
I drove my poor boss quite mad because the dates kept on changing but finally the weekend of 02/17–02/20 came and we headed north. It was raining when we left Oakland airport and raining when we got to Portland. The day before our trip I had a terrible thought: “Is it still snowing in Portland?” But no, thank goodness, just cold wet rain. Lots and lots of cold wet rain. We landed, got to the rental car pick up and that’s when I realized I left my wallet on the plane. I took it out to pay for a drink and put it in the back of seat pocket. But the drinks never came because of turbulence and I forgot my wallet. The first rental car was a sub compact. That’s what I asked for. The dear woman at the rental counter looked at Philip and didn’t believe that he would fit in the car. She was too right, he didn’t. She laughed at him when he came back to the front desk. He got the great big Jeep and was a very happy man. Someday I’ll tell you about my husband, a Jeep and a New Mexican road we should not have taken.
Kirk and Julie’s new home is a whole five minutes from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) which is on a steep hill in SW Portland. This hill holds multiple hospitals including one that specializes in eyes and a Shriners. (There is something very dear about a statue of a man in a suit, holding a child’s hand and wearing a fez with a shoulder length tassel.) Kirk has walked to appointments at OHSU many times.
The house is up many stairs on a large uneven lot with much lush greenery including a huge very old conifer (no, I don’t remember what kind). The front room is solid windows with a lovely fireplace and beautiful new floors throughout. It is the perfect house for our gardener, her lover the massage therapist and their divine girls. We didn’t call from the hotel, as I faithfully promised I would, so we had to wait for them to come back from the store. Kirk had his new shunt put in earlier that morning in preparation for the chemo dump that was to come. He was thinner than the last time we saw him yet still has some eyebrows. Oddly his beard is there but it is tow colored, just like when he was a very little boy. All that really mattered was we could see and touch and talk to Kirk.

Julie sits on the love-seat in the beautiful bow windows, to nurse Wren. The little bird is on a tear. She wants to eat all the time, sleep some of the time, dance when someone will lead, and grow. It had been many years since Philip danced a baby to sleep but he hasn’t lost the knack. As for me, I am simply amazed at this creature who changes as I look at her. At six weeks she holds her head up and the gaze of power is beginning. In her first pictures it appeared she might be dark haired, like her wonderful mother. But no, the red will not be denied and the old Saunders strain is coming through. We shall see.
Mathilda takes the bus across town to her school. Mathilda draws all of the time. Mathilda wrote a report on Rosa Parks that she would present to the 4th and 5th graders. (I have to talk to her about how that went.) She can be crazed as only a 3rd grade girl can be. When we went out to dinner on Friday night, we brought along a school friend and they dissolved into a whirlwind of eight year old madness. In Mathilda’s eight years of life her father has been fighting caner for five. She loves her grandfather very much and I pray for the time when seeing Grandpa is not equated with Daddy being in the hospital. This is a very strong family.
Dinner: it was our plan to take care of our family as well as they wanted. Portland has lousy weather, let’s just admit it. London, Berlin and many other great cities have drippy, rainy weather when one just prays for a sight of the sun. So it is with Portland and yet it has its own joys. One of these is a treasure trove of brew restaurants. I cannot call them pubs because they are too large. The food in these places is good to very good and Friday night we went to one of these. Kirk’s palate has been deeply affected by all the chemo so foods and beers he used to love are no longer available to him. But some new flavors have come forward so he and his father were able to discuss the brewers art at some length. Kirk still loves caramel.
What city has enough parking, certainly not Portland. But there are parking structures dotted around downtown so it really wasn’t bad. We did discover that Mathilda has a super power. She, like my sister, has powerful parking juju. After we have circled the block and found the big old parking building, parked and walked to the restaurant, we would find the rest of the family. They had already put our name down for a table. P and I never had to wait more than five minutes. All of this is because of Mathilda’s magic parking power. He father swears that the mere invocation of the girl’s name can find a convenient parking wether she is in the car or not. Her mother supports this assertion. That’s some big time juju.

We stayed at a motel about three minutes from Kirk & Julie’s. This gave them some privacy and us the comfort of our own space. OHSU is so important that the hotel gave us a special rate because we were visiting a patient at one the hospitals. Sunday morning we slept late (for us) and went down to the sports bar that was part of the hotel and found that they had FIFA direct and while I wrote up my travel notes, Philip watched Barcelona eventually do their job. Trust me, when we go up again, we will stay there.
Sunday was a day of obligation. We had planned to take Kirk to Powell’s. Julie chose to join us and thus the entire family invaded one of the greatest bookstores in the world. For those of you who are not bookstore centric, Powell’s fills an entire city block in downtown SW Portland. They carry new and used books. They even carry music thus Philip was tempted by a score of The Makropoulos Affair by Janáček. It was just too pricey.
I on the opposite shore stood in the middle readers section of a massive children’s room and tried to focus. Primarily I was shopping for Mathilda. At Christmas I sent her The Dark is Rising by the great Susan Cooper. But it is too old for her now; maybe next year. Having seen the girl and her bestie at dinner on Friday, stories about two girls growing up together seem perfect. So I’m turning her on to the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace.
(Standing at the ‘L’ shelves I saw a very old friend. When I was in 4th grade I read the works of Hugh Lofting. The stories of Dr. John Doolittle were my meat and drink. Yet I’ve never owned one of them, till now. A citizen of Puddleby-on-Marsh, Dr Doolittle put his mind to the language of animals and their care. My copy is a Canadian edition from 1923.)

And then suddenly it was Sunday afternoon. We sat by the fire in the front room, ate pizza and tried to pretend that the grandparents didn’t have to go home. Philip did try to get a job in Portland. Three times the same position, at Nike in Beaverton, has showed up online. The job description could have been lifted from Philip’s résumé, Each time he applied he heard nothing back. Always looking for the silver lining, I’m seeing a problem at Nike. The same job turning over three times in 16 months? Something is wrong there.
Our flight was very early so we made our goodbyes Sunday evening. Leaving was difficult. After hugs and kisses, all we could do was walk down the stairs and into the dark evening. Yet, by the time we blearily walked down the long concourse of Portland Intl. Airport, the difference was clear. Terrified parents went up to visit with their sick son and his family. The son is still very sick but his blood is strong and his family is even stronger.
With that in our hearts we came home to live, to love and to look clear eyed into this next year. Strength for the journey.

July has been very good to us. Last week we had Kirk, Julie and Mathilda in town. They were housesitting for old friends up in very south Berkeley. I knew that neighborhood when I worked at Cody’s 4th St. It was mostly rented shotgun Victorians that weren’t well kept up. But the wheels of gentrification are turning. The place the kids sat is a really nice Craftsman bungalow, bought at the bottom of the market ten years ago and now a spiffed up sweetie. It’s happening all over. As I drove my old way home after dropping them off, on every block there were four or five houses already fixed up and others on the way.
We dined with them, visited with them and then on the final morning my Saunders men being silent together. Kirk seems well, the blood numbers stay low and he eats well. Julie is in good shape with some taste and smell vagaries because of her traveling companion. When Mathilda was on the way all Julie wanted was water. All this person wants is pickles. The baby is due in early January. We are starting to talk of going up for Thanksgiving.
Because of scheduling at work, Philip and I weren’t able to take our anniversary weekend until 07/01. On the traveling day he got himself home as soon as he could and everything was packed up. I was hoping to get us to Murphys by sundown, but the I 5 had other ideas. So, we drove up to the hills shrouded in gloaming. But we found the place because our hostess gave perfect directions. Our room was just as advertised, cozy, very private with an ensuite bath, good wifi and a nice strong ceiling fan. It gets really pretty warm in the Sierra foothills in early July.
Breakfast appeared magically out our door and we headed out and  down to some dear smartass winemakers. Some may want fortune, some may want fame, I want to be recognized at the Twisted Oak winery in Vallecito California when I walk from the car. (We hadn’t been there in two years and it was the only wine club we held onto, hoping for better days.)
We were welcomed with two cases and a full description of their contents. I confessed having an ‘06 Spaniard to the lady of the house and she was sharp with me. She forcefully (well, forcefully for her) told me that we must drink it right away and send a review.
Once down the hill and back into beautiful downtown Murphys. There is a little service station on Main whose color changes from time to time, and it is the home of Milliaire Winery. It is our other fav in Murphys. We had cancelled our wine club membership with them but they were so welcoming. We tasted and bought and put the cases (yes that is plural) in the back of the Cruiser. (Otherwise known as the Little Blue Opera House—we can get to Murphys with one opera and an oratorio. What? you thought we listened to the local radio??)
We had a lovely lunch and checked out two of the other 22 tasting rooms in that little town. It was in the second room, Tanner, that a problem raised its head. Power went out, and then it came back on, and then it went out for good. There was a fire a valley away that brought down a tower, so phone, electricity, wifi all were gone. The last time we heard anything was that it would be up by 5:30. So we went back to our digs to relax, read and wait. It didn’t happen. We drove to Angels Camp, no power; in fact we were told it was out all the way down to Farmington. California Highway 4 was dark and would be till Sunday afternoon.
So we went back, packed up, left our lovely little nest and headed out towards Lodi. We’d planned on a night there after the two nights in Murphys. As soon as we turned right on the 49, just out of a dark Angles Camp, there was electricity. We could see lights in houses, there was power in San Andreas and in Valley Springs where we stopped at a lovely little bistro called Taco Bell. But no place for our heads. So, we pointed our faces down into the hot darkness of the Central Valley.
We stopped at the big gas station at the junction of Old 99 and the curve of the 12. There I phoned the Motel 6 with whom we had the next night’s reservation. But there was no room for us. They were full because of the fire. Yet fortune smiled and we found a Budget Inn where the sign said “Vacancy.” Would there be rest for the fire-chased weary?
There was. We were greeted by a lovely young South Asian gentleman who answered the pertinent questions. “Yes, we have a room, yes, we have wifi. Just sign here.” Our room was just past the still populated swimming pool, where children cavorted  in the chlorinated air and gentlemen spoke amongst themselves.   Worn but clean it had a big old hotel air conditioner that made a hell of a noise and just pumped out the cold air. It was perfect. Philip had been able to nap in the afternoon but I hadn’t so he enjoyed the joys of being reconnected and I turned into a blissed out turnip.
The next morning, with the fire behind us (power did not come back to Murphys until Sunday afternoon), we were in search of breakfast and after that, wine. We came to Lodi to taste the Zinfandels for which this appellation is duly famous. But breakfast was necessary as was the cancelation of our reservation at Motel 6. This was far more complicated than I could have imagined. Since I hadn’t left a credit card #, I thought to call just as a courtesy. But no, there was a whole phone process that happily ended as expected. Cancelation without fee.
We found the Denny’s, just off Kettleman Ave. This is clearly where the elite meet in Lodi. Sitting on the bench and waiting to be called, we were told that a specific waitress was the best in the place. And so she was. I was able to inform her that Mr.Sandoval  recommended her mightily.
Have you ever watched line cooks at Denny’s or Ole’s or any other short order place? Well my friends, hear me talking to you. One can go to the Cordon Bleu or the CIA, and these are great institutions, but the grill line at any cafe is where you learn to cook.
Our first stop wasVan Ruiten Winery. We knew little of it but that was also true of Milliaire and Twisted Oak when we first found them over 15 years ago. We went in and started to be simply blown away. This is a very delicate terroir and its base is white clay. Van Ruiten makes clear, specific wines including a Pinot that knocked Philip right to the floor. Having been struck by lightning once, we had some mercy on the suspension of our little blue opera house and headed home.
I love the 12 as it crosses the Delta. There was more rain this year and everything looked lush. After that wonderful breakfast, lunch at Isleton or RioVista seemed superfluous. I just wanted to go home.
And so we did. It had been an eventful and wonderful 25th anniversary trip in the best place in the world, the glorious state of California. With the very best husband, Philip Milton Saunders.