All Over the Map

  STRANGERS MATTER  If there’s one truth I’m carrying over from 2023 to 2024, it’s this: strangers matter.  How we are in the lives of strangers can have far reaching ripples on any given day. We literally have the power to make a bad day worse or better for a total stranger in a few seconds.  I know, it sounds corny, but it’s true.  I’m thinking of three events I experienced in the past few months. The first was at Trader Joe’s in Escondido.  Usually I love shopping at that store, but I was tired and a bit down.  My husband and I had just heard that our homeowners insurance was being cancelled because of fire risk.  The Santa Ana winds had been relentless for weeks and my allergies were acting up, causing a long bout of coughing and asthma and a recent trip to urgent care.  Everything about the shopping trip was overwhelming.  Finding a parking spot. Walking from my car to the store without getting run over.  Discovering (again) that I’d mistakenly put my groceries in someone else’s c

The weirdest thing happened to me a few weeks ago when I was getting my mammogram. My right breast was being gently shmooshed by the technician and I told her I was grateful to her for being so skillful and not causing me excruciating pain as has happened in the past with less skillful people.   Her response:  “I’m so glad to hear that. But don’t thank me -- thank Jesus.  Now please lean a little more forward and to the left. Perfect.  Excellent.  Now hold your breath a few secs so I can get my photo.”   I did what I was told, while feeling more than a little weird about her Jesus comment.   When she came back she set my breast free and proceeded to tell me about how hard her life had been until two years ago. She said she’d had a rough childhood and kept making bad choices when it came to men. She was a single mom of a teenage boy who was getting into trouble.  Then she found her church, her pastor, and Jesus and things became so much better.   “When you’ve found Jesus and you know yo

           When my daughter was preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage that prepares 13-year-olds to take their place as adults in the community (Bar Mitzvah for boys) she did a project on Jewish values regarding the treatment of animals.  That’s when I learned that it’s forbidden for Jews to hunt for sport, as it can cause prolonged pain and suffering for the animals.         I’d forgotten about that until October 7 th  and the days that have unfolded since then, watching and listening to the reports of 260 of young people at a music festival in the desert being hunted down and slaughtered, raped, burned and taken hostage by the Hamas terrorists.        And more reports of entire families being hunted and tortured and slaughtered in their homes. Mothers, fathers, babies, grandparents.   Many survivors have talked about the laughter of the killers throughout the massacre.      Shaylee Atary, the mother of a one-month-old baby, described being hunted by the Hamas terr

When I was little my father would sometimes take me and my little brother to a place that the English speaking natives of Cape Town, South Africa referred to as The Gardens .  I liked wearing my sailor dress and sunhat and always remembered to bring a brown paper bag filled with breadcrumbs.   Our first stop was usually the dinosaurs at the National History Museum, where I'd stand and stare with a mixture of horror and fascination at the huge beasts tearing at each other and leaving bloody wounds. Then we'd stroll through the rose gardens, inhaling the perfume of a thousand flowers.  Voices speaking languages I couldn't understand blended with the buzzing of bees. Table Mountain, with its tablecloth of white clouds, loomed against the brilliant blue sky and served as the perfect backdrop to the roses in their gaudy summer splendor.  Next, we'd continue along shaded pathways to the aviary, which housed a few scruffy parrots that refused to talk to me. I got a much more e

How timely Caesar Chavez Day is this year.     Here in sunny San Diego County we’ve had endless, record breaking rain these past months.     As much as we always need rain, this has been extreme.     Streets are flooding. Boulders are falling down hillsides. Freeways are shutting down due to sinkholes. And work has practically dried up for residential gardeners, the people who keep our trees trimmed and our yards weed free.     These are the people who have no insurance, paid vacations or sick days. Many of them are trying to stay off the radar as they wait in an endless line for the papers that would make them legal residents, and they are often exploited and taken advantage of.     Talk about being vulnerable.     Over the years my husband and I have come to know and care about our gardener and his family.  They are indigenous Guatemalans and the language they speak is  Q'anjob'al .   It sounds like the wind whistling through a tunnel.  We’ve learned how Guatamalan tamales ar

        From the moment my first child was born in 1986, the most important thing in the world to me was being a mother. When my children are happy I’m happy and when they’re struggling, I struggle too.  There is nothing that could have prepared me for how much of one’s heart, body and soul motherhood consumes.       Which is why, when I heard the news on June 24   last year that Roe V. Wade had been overturned, my cries of “No! No! Oh please, no!” joined the chorus of millions across the country as the cruelty of this ruling sank in.      I thought about “Betty,” a woman in her 80’s who I always enjoyed chatting to in our library bookstore. One day we were talking about Judy Blume’s gift for writing about subjects that preteens hate talking to their parents about -- like puberty and bullying -- when she told me how, when she was 15, she’d had a crush on a young soldier who was stationed near her home.       One evening   – not at all against her will – their kissing led to sex and two