Harrowing Hailstorm 1981

The dark and stormy night drives horizontal hail against the windows like a berzerk banshee with handfuls of ball bearings. Wave after wave of ice pellets threaten to crack these sheets of silica shaking in the wind. In an effort to calm my mind, I think of hot sand melting to form this very glass. Vitrification is a process that has always fascinated me. I force my mind to consider this distraction.

As a child, it was a treat when my parents took me downtown to Olvera Street. The old plaza and shops lining the crazy cobblestones just west of Union Station were a great diversion from the stultifying frozen rage inside our house. On the west side of Olvera Street, there was a glass blower - who didn’t blow so much as he fashioned sailing ships, ballerinas, unicorns, dolphins and religious icons by holding slender glass rods in his deft hands before a white-hot flame. I would stand and watch ‘til the afterimage of that flame burned into my retina and persisted for several minutes as I was dragged away still sniffing after the scent of molten glass.

The detour of remembrance has worked. The storm has calmed a bit, and so has my anxiety. Rain still falls heavily, but the ice pellets are gone.

I’m alone in the house with my four year old and eight month old daughters and loyal old Fairfax Dog. The storm raging outside has flooded the street and I’m as electified as the scene lit up by the lightning - as I watch a tree going end-over-end down the middle of Benedict Canyon Drive - while the water is half-way up our driveway. Three cars that were parked on the street have been lifted by the flood waters and float downstream like toys. I’m frozen with shock. Will the river come up to the house? The street light is out, but I can see dim lights in the houses across from us.

Nine P.M.  I hear the mantle clock strike. Thankful the girls are peacefully sleeping, I try the phone again. Still dead. They need me to make the right decision: Stay put or try to drive somewhere. By candle light, I check on them once more, then don my boots, grab the flash light and wade through the deluge at the top of the driveway, through the ivy between our house and the neighbor’s, dodge the off-pouring of their garage roof and bound onto their front porch. Their house is equally dark. My hope that their phone is working fades. I knock timidly at first then, with more urgent  knuckles. 

Ralph comes to the door and opens it a crack. I hold the flashlight so it illumines my face. 

“Ralph! Sorry to bother you. Is your phone working? Ours is out. Mark is on his way home from LAX. I want to warn him not to drive up the street...”

"Come in, come in...”

Carol comes to the entry way as well. I leave my slicker and boots on the porch and squeeze past their huge arthritic German Shepherd. Blindly, he sniffs at my socks and wags his tail - panting moist clouds of doggie halitosis.

Eight year old Pam is still awake. I see her curled up on the couch. By the light of a flourescent camping lantern on the coffee table - she looks more fair-haired and fragile than she is. Karen must be asleep in her bed. Karen and my four year old are good buddies.

“Dan Enright put a car-phone in Mark’s Pontiac last week. I’m hoping I can reach him on the road. Your phone working?”

“Let’s see.” Ralph lifts the receiver. The sound of the dial tone from across the room warms my rigid body.

I blurt out the phone number.

He dials and gets a fast busy. My palms are sweaty. 

A blue flash and thunder that stops our hearts and hurts our ears tells us the storm is moving fast.

“Gotta go - in case Mosa & Megan wake up... will you please try a couple more times?” I bolt to the door and put my boots and slicker on once more.

“Sure thing. Anything else you need?” Carol asks as she writes down the number.

“Just for the storm to stop scaring us, and PLEASE keep that big ol’ tree from falling over! Thanks, neighbors!” 

I run back to our porch and listen just inside the door. All I hear is the rain on the roof, the roar of the river on what used to be our quiet street and deaf ol’ Fairfax shaking himself and jumping off the couch - trip, trip trapping on the hardwood floor.

I scratch his pointy head. Drying off with the towel left by the front door for muddy dog feet, I move down the hallway to reassure myself by flash-light that all is well with my lovelies. The sound of their soft breathing tears at my heart. How can something so magical as their very life’s breath make me feel so powerless to protect and preserve it?

Acts of God include one-hudred year old trees falling over in great storms such as this and onto unsuspecting dreamers asleep in their homes. My WILL is that the rain keeps UP so it doesn’t come DOWN any more this night! My will is that the tree be rooted all the way to the center of the earth and that it hold tightly to its branches. My will is that Mark have an easy return and that he can somehow pull up into the driveway without stalling out the engine; that he come home safely and help melt away this dark forboding that something awful will befall these beautiful daughters on my watch or ever. 

I feel the mama wolf rise up inside me and know I will do ANYthing to protect my pups. I feel like biting something - hard. I open the dark refrigerator and rummage for the head of celery. Breaking off three pieces, I run them under the faucet and bite and bite and bite. I imagine my fangs gleaming in the flash of lightning.

Hot rage, like white-hot flame, liquifies and evaporates my frozen fear. Wish I'd known that trick when I was a child.

Lying down beside them, slowly I settle my breath to match my daughters' steady, even life-breath and wait.  

Kite Staff

My family bought a home in Echo Park the year I was born and we moved in when I was eleven months old. All the while I was growing up - six years behind my brother Mel, I got to witness the nearly daily miracle of light refraction from the ocean - miles and miles away from those beloved hills where we lived. When I was older, I imagined all sorts of stories while watching the light on the sea from my vantage point at the top of the old Eucalyptus tree.

In a previous blog entry, I remember sharing how sure I was that the poor fish out there would be cooked as the sun dropped into the ocean at day’s end. I knew without a doubt that it was the sun’s descent into the water that made it feel warmer after sunset than it had during the day.

Other fantasies included pirate ships, Tinkerbelle, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys - thanks to a Disney record we had with colorful cartoon images emblazoned on the plastic LP itself.* Mary Martin’s role as Peter  inspired even more imaginative play and sword fights - using for lances - the plentiful bamboosa that grew at the base of the old Eucalyptus. They showed that old Kinescope Movie of Peter Pan on TV once a year for several years - until it was lost.

Kite staff was also home to several forts built by hollowing out the five foot high crop of late summer weeds. We’d make a tunnel through the weeds - much like the entrance to an igloo - by trampling a clearing, bending the side weeds into an arch and weaving them down into the ones growing on each side. We found an old rusted-out mattress-inner-spring and put a sheet over it to serve as a couch. Great plots for saving the world or overcoming enemies were hatched in that club-house by Peter, Angelika, Jeffrey, Gary and me. Sometimes Jacky would join us and more rarely Johnny Mayfield. They lived in farther parts of Echo Park - a long walk.

When the weeds were dry enough, we’d take cardboard boxes and slide down those steep Echo Park hills... the closest thing we had to snow-tobaggoning in dry Southern California. It’s a wonder we didn’t all break our tail bones!  It’s also a good thing we never crashed into the Jakonvich’s wood-siding-paneled house at the bottom of the hill!

The only negative experiences on Kite Staff were the occasional cases of Poison Oak, rare fires - one that burned awfully close - well, one wall of our house, and a few back scrapes and bruises on the jagged cracked-off part of the trunk of an old tree that held the rope swing.

Kites? Yes, we did fly kites when anyone had money to buy one. There was a mysterious pipe stuck upright into the center of the level part of Kite Staff. Sometimes we would tie a well-flying kite’s string to it and then keep it from slipping off the end by taking turns standing (balancing) on top of the pipe. The pipe was only three inches in diameter, but it must have gone directly to the center of the earth, for as many rocks, pebbles and handfuls of dirt as we dropped in over the years, it NEVER filled up! 

On a recent Monday, I hiked with a friend in Ferndell. We wound up driving to the Planetarium. From there, the view was lovely. Although the Observatory is closed on Mondays, and I have yet to see the newly rennovated interior, I was so glad to see that magical strip of ocean reflecting sunlight and dreams - just as it used to do in my childhood in Echo Park.

It’s comforting to know that some things never change. Can you see the pirate ship just taking shape on that gleaming horizon?

*LP record stood for "Long Playing" or thirty-three-and-a-third RPM (revolutions per minute). They were about the size of a pizza for two, hence the name "Licorice Pizza" for one recycled record store! The other name that caught my fancy was "Vinyl Resting Place." If all the music sources you know are from CDs, MP3s or iTunes... treat yourself to a stroll in one of these old fashioned record shops. I swear the analog music will nourish you differently from digitally produced CDs!

Treat yourself also, with a trip to the Observatory some clear-day pre-sunset afternoon! 

Autumn Leaves

Mama Barbara was fond of playing "The Autumn Leaves" on the piano. She played it nearly every time she sat down to play and, invariably, she wept when she got to the part "...but I miss you most of all, my darling, when autumn leaves start to fall." Something to do with an old affair. That was their song.

Michel Legrande's album I Love Paris held that song nestled in the grooves between The Last Time I Saw Paris and I Love Paris in the Springtime, I love Paris in the Fall. We played that album while I was growing up until the grooves were worn through to the other side. We could hear those side two songs coming right through in the background - and they were backwards! (Shades of The White Album by The Beatles.)

I wonder if CDs can be equally worn. I don't think so. Something different between laser light and record needles.

I wonder if Mom's old flame is still alive... or if they've met up in some heavenly autumnal forest.

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The best leaves for crunching are really crispy Sycamore leaves. They make the most satisfying "crunch" and emit a fabulous fragrance. You can also just pick them up and pet their velvety five fingers and keep them for years.

The best leaves, in Los Angeles, for use in autumnal decorations are the bright red Liquid Amber leaves. Those are the trees that drop Sputnik-looking pods.

Flat, prickly Oak leaves are the worst crunchers but they sound awfully pretty when a soft rain pitter pats them on green rolling hills of California's central coast.

May your Fall be cool and as crunchy as you like.

Going... Going...

Hallmark Corporation has completely ignored one of life’s guaranteed passages.

We’ve got welcome new baby cards; birthdays of every number - well, at least First Birthday, 21st, 30, 40... 100, etc.; wedding cards and even ‘congratulations on your divorce’ cards! You can buy mother’s and father’s day cards in English and in Spanish, graduation, anniversary, bon voyage, get well, retirement, and sympathy cards for the survivors after someone dear dies.

What we DON’T have is a card for the one who has been given a diagnosis and has to wait it out until Merciful Death finally grants peace to the sound-minded, tormented and tortured soul trapped in a dying body.

Here are some possiblities I might share with the card-designing “heart-ists.”

“Have a good death... wish I could be there with you, but I can’t stand to see you disintegrate... makes me              squeamish to be aware of my own mortality.”

“Sorry, you won’t be at the bridge games on Thursdays. We’ll miss you. Say, can we borrow your coffee urn?”

“Wow, bummer, dude! You can keep the $20 bucks you borrowed from me.”

“Sorry to hear of your decline. Before you’re too far gone, could you possibly please pay me back the money you owe me?”

“How unpleasant, you are sick... hope this poem does the trick... when you lay you down to sleep, pray the Lord to make it deep. If you croak before sun-up...  I’ll come by and feed your pup.”

No apologies. Macabre is as macabre does. Just in a weird mood.

We went east (Maryland) last Sunday through Tuesday to visit an aged and ailing auntie. At ninety six, she’s entitled to choose her window of exit, right?  Cancer is weakening her body, but her mind is sharp and clear as ever. She wishes someone would just end it for her. She is so done with life. She asks her doctor (not named Kevorkian) and sons for help to end it all. The son who is a lawyer says, “Sorry, Ma... it’s illegal.” She sighs deeply and with dignity sucks it up and stoically continues with her decline.

October two years ago, (photos) when we triangulated a trip to NY with another visit to Silver Spring, Maryland to see Aunt Esther, she was complaining that the orange tee-shirt her teacher wanted her to wear for the line-dance competition was a wretched shade of orange. She rolled her eyes - feigning disgust in a humorous way.

That trip, at her request, we took her to IHOP for breakfast. I asked the then spry 94 year old, “Aunt Esther, how is it that you keep so fit and pull so much enjoyment from life?”

She was pouring syrup on her pancake stack as she answered, “I think it’s because I watch what I eat, and never over-indulge.” At that moment, the lake of syrup, which she continued to pour all the while she was answering, completely filled her plate and was overflowing onto the table. Mark and I just giggled - and still do - to recall the dichotomy.

She is a roll model of grace, humor, dignity, compassion and living life to the fullest - if not dietary discretion.  “Aunt" Esther was best friends with my husband’s mother - from the time they were both teens in the Bronx. Esther and her husband Phill were very supportive when things were rocky for my mother-in-law, her three kids and (estranged) husband.

The last of the ‘old guard,’ Aunt Esther’s inevitable death marks the end of an era and brings up for us the loss of parental figures all over again. We plan to cry a lot.

Before flying, we had prepared a book for her: “The Book of (a very special) Esther” in which we posed open-ended questions for her to contemplate...

Recall growing up... What was it like to be in your family? What kind of sister were you?

What were your dreams and aspirations?

When you met your husband, how did you know he was the one for you?

Remember the first time you held each grand child?

How did you manage to hone your skills, be there for your children and Phil and

still keep the business running? 

And so, on it went.

She quite liked the book and began recollecting right then and there in her den during our first visit of three over two days. We had a fabulous Greek dinner with Aunt Esther’s two sons and their wives on Monday night. The waiter, who was accustomed to seeing their mom with them all, asked about Esther... he knew exactly how she always liked her Moussaka and salad.

We’re all losing someone special. 

All of us in the human family lucky enough to have loved deeply are bound to have our hearts lacerated by loss.

Waiting for the connecting flight from Vegas to home Tuesday night, it seemed fitting that the sunset was particularly gorgeous, drawn out and full of glory holes - where the sun streams through the holes in the clouds making artful (heart-ful?) beams - so distinct you could climb them to heaven.

Maybe that’s the Hallmark card... “May the sunset of your final days be as welcoming as the world was on the day you were born.”

(And may we learn to welcome our babies in as gentle a fashion as we allow our elders to depart! At this writing we’re not very good at either end!) 

A macabre sense of humor seems to run in our family. In 1989, when Mark’s dad was dying in Florida, we asked our daughters to help us make a card for Gran’pa Buddy. We had magazines and scissors and glue sticks on the dining room table. Nine year old Megan found some printed words in a slick ad that read, “Going, going... gone!” We all had a good laugh. It’s OK to laugh even when we’re grieving. It’s all part of the process.

With all the healing I’ve been privileged to witness over the years, I find that when it gets right down to that final layer of the onion... it’s all LOVE.  

Smooth Sailing to the Infinite Beyond, Auntie Esther.

This is no ordinary feeling...

An unnamable emotion has my innards sloshing like those of a sea-sick-queazy kid. My back feels steely, my gut is equally hard. What is this feeling?

Mostly everything is going along just fine - I’m enjoying my work with families at camp, my work with clients and kids is going really well. My honey and I are getting along sweetly with a deepening love that keeps refreshing itself as we witness one another’s triumphs or hold each other thru the sad times. What is this yucky background color that’s got me all knotted?

Sure the house could be tidier, cleaner, even. There are cobwebs I can’t reach without going to get the ladder. The garden could be more well-tended and productive. There are termites gathering in the rafters upstairs and raining down wings and wriggling bodies onto the carpet. There’s termite poop gathering as they eat the oak threshhold of the patio slider door. The squirrels have eaten all the apples, all the figs, and all the blackberries. There’s a melancholy that those gorgeous grapes are gone. At least we got some of those! Grasshoppers have strip-mined the kale to nothing but spikes and the collard forrest is fading fast as white flies suck their green blood - turning them a whiter shade of pale. Still, these lossy-things are not the cause of the ooky feeling I cannot name.

Night comes sooner. Days get shorter and although my heart quickens as I write this and think of the enormity of the task of buying, wrapping and mailing holiday gifts to the hoards of nieces and nephews - in a timely way for the coming Season of freakin’ Joy and Light... again it is not cause enough for the unrest in my midsection... 

No, it seems to have to do with the impending birthday October 6. Ah! That’s it! Will you still need me? will you still feed me when I’m 64?? AND... this is the first birthday of my life when my mother is not on the same plane. Her’s took off last February first and all the days in between have been the first of that date for me to live without her. There’s a poignancy in it that makes my eyes swim in their sockets and my brain a little foggy. Yes, I’m still her baby and I miss my mama. It would have been her 93rd birthday August 23, her 51st wedding anniversary with my step dad September first, her first born’s 70th Birthday September 8... yikes she was only 23 when she birthed my bro! And here I am, sad at the thought of celebrating without thanking her by hugging her tight. Still, I’ll give her a call... let’s see that’s Heaven 4- 6321, right? 

At least I now know what’s been making my middle murky. Grief has no logic to it - only thorns and barnacles, brambles and sticker pokes - sort of a whole-body event of discomfort. 

Sigh... I know how to get through it. I just don’t like it. No one does. Just one of those human tasks... gettin’ through ‘til it’s over or easier.

By the time I’m officially a Senior Citizen this time next year, the pokes will be softer, the tightening less intense and the unnamable will be named and tamed - a bit.

Grateful Again

After countless cycles of finding myself squeezed into as small a ball as I can tighten and trying to relax out of that tightness, I arise at 4:30 to write. I tried talking myself down from the ceiling and into sleep again so many times, that I finally gave up. The hover muscles won. It is enough that I did sleep some. I’m grateful for the mercy of whatever rejuvenation I received; I’m grateful for the muse nudging me to get my butt out of bed.

Yesterday morning held one of those watershed moments for me. I stopped stifling myself and shared one of the songs I’ve written over the years out loud in a group where it truly fit.

What better context than a workshop entitled The Resilient Child could there be for this song that I wrote in 1989?

I cry for the children whose terrors come in the night

Who tremble through ‘til the morning 

And walk the day without light

I cry for the children who forget what they mustn’t know

Who bravely smile at a stranger 

To hide what they mustn’t show

I cry for all the ones whose secret’s never been told

I cry for those of us who kept it ‘til we were old

I cry for the young ones whose eyes stare blind into space

Whose smile seems so disconnected 

From tears that once stained their face

I cry for the power that was stripped but not really lost

The first time ever they were touched

Too young that boundary was crossed

I cry for all the ones who are struggling hard now, like me

To heal the ancient wounds and taste what it means 

to be free

We are all little children with nightmares, yearning for light

The deeper we dare into darkness, the more we’re given 

true sight

So we toddle like children, small steps and small victories

Freshly facing the old situations, re-writing our own histories

I cry for all the love we needed when we were small

I cry and with the tears - begin dissolving the wall...

Someday I’ll fly-y-y-y-y...

I Cry For the Children lyrics and music by Melinda Maxwell-Smith,1989

After I sang it to my thirty or so fellow students and the two teachers of the workshop, I shook and shook and shook for a good twenty minutes while the workshop went on and I wrote shaky notes. The waves of shiver-shake moved through fiercely - until they softened and finally subsided. Then feelings of warmth, calm and contentment filled me from tippy-toe to the top of my head. A familiar feeling of a veil being lifted made all the colors in the room more vivid and I felt more connected to eveyone there.

It’s so easy for this “kid in the closet” to stay in there - thinking she is “safe.” Coming out still feels risky, but each time I do show-up as my authentic self, my gratitude for the world being there is so profound I’m moved to tears.

It felt easy rather than queazy to be at lunch with classmates. It felt easy, not queazy to be in therapist role for a fellow “traumatized baby” for our afternoon exchange session of table work. 

When it was my turn to be client, there were different kinds of waves moving through me. I couldn’t stop laughing. Hot, sweaty undulating waves of laughter broke and cleansed my internal shores - nearly the full thirty minutes - while my capable therapist (thanks, Laura, you’re the BEST) tracked wave after wave from my feet through the whole body to my neck and head - watching and sometimes supporting my neck as my back arched and curled. 

At some point Steve, one of the workshop leaders, came over while I was trying to laugh as quietly as I could so as not to distrub the other diads of students who were also (more quietly) in process. He seemed completely unconcerned about the noise factor for which I’m grateful. It’s hard to stifle a head to toe laugh.

He did ask me, “When did you last do this?”

“It used to come up a lot in sessions,” I said, “but I got chastised for it. Therapists told me it was covering over the grief and rage underneath and that I should get to that.”

“I think you did it just before you were born,” Steve said and walked to another part of the room.

Still not sure if he meant the literal laughing part or if the arch and curl of the spine as those huge waves of cathartic laughter moved through me were similar to what happens during the birth process. I’m guessing the latter.

What’s that old cannard? 

When I was born, I was crying and everyone around me was laughing. 

When I die, I will be laughing and everyone around me will be crying.

Ecstatic birth and Orgasmic birth are perhaps possibilities, but most of us seem to come through kicking and screaming - not wanting to leave the other side; not wanting to take up residence in a sensitive body to live in this prickly and torturing world.

For just this moment, I am feeling gratitude for the life I’ve been given. I am smiling and extremely GRATEFUL for the path I’m on and the folks who surround me.

Thank you for being there!