Rockabye Baby

Rockabye Baby / Lullaby renditions of the Rolling Stones






One of my first memories is standing in my crib. The sides came to my chin and I had to pull myself up. In later years I’d imagine the view from a reclined position in my crib to be the same as from any jail cell and blame that for an adolescence filled with delinquency.



But at what must have been about six months of consciousness, I didn’t think these things. Instead I remember thinking the situation troublesome. I was bored.


From my standing position looking in one direction I had a good view to the outside. A gorgeous day was framed by the window. Blue sky. My memory thinks it looks cold. In the other direction I remember seeing the sleeping forms of my parents. I remember thinking a good scream would change the situation, but I refrained. I remember also thinking that with some effort I might pull myself up and over the sides of the bars that kept me trapped, but there was no point. I had no where to go.


Instead, I released my grip and allowed gravity to give me the ride down to first a seated then prone position. I would watch the parade of circus characters who marched across the pink background on my wall. I particularly liked the ringmaster for he had the most magnificent of hats. Like a majorettes. There was a seal too, who balanced a ball on his nose and I think maybe an elephant too.

Stray cat strut

Runaway boys / Stray Cats










P and I were discussing cats today day. How there are all kinds. Some choose you. Lulu chose me, there is no question about that. P told me of her kitty, Celia who chose her. It was a very similar story.



Celia was a cat who would follow her, sit with her, come when called. One particularly endearing trait was at bed time, Celia would curl up in the crook of P’s arm. Facing each other, Celia would purr and knead her side.


Celia had a sense of things too, P explained. She would come and curl in when P was sick. She behaved when P was tired and stressed. By our conversation, Celia had passed away, but she had been a wonderful little friend.


When Celia was a teenager, P developed a health problem. Her glands swelled and became sensitive, particularly in that delicate underarm area that Celia liked to knead. Initially they thought it was some kind of virus or infection, but when the antibiotics didn’t work they started to wonder. Finally the doctor’s told P that she had to go in for a biopsy, they were sure sh she had cancer. She was upset and Celia didn’t leave her side.


After the procedure, braced for the worst – the doctors told her, she was going to be fine. The problem was cat scratch fever from Celia’s kneading. The right drugs and all was well.

don't you forget about me

Breakfast Club / Sountrack:

don't you forget about me / Simple Minds








Okay, for those of you who might be following along or are very astute, you will notice, yet another gap in the daily process: yesterday. I have only two words to account for this: Senior Moment.



No really. I completely forgot it wasn’t Saturday. I knew I had posted Saturday. So, it wasn’t even that I had forgotten to post, it was truly that I had forgotten I had slept and another day had passed. Let me tell you, this was a really bummer around 8 pm when I realized I had to come to work today.


“Tomorrow’s Monday??” I had said, heart broken, and checked the date /time on the computer just to make sure. It was worse than any horror movie. But clearly I have survived and we shall resume regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

No place but Georgia

Keep your hands to yourself / Georgia Satellites








There was a peach tree in our back yard. It was pretty old and each year little furry green rocks would form on it’s branches. Squirrels would try to get them, wind would make them fall. For years all I wanted was one of these little treasures to grow into a reach peach.



After seven years of waiting, finally it looked like one was going to make it. I watched that one piece of fruit grow over the days then weeks. Until finally it was large enough and a yellow orange color. It wasn’t fully ripe and it was hard as a rock, but still. It had outlasted all the others.


We picked it with great ceremony and carried it into the house. It was washed and adored. Eventually, we took out the knife to sample our prize. We were too late. In the heart of it’s pit were two bright green caterpillars, both fatter and juicer than the peach itself. I was horrified and have never been found of peaches since.

Road trip

Small Revelations / Chris Smither










Although I was born a Pisces in the sunny state of California, I can barely swim and have never managed to get a deep dark savage tan. Some would say this is because I just didn’t spend enough time there. As the stories go, I was conceived on the East coast, where everyone thought I would remain. However, that was not meant to be.



At some point in February, my parents moved to Southern California, just out side of L.A. for my father’s job. My father’s jobs were some times quick to change. I was born in early March. And we moved back East in early April.


Although my memory is good, I can remember standing in my crib at a year that had to be less than one, I do not remember this trip. The stories however have remained constant.


Even after a messy divorce, both my parents agree: we drove back East early April. Me, my parents and my mother’s mother. She had come West to help with the baby, me. All also agree that we took the Southern route to cross the Rockies at that time of year, but it was a bad ride. The pass closed behind us.


Of course, the details of the story alter a bit depending on who you talk to. My mother says my father was an idiot. That it started to snow on the way up one side of the mountain, but he didn’t care. She claims he pulled off at the top to brush the snow off the sign to take a picture, but the snow was too thick and the picture impossible. As a result of this dawdling, we were all nearly killed on the way down.


My father says it started to snow on the way up and he was getting nervous. Near the top, he pulled out and passed the plow, so that while the drive might have been harder, if we had a problem, someone would find us. He claims there was never a picture.


Who knows?


Everyone agrees on another story. Stuck in a motel room in Kansas, my father went to the desk and asked for a church key, a bottle opener that was apparently required to open my formula. Apparently, a church key is a regionalism. The good Kansonians had no idea what was being asked for, but trying to be helpful… The motel staff combed the town, finally producing the minister, whom confused, produced a church key.


The trip apparently after this was uneventful and we arrived back East where we started and that was the end of my California adventure. However, I’m fairly certain that two other things came out of this trip. First, is my unique relationship to cars and driving. A lot of significant things of my life have happened with some kind of connection with the automobile. However, I cannot prove this connection.


Second however, I am more convinced about. For most of my life, when I couldn’t sleep I would count. 1…2…3…4… While most kids asked for bedtime stories, I’d asked to be counted to. I had no love of math or numbers, I just liked the rhyme of hearing a count. When upset, I’d count to calm myself. I did this into and through adulthood. When I got older and counting was too simple, I’d count backwards. 100…99…98. When that was not successful, I’d increase the start number 1000…999…998…997.


I always wondered about this in myself. Why? Why did I do this? It was, quite frankly, weird. One day, as an adult myself and my father a old man, he sat over a meal rambling and telling stories. This was pretty common and the stories pretty consistent. But this one day, he started talking about that trip across country.


“You loved those magic fingers machines on the beds.” He told me. “We’d have driven for hours and end up in some motel room. Your mother and grandmother would go to eat, and I’d be tired and sore and say go, I’d stay with you. They’d go off and I’d put a bunch a quarters into that machine and the bed would vibrate and we’d both lay there and I’d count to you. You loved it.”


And at the moment, a life time of weird suddenly became perfectly clear.

there's a lady who knows

Stairway to Heaven / Led Zeppelin












I’m not sure most people cannot tell you the times in their life when they changed. Those moments when some little thing within them snaps or shifts and from that point on things are different. They are different.



I know those times, perhaps not all of those times, but at least some of those times. The first time I remember this was as a teenager. Formerly I had been a quiet, shy nerdy, kid. I was until the change moment a bit on the scared side and certainly without the self confidence that was required if you were to become noticeable. Of course, in later years, people would not believe this. They would say, “You? Shy? Quiet? Impossible.” And it is undeniably true that as time has gone on, well, I’ve gotten worse.


The change moment occurred one day in the supermarket of all places. It wasn’t one of those big chain box stores. No, this was the local, small time, family owned and operated market. It was the kind of store that in comparisons to the nation wide chains have no stock, dirty floors and narrow isles. It was the kind of store that still held personal accounts, and one could go through the checkout line and then merely provide a last name and a notebook would appear from on the counter.


On the particular day in question, I was out shopping with my mother. It was a spring day. One of those early spring days that is hot and teasing about the summer that is just around the corner. She’d picked me up after school and I think we had some other required errand. But we were both in good spirits, silly with the sun and good weather.


I remember we had ambled the length of the story, switchbacking through the isles. We were traveling down the last isle, the frozen foods and dairy section, when we both looked at each other with the same thought: ice cream!


“Go pick out a flavor…” My mother suggested as she abandoned our cart to head towards eggs.


“What flavor do you want?” I called, heading the few steps in the opposite direction.


“Whatever.” She called back, as I stood frowning facing the double glass doors. I knew we did not have the same taste and the choices were numerous.


What do to? What to do?


“What’s your choice?” She prompted, and that’s when it snapped.


I don’t think I ever would have done this if I had not been in a silly, mood. But my eyes landed on the Heavenly Hash, and it began.


“Heavenly Hash!” I said, my arms shooting into the air. “Hallaluah! Yes indeed, Heavenly Hash!” My voice was raising and I was trying not to laugh. My mother shot me a look that said, ‘Really?’ And in response, I dropped instantly to my knees before the cart and case. “It came to me in a dream! It did, I say. Heavenly Hash!” I wailed and then collapsed in a fit of giggles as people started to round the isle and I noticed some of the customers and employees taking a step back to see the performance.


“Okay, get up and put it in the cart.” My mother said, eyes rolling, but laughing too. I did, but something had changed. I was no longer shy. It didn’t even bother me a week or so later when my mother reported that the store clerk had asked if her daughter was okay.

nanowritmo / postscript what next?

Sounds of Silence / Simon & Garfunkel











As a Nanowritmo project, I didn't make it - if you have read this November tale, its just over 27000 words.  Still...   not bad, I don't think.

And not bad that we are on Dec 1st and this blog is still blogging along.  This will be post 177 or 178... I forget.  No wonder I'm tired....

The real question is where to do now....Having spent the last month writing on one set thing,  has been good.  Now that that's done, I am back to being lost in a sea of blank paper... or rather blank computer screen.  I shall need to think on this for the next 24.