Conversations with Guy, Volume I: Chapter 3

I got to enjoy another Glanville visit recently, and Guy is doing a lot more in the way of actual sentences now, which is fun. And though he’s not actually reading yet, there were a couple times that I opened a favorite book at random and he said exactly what was on the page. He also calls me “muncle Tandava,” which is adorable.

One thing he’s doing a lot now is pointing enthusiastically at anything that catches his attention, and exclaiming “LOOook!” It’s especially cute when you ask him what it is he’s pointing to, and he replies in the exact same tone of fascination and amazement, “I -o- KNOOOW!” He’ll do this with all sorts of things, “regarding with equal gaze,” as the Bhagavad Gita says, “a clod of mud, a stone, and a bar of gold.”

He’s also counting now, and especially enjoys the 1-2-3 game (as in: count to three and then do something together, usually eating a raisin or something). I made him count most of the time, and he pretty quickly found ways to trick me with it. The obvious way was 1-2-eat-the-raisin-early. One version I particularly liked was “one... two... thr-YOU count!” Another time he went “one... two... [long pause, thinking] ... what comes after [s]even?” That got such a laugh that he started doing it deliberately for a while, with his grin that says he knows perfectly well that he’s playing to the crowd.

Another time, I tried to trick him, but he saw through it. We were rehearsing animal sounds at the time. (I liked to get him to work on “hiss” for snake, to practice his S’s.) Then he got distracted, as he often does, and pointed up to a vase on the table: “LOOook! Flower!” So naturally I asked him “What sound does a flower make?” Just to see what he would do. He stared at me for a few seconds, clearly thinking hard, then said “I [s]mell it!” Not gonna put one over on him, no sir.

Lacey also told me about one of his best new words, though I didn’t get to observe it “in the wild,” as it were. Apparently he has an oscillating fan in his bedroom, and at some point, someone told him that word. Then one day, he was walking along a curb, with one foot up on the curb and one foot off, rocking up and down as he went. Lacey asked him what he was doing and he said, entirely unprompted, “I’m off-ill-ating!”

Conversations with Guy, Volume I: Chapter 2

First of all, I have to say that this is really just about one of the best photos ever. Guy looks like he’s regaling me with some of his most humorous anecdotes. As he probably is. When these posts are someday published in an encyclopedic set of books, that photo will be on the cover.

I just spent a few days up in Portland with the Glanvilles, and since Guy’s last visit down to California only a month ago, he’s improved a number of words. “Piaaaaa” has now become more recognizably “fish,” “ngyo” has become “owange,” and he has even graced me with a extra letter in my name: I am now “Tamva.” Perhaps by the next visit I can be up to three syllables. Oh, and he also says “muncle” at me sometimes, which the rest of the family has been doing since he was born, but which I hadn’t heard from him before. (That’s a “monk uncle,” for those of you who haven’t heard.) It’s adorable.

Another thing he’s doing is stringing more words together into proto-sentences, or at least reasonably related groups. So for fun one evening I tried to get him to call me “yellow muncle Tandava.” This is what happened:

(Me:) Can you say “yellow muncle”?

(Guy:) ’ellow!

(Me:) “Yellow muncle”?

(Guy:) ’ellow muncle!

(Me:) Good! Now can you say “yellow muncle Tandava”?

(Guy:) [mischievous grin]

(Me:) You can do it… “yellow muncle Tandava”?

(Guy:) BUM!

He’s also collecting some other interesting new words, like “hummingbird” and “kombucha.” He can mimic pretty well sometimes, too, even if he doesn’t know what we’re talking about. We got him to say reasonably credible versions of “authenticity” and “symmetrical,” for reasons that made some sort of sense at the time. “Euphemism,” however, is still stuck at “eh-VOOM.”

I spent a great deal of the time there reading books with fascinating plots, mostly involving colors and numbers. Guy would often get tired of a book before I was finished, though I would naturally want to see how they ended (not having read these thousands of times like Lacey has). So there would be a little struggle, with Guy saying “no” and “all done” repeatedly, and eventually wresting the book away from me. After which he would say “good job,” in a tone that implied “don’t feel bad, you tried your best.”

Conversations with Guy, Volume I: The Early Years

After spending the last 10 days with my adorable, almost-two-year-old nephew, I'm not always sure whether I'm teaching a language or learning one. It can be quite entertaining, though Lacey still has to translate for us a lot.

Guy has standardized the pronunciation of my name to “Tama.” For a brief period of time a couple months ago, it was “TanBbBbBbBbBb,” but that seems to have been too much work. A great many of our conversations now go something like this:

“Tama?”

“Guy?”

“Tama.”

“Guy.”

“Tama!”

“Guy!”

“Tamaaaaaa :-)”

“Guyyyyyy :-)”

“Tama….”

“Guy….”

“BRAAAAAAIIIIIIINNNNNS!!!!!”

“Yes, that was the train going by. Very good!”

“Tama.”

“Guy.”

And so on. Pure poetry, that. We had similarly scintillating discussions regarding the repeated opening and closing of sliding glass doors, which he was getting very good at operating (given copious amounts of practice).

He does have quite a remarkable number of words at his disposal, though, in spite of what the above may imply. Many of them involve food, including such relatively obscure items as chia seeds, edamame, and quesadillas. Though the first time he used the latter on me, I responded almost automatically with “It’s Saturday.” But then Lacey reminded me that he doesn't speak Spanish, and has trouble with S’s.

We also get to watch him pick up new words even (so to speak) as we speak. We visited Jim in Santa Cruz one day, where he learned the word “ocean” (“otun”). Then as we were trying to get him ready to leave, he wandered into a room where he found a suitcase. As he is inordinately fascinated by suitcases (“too-ca-ca”), Lacey remarked in despair: “Oh no, he found a suitcase. We’re doomed.” Upon which Guy ran from the room waving his arms, crying “Doooooom!” He repeated his trick when we recounted the story for Mom the next day, but we've all been laughing at the word so much that I think it's safe to assume he doesn't know what it means.

Speaking of making us laugh, one of the first things Hugo told me when they all arrived was how Guy has been learning his colors and keeps calling things “yellow” all the time. So naturally we pointed to my shirt and said “Guy! What color is this?”

With a big grin he replied “-ite!”

“No, not white! What color is it?”

More enthusiastic this time: “Boooooo!”

Another try, and now he’s totally laughing at us: “Geeeeen!”

He went through all his colors before finally admitting that it was actually “-ellow.”

Another time, we took a break from the playground to go inside and get a drink of water (“ca-ca” — yes, we’ll need to do something about that particular pronunciation). After we were done at the sink, we made it as far back as the door before he wanted water again. So we went back, got another drink, got back to the door… and then had to go back for yet another drink. By this time he was grinning mischievously, and also rather giving himself away by asking for “door” after water, rather than “playground.” So I eventually escaped that cycle.

So anyway, this has been excellent communication practice for both of us, I think. They're heading home today, but I'll get to see them again in about a month, when I'll probably get to learn a whole new batch of Guy vocabulary.

Autobiography of a Monee

Or: Top Secret Project Revealed
Or: Why I Love My Family

Yesterday we had Monee's 80th birthday party and the unveiling of this year's top secret project: her autobiography. This is something she's been working on, off and on, for the last 20 years or so, so everyone knew about it in a general sense at least, but without really expecting anything at any particular time. Around March or so, when I started going up to Rossmoor to visit more often, she told me she was planning on resurrecting the project, finishing it in secret, and surprising everyone with it at her birthday. I was appointed her Secret Editor in Chief, with duties that included proofreading, editing, formatting, and general motivation and encouragement. We chipped away at it a little bit every week, then two months ago Pa and I took it down to a copy shop to get all 70 pages of it printed and bound, along with 50 pages of photos Greg had assembled for it years ago. Then we had to just sit on it quietly and not give anything away until the appointed moment. But it made a beautiful book and it was immensely satisfying to hand them out to everyone when the time finally came.

I am extremely proud of my grandmother for getting this completed. It was no small task, especially since her health was none too good back when I joined the project, and it was very slow going at times. But everything worked out wonderfully, and I'm honored to have been a part of making it happen.

After dinner, dessert, and presentation of the book, the assembled multitudes (well, moderate multitudes) got to go around the circle and share what we appreciate and love about Monee, Gramma Kathy, Mom, Kathleen, or whatever else we all call her. And while we expected (and got) very loving things from family members, I think what struck me most was the non family members. That's sort of an artificial distinction, though. The concept of "family" at these gatherings always feels very fluid and extendable. Not only did several people have significant others there, but there were also two ex-spouses and an ex-girlfriend. One of the exes was my dad, who also brought along my step-mother and step-grandmother, who I don't think had even met any of my family beyond me before.

And what comes through the most from all these supposedly unrelated people is how much a part of the family they became, right from the very beginning, being welcomed and loved right along with everyone else. Shaleece said she was nervous the first time she came to meet everyone, "but as soon as I got here, I wasn't nervous anymore." Grandma Marian said she was welcomed like an old friend in spite of meeting them for the first time. Mom talked about never feeling the slightest doubt about being absolutely, unconditionally loved, and I think it's clear that when you can raise a family like that, it extends well beyond the literal family.

Having grown up in this family, I realized that this is something I've kind of taken for granted, and it's easy to forget that not all families are like that. And it's even more impressive when you realize so much of this is flowing down from a woman who can't remember ever being told "I love you" until my grandfather came along and said it to her. So I admire my Monee all the more for that, and I'm incredibly grateful to be a part of this wonderful family, may it grow ever larger.

¡Buen Viaje!

I'm driving Lacey to the airport this morning. She has a one-way ticket to Guatemala for her next adventure, so I don't know quite when I'm going to see her again. I do know that she's going to make a wonderful experience of it all, and I'm very proud, as I always am, of my dear sister. ¡Buen viaje!

(As for me, I just haven't been in much of a writing mood recently. Don't take it personally. The blogging will come back at some point, I'm sure.)

Things Everybody Knows

Mom is behind on the Harry Potter reading, so I was reading some of it out loud to her, and we had stopped to discuss names at one point.

Mom: ...and of course, "Dumbledore" is Anglo-Saxon for "Bumblebee."
Me: [blank look] really...?
Mom: Oh, sorry, I thought everyone knew that.

She evidently reads different books than the rest of us. :-)

A Grandson Clock

I got my very own "Pa clock" yesterday. Around Christmas time Pa let me choose from a number of different clocks he had recently gotten at an auction, and I chose Cogsworth here. Pa just finished fixing and restoring it and delivered it yesterday. It's about a hundred years old, and German. A lovely little clock, and I like the color of the wood and the design. But my favorite thing about it is the chime on the hours. It's very mellow, and sort of comforting.

All my life, clocks have been associated with Pa, and he's always had a "clock room" full of them in various stages of (dis)repair. Always fun to listen to that room around the changing of the hours. This picture, with Pa and Lacey in the clock room, is one of my favorites.

Portland Plantland

I got back last night from a few days up in Portland visiting Lacey. She and John have a lovely apartment that I particularly liked (among many other reasons) because it's chock full of happy plants. I made an official count at once point, and came up with 70 distinct plants, just indoors and not counting everything they've got growing in the community garden nearby. By the time I left, it had already increased to 71, because it turns out that Lacey can't even walk into a music store without someone there giving her a plant to take home with her. It all made me want to start getting more greenery around my apartment. I've currently got a wandering jew and a spider plant, both doing decently well, but I've got a lot of space on my balcony that I'm not doing anything with, so it would be fun to get some stuff growing out there. I think Lacey inherited both of Mom's green thumbs, but I'll see what I can do.

Other fun stuff from the weekend:

• Dad and Betty Lue also visiting, and all of us going over to John's parents' house for a big family Thanksgiving dinner.
• Beating everyone at Scrabble.
• Spinning Alice (the cat) around on the hardwood floor.
• Watching Ice Age II.
• Hazelnut pancakes with pumpkin butter.
• Butter sculpting with John (not with the pumpkin butter, though).
• The Portland Farmer's Market, literally right outside their building.
• Going to Powell's (of course).

I had a remarkably easy time at the airports on both ends of the trip, perhaps because I flew on Thursday and Saturday, rather than, say, Wednesday and Sunday. On the way back, though, the woman sitting next to me clearly did not like being in planes. She spent half the time drinking a series of Bloody Marys (picking the ice out and hiding it in her doggie bag), then the rest of the time moaning drunkenly and talking to herself about how she "can't stand it," and then, mercifully, falling asleep. I'm glad it was a short flight.

The Riddle Cemetery

We had a family trip up to Riddle, Oregon this weekend. Uncle Jim had been keeping Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Marsh's ashes for three months and three years, respectively, and it was time to get everyone together with the two of them one more time. Jackie was a Riddle before she was a Waldon, and it was her family who founded the tiny (pop. 145) town of Riddle several generations previously. The cemetery there is full of Riddle headstones, and Jackie and Marsh's was waiting for them, next to Jude and Bob's, her father and brother. Jim brought the shovels, and we dug them a cozy little space, sang and prayed a bit, and said goodbye. We've had a Celebration of Life for each of them already, so this last little bit with just the family around was a good way to complete things. Those of us who weren't able to get up to Oregon were there in spirit.

The rest of the trip, though brief, was also good. I was glad to get to spend a lot of time with Dad (and a bit with Lacey) on the drives up and down. The whole family had dinner Saturday night at Wiley's World in Ashland, which I highly recommend to anyone who happens to be around there. The highlight there was the marionberry cobbler, made with berries from a bush right behind the restaurant, with homemade ice cream. Everything was fantastic, though, and I was waddling my way out when we were done. We also went to the Oregon Cabaret Theatre to see a show called Return to Planet Lisa. Lisa Koch has a pretty funny music/comedy act, which she performs in a variety of different personas. And Riddle even made an appearance in a song (to the tune of My Favorite Things) about small southern Oregon towns no one has heard of. That amused me.

Lots of Stuff

If you look up "packrat" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of my Grandma Jackie. Her two-bedroom apartment was stuffed to the gills, basically just leaving linear paths to move around in, with no actual space. Now that she's gone, my dad's family gets to go through and figure out what to do with it all. I spent all weekend and also yesterday evening up there, along with Dad, all of his siblings, and varying numbers of cousins. So at any given time there were usually 6-9 of us trying to maneuver around in this little space, preferrably without breaking anything.

A lot of the stuff, of course, is getting divvied up between family members, based on either sentimental or practical desires. Even more of it is getting donated to the local hospice thrift shop. We started by filling the bed of a pickup truck with garbage bags filled with clothes. There's still another batch of those to go, too, I think. And then the books. After we had each taken a box or a few for ourselves, and Aprill and Lamar had gotten several boxes of books on Christianity for their church's library, there were still 34 boxes left to get donated. Then a few more of music and videos and such. Plus trinkets, figurines and knicknacks up the wazoo (the raccoons alone took up a box of their own). And there was plenty of pure junk as well. I lost track of how many boxes of stuff I threw away. And even after all of this, there's probably still more stuff in that apartment than I own myself, but progress is definitely visible.

The very sentimental stuff is getting handled more carefully, of course. The evolving method is to pick an item type (e.g. pictures on the walls) and then have people take turns choosing what they want to take, working through a hierarchy of siblings by age, and then into the second generation (mine) when the first has the most important stuff, and occasionally into the third, since Kathy's granddaughter Jessie was there last night as well. Anything left over after that is up for grabs until it gets packed away.

Anyway, it's been a really interesting few days. I think it's been good to have so much of the family together and working on a big project together like this. There's a huge mix of personality types in the group, but on some level there's definitely something that we all "get" about Jackie and her passing. We can all miss her and love her while still laughing at her eccentricities and her ability to just "keep on giving." So it's been good.

Grandma Jackie

Grandma Jackie passed away this morning. For 16 years various doctors have been telling her that her time was nearly up, but she just kept trucking along, traveling the world, being active in her church community, and just generally loving everyone who came within reach. When she had an accident last month and was hospitalized for a week, though, even she started admitting it was probably the beginning of the end. But she was ready, and was happy with her life, and it gave the family all time to get together and prepare. On Monday I was up visiting her and got a chance to record her talking about her life, and about Grandpa Marsh, and her brother Bob, and the places she had traveled, and other memories. Dad said it was one of the last few real conversations anyone got to have with her, since she spent the last few days heavily medicated and just generally fading out. So I feel very blessed to have gotten to do that. She died this morning with Aunt Pat, and I think it was all pretty easy and peaceful.

As I've thought about all this, both today and in anticipation over the last few weeks, I've realized that Grandma Jackie was not only a good role model for living, but also a good role model for dying. That sounds odd to say, but I think it's an important thing that isn't thought about often enough. She lived her life (and more of it than anyone had expected) doing everything she thought was important and meaningful, and she was happy with it, and at peace, and ready for the transition. She made sure to get visits from everyone she could towards the end, and she had her children with her in shifts constantly for the last few weeks. Uncle Jim and Lacey also both made it down from Oregon just the other day, and I was up again last night with Lacey, Aprill & Lamar, Dad and all three of his siblings, so it was a really good gathering. We all got to spend some time with each other and with Jackie, and to talk to her. She wasn't really able to respond much, but I think it was really good for her to have so much family love around her during the final stages. I couldn't have asked for things to have gone much better than that.

I'm heading up to Rossmoor tonight to be with family, and I'll probably be up there most of the weekend.

Great Grandfather

Here's a better picture of great grandpa Walker, where you can actually see him. I got this one when I inherited his old banjo guitar nine years ago. Good picture. Let's not have any more "seed of Google" type posts about it this time, though. That was just weird.

Great Grandparents

I spent a lot of the day with Monee yesterday, and one of the things we did was to look through some of her old photos of her parents in the 1920s and '30s. I scanned a few of my favorites, which you can see on the Flickr photos above. The two of my great grandmother Mabel Reesey Walker Herdman in particular fascinate me. There's something a little mysterious and impish about her face that I love. You can tell that in spite off the old-fashioned formality of the pictures, she's still got some zing in her. I'm not sure why I like the picture of my great grandfather, Thomas Walker, so much, especially since you can't even see his face very well. But I like it nonetheless.

Mabel and Tom both kept diaries during the time of their (secret) courtship and subsequent elopement, and we've got transcripts of them both written out with each person's entry from each day side by side, along with Mabel's commentary on it from a taped interview with my uncle Paul years later. Fascinating stuff. It's really making me want to get more into the family history and dig up old stories and photos and things to share, like uncle Jim does on the Waldon side.

Spiced Peach Jam and SandWallaWallaWiches

Lacey's running around California for a couple weeks, getting in visiting time with everyone, and she spent the Labor Day weekend with me and Mom in Palo Alto. She is strewing homemade jam about as she goes, as well, and I must say the spiced peach is incredible (especially since you almost have to slice it as much as spread it). Strawberry-rhubarb was a very close second, though. Also, we got a big yummy Walla Walla onion at the farmers market and made toasted cheese, onion and tomato sandwiches. Wonderful stuff. Anyway, Lacey's blogging up a storm about her trip, and my writing is not feeling particularly voluminous today, so I'll leave the rest of the stories to her.

Cousin Central

Cristie and Paul came up last night and we all went to Swing Central together. I've been meaning to start doing more swing dancing lately, so it was fun to do that and see them both. They took the drop-in beginning class and I watched Kevin and Carla's intermediate lesson. I'm definitely thining about signing up for the next series when it starts. Lots of cool stuff to learn there.

One odd thing about the dance was that during the whole time (except the lessons) there was a projector showing videos of the U.S. Open competition on the wall, without sound. A couple times, everyone even stopped dancing entirely to watch a particular couple or group. But the sound was off, of course, because of the music that was playing for us to dance to. So it was absolutely bizarre to watch choreographies to the wrong music. Sometimes things would seem to line up in phrases and almost work, which in a way was almost more confusing, because then it just seemed like a not-so-good choreography, rather than something that was clearly mismatched. Weird.

Mexico City, 1968

I found a set of photographs from what Dad called a "pre-Olympic tour" in Mexico. He said his college team travelled around the country racing against a lot of the local and regional teams, and they also got to run the first official race on the real Olympic track. Very cool. Hopefully I'll get to hear more about it when I see Dad on Christmas. I'm not sure what event this was that he won.

More Stuff from the Boxes

I spent a little while this evening going through a bag full of old birthday cards and similar things from when Dad was age 0-5. Most weren't anything very interesting or worth keeping, but some I kind of liked. I'm particularly taken by how many little tiny cards there were. I like miniature things, and you don't see cards this size these days.

I haven't managed to work myself up to tackling all the various newspaper clippings yet, but a couple did catch my eye. One was the family photograph shown to the left. The other was a Sermon of the Week, which was "condensed from one written and delivered" by Dad, when he was 16. Neat.

Trophies

I went through the two boxes of Dad's old running trophies tonight. A lot of them were broken, and there was also a separate collection of broken people from the tops of various other trophies. Some still looked good, though. And there were a few amusing ones, like this one, which seems to be Richard Nixon jogging on a treadmill, scratching his armpit and making a face like a fish that wants to be fed. Then there's this one, which looks like a combination combination gramophone-compass-speedometer-pen holder of some sort. Interesting. I was disappointed that not many of them said what even he actually won (though a couple were marked "2 mile run"). Still, it was fun to see everything, 25 trophies or pieces in all.

A New Project

The pack-rat tendencies in my family are really far too extreme. A couple months ago, Uncle Jim delivered to me four boxes and one bag that had been in the care of my aunts. It seems that these contain nearly everything that ever happened to my dad during his high school and college years, at least in terms of athletics and academics. There are two boxes just of trophies and awards from his track and field competitions. There are also two more boxes of scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings, photos and report cards. The bag contains a few things from earlier years as well, like a stack of birthday cards (some from when he was two years old), a baby book, a bit of schoolwork, and more report cards. Scattered throughout are some more random things, like a paperback copy of Revolution at Berkeley, and an entire binder of Pan American World Airways Teacher magazines.

So anyway, this has all come to me, in a kind of implied apprenticeship to Uncle Jim, the family historian. I'm in the process now of simply figuring out what to do with it all. Tonight I opened everything for the first time, just to see what all is in there and get an idea of what I'll be facing. It looks like it will be interesting to go through piece by piece, but I'm also going to need to somehow archive it all so that it can be safely gotten rid of without upsetting Grandma Jackie (Dad doesn't care what happens to it, and I'm certainly not going to keep it all in my room forever). I'll probably just photograph all the trophies, which should be the easiest part. Scanning in all the photos will probably take a while. When it comes to the hundreds of newspaper articles, I think there's going to have to be some significant selecting and editing involved. I'm not sure what I'll do with the slides. But whatever I do, it'll be a bit of a project for a while.

On the other side of the family, I have a cassette tape from Monee that I want to transcribe, and maybe get into a digital format at some point. It's Uncle Paul talking with Great-Grandma Herdman about Monee's father's "courtship diary." Should be interesting. I'd also like to read some of Great-Grandma Herdman's diaries, if we can ever borrow them from the cousins currently in possession of them. But that's a project for another time.

Rare Books and Egyptian Relics

Mom and Pa came down for a visit today and we all went on a field trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, where they currently have a rare books exhibit. We showed up right at 11:00 when the doors opened, to "beat the crowds," but luckily not everyone gets as excited about old books as we do, so we actually had the exhibit to ourselves. Lots of neat things there, like a first edition (1721) of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting. I wish we could have actually flipped through the books and read them. We wandered around the rest of the museum too, of course, through an Egyptian tomb replica, past actual mummies and a rare original statue of Cleopatra VII, and eventually outside to a nice fountain where we had our picnic. A fun tri-generational outing all around.