Author: dallanz

Recollections: Balloon

A balloon, a piano, a grandfather clock, and a blonde.

One of my dad’s regular customers was a gentleman confusingly named Gain John. He and his family lived in the neighboring city of Palo Alto. Every now and then the Johns would invite us to dinner. Theirs was a large kitchen so we supped informally. I don’t recall if they had a dining room, or if we were in the kitchen by virtue of a perceived level of comfort with each other’s company. Mrs. John, whose first name I forget, had a nice collection of Revere Ware pans hanging on the wall, all their copper bottoms gleaming without stain or spot. My mother never failed to mention them on the way home; to her they represented an impossible dream.

At that point the Johns had only one child, a girl of maybe four or five, blond and sweet. I was a wisened ten years by then, and being an only child, took to her as I would a little sister. One I adored and wanted to nourish.

The street they lived on was narrow and woodsy, there was a grey picket fence, a long winding walk through a tree-filled garden to a kind of external hall that led into an irregularly shaped office to the right, and to an impressively Julia Morganesque front door. The living room was large. To the left was a sunroom packed with plants. Straight ahead, a baby grand piano. Next to the fireplace to the right, an elaborate grandfather clock with what seemed like a dozen dials that colorfully measured various astronomical events. The floor was covered with a thick Persian rug. Their home was as unlike anything in our family as I could imagine.

So, into the aftermath of one of those kitchen dinners appeared a balloon. And before long, four adults and two children were standing on that beautiful carpet and batting the balloon in a circle. I made a special effort to send it at little girl height so she would be a part of our sport. The adults did the same for me. It was like a dream. When we played games in our family, there were rules, or horseshoes, or fake roulette wheels, and there was lots of vocalizing; shouts of surprise, victory cheering, bad luck groaning. That night at the Johns’ there was the pong of a passed balloon and an occasional murmur. And we were all one society, ages four, ten, forty-something, and fifty-something. I held onto that memory like a precious gemstone.

One evening in 2005 while I was on loan from Scranton, my mother and I, bored with what broadcast media had to offer, began to randomly reminisce. The Night of the Bouncing Balloon came up. Well, to be sure, she had no recollection of it at all, but she remembered Gain John, and how she was always reversing his name in my father’s ledger book when she recorded bills and payments. I described their house. She remembered that, too, though not quite as vividly as I did. She also remembered the Revere Ware, but denied any emotional crisis around its immaculate display.

“Where was that house, exactly?” I asked.

“I have the address somewhere,” as she pushed herself out of her rocker and shuffled to the breakfast room-made office. In a deep drawer she had every address book she’d kept for sixty years.

“That would have been 1960?”

And so it was found.

“Let’s go look them up,” my mother enthused.

“Well, we could drive past, see if the house is still there.”

“And if it is, we’ll stop in and say hello.”

“What if they sold the place? They probably have. I doubt anyone we know is still living there. And what if they don’t remember us? And why should they.”

“We’ll go tomorrow morning.”

And so we did. I drove her Toyota to the discovered address. The house was on a corner, as I remembered it, and obscured by trees, but it lay only a dozen feet off the widened highway, and there was a semi-circular driveway that went from side street to main road. 

“Turn here.”

“Why?”

“So we can see it better.”

I did.

“Now go into the driveway.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not? We’ve come this far, we can’t just drive past.”

“We’ll drive in and look.”

We did.

“That’s the place alright. I remember that little hall that led to the front door. And inside was a sunroom, and a piano, and a grandfather clock. Well, we’ve had our look, better get out before they call the cops.”

I started to pull slowly away, and Mom had her door open and was ready at 94 to leap out of a moving vehicle rather than to have her curiosity curtailed.

“Okay, we’ll go in…” but my suggestion came late as she was already halfway to the front door.

I sprinted ahead, knocked, and grimaced.

A woman, blond, about six years younger than I, opened the door.

“We were just driving by and thought it would be nice to say hello. I’m Ann Zarko, and this is my son David.”

I stammered apologetically and waved.

“Oh, yes,” said the woman, “Mr. Zarko was Dad’s mechanic.”

We were invited in. The sunroom was there, but no plants. The piano was there, too, and in about the same position. The grandfather clock had been moved, and the Persian replaced with something from the 1970’s.

“Are you here for the memorial?”

We responded blankly.

“Oh, today was Dad’s memorial. He died three weeks ago. We’re just back from a celebration of his life. It was lovely.”

“We just showed up,” and I told her why and how. We stayed an hour.

Photo: This may actually be the house, which would be a hugely lucky search.

Recollections: Snow

As a lad I was quite dedicated to the Blessed Mother. Even though I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, I still experience a devotion to her, it’s just different now.

My parents rarely went to a social function without me, and when they did, it rarely lasted beyond my bedtime, so a sitter, usually from the family, would be all that was necessary. On January 20, 1962 my parents went somewhere unusual or far away, I guess, and I was invited to spend the night with Aunt Marian and Uncle Bill. When I spent overnight time with relatives, it was almost always with Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack, so this was special. 

Their house was also special – or maybe all houses are when you’re a kid. It was a sprawling “U” shape of Marian’s design that embraced a courtyard with a brick barbecue and a hanging light fixture made from an old wagon wheel. There was a large living room with a grand stone fireplace and a picture window, an ample dining room, and a huge eat-in kitchen. The master bedroom was in front (the house was generously set back from the street) while Shirley and Linda’s bedroom was in back, and included a number of really cool builtins. My cousins were living on their own by then, so I got to stay in their room. I can still remember Marian tucking me in that night. I can still remember how happy I was to be there. And I can still remember praying to Mother Mary for snow. 

What prompted that particular plea, I don’t know for certain, though I do have a dim memory of Marian (who hailed from Indiana and knew about such things) saying to my folks as they departed on the front porch that the air felt like snow. But everyone had laughed, so that I took it at all seriously… Well, maybe it was just the idea; staying over in a special place, then to wake the next morning to a winter snowscape, well that would be just fine.

And so I prayed like I’d never prayed before that it would snow. In Sunnyvale, California that had not seen snow in thirty years.

I woke early, just as light was beginning to glow. The color of the dawn seeping through the shades was distinctive, odd, exciting. My pulse picked up. I wondered if anyone else were awake. Should I go into the living room, see what lay beyond the picture window? Would that disturb anyone? If my prayer had been answered, would it matter if I woke the rest of the household? I mean, that would be a very big deal. 

I was still debating the ethics of a guest being the one to herald the day, when my aunt cracked the door open.

“Are you awake?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, you might want to get up, now. There’s a surprise.”

I bounded out of bed and into my robe and probably almost knocked Marian over in the hall as I ran to look outside. There it was. Their vast lawn was a sea of sparkling white. The trees looked like a Christmas card. The street was still pure and untrammeled.

“Call Mommy and Daddy!”

“They called me. Your mother likes to be up early. She thought you’d want to see this.”

I crossed myself a dozen times once Marian left for the kitchen (she was Congregationalist, I wasn’t sure she would understand). 

Uncle Bill was already outside, sweeping down the driveway so when my folks got there, they’d have a place to park. Marian made hot chocolate. That morning was, like, the best a kid could ask for. 

Marian and Bill took regular trips – well, to all over the world, but that’s a future story – to Lake Tahoe, so even though Bill was a Sunnyvale boy, he knew about driving in icy conditions and such. For Mom and Dad it was the first time for snow since 1932.

I’ve since lived in the northeastern United States, lived there for thirty years. I imagine myself as being over the thrill of snow, though – especially from inside a warm house – I must admit it as one of the most extravagant events nature has to offer. And it’s good to remember being a kid, and what it was like for a meteorological anomaly to be so extraordinarily exhilarating.

We drove all over town. Everything was transformed. Marian pointed out houses with melted patches on their roofs. Their occupants were up and stirring; they had turned on the heat.

“Now see, how wonderful it is to have someone with us with experience of snow,” cooed my mother. Marian was a teacher, and a good one, too. Mom could not have issued a better invitation. We were, from that point, regaled with stories of horse-drawn sleighs and of skating on frozen ponds back in Indiana. The magic for this boy was thick.

It was still early when my folks and I got home. We lived across from the city hall, a modern complex of handsome, shed-like buildings surrounded by artificial hills and valleys of lawn. Snow sat untouched on all of it, except for one set of footprints that ran up the steepest hill and down again at an angle.

“Maryanne.”

Our neighbor’s granddaughter was about my age. We were old friends, and I liked her a lot. But she was so infuriatingly impulsive. Could she not have waited a few hours at least before she marred the pristine beauty of our view?

An hour later we were both on that lawn throwing snowballs at each other.

Photo: snow at the Lopin ranch, 1932

Recollections: Leftovers Friday

Even though Grandpa and Grandma Lucas were not blood relatives, it was clear to me as a child how they fit into the family. They were my cousins’ actual grandparents, on loan. How Aunt Alice and Uncle Bert figured into the family was more mysterious, and still is. They were perhaps Aunt and Uncle to my Aunt Marian, therefore Alice may have been Mattie Lucas’s sister. I’m really shooting in the dark, here. But I felt pretty much the same about them as the Lucas’s; you can never have too many uncles and aunts.

Bert and Alice lived on the same block as we did, only on the other side. We walked down South Mathilda to Olive Street, turned right, and their house was on the corner of Taaffe. (I say walked, but despite the tiny distance, we often drove.)

I loved that house. It was a California Mission bungalow, all rough troweled plaster and terra cotta roof. You entered from a small porch into the living room with a rustic fireplace. Directly opposite the entrance, a wide arch presented the dining room, which had windows along its back wall. They opened onto a patio and a walled garden filled with fuchsias. To the left of the dining room was Bert’s drafting studio; more windows, tiled floors, and a drafting table full of t-squares, triangles, Koh-i-nor pens, sharpeners, scale rulers, and velum. That room led onto a patio. To the right of the dining room was a long, narrow kitchen. There was a fancy-painted breakfast nook at the near end. Alice’s stove was several shades of green enamel, and had control knobs that were somehow in the shape of a pendant. (Don’t ask me how, it’s a memory.) Through the kitchen you could go down a set of aromatic wooden stairs to the basement where the men would gather for billiards.

It was a magical house.

I don’t remember having spent an actual holiday at Bert and Alice’s. But for some span of years, the family celebrated Leftovers Friday, when we gathered again to finish off what we were too stuffed to eat on Thanksgiving. It was better than being stuck with a refrigerator of whatever it was we had provided for the actual feast, like four Tupperware containers of mashed yams. It allowed us to continue to enjoy a varied table in each other’s company. At least a couple of these day-afters were held at Bert and Alice’s, and I remember them being more convivial than the holiday itself. Some of the adults were there on lunch hour — extended to allow for pumpkin pie — and were delighted with the break in routine. The style of service was decidedly tin-foil and wax paper, so everyone was more relaxed. If the white meat was a bit on the dry side, we all knew it already, no one had to point it out, and no one had to be embarrassed about it either.

One year when I was seven or eight, Bert had — for reasons forgotten — set up a public address system. The speakers were in the dining room, the microphone in the front bedroom. He said a few words of welcome, everyone laughed, and some of the curious went up to examine the source. I was not among the curious. It seems that I’d heard the voice, paid little attention to the words, and assumed someone had turned on the radio. I wanted Dad to take me downstairs for a game of eight ball.

It was often on a Tuesday when there was nothing worth watching on TV.

Uncle Bill would show up unannounced, and tease my father into doing his day-end bookwork a bit later than usual so we could go over to Bert’s for pool. I don’t know how Dad spared the time. His billings could take more than an hour, he seldom got home before 7:00, and was in bed by 10:30. But two or three times a month he agreed to join his brother for billiards.

There was a rotating group of regulars, and my uncle could always scare up one of them to round the group out to a regulation four; he and my dad, Bert, and another guy from the neighborhood. They played the real thing, billiards with two white balls and a red, cushion shots, elegant set ups, arcane terminology. There were pictures on the walls of dogs playing poker, of sylphs standing prettily in a bosky glade, of an old woman and her butcher weighing a chicken, both disrupting the scale in their favor. The men swore. My father almost always won. His background as a machinist fit nicely into the precision of the game.

After a few rounds with his friends, or if a second neighbor showed up to crowd him out, he’d come over to the pocket billiards table, colloquially known as pool, and combination play and teach me through several games. These were good tables – slate beds, oak gutters, thickly felted cushions. The balls made a wonderfully satisfying rumble as they returned from their pockets to the rack at table’s end.

That’s where I wanted to go while we waited for leftovers to be heated and served. But Dad enticed me to take a look at the microphone in the front bedroom. Bert followed. It was a splendid thing, this microphone; chrome and shining, hefty and complex. Bert turned on the amp and tested the mic with a tap.

“Say something.”

I was too shy.

“Try it. Have you never used a microphone before?”

“No,” I mumbled into my sweater.

“Well, I’ll leave it on in case you get the urge.”

I followed them back to the dining room. Not a word was uttered about pool or the basement. A few minutes later I gave in to the call of fate and retraced my steps to the microphone.

“Hello.” My voice boomed back at me from twenty feet away in a most satisfactory manner. “Hello to everyone in the dining room.” That got a laugh. This felt dangerous. “And welcome to Leftover Thanksgiving hosted today by our favorite aunt and uncle, Alice and Bert! Let’s hear a round of applause!” They clapped. My future as a striving theatre professional was sealed in that moment. 

I have been justly accused of extending pre-show curtain speeches past the useful limit while functioning as artistic director at one theatre or the other. It was an indulgence with roots in that microphone.

I couldn’t stop talking. I listed names of family and their imagined responsibilities for the day. I reviewed the dishes on order, complimented the cooks, anticipated who would have to leave early and who would get stuck with washing up. Who would get to take home the leftover, leftover stuffing.

After several minutes of my imagining a happily amused audience, rapt at my wit and sophistication, my father crept in.

“Just going to adjust the volume, here,” he said, masking the amp with his body.

“Not loud enough?”

“Something like that.”

He returned to the table, I kept right on going. Uncle Bill had to interrupt to let me know that I was missing the turkey. I imagined glowing faces and an enthusiastic welcome, the way you saw an audience greet its adored master of ceremonies on television.

There was none of that. Everyone was eating, laughing, talking. My cousin Shirley patted the chair next to her. My plate was already filled.

Photo: Bert is seated center, Alice is standing behind him.

Recollections: A Gift of Memories

My dear friend Erika, an American who married Italian and has been living in Orvieto since 1958, lately observed that Christmas gifts are bulky and hard to carry while juggling a cane and a dog. This year, she would give memories. Memories grow more abundant with every passing week, and as I am now of the generation that lives on the far fringes of its living memories, there are plenty of gifts to go around.

When it was my grandparents who represented the farthest reaches of living memory, they recalled high-button shoes and handlebar mustaches. My generation reaches back to colorfully striped bell-bottom trousers and, well — handlebar mustaches. There is a circularity in play regarding youth fashion.

Before they fade, I’m wrapping the memories that are still crisp and giving them forth as offerings for the winter holidays. The specific holiday is not, to me, all that important, so only some of the memories will be holiday related. That we gathered to celebrate our family in our family’s way is what ties me to these recollections, and, I hope, will stir reflective memories of your family’s way, in turn.

Let’s begin with Christmas, specifically my fifth Christmas Eve. I was the youngest among us, so it was deemed that I should be the one to personally meet Santa Claus.

Being only four, I didn’t have a lot to draw on as to what was or was not traditional, but the family gathered at my parents’ house that year – 1953 – the only time I can bring to mind that we were not at Aunt Marian and Uncle Bill’s. Even with little knowledge of precedent, I remember being excited that we were hosting the festivities.

What I don’t recall, but would bet was traditionally observed, was the pre-gift giving meal at my grandmother Zarko’s. The ancestral estate was a seven-room farmhouse build in about 1908. It smelled of garlic year around, of quince candy during the winter months, and of Croatian strudel with apples and apricots in late fall. The Christmas Eve smell was boiled cod. 

I don’t remember there ever being Christmas decorations or a tree, there was no room. There was a radio the size of a refrigerator, a pump organ that no one knew how to play, a glass-fronted hutch filled with china extracted from boxes of detergent. There were butter-block chairs and a matching settee upholstered in crackling black leather and stuffed with horsehair on top of spiky, creaky springs. The kitchen was dominated by a round oak pedestal table that my mother had found somewhere for five dollars, and which she brought home – my folks lived with my grandmother in those days – in the rumble seat of her Model A Ford. Warming the kitchen was a combination wood and gas burning stove with a special tank for hot water. The phone in the hall had a call button that you pushed to gain an operator’s attention so you could vocally tell her the number of the person you wanted to reach, or if you couldn’t remember the number, the name.

On a back porch that always felt like it was about to slide into the vegetable garden, was a squat, black cast-iron wood stove, the oven door graced by a white porcelain panel that showed the temperature with a black needle, and a little mica-glazed window. The other half of the porch was glassed-in and home to a perplexing array of coleus plants, spilling over their shelves and onto the floor. There was always a gallon tin of extra virgin olive oil sitting on an oil-saturated side table, a hole poked into its lid that was stopped up with a twig. As a kid I imagined the twig was, logically, from an olive tree — but probably not.

Perhaps because they had lived there for so long, my parents always entered the house through the back porch. Everyone else used the front door, a narrow panel precariously placed at the top of four narrow steps that sported no handrail. The screen door opened out. For every festive occasion, lives were risked just to attend dinner.

And every Christmas Eve and Good Friday, Grandma Zarko cooked dried cod. And at every codfish dinner, my Uncle Bill would quip that to make the stuff eatable required dragging it behind a tractor for two hours, soaking it in acid, pounding it with a hammer, and boiling it overnight. He was exaggerating, but only slightly.

The meal Grandma Zarko always prepared was by design, tradition, or coincidence, blindingly white. There was the codfish stew with white onions followed by a plate of mashed potatoes, white cabbage, and cauliflower, garnished with a slice of Swiss cheese. Everything was saturated with garlic, sopped up with white bread, and washed down with your choice of white wine or white apple juice. The meal was served on white soap-box china on a white linen table cloth. We tidied our lips with white cloth napkins. For dessert, fried dough in various forms represented color for the evening, as it was all a shade towards ivory, but just to make sure it didn’t offend the overall scheme, it was dusted with powdered sugar.

After dinner everyone would go to Aunt Marian and Uncle Bill’s to open presents, drink wassail and egg nog, and marvel at the decorations. Except in 1953.

Now most kids have only two sets of grandparents. I was lucky. I had three. There was my widowed Grandma Zarko, my mother’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Lopin, and Aunt Marian’s parents, Jess and Mattie Lucas, who I got to call Grandma and Grandpa, even though they were not blood relatives, and strictly speaking, not even related by marriage. But you cannot have too many grandparents, and I was a kid and couldn’t have cared less about strictly speaking.

It was decided in an adult pre-Christmas convocation, that if they were to pre-empt my asking what happens when Santa Claus dies, they had better do it when I was four. I might be too clever to sustain a belief in the Old Elf until I was six or seven. So it was that Santa Himself appeared in our living room that Christmas Eve in 1953, and in front of the whole family, not just to score a plate of cookies while everyone was asleep. Well, almost the whole family was there. Grandpa Lucas missed it completely! But I told him all about it when he got back.

One night, a year and a half later, I lay in bed wondering, and finally called to my mother to ask the burning question; what happens when Santa Claus dies? Does somebody elect a new one? Sort of like the Pope? My mother gently revealed the truth. I found it not at all calamitous. But I did have one question. If Santa Claus is made-up, who was it came to visit Christmas before last? She told me. 

“Oh!” said I, “I wondered how come he was wearing a mask…”

“If you asked, I was going to say; it’s cold in the North Pole.”

“…and how come he had Grandpa Lucas’s watch on!”

Photo: Linda, me, and Shirley — cousins.

Distant Flame

I’ve been writing these posts – lockdown, post-lockdown, personal lockdown – in part to keep in touch with friends, in part to create a record, in part to process my thoughts during difficult times. My abilities to process and sort are presently challenged almost to the point of paralysis. I want to hear from all my friends and relatives in California, now and every fifteen minutes until the fires are gone. There are devastating flames in communities I have held dear for a lifetime. I am thousands of miles away, isolated with a leg I can’t yet walk on, and connected tenuously through Facebook and email to friends I cannot receive assurances from on demand.

I just watched the morning briefing on the fires in Santa Cruz County’s San Lorenzo Valley, and am flooded with admiration. And am fighting profound feelings of helplessness. I can only imagine how much more profound those feelings must be when the material aspects of your life are in danger of incineration.

“Don’t try to take things into your own hands,” the people who gave the briefing said repeatedly. “Every rescue we have to undertake removes personnel from the front lines. We know your urge to help is well-intentioned – to assist your family, your neighbors, your community – but in this instance you need to step back, and wait.”

A friend whose home may be in harm’s way posted photos some brave soul took of the fires in Bonny Doon. They are devastating, especially when one superimposes those charred, burning images with the green summer-filled pictures in your mind. That not every photo was of a solid wall of conflagration, that they included a single firefighter spraying down a fence, was oddly heartening. But the image that brought tears was of what had been someone’s lovingly constructed patio, stones beautifully set with perfect care, a stone fire pit still in place – all surrounded by ash.

Big Basin, I hear, is destroyed. Surely not all the great trees — redwoods are hearty resisters of flame — but the structures that identified it as a park are gone. The redwoods will begin to rejuvenate as soon as they can reach moisture. We will not see the park we knew, again, but something wondrous will soon begin to rise. It is the way of forests. The people whose stewardship our enjoyment of the place depends upon will minister in trailers and prefabs for a few years, then slowly the facilities will catch up with the trees. And we who knew it pre-fire will share our photos and our memories until reality surpasses them. The last great fire to devastate the area was 110 years ago. My mother and her family where hiking and picking berries as soon as ten years later.

But a human community can be more fragile, less inclined to grow back so spontaneously. Human roots are different – they can be moved. There will be insurance claims, financing, emotional destruction, huge adjustments to be decided upon. And even if no more homes are lost, this week marks the end of something for those directly affected. It is the same uncertainty as accompanies the pandemic, come closer still. Even these thousands of miles away, I feel changed by the fires, more fragile, less willing to trust the material world.

In the midst of these unknowables, I still hear humor (which floods my heart with joy) and courage. I hear people just dealing with what must be done, open to the future and hoping for the best. There is some relief in natural disaster when compared to war or oppression. The pain it inflicts is beyond our capacities to prevent, but the response it engenders can embody the best that human nature has to offer. Barriers drop, hands reach out, communities are restored.

It is also natural for the human personality to want definitive endings. Movies and books and plays end with a satisfying emotional or intellectual charge, even with a plot not completely resolved. The human experience needs punctuation, resting tones, and pauses for us even to begin to understand it. The most difficult times are those that leave too many open questions stacked on top of one another. We live in difficult times, and need to learn to blend helpfulness with waiting. That is not an easy thing to do.

Big Basin Memories

Big Basin State Park in California. San Lorenzo Valley. The redwoods.

Open my mother’s photo album, there will be dozens of black and white photos of picnics and hikes among old-growth redwoods, edges ragged in the style of the day. A few pages deeper, the photos are in faded, bluish color of me and my friends with our proudly fashioned hiking sticks, or of hands outstretched with offerings of oats to not-very-timid deer. When I lived in Santa Cruz County as a young man, guests were always offered a few hours, at least, in Big Basin. It is one of my favorite spots, anywhere – a lush haven, a forest retreat, a living link with an unimaginably distant past.

Fires are burning now, up and down the San Lorenzo Valley. The houses of many friends are in danger. The fires have consumed me. I check for news far more often than it can be reported. It is a disaster for tens of thousands, and a heartbreak for thousands more whose loving memories are rooted in those mountains.

My mother’s memories included regular trips to the Park. Her father would hitch the horse to their buggy, and they would set off on a full day’s journey – five kids, a few neighbors, and supplies for a week’s stay. They reserved cottages, met up with friends from other areas, hiked, waded in ponds, and picked huckleberries. My grandmother brought her portable oven to put over a campfire so she could turn the berries into berry pie. Later, when the family was able to afford an automobile, jaunts became shorter and more frequent, but even as my grandparents grew frail, they continued to make day trips to the splendid wood.

Sometime in my infancy, my journeys blended with theirs. I don’t recall my earliest times there, but I know that by the age of seven I had memorized the official map of hiking trails – Waddell Creek, Redwood Loop, Sempervirens Trail – and every visit was planned for the walks I would coax my relatives into conquering. Sometimes we’d rent cottages, sometimes we’d leave just before dawn and hike until a half hour before sunset. The smells, textures, the presence of the trees, were wonderful, the hot sun, the tangled roots, the fungi, rotting wood, small wildlife, and flowing waters were my beloved teachers.

The day when the morning news on the car radio was obsessed with Marylin Monroe’s passing – Norma Jean – we were on our way to Big Basin. Green mosses, huge ferns, and the smell of laurel acted as counterpoint to a strangely personal grief that sprung not from the death of an icon, rather more from the sadness of her life. Of her victimhood. Yes, we knew, even then. Even at that age.

Looking back, it seems that every other summer week was punctuated by a trip to Big Basin or further south, into San Lorenzo Valley. My mother discovered an excursion railway called Roaring Camp, just shy of Felton, and was convinced by the charming conductor with the white mustache to buy a couple of thousand shares of stock. They had big dreams – a frontier village at the depot end, and a climb up Bear Mountain where a nineteenth century style resort hotel would await, all traditions of that picturesque era firmly in place. It captured my love of history and histrionics, and I encouraged the investment.

Friends of the family had weekend cottages in Boulder Creek, Brackney, Felton, and Brookdale. We were frequently invited. My uncle bought a lot near Bear Creek and intended to build a cottage there, but found out too late that the lots were zoned by the association for proper houses, not cottages. He was a master carpenter whose intention it was to build himself, and his regular job only allowed time for a cottage. Still, we’d go to his empty lot for picnics several times a summer, just for the air. That is where he taught me how to safely scale a muddy incline.

In my senior year of college I traveled north from Tucson with friends to audition for American Conservatory’s summer program. Somehow, we met up with other students and I convinced them to spend a day hiking the redwoods. Grounded in musical theatre, the grove rang with their renditions of show tunes. After college I lived for an off-season in a vacation hut near Felton, and later in a former vacation lodge in neighboring Mount Herman. All during my dozen or so years in the area, there were friends and activities to draw me into the redwoods. They capture you, make you promise to return.

About ten years ago, two of my dearest friends sold their townhouse in foggy Aptos and bought a rather typical split-level in chaparral-surrounded Ben Lomond. They turned the bland house into a California classic, and coaxed a lush garden to grow on the sandhill of their backyard. I was there when they moved in, and they have been gracious in their hospitality ever since. I can explore the shapes and feelings of their home in my mind, like the house I grew up in; thick with good memories.

This morning I woke to a post that my Ben Lomond friends had been evacuated. The twenty thousand acres ablaze yesterday had turned into forty thousand overnight.

Memories on hold, I pray for rain, no wind, and skilled firefighters.

Sideshow – Time on My Feet

Today something changed. Maybe because the leg is healing after the surgery to mend my left Achilli’s tendon, it is able to find a more comfortable position, and other parts of the body have adjusted into positions that allow me to write without screaming every five minutes. Maybe I am screamingly bored, cannot read the news or scroll down Facebook anymore, and those intolerances have necessarily pushed me beyond a barrier. 

I have slept enough in the past three weeks to satisfy my needs for the next year. There is nothing wrong with me that wouldn’t be made better by a brisk walk. Walking from room to room on crutches (but only when I have to) has actually seemed like exercise. 

Am I complaining? A little. Yet, I’m only three weeks into this. I have friends who have been through far worse for far longer as partial payment for a new knee. For instance. I never appreciated what they endured, what patience it takes, what stability of character. What support from others.

A few days ago, I think – time slides around like Jell-o on a warm plate, even more so than during lockdown – I discovered a site that offers free, public domain, audio books. You know, all the greats of English and American literature. This was good, for reading has been even more impossible than writing, and for all the same reasons. I’d never read A Tale of Two Cities, so I chose that as a project. I got through most of Book Two by yesterday, but so far today cannot face it again. Too much like the news, only darker. All windows are grimy, most of the players are desperate, the ruling class is cluelessly self-involved and heedlessly cruel, the poor too many and terribly ground down, the finely drawn characters often repellant. Okay, almost exactly like the news. I’m taking a break.

I’ve tried writing before during this recuperation. First failures reference the aforementioned physical discomforts. Even as those became, at least in my imagination, surmountable, an acceptable opening sentence would not present itself. They all whined and contained too many first person pronouns. Writing about experiences in lockdown was still to record a communal event, even in my solitude. This personal lockdown of recovery affects mostly me, and the kind souls – Erika first among them – who have been solicitous of my well-being and comfort. Whining feels unappreciative. In fact, it is a bit unappreciative. And as I am strongly appreciative, I don’t want to leave a contrary impression. But I am not a happy sitter even in the best of times, and while these are not the worst of times except to my restless legs and over-used buttocks, one does get bored and a little hysterical when the clock tells us that the interminable day is not yet half wasted.

I feel for prisoners of all epochs. Wonder at the anchorite. Am made humble by the hermit. Have great empathy for the bed-ridden and isolated. It is not how we are made, to be this sedentary and apart from community. It takes a great measure of letting go; some of that is good, too much can begin to turn morbid.

Cynthia’s lovely apartment, where I am spending this period of seclusion, even completely re-arranged and protected, is a godsend. If I seem to be whining now, imagine how I would sound confined to my former cottage’s upper floor, wonderful neighbors notwithstanding. Given that I have to relocate while my leg heals (with the kind assistance of yet more friends) I would have had to leave even those confines in the middle of my recovery (the house has been rented to a new tenant, already) whereas here I can see out my term. And the place that will be prepared for me is lovely in many ways. But I look at its photos online – for I saw it in person only in late May, and only once – and wonder at the kitchen, its lack of storage, its lack of an over-the-sink dish drain or alternatively, a dishwasher, and try to imagine how living there would actually be. I have to entrust to the advice of others who can physically visit and draw practical conclusions.

But I have shelter, wonderful friends, good doctors, and relative comfort and health. That is so much more than millions of others.

The surgeon will come tomorrow to see if the stitches are ready to come out. He put them in almost three weeks ago in a beautiful hospital outside Siena during an operation that involved no discomfort, not even a bill. If they come out, that will be a marker, at least. I doubt that my mobility will much increase, or if it does, it will do so incrementally. So, perhaps once I exorcise this demon of restless squirming, I will find a way to write again; about this remarkable town I live in and my view of it from Cynthia’s lovely, long terrace. A hobble onto and upon the terrace is my – practical, I hope – next goal. It will broaden my horizons, and that is always a good and welcome thing. And a reward.

Sideshow – Andiamo Avanti

While drawing the curtain closed in the bedroom, I saw my neighbor Giancarlo on a ladder watering the flowering plants that line the walls on Via delle Pertiche Prima. One of the neighbors does this every evening during summer. There are at least twenty plants, probably more – I’ve never thought to count them. 

Tomorrow will be my last full day as a resident of this lovely lane. It makes me sad. Renzo was just over to deliver a rice salad for my supper. He sat at the table with me and we talked like old friends. We are old friends, who finally met face to face about four years ago.

“I would happily live the rest of my life here, Renzo,” I told him.

“And I would be happy if you did.”

But steps, garden, and dozens of complicated and fascinating details have decided otherwise. I no longer want to climb those twisted stairs, and even if I recover mobility, by and by, it will be months. The change must be made now.

On Tuesday, I will begin a kind of vacation at Cynthia’s large and luxurious apartment, all on one level. A vacation made unfortunately possible by the impossibility of her coming here for the time being. But she has offered to share it while I clump around in the therapeutic boot, and I am grateful.

So, Renzo was in the middle of telling me about a 19th century Italian author who wrote about life in Catania when Elia entered, wreathed in smiles (as Dickens liked to say). We had just finished extolling his virtues.

“Ears on fire?”

“No, why?” Elia is Moldovan, and though he speaks well in the Orvieto manner, some idioms he doesn’t catch. Neither do I.

“We were talking kindly about you.”

“Sorry I missed it.”

“It won’t happen again. He passed his drivers’ exam.”

“I know! That’s a big deal.”

“My fifth time. I had four times to practice.”

We then shared plans for tomorrow. The gate opened wider and Patrizia and daughter Beatrice self-admitted.

“Beatrice came back for my birthday.”

“How could I not?”

She works at the university in Bologna with two doctorates. Renzo’s son, Giovanni, is drummer for what we all hope is an up and coming band, Metarmonica. Renzo and Patrizia did well as parents.

Smiles and waves and greetings, and everyone left. 

The rice salad was simply delicious.

Sideshow – Better Late than…

Fourth of July, all things American, Giancarlo brought me lunch; pasta, salad, bread, a sweet. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a small foil-wrapped loaf.

“Do you know this stuff?”

“Philadelphia Cream Cheese? Of course I know it. It’s been clogging arteries since I was a kid! Very American.”

“Exactly.”

Brief pause. “Oh!”

“Happy July four!”

When I was a kid, my aunt loved amazing us with her No-Egg Wonder Cake. It was chocolate, and gooey, and scrumptious, and she iced it with sweetened Philadelphia Cream Cheese. That icing established the cheesy substance among my special favorites – though I rarely eat it in any form. My aunt’s recipe, by the way, used vinegar and baking soda as leavening. I was of an age when I was just discovering the marvels of vinegar and baking soda bombs, so the cake had added appeal.

Elia gets a kick out of explaining to everyone how my American accent is teaching him English. I don’t quite follow, but the idea delights him, so who am I to question? We are as much a novelty to our Italian friends, as they are to us. And Elia is Moldovan, so double that.

A few American part-time residents with solid immigration credentials – such as permanent residence or EU passports – have found their ways back. Some go into quarantine, some do not, depending I guess on where they come from and when. I don’t know, it’s very confusing. Some I had a chance to see before I entered personal lockdown because of my tendon. Others have stopped by to see the creature himself, braving the heat of the day. Still others, I have heard of their arrivals, but have not seen. I assume they are soaked in jet lag or the usual amazement of being here. 

Being here these days can involve quite a back story. One couple I’ve yet not seen, but heard from, wrote of a flight that included four stops, cancellations, delays, and missed connections over a three-day span. Others got on Alitalia at Kennedy, and disembarked more or less on schedule in Rome. These days, even uncertainty is uncertain.

One thing we Americans abroad all share; a deep gratitude for the luxury of a home in, or around, Orvieto. We talk about the town among ourselves, Americans and expats of other extraction alike, because we cannot cease but to marvel at our being a part of it.

“Do you like Orvieto?” Annette, a German physiotherapist asked me yesterday while teaching me a series of limbering and opening exercises.

“I love it. Do you know the film, King of Hearts?”

“Oh, yes. Lovely.”

“Orvieto reminds me a bit of that. Everyone is just a little bit crazy. And because we all are, we let each other play out our characters with a bemused affection. The really serious people can’t bear the inconveniences of living on a medieval street plan, and have left for more rational lifestyles. Those of us who remain embrace the loopiness, the scramble, and the beauty it creates.”

Or at least that’s my take. Actually, I only got as far as “bemused affection” with Annette present, the rest is what I would like to have said were I not being told to breathe.

The municipal building here (municipio) was designed by Orvieto’s preeminent renaissance architect, Ipolito Scalza. It is a series of arches topped by a porch, very stately and harmonious. Then one arch and a half beyond what was obviously designed as the central arch – replete with extra columns and more thickly embellish with decoration – the building suddenly ends. The government ran out of funds for the project in 1585. I’m sure there are good reasons for the project’s never having been taken up again in 435 years; lack of political stature, land rights, the Papal States. I am also sure that almost every American who passes and notices the incompleteness is driven just a little mad by it. In America, we finish what we start! Or at least, so we like to believe.

On more than on occasion, I have caught myself dreaming idly as I pass that I’d won a lottery (that I never play) and offer a stunned mayor money enough for Scalza’s vision to be realized, thereby setting off a series of political intrigues and machinations that eat up another 400 years, the end of which witnesses the filling in of the half arch that now marks the building’s western limit. 

And that is why we like it here.

Happy July four! Even if a week or so late.

Sideshow – Risotto

Three years and several months ago, my friend Ron in Williamsburg, Virginia saw a list of plays I had written to that point and became curious.

“Do you have one you’d like a staged reading of?” he wrote.

“Try Risotto,” I suggested.

He read it, thought it worthy. We agreed that our mutual friend Mary, who I first met at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco forty years ago, would be perfect for the lead, and Ron had ideas for the other two roles. Then logistics and reality intervened and nothing came of it. 

That summer I was in New York, and my friend Rosina, who had read the play and liked it, organized a public reading with herself in the lead. It was very helpful, and she read wonderfully. I also decided that I wanted nothing more to do with public readings of a script that was still raw.

I worked on the play during the following few months, then put it away until last November when I suddenly realized what was needed to take it over the top. I picked away at it from time to time until February, then the world stopped and so did I.

Then somehow, the project surfaced again in the Age of Zoom. Ron was interested, Mary was available, I had identified Kenny as well-suited for the male lead, and Ron knew of a good fit for the third role, a fellow Williamsburger named Ed. What’s more, our friend Travis knew Zoom, and opted to host.

I will sound like a fatuous old fool of a playwright, because that’s who I am, but I sat by the window in my bedroom in Orvieto and watched five friends, three in Virginia, one in New York, and one in St. Pete’s, and was amazed. Amazed by the fact it was happening at all, by the seamlessness of the program, by how connected and committed were the actors – by how well the play seems to work.

“It reads well,” said Ron.

“It reads better on stage than on the page,” said Travis. (That is often said about my scripts. After years of hearing it, I’ve decided to take it as a compliment.)

“That was fun,” said Mary.

It wasn’t until after we’d signed off that I became wistful. I miss the rehearsal room, the generosity of actors, friends in theatre. 

“You asked what I see next for this play? To see it onstage with this cast, Ron directing, and Travis producing. There, I’ve said it,” I wrote in an email thanking them. I have a habit of seeing rep companies wherever I look, however impractical trying to make them happen may be.

That was yesterday. I’m still captivated, replaying the actors’ performances – and my emotional responses – in my mind. I have no right to be so satisfied. In rehearsal, the holes and lumps would reveal themselves, there is no doubt work to be done, but that’s okay. I want to do the work. But when will we meet again to dream together after house lights dim, even in Williamsburg? When can I travel? Who has money for such things?

This morning my physiotherapist, Katrin, came to my house to work on my foot. There are two small tears in the tendon. She explored, showed my neighbor Giancarlo how to apply hot compresses, called a few specialists she knows, described what is probably next.

This prompted a day-long discussion among several of my neighbors as to the best way of assuring that my foot would get the regular attention it needs. Much of the discussion arrived unannounced, thus me without my hearing aides. Making sense of what was being said, and why, was about as slow as my going down the stairs, but I eventually caught on, and a solution was proposed that I had been pondering on my own, as well. Elia, who cleans my yard and waters, who harvested the apricots and shared them with neighbors, who needs money and has no other obligations, Elia will be trained by Giancarlo in the mysteries of hot compresses. A schedule was set, and everyone went away satisfied. 

This evening, Erika and Alba explored an apartment available – ground floor, balcony, centrally located, needs work – and minutes later I had a video, photos and commentary. Another option is always a good thing.

As he left, Giancarlo made doubly certain that I had milk enough for breakfast tomorrow, and food enough for the rest of the day. Because of his largess, I still have full helpings of pasta fredda and wheat berry salad, two helpings of lasagna, three or four of green beans, plus a bag of garden tomatoes and cucumbers, a half round of cheese, prosciutto cotto, and three kinds of bread. {And Emilio is shopping for me tomorrow afternoon.}

“This is great, Giancarlo, I may never want to heal if you keep this up.”

“Okay, but don’t let us catch you walking!”

Risotto was inspired by Annie Musso, our Italian neighbor when I was growing up in Sunnyvale, California. She kept a quarter of an acre of garden and from it supplied everyone on the block with gorgeous organic produce from May to November (and certain things, all year long). We thought of her as phenomenally generous. She thought of herself as normal. Now I understand why.