Mom

She was a mother of three before her twenty-sixth birthday. Before her twenty-eighth birthday she had sent her alcoholic husband packing and was supporting her children on her own.

She worked night's car hopping and waitressing. By day she changed diapers, dried tears and did her best to be the best mom and dad she could be. Before long she landed a job as a teller, which without much planning led to a banking career for her.

She was den mother and a little league booster. She sewed costumes. She taught phonics. Without much assistance she was able to purchase her own house.

She dated but if the man she was seeing had no interest in her children than he was soon sent packing. One night while at the lodge with her boyfriend she saw that a trip was coming up to Palm Springs. She asked him to take her and the kids, he said I will take you but we will leave the kids at home. The man sitting to her right spoke up and said he would love to take her and the kids. She said agreed and that how she met her one true love.

They married and they moved to a bigger house. She worked hard to make her new life work and it did. Her children grew and developed into responsible young adults. At the bank she found herself in management and began taking classes to facilitate her climb up the corporate ladder.

Just when the future seemed set in stone health problems developed. She developed breast cancer. After a mastectomy she went back to work and began chemo treatments. After six months the cancer was in remission and after five years she was cancer free. He had a heart attack.

The children moved out and life began to mellow. Now that it was just the two of them they began to travel. Cruises and cross-country drives. They had a pool and a Jacuzzi put in at the house so they could entertain all of their friends.

They began to look forward to retirement but before any firm plans could be considered he developed lung cancer and before she knew it she found herself a widow at forty-eight. She continued to work and move up through the bank. She spent time with her children and her grandchildren. She bought herself a place near Laughlin, Nevada on the Colorado river where she could go relax on the weekends.

As the corporate world changed she took early retirement, sold her house and moved to the river full time. Before she became too comfortable in her new life of leisure she had a major heart attack and a second mastectomy when the breast cancer returned.

Today her health is good and she spends her free time visiting her grandchildren and playing video poker. She is a wonderful person and I am proud to call her mom.

Rain

With the late spring rain
Came the final scene
Where the woman he loved
Broke his heart
It was a Tuesday
In May
At a little hotel
In Santa Barbara
Where the roar of the surf
Couldn't cover the sound
Of his breaking heart

Without an intro, she began
There's another man she said
They had been sharing a bed
For the past year or two

And he felt like such a fool
Watching her sit there, looking so cool
While he fell apart, like a little boy
Who had just lost his favorite toy

With tear filled eyes he asked her why
With heart wrenching sobs he begged please don't lie
He needed the truth, no matter how it hurt

She closed her eyes for quite awhile
Before she whispered
Once upon a time I loved you
I would have sworn that love was true
But as the years passed by
I won't lie, that love faded away
Than he came into my life
He made everything seem all right
He gave me his love, and he set my heart free
I am sorry and I never meant to hurt you
But now the time has come for me to leave
With that, she turned her back
And without a good by she was gone

He sat in quiet solitude
His soul like a ship on a stormy sea
Being tossed and turned
By the waves her words produced
He cried, he screamed, he considered suicide
No not that he thought
I want to live
With her or without her
I will survive
A better person for loving her
A stronger person for losing her
Though no matter how I fight it
I will love her
Until the end of time

Premonitions

On at least three separate occasions in my life I have experienced something akin to a premonition. Now I am not claiming to have ESP or anything like that. However two of the three "premonitions" mentioned above did actually prove to have some validity to them. Instinctually I believe the third one was also accurate but since I cannot prove it I count it as a miss.

Premonition First: one afternoon during our junior year of high school my friend J. and I decided to take a drive. Like most sixteen year olds we wanted to test the boundaries of our newfound freedom.

Not to far from our high school was Santa Anita canyon. The road to the canyon was several miles of twists and turns, which ended at a parking lot with a spectacular view of the San Gabriel Valley. The canyon was popular with teenagers for three basic reasons, the thrill of the drive, partying and of course it was a perfect place to bring your girlfriend on a Friday night or any other night for that matter.

On this particular day I was driving and J. was just enjoying the scenery. About halfway up the mountain my entire being was suddenly in the clutches of the worst fear I had ever experienced. For no logical reason I knew I had to pull the car over as close to the edge of the road as possible and stop. Something like this had never happened to me before but I did not question the feeling. I pulled over till my right tires were almost kissing the clouds and stopped the car. My hands were shaking and J. was looking at me like I had lost my mind but my throat was so dry that I could not even explain what I was doing I just sat there.

My fear grew steadily until off in the distance we both heard the screeching of car tires. Not two hundred yards away from where we were stopped a speeding car came around the corner in our lane. If we had continued forward my car would have probably been pushed over a cliff and fell a thousand feet to the rocks below. The other car sped past us, missed the next turn and went over the edge.

I quickly turned my car around and headed back down the mountain for help. We found a pay phone and J. called the police. As it turns out that there were four guys in the car who had all been smoking pot and drinking. Three of the four survived the accident the one who didn't was not wearing is seatbelt and was thrown from the car smashing his skull on a boulder.

Premonition Second: another friend and another canyon. I was not driving my friend S. was. We had gone out to dinner and since his car was new he wanted to see how it handled on some mountain roads. So we drove up into Azusa canyon, which was not far from where we lived. It was a beautiful night, the windows were down the stereo was blasting and all was right with the world. Suddenly for no reason at all there was a cold shiver running up and down my spine. My mind was filled once again with stark terror. I managed to yell at S. to stop the car. He did and looked at me like I was nuts. In a shaky voice I explained to him that I knew if we drove much further up the mountain something horrible would happen.

At first he laughed at me because he thought I was pulling his leg. Than he saw the look in my eyes and realized I was serious. I told him I know it sounds crazy and you don't have to believe me but just turn around for me. It took a few minutes but S. finally listened to me and headed back down the mountain.

Nothing happened and S. would kid me about it every once in a while but somewhere deep inside there is a part of me that still believes if we had continued up that mountain something would have gone wrong.

Premonition Third: in 1982 my girlfriend at the time and I were moving into a new apartment. I had taken the day off from work to move our stuff. Our new place was about a block from Foothill Blvd., which is a very busy street especially during rush hour.

Two of my friends had come over to help move the heavy stuff and after a long day we were sitting around the table shooting the breeze. Again for no explainable reason I knew something was wrong. Without a word I jumped up from the table and ran for the door. A chorus of what's wrongs followed me and as I hit the landing I shouted over my shoulder that L.(my girlfriend) was going to be in an accident. As I ran down the stairs I heard my somewhat confused friends following me and in the distance the unmistakable sound of a metal on metal collision.

When I reached the corner I found my girlfriends car with the passenger side door caved in. She had been attempting a left hand turn and never saw the car that hit her. Fortunately both her and the other driver were banged up but otherwise they were fine.

So there you have it my three experiences with premonitions. I must have only been allotted a trio of premonitions because I have not had one for over twenty years.

To Tip or not To Tip

Everyone has one, from your neighbor to your mother; everyone has his or her very own restaurant horror story. Most of us have more than one.

Several years ago a group of us were dining out at one of the chain restaurants. We had all eaten at this particular location before and never encountered a single problem. So our expectations were that we would be sharing an enjoyable evening amongst friends.

Right from the start clouds of doom began forming on our dining horizon. What was presented to us, as a twenty-five minute wait somehow became a seventy-five minute wait. No problem we thought, its Friday night these things happen. We were in the bar having a few cocktails before dinner so we accepted the delay without complaint.

We were finally seated after close to a ninety-minute wait, which in reality is not bad for Los Angeles on a Friday night.

Our next sign of impending doom appeared when we arrived at our table. Though someone had apparently attempted to bus the table there were still a few soiled napkins and used silverware scattered about. The table was filthy and the previous diners either had a child with them or they had been raised by wolves because the floor beneath the table held the scattered remain of at least one meal.

Without batting an eye our hostess, with a straight face, told us to take a seat and she would send someone over to finish cleaning the table. This is the point where we should have headed to the nearest In & Out for Double-Doubles and fries but no we must have been feeling rather masochistic that evening so we stayed for the floorshow. A busboy finally showed up, wiped down the table and brought us utensils and water. He even remembered to bring a sweeper to clean the buffet out from under the table.

We perused the menus, made our choices and looked about us expecting that some member of the wait staff would swoop down on our table pad in hand ready to take our orders. Of course that was entirely too ask. There was not even a restaurant employee within shouting distance of our table. Finally, just about the time we had begun to second-guess our asking the busboy to remove the floor level buffet our server arrived.

Talk about a waitress with a chip on her shoulder this woman was hauling one of the Giant Sequoias around behind her. Surly, snotty, snobbish I mean if you had seen her on the street you would have crossed to the other side just to avoid her. By this point in time we were really not concerned with whom our server was we just wanted to eat.

It was a simple order really. Everyone ordered ribs and baked potatoes easy to prepare easy to deliver right. Wrong. When she finally returned with our food instead of six orders of ribs there were three. Instead of the other three ribs we had received grilled chicken breasts. We attempted to explain to our lovely server what our actual order was but having to think seemed to confuse her so we finally asked for a manager to come to the table. He corrected the problem and replaced the chicken plates with rib plates.

It was not until we began eating that we discovered that all of our potatoes were undercooked and two of them were not cooked at all. We did not even bother to mention this latest development to the restaurants obvious choice for employee of the month as she was busy whispering sweet nothings to one of the busboys. Not once during the meal did miss sunshine surprise us with a visit to ask if we needed anything else.

Finally we managed to gnaw our way through the last of the rib bones and we decided it was time to head for home. The atmosphere was just too heady for our taste. We were finally able to get the personality queens attention and managed to convey our need for a check so we could leave.

Once we divided the tab a small debate ensued, to tip or not to tip, that was the question. Most of the table was on the anti-tipping side. Two were for leaving a moderate tip as they felt that it was proper to leave something. My vote was for leaving a dollar tip. I felt that leaving no tip was too obvious and leaving a moderate tip was undeserved. My point was a one-dollar tip for a seventy-five dollar tab was just subtle enough to be insulting. I was able to sway my fellow diners with my convoluted logic and we left one dollar.

Now for the punch line: as we headed for the parking lot we heard someone shouting for us to wait. We stopped figuring maybe one of us had left something behind. Turning we saw our waitress running toward us waving our one dollar tip. Upon reaching us she started ranting about how it was customary to leave at least a fifteen percent tip and that one-dollar did not cut it for a seventy-five dollar tab. I in turn informed her that it was customary to provide service worthy of a fifteen percent tip and since she hadn't she received the tip she deserved. At that point I reached out and removed our dollar from her hand and informed her that chasing a customer out to the parking lot was such a classless act that she no longer deserved even that tip.

With that we turned and walked away leaving one stunned waitress in the parking lot.

Bedtime Stories

Friday nights my siblings and I would stay at our Grandmothers. Sometimes until one or two in the morning when my mom and step-dad would return from their night on the town. My brother and sister were always in bed by nine but by virtual of being the oldest I was allowed to stay up until eleven or eleven thirty.

I can still smell the sheets of the bed I would sleep in. Nana had a washing machine but she never would use her dryer. Her sheets were always hung on the clothesline to dry. The scents they absorbed were nothing like the artificial scents of today. Oranges, lemons, tangerines, fresh cut grass all of natures ingredients would mix into wonderful new perfumes that became with the linens I slept on.

Nana was a nurse and always worked the graveyard shift. On Friday nights she would tuck me and listen to my prayers while she was fixing her hair and preparing to leave for work. If I close my eyes I can still see her wearing one of those starchy all white uniforms of old and a matching nurses hat clipped to her hair with several bobby pins.

Once my prayers were finished she would sit on the end of my bed and share a few stories with me. Most children my age would be tucked into bed with tales of knights and dragons, princesses and rogues while all the while my grandmother was sharing with me the latest news and gossip from the ward she worked on. Nana worked at the City of Hope and she spent most of her career there on what she called "the terminal ward". In the late sixties and early seventies most cancer treatments were not very successful so her job was primarily to reduce the suffering of and provide comfort to those in the final stages of their battle. So her "stories" primarily consisted of which patients might not make it through the night, what families were handling things well and which ones weren't.

So as my peers floated off to dreamland on white feathery clouds, riding mighty steeds and saving the fair damsel in distress. While my dreams were dominated by the angel of death and visions of souls taken to soon wandering the wards unable to accept the fact that their time on earth was through.

Now that I think about it I would not have had it any other way.

Yesterday's Lovers

Yesterday, wisps of fog could be found swirling amongst the ancient oaks, ghosts from another time. Today the oaks are without chaperones. Lonely sentinels left to guard the memories of those who are no longer gravities prisoners. The ground beneath their limbs is bare but for granite stones, cold and impersonal, scattered upon the earth. A sober acceptance of the passing seasons entwined with the denial of times never ending march. Visitors are few to these somber acres. Hidden from view behind rusted, wrought iron fences fighting a losing battle with the encroaching vines. The few who still make the journey are barely discernible from those who have already moved beyond this realm. Old beyond their years they still fight for the memory of those who have passed before them. Feeble attempts are made to clear the weeds from around the stone that marks the passing of one they loved. Silent prayers are shared as tears from still grieving eyes soak through the earth to the bones below. Each visit made is a solemn reminder that soon there will be not one but two names etched in stone.

From the top of the old hill where teenagers still park a mournful fog once again winds its way through the stones. In the silent darkness the living will drink their beer and dare each other to slip through the fence and touch one of the stones. While in the fog bound darkness yesterday's lovers, rise from the dust and dance to the rhythm of the stars.

Tears in the Sand

She stood at the cities border her back to all she had ever known or loved. Before her lay a journey of unspeakable hardship and pain, a journey that would either break her or like Moses before her she would emerge from the harsh desert cleansed by God's furnace.

She thought about the life she was leaving behind. A small flat, where on warm nights her parents would often find her stretched out on a blanket. A smile on her face as she lost herself in the wonders of the universe and the many gifts of God's creation.

Her parents were gone now. No ones fault. She found herself avoiding the roof. In her eyes the universe held no more wonders. A god who could randomly remove her parents from her life was not a god she chose to believe in. After the funeral she boxed all of the holy books and religious artifacts and placed them in the back of the storeroom.

Many months passed but for her time had stopped. Books lay scattered about her room unread. Knocks on the door went unanswered. When she did leave the flat it was for the bare necessities: bread, fruit, canned goods and tea.

Old friends and new attempted to pass through the doorway into her inner sanctum but they were turned away one and all. Without realizing it she had begun to confuse independence with pride. Even the most independent of souls needs to lean on someone sometime. However, her pride would not allow her to see her need for friends as a virtue but clung to the belief that to lean on someone was to show weakness.

So now she stood with her back to the city she once loved and began a journey into desolation in search of salvation.

Her plan was simple her against the scorching sands of the desert. The heat and sandstorms would either kill her or heal her. On her back she carried to water skins, dates and hard bread. She had a rough map that purported to show the locations of several oasis's but who knew anything of its accuracy.

She set out at dusk figuring she could walk further with less water if she traveled by night and slept by day. Before long the walls of her small city were lost to the horizon and she found herself truly alone for the first time. For miles in every direction was empty desert, behind her barely visible in the darkness were her footprints. Glistening in the moonlight from the many tears that escaped as she roamed the desolate wilderness. Before her lay empty sand smooth and flat awaiting her footsteps.

By the third day she began to lose track of how many days she had been walking. The calendar of her old world lost its importance as she began to rely on the sun and moon as her timepieces.

Every other day or so she would stumble across a small oasis, little more than a mud hole with a few date palms taking advantage of what moisture there was. Here she would wash the desert sand from her feet and allow herself a few extra hours of rest before continuing her journey.

No matter how far she traveled she found she still had tears to cry. She cried for her parents, for forgotten friends and for lost opportunities. She found herself crying in her sleep for worlds she had never known and beings she had never seen.

Finally there came a day where she could cry no more. The bitterness, the sadness, the anger, the envy all of it had been washed from her soul.

Just before sunrise she came across a true oasis. Beautiful trees, a large pool of fresh water everything a weary traveler could want. She dropped her pack and jumped in the water soaking the grime from her skin and the last bits of darkness from her soul.

When she emerged she lie down in the tall grass and fell asleep.

She awoke to the sound of goats rustling in the grass and drinking from the pool. Nearby sitting on a large flat rock sat an old man. He had a small fire going. He looked up and spotted her.

"Come join me young one," his lips barely moved when he spoke but his voice was crisp and clear.

He began asking her questions about her travels where she had been and where she planned to go. He told her things about herself that she did not even know. His gentle eyes looked into her heart and soul and her spirit was naked before him.

He began to softly speak: "Young one you have learned and accomplished much on your journey. In the beginning you looked deep into yourself and found yourself wanting. So you set out on your own to find what was missing. You traveled across a desert that strikes fear in grown men and yet you survived. Along the way you discarded that which was needed no more: anger, selfishness, bitterness, sorrow, aloofness and stubbornness. Each tear you cried washed these traits from your soul. However my daughter you made this journey harder on yourself than necessary. Your friends and family would have held you as you cried and your tears washed these traits from your soul. Look back my daughter look at the footprints you have left behind. Each tear has brought to life a solitary rose. Roses are beautiful alone but in a bouquet their beauty knows no boundaries. You belong in a bouquet of friends and family my daughter each rose is important to the bouquet and now it is time for you to rejoin your bouquet."

She sat in silence for many hours pondering the words of the goat herder. She drifted off into a dreamless sleep. She awoke feeling refreshed, she stretched and…..

Opened her eyes finding herself not in the desert but in her own bed. On her bedside table was a bouquet of the most exquisite roses she had ever seen. She slowly sat up and looked around her something was different. What she wasn't sure but something. She stood up from her bed just as the door to her room opened….

without thinking she flew into the arms of her parents crying tears of joy.