May Day. I opened my eyes, rolled over and looked out the window. A couple of birds hopped through the arbor grapevines into the feeder. May Day thoughts as a child came to me, rhyming songs and dancing around some May Pole (or maybe a tether ball pole), images of little children tossing flowers in the air.
I felt my body and brain tense up as my mind switched places to the workers of the world – this May Day. I could almost hear my heart aching.
Everything in my home is here because of a worker somewhere. Everything I listen to comes from a worker. The books I read and the paintings that surround me. Everything on the telly is there because workers figured out how to get it there. My clothes in a dresser made by workers, the socks on my feet keeping my toes warm, the streets of my town, the cell towers, the food on my breakfast table, the tea in my cup, the laptop on which I write. The grape arbor and the backyard fence. The garden seeds that come in those bright little packets. Everything.
There are new protests around the world today, pleading for the health and safety of our fellow world humans. In Covid time. Workers out in force behind (working) police lines, red flags waving, bullhorns blaring and Personal Protective Equipment six feet apart.
But what can I do?
I can honor the workers of the world, those men and women who walk out their door every single day to help others, no matter the weather, no matter this Covid time. I can send money to support a workers group. I can buy a beautiful new painting from artiste/worker Eduardo Guzman. I can do my own yardwork in the weeds under a warm sun.
I can meditate on life in our world.
And in my daughter’s house next-door, where she tasks her three kids in their schooling and cares for that scrumptious little 3-month old, while her essential worker husband is out on the road, I can sweep the floor, wash a few dishes, do a load of laundry, and snuggle a wee bairn.
The sun will be out until it’s not.
From me to you – take care, be well, be safe. And thank a worker somewhere somehow. Keep them in your heart. Keep you in your heart and I will do the same.
On any given morning, I roll out of bed after listening to some KQED Radio/NPR Morning Edition. One particular morning, the “fundraising drive” commenced. Yeah, you know the one.
I listened as someone hawked Paul Anka tickets once, and then a few days later, I heard it again. That time I decided we’re going to see Paul Anka. Mollie and I both quite often have the Paul Anka Pandora station on, so I was pretty sure she’d go with me.
The show started with a long set of instrumentals, no Anka on the stage. When he finally emerged, he didn’t come out from behind the stage. No, he came in, escorted by a couple of big body-guards, from the up-front exit doors. He walked in slowly, shaking hands, touching the shoulders of those close to him, and allowing his fans to get up close and personal with him.
“Mom, these old women are really rude.” And she was right – there they were (not us!) swooning, half-drunk or overly medicated – they were everywhere. My sweet daughter was at least 35 years younger than anyone else there. I’m pretty sure she was the only one of her kind. The two of us grinned happily as we we showered by his amazing voice cranking out the tunes.
The San Jose Civic Center was set up in a big band venue, complete with an extraordinary sax player, John Cross, musical director of Anka’s orchestra for many, many years. Indeed, the entire orchestra rocked along with Anka. I don’t know what kind of set-up I expected, but the big-band one was perfect.
Anka was my teenage idol as a youngster, along with Ricky Nelson, and then of course the Beatles and Elvis. But Anka was really the one and I still love his music. He sang hit after hit, his voice clear and strong, amazing range able to hit every note. Wow! He told funny jokes and crazy tales during his time with us. No intermission, a small audience, one that was full of the people who really wanted to be in the same room with Paul Anka.
He never seemed to be in a hurry.
“I got lucky as a kid. I was writing kids’ songs. I was hopefully writing the way every teenager thought, how they all felt in that world.” He smiled when he spoke of Annette, you know, Funicello. He reminisced on American Bandstand. He spoke fondly of the great ones who died much too young.
He laughed as he told us the first time he met Frank Sinatra. “Mr. Sinatra.” Anka was living in New York. He got a phone call one day from ‘a guy’ telling him that Mr. Sinatra wanted to meet with him.
Anka got on a plane, following directions, and he flew out to Las Vegas, where he was met at the hotel by Sinatra’s guy. “Take off your clothes and get into this robe.”
Everyone in the audience laughed, as you can imagine.
His escort led him to the steam room and slowly pulled the door wide open.
“And sitting there was Sammy Davis…and Dean Martin..and Frank Sinatra – all naked looking up at me!”
He spoke about how much he learned about the business during the years he was with the Rat Pack. And then about the time he was 28 years old, he met up with Sinatra in Florida, in Miami Beach.
“Sinatra told me he was quitting show business and he was going to do one more album. And would I write him a song? I was shocked, we were all shocked – quitting the business? And he did leave, but he came back later!”
“I had never written for him. He had asked me, but I was scared to death.”
Some time went by, Anka was living and working in the big apple, and as he says, he kept getting this tune in his head, the song swirled around and then boom! he wrote it in six hours. He hopped a plane out to Vegas and gave it to Frank.
“I was old enough at 28 to write it, but I was too young to sing it. You needed someone of Mr. Sinatra’s vintage to sing that one.”
During the show, he wandered down a few times and those “rude women” would mob him. I tried once, but tried too late and never got close. But we did get this:
He told us his friends often ask him why he keeps doing these show; he doesn’t have to, at 78 years old.
“I love doing this. I don’t have a job, I have something that keeps me alive, along with the love of my family and friends. I take care of myself, I exercise, I eat well, most of the time. I diet! Oh, do I diet! I’ve been on Jenny Craig more times than Mr. Craig!”
I saw Anka twice in my twenties. I was surprised then how short he was – shorter than me! This time, I felt like I was watching a friend on stage. The memories the songs brought to me – the sad and happy times of my life.
My KQED sustaining member contribution is larger now, and so is the happy place in my heart.
On Mother’s Day a few years ago, my kids all chipped in to surprise me with a tandem kayak; it was just what I wanted. I figured I could take the grandkids out in it. It eventually turned out to be a little more than I really wanted to handle. The weight and unwieldiness became a barrier to my paddling and I quit taking it out, even though I loved each and every time I was in the water. I decided it was time to get my beloved kayak a new owner – and then look for something different for me.
So I sold it to Kevin. A friend of mine, he lives on a boat, a boat quite a bit bigger than a kayak. And he has a kayak as well – a white sit-on-top that’s all decked out with bunch of electronic something or others for some reason or another that I don’t understand.
But my Pemlico Wilderness Systems kayak is pretty sweet and he wanted it. Late in the morning this past weekend, he came by with his friend Ann. I like her; we’d met when she and Kevin helped me to evacuate a bunch of my valuables during the Napa fires in 2017.
My son-in-law Matt helped Kevin to get the kayak up on Kevin’s pick-up truck racks and he and Ann took it to his place. It was a great day for kayaking (every day’s a great day for kayaking), Ann had to go to work, but Kevin and I didn’t, so I met him at the docks and we set out for an afternoon on the water outside Benicia’s boat harbor. It was a bit breezy, but wind is just air, right? No matter how the flag is uplifted.
Kevin’s back porch
Kevin pointed out a small rock island outside the harbor – that was our destination. Our trip initially began with me paddling Kevin’s “sit on top” kayak, with Kevin in my – now his – kayak. I paddled alongside, or behind, taking direction in a new body of water, and we headed out. It turned out the wind was roaring in from San Pablo Bay, and this girl was making no headway at all.
I could laugh all right, but paddling in place was not really what I had in mind. Kevin had a new plan. We’d each paddle close to the edge of the harbor’s retaining wall and pull into the little beach nearby. A beach, by the way, in name only. It’s mainly covered with old wood sediment from a long gone mill. The only sand is like quicksand. Seriously.
After we pulled in, I got out of the sit-on-top, settled into the bow seat of the tandem while Kevin reached around to tie the sit-on-top to the tandem, and we towed it while paddling off on our grand adventure. Great idea! Two power paddlers in the same boat.
Now we were in business. The wind still pushed at us, but we were better. We would prevail. Not a moment to spare for taking pictures however. I’d forgotten to put the fully charged battery back into my good camera, so didn’t have it with me anyway. And, I was a little leary taking it out on the boat with no good dry-bag on me.
We made good time to the little rock island, guiding the nose of the kayak onto shore amidst assorted rocks and piles of boulders, covered with slippery, slimy green algae. You know the kind.
“No, you get out first,” I replied to Kevin’s query whether I was ready to get myself out of the boat. He’s an expert at getting in and out of kayaks, and I’m nowhere near excellently experienced, much less an expert. So he could get out first. And give me a gratefull pull up assist as well.
I had the tie-line in hand and offered to wrap it around and and tie it onto a 10″ diameter hanging piece of driftwood stump that was protruding from the shore right in my face.
“Like this?” I asked.
“Yeah, that log ain’t going anywhere. That’s great.” he said.
“Okay,” I replied somewhat hesitantly, grimicing to myself, not really sure about it. But I figured Kevin’s the expert, not me, so I shrugged it all off, chuckling and all.
We hiked up a dry, steep short slope of rocks, sand, dried grass and weeds to the top of the isle. Both of us being the artsy-fartsy types, we commented on and admired the various shades of tan and brown and yellow in the rocks, the golden tree pollen, while attempting to come up with the proper names of plants, birds and trees right there in front of us. We scoffed heartily at the few-thousand-tons-of-deadweight oil tanker sailing out to the Pacific, tug boat in tow.
The mountain top was covered with evidence of previous explorers who’d actually built a tree house. A poor attempt, I might add, but it did have a nice wide piece of lumber laying across two branches. On the ground were three windward walls nailed together and an open lanai, if you want to call it that. It was pretty much a mess. We found their hammer and nails left inside, so maybe they had more improvements in mind for future visits. Or else they fled for their lives from a giant hungry sea-monster, never to be seen again.
Anyway, the outer wall to the north had a few wide planks of lumber on which we could sit. Settle in we did. With a little chilled white wine, a bunch of cheap snacks and a little smoke, the chit-chat commenced. It had been a while since we’d had a good visit, and we had a lot of catching up to do.
We used to work together at Napa State Hospital, so that topic always comes up. We’re both glad to not be working there anymore. We reminisce on a few colleagues and wish the ones still working to be the safest they can be. We laughed and reminded each other of the antics of some of our favorite crazy patients. We talked about various friends, also former employees, who are as happy as we are to be out of that grossly mismanaged hellhole.
Any successful day on the river with friends provides plenty of time to cover lots of territory. We discussed conspiracy theories – large and small – real or unreal. Death and dying and communicating with spirits who’ve passed on. We shared talk of our day to day living and the people in it. We commiserated on and celebrated our lives on earth, in America, in our neighborhoods, and the many ways Kevin’s found, after a few hardships of his own, similar to all of ours, to help many people down on their luck right there at the edge of their world.
We watched sea-birds “cruising for burgers.” My friend Cristy taught me all about birds cruising for burgers; I think it was in the wilds of West Virginia, or maybe Austin TX. Or was it NYC? It was a long time ago, I don’t remember.
Kevin pointed out a U.S. Coast and Geodedic Survey Topographic Station metal tag drilled into the top of a rock, complete with notification of the threat of fine or imprisonment for disturbing the darn thing. WTH?
The wind had died down a bit and Kevin decided after a while to go check on the boats we’d left tied in the rocks. He just wanted to see that all was well. What he discovered was an empty beach where we’d left the kayaks. He quickly scuttled around to locate them at the base of the isle. Thank goodness they had not floated completely away but had just moved with the wind clear around the back of the island. The first thing he noticed, after the kayaks, was a single Herman’s gull hovering on the wind currents 20 feet above the kayaks. Laughing like he was the instigator or something. Kevin started laughing with him.
He couldn’t tell for sure if the whole thing was so hysterical because he was lightly toasted from the green bud we’d had, or something else, but it sure seemed that the gull was actually laughing like a child who’d played a joke on a parent. The more the gull laughed, the harder Kevin laughed, making it treacherous to keep his footing down the steep embankment towards the water. He looked up at the bird, yelling out, “Oh, you think that’s funny, huh!?”
The crazy bird was laughing too hard not to be convincing. On an island normally covered in birds, it was odd to see a single solitary bird keeping eyes on our lost kayaks while the other birds were nowhere to be found…as if they too were part of the joke, but had no faith in Kevin’s sense of humor and so had flown to some hideout instead of staying to see what happened. Lol. Pirate gulls, no doubt.
Completely ignorant of this escapade, I heard my name being called from a ways behind me – definitely not where we’d left the boats. Thank goodness he caught those little rascally boats. It could have been a long swim for us. A difficult swim as well, because–of course–our PDFs were in the boats.
After getting the boats back to where they belonged, Kevin spied a beautiful and extremely heavy piece of driftwood. He dragged, pushed and pulled it up to our topmost lookout and proceeded to wonder how to display the darn thing.
After a bit of discussion, and a little dancing around about which end was the top, which was the bottom, and all the aspects of this fine piece of nature’s art, we finally got it in place.
The last thing we did before heading out was to shore up this new piece of art that now sits next to the treehouse. With the aid of a few pieces of lumber and other scrap wood–voila!
The wind had died down, we headed out and had a fine paddle back in the Pemlico (which I miss already) to the docks. No better way to spend a long afternoon than talking about life and our parts in in while hanging out at the water’s edge.
But what can I do?
The San Jose Civic Center was set up in a big band venue, complete with an extraordinary sax player, John Cross, musical director of Anka’s orchestra for many, many years. Indeed, the entire orchestra rocked along with Anka. I don’t know what kind of set-up I expected, but the big-band one was perfect.
We watched sea-birds “cruising for burgers.” My friend Cristy taught me all about birds cruising for burgers; I think it was in the wilds of West Virginia, or maybe Austin TX. Or was it NYC? It was a long time ago, I don’t remember.
Writer Paints 