Category Archives: Personal

Pure Gold

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Mono Lake and White Mountains
Lundy Canyon
Parker Lake
Green Creek Trail
Parker Lake Trail
Green Creek
Green Creek Trail
Fern Lake
Fern Lake

I’ve been playing hooky from my blog lately, and here’s one of the reasons why: a fall foliage and hiking trip to the eastern Sierra. We stayed in Lee Vining and dined out at the overrated Mobil Gas Station every night. Best dessert: sharing a pint of dark chocolate chip Haagen Dazs gelato. Yum.

The landscape was blanched of color by drought and a season headed into dormancy. This subdued palette of tans and grays that hung from a sapphire sky made the brilliant yellow of the aspens even more striking. Double yum.

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Favorite fall foliage outings?

Up in the Air

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hot air balloonsLike many recent college graduates, I spent the summer of 1977 moping in my parents’ basement.  My college roommate, Sharon, was doing the same, 3,000 miles away in Berkeley. We had no jobs and no prospects, so we spent a lot of time on the phone.

“Why don’t you come out to California?” Sharon proposed one day.

Since it was the first idea all summer that made me smile, I thought, “Why not?”

A couple of weeks later, I waved goodbye to my stunned parents, then boarded a Greyhound bus that would take me across the country.

First, though, it would take me to St. Louis, where two college friends had just started medical school at Washington University.

It was great to see them. It was even greater taking a shower and sleeping in a bed—my last taste of such comforts until I’d arrive days later in Berkeley.

Before my friends put me on the bus the next morning for the second half of my westward adventure, we wandered through Forest Park. There people swarmed among hot air balloons, most just flat or half-filled expanses of brightly colored nylon on the lawn. A few were fully inflated into majestic orbs poised for flight.

We watched as the balloonists adjusted ropes and burners, then took off to land wherever the wind (combined with skill and a little luck) would blow them. It was the Great Forest Park Balloon Race, founded just four short years earlier—the same September we had entered college.

This weekend marks the 43rd anniversary of the Great Forest Park Balloon Race. Which means I’m marking my 39th anniversary of coming to California. I had no idea back then how long I’d stay, or what I’d do, or how I’d survive.

But when Sharon picked me up dirty and exhausted late at night from the Greyhound bus station, she drove twisting, up and up, through the Berkeley hills, stopping finally at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

“Look!” she said.

There stretched out before us was the fathomless black of the bay, the twinkling lights of Berkeley and Oakland below, San Francisco a shimmering faraway specter, the night sky shot through with billions of  stars.

I had arrived home.

Decades later, my husband and I sometimes say, “We should take a hot air balloon ride over Napa Valley someday.”

We haven’t yet, and I suspect we never will. We’re too cheap, and besides, I’m really not all that adventurous. It still amazes me that I ventured away from home and onto that Greyhound bus so long ago.

But I’m glad I did, glad I let myself land wherever the winds blew me.

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Have you ever been adrift and let the winds blow you wherever they take you? Where have you landed? 

 

 

 

Remembering 9/11

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Candle in the darkI wrote this post on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and offer it again today in commemoration

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As usual, I went to yoga Sunday morning, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Mostly I go for the effect on my muscles, not my spirit. But on this solemn day my yoga teacher lit a candle in remembrance, and invited us to practice Tonglen, breathing in all that is troublesome in the world, acknowledging it, then transforming it into compassion and peace on the exhale. After a few minutes, the class continued with its typical focus on backs, necks, and hips, or, as one member put it, “the usual overall soreness.”

At the end of the class, after the stretching and the Namaste, another member shared what happened to her Turkish and Egyptian friends ten years ago. They owned a restaurant in Manhattan, which they managed to keep open after the towers fell despite the chaos and lack of customers. Late at night three white men came in. They trashed the place. One of the owner’s friends managed to slip away and call the police. Soon the men who had destroyed the restaurant were apprehended and brought back to be identified before they could be charged.

“Yes, those are the men,” the owners told the police, who were eager to throw the book at them.

But the owners refused to press charges.

“This is a difficult day,” they said. “We understand their grief and rage. Let them go.”

Incredulous, the police did so reluctantly.

A few hours later, the three men came back with some of their friends, pressing upon the owners fistfuls of cash for the damage. The men helped clean up as best they could, and continued to come for the next several weeks until things were put right again.

Sometimes forgiveness is the most effective kind of justice. It is much more likely than hatred or revenge to spawn atonement. This is the lesson so often lost in our decade of fear and grief and war. But it is one worth remembering as we light a candle; breathe in trouble and sorrow; breathe out compassion and peace; and seek to ease the overall soreness of the world.

Moment

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MomentI hear my iPhone vibrate just before the end of the therapy session. By the time my client dries her tears, writes a check, and takes a few Kleenex for the road, it’s 12:55–five minutes before my next client.

I punch in the voicemail code and listen. It’s the doctor, the one who removed a polyp from my uterus the week before.

“It’s likely nothing,” she had assured me. “Ninety-nine percent of the time everything’s fine.”

Now I hear her voice: “I need to talk with you, so call me. They can come and get me even if I’m with someone.”

Because I must be with someone and their troubles in less than five minutes, I don’t call then. But in that moment I know I have cancer.

I pretend I don’t know so I can make it through the session.  Then I usher my client out the door and prepare myself to return the call I don’t want to return. I’m supposed to meet my friend Deb for a walk—a walk I’ll need now more than ever, which is why I do not cancel it. I can count on Deb. I can also count on her to be late, so I hit “Call back” on the doctor’s message en route to our rendezvous spot.

The doctor says she’s sorry to have to tell me this, but the biopsy turned out to be cancerous.

“We were all so surprised!” she blurts out, apologizing for how light-hearted everyone had been during the outpatient procedure.

It’s true—she, the nurses, and I had treated it like a lark, laughing and telling raunchy jokes as I, woozy with painkillers, lay on my back with my feet in the stirrups while they dug out the suspect tissue.

The doctor tells me she doesn’t yet know much, but wanted to call right away so I could begin to wrap my mind around this. She utters the words “uterine papillary serous carcinoma,” which I gather is the technical term for uterine cancer. I write it down so I can look it up at the end of my long, busy day. The doctor quickly mentions next steps, adding that early detection is on our side. I can tell she wants to get off the phone even more than I do.

Luckily, Deb arrives just then, so I release the doctor and turn to my friend.

“Guess what? I just found out I have cancer,” I say matter-of-factly.

Deb is full of hugs and sympathy, even though she cannot keep from pointing out the house where her friend who died of melanoma lived.

“Don’t tell Jonathan,” she says, meaning my husband, who was diagnosed with melanoma two years ago. He’s completely fine now.

I’m not sure if Deb means I shouldn’t tell Jonathan some people die of what didn’t kill him, or if I shouldn’t tell him I have cancer.

But I do tell him, when we are both home from work. Jonathan is shocked, as am I, which must be why I’ve so blithely been able to carry on with my day even though my life has been upended.

Jonathan and I both assume that, like him, I’ll be fine, too. Uterine cancer, after all, is the one everyone says is the kind to have if you must have cancer. Even my mother, a hypochondriac given to fits of hysteria, sailed through hers with barely a whimper.

After a brief interlude of hugs and tears, Jonathan and I sail through the rest of our evening as if nothing, not even cancer, can interfere with our plans. We are determined to watch President Obama accept the nomination for a second term at the Democratic Convention. We are even more determined to present a good face to our 21-year-old daughter, Ally, who returns later that night brimming with stories from a backpacking trip.  We lap up her enthusiasm as if our lives depend on it. Perhaps they do.

After everyone has gone to bed, I sit down at the computer a few minutes before midnight and google the fancy term the doctor used: “Uterine papillary serous carcinoma.”

Rare and aggressive.

Highly malignant.

This is not my mother’s uterine cancer. I read on, fear choking me like ash. Even women with Stage 1 UPSC have an iffy prognosis. Will I make it to Ally’s college graduation next year?

For six months between that moment at 12:55 and the first day of spring, when treatment ends, my life is measured out in precisely timed appointments: CT scans; a complete hysterectomy sandwiched between pre-op and post-op meetings; oncology and Chinese medicine consults; chemo and nutrition classes; bloodwork; wig fittings; three rounds of internal radiation; acupuncture; six infusions of poison into my veins. I imagine the invisible cancer mushrooming inside me. Not knowing how many moments I have left, each moment is etched in my brain.

Then it is over, and I am fine. At least for the time being. I make it to my daughter’s college graduation. In the pictures of me standing next to her in cap and gown, my smile is wide, my wig slightly askew.

When I was a teenager I read a short story about people who are granted the power to learn the exact hour and manner of their deaths. Initially grateful, they spend all their time trying to outfox fate, to no avail. They die anyway, having spent their entire lives obsessed, anxious, and miserable.

The last thing I want is a crystal ball. Time already stopped once, at 12:55 on a September afternoon.  I do not want to know when it will stop for good.

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Today is the third anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. I am fine. What moments–for better and for worse–are etched in your memory?

Discovering Blogs: The Liebster Award

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liebster-award-logo

My lovely fellow blogger, Heidi BK Sloss of The Art of Living Fully, nominated me for the Liebster Award, which was developed to recognize bloggers and help others get to know them. I really appreciate the honor. Be sure to check the end of this post for the bloggers I’m nominating!

Part of the Liebster Award is the opportunity to answer some questions. So here goes!

What makes you happy?

A really great walk—with my husband, with friends, or with a podcast (This American Life, Fresh Air, The Moth, and Snap Judgment are my favorites); sipping a latte while reading the paper at Comforts, my favorite café, every morning; watching a good DVD series with my husband (Season 6 of The Good Wife just arrived via Netflix–Yippee!); movies and our movie group; fresh flowers; favorable political trends (not a lot of happiness there right now); my kids feeling happy and engaged with what they’re doing; being on track with my eating and my writing; getting published.

Why did you start blogging?

I resisted blogging for a long time because I am very technophobic and because I was afraid my blog would be really lame, petering out after a few posts. Then in 2012, I was one of only two Listen to Your Mother SF cast members without a blog. The other outlier had no interest in blogging, but I did. In fact, I had the usual fantasies of being discovered and going viral and getting a MacArthur Genius Grant, or at least a book deal. Since my grandiosity is tamed by equal doses of self-doubt and procrastination, I had not yet been able to implement this strategy. Finally, the shame of seeing no hyperlink under my name in the LTYM program spurred me to overcome my fear of lame. After that, I began the slow process of reinforcing overcoming technophobia by tackling WordPress.

At the same time, I had also begun serious work on my one good book idea, “Ruptures in Women’s Friendships.” I saw my blog as a way of conducting research—crowd-sourcing stories people would share in response to my posts on the topic.

Then I got cancer. (Did you know that WordPress causes cancer?)  My plans were derailed by six months of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. But cancer has a way of focusing the mind on what matters, so with new resolve (plus new access to a great online WordPress tutorial), I launched my blog in July 2013. Interestingly, everything in my life is back on track except my Ruptures project. Instead, I have written a lot about cancer, that unwelcome but excellent muse. I still am pretty technophobic (Twitter? What’s that?) And I still fear my blog is lame, but at least I post on a fairly regular basis.

What is the best thing anyone has ever said about your blog?

Honestly, anytime anyone says anything about my blog, I’m ecstatic. I particularly love when what I’ve written inspires readers to share their experiences. But the comment that’s meant the most to me came from a blog post I put on a group blog, long before I had Shrinkrapped up and running. I’d written about my own evolution on the topic of gay marriage–from a straight person’s total oblivion to full embrace. Months later, a gay father came across the post and emailed me about how much it meant to him. He told me about how traumatized his eight-year-old daughter was when planes carrying banners denouncing gay marriage flew over their house (this was in the bad old days when Proposition 8 was riding high in California). He said it was the first time she had experienced hate for her family. “Thanks for writing your piece,’ he wrote. “Maybe it will shift a mind or two.” Comments like his remind me that connecting through writing matters. This keeps me going when I lose heart.

What is one piece of advice you would offer or one saying you live by?

My favorite saying comes from something I first heard from a fellow Weight Watcher: “Set the intent.” (Meaning, “Ponder how differently your day might go if for breakfast you scarf down a dozen jelly doughnuts versus an egg-white omelet.”)

There’s a more widely applicable meaning, too, and it’s the one piece of advice I’ve given my daughters that they’ve most cottoned to: “Find something small you can do every day no matter what that will help you feel on track—for me it’s making the bed.” Lo and behold! I have raised two bed-makers, though I would not have placed money on this during their childhoods.

What are your top three bucket list items?

For a better answer, read my old post, “Bucket List.” But here’s the list:

  1. To be published in “Modern Love” in the New York Times
  2. To live long enough to know my grandchildren (their existence is entirely hypothetical at this point)
  3. To attend my own memorial service, meaning to be in good enough shape and have enough time and enough people who think well of me to hear before I die what they’ll say about me after I die. And to have a chance to say what they’ve meant to me as we say goodbye.

 What is your ultimate guilty pleasure?

Devouring a pint of Three Twins Chocolate Orange Confetti ice cream. Since the near-total demise of Swensen’s, with its Swiss Orange Chip, it’s been hard to come by my favorite flavor. Luckily, Orange is the New Black inspired Three Twins (my Weight Watcher leader calls it “Three Ass”) to launch this fantastic new flavor. More luckily still, I only buy premium pints on sale, and it goes on sale very rarely.

What is one product or service you cannot live without?

National Public Radio. No hyperlink necessary.

What is your favorite U.S. destination? What two countries make you the happiest to visit? What is your dream destination?

Honestly, I don’t have much of a travel bug, so I’ve lumped these questions together. I live just north of San Francisco in beautiful Marin County, so my favorite destination is only a short drive away: Point Reyes National Seashore. My favorite vacations feature hiking in beautiful places. I actually find long weekend B&B getaways more refreshing than bigger trips. But this summer I was happy in the French Pyrenees and hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc through France, Switzerland, and Italy. Before that I’ve loved the Dolomites, the Canadian Rockies, Bryce Canyon, Sawtooth Mountains, and the many trips I’ve taken to the Sierra Nevada. I dream of future hikes in the U.S. Rockies and Mount Ranier, and of taking a walking tour of the English countryside with its cottage gardens. But I’m just as happy with my daily walks out my front door.

But Enough About Me! Paying the Liebster Forward

I’m embarrassed to admit that I barely have a pinky toe dipped in the blogosphere—how do people find the time? But check out these worthy bloggers in addition to the aforementioned The Art of Living Fully. And remember, there’s nothing worse for a writer than sending words into a black hole. So feel free to comment, tweet, share, and give a shout-out to your own favorites!

Jessica O’Dwyer, who has written a memoir, Mamalita about adopting her daughter from Guatemala. Check out her blog, Mamalitathebook, for more exquisitely observed and felt writing about international adoption and related topics.

Dorothy O’Donnell, who writes beautifully about everything, including raising a child with pediatric bipolar disorder.

Rhea St. Julien, who reaches into her heart and soul to write about race and other things that matter at thirty threadbare mercies

Jenny Marshall, who writes about culture, language, and travel at A Thing for Wor(l)ds

You can find a lot of wonderful writerly stuff at Write On Mamas and a lot of talent on WOM’s blog. Check out the blogroll on the Home page for individual members’ sites.

And here are my favorite buddies I met on this year’s A to Z Blogging Challenge:

Dyanne at Backsies is What There is Not (Fans of the Frances books, unite!). Dyanne is very funny and very positive in her outlook. I have a bit of an allergy to positive thinking, so the fact that I find her so engaging is a testament to how skillfully she handles the balance of the good, the bad, and the ugly in all aspects of life.

Wendy at Wendy’s Waffle. I love that Wendy writes about a wide range of topics, from politics to the personal. Plus, she’s someone who lists “chocolate” as one of her interests, and like me, is an empty nester. Wendy lives in London, so it’s great to get a perspective from beyond my own shores.

Paula at Mpls Transplant. Paula, who moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Minneapolis, asks, “Is Minnesota Nice contagious? God, I hope so . . .” I happen to know she was plenty nice already, at least by Bay Area standards! Here she’s funny, inventive, and great at incorporating photography into her writing.

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Answer a question or two yourself–like what’s YOUR ultimate guilty pleasure or what’s on your bucket list? Also, what are your favorite blogs?

For the Birds

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Sandhill cranesThis week my writing group, the Write On Mamas, was invited to share our work at a local senior residence. It was a delight to be there along with my fellow WOMers Janine, Mindy, and Steven. Here’s what I read, an old favorite of mine originally published in skirt!

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Like most married couples, my husband Jonathan and I have many pacts–no cheating, no badmouthing each others’ parents, no going to bed mad. Our agreements are the glue that holds us together.

One of our pacts is to never take up birdwatching. Jonathan and I spent way too much time as kids trapped in some swamp while our parents cooed over coots.

We once took a hike with our friend, Peter, an avid birder. Eyes downcast, my husband and I listened politely as he droned on about plumage and wing span.

“Oh,” Peter said, at last noticing our silence. “Children of birdwatchers.”

Since we have our youthful resentments to uphold, we cling to our pact even though every binocular-toting couple we know is happily married. Birdwatching may unite others, but not Jonathan and me.  If one of us strays, pulse quickened by a downy breast, it’s grounds for divorce.

Still, as long-term marrieds, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to spice up our relationship. The forbidden, even birding, holds allure. So what if it’s like watching paint dry?

That’s how we recently found ourselves driving to the delta with our friends Steve and Mary to catch the last of the sand hill cranes before they headed south. Or wherever cranes go when, sensibly enough, they tire of hanging out on the levees with bored teenagers gunning their engines.

Before we embark, my husband and I renew our vows.

“Promise me we won’t become birdwatchers,” I implore.

“I do,” Jonathan pledges.

Steve and Mary have an exemption. They even have a temporary placard for disabled parking. Sidelined from favored pursuits like hiking and backpacking by surgery, they have entered the phase of life Steve refers to as “recalibrated pleasures.” They’ve traded in their boots for Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guides and sunk a few thousand dollars into birding paraphernalia. No doubt they’re faking it, forced to find the silver lining in an unjust fate. We’ll be safe with Steve and Mary.

We pile into the backseat of their car. After a drive that lasts forever, strip malls give way to fields of rice stubble. We pull onto the shoulder of the levee dam road. “Look at the swans!” Steve and Mary exult in unison. It occurs to me that they’re not pretending.

The side of the road is littered with parked cars whose trunks yield vast arsenals of birding materiel. Pot-bellied men hoist huge tripods onto their beefy shoulders. Except for their girth and Audubon Society t-shirts, they could be mistaken for guerrillas sporting shoulder-mounted grenade launchers.

Birders are a passionate lot. Within a 10-mile radius, only my husband and I are cool to the wonders of feathered fauna. At least I hope Jonathan still is. He seems suspiciously enthralled as Mary explains the difference between divers and dabblers.

Steve spots the cranes on a distant bank. Even I have to admit they’re spectacular. After about 10 minutes of genuine oohing and another few of feigned ahhing, I’m ready to climb back in the car and head for civilization, or at least a Starbucks in one of those strip malls.

But people who routinely drive 100 miles in search of creatures they can’t see without expensive equipment are not prepared to settle for such a small return on their investment. So we look at the cranes. We look at ducks. We look some more.

Birding is like time-lapsed photography in reverse. The day slows down and stretches out in a languorous slow-motion crawl of nothing much happening. We drive farther. A chain-link fence separates the road from a plot of barren land. Steve spies a thin white line close to the horizon.

“Might be white pelicans. On the other hand, it might be plastic garbage bags,” he says with quiet excitement, as if either outcome would please him equally. Has his sense of pleasure been so radically recalibrated?

We train the binoculars on the barely discernible thread of white. Sure enough, they’re pelicans. But heaped together in a slovenly pile, these pelicans look like garbage bags with wing spans fluttering listlessly in the breeze. Perhaps it’s some kind of rare hybrid species: Feathered trash.

The day moseys along toward sunset. Mud hens are now indistinguishable from mud in the long shadows swallowing up the fields. The sky is streaked with cotton-candy wisps of pink and smoky gray.

It is also streaked with birds, flying in formations that, truth be told, look a bit ragged. No perfect, straight-edged V’s for these cranes and geese! Maybe they’re bored, too, and want to mix things up a little.

I think of my friend who took his family to see Winged Migration. Ten minutes into the film, his eight-year-old daughter elbowed him and said, “So this is it, huh? It’s just gonna be birds and then more birds all the way through.”

I’m with that girl! But is my husband still with me? He’s keeping up a steady stream of delighted chatter, admiring how graceful the airborne cranes look when they’re not stuck on land with their unruly necks and legs all akimbo. Jonathan’s enthusiasm makes me nervous until I realize that I, too, sound like I’m going to log on to one of those birding chat rooms the second I’m near a computer. I sidle up to Jonathan in the gathering darkness and whisper, “You haven’t gone over to the light side, have you?” He smiles and squeezes my hand hard, twice, our secret code. Birds of a feather flocking together. Such a man I have married! Black silhouettes fly against a crimson sky; white lies fly below.

“It’s so beautiful,” I exclaim, this time sincerely. Not only because together my husband and I have resisted the call of the wild, but because of how the bloodshot-turning-charcoal clouds are reflected in the little pools of water dotting the furrows. The delta at twilight looks like sepia shards from a shattered kaleidoscope.

We stow the scopes, the tripods, the binoculars, the books back in the trunk. Relieved, we climb into the car and head for home. Steve and Mary point out raptors on the power lines while Jonathan and I hold hands silently, eyes closed, in the backseat.

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Postscript: Years later, Jonathan and I are still stubbornly resistant to birding. We know a hawk from and a hummingbird, and are happy to leave it at that. Steve and Mary, meanwhile, have traveled all over the world on birding expeditions. They are still our friends, though they haven’t invited us along on any more outings. What shared interests and antipathies do you and your sweetie enjoy?

 

Fledglings

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Finch familyLast weekend we loaded up the U-Haul and moved our daughter into her first San Francisco apartment.  Ally had just started a new job—the kind with benefits, including dental. That same day, our other daughter, Emma, moved from home into an artist’s residency a thousand miles away.

Developments were also under way in another family—this one nesting under the eaves on a drainpipe above our back deck. A pair of house finches who raised a brood there last year had returned.

The first time round, I was a nervous wreck about the birds. Would the neighbor’s cat get them? Would the babies fall out of their nest? Crash while learning to fly? Every morning I peeked out the window like a new parent who ventures into the nursery dreading crib death. It was like a time-lapsed sequence of all my anxieties about raising our own children.

But everything turned out fine, as it usually does. So this time round I’ve been calmer, not only with the finches’ launch, but with our daughters’. There’s a pang still, but it’s not nearly as acute as before, when each new step Emma and Ally made away from us left me worried about their well-being and wondering who I would be in their absence. Now I have come back to myself, come back to the marriage pushed to the back burner while my husband and I grew our girls into young women. Just as our daughters are taking flight into their new lives, we are, too.

So it is with our bird family. The parent finches go from patient egg-sitting to cramming food down gaping mouths. Scruffy teens with tufts of down atop their heads soon take over the living space, crowding each other on the edge of the nest.  Dislodged twigs and dried bits of guano litter the deck below. In a few days, they are gone, leaving behind their mess.

Just like Ally and Emma. I sweep the deck, then tackle the debris left behind in their rooms–stray socks, scraps of paper, dirty sheets and towels. As much as we miss our daughters, my husband and I love the return to order, love having our house (and deck) back.

Besides, we look forward to return visits, messiness and all.

 

 

 

Insane

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No gunsMy husband and I were hiking in the Alps with a group of Australians shortly after Dylann Roof murdered nine members of a Bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina. We felt like we were on a different planet trekking all day among towering peaks and wildflowers as at night we kept abreast of the horrific news on our smartphones.

The stark racism behind the Charleston shooting makes it almost beside the point to zero in on guns; a massacre so intertwined with America’s long and sorry history of racial oppression, particularly in the South, has understandably made this the prevailing focus. Nonetheless, although the why of Roof’s violent bigotry is deep-rooted and complex, the how is simple: easily obtained guns and ammunition.

Our Australian hiking companions were incredulous about America’s failure to do anything about gun violence. These were not our usual crowd of Bay Area liberals for whom guns arouse a knee-jerk suspicion. Our fellow trekkers were arrayed across the political spectrum. Several were ranchers; one talked about getting his first rifle as a kid. Yet Australia chose a different path from the United States after its own traumatic experience with a mass shooting.

In 1996, an Australian gunman killed 35 people in what came to be known as the Port Arthur massacre. Instead of sorrowful hand-wringing and inaction, John Howard, the newly elected conservative prime minister immediately passed with bipartisan support strict gun control laws throughout the country.  Private sales were banned, and only a narrow range of reasons were valid for ownership (self-defense, fear, and gun “rights” were not among them). Gun owners had to pass a safety class, could not carry their weapons around, and had to register and store them properly.

Some legislators paid a political price, but almost 90 percent of the population favored the new regulations. As our Australian friend who had grown up with guns explained, there were initial misgivings, but after a couple of years everyone saw that life continued to be fine, and the resistance disappeared.

The new laws were extremely effective. In the next decade, Australian gun homicides declined by 59 percent, the suicide rate by 65 percent. The rate of home invasions also declined. And there have been no mass shootings since Port Arthur.

As we listened to our hiking companions’ stories, they listened to ours:

  • About how even after 20 first-graders were shot to death in Sandy Hook in 2012, Congress could not summon the courage to mandate universal background checks supported by 90 percent of Americans.
  • About how the NRA’s response to gun violence is to advocate arming more people; “The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” an NRA spokesman said after Sandy Hook.
  • About how men armed to the teeth swagger around advocating open-carry laws.
  • About how restrictions on guns have loosened rather than tightened since Sandy Hook.

“You’re kidding! That’s insane,” one of the Australians exclaimed over and over.

Indeed.

We hear a lot about insanity in conjunction with America’s mass shootings, which now occur at the rate of about every other week. The mental instability of the killers is inarguable, as is the need for more effective mental health screening and treatment. Yet scapegoating the mentally ill (who are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence) misses the point of a widespread cultural insanity. It also misses the point of doing something about the delivery system if not the root causes of our national pathology.  As Australian’s John Howard recalled about the Port Arthur massacre in an op-ed he wrote following Sandy Hook,  “The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing. Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy access to a gun.”

We left the Alps much rejuvenated by the scenery and much enlightened by our Australian friends. Because we were on vacation, I didn’t write about it at the time. When we returned, we were gripped and heartened by the sea change that finally brought down the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s capitol in the aftermath of  Dylann Roof’s rampage. Guns, again understandably, took a back seat as we celebrated this important if symbolic milestone in tackling racial oppression.

But I knew it wouldn’t be long before gun violence was in the news again. Sure enough, this week Chattanooga and Lafayette were added to the roster of communities shattered by a gunman. More gun deaths will surely follow—those that make headlines and those that don’t. As glad as I am about the Confederate flag’s downfall, I wish we could take a page from the Australians, and see our gun insanity follow suit.

A Sprinkle in Time

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Portulacas

It’s amazing what a little bit of rain will do. Not just the spit of heavy fog, but real rain. This unexpected visitor hung around for less than an hour Thursday night in drought-parched Northern California, but boy, what a difference! Our garden perked right up, as this pot of portulacas can attest.

The garden has been hanging in there on life support: container plants watered with warm-up water from sinks and showers, drip irrigation stretched a day or two longer between waterings. Nothing much has actually died of thirst–it just looks like Hell, somewhere on the continuum between bedraggled and fried (except for the thriving grasses, succulents, grevillea, and oleander, which were clearly meant for Hell’s Climate Zones 1-3).

I had thought the portulacas were doing pretty well with water stinginess–until they burst into radiant bloom after their bonus drink. That’s when it hit me how often we keep plugging along on not-quite-enough, thinking all is fine.

I myself could use an extra few sips–of sleep, of fiction reading, of fun–to go from doing just fine to thriving. How about you–what little extra would make a big difference in your life?.

 

 

Question #4

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Jonathan and Lorrie, Tour du Mont Blanc 2015Fans of Shrinkrapped may recall that I was planning to pop the question–make that 36 questions–to Jonathan during our vacation. These are the questions, devised by a psychologist and popularized by Modern Love, that supposedly foster intimacy and love. In our case, they fostered a certain amount of resistance and eye-rolling, but Jonathan was game enough to humor me through the first 11 questions during a long drive to the Pyrenees.

Question #4 stood out: “What would constitute a perfect day for you?”

Our answers were the same–a great hike, topped off with a great meal.

We had five hiking days in the Pyrenees, then six in the Alps on the Tour du Mont Blanc. All were great, and all were followed by great meals (OK, panna cotta instead of chocolate mousse lowered the score on a few occasions.)

But all in all, so many perfect days made a perfect trip!

Hike to Cirque d’Estaube
Aigüestortes National Park, trail to Lake Llong
Day 6, Tour du Mont Blanc, ibex
Cavallers Lake, Aigüestortes National Park
Path to Cirque du Gavarnie
Day 3, Tour du Mont Blanc
Day 4, Tour du Mont Blanc, view from Col de Balme
Hike to Cirque d’Estaube
Looking down on Gavarnie