A departure from family business for a pointless thought about love...

Love. For as long as I can remember love has utterly confused me. It seems that people are continually labeling ordinary emotions such as loyalty, devotion, comfort, responsibility, insecurity, familiarity and fear as love. How can one truly identify love? How does it come to be? How long does it last? And how could one trust it? Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be in love. I imagine what it would be like to miss someone, to worry about their safety, to wonder what their doing. The closest I’ve ever come to this feeling was when I met a small black puppy. I found myself constantly preoccupied with the puppy’s safety, hoping he was being treated kindly and imagining what it would be like to snuggle him. These moments are short lived, and I return to being perplexed by canoodling couples and over used terms of endearment. Love is something that everyone wants. And why is this? Could it be the feeling of love surpasses every other emotion? It seems nothing feels better to a human being. Since the beginning of time people have committed every conceivable atrocity in the name of love. For some it’s possible to be in love with love. From what I have observed this feeling of being in love with someone is like having every molecule in ones being leap to attention. But is it love when someone happens to fit all my physical, intellectual and emotional requirements? Wouldn’t it just be chance? Why call it love? Isn’t it just a unique coincidence? As people we persist in excessively using the term love for everything that pleases us. “I love that bed spread” or “Did you see that movie, I just loved it” or “I absolutely love that shade of yellow, I would love to paint my upstairs bathroom that exact color” You see! It is my belief that we have trivialized this emotion to the point where it means no more to us than a delicious meal. You savor the meal, the act of eating it is agreeable, you recall the meal fondly and think to yourself “I loved the way my steak was cooked and the mash potatoes! I would love to have the recipe” It appears we find true love numerous times a day. We find it in everything comforting and enjoyable. But what makes acquiring the love of another person so enticing? Why is it that we place that love above all the others? At some point in every person’s life their eye turns singly toward the pursuit of what many consider the world’s most definitive prize. The love of another human being. The love that that person offers, gives the recipient a sense of importance, of superiority. When one is publicly ill-treated, the thought, that there exists in the world someone who believes that they are the personification of perfection, lessens the wounding impact. But what of those who have no such alter-ego? What of the ones that are overlooked and by their would/should-be pursuers? One of two things usually happens. The first become enfeebled and feel personally attacked at every turn. People in this fragile state are more often than not unpleasant to associate with and tend to murmur continually about their solitude. This behavior only increases their feeling of inadequacy and need of constant reassurance of their value. Unfortunately, I have no advice to offer as to how to deal with such a person . If you truly care for them, I would suggest not pushing them in front of a fast moving train. If you do not care for them, by all means get rid of them. The chances of them being rehabilitated are slender indeed. The second group of slighted individuals become thick skinned, reality driven and optimistic. I am one such individual. I hope one day to feel more for a human being than I do for a puppy or my bed spread.


(This thought was written three days before I met my future husband...odd)

The End of the World and Root Beer Floats

Every Monday was “End of the World Day” that’s when Winnie would gather us together where we would discuss and often sob about the inescapable prospect of Doom’s Day. Whether the topic was the nuclear holocaust, earthquakes, flash floods, or WWIII we always went to bed that night with a sick hopeless feeling in our stomachs. There were signs that we were continually on the look out for. For example, if we were hit with a nuclear bomb the sky would turn a vivid pinkish orange color, followed by a complete loss of power, and eventually radiation fall out would drift down from the sky like snow. Hence my hatred for sunsets, blackouts, and ashes.

Prior to an earthquake the animals would act in peculiar way, horses would pace back and forth in their pens, dogs would bark at nothing, and hide under furniture, mice would stop scurrying, and cats would disappear into secret places. Any time our dog Headcold would bark I would become frantic and could not rest until I discovered what he was barking at. Anytime old man Derker’s horses were found running and neighing in the fields I would take them apples or carrots to calm them. I always felt if I was able to quiet them down there must not be anything to be cataclysmic approaching.

It was Winnie’s desire to have the most primed, savvy, and well prepared children ever born. Ready for any and all eventualities. But I didn’t feel primed, savvy, or well prepared for anything. I was utterly paralyzed by fear! Not only were our minds plagued with the prospect of a natural or nuclear disasters but with Biblical ones as well. You know, the moon turning to blood, unquenchable fire, Mr. Apocalypse and his four horsemen, the mark of the beast and so forth. Terror became my constant companion. I couldn’t abide hearing any conversation that included the following: hurricanes, tornados, lunar or solar eclipses, daylight savings or explosions of any kind. My mother would say things like “It’s a sign of the times” and “See! It’s happening just like it says in…” she would then quote by heart a lengthy scripture that would coincide with the current event at hand that would chill us to our very cores. I would then quietly leave and go into my room to hide under my blankets where I would cower for hours at a time, which made me glossy eyed and feverish. Winnie would look at me feel my forehead and ask “what’s wrong with you honey?” All I could say was “I don’t feel very well” and being a wonderful nurturer she would make me a cup of soup and bring me a coloring book and a new box of crayons. I only superficially enjoyed this activity. The Looney Tunes characters bringing little comfort to my tormented mind.

On one occasion we were to watch the move ‘The Day After’ to further prepare us for the fate of mankind. It’s a film about an American city that is hit by a nuclear bomb. Winnie, never having seen it, felt sure it would be just the thing to instill in us the all important message of “He who fails to prepare, prepares to fail.”

Being in her comfortable chair she settled in and promptly fell asleep, while the rest of us viewed with unspeakable horror as the mushroom cloud appeared and both people and animals were obliterated. The unfortunate survivors had to endure their hair falling out, festering sores, uncontrollable vomiting, foaming at the mouth, and living amongst the rubble that was once their home.

After the movie we were served root beer floats and ginger snaps. We didn’t eat, but instead wept and clung to each other for solace, even Ben. Being no more than five years old it was my understanding that this was going to happen, we just didn’t know when. The absolute fright I felt at this prospect stayed with me for over a decade.

The next day all five of us decided to dig out a fall out shelter in our front yard. We dug it so deep that three of us were able to sit inside quite comfortably. That is until Nyna Morgan and elderly friend of Winnie’s came for a visit and fell in. We were told to immediately fill it back up. “Well,” I thought “I guess we’re all going to suffer radiation sickness and die just because she’s too old to watch where she’s going.

I never told Winnie about my gloomy notions. If only I had asked “Mommy, is it true that I am going to die an agonizing or horrifying death? Is it true that I’m going to have to watch everyone in my family rot and decay away? Is everything lovely and beautiful around me going to be destroyed?” She would have probably been able to dispel all these dark thoughts but as it was, I never had the courage to ask. Because what if the answer was actually “Yes, Agnes it is all true dear, I’m sorry. Would you like me to bring you some paper dolls?”

Death, Hell, and Dessert

Throughout her childhood, my little sister Ruth had over thirteen near death experiences. Once she fell into a ditch of rushing water, once she got locked in an air tight freezer, once she fell from the top of our highest cherry tree, and once she was followed home by a mysterious man in a white van. But I never thought that last one should have counted along with so many more that I’m not mentioning.
After each deathly encounter she would emerge back to mortality with glorious tales of the after life! How everyone glittered and had magnificent wings of gold and crystal. How they petted her, and gave her delicious things to eat. But always in the midst of her whimsy, she would hear my mother calling, “Ruthie, Ruthie, come back, you’re too young to die. Come back.” And once again she would cheat death and be renewed. At first, we were all fascinated by these accounts, but I soon grew weary of hearing about all the cupcakes, cinnamon buns, and peanut butter brownies that they would serve her on glistening jeweled platters.
Once I asked her if she had seen our grandmother up there. She said that she had, and that Tiny had been wearing sparkly emerald earrings, and an emerald robe to match. “Aha!” I thought, “What a liar! Everybody knows that Tiny went to hell!”

Bad News, Baby Girls, and Puppies

At the time of my birth there were already three anxious siblings waiting for me at home. Sue, Ben and Lucy. Five year old Ben was the most excited, and soon to be the most disillusioned. It really wasn’t his fault, as Winnie had been cheerfully telling everyone for nine months that I was a boy. In fact she and Ben picked out a name for me. I was going to be called Joshua, but Ben had difficulty saying it, so they decided on Jonah. Ben would pat Winnie’s tummy and say “Hi baby brother! Me and you are going to have a puppy!” At last a brother! He had never cared for Sue and Lucy. This baby was going to be all his! He was finally going to even the score, two to two. Winnie brought me home and gave Ben the bad news.

“Guess what Benny boy!, mommy brought you a baby…sister!”

Up to this point he had always assumed that she loved him. He looked at me, threw himself on the floor, and wept bitterly for nine consecutive days. Ben spent the rest of his life reminding me that I was neither a brother nor a puppy, hence my existence in this world was superfluous.

Unfortunately Ben was destined to suffer one more discouraging blow. Yes, another baby brother named Jonah… who would later be called Ruth.

Christmas, Shotguns, and Ash-trays

Winnie is traditional in the extreme. Her traditionalism is a feat upon hearing about my Grandma Tiny. It’s astonishing when you think about a four foot ten inch women chucking a seven foot Christmas tree, out the front door. Every Christmas Tiny tossed the tree out onto the front lawn. After putting up the lights, candy canes and tinsel, Winnie and my Uncle Bud would gaze at it sadly and think what a pity it was that this beautiful tree would eventually end up in a heap on the front lawn, being picked apart by squirrels and peed on by the neighbor’s dog.

I remember hearing about the time she pulled a gun on the Avon lady’s son for putting his sticky fingers on her china cabinet. And how she once chased a man who stole a strong box of cash from the office of the motel she owned, firing a heavy shotgun repeatedly, exploding the back window of the pick-up he was driving. I remember asking her once if she was just trying to scare him or blow out his tires to stop him. She said, “Hell no! I was trying to kill that bastard!”

Killing bastards was something Tiny did very well. She didn’t so much kill them as make them wish they were dead, or had never born. She was as cold and unpredictable as a Minnesota winter. Consequently, most of her childhood poor, little Winnie was perpetually chilled.

Tiny despised Pap deeply. She despised his “muddy eyes” and his “oily, sludge like skin” Tiny was so spiteful that after Winnie and Pap had "converted" themselves into healthy, observant, well on their way to exaltation Mormons, she calculatingly sent him ash-trays for Christmas. She would often say “He only wants to marry you so he won’t have to eat beans and tortillas for the rest of his life.”

Pap didn’t even like beans and tortillas, he preferred fillet minion and shrimp with lobster sauce. Even when Tiny died, with her last breath she remarked that Winnie had wasted the best years of her life by “co-mingling with dark and loathsome flesh”. And that he was nothing more that a "filthy, interloping, immigrant". Conveniently disregarding the fact that she herself sailed passed the feet of Lady Liberty as a young, dirty Italian girl. Her last words were "You've been such a disappointment" Winnie replied softly, as she stroked her withered transparent fore-head,
“I’ll miss you too mommy.”

Farms, Heroine, and Disappointment

Winnie’s life long dream was to have a charming, little hillbilly farm with chickens, fruit trees, and maybe a cow. Pap had no dreams. Much like an animal, he only operated on instinct. Not long after marrying my mother and settling into a life of reluctant domesticity, he disappeared for three days. Winnie was frantic. She called everyone. The police, all five of Pap’s brothers (also thugs), her mother-in-law, and every mortuary in town, but no one knew. By the evening of the third day, he staggered home. He had been at a party and tried to get sober before coming back, which took two and a half of the three days. Winnie’s hysteria astounded Pap. None of his previous wives, (meaning the two before my mother) had ever cared one bit what he did. He shot up heroin, snorted cocaine, smoked hashish, drank and played as much pinochle as he wanted, and nary a word was uttered. A year or so later my oldest sister Sue was born, and suffice it to say that she never witnessed any such activity, and much to our disappointment neither did the rest of us. Pap had been painstakingly molded into a reasonable human being by then. Pap's colorful past was something that Winnie pretended never happened. How else was she supposed to get us all to fit in, in a polite, quaint, Mormon community? By lying of course...

How I came to be...

My mother is a lovely blue-eyed half-Italian, half-Swedish conservative from a small Town in Minnesota. My father is a Spanish-Basque thug from Salt Lake City, Utah. Someone once said to me, “Well, that must make you a…Thuglican?” They met at a Mexican cantina, called La Paloma where my mother was waitressing. He asked her to go golfing. Betsy, a friend and fellow co-worker of my mother's said, “Don’t you marry him Winnie!” “I’m not going to marry him, we’re just going golfing.” Two months later they were married.