May 2010

A few weeks ago, our local newspaper ran several pages of summer programs for children.  Some are daily “camps” filled with activities and run all summer.  Others are enrichment programs that teach everything from archery to zoology.  Times haven’t changed.  Working parents need safe “holding stations” for their children, like Marta in Her Mother’s Hope – and her “Summer Bedlam” boys. 

Mom enrolled me in “Swim to Live” classes at the local high school.  I started out a “pollywog” and ended up in synchronized swimming.  When my parents decided my brother and I needed a little culture, Mom enrolled us in a summer music program.   My brother was one of the only boys big and strong enough to carry a tuba.  I wanted to play saxophone, but ended up with a clarinet.  I gave up the clarinet to twirl a baton, and ended up assigned to be drum majorette (because I was taller than the other students).   A few years later, I...

My mom and dad built their home from the foundation up, literally.  I remember when they broke ground and laid out the lines, poured concrete and put up the walls.  I still love the smell of sawdust.  The scent sends me back to happy childhood memories. 

Both of my parents worked. Dad was a policeman and worked in forensics.  Mom was a nurse at a VA Hospital in Livermore.  After their “day jobs”, they put on “work clothes” and plugged in the table saw, pounded nails, plastered or painted.  I don’t know how Mom managed it, but she had dinner on the table every evening between 6 and 6:30 – and it wasn’t “take-out”.  She made a “four-square meal” (salad, meat, potatoes and a vegetable – and something sweet later). 

They paid as they built, starting with two bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchen and small living room.  They planted an orchard of English walnut trees, knowing in the years ahead, the nuts would bring in enough money...