My son's 32 Ford Coupe at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2002. Engine pretty much built from scratch
Into cars at a young age.
Again I am repeating one of my stories from last year.
It's my son's 37th birthday today
July 12, 1972 was one of the most important days of my life.
That was the day my son was born.
Puri and I had been married for three years when I became pregnant. I am sure quite a surprise to some of my relatives in Holland, since we got married in such a hurry :>)
For three years we'd been using a rather controversial birth control method. I still don't understand the fine points of it, but it had something to do with astrology. Something Puri was very much into those days. When the moon was in a certain house, I was 'safe'.
Well, we miscalculated one day :>)
Perhaps it was a cloudy night?
We really were surprised. When I came out of the doctor's office I was crying, and Puri thought I was upset. In the parking lot, walking back to our car, he asked me if I wanted an abortion.
God no!
You have to understand that we were hardly in a position to bring a child into the world. He was working, but only off and on. I was working as a sales clerk at a large department store, The Emporium, which in those days was the big competitor of Macy's, at least in California. Puri was into horse racing. Not particularly the gambling, although he did spend a few bucks on that too, but he was convinced he could develop a system......a sure way to pick the winner, every time!
Oh Lordy, that damn card system of his. This was in the beginning of the computer age. He used them at Stanford University to develop his "system". He dabbled, and designed, and worried. His horse racing was a priority.
He once told me, if the house is on fire, don't bother getting anything out but the horse racing card system!
Looking back our life was to say the least, picturesque.
We lived in a tiny cottage, no larger than a single wide trailer, really. But it was a darling little place. A small kitchen (no oven) stove on top of the fridge, built in cupboards, a small living room with room for a trundle bed, a dresser, and later two fold up Cost Plus chairs. When we pulled out the bed at night we had to move everything else into the kitchen. There was a small bathroom, with a bathtub that tended to back up when it rained, and we used the space by the back door as our closet. The whole interior was covered with wood paneling, windows on both sides.
This was our home, ours and our puppy Sheba, and our cage of rainbow finches. Our little caboose. Or, as a friend of ours once exclaimed: Holy Shit! Sirhan Sirhan has a bigger cell than THIS!
We lived on a hill, there were three homes along a dirt road, our landlady lived in the first one, and at the end of the road were two more homes. These three properties were pretty much the last holdouts of an ever spreading developing area with apartment buildings. In later years the entire hillsides were built up, but these three houses are still holding their ground and are still there.
Our landlady was a wonderful woman, she was a widow. Her husband used to be the mayor of the town we lived in. She had three sons. We became part of the family, celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving with them and their friends. She let me use her washer and dryer, and her oven if I wanted to bake cookies. I still use her recipe for twice baked potatoes. She was a teacher at a local College. For years after we exchanged holiday cards, until about four years ago the cards stopped coming. Either she is too old to write now, or, more likely passed on.
(I learned not too long ago that she suffers from Alzheimers and lives in a nursing home)Her youngest son became a journalist and we ALMOST met up when we lived in California recently. He wrote for the Sacramento Bee. The oldest son was already gone from home when we lived there, and the middle son went crazy after he experienced the riots at the Chicago convention in 1968, and eventually ended his life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Our first experience being close to someone who went from being a bright handsome promising young man to a drug crazed lost soul, who in the end could not face his world.
The little house was made of wood, painted dark brown with white trim, it sat in a beautiful garden next to the main house where our landlady lived. There was a huge plum tree and a persimmon tree, as well as a grove of eucalyptus trees and many blooming hedges and bushes.
Spring time was incredible, with everything in bloom.
When we became pregnant we had to look for another place to live.
The house at the end of the road was empty and very mysterious. The people who built and owned it lived there until their deaths. They were quite old when they died, in their nineties.
The guy who lived next door to them was their nephew, who was the heir and executor of their 'estate' His name was Bob, he had a dog named Blackie. He drove a Chevy El Dorado. A little fireplug of a fellow, never married, always very serious, didn't know about deodorant.
He never thought of selling the house or renting it out. It just sat there, something for him to fret about.
It was a spooky place, because he had it wired so that lights would go on at night, and radios would play at certain times. He had a fire alarm on the roof that would go off every time we had a thunder storm, and the alarm was LOUD!
Some friends and us ventured to take a look one evening, in the dark, and as we peeked into the sun room, a radio started playing somewhere in the house, we all jumped. We peeked into one of the rooms we were able to reach, and it was a bedroom (we later found out it was really the dining room, but when the folks got too old to climb the steep stairs, they probably moved their bed downstairs.) The bed was still in there, with the indentations of the people who used to sleep there. On the dresser there were still grooming items, a brush, a comb, a mirror and a few hair pins.
(Puri told me recently that after I left him and he lived there by himself, he experienced paranormal activity, which I believe!)The house was on top of the hill, where you could look in all directions. There was a trail down below that went to around the property towards a reservoir, Waterdog Lake.
It was very quiet. The grounds must have been beautiful at one time, as you could still see the outlines of the gardens and terraces. Apparently they worked in their garden from sun up to sun down. It was a huge lot. On one slope behind the house each spring thousands of daffodils would bloom. A huge pepper tree sat at one corner of the house, the limbs almost reaching some of the living room windows.
I decided to get friendly with Bob, who was a rather paranoid little guy. And when we finally got to know each other a little better, I asked him if he would rent us the house.
Our land lady convinced him that it would be a good idea, and that we were good people.
He said yes. He had to remove the stuff from the house though, and it took four large moving vans to take everything out.
The rent was $200 a month....
When we finally were allowed to have a look inside we were blown away. The place was in pristine condition. Hardwood everywhere, all the floors, the ceiling. Redwood window casings. Redwood built in cupboards, a huge three part sun room, a large kitchen with an antique stove, which worked perfectly. Across from the front door through the hall were a few steps down to another bathroom and a small storage room.
It had two bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom, complete with a bath and shower. There were huge walk-in closets with little windows and built in dressers, and next to the main bedroom was a smaller room, which we ended up using as a nursery.
The basement was huge. Ran all the way under the house.
You entered the house (the basement was above ground) and went up four steps. On the right was the dining room (the room that was used as the bedroom) On the left there was the living room, two dramatic steps down. The acoustics in that room were amazing. I used to stand on top of the steps, which were like a stage, belting out Abba and Four Tops songs.
The living room had windows on all three sides. It had a huge fireplace, about ten feet wide. It was cemented shut because of a bee problem at one time, so unfortunately we were never able to use it.
There was a hallway in the middle. Bee problem there too, but we were never able to get rid of the bees there, when it got hot in the summer we had honey dripping from the ceiling though.
Next to the dining room was the breakfast room, also with built in redwood cupboards and glass doors, then the kitchen, and off the kitchen the three sun rooms, one large space divided into three rooms, the outside rooms were open and were screened. We used one room at one point to house our seven puppies for a while, and used the other side as a hot house where I grew my marigolds from seeds. The middle room was our ironing/play room.
Now picture this. We had nothing! We had two folding chairs and a dresser. I had a little rocking chair. We had shelves on bricks for the LP collection and the stereo, and a little cabinet for the TV.
We moved all our belongings in a wheelbarrow. I only took about ten trips.
The dining room still had the table, a beautiful round oak table with chairs. The breakfast room had a small table with chairs as well. As I looked at some of the pictures I still have I remember now that there were also two large oriental rugs. A blue one in the living room and a red one in the dining room. I hung my guitar on the wall, along with all my handmade wall hangings, bought many plants, among them a selection of different ferns, which I found in a remote 'fern ranch' near the coast, and a few fast growing Swedish Ivy plants. The plants thrived in that house. I had a button fern that grew about three feet wide.
We bought a mattress and box spring, and a second hand dresser, which I repainted.
We used a piece of plywood on cinder blocks for a coffee table. My parents sent a bolt of fabric for curtains, which I sewed myself. The curtain rods were already there. Beautiful cast iron rods with gorgeous fixtures. There was a central heating system, but no air conditioning. Opening all the windows at night enabled the fresh air to blow through the entire house.
Puri was working for a record distributer at the time. We owned a VW bug, named "old Blue" which I bought from my uncle for $400 after my cousin (cough) ran all over the world in it all through college.
Old Blue finally died, but we sold it to Wheelie, who happened to live across the road from us at the time with his second wife and his two kids. (We don't believe in coincidence, people! :>) and had a grand old time rebuilding the engine and making it run for many more years.
We were pretty content in the house, even though there were some spooky elements to it.
Not in the least the small storage room off the extra bathroom, where a few large trunks were stored, and it was lined with shelves filled with boxes of laundry detergent, OLD stuff from the 40s at least.
Had I known what I know now, I would have confiscated all that stuff, which is probably worth some money these days. We never had the nerve to open the trunks though, who knows what was in those.
We also found a fully stocked work bench in the basement. Many of the tools were hand made, and my father had a field day in that basement. Drawers full of old towels with crochet trim, and those wonderfully colorful retro table cloths. I found a set of colorful dishes, which I smashed into pieces, for a mosaic coffee table project I was planning. The table was never made, and in later years I realized that I smashed a bunch of valuable Fiesta ware into smithereens.
There was an armoire upstairs on the landing which still held a bunch of clothes and old shoes.
Wheelie's then wife was enamoured with that stuff and took a few of those dresses. I rather left the stuff alone. I really never opened that armoire, just didn't feel polite somehow.
But I digress......big time.....:>)
My pregnancy went smoothly. I saw a different doctor at Kaiser Permanente every month, but that didn't bother me. It cost us $85 TOTAL to have prenatal care PLUS the birth and well baby visits. Amazing!
In those days there were no prenatal classes, and my only source of information was a small paperback book that told me exactly how things worked. I had a basic idea what to expect from the delivery and I was confident that it would be a cinch.
My parents came over to visit late that June. The baby was due around the first of July. Of course this child was almost two weeks overdue! I remember that as a last resort Puri and I decided to go play some catch football at the beach at Half Moon Bay. Didn't exactly help. :>)
But finally the day was there. My water broke in the middle of the night. So off we went to the hospital. My mom was sure we would be back. Not!
The weather that week was horrendous. The temperature reached 106°. My parents spent their days with most of their clothes off in the cool basement.
I really don't remember much about my labor, except that a lady in the next room was screaming like a banshee. The doctor wanted to 'ease' my pain a little and proceeded to come in with a HUGE syringe, at which point Puri decided to leave the room (and who the hell knows, the hospital.) I received a shot through my woo woo, right into my cervix.
Don't ask, this is how I remember it.
The pains went away, I slept...
Next thing I know I was being rolled into the delivery room. The doctor who delivered my son was a stranger to me. The nurse was an older German lady, who I remember to be rather enthusiastic.
Yoo are doink great! POOSH POOOOSH!!! Yes, yes!! POOSH POOOOOSH!! No drugs! Good for Yooo!!! POOSHHHHHH!!!!
Puri chickened out and didn't come into the delivery room with me, but he was standing out in the hall and we had this commentary going back and forth.
The doc decided to 'cut' me, I guess things didn't go quick enough for him.
So after a long time of poooshing, there he was!!!
It's a BOY! I yelled out to the hall.
I was ecstatic. I was so damn happy.
The doc sewed me up (45 stitches, ouch) and after that I really don't remember much, they gave me Tylenol III, which knocked me on my ass for the next two days. The codeine really did a number on my head. Everyone in the hospital spoke Dutch. I was in lala land.
In those days you were not allowed any visitors except the daddies. So my parents were not allowed to see me, but they were able to see the baby in the nursery.
I remember Puri looking into the bassinet after he was born, and really squinting his eyes and examining the child. Like he was looking at an interesting bug.
Our baby's right ear was folded over, and he did look rather comical. But to me he was the most gorgeous baby on earth.
After three days we went home. There is a video of us coming home.
In Old Blue.
No car seat
No seat belts.
Me holding baby in my arms.
Trying to get out of the car without any help. OUCH OUCH OUCH...Puri oblivious, My dad filming, my mom wringing her hands....
Walking up those stairs, my mom oowing and aahing...OUCH OUCH OUCH
Since we had no money to buy anything for the baby, my parents and my aunt and uncle got this basinette from the Goodwill store. My mom "dressed this cradle with white cotton on the inside, and blue gingham with lace trim around the outside, like a long skirt. They made a little canopy that hung like two wings. Mom made sets of little sheets and pillow cases. This first grand baby of their was going to sleep in a true cradle! :>)
I was very much aware that my world had just made a huge shift. As new moms tend to feel, overwhelmed, scared, and just filled to the brim with so much love for this little new human being....
My parents had to leave a few days later.
I remember standing at the bedroom window upstairs where I could watch the car leave and drive down the dirt road...
Standing there an
overwhelming feeling of sadness came over me....I had never felt so lonely in my entire life....I can still see myself standing there at the window, holding my son in my arms, waving my parents goodbye as Old Blue drove down the dirt road.....
I held on to this little bundle and it felt like it was him and me, together, forever. This is it, kiddo, I thought, here you are, and oh, how I love you!
~*~*~
And here we are...today...
I can still feel that horrible loneliness....as the child that meant the world to me, the boy I adored, nurtured, loved....called my "Best Boy".... the curious and adventurous toddler, whose first words were: light! train! and ME! The little rascal who would 'run away from home' scaring the daylights out of us, one time found under my landlady's porch with the new kittens, another time scooped up by a cop, he was halfway to
Waterdog Lake! And he was only 1 1/2 years old then!
The little kid who was so darn clever, so naughty, and couldn't do anything wrong in our eyes...
He no longer wants to have anything to do with me....
His reasons are
understandable. I made some unwise decisions along the way....In my quest for the perfect mate/family I must have neglected him somehow...at least he feels that way...All I know is that I tried to do the best I knew how.
He's all grown up now. He has done some incredible things. I am so proud of his
accomplishments. He is so very talented in so many fields.
My hope is that in time he will come to understand why things happened. That he will be able to forgive me.
That he will be able to call me Mom again.
In the meantime I wish him a very Happy 36
th (37
th this year) Birthday. Wish him much much happiness, good health.
SGMKJ!
We still need some stuff for the walls and some book cases for all her other books and toys, but we're getting there.
