LITTLE WHITE DUCK

Christmas Day at the Delta Ponds

I hear them and quack my response from the path. They float to the pond edge: a small white duck surrounded by mallards. They follow the little white duck who waddles toward me on a well-worn duck trail up from the pond. They peck at its tailfeathers.

It stops in the middle of the trail just feet from me.

I scold the others. Duck discrimination, I say. Fowl prejudice!

They turn, wobble back to the water – all but the hefty hen, the lead bully. She eyes me, assesses my reach. In slow, matronly steps she descends toward the pond. The little white duck follows.

Near the water, a male emerges from grassy hiding. An ambush? Then he, too, scuttles to the water.

This little white duck will never grow up like the Ugly Duckling – no swan in this one’s DNA. It huddles by the reeds until the mallard flotilla drifts off.

white feathers
orange beak
sail away safe

Burying the Squirrel

Thanksgiving Day, 2019. A sunny afternoon. I took a long walk by the river. The last of the geese huddled in the cold – a great mass of feathers in the ‘rest area’ beside the ponds. I’m amazed that they find that spot twice each year, once in late fall, once in early spring.

In the street a few yards from my drive, a squirrel lay on his back, feet in the air. I knew I couldn’t leave him there to be further flattened.

I trudged to my house, retrieved a shoe box and my gardening gloves. The poor little guy! Hit in the head, probably dead in an instant. I carried the box to my small garden area. The soil here is clay; I hope I dug deep enough.

When finished, I turned to the grassy area under the oaks and admonished the other squirrels not to cross the street. I hope he isn’t the one that often hangs upside down on the trunk of an oak and appears to watch me through the window.

I’ve hit animals in my own car twice.

The first time, I was not yet twenty, driving on a highway from Riverside back to my parent’s home. A beautiful drive between rows of eucalyptus trees. I saw the critter but couldn’t avoid him. What a sick feeling! There was nowhere to stop, so I drove on, apologizing over and over.

The second time, I was in my sixties. Driving over 30th Avenue – a 55 MPH zone - from Eugene at night, a large cat dashed in front of my car, hit smack in the middle of my front bumper. I pulled over, unsure what to do. I called the non-emergency police number. “Should I move it? It’s in the middle of the lane.” They said “No, too dangerous. Thanks for reporting.”

Before I left, another car hit the poor beast. I expected the police to remove the carcass but they didn’t. That sick feeling recurred for weeks each time I passed the spot until the piece of fur was flat and shifted to the center of the road. Eventually, it disintegrated, absorbed into the dust and dirt from passing cars.

And so, on Thanksgiving Day 2019, I had the opportunity for small atonement to the animals I’ve harmed.

Up Against the Wall

Our beds were always pushed against the wall, tucked into opposite corners of the room I shared with my older sister.

Even when she moved to her own room, my bed remained snugged into the corner. I remember slipping my foot between the mattress and the wall, comforted and cradled by tight envelop of sheet and wall.

And later, away at college, beds always clung to the wall. In dorms we had no choice, no room to re-arrange. My bunk on the sorority sleeping porch – a lower one – huddled into the northeast corner. Had I chosen that one instead of an open bunk in in the middle of the room?

My first apartments were no different. Shared bedroom with twin beds in the familiar formation.

And then. My own apartment, a single bed, centered on the wall. I could rise from either side. The openness new, exciting, disorienting.

And then. Big beds, shared. How did we choose sides? Did we choose?

And now. A decade of sleeping in a bed centered on the wall. Nights alone, sometimes sleepless, adrift, vulnerable.

But in my guest room a single bed snuggles tight up against the wall. Just the look of it brings comfort.

Country Music

“He was a creep,” she said, startling me. I had just claimed to appreciate his music.

I’d engaged in a spontaneous conversation with two women – strangers to me – in the library bookstore. We’d been discussing the PBS special on Country Music, the things we’d learned or learned in depth from the series.

I said, “I read two biographies of him and hadn’t gotten the impression that he was a creep.”
I quickly excused myself.

Later I wished I’d said that one was written by an admirer, one by someone who was dismissive of his talent. And I wanted to go back and ask what she meant, what defined him as a creep. Did she know him personally?

Her comment seemed odd since we had already noted the prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse by many country stars – the early deaths, destroyed relationships, legal problems.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I know how strange we can seem, how our feeling of unworthiness can goad us into pomposity, how our moods can turn quickly. When under the influence our personalities warp and we take actions that appall us later. People judge us. Stars who are alcoholic suffer the same erratic traits. They live in the fishbowl of public scrutiny. He was no exception. He had a big ego and, when drinking, an unpredictable temper.

He’s been dead for years. His career had faded before he fell out of the sky that day. Was he a creep? It doesn’t matter. I still love his music, his voice.

RIP John Denver.

Family Fotos

1963, November.

Grammy sits erect yet at ease in that wingback chair, ankles crossed, arms draped over the armrests. Her hands dangle, open and relaxed. She looks to the side, faint smile in her eyes. My sweet, patient, calm Grammy.

1964, July.

Grammy perches on a wood bench, a flowered hat pinned to her hair, purse clenched beneath the arm supporting her great grandson. His head flops over her other arm. She braces her feet apart as though straining to keep his 2-week-old body safe.

2019, May.

I cradle my great grandniece, my arms posed exactly like Grammy’s. At nearly three months, Caroline is heavier than I expected. Though I am ten years younger than Grammy was, I understand the effort it took to appear at ease with that precious new life.

THE NATURE OF MY DAY

August 25, 2019

Morning.
A gnat joins me at the kitchen counter as I read my meditations. It leaps backward, scrambles forward, turns in circles. It slips under my book, pops out and whirls again, a dervish seeking ecstasy - or protesting invasion of territory by a stinky human.

In the bath, a tiny spider – barely a speck – wanders the edge, skirts blobs of water in which it would surely drown.

Afternoon.
On the patio, a whir of wings brings me eye to eye with slender, neon bright hummingbird. It breaks hover when I speak, darts and guzzles from orange trumpet blossoms, then zings to the sky.

Beside the river path, geese yank and tear at grass, their plump bellies threatening to tip them over. Maples edged in crimson foretell approach of autumn.

Evening.
The shy tuxedo cat next door has been alone two days. Though her owner claims she won’t approach humans, she trots over and rubs against my leg. Her eyes glaze as I pet and soothe her with kitty talk.

Memory Cafe

I talk to my world as I pass through it. I greet dogs and their owners. I tickle pink peonies and exclaim over burnt orange rosebuds that burst into yellow flames. I question squirrels and reply to bird calls. To those eight turkeys wobbling and weaving on the road ahead, I suggest they choose a lane and stick to it.

Not surprising, then, that the song I Talk to the Trees began spinning in my head. A group I belonged to in college (!!) performed it at a choral event. I love the tune and the arrangement they chose. I can recite the first verse perfectly right down to the echoed phrases:

I talk to the trees
but they don’t listen to me
(listen to me)
I talk to the stars
but they never hear me.
(never hear)
The breeze hasn’t time
(hasn’t time)
to stop and hear what I say.
(what I say)
I talk to them all in vain.

Memories. Unique. Personal. Entertaining.

A friend told me he once misread a sign he passed daily. Interesting, he thought. A Memory Café. Months later, he finally saw the second word. Care. Memory Care.

I like Memory Café better. We get to choose our memories, combine them creatively.

My brain understood the intent of the second verse of that song, but the words had slipped away.

Luckily my Memory Café menu allows à la carte selections and served me a verse from Blue Moon:

Suddenly you appear before me
the only one my arms will ever hold.
I hear somebody whisper please adore me
and when I looked the moon had turned to gold.

Memories. How puzzling the pieces remembered and those forgotten.

I remember a concert by the Divine Miss M (aka Bette Midler) at Red Rocks in Colorado. It was 1974. I had never heard a single song by her before that. I had never heard of her before that.

She swept onto the stage hurling F-bombs against the walls, ranting about the amazing setting, obscene expressions of awe that echo in my memory. I cannot tell you a single song she performed, but I remember that dramatic entry.

It must be surprise that embeds certain fragments, discards others. Like the elevator that burst into open air and scaled the side of the building; my sister’s dismay as I sank to the floor in fear.

Or that creepy foreboding on a Montana highway when a green-and-cream El Camino overtook my Ford pickup for the second time, then hung beside me in the passing lane. The driver honked to ensure I got full view of his exposed equipment.

Ah, yes. The Memory Café. Some items more appealing than others.

WHAT’S HE UP TO?

I encountered racism yesterday. It was so subtle I could have missed it.

The watering system in my section of the complex hasn’t functioned yet this year. The landscape and irrigation supervisor was walking the property searching for the cause.

As I went to the mailbox, a car pulled into my neighbor’s drive. My neighbor does massage as a second job, so this was not surprising.

When I turned back toward my unit, the person from the car was still standing beside her car watching the landscape guy. I was startled when she asked, “What’s he up to?”

I probably don’t need to mention that the man is black.

“He’s the grounds crew supervisor,” I said. “He’s trying to find out why the water system isn’t working.”

She said nothing and proceeded to my neighbor’s door.

I wanted to follow her, pound on the door and ask if she would have been bothered if the man had been white. I wanted to ask if she felt threatened because he wasn’t white. Had she thought she was protecting something – me, my neighbor, the complex – by watching him?

The man never heard her question, thank goodness. But I felt shame for the many times he has undoubtedly been confronted in similar situations.

Blackface

Blackface. White people painting themselves black to portray African Americans. Scandal after scandal inflamed by photos dredged up from years ago. And I’m guilty, too, though I don’t worry about being ‘called out’ now.

You see, I once painted my face and legs black, covered my lily-white arms with long sleeves and hid my dishwater blonde hair under a red bandanna.

I still have the photo. My best friend Christina and I look at the camera, unsmiling. We’re nine years old, dressed for a May Day celebration of Stephen Foster’s music. At school. Public school. In Whittier, California. At the time, Whittier was a Sundown Town. No blacks lived within the city limits. I had never met a black person.

By the time I was a senior in high school (1961), Whittier had repealed the Sundown Law. One black family lived in the city limits. Their son was in my class, a daughter a couple of grades behind. And yet that year, in an all-girl dance show, one group wore blackface and titled their act Pickaninny Paradise! They may have used a Stephen Foster song.

I did a little research on Stephen Foster. He was not from the South. He was from Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery stronghold. He did write songs about the South, about black people, sometimes seeming to mimic their speech. He died in 1864, just before the end of the Civil War. His biography states:

He made it his business to study the various music and poetic styles circulating in the immigrant populations of the new United States. His intention was to write the people's music, using images and a musical vocabulary that would be widely understood by all groups.

It goes on to note:

Foster sought to humanize the characters in his songs, to have them care for one another, and to convey a sense that all people--regardless of their ethnic identities or social and economic class--share the same longings and needs for family and home. He instructed white performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them.

My participation in that long-ago event dancing to Stephen Foster’s music, or watching without protest that group of white girls in blackface – does that mean I am racist?

Over the years, I have had friends who are black. I hope they would feel free to stop me if I speak or act offensively. I can only acknowledge the inappropriateness of my actions and make amends when I become aware. But I must make those amends with sincerity – and change my behavior. That is what is wanted in the current swirl of revelations.