The day began so beautifully. I set my alarm and actually awakened at 6:15 a.m. this morning -- to make a 6:30am "virtual" writing meetup. Yes, I realize this is bordering on insanity, especially for me, but I really must get serious about my writing -- and I mean really serious. We're talking 40 Days of Writing and NANO serious! As the day slips by, many times the words drift through my fingers...this cannot happen. No one mentioned that at 6:30 a.m. it is still dark outside! I didn't know this because I never wake up this early. The house was dark, silent and chilly as I padded down the hallway in bare feet and pulled my tie-dye sweatshirt jacket closer to me as I stumbled to my laptop computer and sat down -- staring at the sign-in screen for a moment or two wondering what am I doing here and why? Luckily I hadn't forgotten my glasses, so at least I could see -- and I had a glass of water...no time to make coffee now, just sign in.
I logged into the "Shut Up and Write" meetup page (you see, I'm desperate now -- I've signed up for everything, seriously! this must happen!) and commented -- I'm here and it's dark. Another person chimed in that she was writing on her iPhone, her preference. For a fleeting moment I wondered -- how does anyone write on an iPhone? How is this even POSSIBLE? I can't even use those touchscreen thingies and stick with my crappy old phone because it has a keyboard! That's amazing. Another perky looking gal is happy that she made it -- she had dreamed that she'd awakened too late.
So the moments seemed to fly by as I madly typed away, forgetting time and space for just a little while -- a scene from my "book," when we move from Oregon to California based on a freewrite idea I'd received in the mail from yet another site. I figure if I surround and envelope myself with words and stories, something magical is bound to happen, right? As I wrote the sun rose and light blended with clouds stretched across the sky above golden-colored hills. The treetops glowed. Oh yeah, we live on a hill and I'm sitting at this table with a perfect view of the hills...I'd forgotten in the darkness.
Soon almost an hour had gone by and I had to break myself away to get ready -- I had to be at the Palo Alto Santa Clara County Courthouse for yet another traffic thing at 9:00 a.m., and then of course head for work. I managed to get out the door by 8am which gave me an hour to drive to Palo Alto, and of course it took that entire hour to fight the traffic across the Dunbarton Bridge and through Palo Alto at commuting time. I parked (and now I know where the good parking is) and dashed into the courthouse, and as I handed over my purse and tried to walk through the metal detector thingie, the cop reminded me. "Don't forget -- give me your peace button." I stopped in my tracks. What? He wanted me to hand over my button? Oh well...no way. And if he does, we've got a problem and they'll have to haul me to jail before I take off my peace button with the ukulele on it.
The cop smiled -- he remembered me I guess. "Just to get through the metal detector!" Whew, oh yeah, okay. I handed it over to him and walked through. But then I had to take my belt off and it was just this huge ordeal before I finally made it through after trying five times. Then I had to gather my stuff and dash up the steps just in time. Court had begun.
But then my name wasn't called by the end of the "C" people -- and I thought, wait a second, I'm supposed to be here. I had to check the court list of traffic criminals (not really, but when you hear the judge speak about all the rules and such, you'd think so!) -- and I wasn't on it. Oh man. NO way. This was the day. I was sure of it. So I had to go to the county clerk's office and wiat in line -- and that's where I found out my court day wasn't today, but tomorrow. Ohhhh man. How will I explain at work that I have to come in late yet again? I trudged out of the courthouse feeling down trodden, jumped into my car and drove to work...
and here I sit..it's lunchtime! signing off...for now.
and, here's the freewriting I did in the wee hours of the morning -- thanking Laura Davis for the wonderful prompts she sends me every Tuesday!!!!
Today's Writing Prompt from Laura Davis (I get these every Tuesday Morning):
Write about a time when you embarked upon something new and challenging, frightening, or
even dangerous-as a way to find an answer, to rediscover something essential about yourself.
Tell us about what you did-the adventure, the journey, the risks you took-what drove you there,
and who you were when you emerged afterwards.
“I’m moving back to San Francisco when you die, Mom.”
Mom smiled slightly – she was a skeleton of herself lying there on that bed, all stretched out –
the damned bone cancer. I didn’t want her to leave – she had grasped my hand and asked in a
husky whisper if it was okay, but all I could do was hold her hand and cry. But my mind was
made up.
“But, dear,” she croaked. “What about Vicki and all your people here? And the kids…” Then
she drifted off into a morphine-induced sleep.
Even my mother didn’t believe I could do it – no one did. So when I took that trip down to
California in the rusty Chevy Cavalier that my son’s friend had given us, making my way further
south, I thought to myself, “I can do this.”
We had said good-bye to my mother, me and my four kids – and scattered her ashes in the ocean
just as she’d requested – one mile off the Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Newport, Oregon. I had
finally let my mother go when I sat in my car and listened to “Freebird” on the radio in the 7
Eleven Parking lot.
I landed a job within two weeks. I had contacted Heald Business College because I remembered
I had life-time job placement with them – so even though it had been 22 years since I’d
graduated in 1976, they would still help me. I smiled as I walked in the door of Heald
Business College which had changed locations in San Francisco since I went to school there
– remembering how my mother and I had argued about business college. I didn’t want to go
because of the dress code. How dare they force people to wear nylons and dress up like they’re
going to work? And why shouldn’t I go to college? My mother had a master’s degree in English
Literature – and she was definitely the most well-read person I’d ever known – reading at least a
book a day for her entire life – at least as long as I knew her. She had books by her bedside even
after cancer ravaged her body – books like “Tibetan Book of the Dead.”
“Because you need a skill – and you’re not ready for college!” Mom had shouted. I thought she
was trying to say I wasn’t smart enough for college because I didn’t do well on the SAT tests
and the only subjects I ever got A’s in were Music and English. But that didn’t matter. I could
be a writer, I argued – and live above a store on Haight Street, wouldn’t that be cool? My mother
shook her head. “What do you really want?” she asked.
It was when I said those people standing on street corners and on stoops in San Francisco who
played their guitars and sang looked really happy and I would love to be happy like them that my
mother totally freaked out.
“You must to go business college!” she shouted in a loud, dramatic voice. “You’ll thank me
some day!”
Twenty-two years later, within a month after my mother’s passing, I walked through the doors of
Heald Business College as an alumni – and I silently thanked my mother. It wouldn’t be the last
time.
Sure enough I still existed and I still got free job placement services – I was sent to a legal
placement firm on Montgomery Street in San Francisco – the financial district with the tall
buildings. And the nice people there immediately set up an interview at a law firm in Palo Alto
– apparently things had changed since I’d worked in San fRancisco back in the 1970’s. A lot of
the larger law firms had migrated down the peninsula to Palo Alto – and the peninsula was now
called “Silicon Valley.”
I landed a job at that first law firm in Palo Alto – and I drove back to Oregon to let the kids
know.
“We’re moving to California in two weeks!” I announced. The kids freaked out – I looked at
them all, Stevie, Melissa, Jeremy and Megan – 16, 14, 13 and not quite five – my four kids
– “It’ll be so wonderful!” I said excitedly. “We’ll be back in the San Francisco Bay Area!
Grandpa’s down there.”
The kids didn’t look too excited, but they went along with it. People said I was moving to be
with a man – others said I was moving down to the land of fruits and nuts, which made me want
to move even more. We had many tearful good-byes as my kids grew up in Oregon.
I rented a 20 foot truck to move all of our stuff. Ten years of our lives in a 20 foot truck. But
the two car garage had become a storage room for assorted exboyfriends, even my brother and
mother. Two days before we moved, with the help of Stevie and his friend Sam, we moved
a truckload of trash to the City Dump – that’s when the tragic accident happened and we
accidentally threw my mother’s heirloom Christmas ornaments off the cliff at the City Dump.
To this day, I will never forget that feeling of loss, horror and dread as I watched the old box that
looked as if it was stuffed with old newspaper hit the side of the cliff and all those ornaments
shattered, the ones my mother had left for me and the kids, and those beautiful handmade
stockings of green, red and blue glitter, and those red satin bows. My heart went off that cliff at
the City Dump that day and I’ve never been able to get it back.
Sam drove the 20-foot truck and I drove the Chevy Cavalier – Stevie and Jeremy rode in the
truck with Sam. In the end, it was just me and my kids and Sam. We moved everything we
owned into that truck, leaving some things behind and we still managed to fill one of those
dumpsters used at apartment complexes.
As the truck pulled out of the cul-de-sac on Krystie Court for the last time that early September
1997 morning, my redheaded four-year-old crying softly in the back seat and Melissa asleep
in the front because she just couldn’t take it, I wondered what the heck I was doing. I doubted myself. Did I make the right decision to want to move back home to the San Francisco Bay
Area? What the heck was I doing uprooting the kids after they’d lived here for almost 10 years?
But the kids hadn’t told me I was an idiot for doing this. And they would have had no problem
with that. Good-bye Oregon and hello California.
We didn’t know the truck would eat so much gas and we traveled on a shoe string budget, of
course. That’s just the way it was. But soon I’d be at my brand new job that paid twice as much
than I’d ever made my whole life! The truck ran out of gas on I-680 outside of Walnut Creek –
and we had to call my Dad and have him wire some money to them.
Somehow, some way we made it. Our first stop – my Dad’s apartment in Sunnyvale, California
and second stop our new home in Mountain View, California.
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