And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down

It was pouring rain in Disneyland this weekend, but we had fun anyway!  Happy Birthday Rafa!

Happy Thanksgiving

May we be thankful for health and strength, for sun and rain and peace. Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities, and let us ever remember that true gratitude and appreciation shows itself neither in independence nor satisfaction but passes the gift joyfully on in larger and better form.     ~W.E.B. Du Bois

Please join me in prayers for Baby Madeleine and Baby Vivian. 

Sunset Season

It's sunset season out here in the Sunset District.
Every year in Autumn we get these painted skies in the evenings.
Simply beautiful.

Foghorns

I remember the sound of the foghorn at night when I was a child drifting off to sleep. There were real foghorns in those days, posted at the entrance to the Bay, and they would begin to sound as soon as the fog started to roll in.

I can remember the sound of my grandfather's footsteps on the backstairs. The wooden steps with their black plastic covering would creak as he went down to his workbench to shine our shoes and have a smoke.

I can remember the steady whoosh and click of the pressure cooker in my grandmother's kitchen, and the tick and bell of the old white kitchen timer on the counter.

I can remember the sound of the seashell windchimes at the front stair.

I can remember the high pitch of the engine of my father's truck warming up on cold winter mornings.

I can remember the click of the loose ivory on the piano. The ivory pieces that had fallen off and been glued back on would click against the ivory keys next to them. The keys were made of real ivory. My grandmother was very proud of that.

What childhood memories do children have if they can't hear things like this? When Rafa watches his babies grow and learn, what will he remember most?

Self-portrait

Nothing New Under the Sun

I was going to write a little about how cold we feel right now, in the middle of summer, in San Francisco. It is foggy, damp, windy, and grey. In the car, I have to use both the windshield wipers and the heater, and we have our heavy jackets out for wearing everyday.



And then, all of this started to sound familiar to me, and lo and behold, I said the exact same thing last summer in the first week of August!

Just goes to show you that there's nothing new under the sun, or lack of sun, for that matter. Back to the lavender oatmeal.

Paul the Octopus

Paul Uses Nine Brains to Tap Into Sixth Sense

Germany Rejects Spain's Bid To Buy Octopus Oracle

Paul the Octopus Gets His Own (Unofficial) iPhone App

Total Wipe-out

Remember what it was like during summer vacations when you played and swam so hard that you were asleep before Mama could even get your pj's on?

Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?

Do you remember eating at the kids' table?

Pure Joy!

We're Having a Heat Wave.....

San Francisco Ocean Beach -- Can you believe it? Looks like LA!

Summer is here...

Grieving

What happens to love that is directed toward someone who can no longer receive it? What if that love comes back to us with the full force with which we sent it? Does it cause pain that way? Is that the pain of grieving?

We are grieving the loss of a dear, dear friend this weekend. He was a figure of generosity and caring, of deep connections and of irreverence, part of the history of who I am and of who my children are. His absence will be remarkable for a very long time.

Pancakes on a Thursday

This morning Rafa and I both woke up early. He come in to talk to me, about dreams mostly. Then he asked for pancakes.

It was a work morning, a middle-of-the-week morning, and there were things to do. But we made pancakes anyway, just because we could.

Here are some of our favorite pancake variations:

Oatmeal pancakes
Replace half of the pancake mix with quick-cooking oats, and make as usual.

Lemon pancakes
Squeeze the juice from a lemon from the tree in the backyard into the mix. This only works if you use pancake mix and water, not pancake mix and milk!

Cinnamon-raisin pancakes
Pa invented this one day when there was no more raisin bread. Stir in a half a cup of raisins and a couple of shakes of cinnamon into the mix.

Mixed berry pancakes
Fold some berries (fresh or frozen) into the batter, after you've done the rest of the mixing, or they will fall apart. The berries, that is. And the pancakes will turn out purple.

I guess, since we had pancakes for breakfast today, we really shouldn't have pancakes for dinner too, should we?

Platinum

I remember the sound of the foghorn at night when I was a child drifting off to sleep. There were real foghorns in those days, posted at the entrance to the Bay, and they would begin to sound as soon as the fog started to roll in.

I can remember the sound of my grandfather's footsteps on the backstairs. The wooden steps with their black plastic covering would creak as he went down to his workbench to shine our shoes and have a smoke.

I can remember the steady whoosh and click of the pressure cooker in my grandmother's kitchen, and the tick and bell of the old white kitchen timer on the counter.

I can remember the sound of the seashell windchimes at the front stair.

I can remember the high pitch of the engine of my father's truck warming up on cold winter mornings.

I can remember the click of the loose ivory on the piano. The ivory pieces that had fallen off and been glued back on would click against the ivory keys next to them. The keys were made of real ivory. My grandmother was very proud of that.

What childhood memories do children have if they can't hear things like this? What will trigger nostalgia later on for them? Smells, perhaps, and patterns of light. When Rafa watches his babies grow and learn, what will he remember most?

A New Garden

We are cleaning up our backyard. Rafael has been thinking and drawing, working on a solution for a big space in a cold climate.



We are going to be able to reuse much of the brick and the pavers that were part of the original garden in the 1940s. This makes me happy, because it's green and resourceful and shabby-chic trendy and all that, but also because it preserves the choices of the original owners who left the house to us, and I like to think that they are pleased by the changes.

A Life Filled with Losses, a Life Full of Love

Imagine three girls. Their parents die of the flu. They live together in a boarding school, and visit with their aunt once a month. Their brother is down the road at the boys' school, but they don't get to see him until they are 16. When they turn 18, they leave the orphanage and move back to San Francisco and live together in a flat in the Mission District. They find work. They buy a house together in a new development out near the ocean beach.

One evening they get a visit from a policeman. Knocking on the front door, he comes to tell them that their aunt, the aunt who had worked so hard to put them through boarding school, who had been their only lifeline, apart from each other, the only reminder they ever had of their parents, had died. Stepping off of the streetcar on the way home, she had been hit by a car. They mourn again.

They meet young men. They marry and celebrate their new lives together, close, separate. They branch out and buy homes, all within two blocks of each other.

Their families grow. Cancer strikes. One boy becomes ill and dies. Another young girl is born. They are together and care for each other.

Sickness strikes again. They come together to care for the children. Life goes on.

The children get married. Some of them go away to war. They come back and the grandchildren begin to arrive.

Imagine the time passing.

There is love, there is family, there is food, there are parties, there are friends, there are weddings, there are baptisms, there are drinks, there are travels.

The funerals begin. Kate goes first. Then Helen. Dorothy is the last one, and she watches over all of us. Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, matriarch to all.

Perhaps she suffered more, watching so many go before her. And perhaps she loved more, she had us all to herself the longest.

They are together again now.

Little Dorothy

Little Dorothy used to fall asleep on her sister's lap during school hours. At first the nuns at the Orphanage, St. Gertrude's Academy, didn't want to take Dorothy.

"She's too little," the Superior said. "We don't have any girls under 5 and we have nowhere to put her during the day."

But Aunt Mae convinced them not to separate the sisters who had lost both of their parents and their older sister to the flu epidemic, and whose brother had been sent down the road to the boys' school.

"Please don't separate them," she said. "Kate will take care of her sister."

And so Kate had to promise to keep Dorothy with her at her desk in the schoolroom during the day, and to keep her quiet. Dorothy was a good girl, so she would curl up on the bench next to her sister and listen to the lessons until she was sleepy enough to take a nap. She was only 3 years old.

In Memoriam

Mary Sylvia, 1914-2008
Richard Andrew, 1940-2008