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Me Versus the Painter or Drip, Drip, Part II

May 3, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling all week that I’m fighting the painter for possession of my house. Perhaps I’m reaping the other end of my current karma – although I haven’t squashed anything lately including ants. But since fixing the leaking sink and drying out the downstairs ceiling went so smoothly a couple of weeks ago , perhaps hitting a snag in the fixing process was inevitable.
The first hurdle was finding a painter at all. I called five or six on the first round and got zero callbacks. Hmm, I thought, perhaps I should give up law and fiction and learn painting. Although standing on high ladders is not my forte.
By and by a slick corporate outfit gave me an estimate, and a wiry little self-employed Irishman from Dublin bid on the job. Same price, both of them. Now I should explain I actually have two ceilings to paint. A month before the sink hit an iceberg, a strange, dark H shape appeared on my bedroom ceiling which is upstairs, just above the ceiling the sink would souse a few weeks later. I convinced myself it was a shadow for about two days, and then gave in and called the insurance company. The adjuster (and her rather cute boyfriend) diagnosed a leak in the circa 1978 skylight which sits high atop my roof. My buddy with the cute boyfriend sent me a check for painting the ceiling minus my deductible and left me to fend for myself with the dreaded Homeowners Association, who had jurisdiction over the skylight. Normally the HOA would rather die than move quickly but since it was about to rain, for once they acted promptly and fixed the leak. Whew! I thought I was home free, until the sink did its thing, and I wound up with two damaged ceilings. (Louise Hay has all kinds of wisdom about avoiding the thoughts that attract illness, but she says nothing about what kinds of thoughts attract wet ceilings. If I knew, I’d never have those thoughts again!)
Anyway, now flush with insurance company cash to paint both ceilings (within two dollars of the bids, can you believe it), I set out to hire a painter to do the downstairs ceiling which had two brown spots about the shape and size of Australia and New Zealand and the upstairs ceiling thoughtfully monogrammed with my last initial. (Or the beginnings of Helter Skelter, take your pick.)
You guessed it I picked the Irish painter. Three reasons. First, I am self-employed, and I try to hire other self-employed people. Second, the slick corporate guy also owned a day spa called “Coconuts,” and he kept talking about the “girls” who worked there. Did that make me a “girl lawyer” I wondered but didn’t dare ask. Third, I spent some time in Dublin when I was working on the Ph.D. that became a J.D., and I hadn’t heard anyone say “tink” and “mudder” for years. And, then, the Irish are born storytellers, and I love a good story.
But now it is Thursday night, I’m tired of stories, and my house has been a mess since Monday. Worse than that, the job was supposed to be finished today, and while the H has disappeared (thankfully) upstairs, Australia and New Zealand are still plainly visible downstairs. He’s turned them white, but he hasn’t made them go away. I have a bad feeling he doesn’t know how to. Just in case, I have developed a backup plan. If I’m still looking at albino continents this time tomorrow night, I’ll hire an artist to paint a full color world map on the ceiling. Might as well go with the flow.

Australia and New Zealand ceiling art to be

Here’s the thing, Monday. Can I trust you?

April 30, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

Twitter tweeted me today and said my account had been “compromised” and please get a new password. My daughter confirmed she had received a “tweet” that she knew didn’t come from me, so Twitter wasn’t kidding.
Awash in internet paranoia, I not only changed that one, but all the rest of them, too. After all, you never know.
The trouble with all these passwords is exactly that: “all these passwords.” I literally have to keep a cheat sheet in my desk drawer to keep them straight. And then, there are the web sites I don’t visit often, and honestly who can remember ten letters and numbers, preferably upper and lower case with symbols after three long months? Not me.
My daughter said she’d seen a notebook made expressly for listing passwords. I probably need that, since my current list slants across three well thumbed 4 X 6 cards awash in a rainbow of sticky notes for the after-added ones. If you are organized in the rest of your life, but your password list looks drunk, what does that mean?
Of course, I couldn’t take a password notebook out of the house because I’d promptly lose it. But I was thinking, it would look rather nice in my desk drawer where the helter skelter note cards with sticky notes now live.
The Twitter email just went hand in hand with Welcome To Monday. I try not to believe Monday has it in for me, but I do occasionally wonder if Monday is really a Ferrari driven by the Mischief Demon. I headed into my favorite FedEx Office this morning only to find they had botched a total of twenty six velo-bound briefs that I had left for the overnight shift to copy. Only last Monday, they had made exactly the same mistake on an overnight order. The stapled sets, they could handle, but the velo machine just brought out their creativity. Whoever works the graveyard shift has yet to grasp the obvious: a “copy” of an “original” has to look exactly like the original or else it is not a “copy.” You can’t have a single-sided original and a double sided “copy.” In lawyer-world, “copy” means “exact copy” not “in the ballpark.” (This obsession with nitpicking is also called “thinking like a lawyer.” I get paid to do this. Honest.)
At any rate, while I waited for the corrected velos, I exiled myself to one of my favorite home stores where I sniffed candles, bought a few of the good ones, and snapped up a pound of my favorite coffee at a wildly discounted price. Thank you, Monday Demon.
Then I headed back to FedEx and laughed myself into near hysteria reading “Laughter is Your Best Vacation” (which was seductively next to the impulse-buy candy under the cash register) while I waited for the staff to finish the 26 corrected velos. In the end, because I am pretty sure my work keeps the doors open at that particular FedEx branch, they gave me the entire order for free. Thank you, Monday Demon. Now on to Tuesday. (I’m thinking Tuesday drives a VW bug. One of the new ones that looks as if they took an old one and tried to turn it into a helium balloon.)

The Monday Demon

What About Ordering a Magic Spell instead of a Pizza?

April 26, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

This week I managed (finally) to figure out how to post the cover of my novel on my blog. See, there it is on the sidebar. Now don’t laugh. Sometimes I think writing and editing it was easier than finding out how to use that pesky little image widget. (Just kidding.) And then there was the problem of how to post links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I googled and goolged and googled before I got that right. And I’m not sure those links are all pro, but they work. That’s all that counts.
I decided to publish Dance for a Dead Princess myself for several reasons. One, the whole business of finding a literary agent seems to have changed radically. Back in 1995 when I found the lovely lady who represented Summer’s Child, the whole process of agent rejection was more like a stately dance. I sent my book summary and sample chapters off in discreet navy folders, and they came back in my prepaid envelopes with “No Thanks” scrawled on the cover page. Moral of story: a human opened and at least looked a them. Until by and by, a human liked them and represented them.
Summer’s Child came close but did not sell, and another author appropriated my title (without asking me, but never mind), and my agent retired while I built a law practice and raised my children. (No small feat, by the way.) Then, a year or so ago, when I dove into the Literary Agent Ocean once more because I now had two novels I wanted to publish, I was shocked at how things had changed. Just their websites were hostile and uninviting. “Closed to submissions.” “We do not consider unpublished writers.” “We only accept referrals.” Couldn’t they have just written it out, “We are just TOO GRAND to ever read a WORD you’ve written even if it’s only a Cover Letter”? Or “If you’ve NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED we do not consider you LITERATE no matter how many GRADUATE DEGREES you have.” And then, the ones who had a tiny chink in their website armor allowed email submissions to which they promised NEVER TO REPLY. (But logical question: at some point weren’t all now published authors unpublished and didn’t they turn out to be both LITERATE and ENTERTAINING? Doesn’t that sort of squash the Literary Agent view of the Unpublished? Just a thought.)
Now, I am a lawyer, and law is not a profession known for being touchy feely. But I at least tell people when I am not going to represent them. And I do so in very polite lawyerspeak on ivory twenty-pound bond, personally signed by me, which they can cherish for a lifetime along with my highly impressive letterhead. (Don’t laugh. If you are a lawyer, you are selling your brain, so your letterhead has to be IMPRESSIVE to convince the client your brain is worth the fee.) “Dear Ms. XYZ, having considered the facts of your case, I have concluded I am not the right attorney for your file. Best of luck with your matter. Very truly yours, etc.”
Now, I hasten to add, one or two agents wrote me polite and professional turndown letters; and I respected their sincerity. In particular, they acknowledged what a feat it is even to create a novel even if mine was not right for them. But they were the minority, and I just didn’t see the point of beating my head against the closed Literary Agent Door. It reminded me of trying to get into social clubs in high school. The Cool Kids were never going to let you in no matter your merits because they had deemed you unworthy without ever taking time to even talk to you.
Anyway, Literary Agents were a barrier to entering the world of author. But they were no longer insurmountable. And even more importantly, I had seen what traditionally published authors go through. Back in the day, before I found My Agent, a published friend of mine shared her tribulations as her then-agent tried to turn her into Olivia Goldsmith (who was hot at the time; she died during plastic surgery. No comment.) My friend did not want to write the Big Hollywood genre thrillers the agent wanted. So her next move was to Agent Two, who, so far as I know, let her be herself. But I noticed that when her publisher published her books, she had to do all the work of promoting it. And I don’t mean being flown around first class from New York, to Boston, to London, and Paris with appearances on the Today show and GMA. No, my friend had to call the local bookstores, beg for book signing dates, haul her books there, and hope someone would show up to see her and ask her to sign one. In short, she was doing all the work, and it was not glamorous.
Now, I gave up big law firm practice to work for myself. There are upsides and downsides, of course, to that decision but I am my own boss. (And I’m pretty nice to work for, by the way.) So it made sense that if I was going to be a writer (and I’ve been a storyteller since the day I was born and a writer since age 11), I would light out for the Territory on my own. Hence decision: self-publish.
On March 30, 2013, I uploaded Dance For A Dead Princess to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords, armed only with my favorable Kirkus review and determined to figure out how to tell the world about my book. A great read. Cheaper than a Starbuck’s latte and lasts longer too. In the past month, I have floundered as I learned the ways of promoting a book. Some sites are very straightforward: send us money. Ok, I can handle that. Some sites have RULES that are as complicated as magic spells (and which makes me wonder if it would be easier to order a spell from California Psychics). The RULES go like this: You must have x stars, x reviews no longer than x which were not created under a New or Full Moon. Wow, mind boggling. Worse than the California Rules of Court. (Trust me, those babies are better than sleeping pills!) Of course, my question for those sites – pardon me for being lawyerlike – is how do you get x reviews with x stars under whatever moons your prescribe until you can let the word know your book is out there? Isn’t publicity designed to inform readers you and your book exist so they can create the x reviews, with the x stars under the required moons? Or am I being too logical?
Anyway, my novel and I have emerged into the new world of Novel Promotion where right now I feel as if I’m standing under a dark sky watching all the tiny little stars of all the books in the world shine down at me. But I believe in Dance or I wouldn’t have come this far. So I’ve just got to figure out how to help it shine a little brighter so readers who would love it will find it. This is a new journey, and I’m up for it.

Kirkus Reviews

Heroes are Always Remembered

April 20, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

This has been a tough week for all of us. First the heartbreaking images from the Boston Marathon on Monday and then last night and today the death of one perpetrator and the capture of the other. Monday’s blast not only shattered the world around the marathon’s finish line, it shook all of us to our emotional core. How to believe in the essential goodness of humanity in the face of three young lives extinguished in seconds and hundreds maimed and injured? This is the place where we want to shake our fists at God and demand, “Are You There?”
The heroes who step forward in times like these are the ones who bring us redemption. Because they are willing to be selfless in the face of danger and even death, they let us go on believing that the essence of life is goodness and love. Boston and the sight of so many law enforcement officers, as well as civilians, stepping forward as heroes reminds me of a hero whom I never met and who died when I was two years younger than Martin Richard, but whose story has become an important part of my family lore. In the family I grew up in, the word “Boston” is synonymous with “Dick Horan.” Here’s why.
My father was an FBI agent. He was a very good FBI agent. That meant when something happened in the world – like Boston on Monday – our phone would ring in the middle of the night, and he would be whisked away on “indefinite assignment.” We never knew when he would be back. And once in a great while we would also admit the awful corollary: we never knew if he would be back – although it is exceedingly rare for an agent to be killed in the line of duty.
On January 17, 1950, a gang led by Joseph “Big Joe” McGinnis and Joseph “Spec” O’Keefe robbed the Brinks bank on the north end of Prince Street and Commercial Street in Boston. They arrived in Brinks’ guard uniforms and masks, went to the trouble of duplicating the bank’s keys, and made off with $1,218,211.29 in cash, and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders, and other securities. They divided an initial cut of the loot and put the rest away to wait for the six-year statute of limitations to run while they squabbled and fell out with each other. The FBI investigated the Great Brinks Robbery for many years and finally made arrests in January 12, 1956, just five days before the statute of limitations expired.
But my father had no inkling of that outcome when he got “the call” late one night in the winter of 1951. I was heading toward my second birthday in the coming August, and my mother was pregnant. In the 1950’s married women had children because everyone expected them to. But a more unmaternal person was never born than my mother. So she was not delighted to be left alone, although she knew it came with the territory of being my father’s wife.
Six months later, my father was still in Boston and had no idea when he would be back. It was hot, hot, southern summer in Tennessee; and my mother was uncomfortably pregnant and stuck with me, the charming child who neither napped nor slept. One particularly miserable day in mid-July, a scruffy man came to the door and asked to borrow the ladder he had seen in our open garage. Now, of course, my law enforcement wife mother should have known not to leave the door open or to say yes; but we were home, and it was hot, and she did. The man used the ladder, put it back, and then returned in the wee hours of the night and broke into garage.
Nearly eight months pregnant, my terrified mother summoned the police, who responded at once and frightened the man away. Later, Mother speculated he had seen the country ham she had brought from her father’s farm and the jars of canned goods my grandmother hand contributed and had returned to steal the food.
Calls to my father in Boston did not produce his return. I’m not sure if she asked him to come home, but I bet she did. However, the Bureau was not going to yank a top agent from a special assignment because of a domestic burglary.
Then, a week later, the doctor informed my mother my sister was going to be a breech birth. Now she really burned up the phone lines to Boston.
FBI agents work in pairs. My father’s partner was an agent named Dick Horan, then of the Boston office. Although my father did not strike up many friendships, he and Dick hit it off. That night after my mother’s call, Dick could tell my father was upset, and he insisted the two go to a movie. Now, my father hated two things in the world: sweets and movies. But he went because Dick insisted and eventually told him about my mother’s call.
In the family legend, it is Dick who went to the Special Agent in Charge and asked for the Bureau to send my father home. I suspect that is true, since I can’t picture my father, hat in hand, asking to leave. But not long after Dick dragged Dad to the movies, the SAC called him into his office and told him he was going home. To this day, I remember (and I was less than two mind you) going to the airport to get him that hot July afternoon in my best dress and hair bow. Then a few weeks after his return, my ever fickle sister turned herself around and was born head first.
On April 18, 1957, Dick Horan was killed by a fugitive on parole whom he and a team of agents were trying to arrest in Suffield, Connecticut. The rest of the agents went to the back door of the house. As Dick went down the basement steps alone, Francis Kolakowski shot him to death. I was just shy of my seventh birthday. After that, my father was ever-bitter about the subject of parole and would tell Dick’s story if the word was spoken in his presence. Understandable.
So, you see, heroes live on. I cannot count the nights my father sat around the dinner table, and in the tradition of true Southern storytellers, told Dick’s story. And today, all these years later, I am telling it to you. In the same way, night after night, someone will tell the stories of the heroes of Boston. And they, like Dick, will live in the lore of uncounted families from generation to generation. I never met Dick Horan, but I always felt as if I had. He meant a lot to my dad, who was close to few people in his life. Dick was a good man and a hero. And this week, the good men and women of Boston became heroes and redeemed us all. They gave us the hope and the courage to believe that evil is the exception and goodness is the rule.

Richard P. Horan, a hero

Drip, Drip, the Ceiling is Falling

April 13, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

It all began on Wednesday morning when I found a large water spot in front of the vanity in the bathroom just off my bedroom. After sticking my head into the dark depths of the vanity (and living to tell the tale), I discovered a leaking cold water valve under the sink. Another piece of original 1978 hardware had failed in my condo.
About that time my son called from downstairs, “Mom, did you know water is dripping onto the living room floor?” Soaking wet myself from my shower, I dashed down to see the sodden ceiling just under the dripping sink. I grabbed a bucket and old towels and summoned the plumber.
Two hours and two hundred dollars later, the leaking valve was a thing of the past. But the fun was just beginning with the ceiling. The “Restoration” service attached to the plumber called to schedule an appointment and cheerfully announced they were going to tear out my wet ceiling “just in case.” Of what, I wondered. I suppose their theory was an absent ceiling can’t grow mold. But an absent ceiling isn’t much to look at. And how does tearing out my ceiling qualify as “Restoration”? I quietly and firmly informed them that, although I had telephoned my claim in to my insurance company and they agreed I was covered sans deductible, the Nuclear Option was not going to happen that afternoon. Couldn’t they just bring over some big fans, please?
Not long after that, a cocky “Restoration” specialist arrived to tell me they would bring fans, but the fans would sound like 747’s taking off, and they would run 24 hours a day. Mind you this is the area where I compose my unbrief briefs 24/7. Appellate work is a quiet scholarly activity. You do it in libraries, not on airport runways. And Mr. Cocky Specialist also informed me that if the errant ceiling didn’t dry out (and he fully expected it wouldn’t) they’d arrive on Monday to tear it out. I said, No thanks. And summoned someone associated with my insurance company for a Second Opinion.
Mr. Second Opinion was a very nice, quiet Hispanic gentleman who spoke a soft waterfall of Spanish to his female assistant. His peaceful demeanor was reassuring. He and the assistant measured and studied and figured and eventually informed me the upstairs wall between my bedroom and the bathroom was also wet. Mr. Cocky in his fixation on demolition had missed that. They said the 747 fans were unavoidable, but they didn’t think they needed to tear anything out.
I surveyed my options. Only I didn’t have any options. Large noisy equipment was going to have to take over my bedroom and living room, including where I work, until Monday. And I had deadlines in the Court of Appeal and I couldn’t just go on “Water Vacay” while I waited for it to be over. Plus my Golden Retrievers, who hate loud noise, and my son’s cat would never last two minutes with the 747’s in the house. Not me mention me, who hates loud repetitive noises.
So here I am on Saturday morning evacuated to a hotel that allows pets while the fans have rendered the house uninhabitable. The hotel is actually quite nice, but I would rather have skipped the ordeal of packing and taking everything down in the condo that the 747’s could damage. I was up really late on Wednesday night.
And then, too, there is the problem of uprooting dogs who never go anywhere except the vets and the groomers. You can explain to a toddler that the family is going to stay in a hotel for a few days while the house is fixed, but you can’t take two Golden Retrievers into a hotel room, turn on TV, and plug them into Cartoon Network for the duration. Melody and Rhythm are better today, but on Thursday they would not let me out of their sight.
This morning thoughtful Mr. Second Opinion informed me we can go home tomorrow. And he installed Hepa filters yesterday because I mentioned I was having trouble breathing from the dust the fans are blowing around. What a change from Demolition Man!
This whole experience has stirred up the homebody in me who loves to live peacefully surrounded by her little treasures. I see why I dream about traveling and then just stay home.

What looks like a fan and sounds like a 747

Red and Yellow, Black and White

April 7, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptist Conference after more than sixty years. He had been a deacon and a Sunday School teacher, and he is a profoundly and sincerely religious man. But his reason for leaving the Southern Baptists: the church’s increasing rigidity over the equality of women. Relying on certain passages of scripture, the Southern Baptists insist upon a wife’s subjugation to her husband. And they no longer allow women in the ministry.
Southern Baptists are the United States’ largest Protestant denomination, with 15.9 million members. I doubt that people who have not lived in the South understand what a powerful presence they are in Southern society and culture. My own grandfather was a rigid Southern Baptist who believed in eternal damnation for setting foot in any other church. As a child, I was bundled off to Sunday School and kindergarten at the Southern Baptist church that literally sat on our doorstep. (Eventually they would buy the house I grew up in and turn it into a parking lot, an act of destruction that has always left me profoundly sad.)
I was lucky that my early contact with the mighty Southern Baptist conference had nothing to do with doctrine and everything to do with my parents not wanting to go to church themselves. They shuffled me across the street, Sunday after Sunday, and then went home to put their feet up, read the paper, and drink coffee until it was time to pick me up. The perfect example of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Eventually, though, being Southern parents, mine were forced to decide about their children’s Religious Affiliation. Southerners have to have some sort of Religious Affiliation to use on Easter and Christmas. And to get married and buried.
Since I had not been baptized as an infant – a practice my Southern Baptist father would never have agreed to and my Methodist mother had no opinion about – I necessarily would have to be baptized as a pre-teen or teen. But the point was, I was a daughter of the South and so I had to be baptized somehow, to avoid going to hell, of course. (Hell at that point was thought to be populated by Northerners, at least unreconstructed Southerners thought so. I didn’t give it much thought since I never planned to wind up there. And it did seem to me that the Civil War had been over for quite some time.)
My parents eventually lit upon a sect of Presbyterians who conducted services as if they were Episcopalians minus kneeling, the sign of the cross, and robes on the minister. For some reason, these Presbys were taken with the beauty of the Anglican liturgy (me, too, by the way) and they adopted it as their own. My father quit being a Southern Baptist and my mother quit being a Methodist, and I got baptized and turned into a Presbyterian by having a red carnation dipped into a bowl of water and squashed on top of my head. Whew! Eternal Damnation avoided! (I fully believe God has a sense of humor because He gave me one.)
By and by, to the absolute horror of my parents, I became an Episcopalian. This required yet another baptism for technical Episcopalian reasons. In their world, water on top of the head doesn’t save you. It has to cross your forehead. So to make absolutely sure I was good and baptized for all time, the priest poured water from a silver shell over my forehead. Killed the hairdo, but now Nothing stood between me, Saint Peter, and those Pearly Gates.
At first, I wanted to be an Episcopalian so that I could walk into any Anglican communion anywhere and hear the beautiful words of the liturgy. I loved that feeling of community when the priest intoned that gorgeous subjunctive phase, “The Lord be with you.” And we answered, “And also with you.” If I went to a Presbyterian church, other than the one I grew up in, I would not hear the liturgy. Then, by and by, my first child turned out to be a daughter. And I wanted her to grow up in a church where women could be priests if they wanted to be. I couldn’t see the point of a religion that told women from the get-go, you’re not good enough.
I have admired Mr. Carter always. He is a man of integrity in a world where integrity is in short supply. And I know what a hard decision he had to make. A Southern Baptist heritage is like being bound by tentacles.
For me, I chose well. You can be anything, anyone, anybody and be an Episcopalian. We have women priests, men priests, gay priests, lesbian priests, and yes, married priests, hetero and gay. Oh, and Bishops, too, come in all varieties. We are the ones the Catholics come to when divorce makes them ineligible to be Catholics anymore. We don’t have to stand on street corners and preach (Southern Baptists did this when I was growing up) and we don’t condemn anyone else’s religion. We are pretty sure God doesn’t either. And we are absolutely sure that women are equal in this world and the next. Back in the day, the Baptist Sunday School taught me to sing this song, which doesn’t say anything about having to be a male child to gain the All Access Pass to Heaven.
Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Love Comes in All Shapes and Colors

The Bunnies Want To Stay

April 3, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

The Easter Bunnies eyed me from the front door this morning and said they are not ready to come down. Normally on the first of April I would be putting them up, not taking them down. The green shamrock wreaths always rule the month of March. But the calender played a trick this year and stuck Easter on the day before April Fool’s, leaving me with some unhappy leprechauns who didn’t get to come out of their boxes in March.
In my last post, I explained how my neighbor Lenore inspired my monthly door decorating sessions. Her whimsical greenhouse window displays reminded me that each month has something special to celebrate. I also was inspired by my southern roots, particularly the years I lived in Virginia where I first noticed wreaths displayed on doors year round.
California entrance doors don’t seem to need decorations (except at Christmas) because front doors aren’t used. Most Californians enter their homes through the garage. They pull up in their expensive European sedans, hit the garage door opener hidden in the car’s sun visor, and vanish into the depths never to be seen again. Or at least, never to be seen until the next time the garage door goes up, and they pull out once again in their expensive European sedans. (At Four-Way Stop Intersections in California, the first car to go is not the first one that stopped; it’s the most expensive. Heaven help the Mercedes driver who encounters a Lamborghini.)
When I first came to California in the mid 1980’s, I noticed that the houses here don’t look out on the street the way houses do back east. Where I grew up, and throughout the South, houses have front windows that seem to look outward like eyes. And backyards don’t have fences; or if they do, they have the chainlink ones that let you see into the yard next door. But in California, houses more often look inward toward a pool or courtyard. And people here put high wooden fences around their yards, so you know you have a neighbor, but you cannot see hide nor hair of him or her. I came to wonder if this modern-day residential phenomenon could be attributed to the history of California because people from back east arrived to live on isolated ranches and to fend for themselves. When they urbanized, they continued to keep their neighbors out of sight as much as possible.
At any rate, I am a cultural anomaly here because I both use and decorate my front doors. (Yes, I have not one, but two. And I saved them from the vicious Homeowner’s Association over a a year ago and vanquished a male chauvinist bully on Yelp while I was at it. But that is yet another story.)
To keep the peace, I promised the bunnies they could stay until Saturday. Then they have to go back to their boxes until next year.

Can’t It Stay Easter for a While?

Cheeky Bunnies

I refuse to leave: squatter’s rights.

Cheeky Bunnies Demanded Their Close-Up

The Window

March 25, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

I went to an estate sale on Saturday and acquired some
items that mean the world to me. No one knows why. Here’s why.
A few years ago, the woman who gave birth to me had a stroke that
changed her personality so drastically that I found myself an
orphan in mid-life. She had always been a difficult person, and I
had labored for my whole life to have a place in hers. I had
acquired all the academic bells and whistles, had become a
respected professional, and had done a sometimes heroic job of
raising three children as a single mother. But nothing I ever did
impressed her or was enough for her; and in the end she showed me
the door because I was, in her terms, a poor specimen of a human
being.
She survived the stroke; but our relationship did not. And
that is enough said about that. I found great freedom in accepting
my situation and moving on with my life. She wanted me gone; I gave
her what she wanted. For the first time, there was no voice whining
in my ear that I wasn’t good enough.
A few months later, a story on Good Morning American snagged my attention.
A lovely young woman in her mid-thirties, also cast out by her birth family without
justification, had actually put herself up for adoption. And she
had found a lovely second family. I considered the ad I would have
written. “Lovely little family of four, all outstanding over
achievers, seeks parents and grandparents. Looking only for love
and companionship, holiday celebrations, loving phone calls.”
It was only a fantasy, of course. But fantasy has often gotten me
through some of the harder places in life.
Perhaps the central difference in my birth mother and myself is the ability
to nurture. I’m not quite sure how an Earth Mother like me sprang from an Ice
accept her as she is.
Queen, but I did. I don’t fault her for what she didn’t have. I
But as a born nurturer, I have to have someone or some thing to take care of.
Of course there were my children when they were little. And even now they
are adults, I can still give them some nurturing, although not as much.
But now they are on their own, my days are bracketed by the need
to care for my two Golden Retrievers, Melody and Rhythm. Every morning
and every afternoon, I feed them and walk them to the enchanting
little pond that some of the condos in our development back
up to. And this routine was especially comforting in the days
when I was still hurting from my mother’s ultimatum and
wishing I could advertise us for adoption.
The path to the pond winds through a grove of lacy
eucalyptus trees, past a condo in our development with a greenhouse
window facing the path. Now all these units are rather old. They
were built in 1978 when greenhouse windows were quite the “in”
thing. As Melody and Rhythm and I passed by day after day, month
after month, I noticed that this particular window’s display
changed with each month and often featured ducks, a tribute to the
mallards that inhabit the pond. At Christmas, the window had
caroling ducks in tiny Dickens outfits holding tiny song books. At
Easter, there were ducks and bunnies and pastel eggs. For July,
teddies dressed in red white and blue and lots of those .99 cent
flags. At Thanksgiving the window held a blend of pilgrims, ducks,
and autumn leaves. Then Christmas and the web-footed carolers would
come round again. In between, the window defaulted to a display of
tiny lighthouses, rustic bears, bald eagles with spread wings, and
a pair of tin lanterns. And now and than a new trinket appeared.
The person responsible for this fascinating whimsy was a tall,
thin, grey haired woman, well over eighty. Just about the age of my
former mother. She lived alone, dressed elegantly in expensive
subdued slacks and blouses, and always wore pearls. There were skis
in the garage and a set of golf clubs. In those days, she still
drove. Her regular routine was a trip to the grocery store around
four o’clock each day to decide what to cook herself for dinner.
She first noticed me because she loved my beautiful Goldens, and we
often passed by just as she was beginning or ending this daily food
shop. She’d wave when she saw us and would smile and say something
sweet to Melody and Rhythm.
I learned that her name was Lenore. I caught glimpses of her mahogany Windsor
chairs in her dining room as I passed each day. I saw the tiny beautiful
antique table in the perfect spot in the hall, the tiny spoon
rack above her miniature sideboard, and the glass-fronted
curio cabinets in the living room. I guessed she was a collector,
and that she was not from California. Her condo was an exquisite
blend of Williamsburg-style furniture that few people in
California are drawn to. But I, of course, loved it.
She was just the sort of mother I would have chosen.
Her monthly displays inspired me to decorate my own front
entrance each month. I didn’t have a greenhouse window, so I made a
front door wreath for each month and hung appropriate wooden signs
and ornaments on the tree by the door. Even the grumpy Homeowners
Association wrote me a letter complimenting my charming entrance.
Little did they know it was all because of Lenore and her
greenhouse window.
Lenore seemed to draw people to her. Most afternoons when the weather
was nice she would put off the store trip, and she would sit at the table
on her patio with several of the ladies who lived in the condos. They
would sip white wine from thin-stemmed crystal glasses and chat.
Their ritual included feeding the ducks who would come up to
her patio, flapping their wings if Lenore was late throwing
out their food. Often, Melody and Rhythm and I would be
walking by about this time, and Leonore and her friends
would wave as they threw food to the ducks.
Then, a couple of years ago, Lenore had a stroke. A widow from Connecticut,
she had moved to San Diego when her husband died to be close to her
children living here. So she had plenty of support from children
and grandchildren. She recovered enough to go on living in her
lovely condo with a live-in care giver; and even though she no
longer drove, she steadfastly maintained her old routine. Store in
the afternoon. Friends and duck feeding on the patio. Waving at me
and the retrievers. Church on Sunday. Always beautifully dressed
with pearls, but now she used her ski poles for support instead of
a cane. And the window changed each month just as before.
I came to count on that window. Her creative additions were mini surprises in
my day. Sometimes a new duck. Sometimes a single flower in a vase.
She was obviously a woman of great charm and creativity. Then, this
October, a month after she turned ninety, she died. I didn’t know
for a long time because nothing changed at the condo. There was
even a Christmas tree at Christmas. And the window displays went on
as before.But in early January, I began to see lots of picture
frames in the trash and a woman in the garage going through albums.
Eventually, I learned that these were her children deciding what to
keep and what to let go of.
I was profoundly sad, but her daughter staying at the condo kept
up the old ways. Window decorated. Afternoons with the ladies and
white wine on the patio. Ducks fed. I half hoped Leonore wasn’t really
gone but was on a long visit and coming back. Silly fantasy.
But the day I saw the blue glass vases were no longer in the window
in her bedroom, the truth became very real to me. She and I had loved blue glass vases.
This Saturday, I was one of the first to arrive at the estate sale. I knew exactly
what I wanted. And there they were, still in the greenhouse window,
with tiny price stickers on each one. I don’t know where the
caroling ducks went, or the bunnies or the patriotic teddies, but I
bought the default bears and lighthouses and lanterns. And a tiny
little Limoges heart box to remember her by.
Lenore didn’t really adopt me. But it was a fantasy that got me
through a sad time in my life. I don’t have a greenhouse window,
but I rushed happily home from the sale and arranged my treasures on
shelves in the guest room. And I go in often to stand
in front of them and smile. They mean the world to me.
And something else came from the estate sale, too.
I met Lenore’s son and his wife, and I got to tell them how
much Leonore inspired me. Yesterday I was out walking the
retrievers at the usual time, and they were leaving after closing
up her house for the last time. They made a point of waving to me
just as she would have done.
So prayers are answered. A part of my own family reconnected with me
after my wish went out to the Universe to belong. And now I will always
be able to look at Leonore’s little treasures and remember how
much she inspired and cheered me during a sad time in my life.
The ducks, too, are being looked after. One of her friends comes
by each afternoon about four to feed them as Melody and Rhythm and I go by on our walk.

Lenore’s patio just as she left it

The ducks and the
pond

The window empty for
the first time.

Lenore’s eagles and lanterns

The light houses

Her bears

Her January
cardinals

Memories Are Made of This

February 19, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

Last week, on the day before Valentine’s Day, my son called home from college.
“Mom, I need the fudge recipe.”
Now here was a bit of family lore that had drifted silently into dry dock, and I’m not quite sure if I can say when. Back in the day when all three kids were home and fairly small, fudge at Christmas was our special family treat. Even in the years when Christmas had to be celebrated on a shoestring, fudge was always affordable. It was our go-to gift for their friends, for their teachers at school, for their music teachers, and for anyone else who happened to cross our paths at the holiday. And it was blissfully appropriate across all religious lines as long as I remembered to buy only “Happy Holidays” tins at Walmart. (None of the kids’ friends had a problem with the ones with Santa Claus on top, either.)
Now, candy was an interesting subject at our house. I do not know if modern Southern mothers raise children who are forbidden to have candy, but I was not raised that way, and it never occurred to me to banish candy. Perhaps because it was so available, my children were never particularly interested in it. The miniature candy bars in the toes of the Christmas stockings became petrified wood by the time I remembered to throw them out at Easter. Similarly, the pastel foil wrapped chocolate eggs thoughtfully provided by the Easter Bunny languished into melt down as summer approached. And my children would politely nibble an ear off a chocolate rabbit and then wrap it up forever more. At Halloween, they counted their loot and put it away until Christmas. It is amazing that we didn’t have more ants in the house more often.
So because candy was never forbidden, it never made anyone’s heart beat faster. On the other hand, when the children who were being raised Sugarless came over, I’d find the little jars of Hershey’s kisses on the kitchen counter empty by the time they went home. Which was fine. The kisses were there to be eaten, and we probably weren’t going to eat them. And I would never inform the Sugar Police on our little visitors.
But fudge at Christmas was a different story. Maybe because fudge is creamy, gooey chocolate like none other and maybe because it appeared but once a year, every fudge crumb ever concocted on our stove was consumed.
When Michael called last week, I panicked. Where was the recipe? I had once known it by heart, and for a full ten minutes I could not even think where the written version was. Losing it would be like losing the baby teeth the Tooth Fairy had taken out from under their pillows and hidden in my jewelry box. Some parts of family lore are just too precious to lose.
“I’ll have to hunt for it and call you back,” I told him. (Southerner’s “hunt” for things; we do not “look for” them.) As soon as I got off the phone, I sat quietly and tried to think it through. I had no idea where the written version was because I had made it so many years by memory. Yet I knew it was written down. I am careful to keep important things like that written down.
I closed my eyes and thought about how ordinary things are no longer ordinary when they are woven into the fabric of a family’s life. There are the special ornaments that have to be on the Christmas tree each year. There is the Thanksgiving stuffing that must contain sausage and oysters, but no mushrooms. There is the one and only birthday cake with chocolate butter cream to paste the layers together, and vanilla butter cream on the outside. There are the Easter Bunny footprints stealthily stenciled on the front walk at midnight with flour. There was our first dog’s birthday on July 4, and now our current dogs’ birthdays on February 2 and March 3. These things and these dates and these memories are sewn together to make the quilt of our unique family story. And each is important and never to be lost or forgotten.
So where, oh where was the fudge recipe? Of course, in the binder of family recipes that I had put together over the years. Within fifteen minutes, I had typed it into an e-mail, and it was on its way to my son who called shortly thereafter.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“No problem. Glad you reminded me where it was.”
“Well, I’m being cheap. Instead of buying chocolate, I’m making it for her.”
“Oh, no. That’s not cheap. Any gift from your own hands, of your own time, is never cheap. You guys have a very Happy Valentine’s Day!”
And so a bit of our family lore was recovered, renewed, and passed on.

Holiday Tin

The Good Stufff

The Smile Project Or At War with “The Zombie Zone”

February 8, 2013/in Uncategorized /by DeborahH

Two years ago, I started “The Smile Project” because I became uncomfortable with “The Zombie Zone.” I realized that when I passed a person I did not know – in a parking lot, in a grocery store, at the gym, or while waiting in line to use the Ladies’ Room (because ladies, unlike gents, ALWAYS have to wait in line) – the two of us entered a Dead Zone where we were close enough to greet each other or at least acknowledge each other. But, of course, we didn’t do that because we were strangers. No, we passed with blank, dead looks on our faces. In other words, we became Zombies passing in the night. (Or in the day as the case might be.)
I didn’t like the Zombie Zone. I hated that split second when the approaching stranger was close enough to require turning my head to avoid eye contact. If I timed it wrong, and our eyes met, we became two strangers awkwardly wondering what to say to each other. If I timed it right and got my eyes out of there in time, we became two strangers awkwardly avoiding each other. None of this felt good to me.
I considered what to do. Throwing out a “Hi” seemed like a bad idea. The trouble with speaking was I’d be overheard, and I’d look and feel like a Real Idiot if I didn’t get a return greeting. And the odds were pretty high in California that random strangers were not going to greet me back.
So I decided to found “The Smile Project.” The rules were I had to smile at every stranger, young or old, male or female, who came within the Dead Zone. I’d wait until that moment when eye contact should be avoided, make contact, and smile. And then I would wait to see what happened. It was a no risk proposition because if my smile didn’t Undead the approaching Zombie stranger, no one but me would know.
I have enjoyed watching the reactions to “The Smile Project.” There are, of course, the Zombies who remain Undead and ignore me. (“Really, why is that strange woman smiling at me? Do you think she wants something? She’s kind of cute, but I don’t know her. Better get out of here fast where no one is smiling at me.”)
But most of the time, the reaction to my smile is a return smile. There is usually a startled moment in the beginning while my target tries to figure out why this strange woman is smiling at him or her, followed by a (1) a tentative return smile or (2) a big grin. Once in a while, my target will smile and say Hi, or Nice Day or even wave. A smile is the greatest icebreaker in the world.
The Smile Project is also very useful when Waiting in Line. Californians do not Wait in Line well. They whine, complain, and look for ways to cut. They do not simply settle in and accept the inevitable truth: there are other people on the planet and They are Ahead In Line. So here’s where The Smile Project comes in handy. I scope out my fellow Line Mates and smile at the one (or even two) who don’t break eye contact the minute they see me. I smile and say, “Nice earrings,” or “I love your boots,” or “Yeah, we love pepperoni pizza at our house, too.” Usually from my minimal effort, a conversation is born that makes me, at least, forget about having to wait. Other people love to tell their stories. And since I am a storyteller, I have two great passions: telling stories and listening to them. So passing the time listening to someone’s story is well worth the price of a smile.
The Smile Project is also like garlic to vampires when it comes to warding off angry stares. The grocery stores here have aisles wide enough for one and a half carts. That means if you stop your cart to select an item, you are automatically blocking traffic. And every turn from one aisle to the next is a blind turn because of the stuff they pile at the end of the aisles. Pulling your cart out in front of another person or asking someone to let you pass by can net you an angry glare because that person has just been forced to recognize There Are Other People In the World; and right now, in particular, Those Other People are in Their Own Personal grocery store. However, throwing out a random smile usually gets me a smile in return and often a pleasant verbal exchange about the need for smaller carts or wider aisles. You can see a glare melt under the shine from a smile. You really can.
The Smile Project is also a godsend in Costco where I am absolutely the Only Human Pushing a Shopping Cart and Watching Where I am Going. Haven’t you noticed that everyone in Costco is pushing his or her cart with his or her head sideways (think The Exorcist) looking for free food? Just smile when they run into you.
I invite you to try The Smile Project for yourself. It is totally no cost and very low risk. The worst that can happen is you will encounter a Zombie who likes being Undead. But not always. And something really magical happens when the Dead Zone vanishes because your smile has made a stranger’s eyes go from blank to warm. I didn’t expect much when I started The Smile Project, but it has been more than worth the effort.

Founder of The Smile Project