The Gifts of Old Age

 Gather around, children. It’s story time.

Sometimes I worry that I am too happy.

Understand – in my earlier adult years I planned to be a hard charging elder, still singing, still performing, still writing. I thought I’d drop with my guitar on. Just blink out in the middle of a song.

At that time, I had no idea what was ahead – that I’d cruise into my late seventies unable to walk without falling over, having to use a walker, and sometimes, on bad days, a wheelchair.

I’d say I didn’t see breast cancer coming, but I kinda did. I was in shock when that jagged little object showed up in a mammogram, but so many women get breast cancer that I thought it was simply my turn. The experience I had was not a big deal as cancer treatments go, but frankly, in my opinion, cancer treatments tend to be brutal. Even though my treatment was comparatively simple – surgery, radiation, no chemo, and the experience turned out well, still – it changed me. It changed my body. The experience left me tired, and it was almost a year before I emerged from the brain fog the radiation produced. We’ve all heard about “chemo brain.” Radiation brings its own challenges: “radiation brain.” Boy, was I surprised.

I also did not see in my early years that my husband would die so young. He was 68. From the vantage point of 75, that’s young. He’s been gone for almost ten years now. I integrated my grief into my life and have kept living, even though I have often wondered why, when it seemed like my functional life was over and most of my energy was drained by taking care of myself day to day. Once more I was asking the God I believe in, why? Why this?

After wrestling with the conundrum of why I was still living but not being productive, at some point a deep relaxation set in, and I became downright complacent about my non-productiveness.

“I did nothing today, and I’m okay with that.”

 I could not have imagined doing nothing all day when I was young. I was so driven by my need to prove I had worth, to justify taking up room on the planet, to prove I was not lazy, but now I have many days when I hang around the house and read, and play solitaire, and watch British mysteries and comedies and period pieces in the evening.

I talk on the phone with friends and family. A lot of my purpose now – my productiveness, if you will – is listening to people. I have always loved listening to people. I love their stories, and their spirits. I feel like listening to people is the best thing I do these days.

A bonus is that listening keeps me from shooting my mouth off and saying something incredibly stupid. Seriously, I almost always regret saying anything in any public venue. While I’m kicking myself for what I did say, as well as for what I forgot to say, it is exquisite agony. Why did I say that? Why didn’t I say this? Will I ever not feel like I don’t belong in a room?

Okay, I’ll tell you when I feel like I belong in a room: when I’m singing and playing with other musicians. I still worry about being off the beat or being flat when I’m tired and singing low notes, but mostly we’re all in it together and having a good time. The best time. Yeah. Doing music together is the best time there is.

It doesn't happen often enough anymore – the pandemic kind of threw us all off, and we’re still learning to congregate again, or at least I’m still learning.

I am learning that as the truth of this being in my last years and knowing death is not far away sinks in, I still want to be of some use in the time I have left. I still want to laugh with people – inappropriately if possible.

And I hate it that I’m going to die. I don’t want to leave this party. I am finally getting the hang of life, and many times I am more happy and contented than I have ever been before. This is one of the great gifts of old age.

I didn’t see that coming, either. But I will take it.

 

 

 

The New Computer

 I was getting complacent about my old computer, which turned out not to be wise, because it started blacking out on me. Solid black nothing for a few seconds, and then it came back on. I was going to live with it, until I realized that the blackouts were happening more frequently and lasting longer.

So I decided to get a newer, non-blacking out computer.

Which I have done. Now I’m on the new computer learning curve.

This is an all-in-one computer, so it’s a monitor and a keyboard, and somewhere under or inside the monitor is where the computer innards live. It’s taking a little getting used to. My old computer ran on Windows 10. This one runs on Windows 11. There are little differences to which I need to become accustomed.

So far so good, right? I will reach a point where I’ll feel like this computer is as comfortable as old shoes, but I am not there yet. It has properties and abilities of which I am not even aware. My main uses for a computer are email, watching reels of gorillas and monkeys on Facebook, and playing solitaire. Windows computers have always been good for playing solitaire.

In fact, Mac aficionados have cast a lot of shade on PCs because they believe Macs are superior in every way. They might be right. I don’t know. I only know that I can afford to buy a PC, and the price tags on Macs are way out of my ballpark. I know they are good machines – I started on Macs back in the 1990s, believing they were superior. I had at least three – a Performa, an iMac, and an iBook. All worked fine, until they didn’t, and then I had to take them off the island to a Mac repair shop. About 2004 I purchased a Dell laptop because the newspaper for which I wrote used a PC platform.

I discovered almost immediately that I like PCs better than Macs, for a few reasons, but the main reason is that PCs are language based, and Macs are visuals based. Language is my wheelhouse, and I was happy to start using the dolled up DOS system upon which Windows was based. It felt more natural to me than the Apple products.

Also, for a few hundred bucks I could get a computer that did everything a much more expensive Mac did. The other reason I like PCs is that I don’t have to leave the island and find a repair shop every time something goes caca. Nowadays, you don’t even have to defrag computers once a week.

I used to enjoy the colors that came with the defragging screen, I admit. But I don’t miss the process of sitting here waiting for the computer to sort itself out. Soon the defragging process was changed to an unsupervised process that automatically took place in the night. You could pick the day and time. Now defragging is not even mentioned. I wonder if computers defrag anymore.

One of the properties of growing old is realizing how fast your life went by. The pace at which computer technology and usage has grown parallels that speed. You can get the best and most modern version of a computer, and in a blink there are machines coming out that do more, faster, and your computer is a dinosaur.

A dinosaur is what I feel like these days. I really enjoy talking with members of my cohort – the early baby boomers – they get the references and jokes that I get. Whenever that meme comes up on Facebook that says, “If you remember more than 10 of these things, you are older than dirt,” I say, ten? Heck. I always remember every single one of their examples from bygone days. Wringer washing machines, little wax “coke bottles” with sweet syrup inside, candy cigarettes, and meat from the butcher shop wrapped in brown paper and string. We reused that string, too.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, new computer, I feel like a dinosaur, and my printer won’t work yet. It will, I know, if only because I have three boxes of ink cartridges for it and I don’t want to give up on it until I have used up that ink.

So here I am, trying to figure out this spiffy machine’s workings. I’ll get there.

Miscellaneous notes from piles of paper and a little family history

Dear Hearts,

I am at a stage of life when I am trying to divest myself and my house from all the crap I have accumulated the last 45 years or so. The trouble is - and I know many of you have the same experience - as I go through the old piles, I have to stop and read the writings, and look at the photos, before tossing anything. This blog entry is miscellaneous notes from a little notebook I came across, and then veers into Litchfield family history. 
It starts off useful, with a recipe for making yogurt

Making yogurt

1/3 cup yogurt

Heat quart of milk to 180 degrees

Cool to 115 degrees

Mix in yogurt

Wait.

I haven't tried this yet. 

 

Notebook pages

1.

1.        3/12/15

People who are better than I am

People who don’t watch television every night,

Because, you know television makes your brain liquefy and drip out of your open mouth.

People who are better than I am

Don’t play solitaire for hours,

Trying to make impossible plays or win once, at least.

And their homes are neat and tidy

And their diets are healthy

And they don’t feel guilty when they sit back to relax

Because they aren’t doing the vacuuming, or putting away the dishes, or folding the laundry,

Or any of the other chores I mean to get around to

Because people who are better than I am

Have balance, and structure

And equilibrium in their lives.

But they are not perfect,

For all their tranquility and order

They’ve been known to

Split infinitives

Sometimes they go out and spend money that was meant to pay the bills

Sometimes they lean over a garbage can and yell,

“The world can go to hell!”

So even though I know

They are better than I am

I kind of like them

Just fine.

 

2.

07/22/22

So I cooked

This evening

An artichoke, and some leftover chicken from the freezer.

In all too typical fashion I let them cook dry and burn

And the aluminum cladding on the bottom of the stainless steel pot

The artichoke was in

De-laminated and left part of itself on the element

And a few more drops of itself on the counter

When I lifted the pan off.

I was not expecting that.

That old pot – one of our wedding presents from 1979 –

Is headed for the landfill now.

And the knife I used to cut off the top of the artichoke

Is quite dull after all these years.

I know Rick was with me when I got that knife at the late, lamented, 

Bed Bath and Beyond, around 2007.

It was $30, more or less.

I can’t say we didn’t get our money’s worth out of it.

So

I need

A new knife (15 years)

A new pot (43 years)

A new stove (free discard, age unknown) *

And maybe

A winning lottery ticket.

Time to go shopping.

*This stove miraculously manifested itself and is working just fine.

 

3. 

09/11/23

I don't really have a story to tell. I'm just old, and a lot has happened and I thought should write some of it down. My cousin Charlotte is always telling me to write a book about our family. I haven't done it yet, though there is a story or two there.

When I was in the fourth grade, we were learning about Manifest Destiny (yes, I know now that that was about the eradication of the civilization that already lived here, and stealing their land, but that's another essay) and the brave settlers who came out west in wagon trains. I asked my father one day if our family came west in a wagon train.   He laughed. No, he said, our family waited until the railroad was built and then came out west.

Okay, so the Litchfields were soft, right? They waited until they could buy a ticket and travel in the relative comfort of the train. Well, that's what I thought until I came across the historical family record. Some Litchfields had come out West individually, by horse I imagine, or maybe even around the Horn, and settled in the Central Valley of California, in what is now Manteca. There they farmed, and married, and multiplied, and wrote home to the relatives in the Midwest about what a great place California was. The climate and the rich Delta soil made the living comparatively easy compared to the Midwest's harsh winters and hot summers.

So when the railroad was connected between the West and the East of the United States, a Litchfield family did take the train out west to Manteca. But the train was not made of passenger cars with padded velvet seats. Nope. This was the second train to convey people to the West, and the people rode in boxcars. By the time the Litchfield family arrived in Manteca, one of their children had died. So it wasn't the easy train trip my father made it sound like. It was uncomfortable, and dangerous, and fatal to one of their children. It was common to lose children in the 19th century, but I do not believe that people mourned any less for their children then than people do now.

So that's how the Litchfields from which I descend came to California. 

In the 1880s, my great grandparents, Chauncey and Belle Litchfield, moved from the Central Valley over to a valley in the foothills of the Coast Range. Belle and their eldest son, Percy, my grandfather, could not tolerate the tule fog in Manteca, so they moved to the Coast in hopes of it being a healthier climate.

They settled near Watsonville, in what was and is Green Valley, and planted 100 acres of apple trees, and they prospered and multiplied.

To be continued.

My great grandfather, Chauncey Litchfield. He was named for his grandfather Chauncey. 

The Fifth of July

 It was quiet here on the 4^th of July, because King County, where I live, has banned all fireworks. For some reason that worked. I heard nary an explosion all day and all night.

It was bliss.

A friend who lives in a different neighborhood on the island tells me that the ban had no effect there, and he and his dog were cowering until three in the morning while the explosions went off around them. I was sorry to hear that, especially considering how much I enjoyed the quiet here.

Look, I ooh and aah at fireworks, same as anyone, and have enjoyed many fireworks shows over the years, and enjoyed setting off fireworks with the boys when they were little. I enjoyed that a little too much.

Rick and the kids really got into their fireworks. One year when the boys and I were in Sonoma for the 4^th of July, watching their fireworks display over a cow pasture, Rick built a little cardboard house here with the specific intention of putting action figures in it and blowing it up. Which he did. And videotaped the destruction to show the kids when we got home.

After years of enjoying pyrotechnics and my own pyromania, I don’t know, something changed. I think it was having my dog, Marley. She hated loud noises. Thunder made her crawl under the bed or go into my closet under the clothes and try to escape to Narnia. She did not want to be held and comforted. She wanted to get as far away from the noise as she could.

My husband Rick was not at all attracted to firework shows, perhaps a legacy of his time at war on a guided missile frigate. I remember the story of the misguided missile that got loose and went wild, flying between the masts of the ship. Everyone aboard thought they were goners until it went into the ocean and destroyed some sea life. If there was any left in the Tonkin Gulf. Oh, and that never happened, by the way. If you ask the Navy.

Rick stayed home with our previous dogs and then with Marley on the Fourth of July. He would have stayed home anyway, but his staying home had the bonus of him being there for the pups. There were a lot of kids setting off fireworks in the neighborhood in those days. After Rick died, I stayed home with Marley on the Fourth of July, trying to comfort her as the explosions went off.

Then, after Marley was gone, I found I’d lost interest in fireworks displays.  I have never been in a war zone, but I felt like I was in one when the fireworks were exploding and whistling through the air. It did not feel congenial. So this year, with all personal fireworks banned in King County, I enjoyed the quiet here.

It was such a tradition to buy fireworks and have a little show for the kids on the Fourth of July. When I was a child, I always had sparklers for the occasion. It wasn’t until I had children that I looked at sparklers and thought, oh my god, those little red hot pieces of wire are dangerous. Somehow, I never got burned, and I don’t think my boys did, either. They still have all their fingers.

Every Fourth of July for a few decades I spent the day at Becky and Roy’s house. They had the grill going and there were plenty ofeats, and drinks, and family and friends. There were fireworks there, which the children couldn’t wait to set off. As the kids grew up the gatherings got quieter, but about 9:30 or so we’d all bundle into our cars and head down to Jensen Point to watch the fireworks show.

Sitting down there on the grass we’d watch the blossoming of extravagant showers of colored fire, all building up to the grand finale, when the rockets were going off in profusion, a huge bouquet of sparkling colored lights, a dozen or two all at once. It was quite a show. It was emotional. When the show was over, you could hear people cheering, and car horns honking, all around Quartermaster Harbor, in appreciation of the fireworks. It was a grand community occasion.

Meanwhile … dogs and cats and horses, cows, sheep, goats, and other livestock, and war veterans and small children, and the people who loved them, tried to escape the noise.

I can’t imagine how a combat veteran might feel about fireworks. I have heard that when commanded to attack someone, you are told to, “light ‘em up!” I think there is some substance to that rumor.

How do you walk away from those experiences? Rick was certainly scarred by his year aboard ship in Vietnam. He talked about it every day for years.

Summing up: it was quiet at my house on the Fourth of July. And I loved it.

Now. If only I could find my car keys.

My sweet pup Marley

 

 

 

Becky Denton Bumgarner May 19, 1949 – February 3, 2023

Having lemon sherbet in Ballard on the day her grandaughter Lulu was born. June 14, 2018

 Becky and I were friends from the time my son Drew met her daughter Maggie, in their second grade class at Burton Elementary. They bonded as best buds. So did we.

She knew how to be a friend, and once you were her friend, you were friends for life. She had many friends, especially school friends and the Girl Scouts with whom she grew up. Every year in August she went to Woman’s Own, a camp for adult women who had been Girl Scouts. It was held over at Camp Robbinswold on the Hood Canal on Labor Day weekend. It was the highlight of her year. Those were her people.

She was always buying things – guitars, books, clothes, routers and router bit sets, books, garden tools and other tools and yard equipment, sewing machines, books, furniture, books, and wheelbarrows and raised bed surrounds, and more – and then not really using them. Stuff was piled in the yard, and inside the house. The books went on the shelves she bought, and everything else went on the floor. Every surface was packed, and God help you if she saw you touch anything or try to do some tidying up. She would shriek, “NOOOOO! Don’t touch that!” We saw piles. She saw projects, and plans, and stuff that would definitely come in handy. Everything she brought home was a fabulous find.

She did use the garden tools, in her “jungle renovation” business, which she really enjoyed, both the work and the friends she made of the people who hired her. Her “Tool Talks” at the Vashon Garden Club meetings were legendary.

She was a fabulous storyteller, and wrote the “Blackberry Bear Tales,” which are full of wonder and wizardry. She meant to publish them, but that hasn’t happened. Yet.

At the end of Woman’s Own last September, Becky rode with Maggie to Maggie’s home up in Lake Forest Park. That night Becky was sleeping on the big couch in the TV/computer room, and in the middle of the night realized that she needed to go to the bathroom. She tried to get off the couch but couldn’t stand up. Like most hard-headed women, she was going to make the best of it and tried to crawl to the bathroom without asking for help, which did not work out. A couple of days later she was in the hospital diagnosed with cellulitis. After that and a stint in a nursing/rehab home, her husband Roy brought her back to the island, and she continued recovering at home.

One afternoon we were going to have a girls’ afternoon out. I went down to her house to pick her up, and found a tree had fallen across their driveway in a little windstorm the night before. She managed to come as far as the tree with her walker, and we talked to each other over the tree, but neither one of us was able to climb over or through it, and we certainly could not move it. We decided we could not have an outing that day, and promised each other we’d do it sometime soon, after the tree was cleared. That was the last time I saw her.

Down at Lisabeula, summer 2022. She is explaining how an airplane flies.

We talked on the phone once or twice a week. I knew she was spending a lot of her time on the couch, but she would tell me, “I walked out to the mailbox!” or some other milestone. We spoke on Groundhog Day, just a regular check in, chatting and oohing and aahing at pictures that Mags had sent to both of us on our phones of Maggie and Ben’s new baby boy, Isaac.

Becky told me that she had eighteen medical appointments coming up – I don’t know if that was the precise number or if it felt that way to her – the wound clinic, the endocrinologist, etc.

She had a serious heart attack a few years ago. She was hauled into Swedish by ambulance, received two stents to open her two totally blocked arteries, and was feeling better by that afternoon. She made a story of it and loved to tell it:  She was in the aid car, thinking that she’d had a good life, wonderful daughter, wonderful friends, she was okay with this, and then – she met God, who said, “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here yet.” She told him if that was the case, he needed to send her right back, otherwise she was going to go have tea with Mrs. God, and he would be in trouble. He sent her back right away, and she was in the aid car again.

She said after that experience that she was not afraid to die.

She passed on the morning of February 3, in her sleep. She’s gone now and she ain’t coming back. No one is going to call me after 10 o’clock at night anymore or call to tell me, “The Kingston Trio is on!” every time the PBS pledge weeks run folk music specials.

She spent a lot of her time on the couch towards the end, entertaining herself with various screens. That’s how Roy last saw her. He said she was looking at Youtube videos at 3:30 in the morning. When he got up later that morning she was still in the same spot, and she did not answer when he asked her if she wanted breakfast, so he went over to see how she was doing and realized that she was gone.

I hope she’s having tea with Mrs. God.

On Getting Old

There are ups and downs to aging. The first up is that you are still alive.

The second up is perhaps better than the first: you no longer care about what anyone thinks.

My husband Rick died young, as I see it now. He was 68. People die at 68 all the time, but I certainly was not ready to see him go.

I used to read about people dying in their 60s or 70s, and I was not surprised. I don’t think that way anymore. I think, geez, I’m older than that person, and I’m still putting along. They were robbed of some good years. It seems unfair now when people don’t get a chance to be old.

Another part of being old for me is thinking of people I used to know years ago. I used to wonder where they were and what they were up to. Now I think about someone, and after a few minutes I think, they might be, or they probably are, dead. Takes a lot of the sparkle out of looking for old friends.

It’s okay, mostly. There are not many people to whom I want to say anything. Probably not any. I feel comfortable thinking, “I have outlived all my mistakes, even the worst ones.” If someone from the distant past showed up and complained about something I said or did, I would, if possible, make amends, but in some cases, with some people, I think we all know that there is no fixing whatever happened, because we mixed like oil and water. On fire.

We must let it go.

Of course, one of the downsides of getting old is that you feel every injury you ever had – every broken bone, every hard hit, every disease that decreased your lung capacity, every surgery, every bout of cancer you supposedly “won,” but you still carry the scars and effects of chemo or radiation. Everything that has ever happened to you. There is a book titled, “The Body Keeps the Score.” That book is about trauma, but the body really does keep score of everything that has happened to you, physically or emotionally. In old age the old injuries re-surface as chronic conditions, and I’m sorry to say that some of them involve intense physical pain. The cartilage in my knees is only a memory. My hands bear the arthritis of sixty years of playing guitar, probably most of the time holding the instrument wrong. If you have compounded the mischief by smoking or drinking or doing drugs, or in my case being obese, the oppressions of old age can be heavy. Rick had emphysema/COPD, probably from smoking for 55 years. Just a guess.

Eating weird diets can do you in, too. I dieted to lose weight many times, and I may again, but I know there are risks involved. That’s why you are always told to talk to your doctor before starting a diet. I don’t know if anyone does that, but we are told to do it. Dieting has finished off many a gallbladder, but they don’t warn you about that at dieting groups, at least none of the ones I joined.

“You are guaranteed to lose weight! And maybe an internal organ!” See, that would be a terrible sales pitch.

Then there is osteoporosis, arthritis in general, weakening muscles from disuse, gum disease, cataracts, hearing, and vision loss, and of course the real Boogey Man: dementia. Most of us have moments of not being able to remember a name, or a word. That’s common, and it is also an early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, which not everyone will develop, but a lot of us are worried about. There are other varieties of dementia – whee! – and we all know that sooner or later our bodies will fall to being worn out and used up.

Some of us will see the end and use assisted suicide to avoid suffering and placing financial burdens on our families, but mostly to avoid suffering. I hear it is peaceful.

Some of us will unexpectedly go out in a blink. I envy those people.

Some will linger long, and fight their leaving the party, because they don’t want to miss anything.

Some will inspire us with their spiritual light and courage, although I have found that courage is something you discover in yourself when circumstances arise, and you do what needs to be done.

Anyway, getting older. There are ups and downs. Most of the downs are physical, but if you still have friends and a sense of humor, that makes up for a lot of physical pain. If you play an instrument and sing, bonus! Time ceases to enslave you when you sing or play an instrument. Or play with your model trains. Or quilt. Or write poems. Or do any of the things that bring you bliss and a moment out of time.

We’re all going to the same end, but some of us are having more fun along the way than others. I think it’s at least partially a choice, and luck. At this point I feel lucky. I’m still here and the house is paid off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cat Chronicles, May 2023

 Part 1: Mellow

Mellow was my cat for nine years.

He was a dapper tuxedo cat, and he was affectionate and cuddly, and he drooled. OMG, he drooled. The woman who gave him to me nicknamed him, “Slobberchops.” I tried to grab a towel to catch the runoff when he climbed up on me, and I threw towels to guests who were favored with his presence.

Every guest was favored with his presence. He was the official greeter at Casa Tuel. If you sat down at my kitchen table, you soon had Mellow in your lap. He was kind of shameless that way.

He was especially fond of climbing up on my left shoulder, circling around the back of my neck, and settling in facing forward on my right shoulder. I didn’t mind that. He only stayed for a few minutes before jumping down and taking off to do his own cat business.

He came to live with me from a dear friend in Oregon and was the king of the cats at Casa Tuel for nine years.

Rick and I always lived with an animal for a few days and let their name come to us. A few days in I thought, this cat is so mellow. So I started calling him Mellow. Major Jack Mellow, but Mellow was his call name (not that he’d come when I called).

When he started going outside and began hauling home bits of things he had killed, I realized that he wasn’t so mellow when hunting, but by then the name had stuck. So he was mellow, AND a cold-blooded murderer of whatever he could catch, usually rodents, occasionally a bird (which is why bird lovers wish all cats were indoors only, and it’s a good argument).

So I had Marley, my sweet dog, and Mellow, my sweet cat.

 When I fell and broke my back a couple of years ago, my friend Sonya, who had bonded with Mellow on her visits here, took him to her home to foster him while I recovered. Marley was eventually taken in by a VIPP volunteer during my absence in hospital and rehab. Marley arrived home the same day I did. Mellow didn’t return until November, when Sonya came up for Thanksgiving. I thought she’d get a cat of her own after that, but she did not. Mellow may have ruined her for other cats.

Mellow settled back in here fine.

He was a great communicator, was our Mellow. We had conversations. I would meow at him; he’d meow at me. I don’t know what we were saying, but apparently, we weren’t arguing.

He was an indoor/outdoor cat, because all the cats I’ve had all my life were indoor/outdoor. One of the bonuses of that was that I seldom had to clean his litter box. He preferred to go outside. That arrangement worked fine, for nine years.

Then one night a couple of months ago he wanted to go out. Usually I would have said, no, it’s too late, because I know that the coyote population on the island is thriving, and that they do kill people’s cats. But he was yowling a bit and demanding to go out. Eventually I said, oh, fine, and opened the door. Out he went, same as every time before, but this time he did not come back.

A lot of people offered to look for him, and did, because I can’t walk so well anymore, but he did not turn up. Gone without a trace.

I miss him.

Good night, sweet Mellow.

 

Part 2 The New Kids

After an indecently short period of grieving I saw a pair of bonded adult cats up for adoption online and I said, “I need cats!” I haven’t stopped feeling sad about losing Mellow, but it’s nice to have other living creatures in the house. As a cat-loving friend said, “They need you!” And I needed them.

Their Priormom had to drop everything and move back east to take care of her mother, who has large dogs. Priormom decided to leave the cats here. And that’s why I have two new fur roommates, an orange tabby boy, and a dark grey  and tan medium-longhair Maine Coon cat.

They were traumatized when they arrived. They’d lost their lifelong home, been in foster care for three weeks, and now they had landed up here in a strange house with a strange lady. They’ve been here two and a half weeks, and while the orange boy likes to rub up against my ankles and lets me scratch his back and rub his ears, the other one is such a spook that I’ve started calling her Cryptocat. Not sure if she really exists sometimes. I see her about once a day when she comes downstairs to eat.

After my experience with Mellow I decided that they would be 100% indoor cats. So far, it’s almost like not having cats after Mellow’s effusive affection, but cleaning litter boxes for two cats tells me that, oh yeah, I have cats, all right.

They had names when they came here. At present I’m calling the boy Brony, after adult male fans of My Little Pony. It’s a real thing. You can look it up. His given name when he arrived was Jibronie. I looked that up and found out it was a derogatory Italian word. Didn’t feel like calling a cat anything derogatory.

I find myself greeting him in the morning with, “Hey, Bro.” The other cat was named Macie, but I’m beginning to call her Mopsy, because my friend Sonya saw the cat’s picture and said, “She’s a mop!” Yeah, she kind of is, and it struck me that Mopsy might be her new name at Casa Tuel. We’ll see if it sticks.

Two totally different personalities than sweet old Mellow, but company all the same. Brony is affectionate enough for me at present. He likes to rub up against my ankles in the morning, and he allows me to scratch his back. I’ve been told that someday I’ll be minding my own business and one of them will crawl into my lap. I can wait.

 

Part 3:  May 15, 2023

Adjusting

I didn’t have to wait long. That very night Mopsy jumped up on my bed, came over to me and fell on me, and began snuggling and cuddling and kneading. My mind was blown but I started scratching her and she seemed delighted. I don’t know what flicked the switch. Maybe she was waiting to have her name changed?

Actually, I think what really did the trick was sitting in the living room throwing her Temptations cat treats. The next day she was literally eating treats out of my hand, and she is a bit of a chomper, so she bit my fingers, but gently, and I noticed that she got more careful right away. The last couple of days she has been lying on the cushion of the chair next to my recliner, looking at me flirtatiously through the side of the chair, and so far she has joined me when I go to bed for cuddle time.

I thought then that Brony, who was the first one to show any affection, would be a long haul because he wasn’t doing more than letting me pet him as he walked by, but today he jumped up on the back of my recliner, and went to sleep there.

My friend Sonya came to stay for a week, and now that’s she left the cats have backslid a little into their original spookiness. Perhaps her absence feels like abandonment to them? I don’t know. Still can’t do more than stroke Brony as he walks by, and Mopsy isn’t cuddling up to me every night, although she does like to sleep on the bed with me.

Now they spook and run off if I stand up to walk somewhere. My walker and wheelchair must seem like fearsome contraptions or even creatures to them. They always run away when I am using these aids to walk.

They run away a lot. It’s getting a little tedious to be honest. They’ve been here for a month now. They have figured out that I am the purveyor of treats, kibble, catnip, and canned food, so I have a lot of cred with them, but I am trying to adjust my expectations. They may never stop running away when I get up to walk, with or without assistance. I hope that eventually they will figure out they are safe here.

They are a huge change from Mellow, who liked to climb up me when I was sitting and liked sleeping on me when I was in bed. Well, I am soft.

They both surprise me every day. Some surprises are more pleasant than others. When I discovered that Brony had knocked the bag of catnip flavored greenies off the hutch, ripped a hole in the bottom, and eaten all the treats, it was not a happy surprise. He is a hunter, I’ve realized, and his hunting ground is the top of tables and counters.

I have never heard Brony meow, and Mopsy’s meow is a tiny little squeak. She is a Maine Coon Cat, so she’s large, and that tiny meow seems incongruous to me, but there it is.

I have not heard either of them purr.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Part 4: Cat Life Now at Casa Tuel

They do purr, almost inaudibly, and they do meow, but again, almost inaudibly, and rarely. Sometimes Brony will give a little cat, "chirp," but mostly they are non-talkers.

They are not physically affectionate, but they do like to hang out in whatever room I am in. I attribute this entirely to cat treats.

 They don't hang out together much. None of that cute cat yin-yang when two cats curl up together, but I do see them occasionally touch noses and give each other some grooming licks. And then, like as not, Brony gives Mopsy a good swat in the face. So much for that moment of tenderness.

I feel like they have made peace with being in their new home, and they are quiet company for their human. Their lack of showing affection still bewilders me a little after living with Mellow, but they are who they are, and because they are so stand-offish I feel complimented every time one of them deigns to come over to me to say hello and allow me the privilege of petting them. Cats.

Ooga Booga: Great Shakes

Occasionally, someone comes out with an "ooga booga" story or book about the Big One (earthquake) that is to come on the Cascadia Subduction Fault Zone.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be scared.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone had its last major slip and earthquake at 9 p.m. local time on January 26, 1700. How do we know this so precisely? I’m going to put it down to nosy scientists, God bless them.

When such a quake happens again, we can expect coastal towns to be wiped out by tsunamis, along with destruction caused by the quake itself, and tsunamis will spread up and down the West Coast and across the Pacific Ocean.

It will affect the Salish Sea/Puget Sound to a lesser degree, we hope. We'll feel it.  A computer projection of tsunamis caused by the Cascadia Zone Subduction Fault showed tsunami waves traveling up the Sound, bouncing off of Tacoma, and rebounding to smack into the south ends of Vashon and Maury Islands. Something to think about.

The March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan was a subduction zone quake. Perhaps you remember the havoc and death caused by that quake and ensuing tsunamis.

The 2004 Boxing Day Quake in Sumatra wiped out many places and people in Indonesia and all along and within the Indian Ocean.

The 1960 Chile/Valdivia Earthquake is estimated to have been a 9.4 – 9.6 in magnitude, the largest recorded earthquake in the 20^th Century.

The second largest, the 1964 Alaska Earthquake, was a magnitude 9.2. Most deaths were caused by the tsunamis created in that quake.

These were all Great Quakes. I have never experienced a Great Quake. I am not looking forward to it.

The 1994 Northridge Earthquake was rated as a 6.7, but it caused a degree of death and destruction in the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles area that was unprecedented and led to many changes in building codes and earthquake precautions.

It doesn’t have to be a Great Quake to be a disaster.

Tectonic plate theory arose during the 1960s - before that there was a whole different geological narrative about how the earth moved and quaked.

The Cascadia Subduction Fault Zone is formed by the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate sliding under the North American plate. Such a little piece of tectonic plate causes so much havoc. There are earthquakes along the fault zone frequently, but we don’t feel them here because they are too far out at sea.

When subducted material gets deep enough, it heats up and becomes magma, and produces the chains of volcanoes we have on the West Coasts of the American continents, and around the Pacific Ring of Fire.

I am reminded in my reading that Mt. Rainier is an active volcano. Sigh. Noted.

I grew up in coastal Central California in the San Andreas Fault zone, where minor earthquakes are common, and I considered them kind of fun. Whee! We’re shaking!

That was before I was in the 6.6 Sylmar Earthquake in Los Angeles in February 1971. It was centered on a fault out in the Simi Valley - not the San Andreas Fault, which is supposed to unleash a Big One, so I was told all my life. That 6.6 Richter Scale quake was plenty strong enough for me - portions of freeways collapsed, gas and water mains broke, there were fires, a brand new hospital in the San Fernando Valley pancaked and killed around 40 people. Part of the Tehachapi Mountains was raised four feet.

Where I was, on a hilltop in Silverlake near downtown LA, it felt like a truck was ramming the house repeatedly. It was scary - I'd never been in an earthquake that big before. It happened at 6 in the morning. I went upstairs and watched the TV news with my landlady. It took a while for all the reporters and news agencies to wake up and get organized. Reporters in the San Fernando Valley were reporting as they ran out of their houses.

I went to work around 8, because this is America, you know, and we don’t skip work for a major earthquake. I worked for an insurance agency on Beverly Boulevard. On the way there I saw landslides on hillside roads, and the building I worked in had cracks in the stairwell. I know that because the elevator was out of service.

There were aftershocks all day, and those continued for months. I got so I knew the Richter rating of each aftershock by feel.

I have learned that that skill does not travel. We had a 6.8 quake here on February 28, 2001, the Nisqually Ash Wednesday Quake. It was centered near Olympia. I was working at a local hardware store at the time, and I thought it was a 5-something quake.  It was long, almost a minute the record says, and it started, and paused, then started again and shook harder. There was surprisingly little damage at the hardware store. We lost some glass lamp chimneys and that was about it. People ran outside, of course, because that’s what people do. You aren’t supposed to run outside. My father’s Uncle Ralph died in an earthquake in Santa Barbara, California, in 1925, when he ran outside and was buried in bricks falling from the building. This is why you are not supposed to run outside.

This is also why I wouldn’t live in a brick house.

But never mind – no bricks hit anyone on Vashon, as far as I know. Some of the older brick buildings around the area did suffer damage, and cars were damaged by falling bricks.

The original Richter Scale has been upgraded for more accurate earthquake measurement, because it was originally designed for earthquakes in Southern California. It was supposed to be an objective measurement, but earthquakes are subjective experiences.

Let's just say that anything over a 6 is getting into major earthquake territory, and you will not enjoy it.  

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which had its epicenter in Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco, was traditionally rated as an 8.3 on the Richter scale. In recent years it has been downgraded to a 7.7-7.9 magnitude. A lot of the damage in San Francisco was caused more by the fires after the quake than the quake itself, except, of course, on fill land, which liquified when the quake hit. 

I'm not trying to make it sound nicer than it was by saying its numbers have been lowered. It was as bad as we have heard.

The October 1989 Loma Prieta quake was rated a 6.9, and perhaps you are old enough to remember the damage that caused - a section of the Bay Bridge collapsed, and the double-decker Nimitz Freeway in Oakland pancaked, killing people in their cars. Lots of buildings in San Francisco that had been built on fill land collapsed or sank, and there was fire in the Marina District. 

Santa Cruz and Watsonville were devastated by the quake. Many buildings collapsed or had to be bulldozed and both downtowns had to be rebuilt.

Again, the Loma Prieta Quake was not a San Andreas Fault quake. It was generated by a lesser fault in the San Andreas Zone. The epicenter was in the Nisene Marks Forest, east of Aptos. 

So the 1971 San Fernando Quake (6.6) and the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake (6.9) were big and did a lot of damage and killed people. But they were not Great Quakes. Neither was the Big One.

The 2011 Japan Tohoku Quake was rated a 9.0 to 9.1, the 2004 Aceh Banda Quake a 9.1, and the last Cascadia Subduction Zone Quake in 1700 - well, there was no Richter Scale in 1700, but those were all Great Quakes.  

(see: https://www.king5.com/article/weather/earthquakes/copalis-beach-ghost-forest-cascadia-subduction-zone-earthquake/281-045a5189-de8b-4e25-be36-8271bd4bbfa2)

So, yes, there will be Big Ones, from the Cascadia Subduction Zone and from the San Andreas Fault, and elsewhere, and those quakes will be scary and destructive and deadly.

So someone occasionally says, “Yoo hoo, big earthquake coming. Get prepared.” They are correct.

Big quakes are rare enough that we are lulled into complacency. Be ready. Stock up on drinking water and foods that don’t need to be cooked.

Have I done this preparation?

Oh, heck no. But writing this essay is motivating me to do so. As my mother used to tell us, do as I say, not as I do.

Anecdotes:

In the 1971 Sylmar quake, Dr. Richter, who devised the Richter Scale in 1934, and lived out in the vicinity of Cal Tech in Pasadena, said that his dishes rattled.

In the 1906 San Francisco Quake, springs dried up in Santa Cruz County. My father was born in 1912 and he heard stories from the old timers in Watsonville.

Also in the 1906 Quake – Malvina Reynolds was born in 1900 and her family lived in the Mission District in San Francisco. She told me that the chimney collapsed in their building, and her baby brother, in his crib, disappeared down the hole. Major panic! They found him, sitting on his mattress on a pile of rubble, safe and sound. If he’d been able to talk, he might have said, “Again!”

Books You Might Not Get to Read

Hello, children!

A young friend was reading one of the more obscure Oz books by L. Frank Baum to her son, and she came to a part, a character, which she considered racist. She stopped reading and set the book down.

When she talked about this, it made me reflect on how I was raised. No one ever did not read a book to me because it was racist.

I was at an estate sale here on the island a few years ago and saw a book titled “Little Brown Koko,” and I thought, wow! I had that book when I was little.

The book cover was bright blue, with a colorful picture on the front of Little Brown Koko and his Mammy (think  Aunt Jemima, or Hattie McDaniels in “Gone with the Wind”).

I picked the book up and began reading. Oh! Holy gazoly carp shucks! I could not believe my eyes. These stories were written in the clueless racist void of their time, by a woman named Blanche Seale Hunt. She wrote the Little Brown Koko stories for a radio show that ran through the 1930s until 1941. They were little morality tales for the (white) boys and girls. In my experience raising kids, the Berenstain Bears did a much better job of morality tales, for all boys and girls, as well as non-binary children, but don’t get me started.

Seeing that book 60 years down the road made me realize – again - how children my age and younger were and are raised with the bland acceptance of the racism which is the norm in our society.

That is why we white Americans are so dense about what is racist and what is not, and how hard it is to open our eyes to the things we took for granted in our understanding of life and our society.

If you asked us as children if we were racist, we would probably ask, what’s a racist?

Then we would say, oh, heck no. Don’t be silly.

Long story even longer, L. Frank Baum, who wrote the Oz books, was writing at a time (19th century) when racism was simply the way it was. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and then the Union had to win the Civil War to make it stick.

Rick’s Aunt Dodie wanted Rick to uproot the family and move us back to Ohio, where Rick and I and the kids would be close to his mother’s family. She was surprised when he told her he couldn’t move back to Ohio because of the racism there.

“But, Ricky, that’s just the way it is,” she said, and she was correct.

I don’t think Little Brown Koko is coming out in any new printings. Even most white people would understand why not.

Then there are the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, although I believe the Uncle Remus stories had a much wider circulation and more complex history than Little Brown Koko.

Those stories are based on African folklore that Harris first heard at Turnwold Plantation where he went to work at the age of fourteen. Harris spent his time off in the slave quarters. His background as an outsider - the illegitimate, red-headed son of an Irish immigrant – made him feel more connected and comfortable with the slaves. He absorbed the stories, language, and inflections of the slaves he knew there. Their stories later became the foundation and inspiration for Harris's Tales of Uncle Remus.

Thing is, Uncle Remus is a retired old slave telling stories in slave dialect to the rosy cheeked white children who lived in the big house. Uncle Remus’s stories of Brer Rabbit and the other animals – Brer Fox and Brer Bear - were Joel Chandler Harris’s attempt to preserve the African stories he had heard from the slaves.

His efforts are not appreciated now.

Walt Disney made a film, “The Song of the South,” of the Uncle Remus stories, and published comic books with Brer Rabbit, that wily trickster, which I read when I was a child.

The trickster is a common character in world folklore, but Brer Rabbit does not get much press anymore. Don’t look for “The Song of the South,” to be re-released anytime soon, or for anyone to do a cover of, “Zippity Doo Dah,” either, which is a darn catchy tune.

Times have changed, but based on what I’ve seen, I doubt there will ever be true equality of the races in America - not for a long, long time, anyway. Some people need to look down on other people to feel better about themselves.

I think that those of us who realize that we absorbed racism, and we are carriers, need to change what we can, as we can.

I am not saying that will be easy. We are such well-meaning, clueless people, most of us; but we are responsible for our beliefs and behaviors all the same. Dang, huh?