writing

March 19, 1973

When Luke and I met in 1969, I was the depressive and he was calm and smiling. At some point during our three years together, he absorbed my darkness and I took his light. I didn’t consciously steal it – it just happened.

We’d broken up for the final time a year before this entry but we remained friends like many couples promise but few actually do. (Spoiler alert – it’s not easy.) He never called me, I always called him, which under ordinary circumstances I would’ve read as cease and desist. I didn’t because I was profoundly worried about him. Slim to start with, he now looked skeletal (due to macrobiotic diet, not drugs). He’d withdrawn from everyone and everything, including painting which he once loved. I was afraid he’d die. He was only 22 years old.

I knew we could never get back together. We were travelling in diverging directions. Soon we’d move on without each other, not even as friends, but that didn’t mean I’d stop caring. I’d always wonder about his life – did he find what he was looking for? Was he happy? In the unlikely event our paths crossed again in this lifetime, I’d be happy to see him and eager to hear his voice. I’d always want to know what would happen next – and then, after that. They say love never dies. In my case, neither does the power of curiosity.

Near the end. Check the body language. I'm trying to hang on. He's trying to get away. — Near the end. Check the body language. I’m trying to hang on. He’s trying to get away.

Luke isn’t the only one who arouses my intense (obsessive is such a harsh word) interest– I feel that way about anyone I cared about and I suspect I always will. Maybe that’s why the Bible story about Lot’s wife struck me as tragic. As she and her family fled Sodom, she turned to look back – in my view, because she couldn’t bear not to know what happened to the people she left behind. For that, God turned her into a pillar of salt. I know, the sin was disobedience, not curiosity but the punishment seems a tad Draconian. I’d look back too – so there’d be at least two pillars of salt outside where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood.

Looking back one last time (outside Melnitz)

March 17, 2007

I claim neither psychic abilities nor experiences except possibly this one. I’d seen “The Marvelous Wonderettes” a month earlier with my sisters, Art Everett and Sam. Basically, it cleverly strung dozens of girl group hits into a story line of sorts. The cast – four female singers playing high school students – selected two or three people from the audience to join them on stage for non-singing roles, one of which was Mr. Lee – a high school teacher one of the students crushes on.

As soon as I saw it, l “knew” that if I could drag John to this play – no small feat considering it’s a musical with an all-female cast entitled “The Marvelous Wonderettes” – he’d be the guy that got picked to be Mr. Lee. No matter who else might be in the audience, in my premonition John was a lock.

Life rarely unfolds precisely as I picture it but today it did. John had a great time and he was terrific. If I’d been pulled on-stage – despite negative body language designed to make situations like these avoid me like cat puke on the carpet – I would’ve tried and died. John welcomes the opportunity, maybe because his day job involves speaking persuasively to relative strangers. Is he good at performing in public because of the practice he got in his career or did he select that career because he was already good at it?

I tell myself I’d like to be better at speaking in public but I’ve done nothing to make it happen. My public speaking education screeched to a halt in my junior year at Wilcox High. Consequently, I make the same mistakes today that I did at seventeen. Fear ignites a fight or flight surge of adrenalin and I race for the finish line as if pursued by a pack of rabid wolves – talking so fast I’m unintelligible. One on one, I’m usually fine. Three or more, forget it. Like my father used to say – we all have different gifts.

March 12, 1982

I’m sure some of you are sick of seeing me share Carson Animal Shelter dogs in desperate need of homes. I try to limit myself to one a day but sometimes a second or third will tug at my heartstrings. Once I’ve shared a dog or cat, I like to cycle them through again until they get adopted, rescued or (noooo!) PTS (put to sleep). I’d love to adopt them all myself but my family is near mutiny (we’re at a mere three former shelter dogs, two cats and a turtle). And, like they say, you can’t hug every cat. Or dog.

Gunnar, the puppy in the entry above, led a long and happy life but not with us – Joyce and John Salter re-adopted him and did a far more successful job of training him than we could. (We think he may’ve been part dingo. That would explain a lot.) We went back to the Glendale animal shelter a few days later and brought home a golden retriever we named Nick Mellow – one of my favorite dogs of all time. They’re all my favorites, in their own way.

In June of last year, one of the Carson posts – about a blind deaf dog abandoned at that high-kill shelter by his owner because he was “too old” – really got to me. So much so that despite opposition from my family, Joyce and I drove down to Carson and adopted him. They wouldn’t let us introduce him to Zelda – to see how they’d get along – before we adopted him. Most likely, I would’ve brought him home even if Zelda despised him which, unfortunately, she does. Eight months later, she’ll still savagely attack Mr. Magoo if I turn my back. Mr. Magoo doesn’t even try to defend himself – he just whimpers.

Magoo’s done a good job mapping the house and yard but occasionally he makes a mistake and slips into the swimming pool. He’s never outside unattended so he’s quickly rescued. Still, between Zelda the Evil Princess and Magoo’s unexpected flops in a frigid pool, our house is not ideal (but a vast improvement over death row at Carson). Both Sam and John urge me to find a safer place for him. The thing is, although he requires more care than a younger less challenged dog – I love the little guy. I love him enough to let him go should a perfect environment arise but too much to actively seek to re-home him.

So, if you’re sick of my dog shares, I’m sorry. Scroll through them fast, like I whizz through topics that don’t interest me. I’ll try not to abuse everyone’s patience. For now, though, I plan to keep sharing and re-sharing at least one a day so these poor animals won’t be forgotten and destroyed. They look so confused and terrified, as if they’re trying figure out what they did wrong. It breaks my heart. If you’re enough of a dog or cat person that you don’t mind looking – and there’s room in your home and your heart – consider letting one of them in. Yes, it requires some work on your part. But it’s worth it. We extended Magoo’s life by at least two additional years before he passed over the rainbow bridge. Yes, it was worth it.

March 2, 1980

Showing off the nightgown Peggy gave me.

With Janet, whose birthday is two days after mine.

With Bennett Traub and an incognito JoAnn Hill.

As the photos suggest (a very well-documented party, thanks to my sister Janet) this was a fun birthday party with two very familiar features – the phone call with my parents, in which they regale me once again with the details of my birth in a snowstorm. I’m ashamed to admit I got impatient with them although I tried not to show it – don’t they understand that I know this story by heart? How many times are we going to tell it? Of course, now that they’re gone, I’d give anything to stroll down those familiar paths of memory again.

JoAnn Hill, ArtEverett, Joyce and John Salter.

And – true confession – I’ve been known to torture my own three children with overly-long sagas about their birth – which I’m sure they’d prefer to live without.

Sharon Grish, CD - who recently turned 3 - Joyce and JoAnn Hill — Sharon Grish, CD – who recently turned 3 – Joyce and JoAnn Hill

My second obligatory birthday riff – no matter what birthday it happens to be – is how achingly sad I feel to be so old. The melancholy trauma of aging hit me for the first time when I turned ten. I was inconsolable at the realization that from that day forward, my age would never again be a single digit.

Peggy Tanneyhill (Horn) and Bennett Traub

Although I should know better by now (live for today, darn it!) I’m always lamenting the loss of something trivial, especially compared to the blessings I’ve enjoyed in this life. If you’re into the enneagram, I’m a classic type 4 personality – obsessed by what’s missing, never satisfied with what I have – until I lose it, anyway.

February 27, 1969

This entry captures my skewed priorities during my senior year (aka known as my Great Depression). Getting accepted at UCLA was momentous (and kind of crucial, since I neglected to apply to any other institution of higher learning). It was truly life changing.

That said, my obsessive focus was on pinpointing where I stood in my relationship with X – talk about an absurd waste of time! A mollusk could’ve deduced I was nowhere – the same place I’d been for almost two years.

It’s a peculiar kind of hell, pretending to be satisfied being “just friends” with somebody you’re madly in love with. To level the “just friends” playing field, I invented a boyfriend to compete with his living girlfriend. When he tortured me by rhapsodizing about how much he loved her, I could retaliate with my make-believe relationship with the non-existent Pericles. (I gave him a more normal name which is not to imply he was one iota more believable.)

To render an already pitiful situation more pathetic, I repeatedly pulled my fictional punches. Instead of touting my relationship with Pericles as a love affair for the ages, at the slightest hint X might be interested in me again, I kicked poor Pericles to the curb. My brilliant reasoning went, “X secretly wants to come back to me but he’s afraid he’ll be rejected for Pericles! Play it smart. Tell him you dumped Pericles so you’re fully available to him.”

Yeah, that’ll work every time – somewhere other than the planet earth. Suffice to say, my Herculean efforts to recapture X’s heart failed miserably. When I left Santa Clara (as it turned out, for good – and in June, not September) I never expected to see or hear from X again – but at least I had UCLA in my future. And that’s what actually mattered.

February 21, 2015

This is one of those days with more significance today than when I wrote it; there was so much we didn’t know, couldn’t let ourselves imagine. This breakfast/lunch would be the last time I’d see and speak to my father while he was still mobile and able-bodied. Sam and I were lucky to get there at all. I was sound asleep on a Saturday morning when Sam darted into our room and said she just received a text from Janet – we were invited to breakfast for Daddy’s 89^th birthday, starting five minutes ago. We threw on our clothes and raced over – even so, we were last to arrive and CD and Alex missed it entirely.

The word I used to describe it in this diary entry is so bland – pleasant. Foxy’s is a long-standing Glendale coffee shop on Colorado Blvd. It was another sunny day in California. In a large group like ours, it’s hard to indulge in much intimate conversation but – as he always did – my father engaged everybody at the table individually about what was going on in our lives. As usual, he said next to nothing about what was going on in his. He certainly didn’t mention he was in pain.

If anything, he might’ve urged us to spend more time with my mother, who was struggling to adjust to the nursing facility where she landed. (It would be weeks before we could move her to Solheim, the Lutheran nursing home they had selected for that far-off day in the distant future when they might need one.) Right now, all my mother wanted was to return to her life at their condo. None of us knew that life was already over. None of us knew we were already counting down hours and minutes.

If I’d known, what would I have said? The question haunts me because contemplating what I would’ve said if I’d known makes the banality of what I did say painfully obvious. We probably said “I love you” in the casual hello-goodbye way we always said it, not in the heartfelt way I wish I’d said it. Not like I’d say it if I’d known it was the last time. I would’ve told him he was the best father ever and the greatest blessing in my life. I would’ve said, please stay. I need more time to study the kindness in your face, so I can reflect a fragment of what you gave to me and anyone else who was lucky enough to drift into your orbit. I would’ve said, the world is a colder place without you. Nothing will be the same when you’re gone. I hunger for the sound of your voice. I’ll miss you every day for the rest of my life.

Instead I said, happy birthday. Thanks for lunch, what a great idea. Let’s do it again for my birthday and Janet’s, coming up in less than two weeks. We didn’t have two weeks. In retrospect, I see his tumble during the photo shoot as foreshadowing but on that sunny day in February, it seemed like a careless mishap, nothing to worry about. We had years of sunny days to brunch in our future. Next time, the whole family – including my mother, who’d surely soon be ambulatory – would gather. We’d get everything right next time.

Sam admires Bree's handiwork on Grandma's nails. — Sam admires Bree’s handiwork on Grandma’s nails.

February 19, 2012

There’s a bittersweet quality to seeing my oldest son do what I once did – albeit, in an entirely new way. Naturally, I’m proud of him (see my October 14, 2006 blog for details of his torturous – for his parents, anyway – journey from sophomore high school drop out to valedictorian in his film school major at UCLA. It was for real – we heard him give the speech. He thanked his father, who majored in poli sci at USC, instead of me, a fellow UCLA film school alumni. Go figure.) As happy and proud as I am, part of me longs to stand where he now stands. It’s less about envy than nostalgia.

His mother, not mentioned, in the valedictorian speech

The Melnitz lobby facing the blank theater — The Melnitz lobby facing the James Bridges theater

These feelings became acute the night John and I attended the screening of his Project 1 equivalent film. Melnitz Hall looks the same, at least from the outside – and the Jakes Bridges theater where I screened my Project 1 film is oh so familiar – but look closer and everything has changed. I don’t recognize a single name on the faculty roster. Different people occupy all of my old professor’s offices.

The sculpture gardens outside Melnitz Hall.

During another student’s gory film, I took a breather and went into the lobby. Sitting there, by myself, sent me reeling through decades long gone. Memories of hours spent between classes in that very spot – albeit on funkier couches – flooded me. I half expected a classmate from my past to stroll up and say hello but that didn’t happen. As an old Madonna song might put it, Melnitz Hall used to be my playground. Now, although it holds a place in my life and my heart, it’s not my world and it won’t be again.

On the bright side, writing – my area of specialization – remains essentially the same, at least in terms of skill set, despite technological advances such as computers instead of an IBM Selectric, printers instead of carbon paper, script delivery by email attachment instead of by messenger. (What happened to the messenger industry? Are they out of business?) I got on board with word processing early and it hasn’t been hard to stay on top of the curve.

I was faced with another transition shortly after CD graduated, when I was offered an opportunity to teach screen writing at Columbia College Hollywood. I’ve always identified as a student – in part because I enjoy and take frequent writing workshops to stay current – and now I’m on the other side of the desk. So far, I enjoy it. Spending hours mentoring millennials is as close as I’ll get to re-experiencing my heady undergraduate days (albeit vicariously, from a different POV). There’s a palpable rush of creative energy that comes when I cross the threshold of a campus like UCLA or Columbia. It’s not a time machine or the Fountain of Youth, but it’s close enough.

December 14, 1964

Perhaps what Chamberlain Castle would have looked like — Perhaps what “Chamberlain Castle” would have looked like

I suspect the reason I didn’t have imaginary friends was my two sisters. (That said, the youngest – Joyce – had a a deep long-lasting friendship with an imaginary boy named Keith – and for all I know, Janet had one too but she never told me.) Sandy was an only child with an oversized imagination so naturally she created a cast of companions.

With sisters instead of imaginary friends

The characters in my story took the place of imaginary friends. My favorite part was naming them. I was – and still am – obsessed with names. I used to go through the fashion section of the huge Sears catalog that arrived every year and name the models. Selecting the perfect moniker was a challenge in 1964 because all the names in the baby books – and all the kids I knew – got stuck with traditional names (Kathy being particularly popular in the early fifties – see link to blog).

The era of exotic names – Apple, Charisma, Karma, Carlisle, Kipling (many unisex) – was at least a decade in the future, maybe more. In 1964, the top five names for girls were Lisa, Mary, Susan, Karen and Patricia. For boys, Michael, John, David, James and Robert.

The less said about the story described above, the better. At thirteen, I cornered the market on terrible hackneyed ideas. A surprising number survive, although recently I realized I might not need to save everything. If “Chamberlain Castle” never escapes the slush pile (in this case, a file cabinet in the garage) the literary world will not suffer.

November 29, 1968

I’ve written elsewhere about how right UCLA was for me (link) but I knew little more than its four initials when I applied. For all I knew, it could’ve been located in the dregs of downtown LA. (Except then it would’ve been called USC. Whoops, my snark is showing.)

The article where I found this picture called it the Ugliest Law School in America. Their words, not mine.

My parents were equally ill-informed – their now-void plan had been to send me to a Lutheran college where I’d meet and marry a guy at least half-Scandinavian. To their credit, they hid their disappointment well and didn’t try to change my mind.

Life was paradise as an adored only child.

Consequently, on Friday after Thanksgiving in 1968, my parents and I left my sisters in Santa Clara and drove to LA. It wasn’t often I spent significant time with them without my sisters as buffer. It was exhilarating to reclaim their undivided attention but also unnerving. Too much focus on me risked revealing defects I sought to hide, especially from them. Based on the most formative experience, which took place when I was two years and two days old, imperfections – the failure to entertain, for example – were cause for replacement. Either one of my younger sisters – both less flawed than me – could easily take my place.

The day they brought a new baby home and my world fell apart

It wouldn’t be the first time. They’d done it before and could do it again.

From this point forward, every photo depicts Janet being held and me in a state of acute distress.

Click this link to view family photo albums illustrating the inner torment of a highly sensitive recently displaced first-born child. You’re not being disloyal to Janet or Joyce. They signed off on my weird obsession decades ago. I’ll add new photos and captions in the near future.

November 21, 1973

When I met Larry Payne in November of ’73, he was one of two McCall’s west coast advertising salesmen working under the supervision of Mr. G. Don Draper was decades away, but (in hindsight) I saw a guy on his way to becoming Draper unless he made significant changes. Not that there’s anything wrong with being young, successful, handsome and charming – all of which describe Larry and Draper. The difference is, Larry wanted his life to be more than a slick Madison Avenue ad for success.

My family at Janet's house along with Larry Payne — My family at Janet’s house along with Larry Payne

Astute as ever, Larry’s secret spiritual leanings flew far under my radar – not too shocking since I quit McCall’s less than three months after I started. My best friend Gail replaced me and when Gail moved on my sister Janet got the job. Via this grapevine, I heard what Larry was up to from time to time. One thing I never suspected was that – of the two of us – his name would appear on book jackets long before mine.

Cut to the present. Hopefully, I’ll fill in the middle someday. Today (from the bio on back of his book) “Larry Payne, Ph.D., is an internationally respected Yoga teacher and back specialist. He is Founding President of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, founder of the Yoga program at the J. Paul Getty Museum, co-founder of the Yoga curriculum at UCLA Medical School and founding director of the Yoga Therapy Rx and Prime of Life Yoga programs at Loyola Marymount University. Most Recently co author of his 5^th book, Yoga Therapy & Integrative Medicine Turner Publishing.”

Here’s the best part. More than forty years after we parted ways at McCall’s – we are now FB friends – and he’s just as charming as he used to be.

writing

March 19, 1973

March 17, 2007

March 12, 1982

March 2, 1980

February 27, 1969

February 21, 2015

February 19, 2012

December 14, 1964

November 29, 1968

November 21, 1973

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