It’s a strange feeling when both your parents have passed, a kind of changing of the guard between generations. And yet, immersed in memories at the moment, in many ways I still feel like a child.

I think my parents were two very lucky people to get to be together so long, and they gave lots of love to others, especially their children, their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, as well as foster children they cared for before their own came along. They lived most of their married life in California, except for several years in Oregon, where my three older siblings were born, and a few weeks that I barely remember in Arizona. Our vacations when I was young were road trips, with my dad at the wheel.

For most of his working life, in fact, my dad was a truck driver, mostly driving cement mixers. Concrete lasts quite some time, so it’s possible there are remnants of his work remaining all over parts of Oregon and Southern California. But the most important legacies he leaves behind are the memories that we, his offspring, family, and friends, hold dear.

In 2006 I wrote my dad a Father’s Day letter that touched him so much he read it to numerous people, including his and my sister’s dentist. That’s the kind of guy he was. He had friends everywhere.

I’m sharing that letter below, along with a photo I took of my dad at a family reunion in 2007. (As usual, click on the thumbnail image for a larger view.)

In remembrance:

Dear Dad,

Some of my earliest memories are of waking up on cold mornings in Oregon in the secure knowledge that you already had a fire going, that you’d ventured into the cold morning before anyone else to warm up the house. Then there were those fish ponds that froze over one winter, and the big aquarium in the living room.

Fish. Fish dinners. Fishing. Pictures of family members and friends with fish they’d caught all lined up on the front lawn. Wading in a river to fish. Standing on a pier to fish. Waiting under a full moon for the grunion to run.

I remember drives, too. Lots of long drives to places I never would’ve seen any other way. Stopping by the side of the road sometimes to sleep with eighteen-wheelers whining past in the dark. Mattresses on the floors of motel rooms, long freight trains keeping us awake. Watching the road out the window in the upper bunk of the camper. The other day I saw a DVD player for kids to use in a car, and I felt sorry for any kids who don’t just look out the window and actually see where they’re going. Watch a movie while Dad drives? But there’s so much of the world to see out a car or camper window.

Fishing. The fire fall at Yosemite. Weekends in the desert at Red Hill or Salton Sea. Camping in the redwoods and listening for bears at night. Almost getting struck by lightning in Cuyamaca, but not, because somehow Dad knew. Finding wild roses growing along a creek. Attempting to camp with a cat. The night at Virginia Creek, after a day spent fishing, when we heard the rumble of a big herd of dusty sheep that came down to drink, then rumbled away leaving another cloud of dust and muddy water. Succulent fresh trout for dinner outdoors. Fishing.

I wrote a book in which a man whose son had died regretted that he hadn’t fished more with his son. That’s certainly not a worry in our family. We did lots of fishing. Funny thing is, in all those years I don’t think I caught a single fish—but I sure had a good time.

Thank you for giving me so many pleasant childhood memories.

Today I knew I needed to crawl out of this hole I found myself in. I’ve been avoiding the news, because that usually just makes me feel worse, and worse was definitely not what I needed. I know some people think that’s an unrealistic attitude, but I find the news unrealistic, in its focus on everything bad and very little good except nonsensical news about the personal lives of celebrities — people who would likely just as soon be left alone when it comes to personal matters.

I decided to search for some positive news on the Internet, and I found this story on a blog called Great Pet Net that I thought I should share in case anyone else could use a lift: Jasmine the Mother Theresa Greyhound. Dogs tend to have a healing way about them, all around, in my opinion. But this one is exceptional. She certainly had a distant healing effect on me.

It’s a beautiful spring day here. Flowers are blooming, in spite of the gopher that keeps eating them. (Our gopher loves California poppies and nasturtiums. What does yours like?) The The Hooded Orioles arrived early from Mexico, and one almost flew right into me yesterday, maybe because I was wearing green and blended with the plants. Later I watched three Red-tailed Hawks circle the sky above our house. Clouds sail across the sky today in a stiff, delicious ocean breeze. My cat Tara is always up for a game of chase or a tumble with toys. Someone I care about is playing Bach on the piano in the next room.

Yesterday I spotted a long, sinuous cloud in the western sky that looked like a Japanese dragon. I didn’t get a picture, but if you’re familiar with the animated film, Spirited Away, it looked a lot like Haku in his natural form as a river spirit.

Now that I’ve set my mind back in its more customary direction, at least for the moment, good things are beginning to happen inside me again, too.

Every now and then I find it necessary to keep a gratitude journal, to find at least three things each day that I’m grateful for to write about. I think I’ll take up that practice again for a while.

Meet Tara, named for the Goddess Tara, revered in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in Celtic lore. Cats are supposed to be worshiped, right? Tara thinks so.

In the second photo she’s making friends. Any time she ventures near her new doggy friend she receives a great big juicy kiss on the face, which of course any cat should be delighted to receive. Especially if she just finished washing the last kiss off her face. Indi also loves to get swatted in the face. I think Emily taught him to see that as fun, as a former owner had Emily de-clawed. Indi realized earlier today that Tara comes fully loaded, though she only swats when she’s playing.

We were a little concerned about the introduction, since lately Indi’s become enthusiastic about chasing strange cats out of his back yard. But when his new kitten was introduced as a member of the pack, he happily reverted to baby sitter. Tara took to him with no hissing, having been born into a home with dogs. She knows the drill. Avoid doggy kisses by cruising behind furniture and darting under beds. Especially after the doggy has just taken a long drink of water. (Very drippy business.) Indi is getting old, which you can tell by all that white fur on his face where it used to be mahogany. But having a kitten around has put a smile on all our faces and zest in our steps. (Handy when there’s a kitten darting about underfoot.)

In truth, each person tends to accomplish the things that are most important to that person. I know that sometimes in the past I wasn’t even conscious of what was really important to me. I was more conscious of what I thought was expected of me, or what everyone else seemed to consider important. I wanted everything for the people I loved, forgetting that what everyone really wants is . . . love. I felt guilty about what I didn’t do, or sometimes even resentful about what someone else didn’t do to help. But the important things got done just the same. Why can’t we be content with that and spend the rest of the time enjoying each other’s presence, or our memories of those who can’t be with us?

Sometimes it’s better to focus on what does get done and simply be happy with that, especially around the holidays, which seem to overwhelm all of us with expectations of perfection — whether out of a need to recapture our childhood and a feeling of being taken care of, or to recapture our childrens’ childhoods, or for some to capture a childhood they didn’t get but have always wanted.

I have wished many times that I could get everything right, for even one day of the year, but I don’t. I never have, no matter how hard I worked at it, no matter how frantic I got or how I urged others to take part in my visions of the perfect whatever — and I can be as much of a control freak as the next person. Expectations of perfection tend to leave us unsatisfied and always wishing we could do better. And yet our expectations seem to increase each year, working us into a kind of frenzy.

My new goal is to be happy with imperfection, for this season and all future ones, in fact all year. I want to look at what I accomplish and say, “This is enough. I did my best for now, and I am enough.” If I can achieve a day of joy with myself and those around me, maybe that’s the best I should wish for, regardless of whether the table is perfect, or the turkey perfect — or, in our case this year, the chicken. I can be joyful, whether everyone gets exactly the gift they want, or a card on time, and even regardless of whether I get to be with the people I want. I have lots of memories with my loved ones, and I cherish them this year as much as ever, right here in my heart, as always. They know I love them, and I know they love me. That really is the most important thing, isn’t it?

If this is supposed to be a time that we celebrate peace and love, then why do we get ourselves so wrapped up in these perfectionist delusions? Maybe it has to do with winding down the old year, and some pressure that builds from the notion that we needed to make this year better than any past year, or that we have to make next year even better, on and on until the years run out. This is madness, isn’t it? Where does it come from? It reminds me of working in a place where doing one’s work well and on time means future expectations are even greater, that the quality/production machinery gets cranked up, and pretty soon everyone’s running around like Lucy Ricardo and Ethyl Mertz trying to keep up with that crazy candy conveyor belt. Those are the kinds of jobs that kill people before they have a chance to retire and enjoy all they’ve earned — if there’s anything left.

My wish for everyone I know is that they’ll step off that track filled with holiday madness (or any other flavor of perfectionist madness) and simply enjoy a pleasant time with loved ones, basking in the lack of any need to be perfect. Laugh about the errors made attempting to get everything to the table on time, or the overdone food, or the dust on the mantle. The world only needs one Martha Stewart, really. She’s wonderful, but unique. Heaven help us if anyone ever decides to clone her. Or me, for that matter, with my trail of dustbunnies scattering behind me at the other end of the housekeeping spectrum. You ARE perfect, each of you, just the way you are. That’s why the rest of us seek to be with you all year long, or wish we were when we aren’t. You, just as you are, are the true gift we all cherish, right here in our hearts. My suggestion is to throw out the To Do List, and replace it with one that has only two goals on it:

• Have fun.
• Be happy with whatever you and your loved ones get.

Consider that failure is impossible. The one with the most gifts or the least doesn’t usually notice. If they’re aware of the world around them, they know they’re lucky to get any, and if they don’t know that, we’ll leave them to their innocence this once. Most guests don’t see the table setting, especially what’s missing from it. If the turkey takes too long to cook, you can eat the pie first. The dessert police won’t arrest you. They don’t work on holidays. Keep peanut butter and jelly or canned soup on hand in case the oven breaks (it happens).

I wish you fun, laughter, and contentment this year, creating or reliving memories that are special and uniquely yours, rather than magazine-like, cookie-cutter perfection where people are afraid to touch anything. May you be content in a life and in love well spent. Love to all of you and those close to you — just as you are.

When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about this song that I learned as a kid for Thanksgiving:

Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.
(read the rest of the lyrics at Wikipedia)

It might seem a silly thing to remember during serious times, and on yet another holiday that seems to offend so many people. But holidays can be a good way to remind us how we’ve changed and progressed, and to find new ways to change and keep moving forward. It might interest you to know that the song quoted above, titled “A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day,” was written by a woman who was well ahead of her time — or perhaps a better way to say that would be that she wasn’t as behind as the rest of her people of her time. According to Wikipedia, “Lydia Maria Child (February 11, 1802 – July 7, 1880) was an American abolitionist, women’s rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist.” The entry goes on to state this:

She was a women’s rights activist, but did not believe significant progress for women could be made until after the abolition of slavery. Her 1833 book An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans argued in favor of the immediate emancipation of the slaves, and she is sometimes said to have been the first white person to have written a book in support of this policy. (read entire Wikipedia article)

It’s good for any society to be able to review its errors and learn from them, to evolve as a people and keep working to make things better for every member that it carries into the future, so this seems a good song to use to celebrate this day of thanks.

As for memories of grandfather’s house, I don’t have any. My maternal grandfather died before I was born, and the other lived farther away than we could afford to travel. But I knew my maternal grandmother. We took trips to Oregon see her at other times of the year, until she came to live with us when I was a teenager, and we spent Thanksgiving with her at our house most of the years that followed. I also remember trips as a small child, mostly around Easter, to what had once been her father’s little homestead in Potrero, CA, a tiny town pocketed in the hills north of Tecate, Mexico, and made famous recently by wildfires and mercenaries.

My great-grandfather’s house was a favorite place for my mom to visit when she was a girl, and I can imagine her going there for Thanksgiving, though not through “white and drifting snow.” Even at Potrero’s altitude of about 2300 feet, snow rarely falls there. I remember the house where my great-grandfather lived only as a fireplace still standing long after a fire had destroyed it. There was a newer house by then that a great uncle lived in, but it seemed that every family member found a reason to walk past or through that burned-out structure on each visit to the property, imagining the past, until it was sold off sometime in the late ’60s or early ’70s.

Even though there’s no snow in Potrero, or here, on Thanksgiving, there is this memory of place special to me and my family, a place I wouldn’t know how to get to today, and a man named Christian Nelson, whom I never met. He was originally from the island of Læsø, in Denmark, where his father was a fisherman. Chris herded geese as a boy, and left home at 14 to spend years at sea, on merchant ships, until he decided to settle here as a young man. His name should probably have been spelled Nielsen, but he spelled it Nelson when he came here in 1881 because he thought it seemed more American. He later joked that it turned out he’d made a Swede of himself.

I haven’t been much for genealogy, not having children of my own, and I don’t think about Chris Nelson very often. But a couple of days ago I sorted through some old books and came across two that mention him. One is a memoir my grandmother wrote about growing up in Potrero, and the other was written by a woman named Ella McCain, who happened to be with my great-grandmother, Josephine Gray, on the day she met her future husband. Ella described the Danish farmhand Chris Nelson as a “big, barefoot boy.” He worked for a local rancher they were visiting who’d just married into Ella’s family, and Ella mentions how she and her sisters teased Josephine about Chris, which leads me to think there must have been an attraction from the start. Ella also wrote that Chris Nelson had landed in San Diego Harbor on the four-masted sailing ship Trafalgar, and that information sent me searching the Web for more. It took a while to get the right search words, but I finally found a listing for the ship, which no doubt looked something like this.

I couldn’t be with the rest of my family this year, only my spouse and my dog who are both very special to me. Still, snow or no snow, in the past two days I’ve been over the hills and through the woods of my memories and family history, to my great-grandfather’s house, where he kept bees, won ribbons at fairs for his peaches, and provided eggs, butter, milk, and honey to my grandmother and her family during the Depression, when such luxuries were hard for them to come by in San Diego. He spoke four languages, that I know of, and he raised eight children, four each with two consecutive wives. (Josephine died 13 years into their marriage, when my grandmother was five.) He set a standard for the whole family, of love, hard work, honesty, generosity, and care for the land, lessons that have stayed with us for generations.

The riches we leave our families have little to do with money, or even genetics. I grew up with two adopted siblings, and we all learned the same love and values. Those were what we carried forward into our lives, a gift partially from Chris Nelson of Læsø, Denmark and Potrero, California, and partly from others before, after, and beside him, including my dad’s family back in Missouri. Both Chris Nelson and my dad have given their children and grandchildren a legacy of values that are worth a fortune, the same kinds of values I’ve done my best to adhere to through my life. Today I’m keeping those memories and ideals that count most in my mind, and I feel very grateful to have the memories and family that I do. But I also remember now, which I didn’t with as much awareness as a child, that there were people here before my grandparents, great-grandparents, or anyone else in my family came here. The Kumeyaay lived in Potrero well before my great-grandfather or any other white person ever heard of it or named it. The Kumeyaay considered the mountains near there sacred, and had their own names for them.

I understand why many people are offended by celebrations of Columbus Day and Thanksgiving that only recall a portion of the past, that glorify the western expansion of white people and the raping of a land that was just fine before we ever landed here. I think it’s important to remember that bitterness and the wrongs that have been done, as well as our growth as a combined people, the lessons learned that are worth salvaging. We learn from our mistakes, if we’re humble and respectful and we bother to look back and see clearly. We can’t change history, but we can remember it, the good and the bad, and do our best to make the future better.

In enjoying that song that I learned as a child, and in learning more about the woman who wrote it, I have to ask myself what voices of healing we may be ignoring today, just as her message of healing was ignored at the time she called for abolition. What voices, even before hers, tried to tell us not to begin slavery, or not to begin to rob Native Americans of their lands and way of life? When we gather around tables and talk about football games, or watch the news, what voices can we hear, behind the media’s hype, behind the conversation at the table? What voices are calling to us to do the right thing? How much weight and importance do we give them in our lives — everyday, not just on holidays?

I’d never been evacuated before. It’s a surreal experience, especially early on when you don’t know whether you’ll have a home to return to. All I can say is that the more information local governments can provide evacuees the better, whether it’s positive or negative news. Information makes people feel less helpless and forgotten and tells them what they need to do, how to begin as soon as possible to get back to normal and to find a thread connecting them to their future. Sitting and waiting without much information doesn’t work for most of us. I learned in the past four days that it definitely doesn’t work for me, and I usually think of myself as a fairly patient person.

Our community lost about 206 homes out of a total of (I’m guessing) 15,000 to 20,000. Of course when its your home the numbers don’t matter. Losing the roof over your head and all your things is a huge deal, no matter how little or much you start out with. My dad, niece, and nephews learned that a year and a half ago. My heart, hopes, prayers, and wishes go out to all those who lost their homes, and most especially to the families of those who lost their lives and to those who were injured.

The incredible thing to see, on our drive home, were places where the hills were burned almost bare, where the fire had made it right up to the houses but so many of them remained untouched. Our firefighters are amazing and heroic. They clearly went to every extent possible to save as many homes as possible, everywhere they could in those raging winds and dry, blazing heat, in all shapes of landscape — canyons, gullies, rocky hillsides, you name it. Little pockets of miracles stand out in the hills of Southern California. The sad thing is that in a Santa Ana condition, fires start so quickly and spread so fast that they do a lot of damage before help even arrives. There’s just not much the firefighters can do about that. As it is, I think they’re miracle workers.

There’s still some smoke, and all the fires aren’t out yet, but the winds have died down and there’s a bit more moisture in the air. That’s helping the ongoing efforts to contain and keep hot embers from re-igniting. But everyone here is tired. Even those of us who did very little about the fires are tired with worry. I’m off to rest up and get back to normal.

The story surprises me, because in our former neighborhood, where our back yard faced a community college parking lot, we had excellent luck putting things out in the driveway for free, including boxes of used books. Sometimes people took entire boxes rather than a book or two. Nearly everything we put out found a home, including an old sofa we’d acquired already well-used, which I was certain we’d wind up hauling to the dump. Ours wasn’t a busy street except during classes, when students parked there, so I have to assume it was sometimes students who took those items. Then again, my experience with that was ten years ago. Now everyone I see walking around has a cell phone stuck to one ear, and I’m lucky if they avoid colliding with me. Maybe they wouldn’t SEE the books, even with a big sign.

When I was a student, I would’ve browsed through any box of free books on offer, even though I had plenty of other reading that I should be doing instead, for school. My grandmother used to say that no one in our family could clean an attic, because we’d stop to read everything. (That was before bubble wrap, when we used newspaper to wrap fragile items.)

Which reminds me, I dreamed just last night about the car I drove as a student. I hadn’t thought about that car in years. It was a white 1964 Mercury Comet that had a lot of miles on it before I got it. The dream was a mini-nightmare, not because I found myself in that car, but because this creepy guy who’d just followed me out of a bank removed what I thought was a disguise — a wig, under which he had a shaved head — then tried to get me to give him a ride. I was suspicious of him, so first I told him that if I did that my dad would kill me. (I must’ve been a teenager in the dream, which explains the car.) He argued with me, but I got into my car and locked the doors. It isn’t the sort of dream that usually qualifies as a nightmare for me, but it woke me up, heart racing.

That first car had some real-life nightmarish qualities. One was its tendency to overheat if I drove it to a higher altitude. I love the mountains, so not being able to drive my first car to the mountains without it overheating frustrated me no end. As the car aged, it developed other idiosyncrasies. I think my dad and I were at one point the only two people on earth who knew how to start it, which involved pumping the gas pedal just the right number of times, then holding it down . . . oh well, I don’t remember the sequence now. It had other problems too, and I have to wonder now at my desire to drive the thing, but when you’re young I guess you just want to go. You don’t care what you put up with to do it.

That car’s most nightmarish problem was the front passenger door’s sticky latch. My parents paid for my gasoline on the condition that I drive my grandmother anywhere she wanted to go. One day the door didn’t catch, and it flew open when I made a turn. Grandma didn’t fall out, but that incident qualifies as more nightmarish than the dream that ratcheted up my heart rate last night.

What about you?

Do you rummage through boxes of free books whenever you see them?

What was your first car like?

Do different things scare you in dreams than in real life?

We enjoy bird friends at greater distance these days. When I came across the linked story today, I decided I had to share. It’s a love story, just in time for that love-related holiday around the corner—if you’re reading this post while it’s fresh. But why wait until a particular time of year to celebrate love?

Here for your enjoyment, straight from Australia, is a tale of love among cockatoos. Note the first time I read it I assumed the first page was all there was to it, and only saw the “next page” link on my second time through, so be aware, there’s more.

Hope you and yours had a peaceful and abundant day, and I wish you many more.

I wonder what would happen to our economy if inheritance was done away with. If, when you (and your spouse) died, if you hadn’t chosen charities to give the money to, the state came in and decided how to divide it up among the needy. No passing one’s wealth on to the next generation except in a contribution to the world as a whole.

Maybe people would stop hoarding so much wealth, since not only could they not take it with them, they couldn’t leave it with their children either. Their children would start out (or at least continue on) with no more than anyone else.

There’s an obscene and growing divide in this world between the haves and have-nots.

I live in a community where we have both very wealthy and very poor. Huge, palatial mansions, and trailors and apartments where people live who don’t own cars or washing machines.

NOTE: If you live in New York City or Washington, D.C., maybe you can live without a car, but if you live in a small town in Southern California and can’t afford a car, it’s a different matter. Taking the bus anywhere from here will take hours.

Young mothers take their children with them, a stroller in tow and a few children on foot, and walk everywhere. We have few sidewalks and few crosswalks, and a lot of traffic through town from a military base. Every time sidewalks are proposed, people complain that the town would lose its “country” feel. So the low-income mothers continue to fight traffic on foot with those strollers and those children. In some places this is downright dangerous.

I wish, when the next wealthy bugger in town dies, their money could go toward sidewalks and crosswalks for those mothers and children. I don’t think the rich driving their big cars through town even see those young families. I suspect they’re invisible to them. Inconsequential, since they have no monetary wealth.