Sitting out here in the backyard of Jack & Jean’s place on Dorrance Lane.
Underneath the two great trees they planted.
Remembering the trampoline of my youth & the swing set & fort I bought for Nick & how Sam & the sons & daughters of my siblings enjoyed both.
Missing the hammock & reading to the boys.
And suddenly, I feel the need to climb a tree.
This is an insane idea at my age & state. But if I bring out a step ladder, I can get there.
Getting down will be a bitch.
But how much fun to linger there.
I am going to find my way to that limb.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The Greatest Thing since Coca-Cola
My friend Sue Ann McLauchlan Faulkner posted this on Facebook today:
Did you know that 124 years ago today on May 8, 1886, the first Coca-Cola was served? So let's celebrate by opening an ice-cold Coca-Cola and sharing some happiness with others today.
When I was a junior at El Paso’s Coronado High School, General Electric transferred my father to Houston. A place he once vowed he would never live. Too damned hot & humid.
I was seventeen, beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin. Totally entrenched in the drama of high school in the seventies. I was a finalist for class favorite – quite an accomplishment for a skinny nerd attempting to traverse all the levels of society that make up high school. I was on student council (the House, not the Senate). One of my best friends was on the football team.
At the time, unknown to anyone, I was suffering from a severe thyroid disease. I lost weight, I lost my prowess as a math whiz, I seldom slept, I forgot my class schedule. I thought I was going mad, that I was losing my mind.
Keep in mind, this was the late sixties & early seventies. Many of my friends were experimenting with drugs. But they all put the word out that no one was to introduce anything to me: She is already flying.
My friends compensated for me. The two Susies in my life, Aronson & Borschow, moved into my locker. They helped keep track of my schedule. I remember so many times, feeling lost & someone leading me, whispering: It is time for English. This period is World History. Jaki, you are supposed to be in Chemistry in the next building.
I remember the times when no one was near & I was forced to go to the office & say: My name is Jaki Ettinger & I need a copy of my schedule. Looking back, no one in the office found it strange that I came time after time for my schedule. But it was the late sixties & early seventies.
Many mornings, I would awake long before dawn, climb over our rock fence and make my way across the desert, climb a hill, and watch the sun rise.
There is nothing as beautiful or as serene as sunrise or sunset in the mountains.
So, I was not happy about moving to a place I only remembered from vacations: hot, humid, flat, unprotected. Not to mention attending a high school named after a man I personally held responsible for the onset of the Vietnam War.
Or about moving to a school where no one was aware that I might be a bit off-balance.
My friends gave me a surprise going away party at Betsey Kerr’s house. My last day at school, I had a party in every class. That evening, I attended a dress rehearsal of Brigadoon. And my dearest nearest friends took me to Grigg’s – one of my favorite Mexican restaurants.
The next day, fortified by sandwiches provided by my friend Susie Aronson, I walked through our garage, looking at the moving boxes.
On every box marked for my room, I wrote: Jaki is Great.
When we finally moved into our house in what is now Meadows Place, Texas, Fort Bend County, bordering Houston, I found a note underneath one of my proclamations that I was great:
Jaki is the greatest thing since Coca-Cola.
T
Did you know that 124 years ago today on May 8, 1886, the first Coca-Cola was served? So let's celebrate by opening an ice-cold Coca-Cola and sharing some happiness with others today.
When I was a junior at El Paso’s Coronado High School, General Electric transferred my father to Houston. A place he once vowed he would never live. Too damned hot & humid.
I was seventeen, beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin. Totally entrenched in the drama of high school in the seventies. I was a finalist for class favorite – quite an accomplishment for a skinny nerd attempting to traverse all the levels of society that make up high school. I was on student council (the House, not the Senate). One of my best friends was on the football team.
At the time, unknown to anyone, I was suffering from a severe thyroid disease. I lost weight, I lost my prowess as a math whiz, I seldom slept, I forgot my class schedule. I thought I was going mad, that I was losing my mind.
Keep in mind, this was the late sixties & early seventies. Many of my friends were experimenting with drugs. But they all put the word out that no one was to introduce anything to me: She is already flying.
My friends compensated for me. The two Susies in my life, Aronson & Borschow, moved into my locker. They helped keep track of my schedule. I remember so many times, feeling lost & someone leading me, whispering: It is time for English. This period is World History. Jaki, you are supposed to be in Chemistry in the next building.
I remember the times when no one was near & I was forced to go to the office & say: My name is Jaki Ettinger & I need a copy of my schedule. Looking back, no one in the office found it strange that I came time after time for my schedule. But it was the late sixties & early seventies.
Many mornings, I would awake long before dawn, climb over our rock fence and make my way across the desert, climb a hill, and watch the sun rise.
There is nothing as beautiful or as serene as sunrise or sunset in the mountains.
So, I was not happy about moving to a place I only remembered from vacations: hot, humid, flat, unprotected. Not to mention attending a high school named after a man I personally held responsible for the onset of the Vietnam War.
Or about moving to a school where no one was aware that I might be a bit off-balance.
My friends gave me a surprise going away party at Betsey Kerr’s house. My last day at school, I had a party in every class. That evening, I attended a dress rehearsal of Brigadoon. And my dearest nearest friends took me to Grigg’s – one of my favorite Mexican restaurants.
The next day, fortified by sandwiches provided by my friend Susie Aronson, I walked through our garage, looking at the moving boxes.
On every box marked for my room, I wrote: Jaki is Great.
When we finally moved into our house in what is now Meadows Place, Texas, Fort Bend County, bordering Houston, I found a note underneath one of my proclamations that I was great:
This is a declaration of a childish, immature, unimaginative mind.
The correct declaration should be:
Jaki is the greatest thing since Coca-Cola.
T
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
About Douglas the Purple Mouse
When we were still living on Morningstar Lane, and I was attending Cabell Elementary, and Sue Ann McLauchlan was my best friend, at some point in some year, Sue gave me a set of pins.
Two purple mice with crystal eyes and gold toned tails.
Sue moved away first, then my family & I moved from Dallas to El Paso.
But I always kept those mice with me.
Most people who know me well understand that, at heart, I am a bit shy. Others find the concept out of sync with the Jaki Jean they know.
But, in high school, I was shy & eager to meet new & interesting people. And a bit demented.
So I retrieved one of those mice, pinned it to the inner lapel of my orange corduroy coat, & started introducing Douglas.
Whenever there was someone I thought I wanted to know, I would approach them & say:
Excuse me, my friend Douglas would like to meet you. He is a bit shy.
Then they would ask to meet Douglas & I would open my coat & say This is Douglas.
Douglas took me a long way at Coronado High School. I met a lot of people. It was the late sixties & early seventies & sometimes people sought me out to meet Douglas.
When one of his eyes fell out & his tail broke, we had a funeral & buried Douglas in one of the beds in the patio, somewhere outside the English department.
And when my father was transferred to Houston & we had to leave, my friends & I dug up Douglas.
He is with me still.
As is Sue Ann McLauchlan Faulkner.
Two purple mice with crystal eyes and gold toned tails.
Sue moved away first, then my family & I moved from Dallas to El Paso.
But I always kept those mice with me.
Most people who know me well understand that, at heart, I am a bit shy. Others find the concept out of sync with the Jaki Jean they know.
But, in high school, I was shy & eager to meet new & interesting people. And a bit demented.
So I retrieved one of those mice, pinned it to the inner lapel of my orange corduroy coat, & started introducing Douglas.
Whenever there was someone I thought I wanted to know, I would approach them & say:
Excuse me, my friend Douglas would like to meet you. He is a bit shy.
Then they would ask to meet Douglas & I would open my coat & say This is Douglas.
Douglas took me a long way at Coronado High School. I met a lot of people. It was the late sixties & early seventies & sometimes people sought me out to meet Douglas.
When one of his eyes fell out & his tail broke, we had a funeral & buried Douglas in one of the beds in the patio, somewhere outside the English department.
And when my father was transferred to Houston & we had to leave, my friends & I dug up Douglas.
He is with me still.
As is Sue Ann McLauchlan Faulkner.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Jaki Jean on Jean
This evening, watching the early news, I told my mother that I wanted to go on record. That the last thing I wanted to see was a musical of Little House on the Prairie.
A bit later, she rolled into the kitchen & said:
I just want to go on record. I do not want to watch a rendition of Romeo & Juliet with Ellen & Rosie.
We laughed & I said, of course, Juliet was played by a man.
So what a gender bender it could be, Rosie & Ellen, playing those roles.
A woman as a woman, a woman as a man.
And my mother smiled.
A bit later, she rolled into the kitchen & said:
I just want to go on record. I do not want to watch a rendition of Romeo & Juliet with Ellen & Rosie.
We laughed & I said, of course, Juliet was played by a man.
So what a gender bender it could be, Rosie & Ellen, playing those roles.
A woman as a woman, a woman as a man.
And my mother smiled.
Friday, April 23, 2010
It's the surface Navy's worst loss of life during peace time operations.
I remember the call I received twenty-one years ago.
I was sitting at my desk in the Washington Hilton, contemplating the wording in a corporate brochure or a bride’s choice of flowers and colors and I answered the phone.
It was Leslie, a friend of my youngest brother.
Leslie, who arrived as my father was in the midst of a massive heart attack and performed CPR and brought him back. Only for the paramedics to lose him on the way to the hospital.
I still see her in the Emergency waiting room, and I hear her saying I never lost anyone before.
And then I hear her say over the phone, Are you watching CNN? There has been an explosion on the Iowa.
Of course I was not watching CNN – I was contemplating the magnificent and the mundane of floral choices. My youngest brother was on the Iowa.
I made a call to a woman I worked with on an Inaugural Ball for George I, a woman whose son worked with Naval Intelligence. And I tell her that my baby brother is on the Iowa and that I need to tell our mother something.
She made a call.
Her son the Naval Intelligence Officer called me.
His name is not on the list of the dead or the wounded or the missing. This is all I can tell you.
So I had that to tell our mother. He was alive.
My brother does not talk about the turret explosion. Except that some of the sailors he brought to crash in my apartment on Virginia Avenue in D.C. died that day. And that there was not a lot left in the turret.
With all due respect to that kind Intelligence Officer who tried so to give my mother comfort.
My brother was not dead or missing.
But he, like so many others, was wounded.
In peace time.
So what has left our men & women wounded in these war times>
I remember the call I received twenty-one years ago.
I was sitting at my desk in the Washington Hilton, contemplating the wording in a corporate brochure or a bride’s choice of flowers and colors and I answered the phone.
It was Leslie, a friend of my youngest brother.
Leslie, who arrived as my father was in the midst of a massive heart attack and performed CPR and brought him back. Only for the paramedics to lose him on the way to the hospital.
I still see her in the Emergency waiting room, and I hear her saying I never lost anyone before.
And then I hear her say over the phone, Are you watching CNN? There has been an explosion on the Iowa.
Of course I was not watching CNN – I was contemplating the magnificent and the mundane of floral choices. My youngest brother was on the Iowa.
I made a call to a woman I worked with on an Inaugural Ball for George I, a woman whose son worked with Naval Intelligence. And I tell her that my baby brother is on the Iowa and that I need to tell our mother something.
She made a call.
Her son the Naval Intelligence Officer called me.
His name is not on the list of the dead or the wounded or the missing. This is all I can tell you.
So I had that to tell our mother. He was alive.
My brother does not talk about the turret explosion. Except that some of the sailors he brought to crash in my apartment on Virginia Avenue in D.C. died that day. And that there was not a lot left in the turret.
With all due respect to that kind Intelligence Officer who tried so to give my mother comfort.
My brother was not dead or missing.
But he, like so many others, was wounded.
In peace time.
So what has left our men & women wounded in these war times>
Sunday, April 4, 2010
T & I
I wonder when it was that I started crossing my Ts and dotting my I s as I write, instead of waiting until the end of the sentence, or at least until the end of the word, to take care of that penmanship housekeeping.
I looked up the whole concept of crossing t and dotting i.
Generally, it means being careful, thorough and precise: including all the required elements of detail.
It comes, I believe, from the days of manuscript copying where the letters i and t were carelessly left unadorned by their dots and cross-strokes because they required a break from the continuous flow of the writing.
So, if I read these definitions correctly, my obsession with crossing t and dotting i as I write is a sign of precision & a willingness to break the continuous flow of my thoughts.
Fractal instead of linear.
Excellent.
I looked up the whole concept of crossing t and dotting i.
Generally, it means being careful, thorough and precise: including all the required elements of detail.
It comes, I believe, from the days of manuscript copying where the letters i and t were carelessly left unadorned by their dots and cross-strokes because they required a break from the continuous flow of the writing.
So, if I read these definitions correctly, my obsession with crossing t and dotting i as I write is a sign of precision & a willingness to break the continuous flow of my thoughts.
Fractal instead of linear.
Excellent.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
About that Thanksgiving
There was no carrot souffle.
But there was baby Ailee, my sister's grandchild. Beautiful & bubbly & intense.
Like her parents.
I missed the souffle.
But there was baby Ailee, my sister's grandchild. Beautiful & bubbly & intense.
Like her parents.
I missed the souffle.
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