Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

writer/musician California native, Oregon resident Author of Freelancing for Newspapers, Shoes Full of Sand, Azorean Dreams, Stories Grandma Never Told, Childless by Marriage, Now Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer's, and the Up Beaver Creek novel series. Most recently, I have published three poetry chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead, The Widow at the Piano: Confessions of a Distracted Catholic, and Blue Chip Stamp Guitar, plus a full-length collection Dining Al Fresco with My Dog. I have published hundreds of articles, plus essays, fiction and poetry. I'm also pretty good at singing and playing guitar and piano.

The Spirit Fills the Church Bazaar

It started months ago with people gathering their unwanted possessions–their books and CDs, coffee mugs, unused popcorn poppers, china figurines, and Christmas decorations–and bringing them to the church. The donations piled up in the office, the basement, and the garage. As the time drew nearer, Father Brian started his post-Mass standup routine about the important of buying raffle tickets. You don’t have to be here, he said. We’ll mail it to you—I hope you don’t win a sofa. And if you don’t want any of the other prizes, we have money! For weeks, after Mass, people walked around with strips of gray raffle tickets and signed their names on big posters for donations and volunteer tasks.
Then the baking began. Zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, banana bread, scones, muffins, and thousands of cookies, not just chocolate chip but peanut butter, sugar cookies with green sprinkles, snickerdoodles, and Rice Krispy treats.
Halloween and All Saints Day came and went, pen scratches on the calendar compared to what was coming Saturday: the Sacred Heart bazaar.
On Thursday, workers took down the holy pictures and posters in the hall and the adjoining classrooms. They rearranged the tables, covering them with red and green cloths. They carried load after load of books, CDs, coffee mugs, popcorn poppers, china figurines and Christmas decorations from their hiding places into the hall. They set up signs for the Book Nook, the Country Store, Odds and Ends, the Cookie Walk. They set up tables near the kitchen where people could eat Chinese lunch or homemade pie.
On Friday, parishioners with dough and colored sprinkles embedded in their fingernails came in a steady stream delivering their home-baked contributions on holiday plates, in plastic bags, in aluminum foil.
On Saturday, parishioners, garage salers, and bazaar lovers were waiting at the doors at 9 a.m. With borrowed grocery store baskets in their hands and twenty-dollar bills in their wallets, they shopped and shopped, and, like the loaves and fishes, there was still more to buy. They bought raffle tickets and signed their names to spend hundreds of dollars on silent auction items, including paintings, quilts, and a dinner with Father Brian. They filled boxes with all kinds of cookies, filled them so tight they could barely close the lids.
When the bazaar ended at 3 p.m., there was still more left to buy. So on Sunday, the workers opened the doors again, and parishioners swarmed out of the 8:30 and 10:30 Masses to snatch those half-price bargains, not minding that the usual donuts had been replaced by leftover pie.
Then, sated, clutching their treasures to their chests, they went out into the rain while the exhausted volunteers counted the money and returned the hall to its usual holy appearance, knowing that Sacred Heart would thrive for another year.

Just South of the Airport

I woke up this morning to the sound of a plane flying over my house. UPS? Fed Ex? A private plane heading to Portland or Silicon Valley? A couple years ago, I would have guessed it was a Seaport commuter plane doing its 4:45 a.m. run to Portland. That airline, like several others, tried flying out of Newport and couldn’t make enough money to stay. In the 14 years since Fred and I moved into our house a half mile south of the airport, we have watched Harbor Air, Sky Taxi and Seaport come and go. Each time, they left the airport a little more modernized for the mail transports, charter flights, and Coast Guard helicopters that continue to fly there. With new lights, expanded runways and fences to keep deer and elk off the tarmac, Newport Airport can accommodate the biggest jets, but it just can’t support regular flights that would let us avoid the three-hour drive to the Portland airport. Imagine being able to walk up the road with my suitcase and hop on a plane. Unless I buy my own plane, it’s not happening.

When we were looking at the house, the previous owner noted that sometimes the helicopter noise gets annoying. He was right. Although it’s nothing compared to our previous experiences with airports in San Jose and Los Angeles, it does get tiresome when the helicopters warm up on the runway for an hour or when pilots in training practice takeoffs and landings.
It’s also a little disconcerting to be sitting in the office and see a plane appearing to fly straight toward the house. But it’s fun to sit on the deck or be soaking in the spa and watch the planes fly over, to wonder about who’s inside and where they’re going. I have heard rumors that Bill Gates and other famous wealthy people fly into Newport to relax at the beach. I often wave at the planes, although I know the people inside can’t see me. It reminds me of when I was kid in San Jose and blimps from Moffett Field would fly over. Everyone would run out of the house to watch.
At night, the airport lights flash in the darkness, like constant sheet lightning pulsing like a heartbeat. I often hear the planes before I see their red and green lights blinking among the stars. If it’s cloudy, I may not see them at all, but I hear them flying over, hear their engines growing louder, then softer, then sighing into silence.
Living so close to the airport has its risks—and not just a plane falling out of the sky onto our house. Over the years, rumors have circulated about a resort, a housing development, new roads, and most recently an air museum practically in our back yard, but none of this has happened. Annie and I still take our walks around the open land just south of the airport, gazing across the ravine at the runways and the lights. The only thing that has changed is the pine trees and Scotch broom getting taller.
Sometimes it feels like we live out in the middle of nowhere here in the woods. All I can see from my windows are trees, but the sky is wide open and the aircraft flying over remind me that we’re not alone and civilization is not far away. I wake up to the sound of a plane flying over the house. It’s time to get up.

I write a lot more about the airport in my book Shoes Full of Sand, available at Amazon.com and at https://suelick.com/front-page/blue-hydrangea-books

Google yourself some free piano lessons

I’m in love. This love predates both husbands and all of my dogs. It’s not a man. It’s a piano. Yes, I have been in love with the piano since I was a little girl. It was love at first listen.
I was not one of those kids forced into lessons. In fact, I never had a real piano lesson until I was in my 40s. And I didn’t stay with any teacher for long. Too expensive, and it was difficult to mesh what I had already taught myself, sometimes incorrectly, with what they had to teach. Plus I wasn’t a kid with free time after school. I was a grownup with a job, a house and a husband to take care of. But I started playing when I was seven years old, using my mother’s old piano books, and I have never stopped playing or wanting to learn how to play better. If there’s a piano in the room, I want to get my hands on it.
Enter Google, one of my best friends. I don’t know whether Google is male or female, but he/she/it is magic. Ask and be answered. What’s the capital of Maine? What does PCOS stand for? What animal is leaving those footprints where I walk in the woods? It’s all there. So, the other day I was singing at the piano, wishing I knew more about how to accompany myself, when I suddenly thought: Ask Google!
After all, I had found guitar, mandolin and piano lessons online before. Sure enough, I typed in “accompany singers on piano” and I got several listings. Having myself a little clickfest, I found videos, sheet music, and even a free e-book. All kinds of music lessons are offered for free on the Internet. Want to learn to read music? It’s there. Want a few new jazz licks? Yup, it’s there. Now, many of these online teachers will urge you to get on their mailing list and will eventually suggest you purchase their courses.  Some of those courses are good values when you consider in-person lessons cost about $30 for a half hour. But you don’t have to buy the courses. The freebies are enough to keep you playing for days, and it’s fabulous to have somebody to play along with, especially if you live alone with a dog who can’t play any instruments and can’t even manage a respectable howl.
Try webpianoteacher.com . Also search Google and YouTube. Have fun!
Oops, I just stopped writing to read this one lesson and then I had to go to the piano and try it and oh, what can I say? I can’t resist a piano. I think I feel a song coming on. See you later.

Time for rain, giant pumpkins, and fleece

Tis the season when I stand in the rain every morning and evening urging Annie to leave the doorway and “go potty,” when I pile up damp towels and soggy shoes, when the sun is but a memory. The rainy season has begun, and the snowbirds are heading to Arizona.
It happened so quickly. Last week, I lived on the deck in the sun, reading, writing, playing music, doing yoga, snuggling with the dog or just lying flat out soaking up the warmth and light. Did you know that many of us who live on the Oregon coast are seriously short of vitamin D? It’s true.
We hadn’t had any measurable rain for two months. That’s normal in many places, but not here. The lawns were turning brown, and for the first time ever, fleas showed up at our house, finding Annie’s dense fur a fabulous playground. After a couple days of her hiding in her crate and literally dragging her tail, we made an emergency trip to the vet, thinking she was sick, only to find she was infested with fleas. An expensive triple-pronged pharmaceutical attack later, she’s feeling better.
The leaves have been falling for weeks, and now I understand why I should have raked them up. They have become a soggy brown mat on the lawn, now joined by the season’s first fallen branches. The bird bath, which had gone dry, is now a floating pool of pine needles. Although I did pack in a load of pellets last week, I never cleaned out the gutters, so waterfalls cascade right over my front door. I’m wondering how I’m going to keep my spa cover from flying off in today’s high winds; last year’s winds ripped all the straps off.
This is just the beginning. The weather forecasters say we will see the sun again on Wednesday and Thursday before the rain returns. Meanwhile, although I still have my tan lines, I’ll be putting on my rain suit to walk the dog. A neighbor stopped Saturday to tell me I was awfully dedicated to be walking Annie in the rain, but nine months out of the year, if we don’t walk in the rain, we don’t walk at all.
There are bonuses to the arrival of the rain. The mushrooms are popping up, just in time for the annual mushroom festival held in Yachats every October. People are hanging Halloween decorations—I’ve got my orange lights ready to string in the front windows. They had 100-pound pumpkins at Fred Meyer Saturday. And Christmas is coming.
I’ll miss going out without a jacket, but it is kind of nice to put on the layers of fleece and read by the flickering light of the pellet stove while the rain patters on the skylights.
When my brother visited in May, he wanted to know why everyone he met kept talking about the weather. Well, that’s because it grabs and keeps our attention around here. What are we going to do today? Well, let’s check the weather.
Wherever you are, try to stay dry and warm, but if you get wet, know it will feel fabulous when you change into dry clothes.

Not quite the walk we’d planned

What started as a brief after-work dog walk and research trip turned into an ordeal someone my age should know better than to get herself into.
It was a warm sunny day, one of those glorious autumn gifts we experience here on the Oregon coast. Annie and I drove to the Beaver Creek Natural Area, a relatively new state park threaded with trails, most of which we had never tried or even found. I figured we’d park near the visitor’s center, walk enough to exercise the dog then drive around taking pictures for a writing project I’m working on. That’s not quite how it turned out.
We started on the marsh trail, one we’ve done before, never getting too far because the dirt turned to mud, then muck, then water. Because the last couple months have been so dry, we were able to keep going, even after Annie pulled me into a patch of gooey mud that coated my “dress tennies.” We walked and walked across this vast land of yellow rushes and wide open spaces, birds our only companions.
Suddenly the path ended at a bridge high above the creek. We crossed it. Then I saw the sign that would prove our undoing: Beaver Creek Loop Trail. Arrows pointed both right and left. I thought, hey, let’s take this. It will be a drier and possibly shorter path back to the visitor’s center.
It was a lovely trail through the trees, along the creek, past skunk cabbage and ferns. But there wasn’t a soul around. We stepped over bear, cougar and deer droppings. Annie, who can’t resist a pond or a puddle, decided to cool herself in the muddy stream beside the road and emerged black from the belly down, as if she had stepped in paint. “Come on!” I urged. The sun, barely visible over the trees, dropped toward the horizon and shifted from in front of us to the side as we gradually left the creek behind. As we walked uphill and down, I started to worry. It was already 6:00. The sun would set in an hour. Where was the end of this trail? What if a bear came out of the trees? I started praying.
Finally, the trail curved and I saw buildings. Safe, I thought. But it wasn’t the visitor’s center. It appeared to be equipment storage sheds. No people, just a Port-a-Potty. The trail continued on. Now I could hear cars in the distance. There was a road up there somewhere, but which road?

More bear droppings. I tugged on Annie’s leash. No time to explore. We were losing daylight and I didn’t want to meet Yogi. Or even Boo Boo. We were definitely lost. I considered calling 911, but I couldn’t tell them where I was. We weren’t hurt or trapped like that “elderly” 65-year-old I had just read about who spent the night caught in blackberry bushes near Rose Lodge. Blackberries lined this trail, too. Delicious. But we weren’t leaving the trail for anything.

At last I saw a metal gate up ahead. A road! It should be Beaver Creek Road, I assumed as we eased around the gate and stopped, looking right and left. Nothing seemed familiar. Were we above or below the visitor’s center? The sun had dropped to a yellow glow above the trees. I saw a milepost marker, Mile 1, to the right. The center wasn’t that far, was it? We went left.
This didn’t look right either. We came to a house plastered with no-trespassing signs. It looked deserted, but I was about to climb the steep driveway when I noticed the metal grating across the road, like an oversized cattle guard. Annie couldn’t walk over that. Next house, nobody home. Then way up ahead, I saw two horses, palominos, and a guy grooming one of them. “Come on, Annie.”
Afraid of the horses, Annie pulled back, her face scrunched against her collar, her eyes full of terror. “Come on. It’s okay,” I said, dragging her along until I got close enough to holler to the guy. “Is this Beaver Creek Road?”
He looked at me like I was the stupidest person he’d ever seen. I regretted leaving the house in my ugliest pants and no makeup. If you’re going to get lost, look good. “Yeah, it’s South Beaver Creek Road. There’s a north and a south. Which one do you want?”
I had no idea. “I’m trying to get back to the visitor center for the natural area.”
He pointed back the way we had come. “Walk a mile that way. You’ll come to a fork in the road. Go to the right another quarter mile or so.”
I wanted to cry. By now we had already walked for almost two hours. My shoes were pinching my toes. Annie was limping. I wished somebody would offer us a ride, although nobody would want my mud-painted dog in their vehicle. I felt old and foolish. “Thank you!” I called, and we got back on the road.
They don’t allow much space between the white line and the bushes. Cars occasionally passed us, pickups, SUVs, two PT Cruisers, all moving fast. Annie poked her nose into berry bushes and weeds as I kept urging her along. If it weren’t getting dark, there’d be no hurry, but it was. We passed the milepost marker and kept going. Annie plodded along in front of me, her legs black to the hips. “Hey girl,” I said. “If something tries to eat me, you’ll protect me, right? I’ll do the same for you.” She just kept walking.
We crossed Beaver Creek, saw a couple fishermen in a boat. Waved as if we weren’t lost or exhausted.
At last we came to the fork in the road. A stop sign. Green road signs. South Beaver Creek and North Beaver Creek. On NORTH Beaver Creek, a sign pointed us to the visitor’s center a quarter mile ahead. Somehow we had missed where the “loop trail” looped back to civilization and wound up on the road to Waldport. We turned, passed the center, now closed with a metal gate blocking the parking lot. Luckily I had parked a little farther up the road. My Honda waited for us. We collapsed into the seats and drove to the highway, turning onto 101 just as the sun was sliding into the horizon. It was the reddest sun I have ever seen.
We were alive. We were safe. We were sore.
The moral of this story is this: If you are not prepared for a long walk—alone with no map, compass, water, food, flashlight, or sleeping bag—go back on the trail you came in on, lest you wind up in the newspaper in your ugly pants and no makeup, being described as an “elderly” hiker who got lost in the woods.
***
For a map of the Beaver Creek State Natural Area and its beautiful trails, visit the website at http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_261.php. Don’t count on signs on the actual trails.Story and photo copyright 2012 Sue Fagalde Lick

Tsunamis are real threat for coastal residents

If you drive through Newport and other towns on the Oregon coast, you’ll see blue and white signs warning that you are entering or leaving a tsunami evacuation zone. Frequent emergency preparedness discussions, siren tests and practice evacuations remind us that the ocean might not always stay on the beach. A big earthquake anywhere around the Pacific, even one we might not feel or know about, can send massive waves crashing into our hometowns.
In March 2011, the huge earthquake in Japan, followed by tsunamis that wiped out whole towns, showed just how bad it can be. We watched television reports that showed the waves taking away cars and buildings as if they were toys. Here on the west coast of the U.S., we woke up early wondering how bad the backlash would be on our own coasts. I live above the tsunami zone, but my aunt in California, not knowing that, woke me up at 5 a.m. Not only had she seen the reports on TV, but she grew up in Hawaii, where tsunami alerts occurred frequently. Assuring her I was safe, I got dressed and waited to see what would happen. We were relatively lucky here. A few harbors in Oregon and California, including nearby Depoe Bay, suffered some damage, but for most of us, the tidal surge was barely noticeable.
That has not always been the case. I have been reading an amazing book called The Raging Sea, in which author Dennis M. Powers of Ashland, Oregon tells the story of the 1964 tsunami that hit Crescent City, California. A few hours after an 8.4 earthquake that struck Alaska, the waves hit  Crescent City with deadly force. Powers has used eye-witness reports to place us right into the action. It was midnight when the first wave hit. We see people waking up to find water eight feet high in their houses. We see others clinging to counters and rafters in their shops as the waves come up around their chins and threaten to carry them away. We see wave-borne logs bashing through windows, walls and roofs collapsing, and cars floating away with people trapped inside. We see children being swept out of the arms of their mothers and fathers.
The first two waves weren’t so bad, but some people were fooled into thinking it was over and walked right into the much bigger waves that followed. Others, having heard many false alarms over the years, decided this one wasn’t worth getting out of bed for. They were wrong. Thirty city blocks were destroyed, 289 homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 11 people died that night. Many more were injured.
Aside from Alaska, Crescent City suffered the worst damage. But four children died on Newport’s own Beverly Beach in that 1964 tsunami. They were camping with their parents when the waves took them away. The parents were injured but survived, devastated by the loss of their children.
The Raging Sea is a great read, full of suspense and great characters, but it’s also terrifying because it really happened and could happen again. It has certainly changed how I look at the ocean.
Saturday’s Oregonian newspaper carried an article about tsunami drills in Manzanita, up the coast from us. Click here to read it.
Tsunamis don’t happen very often, thank God, but when they do, be ready to run to higher ground. Don’t stick around to watch. Pay attention to those blue and white signs. For a map of Pacific Northwest tsunami evacuation zones, click here.

Through a Migraine Haze

The pain in my head melted everything else into a cloud of confusion, but I needed groceries. It was Saturday, a day I always picture as a carefree jaunt to the farmers’ market or whatever else is going on in town, a day when I’ll clean house while listening to “Car Talk” on NPR, play a little music, and write only if I feel like it. In truth, it usually gets bogged down somewhere along the line. I have obligations, sometimes playing a 5:30 Mass or a funeral, sometimes Nye Beach Writers. One of my blogs needs posting, Annie needs a walk, the sheets need changing, and the fridge is down to a wedge of brown cauliflower, a hunk of cheese and two slices of nine-grain bread.
I live alone. I don’t have time to have the vapors, or a migraine headache. I hear tell people go to bed with these things, but I generally try to ignore them. First stop: the post office to pick up my daily dose of charity solicitations and bills. Next I had planned to visit an open house being held by an outfit calling themselves “Healing HeArts” (spelled just like that). A blend of yoga, massage, acupuncture and counseling, they occupy a section of the professional building on 111 SE Douglas Street where my dentist used to be. I’ve been missing my old yoga class, so I decided to check it out despite my hurting head and queasy stomach. Maybe I could get a massage or do a little yoga. I wore my stretchy pants, just in case.
Balloons. New Age guitar music. A slip of paper to get signed by each practitioner and entered into a drawing for a prize. Hallways crowded with people. Cheese and crackers. Fruit. Tiny rooms with massage tables. Candles. Self-help books. An energetic young woman named Holly in a tiny wooden-floored yoga studio where she offers one-on-one therapeutic yoga sessions. A friend from church who is starting a new therapy practice. After years in hospice care, she radiated happiness. A cozy room where an acupuncturist handed out little boxes of herbal throat lozenges which I later discovered contain loquat and butterfly wings. Butterfly wings?
Walking around in a fog, I wished one of these cheerful practitioners would fix my head, but this was purely a social day. No demos. I hope I didn’t look as spaced-out as I felt. I hope I win the raffle and get a free session with one or all of these kind ladies. I hope I never have another migraine like that. Two days later, my head is still sore.
From Healing HeArts, I took my headache and queasy stomach to the grocery store, stocked up, paid up, and went home to listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” on the sofa with Annie in my lap. The dog cure. That’s my kind of therapy.
Have a headache-free week.

Where everybody knows your name

Everybody seems to know me around here. If they don’t know me from church, they know me from various writer events or they’ve seen me singing at the annual garden tours or the Toledo street market. They know me from yoga class or the Alzheimer’s support group or the dog park or the grocery store. Maybe I interviewed them for some article for some newspaper, or maybe they took a class I taught at the community college.  They’ve certainly seen my name and picture in the local newspaper. It’s not hard to make that happen. They publish pretty much everything people send in, unlike the papers I used to work for that were more stingy with their ink.
Take yesterday, when I hosted a talk about my new book Childless by Marriage at the South Beach Community Center. Attendance was disappointing, even though the Beavers and Ducks games were over. But this one woman came in, and I exclaimed, “I know you. What’s your name?”
It turns out we know a lot of the same people involved in local music. I have heard her sing and watched her play bells. I’ve read about the antique business she runs with her husband. She knows me from Sacred Heart, from the garden tour, and from the newspaper.
If you want to be anonymous, go live in a big city. In a small town, it’s impossible unless you hide in your house and never do anything. Many of the most active people I know moved to Oregon from California and immediately got involved. We Bay Area transplants just love the way people connect in and around the towns on the Oregon coast.
It’s the way it was when my father was growing up in San Jose. Living on a ranch on Dry Creek Road along the edges of Campbell and Almaden, his family knew everyone around them, and everybody knew the Fagaldes. It’s hard for him now to accept the way things have changed. When he goes out, he’s usually surrounded by strangers, many of them speaking languages other than English. The old-timers are dying off, their ranches turned into housing tracts. It’s a lonely place, even with nearly a million residents. People stand so close together sometimes that they touch and yet they don’t speak or acknowledge each other’s presence. Not here. Thank God.
We’re short on stores and long on rain, but after a while, everybody knows who you are.

His eye was on the widowed sparrow

Bang! Bang! Something hit a window. Hard. Like some jokester, a visitor trying to get my attention. But I live in the middle of nowhere, alone with my dog Annie. At twilight on a Sunday night, I was not expecting company.

Heart pounding, I left my computer and searched for the source of the sound, expecting/fearing to see a human or a large animal like a bear. In the living room, I saw Annie looking down into the flower bed. In the dim light, I still couldn’t see anything, so I went out.

Between the white daisies and the purple hebes, I saw a dusty-brown sparrow sitting cockeyed, tail up. She had hit the window and now sat stunned, possibly dying, her white-rimmed eye squinted in pain. Knowing I could not heal her, I could only pray. Lord, please let this sparrow live.

I went back to my computer, where I was on my fourth page of writing about how lonely I am, how every little thing is fraught with memories, how my husband and most of my birth family have died or live so far away I never see them, how I’m jealous of people with husbands and grandchildren. All this was sparked by seeing Annie’s mom and sister on our walk–her family. But now, thinking about the sparrow, I decided to quit my whining and play the piano for a while.

An hour later, I went back out with my flashlight. The sparrow had righted herself and her eye looked clearer, but she seemed to be pumping up and down, perhaps in pain? Oh God, please help her, I prayed. This time I was drawn to touch her. I put one finger on her soft feathers. So soft. “God bless you,” I said, and went back in.

At bedtime, I took one more look. She was still there. She looked the same, still alive, still pumping up and down. But this time I noticed something else. There were two birds. The other, a male, lay dead on the sidewalk, its feathers splayed out like a fan. Was she grieving? Would she stay here indefinitely or fly off when she felt strong enough? Please God, I prayed. Let her live. Let her be gone in the morning.

I thought about the two birds during the night, the dead male and the female rocking in pain or grief. (Is there any difference?) I don’t know why they hit the window. Perhaps they saw their reflection. Perhaps they were attracted by the light. Perhaps they were just flying along and bang! Everything changed forever.

This morning, the widowed sparrow was gone. In the light, I could see two patches of gray and white feathers stuck to the window glass where they hit. After breakfast, I will take the male’s weightless body to a resting place under the trees. The widowed sparrow, like me, will go on.

Time to clean the garage

My garage was looking pretty good until I cleaned out the storage locker. That 10 x 6 cubicle that Fred and I rented “for a few months” in 2001 was jammed with stuff that was getting mildewed and mouse-eaten. It wasn’t worth paying $45 a month to store things I never used. Where did I put everything? In the garage, in my single-car cobweb-covered already-full garage.

We’re talking camera and computer gear, an old TV, a semi-broken chair, a nightstand from my in-laws’ house, sewing paraphernalia and fabric up the wazoo, ancient stereo components, the old dog crate, boxes of old newspapers that I wrote articles for in the ‘70s, and books, books, books. Mucho stuff. Plus I save boxes just in case I might need to mail books or move, and I’ve got Fred’s wheelchair, clothing I’ve been cleaning out of the closets to give to Goodwill or somebody, and umpteen plastic bags and bottles that need recycling. It’s a good thing I have a relatively small car.
When I unloaded the storage locker, it was snowing. This is . . . September? Right. It’s been on my to-do list, honest. Well, one day last week, after I got a particularly nasty comment about something I had written, I tore into that garage. I worked up a sweat going through all the junk and putting it into piles: Goodwill, church bazaar, recycle, the dump, and oh maybe I’ll keep it. I’m happy to report the latter pile was small. Some things I might have kept but for the rust or mildew that made me not even want to touch them. Out, out, out.
The trouble is that everything contains a memory. It’s not just stuff; it’s my life. I remember when I used to develop film in the kitchen and print pictures in the bathroom with black cloth blocking out the light. I remember when I read all those books. I remember when I made the dress cut from that cloth. I admit I’m a saver, although not quite a hoarder. The older I get the more I like hanging onto my memories. But I can’t keep all this stuff.
So far, I have hit the recycle center and Goodwill and loaded the bazaar stuff into the car. I will go to the dump soon. And I’m going through those boxes of newspapers and tossing most of them. I remember each bylined story and what it was like to be a young reporter running around Gilroy or Milpitas or Pacifica in my VW bug doing interviews. I loved those days. But . . .
There’s one box I’m not tossing. It contains jacks, marbles, balls, a wooden flute, a harmonica, a couple of dolls, hopscotch charms, and other toys. I still want to play with my toys. Why not? They’re mine.
As the garage empties, I feel freer and lighter. But this is one of those jobs that don’t stay done. On my way home from Goodwill, I stopped at a garage sale, where I picked up a suitcase and a George Foreman grill for $3. What a deal. Now, where am I going to put them?