Betty was my first tough boss. But also one of the best.

My best friend bought this dancer for the first tree I bought.

Betty was my first tough boss. But she also gave me my first Christmas bonus, which I used to buy my first tree.

That was cool. Especially since Betty didn't always like me. 

She was a short-but-formidable New Yorker who opened a pizza place in my California hometown using her husband's family recipes and her keen business sense. A no-nonsense woman who rarely smiled, Betty had strict rules for her employees and I respected all but one when I started working there my last year of high school. I understood why we had to weigh toppings, why we couldn't give pizzas to our friends and could only give ourselves one free slice per shift. But I never understood why she wouldn't let girls work the ovens.

Working the ovens meant you were in charge of cooking all the pizzas: putting them in, then pulling them out and slicing them when they were done. It was hot, dirty work that Betty thought girls weren't strong enough to do, and most didn't want to do. But I did.

I liked that it was a mental and physical puzzle, starting with deciding where to place each pie and remembering which one would be ready first. I loved that it was a job you did alone, and that freed you from helping customers, because you never knew when the last 17 seconds between done and burnt would come. And I loved watching the muscles on my arms growing from lifting pizzas, even smiling at all the burn scars that joined them.

But no matter how good everyone else knew I was at working the ovens, I could never do it when Betty was around. Fortunately, I did get her approval to do a job I ended up loving even more: stretching out dough.

“I hear Phil taught you how to stretch dough,” Betty said one day. "He says you could fill in for him on the weekends, so he doesn't have to get up early after playing with his band. Though God knows who pays to hear that music."

"Yes, I'd like to," I said.

“Right. But first you need to make me a dough.”

When I came back from the fridge with a dough canister, Betty stopped me from opening it.

“Wait, show me your hands,” she said. “Good. No nails. Keep them short."

To calm my nerves I pretended Betty wasn't there, focusing on everything I loved about working with a dough. Taking it out and getting that first whiff of the earthy, moist mix of yeast and olive oil. Then swirling a handful of flour on the board before dropping the dough, still perfectly round and full of possibility -- no tears or even thin spots yet.  And how each dough looked different, with its own moon surface of air bubbles, but felt the same: deliciously soft and squishy as I pushed out the air bubbles out and flattened the dough into a disc dusted with flour.

Then I lifted the dough up, and with just two fingers of each hand began to pinch a lip onto the edges, forming what would become a nice, bubbly crust. Once it had an edge all around and I was sure it was warm enough, I began to spread the dough very carefully with my thumbs, letting it drop down the backs of my hands and gently stretch itself. I never threw the dough like Phil did, and while my method took longer and was less flashy, I thought mine were always more circular and had less thin spots. By the time I laid down the finished dough, I had forgotten Betty was there because I jumped when she said, “OK. You can stretch the dough. Just don’t start tossing them like Phil does."

That Thanksgiving, I knew Betty had thoroughly warmed up to me because the night before she asked if I wanted to go home early and help my mother with the cooking.  
"No, it's just me and my dad," I said, forgetting to lie.
"Oh. Why?"
I always hated this part. Not matter how straight the words sounded in my head, they always came out crooked. "My mother was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago."
Betty sucked in her breath as I turned to tidy the bins of toppings, hoping she wouldn't hug me. If that hard little woman turned soft and wrapped her arms around me, I would have melted into a puddle. But she didn't. Just made a few sympathetic noises that sounded like "you poor thing," and I didn't turn around until the bell on the front door told me she left.

Then a few days before Christmas Betty came in early one Saturday morning when I was alone. "This is for you," she said, holding out an envelope. "But you can't tell anyone else about this. Not everyone is getting one."
I nodded and put the envelope in my apron pocket. After she left I opened it: Inside was a $100 bill, about half my two-week paycheck. And before I went home that day I knew exactly what I wanted to buy first: a Christmas tree.

My father hadn't bought one since my mother died. He never cared for American holidays, and especially didn't like how we celebrated Christmas. So with his wife gone, he decided we didn't need a tree, and we definitely didn't need to ever play that "blasted Johnny Mathis again."
So I bought a tree with Betty's bonus. And waited until my father went to bed to decorate it so I could play the Johnny Mathis Christmas album while putting on the ornaments.

Betty made my holiday that year, but she also showed me something much more important: that I was a good employee and my skills were appreciated, even if smiling on-demand wasn't one of them. At my first job I made food, too, but there it didn't seem to matter how hard I tried to pour the perfect ice cream cone or shape the perfect stick of cotton candy if I couldn't smile while handing it over. It took me decades to find the strings on my smiles, and they're still hard to pull.

But Betty didn't care that I wasn't sweet and friendly like most girls. She cared that I showed up when I was supposed to, made good pizza that I charged the right price for, and didn't pull money out of the cash register on my way home. And she liked that I didn't dress like a girl, either, because I was happy to just wear a plain white T-shirt and jeans under my apron, didn't have jewelry getting in the way and didn't need all those extra bathroom breaks to check on my make-up.

"You'll always have a job here," Betty told me when I left, adding that she was sad to lose such a "sensible" worker like me. I'll never forget how good that made me feel, knowing that even if I never learned to pull out my smiles at will, I could still be a valuable employee to the right bosses.
And that meant more to me than any Christmas bonus could.

Three little things got us through the power outage: A radio, lamp & camping stove

Before our power went out last month, my husband and I watched six innings of Game Four of the 2019 World Series. Then when the house went silent, we moved outside to listen to the rest of the game on a transistor radio while looking at the stars, which were so much brighter with all the streetlights and houses around us gone dark.
"We should do this more often!" we said.

That was cool.

I didn't buy the little Sony radio for the long-anticipated Public Safety Power Shutoff by PG&E, but because it reminds me of my father. Since my mother wouldn't allow a television in our house, my father listened to local football and baseball games on a small radio hung near the kitchen door to get the best reception. So hearing sports announcers on the radio will always bring back fond memories of relaxing weekends with my family, making me smile even during a power outages.

More useful than the radio, though, was the lamp I did buy specifically for an outage because it runs on batteries and has a USB port for charging phones and tablets. And while we didn't need to charge anything quite yet that first night, we were left without a way to run the bedroom fan, which we depend on for white noise to help us sleep. But when I discovered I could plug the portable noise machine we bought for travel into the lamp, it became the next hero of the outage.

The next morning I went outside to start up the camping stove I also bought months earlier: A portable burner you attach to a small propane tank and light with a match, which is how my mother cooked everything for us on camping trips.

Using a small cooking pot on top of the burner, I boiled water for coffee and then later for instant oatmeal. For lunch the stove heated up leftovers we needed to eat as soon as possible, then for dinner it heated up canned soups and boiled water again for tea. 

All four nights and mornings of the outage that propane tank kept powering my burner whenever I needed it. And on just one set of batteries that lamp kept going for three days, charging three small devices throughout the day, lighting the living room in the evening and running the noise machine all night.

But as happy as I was to have those three little things providing most of what we really needed (especially since our house still had heat and running water), the fourth day of the outage when I found some ladies cooking up egg sandwiches on a gas stove in downtown Ukiah, I immediately bought two of them for our lunch.

And that sandwich would have been delicious any day, but after four days of instant oatmeal and canned soup, that egg, bacon and cheese served on soft, warm bread tasted like the best thing I had ever eaten.

Three cool Halloween costumes I saw in Ukiah

Strolling through downtown Ukiah on Halloween this year, the first costume that caught my eye was made by teen Noah Edelman, who was carrying his own head.

That was cool.

"I figured I'm a bit too old to be trick-or-treating, so I'd better make a really good costume," said Edelman, who is now a freshman at Ukiah High School, explaining that he got the idea for the costume from a book he found on his parents' shelves called "The Encyclopedia of Immaturity."

The second costume that caught my eye was a wagon mousetrap carrying Carson Kennedy, nine-months-old, who was dressed in a grey mouse costume and trying to eat a plastic hunk of cheese.

"His great-grandfather made this for him," said mom Kenzie Kornegay, explaining that her grandfather Brian Kornegay makes boards for the game cornhole, so he just needed to make the round hole a bit bigger so Carson could fit through.

My favorite adult costume was definitely Grey Wolf-Smith as Divine, an actor who starred in the John Waters' movies Hairspray and Pink Flamingos.

"I made the eyebrows myself, and I almost ran out of make-up!" said Wolf-Smith of Divine's signature eye shadowing that covered much of his forehead.

Former prisoner calls getting a jury summons 'one of the best days of my life'

When I was picked recently to serve on a jury, I immediately felt trapped and panicky as  I realized I'd be spending the next several days in a stuffy courtroom full of strangers. Until I heard the voice of one of my fellow jurors describing how he felt getting his jury summons.

"It was one of the best days of my life," said the former prisoner, explaining that the letter was his official invitation back into society.

That was cool. 

I had groaned when I got my summons. And I'm guessing most everyone else called in with me that week did, too. 

But not the convict I will call John. To John, that letter meant he had successfully rehabilitated himself and reinstated his rights to vote and to serve on a jury.

He had waited years after his release from prison to apply for those rights. And once he did, "six months later I got that summons," John said, adding that he'd never been considered for a jury before because of a criminal past that began in his teens.

But while our fellow potential jurors did everything they could to show resentment toward law enforcement, often relaying second or third-hand accounts in the hopes of being excused from service, John said he had no hard feelings toward the people who administered his punishment.

"I know the bailiff there because he arrested me," John said of the handcuffs that had put him in prison for several years.

The first morning of the trial, I told John he had given me valuable perspective. Such as how sitting in comfortable chairs, being offered many breaks with the freedom to go outside and eat whatever we wanted during the day, then going home every night to our families and sleeping in our own beds was nowhere near like actually being in prison.

Except in one surprising way it was. 

When I asked John if there was anything he missed about being in prison, he described a culture of mutual respect he had appreciated. On the outside, he quickly noticed, people often give no thought to others they pass, not even acknowledging the presence of, let alone holding a door open for, someone they will likely never see again. 

But since prisoners are crammed together day after day as they eat, sleep, bathe and use toilets within inches of the same people over and over, they quickly learn that even the smallest act of respect will be remembered and reciprocated.

And I felt such careful respect in every action of our judge in the courtroom, starting with how he greeted us every morning, and excused us every afternoon, by sincerely thanking us for carving time out of our lives to serve on a jury. 

The judge was so considerate, in fact, he had water put on a table for us to access any time we wanted, even adding his own cough drops and chocolates for us to enjoy. And when my service was completed, I got a letter from the judge personally thanking me one last time for my time and commitment.

That, too, was cool.

 

Update: Of course, this was written before the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore does not address the new layers of anxiety and risk now associated with certain aspects of jury duty. However, my appreciation for the perspective my fellow juror offered me has not changed.

Poem: Canoe

I am in your canoe.

Until we capsize,

Or you throw me overboard,

I will be paddling next to you.

Justine Frederiksen

For years I saw a man in the cemetery every morning. One day, I stopped to talk to him.

A man brings red roses to his wife's grave on their anniversary.

Most days I drive by the cemetery I see a man visiting his wife's grave. 
When it's hot he wears a hat and short sleeves; for the rain he brings a raincoat and umbrella. First he tidies up the flowers and grass near the headstone, then he stands with his arms folded for about 15 minutes.

For years I've wanted to talk to him, always hesitating for fear of disturbing him. But something made me stop recently and approach him with a small wave. When he waved back I asked, "Are you visiting your wife?"

"Yes," he said, nodding at the fresh red roses lying on the grass. "Today is our wedding day."

That was cool.

"We were married for more than 66 years," he said of his high school sweetheart. "And you're not going to believe this, but in all those years we never had an argument."

"We both grew up in homes where people were always yelling at each other, so we made up our minds that we weren't going to do that," he continued. "And we didn't. We had a lot of discussions, though, with time for me to talk and for her to talk. And by the time we went to bed, we had worked everything out."

To stay married, he said, you've got to be "willing to listen and you've got to be willing to admit when you're wrong.  And usually, my wife was the one who was right. As a husband, there are two things you should say every day: 'I love you' and 'Yes, dear.'"

When asked what he liked about his wife when they met, he said it was her beautiful smile.
"I don't think there was another woman with a more beautiful smile. And she was pretty inside and out."

When asked what he thinks about as he stands over the headstone carved with both of their names, he said he mostly thinks of the good times. But there is a headstone to the right belonging to one of their children.

"That was the saddest day of our lives," he said, explaining that the couple bought two headstones then, one for themselves and one for their child.

When asked why he visits his wife's grave every day he said, "I'm 92 and half now, so I don't have much else to do. And she gave me her life. It's the least I can do."

To respect the man's privacy, the photo was edited to remove the names from the headstone.  

My grandmother's Tercel: I still think it's ugly, but I love driving it.

My grandmother posing in front of her orange beast.

The last car my grandmother bought herself was a new 1984 Toyota Tercel. I thought it was too small and an ugly color, but she loved it. Every time we walked up to it she would gush, "Whose pretty little car is that?"

That was cool

I had never heard my grandmother use that voice before. I only knew the one she used to complain about my father. Or to order me and my sister not to walk so far away from her. Or to ask why I wasn't wearing the sweater she bought me.

I spent most of my life afraid of my grandmother and dreading our time together. But once I learned how much she lived through before I was even born, it helped me forgive her for being so difficult to be around.

She was put in an orphanage with her brother after their father died of the Spanish Flu, then came of age during the Great Depression, which taught her to track every penny she spent for the rest of her life. She became a bookkeeper, then a single mother in the 1940s. She kept my mother, kept working, and kept lists of every dollar she spent on my mother's diapers. Plus every dollar my grandfather didn't give her for those diapers.

My grandmother and my mother in the 1950s.

My father said my grandmother only kept my mother to prove to her mother she could. But it doesn't matter to me why she kept her, just that she did. And then helped her daughter pay for college. And helped my parents buy a house. Then helped me pay for college.

It took me a long time to accept that spending her money was how she showed love. Because I always wanted a grandmother who hugged us and laughed when we played, not one who loved to remind us of every naughty thing we ever said or did.

The only time I remember sitting in her lap was when she let me drive a car for the first time at about eight-years-old. I don't remember why she put me behind the steering wheel that day, but I remember us all laughing as I struggled to guide the car through the empty parking lot. 

The next time she gave me the wheel was two decades later when she took me to England so I could drive on the left side for her. The day after we picked up the rental car I woke up with a cold that my grandmother blamed on my walking around with wet hair. "You better not be too sick to drive," she announced as I stared out the window above my bed, wishing I could just sleep.

Later that same trip she gave me a rare compliment when I miraculously drove us back to our hotel through thick fog with no GPS, maps or even road signs to guide me, and later we shared an even rarer belly laugh. We got lost while driving to see a friend of hers and stopped at a pay phone to ask for directions:
"Where are you?" the friend asked.
"We're at Weak Bridge," I said, calling out the only sign I saw.
"You're where?" her bewildered friend said.
"We're at Weak Bridge!" I said, then finally it hit me. "That's not the name of the bridge, grandma. That's just telling us it's a weak bridge!"
We collapsed into the only laughter I remember sharing with her as an adult.

Another 20 years passed before I drove for her again, but this time she didn't ask me to. She also didn't ask me to write out all her checks so she didn't pay her rent twice, or to have meals delivered to her room every day when she stopped going to the dining room to eat.

Instead, she fought my help every day until I finally cracked at the diner where she demanded to know why we weren't at the French bistro she loved (knocking over all the tiny tables with her walker) and I snapped at her before running into the bathroom to finish yelling in a stall.
Afterward as I buckled her seatbelt she said, "Are you sure you don't want to just push me out of the car?"
I sighed. "No, grandma. I don't."
And I didn't. But I did ask my husband to start driving her around after that.

A few years ago she died just shy of her 98th birthday, but she is still with me because I drive her car every day. I still hate its color. It has no air conditioning. The radio doesn't work. I can't move the driver's seat anymore and the rear-view mirror disintegrated long ago.

But I love driving it. Because now in that car I can spend time with the grandmother I choose: all the best parts with none of the bad. Inside her car, I don’t think about the woman who spanked me for spilling cereal milk on her bedspread. I don’t think about the woman I drove to doctor’s appointments after cleaning poop off her shoes. 

The first visa she got to live in France at age 56.

Instead I think about the woman who drove me to countless museums, operas, ballets and Broadway shows. I think about the 56-year-old who moved to Paris for a year so she could learn French. And the 80-year-old who walked miles and miles of that city with me during a transportation strike. The 83-year-old who took me to New York. The 90-year-old who filled her tiny car with everything that would fit and drove herself to her new senior apartment complex in Petaluma. 

And I hope that the more time I spend with that determined, independent woman now, the more likely it is that I'll still be driving myself around when I'm 90. 

Update: I recently found a 3 x 5 card that she had typed details about Tercel on: 
Purchased from Toyota Santa Cruz on 8/31/84. Cost: $6538.30

You can see the Tercel starring in video below: