In a city of grown up child stars, a literal graveyard of broken little dreams and big time drug habits, where one can go left, and another go right, Alyssa Milano has been my role model, because she's stayed down. Grounded. Looking never left nor right. And it's difficult to not like her. Although brunette (a fault I too have had to overcome), she's smart and perky, a fantastical writer, a healthy independent woman, who you don't see forever in the press for a string of high profile relationships, but instead for what she wants to be known for: being an actress, and being a baseball fan.
Her MLB blog is one of my favorites because she's forever humble in her access, a grown-up child who hasn't lost the luster for her hometown team. Who sees baseball, not as a game, but as a storytelling experience. Who saw the necessity for cute dodger outfits, and created bedazzled jerseys, mini-skirts, and velour jackets which show team pride. A stylish, independent, grounded woman, with a love for sports, and my own team. How she wouldn't be my role model is more a question.
I've experienced the meeting and greeting, first date to second, year one to two, to three and four, fights and reconciliations, more fights and reconciliation, growing together, and growing up in the human experience. I've listened to what works and what doesn't, and tried to craft the ways in which I respond to relationships out of a learned way. I've watched movies and television shows, reality and scripted, 4 sessions of couples therapy, one visit with a life couch, a row and a half of self help books on a bookshelf, regular calls to my mom and my best friends and a sister who is all together tired of my questions. What I learned from the books and the coaches, a random woman at Starbucks, and $135 dollars give or take state sales tax is this, and this alone: when you ask people their opinion, they will give you one. They will define your reality by theirs, take some offense in you not listening, but almost always do so from a place of trying to help. A place of love.
I ask a lot of questions. My mother shakes her head angrily at the day she ever thought I wouldn't speak. It's been years of asking questions, and wanting answers, but the more I see, and the more I know, the more I ask, and the more I question, the less I know for sure.
I know for sure when I was 17 I wanted no part of boys at all.
I know when I was 20 I thought I couldn't live without them.
I know by 25 I was so hurt I couldn't live with them.
I know I've seen movies that describe relationships as "finding your other half."
I know I've seen more movies that say more of the same.
If relationships are about finding your other half, then being single must be about being empty.
Right?
A baseless void-fused experience of chaos and loneliness - until you can find someone that will love you.
Yikes.
None of that sounds quite right. Which is why I like Alyssa Milano.
Someone grounded, who I admire, who's stayed single well in to their 30s. Who has pursued their passions and lived fabulously. Who's interests lie in her desire, and who's partner came as a result of all that.
"A lovely gift," she describes it.
I like Alyssa Milano most for being a Dodger fan. But during the off season I like her for seeing relationships as I have asked and answered and see them now, as being nothing more than a lovely gift, to an otherwise beautiful life.
Monday, August 17, 2009
A Rubber Ducky Race
Parallel to the water and circus themed boardwalk, east of the body builders and fortune tellers, south of the tanned bodies, and still west of surrounding LA, lays the Venice canals. A small community of cute homes, separated by narrow waterways. I've cut through them, up and over the bridges, to get to the beach, and on a date once I walked hand in hand down one, but generally I don't give a whole lot of thought to them in a city where there's something always shinier grabbing your eye.
In a new Independence Day tradition, children and adults both, line up for the "Rubber Ducky" Race. Children in life jackets, and everyone at one time drops their plastic yellow rubber ducky in the water, and then it's up to the canal, and the wind, and the movement of the universe to carry it forward to the finish line. There can be only one winner in a race. But I've always seen pictures, and seen participation in something so innocent, beautiful, child-like, simple - as reward enough.
My friend Lisa says I'm the "most resilient person she knows." On the day she was to be married, she rewarded my hardworking bridesmaid duties (of drinking a lot and flirting with her groomsmen) with a small, beautiful trinket. A sterling silver mirror, engraved with the three words which sees in me, gets from me. Resilient was listed first.
"I'm tired of being resilient," I once said after a long bout of unemployment and miscellaneous other troubles.
"I know you are, baby."
It didn't make anything any better, but the acknowledgement, the concept that overcoming adversity that started at childhood with alcoholism and domestic violence, may now come easier, but it's all together exhausting.
For reasons I'll never understand, I got laid off from my job Thursday. I wasn't happy in it, but the grief that comes from that sort of loss, most compare to some of the worst pain you experience. I cried and I cried, until that very same friend, with the engraved mirror called me. We had a similar conversation, to perhaps ones we've had in past, where she reaffirmed my ability to overcome this, to be resilient, to gain strength. To be ok.
I was sad. And I was angry. Hurt. Out of control. And confused.
I thought of the rubber duckies.
I thought of the rubber duckies and their painted on faces, and little plastic bodies, being dropped by children in life jackets in to shallow unpredictable waters, and being carried away by life.
I was blocking part of a driveway, and in a red zone, and I couldn't sit there and cry anymore if for no other reason than my eyelashes were stuck together and a meter maid hovered in my rear view mirror.
I capsulised my pain, and my sense of failure, my fear and anxiety, and I imagined it as a rubber duck, floating away.
And asked only that God take care of getting me to the end of the canal.
In a new Independence Day tradition, children and adults both, line up for the "Rubber Ducky" Race. Children in life jackets, and everyone at one time drops their plastic yellow rubber ducky in the water, and then it's up to the canal, and the wind, and the movement of the universe to carry it forward to the finish line. There can be only one winner in a race. But I've always seen pictures, and seen participation in something so innocent, beautiful, child-like, simple - as reward enough.
My friend Lisa says I'm the "most resilient person she knows." On the day she was to be married, she rewarded my hardworking bridesmaid duties (of drinking a lot and flirting with her groomsmen) with a small, beautiful trinket. A sterling silver mirror, engraved with the three words which sees in me, gets from me. Resilient was listed first.
"I'm tired of being resilient," I once said after a long bout of unemployment and miscellaneous other troubles.
"I know you are, baby."
It didn't make anything any better, but the acknowledgement, the concept that overcoming adversity that started at childhood with alcoholism and domestic violence, may now come easier, but it's all together exhausting.
For reasons I'll never understand, I got laid off from my job Thursday. I wasn't happy in it, but the grief that comes from that sort of loss, most compare to some of the worst pain you experience. I cried and I cried, until that very same friend, with the engraved mirror called me. We had a similar conversation, to perhaps ones we've had in past, where she reaffirmed my ability to overcome this, to be resilient, to gain strength. To be ok.
I was sad. And I was angry. Hurt. Out of control. And confused.
I thought of the rubber duckies.
I thought of the rubber duckies and their painted on faces, and little plastic bodies, being dropped by children in life jackets in to shallow unpredictable waters, and being carried away by life.
I was blocking part of a driveway, and in a red zone, and I couldn't sit there and cry anymore if for no other reason than my eyelashes were stuck together and a meter maid hovered in my rear view mirror.
I capsulised my pain, and my sense of failure, my fear and anxiety, and I imagined it as a rubber duck, floating away.
And asked only that God take care of getting me to the end of the canal.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
First Love
At twenty, and knowing just about as much as I know about men and relationships and dating, as um, I know now, I met a boy to whom I fancied. We slow danced at a sorority party and drank God knows what was being handed out, and he asked me for my phone number on a lawn chair by the pool. I gave him my home phone because I hadn’t yet joined the mobile phone age, we smooched in my then new Chevrolet, and I convinced him there was nothing strange about wanting to take it slow. He asked to see me the night after next, and I was encouraged at his excitement to see me again so soon after our first meet.
I can remember the birthdays and anniversaries of everyone in my life, and what I wore at my 13th birthday party and my 6th grade graduation, and just about every face of anyone I’ve ever met. But for some unknown reason, my memory of my first date on the first date I’d ever been on, is spotty. I remember being at a super market. I remember him forgetting his wallet. I remember me paying and him being embarrassed. I remember falling, as I do. I remember spilling something, as I do. And I remember having a chai latte at the Coffee Bean. I wasn’t yet 21, so coffee was just about as grown up as it came on a grown up date.
I told him how joining a sorority was the last thing I’d ever thought I’d do and how I’d been a year round swimmer my entire life. I told him of my parents and their strife, and my need to leave home at 18 years old. I told him as much information about me as I could because I liked this boy. He told me about the job he had when he turned 16 and how that turned in to the job he has now. He told me about his dog, his parents, vacations he’d been on, where he’d gone to high school, and he told me of his love for baseball.
As the first date, of my very first date, I knew no rules, other than the “make yourself look good” rule. From what you say, to how to say it, to how you clear your throat, and purse your lips and how that sweater looks with those bluejeans. I knew when he talked of baseball, I could not say, I wouldn’t say, I’d never seen a game in my life. I smiled, and I nodded my head, and giggled appropriately, as we do. I said uh huh a lot, and I got information out of him, recording it, as if I was interviewing a suspect in a crime I’d work on cracking later.
Tell me more about this baseball.
He told me about little league, and playing in high school, about the team he plays with now, about how many games he goes to, and every park he’d been at. He then said the words that would change my life,
“I would never date a girl who didn’t like baseball.”
Interesting.
We smooched again, and I returned home, to my apartment, to my life, to ponder this man who seemed through all natural and obvious human ways to have a little crush on me. But how to get around this little baseball hurdle.
Some have found it to be an ability to not commit to anything in particular. My religious teacher says I have a natural curiosity in general. A positive trait he says. My university awarded me with a liberal studies degree after taking a good share of most classes they offer and I’m fairly certain there is just about nothing I would assert does not interest me. I don’t know who’s right. I just know I’m curious about life. It’s an interesting place I rarely understand. And if it means winning the heart of the first boy that’s piked my interest, my boy curiosity, I’d learn baseball.
By the next day I’d found myself to internet explorer and the teams listed as National league and American league. That took a day, and embarrassingly the use of flash cards, to master. I took to stadiums, and schedules, stats, notable players and rules of play. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I’d never met something I liked more, and I’m not talking about the boy. When we’d get together, I’d be picking apart my baked potato at Black Angus and drop gems like, “did you see ____’s sac fly to right that drove in ____ and won them the game?” “How about _____’s homer. He’s now 15th behind ____ in the American League this season for homeruns.”
He was in love. And so was I, with baseball.
He took me to games, and we stayed home and watched them on the couch, and we went to post season and world series games, and once when I stumbled upon Puerto Rico I took a bus for 2 hours to get to the stadium the then Expos played half their home games the last year the Expos existed as a team. We visited stadiums across the country, and I photographed myself in front of them. But it was Dodger Stadium which I loved most of all.
I fell in love with baseball, and then I fell in love with the Dodgers. Not to say I haven’t been seen with a rally monkey draped around my shoulders or a Yankees hat and a pretzel in the Bronx or a Cubs hat and an old style in Chi town. I’ve been known to be a cheater. I get around.
Three years later we were to part. Ours was a spring to summer relationship, with no chance for a post season. An important one that made me ready for every relationship I’ve had since. As part of the breakup I dropped the bombshell, I hadn’t seen a game before him, I didn’t know a thing about baseball before we met.
He acted externally deceived, angry even, as if I'd lied to him, but I always got the sense he knew how deep my love for him ran that I’d immerse myself to those levels to share in his passion. But in me, being me, it became mine too.
One of the last arguments we had we were separating kitchen appliances. I currently have mustard and cat food in my refrigerator, and live as a bachelor never cooking, so I knew having pans and spatulas and blenders was of little importance as leaving on good terms. I said, “please have it all.” We continued to argue.
“All I want is baseball,” I said.
“Ok”
It was only fitting our first date and last argument would carry the same melodies, the same undertones, the same harmony. We were significant for one another. For in him I found first love.
I can remember the birthdays and anniversaries of everyone in my life, and what I wore at my 13th birthday party and my 6th grade graduation, and just about every face of anyone I’ve ever met. But for some unknown reason, my memory of my first date on the first date I’d ever been on, is spotty. I remember being at a super market. I remember him forgetting his wallet. I remember me paying and him being embarrassed. I remember falling, as I do. I remember spilling something, as I do. And I remember having a chai latte at the Coffee Bean. I wasn’t yet 21, so coffee was just about as grown up as it came on a grown up date.
I told him how joining a sorority was the last thing I’d ever thought I’d do and how I’d been a year round swimmer my entire life. I told him of my parents and their strife, and my need to leave home at 18 years old. I told him as much information about me as I could because I liked this boy. He told me about the job he had when he turned 16 and how that turned in to the job he has now. He told me about his dog, his parents, vacations he’d been on, where he’d gone to high school, and he told me of his love for baseball.
As the first date, of my very first date, I knew no rules, other than the “make yourself look good” rule. From what you say, to how to say it, to how you clear your throat, and purse your lips and how that sweater looks with those bluejeans. I knew when he talked of baseball, I could not say, I wouldn’t say, I’d never seen a game in my life. I smiled, and I nodded my head, and giggled appropriately, as we do. I said uh huh a lot, and I got information out of him, recording it, as if I was interviewing a suspect in a crime I’d work on cracking later.
Tell me more about this baseball.
He told me about little league, and playing in high school, about the team he plays with now, about how many games he goes to, and every park he’d been at. He then said the words that would change my life,
“I would never date a girl who didn’t like baseball.”
Interesting.
We smooched again, and I returned home, to my apartment, to my life, to ponder this man who seemed through all natural and obvious human ways to have a little crush on me. But how to get around this little baseball hurdle.
Some have found it to be an ability to not commit to anything in particular. My religious teacher says I have a natural curiosity in general. A positive trait he says. My university awarded me with a liberal studies degree after taking a good share of most classes they offer and I’m fairly certain there is just about nothing I would assert does not interest me. I don’t know who’s right. I just know I’m curious about life. It’s an interesting place I rarely understand. And if it means winning the heart of the first boy that’s piked my interest, my boy curiosity, I’d learn baseball.
By the next day I’d found myself to internet explorer and the teams listed as National league and American league. That took a day, and embarrassingly the use of flash cards, to master. I took to stadiums, and schedules, stats, notable players and rules of play. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I’d never met something I liked more, and I’m not talking about the boy. When we’d get together, I’d be picking apart my baked potato at Black Angus and drop gems like, “did you see ____’s sac fly to right that drove in ____ and won them the game?” “How about _____’s homer. He’s now 15th behind ____ in the American League this season for homeruns.”
He was in love. And so was I, with baseball.
He took me to games, and we stayed home and watched them on the couch, and we went to post season and world series games, and once when I stumbled upon Puerto Rico I took a bus for 2 hours to get to the stadium the then Expos played half their home games the last year the Expos existed as a team. We visited stadiums across the country, and I photographed myself in front of them. But it was Dodger Stadium which I loved most of all.
I fell in love with baseball, and then I fell in love with the Dodgers. Not to say I haven’t been seen with a rally monkey draped around my shoulders or a Yankees hat and a pretzel in the Bronx or a Cubs hat and an old style in Chi town. I’ve been known to be a cheater. I get around.
Three years later we were to part. Ours was a spring to summer relationship, with no chance for a post season. An important one that made me ready for every relationship I’ve had since. As part of the breakup I dropped the bombshell, I hadn’t seen a game before him, I didn’t know a thing about baseball before we met.
He acted externally deceived, angry even, as if I'd lied to him, but I always got the sense he knew how deep my love for him ran that I’d immerse myself to those levels to share in his passion. But in me, being me, it became mine too.
One of the last arguments we had we were separating kitchen appliances. I currently have mustard and cat food in my refrigerator, and live as a bachelor never cooking, so I knew having pans and spatulas and blenders was of little importance as leaving on good terms. I said, “please have it all.” We continued to argue.
“All I want is baseball,” I said.
“Ok”
It was only fitting our first date and last argument would carry the same melodies, the same undertones, the same harmony. We were significant for one another. For in him I found first love.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Golden Sunshine
In the second grade I got Daisy. I’d never had a Daisy before, and just thinking about Daisy recently I sent my mom on an immediate mission to find a 7 year old Rebecca photographed with a puppy of a Daisy because I believe quite certainly there could be nothing cuter than a gawky 7 year old me with that little slice of golden earthly perfection.
Daisy was a slice of delicious childhood. She was puppy in the ways all people, even the most hardened among us, adore puppies. She loved play, as if it was her job, and she loved us like nothing else mattered. When we got a cat, she stepped aside, and let the cat be the boss, as any good dog would. When my parents would fight, she’d hide with us and be our protector. She was a good couch pillow, and it was only after walking her wearing roller skates that I learned even the best laid plans go array. Daisy was a golden retriever. Where her retriever skills failed (you want me to fetch what?), she was certainly golden.
That golden girl got old and we refused to let her go. Even when arthritis and seizures took over, we fought it, requiring the doctor to fix her woes, as if he was more of a magician. But maybe he was part magician. And her, other part, magic.
As a social person intent of making as many friends as earthly possible, requiring to meet and speak to every person in any particular bar I step foot, it’s oddly peculiar that my closest confidants have been my pets.
The day I got laid off from my last job I came home and laid my body on my chaise, my head on the couch edge and wept to myself. Sophie came up alongside that small part where my hip curves in to my torso and sat herself down. She looked up at me once, in the eyes, and then nothing else needed to be said. She’d told me we’d get through this. Years before that when all my friends had gone home after a late ending party to their significant others, I came home, with more energy than I could direct in any particular direction. And so I danced. I picked up Sophie and we danced to whatever Top 40 nonsense was playing. Eventually she tired of fighting and eased in to the notion, she’d just have to withstand my love. It's been 10 years of breaking her down slowly with my love. When I got in to college, she was next to me opening up my mail. When my LSAT scores said I’d get a scholarship to law school, there she was. She’s lived in every apartment with me since I was 20 years old, met every boy I’ve ever dated, and some day I hope her to meet someone I date worthy of being called a man. She prefers football, but she doesn’t mind me staying in on a Friday night with Vin Scully calling the night’s Dodger game.
Pets tell the story of your life.
It’s difficult to see turning 30 in a few months and not see my pet as a storyteller of my early adult life. She’s like this vault of knowledge. A keeper of my tales. And through magic I will keep her to be my trusty book for life, my best companion.
Daisy was a slice of delicious childhood. She was puppy in the ways all people, even the most hardened among us, adore puppies. She loved play, as if it was her job, and she loved us like nothing else mattered. When we got a cat, she stepped aside, and let the cat be the boss, as any good dog would. When my parents would fight, she’d hide with us and be our protector. She was a good couch pillow, and it was only after walking her wearing roller skates that I learned even the best laid plans go array. Daisy was a golden retriever. Where her retriever skills failed (you want me to fetch what?), she was certainly golden.
That golden girl got old and we refused to let her go. Even when arthritis and seizures took over, we fought it, requiring the doctor to fix her woes, as if he was more of a magician. But maybe he was part magician. And her, other part, magic.
As a social person intent of making as many friends as earthly possible, requiring to meet and speak to every person in any particular bar I step foot, it’s oddly peculiar that my closest confidants have been my pets.
The day I got laid off from my last job I came home and laid my body on my chaise, my head on the couch edge and wept to myself. Sophie came up alongside that small part where my hip curves in to my torso and sat herself down. She looked up at me once, in the eyes, and then nothing else needed to be said. She’d told me we’d get through this. Years before that when all my friends had gone home after a late ending party to their significant others, I came home, with more energy than I could direct in any particular direction. And so I danced. I picked up Sophie and we danced to whatever Top 40 nonsense was playing. Eventually she tired of fighting and eased in to the notion, she’d just have to withstand my love. It's been 10 years of breaking her down slowly with my love. When I got in to college, she was next to me opening up my mail. When my LSAT scores said I’d get a scholarship to law school, there she was. She’s lived in every apartment with me since I was 20 years old, met every boy I’ve ever dated, and some day I hope her to meet someone I date worthy of being called a man. She prefers football, but she doesn’t mind me staying in on a Friday night with Vin Scully calling the night’s Dodger game.
Pets tell the story of your life.
It’s difficult to see turning 30 in a few months and not see my pet as a storyteller of my early adult life. She’s like this vault of knowledge. A keeper of my tales. And through magic I will keep her to be my trusty book for life, my best companion.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
I must not disappoint those who now come to expect daily postings on the memoirs, and because I've been working on something to be ready for Thursday's posting, you fine people may, if you wish, read what I read to the teachers of Haddon Elementary and LAUSD on the day of my mom's retirement from school teaching.
She said she loved it, but God pays her to say that.
I think it’s significantly hard to look back at my more prolific teachers, and not see them in part as parental figures. Five days a week, morning till afternoon, breakfast through lunch, and if you’re naughty you may be around for dinner. They reinforce what’s right, and oh do they let you know when you’ve done wrong. They lay the brick and mortar of knowledge that you’ll build on for life. And if they’re a good teacher, they’ll make you ravenous enough where you’re never content. You will seek, and you will wander, search and question, always knowing there is more to know, better ways to do the same old thing, a glimmer and an idea for a way to make this tired world a better place. Knowing in the end knowledge is only important if it’s used and translated in to wisdom, to not create heads of floating data and dates and places and pages of textbook, but wise, strong people who will take their education and become better people in the world.
With teachers being so parental, it’s hard to not see my mom as one I’ve shared with so many children through the years. My mom loves sharing the story about when she was pregnant with my sister, and having little problem in making what I was thinking and feeling very clear even as a 3 year old climbed up on her with the admission, “Mom, I was thinking. I’m very worried once the baby comes; you won’t have as much time to spend with me.” She expressed amusement, and assured me, she’d be able to split her time fairly. If my memory serves me, she made good on that pledge.
She’s had to do exactly that for years - split herself in pieces, being teacher, confidant, advisor, authoritarian, dancer, chorographer, and artist 32 times over. Months becoming school years becoming decades. I can’t imagine that was ever easy for her, but she did it well – and I’d like to give credit where credit is due - I benefited.
I’m a different sort of folk. I annoy my friends to all ends with my, “..but why?, I research cities and weather patterns of places I’ve never been, I get calls from people who know I will know how to find the answer to just about anything, I Google, and I question, and I seek, and I search, and I pull out my Iphone at the dinner table to look things up, and I’m never, I am never, satisfied, with who I am, or what I know, or what I think I know. I think that’s the beauty that comes from being the daughter of a teacher. I am smarter, and wiser, and a better person in the world because I come from the home of a teacher.
But all would be of little importance without this. My grandmother has this quote. Of all the quotes, and all the stories, she tells and tells again, it’s the one I have heard the most often. She says, “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.” It took years, and the internet, before discovering alas my grandmother was not the original author of these words. But in keeping with tradition, with all things I enjoy from the lips of my mother, and her mother, I have continued to repeat it as if it was them who authored them always. “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.”
Eventually the body asks for its toll, and we can’t go on forever. Eventually we all must slow down. But I have to imagine it’s awfully gratifying to do that with a rear view mirror’s view of a career you’ve loved. My mother’s mother said it to her, and my mother said it to me, and I only ask that of everything I’ve learned from my mom as a teacher, the most valuable lesson, the last lesson she will teach, is that I find something I love, as she had.
She said she loved it, but God pays her to say that.
I think it’s significantly hard to look back at my more prolific teachers, and not see them in part as parental figures. Five days a week, morning till afternoon, breakfast through lunch, and if you’re naughty you may be around for dinner. They reinforce what’s right, and oh do they let you know when you’ve done wrong. They lay the brick and mortar of knowledge that you’ll build on for life. And if they’re a good teacher, they’ll make you ravenous enough where you’re never content. You will seek, and you will wander, search and question, always knowing there is more to know, better ways to do the same old thing, a glimmer and an idea for a way to make this tired world a better place. Knowing in the end knowledge is only important if it’s used and translated in to wisdom, to not create heads of floating data and dates and places and pages of textbook, but wise, strong people who will take their education and become better people in the world.
With teachers being so parental, it’s hard to not see my mom as one I’ve shared with so many children through the years. My mom loves sharing the story about when she was pregnant with my sister, and having little problem in making what I was thinking and feeling very clear even as a 3 year old climbed up on her with the admission, “Mom, I was thinking. I’m very worried once the baby comes; you won’t have as much time to spend with me.” She expressed amusement, and assured me, she’d be able to split her time fairly. If my memory serves me, she made good on that pledge.
She’s had to do exactly that for years - split herself in pieces, being teacher, confidant, advisor, authoritarian, dancer, chorographer, and artist 32 times over. Months becoming school years becoming decades. I can’t imagine that was ever easy for her, but she did it well – and I’d like to give credit where credit is due - I benefited.
I’m a different sort of folk. I annoy my friends to all ends with my, “..but why?, I research cities and weather patterns of places I’ve never been, I get calls from people who know I will know how to find the answer to just about anything, I Google, and I question, and I seek, and I search, and I pull out my Iphone at the dinner table to look things up, and I’m never, I am never, satisfied, with who I am, or what I know, or what I think I know. I think that’s the beauty that comes from being the daughter of a teacher. I am smarter, and wiser, and a better person in the world because I come from the home of a teacher.
But all would be of little importance without this. My grandmother has this quote. Of all the quotes, and all the stories, she tells and tells again, it’s the one I have heard the most often. She says, “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.” It took years, and the internet, before discovering alas my grandmother was not the original author of these words. But in keeping with tradition, with all things I enjoy from the lips of my mother, and her mother, I have continued to repeat it as if it was them who authored them always. “Find what you love, and you’ll never have to work.”
Eventually the body asks for its toll, and we can’t go on forever. Eventually we all must slow down. But I have to imagine it’s awfully gratifying to do that with a rear view mirror’s view of a career you’ve loved. My mother’s mother said it to her, and my mother said it to me, and I only ask that of everything I’ve learned from my mom as a teacher, the most valuable lesson, the last lesson she will teach, is that I find something I love, as she had.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
In an addendum to yesterday's post, I'd like to add "not listening to conversations in the gym locker room" to the previously written, "don't look around." Because when you look around, and you listen, you hear two valley girls engaging in something that sounds like:
Girl #1: "No cause I'm pretty sure there's no wi-fi in an orphanage."
And girl #2: "But maybe. I don't know."
Girl #1: "No cause I'm pretty sure there's no wi-fi in an orphanage."
And girl #2: "But maybe. I don't know."
Monday, June 29, 2009
Somewhere in Outer Space
In a general effort to, “get my life together,” I’ve spent the better part of the last 6-8 months searching for new gainful employment, finding new and inventive ways to stretch the same 100 pennies in one American dollar to buy me all the things I need to live in a recession, getting myself and keeping myself a new firefighting man, making Rebecca 2.0 ready and in fighting weight for a 30th birthday fast approaching through frequent and long staying trips to the gym, being the sort of dodger fan the best team in baseball deserves, and of course zestfully checking off bucket list items on my mama gena list. The mama gena list (research her if you must), when not instructing me to get a facial and get new bras, register for a intro stand up class, and convince my landlord to let me get a saint Bernard in my small one bedroom apartment I already share with two cats, is also a place I list my great writing ideas I’m certain would be the toast of the town. As such, I find little time to give blonde memoirs the tender loving care she so earnestly desires and deserves, and for that, I’m a bad blogger and I apologize to her, and to you. But if my exboyfriend’s girlfriends have time to droan on on their blog, and I have time to read it, I certainly have time to update this.
This update has zero to do with a text message I just got from a one, Erin Elizabeth Evans, of Brentwood California, with the body, “you do realize it’s been exactly 8 months today since you’ve written on blonde memoirs.”
Zilch.
I think it’s fair to say I put a little something, shall we say, of excess, in to style. It doesn’t come from nowhere. I’m a child of this city, where looking good means you have a fighting chance. My mom put a lot of stock in appearance. You would never know from that easter Kentucky derby type hat she always put me in, or the mother sister sister matching cinco de mayo outfits which we threatened to wear to her recent retirement party. You would never know from the Mervyn’s threads that followed me through my youth or the enormous head enveloping white bow bought and put on me for my 6th grade graduation.
I think if you went to my mother’s house, on any day of the week, let’s pretend and say tomorrow, and woke her up out of a dead sleep at 4am, she’d have matching pajamas with earings, a necklace, and several bracelets that she’d be more angry with you that you hadn’t complimented her on, than that you broke in to her home, and woke her up from a dead sleep. Bless her heart, but being her daughter is a lot of work, and it requires a lot of love.
It also requires a lot of funds. Funds to purchase Guess’ new hot pink pumps to round out my Barbie style portfolio. Funds to get my hair did. Funds that are absent in a global recession. Still I try and try I do, by bringing things out of retirement and matching them up with skirts and pearls that seemed unlikely pairs in fashion years before.
Today I went to the gym at lunch, like every day before it. I kept my eyes peeled on my locker and changed as quickly as my little limbs could climb out of my threads to give me the maximum hour lunch break to get my sweat on. Very uncouth to look left or right at anything except locker number 109 in front of me, as I’d expect others to give me the same respect, when something shiny, and something blue, probably old and probably borrowed, caught my focused eye. It was a skirt, and a shirt, and shoes, and while I tried not to stare, and I tried to keep focused, I tried to balance on my right foot while lacing the left, I had to cover my mouth to not blurt out, “oh no you are not wearing those things together.” “Oh and the shoes. The horror of those shoes.”
Who really had I become? Judging probably a very nice woman, huming the Monday blues in her, well, blue mismatched outfit. A nice woman trying to do her body good with a tall glass of a lunch time workout. I don’t like I judged her, but that doesn’t make that outfit ok.
I needed answers.
Around the same time my mom got inside my head with all sorts of nonsense I take to the pen and paper to illustrate, she also taught me something of value. At one point in early Rebecca-hood I had this concept that the world needed to hear every thing I thought in my head. In a loving talk, she said to me this. “Rebecca, how about whenever you have the vaguest inclination perhaps you shouldn’t say something, you have a system devised where you have to think about it a bit.” At that time I believe I was in the 3rd grade, and working on a solar system diorama in a payless shoe store shoe box, and so we decided out there in the silver Volvo on a hot valley day, when I thought of something perhaps I shouldn’t say, I’d recite first all the major planets in my head.
It was a helpful method. So helpful, I pretty much forget just about everything that wouldn’t be constructive, and much of what is.
A blonde was in the making.
If you look at me and I have a blank stare, or if I’m thinking real hard, trust I’m somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, and that mismatched outfit standing squarely to my right.
This update has zero to do with a text message I just got from a one, Erin Elizabeth Evans, of Brentwood California, with the body, “you do realize it’s been exactly 8 months today since you’ve written on blonde memoirs.”
Zilch.
I think it’s fair to say I put a little something, shall we say, of excess, in to style. It doesn’t come from nowhere. I’m a child of this city, where looking good means you have a fighting chance. My mom put a lot of stock in appearance. You would never know from that easter Kentucky derby type hat she always put me in, or the mother sister sister matching cinco de mayo outfits which we threatened to wear to her recent retirement party. You would never know from the Mervyn’s threads that followed me through my youth or the enormous head enveloping white bow bought and put on me for my 6th grade graduation.
I think if you went to my mother’s house, on any day of the week, let’s pretend and say tomorrow, and woke her up out of a dead sleep at 4am, she’d have matching pajamas with earings, a necklace, and several bracelets that she’d be more angry with you that you hadn’t complimented her on, than that you broke in to her home, and woke her up from a dead sleep. Bless her heart, but being her daughter is a lot of work, and it requires a lot of love.
It also requires a lot of funds. Funds to purchase Guess’ new hot pink pumps to round out my Barbie style portfolio. Funds to get my hair did. Funds that are absent in a global recession. Still I try and try I do, by bringing things out of retirement and matching them up with skirts and pearls that seemed unlikely pairs in fashion years before.
Today I went to the gym at lunch, like every day before it. I kept my eyes peeled on my locker and changed as quickly as my little limbs could climb out of my threads to give me the maximum hour lunch break to get my sweat on. Very uncouth to look left or right at anything except locker number 109 in front of me, as I’d expect others to give me the same respect, when something shiny, and something blue, probably old and probably borrowed, caught my focused eye. It was a skirt, and a shirt, and shoes, and while I tried not to stare, and I tried to keep focused, I tried to balance on my right foot while lacing the left, I had to cover my mouth to not blurt out, “oh no you are not wearing those things together.” “Oh and the shoes. The horror of those shoes.”
Who really had I become? Judging probably a very nice woman, huming the Monday blues in her, well, blue mismatched outfit. A nice woman trying to do her body good with a tall glass of a lunch time workout. I don’t like I judged her, but that doesn’t make that outfit ok.
I needed answers.
Around the same time my mom got inside my head with all sorts of nonsense I take to the pen and paper to illustrate, she also taught me something of value. At one point in early Rebecca-hood I had this concept that the world needed to hear every thing I thought in my head. In a loving talk, she said to me this. “Rebecca, how about whenever you have the vaguest inclination perhaps you shouldn’t say something, you have a system devised where you have to think about it a bit.” At that time I believe I was in the 3rd grade, and working on a solar system diorama in a payless shoe store shoe box, and so we decided out there in the silver Volvo on a hot valley day, when I thought of something perhaps I shouldn’t say, I’d recite first all the major planets in my head.
It was a helpful method. So helpful, I pretty much forget just about everything that wouldn’t be constructive, and much of what is.
A blonde was in the making.
If you look at me and I have a blank stare, or if I’m thinking real hard, trust I’m somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, and that mismatched outfit standing squarely to my right.
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