6. Married someone who later had a sex change
7. Lived in a barn (for two years, with spouse and kids)
8. Nearly got locked inside a 1200-year-old church
9. Spent two different nights on the outskirts of Merida (Spain) hoping to
hitch a ride
10. Painted stampeding elephants on the side of a Porsche
Okay, a bit more explanation:
1. Elevators in the sidewalk
When I was a kid my family raised several acres of gladiolas which we sold
to San Francisco's premiere florist, Podesta Baldocchi. We would have to
be 'up the hill' at our growing field on the wild edges of San Mateo at
5:30 a.m. At the time there were acres and acres of rolling, empty land
there (something almost impossible to imagine now.) My sister and I would
run flowers from my dad, who would cut them, to Mom, who would bundle them
in our little makeshift shed. Then if I was lucky, Dad would take me with
him to Podesta's. We had to be on the road by 6:15 and into the city
before seven to avoid rush hour traffic. We'd wend our way downtown, park
out front of Podesta's in the loading zone, and then--the magical part for
me--take our cart laden with flowers onto an elevator that came up through
the open metal plates in the sidewalk, and descend into a bustling,
fragrant world full of cut flowers and arrangers. Sometimes one of the
flower arranging ladies would give me a carnation or two.
2. Out of the mouth of babes
Needless to say, I don't remember this, but Mom told me about it when I
got older. Evidently it was one of the first things I ever said, and it
was some observation about the weather. Mom said she was completely
shocked.
3. Prune picking
Ah, this was what every kid did back in the day when Sonoma County was a
prune-growing region instead of the classy, upscale wine country it's been
transformed into today. Dad would hire day laborers, too, but we kids had
to pick as well. We got... I think it was 35 cents a box for our work, and
these were standard field lugs.
4. The unthinkable
It's hard to believe, but the ashes of an infant fit inside a box no
bigger than a baseball, and even then take up only a fraction of the space
inside. No, you didn't want to know that. Believe me, neither did I.
We scattered N's ashes in a redwood forest--actually, only about ten feet
away from the spot where we were married. M and the kids all took turns
shaking a few ashes out of the plastic bag, but when it was my turn I
found I just couldn't do it. I couldn't touch them.
5. In which we drive a golf cart
This was in the early seventies. M was in his electric vehicle phase, and
so he could experiment (and because it was cheaper than some conventional
vehicles), we bought a used golf cart. It had a top speed of 15 mph, had a
fiberglass 'cab' and no doors. Later we splurged and had vinyl side
curtains made that snapped into place as doors. Since it had a single axle
(it was a three-wheeler), we registered it with the DMV as a motorcycle,
and nobody blinked an eye. Some years later a policeman stopped us and
told us it was illegal to drive it on the street, but we pointed to the
license plate, and since the state had licensed it, there was nothing he
could do.
You did have to be careful in it, though, going so slowly--especially in
parking lots, where you could drive right up behind people without them
ever realizing you were there, because the cart was pretty much silent.
And kids loved it. Every kid who saw you would gape, open-mouthed, and
stare after you until you'd completely disappeared from view. You knew
every one of them was thinking, "I should be able to drive
something like that!"
At the time we were poverty-stricken students and had no money for gas,
but there was an outlet in the parking area at our apartment complex, and
we'd just cruise in to a stop and plug the cart in to recharge. This was
at the time of the first Arab oil embargo, when people in gas-powered cars
were lined up around the block to buy fuel. But we'd just glide by--at 15
mph--and never have to make a stop.
6. The ultimate transformation
As it turned out, M had known since he was in about fourth grade that he
was a transsexual. Mostly this was subconscious knowledge, I think.
Although I wish I'd had a little warning, like so many other-gendered
people of the time, M had hoped that by getting married and living life in
the 'normal' mold, the whole identity issue that was always scratching at
the back of his mind would somehow melt away.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
There are few things as utterly Twilight Zone as watching someone you know
turn into someone of the opposite gender. It really makes you realize how
much you depend on slotting the people you meet into the blue box or the
pink box, if only for general identification purposes. I learned that
eventually you are able to wrap your mind around this new concept,
though those around you who aren't forced to deal with it have a much
harder time, and that kids, as always, are resilient beings and will adapt
to anything fairly easily. The older boys, who had peers to deal with,
settled on the pre-emptive strike as their strategy of choice: they'd tell
their friends outright, before it became an issue they might appear to be
hiding. And as always, humor was always around to buoy us. The kids had a
running joke for a long time in which they'd address a hypothetical
inquirer with, "Of course my dad's a woman! Isn't yours?"
As to the marriage: no cause for sadness. It suffered from other terminal
problems anyway. The sex change forced us to a break-up point that needed
to come. The next few years were extremely hard for me (disoriented,
marriage down the tubes, alone and with five teen and pre-teen kids to
raise, four of them boys), but in the end I realized the whole experience
has made me stronger. It's true what they say about the things that don't
kill you.
7. Home sweet barn
This was the result of a period of prolonged unemployment. Two years in
the upstairs of a barn: two heated, insulated rooms (one with windows!), a
refrigerator, microwave and electric frying pan in an open area. No
running water, no plumbing. An outhouse behind the barn. For me it was
seriously depressing and often scary in the struggle to make sure there
was food on the table. But the kids loved it. There was a creek, two bats
named Ivan and Igor who would fly up the stairs and out the end of the
barn as evening approached (they lived in a store room downstairs), and
redwood groves nearby. In the winter it would be 25 degrees in my
'kitchen' in the morning, so we ate in the kids' room, which was heated,
where we sat at a table with rows of night-dried laundry suspended above
our heads. The older kids (Paul and Ben came along post-barn) like being
able to answer in the affirmative when someone says, "Were you raised in a
barn?!?"
8. Nearly got locked inside a 1200-year-old church
While visiting northern Spain, our group had stopped in the Asturian
countryside where two historically famous Romanesque churches (Santa Maria
de Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo) are located very close together. A few
of us were inside one of these little churches when all of a sudden the
door closed and we could hear someone applying a padlock. It was the
guardian/guide of the building, who had intended to lock up while he went
to lunch. We yelled and he opened the doors for us.
9. Two nights at the edge of Merida (Spain)
The real moral of this story is: if someone suggests hitchhiking from
Madrid to Lisbon and back over a weekend, don't take them up on it. Ah,
but my roommate and I did indeed make this trek. It was the early '70s and
hitchhiking was pretty safe at the time. But several rides fell through,
and both ways we ended up at the edge of Merida, at midnight, on a
deserted road with our thumbs out.
That wasn't the worst of the story. In fact, that bad parts were legion
(though humorous in retrospect) and I'm not really up for the telling of
them here. Suffice it to say that in the end Merida came to exemplify for
us not Spain's rich Roman history; rather it became an icon for our
too-rushed weekend trip with all its oddities and frustrations. However,
having reasonably healthy senses of humor, for several years afterward
said roomate and I would periodically send each other postcards of Merida
on which we had written "Wish you were here!"
10. A bit of a decorative touch-up on the Porsche
It was an old Porsche--a 1961--that we'd picked up for $1700, a pretty
good deal, actually, in spite of the fact that with the convertible top
down, once the doors were opened you couldn't close them again. The floor
pan was so rusted that opening the doors made the car's frame sag out of
shape. Eventually M and a friend welded in a new floor pan.
But the paint: it was when I was first designing baby clothes shortly
after Annie was born. We'd opened a tiny store and needed publicity. The
store was called 'The Elephant's Trunk' and M figured that people would
notice a sign on the car (which could have been partly because he was
extremely car-centric himself.) So I went out one morning with little pots
of white and pink and painted away--both doors as I recall. It did look
rather amusing, and it did bring us one customer at least--my very first
maternity customer, a tiny woman who at one month had outgrown her regular
clothes and desperately wanted something that didn't look silly. It proved
to be my entré into designing for pregnant women.
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