Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine I AM NOT LIKE YOU

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.”
-- Count Dracula, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

CHAPTER ONE: CHRONOLOGY

My father, John (nmn) Roberts, was born April 17th, 19O6, in Piedmont, South Carolina.

You might accurately imagine my father’s appearance as a broad, stereotypical Southern Sheriff, although he was actually a Police Detective.

Just before Christmas 1944, my father came home from the Philippines, where he had been fighting the Japanese with General MacArthur. He was missing a kneecap, which, according to one story or another, had been either shattered by shrapnel from a grenade, or blown off by a sniper’s bullet. Talking to my father in later years, he confessed that he did not really know how he had been injured during the war. There had been a lot of noise, fire, and explosions. He passed out at one point, and woke up sans patella in a hospital.

My mother Esther was just eighteen months younger than my father. Her parents, Arcady and Ekaterina Tsimmerman, were born in 1859 and 1866 respectively. They were Russian (or possibly Polish) immigrants, and upon setting foot in the U.S.A. took the names Arthur and Kate Zimmerman. My Grandfather Arthur passed away before I was born. My Baba Kate I remember as an old, old woman.

As I said, my father came home from the Great War in mid-December 1944.

I was born September 14th, 1945.

I have four older sisters, ranging from five to seventeen years my senior, all named after various female members of my mother’s family. (The oldest and youngest are still living.) When I came along, my father was so happy to have a boy in the family that he named me after himself, even giving me his last name twice for good measure. In this way, everyone would know that he finally had a son.

When I was nine months old, our family moved from the Deep South to Northern California, my father pursuing a job offer too good to pass up. My oldest sister, Sarah, stayed behind in Atlanta to finish attending college.

My younger brother Jack was born in a hospital on the hills of San Francisco on September 15th, 1948, exactly three years and one day my junior. Jack, as you know, is a diminutive of John, so my father had two sons to carry on his name.

When my sister Ruth was born in 195O, my father threw up his hands in surrender.

CHAPTER TWO: KINDERGARTEN AND NOT TOO FAR BEYOND

I amuse my grandchildren by telling them that in Kindergarten we took naps. My mother sent a patchwork quilt to school for me to sleep on. In my grandchildren’s version of Kindergarten, they had an hour or two of homework every night, and were considered backward if they could not read by June.

Aside from naps, much of the rest of my Kindergarten experience was play. There were swings and slides and “monkey bars” and a geodesic climbing dome outside in the tanbark. There was a large grassy area, to play on, in the shadow of an immense evergreen, the trunk some fifteen feet in circumference, and the topmost branches rising four stories into the air. Naturally, we were not allowed to climb it. But after the school had closed for the day, and all the administrators had gone home, kids from blocks away would hop the school fence to play in that tree. Someone had built a “tree house” in the mid-level branches -- really, just two sheets of plywood, nailed on. It was all terribly dangerous, but we never heard of anyone getting hurt by falling, other than getting the wind knocked out of them.

There were toys inside the Kindergarten as well. I particularly enjoyed playing in the toy kitchen area, with its toy stove, toy sink, toy countertop, and toy refrigerator. I was blithely unaware that a boy playing in the kitchen area was Not A Good Thing, socially speaking. You would think I would have caught on. No other boys played in the kitchen, and none of the girls would ever enter when I was in there.

I was not actually taught to read until second grade. But in the summer of 1953, I remember reading voraciously.

Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Winnie-the-Pooh, The House At Pooh Corner, Peter Pan, the fourteen Oz books, Mary Poppins, Doctor Dolittle, and quite a number of Raggedy Ann and Andy books. All supplemented by Grimm’s and Anderson’s fairy tales, Greek and Norse myths, and tales of King Arthur and Robin Hood.

To say I didn’t learn to read until I was nearly eight years old is somewhat disingenuous. I have a very clear memory, even at my advanced age, of visiting Fleishhacker Zoo at the age of four, and seeing the big white letters painted on the asphalt spelling out Z O O. And realizing that this was a phonetic representation of the word “zoo”. But I was a quiet child, and did not mention it to my parents.

CHAPTER THREE: ON A DARE?

Her name was Katie, and we were in first grade.

Queued up on the playground, waiting to be marched back into class after recess.

There seemed to be a lot of recess in those days. One before lunch, then an hour for lunch, then one after lunch. Recesses were long and luxurious, while the time in the classroom simply flew by, mostly because I wasn’t really paying attention.

The first grade class was arranged in two straight lines on the blacktop, boys on the left, girls on the right.

Katie stepped out of line, dashed over, and kissed me right on the lips.

Two weeks later, her family moved away. I’m pretty sure those two things weren’t related.

Looking back on it from the perspective of experience, I am virtually certain that Katie did it on a dare. I was kind of an oddball kid, small and skinny, with a nose too big for my face, and ears that stuck out too far from my head like Alfred E. Neuman’s. I was probably somewhere on the autism spectrum as well, although nobody knew what that was back then.

Just the kind of kid of whom some girl might say, “I dare you to kiss him.”

CHAPTER FOUR: ACCIDENT PRONE

I walked early. By the time we had moved to California, I was up and running.

But before that, while we were still in Georgia, I was climbing. Standing up high, without actually being able to walk. One afternoon, I managed to climb our gas stove, turning on one of the burners on the way up. My mother came into the kitchen to find me standing wobblingly on the stove-top, one shoe melting onto the fiery burner. She was panicked; I was nonplussed and unharmed.

Over the course of my childhood, I fell from a tree, off a roof, and from the back of a set of bleachers. I broke my wrist falling off the bleachers, and I broke a toe once, although I can’t remember how. I fell off my bicycle into the path of an oncoming steamroller, but was unharmed except for the usual scrapes on elbows and knees. I fell off the same bicycle into a garden of red rose bushes, and into a patch of purple thistles. I once ran through a plate-glass door, with nothing to show for it but some glass in my hair and a scratch on my arm. I once set my mother’s car on fire by putting a penny in the cigarette lighter. Astonishingly, it was repairable, and she had that car for years afterwards.

My parents called me “accident-prone”, and so I was, through a combination of inattention, unawareness of my surroundings, native clumsiness, poor decision-making skills, and an appalling lack of foresight.

CHAPTER FIVE: TALK

I began to talk at the age of eight months. I only knew three words, “Hi”, “Fine”, and “Momma”.

So when my mother took me to the grocery store, and one of the little old blue-haired ladies there would come up to her cart and chuck me under the chin, and say, “Hewwo, widdle man. How are you, Shoogah?” I would reply “Hi. Fine.” Just like I knew what I was talking about.

The fact that I was small for my age made it even more hilarious to my mother. We get our little pleasures where we can find them.

Because I did read a lot, as I grew older I developed an extensive vocabulary. This pleased me, for I found I was able to express myself with both clarity and precision. However, children in real life do not usually talk like the characters in books, and people thought I was weird.

“What do you mean by ‘weird’? Do you mean you find me strange, unusual, unexpected or unnatural? Am I eerie, uncanny, mysterious or frightening in some way? Spooky, or ghastly? Do you believe I control fate itself, or I am some supernatural punishment inflicted upon you by the gods? Or do you just mean you find my behavior outlandish, peculiar, or grotesque?”

From about fifth grade onward, I made an effort to express myself in more colloquial vernacular. Simplify my speech. Make my language simpler. Talk normal.

To this day, I speak slowly, with many pauses, trying to accommodate a simpler syntax and more common synonyms. As my mind has aged and weakened, it has actually become harder to access the simpler, more general words, rather than the obscure, specific vocabulary that spontaneously springs to mind. Such as “regular” or “normal” rather than “spontaneous”.

CHAPTER SIX: BULLYING

I was bullied as a kid. I suppose every kid of my generation was.

I was punched, kicked, and spat upon. I have never had my nose broken, only bloodied, but I have had a black eye more than once. I have had my sweater, shoes, and glasses stolen, thrown down a sewer, or up onto a roof. The frames of my glasses were broken so many times that my mother eventually bought me steel frames. Not wire-rims, but thick, horn-rimmed, military-grade steel frames.

I have had my mouth stuffed full of dirt more than once. I have been forced to eat dog excrement. Once, I was tripped while standing in the milk line, and split open my chin, requiring several stitches. I was hit on the back of the head with a steel pipe, and when I returned to class after recess, my teacher sent me to the nurse’s office, because my yellow polo shirt was dyed red with my blood, in the back, where I couldn’t see it.

In fifth grade, I was called out to a fight at “The Place”, near a eucalyptus grove. “Come alone,” I was told. “Fists only. No weapons.”

When I got there (Yes, I was that stupid) my tormentor called out to me, “Coward”.

“I’m not the one who came here with six of his friends,” I answered. (See what I mean by stupid?)

That was the worst beating I’ve ever had. But then, I have never gone to war.

In High School, a fellow student, a head taller than I and perhaps twice as broad, told me, “I could beat you up.”

“That’s true,” I said. “You’re right. You’re a lot bigger and stronger than I am. There is nothing I could do to hold you back, if you tried to beat me up. I am not strong enough to defend myself. The only thing I could possibly do to stop you would be to kill you.”

He looked at me funny, and didn’t say anything more about it.

CHAPTER SEVEN: KISS THE GIRL

She was a Freshman, I was a Senior.

In High School, to be perfectly clear.

We didn’t know each other. We were in different History classes, but one Friday, the two classes joined several others on a field trip.

Late in the day, as we all waited in the rain to board the bus back to school, many of us sheltered under the narrow overhangs along the side of the museum. She and I randomly ended up in the same alcove. Although it was just the two of us, it was a close fit.

When she turned her face up to me, I impulsively -- almost -- kissed her. But I pulled back.

“Coward,” she said.

It was a long, sloppy, highly imaginative, and almost athletic kiss, but I believe it counted as just one. Then we boarded the bus.

On Monday, I sought her out at lunchtime, wanting to ask her out.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “My parents won’t let me date until I’m sixteen.”

A few weeks later, she invited me to her fourteenth birthday party, along with a plethora of other students, both boys and girls.

“Do you remember me?” she asked at the door.

“Of course I do,” I replied. She laughed, and danced away. We saw each other a few more times after that, but only from a distance.

CHAPTER EIGHT: PICTURE ME

My wife was looking through one of my old High School yearbooks.

“You look like that kid from Harold and Maude,” she said.

She meant Bud Cort.

She was right.




When I was a senior at The University, my brother Jack was a freshman. I suppose because of our slight southern accents (from growing up around our parents) and our quiet, southern-gentlemanly-ish manners, some of our friends and acquaintances started calling us “The Tarleton Twins”.

Jack was the one who looked like George Reeves: five inches taller, fit, square-jawed and handsome.

I looked more like Fred Crane.



When Warren Zevon came out with his album Excitable Boy my wife mentioned, “Boy, he really looks like you.” He was blonder, handsomer, but she had a point.



As I moved into middle age, one of my clients mentioned he thought I looked like Alfred Einstein. Not Albert Einstein the physicist, but Alfred Einstein, the musicologist. I was somewhat heavier by that time, but I can see the resemblance.


In the 2OOO’s, I grew a mustache. It came in gray. My wife told me I looked like Wilford Brimley. This was unfortunately true. I shaved it off.


Now in my advancing age, I look more like Barry Humphries.



No, not that Barry Humphries.



No, not that Barry Humphries, either. The one from the Hobbit.



That’s more like it.

CHAPTER NINE: THE THIRD GIRL I EVER KISSED

This is going to take a little while to explain.

It was 1964. As a college sophomore, I had the good fortune, and good luck of the lottery, to continue to live in the on-campus dorms.

The dorms were “co-ed”, as the term was understood in that era. That is, they were U-shaped, with the women’s dorms on the Eastern Leg, and the men’s dorms on the Western Leg. The connecting bar to the South was a common area, which was closed and locked after nine pm. Such were the mores of the times.

Judy -- I will call her Judy -- lived across the quad from me, and had a good view of the face of my second-floor dorm room. It was a private room (no roommate), tiny and narrow. There was barely room for a bed, a study desk, and a chair. A small closet. The toilet and shower were across the hall, shared with the other dorm rooms in the suite. These others were all doubles.

Judy lived with her roommate, as I said, across the quad, also on the second floor.

Oddly, the rooms were designed to each open onto a little balcony, and even my tiny unit had a narrow one outside a sliding door. Judy observed, in the Northern California Spring, that my balcony received one or two hours of direct sunlight each day. Hers, on the opposite side, was always in deep shadow, as was most of the quad, most of the time. Being a native of Southern California, Judy coveted that sunlight.

So she figured out where my room was, and came over and knocked on the door one weekend.

Would I mind, she wondered, if she installed a beach chair on my balcony, and came over to sunbathe in that little spot of light there every day?

I did not mind at all, because (1) it was attention from a pretty girl, and attention from a pretty girl is always welcome, and (2) I had classes in the late morning and early afternoon that quarter anyway, so she could have the run of my apartment while I was gone.

Because virtually all the dorm rooms were designed for two, each had two keys. My room, a single, also had two keys through some bureaucratic logic, and I had been presented with them both, although I had no idea what to do with the spare. But now (3) I could give my spare key to Judy.

Mostly when I came back from class, Judy was gone to classes of her own, but sometimes she was there. It was always a treat when she was. She was cleverer than I, and could always help me with my homework, even if it was not a course she was taking. She had the peculiar ability to read the relevant chapter in the textbook, and somehow know the answers to the questions at the end.

There was also the matter of her wearing a bikini while sunbathing. There was quite a bit more coverage with a bikini back in those days, still, a bikini on a pretty girl was an appealing aesthetic. Even while doing homework, wearing a robe as part of the ensemble, it brought a certain brightness into my otherwise dull and drab life.

Of course, when we started making out on a regular basis, there was an enhanced jollity in having the pretty girl you are snogging and whatnot wearing little more than a bikini and sandals.

Over time, there developed a degree of frustration and anxiety in our encounters. We would sometimes spend hours at a time in amorous repose, but in the end, Judy just went back to her dorm room, always before the 9pm curfew.

So long, it’s been good to know you.

Her severe religious upbringing, and personal religiosity, led to even greater frustration for Judy, as she was desiring something which was, for her, entirely beyond the pale. With the minimal attention I had paid to the minimal exposure to religion I had experienced, I felt it best to let her take the lead. I might have wanted things to move a little faster, but at least I had no qualms about the final destination.

One night she teased, “There is a way, you know. We could get married. Then get a quickie divorce. Then it would be completely legal. Not even a divorce, really. If we’re married less than ninety days, we could just apply for an annulment. It would be like it never happened. Only it would have happened. Probably several times.”

“You’ve really thought this through,” I commented. Either at the time, or sometime later.

“You hear things,” said Judy.

It seemed an absurd suggestion. But the idea, once out there, became more palatable over time. Almost reasonable.

At last, one evening while she was sitting, fuming, frustrated, getting ready to go back to her own room, I said, “This is stupid.”

I got down on one knee and asked, “Will you -- temporarily -- marry me?”

She laughed and left.

But the next day, she said, “Yes.”

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CHAPTER TEN: MY FIRST WIFE

It turned out to be a little more complicated than we thought.

We had to fill out and pay for a marriage license. There was a two week waiting period.

We had to get physical exams. Judy got a prescription for The Pill.

Although not really necessary, I bought her a wedding band. Solid silver, one-tenth the price of a gold one.

She found an old wedding gown that smelled of moth-balls in a thrift shop, which fit her without alterations. It was decorated with entirely too much lace, and it was hot for a California May.

I wore the dark blue pin-stripe suit I kept for special occasions. And a red tie.

We rented a room for two at a local motel near the courthouse for just one night.

City Hall provided a Justice of the Peace and two anonymous witnesses.

There were a half-dozen other couples there, all older than the two of us.

We told no one: not parents, not friends, not family.

A photo was included as a souvenir. It was all over by two in the afternoon.

We took her Karmann Ghia to the motel, checked in, and picked up where we had left off the night before.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“This feels weird.”

“We can slow down. We have all night. And eighty-nine more night beyond that, if we like.”

“It’s just…” She kissed me hard, and then drew back. Thus began a conversation that lasted past midnight. It had, for the most part, only one single subject.

Excerpts:

“Sometimes I think I want to just Do It, and go home.”

“I think you might not really mean that.”

“You’re right. I don’t mean it. But I want to mean it.”

“Do you want to go home? I mean, back to The University.”

“No. Not really. I don’t know what I want.”

(extended kissing)

“This isn’t working.”

“It’s OK.”

“I wish we were really married.”

“We are really married. We are as completely married as anybody can get. We’ve got the signature of a judge on a public document, filed at the courthouse, that proves it.”

“But… I don’t want it to last forever.”

“I don’t want it to last forever either,” I lied.

Judy had picked up the annulment papers we needed to file on the way out of the courthouse.

I pulled them out, and signed in the appropriate spaces.

“All you have to do is sign it, too, and put it in the mail.”

She set the papers down on one of the end tables.

“I like you.”

“I like you, too.”

“A lot.”

“I like you a lot, too.”

“What if you were in love with me?”

“Wow. Do you want me to be in love with you?”

“You make is sound like something you can just turn on and off.”

“Look. I’ll be honest. I… admire you, tremendously. You are my superior in every way. You’re smarter than me, stronger than me -- more athletic (she did soccer and swimming. I did sandwiches) -- more emotionally mature, more mature, period. More… gregarious. Friendly. Charismatic. People like you.”

“Are you trying to flatter me?”

“Is it flattery if it’s true? You’re more beautiful than me. Objectively, beautiful, period.”

“What’s your point?”

“You’re Out of My League. It would be so easy for me… It would be easy for me to fall in love with you. But I don’t think I could… un-fall. Do you understand?”

“No.”

This is when I learned: we think we are looking for someone who will love us.

What we are really looking for is for someone who will allow us to love them.

We went to bed at one or two in the morning. She slept in her wedding dress, on one of the Queen beds. I slept in my white t-shirt and the suit pants on the other one.

In the morning, I paid the motel $6, and Judy drove us back to The University.

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I Won't Dance

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CHAPTER ELEVEN: MARRIED LIFE

The next Monday, she came over for a brief, chaste sun-bathing-and-make-out-session, but her heart didn’t seem to be in it. On Tuesday afternoon, when I got back from class, her beach chair was gone from my balcony.

I saw her around campus. I mentioned I still had the annulment papers back in my room. I invited her to drop by and pick them up.

I called her a few times to remind her the papers needed filling out. Sometimes the phone would just ring. A couple of times she said “OK”, but never showed. I didn’t want to be a pest. I stopped calling.

She dropped by my room unannounced one afternoon. She was wearing more clothing than I had ever seen her wear other than the wedding gown.

“I’m sorry. Things just got too real for me too fast. I’ve been thinking about things. I feel like we really are married. I mean, we’re family now. And because we’re family, it feels… it feels like incest.”

“<Now that is a real problem>” I thought to myself. “<You ought to have that looked at>”

“We both just got carried away,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

I picked up the annulment from my study desk, where it had been sitting for weeks.

“Everything is filled out,” I explained. “All you have to do is sign, and we can drop it in the mail today.”

“I need to run. I’ll drop by again, right after class, and we can finish everything up.”

But she never showed.

June. Finals week. Early one morning, I stuffed the papers in an envelope addressed to the courthouse, applied the appropriate postage, and took it across to her dorm room.

She answered in a bathrobe -- the same one she wore after sunbathing. Nothing I hadn’t seen before.

I apologized for coming over so early. I had an early final. I gave her the envelope through the crack in the door.

She took it.

Looking over her shoulder, I noticed she had a guest.

A male guest.

CHAPTER TWELVE: MOVING ON

School ended.

Judy went home to Southern California over the summer. I stayed at The University, picking up a few classes. She didn’t come back to school in the Fall.

I realized I didn’t have her home address or telephone number. I didn’t know her parent’s names. I didn’t even know what city she lived in -- only that it was one of those little suburbs around L.A.

The annulment had never gone through.

She had a pretty common last name. Think “Smith”.

I wondered how much it would cost to hire a private detective.

I washed out of the on-campus housing lottery my junior year, and had to take an apartment off-campus, a small house which I shared with three other guys.

It had been more pleasant living alone. There was quickly a smell of unwashed clothes, and poorly washed dishes, food in the refrigerator that should have been thrown out last week.

Mostly, it smelled of other guys. Sweat, or testosterone, or something.

There is this.

All the time I was growing up, I was teased and bullied for being, as it was supposed, ‘gay’. They used different epithets in those days.

It is true I presented as effeminate. I was small, slender, and unathletic. I preferred reading to playing sports, and actually playing sports to watching them. I liked movies. I liked it when my parents took me to see a play. I liked listening to Original Cast Albums of Broadway Musicals.

I was quiet. I was, perhaps, shy. Not aggressive. I didn’t like fighting.

However.

The psychiatric establishment tells us that everyone, male and female, falls somewhere on a spectrum, from “Attracted to Men” to “Attracted to Women.”

In 21st-century America, we tend to separate people into “Gay”, “Straight”, and “Bi’.

But the more you dig down, the more complicated it gets. LBGTQIA+. And all the other letters of the alphabet, too.

As for me, personally, I am way over on the “Attracted to Women” end of the spectrum.

I mean, I can understand why someone might be attracted to, say, Tab Hunter or David Bowie.

I’m just, well, you know, not.

I have always preferred the friendship of women rather to men.

Men are generally squarish, rather than roundish. Hairy, rather than smooth. Coarse, rather than… whatever is the opposite of coarse. I prefer the latter in all cases. And not to put too fine a point on it, women smell better. To me, at least.

A couple of decades after I graduated from The University, I was invited by a group of men-friends to go out on a camping trip, to celebrate (?) our mutual mid-life crises. Just us men, out in the woods, where we would do man-things, such as eat mostly-raw chunks of meat charred on sticks, sleep under the stars, and, presumably, grunt, scratch, and piss in the campfire.

Why should I do this, I thought to myself, when I could otherwise stay home in bed all weekend with my wife?

Anyway, my Junior and Senior year at college, I lived in this off-campus house with a number of regularly rotating roommates, all male, some more or less annoying than others.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THESE YOUNG GIRLS WON’T LET ME BE.

Elvis Presley and I have something in common.

1965. Senior year. I needed credits to graduate. I had taken three years of Theater Arts in High School, one year of Performing Arts, strutting the stage, and two years of Stagecraft, behind the curtain. I registered for Drama 1O1.

The rule was, you got one free drama class. All the others you had to audition for. The major portion of the second half of Drama 1O1 was pairing up and preparing for that audition.

My partner was Betty, a Freshman, seventeen years old, fresh out of High School.

Our scene, selected by our Professor, was the kissing scene from “Miss Lonelyhearts.” I was “Miss Lonelyhearts”, a (male) newspaperman, and Betty was my girlfriend, “Betty”. We rehearsed the kiss. We performed the scene for our professor, and took comments. She noted that while Betty was supposed to be the aggressor, she actually physically pulled away from me during the actual kiss. She suggested we needed to work on this.

I would like to point out that I was, at this time, still technically married.

The next time we met, Betty explained that while she would agree to do the scene with me, she was not actually going to be auditioning. Change of plans. I had recently discovered that I was not going to have time in my schedule for any more Theater before my graduation. It was not necessary for either of us to audition.

Then she explained her change of plans.

She was dropping out of college at the end of the quarter.

She had received her calling.

She was going to become a nun.

So what does this have to do with Elvis Presley?

In the 1957 film “Loving You”, the actress Dolores Hart gives Elvis Presley his first on-screen kiss. Five years later, she became a nun.

Currently eighty-one years old, Mother Dolores Hart resides at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, the same convent as Mother Noella Marcellino, the fascinating “Cheese Nun”. (Mother Noella holds a doctorate in microbiology from The University of Connecticut, with a specialty in the production and aging of cheese)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: IT’S OFF TO WORK I GO

I graduated with a degree in accounting from the business school.

My first job after graduation was working for a large hotel in the East Bay. I had a small office behind the registration counter, and a “studio apartment” at the hotel as part of my compensation. It was actually a converted hotel room on one of the upper floors.

Queen sized bed. Dining table. Coffee table. A couple of chairs. Black-and-white television set. Private Bath. Maid service. Clean sheets and towels every day.

My “kitchen” consisted of a small cube of a refrigerator, a hot plate, and a toaster. I owned two plates, two bowls, two cups, and two sets of silverware. This was optimism at its finest; I assumed one day I might have a visitor.

It was easy for me to work eight hours at my office in the hotel, then go up to my apartment, and never see the light of day. When I did go out -- food shopping, mostly -- I drove a beat-up old Ford Mustang. Red.

I visited my parents once a week. On those days I got at least one decent, well-balanced meal.

Eventually I started reconnecting with some old High School friends.

Flush with cash from my first job, I went Christmas shopping in San Francisco with my friend Chris and his girlfriend Rachel. It didn’t take me long to spend most of what I had, so I was waiting for them outside on the corner of Market Street and Somewhere when this guy comes up to me.

If it had been a few years later, he would have been called a hippie. If it had been a couple of decades earlier, he might have been called a hobo. Nowadays, we would call him a homeless person. He asked me if I had any spare change.

Now the writing advice is, “show, don’t tell”, but I think you need to understand something. So I am going to pause the narrative, and tell on myself for a little bit.

You’ve heard of SAD? Seasonal Affective Disorder? Whether the shorter days, overcast skies, colder weather, or enforced merriment of the holidays, some people just get depressed in the winter. I understand this is quite common.

I have anti-SAD.

Eleven months out of the year, I am somber and morose. The medical term is dysthymia.
But once December First rolls around, I become as merry as Ebenezer Scrooge in the Third Act.

Perhaps this is because I came from a loving family, with memories of a dozen happy Christmases.

One year, my parents bought me a rubber punching bag shaped like a clown. I played with it so hard I had destroyed it by the end of the day. The next Christmas, they bought me another one. That’s the kind of parents they were. (I destroyed that one, too.)

There is also the fact that unlike many other people, I actually enjoy holiday foods like Ham and Turkey and Pumpkin Pie and Apple Cider with cinnamon and cloves, and Eggnog with nutmeg, and Gingerbread (hard and soft, both) and peppermint and marzipan and stuffed dates and stuffed olives and Shortbread and Pfeffernussen. And the occasional Yorkshire Pudding. I have even had slices of two different fruitcakes that were actually quite good. (Although only two out of hundreds.) I also like leg of lamb, hard-boiled eggs, cheap Easter chocolate, and stale marshmallow Peeps. And baked Hallowe’en apples stuffed with walnuts and raisins, and pumpkin pie, made with either golden squash or real pumpkin.

Perhaps it is because I have an aesthetic appreciation for Surrealism, particularly the bizarre juxtaposition of contradictory images. Thus, as the mercantile community seeks to earn 5O% of its income in the last month of the year, Heaven and Angels are playing through the radio speakers in the department stores, exhorting us to Come and Adore the Son of The Father, Now in Flesh Appearing, Away in A Manger, And On Earth Peace, Goodwill Towards Men.

And the shoppers, rushing home with their treasures, don’t even notice.

So it was that, full of Christmas Spirit, I emptied my wallet, and gave a complete stranger a $2O bill. He took it; he didn’t even look at the denomination, and walked away up the street.

Then this happened.

He stopped, turned around, and looked me in the eye from a quarter-of-a-block away. “I’ve been out here for hours,” he said. “And you’re the first person who has given me anything at all. God bless you, man.”

“Hey, Merry Christmas, man,” I said. “As merry as you can make it.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: BUT EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN...

There are moments in space-time when the wave function collapses, and any alternate universes that might have once existed are foreclosed. When some action begins a cascade of events which will lead to their inexorable conclusion, impacting your life forever.

This was one of those moments.

My friend Chris and his girlfriend came out of the stores to find me waiting for them. We walked to where Chris had parked his car.

“Who was that guy you were talking to?” Chris asked.

“Just some bum,” I said. “He was asking me for money.”

“I hate that,” said Chris. “I wish the City could get them off the streets.”

He climbed into the driver’s seat, Rachel took shotgun. I rode in the back.

“I gave him $2O,” I confessed.

“What? What a waste. He’ll just use it to buy booze.”

“And if I gave you my last $2O, what would you use it for?”

Rachel laughed like Christmas bells ringing. “But it would be really, really good booze,” she said.

He dropped me off at my parents. I was spending Christmas Eve with them, sleeping over in my old room, and then Christmas Day with them as well. On Tuesday, I would be heading back across the bay to my apartment at the hotel, and back to work.

I saw Chris and Rachel again at a low-key party on New Year’s Eve.

“You should call Rachel’s cousin, and ask her out,” said Chris. He handed me his business card, with a name and number written on the back.

Later that night-- early January 1st, as it were-- Rachel said to me sotto voce, “You should really call Libby.”

“Who?” I asked.

“My cousin Libby. You should ask her out.”

“Do I know her?”

“No.”

“Does she know me?”

“No. But she knows… you’re Chris’s friend.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE FATEFUL CALL

Over the next few days I became deathly ill with the flu, complete with a hacking, racking cough. It got so bad I actually went to a real doctor and got a real prescription-level cough suppressant. May I say here that dextromethorphan with codeine is my drug of choice.

So it was on a Friday night two weeks later before I gave Libby a call. Telephone conversation reconstructed.

Me: Hello, this is John Roberts. Is Libby there?

Rachel: Oh, hi, John. This is Rachel. I’ll go get her.

Libby: Hello?

Me: Hello, this is John Roberts…

Libby: Oh, I thought you’d never call.

Me: Sorry, I’ve been sick. Uh… would you like to go out sometime?

Libby: What did you have in mind?

Me: Uh… Maybe we could meet somewhere for coffee tomorrow afternoon?

Libby: Why don’t you come pick me up at my house, and take me down the block to McDonald’s for a chocolate shake?

Me: Uh… OK. Sure. Is one o’clock tomorrow good for you?

Libby: Sure. I’m not very good at being on time, so you might have to wait. Be sure to dress up.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: AND NOW, SOMEONE WHO NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION

I carefully selected a brown suit and tie. Black is threatening, blue is intimidating. Brown or tan makes one appear harmless. I learned that from GQ. They don’t recommend brown suits.

When I went to pick up Libby, Rachel answered the door.

“Yeah, Libby’s living with us while she’s going to College. Her folks actually live in Bakersfield.” Libby’s Aunt-- Rachel’s mother-- was home. Her Uncle was out. Libby herself was nowhere to be seen. Her Aunt seemed nice. She asked me where I had gone to school, when I had graduated, what I did for a living. But she didn’t even make it seem like she was giving me the 3rd degree.

Eventually, Libby showed up. I left my car parked in front of her Aunt and Uncle’s house, and we walked the two blocks to McDonald's. She ordered her milkshake, and I ordered a batch of fries.

She was petite, with a heart-shaped face. Her dark eyes had tiny golden suns around the pupil. Her hair was cut short, like Twiggy, and chestnut-brown. When she spent enough time in the sun, I later learned, her hair turned jet-black. In the future, I would see that hair at numerous lengths and in numerous colors. Once, she hennaed it red. Once, we found a single gold hair, and let it grow until it finally fell out. Three times, in three different decades, she had it permed. Once it fell past her waist. She always cut it short again, especially right after one of our kids was born. They would pull on her hair while they nursed. In middle age, she developed a white forelock. Later, she developed two more white streaks, just above her temples as well. She used herbal or fruity shampoo and conditioner, and I enjoyed the varying scents when I was near her.

“So you’re up at the Junior College?”

“I’m graduating in June.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“I’ll send you an invitation. What do you like to do on a date?”

“Uh… aren’t we on a date now?”

“I mean our next date. Hopefully before I graduate in June. Do you like plays?”

“Sure.” I took some theater classes in High School. And one course at The University.

“Well, my College is putting on Pirates of Penzance. We could go next weekend.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Or we could go tonight.”

“We could…” I had come over-prepared. I had a hundred bucks in my wallet. A college musical couldn’t run $5O a ticket, would it?

“We’ll need to go back and tell my Aunt and Uncle we’ll be out late.”

“Can I take you to dinner before the show?”

“Dinner and the Theater. That’s what I call a date.”

Libby’s Uncle was home. He treated me with perfect civility, but I got the impression he didn’t approve of me for some reason.

I later learned he spent the next six months inviting guys over for dinner that he thought were more appropriate matches for his niece.

I took her to dinner at a nice little seafood restaurant I knew. The show at the College was better than I expected. We got home before eleven. I walked her up to her door, she let herself in.

“Good-night,” she said.

“Good-night,” I said. She shut the door.

I heard Rachel on the other side. “Well, tell me all about it,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: I THOUGHT LOVE WAS ONLY TRUE IN FAIRY-TALES. AND THEN...

The College movie theater was showing François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. We went there on our second date.

“Wasn’t it fantastic?” asked Libby.

“I guess?”

She then explained to me all the parts of the film I had missed-- for example, that the credits are all spoken-- there are no written words anywhere in the film. That Julie Christie plays both Monday’s wife, and his mistress.

So for our third date, we saw it again. This time, I was able to converse about it with her more intelligently.

On our fourth date, we went to see the film “The Ballad of Josie” with Doris Day and Peter Graves. We were mutually unimpressed. However, that evening did end with a kiss, so that was progress.

I sent her a Valentine on February 14th. We were, after all, dating steadily.

We drove out to The University. I showed her the buildings where I had had most of my classes, I showed her the dormitory building I had lived in for two years, and the house I had lived in (off-campus) for the other two years.

We took a ride on the San Francisco Ferry. Turns out, she gets seasick. I have never had that problem. Lots of people onboard had advice. “Stare out at the horizon.” “Stand in the middle of the boat.” It was not one of our more successful dates.

I took her to see the little office behind the hotel check-in counter where I worked. I also took her upstairs to see my room. She peeked through the door, but demurred when I offered a tour.

I liked being with her. She seemed to enjoy my company. One night, I took her out to dinner, and afterwards, we just sat in the car and talked for hours.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Sometime around the end of March, there was a knock at my door. A scruffy-looking young man handed me an envelope.

“Service of Process,” he said.

“Judy”-- my wife from The University-- had moved to Wyoming. She was engaged to be married. I was a hindrance to that happy prospect, or, at least, our never-consummated, never-annulled marriage was. Now it was too late for an annulment. A divorce was called for.

Judy had hired an attorney, and I had been provided with the necessary paperwork to agree to an uncontested divorce. There were some niggling details. I was to pay a token amount of spousal support, $1OO per month for twelve months. The judge in Wyoming rather frowned on this. He thought it should have been more. A lot more.

But I was happy to pay it, to end that sordid episode in my life.

Thinking back on it now, I wonder how she ever found me. I have a pretty common name -- I share it with a Supreme Court Justice, a television journalist, and two British writers. And at the time, I had no real address-- just lived in a room at the top of a hotel. I suppose she must have sprung for a private detective.

I never asked.

This is when Libby and I had our first big fight.

I thought it was a funny story. She didn’t.

“You mail those papers back right now! I can’t believe I’ve been dating a married man!”

“They’re already in the mail. And I wasn’t really married, anyway.”

“You were married enough that you need to get a divorce!”

I eventually, also, had to give a litany of every girl I had ever kissed.

(see the previous eighteen chapters)

Libby, as it turned out, had never kissed a boy. I was her first.

Although she confessed -- rather shyly, and rather reluctantly -- that she had had a secret girlfriend in High School for about a year. Which made her, in a sense, more experienced than I was. That is, she had actually slept with a girl!

CHAPTER TWENTY: AND NOW, THE MOMENT YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR

June was fast approaching, and Libby’s college graduation. Now that I was finally (almost) unmarried again, I was planning on getting married. Again. I was going to propose after the graduation ceremony. I figured I could get Libby alone for a few minutes, if I was patient.

I bought a 1/8th-carat engagement ring in her size.

I wore my dark blue pinstripe (with vest) to the graduation.

I found the perfect moment, on the porch, in the backyard of her Aunt and Uncle’s house.

The full moon shining in the sky.

Or maybe I am romanticizing. About the moon, I mean.

I asked her to marry me.

She laughed at me.

This hurt my feelings.

“No,” she said. “I’m not laughing at you. I’d love to marry you. We just have to wait… at least until next March.”

“Why?” I asked. I wasn’t opposed to waiting, but the ‘have to’ part kind of worried me.

Libby explained.

She was just seventeen. Her birthday was at the end of March.

I had kind of missed her birthday. During the fight-- the turmoil over my divorce back then.

She had been only sixteen years old when I took her to McDonald's for that first chocolate milkshake.

Libby had been skipped a couple of grades. She had graduated High School at fifteen, and had spent two years at the Junior College (I understand they are called Community Colleges now) where she earned her Associate of Arts degree in General Education, and a California Teacher’s Certificate.

This sort of explained why she never ordered wine with her dinner. I had assumed she was just some kind of a teetotaler.

And now I had to explain to her Aunt and Uncle that I, a nearly twenty-three-year-old man in the middle of a divorce, was planning on marrying his seventeen-year-old niece.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: ENGAGED

I am in favor of long engagements.

Ours allowed us to get to know each other better.

For example, I learned what year my fiancée had been born.

“You make me feel like an old man,” I said.

“You are an old man,” she said.

Which taught me to re-think my incurious, laissez-faire attitude towards interpersonal relationships, and ask more questions in the future.

We spent time with my parents. Libby bonded with my mother, wanting to learn all about all my favorite childhood recipes. Which was pretty funny, since my mother was a Betty-Crocker-bland cook, and my actual favorite meal, to this day, is Something I’ve Never Had Before.

We spent time with her Aunt and Uncle. He seemed to have been grudgingly talked into approving of me. Her cousin Rachel and I were more-or-less friends already. I also impressed Libby’s Aunt with my cooking skills, daringly adding diced Spam and frozen peas to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Rachel’s pre-teen twin brothers loved the concoction.

I learned that Rachel and Chris had told Libby the story of my giving $2O to a homeless man on Christmas Eve.

Chris, mostly wanting to demonstrate what a doofus his friend was.

But Libby had been charmed by the story, and had wanted to meet me.

That is why they had arranged for me to ask her out.

Rachel and Chris had not even considered the age difference -- Libby was otherwise so mature that people tended to forget her age -- nor had they expected that we would fall so hard for each other.

Libby would not actually meet Christmas Robert until December. As I mentioned, during the holidays, I become a rather different person.

I would kiss her, and tell her, “You’re sweet.” It was a little while before she realized that I meant it literally. It was as though someone had painted a thin layer of fructose on her skin. She was literally delicious.

In the Summer, we took a road trip in my old red Mustang to visit her family in Bakersfield. This consisted of her parents, an older brother, an older sister, and two little brothers, seven and four at the time, whom she had never met, having been away at school in Northern California.

She stayed overnight at her parents’ house.

I rented a room at a cheap motel in Buttonwillow.

Her family was civil and polite, if not cordial. They were, on the whole, cool and taciturn. There was obviously some sort of unresolved stress between Libby and her parents.

I began to suspect that she had not been living with her Uncle wholly because she had been attending school.

When I asked, she didn’t want to talk about it. Eventually, she said, “It’s a disagreement. A religious thing.” and asked me to leave it at that.

Libby’s older sister was red-haired and brassy, and a hugger. Unlike the rest of the family, she was enthusiastic about our engagement, and kept calling me her brother-in-law, or even ‘new brother’. She lived with her husband on a farm outside the city limits. (At least, she called him her husband. They may not have been technically married.)

I saw very little of her father over the two days we were there. When I did see him, he took me aside, and tried to talk me out of marrying Libby. “She’s not the girl for you,” is all I remember him saying. I didn’t really listen.

Sometime either just before or just after our trip to Bakersfield, I got a small package containing the final dissolution of my marriage to Judy. She had also included the free photograph of the two of us that they took at the courthouse on our wedding day, as well as the solid silver wedding ring I had bought for her -- which had neatly broken in half, into matching crescents.

I would like to say that I took all the legal papers, the photo, and the broken ring and bought a locking fire-proof safe to keep them in forever, as talismans and proof of my divorce.

I actually have no idea where any of that stuff is now, and haven’t for decades.

I showed the papers and the photo to Libby, of course.

“She’s very pretty.”

“But I only have eyes for you,” I said.

She scoffed.

But it was true. Judy’s surfer-girl looks literally paled beside Libby’s darker beauty. Looking at that photo was like looking through Alice’s looking-glass, into another world where nothing made sense.

We had Christmas dinner with my parents. We had Christmas dinner, a few hours later, at Libby’s Aunt and Uncle’s. We tried to control ourselves, to eat only small portions of each dish. But the dishes kept on coming. It was hopeless. We were both sick on the 26th.

We had had this experience before. We had doubled up on Thanksgiving as well. We promised each other that after we were married, we would have Christmas and Thanksgiving alone.

And never have two Christmas dinners or Thanksgiving dinners again.

A pie-crust promise. Easily made, easily broken.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING

It was a slightly inconvenient relationship.

I worked in the East Bay, Libby lived with her Aunt and Uncle on the Peninsula. The San Francisco Bay stood between us. The Oakland and San Mateo Bay Bridges became familiar acquaintances. In September, Libby was hired as a Kindergarten teacher at a grammar school near her Aunt and Uncle's place. My hours were strange, occasionally requiring me to work weekends, or the graveyard shift. So we had difficulty seeing one another regularly, sometimes.

However, faithfully, once a week, I would drive across the Bay and go to her house, where her whole family and I would sit and watch Star Trek together.

Libby turned eighteen on March 28th, 1968. On April 6th, 1968, we were married at her Aunt and Uncle’s church. They did not require either of us to convert. We had the reception at the VFW hall. My parents generously provided catering for the event. It was all very simple and low-key. One of Libby’s Aunt’s nieces, who was taking a High School sewing class, made the bridal gown. There was dancing.

My friend Chris didn’t attend our wedding. He and Rachel had recently broken up, and she brought her new boyfriend.

Libby’s family in Bakersfield didn’t come either. They claimed to be going through a bout of the flu. My brother Jack, now in his senior year at The University, showed up in his dress Army ROTC uniform. My Baba Kate took the train from South Carolina to be at my wedding. If I am doing my math correctly, she was one-hundred-and-two years old at the time, and still lived alone. Did her own shopping, worked in her garden every day.

Libby tossed the bouquet. We ate cake.

We drove across the bay to my -- our -- hotel room apartment. She didn’t let me carry her across the threshold. She was afraid she would hit her head on the narrow doorway.

At this point, if this were a Fairy-tale, the story would be over. The Prince marries the Princess. They live happily ever after.

And by Fairy-tale, I mean Fairies like Maxfield Parrish or the Cottingly Fairies, not like the creepy Brothers Hildebrandt or Brian Froud Fairies.

But the story is not over. It is just beginning.

Spoiler Alert: They lived happily ever after.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: YEAR ONE

There was a little old German who manned the front desk at the hotel some evenings. When he and I were working the same shift, and things got slow, we would sing old drinking songs in my High School German.

Ach Du Lieber Augustin.

Im Himmel gibts kein Bier.

Ich Hab Den Vater Rhein In Seinem Bett Gesehen.

An Die Freude.

He was on duty when Libby and I came back from the wedding. I introduced her as my new bride. My wife. Frau Roberts.

He half-winked at me.

“Du warst nicht blind, als du sie siehst,” he said.

The little apartment improved. You know those cinder-block-and-wooden-plank bookcases college students make? Libby built one and filled it with canned goods and staples. She organized the tiny refrigerator to hold more food than I ever imagined it could. I had felt competent cooking for myself, but my new wife was nearly a gourmet chef in the kitchen.

Libby would take the Mustang to school across the bay. Eventually, we bought a VW Van for her, which she filled with books and games she wanted to share with her kids. Not that first year.

She loved her children. She would eventually end up teaching Kindergarten, and First through Third Grade, and once, for a short time, Pre-School, over the next thirty or so years.

She never stopped going to school herself. She eventually got a Masters in Education, and Bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Science and Computer Science, and uncountably many educational certificates.

One day I was driving our VW bus across the Golden Gate Bridge, and the bus began to tremble and shake violently, as if it was going to fall apart. Libby calmly informed me:

“It’s the seams on the bridge. You must be hitting them at the exact resonance frequency of the van.”

“What should I do?” I asked, panicked.

“Either speed up, or slow down,” she said.

I sped up just a little. The vibration stopped.

She had just happened to be taking Computational Geometry at the time, and just happened to have been studying resonance frequencies in her class.

Who says you will never use that math?

Her hobbies included Astronomy, Botany, Zoology, and Quantum Mechanics.

She spoke Spanish and French fluently. Italian and Portuguese almost as well. Her German was better than mine. Conversational Russian. Later, she learned Tagalog and Punjabi -- enough to converse with her student’s parents.

She did nothing by halves. She once helped organize a Cub Scout Camp. There was supposed to be a class on how to post, fly, care for, and honor the flag. She got the Air Force Color Guard to come and teach the kids, and demonstrate how it was done. There was supposed to be a class on computer science. IBM sent her four programmers to teach the class. There was supposed to be an Art class. She arranged for these clueless 8-to-11-year-old Cub Scouts to be taught by Faith Ringgold(!), although they used construction paper rather than quilts to tell their stories. This was all donated time. She, herself, taught a class on Campfire Cooking. She taught the boys to make Chinese stir-fry in a wok over a campfire -- a skill they would be able to use in their own kitchens, as adults. Some of these boys had never eaten vegetables without making a face, but she taught them to make a well-balanced and delicious meal they actually liked.

I have not even scratched the surface.

She had a brilliant mind. And yet, she chose to teach Kindergarten.

I can see her in my mind’s eye, that first year, sitting cross-legged on our bed, in our little hotel apartment, her guitar on her lap, playing “When I’m 64”, and laughing.

The body of her guitar was painted to look like blue stained glass, of course.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
-- Wallace Stevens, 1937

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: SEX

We American English speakers are funny. We say “gender” when we mean “sex”. We say “sex” when we mean “intercourse”. We say “intercourse” when we mean “coitus”. And mostly, we don’t say “coitus” at all.

You would think that a couple of ignorant, inexperienced virgins would have a hard time figuring things out.

You would be wrong.

First of all, it is fairly intuitive and straight-forward.

Second, this was the 6O’s. There were any number of instruction manuals available. The Kinsey Reports. Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, and other, lesser-known volumes.

You could walk into any bookstore in the Haight and buy books on Tantric Yoga and Erotic Massage. Or the Kama Sutra.

We never really got into Tantric Yoga.

Thirdly, Libby and I had a good sense of humor about all this.

Still, time went by, and despite regular utilization of the appropriate techniques, we didn’t have kids.

We were willing to wait. We were willing to take things as they came.

Most of the time.

“I think I’m barren,” Libby said one day, apropos of nothing.

“Do you think we should go see our doctors?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

And that was the last time either of us brought it up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THREE YEARS LATER

In 1971, I was accepted into a CPA program at a firm in San Diego. The extraordinary thing about this program was that I would be simultaneously earning an MBA.

We packed up the VW Bus. My old red Mustang had been replaced by a lemon-yellow Pinto. We drove the two cars south.

We stopped in Bakersfield to visit her parents. The first time since before the wedding, and only Libby’s second visit in ten years.

They were no more welcoming than before, although they did feed us.

“Are you planning on having children?” they asked.

“No plans yet,” said Libby.

“Thank God,” said her father, under his breath. I don’t think I was meant to hear.

Her red-haired, brassy older sister was the exception. She hugged us both, and fawned over us. She took us out to her farm, where we finally met her husband. It was a dry, dusty place that reminded me of The Grapes of Wrath. They even had grape vines.

We stayed overnight at the same motel in Buttonwillow I had once stayed at alone before.

In the middle of the night, Libby got up with stomach pains, vomiting, and diarrhea.

“Do you think I should leave the car here, and drive us both in the Bus?” I asked.

“I’ll be all right to drive. Probably just a little food poisoning. Serves me right for eating at my parent’s.”

“Surely you don’t think they would try to poison you,” I joked.

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said, in all seriousness.

In the morning, she felt fine, and we continued on down to San Diego.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE EXORCIST

Should I tell you now? I suppose it is as good a time as any. We will not see Libby’s parents again in this narrative.

They didn’t come to the wedding. They didn’t even come to the funeral.

“They didn’t even come to the funeral,” I said. “They didn’t even send flowers.”

“Well, you know why,” said Rachel.

“No,” I said. “I don’t know why.”

“Libby never explained?”

“She said it was some sort of… religious disagreement.”

Rachel snorted. “Religious? If that family ever walked through a church door, it would collapse on them.”

“Libby came to live with us when she was ten. Because her parents threw her out of the house. A neighbor somehow got our number-- I think they called Libby’s parents, and they gave it to them out of desperation. Or wanting to be left alone. I saw what happened myself. My father took me with him when he went to pick her up. He wanted a friendly face along -- someone nearer her age, although I was already in High School. We went to the neighbors, then took her back to her parents to get her things. She went upstairs to pack -- my father brought a large suitcase for her, in case there wasn’t one she could use. When she came down -- well, it was sometimes brought on by stress. All of a sudden, I could hear Libby doing Times Tables under her breath. Sometimes focusing her mind on something else could delay the onset for a little while. But it was too much. Standing there, ready to go with her new suitcase, she had a seizure.”

“Libby had juvenile epilepsy. Her family thought she was possessed by the devil. As soon as she hit the floor, they grabbed these big crucifixes they had scattered around the house, and started shouting bible verses at her. My father, of course, was a doctor, and immediately rushed to her, to make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit, or hurt herself in some other way.”

“When it was over, they warned us she needed to go on a ‘cleansing fast’ for twenty-four hours. My father didn’t respond. He just glared at his sister and her husband, loaded Libby’s suitcase in the trunk of the car, and took the three of us to a fancy restaurant.”

“That’s how Libby came to live with us. My father successfully exorcized her ‘demons’ with phenobarbital. She was only ten years old, but so bright, my father had to have her put in seventh grade. By the time she was in High School, she didn’t even need the drugs anymore. Juvenile epilepsy. You grow out of it.”

“My father told me later that her parents sent weekly letters for a year, admonishing him not to be too taken in by this ‘devil-child’. Stern punishment: that was the way to treat her, and ‘fasting days’-- intermittent starvation. Of course, he wouldn’t do it. And they wouldn’t give up their superstitions. Not even to see the grandkids. I expect they think that they, too, may be devil-spawn.”

<The above is a quick digest of several conversations I had with Rachel and her family over a couple of months. It took me a while to understand what they were telling me, it seemed so absurd.>

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: I ABANDON MY WIFE

Our first home in San Diego was a zero-bedroom apartment. There was a central room, a small kitchen, and a smaller bathroom. There were stairs leading up to the kitchen and bathroom, and a queen-sized bed pulled out from a hidden panel in the wall -- stored in an area underneath the kitchen and bathroom.

During the day -- living room. During the night -- bedroom.

The weekend we arrived, Libby’s flu-like symptoms returned. Unfortunately, I had orientation at my new job -- my new career -- on Monday, and I left her, sick and miserable, alone in a city where she knew no one. Our telephone had not even been installed. I felt terrible. She felt worse, I’m sure, but never complained.

She was, of course, four months pregnant.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: MY OWN FATHER

Life does not flow linearly, one story after another. Sometimes it is necessary to go back, and retell the timeline from a different perspective.

We left for San Diego the first week of January, 1971. My father passed away in December, 197O, from complications arising from decades of smoking. It was just a week before Christmas.

Two years before, at our wedding, he was already taking oxygen. Carried a little tank around with him.

I gave the eulogy at my father’s funeral.

Let me repeat that.

I gave the eulogy at my own father’s funeral.

No tears. No choking up. And the worst part is, everyone knew beforehand that I could do it.

He asked me before he died to include one of his favorite poems.

Next, Please by Philip Larkin (1951)

Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brass work prinked,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

My father had to retire early from the police force due to his health problems. But he never stopped working. He became licensed as a private investigator. He never had an office, never advertised. His clients always came by word-of-mouth. He probably under-charged. He just liked working the cases.

He had a good pension from the Police Department.

He consulted on an insurance fraud investigation once, and the company wanted to hire him full-time. A man in his sixties, with crippling emphysema, who walked with a cane. That was the quality of his detective skills. He turned them down. They ought to have made a TV show about him.

I miss my father. We used to have spirited arguments about moral philosophy. Sometimes we would convince one another, and argue the opposite sides next time.

My father taught me how to shoot a handgun. Gave me lessons on gun safety. This is why I have never owned a gun.

When we moved to San Francisco, my father learned that he had been born the day before the San Francisco earthquake.

“They knew I was coming,” he would say. I’m not sure what he meant by that.

There was a magazine article once that reported that individuals in prisons had, on average, a lower IQ than the general population.

“That’s because we can’t catch the smart ones,” my father remarked.

One summer, when I was eleven or twelve, the two of us read all the science fiction available at our local library. Admittedly, that was not a lot. But we discussed Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Bradbury together.

He wanted me to grow up to be a physicist, invent teleportation technology, and put the trucking and shipping industries out of business. Simultaneously making our family richer than Croesus.

I disappointed him.

I remember him now as he was then: big-bellied, loud, boisterous, and larger-than-life.

Accustomed to wearing three-piece suits to the office, overalls and plaid shirts at home. Formal or casual, he always wore the same brand and style of brown dress shoes. He always had at least two pair: one polished to a military shine, the other dull, worn, and scuffed for his work around the house and the yard.

After my father passed away, my grandmother sold her home in South Carolina, and moved in with my mother. Baba Kate was then (if I have done the math right) one-hundred-and-five. She would live to be one-hundred-and-seven. Like my father, she would die at home, in her sleep.

After that, one of my father’s widowed sisters and her friend moved into my mother’s home. Like my father, the two smoked like chimneys. My mother never approved of smoking, especially not in her house.

There was a gazebo in the backyard where one could sit and smoke outside in any weather. (A covered walkway led from the house.) My mother called it “The Smokehouse”. The backyard smelled like stale tobacco from as early as I can remember.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MY BROTHER JACK

The June after we were married, my brother Jack graduated from The University. He immediately went into the Army.

This was at the height of the Vietnam War, mind you. Sixty thousand American soldiers died. Three hundred thousand were wounded. It was not like the (relatively) safe wars we prosecute today.

But my brother Jack was completely sold on the righteousness of the War.

The Vietnam War broke him.

He was not shot, not hit with shrapnel. But he came home addicted to a wide range of drugs. The worst was heroin.

While he lived in the Bay Area, and I was in San Diego, our aging mother took care of him.

For a few years, he held a job and rented an apartment. Until he couldn’t anymore.

He wandered, sometimes crashing with friends, occasionally homeless. When he couldn’t bear it any more, he would go to my mother’s house. And she would take him in. Until she couldn’t.

He only declined. He was in and out of mental hospitals and half-way houses. Sometimes he would go out and wander the streets, sometimes for days.

After we moved back to the Bay Area, I tried to take some of the burden off my mother. It was hopeless talking to him. And he smelled bad. I should have been more help, but I honestly didn’t know how. My mother chiefly kept track of him until she passed away.

After that, he was mostly my responsibility. I was relieved every time he checked himself into one institution or another. They did not always inform me when he was released. Sometimes I would show up for our weekly visit, and he would not be there.

Once, I drove down from San Francisco to Anaheim to pay his bail. He had gotten himself in trouble in Disneyland.

Aside from a couple of shoplifting incidents, that was the only time he was ever arrested, as far as I know.

In the summer of 1981, I received a call from the institution where Jack was currently residing.

Apparently, sometime during the previous week, he had hit his leg, hard, on a chair or table. Hard enough to bruise a large vein. He developed a blood clot, which moved to his heart, precipitating a heart attack.

He was rushed to the hospital. By the time they had called me, listed as next-of-kin, he had already passed away.

He had been hospitalized for a heart attack before. I did not know this.

It seems strange that after all the bullets and bombs he dodged in Viet Nam, after all the cocaine that he sucked up his nose, after all the heroin he shot into his veins, it was an ordinary chair that killed him.

I gave the eulogy at his funeral, as I had given the eulogy at our mother’s.

Looking back on it now, it is hard to believe it was less than eighteen months between my mother’s passing, and Jack’s.

I should have taken better care of my brother.

CHAPTER THIRTY: OUR LITTLE BOY MARSHALL

Continuing where we left off.

Our little boy Marshall was born the first week of June, 1971, in San Diego.

Libby had been doing a little substitute-teaching while she was pregnant, but she began to be called in less and less as she began to show. Ah, those were the days.

Marshall benefited from his two odd parents. That is to say, he was affected by us. He would sit between us on the couch as we watched Star Trek reruns. His mother read to him enthusiastically.

When he learned to walk, he and Libby would go out walking together. At first, around the apartment complex. His favorite route would take them by the swimming pool, where he would splash with his hands, or kick with his feet.

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous taking him down by the pool?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Well, he’s only a year old. He might fall in.”

“Then I’ll pull him out.”

“I just don’t want anything to happen to him.”

“You mean, you don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”

She taught him to swim before he was two.

They took longer excursions. They went where he wanted to go, exploring the neighborhood. Libby followed, making sure he was safe. He seldom looked back. He trusted she would be there.

So did I.

One night she whispered to me, “I want everything to happen to him. Even the bad stuff. I want him to fall, skin his elbows and knees, maybe even break a bone. I want his heart broken. Otherwise, how do you know if you’re alive?”

In September of ‘72, Libby began teaching half-days at a Nursery School, and Marshall went with her. We would call it a Pre-School in the 21st century. He had something like free enrollment, and got to associate with a lot of other children his age.

When Star Wars came out, you can bet we took six-year-old Marshall to see it with us. He was enthralled by the lights and colors, and fell asleep less than half-way through.

By this time, Libby had begun teaching Kindergarten again. I had a new job at the headquarters of a finance company. We had moved up to a two-bedroom apartment.

Marshall read voraciously, like his mother. He was good in school, but he found it boring.

At age fifteen-and-a-half, he took the G.E.D., and aced it. His mother explained that he was not going to just sit around the house: it was work, or school. He moved to Arizona for two years, and got a certification as a motorcycle mechanic. Came back to California to live with Mom and Dad and work at a local Harley-Davidson dealership.

He got married at nineteen. Had a son when he was twenty. Decided he needed a better career, and apprenticed to a Union Electrician. Got an Electrical Engineering degree. Got an Electrical Contractor's license. Moved his family to New York. Moved his family to Florida.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THREE LITTLE MAIDS FROM SCHOOL

The three of us moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area the summer of 1979.

Before 198O had ended, our daughter Joanna was born, and my mother had passed away.

In 1981, Ashley was born.

In 1983, Mickeallah was born. (As a teen-ager, she changed her name to Michelle.)

We began to think it was, perhaps, time for some prophylaxis.

We procrastinated, and it turned out that such action was unnecessary. After a brief spell of prolificacy, we stabilized at four children.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: HI DIDDLE DEE DEE

Shortly after we returned to the Bay Area, and both before and after the girls were born, my wife and I became involved in community theater.

We had both been involved in theater in High School, Libby more intensely than myself.

Due to the demands on our time of rehearsal and performances, we alternated. One would be involved in a production, the other would stay home with the kids.

Libby was primarily involved in musicals.

Hello Dolly. Kismet. 42nd Street. The Sound of Music. Cinderella

I was more interested in straight theater.

Dial M for Murder. A Shot in the Dark. Wait Until Dark. Dracula. Woyzeck. Harvey. I did tech work on Waiting For Godot.

Libby cheated a little, and got me parts as a featured player in shows she was in a couple of times.

In this case, “featured player” means a character with only one single short scene, who never appears elsewhere in the play.

Zoltan Karpathy (that marvelous boy) in My Fair Lady.

Bert Healy in Annie.

Heh.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: IF YOU’RE GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO

Libby’s cousin Rachel was half-owner of a beauty salon in San Francisco.

We played with our appearance a little. At one time, Libby and I each got perms, and hennaed our hair red.

I know this is perpetuating a stereotype, but between the actors and the hairdressers, during this period in our lives we had a lot of gay friends. I mean, invited-over-to-their-house-for-dinner-regularly level friends.

This was San Francisco, after all. We got to know the Castro well.

Of course, this was the 8O’s…

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: JOANNA

Marshall had a bit of a time adjusting to his new flock of baby sisters, after being an only child for nine years. The girls were full of surprises.

Joanna was four. She asked her thirteen-year-old brother to play pretend with her.

“I’m a Robot Karate Dinosaur,” he announced.

“I’m a Princess,” said Joanna.

“Let’s fight,” said Marshall.

“OK,” said Joanna.

“I’m using my Atomic Robot Dinosaur Karate,” said Marshall.

“Guards! Guards!” said Joanna.

Owned.

One day, Joanna looked me in the eye and asked, “Are we real?”

I discussed with her what “real” meant. Toys and dreams are not real. Books can be fictional or non-fictional. Most of the people on television are just acting. She seemed to understand.

“But are we real?” she asked again.

“What do you think?” I asked, exasperated. “Are you real?”

“I think so,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: ASHLEY

In High School, Ashley became involved in the Sister City Program. We hosted Kimiko, an exchange student from Japan for the month of December.

The following year, Ashley went to Japan. She visited Tokyo (including Tokyo Disneyland) and Hiroshima.

For several years she thought she might like to live in Japan, but eventually changed her mind.

Ashley benefited from having an oddball for a father. She was invited to a party once where each guest was to bring the strangest song they could find.

There was to be a contest.

She took first and second place.

It's a Small World (Rapmania)

The Empire Strikes Back (MECO)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: MICHELLE

Michelle followed her mother’s passion for performing. She became a Drama Nerd, took singing lessons, dancing lessons. Played the flute and clarinet. She could cry on cue. She learned to juggle. Learned to make animal balloons.

Here is why. Fundamentally shy, she still wanted to be popular. The best way to accomplish this was to be able to entertain at parties.

At one point, she considered taking fire-breathing classes from Fire Pixies in Auburn, California.

FAQ: How do you keep from burning your mouth?

ANSWER: It will heal.

She changed her mind.

During High School, she changed her name from the slightly-unusual Michelle to perfectly-normal Michelle.

She grew up to be far more serious than I ever would have imagined.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: FOUR BECOMES FIVE, SIX BECOMES SEVEN

In 1993, Michelle was ten, Ashley was twelve, Joanna was thirteen, and Marshall was married, and living fifty miles away.

And at the ages forty-three and forty-eight, Libby and I were pregnant again.

The doctors were very concerned. This was technically a “geriatric pregnancy”.

Libby objected to the term “geriatric”.

It was somewhat harder than her other pregnancies. She required bland food, no chicken and no fish. Salt made her nauseous. She found it easier to eat crushed ice with a spoon than to drink water. Vitamins made her gag.

This was not just the first or second trimester. This was the whole nine months. The last two weeks, she was ravenous -- but could find very little food bland enough to eat. Thank heaven for Vanilla Ice Cream.

But it was worth it when Jake was born. Not just to me, but to Libby.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: JAKE

There had not been a baby in the house for a long time.

Libby loved little children -- she taught Kindergarten most of her adult life -- but she loved babies particularly.

“They’re so curious, so ready to learn,” she once said. “Little flaming balls of Finding Out.”

Through a series of coincidences, I was able to be present at the births of all our children.

Each of our children had some unique, unmistakable birthmark or mole or constellation of freckles by which we could absolutely identify that child as the one we had seen in the birthing room. And that this was the same child in the morning that we had put to bed last night.

Jake was the easiest to identify of any of them. He was absolutely unblemished, no freckle, no mole, no birthmark, no discoloration of any kind. His skin perfectly creamy smooth.

Also, easily identified by the fact that he could hold his head up from the moment he was born. I would be burping him on my shoulder, and he would be looking wildly around at this brave new world.

Jake would turn his head whenever music played. When the radio was giving the traffic report or the news, he would ignore it. But as soon as two notes of music played, he would turn his head toward it.

With Jake, we were seven.

Oddly, each of us: myself, Libby, Marshall, Joanna, Ashley, Michelle, and Jake, were born on a different day of the week. The odds of that are 163-to-1 against.

Jake loved his sisters, and sorely missed them as one by one, they went away to college. Joanna when he was five, Ashley when he was six, Michelle when he was eight. He cried every time, as the train or plane or automobile carried them off.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH TWO THOUSAND AND ONE

I clearly remember my clock-radio alarm going off that Tuesday morning.

As my radio came on, NPR was already reporting on the attacks. I remember thinking to myself, “I hope there will be a measured response.”

My hopes, of course, were vain.

Three thousand Americans killed in the attacks. Six thousand American soldiers killed in the resulting wars. Over five hundred thousand Iraqis killed. At least two hundred thousand Afghanis. Tens of thousands of children. Millions displaced.

And it still continues.

CHAPTER FORTY: MISCELLANY

Joanna became a High School teacher.
Ashley is a professional writer.
Michelle and her husband are both computer geniuses of some kind.

Two of my children, and one of my grandchildren, have lived in Phoenix at one time or another. I have never been.

They tell me this is not Alzheimer's. Rather, I suffer from (temporary, reversible) diabetic amnesia, aggravated by dysthymia, anxiety, and COPD.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: COMIC BOOKS

I bought my first comic book the first or second year Libby and I were married.

The Grammar School that one of my nieces attended was holding a Rummage Sale fundraiser. There was a whole table of used comic books.

I purchased two: World’s Finest #179 (which included a reprint of Superman #76), and Superman #162. I believe together they cost me fifty cents.

These are a couple of bizarre little stories. In the Superman #76 reprint, Bruce, Clark, and Lois are all together on a cruise ship, and Lois is trying to discover Superman and Batman’s secret identities. That’s pretty much it. I thought it was stupid.

Superman #162 is, of course, "The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!" in which Superman solves all the world’s problems -- hunger, poverty, evil -- because he has suddenly become twice as intelligent. Well, there are also two of him, so maybe four times as intelligent. Plus he marries both Lois and Lana. And enlarges Kandor. And all the rest of that stuff.

This was not the first time I had read comics, though.

When I was living in off-campus housing, one of my roommates had an extensive comic-book collection, including several issues featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes.

I found the conceit of the Legion charming.

After Libby and I moved to San Diego, I happened to stumble across Comic Con -- it was either the first or second of its kind. This was the summer of 1971.

Mostly, it was just a bunch of guys with a bunch of second-hand comics for sale.

I was that guy who bought a big stack of Adventures. I held onto them for a long time.

This started my continuing interest in comic books, which Libby tolerated.

In addition to the Legion, I also had a continuing interest in the Martian Manhunter, a character who has nearly a many powers as the Legion, and almost as many different incarnations.

Of course, this is all regarding super-hero comic books.

When I was in third grade, much of my reading material was Harvey comics. Casper. Wendy. Spooky. Hot Stuff. Little Lulu. Little Dot. Little Lotta. Richie Rich. Stumbo the Giant. Baby Huey.

Some of them were left to me by my sister. Some of them I bought with my meager allowance.

Now that was some weird stuff.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: WHAT ABOUT MY MOTHER

I suppose I need to talk about my mother. I am hesitant to do so, as recording my childhood memories of her might make her seem an absurd character.

She had little rhymes and jingles she would repeat, as she went about her daily activities.

When we came home from the store:
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.

When she was trying to get us out of bed, and ready for school:
Get up, get up, you lazy-head,
Get up, you lazy sinner,
We need those sheets for tablecloths,
It's nearly time for dinner!

When she was getting us ready for bed:
"To bed! To bed!"
Says Sleepy-head;
"Tarry awhile," says Slow;
"Put on the pan,"
Says Greedy Nan*;
"We'll sup before we go."

While preparing southern fried chicken:
Nobody here but us chickens!

She was a homemaker. Her house reflected herself and her personality. We children and our father just lived there.

We had a “hi-fi” phonograph on which she played Lawrence Welk, Mitch Miller, Bing Crosby and selections of songs of the 189O’s.

There was always an easel set up in the living room. Her hobby was painting paint-by-numbers pictures. The finished products would adorn our walls for awhile, being regularly switched out.

As a cook, she used almost exclusively salt and pepper as spices, and not much of those. Her meals were bland, but nourishing.

When she cleaned the house, she left spider webs in hidden corners behind certain pieces of furniture. We all knew where they were, and not to disturb the spiders. They were not allowed in the bedrooms, but my mother felt they helped keep down the incidental insect population, especially in the summers.

You may think her odd, especially by today’s standards, but each of these stirs a fond memory in my heart.

And here is the thing: she spent her life serving others, trying to make their lives a little easier. My father. My brother Jack. All of us children, really. Neighbors came with problems to hash out, or just to talk.

When in the sixties, women began to return to work in large numbers, she opened her home as a daycare for some of the younger mothers in our neighborhood with pre-school-age children Older children would use our home as an after-school space to wait until one of their parents got home from work. She would never have thought of charging money.

We always had at least two cats, and usually a dog. When I say “we”, I mean my mother.

She also asked me to read a poem at her funeral:

The House by the Side of the Road
By Sam Walter Foss (1897)

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat
Nor hurl the cynic's ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

That is how I remember my mother.

=======================================================================

Has the time come so soon? Have we reached that point already? Surely there is more to say before I have to deal with what is coming.

I suppose cannot procrastinate any longer.

=======================================================================

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR

Sometime in August of 2OO9, Libby began to complain of a sore back.

We began to have regular massage sessions before bed.

She also began experiencing nausea, bloating, and occasional diarrhea.

“I almost feel like I’m pregnant again,” she said.

“Nit moeglich,” I said. “Not possible.”

“I mean, I feel like I’m six months pregnant. Not possible.”

When her back massages became painful, I suggested she go see a doctor. Surprisingly, she agreed.

The last week of August, Libby was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.

She gave her notice to the school district. They would have to find another teacher. They would never find another one as good as Libby.

She went through a battery of tests. The cancer had already spread to her stomach, liver, and lungs.

“If it has spread to her brain,” her doctor explained, “There is little we can do.”

She was scheduled for a brain scan in mid-September. It was positive.

Her doctor estimated she had about three months to live. Christmas.

I spent much of my spare time looking for miracle cures. Searching the internet, looking for stories of survivors.

There are remarkably few stories of survivors of pancreatic cancer.

The hospital attempted targeted radiotherapy for the brain tumors. Chemotherapy for all the rest.

This sent her to bed for two weeks.

She had always been petite. Now she was wasting away.

I took time off from work indiscriminately. My performance reviews began to suffer.

The only thing she could stomach was Ensure. And then only if I helped her drink it.

It was not just Libby I had to care for. Jake needed rides to school, and to his many after-school activities. Some nights I was out until nine or ten pm, leaving Libby home alone.

We hired a nurse.

Beginning in November, Libby began to get up and around again, with the help of a cane. She seemed to improve as the month progressed.

On Thanksgiving, all our children, their spouses, and our grandchildren came to visit us from all across the country.

Also, Libby’s older, brassy, red-haired sister from Bakersfield, and her husband.

Her cousin Rachel dropped by to say hello, but didn’t stay for dinner.

Thanksgiving was a day when I prepared the meal, with all the trimmings.

With seventeen people in the house, this was an opportunity for some real cookery.

But once I got the turkey in the oven, Libby shooed me out of the kitchen, and took over.

She was energetic, almost her old self. Just thinner.

She seemed to be in at least two places at once, all day long. In the kitchen cooking, but also all over the house, socializing with all the members of our family.

At dinner, she sat down and ate real food for the first time in weeks. Small portions, but real, solid food.

On Friday, with many hugs and kisses, we saw everyone off.

On Saturday, I served her breakfast in bed. Poached eggs and Ensure. She left the poached eggs untouched, and stayed in bed all morning.

In the afternoon, I brought her lunch. Only Ensure, this time.

But she had passed on.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: ARRANGEMENTS

Libby did not even make it to her sixtieth birthday.

I had just turned sixty-four.

Just a week after our Thanksgiving get-together, all our family gathered again.

For a less happy occasion.

Libby had a fairly substantial life insurance policy. Air travel is expensive. But none of my kids accepted my offer of reimbursing travel expenses.

I expect Marshall may have helped out his sisters and their families.

I gave the eulogy at the funeral of my father, my mother, my brother, and my sister.

I could not speak at Libby’s funeral.

I could hardly speak at all.

Looking back, I am afraid I was over-dramatic with some of the arrangements.

I hired an actual bagpiper to play “Amazing Grace” at the graveside. At a respectful distance.

We buried her in one of the colorful smocks she wore as a Kindergarten teacher.

She wore her wedding band, and the one-eighth-carat engagement ring I had bought her so long ago. She had never wanted anything larger.

I had the plaque engraved, “When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.”

We rented the same VFW hall where we had been married. Members of Rachel’s church provided a luncheon for us after the funeral.

Libby had always joked that, instead of a tombstone, she wanted a soda machine on her grave, regularly restocked, dispensing free sodas to anyone who would stop by.

I would have done it, had it not been impossibly expensive.

Instead, I made sure that each place at the luncheon was provided with a can of soda.

Everyone went home.

A week later, I went to replace the flowers on the grave. The old flowers, of course, were wilted and dead.

“Libby isn’t here,” I thought. “She’s gone, and nothing will bring her back.

I left the fresh flowers, but didn’t visit her grave again for some time.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: CHRISTMASTIME IS HERE

As December rolled on, my heart became lighter.

The dysthymia that is my near-constant companion began to ease.

I had to cut down on my insulin. My diabetes improves with my mood.

It happens every Christmas season.

It was absurd. Libby was gone. I missed her terribly. But my mood, responding to some circadian clues, was improving.

I hated it.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN

Let me tell you the true story of Annie Oakley.

It is nothing like the Broadway musical.

At the age of sixteen, Phoebe Moses married trick shooter Francis Butler, after publicly out-shooting him 25-to-24 one year earlier.

Trick shooters were well-named in those days. Although some were legitimately amazing marksmen, many of their best “tricks” were just that -- tricks, faked for the audience.

Phoebe, who took the name Annie Oakley, could actually do many of the stunts that other sharpshooters faked.

Only five feet tall, Oakley and Butler frequently lied about her age, sometimes advertising her as five years younger than she actually was. Even with her incredible talent, they could not stop conning the public just a little.

Annie passed away at the relatively young age of sixty-six.

The widowed Frank Butler, although a decade-and-a-half older than his wife was in perfect health when his wife passed away.

Nevertheless, he died eighteen days later.

He literally could not live without her.

Libby was dead, but my life went on. This seemed wrong. I felt perhaps I had never really loved her.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: “I’M WORRIED ABOUT JAKE”

I pull into the parking lot at work. Libby is in the passenger’s seat.

“How can you be here? You died.”

“I’m always here.”

She is warm, solid. I can feel the heat of her body next to me. She touches my arm. She is wearing her rings.

“This doesn’t make sense. I remember arranging the funeral.”

“I’m worried about Jake.”

“I know. I am, too.”

“Please. Help our son.”

And she was gone.

A few days later. Morning. I am sitting on the edge of the bed, doing my arthritis exercises, trying to get my ankles working. I put on my glasses.

Libby is standing in one corner of our bedroom, next to the window. She looks like she did six months before she died. Chestnut hair, now flecked with grey. A tuft of white forelock. Gray streaks at the temples. She is wearing a dress in a style I have never seen. There appears to be a white marble staircase behind her.

“I’m worried about Jake. Please help our son.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: RAISING A TEEN-AGER

Jake, our youngest, was sixteen when his mother died.

He was a moody and angsty teen-ager, moreso than his siblings.

The others grew up reasonably responsible and self-motivated.

Jake had to be reminded about the most mundane things.

Do your homework. Clean your room. Do your laundry. Wash your dishes. Take a shower. Honestly, take a shower. Go to bed, it’s late. Go to bed, it’s past midnight, you have school in the morning. Eat breakfast. Brush your teeth. Unplug. Put down the controller, it’s time to leave.

It fell to Libby to do most of the reminding. I did not much care if he went to school smelling like boiled cabbage and AXE. Besides, I left for work before they left for school.

Libby loved him too much. She couldn’t bear to see him fail.

Even when she was bedridden, she would watch the clock, calling out to him what needed to be done now.

He resented her mightily for it.

By the time Jake was in High School, there was constant friction between him and his mother. He would spend hours alone in his room, plugged into his electronic devices. It was an escape from what was, to him, an unendurable home life.

Getting nothing done.

At that last Thanksgiving, I found him after dinner, in his room, blocking out the world with headphones.

“Come out and socialize with your family,” I advised him. “They’re only here for the day.”

I saw him later in the evening, at one of the tables we had set up in the backyard to accommodate everyone in the family. He was chatting with Ashley. They were out there for quite a while.

After everyone else had left the house, I asked him, “Jake, will you help me do the dishes?”

“Why do I have to do the dishes?”

“I’m not asking you to do the dishes. I’m asking you to help me. There’s a lot, and I have to go to work tomorrow.”

I had to work the day after Thanksgiving every year. For years.

“You don’t have to,” I said.

He went to his room.

Libby came out to give me a kiss while I was washing up. Then she went back into our bedroom to lie down.

A little while later, Jake came out to help me with the dishes.

=======================================================================

Jake attended a Performing Arts High School.

He is unquestionably the most talented of our children.

He fully intended to make the Performing Arts a career.

It actually seemed possible at the time.

After Libby passed away, I was no longer able to make the drive every morning to take him to school.

I re-enrolled him locally.

Libby had organized her life around him.

She had taught the afternoon session of Kindergarten, so that she had the mornings free to drive him to school.

Her Kindergarten class ended the same time as his High School, so that he only had a half-hour or so to wait before she picked him up.

Sometimes, he stayed late for after-school rehearsals.

Depending on what productions he was in, Libby might take him to another class or rehearsal, sometimes driving him around six nights a week.

Often, they would be out past ten o’clock.

With his mother gone, he had to cut back.

=======================================================================

Fragments of conversation, January -- February 2O1O

“But there’s no one else to play Atticus”

“They can find someone.”

“No, they can’t.”

(They did)

“I hate this school. Their Drama Department sucks.”

“If you get your license, you can drive yourself to the Performing Arts School. We can re-enroll you. If you start now, you can have your license by Summer. I can help you. I taught all your siblings to drive. We still have two cars. You can have one.”

Jake never did any of the things necessary to get his driver’s license. Never even got started.

=======================================================================

“I hate this school. They call me a faggot.”

“They called me a faggot when I was your age.”

“Where you?”

“Nope. Are you?”

“No! I mean… I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’m bisexual.”

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Three or four, I guess.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever kissed a boy?”

“No.”

“Is there a boy you would like to kiss?”

Silence.

“Your taste in pornography runs to heterosexual.”

“How can you know that?”

“I know what goes on in my own house. I’m the one who has to clean up your browsing history.”

“I like girls. A lot. But sometimes… I feel like I could be attracted to boys, too.”

“That’s called being human.”

=======================================================================

“Why does she have to be that way?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why does she have to nag me all the time? Why can’t she accept me for the way I am?”

“She always accepted you. She never nagged you. She just reminded you. She loved you.”

“But I can do it myself!”

“But if she didn’t remind you, you didn’t. You still don’t”

“She hated me.”

“Your mother loved you more than you can know.”

“She hated me. I hated her. But I didn’t want her to die.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stuff she nags me about… she makes me not want to do it. Even if it’s something I want to do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My grades suck now.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you care?”

“I care as much as you do. I’m happy to help you with your homework. But you have to ask me. I can’t do it for you. I can’t live your life for you.”

“I hate this school.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: I SEEM TO BE HAVING A LITTLE TROUBLE COPING

I was having difficulty concentrating at work.

Sometimes, I would come home and just sit at the computer. Or just sit.

Or sleep.

I began to retreat from reality. Into videos, books, dreams, my own imaginary worlds.

I started paying bills late.

Jake started living on Ramen, ham sandwiches, and pot pies because I couldn’t bring myself to cook. Of course, he didn’t want to cook, either.

I was not eating right. I was forgetting to take my insulin. My doctor told me my blood glucose was out of control.

I would forget things. I began locking my keys in the car. I got extra keys to put in my desk at work.

Once I locked us out of the house. Fortunately, Michelle had an extra key.

Jake’s grades continued to slide.

I was called in to parent-teacher conferences.

Jake started meeting with a psychiatrist. I didn’t have the time.

My employer laid me off. I wasn’t keeping up with the workload.

Not fired. Early retirement. At least I had a pension.

Michelle and her husband helped me apply for Social Security and Medicare.

Helped me organize my expenses.

None of the paperwork made any sense to me.

Did I mention I was an accountant?

In April, Marshall flew out from New York.

Marshall, Michelle, and Ashley sat me down for an intervention.

I was not taking proper care of myself.

I was not taking care of Jake.

It was proposed that Jake go and live with Marshall in New York.

Marshall already had a boy Jake’s age. He was doing well.

The alternative was a report to Child Protective Services, and a protracted court case.

They would allege I was an unfit parent.

They would ask the court that I be placed in conservatorship.

That my adult children be given control of my assets.

I was too tired to fight.

Jake moved to New York before the end of the school year.

Marshall enrolled him in a Performing Arts School in New York City.

[u]CHAPTER FIFTY: THE CRASH[/i]

In the summer, my former employer declared bankruptcy.

Their assets were purchased by another company.

My pension plan was now unfunded.

PBGC would cover a fraction of my pension, but for several months I would be reliant upon Social Security and Medicare alone.

My house was still underwater from the crash of ‘O7.

We sold my home for a loss.

I moved in with my daughter Michelle and her husband.

Michelle and her husband became my conservators, as I had lost the ability to handle my own money. Ironic, for an MBA and CPA.

I have my own small room. Bed, table, computer, small fridge, microwave. In some ways, it reminds me of my first apartment at the hotel.

Among other annoyances, my daughter and son-in-law are strict vegetarians.

I had been living on chuck steak, ratatouille, and unsweetened baker’s chocolate.

(I dissolve the chocolate squares in boiling water. I prefer it to coffee. Maybe with a little almond milk.)

They actually don’t mind if I eat meat. Just not in their house, and not in their presence.

My social security and pension checks are auto-deposited into Michelle’s account every month.

If I want money, I have to ask for it, like a child.

I have no access to a personal savings or checking account.

It’s my own fault. I should have handled things better.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE: THINGS GET WORSE

Sometime in early 2O15, I had a “psychotic break”.

That is to say, a “nervous breakdown”.

That is to say, I “went mad”.

That is, I was sent to the Second Floor.

I cannot fully explain what it is like to be mad. I do not have a solid, consistent narrative. Only dissociated memories. But some of those memories are still very vivid.

I did not have hallucinations. But I did have delusions.

There was an underlying sense that something was wrong, but I could not identify just what.

I once became convinced that I was sitting in an empty chair on the other side of the room.

One day, I realized that my skin was aluminum foil. When I looked at it, it looked like ordinary skin, but I knew it was actually aluminum foil.

At one point, I became aware that I was completely hollow inside, like a China doll, or one of those cheap chocolate Easter bunnies.

Time and space warped and distorted.

I sat down to lunch. The nurses took away my empty plate, and immediately replaced it with a dinner plate. Some six hours had elapsed in the blink of an eye. I had been sitting there, unmoving, for six hours.

Sometimes the bathroom seemed an impossible distance away, a daunting, formidable expedition across the miles-wide room.

We were allowed time for exercise. We would walk the circular corridor around the central room. On one occasion, it seemed like a journey around the world, subjectively taking several years. When I returned to the common room, I hardly recognized the place.

I became convinced that I was in a monastery. The other patients were holy men. The occasional screaming was ecstatic prayer.

I became convinced that I was back in The University, but could not find any of my classrooms, or my professor’s offices.

I became convinced that I was at work. Unfortunately, someone had removed my desk, telephone, and desktop computer. No one would tell me where they were.

I became convinced that I had done something horrible I could not remember, and that I was in prison for it.

When I remembered my wife had died, I deduced that I must have murdered her.

Then I remembered she died of cancer. I was still convinced that I had caused it.

They tell me I didn’t recognize Joanna when she came to visit from Texas. I thought she was my mother. I have no memory of this -- neither a visit by Joanna nor my mother.

Michelle and her husband filed for full conservatorship, making formal what had merely been fact before.

It seemed like years. Sometimes I thought I had been born there.

At one point Ashley came to visit with her daughter Sapphire.

My grand-daughter became my most regular visitor.

I’m not sure when she started coming to see me, but when I began to become more coherent, she had already been visiting regularly for a long time.

She walked home from Middle School. The hospital was on the way.

I coped with my anomalous mental condition by writing.

I wrote out my tangled thoughts.

I raged against the dying of the light.

I wrote bad poetry.

I described the imaginary worlds in my head.

These paracosms were, at one point, more real that the unstable, unreasonable, illogical reality I experienced daily.

You can read about some of them here

Sapphire brought me notebooks and pens. When the notebooks were filled, she took them to her room, and stored them in old moving boxes.

Eventually, I was released. I had not been gone as long as I thought. Months, not years. Not centuries.

I am more careful now.

They don’t lock you up for your thoughts or feelings.

You can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking.

Don’t set the house on fire.

Don’t believe the delusions.

Don’t mention them.

Stay focused on the things other people believe in.

Just keep your speech and actions “normal”.

If you can.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: GUAM

In 2O17, mostly due to the onset of the Trump administration, we moved to Guam. That is, Michelle and her husband moved to Guam, and took me along with them.

It was there that my arthritis and sarcopenia advanced to the point of my becoming wholly crippled.

Most of the people I met there love Guam. For me, it is just too hot. There is a lot of beach, and I don’t like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere. My caretakers had jobs, and places to go. I got used to sitting by a window in an 8O° room, either watching it rain, or watching it not rain.

A Sea Dirge
by the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

There are certain things - as, a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three -
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the Sea.

Pour some salt water over the floor -
Ugly I'm sure you'll allow it to be:
Suppose it extended a mile or more,
THAT'S very like the Sea.

Beat a dog till it howls outright -
Cruel, but all very well for a spree:
Suppose that he did so day and night,
THAT would be like the Sea.

I had a vision of nursery-maids;
Tens of thousands passed by me -
All leading children with wooden spades,
And this was by the Sea.

Who invented those spades of wood?
Who was it cut them out of the tree?
None, I think, but an idiot could -
Or one that loved the Sea.

It is pleasant and dreamy, no doubt, to float
With 'thoughts as boundless, and souls as free':
But, suppose you are very unwell in the boat,
How do you like the Sea?

There is an insect that people avoid
(Whence is derived the verb 'to flee').
Where have you been by it most annoyed?
In lodgings by the Sea.

If you like your coffee with sand for dregs,
A decided hint of salt in your tea,
And a fishy taste in the very eggs -
By all means choose the Sea.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat,
You prefer not a vestige of grass or tree,
And a chronic state of wet in your feet,
Then - I recommend the Sea.

For I have friends who dwell by the coast -
Pleasant friends they are to me!
It is when I am with them I wonder most
That anyone likes the Sea.

They take me a walk: though tired and stiff,
To climb the heights I madly agree;
And, after a tumble or so from the cliff,
They kindly suggest the Sea.

I try the rocks, and I think it cool
That they laugh with such an excess of glee,
As I heavily slip into every pool
That skirts the cold cold Sea.

Before the year was over, as the Apocalypse had failed to emerge, we moved back to the Mainland. Michelle and her husband had rented out their house, and they kicked out the renters and we moved back in.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE: BUT EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN… COVID ATTACKED

In 2O18, my granddaughter Sapphire turned fifteen-and-a-half, and, unlike many of her generation, was excited about learning how to drive. Her mother (my daughter Ashley) and stepfather were too busy with work and life to spend much time teaching her to drive. I volunteered, having taught most of my kids the ins and outs of the art.

Rule One:
Grandpa's Advice

One particularly enjoyable excursion, for me, was when we would go out, drive around, go out to lunch, and then go out to the local mall and see a movie together. After a few months, she learned to drive, the lessons ended, and we saw less of one another.

But she is still my favorite grandchild, and I am her favorite grandfather.

In March of 2O2O, Sapphire was a senior in High School. The schools all over had shut down. But within a week, her school was up and running with an online learning program. As it happened, every student there already had a school-issued laptop, and the teachers were very adaptable.

She absolutely flourished under online learning, and finished her senior year with straight A’s.

She had already been accepted to college, but when September came, the schools were still mostly on lockdown, and she completed her Freshman year online. Including online Theater and Music classes. They did an online, socially distanced version of Midsummer Night’s Dream, with each character performing in their own space, usually their own bedrooms. It was magnificent.

By September of 2O21, schools were opening up for in-person study again, and it was necessary for Sapphire to move out of her mother’s place and find her own residence near the college. She found a cute little two-bedroom near campus, but could not find a roommate, and the cost for her family was prohibitive.

So we did something odd.

I moved out of my daughter Michelle’s place, and moved in with Sapphire, as her roommate, some fifty miles away. While Michelle and her husband were still technically my physical caretakers and financial conservators, they delegated those responsibilities to Sapphire. She was much more generous in the discretionary allowance she gave me from my Social Security. Also, I was on my own a good deal of the time, and found myself able to explore the town, riding around on my electric wheelchair.

There were other benefits. I still owned my car, but it effectively became Sapphire’s, without the need for her to purchase her own. She also made friends-- quite a few friends-- and I became something of a favorite oddity when they came over.

On a couple of occasions, I have even been taken to the movies by a retinue of beautiful, college-age young women.

All young women are beautiful. Don’t let any young woman be told otherwise. In the words of Carrie Fisher, “Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They're the temporary happy byproducts of time and/or DNA.” And as I approach eighty years old, more and more women are looking young.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR: -- THE PRESENT

Libby has been gone fifteen years now, and I don’t miss her any less.

I am still hanging on to life.

I feel a bit guilty about that.

Christmastime is coming soon. I expect, once again, I will have a brief respite from my dysthymia.

I feel a bit guilty about that, too.

I am living again with Michelle and her husband. They provide for me. I am grateful. I try to stay out of their way.

Sapphire is the one who seems to tolerate me best, but we see each other infrequently.

Her new boyfriend of six weeks looks like the new Lightning Lad.

Same coloring, at least. Sports guy.

Unfortunately, he has no interest in comic books, unlike her former blonde, blue-eyed boyfriend.

Jake turned thirty-one a couple of months ago.

He still lives in New York, although Marshall and his family have moved to Florida.

Jake works for an employment agency.

In the evenings, he has been doing community theater. Sings. Acts. Dances. Builds sets.

He still hopes to go professional one day.

He aspires to play Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton. Fiyero in Wicked. Hermes in Hadestown. Jack Kelly in Newsies. Michael in Be More Chill. Beetlejuice in Beetlejuice.

I wish him the best of luck.

On the weekends, he hustles gigs as a professional, paid Dungeonmaster. Yes, that is an actual thing.

At least one of my kids or grandkids calls me on my birthday, or Father’s Day. Sometimes Thanksgiving or Christmas. I see them once in a while on Skype or Discord. Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio IRL. So I am not completely isolated.

Their lives are varied and interesting.

What I need is a few more hobbies.

How to end this?

I have no moral for you.

After all, my life is anomalous.

I am not like you.

But how about this as a moral?

What we desire most for our loved ones is safety.

What we desire most for ourselves is freedom.

When we are young, our desires conflict with our parents’. When we are old, our desires conflict again, but in the opposite direction.

ADDENDUM

On Monday, December 2nd, at 5:45 in the morning, Sapphire is taking me to the hospital for cancer surgery. I am terrified. This is my second surgery in five years, but two different types of cancer. Due to the wonders of Medicare, the surgery will only cost me $25O out of pocket. Your tax dollars at work.