AMY GOES TO PROBATE COURT (Short Version)
December 8, 1998: With trepidation, I opened the large manila envelope from my sister Susan. I hadn't heard from Susan in years. She used to beat me up when we were kids and we had mutually avoided each other every since. I looked inside the envelope and a bunch of legal documents fairly sprang out at me. Words like "took advantage of my father's failing health" and "bloodsucker" and "appalling...allegedly...despicable..." flooded the page. "Absolute distortion of the facts...absolute fabrication of the truth," it continued.
I couldn't believe my eyes. My sister, who had conveniently been too busy to visit my father during the last years of his "failing health"and too busy to visit him in the hospital and too busy to help him dismantle his house when he was forced to move to a retirement home and too busy to visit him there...well. My sister and her lawyer-husband now had plenty of time to sue me for his estate. And it looked like they were going to get away with it too.
How did all this craziness come about? With the clarity of hindsight, I can now see exactly how. "I want you and your children to inherit my estate," my father had told me on his deathbed. Slowly and hesitantly he had asked me to write his wishes down, one by one. I wrote them down okay. But I didn't get them witnessed!
Both my father and I made some big mistakes regarding his estate. Please learn from our mistakes. Here are ten of them:
BIG MISTAKE 1: NOT MAKING A LEGAL WILL. If someone is in the hospital, or even if someone is young and healthy and doing push-ups in the triathalon, everyone should have a will.
Years ago my father, Alexander Straitwell, hired a lawyer to establish a trust and a pour-over will for his heirs (a pour-over will allows for anything not specifically mentioned in the main trust to "pour over" and become part of it automatically upon the death of the trustee).
"Here is the breakdown," my father told me. "Your sister Susan will be second trustee after I die. You will get 15%, Susan will get 25% and Elizabeth (my older daughter, his first grandchild) will get 20%. The other grandchildren can have the rest".
"A trust is a good thing," I then explained to my younger children. "It sounds a bit more complicated than a will, but its principle is the same: Pop has money. Pop uses it when he's alive. Pop leaves what is left when he dies to whoever he wants to have it. And the sweetest, best part of it all is that, the way this trust is set up, we get to avoid probate". Avoiding probate? ALWAYS a good thing. Trust me on that one!
Pop had a will (well, technically a trust -- but it was the same as a will). It was legal and binding. So far so good.
Then last winter, my father gave me a call. "My last heart attack was a little too close for comfort," he said. "I've written a new will". This was a wise move. Writing a new will allowed him to give his money to his heirs according to his current wishes. "I've named you as executor," he continued, "but I'm not naming any specific heirs. I want you to just distribute my assets according to instructions I will give you later." This was our first big mistake. A will, to be legally valid, must name specific heirs, either in the will itself or in a codicil. A codicil is an addition or amendment to a will.
"This will is self-proved," Pop continued. "That means it was properly witnessed. Two of my neighbors witnessed it today." That was good. A will usually needed two witnesses and witnesses could not be beneficiaries. Even still, we should have had him hire a lawyer to check this will or we should have had him use a will form, available from Nolo Press or any stationery store. As it is often difficult for heirs to tell their parents what to do, I should have advised him about this -- but I didn't.
BIG MISTAKE 2: ASSUMING THAT RELATIVES WILL HONOR YOUR WISHES AND NOT TAKE YOUR HEIRS TO COURT. Pop continued to describe his will. "It has a no-contest clause and also has a clause giving anyone who claims I died intestate the sum of one dollar. That will keep Susan and Jimmy from contesting it." Susan had stopped speaking to my father seven years before, when Pop had re-married. Her last words to him were, "If you marry her, who will put my children through college!" And now Pop was worried that Jimmy, his lawyer son-in-law, would try to contest his will. I didn't think Jimmy would. I assumed that, even though they had feuded with my father, Susan and Jimmy would want to honor his wishes. That was our second big mistake. When money was involved, my father's wishes didn't matter; Susan stood ready to drag us -- and herself -- through probate hell.
BIG MISTAKE 3: ASSUMING YOU WILL LIVE FOREVER. Unfortunately, this is just not true.
Two nights before my father died, I got home from work and there were three messages on my machine. "You have to get down here. I need to tell you what to do after I die". He thought he might be dying -- but I didn't believe him, didn't want to believe him. Even though he was 85 years old, had lost over 75 pounds in the last year and was on oxygen and morphine, I still assumed he would live for another 20 years. That was our third big mistake.
The next day, a doctor called me at work. "Your father is dying," were his simple, honest words. I ran to the hospital.
Pop's breathing was labored and painful but, responsible man that he was, he still struggled to make it easy on his heirs by delineating his estate. "Here is my PIN code. And here is the combination to my safe. And don't forget to cancel Social Security and to call the Office of Personnel Management".
I held his hand, climbed into the bed with him and shamelessly begged him not to die. Trying for levity, I asked him, "Hey, Pop! Do you see the tunnel? Do you see the light?"
"Forget about the light," he replied. "Let's get back to talking about the Bank of America." I smiled at his reply. So typical of my father to try to care for his family even in the face of Death itself. Pop was an opponent equal to standing up even to the Grim Reaper.
Then, miraculously, Pop rallied. I went home all happy, thinking the crisis was past. Getting my father's directive notarized was the last thing on my mind at this point in time. Yet another big mistake on my behalf.
BIG MISTAKE 4: NOT GETTING THAT CODICIL WITNESSED. That night, in the hospital, my father dictated a directive/codicil to me. it was five pages long. "Here is what I want you to do after my death," he told me. "These are the instructions you need to have, as my executor, to complete the instructions in my will," he told me. "Susan and Jimmy have their house," he told me. "I helped put their children through college. They will be all right. I want to give my money to Elizabeth so she can get settled in life, and to Joe and Amy so they can finish college". I wrote down his words and went home to work up a clean document from the rough draft he had dictated to me.
The next day he signed the document but I still didn't think he was going to die and so made very little effort to get the document witnessed. "I can't witness it," the nurse on duty told us. "It's against hospital policy. Why don't you have it notarized?" I learned later that wills/codicils had to be witnessed, not notarized, and, anyway, I didn't do either because I simply did not think he was going to die even though he looked just awful. This was a very big mistake.
BIG MISTAKE 5: ASSUMING THAT PROBATE IS A PIECE OF CAKE. Several weeks before going into the hospital, Pop called me every night. "I'm transferring all my assets into joint ownership with Elizabeth," he said again and again. This was a very wise move for him to make. He explained joint-tenancy to me. "Any money or property placed in joint tenancy goes directly to the heir who is the joint tenant. And no one can dispute it after I die because no one can get access to it without that heir's written permission. And you won't have to go through probate either." Probate. There was that word.
"I want Elizabeth to have my money and my car when I die," he continued, "and this was the best way to make sure she gets them. I just don't want anyone to have to go through probate." I still wasn't very sure what probate was or why we should try to avoid it. That was another big mistake. One should always avoid probate like the plague.
"What is a prooo-bait?" asked my youngest daughter Amy, then age twelve. I couldn't tell her. I didn't know myself. Didn't have a clue. I looked it up in the dictionary.
"Official proof of a will," I read, "Whatever that means." All too soon I -- and my whole family -- was going to find out -- in excruciatingly painful detail -- exactly what the word "prooo-bait" meant. Suddenly and without warning, my father died.
The nurse called us from the hospital. "Your father is dying," she said. "He has pulled out all his tubes." How like my brave and wonderful father; to just get fed up with being hooked up to machines and tubes and pull them all out. Amy and i raced to the hospital but it was too late. My father was dead.
With courage I had no idea she possessed, Amy drew hearts on my father's hands and whispered in his ear, "This is so that when you get to heaven, God will know that you had been loved."
The shock of Pop's passing hit me like a thunder bolt. I was heart-broken, miserable and numb. I called Joe and Elizabeth. Elizabeth called Susan.
BIG MISTAKE 6: HEIRS WHO GO OUT AND SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON LAWYERS. If your heirs are forced into probate and the estate is less than $100,000, please advise your heirs -- from Heaven if need be -- to settle it by getting some self-help books and/or by going Pro Per (In Propria Persona, which means representing oneself).
Less than a week after my father died, I got a letter in the mail. "Why would James R. Troth, Esq. be writing me?" I asked young Amy as I opened the envelope. It was a letter from Jimmy. "Petition for Letters of Administration," it said. "Notice of Petition to Administer Estate and Petition to Establish Existence and Validity of Trust for an Accounting, for Hearing to Determine Location of Assets". Those were fancy titles to documents that said, basically, "Give me the authorization (and the money) to handle Estate affairs. I want to be executor." I couldn't believe it. Susan was asking to be named executor. Pop had been dead less than a week and that creepy bitch Susan was actually suing me!
Further, my so-called sister was alleging, in front of the world and his wife, that I had influenced my father on his deathbed and "taken control of the assets." That's a legalese way of accusing me of robbing our poor defenseless old father blind!
I was numb. "Oh. No. Not now, not so soon after my father's death. Oh no," I cried. "Not now." Now not only did I have to deal with bureaucrats and clean-up and morticians. I had to deal with my greedy idiot sister and also deal with -- and pay for -- lawyers. And she was forcing me into probate court.
I started calling lawyers. Three or four attorneys flat-out told me, "You can not file your father's will and codicil because of the lack of witnesses to the codicil. You must file the 1991 trust and pour-over will instead." That would give Susan 25% of Pop's assets -- assets that he had wanted to go to Elizabeth.
"But what about my father's codicil? What about his intentions? What about his wishes? Are they just to be ignored?" I cried. And cried. To no avail. Apparently, wishes and intentions and directives didn't count for diddily in a court of law if they weren't properly witnessed. I took the lawyers' advice. Another big mistake. If there are a bunch of wills and directives and codicils, file them all and let the judge decide.
In the meantime, Jimmy subpoenaed my father's bank records and God knew who else in search of Pop's assets. Things were getting mean and out of hand. We found out later Jimmy had even hired a private detective to trail Elizabeth. Legal bills began mounting up at an alarming rate. All over an estate that was worth $60,000 tops.
I then interviewed approximately 14 other lawyers, each of which had a conflicting view of how the case should proceed. The only thing they all agreed upon was that we should give both themselves and my sister bundles of bucks.
BIG MISTAKE 7: ASSUMING THAT HEIRS CANNOT POSSIBLY REPRESENT THEMSELVES. In the face of reality -- I could not afford to hire a lawyer -- I decided to go Pro Per. Scary. But it was better in a way. None of the 15 lawyers would say what I wanted to have said. They wanted to quote statutes. I wanted to have my father's wishes honored. Big difference. And they all wanted at least $150 an hour. One lawyer had the good grace not to take the case because "I would have to charge you $75,000 on a $60,000 estate".
I then took the offensive and became the "Petitioner" instead of the "Respondent" and, finding some online probate forms, I filed my own Petition for Probate, my own Petition to Administer Estate. And for good measure, I filed a supplemental petition that would allow acceptance my father's will; name me executor; show that my father's estate was rather small; and to establish that Susan and Jimmy had claimed my father died intestate (without a will) so we could claim she was entitled to only one dollar. More than she deserved. Humph.
I sat down and wrote out my own damned Petition. If I do say so myself, my "Wherefore" clause was a beauty (in a legal document, a "Wherefore" clause is the summation of the demands made by the Petitioner against the Estate and/or the Respondent, based upon all evidence presented in the body of the document). My Petition was a work of art with all kinds of exhibits. And I even had it filed by Fax and File, an attorneys' service that files your documents for you by fax.
Susan and Jimmy fought back and filed their objection. Not surprisingly, their "Wherefore" clause basically called for transferring all Pop's assets to them.
"When pigs fly," I said to myself. I no longer cared what kind of legal stuff they threw at me because I was Pro Per. "That means they can't blackmail me into giving them bunches of money by jacking up my legal bills," I told Elizabeth. "They are going to have to spend lots of time on the case now, time they could be spending on their paying clients. It's not going to be as easy as they thought it was." And by this time, Susan and Jimmy had also discovered the truly small size of my father's estate.
"I bet that they are going to want to settle to our advantage," I predicted. A settlement is an out-of-court contract that ends a case in a manner satisfactory to both sides.
Little did I know that I had no idea what I was doing.
BIG MISTAKE 8: ASSUMING THAT GOING TO COURT WAS GOING TO BE EASY. As the date of the probate hearing approached, Elizabeth and I worked on first things first! Like planning what we were going to wear to Court. We settled on French twists, Liz Claibourne and knock-off Gucci. Elizabeth and I exuded calm and confidence. We were ready! Then, on the day before the hearing, a lawyer friend of mine asked, "Have you called up the court's Tentative Ruling phone tape to see if there was a tentative ruling?" Gingerly, I took the phone and dialed. It turned out that a tentative ruling was called a "pre-grant" in probate court, and that, in the case of the Estate of Alexander Straitwell, there was none. This was a good thing. I would have been too late to oppose it if there had been one.
"Have you prepared an order?" my friend then asked.
"What's an order?" I replied.
"An order is wish list, like a `Wherefore' clause, that you give to a judge to sign -- to either grant one's wishes, or cross out what they didn't want to grant." Oh. I hurriedly designed an order, again asking for the moon.
At 7:00 pm that night I got a call from the Clerk of Department 17, telling me about a whole bunch of things that were wrong with my Petition, fatally wrong things. Tearfully I called Elizabeth. "The clerk said I didn't check the box to request probate; that I didn't arrange for a publication or prepare a Letters Testamentary request or file the original will. Jesus. We're doomed." So much for going Pro Per.
Elizabeth comforted me. "Well, no matter what happens tomorrow, at least all the gut-wrenching anguish and suspense will finally be over -- for better or for worse -- and we can get on with our lives". Wrong again.
On the day of the hearing, we arrived at Department 17 at exactly 9:30 am. We went to check in with the court clerk. "Go down to the probate office one floor below," he said, "and check with the probate clerk".
The probate clerk read us the riot act. She gave us a print-out. "Here is a list of all the things you failed to do," she stated. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Then Jimmy Troth stepped up to the counter and low and behold the clerk read him the riot act too. Yes! He had also made filing mistakes. And he was a real lawyer.
Properly chastised and quaking in our (high heeled) shoes (and nylons) Elizabeth and I took seats on the opposite side of the aisle from Jimmy and Susan. And there we sat as case after case after case was called. A parade of lawyers and heirs went up to the bar and then left.
Finally, at 11:45 am our case was called. We were the last folks on the docket. The judge looked at our bright orange portfolio, looked at us, and frowned. Her face was an open book and the pages were clearly saying, "Why are you wasting my time?"
She then listed all the myriad things wrong with our filing. She, thankfully, also included a chastisement to Jimmy. "This case is continued for two months", she said. Boom. Just like that. The session was over and nothing was settled, nothing was proved.
"But Your Honor," I timidly spoke up. "What about the Estate's debts? What about the payments of my father's mobile home? What about his income tax? I have bills to pay, stuff to be taken care of. Jimmy has frozen all Pop's assets! Your Honor, we can't wait two months to take care of all that."
The judge considered me a moment and then said, "I am going to appoint a Public Administrator here". It sounded good to me: An impersonal referee to handle the Estate. Jimmy agreed too. Nobody told me it would cost "the Estate" $200 an hour. And nobody told me that once Public Administrators got a hold of your case, helpful and skilled as they may be, theirs was an appointment for life. And nobody mentioned that the Public Administrator, good intentioned as he might be, was too overworked to sell property, invest funds, pay taxes or anything else either. Another big mistake.
I continued to cancel Pop's credit accounts, cancel his retirement benefits, apply (or try to apply) for reimbursement of burial expenses from the Veterans Administration, send out death announcements, pay off creditors, write thank-you letters for condolence cards (none of which stuff our Susan volunteered to do. As usual. Although she might have done it if we had offered to pay her.)
I spent hours on the phone. At the Office of Personnel Management and Social Security, there were a lot of "Please press 1" messages and about a half-hour of wait time each time I called. Please be advised: There is a heck of a lot of paperwork and waiting time involved with death.
We then planned a testimonial dinner for my father, instead of a memorial. He hadn't wanted a memorial. The dinner was to be on his birthday. "Forget about the troubles," I told myself. "Today is the day we are going put all that court stuff out of our minds and simply celebrate how lucky we were to have had Alexander Straitwell for a father and grandfather." Joe came up from U.C. Santa Cruz and all the relatives gathered: The Rotary Club was giving my father a testimonial dinner on this special day. "Thank you," I told them all. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart".
BIG MISTAKE 9: TRUSTING LITIGIOUS HEIRS. Elizabeth, who could not afford to take bunches of time off and fly up for L.A. once a month, called Susan and offered to settle for $22,000; a bargain. Susan said yes. Then Susan called Elizabeth again the next day. "We want $3,000 more than you offered. And we want no costs." No costs meant that Susan would not have to pay lawyers, the Public Administrator or any of Pop's estate expenses. It was a sweetheart deal for her. Elizabeth agreed to $22,000 and no costs just to be rid of Susan. But I was not willing to settle. I felt that Susan and Jimmy could not be trusted.
"Why should we give her bunches of bucks?" I asked. "Where was she when Pop needed her? And besides, we'd be taking a bath on this one."
Elizabeth and I talked on the phone every night. "We still have to file an accounting," she said. An accounting was an exact record of everything in an estate, where it came from and were it went to. The average lawyer charged $3,000 to do one. "And we still have to deal with probate which might possibly cost thousands of dollars in legal fees. If we could avoid all that, the settlement would be worth it."
I did not agree. "What if Pop's income tax needs large payments? What if he had large medical bills still to come?" I asked her. "The whole damn estate is only worth $60,000. Why should we give Susan a whole big chunk of that? You could be left with nothing. Nothing but bills."
"If," Elizabeth replied, "we can walk away from all this with no more legal work and no more lawyer fees, then settlement is a good idea."
At 11:15 pm that night I am drowsily reading in my bed. Suddenly, Amy burst into my room, tears streaming down her face. "Oh, Mom. I had the worst nightmare. I dreamed that Grandpa was dying and some hand with a knife in it kept stabbing him and stabbing him and stabbing him," she sobbed. "It was terrible. I tried to stop it but I couldn't. The hand just kept stabbing Grandpa." I held her and tried to calm her down. "I couldn't see a face" she wailed, "just this hand, stabbing and stabbing."
"It's going to be okay," I muttered. That's when I decided to go along with the settlement. Another big mistake. However, I still didn't trust Susan so I also decided to file all the documents that the probate paralegal had recommended, including publishing my intentions in the paper, just to be one the safe side. Wise move.
One week later, I bought a copy of the Oakland Tribune from Fred's Market. Eagerly I checked the classified section, under Legal Notices. Yes! There it was! My name in print. "Petition to Administer Estate: Jane Straitwell..." etc. etc. etc. The Public Notice deadline has been made. One more item to check off the list of things that must be done before April 26.
Now I had only to file the Letters, the Orders, the Proof of Subscribing Witnesses, and the Duties and Responsibilities. I knew about all this now because I had finally broken down and checked out Nolo Press's How to Probate an Estate from the library. It was the best thing I had done so far! I called Nolo up and told them so. "Thank God for Nolo Press! If only I had bought a copy of that book at the very beginning of this damn will contest -- or whatever the term for it is -- legal blackmail -- we wouldn't have had to be so stressed out." Now I was right on track. If the settlement fell through, which could happen considering my sister's track record, then we would be sitting pretty when the court-imposed deadlines arrived. What was that quote? "Most lawyers have suffered near-death experiences trying to meet court-imposed deadlines." I was beginning to understand what was meant.
I also called my step-brother Michael and his friend Helen. They had been at the hospital the night before Pop died. "Pop told you about signing the codicil didn't he?" I asked them.
"Yes".
"Then would you sign a Subscribing Witness form saying just that?"
"Of course". Good. Now hopefully we could get the codicil declared legal. If we didn't settle...
The Public Administrator finally allowed me to start working on Pop's taxes as it became more and more clear to both of us that he was not going to have time to do them himself. I then holed up in the Alameda County law library and searched the reference books for how to compose a trust accounting. I got three or four sources and patched them together into a mosaic cutout of a document. There was no clear-cut accounting form -- there are usually forms for everything -- that I could just plug into the document I was typing but finally I put together a pretty good document that supposedly had all the elements an accounting needed to have to be valid. Go me.
Then I started to work rounding up the documents I would need for the exhibits: Quitclaims, bank statements, escrow documents, etc. Elizabeth reluctantly signed the accounting and I filed it. More and more she was becoming set on the settlement. "I don't have time to keep appearing in court," she said, "and I am willing to pay to get it all over with." I couldn't argue. But at least the accounting was filed. And it hadn't cost no $3,000.
Finally the day of the court settlement hearing arrived. Amy and I had a heated discussion on what to wear to court. We finally compromised. "You look lovely," I said as she modeled her knit cotton top and her Pipes wide-leg blue jeans.
After all the struggles and hesitations and preparations, I was finally reconciled, sort of, to settling: We grinded our teeth and appeared in court. But the settlement was not to be. Jimmy had forgotten to file Amy's Guardian Ad Litem papers! The case was continued for another two months. "Not again!" I cried out in anguish to the judge, "Can't you PLEASE just settle this case! Can't you please just settle it TODAY! I don't think I can stand another two months."
BIG MISTAKE 10: ASSUMING THERE IS AN END TO THE PROBATE PROCESS. "I have to go by the books," the judge replied, not unsympathetically, as she indicated with a wave of her hand a row of thick law tomes. Then, right there in the courtroom, I had a sudden, horrible epiphany. I suddenly realized that even the judge couldn't settle the damn case; that probate was forever. The judge couldn't stop it. Not even Susan and Jimmy had been able to stop it. And not all my consultations with lawyers and not all my hours and hours and hours of Pro Per efforts had been able to stop it either. Suddenly I realized that this case had taken on a life of its own; that probate was forever. The Estate of Alexander Straitwell had suddenly, on April 26, 1999, become the case from Hell, damned to purgatory for eternity.
Sadly I left the courtroom, having finally realized that this case would go forever, that I would have to forget about the easy-way-out settlement, go back to good old Nolo Press and the law library and keep grinding out my Letters and Orders and Petitions until the end of time.
Then, as Amy and I slowly walked down the courthouse steps, I resolved to myself that if the law was taking this case so much further than even Susan and Jimmy had wanted, well, I would take it even further. That night, I lay on my bed thinking. Then I had an inspiration. "Amy!" I suddenly called to my daughter in the next room. "Get yourself a court dress. We're going to take this case to trial!"
Wise move? Big mistake? I'll tell you later!
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
AMY GOES TO EGYPT
December 3, 2001: 1,379 days until I retire. 119 days until my daughter Elizabeth has her first baby. And eight more days until me and my 15-year-old daughter Amy leave for Egypt.
All my life I've dreamed about going to Egypt. I've saved $20 a month for years in order to go. When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was to become an archeologist. And as for Amy, she had just finished reading a book called The Egypt Game a total of 25 times. Eight more days. We're ready!
Or are we?
What will it mean to go into an Islamic country during Ramadan exactly four months after the World Trade Center was destroyed? "Go to Egypt? Now? In the middle of the bombing of Afghanistan? That's crazy! Don't do this to me, Mom," cried pregnant daughter Elizabeth. "I want my baby to have a grandmother." But Overseas Adventure Travel wouldn't refund our money and so off we are going. Wish us luck.
December 9, 2001: Shopping: Shoes. "Shopping -- shoes." Shopping/shoes. All the anxiety of trip preparation has focused on my feet! I've tried on 20 different pairs of shoes on three different occasions. I bought two pair. They were not right. I went through my closet four times. I tried on all of Amy's shoes. I've got nothing!
Instead of focusing on the fact that we're going into the Middle East when part of it is a war zone; that we're flying Egypt Air out of JFK; that I just did two weeks work in three days in order to leave my boss caught up at the office.... Shoe anxiety is easier to handle. And I'm not done packing either.
Rick Steves on TV last night recommended, "Have everything packed and ready two days before the trip." Moist towelettes? Po Chai pills? And Amy's famous maxim, "Never travel to a foreign country without gel." I'm always a nervous wreck, even before a trip across the bay to San Francisco. I make a lousy traveler. Why do I go? The alternative is to stay home.
"To reach any significant goal, you must leave your comfort zone," sez my Franklin Planner. I'm leaving it bigtime. And I'm a nervous wreck.
December 11, 2001: Went to the Tibet Café for dinner last night. Just like old times in Lhasa.
Got to the airport four hours early to be prepared for security contingencies. Ha! We coulda slept in. No one was at the airport. We were the only people in the check-in line, the only people going through the X-ray machine. The only people ordering greasy pizza at the snack bar.
Now it's "brain in a jar" time. Would it not be utterly cool to be able to stash one's brain in a jar and/or turn a switch to turn off thoughts for the next 20 hours of travel time? What did our cave-man ancestors do to keep from going ga-ga while waiting in their igloos for winter to go away?
"I'm bored," stated Amy, huddled in a cocoon of CD player and hand-held video games.
"Brain in a jar," I replied. Oh. That reminds me of the legal joke, "But Sir," asked the lawyer, "If you didn't check the corpse's pulse, didn't check his breathing, didn't check his heart, then how did you know he was dead?"
"Because his brain was in a jar on my desk, Sir!" replied the coroner. "Only lawyers can have no brains and still be alive."
At that point they called our flight. We got on board and waited like good little passengers for our movie and our meal. "This is American Airlines Flight 16 to New York. You have ten more minutes of cell time usage." Brain cells?
Then we survived How the Grinch Stole Christmas and airline food. Then we flew over New York City and I cried when I saw what Ground Zero looked like. "Amy," I said, "See Manhattan down there?"
"Oooh! I see the Statue of Liberty!"
"No, Amy. Focus. You see all those skyscrapers...there?"
"Yes."
"See that space that looks like a gigantic parking lot right in the middle of Manhattan? That's Ground Zero." Ground Zero was huge.
25 minutes later, we were at JFK Terminal Four with approximately 600 luggage-bearing Egyptians all wondering why the check-in line wasn't moving.
"It's a computer breakdown," said the man next to us and we waited two hours while discovering how nice Egyptians were. Amy played travel Sorry with an Egyptian-American seventh grade girl who was returning to Egypt with her family. "Don't ever wear shorts in Egypt," she warned Amy. "You will get hit on."
"No, I'm used to that. I'm from Berkeley," replied Amy.
"No, it's nothing like that. It's like nothing you've ever experienced. But other than that, Egypt is great!"
Then we boarded the plane and it was only 12 midnight -- and we had 11 hours left to go! Amy was holding up really well. Even me.
Did I mention that the American Airlines stewardess on the flight to New York went to South San Francisco High School? Just up the road from my high school? South City boys were cute and sexy and dangerous. Sort of the 1950s equivalent of Eminem. And did I mention that the stewardess gave us a free blanket from First Class when we left because it was New York City and I was worried that we would be cold? We weren't. But it was a wonderful gesture that endeared American Airlines to me forever.
December 12, 2001: 109 days until I become a grandmother? The Egypt Air flight was remarkably smooth and although we're all crammed in here like sardines and it was impossible to sleep more than 20 minutes at a time, we survived. Or at least we will survive. We land in Cairo in one-half hour!
All of our tour group is on board but I have only met the mother-daughter travelers from Tallahassee, Florida.
Amy managed to sleep several hours even though she couldn't take her contacts out. "Mother! Why didn't you tell me that we couldn't get at our luggage in New York," she lamented -- and stared straight ahead unblinking for the first four hours of the flight. Then she fell asleep and woke up without tears.
Ramadan etiquette: When they served breakfast at 4 pm Cairo time, it was daylight outside. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are not supposed to eat between sunrise and sunset. To eat or not to eat? All my Egyptian fellow-passengers dug right in. "Is it okay to eat?" I asked the passenger next to me.
"People who are traveling are exempt." We're traveling. Cool. The plane landed at 6 pm Cairo time.
8:30 pm Cairo time: We sat around the airport waiting for luggage. We sat around the tour bus waiting for people waiting for luggage. Has nobody here even heard of jet lag? Dinner! Hotel! Now! Please!
All the people on the tour seem really nice. Teachers, nurses....
December 12, 2001 (Thursday): The Cairo Museum of Antiquities. We actually saw the actual body and skin and bones and teeth and hair and everything of King Rameses II, one of the most legendary men to ever live. Guess what? He was bald. And he was very, very dead. It was a very "dust to dust" kind of thing.
There sure were a lot of antiquities stuffed haphazardly into this run-down museum. Well worth the trip. I recommend it. Our tour guide said, "Every museum in the world has a major Egyptian collection. And there are many, many private collections throughout the world as well -- plus the hundred thousand items in this museum." The Egyptians produced a lot of stuff.
Some say this was because, in ancient Egypt, everyone was an artist and everyone got to be creative.
Then we ate lunch and drove around in traffic for a while. Cairenes try to jam as many lanes of traffic into a two-lane street as they possibly can. All the cars drive very fast with only an inch or two separating every car. It's nerve-wracking.
We actually got to see the Nile. It's a bunch of football fields wide. As wide as the Mississippi? Hard to tell. As wide as the Yangtze? Almost. It's a lovely river.
Last night after dinner -- chicken fettuccine and chocolate mousse -- we walked across the street from our hotel in order to see a pyramid. We just crossed the street and there it was, sticking up from behind a fence.
"They're not as big as I thought they'd be," I told Amy. "I thought they'd be bigger."
This guy in a long dress -- lots of men wear long dresses in Egypt -- said he'd take us to the pyramids. He dragged me and Amy into a back alley from where the top of a pyramid showed up in the moonlight from behind a fence. The alleyway started to look kind of deserted.
Then suddenly two men bounded into the alley, riding a very large camel. This was too much for Amy. "I'm out of here." I gave the man a dollar, thanked him very much and ran. End of pyramid adventure.
Cairo -- yes we are still driving around in holiday traffic. The end of Ramadan is a major holiday in Egypt, sort of like Christmas is in the US. Everyone goes out shopping for it and Cairo looks like any other big city in China or Mexico or anywhere else third-worldish or without traffic restrictions or your more stringent types of building permits. Cairo traffic sucks. Why are we doing this? Driving and driving and driving? Amy fell asleep.
A lot of the buildings are made of brick. 50% of them appear to be unfinished. What does this mean? It means that I am jet-lagged and need to go back to the hotel for a rest.
Ah. Now we are going back to the hotel. I hate to say this but the pyramids just look sort of stupid and out-of-place peeking out from behind semi-finished, semi-highrise apartment houses. These dinky, out-of-context pyramids seem to piss me off. I guess it's because the painting of them that I have at home hanging on my bedroom wall shows them with palm trees and the beautiful Nile flowing by in front of them.
December 14, 2001: "Now we are going to have dinner with an Egyptian family." And we did. "This is camel meat," said our guide Mahmoud. "It actually has a very low cholesterol count." Actually, it tasted like very rich/greasy beef.
The home where we visited was a vast apartment -- reminiscent of those grand old flats in New York City, overlooking Central Park. Each room was cavernous and there were a lot of them. "Within this building and neighborhood," our host told us, "we have created the atmosphere of a village. All of us are inter-related. In this building alone we have aunts, cousins, parents and grandparents. When we held a wedding celebration last month, 17,000 people were invited."
"17,000?"
"17,000. We take our family obligations very seriously." And he did. A young man whose income came from the travel industry, he had a well-furnished home, a lovely wife and three small children -- plus various aunts in the kitchen preparing the dinner and various children of cousins etc. running in and out.
Amy roughhoused with the four-year-old son and I played cards with the smart and delightful seven-year-old niece, too young yet to cover her hair. She picked up the intricacies of the card game -- called "Egyptian Rat Screw" incidentally -- very quickly.
The food was delicious; a lot of Arabic food comes in bite-sized portions, meant to be eaten with one's fingers I presume. There were dolmas, canoli-like shells stuffed with beef and rice, pieces of meat pastry cut in triangles, various honey-based squares of this and that to be popped in one's mouth for dessert. It was a nice evening.
Everything on this trip so far has been nice enough, sure, but nothing all that different than other places I have seen; not that much different from the restaurants, museums, traffic, etc. of American cities. Even the antiquities museum was not all that much more super than the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, CA. Well, maybe better. But when I saw the King Tut traveling exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, it was awe-inspiring. The same stuff was just lying around the antiquities museum with no dramatic lighting, descriptions or stage management. It was hard to get excited. One sort of had the feeling that all these rare items were copies or imitations and that the real stuff was off on sale at Tiffany's.
Back at the Mena House Hotel, Mahmoud hit us with the bad news, "We have to get up at 3 am in order to fly to Aswan." Are you nuts? We're little old ladies here -- we need our sleep -- we still got major jet lag -- get over it.
December 15, 2001: Now it is 7:30 am and I am sitting in an Air Egypt plane looking down over desert and cloud masses, on my way to Aswan. I have no idea what we are going to do or see there. I am too tired to ask.
Why are there clouds? I thought it never rained in Egypt. Below the cloud cover, I can see brown and tan mountainous terrain, emphasized and highlighted with what appear to be rivers of sand snaking through all the cracks and crevices and canyons. It looks like what may have been a system of mountainous watersheds millions of years ago may have been replaced by sand. We're all too tired to care.
Then the cloud cover lifted and there was the Nile, looking just like the geography books said it would -- greenness cutting a swath through the desert -- and I realized that those mountains were mountains of sand and the gullies and "valleys" had been cut not by water but by wind. And that the Nile fought a valiant but hopeless battle to keep the sand back; from engulfing the strip of green that lined its banks for a mere mile or two on either side.
"Just look at that patch of green trying to fight back all that sand," I told Amy. "That's amazing!"
"You just keep telling yourself that," she replied. "Got any cough drops?"
Wow. How do they ever keep all that sand back? They certainly don't have this in the USA! At least not yet. At one time, I am told, there never used to be a Sahara Desert either.
As we near Aswan, the mountains and gullies disappear and it is all just horizon-to-horizon sand. That's a hecka lot of sand.
6 pm: And today was the day I was actually going to see some ruins. Ha! We were scheduled to go see the Colossi of Rameses II at Abu Simbel after we got off the plane from Aswan after waiting three more hours at the Aswan airport. What a waste of time. There had been a direct flight from Cairo that had left at a decent hour. Humph.
So around 1:30, we finally arrived at our hotel and I passed out cold in the lobby. Out. Cold. All my junk went flying in every direction. I couldn't even stand up afterwards and the two retired nurses in the group tried to give me artificial respiration.
So. What happened? Everyone else got to go off to the temple and I sat around yet another hotel room thinking that for all I have seen of Egypt in the last three or four days, I might as well have stayed home.
Then I got stomach flu. So. Tonight's tour is off as well? I don't think so!
6 pm: We went to the Rameses II temple sound-and-light show. "I loved it!" said Amy. They projected a narrative of Rameses' life onto the face of the Abu Simbel temple itself and also onto the temple of his (favorite) wife Nefertari. The dramatic music, the enhances lighting and the projected scenes all upgraded the majesty of the original colossi.
"Rameses built these colossi out in the middle of nowhere for a very good reason -- to alert marauding tribesmen up from Africa just exactly who they were dealing with." Don't mess with the dude!
But I hadn't forgotten the "Pharaoh's Revenge". I already knew not to mess with the dude. I just wanted to make it to the nearest restroom!
Amy has been supremely helpful on this trip. She has helped people on and off the buses, airplanes, monuments, etc. and on Sunday she will help people on and off camels and feluccas. Good job, Amy.
We stayed in a wonderful hotel today. Each room has a dome which resembled a Nubian house -- I guess. And I was wrong about the sand erosion. Mahmoud said, "No, it was caused by water." So I could be wrong about Nubian houses too. But the hotel was located on an especially blue and clear part of Lake Nasser. And a mosquito just bit me!
Yikes, there's another one! On the face, on the neck, on the hands. So much for sleep. After all that jet-lag, I just couldn't get to sleep. So I read. Then I listened to Amy breathe. Then I got up and took a walk along the shores of Lake Nassar.
December 15, 2001: Omelettes for breakfast. Then a hotel employee dropped me off at the Rameses II colossi. There was nobody there! Not even a caretaker. Not even a couple of German tourists! I had the grand temples of Abu Simbel all to myself! I took pictures of myself standing in front of the stone reliefs. Think stone here. Think mountains of stone, dressed to impress.
Inside the temple, carved in the rock, it was -- what? Cavelike? No. It was inspiring. It was like someone wanted to make something very, very special and hopefully something that would last. Is 4,000 years long enough? Sure. Even Rameses' body, back in the Cairo Museum, lasted 4,000 years and it was only made of flesh and blood.
Will I make it through the next plane ride and all the way to evening and bedtime? Will I be able to sleep tonight or am I doomed to go without sleep forever? Is that the Pharaoh's Curse? PS, I'm over my stomach curse.
I was glad I made the extra effort to go out to the colossi today. It finally put me in touch with ancient Egypt. And the nice people at the Seti Hotel made modern Egypt memorable too. I could see living here in a little house on the Nile. It's not that much different than Mexico. Except that speaking Arabic is a bitch.
1 pm: A 17-minute plane ride to Aswan. I looked on the map. "Abu Simbel is down here at the end of the world," I told Amy. It's 3/4 inch from the border of Sudan." I hadn't realized how far south we had been. No wonder Rameses built his colossi all the way down there. He was marking his territory.
At Aswan, we visited the High Dam. Compared to the Hoover Dam, it wasn't very high at all. But it was thick as hell. "There is enough stone filler in this dam to build 17 pyramids," said Mahmoud. There was a four-lane highway across the top of the dam and a rest stop too. We stopped. "Ooooh," said Amy. "Look at the little puppies! Aren't they cute?" They were cute. They were also skin and bones. We went over to the little refreshment stand and asked the guy, "Got any dog food?"
"No dog food."
"But look -- they got Halls Menthol-lyptus!" said Amy, who had developed a wheezing cough and heavy sniffles. We bought Cherry-flavored Halls right there in the middle of the High Aswan Dam. We also bought Nabisco wafers -- the waffle-y kind with the layers that I used to eat when I was a kid -- and Amy split them equally between herself and the two puppies.
At Aswan, we took a ferry to a posh hotel located on an island in the middle of the Nile. Oh, and before that we ate lunch at what our itinerary called "The Old Cataract Hotel," where Agatha Christie wrote many of her mysteries while her husband was working in Egypt. But we just went to a restaurant next door to the hotel instead.
The meal consisted of four different types of humus and home-made "pita" bread to dip into the humus. The bread was made in stone ovens and was all puffy and warm and much more culinarily interesting than the flat bland stuff we buy in the stores. We also had rice -- Egyptians make wonderful rice. Better even than Chinese restaurants -- and eggplant casserole and chicken; grilled and pressed. For dessert we had five different kinds of baklava.
Then we went to this hotel on an island accessible only by boat. But it was modern and luxurious with the American-quality rooms. We slept for two hours. Then a cannon was fired, the sun set and Ramadan officially ended. Everyone in the city cheered and honked horns and patted themselves on the back for surviving yet another year of fasting. And it had been hard for them. Mahmoud had been forced to sit and watch us eat for the past five days.
"There are five pillars to Islam," he told us. "One: The God we all worship -- Christian, Muslim and Jew -- is all the same God; Jehovah from the Old Testament. Second, we give alms to those in need. Third, we pray five times a day. Fourth, we fast during the month of Ramadan. And fifth, we -- oh God, what was number five? I am writing this at 3:45 am so I'm not the sharpest tack in the box. I'm still not sleeping very well. Jihad! Right. No, not Jihad. Jihad doesn’t mean blow stuff up. It means more like conversion by example. Now I remember. It was Haj -- pilgrimage. Every man and woman is required to tour Mecca once in their lifetime. Me! I'll go! Add it to the list. Ankor Watt, the Potola in Tibet, Manchu Picchu, Ayers Rock, the Pyramids, Mecca. Certain places in the world are sacred. I want to see them all. I want some of that sacredness to rub off on me so that I can become a better person.
After Ramadan was over, all the Muslims went shopping. We did too. We took the ferry to the bazaar and wandered happily down a narrow street for ten or twelve blocks, watching the ordinary people shop for the grand feast that ends Ramadan -- sort of like our Christmas dinner/Easter parade outfit combined. Everyone was buying new clothes and going to the barber and the butcher. We went to a spice shop and I purchased saffron and curry.
I also bought two very ugly toy camels, a fez for Joe, a scarf and a bust of Nefertiti. "How much did you pay for the fez," asked Mahmoud.
"$15."
"$15! You were robbed! That hat is worth about $3! What were you thinking! You got gypped!"
"But I bargained him down from $30," I replied defensively. And I had fun doing it too. And I bought the Nefertiti from a nice young man who was persistent that I buy something so I said, "Here is two dollars. Pick me out your favorite thing." And he handed me the little wooden queen. But I surely got taken by the ugly camels. $3 each! Hand-sewn vinyl.
Then we went to an internet café and for ten pounds Egyptian money, I got to let everyone at home know that I was safe, having a good time and was the only one interested in an ugly camel.
December 16, 2001: 4 am. The messuin just made his call -- one hour later than in Ramadan. I guess the faithful are being allowed to sleep in.
Amy is wheezing and blowing her nose and sucking on cough drops in the bed next to me. And reading The Hobbit. We have to get up at 6 am to go ride a camel to a Coptic monastery. "Maybe we should go back to sleep," said Amy.
6 am: Pack, breakfast, camels. Nobody should have to ride a camel against their will! It's cruel and unusual punishment.
We got in a boat and went to Lord Kitchener's botanical garden island. Lots of green, lots of stray cats, lots of ghosts of English officers and ladies in nineteenth century costumes promenading up and down the paths between the palms and ferns and coffee trees. Er, coffee bushes. Lots of greenery. Then we sailed to the north bank of the Nile and were suddenly in desert again. My camel's name was Mona Lisa. There was Mickey Mouse, Superman, etc. They all bawled like those creatures in the Star Wars movies. They all had bad teeth. They all shook every bone in your body when they walked. And getting on and off wasn't too fun either.
"Nuh-uh. You ain't getting me on one of them," stated Amy.
"I'll give you ten Egyptian pounds if you do it."
"Hell no."
"15 Egyptian pounds."
"You must be crazy. Them animals is mean. And they have bad breath too."
"15 Egyptian pound and a dollar. Last offer."
"Not me! Unh-uh. No way."
"Okay. You turned down my last offer. Now you gotta do it for free." Amy and I compromised. She rode a donkey. 15 camel riders looking like Lawrence of Arabia at the siege of Acaba plus Amy on a donkey. Cute.
So we rode out and up into the desert stronghold of the St. Simeon Monastery ruins. And I didn't get bit by a camel or nothing. The monastery was a fortress-like edifice about the size of a small stone mountain; with a view of hills and dunes in every direction. The high walls were of brick. The monastery was formidable, meant to repel the most dangerous barbarian, the longest siege.
Inside the crumbling walls and blue-sky-roofed main basilica, there was the cross-like layout common to all older churches; naves and all. On the walls of the basilica were dimly limned paintings of the apostles -- probably painted by monks from a linage whose predecessors knew Jesus himself. The place had a quiet and holy feeling. I kissed my fingers and touched them to a wall, a Christian gesture of reverence.
December 3, 2001: 1,379 days until I retire. 119 days until my daughter Elizabeth has her first baby. And eight more days until me and my 15-year-old daughter Amy leave for Egypt.
All my life I've dreamed about going to Egypt. I've saved $20 a month for years in order to go. When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was to become an archeologist. And as for Amy, she had just finished reading a book called The Egypt Game a total of 25 times. Eight more days. We're ready!
Or are we?
What will it mean to go into an Islamic country during Ramadan exactly four months after the World Trade Center was destroyed? "Go to Egypt? Now? In the middle of the bombing of Afghanistan? That's crazy! Don't do this to me, Mom," cried pregnant daughter Elizabeth. "I want my baby to have a grandmother." But Overseas Adventure Travel wouldn't refund our money and so off we are going. Wish us luck.
December 9, 2001: Shopping: Shoes. "Shopping -- shoes." Shopping/shoes. All the anxiety of trip preparation has focused on my feet! I've tried on 20 different pairs of shoes on three different occasions. I bought two pair. They were not right. I went through my closet four times. I tried on all of Amy's shoes. I've got nothing!
Instead of focusing on the fact that we're going into the Middle East when part of it is a war zone; that we're flying Egypt Air out of JFK; that I just did two weeks work in three days in order to leave my boss caught up at the office.... Shoe anxiety is easier to handle. And I'm not done packing either.
Rick Steves on TV last night recommended, "Have everything packed and ready two days before the trip." Moist towelettes? Po Chai pills? And Amy's famous maxim, "Never travel to a foreign country without gel." I'm always a nervous wreck, even before a trip across the bay to San Francisco. I make a lousy traveler. Why do I go? The alternative is to stay home.
"To reach any significant goal, you must leave your comfort zone," sez my Franklin Planner. I'm leaving it bigtime. And I'm a nervous wreck.
December 11, 2001: Went to the Tibet Café for dinner last night. Just like old times in Lhasa.
Got to the airport four hours early to be prepared for security contingencies. Ha! We coulda slept in. No one was at the airport. We were the only people in the check-in line, the only people going through the X-ray machine. The only people ordering greasy pizza at the snack bar.
Now it's "brain in a jar" time. Would it not be utterly cool to be able to stash one's brain in a jar and/or turn a switch to turn off thoughts for the next 20 hours of travel time? What did our cave-man ancestors do to keep from going ga-ga while waiting in their igloos for winter to go away?
"I'm bored," stated Amy, huddled in a cocoon of CD player and hand-held video games.
"Brain in a jar," I replied. Oh. That reminds me of the legal joke, "But Sir," asked the lawyer, "If you didn't check the corpse's pulse, didn't check his breathing, didn't check his heart, then how did you know he was dead?"
"Because his brain was in a jar on my desk, Sir!" replied the coroner. "Only lawyers can have no brains and still be alive."
At that point they called our flight. We got on board and waited like good little passengers for our movie and our meal. "This is American Airlines Flight 16 to New York. You have ten more minutes of cell time usage." Brain cells?
Then we survived How the Grinch Stole Christmas and airline food. Then we flew over New York City and I cried when I saw what Ground Zero looked like. "Amy," I said, "See Manhattan down there?"
"Oooh! I see the Statue of Liberty!"
"No, Amy. Focus. You see all those skyscrapers...there?"
"Yes."
"See that space that looks like a gigantic parking lot right in the middle of Manhattan? That's Ground Zero." Ground Zero was huge.
25 minutes later, we were at JFK Terminal Four with approximately 600 luggage-bearing Egyptians all wondering why the check-in line wasn't moving.
"It's a computer breakdown," said the man next to us and we waited two hours while discovering how nice Egyptians were. Amy played travel Sorry with an Egyptian-American seventh grade girl who was returning to Egypt with her family. "Don't ever wear shorts in Egypt," she warned Amy. "You will get hit on."
"No, I'm used to that. I'm from Berkeley," replied Amy.
"No, it's nothing like that. It's like nothing you've ever experienced. But other than that, Egypt is great!"
Then we boarded the plane and it was only 12 midnight -- and we had 11 hours left to go! Amy was holding up really well. Even me.
Did I mention that the American Airlines stewardess on the flight to New York went to South San Francisco High School? Just up the road from my high school? South City boys were cute and sexy and dangerous. Sort of the 1950s equivalent of Eminem. And did I mention that the stewardess gave us a free blanket from First Class when we left because it was New York City and I was worried that we would be cold? We weren't. But it was a wonderful gesture that endeared American Airlines to me forever.
December 12, 2001: 109 days until I become a grandmother? The Egypt Air flight was remarkably smooth and although we're all crammed in here like sardines and it was impossible to sleep more than 20 minutes at a time, we survived. Or at least we will survive. We land in Cairo in one-half hour!
All of our tour group is on board but I have only met the mother-daughter travelers from Tallahassee, Florida.
Amy managed to sleep several hours even though she couldn't take her contacts out. "Mother! Why didn't you tell me that we couldn't get at our luggage in New York," she lamented -- and stared straight ahead unblinking for the first four hours of the flight. Then she fell asleep and woke up without tears.
Ramadan etiquette: When they served breakfast at 4 pm Cairo time, it was daylight outside. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are not supposed to eat between sunrise and sunset. To eat or not to eat? All my Egyptian fellow-passengers dug right in. "Is it okay to eat?" I asked the passenger next to me.
"People who are traveling are exempt." We're traveling. Cool. The plane landed at 6 pm Cairo time.
8:30 pm Cairo time: We sat around the airport waiting for luggage. We sat around the tour bus waiting for people waiting for luggage. Has nobody here even heard of jet lag? Dinner! Hotel! Now! Please!
All the people on the tour seem really nice. Teachers, nurses....
December 12, 2001 (Thursday): The Cairo Museum of Antiquities. We actually saw the actual body and skin and bones and teeth and hair and everything of King Rameses II, one of the most legendary men to ever live. Guess what? He was bald. And he was very, very dead. It was a very "dust to dust" kind of thing.
There sure were a lot of antiquities stuffed haphazardly into this run-down museum. Well worth the trip. I recommend it. Our tour guide said, "Every museum in the world has a major Egyptian collection. And there are many, many private collections throughout the world as well -- plus the hundred thousand items in this museum." The Egyptians produced a lot of stuff.
Some say this was because, in ancient Egypt, everyone was an artist and everyone got to be creative.
Then we ate lunch and drove around in traffic for a while. Cairenes try to jam as many lanes of traffic into a two-lane street as they possibly can. All the cars drive very fast with only an inch or two separating every car. It's nerve-wracking.
We actually got to see the Nile. It's a bunch of football fields wide. As wide as the Mississippi? Hard to tell. As wide as the Yangtze? Almost. It's a lovely river.
Last night after dinner -- chicken fettuccine and chocolate mousse -- we walked across the street from our hotel in order to see a pyramid. We just crossed the street and there it was, sticking up from behind a fence.
"They're not as big as I thought they'd be," I told Amy. "I thought they'd be bigger."
This guy in a long dress -- lots of men wear long dresses in Egypt -- said he'd take us to the pyramids. He dragged me and Amy into a back alley from where the top of a pyramid showed up in the moonlight from behind a fence. The alleyway started to look kind of deserted.
Then suddenly two men bounded into the alley, riding a very large camel. This was too much for Amy. "I'm out of here." I gave the man a dollar, thanked him very much and ran. End of pyramid adventure.
Cairo -- yes we are still driving around in holiday traffic. The end of Ramadan is a major holiday in Egypt, sort of like Christmas is in the US. Everyone goes out shopping for it and Cairo looks like any other big city in China or Mexico or anywhere else third-worldish or without traffic restrictions or your more stringent types of building permits. Cairo traffic sucks. Why are we doing this? Driving and driving and driving? Amy fell asleep.
A lot of the buildings are made of brick. 50% of them appear to be unfinished. What does this mean? It means that I am jet-lagged and need to go back to the hotel for a rest.
Ah. Now we are going back to the hotel. I hate to say this but the pyramids just look sort of stupid and out-of-place peeking out from behind semi-finished, semi-highrise apartment houses. These dinky, out-of-context pyramids seem to piss me off. I guess it's because the painting of them that I have at home hanging on my bedroom wall shows them with palm trees and the beautiful Nile flowing by in front of them.
December 14, 2001: "Now we are going to have dinner with an Egyptian family." And we did. "This is camel meat," said our guide Mahmoud. "It actually has a very low cholesterol count." Actually, it tasted like very rich/greasy beef.
The home where we visited was a vast apartment -- reminiscent of those grand old flats in New York City, overlooking Central Park. Each room was cavernous and there were a lot of them. "Within this building and neighborhood," our host told us, "we have created the atmosphere of a village. All of us are inter-related. In this building alone we have aunts, cousins, parents and grandparents. When we held a wedding celebration last month, 17,000 people were invited."
"17,000?"
"17,000. We take our family obligations very seriously." And he did. A young man whose income came from the travel industry, he had a well-furnished home, a lovely wife and three small children -- plus various aunts in the kitchen preparing the dinner and various children of cousins etc. running in and out.
Amy roughhoused with the four-year-old son and I played cards with the smart and delightful seven-year-old niece, too young yet to cover her hair. She picked up the intricacies of the card game -- called "Egyptian Rat Screw" incidentally -- very quickly.
The food was delicious; a lot of Arabic food comes in bite-sized portions, meant to be eaten with one's fingers I presume. There were dolmas, canoli-like shells stuffed with beef and rice, pieces of meat pastry cut in triangles, various honey-based squares of this and that to be popped in one's mouth for dessert. It was a nice evening.
Everything on this trip so far has been nice enough, sure, but nothing all that different than other places I have seen; not that much different from the restaurants, museums, traffic, etc. of American cities. Even the antiquities museum was not all that much more super than the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, CA. Well, maybe better. But when I saw the King Tut traveling exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, it was awe-inspiring. The same stuff was just lying around the antiquities museum with no dramatic lighting, descriptions or stage management. It was hard to get excited. One sort of had the feeling that all these rare items were copies or imitations and that the real stuff was off on sale at Tiffany's.
Back at the Mena House Hotel, Mahmoud hit us with the bad news, "We have to get up at 3 am in order to fly to Aswan." Are you nuts? We're little old ladies here -- we need our sleep -- we still got major jet lag -- get over it.
December 15, 2001: Now it is 7:30 am and I am sitting in an Air Egypt plane looking down over desert and cloud masses, on my way to Aswan. I have no idea what we are going to do or see there. I am too tired to ask.
Why are there clouds? I thought it never rained in Egypt. Below the cloud cover, I can see brown and tan mountainous terrain, emphasized and highlighted with what appear to be rivers of sand snaking through all the cracks and crevices and canyons. It looks like what may have been a system of mountainous watersheds millions of years ago may have been replaced by sand. We're all too tired to care.
Then the cloud cover lifted and there was the Nile, looking just like the geography books said it would -- greenness cutting a swath through the desert -- and I realized that those mountains were mountains of sand and the gullies and "valleys" had been cut not by water but by wind. And that the Nile fought a valiant but hopeless battle to keep the sand back; from engulfing the strip of green that lined its banks for a mere mile or two on either side.
"Just look at that patch of green trying to fight back all that sand," I told Amy. "That's amazing!"
"You just keep telling yourself that," she replied. "Got any cough drops?"
Wow. How do they ever keep all that sand back? They certainly don't have this in the USA! At least not yet. At one time, I am told, there never used to be a Sahara Desert either.
As we near Aswan, the mountains and gullies disappear and it is all just horizon-to-horizon sand. That's a hecka lot of sand.
6 pm: And today was the day I was actually going to see some ruins. Ha! We were scheduled to go see the Colossi of Rameses II at Abu Simbel after we got off the plane from Aswan after waiting three more hours at the Aswan airport. What a waste of time. There had been a direct flight from Cairo that had left at a decent hour. Humph.
So around 1:30, we finally arrived at our hotel and I passed out cold in the lobby. Out. Cold. All my junk went flying in every direction. I couldn't even stand up afterwards and the two retired nurses in the group tried to give me artificial respiration.
So. What happened? Everyone else got to go off to the temple and I sat around yet another hotel room thinking that for all I have seen of Egypt in the last three or four days, I might as well have stayed home.
Then I got stomach flu. So. Tonight's tour is off as well? I don't think so!
6 pm: We went to the Rameses II temple sound-and-light show. "I loved it!" said Amy. They projected a narrative of Rameses' life onto the face of the Abu Simbel temple itself and also onto the temple of his (favorite) wife Nefertari. The dramatic music, the enhances lighting and the projected scenes all upgraded the majesty of the original colossi.
"Rameses built these colossi out in the middle of nowhere for a very good reason -- to alert marauding tribesmen up from Africa just exactly who they were dealing with." Don't mess with the dude!
But I hadn't forgotten the "Pharaoh's Revenge". I already knew not to mess with the dude. I just wanted to make it to the nearest restroom!
Amy has been supremely helpful on this trip. She has helped people on and off the buses, airplanes, monuments, etc. and on Sunday she will help people on and off camels and feluccas. Good job, Amy.
We stayed in a wonderful hotel today. Each room has a dome which resembled a Nubian house -- I guess. And I was wrong about the sand erosion. Mahmoud said, "No, it was caused by water." So I could be wrong about Nubian houses too. But the hotel was located on an especially blue and clear part of Lake Nasser. And a mosquito just bit me!
Yikes, there's another one! On the face, on the neck, on the hands. So much for sleep. After all that jet-lag, I just couldn't get to sleep. So I read. Then I listened to Amy breathe. Then I got up and took a walk along the shores of Lake Nassar.
December 15, 2001: Omelettes for breakfast. Then a hotel employee dropped me off at the Rameses II colossi. There was nobody there! Not even a caretaker. Not even a couple of German tourists! I had the grand temples of Abu Simbel all to myself! I took pictures of myself standing in front of the stone reliefs. Think stone here. Think mountains of stone, dressed to impress.
Inside the temple, carved in the rock, it was -- what? Cavelike? No. It was inspiring. It was like someone wanted to make something very, very special and hopefully something that would last. Is 4,000 years long enough? Sure. Even Rameses' body, back in the Cairo Museum, lasted 4,000 years and it was only made of flesh and blood.
Will I make it through the next plane ride and all the way to evening and bedtime? Will I be able to sleep tonight or am I doomed to go without sleep forever? Is that the Pharaoh's Curse? PS, I'm over my stomach curse.
I was glad I made the extra effort to go out to the colossi today. It finally put me in touch with ancient Egypt. And the nice people at the Seti Hotel made modern Egypt memorable too. I could see living here in a little house on the Nile. It's not that much different than Mexico. Except that speaking Arabic is a bitch.
1 pm: A 17-minute plane ride to Aswan. I looked on the map. "Abu Simbel is down here at the end of the world," I told Amy. It's 3/4 inch from the border of Sudan." I hadn't realized how far south we had been. No wonder Rameses built his colossi all the way down there. He was marking his territory.
At Aswan, we visited the High Dam. Compared to the Hoover Dam, it wasn't very high at all. But it was thick as hell. "There is enough stone filler in this dam to build 17 pyramids," said Mahmoud. There was a four-lane highway across the top of the dam and a rest stop too. We stopped. "Ooooh," said Amy. "Look at the little puppies! Aren't they cute?" They were cute. They were also skin and bones. We went over to the little refreshment stand and asked the guy, "Got any dog food?"
"No dog food."
"But look -- they got Halls Menthol-lyptus!" said Amy, who had developed a wheezing cough and heavy sniffles. We bought Cherry-flavored Halls right there in the middle of the High Aswan Dam. We also bought Nabisco wafers -- the waffle-y kind with the layers that I used to eat when I was a kid -- and Amy split them equally between herself and the two puppies.
At Aswan, we took a ferry to a posh hotel located on an island in the middle of the Nile. Oh, and before that we ate lunch at what our itinerary called "The Old Cataract Hotel," where Agatha Christie wrote many of her mysteries while her husband was working in Egypt. But we just went to a restaurant next door to the hotel instead.
The meal consisted of four different types of humus and home-made "pita" bread to dip into the humus. The bread was made in stone ovens and was all puffy and warm and much more culinarily interesting than the flat bland stuff we buy in the stores. We also had rice -- Egyptians make wonderful rice. Better even than Chinese restaurants -- and eggplant casserole and chicken; grilled and pressed. For dessert we had five different kinds of baklava.
Then we went to this hotel on an island accessible only by boat. But it was modern and luxurious with the American-quality rooms. We slept for two hours. Then a cannon was fired, the sun set and Ramadan officially ended. Everyone in the city cheered and honked horns and patted themselves on the back for surviving yet another year of fasting. And it had been hard for them. Mahmoud had been forced to sit and watch us eat for the past five days.
"There are five pillars to Islam," he told us. "One: The God we all worship -- Christian, Muslim and Jew -- is all the same God; Jehovah from the Old Testament. Second, we give alms to those in need. Third, we pray five times a day. Fourth, we fast during the month of Ramadan. And fifth, we -- oh God, what was number five? I am writing this at 3:45 am so I'm not the sharpest tack in the box. I'm still not sleeping very well. Jihad! Right. No, not Jihad. Jihad doesn’t mean blow stuff up. It means more like conversion by example. Now I remember. It was Haj -- pilgrimage. Every man and woman is required to tour Mecca once in their lifetime. Me! I'll go! Add it to the list. Ankor Watt, the Potola in Tibet, Manchu Picchu, Ayers Rock, the Pyramids, Mecca. Certain places in the world are sacred. I want to see them all. I want some of that sacredness to rub off on me so that I can become a better person.
After Ramadan was over, all the Muslims went shopping. We did too. We took the ferry to the bazaar and wandered happily down a narrow street for ten or twelve blocks, watching the ordinary people shop for the grand feast that ends Ramadan -- sort of like our Christmas dinner/Easter parade outfit combined. Everyone was buying new clothes and going to the barber and the butcher. We went to a spice shop and I purchased saffron and curry.
I also bought two very ugly toy camels, a fez for Joe, a scarf and a bust of Nefertiti. "How much did you pay for the fez," asked Mahmoud.
"$15."
"$15! You were robbed! That hat is worth about $3! What were you thinking! You got gypped!"
"But I bargained him down from $30," I replied defensively. And I had fun doing it too. And I bought the Nefertiti from a nice young man who was persistent that I buy something so I said, "Here is two dollars. Pick me out your favorite thing." And he handed me the little wooden queen. But I surely got taken by the ugly camels. $3 each! Hand-sewn vinyl.
Then we went to an internet café and for ten pounds Egyptian money, I got to let everyone at home know that I was safe, having a good time and was the only one interested in an ugly camel.
December 16, 2001: 4 am. The messuin just made his call -- one hour later than in Ramadan. I guess the faithful are being allowed to sleep in.
Amy is wheezing and blowing her nose and sucking on cough drops in the bed next to me. And reading The Hobbit. We have to get up at 6 am to go ride a camel to a Coptic monastery. "Maybe we should go back to sleep," said Amy.
6 am: Pack, breakfast, camels. Nobody should have to ride a camel against their will! It's cruel and unusual punishment.
We got in a boat and went to Lord Kitchener's botanical garden island. Lots of green, lots of stray cats, lots of ghosts of English officers and ladies in nineteenth century costumes promenading up and down the paths between the palms and ferns and coffee trees. Er, coffee bushes. Lots of greenery. Then we sailed to the north bank of the Nile and were suddenly in desert again. My camel's name was Mona Lisa. There was Mickey Mouse, Superman, etc. They all bawled like those creatures in the Star Wars movies. They all had bad teeth. They all shook every bone in your body when they walked. And getting on and off wasn't too fun either.
"Nuh-uh. You ain't getting me on one of them," stated Amy.
"I'll give you ten Egyptian pounds if you do it."
"Hell no."
"15 Egyptian pounds."
"You must be crazy. Them animals is mean. And they have bad breath too."
"15 Egyptian pound and a dollar. Last offer."
"Not me! Unh-uh. No way."
"Okay. You turned down my last offer. Now you gotta do it for free." Amy and I compromised. She rode a donkey. 15 camel riders looking like Lawrence of Arabia at the siege of Acaba plus Amy on a donkey. Cute.
So we rode out and up into the desert stronghold of the St. Simeon Monastery ruins. And I didn't get bit by a camel or nothing. The monastery was a fortress-like edifice about the size of a small stone mountain; with a view of hills and dunes in every direction. The high walls were of brick. The monastery was formidable, meant to repel the most dangerous barbarian, the longest siege.
Inside the crumbling walls and blue-sky-roofed main basilica, there was the cross-like layout common to all older churches; naves and all. On the walls of the basilica were dimly limned paintings of the apostles -- probably painted by monks from a linage whose predecessors knew Jesus himself. The place had a quiet and holy feeling. I kissed my fingers and touched them to a wall, a Christian gesture of reverence.
Monday, April 05, 2004
AMY GOES TO DISNEYLAND
August 11, 2003: Thank God! We're going on the road again! Even if it is just to Disneyland. I've developed an addiction to airports! Here's the story. My grown-up married daughter Elizabeth called. "You should come see your granddaughter," she said. "Rosie says about four more words a day. And she loves Sponge Bob!"
I hadn't seen Rosie since April. My only granddaughter was growing up without me. What to do? I couldn't go visit Elizabeth in Los Angeles. She couldn't come visit me. What to do? When Elizabeth was young, I was your typical Berkeley hippie, with all the flowers and bells. What possibly could the daughter of a hippie do to rebel against her mother? What could Elizabeth do to hurt me most? She became a Yuppie!
"Can't bring Rosie to visit you," Elizabeth told me in all sincerity, truly not even aware that she was stabbing daggers into my motherly heart. "Your house is too dirty." How's that for rebellion? It would be like your average modern suburban teenagers telling their distraught parents that they were mainlining drugs. Elizabeth was a neat-freak. And Elizabeth hadn't set foot in my (only slightly measy) house for more than three years.
"But I really would like to see Rosie before she learns to walk," said I.
"She does the cutest thing," Elizabeth said. "She won't crawl. She hates to crawl. She scoots along on her bottom!" Is that cute or what? Gotta go see that. But what to do? I can't go stay at Elizabeth's house in L.A. Are you nuts? Last time I was there, it was all "Don't put your glass down there" and "Hold Rosie like this -- not like that" and "Oh, Mother. You've just left the light on." Or "That doesn't go there. That goes over here."
When Elizabeth comes to Berkeley, she stays in some posh home in the hills. Last time she was up here, Amy and I went over to visit her, bringing a bag of gifts. As I entered the home, I remarked, "What is that smell? It smells like dead animals in here." Elizabeth looked at me, looked at the family dog who had obviously just rolled in something, looked at me again and didn't even think twice.
"It must be coming from the bag you brought," she announced, grabbing the bag and placing it outside the door, ready for me to take back home with me when I left.
Of course we tracked the smell down to the dog, but Elizabeth never even made the connection that she had hurt me yet again. And never even thought to say sorry.
Another Elizabeth story: She's in the hospital, pregnant. Premature labor, eleven days on IV. It's nip and tuck. Me, the frantic mother. 300 miles away. Can't leave work. I fly down to the hospital anyway, run from the airport, run to the hospital. Here I am! Ready to offer moral support! "You're making me crazy, Mom -- just dropping in like this." Back to the drawing board.
What can I do to have a successful visit with this Yuppie daughter? Something needs to be done. After all, she is my daughter. And, actually, she and I used to be so very close -- like Amy and me are now. But stuff happened. I don't even know what kind of stuff. I was a bad hippie mom? She was a stubborn Scorpio daughter? But these are new days, new times and I am a doer and a thinker. Surely I can come up with some way for Elizabeth and I to relate. I can turn this all around. I can do this.
How?
I know! I'll meet her on neutral territory. I won't go to her house. She won't come to mine. We'll go to Disneyland! How could you not get along with someone while going to Disneyland? "Hey, Amy! Wanna go to Disneyland?"
"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"
August 12, 2003: "Expedia.com has come through again," I yelled to Amy from the computer room. "Do I have a hot deal or what. Fly down to John Wayne Airport and spend two nights at the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel for just $134 each."
"Go for it." Click the button. Print out the e-tickets. "We're going to Disneyland. We're going to Disneyland!"
I called Elizabeth. She thought it was a great idea too. "Rosie's got her Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt already. She's all excited!" Me too. Me too.
August 25, 2003: "Would you like to go too?" I asked my son Joe. Definite affirmative. Kudos to the mom. I've stumbled onto a really good idea. Maybe my oldest daughter Shelia could come with us too. All four children together in one spot? I'm a genius!
September 25, 2003: "Do you think Jesse might want to come with us?" I asked Amy. She had a boyfriend now and he had been over to the house a lot lately. Jesse was a weird kind of boyfriend. He kept wandering away to spend time with other girls. If Amy were gone for a whole weekend, would he wander away again? Jesse was definitely high maintenance. Jesse was a great kid but Jesse was definitely a lot of work.
"Mom, I do not want to bring Jesse." No Jesse. A vacation from Jesse. For all that she is deeply, madly in love with the guy, Amy is still a very level-headed and astute girl.
October 1, 2003: Shelia is coming! Shelia is coming! We're to meet in the lobby of the Howard Johnson at 6:30 pm on Saturday night. The whole family will be there. We leave this Friday. I can smell the airport already. But how to get there? The Oakland airport is reachable by BART train but you have to transfer to a shuttle bus and plan on spending two hours in transit. Our flight leaves at 8:20. We have to be at the airport at least by 7 pm. I get off work at 5 pm. Do the math.
One of the clients at work said, "You can do Park and Fly on Hegenberger Road for $7 a day. $21? We would spend that much just going by BART so this sounds like a good deal.
October 3, 2003: "Joe, is your friend Sam going to drive us to the airport?"
"I forgot to ask him. I'll give him a call." The true and only way to discover how many friends one has is to calculate how many of them would actually, willingly drive you to the airport. Using this criteria, I would perhaps have one or two. Using this criteria, Joe might possibly have a hundred. Still, it's a pretty last-minute deal to start to ask around the morning of departure.
11:30 am: It's Amy on her cell. "Mom! There's a water polo game today! I'm the only goalie! What should I do?"
"Where's the game?"
"Alameda." Ten miles away. But on the way to the airport. "Can you get back here by 5:00?"
"I don't think so. There's one game at 2:00 but the next one starts at 5:00."
"Well, just go ahead and go and I'll think of something." I always do. But this is cutting it pretty close. If Joe's friend drives, if I get off work early...we could do it.
2:00 pm: "Ma, I can't get in touch with Sam."
4 pm: Amy called. "The first game is over, another goalie showed up, I got a ride back." And she had saved me half a burrito too. And we could still do BART in a pinch....
If there is one thing in the world I hate, it's having to rush through an airport. And my dread of missing the plane altogether is right up there with my fear of snakes. Knowing full well that my fear was totally irrational -- I have never missed a plane in my life -- I was already starting to freak out.
6:00 pm: It's Joe. "I'm just getting off work now, Ma. My friend Darren will drive us. I'll come by and pick you up." Just getting off work?
6:45 pm: "Hi, Ma. It's Joe. I'm on my way. I just gotta stop by my house and pack." What???
"Joe! What are you doing! You've had a month to pack."
"Take a chill pill, Ma. You are starting to get annoying."
Then I got a message from Elizabeth. "Hi, Mom. I've got to work late tonight until 5 am. But we can still make it to Anaheim tomorrow." Oh no! tomorrow Elizabeth was going to be tired, bedraggled and grumpy. First a missing Amy. Then a tardy Joe. Now a grumpy Elizabeth. Not a grumpy Elizabeth. Oh well. We may miss the plane anyway and then I can spend the weekend propped up on a pillow reading romance novels and catching up on my e-mail. I've got a plan.
7:00 pm: Darren is driving Joe's car. Looking dazed and confused. Driving around in circles. "How do you get to the freeway from here? Oh, and by the way, your gas gauge is empty." What! I'm sitting in the back seat, about to wet my pants.
8:15 pm: "Loading seats 20 to 30." We made it! That's us! Except that Joe and Amy just went off to buy magazines and never came back. "Paging Joe and Amy Straitwell. Paging Joe and Amy Straitwell...."
10:00 pm: We sat next to an obstetrician on the SuperShuttle from the John Wayne Airport to the Howard Johnson Plaza and talked about strange births. He was young and really very nice. "I had a couple once who had the baby in the back of their car. She was in labor but was watching TV and wanted to see how the movie ended. The birth certificate actually reads, `I-80 freeway, Oakland off-ramp.' When they got to the parking lot of the hospital, the baby was inside the mother's stretch pants! `You're not going to take my wife's pants off right here in the parking lot, are you?' asked the amazed new dad." What a story!
11 pm: Turns out that the SuperShuttle's first stop was in Newport Beach. That's 30 miles out of our way!
"Do you have a room with two queen beds instead of one king?" I asked the receptionist. She took one look at my "Clinton-Gore" lapel button and changed us over without a question. Not everyone in Orange County is a Republican. Score!
"Would you like a rollaway bed too?" I guess people are tired of reading about Arnie-for-governor and his sexual assaults on women. Even Clinton is starting to look good. Plus our troops are getting massacred in Iraq. "17 attacks a day " scream the headlines. Hubris. Neo-con hubris. Perhaps Americans are finally getting sick of it?
"I have a friend who lives around here," Joe said. Why am I not surprised. "His parents are rich right-wing Christians." Joe whips out his cell phone and chats.
The room was very nice. Big room. Vanity area. Table and chairs. A balcony!
"You guys sleep in that bed. I want this bed!" announced Amy. No way. I am not sharing a bed with Joe. "He's my son for God's sake."
"And it's okay that he's my brother?" Poor Joe. Nobody wants to sleep with him just because he's a guy. The son/brother relationship aside, I'm too old to sleep with boys and Amy is too young. What am I saying here. Incest? "Amy! Change the subject! No one is sleeping with Joe." We must be hecka jet-lagged to even begin to wander into this conversation. "Good night, children."
October 4, 2003, 8 am: Amy is giving me a make-over! "Can I have the trashy ho look?" I ask her.
"No, give her the classy bitch look," says Joe. You should see me. Lip liner, mascara, blusher, shadow, gloss. For a 61-year-old, I look hot. Disneyland, here I come!
10 am: Elizabeth and family arrive. "Elizabeth didn't get off work until 6 am this morning," said her husband Jason. Uh oh. Bad sign. Rosie is almost walking and she is so cute. I'm so excited. We're going to Disneyland!
11 am: $47 per person. Gulp. Elizabeth is Miss Moneybags. Maybe she'll treat us. Nope. "I want to wander around on my own," sez I. Hell, if I'm paying for it, I might as well enjoy it. "Joe, give me your cell phone." He does. He know the Mom is notorious about getting lost. Elizabeth makes some crack about me babysitting Rosie. Oops. I'm in dog dookie again.
"Would you like me to take Rosie so you can go on the rides?" Another wrong thing to say. I get the impression Elizabeth wants me to hang out with her. But hell. I'm not hanging out with Joe and Amy either. I am just not the type who hangs out.
Now we're inside the park. All is forgotten. To hell with all of them. This place is paradise! "I am so glad we came here! Look! There's a horse! There's Merlin the Magician! There's...." It was Gay Day at the Park. Every gay person in Southern California was there and wearing red T-shirts and mouse ears. How cool is that! "Hey! Gay dude! Welcome to Disneyland." I'm so jazzed. It gives me new hope for Southern California -- that they're all not unhappy right-wing "Christians" all intent on murdering Iraqis. These gay dudes are the children of the truly hardline right-wingers (gayness is caused by early childhood stress and growing up in a right-wing family is about as stressful as one can get. I oughta know!)
Oh my God oh my God! We're on one of the Small World boats! Rosie is going nuts. "Water! Water!"
"What do you see?" asks Elizabeth. "Look up there. Fish! And a bear!" Elizabeth really is a good mother. Rosie gave us a big, big smile. I took a picture of her. Joe took a video. Amy stuck out her tongue.
"Mom! There's Ireland." And a Middle East that had seen happier days. Flying carpets! There's Africa before Pat Robertson got his hands on the gold mines and Eisenhower had Patrice Lumumba assassinated. Look! There's Chile before Kissinger assassinated Allende. Australia. I've been there.
"There's the rain forest!" said Elizabeth, equally delighted. Don't say it. The rain forest before.... It's a small world after all.... "It's a small, small world." Joe is videotaping everything! Go, Joe. This is better than LSD!
"Where are you going next?"
"Fanatasyland. Toon Town. Toon Town would be good."
Bear Country. No. I want to go on the Small World ride again. Stand in line? Go get a Special Needs fast pass? What? I'm immobilized. So much to do! So much to see. So much to write about. There's Creulla DeVille! There's 50 more gay guys in red T-shirts. There must be a hecka lot of stress-causing right-winger parents in SoCal!
What would I really want to do? Jungle Cruise! Jungle Cruise! How to get there? Where's my map? Big Thunder Trail to Frontierland.... Whew. Made it through Frontierland without getting scalped. There's the riverboat. There's the Golden Horseshoe Saloon. Dodging strollers. I can do this! What line is this? Pirates of the Caribbean. Only 300 people. Will I see Johnny Depp? Forget this. I'm going for a Special Needs pass.
"Joe! Where are you?"
"Toon Town"
"Want to go get a pass?"
"Meet you in front of the whale at 2:00" Moral? Never do D-land without matching cell phones. Back to Adventureland. Jungle Cruise! Gotta keep on the move.
I got my pass, went past 500 people, got put in a special elevator and got right to the front of the line. What is my special needs story? I've got a great one! I did 100 jumping jacks a day for three years and it destroyed my knees forever. "Never try that at home." However, in the past few years I have discovered that if I exaggerate my knee movements -- pull my knees higher up than usual when climbing stairs -- I use my thigh muscles instead of my knee tendons and it doesn't hurt as much going up and down stairs. So here I am down in this cave, waiting in line with about 200 people. "Excuse me, Sir. This is the Jungle Cruise, is it not?"
"No!" answer ten gay guys and a dyke in unison. "This is Indiana Jones." Cool. But wait. What are they saying over the loudspeaker?
"Ladies and gentlemen, the ride has just broken. Stay where you are...repeat...stay where you are. We will come and get you...." Then a single line of people slowly begin to emerge from the bowels of the earth, coming back out from the Temple of Doom.
Oh. Well. It's a jungle out there. After all this, will I be able to go on the ride or not? And guess what? There is no cell phone reception at Indiana Jones. What a trip! Three minutes more and I would have been trapped in the Temple of Doom forever. How cool is that! Time to meet everyone at the whale and I haven't even been on a ride yet. Look! There are some swans. I think I'm getting a sunburn.
There's Joe and Amy at the whale. "Joe almost killed Mickey," were the first words out of Amy's mouth.
"I hugged him too hard and he fell over." Oh. "I'm hungry, Ma!"
"Too bad for you, Joe. You shoulda eaten those tuna sandwiches I dragged all the way down from Berkeley."
Joe grinned. "I sure would like a tuna sandwich!" Go to Hell, Joe.
There's Elizabeth and Jason. "I'm hungry," says Joe. We're in some place that sells cheeseburgers. "I'm getting a double cheeseburger without any cheese." Burgers. Fries. Pizza. Under a Pinocchio mural. Rosie tried on hats all day and was about to fall asleep. What should I do next?
3:00 pm: World's worst pizza. Did I already say that?
I am so bad. What I want to do is dump Elizabeth, kidnap Rosie and flee back to Small World. Elizabeth drives me nuts. She's so possessive of Rosie yet at the same time actually manages to make me feel guilty for not paying Rosie more attention. I need to grit my teeth and spend the afternoon with her. It's only a day. I'll never have to do it again.
"I want to do the Matterhorn," said Joe.
"Me too," said Elizabeth. I'll be damned. Elizabeth actually handed Rosie to me and Amy and Elizabeth and Joe were off to the Matterhorn. Now Rosie, Amy, Jason and me are being loaded into the boat at Storybookland. Oh no! We're going into the whale's mouth!
"This is our very own special entrance to Storybookland," croons our guide. There are cute little cottages on the banks of our little river. "There's Alice's house. And there's the marketplace where Aladdin met Jasmine. Now we are entering the Cave of Wonders and the jewel mine for the seven dwarfs." And there's Cinderella's pumpkin. What a peaceful, wonderful ride. "There's Toad Hall." The water, the boat, the sunny day: A+ for this ride sez Rosie.
That ride was just right for Rosie. "Wanna do Alice in Wonderland next?" How long is the Matterhorn ride? Do we have time? The phone rings. "Where are you?"
"Matterhorn exit."
"How was it?"
"Pretty tame," sez Joe. "It was a lot scarier when I was eight years old." Where to now?
"Ooooh! Did you see that guy?" asked young Amy. "That guy was hot!" In his cute little red Gay Day T-shirt. Rats.
"There's Sleeping Beauty!"
"There's Beauty and the Beast," said Joe.
"I bet she's hot."
"Yeah," said Joe.
"I meant in that outfit." Our poor little dysfunctional family seems to be doing pretty good. "There's the Tiki Room."
"What's that?"
"Mechanical birds singing and mechanical flowers telling jokes."
"Let's do it on our way back." We're on our way to the Haunted Mansion. There was a 45-minute wait at the Pirates of the Caribbean. We went right in. I love the special assistance pass. There was a skull and crossbones and a parrot and buried treasure.
"Wahhhh," sez Rosie, sucking her thumb. Her Mickey ears have started to droop.
"Prepare to set sail," yelled the pirate. Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me. Down the waterfall. "Look! Skeletons! Crabs! This is just like Halloween!" said me. Ghosts. Treasure! Maps! More treasure!
"Dead men tell no tales." Avast you surly scum! Rosie blinks. Joe videotapes. Rape, murder and pillage made fun as only Disney can do it!
"I want a shirt that says `Kiss me I'm a pirate'" says Amy. "Hey! That guy goes to my school!" September 19 is national "Talk like a Pirate" day.
Amy bought a T-shirt that said, "Sail with the wildest crew to ever sacked the Spanish Main." And of course a skull key chain.
"I think I'll take Rosie back to the hotel for a nap," said Elizabeth. Rosie loved the Pirates of the Caribbean but enough was enough. We headed off for the Haunted Mansion. They had a new theme, "The Nightmare Before Christmas does Halloween," with such tunes as "Scary bells scary bells, dread that awful sound," and "Wreck the halls with bones and spiders Fa la la la la la la la..."
Some scary-voiced dude announced "This year Jack Skellington has decided to play Sandy Claws. Two people to a car."
"I'm going with Joe!" said Amy.
"No you're not. I'm not going alone! What if I have a heart attack!"
"Oh well."
"Oh my God!" We are now in a huge room designed by a psychopath on major drugs. Colors everywhere and really scary music. And lots and lots of cobwebs. "Keep a close watch on your children...." There they go! My kids.
The basic theme of the Haunted Mansion ride was Halloween in the graveyard. "Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Fright."
"I liked the old Haunted Mansion better," said Amy. But on this one they really tried hard.
"What do you want to do now?"
"Jungle Cruise?" said Joe.
Amy is on the phone with her friend Kerris at home in Berkeley, chit-chatting away about Amy's boyfriend who is up to his old tricks.
"I'm glad that Rosie didn't go to the Haunted Mansion," says me. It was a bit scary. The Jungle Cruise guy thought it was really funny that I was taking notes. "We're on the boat now. That's spelled B-O-A-T." Now we are in the jungle. Love it. "Here we are on the longest river in Anaheim."
Now we're sailing into the hippo pool. To the cannibal picnic. Under the waterfall. The captain told the funniest jokes.
"Let's go shopping." Guess who said that.
"No, lets try Indiana Jones again."
"Nah. I don't want to get stuck in the bowels of the earth."
"Come on, Joe. That's half the fun."
"I want to go shopping."
"I want to go to Indiana Jones." We both looked at Joe-the-tie-breaker.
"Oh well. Indiana Jones." Back into the bowels of the earth. But this time the line was shorter. And we got to take the elevator.
"We're going to get to the next floor and end up at Macy's lingerie."
That was one scary ride. My heart stopped. I was terrorized. "Again!" I almost peed my pants. "Where's the bathroom?"
"Down there to your left." Peachy. 100 stalls. Half of them empty. I could take my pick. Amy went off to the Adventureland Bazaar. Going to Disneyland is like going to a foreign country. Except they have cool flush toilets.
"I'm about ready to go home," said Joe.
"Where's Amy?"
"She went off to find an ATM." The day is just about over. "My feet hurt."
"Go see if you can snag Amy and let's go back to the hotel." We gotta meet Shelia in 45 minutes. That's a treat that I'm looking forward to. Were there any rides we missed? Any serious rides? Goofy's Bounce House? Nah. We done it all.
"Where's Amy?" We lost her. Joe had given her a lecture on fiscal responsibility and off she went. We finally found her haunting the shops on Main Street. They're lowering the flag and playing the Star Spangled Banner. How delightful. That means Disneyland is being patriotic and will bring our boys home from the slaughter in Iraq and dump George Bush out of the White House. That's patriotic!
Then we went and bought a bunch of key chains to give to folks at home. Jessica got a Tinkerbell necklace. Kerris got a giant lollypop. "Does anybody remember how to get back to the hotel?" A Jackie Chan movie was playing on HBO when we got back. And then it was time to go sit in the lobby and wait for Shelia.
"Elizabeth called," said Joe. "She found a fabulous restaurant and made us reservations." What? How like Elizabeth to not even consult us. That's something my parents would have done. Elizabeth! You are not the head of this family! I am. How can I convince her of that? Should I even try? How to convince Elizabeth? If I was elected President or perhaps married Prince Charles or somehow became the most famous, the most recognized, the most sought-after person in the world? Nah. Ain't gonna happen.
Then Shelia arrived and I had to get all used to her again too. And Joe jumped in and chit-chatted rock and roll with her and all was well.
"Look at it this way," I told myself. "If Elizabeth runs the family -- or whatever -- then I won't have to go to all that work and run it myself.
"There's Disneyland, Disney World, Euro-Disney and Disney in Japan," commented Amy.
When Shelia joined us for dinner, Elizabeth behaved herself again -- but I got all weird. "I'm no good," a voice within me said. "Here are these two fabulous professional women and I'm just some loser schmuck who happens to have the same gene pool." We ate dinner at Tangerine, which turned out to actually be a fabulous restaurant -- with to-die-for cheesecake and shrimp-stuff mushrooms. Honest it was good. And Amy proved to a jewel with Rosie. Now we are at Elizabeth's hotel room, babysitting Rosie while Elizabeth and Jason spend the evening at Disneyland on their own. Amy is explaining, "Let's see what is behind door number one," to Rosie and Rosie is saying, "Mommie! Mommie!" to the world in general after explaining all her toys to us in some forgotten language that only she can understand.
I gave Shelia a big hug back at the restaurant. "Come visit us in Berkeley," I said. Maybe she will. Maybe she won't. The big sister role becomes her. Then I looked over at Joe and Joe looked sick. He went home to Howard Johnson and went to bed. Too much partying last night with the right-wing Christian dude.
After Elizabeth and Jason get back from Disneyland, maybe there will be time for me and Amy to go back and play around. Just me and Amy. That would be fun. "What ride should we go on?"
"The Matterhorn!"
10:00 pm: "Waaa!" sez Rosie. We go walk her around outdoors.
"Hey, doesn't that look like Shelia?" It was. She had driven Joe home and then come back -- with ice cream! Homemade store-bought ice cream, a banana-caramel-hot fudge sundae. And three spoons! What a daughter! Rosie dove at it like there was no tomorrow.
"Jesus, Mom, don't let Rosie have any of that! Elizabeth will kill us!" Too late. The four of us hung out and told stories and giggled.
Now Amy is power-napping and Rosie is passed out on the floor. What a nice vacation this is turning out to be.
10:30 pm: Rosie's asleep! We are good babysitters after all.
11:15 pm: Elizabeth and Jason came back. Smiling. "You should have seen the Park. It was wall-to-wall people! Then we got lost." Rosie and Amy were crashed out together on the bed.
Amy and I grabbed our stuff and sneaked out the door. "Hugs, Elizabeth! Thanks! Hugs, Jason! Gotta run!" D-land closes in 38 minutes!
Fighting the upsurging tide of happy campers leaving the Park, we raced through the turnstiles, raced up Main Street.
"Where to, Amy!"
"Gotta get a present for Jesse!"
"Forget that! You can do that at the airport!" Pant pant puff puff. "Small World!" Best ride in the Park! Just ask Rosie.
"Yeah!" We sprinted the whole length of the Park, got there just in time, jumped in the boat.
"It's a small world after all..." we sang. There were four young people in the seat in front of us. Suddenly one of the girls leaned over, dipped her whole head into the water, jerked her head back up, shook her long dark hair like she was a wet dog and sprayed us all with boat-water. Yuck! This person was obviously a candidate for one of my famous "In the future" lectures.
"In the future, young lady, please keep your head in the boat," I told her sternly. And stay off drugs, I failed to add but should have.
Amy looked at my watch. "We still have 15 minutes! Let's go to the Pirates of the Caribbean store and buy Jesse a T-shirt!" Works for me. Alone, down a deserted side path, we streaked toward the "Pieces of Eight" gift shop. An occasional security guard or employee just getting off work smiled at us as we raced (as fast as I could race with busted knees) through the warm SoCal night. It was heaven.
"Amy! I can't keep up! You go on ahead! I'll meet you at the store." When I got there, she was already pawing through a rack of wife-beaters, looking for a medium. "Just snag a large and let's go! The Pirates of the Caribbean ride is still open."
Amy elbowed two ladies and a few kids out of the way, threw a twenty-dollar-bill on the counter and mumbled, "Keep the change." We raced out the door, through a deserted New Orleans Square and bolted for the ride with one minute to spare. We were the last ride of the night.
"Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me." Back through the glorification of violent male bonding, making sacking and burning seem like a fun idea. And fun we had too, shamelessly singing the pirate song at the top of our lungs. "Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me."
October 5, 2003, 7:00 am: Joe was sick last night. Coughing and malaise. Amy is sitting on the bed, brushing her teeth and singing, "A pirate's life for me." Jason is going to drive us back to the airport. We still have one tuna sandwich left. Our fun-filled vacation is over. I have bonded back up with Elizabeth again and we had wonderful fun. Do you want the sordid details of our mundane flight back home as well? You do? We'll have to wait until it happens. We still haven't left Howard Johnson's. Joe is in the shower. Amy is practicing "My talented skills as a packer."
9:00 am: In the car with Rosie. "Da-Da!" she wailed. The indignity of sitting in a carseat.
"Look, Rosie! It's your favorite Winnie-the Pooh beanie baby!" She threw it at me! Followed by Minnie Mouse ears and a Sippie cup. This kid was pissed off!
I gave Rosie one of my famous "In the future" lectures. "In the future, Rosie, stop sneaking into the ice cream in the middle of the night then being in a bad mood the next morning." I had to whisper this one so that Jason wouldn't discover our dirty little secret of having spoiled my granddaughter rotten with unhealthy stuff. My bad.
Even after one of my best "In the future" lectures, Rosie was still crying. Time to pull out the heavy ammunition: My famous "Would you consider" lecture. "Rosie. Would you please consider shutting up?" The famous "Would you consider" lecture gives children the chance to resist. Children need to resist! And boy was our Rosie resisting. When that didn't work, I gave her my famous "If you" speech (bribes...er...rewards work really good with kids). "If you stop screaming in my ear, Rosie, I'll let you play with my doll collection when you come to visit next month...." That had her attention. For a whole minute. "But Mom and Dad are still the boss" is the next step in John Gray's Children are from Heaven program. "Okay, Rosie. You've turned down my most excellent bribes...er...rewards and you've ignored them." I gave her a steely look. "Now shut up and stop crying." And she did. Of course it helped that we had arrived at the airport just then and Jason had taken her out of her carseat and was bouncing her on his shoulder.... Job well done, Jane. I haven't lost my touch.
"Bye bye, Jason. Bye bye, Rosie. I'm so glad we came." And I was too. I had bonded and spent quality time with everybody -- including Mickey Mouse!
At John Wayne Airport they had announced that little boarding call thingie. "Rows 20 through 30 are now boarding." Amy was standing in line at McDonalds, right across the aisle. I could see her. Joe could see her. The airline attendant in charge of the boarding gate could see her. None of this did any good. "Come on, Amy. Tell them to give you your Egg McMuffin and run!" Everyone had boarded the plane already. They were holding the gosh-darned plane for her. "Amy! You gotta decide. Which is more important!" I yelled. Getting an Egg McMuffin or getting home to Berkeley in this lifetime! We could all see Amy over there mentally sorting out her priorities. Oh my God, the damn McMuffin was winning. "Amy!"
Just then her order got completed, she grabbed the bag, ran over and got on the plane. They closed the door behind her.
Now Joe is asleep on my right shoulder and Amy is reading "By Possession" a steamy romance novel set in England in 1326 during the Black Plague.
When we get home, I need to do a bunch of things. Take Joe to Jamba Juice for something for his cold. Do laundry. Catch up on e-mail and solitaire. And take communion to someone in the hospital who has wasted away to almost 50 pounds. And get ready to go to work tomorrow. But what a fabulous trip!
Upon arrival at the Oakland Airport, we drove straight to church, arriving just as Father Owen was about to close the door. He gave us communion and an extra wafer to take to my sick friend in the hospital.
Speaking of sick, Joe was looking a little peaked still. So we officially ended the Disneyland tour at the local Jamba Juice. "What do you have for a sore throat?"
"How about the Coldbuster with extra Echeneachea?" The doctor was in!
"I just got done eating a whole bunch of junk food. What do you prescribe for me?"
"The Pumpkin Smash with extra fiber." Done. Amy had the Passionfruit Smoothie and wouldn't give me any.
I went home and took a two-hour nap. The only thing left to do now before the trip is officially over is to do the laundry.
That night, I read the quote for the day in my planner. "To persevere, trusting in what hopes one has," it said, "that is courage. The coward despairs." I had hoped that this trip would bring our little family together and it did. Moral: It's really hard to be unhappy in Disneyland!
August 11, 2003: Thank God! We're going on the road again! Even if it is just to Disneyland. I've developed an addiction to airports! Here's the story. My grown-up married daughter Elizabeth called. "You should come see your granddaughter," she said. "Rosie says about four more words a day. And she loves Sponge Bob!"
I hadn't seen Rosie since April. My only granddaughter was growing up without me. What to do? I couldn't go visit Elizabeth in Los Angeles. She couldn't come visit me. What to do? When Elizabeth was young, I was your typical Berkeley hippie, with all the flowers and bells. What possibly could the daughter of a hippie do to rebel against her mother? What could Elizabeth do to hurt me most? She became a Yuppie!
"Can't bring Rosie to visit you," Elizabeth told me in all sincerity, truly not even aware that she was stabbing daggers into my motherly heart. "Your house is too dirty." How's that for rebellion? It would be like your average modern suburban teenagers telling their distraught parents that they were mainlining drugs. Elizabeth was a neat-freak. And Elizabeth hadn't set foot in my (only slightly measy) house for more than three years.
"But I really would like to see Rosie before she learns to walk," said I.
"She does the cutest thing," Elizabeth said. "She won't crawl. She hates to crawl. She scoots along on her bottom!" Is that cute or what? Gotta go see that. But what to do? I can't go stay at Elizabeth's house in L.A. Are you nuts? Last time I was there, it was all "Don't put your glass down there" and "Hold Rosie like this -- not like that" and "Oh, Mother. You've just left the light on." Or "That doesn't go there. That goes over here."
When Elizabeth comes to Berkeley, she stays in some posh home in the hills. Last time she was up here, Amy and I went over to visit her, bringing a bag of gifts. As I entered the home, I remarked, "What is that smell? It smells like dead animals in here." Elizabeth looked at me, looked at the family dog who had obviously just rolled in something, looked at me again and didn't even think twice.
"It must be coming from the bag you brought," she announced, grabbing the bag and placing it outside the door, ready for me to take back home with me when I left.
Of course we tracked the smell down to the dog, but Elizabeth never even made the connection that she had hurt me yet again. And never even thought to say sorry.
Another Elizabeth story: She's in the hospital, pregnant. Premature labor, eleven days on IV. It's nip and tuck. Me, the frantic mother. 300 miles away. Can't leave work. I fly down to the hospital anyway, run from the airport, run to the hospital. Here I am! Ready to offer moral support! "You're making me crazy, Mom -- just dropping in like this." Back to the drawing board.
What can I do to have a successful visit with this Yuppie daughter? Something needs to be done. After all, she is my daughter. And, actually, she and I used to be so very close -- like Amy and me are now. But stuff happened. I don't even know what kind of stuff. I was a bad hippie mom? She was a stubborn Scorpio daughter? But these are new days, new times and I am a doer and a thinker. Surely I can come up with some way for Elizabeth and I to relate. I can turn this all around. I can do this.
How?
I know! I'll meet her on neutral territory. I won't go to her house. She won't come to mine. We'll go to Disneyland! How could you not get along with someone while going to Disneyland? "Hey, Amy! Wanna go to Disneyland?"
"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"
August 12, 2003: "Expedia.com has come through again," I yelled to Amy from the computer room. "Do I have a hot deal or what. Fly down to John Wayne Airport and spend two nights at the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel for just $134 each."
"Go for it." Click the button. Print out the e-tickets. "We're going to Disneyland. We're going to Disneyland!"
I called Elizabeth. She thought it was a great idea too. "Rosie's got her Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt already. She's all excited!" Me too. Me too.
August 25, 2003: "Would you like to go too?" I asked my son Joe. Definite affirmative. Kudos to the mom. I've stumbled onto a really good idea. Maybe my oldest daughter Shelia could come with us too. All four children together in one spot? I'm a genius!
September 25, 2003: "Do you think Jesse might want to come with us?" I asked Amy. She had a boyfriend now and he had been over to the house a lot lately. Jesse was a weird kind of boyfriend. He kept wandering away to spend time with other girls. If Amy were gone for a whole weekend, would he wander away again? Jesse was definitely high maintenance. Jesse was a great kid but Jesse was definitely a lot of work.
"Mom, I do not want to bring Jesse." No Jesse. A vacation from Jesse. For all that she is deeply, madly in love with the guy, Amy is still a very level-headed and astute girl.
October 1, 2003: Shelia is coming! Shelia is coming! We're to meet in the lobby of the Howard Johnson at 6:30 pm on Saturday night. The whole family will be there. We leave this Friday. I can smell the airport already. But how to get there? The Oakland airport is reachable by BART train but you have to transfer to a shuttle bus and plan on spending two hours in transit. Our flight leaves at 8:20. We have to be at the airport at least by 7 pm. I get off work at 5 pm. Do the math.
One of the clients at work said, "You can do Park and Fly on Hegenberger Road for $7 a day. $21? We would spend that much just going by BART so this sounds like a good deal.
October 3, 2003: "Joe, is your friend Sam going to drive us to the airport?"
"I forgot to ask him. I'll give him a call." The true and only way to discover how many friends one has is to calculate how many of them would actually, willingly drive you to the airport. Using this criteria, I would perhaps have one or two. Using this criteria, Joe might possibly have a hundred. Still, it's a pretty last-minute deal to start to ask around the morning of departure.
11:30 am: It's Amy on her cell. "Mom! There's a water polo game today! I'm the only goalie! What should I do?"
"Where's the game?"
"Alameda." Ten miles away. But on the way to the airport. "Can you get back here by 5:00?"
"I don't think so. There's one game at 2:00 but the next one starts at 5:00."
"Well, just go ahead and go and I'll think of something." I always do. But this is cutting it pretty close. If Joe's friend drives, if I get off work early...we could do it.
2:00 pm: "Ma, I can't get in touch with Sam."
4 pm: Amy called. "The first game is over, another goalie showed up, I got a ride back." And she had saved me half a burrito too. And we could still do BART in a pinch....
If there is one thing in the world I hate, it's having to rush through an airport. And my dread of missing the plane altogether is right up there with my fear of snakes. Knowing full well that my fear was totally irrational -- I have never missed a plane in my life -- I was already starting to freak out.
6:00 pm: It's Joe. "I'm just getting off work now, Ma. My friend Darren will drive us. I'll come by and pick you up." Just getting off work?
6:45 pm: "Hi, Ma. It's Joe. I'm on my way. I just gotta stop by my house and pack." What???
"Joe! What are you doing! You've had a month to pack."
"Take a chill pill, Ma. You are starting to get annoying."
Then I got a message from Elizabeth. "Hi, Mom. I've got to work late tonight until 5 am. But we can still make it to Anaheim tomorrow." Oh no! tomorrow Elizabeth was going to be tired, bedraggled and grumpy. First a missing Amy. Then a tardy Joe. Now a grumpy Elizabeth. Not a grumpy Elizabeth. Oh well. We may miss the plane anyway and then I can spend the weekend propped up on a pillow reading romance novels and catching up on my e-mail. I've got a plan.
7:00 pm: Darren is driving Joe's car. Looking dazed and confused. Driving around in circles. "How do you get to the freeway from here? Oh, and by the way, your gas gauge is empty." What! I'm sitting in the back seat, about to wet my pants.
8:15 pm: "Loading seats 20 to 30." We made it! That's us! Except that Joe and Amy just went off to buy magazines and never came back. "Paging Joe and Amy Straitwell. Paging Joe and Amy Straitwell...."
10:00 pm: We sat next to an obstetrician on the SuperShuttle from the John Wayne Airport to the Howard Johnson Plaza and talked about strange births. He was young and really very nice. "I had a couple once who had the baby in the back of their car. She was in labor but was watching TV and wanted to see how the movie ended. The birth certificate actually reads, `I-80 freeway, Oakland off-ramp.' When they got to the parking lot of the hospital, the baby was inside the mother's stretch pants! `You're not going to take my wife's pants off right here in the parking lot, are you?' asked the amazed new dad." What a story!
11 pm: Turns out that the SuperShuttle's first stop was in Newport Beach. That's 30 miles out of our way!
"Do you have a room with two queen beds instead of one king?" I asked the receptionist. She took one look at my "Clinton-Gore" lapel button and changed us over without a question. Not everyone in Orange County is a Republican. Score!
"Would you like a rollaway bed too?" I guess people are tired of reading about Arnie-for-governor and his sexual assaults on women. Even Clinton is starting to look good. Plus our troops are getting massacred in Iraq. "17 attacks a day " scream the headlines. Hubris. Neo-con hubris. Perhaps Americans are finally getting sick of it?
"I have a friend who lives around here," Joe said. Why am I not surprised. "His parents are rich right-wing Christians." Joe whips out his cell phone and chats.
The room was very nice. Big room. Vanity area. Table and chairs. A balcony!
"You guys sleep in that bed. I want this bed!" announced Amy. No way. I am not sharing a bed with Joe. "He's my son for God's sake."
"And it's okay that he's my brother?" Poor Joe. Nobody wants to sleep with him just because he's a guy. The son/brother relationship aside, I'm too old to sleep with boys and Amy is too young. What am I saying here. Incest? "Amy! Change the subject! No one is sleeping with Joe." We must be hecka jet-lagged to even begin to wander into this conversation. "Good night, children."
October 4, 2003, 8 am: Amy is giving me a make-over! "Can I have the trashy ho look?" I ask her.
"No, give her the classy bitch look," says Joe. You should see me. Lip liner, mascara, blusher, shadow, gloss. For a 61-year-old, I look hot. Disneyland, here I come!
10 am: Elizabeth and family arrive. "Elizabeth didn't get off work until 6 am this morning," said her husband Jason. Uh oh. Bad sign. Rosie is almost walking and she is so cute. I'm so excited. We're going to Disneyland!
11 am: $47 per person. Gulp. Elizabeth is Miss Moneybags. Maybe she'll treat us. Nope. "I want to wander around on my own," sez I. Hell, if I'm paying for it, I might as well enjoy it. "Joe, give me your cell phone." He does. He know the Mom is notorious about getting lost. Elizabeth makes some crack about me babysitting Rosie. Oops. I'm in dog dookie again.
"Would you like me to take Rosie so you can go on the rides?" Another wrong thing to say. I get the impression Elizabeth wants me to hang out with her. But hell. I'm not hanging out with Joe and Amy either. I am just not the type who hangs out.
Now we're inside the park. All is forgotten. To hell with all of them. This place is paradise! "I am so glad we came here! Look! There's a horse! There's Merlin the Magician! There's...." It was Gay Day at the Park. Every gay person in Southern California was there and wearing red T-shirts and mouse ears. How cool is that! "Hey! Gay dude! Welcome to Disneyland." I'm so jazzed. It gives me new hope for Southern California -- that they're all not unhappy right-wing "Christians" all intent on murdering Iraqis. These gay dudes are the children of the truly hardline right-wingers (gayness is caused by early childhood stress and growing up in a right-wing family is about as stressful as one can get. I oughta know!)
Oh my God oh my God! We're on one of the Small World boats! Rosie is going nuts. "Water! Water!"
"What do you see?" asks Elizabeth. "Look up there. Fish! And a bear!" Elizabeth really is a good mother. Rosie gave us a big, big smile. I took a picture of her. Joe took a video. Amy stuck out her tongue.
"Mom! There's Ireland." And a Middle East that had seen happier days. Flying carpets! There's Africa before Pat Robertson got his hands on the gold mines and Eisenhower had Patrice Lumumba assassinated. Look! There's Chile before Kissinger assassinated Allende. Australia. I've been there.
"There's the rain forest!" said Elizabeth, equally delighted. Don't say it. The rain forest before.... It's a small world after all.... "It's a small, small world." Joe is videotaping everything! Go, Joe. This is better than LSD!
"Where are you going next?"
"Fanatasyland. Toon Town. Toon Town would be good."
Bear Country. No. I want to go on the Small World ride again. Stand in line? Go get a Special Needs fast pass? What? I'm immobilized. So much to do! So much to see. So much to write about. There's Creulla DeVille! There's 50 more gay guys in red T-shirts. There must be a hecka lot of stress-causing right-winger parents in SoCal!
What would I really want to do? Jungle Cruise! Jungle Cruise! How to get there? Where's my map? Big Thunder Trail to Frontierland.... Whew. Made it through Frontierland without getting scalped. There's the riverboat. There's the Golden Horseshoe Saloon. Dodging strollers. I can do this! What line is this? Pirates of the Caribbean. Only 300 people. Will I see Johnny Depp? Forget this. I'm going for a Special Needs pass.
"Joe! Where are you?"
"Toon Town"
"Want to go get a pass?"
"Meet you in front of the whale at 2:00" Moral? Never do D-land without matching cell phones. Back to Adventureland. Jungle Cruise! Gotta keep on the move.
I got my pass, went past 500 people, got put in a special elevator and got right to the front of the line. What is my special needs story? I've got a great one! I did 100 jumping jacks a day for three years and it destroyed my knees forever. "Never try that at home." However, in the past few years I have discovered that if I exaggerate my knee movements -- pull my knees higher up than usual when climbing stairs -- I use my thigh muscles instead of my knee tendons and it doesn't hurt as much going up and down stairs. So here I am down in this cave, waiting in line with about 200 people. "Excuse me, Sir. This is the Jungle Cruise, is it not?"
"No!" answer ten gay guys and a dyke in unison. "This is Indiana Jones." Cool. But wait. What are they saying over the loudspeaker?
"Ladies and gentlemen, the ride has just broken. Stay where you are...repeat...stay where you are. We will come and get you...." Then a single line of people slowly begin to emerge from the bowels of the earth, coming back out from the Temple of Doom.
Oh. Well. It's a jungle out there. After all this, will I be able to go on the ride or not? And guess what? There is no cell phone reception at Indiana Jones. What a trip! Three minutes more and I would have been trapped in the Temple of Doom forever. How cool is that! Time to meet everyone at the whale and I haven't even been on a ride yet. Look! There are some swans. I think I'm getting a sunburn.
There's Joe and Amy at the whale. "Joe almost killed Mickey," were the first words out of Amy's mouth.
"I hugged him too hard and he fell over." Oh. "I'm hungry, Ma!"
"Too bad for you, Joe. You shoulda eaten those tuna sandwiches I dragged all the way down from Berkeley."
Joe grinned. "I sure would like a tuna sandwich!" Go to Hell, Joe.
There's Elizabeth and Jason. "I'm hungry," says Joe. We're in some place that sells cheeseburgers. "I'm getting a double cheeseburger without any cheese." Burgers. Fries. Pizza. Under a Pinocchio mural. Rosie tried on hats all day and was about to fall asleep. What should I do next?
3:00 pm: World's worst pizza. Did I already say that?
I am so bad. What I want to do is dump Elizabeth, kidnap Rosie and flee back to Small World. Elizabeth drives me nuts. She's so possessive of Rosie yet at the same time actually manages to make me feel guilty for not paying Rosie more attention. I need to grit my teeth and spend the afternoon with her. It's only a day. I'll never have to do it again.
"I want to do the Matterhorn," said Joe.
"Me too," said Elizabeth. I'll be damned. Elizabeth actually handed Rosie to me and Amy and Elizabeth and Joe were off to the Matterhorn. Now Rosie, Amy, Jason and me are being loaded into the boat at Storybookland. Oh no! We're going into the whale's mouth!
"This is our very own special entrance to Storybookland," croons our guide. There are cute little cottages on the banks of our little river. "There's Alice's house. And there's the marketplace where Aladdin met Jasmine. Now we are entering the Cave of Wonders and the jewel mine for the seven dwarfs." And there's Cinderella's pumpkin. What a peaceful, wonderful ride. "There's Toad Hall." The water, the boat, the sunny day: A+ for this ride sez Rosie.
That ride was just right for Rosie. "Wanna do Alice in Wonderland next?" How long is the Matterhorn ride? Do we have time? The phone rings. "Where are you?"
"Matterhorn exit."
"How was it?"
"Pretty tame," sez Joe. "It was a lot scarier when I was eight years old." Where to now?
"Ooooh! Did you see that guy?" asked young Amy. "That guy was hot!" In his cute little red Gay Day T-shirt. Rats.
"There's Sleeping Beauty!"
"There's Beauty and the Beast," said Joe.
"I bet she's hot."
"Yeah," said Joe.
"I meant in that outfit." Our poor little dysfunctional family seems to be doing pretty good. "There's the Tiki Room."
"What's that?"
"Mechanical birds singing and mechanical flowers telling jokes."
"Let's do it on our way back." We're on our way to the Haunted Mansion. There was a 45-minute wait at the Pirates of the Caribbean. We went right in. I love the special assistance pass. There was a skull and crossbones and a parrot and buried treasure.
"Wahhhh," sez Rosie, sucking her thumb. Her Mickey ears have started to droop.
"Prepare to set sail," yelled the pirate. Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me. Down the waterfall. "Look! Skeletons! Crabs! This is just like Halloween!" said me. Ghosts. Treasure! Maps! More treasure!
"Dead men tell no tales." Avast you surly scum! Rosie blinks. Joe videotapes. Rape, murder and pillage made fun as only Disney can do it!
"I want a shirt that says `Kiss me I'm a pirate'" says Amy. "Hey! That guy goes to my school!" September 19 is national "Talk like a Pirate" day.
Amy bought a T-shirt that said, "Sail with the wildest crew to ever sacked the Spanish Main." And of course a skull key chain.
"I think I'll take Rosie back to the hotel for a nap," said Elizabeth. Rosie loved the Pirates of the Caribbean but enough was enough. We headed off for the Haunted Mansion. They had a new theme, "The Nightmare Before Christmas does Halloween," with such tunes as "Scary bells scary bells, dread that awful sound," and "Wreck the halls with bones and spiders Fa la la la la la la la..."
Some scary-voiced dude announced "This year Jack Skellington has decided to play Sandy Claws. Two people to a car."
"I'm going with Joe!" said Amy.
"No you're not. I'm not going alone! What if I have a heart attack!"
"Oh well."
"Oh my God!" We are now in a huge room designed by a psychopath on major drugs. Colors everywhere and really scary music. And lots and lots of cobwebs. "Keep a close watch on your children...." There they go! My kids.
The basic theme of the Haunted Mansion ride was Halloween in the graveyard. "Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Fright."
"I liked the old Haunted Mansion better," said Amy. But on this one they really tried hard.
"What do you want to do now?"
"Jungle Cruise?" said Joe.
Amy is on the phone with her friend Kerris at home in Berkeley, chit-chatting away about Amy's boyfriend who is up to his old tricks.
"I'm glad that Rosie didn't go to the Haunted Mansion," says me. It was a bit scary. The Jungle Cruise guy thought it was really funny that I was taking notes. "We're on the boat now. That's spelled B-O-A-T." Now we are in the jungle. Love it. "Here we are on the longest river in Anaheim."
Now we're sailing into the hippo pool. To the cannibal picnic. Under the waterfall. The captain told the funniest jokes.
"Let's go shopping." Guess who said that.
"No, lets try Indiana Jones again."
"Nah. I don't want to get stuck in the bowels of the earth."
"Come on, Joe. That's half the fun."
"I want to go shopping."
"I want to go to Indiana Jones." We both looked at Joe-the-tie-breaker.
"Oh well. Indiana Jones." Back into the bowels of the earth. But this time the line was shorter. And we got to take the elevator.
"We're going to get to the next floor and end up at Macy's lingerie."
That was one scary ride. My heart stopped. I was terrorized. "Again!" I almost peed my pants. "Where's the bathroom?"
"Down there to your left." Peachy. 100 stalls. Half of them empty. I could take my pick. Amy went off to the Adventureland Bazaar. Going to Disneyland is like going to a foreign country. Except they have cool flush toilets.
"I'm about ready to go home," said Joe.
"Where's Amy?"
"She went off to find an ATM." The day is just about over. "My feet hurt."
"Go see if you can snag Amy and let's go back to the hotel." We gotta meet Shelia in 45 minutes. That's a treat that I'm looking forward to. Were there any rides we missed? Any serious rides? Goofy's Bounce House? Nah. We done it all.
"Where's Amy?" We lost her. Joe had given her a lecture on fiscal responsibility and off she went. We finally found her haunting the shops on Main Street. They're lowering the flag and playing the Star Spangled Banner. How delightful. That means Disneyland is being patriotic and will bring our boys home from the slaughter in Iraq and dump George Bush out of the White House. That's patriotic!
Then we went and bought a bunch of key chains to give to folks at home. Jessica got a Tinkerbell necklace. Kerris got a giant lollypop. "Does anybody remember how to get back to the hotel?" A Jackie Chan movie was playing on HBO when we got back. And then it was time to go sit in the lobby and wait for Shelia.
"Elizabeth called," said Joe. "She found a fabulous restaurant and made us reservations." What? How like Elizabeth to not even consult us. That's something my parents would have done. Elizabeth! You are not the head of this family! I am. How can I convince her of that? Should I even try? How to convince Elizabeth? If I was elected President or perhaps married Prince Charles or somehow became the most famous, the most recognized, the most sought-after person in the world? Nah. Ain't gonna happen.
Then Shelia arrived and I had to get all used to her again too. And Joe jumped in and chit-chatted rock and roll with her and all was well.
"Look at it this way," I told myself. "If Elizabeth runs the family -- or whatever -- then I won't have to go to all that work and run it myself.
"There's Disneyland, Disney World, Euro-Disney and Disney in Japan," commented Amy.
When Shelia joined us for dinner, Elizabeth behaved herself again -- but I got all weird. "I'm no good," a voice within me said. "Here are these two fabulous professional women and I'm just some loser schmuck who happens to have the same gene pool." We ate dinner at Tangerine, which turned out to actually be a fabulous restaurant -- with to-die-for cheesecake and shrimp-stuff mushrooms. Honest it was good. And Amy proved to a jewel with Rosie. Now we are at Elizabeth's hotel room, babysitting Rosie while Elizabeth and Jason spend the evening at Disneyland on their own. Amy is explaining, "Let's see what is behind door number one," to Rosie and Rosie is saying, "Mommie! Mommie!" to the world in general after explaining all her toys to us in some forgotten language that only she can understand.
I gave Shelia a big hug back at the restaurant. "Come visit us in Berkeley," I said. Maybe she will. Maybe she won't. The big sister role becomes her. Then I looked over at Joe and Joe looked sick. He went home to Howard Johnson and went to bed. Too much partying last night with the right-wing Christian dude.
After Elizabeth and Jason get back from Disneyland, maybe there will be time for me and Amy to go back and play around. Just me and Amy. That would be fun. "What ride should we go on?"
"The Matterhorn!"
10:00 pm: "Waaa!" sez Rosie. We go walk her around outdoors.
"Hey, doesn't that look like Shelia?" It was. She had driven Joe home and then come back -- with ice cream! Homemade store-bought ice cream, a banana-caramel-hot fudge sundae. And three spoons! What a daughter! Rosie dove at it like there was no tomorrow.
"Jesus, Mom, don't let Rosie have any of that! Elizabeth will kill us!" Too late. The four of us hung out and told stories and giggled.
Now Amy is power-napping and Rosie is passed out on the floor. What a nice vacation this is turning out to be.
10:30 pm: Rosie's asleep! We are good babysitters after all.
11:15 pm: Elizabeth and Jason came back. Smiling. "You should have seen the Park. It was wall-to-wall people! Then we got lost." Rosie and Amy were crashed out together on the bed.
Amy and I grabbed our stuff and sneaked out the door. "Hugs, Elizabeth! Thanks! Hugs, Jason! Gotta run!" D-land closes in 38 minutes!
Fighting the upsurging tide of happy campers leaving the Park, we raced through the turnstiles, raced up Main Street.
"Where to, Amy!"
"Gotta get a present for Jesse!"
"Forget that! You can do that at the airport!" Pant pant puff puff. "Small World!" Best ride in the Park! Just ask Rosie.
"Yeah!" We sprinted the whole length of the Park, got there just in time, jumped in the boat.
"It's a small world after all..." we sang. There were four young people in the seat in front of us. Suddenly one of the girls leaned over, dipped her whole head into the water, jerked her head back up, shook her long dark hair like she was a wet dog and sprayed us all with boat-water. Yuck! This person was obviously a candidate for one of my famous "In the future" lectures.
"In the future, young lady, please keep your head in the boat," I told her sternly. And stay off drugs, I failed to add but should have.
Amy looked at my watch. "We still have 15 minutes! Let's go to the Pirates of the Caribbean store and buy Jesse a T-shirt!" Works for me. Alone, down a deserted side path, we streaked toward the "Pieces of Eight" gift shop. An occasional security guard or employee just getting off work smiled at us as we raced (as fast as I could race with busted knees) through the warm SoCal night. It was heaven.
"Amy! I can't keep up! You go on ahead! I'll meet you at the store." When I got there, she was already pawing through a rack of wife-beaters, looking for a medium. "Just snag a large and let's go! The Pirates of the Caribbean ride is still open."
Amy elbowed two ladies and a few kids out of the way, threw a twenty-dollar-bill on the counter and mumbled, "Keep the change." We raced out the door, through a deserted New Orleans Square and bolted for the ride with one minute to spare. We were the last ride of the night.
"Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me." Back through the glorification of violent male bonding, making sacking and burning seem like a fun idea. And fun we had too, shamelessly singing the pirate song at the top of our lungs. "Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me."
October 5, 2003, 7:00 am: Joe was sick last night. Coughing and malaise. Amy is sitting on the bed, brushing her teeth and singing, "A pirate's life for me." Jason is going to drive us back to the airport. We still have one tuna sandwich left. Our fun-filled vacation is over. I have bonded back up with Elizabeth again and we had wonderful fun. Do you want the sordid details of our mundane flight back home as well? You do? We'll have to wait until it happens. We still haven't left Howard Johnson's. Joe is in the shower. Amy is practicing "My talented skills as a packer."
9:00 am: In the car with Rosie. "Da-Da!" she wailed. The indignity of sitting in a carseat.
"Look, Rosie! It's your favorite Winnie-the Pooh beanie baby!" She threw it at me! Followed by Minnie Mouse ears and a Sippie cup. This kid was pissed off!
I gave Rosie one of my famous "In the future" lectures. "In the future, Rosie, stop sneaking into the ice cream in the middle of the night then being in a bad mood the next morning." I had to whisper this one so that Jason wouldn't discover our dirty little secret of having spoiled my granddaughter rotten with unhealthy stuff. My bad.
Even after one of my best "In the future" lectures, Rosie was still crying. Time to pull out the heavy ammunition: My famous "Would you consider" lecture. "Rosie. Would you please consider shutting up?" The famous "Would you consider" lecture gives children the chance to resist. Children need to resist! And boy was our Rosie resisting. When that didn't work, I gave her my famous "If you" speech (bribes...er...rewards work really good with kids). "If you stop screaming in my ear, Rosie, I'll let you play with my doll collection when you come to visit next month...." That had her attention. For a whole minute. "But Mom and Dad are still the boss" is the next step in John Gray's Children are from Heaven program. "Okay, Rosie. You've turned down my most excellent bribes...er...rewards and you've ignored them." I gave her a steely look. "Now shut up and stop crying." And she did. Of course it helped that we had arrived at the airport just then and Jason had taken her out of her carseat and was bouncing her on his shoulder.... Job well done, Jane. I haven't lost my touch.
"Bye bye, Jason. Bye bye, Rosie. I'm so glad we came." And I was too. I had bonded and spent quality time with everybody -- including Mickey Mouse!
At John Wayne Airport they had announced that little boarding call thingie. "Rows 20 through 30 are now boarding." Amy was standing in line at McDonalds, right across the aisle. I could see her. Joe could see her. The airline attendant in charge of the boarding gate could see her. None of this did any good. "Come on, Amy. Tell them to give you your Egg McMuffin and run!" Everyone had boarded the plane already. They were holding the gosh-darned plane for her. "Amy! You gotta decide. Which is more important!" I yelled. Getting an Egg McMuffin or getting home to Berkeley in this lifetime! We could all see Amy over there mentally sorting out her priorities. Oh my God, the damn McMuffin was winning. "Amy!"
Just then her order got completed, she grabbed the bag, ran over and got on the plane. They closed the door behind her.
Now Joe is asleep on my right shoulder and Amy is reading "By Possession" a steamy romance novel set in England in 1326 during the Black Plague.
When we get home, I need to do a bunch of things. Take Joe to Jamba Juice for something for his cold. Do laundry. Catch up on e-mail and solitaire. And take communion to someone in the hospital who has wasted away to almost 50 pounds. And get ready to go to work tomorrow. But what a fabulous trip!
Upon arrival at the Oakland Airport, we drove straight to church, arriving just as Father Owen was about to close the door. He gave us communion and an extra wafer to take to my sick friend in the hospital.
Speaking of sick, Joe was looking a little peaked still. So we officially ended the Disneyland tour at the local Jamba Juice. "What do you have for a sore throat?"
"How about the Coldbuster with extra Echeneachea?" The doctor was in!
"I just got done eating a whole bunch of junk food. What do you prescribe for me?"
"The Pumpkin Smash with extra fiber." Done. Amy had the Passionfruit Smoothie and wouldn't give me any.
I went home and took a two-hour nap. The only thing left to do now before the trip is officially over is to do the laundry.
That night, I read the quote for the day in my planner. "To persevere, trusting in what hopes one has," it said, "that is courage. The coward despairs." I had hoped that this trip would bring our little family together and it did. Moral: It's really hard to be unhappy in Disneyland!
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