Missing texts

 It's going to take a long time before I don't miss being able to write to Char.  There were so many things I wanted to tell her about our trip to Santa Barbara, for example.

One thing was about granddaughter Brianna.  I haven't really seen her the last few times we have been to Santa Barbara.  As a teenager, she preferred to stay in her room upstairs than mingle with the visiting relatives.  So when I saw her on this trip, at first I didn't recognize her!  She looked so different (though in this picture there is no doubt that she is Tom's daughter!).  That made me feel sad because it meant that I had lost all connection to her (and she didn't talk to me at all this time around).  Char had such incredible relationships with her grandchildren and it made me sad that I don't have that.

The good thing, though, was that what with when we were in Santa Barbara in July, and on this trip, I had a good visit with Lacie, who previously had ignored me.  We had matching pants, for one thing (lol), we played cards and when I was leaving to go home, she ran outside to hug me.  Now THAT was a novelty and made me feel very good.

There were other things I wanted to share with Char, mostly how "old" I felt in Santa Barbara.  Knowing how she had been feeling prior to her death and the things she told me about how her body was failing, I wanted to share with her how I felt.

If I was lucky, I might have seen her twice a year in the past few years because we lived so far apart, so I won't miss seeing her, but I sure will miss our emails and texts.

Sunday Stealing

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. This feature originated and published on WTIT: The Blog. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves.

1. What do you hope your last words will be?
I love you.

2. What do you spend the most time thinking about?
This week it's my best friend, who died on Tuesday.

3. What is something you can never seem to finish?
Cleaning my office!

4. What mistake do you keep making again and again?
There is either a problem with my keyboard or my fingers.  I keep running words together.  I used to type 130 wpm; these days I'm lucky if it's 30 wpm, with all the corrections I have to make.

5. What’s the best thing you got from your parents?
I got my father's humor.  I wish I had gotten my mother's ability to be a hostess.  Probably I got my card playing fascination from her.

6. What’s the best and worst thing about getting older?
I don't know that there is a best thing about being in my 80s.  The worst is definitely the death of friends.

7. What do you wish your brain was better at doing?
Math

8. If your childhood had a smell, what would it be?
We lived halfway between the Ghirardelli chocolate factory (when they made chocolate there), and a coffee roasting company and I often went to school with the smell of mocha in the air.  I also love the smell of the mechanics of cable cars, which were a block from where I grew up and which I rode to school in high school.

9. What have you created that you are most proud of?
Other than my children, the book I wrote about The Lamplighters theater company.  I can look myself up in the Library of Congress.

10. What were some of the turning points in your life?
*leaving school and working for the Physics Department at UC Berkeley
* getting married
* having children
* hosting foreigners
* traveling
* volunteering with The Lamplighters

11. What song or artist do you like but rarely admit to liking?
I always admit to liking Judy Garland, less frequently liking John Denver

12. What small impact from a stranger made a big impact on you?
My son and I got a flat tire at night, driving home from San Francisco.  I tried to change the tire, but the car slipped off the jack.  We hoped for a police car to come along but found out later that it was miles away and would not have come near us for hours, but a car saw us, got off at the next stop, came back and picked us up (so scary getting into a stranger's car!) He took us to the nearest restaurant, gave me money to buy food for Paul and refused to give me his name so I could repay him.  It was definitely a play it forward moment for me. (this was before we had cell phones)

13. As you get older, what are you becoming more and more afraid of?
Well, dying, of course, but more becoming unable to function.  I am so lucky that our son lives with us!
These days, I am terrified that Trump will win the upcoming election.

14. What are some of the events in your life that made you who you are?
Definitely working with The Lamplighters.  Giving birth to 5 children.  Hosting 70 foreigners from 14 different countries.  Many of our travel experiences.  Working for the local newspaper for many years.

15. What could you do with $2 million to impact the most amount of people?
My sister-in-law and her husband have worked with a group to bring fresh water to places in Africa.  I think any opportunity to bring fresh water to an area would make the biggest impact.

Saturday 9

Welcome to Saturday 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme!

Saturday 9: Jolene (1973)

Unfamiliar with this week's song? Hear it here.

1) In this song, Dolly Parton sings about a woman with great hair, great eyes, a great smile and a great voice. OK, so Jolene has it all. Of these, which is your most attractive feature: your hair, your eyes, your smile or your voice?
It used to be my hair, and I guess it still is, though it's not as attractive as it used to be.

2) Dolly tells us her husband mentions in Jolene in his sleep. Do you talk in your sleep?
I don't know.  Nobody has ever told me I do and I don't stay awake to listen.

3) Dolly has said this song was inspired by a bank teller she caught flirting with her husband. That was in the 1970s. Today we can do our banking from our computers, our phones or a bank ATM. When is the last time you spoke to a banker?
A couple of years ago when we had Ned added to our account.

4) Dolly had a crush on Johnny Cash. When she was just a teen she saw him perform at The Grand Ole Opry and called it "love at first sight." Are you crushing on anyone right now?
No.

5) Dolly is more than a singer/songwriter. She's an industry! Her Dollywood is a theme park, water park, hotel and spa. Looking back on the summer of '24, did you visit a theme park, water park, hotel or spa?
No.

6) A luxury stay at Dollywood can get expensive, unless you're the teacher who wins this year's Chasing Rainbows Award from Dolly. She treats a deserving teacher to a week at Dollywood. Tell us about a teacher who made a difference in your life.
I've talked about Sister Anne before.  She was my typing teacher in my junior year in high school, but she became a friend for the rest of her life and our daughter is named after her.  At one point was going to enter the convent because of her, but she talked me out of it.  Sister Mary William put me on the yearbook staff and made me feel comfortable with my writing.

7) Dollywood is in Sevier County, TN. Her ties to the community are strong, and in 2007, Dolly raised the funds to build a new hospital that opened there in 2010. When you were last in a hospital, were you a patient or a visitor?
The last time was probably 3 years ago, when I had my gallbladder  removed.

8) In 1973, when "Jolene" was popular, Elvis' "Aloha from Hawaii" concert aired. "Aloha" is the native Hawaiian word used when greeting or parting. Can you say anything else in Hawaiian?
How about Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (a trigger fish).  There was a time many years ago when I wanted to learn Hawaiian, but I can't remember anything else now except mele kalikimaka, Merry Christmas

9) Random question: Have you more recently eaten cold pizza or cold fried chicken?
pizza

But she's still around

So we had clam dip for two days.

And then today, Jeri sent this... 

She made pumpkin pie.

A Facebook friend sent me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers.

Then on Jeopardy tonight was a question that Char would have needed to know and I would have written to her about it, about a pendulum, which Mike used to talk about.

Wheel of Fortune contestants this week are all best friends and each pair is talking about how they met and how close they are to each other.

Her daughter Tavie wrote a beautiful piece about her and included several photos on Facebook. 

All day I keep thinking of things I want to tell her and I had a hard time sleeping because I kept crying.

Clam dip

 Pumpkin pie, Mexican won ton and clam dip.  The foods I associate with Char.

I told the story of pumpkin pies yesterday.  Mexican won ton was a recipe we found on Sunset magazine.  It was a mixture of hamburger, sausage, cheese and various spices, and folded into Chinese won ton skins and deep fried.  You served it with guacamole.  It was a favorite whenever we went to any sort of social gathering...one or the other of us made it.  In fact, one of the reasons "Trifles from Tiny Tots," the cookbook we put together as a fund raiser for the kids' nursery school, was written was because so many people wanted the recipe for Mexican won ton.  We ended up putting all of our favorite recipes in it (as well as many recipes from other parents at the school) so we would have them all in one place.  It's one reason the cookbook is such a good one.

But it's clam dip that became the most popular hors d'oeuvre for our Pinata group get togethers.  One of us would make a big bowl of it, to be served with potato chips.  I made it with just cream cheese and minced clams, plus some of the juice from the clams.  I believe she may have added some other ingredients.  But we would put the big bowl out and immediately the kids gathered around.  I can't remember, in all honesty, if the boys ate more than the girls did, but we always told the boys not to "hover," meaning they could take a couple of chips with dip but then had to leave for a bit before they could take more.  The boys always complained that the girls got more than they did.

It seemed appropriate to see this on the kitchen counter this morning.

How better to remember Charlotte than with clam dip.  Ned made it and brought me a bowl of chips and dip at lunch  time.

The nice thing about eating clam dip and chips when you are alone is you can hover all you want.

Miss you, Char.

# # # # #

As I was writing this, I received news that Pat Lange, who taught Jeri how to play piano decades ago, has died.  We just saw her at a birthday party a month or so ago and she looked very sad the whole time.  She made a huge difference in our lives and in the lives of so many others.

My BFF

Charlotte has been my best friend for more than 60 years.  She died today and I'm not sure what I am going to do without her in my life.

I first met her when I moved into a dorm at UC Berkeley.  There were two dorms in one building.  I was in the smaller dorm, she was the grad resident of the larger dorm and I knew from the very beginning that she didn't like me and tried to avoid her.

Then I met her at the Newman Center, where I spent most of my time at Berkeley, and we became friends.  I lived with her and Mike for about a year when I was trying to pay some bills.  I shared a bedroom with baby Tavie, who woke me up every morning, jumping up in her crib and laughing at me.  I would take her to Mike and Char's bedroom and then get dressed for work...when I walked down the hall to the front door, the cat grabbed my legs and gave me runs in my stockings (he gave me stockings for Christmas)

When she and Mike moved to Alaska with two toddlers, I wrote to her every day.  They were living in a log cabin in the winter (it was -50 degrees the day she landed in Fairbanks...she was born and raised in San Francisco).  She told me later it was my letters that got her through that winter.

We each had five kids.  Her two oldest were born before Walt and I got married, but Jeri and her Jenny were about  6 weeks apart in age.  We raised our kids together, lived near each other, watched the same soap operas, went to the same nursery school and grammar school until we moved to Davis and they moved to Palo Alto.  Ned and I were talking tonight about how this isn't two families, but one family.  In fact, while her daughter Jenny texted me about Char's death, I learned about it first from Ned, who heard from her son Tim.  Later Jeri told me she had spoken with Jenny.  

Char and I did all sorts of things together.  We learned how to make candles and filled her kitchen with wax.  We learned how to make bread and spent a lot of time testing out different flours (and learned to cook with sourdough starter).  We went together to get Christmas trees and found two wonderful, full trees and then realized that we had no way to tie them to her Saab so we managed to squeeze them into the car, and I rode covered by tree branches.  

But our best experience involved pumpkins.  We took the kids to a pumpkin patch to get pumpkins for Halloween and when the holiday was over, Char and I decided to use the pumpkins and make pumpkin pies.  We did that for two or three years.  I was the crust, she was the filling and since neither of us had a freezer. we just gave them to neighbors and friends.

The third year we made 32 pies and Char said she felt so silly she would let me toss a pie in her face.  We gathered friends with a camera and staged a chase around the house, ending with my tossing a pie in her face (the dog loved it).  When it was over she said "you know what this means for next year..." 

The next year, I greeted her in rain gear, preparing to have a pie thrown in my face.  We did the same thing after we made our pies, only this time I was the one who got the pie in the face.

For two years, our kids had been watching their mothers and they demanded to have pies to throw at each other.  So the next year, we got little pie pans, made 9 little pies (her youngest was too young; David was 9 months old) and the kids filed out of the house with their pies and began tossing them at each other.  The longer it went on the better it got and there is a movie about it on YouTube.  (It was an 8 mm movie, which I videotaped so the sound you hear is the sound of the people watching the movie)

(Jeri said tonight she felt like making a pumpkin pie)

We were part of a group that eventually became known as the Pinata Group.  Five couples who met and married at Newman Hall, who all had kids and lived fairly close to each other.  We never had New Year's Eve parties, but wanted the kids (22 of them) involved and so we had New Year's day parties, and always had a pinata for the kids.  They lined up, youngest to oldest and the pinatas continued well into their adulthood, with the kids (now adults) still lining up as they did for so many years.

Our families did a lot of camping together.  Mike hated paved roads and we went an entire 3 day weekend over Memorial Day one year without seeing another car, visiting ghosts towns.  We both decided when we finally got to a road we would get out and kiss it.  At the end of one of these tours, we went to a Scottish festival.  Mike drove into the parking area first and the guy at the gate told Walt to "follow that car."  Walt said he'd been following that car for days.

We spent time camping in Death Valley.  One year we were there over Easter and had lamb fondu for dinner, since we couldn't have leg of lamb.  That was probably the year that the wind knocked our tent over and we moved the kids to Char and Mike's tent while Walt and I slept in the car.  In the morning one of the girls asked Walt why he had knocked his tent over with rocks (he had weighted the tent so it wouldn't blow away).

We did a lot of camping on "Eric's property," some land owned by our friends the Havels.  Tim discovered there were huckleberry bushes and we spent a lot of time over several years picking huckleberries.  At night, Char slept with her sourdough starter in the tent so she could make sourdough huckleberry pancakes for breakfast in the morning.

When the kids grew up, Char suggested the four of us take a cruise on the river in England and we went on a small boat (8 passengers in two different boats) from London to Oxford.  It was such fun that the next year she suggested that we take a normal cruise on the river in Russia.  We went on Viking cruises and that started out annual cruises.  Russia, China, Ukraine, the Danube.  We were going to take a cruise down to the south of France and we were meeting Char and Mike in Paris after they took a cruise in Germany first, but Mike got sick and ended up dying in Germany.

Following Mike's death, we took our only ocean cruise, up the Mediterranean.  Viking let Char travel alone.

We haven't seen a lot of each other in recent years.  We live 100 miles apart and when we want to visit, we meet at Fentons creamery where we have crab salad sandwiches and malts.  In fact, the last time I saw her was in May, when Jeri surprised me by taking me to Fentons, and arranging for Char and the girls to meet us there.

After Ned was in an auto accident and needed to buy a new car, she offered  to sell him her Prius for $10.00.  He wanted us to all go down and have lunch, but she wasn't feeling well and didn't feel like socializing, so he and Marta went and got the car.

Shortly after that started a bunch of doctor visits which ended up with a diagnosis of cancer.  She opted not to have chemo (we had discussed that before.  We both agreed that at our age, to go through the discomfort of chemo just to prolong our life was not something either of us wanted to do).  But the cancer progressed quickly.

I could tell how she was doing by whether she did Wordle in the morning or not.  She has not done Wordle in the last two days and I knew that time was coming to an end.

In the days before her death, she was able to see all her kids (son Tim flew out from Maryland), her grandkids and great grandkids and her death, Jenny tells me, was painless.

She has been such a huge part of my life for most of my life and I am going to have a difficult time learning to live without her.

I loved her, and I never actually told her that until she got sick.

Maybe we'll have clam dip tomorrow.

Time to go home

 Ned had convinced Walt to spend an extra few days in Santa Barbara and return home by train, so he (Ned), Marta and I took off around 10 a.m. to head home. 

We got a late breakfast/early lunch at a drive thru and then Ned decided we should go home through San Francisco, since I hadn't been there in so long.  What a wonderful surprise that was!

The city has changed so much since the last time I was there.  I don't have a clue what this building is, but I liked it so much I had to take a picture.

 And then we were on to the bridge, across it, and headed home.

We got here in time to feed Bubba, who was very happy to see us home again, though seemed confused that Walt wasn't with us.

Take-out Mexican food and then a nice night of sleep.  It was a good, long weekend, but we had such a wonderful time.

I read two whole books on this trip, one on the way down and one on the way back, plus some of the book Jeri and I are reading together while there (but I'm too far ahead of her so I have to stop reading that book until she catches up)

(it was over 100 when we got home)