I’m up and out of the house early, heading down the road to Carol’s house for our weekly art class at her ranch.

My friend Carol is 80 and has a home on acres of wild lilac covered, rocky, mountainous land that backs up to a large lake. In the first fire storm that whipped through our town four years ago, she was burned out completely. Only an old barn was left standing. But, first, her husband died and then she got burned off her ranch. One, two. You’re out. Only Carol wasn’t out. She took a big swig of her favorite gin and proceeded to design and have her house rebuilt, but this time to her high artistic standards.

I’m in my Racing-Green Jag meandering down the long narrow road, enjoying the beauty of the great oaks that in some instances hang high and meet over the center line. Four years ago, the road and all the land from this point down, was stung and blasted by tornado-like fire into a gray, powdery moonscape. Now the area is lush, again, lined with massive oak trees that have come back to life, wild lupine, orange poppies and the sycamores that have re-sprung new leaves.

To my right, as I laze around a bend I see dark tire tracks spiraling off to the road side, and where they end stands a new, waist high wooden cross with bright, florist’s flowers twined around it. There are piles of wilting flowers at the base.

“I wonder who?” I think. “Who died here? Someone I know?”

My car slows down even more as though she too is thinking about what can happen to people, and cars, all of a sudden.
Two years ago as I rounded a curve on another road a huge motorcycle flew straight at me and took out the entire driver’s side of my car, leaving my Jag pressed up against a guard rail, just an inch from the deep, silent canyon below.

The driver lived and I lived and my car lived although she was in rehab for 4 months and will never be the same.

I give my car a little pat on the dash. I love her. She saved my life. And, the motorcycle driver’s life also. If my car hadn’t been where she was at that exact moment in time, the man would have sailed quietly over the rail and down into the River Styx.

Carol’s ranch is guarded by an electronic gate. As I approach, I notice maybe, eight or ten men standing beside trucks parked in the turn around right beside the gate. For a moment, I feel alarmed. I am out here in the ‘empty’ Land of Rolling Earth and Mountains and I have to get out of my car, walk to the gate and key in the code.

I take a fast assessment as I pull up to the gate. The men assess me, too. They’re dressed mainly in bushy beards, old floppy hats and work pants.
Hopping out of my car, I grin and yell, (I hope disarmingly,) “So, what are you guys doin’ here?”

The men break into big smiles and assure me that they are just measuring the road.

“Oh!” I shout. “You look like a bunch of artists or painters!”

They looked pleased but can’t think of what to say. I pound numbers into the gate box, jump into my car and whiz through the opening gate.

Rushing into my art class, late as usual, I find Carol and Regina, who is fifty something, and our teacher, Stan, 60ish, already involved in the class.

We ‘girls’ have been meeting and painting with Stan, a very accomplished, award winning painter, for 6 years, at least. We can’t remember how long it’s been, actually. But, that’s not surprising. None of us seem to remember much anymore. In fact, last week at class Stan spent most of the time walking around Carol’s house closing his eyes, swinging an arm out in a wide loop then bringing it in to touch his nose with a finger.

“Just to make sure I don’t have a brain tumor,” he assured us. “I can’t remember anything anymore and it’s worrying me. Yesterday My wife and I were with friends and they said ‘where should we go to eat?’ and my wife said, ‘Not Mexican food, again. Stan and I have been eating it for the last 3 days.’

“Well,” Stan continues, “you know, I thought and thought and thought about it and finally I said to my wife, ‘Where did we eat Mexican food?’ I couldn’t remember a damn thing about it.”

As I enter the living-room, I notice Carol and Regina’s new paintings are propped up against the fireplace hearth where we always look at our work.

Stan is talking about Julian, the small mountain town he lives in, about 45 minutes from us here in the valley.

“You know Powell, the well known naturalist who lives in Julian, just died,” Stan says. “They set up a memorial for him in the park. His grown son went into one of the sheds there to haul out some more chairs and he got bit by a rattlesnake! It just spun up and grabbed him in the leg. He went down like a stone and we called the paramedics. They had him Life Flighted out by helicopter. As we’re all sitting down below at his father’s funeral service, we look up and the AstroFlight with the son in it, flies right over the father’s service. Damdest thing.”

We all suck our teeth in support and sympathy.

I notice that Stan is pensive today. He pulls on his beard. Runs his hand through his lovely, thick hair.

“How’s your mom, Stan?” I ask.

“She wants to die,” Stan says.

We’ve heard this before. She’s 99 years old and she wants to go. She saw her husband, Stan’s father, after he died, many, many years ago and she is not afraid of death.

“She wanted to die four years ago when she had the cancer,” Stan says. “She was really excited about it. But, then she got well.”

We’re all silent. What do you say, “Too bad.” ?

“Now, she had this stroke two weeks ago,” Stan says, “and the doctor told her she would never speak again and be paralyzed on one side for the rest of her life. So what happens? She’s now talking and walking and she’s not paralyzed. Her mind is perfect. And she’s pissed off.”

Stan continues, “The doctor tells her she could live a long time and she said, ‘I only want to live one more month, until after my son gets up here to visit me.”

We all look at Stan. “Are you going?”

Stan is torn. If he goes to see her, it might kill her. If he stays home, she may live.

We’re all sitting here, trying to discuss and settle some life and death issues but time moves on. The old clock is ticking. Stan tells us to get to work.

We do. We three paint masses of flowers.

Regina’s finished painting slants side-ways for some odd reason, mine goes all over the place and Carol does a dainty one on a small piece of rice paper.

What have we done here? Are these funeral flowers or are we celebrating life?

I say, Let’s Celebrate Life!! We will have plenty of time to Celebrate Our Death on The Other Side of Life. Let’s not rush it.

Oh well, there are always exceptions. Maybe Stan’s mom can rush hers?

Hello my friends. I’m back.
This spring I hurt my arm while doing a vigorous job of trimming the roses and since then typing has been painful.

Speaking of gardening.

It’s late afternoon when I look at the new flower garden my contractor, Chuckie, has set up for me and I think, “This is the perfect time to plant all those zinnias and hollyhocks, salpiglossis, peonies and cleome plants that I got today at the nursery!”

Of course, I say this with a glass of red wine in my hand. Maybe it is the second glass of red wine. I don’t know; I’m not sure. But red wine is so good for us, you know, that I have to occasionally drink it.

It is such a beautiful time of day with the sun dipping low over The Big Rock Candy Mountain, which is otherwise known as Mt. Woodson, to anyone who isn’t five years old like my grand daughter Lexi.

I’m singing.

I grab a trowel and pick up all the plants in their little green boxes and I set to work digging and planting the new bed. It takes me just a very short time and I feel tremendous satisfaction as I look at the result.

“My,” I think, “it’s much better to put the plants in the ground right away like this, rather then wait for days and days like I usually do.”

The next morning I wake up happy, thinking about my garden. I get up and pop outside my bedroom door to have a look. Well, now I am pop-eyed!
My god, what a mess! My little plants are dished into the ground every which way and all jammed together. Nobody will have a possibility of growing and prospering in this garden!

“Eeeh gads!” I think, “I most have been impaired last night!”

I spend a good hour re-planting the entire garden. It’s not nearly as much fun as it was last night but the end result is more humane.

My grand daughter Lexi has been with me for 5 days but now she has left for home.
Here is a brief portrait of Lexi at barely five years old.

When we go to bed, she insists on sleeping with me. I say, “OK, if you don’t kick me all night like you usually do.”
Right away she spills her hot coco on both of us.

After we’ve cleaned ourselves and the bed up, I turn off the light.

Lexi says, “Do you have your nightgown on?”

“Yes, Lexi, I do.”

“Are you naked under that nightgown?” she says.

“Yes, Lexi, I am.”

“Oh no!” she yells. “You know I like to sleep right next to people and I can’t sleep next to you if you’re naked!”

“I’m not naked,” I say reasonably.

“You are naked under your nightgown, Baba!”

“So, aren’t you naked under your pajamas, Lexi?”

She says she is but it is different.

I tell her I am not going to get up and put clothes on under my nightgown.

I tell her I am going to beat her at going to sleep. Lexi likes competition.

As I lie in bed, I think about the day.

Lexi is a vegetarian but her family does eat fish. She however, is hard to feed. She wants only pickles, olives and ice cream.

At lunch that day, I am gnawing a pile of beef ribs in front of Lexi and feeling embarrassed about it.
Lexi says, “What are you eating, Baba?”

“I say, ‘Beef.’”

Lexi screams and points at my plate and makes big faces. She thinks a moment and then she says, “What part of the horse do you eat?”

Thankfully, I can tell her I don’t eat horse.

Later, Lexi decides to have a party for my little red dog, Bob. She spends hours writing up invitations to his party. She writes the invitations out on stationary and then puts them in envelopes.

Here are some of the invitations written to the feral cats:

“BABYBLACK

DeR BABeBLAK
You ARe invited to BoBs PRTE AT BABAS HOUSe”

“MoMUCAT

WeLCUm To BoBs PRTE HER At BABAS House”

My invitation reads:
“BABA

DeR BABA You ARE inVited To BoBS House”

(After she has gone home, I find the two letters to the feral cats, placed where they can find them by their food dish.)

Lexi holds Bob’s party outside on my new patio. She has moulded a dirt cake and dirt muffins and she makes Bob The Dog sit in a chair. Nobody else shows up that I can see. I hope Bob has a good time. He doesn’t look as happy as we think he should be.

Lexi is very, very bright. She can read and she can write. She has not been allowed into kindergarden because she just missed the age cut-off. Summer asks me what she thinks the public school will do when Lexi is finally allowed into kindergarden and they find that she already knows everything? I don’t know. What will they do? Summer is annoyed because she has to keep paying enormous sums for pre-school. Lexi has had so much pre-school that I am wondering how many years we can hold her attention in the ‘real’ schools.

Lexi has lofty goals for her life.

She tells us, “I want to be a teenager and have a baby.”

Eeeek.

She has expressed an interest in having a doll called ‘Baby Alive.”

I say to Summer, “For heaven’s sake, get her one!!

I say this because when Summer was little all she wanted was a Baby Alive Doll. She whined for one, she begged and she pleaded for one. Finally, I got her a Baby Alive.

Well, Baby Alive does the same thing now that she did when Summer was a kid.
Summer would feed her and the baby would pee it’s pants. Summer would change her and the kid would pee her pants, again.
Summer would change her pants and feed her and then she would poop her pants. When Baby Alive wasn’t peeing and pooping, she was crying. Baby Alive and her constant demands drove Summer mad. She was a nervous mother, rushing about, crying, trying to always keep the baby cleaned up, and wailing as she did so.

One day, I noticed Baby Alive had gone missing. When I asked what had happened to her Summer said, “I put her in the back of the closet behind all my clothes.”

So, I believe now that Baby Alive is the antidote to Lexi’s desire to be a teenager and have a baby.

Thinking about this, I turn over in bed and go to sleep. I believe I have beaten Lexi at going to sleep, once again. I have the advantage in this game as five year olds can wear a grown up totally out.

My cousin Elaine is a lesbian and proud of it. Unfortunately, early in life she developed enormous, enormous boobs which she finally, in her 50’s, had cut down to a manageable size. She loved those bosoms, then. Whenever someone would comment on the change, she would lift her shirt and show off the now bra-less, orange-sized, smartly saluting breasts.
She has gotten over that, now, I think.

Today, she calls me from my mother’s house.
“Venus! Come on over! I’m in town and I’m here with your mom and your sister Barbara. I brought a nice bottle of red wine.”

I’m over at my mom’s in a green flash.

“I hope this wine won’t give me gas,” is my greeting to Elaine.

“I’ve finally realized that some wine gives me great, robust gas but I haven’t figured out which kinds do it.”

I inspect Elaine’s bottle of red.

“Oh, what the heck,” I say, “open it up. We’ll find out if this is one of those.”

Elaine tells me she is here from Utah on a fun trip. She’s not looking for work as a counselor in Hollywood to the Rich and Famous, as she was a few weeks ago when she came to California. She is now in training to be a nurse. She is 60 years old and it is never to late to jump into a new career.
I quite agree with her.

My sister Barbara is at this moment, working on mother’s bills. She is in Charge of Mother’s Finances.
As you know, all of Mother’s Children have ‘Mother Jobs’.

All except the two boys, Jim and Arthur. We are discussing this as Barbara pounds away at mother’s checkbook, her forehead rolled up into her hairline.

“Why is it,” Elaine asks, “that all you girls have Mother Jobs and the boys don’t have any?”

“I gave the boys the job of keeping Mother’s car washed and in working order,” I say.

We all look at each other and say, “Yeah…right.”

At this moment, Mom’s car is not working. It won’t start and we don’t know why.

Mom tells us that our sister Candy looked under the hood yesterday and a brown field rabbit with a lovely white tail hopped out and bounded off into the fields.

Barbara says something about how the boys should be handling this one. That we can’t do everything and that I should call the boys and explain the car situation.

“Right,” I say, “and you know that they are both ‘working all the time’ and somehow can’t keep up with car-washing and car monitoring.
As if we don’t work,” I add.

Elaine says, “what’s wrong with them?”

And Barbara says “Why can’t they be more responsible? We girls are always helping Mother.”

A lot of excuses for, and possible reasons for the boys dereliction are tossed back and forth when Mother stops us and says, “Oh, they’re just incompetent. I love them but they are incompetent.”

Well, that says it.

Barbara has her head in the computer, then her head again in Mother’s checkbook.
She looks up to say, “My birthday is next week. I’ll be (aaarrrgh) 58.”

We all nod.

“It’s Sunday,” she says. “I’ll be up to visit Mother on Sunday. Maybe we should celebrate my birthday?”

We think that is a fine idea.

“So, will I have to make my own cake?” she asks.

Apparently so as no one volunteers.

“I like chocolate,” Barbara says. “I can go to Henry’s Organic Store and get a good organic chocolate cake mix.”

We think that is a fine idea.

“So, I’ll have to make my own cake then?” Barbara says, again.

I’m thinking, ‘well, I’m not much for making cakes. In fact, maybe Barbara has forgotten but I have a long and bad reputation in this family as a cook. Sometimes I make superlative and amazing meals but there have been a number of absolute dooziers.
But, hey, maybe I could make a decent cake and surprise Barbara, but then we would have TWO chocolate cakes and we would have to eat them both.’ You know we would.

Finally, Barbara joins the three of us at the table. Elaine, Mother and I are lifting our glasses of red wine, toasting each other and generally having a fine time.

Barbara says, “I have to leave now.”

I say, “Why?! I haven’t even seen you!”

“Because,” Barbara says, “you three are drinking.”

“So?”

We all look at her like, ’so?’

“I don’t want to drink and it’s no fun to sit with drinkers.”

But,” we’re not drunk,” Elaine says reasonably. “We’ve each had half a glass.”

Barbara kind of smirks at us and I want to punch her.

She is a beautiful, sensual woman. She looks like Susan Sarandan. And, she is a lovely and good person but she is what I think of as rigid in her thinking. I always have to be careful when I am having fun with her because she often doesn’t ‘get’ what I am saying or laughing about. She takes offense.
She has told me she didn’t like me when we were kids; that she didn’t like me until about fifteen years ago when, while working as a corporate trainer, I took her to Mexico with me, as my interpreter.

“Wine is good for you, don’t you know?” I say. “A glass or two of red wine a day keeps a person healthy. “They say so.

“Well,” Barbara says, “They also say if you don’t drink don’t start.”

“What sense is that?” I point out. “They say red wine is good for your health and that people who drink some alcohol live longer then those who don’t drink at all. So, why would they then say, ‘if you don’t drink, don’t start?’

“And dark chocolate is now good for us, too,” adds Elaine. “Now, we have to drink wine and eat dark chocolate. I think the world is becoming less primitive at last.”

That reminds me. “Mom,” I ask, “where is that box of dark chocolates I just gave you?”

Mom looks embarrassed. “I ate them all,” she says.

“That’s good Mom,” I say, “you just saved me from eating them and you have added to your life span.”

Barbara sighs and leaves.

As soon as she is out the door I remark on Barbara’s attitude about life to Mom and Elaine.

Mom says she knows that many men must have been and are, attracted to Barbara, but are held at bay by her aloofness. And, she probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

I say, “I can see her happy. I think somehow she got all locked up inside and there’s a magic key that will unlock the castle door and set her free. I think the eventual right man for her will have to have a lot of self-confidence and will push through whatever her barrier is. I hope he comes, soon. He’s been tarrying way too long.”

Barbara has a husband, but they have been separated for a number of years. She has two handsome and intelligent grown children. It’s not that I think women need a man to be happy. I just think a man and happiness will be Barbara’s future.

Now, everybody sighs and Elaine pours us another glass of wine.

My mother says, “I wonder….”

There’s a silence. Elaine and I wait…

My mother dips her head and frowns a bit. Then she lifts her head, looks at us and says with a lot of puzzlement,

“…What am I wondering?….”

We get hysterical. Maybe Barbara is right. Maybe we are three drunks drinking, and we aren’t any fun for someone who is sober?

I guess life and situations are all in how you see it.

We three clank our glasses together and agree that Mom should go and take her nap.
Ummm. Maybe Mom has some chocolates around here that she has forgotten about….?