Amazing Gracelessness

In 1976, at my father’s insistence, I learned to touch-type in a Heald Business College course during my last semester of art school. Eventually I achieved the stunning speed of 35 words per minute (if you don’t subtract for errors, which would have made it negative 80 w.p.m.). Though it was standard to require a minimum of 65 words a minute for a secretarial job, upon my graduation I was hired at a brokerage firm in SF’s financial district. My typing has only declined since. You have no idea what I go through to present you with an editorially pristine-ish blog post. Here’s what my raw typing looks like:

The picture below o is of a satusma that Ember decordated. She wouldn’t let anyoby eat it because she love dher artwork for its favde.

It’s not just my fingers that are clumsy. I tend to move through my environment like a car that’s lost its brakes. You know how a mouse can compress its body and squeeze gracefully, efficiently and purposefully through the tiniest hole? It just slips right through with elegance and panache. Not I. Please join me for a trip from the front to the back of my house.

Between my living and dining rooms there’s a wide doorway, easily six feet across. Wouldn’t you think I could amble through without mishap: aim for somewhere in the middle, and step forward? Nope. Invariably I veer off-course at the last second and whack my knuckles on the jamb as I go by. If I do manage to pass under the lintel without mishap or injury, it’s the dining room table or the piano that’s likely leap into my way, and l bash my hip instead. And woe betide any fragile objects within a ten-foot swath of my trajectory. A stray elbow or palm or knee is sure to knock it to the ground.

In the kitchen the hot oven awaits, ready for mischief. Based on precedent, Em has started to get nervous when I approach it. So I move slowly and methodically. I open the door and guide my hand through the center of the 450° space to reach for the casserole. Steady as she goes. All’s well until I collide with the scalding thermometer that hangs off the middle rack. It goes airborne and comes to rest on the back of my hand before plummeting to the oven floor. “Ouch,” I might say softly, which prompts Ember to try to drag me to the faucet to cool the sting. But I’m so used to such things that I’m already over it. My extremities sport festive little scars from hot things, sharp things and heavy, blunt things.

Now let’s keep going, back into the safety of my bedroom. There, I kick off my slippers and proceed to my computer. The legs of the bed are well away from my route, but somehow I manage to stagger off-course again and wallop my left big toe.

It gets old, I tell you.

Other things that get old are Albany squirrels. They never take a day off. Autumn doesn’t dampen their enthusiasm one bit. Here is what they can accomplish in a week.

The day before the Turkey Day holiday, Ember’s teacher reported that the little one is especially rocking math and spelling this semester. And though she’s almost pathologically resistant to writing, look what she cranked out in class.

It made Em happy when her teacher asked for permission to use the story as a model for future 5th graders.

Emmy got to spend Thanksgiving in Chico. I drove her up and stayed overnight at an AirBnB so I could join the celebration of Jesse’s 8th. Luckily, the birthday boy didn’t burst into flames while making his wish.

Here he is proudly displaying one of his creepy dolls that terrify me but don’t seem to faze two-year-old Ruby.

The next morning I met Lulu a couple hours away at Harbin Hot Springs. Hard to believe that after all my years in California, I’d never been there. Much of the beloved retreat went up in flames during the Valley Fire of 2015, but it’s coming back to life. 

Our first order of business was to head for the various pools. Amid all the nekkedness I tried to keep my gaze averted, but sometimes a random penis or boob would float into my peripheral vision before I could blur it away. As we soaked in the warm “meditation pool,” my chronic inability to stay still became glaringly apparent. Within two minutes I was ready to dash off to the next activity, even though there was no next activity. 

Before dinner Lulu and I got massages (her treat). What a luxury. Then we checked into our little room with a view.

I didn’t want to share the one bed because I knew I’d keep Lulu up all night with my tossing and turning. See how often I wake up and move around?

Instead, I packed my camping cot and mat, so Lulu got some decent rest. Here she is the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

We drove home in convoy a couple hours later, past the Petrified Forest (never heard of it), Safari West (likewise), and Old Faithful Geyser of California (ditto), eventually parting ways at a freeway junction a half-hour from our respective homes.

Back in Albany I had four days of uncommitted time: no dinners to plan, school lunches to prepare, groggy children to get ready for school, or bouncy children to persuade to settle into sleep. The time flew by and I accomplished pretty much nothing, except for making a new dress for one of Jesse’s nightmarish dolls (not the one with red eyes and a head that rises off its neck, or the one with scars, but another one).

Over those days I watched a couple things online. One was the new-ish TV series Eleni and Lulu suggested, called Los Espookys. The following line cracks me up because people do it to me all the time, and I fear I do it sometimes as well.

“Look, I hear what you’re saying, and it makes perfect sense, but I’ll keep insisting on [my] idea as if I never heard you.” 

And I also watched Yesterday, in which Kate McKinnon, as a smarmy talent agent, critiques a song that the protagonist performs:

“It’s simple without being charming. I’m struggling to find the words: I hated it, but I wasn’t interested in it enough to listen to it again to find out why.”

Before I knew it, it was time to pick up Ember in Winters again. As I drove us home, the metal abutment of one of my dental implants unscrewed and clunked onto my tongue. Of course this was the middle of the long holiday weekend so there was nothing to be done for it. By the time the doctor could see me, the gum had grown over the hardware and had to be cut open again.

Em and I have been having a lovely time in the week since she’s been back. I’d been concerned that the transition to Life with Grandmother, with its structure and responsibility, might be hard for her, but the amazing little person just swept back into our routine with dignity and cheer. 

Every night one of my final actions of the day is to check on her after she’s asleep: arrange covers, adjust pillows, pull the comforter over her, and kiss the top of her furry head.

Last weekend she got to meet my oldest friend. Maria lives in Delaware, and  her daughter was six months old the last time I saw her.

I can’t believe we’re already careening into the winter holiday season. It had been years since I’d bought a Christmas tree. What’s the point, really, when there aren’t children around? But because Em is here, last weekend I went down the street and chose a modest little evergreen. 

“That’ll be $177, without the stand,” the cashier informed me. 

I glanced around the counter to see what other items he’d accidentally added to my tab. “Uh, actually, I’m getting just this tree. Nothing else.” 

“Right. That’ll be $177.” As it turns out, between California wildfires and the rising price of gas, the cost has skyrocketed. I was stunned into silence. “You still want it?” he finally asked. 

Well, I had an eager tree-decorator waiting with the ornaments all ready to go, so I winced and reluctantly pulled out my credit card. Never again.

Here are some other reasons I don’t like getting a Christmas tree:

• On its three-minute journey home, it somehow spews a thousand dead pine needles throughout the back of the car.
• It’s almost impossible to wrangle it inside.
• It leaves a thick carpet of spent needles on the path between the front door and its destination.
• No matter how much I vacuum, renegade needles haunt me for the next ten years—not just in places where the tree had visited, but places it never even dreamed of going, like the back bathroom.
• Water from the tree stand seeps underneath the plastic garbage bag it rests on. A month later, when the tree is but a memory, a permanent dark stain on the wood floor keeps the Douglas fir always in our hearts.
• The five-inch trunk refuses to settle evenly in the holder no matter what I do, so the tree leans at a jaunty angle and threatens to topple. 

On the other hand, Christmas trees smell good and look cheerful with their colorful lights and the odd assortment of ornaments I’ve amassed over the years, including three pickles, a green Irish dancing Santa, and innumerable pigs. (The painted Mexican terra cotta winged devil with the black penis, a present from a friend, is packed out of view of my young charge.) My favorite decoration is still the one that 10-year-old Cedric gave me in 1976. Every Christmas I set his ornament in a place of honor, and every few winters I Google him, but he is sadly lost to time. 

Another thing that is lost to time is my 1973 school yearbook (from the year after I graduated). I used to have my own copy, filled with the usual personal comments, signatures and dedications. Right before the pandemic I got together with my old HS English teacher who, it turned out, had been living in the South Bay for decades. He asked to borrow it, with the promise of bringing it back in three weeks. Off he went with my treasure. The week before he was to bring it back, he died. 

I could hardly beg his shocked and grieving widow for my book of memories back, so I set up a search on eBay in case another became available. When one finally did, and I snapped it up, though the binding is broken and the pages loose. At the back, tucked away among the ads and credits, is a little uncaptioned snapshot of me: my only appearance in the volume. It must have slipped by the censors, since representations of cigarettes, beer and weirdness weren’t permitted.

That was a very different me than the one of today.

I’ll wrap up now. Em and I have been rocketing through episodes of The Great Pottery Throw Down, which has been fun but now we have only one season left. We also finished reading Book 15—the last—of the Wings of Fire series, about dragons. I’ve been reading them to her at bedtime since January. What’s next?