Where in the World?

                I came away from the mailbox disappointed again. Walking into the house sighing for the fourth day in a row, I said to my family, "This is silly. I'm a 46 year old woman, depressed because the paper doll I'm expecting in the mail hasn't arrived yet."

                You see, hundreds of miles away, an eight year old that I claim as a nephew, despite a lack of blood or marriage ties, has a school assignment. (I've claimed his mother as part of my family for decades – in fact, pretty much my whole life – so I get the rest of her family as a bonus.) His mom phoned and said, "So, we've got this Flat Stanley thing. Do you want to help?" Do I? I practically jumped up and down shouting, "Pick me! Pick me!"

                If you've had a child in elementary school any time in the past two decades or so, you've come across Flat Stanley. He's the hero of a children's book, flattened in a freak bulletin board accident. Stanley discovers that his new situation is convenient, travelwise – he can go anywhere for the price of a stamp. Schools all over America now encourage kids to create their own Stanley, or a paper version of themselves, and send him or her to visit friends and relatives. The students mark on a map the places the doll has visited, and learn about those places. It's a fun way to incorporate geography, social studies and letter writing skills into the kids' lessons. The doll is typically photographed wherever s/he visits, and brings those photos and maybe postcards or souvenirs back home to his/her creator.

                 When my son's third grade class did their project, they chose one boy and one girl to represent the class, and made life size Flat Gilberto and Flat Hannah. We got to take Flat Hannah over spring break, and we took a lot of our photos at Disneyland, within minutes of my nephew Jack's house. We have photos of Flat Hannah with Mickey Mouse, at Sea World, and across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. We carried Flat Hannah in a legal sized manila envelope and whipped her out at every opportunity. Flat Hannah rides the Small World boats! Flat Hannah rides the Sun Wheel in California Adventure! As the week progressed, my son (who hates a scene in public) started gritting his teeth. "We have enough pictures, Mom."

                "We don't have any here!" I'd say.

                When his teacher created a page to represent their class in the school yearbook, she put the photo of Flat Hannah and Mickey Mouse in the center of the page. I was delighted. My son was mildly embarrassed.

                My nephew, Jack, had done the standard kid thing of setting his assignment aside and forgetting about it, so that by the time it came to his mother's attention, time was at a premium. I wouldn't have time to get extraordinarily creative, but I'd have time to get local landmarks and have some fun.

                I waited impatiently until Flat Jack showed up. On the day he arrived, my kids knew how excited I'd be. "Mooooom. He's heeeeere."

                I had an entire itinerary planned. I took off on a round trip drive of approximately six hours, stopping to take two or three dozen photos. Flat Jack visited museums, lakes, the major river in our area, petroglyphs, the Navy Air Base that currently houses the Top Gun flight school, an old military fort and Pony Express stop and the highway that "Life" magazine proclaimed "The Loneliest Road in America."

                I took Flat Jack downtown and shot photos, including one under the Reno arch. A family walking down the sidewalk wanted to know where my doll was from and informed me, with glee, "We have a bear." The tiny teddy bear came out of a purse and was suitably photographed under the arch.

                As I taped Flat Jack to a light pole in front of the ballpark and shot him from different angles, the rickshaw driver, waiting for customers needing a ride back to their cars, said, "Ma'am, I've seen a lot of strange things in Reno, but I'm not even going to ask what you're doing."

                For his trip to Virginia City, I actually made Flat Jack a paper bag vest and cowboy hat, so he could get an "old time photo," one of the more popular souvenirs there.

                I also sent Jack brochures and computer printouts from the places the doll and I visited. It's a good thing I used a flat rate mailing envelope.

                At dinner a week later, my 26 year old nephew and my 24 year old daughter ribbed me about the whole thing. "Did you talk to him? Did you buckle him into his seat?"

                This enthusiasm for school projects is a major reason that I got good grades. Yes, I was that kid, the one who got excited when the teacher announced an assignment – "We get to build a scale model of the Great Pyramid at Giza, using sugar cubes? YAAAAAYYYYY!"

                When I was in elementary school, the teacher announced that for our homework, we needed to bring in a leaf from three separate types of plants. I remember clearly one boy wailing that the assignment was too hard. "It shouldn't be that hard," the teacher said. "Just go out in your back yard."

                "I don't have a back yard. We live in an apartment."

                "Well, does your complex have a common area, maybe a playground?"

"NO!"

                "Does it have any lawn, and maybe a tree?"

                "A lawn, but no trees."

                "So there's no other plants besides grass? There's no shrubs or anything?"

                "What are shrubs?"

                "Bushes. Are there any bushes?"

                "Maybe, but not like, right next to our door or anything."

                "Ok, so in your complex, you have a lawn and a bush. There's two leaves right there. There's bound to be a dandelion or some clover in the lawn, so there's your three." The kid pouted.

                I never understood those kids. I went home to my yard, which was over an acre (not counting the horse pasture), and I filled an entire binder. That's how I learned the names of the various plants, so from then on I knew a yew from a juniper. I picked the leaves, mounted them on binder paper, and labeled them. I coveted leaves from our neighbor's tree, a catalpa, since it had huge leaves. After clearing it with my mom, I asked for a leaf, which they gladly gave. It was the largest leaf I had, almost dinner plate size, and I thought it was very clever that I mounted it on the same page as the smallest leaf, a weeping willow. (No blades of grass for me.)

                My teacher, who was familiar with my work, was still floored. "Where did you get all these?"

                "From my yard."

                "All of them?"

                "Well, except one from my neighbors."

                "Where do you live?"

                "Probasco Way."

                The teacher was still puzzled. My fairly ordinary street didn't seem like a botanical paradise.

                I thought of that project when a family friend, Brandi (a freshman) had a similar project for her biology class. "We have to get 20 different kinds of leaves," she told her mother.

                "Oh! Oh! I know EXACTLY where you need to go!" I told her.

                She looked puzzled. "The teacher said to go to Rancho San Rafael or somewhere."

                "No! You need to go to my mother's house!" I was very enthusiastic about the whole thing.

                Brandi said, "Wow. You're more excited about this than my teacher was, and she's pretty excited."

                My mom is now elderly and walks with a walker, so she couldn't come around the yard with us, but she wanted to make sure that Brandi got the full range of leaves. "Don't forget this. Did you make sure she got some of that?" Brandi was excited. More than once, she said, "Our teacher told us we probably wouldn't find any like this!"

                My mom rocks.

                When Brandi brought in her labeled binder full of leaves, she got the same question. "Where did you get all these?"

                "My friend's grandmother's yard."

                She got a good grade. Brandi rocks.

                Last year, my son took an ancient civilizations class in which he had to complete five projects per semester, reflecting whatever civilization they were currently studying. One of the suggested projects was creating a mock archaeological dig.

                My mother still has her horse pasture, even though no horses have lived there for decades. My son gathered up some of the knick knacks I have, some kite string, a yardstick and a shovel, and walked down to his grandmother's house. (We live only two blocks away.) He laid out a string grid pattern, and buried my dollar store antiquities.

                My son also rocks.

                You can guess what his teachers asked. "Where did you do this?"

                "My grandma's house."

                "Where did you get this stuff?"

                "My mom has stuff like this just lying around." (This is quite true.)

                 What would we do, though, without Grandma's yard?

                Grandma: facilitating good grades for generations.

If You Read it on the Internet, it Must be True... Right?

Ah, prom season; it's here again, like it or not. Whether you're on the "like it" side or the "not" side will likely depend on your age and gender.
 
I always wanted a gorgeous, romantic prom night. Then I got to be old enough to actually attend a prom, and realized that my chances at "romantic" were slim to none. I gave up the fantasy pretty easily, with no depression or weeping. Plus, I ended up with a great senior prom story that included my best friend, her debate partner, a sports car, McDonald's and a freshman in drag. (See "Prom Memories", my post on 6/17/11.)
 
For the most part, my kids attended formals with friends, some opposite gender, and some same gender. My oldest shopped for hours; my second bought the first dress that fit her.
 
My second daughter's senior prom date is undoubtedly responsible for an Internet rumor that will come back to bite somebody on the butt some day. "Chris!" I said, when he put a comment on his MySpace. "You can't say that! People will believe you!"
 
"No, they won't," he said. "They know I'm kidding."
 
"No! They don't! Trust me!"
 
He laughed.
 
 I wasn't angry with him, and he wasn't spreading false rumors of sexual conquest – far from it. I was simply sure that he was vastly underestimating the average person's ability and willingness to believe the outlandish, especially when it involves religion and sex.
 
Terry, my daughter, had a beautiful sky blue gown with beading. It was sleeveless, so I took material from the matching shawl that she didn't intend to wear and used it to make cap sleeves. On the day of the prom, she went to her cousin Sarah's house so that Sarah could do her makeup. The theme was "Arabian Nights," and Sarah does exotic so much better than we could have done it at home.
 
Sarah's meticulous, but not very speedy, so it took longer than we'd anticipated. Even though Sarah only lived a few blocks away, Terry was running late. She ran upstairs to put on her dress, and in her haste she popped the zipper.
 
It didn't just jump off the track or lose its pull tab – it wrenched loose with such force that the entire sliding mechanism flew off the dress, taking a number of zipper teeth with it. It was low on her back too, leaving the entire back of the dress gaping open. There was no way that the dress would zip up.
 
Chris stood downstairs waiting while we stared at the dress. They were already likely to be late for their dinner reservation, and Terry's dress was almost unwearable.
 
I ran downstairs and grabbed the thread that was the same color as the dress, a needle, and Chris. I sat on the toilet and sewed up the back of the dress while Terry chatted with Chris, who found the whole thing amusing. Luckily, the stitching was almost invisible on the blue nylon zipper. They were only slightly delayed, and went off to have a grand time.
 
Our church has an unspoken tradition that encourages kids to wear their formalwear to church the day after a formal dance, so that everyone can ooh and aah over them. Terry was so tired when she got home from the prom that she fell into bed without getting cut out of her dress. I was sure that it would be too mussed and rumpled to wear in the morning, but I was wrong.
 
I have no idea how she did it, but Terry slept in one position, on her back, all night long. Even her hair and makeup barely needed touched up. She looked marvelous. I would have looked like I'd been shoved in the trunk of a car for a week.
 
Chris, who does not belong to our church, told everyone that the whole thing was a religious ritual, that our church required girls to be sewn into their formals to make sure they stayed on all night. He embellished it even further – "Then, they have to sleep in the dresses and go to church and show the bishop the next morning, so he can see that they left it on all night. That way he knows they weren't having sex." If they didn't do these things, there would be church disciplinary action taken, he told people.
 
He did not believe me that people would take him seriously.
 
"For one thing, I mean, it's a dress. The skirt goes up," he said. Obviously, leaving a dress on does not mean that no sexual activity can take place. That alone would make it obvious that he was joking, he was sure.
 
I am not so sure. I think that somewhere, someone is convinced that Chris was telling the truth. "I actually know someone this happened to!" they'll say.
 
If you ever hear someone tell you such a story, even if they insist that it's absolutely true, now you'll know where and how the story started.
 
It was just haste and a cheap zipper, folks, not a religious ritual or requirement. I promise.
 
Before Terry wore the dress again, I used more of the shawl material to sew a flap to one side of the back opening, then put ribbon loops and lacing up the back. It looks great, it allows for weight gain (or loss), and there's no zipper to break.
 
No, lacing does not count as being sewn in. I'm telling you, that's a rumor!

Out of the Dark

I always figured that I'd pretty much breeze through the physical signs of aging. When a friend despaired to me that, "Heads don't automatically turn when I walk into a room anymore," it was all I could do not to snort. I did say, "Welcome to the real world!" Heads have never turned when I walk into a room. Not only do 99% of my male friends not see me as female, a good portion of my female friends don't, either. I am gender neutral. This is totally OK with me. It weeds out the shallow men who don't want to talk to you unless they're hoping to have sex with you, as well as the catty, plastic looking Barbie women who are afraid that ordinariness is contagious.

Gray hair and wrinkles? Pfffttt. I earned these. Besides, I have NO desire to look ridiculously artificial.

Weight gain terrified me at 15, annoyed me at 25, and has since dropped totally off my radar. (Save the comments about how, "I can tell." It is not my job to impress anyone.) I have never been on a diet or purchased a weight loss product. This makes me a distinct minority (and horrifies some folks); I can live with that.

Not being fashionable? Please! First, you don't generally miss what you never had. Second, trends are short lived, superficial, contradictory and driven by the need to 1. make somebody money and 2. feel superior. Being fashionable now means being out of fashion in the future; it's a never ending cycle. If you're me, you're still happily wearing pants you bought 10 years ago, and you have no 1980s MC Hammer pants in your past.

I watched my mother breeze through menopause like it was a total non event, and was glad I'd inherited her genes. I'm hoping I'll have the same luck.

I found myself in my teens and already planning for what I would do if arthritis hit. So far, it hasn't; so much for being prepared.

I was prepared for night blindness, I thought. I'd watched my mother and my older friends first stop driving distances at night, then stop driving after dark, period. I expected it to come on gradually, though, and probably after 50.

It hit without warning, in my late 30s, in the middle of a nighttime drive down a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. I could not quite figure out what was happening. I had a sinus headache, the kind that pushes on the backs of your eyeballs, so I wondered if the congestion was bad enough to pinch off the optic nerves. I had never noticed any kind of trouble, strain or squinting, and suddenly I was unable to see, at 75 MPH.

If you've ever driven between Reno and Las Vegas on Highway 95, you know how much space is out there. You can go for hours between one stoplight towns. We'd left Reno when my husband left work, about 3:00 in the afternoon, hoping to make Vegas before we stopped for the night, on our way to Phoenix. We had a loooong way to go, and I couldn't see.

My husband was coming off seven days straight of 12 hour shifts, and had told us at 3 that he didn't feel up to driving. My oldest daughter was with us, but she hated driving our Suburban in town, in broad daylight. I couldn't imagine her tackling hours in the dark.

I kept slowing down until I was going about 45 MPH.  My husband would snap at me, "You can't go that slow! Someone will come up behind us and smash into us! You're going to kill us!" I'd snap back, "I can only see about 5 or 10 feet in front of me!"

Maddeningly, he'd say, "That's all you need to see!"

"At 75 miles an hour?"

"What's most important is what's directly in front of you. Do you think the road is going to disappear?" he asked. He never quite "got" my thought process until a couple of years later, after many similar conversations, when I asked, "When you walk into a familiar dark room, like our living room, do you run full speed through it, assuming that you'll know where everything is?" Then, it finally made some sense to him, but is still at odds with one of his firmest convictions, the idea that slowing down on a freeway or highway is unacceptable under all but the rarest and most extreme of circumstances. He's also sure that any kind of hesitation, or being unsure of anything while behind the wheel, is a perilous thing.

Making things worse was the constant stream of oncoming traffic, mostly semis. Cars passing in the opposite direction were aggravating, with their headlights starbursting in my field of vision, but in my Suburban, I am at almost the exact height of the headlights of semi trucks. Their lights were right in my eyes and obliterated my vision for about a full second, even when I kept my eyes fixed on the opposite side of the road, toward the shoulder on my side. A second doesn't sound like a very long time, until you count it out, saying, "one one thousand." Imagine that at highway speed, and you'll understand why it freaked me out.

Needless to say, my husband and I were both at our wits end on this particular drive.

When we hit the next town, we stopped for dinner and got a hotel room as well. None of the adults in the car felt capable of driving, and no one wanted to end up as roadkill.

I couldn't make up my mind on that trip whether this was a temporary or permanent thing. It seemed so sudden and so complete - I'd expected age related night blindness to sneak up on me.

It soon became clear, though, that this was my new reality. I can drive all right in town, where everything is lit, but forget highway driving after dark. My depth perception is also completely unreliable in the dark. I can't reliably recognize curbs, for instance. Pushing my elderly mother in a wheelchair at Disneyland, I ran the chair off the curb and dumped my mother out onto the ground, where the wheelchair fell on top of her. My middle daughter stepped in - "Give Grandma to me! Just give her to me!" I was relieved of further wheelchair duty as soon as dusk approached every day for the rest of the trip.

Mostly, I function without falling or wreaking havoc. I run my hands along a lot of walls, though.

I didn't think much about how I would cope backstage; it never really occurred to me that it might take some adjusting. I've spent pretty much my whole life onstage or backstage - it feels as comfortable as my own home. Then I found myself backstage in the dark on the world's largest indoor stage.

I was playing a chorus part in the Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast." I'd wanted to be Mrs. Potts, but hey, so had every other actress too old to play Belle. Anymore, I only take chorus parts if it's a show that I'm really passionate about, and this one fit the bill.

It was performed in the Grand Theater at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort. The stage was built back when the building was the MGM Grand, and it's impossible to describe how enormous it is if you haven't been on it. Normally, everyone has to whisper in dressing rooms, but these are so far back that you can hold normal conversations, and even laugh, and not be heard onstage. There's usually several rows of thick velvet drapes across the backstage area between the dressing area and the performance area. A 727 airplane, left over from the first show produced in the space ("Hello, Hollywood, Hello!") sits permanently backstage, along with a sweeping staircase, huge columns and other set pieces.

At several points, I had to cross behind the set, which has never been a big deal before. Suddenly, it was. I had to follow someone else, or creep along with my hands out in front of me like a ridiculous cartoon.

During one performance, I was making my way from stage right to stage left, headed eventually to the dressing room. I thought I knew where I was going, and I blundered into some of the ropes used to secure the drapes. This is a huge, huge no-no. I wasn't hurt, and I didn't goof anything up, but it underscored for me how much I could screw up by wandering around blind.

I put my hands out in front of me and crept along with tiny steps. The show had a huge cast, with performers as young as 8, and I nearly ran into one of the children in the cast. I apologized for my clumsiness. "I just ran into the ropes too," I whispered. "I can't see in the dark."

A tiny voice came out of the dark at about my chest level. "That's OK. You know me. Take my hand."

I couldn't see the offered hand, but I held mine out. A small hand grasped it, and led me gently through the dark. As soon as I could see the lights of the dressing area, my guide said, "I've gotta go," and scurried off back into the dark behind me.

I was almost absurdly grateful. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my benefactor and say, "Thank you," since I couldn't even be sure of the child's gender or age, much less identity. It was a kindness I couldn't repay in any way. We had a cast of over 100, many of them children or teens - it could have been any one of dozens of pint sized actors. It's a delight to work with responsible kids, just as it's a headache to deal with the opposite.

I'm usually pretty good at admitting when I'm out of my depth. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable continuing to blunder along than I am asking for help. I don't feel I have anything to prove; I just dislike having to count on anyone else. "If you want something done right..." and all that jazz. (Yes, it is entirely possible that I have trust issues.)

Sometimes, the universe sends you unmistakable messages. This one reminded me that there are times when someone, even someone unlikely, will have my back. It reminded me that there are times when I'd be an idiot not to ask for help. It also reminded me that, occasionally, even if you don't ask for help, it will appear out of the dark and guide you through.

Sometimes, we all hear the equivalent of that small voice in the darkness, and we can take comfort knowing that we'll be well cared for (even if we really aren't sure by whom or how). As I get older, there will undoubtedly be many more of those moments, both literal and figurative. At those times, I'll think back to the gratitude I felt at that moment.

"It's OK. You know me. Take my hand."

Read Anything Good Lately?

"When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."

- Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus



When my husband received a job transfer and we had to pack up our oldest two children and move, I chose our new house the moment I stepped in the front door. It was an adorable house, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big living area and coverings on every window. All of that was secondary to what you saw as soon a you walked in - a full wall of bookcase. That alone sold me on the house.



"You have too many books," my children occasionally say. Blasphemy! There is no such thing as too many books.



I have two entire shelves of biographies and autobiographies. Nicola Tesla, David Crosby, Lee Harvey Oswald, Nichelle Nichols, Dian Fossey... all their lives are right there in my living room.

I have two shelves of just comics – my vintage "Peanuts" collection, my Garfield, my Bloom County, every Calvin and Hobbes ever published and my autographed "Pickles" books.



I have shelves for religion, travel, theater. We own a lot of big, glossy coffee table books (and no coffee tables). We have books for our homeschool lessons and books for fun. We have favorite genres – mystery! – and authors. All my Tony Hillermans sit together, as do my husband's Agatha Christies. I have crime books, everything from "Helter Skelter" to volumes by FBI profiler John Douglas.



And the children's books, oh, the children's books. Sesame Street, Disney, Dr. Seuss, fairy tales, the Black Stallion, Henry Huggins, the Borrowers, Heidi… I hang onto books my children have long outgrown, knowing that, someday, there will be grandkids reading them.

Once when a girlfriend came to our house with her daughter, she looked at the shelves that line our living room and said to her girl, "This is what your house will look like."

Sometimes, someone will say, "Have you actually read all these?" Well, most of them. Those I haven't, someone else here has. I have no interest in vintage electronics books, but my husband does.

I even own stuff I'm not very fond of. I'm not a big fan of "Catcher in the Rye." I just want to smack Holden. I own a complete copy of the Warren Commission, despite finding it flawed and inaccurate. I think it's important to be familiar with these books, whether I enjoy them or not.



This shelf sits at the end of our upstairs hallway, between two bedrooms.

This one, just deep enough for paperbacks, sits in the short passage between my living room and kitchen.

This one sits on our stairway landing.

You know how educators are always giving tips on "How to get your kids to read"? We read those articles, but we don't need them.



This is one of my son's three bookcases.

This is my daughter's. She has only one, but it's almost ceiling height, as opposed to her brother's waist high ones.

All four of my kids are voracious readers. They all spent their childhoods saying, "Can we go look at books?" every time we walked into a store. (If the store had no books, it was hardly worth their time.) They'd sit on the floor, quietly reading about dinosaurs or Strawberry Shortcake or anything else that caught their fancy until I finally dragged them away. Frequently, we bought something. Big bookstores have so many fabulous things, I can afford to go into them only rarely. I love thrift stores – "You want that stack of twelve books? Sure!"



People would swoon over my kids. One woman, a schoolteacher, was so delighted by the sight of them crosslegged in the aisles, surrounded by books, that she gushed for fully 15 minutes. "I wish my students could see this!" she said repeatedly.



I used to resist when my kids each wanted their own copy of something like the Harry Potter series, but I finally relented, so they each have their own. So why are books 1 through 4 missing off of MY shelves, hmm? Anyone?



I admit it; I have occasionally spent more on books than on groceries in any given month.



We have e-readers now, too. My husband and son walk around with almost 800 books in their hands every day. While that's great, I prefer paper. For one thing, I just see it differently. I can proofread something on my computer over and over and over, find no flaws, then see a typo as soon as the printer spits out the page. (Meanwhile, one reason my husband loves e-books is that he reads them on black pages with white type, something that causes less eye strain and better comprehension for people with ADD.)



I also can't shake my "I grew up during the Cold War" sensibilities; we all grew up wondering how life would be different After the Bombs Dropped. In a world with no batteries, electricity or Internet, e-readers are paperweights. My paper books could potentially last for centuries.



Still, looking at these photos, I can see a potential problem. Most of my shelves aren't very tidy. Then there's my stairs

and my bathroom floor. Hmm. Beginning to see a pattern here.

Yes, indeed, I have a problem.



I don't own enough bookcases! That's my problem!



Why is the nearest Ikea a 2 ½ hour drive away?

Water, Water Everywhere

We were watching previews in the movie theater in early 2012, and Bill Paxton's voice said, "Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" The lovely flute notes of "My Heart Will Go On" began, and the preview for James Cameron's blockbuster movie played.

At first, all I thought was, "Oh, they're rereleasing it." After all, rerelease of movies is becoming more commonplace. Then the screen said, "April 2012," and I laughed loudly. My family gave me that look that they give me so often – the one that says both, "Why are you so loud in movie theaters?" and "What is wrong with you?"

I nudged my husband. "April!"

"What?"

"They're rereleasing it in April!"

He did not find this funny, and could not imagine why I did.

After the movie, I explained what I thought was obvious. "She went down in April. This year it'll be 100 years since she sank." Even in a family of history geeks, I'm occasionally the geekiest.

I was a Titanic buff long before James Cameron gave us his story of Rose and Jack, long before Bob Ballard found her in 1985. I remember being about 10 and watching "In Search Of…" on TV. I loved "In Search Of…" I loved Leonard Nimoy's soothing narration, and I loved the show's theme of the odd and unexplained. "The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine," the voice-over told us every week. It was great fun. I remember clearly watching them try to figure out the sinking of the Titanic.

Most of the experts agreed, even decades later, that she shouldn't have sunk. They discussed the watertight compartments that would close "at the flick of a switch" and the fact that she should have been able to limp into port even damaged.

Mostly, they couldn't explain why she went down in only 2 ½ hours. There must have been something very heavy and undeclared in the cargo hold, some of the experts were sure. The iceberg damage did not explain her quick death.

Maybe she was smuggling munitions, they posited. Her sister ship would sink in the not too distant future after striking a German mine. Maybe she had massive, undeclared stores of arms in her hold. Maybe something ignited explosive charges on the ship.

I was deeply intrigued. The fact that, if pre WWI smuggling was taking place, it would be more likely to go from America to Britain instead of the other way around dampened this theory, but it was still fascinating. "We'll never know," they said. "She'll never be found."

Enter Bob Ballard, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, side scan sonar and a secret Cold War era mission to check out possible Soviet submarine activity. There she was, still beautiful over seven decades later, 2 ½ miles down.

Many of the questions were answered then, of course. No one had been able to imagine a circumstance that breached more than two or three of the "watertight compartments," plus they had not taken into account the fact that the doors did not go all the way to the top, allowing water to slop over from one compartment to the next. Impurities in the steel of her double hull meant that it became extremely brittle in cold water, snapping instead of bending. Her quick demise was due to flaws in the ship herself, not shadowy conspiracies.

My family cannot figure out why I am the family expert on shipwrecks. I own two beautiful silver pendants made from silver salvaged from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon whose wreck was discovered by the legendary Mel Fisher. I can tell you what I think happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald, who sank in Lake Superior so quickly that she didn't even call for help. Her last radio transmission, to the nearby Arthur M. Anderson, was, "We're holding our own" against the fierce storm.

I am not afraid of snakes or spiders. I honestly, sincerely thought that the ridiculous cliché of women screaming and leaping onto the furniture at the sight of a mouse was fiction, until I met such women.  I tell the kids in my theater class and on my debate team that fear of public speaking usually ranks higher than fear of death for most people, and we can all be proud that we can do something that terrifies others. One of my best friends is terrified of the bearded dragon that lives in my living room; I talk baby talk to her and sit with her on my chest while I watch TV. (She did poop on me once, but hey, I'm washable. So are my clothes.)

Water? That's a different story. Deep water frightens me. Dark water – even an inch of it – induces unreasoning panic. I cannot look at most photos of sunken ships, including the Titanic. I can't watch much deep water video. When I first saw "Jaws," the opening sequence of gliding over the ocean bottom frightened me more than the shark did. (The shark, let's face it, was dorky looking and did not behave factually.)

I once had to sleep with the lights on all night after watching a documentary on the Titanic. I was in my 30s. I did not see the movie in the theaters the first time, and I won't see it there this time. I could barely sit through the previews. Sitting in a dark room, looking at a huge screen and listening to surround sound? I'd have a heart attack. If I watch "Titanic" on the night of April 14, I will do it on a small screen in my brightly lit family room.

I've read both of Walter Lord's books about Titanic. I was about 22, reading "The Night Lives On" when we had guests for dinner, two missionaries from our church. Young men generally go on missions from the ages of 19 through 21, and in order to keep them from subsisting on ramen noodles and microwave popcorn, church members are encouraged to feed them dinner occasionally.

I told them about the book, and about slamming it shut and dropping it when I unwittingly turned the page and found color photos of the wreck. They started chatting about the ship with me and my husband, but I quickly dropped out of the conversation. Soon I was saying things like, "Can we change the subject?" and "I really don't want to talk about it," as they veered into speculation that was curling my toes. I shared my fear of water. They listened in an abstract way and kept on talking. Soon I was saying, "I need you to stop talking!"

They were saying things like, "Can you imagine being trapped on the ship? A lot of people were." Then came the final straw: "There were air pockets, you know, even after it went down. It's possible that some people were alive until the pressure became too great." "Yeah," said the other, "at pressure like that your head would literally explode."

I stood up and shrieked like a banshee. "STOP IT! STOP IT! I TOLD YOU THAT I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! DO YOU WANT ME TO BE AWAKE ALL NIGHT? Do you want me to have to sleep with the lights on all week long?"

They turned and stared at me, all three of them, blinking as if they'd just realized that I was in the room, and wondering why I was so unreasonable.

I had a panic attack the first time I tried snorkeling, and the water was knee deep. The fear is getting more manageable as I get older. I love snorkeling, and have for years. 

         Three years ago, I went in an actual submarine to the bottom of the Pacific. We all watched out our windows as, yes, we glided by sunken ships. 

          We went so deep, over 100 feet, that all the color bleached out of everything and our own teeth glowed orange.

         It helped that the sub very much resembled the ride vehicle at Disneyland, but hey, riding in it is still a HUGE accomplishment. I am extraordinarily proud of it.

We've been through two museum exhibits designed to help you imagine what it was like on the Titanic.

           The first was in Long Beach aboard the Queen Mary. As you entered both exhibits, you were given a "ticket" with the identity of a passenger or crew member on it. At certain points, you find out what was happening to "you." As the exhibit progressed, they started playing creaking sounds, designed to sound like the doomed liner. I've gotta tell you, being aboard a ship, one that's bobbing ever so slightly, while you touch a simulated iceberg and listen to the creaking, is exceptionally creepy.

I started sending my family into the rooms ahead of me. "Come back and tell me if there's anything I have to avoid." They always came back and said, "It's fine," until we neared the end of the exhibit.

The doorway showed a narrow room, almost like a hallway, that turned to the right. There was a wall, about waist high, on the right hand side. "Go check it out," I told my son. I've never been there, but I hear that in the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, exhibits that might be too disturbing for young children are behind waist high walls. The room gave me the willies.

He came back with wide eyes. "I can't even tell you about it. Just close your eyes and I'll guide you through."

Closing my eyes was too awful; it was pitch dark, with the ship moving and the creaking, groaning sounds on the tape getting louder. My blood pressure went up. "I'll look straight down at the ground, OK?"

"OK. Just don't look up."

I took hold of his arm. He led me through the smallish room, and I stood staring down at the entrance to the next one while he checked the new room. "There's some pictures and TVs you have to avoid, OK?"

They had artifacts actually brought up from the ship, displayed in plexiglass cases.

          Unfortunately for me, above them all hung either still photos or video screens – unnecessarily large ones, I thought – showing where on (or near) the wreck they were found. I had to hurry through that room.

          There was one last room, where you checked to see if "you" survived the sinking or not.

            Luckily, beyond that was the gift shop, which opened onto the walkway leading off the ship. It was nice and bright and full of fresh air.

After we were safely off the ship, my family told me what was in the room with the partition. On the side of the Queen Mary you could see a small bump-out near the stern. It looked kind of like a little black box attached to the side of the ship. What had looked like walking into a hallway on the ship was actually walking from the ship, out through this little bump-out. If I had looked up, I would have been looking at the side of the Queen Mary, just at the water line. Looking down, over the side of the waist high wall, there was a clear view of her propellers, lit from underneath. "I'm not afraid of water or anything, and it creeped me out," my husband said. My kids all echoed the sentiment. "It was CREEPY!"

Had they told me that while I was still on the ship, I would have come unglued.

Heart attack averted. Thank you, Son. I am ridiculously grateful for his handling of the situation.

When we got our current National Geographic magazine, I had my daughter look through it and tell me the pages I had to avoid. "How did you ever go on a cruise ship, Mom?" she wanted to know.

Well. Yes. I think everyone who's ever been on a cruise ship thinks about the Titanic. The very fact that there are enough lifeboats for all, and that the ship will not leave port until you have participated in a lifeboat drill are a legacy of Titanic. Part of what grips us about the loss of life so long ago is the fact that there weren't enough boats for all, and that there was no set procedure for evacuating the ship. Anyone who reads the inquest testimony that a Titanic crew member turned back third class passengers because they were not normally allowed on the decks with the lifeboats cringes, I think.

"Most of them froze to death, not drowned. No one freezes to death in the Bahamas," I told her. It's not the whole story, but it's true. I'm also proud of going on a cruise, but the truth is, I didn't worry. I had a great time and slept like a rock.

"What about the one in Italy? They drowned."

Thank YOU, Child of Mine, for bringing that up. As if I haven't had unpleasant and unkind thoughts running through my head ever since that fiasco. Don't get me started on the carelessness that caused that mess.

Next year, for his high school graduation trip, my son wants to go on an Alaskan cruise. We're looking up prices and sailing dates, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I hope my mind doesn't decide to play a horror show inside my head while I'm on that ship, where I might indeed freeze if it sank.

Right now, I'm reading a new book, one that my oldest daughter sent to me from her school's book fair. I'm loving it. I'll probably assign it to my seventh grader when I'm done, as a homeschool assignment.  It's called, "Titanic: Voices from the Disaster."

There's only two pages I can't look at.

In Sickness and in Health

Ah, illness. There you are. I know you must have missed me, but I really didn't miss you.

If I could, I would sleep through any illness in its entirety. We'd figure out some way for my family to slap patches on me that would enable me to absorb medication and nutrients through my skin, and I'd just sleep until the illness was gone. Doesn't that sound good?

There are apparently some really nasty illnesses going around right now. My husband has been sicker than I've ever seen him, and I've known him since he was 22. He doesn't usually get sick. On the rare occasions that he does, it isn't very severe and goes away quickly.

Once, he was uncharacteristically feverish and miserable. I know how that feels, and I know that he likes to be fussed over, so I made him tea, brought him blankets and medicine, and cooed over him. He fell asleep, slept all night, and woke up feeling fit as a fiddle.

"Wow, that virus really kicked my butt," he said.

While happy that he felt better, I was also outraged. "NO! It did NOT! It CANNOT be a butt-kicking if it lasts all of 4 hours!"

He was puzzled. "But it was a miserable 4 hours."

"I don't care! That's not a butt-kicking! That barely qualifies as sick! That's just… mutant! You're a mutant."

In the last 6 weeks or so, though, he's gone from strep to bronchitis and back to strep. The bronchitis really did kick his butt; he was barely functional for a week. That's par for the course with me, but it's unheard of for him. He has never had active, misery inducing symptoms for that long.

I did everything I could to roll up the welcome mat and hang a "no vacancy" sign, but the bronchitis moved into my lungs anyway. Aside from the growly voice it gives me, there's nothing good about this. Well, except for the huge, horse pill-looking antibiotics that I'm on. Those are pretty good. Yay for modern medicine.

Now, it's about getting enough sleep and keeping warm.

Years ago, when my husband and I were first living together and figuring out how the other person ticked, he came home from work when I was sick to find me wrapped in a quilt on the couch. That's pretty standard when I'm sick. He'd barely closed the door when he said, "It's stifling in here," took off his shirt, and turned the ceiling fan on high. I made a noise like a Bloom County cartoon – "AIEEEE!"

"Are you trying to kill me? I'm SICK!"

"I know, but it's hot in here. I'm just trying to get the air moving."

"It's an arctic wind, blowing right on me!"

I unwound my quilt and scrabbled down the hall to the bedroom, griping the whole way, and cocooned in more layers of bedding. In the living room, Dan was opening a window.

"Don't do that! It's cold out there!"

"It's like 80 degrees in here! You're going to melt me!"

I generally can't stand the sensation of wind, at all, and that's when I'm not sick. I can't sleep if I'm breathing on my own arm; I have to pull at least the sheet over it. If my husband is literally breathing down my neck (or on my arms or worse, into my face) in bed, I can't sleep; I shove him over to the other side of the bed. Dan would like to sleep with a fan on. I've tried, and I just can't do it.

A few years ago, he again came home to me sick on the couch, wearing sweats and thick socks, curled into a fetal position under a down quilt."Awww," he said, and snaked his hand up the covers and up the pant leg to rub my calf. He was shocked when my skin felt chilled to the touch. "You're cold!" he said.

"Of course I'm cold. I'm sick. Why do you think I'm sitting here like this?"

He had to check the rest of me to see if the calf was an anomaly, so he reached under my shirt to feel my tummy, which was also cold to the touch. "How is that physically possible?" he demanded. "How can you be cold underneath all that?"

"I don't know. Gimme back my covers." I tucked the comforter back around me tightly. I never bother anymore to think about how it's possible to be cold, because I obviously am. The best I can guess is that my body is so busy fighting the illness that it has no energy left to generate heat. This would also explain why I get sick if I'm out in the cold for too long – in order to try and keep me warm, my body diverts all its energy there, and I have nothing left to fight off any germs. Whether that's accurate or not, the fact remains that cold often makes me sick, and illness further damages my ability to make my own heat.

This is part of our deep seated temperature incompatibility, my husband's and mine. He is always hot. Always. And he stubbornly refuses to wear shorts because he doesn't think he looks good in them, which is maddening in so many ways. It'll be summer, I'll be in shorts or capris and a short sleeved shirt and he'll be in jeans and, frequently, a long sleeved shirt, and he'll crank up the evaporative cooler. "Quit blowing cold air on my bare skin and take something off!" I'll gripe.

I have sat in chairs he's recently vacated and been overheated just by the residual body heat. He's like a furnace.

I, on the other hand, have a standard body temperature of about 97 degrees. I get cold easily. I can't tell you how often I've had to get out of bed to put on a pair of socks because my feet are too cold for me to sleep. I can't let them touch each other or any other part of me when they're that way; instead of body contact warming them up, it causes whatever they touch to get colder. When I'm sick, I feel unreasonably cold, all the time. I cannot sleep when I'm cold.

When our family made a visit once to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we stood in front of a screen that showed heat signatures. The warmer something was, the more it glowed green. My husband and middle daughter were bright green apparitions, chuckling over the fact that some body parts, like armpits, glowed even brighter. My oldest daughter and I couldn't see ourselves, and everyone was starting to wonder if we were somehow standing outside the view of the sensors. Then, we moved directly between the rest of our family and the sensors, and finally showed up - as black, body shaped voids in front of their glowing greenness. "I can't believe you're so cold you don't even show up! That's wierd!" Middle Daughter said. "Welcome to our world," I said.

Our bedroom is unheated (long story), which is great for Dan. Most people sleep better in a cool room, but I can't do it. I sleep with a comforter in the summer. In the winter, I have layers and layers on the bed. (Dan frequently sleeps without covers, even in the winter.)

The old upper crust custom of separate bedrooms makes a bit more sense to me now than it did when I was a kid.

Dan bought me a heated mattress pad, which is one of my favorite birthday gifts ever. It says not to sleep with it on (or you risk burning yourself), but I can see no other reason for its existence.

The first time I got sick after he bought it, Dan encouraged me to go to bed in my thick sweats and socks and turn the bed heater on. I did – I couldn't feel the heater at all. He didn't believe me until he did the hand-against-bare-skin test again and discovered that my skin still felt positively refrigerated. The thick clothes kept the heat from getting through. This made no sense to Dan – for him, staying warm is about holding body heat in. For me, it's about getting outside heat. With the sweats on, I needed the heater at a 9 before I could feel anything. With bare legs, a 2 or 3 felt toasty.

Even better, I bought a new comforter that's so warm I rarely need the bed heater. When I was a kid, we had quilts that were cotton exterior and cotton batting – those things weighed a ton. I loved them. We also had down and feather mix filled quilts that were so heavy and warm. Our sleeping bags were canvas with cotton batting and flannel lining. Newfangled nylon things with polyester fluff just never felt as warm, until I got this comforter. Back in the day, we called this filling "polyester fiberfill," but my new comforter touts it as, "hypoallergenic down alternative." Well, la-di-dah. Still, it's so warm that I occasionally overheat and have to peel it back.

I sense signs that I will feel human again soon. I did some laundry – yay! – and minor straightening. Then I had a nap. Naps are magic.

So, we're in for a ride, illness and me, but one day it will be forced to give up and go away. Until then I will commune with my non allergenic comforter and my orange juice. Good night.

The Eye of the Beholder

As a creator of art myself, I tend to be pretty laid back in my attitude about art other people create. I don't like to over criticize; I don't feel that others need to pass some kind of litmus test before I consider their creations legitimate.

I also think that the purpose of hotel art is to be almost nondescript. Hotel art tends toward the pleasantly bland, like plain oatmeal. Hoteliers don't want guests stealing the art off of the walls.

I also think that's an untapped source of revenue, though - "Like this painting? Buy it at checkout!" It might be a bit of a pain in the butt, stocking all kinds of prints behind the desk, but without frames, they wouldn't take much space. You wouldn't have to charge much to make money.

Anyway, that's not the subject at hand.

I recently stayed in a very nice hotel. It was a high rise condo building - not normally my first choice, as I'm not a big city dweller. Some of the units were owner occupied, and some were short term rentals. The property was downtown in the Honolulu business district, walking distance to banks, offices, and the courthouse. The hotel had conference facilities and the like. Instead of a regular room service menu, they had a brochure for local places that would cater your meeting.

I have to assume that they assumed that the guests wouldn't be spending much time outside the property. That's the only way I can explain the art.
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In the kitchen, there was a print of ferns - that was the only remotely tropical subject. In the bedroom, there was this print:

Outside the window was this building:

I've zoomed in, obviously - it wasn't that close. I'm trying to demonstrate something. Yes, indeed, it is the same building. I'm really unclear on the thought process at work here: "Look! Here's what's right outside your window!"

At least the architecture is interesting. I am entirely baffled by the largest piece of art in the place, this watercolor hanging over the dining table:

Yes! It's a painting of a stoplight! Whose idea was that? Why in the world would someone say, "You know what? I really want to paint a traffic signal." It is beyond comprehension that someone would say, "This is what I think best represents Hawaii."

Was it specially comissioned? Were the property owners hoping that people would forget that Hawaii has beaches, waterfalls, luaus, boating and many other places and activities more exciting than a stoplight? Are they afraid that if you spent all day at meetings, in your suit and tie, you would become unhinged at the sight of palm trees and beaches? Were they hoping you'd feel good about long work days if you could look at the art in your room and say, "Hey, I saw that. This trip hasn't been wasted."

It's a mystery.