Favorite Philosopher's Blog

I have a new approach now.  I am still doing one room at a time, but  I am clearing the decks of everything that is not absolutely necessary to live day to day, which of course makes me wonder why I keep any of it at all, but of course life will begin again once we move.  It also makes me hope that my next home will have some of those floor to ceiling built in bookcases where I can just put my little momentos instead of having them strewn around on this table and that table.

I went through my dollhouse stuff.  I am giving away a bunch of building materials, as I will be only doing room boxes from now on.  Roomboxes take the place of a full dollhouse and allow me to play with my furniture and stuff without the work and space of a dollhouse.  What I am discovering about myself is that I am becoming more realistic about the time I have for all my various hobbies.  Because I have so many interests I realize it is not possible to be a full time dollhouse hobbyist, so a roombox here and a roombox there to display my little furniture will be as good as it gets in this lifetime.   I had a wonderful time building my first dollhouse but indeed it took me several years.  I don’t think I want to spend another several years making another one.  So off it goes – the paint, the windows, the doors, the endless supply of wood.

How life has changed in twenty years.  Boxes of AAA maps get thrown in the recycling, except SoCal maps that I will use just to get oriented spatially.  We find our way from here to there through online maps now.  No more worries about how to fold the map back up. I saw a comedienne once who said if you wanted to torture her father just tie him to a wall and make him watch you fold a map up the wrong way lol!  We all know people like that – you might even be that person yourself! – and the days of those kinds of arguments on road trips are all but over.

The process of purging is an interesting one, in that I may decide to keep something today in a moment of sentimentality, yet when I look at it again tomorrow I’ve had my moment and out it goes.  The benchmark for me is: will this be more useful to someone walking through a thrift shop or to me when the grandchildren come to visit.  I am still getting used to the idea of measuring everything against whether it will be entertaining to the grandchildren.  There are none in the near future but as we all know, the far future becomes the near future before we know it.  I am still looking on eBay to see waht things are worth but generally something that I think should be worth something and then it isn’t, either gets donated or I keep it.  My massage table, for instance is $300 firm (it really should be $400) and if no one wants it for that, I’m keeping it.  So there.

So now there are quite a few more boxes packed than two days ago.  The process is on hold again for work, but I look forward to finishing the first layer so I can relax and enjoy the holidays and then begin again in earnest after that.  I’m getting close, and with each box that gets tucked away in a corner it all becomes more real.

We are moving.

The other day I was at the Lafayette Art and Wine Festival and there it was – again.  A plaque that said “Well behaved women rarely make history.”  We’ve all seen it – on bumper stickers, lapel buttons, greeting cards.  The author of this line is Dr. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a feminist Mormon with a PhD in History at Harvard.  You can read about her on Wiki where it is stated that her work “has been described as a tribute to the silent work of ordinary people   – an approach that, in her words, aims to “show the interconnection between public events and private experience.”

Sounds like someone I’d like to read more about.  But the wooden plaque that you can buy for $30 at an art festival just bugs the hell out of me.  Why?  Because it doesn’t really mean anything as tossed out in souvenir shops and bumper sticker racks, and it certainly doesn’t seem to reflect what Dr. Ulrich meant to say.  It’s just a trite phrase taken out of context that insinuates to the masses that unless we as women stand up and fight for whatever, we are somehow less of a woman.   What is well behaved? What is history?  And why is that statement any more true about women than about men? Ultimately any human being who “makes history” has had to stretch themselves and others.

And then I get to thinking, if making history means being remembered in a history book for some grand accomplishment, then what are the rest of us even here for?  Are we not all making history by the very nature that we are alive? That we are interacting with other human beings?  Is the woman or man who quietly serves meals in a soup kitchen every day less powerful and influential in the evolution of the world than someone who marches in the streets?  Is humility and grace a bad thing? Am I useless unless my name is in the top 50 most influential women of history?  Just looking at the brief biography of Dr. Ulrich I sense that she would agree with me, that she didn’t mean to suggest the banal inferences that the kitschy crafts evoke.   But there it is, thrown around like a clever call to arms at art fairs and t-shirt shops.

I just don’t see how the use of a brilliant woman’s phrase, taken out of context, moves us forward in any meaningful way.  It just sends a message to women saying “yeah, screw the men, we have to behave badly to get them to regard us.”   It says we are oh so hip without requiring us to do the dirty work of actually trying to make a difference and possibly taking the risk of behaving badly.

My final question right at the moment is: does my challenging the common reference of this phrase qualify me as behaving badly?  And if so, have I made history yet?

I have a new addiction now that I’m moving.  Ebay and Craigslist.  Nothing passes through my hands on its way to the “donate” pile without me booting up the computer to see “what it’d go for” on Ebay or Craigslist.  Now some things it’s smart to do that with – Al’s executive desk is in pretty good shape and I’m hoping to make a little manicure money on that.  My massage table is also up for sale but not at a bargain price.  It’s a custom table and although I don’t want to move it, I also don’t want to give it away.

It’s not just me selling things, though.  I have scored lots of free or very cheap moving boxes – the real thing – and packing paper through craigslist.  Wardrobe boxes, dish packs. Very cool to score that stuff – at anywhere from .80 – $5.00 per box depending on the size, I’m sort of making money hand over fist by not spending it.

However, there are somethings that are just not worth a damn.  I was hoping maybe I could auction off the brick from County Stadium in Milwaukee that Al got after the last game – complete with Certificate of Authenticity.  However, they are only going for about $25.  Not worth my time.  Anyway, it got put into the front patio so it’s staying with the house.

Last night I went through the vinyl records.  I understand that there is a movement to keep vinyl alive, and I respect that movement, but the fact is I’m not moving them again, at least not the whole pile.  It’s difficult though.  To me, they are treasures – records were the first thing I bought when I had my own money.  I don’t have it anymore but “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To” by Leslie Gore was my first 45, bought at Ben Franklin 5-10 cent store for probably 50 cents.   I was a hopeless drama queen even then.  Bonus question – can you name the B-side?  No, I didn’t look it up. Hint: the B-side was Judy’s comeuppance.*

Treasures or no, I just can’t drag them to another house.  I have researched the selling price of my vintage 1970’s albums and guess what – pretty much worthless.  There are a few in there that have value but the rest only have value in that I played them over and over in my dorm room at college, and loved to take a field trip to downtown Milwaukee to the record store and torture myself deciding which new hip album to buy – Van Morrison or Loggins and Messina?  Grateful Dead or Edgar Winter?  Dicky Betts or Linda Ronstadt?  I wanted them all, but only had enough money for one or maybe two if I skipped a beer night.

So it was not easy last night as I made two piles – keep or toss.  Some I kept just because I couldn’t believe iTunes would have a replica.  Others I couldn’t get rid of just on sentimentality alone.  We all remember what was going on in our lives when George Harrison released the concert for Bangladesh album.   George taught us how to walk the walk of the hippie rhetoric.  He really was “the best Beatle.”

Then there’s The Chipmunk Songbook and my all time favorite from my childhood – the Kellogg’s Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound album.   It remains a favorite –  among the tracks we hear the story of Yogi and Boo Boo hiding an escaped circus elephant from the circus keepers.  Poor keepers can’t get a straight answer from anyone, not Yogi, not BooBoo, nor Mr. Ranger.  Every time they ask if anyone has seen an elephant they get the same reply “What color?  Striped? Checkered? Polka Dot?”  Great stuff.

I will not give away the Benny Goodman famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert double set that belonged to my Dad either, but I did look on Ebay for curiosity and it is worth – close to nothing.  This is because it was reprinted as a CD.

I’m getting out of here with about twenty albums, tossed twice that many in the donate box.  Not bad.  Now to get Al to go through his.  I mentioned this to a co-worker today and she groaned, and then went on to say she had Nancy Sinatra album “These Boots are Made For Walkin” for heaven’s sake.  Somethings just can’t be let go, ya know?  You may not be able to take it with you, but you can take it to the end  just for the fun of it.

*Answer: Judy’s Turn to Cry (“cause Johnny’s come back, Johnny’s come back, come back, come back to me”)

So.  Al leaves for SoCal early tomorrow morning with his dresser, a bed, a table, some kitchen utensils and a few table settings and his clothes.   He will be back of course, for visits, and I have plane reservations to San Diego til the end of the year.  It hits me once again that I am leaving this town (cue Beach Boys “Leaving This Town” circa 1973).

Last night I was lying in bed and thinking about how big the universe is.  I was thinking how the show at the Academy of Sciences Planetarium took us on a little space tour beyond everything we can see and back again, and how whenever I see a show like that the desired feeling is evoked – we are very, very, very small and there is really no possible meaning to all this life business that our meager brains can fathom at this stage of our evolution.

Which got me thinking: “Why am I so depressed watching the house become a little less familiar, seeing the boxes starting to pile up, the shelves emptying of memories, the rooms emptying of furniture we won’t be moving?”  It’s ridiculous that the absence of a dresser in the corner should send me into a funk.  It’s so insignificant in a universe so infinite.  It’s so irrelevant to the purpose of my life – what house I live in has nothing much to do with my place in the universe nor my reason for being alive and human at all.  As a matter of fact, change such as this is part of what comprises the definition of the essence of my unique life.

Eh, it gave me a little perspective, but it was really Ed the Dog who made me laugh at it all once again.  When Ed comes in our master bedroom through the sliding glass door, he always gets a treat.  That is my attempt to get him to always come when called, although as any local deer can tell you, if there is a critter out there it’s a moot exercise.  I usually have to step outside and shake the treat bowl.  Most times, though, he comes in and immediately sits down and stares up at Al’s dresser, where the treat bowl is located.

This morning when Al let him in, he sat down in front of the now invisible dresser and treat bowl and looked up at it in the usual expectation of being rewarded for coming inside.  Al and I both laughed at the sight of this silly doggie, looking at Al, then looking at empty space where the treat bowl should be, then back at Al; but the lesson is clear.  It’s about the treat, not where it’s located.

My life is a blessing, and it doesn’t really matter where I’m located.  I’m going to try to remember that as I continue this journey of leaving the physical remnants of the last 30 years behind.

Somehow it appears I am ending my stint in the Bay Area the same way I started it.  When we first lived here, this was the destination vacation for many friends.  Al and I played tour guide – hardly knowing where we were ourselves and seeing much of it for the first time as well.

Then came babies and the twenty plus years that child rearing causes to whoosh by.  No one came to visit anymore, and if they did, they were handed a map of the area and told where to go.  They were welcome to use our home as a base camp but our days of tour guiding were on hold.

Now in the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of resuming that role.  Mike and Chris came out from the more eastern realms of our great nation and I found myself (with our other college friend, Jeff) going up to Muir Woods, winding our way through the foggy north bay, ending up at the Golden Gate National Recreation area overlooking the city that was holding up its skirt of fog to show us its ankles.  I sat there as they took a short hike to a higher vantage point, and realized in 29 years I had never been to Angel Island out in the Bay.  Otherwise my mind and body were content just to soak in the reality that I had been here that long, and am now leaving.

We went to a SF Giants game, and I basked in the company of old friends from the baby days, enjoyed the temperate nighttime, looked out over the Bay from our third tier seats, watched the Giants lose (boo!) and once again, savored the moment.  I will probably not sit in that park again for many years.  However, just for the record, I will NEVER be a Dodgers fan (or Lakers fan for that matter.)

This week found one of my oldest friends, Andi, here with her now 20+year old daughter.  We went on a whirlwind overnight to Yosemite, then yesterday (Andi had to leave earlier to get her other daughter to college) Alex and I went to Chinatown.  I had not been in a long while and when I had, it was with children.  Going to Chinatown with children is about as close to hell on earth as I want to get.  The reason is that every emporium is pretty much the same – the same kitschy souvenirs, all irresistible to little hands.  The fact that the shelves are lined with the same junk does not stop the little humans from wanting to go into EVERY store and look at it all AGAIN.    Not Alex and I.  We shopped like grown up girls on a grown up girl shopping trip.  Jewelry, purses, silk robes, woolen jackets that felt like velvet and were out of our price range.  We went into one store that was wall to wall scarves of every fabric and hue, hanging from the walls in rows, forming one huge curtain of color.  Amazingly,  Alex was able to find one out of all those choices that she wanted to take home with her.

After that we headed back to Market and Powell where Al picked us up and we went on to the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  It was completely renovated a few years back and is beyond description, but I’ll do it anyway.  The only thing I have to say about it (as she goes on for three more paragraphs) is that they kept enough things from the old Academy that I felt like it was still “mine.”  When we lived in the city Joe and I would go there frequently.  I had a yearly pass so we could go and play until his three year old legs and psyche collapsed.  It had the aquarium – now in new digs but the vast collection of fish I remember well (HUGE MONSTER BASS AS BIG AS YOUR ROTTWEILER, DUDE), like the Harlequin Shrimp that you used to have to really squint to see is now there in a beautiful aquarium showing off his colors.  The Phillipine coral reef (I’m going, that’s all there is to it) exhibit is the crown jewel as far as I’m concerned.

But that’s only the aquarium – they also kept the African room that includes their old collection of “stuffed” animals.  The room is huge and they rearranged the exhibit so that animals that actually live together are shown together, rather than the old panorama exhibit of everything together, no matter if from jungle or desert.   The lighting wasn’t any different though, and the benches were in the same place, and I remembered it fondly as the room where I could finally let go of Joe’s little hand and let him run unimpeded for a little while.  Indeed, that was still the plan of the day yesterday, when little ones were allowed to go off and explore and still be seen from across the room by exhausted parents resting on the smooth wooden benches.

There are more and newer exhibits – the rainforest, the living rooftop, the many educational hands on exhibits, and the planetarium show (boy have THOSE come along way, thanks to computers and the Hubble) but in the end, to my great satisfaction, it was like going home again to see an old friend in new clothes, and at the same time I was saying goodbye to it all – the sweet memories of Joe and me using the academy as a playground.  Renovation or no, it will always house the spirit of a young mother with her little boy, learning together at the Academy of Sciences.

And yes, I don’t often cry when I write my blogs, but I am this time.  Ta ta for now…

Have to start a new category here for sure.  The Move.  I got through the past week with a lot of angst and almost no feeling at all, quite numb in fact, and now it is Saturday and I have lists upon lists.  I have already put my massage table on Craigslist and am hoping for the best.  It’s a really nice table and I won’t let it go for nothing. It may end up coming with me.  I’ve got a list of things for the garage sale.  I’ve got a list of stuff to let my sons fight over or more likely, to say “oh no, you take it, bro, I insist.”  I have a list of things to discuss with the family – should we or shouldn’t we?

Here’s what I know: I don’t know anything.  I would think that the Disney DuckTales quilt from the toddler years would be okay to toss, but no.  At least one vote has been cast in a strong “keep it” direction.  If you can sing the Duck Tales theme song you know where he’s coming from.  It was an after school staple.

The boxes of Leggos stay.  I know that intuitively.  Hell they might come in handy if I’m ever recovering from a broken hip and need some entertainment.  And, of course, a woman of certain age who is moving away to a sun-filled retirement prone part of the world can’t help but start thinking about “what the grandchildren might want to play with.”

I have linens upon linens, and since I had to take them all out of the linen closet to have some electrical work done, they are the first to be on trial.  Pretty easy, really.  I will keep one set for every bed in this house and everything else goes.  Unlikely we’re going to have any more overnights that require pulling sheets and blankets out to spread across the floor in front of the TV at 3 a.m.  It’s rather liberating, in a way!  But I have to be careful.  The one part of this whole move thing is that is really easy for me to visualize is “getting rid of everything.”  I have to remember that I sort of have to live here for another six months.  And there will be another life on the other end.  The boxes are coming out and, for instance, if I have to give anyone a gift over the next few months it will be wrapped in a paper bag.  Except Christmas – that will be another monstrous, torturous, emotionally awful decision process.

My sister Pat, who has moved numerous times, laughed heartily when I asked for advice on packing.  Then she got down to business:  one room at a time, mark which room the box came out of and whats in it.  One room at a time, that was the most important.  So I’ve been here in the “guest room” all day, sorting through linens, looking out the window, trying to stay focused.

Then I come across a piece of plastered sheetrock that I had framed when we tore down a wall to put up a different one, because a certain kindergartener had drawn a guardian angel on the wall  above his head.  I’m toast.

My computer iTunes is playing The Beach Boys.  Onward.

Whoa.  Didn’t really see this comin’, at least not a few months ago.  Al got a job in Orange County (California, not New York).  We will be moving. I will stay behind to get the house ready to sell in Lafayette.  We’ve been in the Bay Area since we arrived here after our honeymoon involved us and a little Subaru from Illinois to here on a road trip.  29 years.

This blog is bound to be very strange for the next few months.  I figure we’ll put the house up for sale in spring when the hills are Ireland green and my garden tends to look nice, although we’ll probably do one of those fake garden makeovers right before the sign goes up.  It will take me at least that long to get it ready to sell.  I have warned Al that although I am 100% behind this move, he will need to understand that when I burst into tears for no apparent reason, that is par for the course and doesn’t mean I don’t want to go.  It just means I will be cleaning up the garden and will find a little plastic Ninja Turtle toy and I will fall apart.

I already feel very similar to after the ’89 earthquake.  My senses are heightened.  Suddenly I am seeing things I had stopped noticing: the trees, for instance.  Not a whole lot of oaks in SoCal.  It seems surreal now driving around town.  It never really was mine, this town, but now it seems less so.  My stomach turns as I pass by the Little League fields where I never really understood why people would push their baby boys to be the best at such a tender age.   I always felt like a bad mother compared to the ones who seemingly reveled in the Saturday morning mayhem of crowded parking lots and juice boxes and whining babies and lost uniform hats.  It’s all behind me now, in theory, but when I pass those fields I think “good riddance.”  There are many other examples of place in this town that make me not sorry to go.  It’s helpful, no?

Before I go any further, I must say this.  There are people I will miss with the depths of my soul.  They know who they are.  I promise I will come back often, it’s a quick plane ride and/or car ride.  I’m not moving to Australia.   I am putting my best faith forward with this new challenge, but my positive attitude does not diminish twinges of grief at leaving you that are already wafting through my day.

Having said that, I am nothing if not someone who likes change.  I lived in Mundelein, Illinois until I went to college in Milwaukee, then moved to New York, then to Vermont, then back to New York, then back to Mundelein, then to Evanston, then to San Francisco, then to Lafayette.  I have always kept in touch with those I wanted to, and the advent of the Internet has added a few people from the past to my list of lifelong friends.

Off to SoCal.  How weird is that?  Very.  Surfin’ USA and all that.  When I first lived in California and went down to LA the first time, I was quite bitchy as Al can tell you.  I never wanted to go there ever again.  I just about went nuts when he missed a freeway turn and we had to get off at an unplanned exit and turn around.  I was sure we were in the likes of South Bronx and I was going to die.  But of course we had to return – to see Al’s brother and his family and my family in San Diego, to go to Disneyland, to see if the Pacific Ocean really did have warm water at some point south.

I remember the day it changed for me.  We were camping somewhere south of Disneyland. I wanted to go to a miniatures store and get away from the guys for awhile.  I got in my car.  I looked at a map.  I found the miniatures store, which required getting off at an exit and travelling on surface streets.  I did not die on a freeway.  I found my way back.  Suddenly LA was not a big scary conglomerate anymore but a big crazy place full of possibilities.

I never thought I wanted to live there, and I’m not sure how it’s all going to shake out, but I know I’m not scared.  I know there is beauty there.  I know there is culture – you just have to dig a little bit.  There are tar pits with prehistoric bones right in the middle of the city for heaven’s sake!  A couple of hours east is Joshua Tree National Park a phenomenal high desert and a wonderful place to be  –  in the spring.

I will live near the ocean.  If all we can afford is a hovel near the ocean, then I will live in that.  I cannot go inland – it is desert, dreadfully hot and dry most of the year.  I need the ocean.  The marine layer, as I know from camping, insists on fogging up the coast just as it does in San Francisco.  Of course, it burns off faster, but I have been cold at Disneyland more often than I’ve been too hot.

The best beach in the world is in the town where I hope to find that hovel.  San Clemente.  It was our favorite camping spot in SoCal and the idea that I will be able to go hang on that beach whenever I want soothes my soul when the waves of grief threaten me.  The boys had so much fun there – some of my favorite photographs are on that beach – a photo of Al flying a kite, then a photo of each of the little boys holding it as he handed it to them, their eyes squinting up at the sky earnestly and with postures of responsibility.  It was not a good thing to be the brother who would let the kite drop, but on that beach Al got it so high in the sky it had not a chance of falling. Another photo is the one of The Coaster commuter train flying by just off the beach – I know that sounds terrible, but the ocean is so delicious for body surfing there and the sand so castle-building perfect it didn’t matter.  I have a classic photo of all the kids on the beach stopping what they are doing and watching the train go by, beach buckets and sand shovels in mid-scoop, nothing in the photograph but little sandy butts and backs of tousled haired heads of every kid within the scope of the camera lens.  What that one photo doesn’t show is that the Coaster went by every hour or half hour and each time the beach full of kids would do the same damn thing, as if they’d never seen a train before.  It was pretty funny.

Here are the questions that cross my mind…

Am I too old to learn to surf?  Yes, I am, don’t even think of encouraging me.

Should I start looking for the plastic surgeon right away?  These twin pendulums just won’t do.

Will I have to succumb to spray tan, since I won’t go out uncovered but I also don’t want to look like Annabel Lee?

Does it rain there AT ALL?

How soon before I decide I want to  figure out how to witness a red carpet Academy Awards dealie-o up close and personal just once in my life?  Better not.  One glimpse of Johnny Depp and I fear I’d make an Illinois Girl Turned Northern California girl damned fool of myself.  He’s so nice though, right, he’d just offer to let me sit at his table?

OK, I’m getting ridiculous now.  What it really all will be about is a place to walk into the next phase of my life.  I’ll keep you posted, but not before you have to hear all about the insanity I will endure as I decide whether to take or leave the box of the boys drawings from when they were six.

It has been a trip and a half here in San Francisco for seven years and then Lafayette for twenty- two.  It’s time to go.  I can’t wait to see what life has in store for me next.  I will not forget, just as I haven’t forgotten Illinois, or New York, or Vermont or Milwaukee.  Each has a special place in my heart.  I leave with the San Francisco Bay Area, the honeymoon days, pregnant days, the elementary school days, the teenage days, tucked away in my heart now too.