Stories for My Grandchildren.2

Raccoon Story

Your uncles, Aidan and Dylan, are about to go off to college. Last night, we all had dinner together at their favorite Chinese restaurant, which is called Alice’s.

Over dinner, they told me about something that happened recently at their Mom’s house.

They have two cats, Pumpkin and Ghoasty. Pumpkin is fat and stays inside all the time but Ghoasty likes to roam around outside. When Uncle Aidan was a young boy, about six years old, we were all at a school picnic in Golden Gate Park, when he heard a kitten crying in the bushes.

He crawled under the bushes and brought back little Ghoasty, who had been abandoned in the park. Since then she has always been part of our family.

In their Mom’s house there is a “cat door,” which allows Ghoasty to come and go as she pleases.

Recently a raccoon family showed up in the backyard – a father, mother and two little raccoons. The baby raccoons were very cute, Aidan said.

One of them squeezed inside the cat door and was trying to eat the cats’ food. Uncle Aidan saw them and started to scare them away. The raccoons didn’t act very scared at all but Uncle Aidan kept urging them to go away.

Finally the raccoon that was inside went back out and he closed the cat door.

Pumpkin and Ghoasty were nowhere to be seen! They don’t want to mess around with raccoons.

End of story.

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Stories for My Grandchildren

I've started to write short stories from everyday life for the grandkids. Here is the first:

The Mystery Coin

The other day, at the corner store, I got some coins back from my purchase. One of them was clearly a quarter, but it was so blackened and rusted that I could not make out George Washington’s face, let alone what year it had been minted.

Every coin has a date. You can think of it as its birthdate. So I wondered – when was this old blackened coin born? What happened to make it look this way?

Back home I decided to try and clean it up. I tried dish soap, bleach, and all kinds of cleaning supplies that your mothers and I use to clean our kitchens and bathrooms. Some of these are pretty powerful chemicals that you have to be careful with.

But nothing seemed to work on this mystery coin.

My idea was that this little coin deserved to have its own story told -- to at least be able to tell us its birthday.

Finally I got out an old screwdriver and I started gently rubbing the quarter, cleaning it bit by bit.

After a while, I had my answer.

This quarter was minted in 1998!*

So that solved one part of the mystery.

But I still wonder about all the places it has been, all the people who have touched it, where it has gone and what it has been through. I know a coin cannot think or feel, but if it could, do you think it would be happy I cleaned it up, finally?

I’d like to know what you think.

End of story.

*1998 is the year Aunt JuJu was born.

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Back From the Mountaintop

Fifteen-year-old Julia is back from her ten-day trek in the eastern Sierra, culminating with the ascent of 14,042-foot Mt. Langley. She gave a short speech at her graduation ceremony that brought tears to my eyes. Tears of pride.

She seems so grown up. Back from ten days in the wilderness with seven girls and three young women she never met before, having braved wind, rain, snow, heat and lightning, with some border-line hypothermia at some points, she looks fit, strong and newly confident.

After big hugs all around we were off. Her brothers were there to greet her and we're all proud of her.

Back of House Falls Off

Since my marriage broke into shards in 2003, I have lived in this ghetto flat in the Mission. My landlady didn't raise my rent for all of that time until a year ago. Since then she has raised it by $3,000/year. Still I pay far below market rate because this neighborhood is popular with the well-paid young tech workers who have flooded into San Francisco in our latest tech boom.

Frankly, most of us long-time residents are hoping for a bust -- soon. We are sick of getting priced out.

Meanwhile, my landlady always hires the cheapest laborers she can find and tells them to use the cheapest materials they can find when the building needs repairs.

The building often needs repairs. It was built in the 1880's. It is twice as old as I am!

Over the past week, the back stairs started collapsing, so she brought in a contractor who agreed to repair the dry rot parts of the stairs for about $1,500. As he started, the places where the stairs connect to the house started failing, revealing dry rot on the back of the building proper.

Once he started trying to repair the back of the house, the whole of it revealed itself to be rotted through and through. The wood paneling was neither redwood nor treated. It was all cheap stuff never meant to face the elements. Now she upped his fee to $5,000, reluctantly.

Once the siding ripped away, it turned out the studs were rotten too. They were also not the right kind of wood. The windows fell out, they were cut glass, not windows, and when they shatter they create life-threatening shards.

(Remember this is earthquake country. Things fall off our houses all the time.)

The frames holding the windows? Rotten, held together by paste that has long since rotted.

Next, in addition to all of this, the inside of laundry room was a piece of plywood coated in black mold. As the workers removed the rot covering it that inside wall split and cracked.

Now the wind rustles through my flat. And I cannot help wondering whether the cold I have had for the past six months or so might be related to the mold?

Who knows but as I did a load of laundry this morning, I noticed that the whole back of the house started dancing around like a Mexican jumping bean. I bet if a tiny earthquake hit today, the entire back of my house would collapse into the garden below.

Should that happen, I would hope I would not be folding my kids' laundry at the moment it occurred.

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Letting Them Go

This morning I saw my youngest off on an adventure -- mountain climbing in the eastern Sierra for ten days. When I hugged her good-bye I had no words to offer, just embarrassing tears in my eyes. I hope no one else noticed. Of course she did. She is off as part of a group of eight girls her age with three counselors on a rigorous hike in one of the truly stunning places on this planet.

As is the ritual on these occasions, I sent a letter and a wish along with her, which she will read once she out there in nature.

There are other transitions afoot. Her brothers are about to leave home and go off to college, both of them at the University of Montana. I'm no more prepared for that than I am for her to grow up. My 19-year-old told me tonight he is "nervous."

I just watched him walk off to the gym near here where he works out.

His "little" brother is having a party at his Mom's house tonight, but he too is about to head off to Missoula.

Empty nest? Yes.

Do I have any clue how I will cope with all of this?

No. But I know that is my job now. Off they go, taking whatever I have been able to impart, good or bad. They are flying away.

Meanwhile my landlady has raised my rent by $3,000/year in the past twelve months. I wonder how long I will be able to be able to afford to be here for them when they come back?

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Photo Gallery This Week

Summer Saturday Smiles

Got up early, fed the cats, checked on the status of my kids' flight heading here from Atlanta, then drove off on the first of three errands today. To the supermarket to buy food and supplies now there will be four of us here, not just one.

About an hour before heading to the airport, the gathered up the cats and their gear and took them back over to Bernal Heights. They didn't like being confined to their cat carriers at all, but once inside their familiar home they both calmed down and if cats could smile, they were smiling.

Then off on the third and most important trip of the day -- greeting my tens at the airport. They're tall so I can spot them from quite a ways away. All three give great hugs. They brought me stories of their journeys (to New York and Vermont, besides Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The Northeast is so relatively compact compared to Northern California -- here they could have traveled just as far and not left the state.

I got them Mexican food for lunch and now they are resting up for their trip at their Mom's and will be over here presently. Dads can smile and I'm smiling.

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