Current Event: The deer and the peahens

My husband and I ride our bikes almost every day. We have a regular route that we take that gives us six miles. There are those that think we were pretty much weenies for only doing that much for mileage, but it has a couple of hills in it, and at least we do the ride! The other day, on our usual route, one of the hills that takes us near a park, is residential, and backs up to the park. It is an interesting street as the deer and the people coexist very nicely, and there are a lot of deer. The last month has seen the arrival of fawns. So on our recent ride, we noted one yard had about six or seven deer in it, including maybe four fawns. The house owner was tossing apples to the deer, and they were partaking nicely. We watched for a bit, and then rode on up the hill. My husband had been taking deer pictures with his handy little camera, and having taken quite a few, up the hill we went. We take a drink at the top, and then we start back down the hill. Mileage, mileage! More deer were walking leisurely across the street both ways.

My husband said to me, 'wait, what is that?' Across the street among the deer traffic were six peahens, squabbling to each other, sounding like a bunch of demented chickens, and the deer were reacting like they had never seen such a sight before! We slowly drifted down the street on our bikes, and then stopped across from the peahens, who were up the curb and in the grass pecking around a tree trunk, and ignoring the deer. The deer reacted to any movement on the peahens part by leaping backwards or wheeling in the air, but not going far from the peahens. The peahens just kept cackling and pecking and moving slowly toward the woods.

We watched for awhile laughing at the sight, and observing deer behavior, who were not paying any attention to us. I think we could have walked right through the whole group of them and they wouldn't have noticed us. It was a case of existing or being invisible to the birds and the deer. Ah, how nice it is to know there are places that this can happen. Someone will get perturbed and put a [stop to it] I am sure. One can only hope not. If I weren't afraid of the dark, I would creep up into that park to listen to the night noises by all that is living there. Or I could take one of my Fairy Dust Balls with me, which by the way, don't seem to be doing the glow that was promised. Probably why they were on sale in my Gardener Catalogue. I am such sucker for anything that says fairy!

Now I have introduced being afraid of the dark, which is not entirely true but I do suspect there are creepy crawly things out there after dark. Especially at 9500 feet in Colorado. There are bears, foxes and coyotes. Well, there coyotes here in my place in Washington by the water. Every once in awhile you can hear them ky-ying to each other as they cruise Skyline looking for stray puppies, and locked out cats or rabbits. But not for awhile. Be safe peahens, and sleep well small fawns. My fairies will look out for you.

More Being Young

Christmas: I think my Mother really needed to make Christmas a special time. It was important to have the right size tree, and sort of a ritual to decorating with all the ornaments that reached back through the years. My brothers and I had to wait up the stairs while my Dad oohed and ahed over what was under the tree. Special to the whole family were boxes from our relatives in California. They always sent Graber's Green olives, and oranges, and cute little gifts. It was connecting to my Mom's side of the family. My Father's side lived in Seattle, and we saw them often. I would stay with Grandpa and Granma when my parents went away for a weekend or longer.

Grandpa would play games with me, let me take all his cigarettes out of his cigarette keeper so I could use it as a cash register. I would cut out paper money, and have him buy things so I could charge him and give him change. His favorite record was "I Love A Lassie" sung by Harry Lauder. I would listen to that record with him, sitting on his lap. Granma [or Mema], always fed me alphabets with butter, and creamed peas with butter. I found out much later that the peas were actually pea soup undiluted. I loved that and think of it as comfort food.

We lived up on Queen Anne Hill, and Granma and Grandpa lived on Capital Hill. Mom always drove the same way, and we would pass a house with an upstairs window that was put in as a diamond. It was a small square window tipped up on point. Mom told me that Nikos Kazantazakis lived there. I had no idea what that meant but I surmised in my little girl pea brain that it must have been someone mysterious and weird because of that window. Now I think it may have been an author. One time I had to stay with my grandparents for a week, and they put me in school which was a block away from the apartment on Capital Hill. I had to sit in the front row in looking at the teachers desk and the teacher. All I can remember, and it was not anything I learned, was being asked by the boy sitting next to me to pass a note to the girl sitting past me on the other side. The teacher had left the room, and before she left she told us not to talk, and to sit quietly and do nothing. She asked if we had done anything when she came back, and someone told her I had passed a note. I was speechless. I was told to stand in a corner. I could hear quiet laughing. I had been set up! I was humiliated and miserable. I never forgot that event. Scarred for life. I felt stupid, and was because I obviously did not learn anything. Nor did I make a friend. I don't think I told anyone in my family either.

So, living in Seattle, on Queen Anne Hill, I was pretty much on my own a lot. My brothers were older, and I had friends who lived near and would ride bicycles with me, play dolls with me, and paper dolls. I read by myself, and I liked doing that in my room curled up on my bed. Two friends who would play with me were Valerie and Carrie. My memories are faded, and I wish I could remember more of that time. But I do remember the household things. My Mother spent a lot of time in bed. I did not understand it, but I did know where to find her. My Father was in the South Pacific in World War II. We then had a wonderful woman named Maude who sort of ran the house. I knew to go to her when I needed things, food, or comforting. Maude was the one who told me my Mitsey dog had been hit by a car and killed. I also had a cat named Mittens who I treated as a four legged baby and would dress in doll clothes and then forget her. She would just sleep in my doll bed with a dress on, until she would drag herself downstairs thumping her back legs in that doll dress. Mom or Maude would find her and free her from the clothes.

Reading was very important to me. I read the Nancy Drew mysteries. I read the Book of Knowledge from end to end once when I was sick in bed. I had Scarlet Fever when I was about 7 or 8, and had to stay in bed for a month. Mom would bring a book a day up to me and I would read about everything alphabetically. I was a Brownie then, and had been stuffing envelopes with red feathers, a charity campaign, and felt woozy. I guess I keeled over with a fever, and was taken home to bed. The Dr. came to the house to attend to me! Wow, different times. I read the book about the Brownies, the little gnome type of brownie. I also read some books that my Mom gave me about some weird stuff I can't remember now, but there was a yin and yang symbol on the cover of the book.

To Be Continued!

When I was young!

I was born in the thirties. I just got a forward that was supposedly by Jay Leno. We who were born in the 30's are to be congratulated because we survived the 30's and the 40's. It was good! I think my kids lived in the last real time to feel pretty safe in this world. I know that I didn't even think about it, I just was out there living it.

We lived on a hill in Seattle, Queen Anne Hill. I wonder which Queen Anne it was named for,or if it was just a name. Our house was pretty neat, not on a corner but a round. The side walk was curved around our house, and across from the house was a triangle full of bushes and trees. It made sort of a round about, only shaped like a triangle. When I wasn't in school, I was riding my bike, playing cars, crawling around in the bushes that were piled high with leaves playing hide and seek with the rest of the neighborhood kids. There was a bridge half a block away over a ravine. We were not to go down in the ravine as there were bums that lived down there. I think the only bums were my brothers who had a camp they had put together down there, and they would just like to keep us scared so we would not go and bother them. I used to walk the railing of the bridge, which was concrete. The other kids would dare me to walk the railing, and of course, I would do it. Ho, ho, we would laugh, and I would dance across the top of the concrete railing.

There were lots of games we played, kick the can, hide and seek, see who could stand on bike seats and steer with our feet. I remember being pretty brave about doing things I shouldn't. My neighbor, Ramy, and I, would go about four blocks up to the Ave and wait for someone to get off a bus, and then follow them. I suspect we were really pests. The dark did not scare me. Thunder did, and I would hide under the covers until I couldn't stand it anymore, and then go crawl in bed with my Mother. I am pretty sure I was considered a naughty little girl because I was always doing adventurous things. I liked to crawl up on the garage roof and jump around when my brothers were in the attic having a secret meeting. My brothers were 5 and 7 years older than I was. When they had to take care of me, it was generally just familial torture. Their favorite was to open the front door, swing me between them and pretend they were going to let me go. My oldest brother, Frank, would drag me upstairs and lock me in my room so he would not have to worry about where I might be. Oh, and then there was under the basement stairs where they had painted a skull and cross bones in fluorescent paint. The had handcuffs nailed to the wall and they would put me down there and forget about me. Mom would call me for dinner, and then they would have to confess to having incarcerated me down in the basement.

My brothers would have wild vicious ping pong games in the big room in the basement. You could hear them upstairs. That room had the ping pong table and a bomb in it, the bomb painted red. I was always fascinated by that bomb, empty, of course. I suppose my Father had brought it back from WWII. The basement also had a laundry room, rather nice to be separate from the rest of the house, with a laundry shoot that deposited the clothes in a pile near the washing machine. Then there was a room that just had the coal bin, which was filled from the outside by a ramp. The brothers had to take turns shoveling coal into the hamper that led to the furnace. It heated water that went to radiators. Nice, those radiators, which kept the house warm. There was a work bench area with lots of jars with things in them. I tried to avoid the basement because of the skull and cross bones. There were cupboards at the end of the room created by the stairs coming down to the basement, opposite of the dread under the stairs cell!

My room looked out on the front yard. I loved that room. My oldest brother had the room next to mine with a closet between us, with a door that he kept locked. It had a sink in it also. His room led to a cold, sort of morning room that just collected spare furniture, I think, or maybe it was a sewing room. Keith had the small bedroom that looked out the back of the house. There was just a narrow passage behind the house where you could get in the back door of the kitchen, or a door that led down to the basement or up to the main entry in the front of the house. I don't know how they did it, but my Dad had a bathroom put in by those back stairs. It was small with a toilet and a sink. It was handy when I came home from having my tonsils removed. I needed to puke, and they got me in there just in time. Otherwise they would have had to bound up the stairs to the only other bathroom upstairs.

Christmas was always a great time, with a tree in the front window, fire in the fire place, and goodies for breakfast. I can remember my first real bike, a Schwinn, blue and white, and I was joyous. My very own, new bike, which I immediately painted black. Why, I don't know. Guess it was the weirdness in me at that early age. Probably thought I was an avenger or something.

To be continued!

BiPolar Disease

I was having a conversation with a friend about my daughter, Heidi, who had bipolar disease, long undiagnosed. When she was in her 40's, after many bouts with being either up or down with a few interludes of being what could be considered normal, in the midst of an upheaval in her life, she entered the system, was evaluated and diagnosed. There is a loop involved, which usually starts with the police and being reported or reporting an event that involves how one is reacting to an event in ones life. This leads to finally being involved with someone who treats people with mental illness, and hopefully leads to help and continued monitoring, but, alas, this is not always true.

The friend told me that with the young people nowadays, bipolar crops up more and more as a real thing or an excuse for behavior that is not in the norm. As I am sure there is a thread that runs through our family, probably starting with the fact that early relatives are of Irish descent, and in my research I have discovered that there is a high incidence of bipolar, schizophrenia, and associated types of mental illness with the Irish starting in the potato famine, and the hegira from Ireland looking for a better life. The Irish, like any distinct population, tended to settle together in the New World, and it was noted that there was a high incidence of, especially schizoprenia among the group.

My Father told me years ago that we had a relative, probably my great, great grandfather, who having established a family and homesite, disappeared. So there must be a thread of something in our family, that I can account for with my daughter, Heidi, and leads me to want to know more. To be continued