Missing: Dogs in Space OST Cassette Tape

 My daughter discovered the tape recorder, my old cassette collection and the joys of making her own mix-tape. I had a box with all the special and most valued cassettes: Dogs In Space and Yoko Ono were in this box. The box went missing. The other night I thought of when this could have happened. After divorce #1, #2 or #3.... each time I lost more of my things. Some I would miss like the cobolt blue candle holders I bought at BookPeople with my first paycheck from there. I lost records, CDs, books and DVDs, once gifted to me, but taken back in divorce #2. There were records that went missing with the record collector in divorce #3. Thing is, I probably would have purged  most of these things anyway, as every few years I collect a box of things I no longer like and place them at the back door of a thrift store. 

  That was not the case with this box of cassette tapes. I purchased them all myself, never connected to any relationship, only myself. To this day I still love the Dogs in Space OST and Yoko Ono. I thought of a woman I met in NYC and how we became friends and I once had her visit. She was cool and I loved what we found to talk about and her view on things. She also had a connection to Dogs in Space. The person I was married to at the time left the house while she stayed over, and then became angry when she wanted to stay longer. I said, "Sure, of course, love to have more time with you". I can't remember how many more days she stayed over. The person I was married to could have returned to our home whenever, we had a guest room and privacy. Soon after that he asked for a divorce. When I told my NYC friend she never responded. I figured she had some loyalty to the person I was divorcing, or some other strange reason  I didn't understand. It made me angry not hearing from her through the tears, packing up, moving out. So I lost her friendship in the whole thing, and that was both sad and weird. The soon to be ex-husband didn't care for her and listed her stay as one of his grievances against me. It was something I didn't regret, though it was annoying defending someone who just ghosted me.

 So the other night, when I couldn't sleep,  I wondered if maybe I gifted it to her and didn't remember. In any case, it has been almost twenty years and I hope she is the one who has it. It was a nice visit. I hate that what came up in my life caused my relationship with her to fall off. It was like carrying a stack of things out of the house, or placing boxes on the ground to load into the trunk of a car, something fell, I didn't see it, something was left behind, I didn't notice at the time. Later, once arriving at a safe place, once unpacking, never found again. I wonder where that box went, I wonder were a lot of things were left and I wonder how she is doing.

The Dinette Set

My daughter and I removed the 1950s, blue Formica top table with chrome sides and legs from my grandmother's house.  My grandmother has always referred to it as the dinette set. My grandmother is not dead, she is 96 and very much alive. She said I could have the table and the four chairs. It is the little table that sat in her turquoise kitchen throughout my childhood. It is the table I sat at to eat the rice pudding my grandfather made for us, and the atole with a giant cinnamon stick my grandmother would make for me. The weekend would bring a 1950s Mamie pink Rubbermaid container filled with cold potato salad and a pitcher of Lipton Instant Tea with a plate of Shake-N-Bake and green beans. I always loved this table and it's place in my grandparent's orderly home and turquoise kitchen with the impeccably clean floor. There was a place for everything and she'd move across the room cooking, cleaning as she went along, drying and putting things right back in the drawers, trays and cupboards where they lived. After a meal my grandfather would wash the dishes or dry while she washed. I saw my grandmother clean the sides and legs of the table a few times, early on a Saturday morning while Tradio played on their radio and the house smelled strongly of Pine-O-Pine.

It was sometime during college that the table disappeared from her kitchen. In it's place was a round wooden table and four chairs. Upon seeing this for the first time I immediately panicked and asked where the table was. In Austin I saw these things sell for up to $300 and my grandmother was known to suddenly part with longtime pieces of furniture or tschoskes in her home. She  would buy furniture, my grandfather would restore it and they'd sell it for much higher prices. They also sold various vintage items they would come across at garage sales. This side hustle went on for twenty years and proved to be so lucrative they had to start paying taxes. So I was afraid the table had left the house and taken all the dreams I had for it, which was to bring it to Austin with me and set it up in my own kitchen. I never got to do that, however, I did own a red Formica and metal table.

The table was in the salesroom with some boxes on it and the chairs tucked neatly under it. I asked why it was there and my grandmother just mumbled something about something else. I remember saying, "Don't sell, Granmo!" and there was mumbling, but my grandfather smiled and said , "We won't sell it, mija".  And they never did, it sat in that room , with the boxes on it until I removed it from their house just the other day. It was easy, the table is light, we carried it out without issue, as it fit neatly through all the doors. I placed it in my truck and told August to always own a truck. Look at what I have been able to do these past several years with all our moves and in and out of storage, always have a truck so you can get it all done right away and not have to rent a truck or ask someone."

I cleaned the table in the garage and brought her into the house, placed  her on a newly cleaned floor and now... I need to clean the chairs. It feels weird. This table has not been out of my grandmother's house since 1950, 1952. It knows all my dad's breakfast's, all the arguments, all their friends and gossip over coffee, all my childhood chatter over sherbet ice cream. My grandmother loved that table because she didn't place it in the room in the back of the house where things usually went. Everything back there was ruined when the roof suffered storm damage and then a family of racoons moved in. Nothing in there was salvageable and I watched it all get thrown into a large truck and hauled away. She loved that table because it was one of the first pieces of furniture they bought and because it was never sold. Their first living room chairs were sold, their first tv stand was sold, their first stereo console with 8 track player was sold.

My daughter and I will have our Thanksgiving dinner on the table this year. Currently looking for the right tablecloth. I just needed a minute to think and feel. The table looks so cute and petite in my kitchen. I still can't believe I removed it from my grandmother's house. Upon it I put a soul and memories and think of the life it has had. I guess I am letting it get use to it's surroundings before I begin using it. My kid walked in tonight and said, "It's happy here and starting to feel loved and wanted again." 

Mindful Ephemera

 My daughter will soon be taller than I am and what a strange feeling that will be. Everything I go through as a mother with her is as a first time mother. I will always be a first time mother. Today I opened a box and out fell the papers and photos from six years ago. There were birthday cards and art work. I remembered how in those last days in Austin, I collected what was left of her birthday last. We moved out in May. In the box I threw in school work that was returned at the end of the year, drawing the Mother's Day cards, my birthday cards. It all came tumbling out at me, dragging me back to those days and weeks before we left.

Once in Del Rio, the box remained unopened as I knew what the contents were. Then we moved into the home we are in now and I placed the box on a high shelf in the closet in what is now a classroom for remote schooling. The years passed, six years passed and I forgot what was in the box and opened it today. Suddenly I couldn't imagine six years passing, I was back in 2018. I was remembering the garden we kept at the community garden, her tiny voice coming out of small lungs. How she kept a baby voice for a really long time, until she had that growth spurt in May of 2023. I thought about a lot of things. 

As I went through the box I realized I couldn't keep everything. How I have wanted to keep a bank box for every year but that is impossible. So I picked out and curated a nice representation of August, age six, in those weeks just before we left Austin. I have the other bank boxes in my mind. 

1983 was not a good year.

I turned 12 in the spring of 1983. My dad was teaching 7th grade Texas history and was moved to an outdoor portable at the start of the school year, August 1982. I noticed a change right away. He came home in a pissy mood, was irritable over the weekends, and we were all walking on eggshells. Previously he had always been happy at his job, came home with funny stories, and we'd all go out to eat dinner on Friday and Saturday nights and watch TV shows together, laughing. On Sundays, he'd play his Beatles, Sinatra, Edith Piaf, and traditional Hebrew folk records, wash his truck, and by evening we'd all be eating hotdogs and watching The Wonderful World of Disney, then off to bed. But none of that was going on anymore. My dad was grumpy and he and my mother argued louder and louder. We weren't going out to eat as often, the TV would be off when it was usually on.

To this day I hate what Ronald Reagan did to my family. Because of his education budget cuts, my dad was walking on eggshells at his job. Why pay a Texas history teacher when a coach could teach history, two-for-one. My dad took the lack of a raise that year and being placed in a hot shed to teach as a demotion, the move before a layoff. That summer we didn't travel anywhere. My dad got a summer job instead and remained grumpy. One day the mail arrived and addressed to my mother was a letter from  Publishers Clearing House notifying her that she could possibly win one million dollars. She truly believed she had a chance of winning and told us if we all prayed together as a family, we could win this money and my dad wouldn't have to work and be happier. While skeptical I imagined a higher allowance and Barbies I never received for Christmas or birthdays, a new house, and a bigger room. So my mother got my sibs and me to pray a Novena to win the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. For nine days we were called away from our summer TV line-up to go kneel around my parent's bed and pray. My mother would say we had to believe we'd win, we would win, it was an opportunity given by God and all we had to do was get through these nine days of long prayer. This was done while my dad was working. She told us not to talk about too much with him. I thought we should so he could stop working now and enjoy the summer knowing he wouldn't have to return to his dreaded job in the portable. 

I don't remember when the prize was to be awarded, only asking when and praying these Novenas all summer. It was the end of August and we were all back in school, my dad back in the portable building to teach. Finally, my mother told us we didn't win and I remember crying and feeling cheated by God, my mother, and Ronald Reagan, all involved in messing up the good thing we had only the year before. I was most angry with my mother who told us we were going to win because we had faith. This was years before The Secret and words like manifesting. I remember thinking whoever won couldn't have needed it more than us. We couldn't even go out to eat anymore, I wasn't taking piano lessons and no longer attended ballet.

This was also the year I was told there wasn't a Santa Claus. I have a very clear memory of where I was standing in the kitchen, on December 23, 1983. I walked over to the cassette player and pushed play. It was The Carpenters Christmas Portrait and it was in the middle of Carol of the Bells. That was the year I discovered depression. My family wasn't working out, my wishes weren't working out, and now childhood was nothing but a sham. Things at school weren't going so great either, I was not in step with my peers who were already dating each other and sipping beer. On New Year's Eve, I recorded my family in the living room, grandparents, parents, and our close friend Randy, all talking and laughing, waiting for midnight. I would escape to my bedroom and record my thoughts and impressions. I was a sad little thing. I still have that tape and I listened to it recently. It was painful for me to walk out of childhood and into tweendom. I was having an existential crisis and the tape is basically me asking what is life all about, and why are we waiting on a new year so happily when it's putting us all closer to unwanted changes, aging, and death. A lot of still unanswered questions fill that 90-minute tape.

A Happy Fall?

Is a happy fall upon us or will it be a frustrating disappointment of the absolute saddest kind? We need cooler temps, the sun and humidity have been relentless and rarely taking time off. They show up just about daily and torture. The summer has been unbearable, weather-wise. If only we could move to Oregon or even Pennsylvania. I fell in love with the trees in Pennsylvania but the natural world found in Oregon cannot be beat. This summer began quite mild. The mornings were still in the low 70s and dry. We found ourselves having breakfast outside at 8 a.m. and sitting outside until 1-2 p.m. We'd lunch and watch clouds go by. We were well into June when the oppressive temperatures came upon us and ruined our bucolic plans in the backyard as well as the garden.

Recently I found that a black widow had really made herself at home under the deck we abandoned to the heat at the end of June. She was quite large and had three egg sacks. I instantly took my sandal to it all and removed that part of the deck. It had slats where she could easily crawl into our world and would be easily encountered. I couldn't have that. That part of the deck will be rebuilt with a design allowing whatever exists in the underworld to remain there, keeping us apart.

In July we took out Kathy Lennon [of the Lennon Sisters] and photographed her around town. We love paper dolls and I am so glad that August still enjoys playing with them the way she does. It's become a zen type of play, perhaps it always was. One of these will become our Welcome Fall greeting card. While our temperatures don't seem to be surrendering to the season, a lady can dream and dream... Sadly, with climate change, I am not expecting a very cold holiday season. I hope I am wrong.

Sew there was this kid...

My sewing machine is broken and the town has no one who services sewing machines. That explains all the old and new sewing machines scattered among the thrift stores in town. They are bought, taken home, then donated to a new shop within a few months. I have seen one travel this route. I have often been told that I should take on more creative endeavors and maybe create my own business. I just have never felt like the entrepreneurial type. Even when I had a rather successful website, the minute I transferred over to Etsy, it was all over. It lasted a year or so, but I never made enough to quit my day job. I love the security of a day job. I made some money writing, some money knitting hats, and some money selling purses I made. But the bulk of my income has always been from a day job, preferably working for a university. So I still work for a university, it's where my people are, my tribe. 

So back to the sewing machine...I have several and none of them are working, the last one has stopped. I have unloaded the others but will hold on to this last one because it was the one my mother used to sew all of my clothes. Next time I am in Austin, I will drop it off at the sewing machine shop and have it serviced. However, when asked what is the one thing you wish you could do all day, the activity that you can't walk away from, nothing was coming to mind. I have many interests and hobbies, but all day desire to continue? It took two weeks to think over this question and the answer was sewing. It took two weeks because when I think of sewing I think of messing with a machine for several hours, then needing to go to work, feed my child or just being frustrated and having to walk away. 

How often have I walked away from sewing? The thing is, I was never really sewing. I was mostly pulling out a seam I just made because the tension was bad and it was unraveling, there was winding the bobbin again because maybe that was the reason for the thread breaking every ten stitches, and there was going to the store to purchase new spools of thread, new needles, and an oil kit because maybe that was the issue. There were very few times in the last five years that I was actually sewing. Even then I have several pieces to show for my perseverance, patience, tenacity, and dedication to a project. I kept trying despite all the frustrating obstacles, I made it work and I was happy with the results. So to reward myself for getting through past frustrations, going way back to 2005, further back to 1995 when I borrowed a bad machine. Let's go further back to the first machine I ever had, the Sew Perfect Sewing Machine that had the needle and thread in a cartridge and would always come undone and no one could fix it because it was in a plastic case. I either had to get my parents to purchase an $8 cartridge or abandon the project. Then it worked on DD batteries and once they stopped working... So to reward myself for all the years of trying so hard to sew and sticking to sewing even though it seemed to always hate me, I am purchasing a brand new, all metal geared, high-end sewing machine. One that will always be ready to go. I haven't decided if it will be industrial or not but it will be Japanese and it will be loved. 

I don't know why I never did this before, other than I probably thought I didn't sew enough to be worthy of a brand new, high-end, sewing machine. There was the lower middle-class parent lecture, "If I get this for you, you better use it because I don't have the money to buy this, this will be a sacrifice I am making so you better use it, you better practice, you better, you better..." The pressure was always too much. I'd always say, "Forget it" and I really would move on, having been convinced by my parent's speech that they knew me better and I wasn't dedicated or serious enough. The fact that I'd never cry about it confirmed to me that they were right but it manifested later in different ways. The inner child is real, tend to that kid!