Some Sad News

I learned this evening that a cousin of mine that I spent every summer with when we were growing up, passed away this evening. She had been battling cancer for the past year and a half. I'm so grateful that I was able to spend time with her this summer when the remaining members of our family got together in Houston for a wonderful visit. She was younger than I am by several years and a very talented musician. What a loss to her family, her husband and two daughters. One can't help but wonder, why?? But then I guess there are many of us who ask that question many times in our lives.

Looking Back - Part 15 - Childhood Summers in Hico

I will be out of town most of this week in order to attend a family reunion in Houston, Texas. When I first learned that the remaining cousins in my family were planning to get together this month, I felt somewhat sad that I wouldn't be able to join them, but it would just have been too expensive a trip for me to make at this time. When one of my cousins discovered I would be unable to come, she made airline reservations for me so that I could join them. Consequently, I won't be posting except the Evening Thoughts, which I have scheduled, until the end of the week when I return to Seattle and I won't be able to comment on your posts, but I'll try to make up for it when I return and I'll have photos to share.

The memories that have been stirred by the impending trip have been both happy and poignant.

Memories of my childhood, of summers in Hico, Texas.

In case you’re wondering, Hico is a very small town in Hamilton County, Texas. It was founded in 1856. According to early day reports, by 1907, more cotton was bought right off wagons on the main street than in any town in the world. But I digress, my grandparents lived in Hico for many, many years and as a child I spent much time there. There were some Christmases with the entire family of aunts and uncles and cousins. I always loved those holidays because my grandparent’s house had a fireplace! I knew for sure that Santa Claus couldn’t miss that and I was confident there would be even more presents that year.



My grandparents old house today and as it was many years ago when my father and his siblings were young.



But the most vivid memories are the summers that I spent there with my cousin, Jane Ann, who was a couple of years younger, but who shared the same love of paper dolls that I did. Now back then you didn’t buy paper dolls at a toy store, you cut them out of pattern books that you could find in the fabric section of what passed for department stores in those days.

Hico was a very small town and our grandparent’s big, old house was close enough for us to be able to walk to town. Within a day or two of our arrival, Jane Ann and I would walk downtown, first to the post office to visit with Thoma, a lovely lady who worked there and who took the mail from our grandparent’s mail box for us to carry home. She nearly always had a treat for us as well. Our main goal, however, was the store where we knew there might be an extra pattern book or two from the past month that one of the clerks would have kept under the counter just for the likes of us – our grandmother kept them informed of our visits. But before we carried the heavy pattern books home, we stopped by the local drug store to have an ice cream cone, it was always fun to climb up on the tall stools at the counter and watch the man who worked there load up the cones with, what we were sure was the best ice cream in the world. Then, with ice cream smeared faces, we would head for Mama’s house with the pattern book. And if we were lucky we might even be able to find a wallpaper sample book that we liked to use to make furniture for the paper dolls.

We would spend days, cutting out dozens of ladies and men and children from the pattern book. We always had large families – Jane Ann had an older brother, but I was an only child. I wanted lots of children in my paper family – I carried that desire on to my real family many years later.

We played for hours on the floor of the living room there in my grandparent’s house. Sometimes we argued over who was to get a particular paper doll and sometimes those arguments resulted in tears. I do remember one summer when I finally succeeded in getting a prized paper doll much to the disappointment of Jane Ann. Later that year when I learned that she had injured her arm, I felt so badly that I had my mother put the disputed paper doll in an envelope and send it to Jane Ann.

The memories of those summers still play out quite vividly in my mind. The sound of the crickets and the birds in the trees that surrounded the house and could be heard so clearly as we lay in our beds on the screened-in sleeping porch. That porch was where we all slept in the summer as there was no air conditioning at that time and, as always -- then and now, summers in Texas were HOT! I can clearly remember watching my Grandfather milking the cow in the evenings; running up and down along the fence to the small pasture playing with a young calf, poking grass through the wire for him to wrap his long tongue around.

Lovely memories, made even more dear since I was able to reconnect with, not only Jane Ann, but four of my cousins, their husbands and wife. They came from all over Texas to Dallas where I was visiting my oldest son, David. I hadn’t seen most of them in over thirty years and it was the most fun ever. We met at David’s new house – so new that there was no furniture to speak of and they all brought lawn chairs and we sat around his big empty den and laughed and remembered and ate pizza.

Celebrating memories at my son's house in Dallas.



As I said earlier these are very poignant memories for me these days because the husband of my cousin, Laura, died this past year of cancer and Jane Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year and Laura's brother John has also been diagnosed with cancer recently.

How blessed we all are to have the beautiful, happy -- and poignant memories to share and to look back upon.

What a Week!

Last week was such a delightful one that I have to share some of the fun! As many of you know, it was my birthday week and my son, David, came up from Dallas, Texas and my daughter, Kerith, came from Santa Rosa, California. It was the first time that I had been with Adam, David and Kerith at the same time in nearly 15 years and it was wonderful! There was lots of laughter and joking, sharing meals, and some fun trips around the area. So, as a way of enjoying the week all over again, I thought that I’d share some of the photos.

Adam and David at Carkeek Park



The next day after Kerith arrived, we took off for Snoqualmi Falls!



Kerith and I



My 3 Musketeers, on the ferry to Whidbey Island!



As you can see, it was a fun week!

Looking Back - Part 11 - Medical Miracles - More or Less

I'm on a roll with this "Looking Back" series because there have been so many things triggering my memories these days. My daughter Kerith’s birthday is next Monday, and I found myself thinking about the birthdays of my all four of my kids – none of which I was supposed to have, and this in turn led me to reflect on my experiences with the medical profession. That’s not hard to do these days when there seem to be more and more nightmare tales of screw-ups not only by doctors, but hospitals and other health care facilities.

My kids and I have frequently joked that we are alive today in spite of doctors rather than because of them and because we spent their early years on a military base I soon became convinced that all the medical students who made Ds in med school automatically went into the military. The fact that I even had a child period, much less four normal, healthy ones was considered unbelievable unless one believes in miracles - which I do.

I had been told early on by several doctors that my chances of getting pregnant in the first place were slim to none, let alone carrying one for a full nine months. But get pregnant I did just three months into my marriage. I carried my baby full term and delivered an eight pound, very normal and beautiful little girl. Needless to say, I thumbed my nose at that early diagnosis.

As soon as my husband returned from Vietnam I promptly got pregnant again but this time, in the process of moving to Germany, I did miscarry. It ended up being a nightmare experience with one complication, one misdiagnosis after another. It took two months before I even began to feel normal -- whatever that is for me anyway. Not sure normal was ever a discription.

We thought that perhaps my first little girl was a miracle and there would be no more. Wrong! Three months later I found myself pregnant again and shortly afterward we were transferred to Madrid, Spain. Again, it was a very normal full term pregnancy, but about a week before I was due I woke up with what felt to me like pleurisy pains and we made a trip to the air base hospital. There I was told by the doctor that there was no indication of anything wrong and I was just getting anxious to deliver and he sent me home. The next day it was worse and we went back to the hospital. This time a different doctor took my husband aside and told him there was nothing wrong with me, I was not in labor, but if he wanted to leave me at the hospital for the weekend, he’d okay it. Wisely, for his own sake, my husband declined the offer. The following day we made a third trip and saw still another doctor who said he could find nothing wrong either, but asked if I had been x-rayed earlier. When I told him no, he said that real or imagined, I was obviously in pain and I was certainly far enough along that an x-ray wouldn’t injure the baby and urged me to have one. It turned out that I had walking pneumonia and the pain I had been experiencing was indeed pleurisy and, with a proper prescription this time, I was sent home. Four days later, pneumonia free, I gave birth to another perfect little seven and a half pound girl. Within three more years I had – remarkably given birth to two more perfect, healthy babies – boys this time. And they’re all still miracles to me.

Over the next years my wariness of the medical profession and aided by extraordinarily healthy children, we were pretty much able to stay out of doctor’s offices except for routine shots etc. Then when my youngest son, Adam, was eighteen months old, our whole family was returning home in the car from an evening swim at the local indoor pool. The kids were hungry and quickly found a jar of their Dad’s favorite dry roasted peanuts between the seats. There was a lot of giggling and teasing and Adam quickly choked on his peanuts. We whopped him on the back and a peanut flew out of his mouth and we continued on our way home. The following morning he was flying around the house as usual, but what wasn’t usual was the fact that he rattled. By mid day it was obvious that the rattle wasn’t going away and I took him in to see the pediatrician. I told him what had happened the previous day. He listened to Adam’s chest and x-rayed him, but could find nothing. I told him again about the peanuts and he patiently explained how it was impossible for Adam to have inhaled a peanut because the oil in the peanut would have set up an infection that would have resulted in pneumonia almost immediately. I explained that they were dry roasted peanuts and he sighed and shook his head and asked me to bring him back in the following day if he was still “rattling”. The next day Adam was still rattling and the doctor still couldn’t find anything, but admitted there was definitely something not right even though Adam was still tearing around like a normal eighteen month old – he just rattled. The doctor then sent us to a thoracic specialist, who also listened and x-rayed without results. I told him the same story of the dry roasted peanuts and got the same head shaking response – impossible, he said. For the next five weeks Adam was subjected to every imaginable test – all to no avail and while he was still tearing around, he was also still rattling.

By that time the specialist said they had no option other than to fluoroscope his lungs and that had to be done in the hospital and could have possible side effects. But, feeling that we really didn’t have a choice, we took him in and I spent the night sitting beside him, feeling so frightened because he looked so small and helpless in that big hospital bed. They were supposed to take him to the operating room at seven the next morning, so he wasn’t allowed to have anything to eat – tell that to a hungry eighteen month old! As it turned out they didn’t come get him until nine and by that time both his Dad and I were worn out from carrying him around the ward trying to distract him from thoughts of food. Adam saw a nurse coming out of a room with a tray of food and kept trying guide his Dad in that direction by tugging his ears like a steering wheel.

Finally, they came for him and let him take his “blankey” with him. I was fighting back the tears and clinging to my husband’s hand. Adam looked so tiny and helpless as they rolled him into the operating room. The next hour seemed like thirty. Finally, the doctor came out and walked towards us.

“Boy, is my face red,” he said, with an embarrassed grin.

“You found the peanut, didn’t you?” I asked, trying not to leap on him scratching and biting.

He nodded.

“I’ll certainly tell all my patients from now on that if they’re going to let their kids eat peanuts, make sure they’re dry roasted.”

Fortunately, Adam was fine and within a couple of days he was running around again, but this time without the rattle.

I’m still wary of doctors and the frequent headlines about the medical and pharmaceutical professions don’t do a lot to encourage trust. But I’ve been more fortunate lately and have no personal complaints.

And as for Adam, well, like his siblings, he’s grown into an incredible young man that I’m outrageously proud of – definitely one of the four best things his Dad and I ever did – in spite of the medical profession.

A note of explanation, my oldest daughter, Robyn is a terrific photographer, but prefers to remain behind the camera, so I have very few photos of her. Also, she and her husband live in Michigan and we're not able to get together as often as we'd like, particularly these days. But believe me, she's beautiful!

Looking Back - Part 7 -- A Family Hero

The summer of 1948 I turned fourteen and my father decided to take my mother and I to visit a cousin of his and her family who lived in Bandera, Texas. Bandera is a small town on State Highway 16 fifty miles northwest of San Antonio on the beautiful Medina River. It was founded around 1853 although ranchers and farmers had lived in the area since the 1830s. After the Civil War the town boomed as a staging area for cattle drives up the Western Trail. Later it became famous for it’s Dude Ranches, actually it still is.

The cousin we were going to visit was named Ouida and she was married to a member of a family that had lived in the same house since the 1840s and his name was Frank “Big Daddy” Montague. Hmmm does that sound "texan" enough for you? It was a large ranch where they raised mostly sheep at the time. They also owned the one bank in Bandera. They had four sons, Charles, who had died on Tarawa during WW2, Bruce, who was a fighter pilot in the Marines and who had just come home shortly before we arrived. Then there was Frank Jr. , the oldest who ran the bank and the youngest, George who was studying to be a priest. Ouida’s mother, Laura, lived with them. Laura was my grandfathers sister, she was in her ninties, but still very active. She taught her great grandchildren French and also how to play the piano.

The old ranch house had been added on to over all those years and had grown from a tiny two room cabin with walls two feet thick, to a sprawling two story home that maintained the original two rooms with narrow slits on either side of the fireplace that they had used to shoot at attacking Indians. The door frame into that original part of the house had all manner of interesting things from cattle brands, to names and dates, all carved in the surface. It was a fascinating place and I remember being totally awed.

Our first night there, they served dinner out on a broad screened in porch. Young Mexican girls that worked for them scurried about setting the table and then serving us, bringing the next dish whenever Ouida gently rang a small silver bell.

Just as we were finishing dinner, a racy little Ford convertible with its top down pulled up out front and a tall, lanky guy in jeans, a white shirt and a white cowboy hat and boots climbed out and headed for the door of the porch where we were eating. I remember thinking that my heart had stopped beating because with his jet black hair, blue eyes and deeply tanned skin he was the most handsome man I was sure I had ever seen. He was Bruce, Ouida and Big Daddy’s third son and he had just returned from the war, he was a Marine pilot and cousin or not, I was in love!

Later that evening after dinner, Bruce invited all of us to go with him to one of the restaurants in town that had a dance floor and music where he said he would teach me to dance the “Cotton Eyed Joe”! He led us out to the convertible, but instead of opening the door for me, he lifted me up and set me in the front seat. I was certain that I had died and gone to heaven – anyone who could lift my long legs off the ground had won my heart forever. Grinning, my parents then climbed into the back seat and we headed for town. I did learn to do the “Cotton-Eyed Joe”, the “Put Your Little Foot” and a couple of others I can’t remember and it was the most exciting and fun night that I had ever had.

Bruce was also a world champion calf and trick roper and he was getting ready to compete in an event at Madison Square Garden and the day after our night on the dance floor I got a clue as to why I had gotten all the special attention. He was practicing roping calves and he really needed someone to open the gate and shoo the calf out of the shute. It was August, it was hotter than hell, but I happily spent the entire day in the heat and the dust shushing calves out for him to rope. I was a little put out when I learned that he had a real date that night, but we were leaving the next morning anyway and my parents wanted to get to bed early. Next time, I thought to myself.

It was a number of years before I did go back to Bandera. That time it was for an entire summer during which I worked on one of the Dude Ranches. I was surprised to find out as I did some research for this piece, that it is still operating. I also bumped into Bruce years later, he was married and had children of his own by then, but we both laughed about that night years earlier. The years slipped away, I married and my husband was stationed in San Antonio. One weekend I took him to Bandera and we spent the weekend on the ranch that my cousins had converted into a dude ranch. Later when my first daughter, Robyn, was born, my cousin, Ouida, became her godmother. But time slipped by, there was Vietnam and then we were stationed in Europe for three years. We ended up living in Montana and we never made it back to Bandera. I've thought about it many times, often wished that I could go back for a visit.

As I was doing the research I also came across an obituary for that tall, dark and handsome first love. He had a remarkable life as you can see.

Obituaries for Sunday, February 19, 2006

As a member of one of Bandera's pioneer ranching families, Bruce began his ranching duties at a young age. It was in these childhood years that he was taught the art of trick roping. This became a lifelong pastime that he shared with thousands of people all over the world. Entertaining others was encouraged by his parents. ...Bruce grew up a member of the St. Stanislaus Catholic Church and attended St. Joseph's Catholic Grade School in Bandera. After graduating from Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, Texas, he was drafted at the age of 18, and chose the United States Marine Corps to serve his country. After boot camp, Bruce received 'high man' honors at ordinance school in Norman, Okla. He then would serve as an SBD air gunner in World War II and later flew Corsair fighter-bombers in post-war China. During the Korean War, Bruce flew 147 combat missions with Marine Fighter Squadron 311 and then, as an exchange pilot with the USAF, became a flight commander flying F-86 Sabre jets for the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing. During this conflict, he had the responsibility of leading Ted Williams (Hall of Fame Boston Red Sox) and friend John Glenn (first man to orbit the Earth) on their first combat missions. In addition to flying, he was involved in ground combat as a forward air controller, in which capacity he played a vital role during the first battle of The Hook. He received the bronze star for directing more strikes than any other Marine forward air controller. On one occasion he directed 48 air strikes within a 48 hour period. At the end of the war he is believed to have had the most jet combat time of any Marine. After Korea, Bruce attended Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Md. He then served as a test pilot, among other duties testing air weaponry at the Naval Ordinance Test Station, China Lake, Calif. He also served as executive officer of Marine Fighter Squadron 114, assigned to the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt. In Vietnam he was commanding officer of Marine Fighter/Attack Squadron 122, flying F-4 Phantom's from Da Nang. He flew 188 combat missions over Hanoi, over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and while providing ground support at battles such as Dong Ha in 1968. He and his squadron played a vital role in the defense of Da Nang during the 1968 Tet attack. He then became air officer in charge of Marine air support in the Khe Sanh area. In all, Lt. Col. ...Having received a business administration degree from St. Mary's University, Bruce then pursued a career in real estate as a land broker in Bandera for 30 years. He was also a member of First Baptist Church Bandera. He took particular delight in entertaining children with his trick roping at schools, festivals and community events. He was an inaugural performer at the Texas Folklife Festival, where he participated for more than 21 years. Bruce loved roping, flying and spending time with his family. Many of his daredevil airplane antics and tricks are ingrained in local legend, such as buzzing Main Street, the Montague Ranch and other Bandera landmarks with planes. In his last years, Bruce dedicated much of his time as a board member of the San Antonio State School, serving in all the different officer capacities. He also spent a great deal of time writing a military memoir with his son Bruce Jr., titled "The Hook."

Looking Back - Part 3 A Personal Look at Color

In spite of the fact that I grew up in Texas, I never saw the color of a persons skin as being important, not as a child or a teenager in the 50s. I was aware that blacks lived in their own section of town, they couldn’t eat in restaurants around town and they certainly didn’t go to school with me and my friends. But my family owned a restaurant and while blacks couldn’t eat there, they could work there and serve other blacks on a porch off the kitchen -- that was the law. However, when we had parties at Christmas for the employees, it was for all of the employees , we locked the front door of the restaurant and the cooks and dishwashers (they were people, not machines in those days), came out front and we all sat together and ate goodies, exchanged gifts and laughed together.

I graduated from high school when I was sixteen and three months later I turned seventeen and went off to college for two years. I couldn’t decide at that time just what I wanted to do with my life, so I left college and went to work. One of those jobs was for a photographer. His assistant was a black man who had a Master’s Degree in Literature, but his job as a white business owner’s assistant was still a step up in those days. We became very good friends and caused a lot of head turning when we walked down the street together, laughing and talking on our way to the bus stop – it probably was a good thing we took different buses because we couldn’t sit together. I never understood prejudice – not then and certainly not now.

In the early 60s I had decided that I wanted to teach school and returned to college. I worked part time for the first six months and shared a house with a good friend of mine. She was from Germany and was a fencer and one weekend she invited me to a fencing tournament that was being held in Dallas. It was there that I met my future husband. He was a member of the Modern Pentathlon Team. It was an Olympic sport primarily designed for those in the military and he was stationed in San Antonio, the team had come to Dallas for the competition. And he was black.

At the time he was dating my housemate from Germany who was white, so when I say they dated that meant that he came to our house for an evening. They couldn’t go anywhere together, so they’d either have dinner at home or they would go to a drive-in and hope no one called the police. After the competition was over and he returned to San Antonio, they would talk on the phone and he would occasionally drive up to Dallas for a weekend. It didn’t take long for this to get really old for both of them and they finally stopped seeing each other.

But he and I continued to talk and to correspond after I returned to college full time and eventually we began to travel back and forth between my university town of Denton and San Antonio. We could go places on the base at Fort Sam Houston.

I graduated from the university two years later and accepted a teaching job in San Antonio at a Catholic girl’s school. We were still limited to dining or going to movies on the base or eating at my apartment or to parties given by local friends and that kept us busy. We occasionally thumbed our noses at society in general by eating at drive-in or going to a drive-in movie. We still turned lots of heads although it was mainly because people weren’t totally sure just what he was – he had almost as mixed a heritage as I did and wasn’t your “ordinary black man”, whatever that means.

He went to the Olympics the next year and when he returned a Silver Medalist, I had a celebration at my apartment and invited all my students. Oh, my, what a fan club they were! I nearly choked with laughter when I overheard two of them talking and giggling talking about how handsome he was and “didn’t he have the greatest tan”! It just never occurred to them that he could be black.

We married soon after that. My parents loved him in spite of a few relatives that refused to have me in their homes anymore. They came to California for our wedding – we couldn’t get married in Texas because it was still against the law at the time. But I walked down the aisle on my father’s arm in a beautiful wedding gown with my head held high and one big smile on my face.

Over the next five years we had four children who got progressively lighter skinned – to the point that to this day no one knows what their heritage is although they’ve never made any attempt to hide their background and they are, and always have been, outrageously proud of their father, as they should be.

We were married for over twenty years, we eventually did get a divorce, but it had nothing to do with race or color – that was easy to deal with, the old hurts and pain from earlier times, with parents and situations neither of us had any control over had left both of us damaged emotionally. But we have remained good friends and have stayed in touch over the years. The children feel very comfortable with both of us and we do all get together now and then.

I have no regrets nor do I think he has. He was a wonderful father and friend. It’s not about color, it’s about being a human being – we don’t all have the same color of eyes or hair so what’s the big thing about the color of ones skin? I didn’t understand it when I was a child and I don’t understand it today.

I didn't vote for Obama because he’s black, but because he has a vision for this country at a time when we desperately need a new vision. Isn’t it time that we finally put the color of a person’s skin in the same category as having different color eyes or hair? Isn’t it time we look beyond such small, petty and ridiculous reasons and look at the person within? I want desperately to believe that time has come for most of us and I desperately hope that I am right.

Counting Your Blessings

I was cleaning out some files yesterday and ran across a photo that I thought I had lost. It's this picture of three of my brood. Kerith was here from California and David was up from Texas to visit Adam several years ago, before I moved to Seattle. I'm always amazed when I happen to run across photos of them even now as I remember being told that I would never be able to have children. And I always remember the fun I had walking into that doctor's office years later, with three of them and pregnant with the fourth. The look on his face was priceless!


We've had a couple of gorgeous days, with brilliant blue skies, reasonable tempertures and I know spring is on the way -- even if the rain returns later today as is predicted. Life is good and it seemed like the perfect day to count my blessings!