Watching over me (revised)

In 1970 I saved my allowance for nearly a year to buy a wristwatch.

My step-father encouraged me to save money for things I really wanted. If it was a worthy cause, he would match whatever I put aside. He suggested a watch because I was learning time by hour and minute hands.

When we left the house one morning after I'd saved enough money, I was excited. Snuggled in my light-blue, down parka, I pulled the fur-lined hood over my chestnut-colored hair and clambered after him into the family's metallic blue Chevy station wagon for the three-minute trip into town. I was so happy I could scarcely breathe. The chill February air of eastern Washington State bit my nose, but I didn't mind.

I kicked snow along the sidewalk as we walked to Chelan's only jeweler's shop, mysterious in dim light. A bell pinged above the door as it shut behind us. My step-father told the man behind the counter that I could tell time and that I wanted to buy my first wristwatch. The owner smiled at me, pointed to a clock on the wall and asked me to perform. Although shy and nervous and afraid I'd get it wrong, he smiled and said I was worthy--or some such thing.

I looked at an array of beautiful watches: some with diamonds, some with thin gold bands and dainty chains that dangled from the wrist. But I didn't have enough money for those. I settled for a Timex with a round face, clear numbers, and a ridged, black fabric wristband.

To be honest, I wasn't that thrilled with it. The watch wasn't fancy or pretty like the opulent adornments worn by movie stars. But it grew on me. I loved to hold it under my ear and hear it's tiny ticking heart. It was mine, bought by saving allowances and sacrificing candy, and I became quite proud of it. I wore it everywhere.

In 1971, my third-grade class sent a letter to President Richard Nixon along with a handcrafted gift from our Mrs. Pingrey. He (or someone) wrote back, and my classmates became news fodder. Our photograph was printed in the Chelan Daily Mirror newspaper. I gasped when I saw my picture, not because it was me, but because my little watch was visible on my wrist.

That summer, my family and I vacationed at Yachats, Oregon on the Pacific Ocean. It was a fairly long trip with five people stuffed into a station wagon bursting with suitcases and bedding. We spent about a week there in a rustic beach side cabin, playing in the sand and surf, looking for wild strawberries, and catching net-fulls of smelt. As fast as my mother fried, we gobbled them hot, right out of the pan.

I couldn't find my wristwatch when we got home. I looked everywhere. I was afraid to ask my step-father and mother for help because I didn't want to get yelled at and called irresponsible. So I quietly mourned, and prayed, and hoped no one would notice my empty wrist.

School started in September with chilly mornings and warm afternoons. It was too warm to carry my thick parka, so I wore my light jacket. One morning I jammed my chilly hands into my pockets on the way to school. I stopped in my tracks. My fingers closed around the familiar fabric band and felt the smooth face of my beloved, long-lost friend. Little bits of sand clung to it. I must have put it there for safekeeping when building sandcastles and the wind chilled me. I didn't know why I'd missed it being there before. I wound the watch to start it anew and set the time.

On walk home after school I went into a copse off a side road at the top of a hill where a spreading elm tree stood. It was a special tree. We buried a bird there once. I walked to it often and spoke to Jesus about my little girl troubles.

I stood under thick, spreading branches with yellowing leaves. No bird to bury, no troubles to tell Him. My right hand fingered the watch on my left wrist. My eyes closed and I thanked Him.

God was with me, as always. He gave my watch back to me.

When I walked home, I imagined that He held my hand, the one with the watch on the wrist.

Irish Blessings

A tribute to my grandmother Irene Edith (Daly) Wallenborn whose father, Stephen, was Irish. She collected shamrocks. She died April 2007 at age 95.
Irish Blessings

May you live to be a hundred years old...with one extra year to repent.

May you live all the days of your life.

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a road downhill all the way to your door.

We drink to your coffin. May it be built from the wood of a hundred-year-old tree that I shall plant tomorrow.

May the roof above us never fall in, and may we friends gathered below never fall out!

Memories of Grandpa and Fish

Grandpa 1983.

Grandpa with 35 lb. King Salmon. 


The thin nylon cord sang as it whipped through the air to dance above the shimmering green water.

I sat outside and watched him as the summer sun set in golden light behind towering Douglar fir trees, while deepening shadows turned the lake from emerald to forest.

Content, I sat nearby, perched on a cut-out round of a tree tucked into the side of a hill for a step. Huckleberry and blackberry bushes' ripening scent hung in the warm air along with dragonflies.

We both loved the quiet at dusk, being outside, with the scent of Grandma's cooking wafting downhill.

Grandpa worked as a mechanic at Boeing in Seattle. After his hour-long commute home to Monroe, he quietly headed to the lake he lived at to fly-fish. 

There was a large, round piece of plywood that he'd nailed to a fallen tree that rested in the water. He stood on it, and casted his line about 15 feet from the muddy bank. 

From the age of eight through 11, I spent a month every summer with my brother Les at our grandparents' place in the woods. Most of our time was spent outside exploring or with Grandma. But it was my grandpa who fascinated me. 

As I grew older, I noticed his sense of humor was subtle. He smiled at me a lot, but wasn't much of a talker.

On the way home from trips to the big city, we passed pastures of cows and horses. He tried to convince me that horses were cows and vice-versa. I pretended to agree, mooing with him at startled horses. He grinned his close-lipped smile, nodded his head, and kept driving.

In their younger days, my grandparents lived in Lake City, raising my mother and her older brother in that busy suburb of Seattle.

Later, they bought the place I remember most;  a little house overlooking Lost Lake, outside of Monroe. The road was a dead end, enveloped in a wild, tangled forest of tall trees and thick bushes.

Their house was built on a steep slope halfway down to a lake.

Underneath the house on stilts and wrap-around deck was a cave.  When he wasn't fishing, Grandpa worked many years on that place, widening the hole to convert it into an extra living area and storage space.

To me, as I looked up at the house from the lake, it was a gaping monster mouth. For all I knew, Sasquatch lived in it. Many times I ran pell-mell up the hill to the house to avoid whatever I "knew" was hiding there. That was one place I didn't follow my grandpa to.

I knew Grandpa differently than his grandsons. My other brothers, Marty and Jeff, visited for a month in summer as well, but my grandparents couldn't handle all four at once. Maybe it disturbed Grandpa's quiet too much.

I was the only granddaughter, and sometimes I think he didn't know what to do with me. Because he was so quiet and reserved, I didn't get to know him well at all. I was a silent watcher of him.

He taught me how to fish, and showed me around his smokehouse full of fishing rods, but that's about it. I mostly remember him fishing, or sitting in a chair in front of an orange, rounded pyramid-like, free-standing woodstove while he watched television when it was too cold outside.

To remember my grandparents, I also remember fish. Always fish. My grandmother was a fisherwoman.

I saved only a few photos of the multitudes of trout and steelhead and salmon they caught, hung by the gills through decades of fishing. Even now, whenever I travel throughout Washington I recognize river and lake names from seeing them printed in faded black or blue ink on the backs of those photos. Skookumchuck. Skokomish. Sammamish. 

Although I never learned to fly-fish, I taught my own two children the joy of tying a hook, digging worms, the thrill of the yellow and white bobber popping up and down, and the adrenaline rush when the rod bent under the weight of a trout. 

My son, Jason, walks in his great-grandfather's shadow. 

He lives in Colorado, travels to Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon with his friends, his father, and his camera. He is a photographer of all things fly-fishing and is beginning to make a living at it. 

On a visit to a crystal clear stream in the Rocky Mountains, Jason tried to teach me how. As always, I just loved being outdoors. Pine-scented air, the sound of frigid trickling water over smooth stones, the ziiiiing of the line as it sailed downriver were enough for me. Good thing, as I never did get the hang of it.

I think Grandpa would be proud of his great-grandson. 

Jason took the elder's hobby to another level. 

Yet...

There is something to be said about casting a line at the end of the day while the sun goes to rest, the fish leap for flies--real or fake--and there is silence all around.

Just for fun. 

Elmer Bruce Bartlett died in March 2000, age 82.

Little things

Naomi at the Pink Roadhouse in Oodnadatta, South Australia.

We got her a very cool hat to protect her fair, facial skin from sunburn. She is wearing that hat in this photo. She posed for me so I could take the Aborigine man's photo in the background.

Aborigines sometimes have a phobia about being photographed. This man had been "playing" the guitar for our amusement, with no chords or melody.

We figured that his mode of playing was for money to be tossed into a "bush hat" while he pinched a cigarette between two forefingers of the same hand that rested on top of the guitar's neck. The other hand strummed that same aimless tune..."gadang, gadang, gadang, gadang," while he sang whatever words he wanted to.



Jason near a dry lake bed outside of Marree, South Australia. The white line in the background is salt. Lots of dry lake and riverbeds in Australia are salty. Up close, it looks like snow.


Jason and Naomi at Bell's Beach, Victoria. A world-wide famous surfing spot, the waves weren't very big on this day. Good thing...we didn't have time for Jason to surf. The little black dots to the left of Naomi are surfers.
......

It was too quiet when I slid open the big glass door, the back entrance to our home.

A vision of my son sitting on a bar stool, bent over his computer at the kitchen counter met me. But he wasn't there.

Small reminders of his and his wife's month-long visit to my home in Australia greeted me as I slowly walked around the house.

I savored each bit.

There was the flat, cardboard backing from his purchase of computer screen cleaner, and the bottle's cap on the beige, leather sofa.

 Four wine glasses with tiny pools of red nectar in the bottom curves waited near the sink.

Empty Tupperware containers sat nearby, draining, where Naomi had washed and left them to dry.

There was a coffee mug...handle broken...the memory of Jason's surprise at it's sudden demise when he held it made me chuckle.

Near where his laptop computer was stationed I found a tag taken from a hat he'd purchased in Coober Pedy, and my book that he'd been reading, Fatal Shore, a history of Australia.

The memory of his reading excerpts aloud reminded me he wasn't here anymore.

Oil from dinner the night before was splattered around the stove-top, and I reluctantly cleaned it up.

Jason and Naomi made a special goodbye meal of a Spanish potato and onion dish that I love...to go along with the roast lamb that I made because I know they like that. It was a mututal "love" dish, one could say.

It was also a belated Mother's Day gift, as we were camping Outback on that holiday. Naomi had also spent a lot of time making chocolate and oreo "truffles" as well. I have saved a few in the freezer to savor.

I started to clean up, because my niece-in-law and her husband were coming with their four-month-old baby girl to stay with us for the weekend, starting that night.

I put away bananas and cereal that Naomi enjoyed.

At the back of the house, in the room they stayed in, I gathered sheets they'd slept on and towels they'd used after showers. The bathroom fairly echoed with the absence of their things.

Near Jason's side of the bed I found two empty wine bottles he'd planned to take home as a remembrance of our time in the Barossa and Clare Valleys in South Australia. Reluctantly, I put them in the recycle bin, along with brochures he'd gathered about places we'd traveled in Australia.

I meandered to the front of the house and found on my bed a neatly folded winter scarf that I'd let Naomi borrow.

In the room opposite, on an old table, I came across a stack of books I'd recently purchased with Jason at "our" favorite bookstore in Ballarat. I fingered the pages and remembered coffee and congenial silences broken by sporadic comments on this or that author, and this or that topic over a few hours of bliss.

Jason told me he'd written something for me to read in a book I'd purchased...a treasure-book that he'd discarded because he was being frugal. I read the two pages he'd penned in the front of the book and wept. What wonderful things he wrote to me. I wish all mothers had a son as conscientious and loving as him.

As I puttered around the house, getting things ready for our newest set of family visiting, I heard echoes of laughter, the sound of my voice reading stories to Jason in front of the morning fire blazing away, and of my son reading prose and other stories to me.

His and Naomi's laughter is embedded in the walls of this house.

I can still feel my son's warm hugs, his kiss on my cheek as a child and as a man, and see him smiling at me, with his beloved wife by his side...their arms reaching high and hands forming the "I Love You" sign with thumb, forefinger, and pinky...as they left to board their Qantas flight back to a life they've formed together in Denver, Colorado.

I am content, for now, with what I had for a brief month.