All Over the Map

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 t...

        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 stati...

I wasn’t expecting how personal it would feel to watch the documentary  MISSION: JOY – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times   on Netflix.  Watching this film about the friendship between the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it felt as if two big pieces of my life were coming together.  Like everyone else, I wouldn’t be who I am were it not for my history, my DNA, my having been born and growing up where I did  -- which in my case, was in South Africa during Apartheid.   I wouldn’t be who I am were it not for my mother, who was sick for so much of my childhood, but so passionate about so many things when she was well, like art and reading and making meringue castles for our neighborhood parties. Or my father, who was so funny and generous and brave, yet never quite shook the impacts that growing up poor and fatherless left him with.  Nor would I be who I am if it weren’t for my brother, who was born when I was four yea...

      Birthdays can be fun, joyful celebrations and they can also be reminders of past losses, traumas and disappointments.     The 4 th of July, the birthday of the United States, is no different.        America the Beautiful has been a refuge for millions, a place where shattered lives can begin to heal and find purpose again.       America the Beautiful is also the country that gave White people the right to own Black people, to strip them of their names and heritage. It’s the country that wouldn’t allow Black children to attend the same schools as White children until 1954.  And it’s the country where descendants of those people are still living with prejudice and inequities.      Just as my love for those who are dear to me is sometimes threaded through with hurt and disappointment and confusion, so is my love for America.      When I sing...

It  used to be that the words Memorial Day brought with them a lightness that came with the beginning of summer and the promise of long salty days at the beach. It used to be that the words Gold Star Families meant nothing to me. Now I know they mean your worst fears came true and your family will never be the same again. Over the years, as my involvement in the military community has became more personal, the Memorial Day weekend has become a time to pause and reflect, to acknowledge the losses I have born witness to. It’s 2008 and I’m at the Memorial Day ceremony at Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego. I’m here because Sandra Aceves invited me to be her guest and Sandra is here because she was invited to be part of a ceremony for Gold Star families. The button she has pinned to her blouse shows her Fernando in his crisp white Navy uniform, an impish grin on his face. Fernando was a Navy corpsman, killed in an ambush in Ramadi, Iraq, on April 6, 2004 while trying t...

1969 RIBBONS OF MOONLIGHT      It starts with  The Highwayman .  A poem in Miss Abram’s class, Kings Road Primary School, Sea Point, Cape Town, South Africa.  The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding— Riding—riding— The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.     I’m ten-years-old and each line in that story of tragedy and doomed love by Alfred Noyes is a whole new taste and I want more.        That same year I’m taking Speech and Drama classes with Auntie Audrey, my best friend’s mother, who lives two houses away.  We’re getting ready to recite our poems at an  Eisteddfod , a day of music and poetry performances.  We’ve practiced for weeks.  My poem is  On a Night of Snow  by Elizabeth Coatsworth.  Auntie A...

     Did you know Maya Angelou wrote a book for children called  My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me ?  It’s about an eight-year-old girl called Thandi -- which means "hope" in her language -- who lives in an Ndebele village in South Africa with her family and a very special chicken who she tells her secrets to.       It’s one of my 19-month-old granddaughter Kelsey’s favorite books, and because she also has such a special relationship with chickens, we often have to skip straight to the parts where Thandi is holding the big, pretty chicken in her arms.     Kelsey has been living in a village of sorts too for the past year. Her parents have been working from home since last March because of the pandemic, and working from home has meant spending big chunks of time at both sets of grandparents’ houses, so Kelsey can be cared for while her parents work.      This Covid Bubble Village has kep...