A Road Trip to Napa from San Francisco by Way of Mexico

         I no longer felt in danger and was back at work the afternoon I picked up Jonathan to take him to Oakland, where my mother worked as a probation officer.  We were to meet her in the parking lot and leave the car, and she would drive us all to Napa to see David and his doctor, who had asked to speak with us.  But delayed by traffic, we got there late, and Mother was no longer waiting.  I assumed she had gone on to Napa by herself, so I told Jonathan I'd take him their in our car.
        Easier said than done.

       I got on the right road, but it didn't even occur to me that I needed to go in the right direction, and it started to rain.  Jonathan was in his car seat in the back seat, and I sang with him from time to time and kept him from seeing that I was crying between the snatches of songs.  
When I started to see signs for LA, the importance of going in the right direction came to mind, and I turned around.  Under any circumstances, I was a poor driver.  After years of going on dates the had the guy do all the driving, I'd lived in countries where I didn't have or need a car.  I hadn't learned to drive until I was thirty-three years old--after what I told people was the hardening of the brain.  Now, trying to get to Napa, I was distraught as well as dealing with that not-quite-imprinted (with good maps or the ability to follow directions) brain. 
        The rain increased after dark, and when I got within, say, fifteen miles of Napa, I parked the car in one more cafe or gas station and went in to ask.

       A driver who heard me, gave me directions and told me to follow him.
So in the darkness, in the rain, I followed him several miles until we got to the gate in front of Napa, and he waved goodbye.

      I don't know who he was but I will never forget him.
       I drove to the parking lot in front of the Administration Building but didn't see Mom's car.  Then after getting Jonathan out of his car seat, I got directions to the office of the doctor, who welcomed me.

        "My mother hasn't arrived yet?" I asked.
       "No," the doctor said.  "She called and said she had to cancel because you couldn't make it today."
 The doctor told me that we really couldn't talk because there were some things that Jonathan shouldn't hear.


 It didn't take me three hours to get back home.  But that's probably because I went in the direction of San Francisco instead of Oregon.
 

Mom, Speaking from the Heart, Lifting, Numbing Mine

           Walking through the ward at Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in California's wine country, Mom smiled as we passed a patient near my brother's ward.

            “You don’t mean that smile, you bitch!”  the patient hissed.

               “You’re right," my mother said, quietly and sadly.  "I’m worried about my son, and I really don’t feel much like smiling.” 

            "Well," the patient replied,  taken back by my mother's gentle tone, "God bless.”

            I admired Mom for not taking offense or being dismissive but instead communicating her real feelings to the patient  who had challenged and insulted her.  She kept that attitude even at Aegis, when she had Alzheimer’s and was sure she was going to die by—if not before—her 90^th birthday.

            This was the mother, wise woman and counselor, seeker of peace and greater understanding whom  I accompanied for years of visits to see my brother, who entered Napa because of neurological and psychological problems at the age other people entered college.  We visited him together except for the years when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tonga, followed by a year teaching in Spain and two in Algeria.  I was a great letter writer,  but my mother was not, so even though she and her partner Kathy visited me for a few days in Algeria, there was an additional distance created by the geographic one, and even though growing up I’d felt very close to her,  as an adult it seemed that aside from family gatherings for birthdays and holidays, my mother and I got together only to see my brother.  I became someone she depended on for that.

              So when I was a victim (and to some extent a perpetrator) of violence on my thirty-seventh birthday and called to talk to her on the phone as I was trying to figure out how to get my son and me into a woman's shelter--Mother and I agreed that w wouldn't be safe in her home because my husband would know to look there--her final words to me were, “I hope this doesn’t keep you from going to see David with me on Wednesday.”  She called back a few minutes later, apologizing because she realized that with all I’d been through, her concerns seemed callous, and I knew they did, and yet I also understood she was speaking from need, and I think that I understood need—mine and hers.  So what hurt wasn’t that she was being unsympathetic to my plight.  What hurt was that my relationship with my mother had been defined.  We were a team taking care of my brother’s special needs. 

Nani Tutu, Beautiful Grandmother

Tomorrow I'm going to post a longer piece--one with words!  But today I have two pictures, two articles, and two reasons to be pretty.

I am uglier now than I've ever been.  It's almost unsettling.  I remember Mom's once commenting that a smile is an instant face-lift, and I really need to smile constantly because when I don't, I look mean as well as ugly.  In the past week two articles have come out about "Reasons to Be Pretty," to borrow the title of the play by Neil LaBute--a play Jonathan and I saw in New York the same year (I think) that we saw the new, highly praised production of West Side Story, where Maria feels pretty.   One reason to look that way is that our faces are plastered everywhere even if we don't do the plastering ourselves.  The other is that bullies pick on people who are unattractive, according to a recent study. 

Before Jonathan was born, Mom and Kathy took a trip to Hawaii, and Mom came back with a name for Jonathan to call her:  NaniTutu, beautiful grandmother.  A few months after Mom's death, I was in Hawaii with Javier, Evelyn, and Walter, and I paid attention to this name when I saw it on a name tag.  (Trust me.  That's what her name tag says.)

I also found in in a book.

 And that explains one of the names in her obituary.  The others are Nadine, Nay, and Mom!

Picking Apart Obituaries: A Life as Resume

Back from  the Balboa Theatre, where I saw 20 Feet from Stardom, which the marquee made look like something longer:  "Frances Ha Wolverine 20 Feet from Stardom Popcorn Palace Every Sat."  And after reading Tennessee Williams' short story (not play) "The Night of the Iguana" and wondering how such a frank and sexual story got published in 1948, I turn my attention back to Mom's obituary because I'd always felt bad about the short mention of her parents, particularly my saying that they were her adoptive parents as if that just weren't good enough.  But that was not at all what I meant.  I had to mention that they were adoptive parents so that I  could also mention the siblings she found--or rather we, Dana and I, found--when Mother was in her sixties.  I reach a state of apoplexy when I hear someone refer to their birth mother as their "real" mother, so I felt bad that people might get the impression that I didn't consider grandparents not blood-related as "real.".

In loving memory of Nadine Martin, Mom, Nani, Nay, of Pleasant Hill, born  in Kansas City, Missouri  on October 25, 1921, named Natalie Virginia Stephens and renamed Nadine Virginia Robison by her adoptive parents Perry and Lela Robison, who moved to Oklahoma and then to California, where she attended school and studied piano and ballet.

                An honor student, she started UCLA at the age of sixteen, also attended UC  Berkeley, and later left college to marry Elmore Martin, type his dissertation, and start a family.  They lived in California, Idaho, Iowa, South Carolina, and Kansas.    In South Carolina, she continued her education through correspondence courses at the University of South Carolina, and the year they lived in Hays, Kansas, she graduated with honors from Fort Hays Kansas State College with a degree in English.  She and her family then moved to Pleasant Hill, California, where after twenty-five years of marriage and five children, she and her husband divorced.   

                 She worked as a counselor at the Children’s Shelter in Contra Costa County, where she met Kathy Loss, who became her partner and companion of more than forty years.  She also worked as a Probation Office for Alameda County, where she was  praised  for her beautifully written court reports.

                She and Kathy travelled together to Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia, bicycled across the Netherlands, visited her daughter Tina in Algeria, took cruises to Mexico and Hawaii, and went camping across the northern part of the United States to find the perfect apple pie.  A francophile, her favorite trip abroad was probably one to see an Impressionist exhibit in Paris.  She also made trips to see her daughters Dana and M’Lissa and their children and to visit her daughter Susan and son-in-law in Texas.  

                In her sixties, she discovered that her birth mother had five other children, four of whom she then met for the first time.  

I reach a state of apoplexy when I hear someone refer to their birth mother as their "real" mother, so I felt bad that people might get the impression that I didn't consider grandparents not blood-related as "real."

That's one of the reasons I feel good about looking into the Y in Paris-World War I history of Granddaddy Robison.    

 Resumes, even when totally factual, distort and mislead.  That is, after all, what they are for!  Tomorrow I plan to talk about Mom's names.

The French Connection--and My Mother's Father

I'm back from seeing Blue Jasmine, the latest Woody Allan movie, which was filmed in San Francisco and Manhattan.  I saw it with Jonathan, who when he was last here saw the mother-son road picture Guilt Trip with Barbra Streisand traveling with her son from NYC to San Francisco.  This movie was much better, and being with my son was a nice finish to a day that began with my being with grandfather via the YMCA French connection!  This is what Christiane Rheims is going to put in France's Y-equivalent newsletter:

It's illustrated with the picture of my mother's dad, Perry Robison, in uniform and by a picture he took of the canal between the American and the French warehouses.

UC Infos 194 : YMCA  Paris 1919

 

 

Les YMCA à Paris en 1919 : recherche d’informations

Les YMCA de San Francisco fêtent leur 160^ème anniversaire. Dans ce contexte, elles invitent leurs membres à raconter les histoires qu’ils partagent avec le mouvement.

C’est ainsi que nous avons été contactés par Tina Martin. Son grand-père, Perry W. Robison (photo), a travaillé pour les YMCA à Paris en 1919. Son passeport porte l’adresse du 46 rue de Provence, où se situait le siège national des UCJG.

Elle recherche des informations sur les YMCA à Paris cette année-là, les activités auxquelles aurait pu participer M. Robison. C’est pourquoi, outre les informations que nous avons pu lui transmettre, nous lui avons proposé de relayer sa demande dans UC Infos. Au cas où les lecteurs de UC Infos, disposerait d’informations sur cette période.

Trad. du texte au dos de la carte : « Juste un secrétaire YMCA ordinaire qui essaie de faire sa part en France. Car beaucoup de nos soldats ont besoin de davantage de soutien dans la bataille de Paris qu’ils en ont eu besoin en Arregon (Argonne) ou dans les secteurs de Saint Michiels (Saint Mihiel). Perry W. Robison ».

Légende écrite par P. Robison : « YMCA côté canal, entrepôt YMCA à gauche, entrepôt français à droite ».

NB : Canal Saint-Martin, canal de l’Ourcq ?

Contact : Alliance Nationale – Christiane Rhein (c.rhein@ymca.fr – 01 45 83 23 93)

Being Old but Not Ugly

Today in the supermarket, I saw a woman with a really wrinkled face who was truly beautiful, and I thought of my mother and how beautiful she became.  She had been beautiful as a young woman, and then I saw her as less beautiful for a few years, but in her seventies and eighties, she became beautiful again.  My question is "Why can't I do that?"  Why can't I be old and beautiful instead of old and ugly?  All I know is that I can't, at least not yet.

Yesterday after seeing American Jerusalem:  Jews and the Making of San Francisco with Olga and Mikhail, I took the L-Streetcar back home.  When a young woman stood up, I asked a white-haired woman whether she would like to sit down, and she looked at me and asked, "Why?" I really think she was starting to say, "Why should I sit instead of you?  Do you honestly think you're younger?"  Instead she sat down and, gathering her wits about her, asked, "How do you know that I'm older?"  I said something about shoes.  But I didn't even try to finish.  Years ago, thanks to my mother who had The I  Hate to Cook Book and The I Hate Housekeeping Book, I read Peg Bracken's I Try to Behave Myself book, which explained that if you're not sure whether the older person you're offering your seat to will be insulted that you recognize her as older, you should look at her shoes.  If they have high heels, she obviously cares more about appearance than comfort, so you should not offer her your seat. But if the woman has on comfortable shoes, she'd rather be comfortably seated than mistaken for a younger-than-you-woman.

After the white-haired woman was seated, a young guy gave me his seat and said he was good at balancing because it was like skate-boarding.

I want to be treated as a senior, but I don't want to be seen as ugly.  Just old.  Please!