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 Where ever you go, there you are.
I love to travel, I love to write, and sometimes I love to write about what I find when I travel.
But the one constant is, where ever I go, it's always me I'm hauling around.
And sometimes, where ever we go, and no matter how fast, we circle back to home.
My mom lives in the house where I grew up. She bought the place with my father in 1957, which is ancient history in California time.
We will holiday here, in my old home, in my old room.
Among my mother's extensive book collection.
Welcome.
Throughout this site is my version of Being Miss Behaved from poetry to essays to novels. I also teach composition and journaling, and to make some money – I am a Real Estate Consultant.
Elephant Hills
Later my mother reflected
In old age
You just become much more
Of what you were in the first place
And if you didn’t do much
Then you will manage to hang on
For quite a long time
Longer than anyone needs you.
You end up being force fed Jell-O.
every day – a different version
Green Jell-O with suspended pear bits
Yellow Jell-O with pineapple and mandarin oranges
Broken glass Jell-O, all colors with Tapioca
Jell-O layered dessert
Me
I think I’ll travel in my eighties
and End it all by rampaging elephant
Since by then I won’t have enough energy
To scramble up the side of the jeep in face of
such an emergency,
an angry elephant.
So I’ll go
In a Hemmingwayesque burst of dust
The brown low hills
Reflecting my prone body.
For modesty sake
I’ll remember to wear slacks.
For myself, I hope I have enough time
to squeeze the universe in a ball
and roll it towards the questions.
Do we order a bottle of wine with dinner?
Start with calamari even though we are so far from the coast?
Order another cosmopolitan?
One woman in the home (no wait; extended care facility, please)
is 101.
Is there a prize?
Can she still see out the window
and look at the snow?
My grandmother collects Hummel figurines.
and a large book: Hummel Art.
we think that both
the collection and
the book explaining why this should be so.
will all go to my Uncle
of whom we are not currently fond.
The day after the Day of the Dead.
we hovered
and my grandmother said;
“The years between 85 and 95,
not so good”
So then my mother entertained herself
by doing the math
And figured that if 85 is enough
then she only has 17 more years.
So if that is the case
then we should plan the trip to Egypt
right now.
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