Two Parents Living, 1978 My father carries the heavy luggage, as he has always done, ignoring the wet mist of rain in his face and the puddles staining his shoes. He leads the way, hurrying mother by his urgency, projecting the sense of positive directions and insistent goals. They will spend twenty-one drowsy, dulling hours on the bus. But he will be the first in line, getting on, getting off. He would have preferred to fly. But only a family emergency can get my mother on a plane. After a week of eating and over-eating at the recommended San Francisco restaurants, they are leaving, traveling back to Washington State the way they came, by Greyhound bus. Turning away from the car, they deny my request to wait while I park and return to see them seated. "That isn't necessary," says my father brusquely, rejecting the sentiment of a lingering goodbye. And I know, from knowing him all my life, the irritation, should I insist, at the slightest implication that he has requested or required either comfort or solicitude, when he doesn't, he never has. My role is to smile and wave and pretend I must hurry off to another appointment. I note it is with increasing difficulty that my father stands tall, essaying the weight of two suitcases, a furled umbrella, and the invariable briefcase, holding fast to a graying grace through the awkwardness of double doors. He holds them impatiently for her, for my mother -- once a sunburned black-haired tomboy who still moves with an athlete's natural grace -- at his side and a step behind, seconding him, supporting his will and wishes in the style of that era, maternal, serene, attentive. I wonder, does she hope never to be first? He invariably leads the lead, our boss, paterfamilias, responsible for everything that might affect us, or him, and to the world for the public standing of everyone in his family. I can't even imagine what it is to be a man of his time and responsible for such impossible tasks. While he saw friends -- he has a gift for male friends -- mother and I who are close in mind and spirit walked together, looked in windows; we shopped, we shared practical advice about domestic affairs and conspiring giggles that echoed my childhood's long ago. Married fifty-some years, she is nervous now when Jack is not near, when he is walking the city alone, or meeting his buddies in places she doesn't know. Time has tempered my father's fierce command, the hunger for prizes and fame that once flared at his frightened children. But though he is more forgiving of failure, I know he will never approve of my current lifestyle, writing and living on a shoestring while doing fieldwork. When he says so, I am aware he is only stating a matter of principle, the Horatio Alger bid for monetary success that he has lived by. Still, hurt and dismay wells in my throat. Harder and harder, each time, to watch them leave. Much to learn from them and little time, about how to treat my own children and, of course, about who I am. A crisis of contrary expectations dogs our generations. Mine is hippie; theirs spells accumulation as logo and material increase as legend. Father collects bonds, bank accounts; he manages the estates of vanished male friends and advises their widows. Mother collects children -- she had five -- genealogies, sagas of births, weddings, increase, reading me the names. The tree-chopping, city and highway building policies that pushed the country West and the theme of hard work, the expansionist American Dream, propelled them up a class. I have always had two mothers. One speaks for father and most likely herself, protesting the present sons-in-law and the previous sons-in law. Weak men, she says, poor providers, too young for my sisters and I, too artistic, too much hair, not enough discipline, not enough -- as is unspoken but obvious -- like father. While I helped her into her jacket, however, the other smiled and whispered "Have fun," gifting me with the convivial advice that speaks of her own unfettered and happy childhood, running and climbing through a wild of woods and fields. Born into the middle-class, I don't feel any urgent need to 'make it' or 'succeed.' I do want to 'help,' however, and became an anthropologist for that reason. My own mortality is foretold in those straight, unrelenting backs and the heads that won't look back. If we were Gypsies, we could cry, holding and together for a time. Instead, I am left with their tears and mine to shed, saddened at the thought of their eventual separation, for the one of them that will be left behind, and for myself, who always is.

Mill Valley, 1989 Once I lived in Mill Valley. Mornings, I wrote and, after lunch, walked to the Book Depot in the middle of town for the company and coffee. Afternoons, I often took another walk among the coastal redwoods, and sometimes into the hills. At various spots and high enough, I could see the ocean, Sausalito, San Francisco. On one of these hikes, I met a dark-haired young man wearing a brilliantly tie-dyed t-shirt. Life with the Machvaia Roma had taught me to share my thoughts and I immediately confessed his shirt struck me as knockout. He asked if I were a Deadhead -- Marin was full of Deadheads. Deadhead music had never appealed to me and I said so. Nevertheless, he peeled off the shirt which he had acquired at a Deadhead concert. "Here, you like it, you keep it," he jauntily said and continued on his way. I treasured his gift, mostly for the manner of the giving. Then, after a year or so, I immediately gave it to someone I didn't know who admired it in passing. Giving is an art and a practice. Giving can be practiced as an art.

Light Bulbs

My brother has bathroom light on the first floor of his house that he says he hasn't changed for fifty years. We had been talking about lights when he mentioned his everlasting light bulb and praised the genius of big business and American corporations, like GE, who made it. John is very pro-corporation.
My reaction was somewhat different. If corporations can manufacture such wonderfully powerful bulbs, it seems to me rather cavalier of GE and negligible of the public good that they fail to do so. (Of course, lights bulbs that burn for fifty years would markedly reduce future sales.)
I adore my brother. He keeps me stretched in the worldly direction, not least because I am required to consider beliefs and opinions outside my comfort zone.

Rose's Indiscretion

Last week, a voice from the past. The call was from a Machvano whose wife's ofisa was once just two blocks from my San Francisco apartment. While reading Church of Cheese, he had been reminded of his aunt Rose's hard life. "So sad,' he said. "And that's all true; I know those stories." Then he added, "You're a writer and you have to write true stories."
A compliment, surely. A half century ago when I first met Machvaia, they were still smarting from the Marlene Dietrich movie "Golden Earrings" and told me that Outsiders knew "nothing true" about Gypsies. But how can Machvaia be portrayed accurately or fairly in consideration of their secretiveness and the stringency of a social structure that defines any cross-culture contact, other than the economic, as criminal?
Then I remembered that Rose had been married to an Outsider, a Gadzo, and publishing her story in a book was no different than broadcasting it at a slava or a wedding, sacred times when the ideal of seeing one another in the goodly way is the appropriate format. Stories, like Rose's, are shames when they become public knowledge. The Machvano caller was Rose's kinsman, which meant he shared her bloodline shame. Through the usual gossip hotline, many had undoubtedly heard about Rose's indiscretion. And more had suspected. But as an eyewitness author, I had given her error the full credit of black and white, irreversible, print.
Charley was kind enough to admit Rose's story was true. But his statement, "You have to write true stories," suggests that he wanted to believe I was required, by the necessities of my craft, to betray him.

At the zoo

A sunny winter Sunday at the zoo and nearly everyone is here with children. These are young children, a good share of them traveling on a parent's hip or in a stroller. Encountering the Macaque exhibit, some like to scream with fear and excitement, but most just stare in amazement at the wonder of being new to this world. School is out today; where are their older siblings? Does enthusiasm for viewing caged animals in the company of one's devoted parents fade just a few years short of Middle School?
Many of these children old enough to talk are speaking Spanish. Or is that Spanish? Picking words out of the air, I try to guess their meaning. Presidents Day is United Nations day at the zoo, and fuels my linguistic resolve. I promise, in my next life, to become fluent in at least three languages, an enterprise best begun, of course, at the age of my Kinder-pal zoo associates. In the Siamang area, against a background of hoots and shrieks, I come upon a large extended family taking pictures and giving directions in what they assure me is Czech.
I meet a young and pretty woman who is a student in something like behavioral biology; she sits on a bench and takes copious notes of orangutan activity. The lady orang grooms her hefty orang consort, happily chewing whatever she is finding in his fur. Although the male is facing away, the female, her round face vulnerable and tender, glances, on occasion, toward the parents and children assembled just beyond the glass. It crosses my mind that the other apes, the gorillas and chimpanzees, being genetically closer to our Homo sapiens species, never appear quite so benignly naive.
Further on, a father tries to hold his unhappy toddler daughter on a fence and take her picture. I volunteer and, while suspecting the background and the elephant are totally out of range, shoot the two of them with the father's cell phone. Many decades ago, I worked as a camera "girl" at the Hyatt in SF's Embarcadero. The camera was quite large, strapped over my shoulder and braced across my lower arm. The results, as I recall, were invariably vivid, flattering, pleasing, and easy to market, particularly on holidays and birthdays. I would race to the lower hotel level to get the film developed and return with a stack in a variety of sizes.
When these children are grown, more foreign to them than the languages I now hear around us will be the concept of developing film, film itself, and even the retro possibility of taking a picture with a single function camera.

Moving

I love this packed-in Wallingford neighborhood with water views of Lake Union and the canal. Today, I drove slowly down my street, cars on both sides as always, waited for Debra's Penske van to get situated, and then parked carefully in my minimal garage space. Driving, parking where I live is always a tight squeeze and I see the moving van is a bit of a walk from the front door for the movers. I meet Debra in the hall; she says she is moving to a house in West Seattle.
The little rental moving van reminds me of Mill Valley and how we Marinites would try to warn the monster trucks that store a dozen households' belongings before they could turn onto the twisty, narrow Mt. Tamalpais roads and get stuck in the redwoods. As the vans lumbered by, I would wave my arms and shake my head from side to side, which is "No" in sign language. I lived in the flat, flood-prone part of town, on camellia-lined Miller Avenue, and within walking distance of The Book Depot. Other people lived on the mountain, and I never discovered how they got up there, and left, with all their stuff.
I have lived in a number of places and, for me, the perfect situation would involve the civil amenities of relative quiet, clean and healthy air, and a variety of songbirds, combined with fun urban things like great restaurants, museums, and lots of interesting people to meet and things to do. I settle for some part of this picture.

Green Lake

December 31, 2010 is a rare and fair, cold and sunny, day. Bare trees lace their arms against the sky and the choppy water of the city lake shivers itself blue. My face and ears are freezing cold and I envy the bearded chaps with puffs of hair on their faces for insulation. Above, a helicopter rotors a distant background rumble as I overhear bits of conversations, "symphony," "ashram," "wrong color," "Keep doing it." To me, Green Lake is the center of the city, the place to go to see the Seattle people, and sometimes you even see your friends.

Everyone, child, adult, pram, and bicycle, passes me by. Dogs in sweaters, hats, outfits, dogs are part of the parade. Runners' shoes thump on the pavement, and the air disturbance shoots a few zippy, trippy endorphins in my direction. Maybe that is what keeps me going, walking as fast as I can.

Nowadays, no one walks with me; I am slow. With increasing neuropathy, I attend to my stride and the ground ahead, doing the best I can. In the past, my sisters, sometimes all three of them, walked with me. Many years ago, we sometimes saw our father, in his eighties, running. For some reason, he wasn't supposed to run, so we hid or pretended we hadn't seen him. Even yet, a ghost of that memory will trot him past the outside corner of my eye.

The sun is out at Green Lake. Next time, I'll bring my ear muffs.
Happy 2011.