SCARLET FEVER

Did you ever stop to wonder just what had to happen for you to be where you are right now? Think about it, what did and didn't have to take place for you to be born? We can look at the obvious, our parents meeting, our births, our successful navigation through childhood to the present day but what about further back, back to our grandparents lives, our great grandparents lives, how they met, what it took for them to find each other, the hardships, the journeys they took, it's a wonder to me how this grand puzzle we call our lives comes together into this intricate fabric called humanity. Up until recently I knew so little of my beginnings, not because my parents were circumspect or anything like that, they were just plain busy and who knows how much they really knew anyway. Heck, my mom left Germany as a young woman who had been tossed around in the tumultuous currents of Germany at war. My father was no better, the only child of a young French girl and a sophisticated world traveler who had literally been around the world at a time when people rarely left their farms. My grandfather on my dad's side died when my dad was eleven years old and his mother worked constantly to keep them going from that point onward. Everything changed for me this last year when I opened up a box that I had been carrying around with me since my father's death 18 years ago. What I thought was in the box, the odds and ends left from a life well lived and what was, in fact, in the box were two very different things.  What I found was all of the letters my father had written to his mother from the day he had enlisted in the Army during World War II.  What I didn't know was in the box, neatly categorized by year, was every letter my Grandfather had written to my Grandmother from the time they met, through their marriage, through the birth of their son and for years after that as my Grandfather traveled his route as a salesman who sold road building equipment during a time when the country's infrastructure was expanding by leaps and bounds.
My Grandfather died in 1932 when my father was eleven years old so I never met the man I'm named for. But what I have learned is that my Grandfather was a lovely man, romantic, nostalgic, family oriented and driven to give his young bride and their child a wonderful life. I haven't read all of his letters but trust me, there is enough information in them to keep me googling for years.
While Googling my Grandfather's name a small article came up that knocked me off my pins and set me wondering at the randomness that is my life.  Written in 1880 it was a weekly round up of the illnesses and deaths that had threatened and claimed the lives of the town's children.  I could just see the stylized, Victorian image of the Grim Reaper implied in the title of the article, "Scarlet Fever".  Scowling and taunting the helpless parents of every child in Spencer, Indiana,  I could feel the fear expressed in every word of that article and with it, the implied thankfulness that their Timmy or Kathleen, their child wasn't on that weeks roll call.

Scarlet Fever
Since our last issue the fever has appeared in several new cases in
rather a grave form but up to Wednesday evening but one more death had
occurred, that of Rosa, three year old child of TJ HARRIS, who died Friday
evening. Ralph, eight year old son of Judge ROBINSON, has been very bad for
several days, --not likely to recover—but up to Wednesday evening hopes of his
recovery were entertained. Miss Emma LANHAM AND THREE OF Clay SURBEE’S
children have been dangerously ill, but their symptoms now point towards
recovery Up to the present there have been but about 15 cases. A few sporadic
cases have occurred.

After reading the article several times I thought of my Great Grand Parents, John Cruden Robinson and his wife Martha Cooper Robinson and I wondered if they had read the article as their son struggled for life.  Had they been shielded by loving family and friends, had anyone had the presence of mind to hide it from them until they were sure that the danger had passed.  Was there ever a thought of "what wouldn't be" if their young son, Ralph had not survived.
As I read the article over 100 years after the fact I couldn't help but imagine what went through their heads as events unfolded.  You see, there had been another son before Ralph, his name was Guy and he died at two years old of an undisclosed illness.  Ralph had reached 8 years old when the Fever struck and Jesse was years younger than that.  Death lived so much closer then, death was always hiding in a puddle of water, in the growl of a nameless dog or in a pot hole that a wagon wheel just couldn't traverse.  And yet how could death be so cruel?  How could death take two sons from a family that was so thankful for so much, a family that gave so much to the community and the world around them?

In the end, Death didn't win this round and Ralph, at the age of 26, went on to travel the world choosing to live, along with 700 other young American men and women, in the Philippine Islands.  He stayed for nearly fifteen years as part of a group sent by President McKinley commonly known as "The Thomasites." Named for the ship that took them to the Philippines, the USS Thomas.  Ralph was charged with educating untold hundreds of native Philippine children and adults in farming practices and the english language.  He left at the request of the Philippine Government to oversee the construction of the Philippine Pavilion at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco.  While there he met a much younger woman, a French girl who, as the story goes, was working in a cafe at the French Pavilion.  He courted Leah Allue for four years before marrying her and two years later they had their one son, my Father John Firmin.  As the years unfolded this country boy, known by all who loved him as "Laddie" would write letters describing the sounds made by the tall ships in the harbor off Havana Cuba as they blew their cannons telling all within ear shot that World War One had come to an end.  Written first to my Great Grandmother Martha, the letters soon changed in tone as they became addressed to Leah Allue, the young French girl soon to be my Grandmother.  To my knowledge no one ever asked my Grandfather how or why he got to where he was but I always sensed that the driving force in his life, the thing that took him on his travels, near and far was that brush with death at a very young age. 

Once, while unfolding a piece of delicate stationary with my grandfathers hurried script on it,  a newspaper clipping fluttered to the ground.  Browned and nearly translucent with age, it was an article about a demure young woman with a thick French accent who had captivated a rapt audience of 250 with stories about the French and their relationships with the Americans during World War One.   This brave, self possessed young woman was the person I would later come to know as my Grandmother.  

And that's how life is, it's a whole world of other things and other people coming together and drifting apart, passing in the night or committing to being there for each other until the end of their days.  Events that had to happen before you and I can ever have gotten to be right here and right now.  It's a fascinating story this story of Ralph and Leah and it's one that's filled with love and war, and intrigue, and riches beyond compare.  It's one filled with sacrifice and privilege and not so ironically it's the story of all of us.  Because if you scratch beneath the surface of anyone's life, you're going to find a world that, for better or worse, no longer exists but, that had to exist exactly as it did for it to unfold with you and me as characters 

Mrs. Cunningham

Relative to nothing but, many decades ago my friend Stephen Johns discovered a woman by the name of Mrs. Cunningham whose family owned these wonderful fig orchards right off of Coast Highway in Malibu. Every year Mrs. Cunningham would make fig jam and it was the best fig jam I ever tasted, Golden, incredibly sweet and just delicious. For several years after discovering it (and her) I would order two cases of that incredible jam and I would dole it out to myself, two bottles per month at 12 bottles per case. Ghoulish though it may sound I would always wish Mrs. Cunningham well (albeit only to myself) as I walked away from her little stand with its primitively written “Homemade Fig Jam” sign knowing that, as went Mrs. Cunningham‘s health, so went my supply of fig jam. I’m not proud to admit it but, if I was addicted to anything at that time in my life, it was to that jam and maybe a little bit to Mrs. Cunningham’s wry smile that she gave to me along with my change, knowing that she had hooked me good.

I’ve heard it said that anything bordering on perfection can’t and won’t last and such was the case with Mrs. Cunningham and her Jam.

We had gotten to the point in our relationship where Mrs. Cunningham had given me her private phone number so I could call her to ask about “the Jam” and like clockwork, she was always there to answer the phone and, after a little prodding, would finally say “oh yes I remember you dear, before reminding me that her jam was always “first come first served.” She would go on to explain that she couldn’t possibly put any aside for me because it just wouldn’t be fair. I would have to take my chances like everybody else which I always did. And then one year it happened, I made the phone call and the line was disconnected. Though I knew I wouldn’t have to drive all the way to Malibu to know what I knew was true in my heart, I drove by anyway. I can’t say how many times it was that I made that drive but I did go and it wasn’t until I drove by once and saw that they had subdivided the property and put in a strip mall where I had turned off to get to her little stand that I admitted to myself that she was really gone.

As I said at the beginning of this post, my words are relative to nothing else that’s going on in the world in general or in my world specifically other than one thing. On my birthday, knowing how much I love figs, Stephen and his lovely fiancée Dunnia gave me a large bag of dried figs from Costco.

I don’t know what possessed me but I took a couple of handfuls of these very precious figs, I chopped them up, put them in a pot with some water and, in this case Splenda, and I reconstituted them into my version of Mrs. Cunningham’s Jam. And you know what? It was good. I don’t know what Mrs. Cunningham would say but my jam tasted just enough like hers to my brain that I was able to sit back with a freshly toasted bagel, some good butter and not only the jam but all the sweet memories that came flooding back with it.

I have since bought more figs, made more Jam and with a surety that only I can promise to myself, have guaranteed my supply of Jam, at least until my little stand with my little sign is no longer there on the side of my mind’s Coast Highway and that’s all I can ask for. God bless you Mrs. Cunningham wherever you are, you made my life so much sweeter in ways you’ll never know.

Infected

Driving back from visiting with my family in Orange County the other night I was listening to the music that has orchestrated my life, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Carole King. As I drove I started thinking of friends, family, loved ones no longer here and how much they still exist in my world on a daily basis. As I wandered through my thoughts Joni sang, "you're in my blood you're like holy wine, so bitter and so sweet," and I started to think how life and our experiences within it are similar to inoculations, little doses of all that life has to offer from love to loss and everything in between, toughening us in some ways, softening us in others and turning us into the humans we choose to be. I started thinking about how, when we are with a group of friends, family, loved one's on a regular basis we are literally breathing them in, becoming them as we breath the same air, share the same space, feel the same emotions. We breath them in, we commune with them, and we are left with a warmth that is singular and incredibly special. No wonder so many people inhabit my thoughts and my heart, I have been so blessed with friends, with men whom I have loved and who have loved me, with experiences so vast and varied. Life doesn't come to us, we have to reach out to it. We have to be brave and expose ourselves to all of the things life is, happiness, sadness, heartbreak, love, loss, joy, beauty, ugliness, all of it. . . it won't knock on our door, we have to be infected by life

A Post From Facebook That I'll Call, "RICH"

I don't say much on here, I post a song that brings a tear or a smile, I mention my friends now and then but overall, I don't say much. I felt I had to say something tonight because I haven't been able to shake this feeling I've had all evening. You see, I came home from the pharmacy this afternoon with a big bag full of prescriptions and I felt rich. I felt rich because I had a three month supply of one drug that pretty much keeps this illness of my heart at bay. I felt rich because I knew that for this three months I didn't have to worry about physically falling behind, getting worse. Rich used to be a Bentley, a Rolls, maybe a Ferrari but now it's different. Rich is Love, Rich is friends, Rich is that special look that my kitten Jesse gives me once or twice a day for no reason at all telling me that I'm a pretty special human to her. Rich is Marques giving me that silly look of his, the one with the googley eyes and Rich is more. Rich is a pantry full of food, good friends to help us eat it and Rich is laughter, laughter late into the night around a table with people I love. And yes, Rich is a big white bag full of pills from the drug store telling me that everything is going to be alright. . . for now.

OUR TOWN

Slogging across the city yesterday to the tune of sirens, horn honks and screeching tires, it's hard to believe this city has a soul, a heart. But then I pull up to my job site and see neighbors out talking and laughing, all unified looking for a necklace dropped by a young woman in the group. Later on, sitting in front of my own home, miles away, talking to a dear friend on the phone before going in the house, I watch our own little neighborhood tableau. Children running up and down our stairs looking for Marques and Gabby, parents catching up after a long hot week, laughing and commiserating with one another about this trial and that, everyone slowly but surely weaving that tapestry that we call home. And I hear it, quietly at first but then it's all I can hear as I sit in my truck . . . It's the heartbeat, the rhythm of our collective soul and it defines the beauty that can be L.A. —

The Many Faces of Love

There came a time in my relationship with my father, sometime in my very early teens, when he proclaimed that I could no longer hug him or kiss him good night. I always wondered if he had some subterranean inkling that his youngest son was gay and that, by hugging him or kissing him goodnight he was somehow reinforcing the idea that it was OK to hug or kiss another man. I’ll never know but a few years later, during the height of the Vietnam war, I went to the airport to pick him up from one of his trips to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he taught combat strategy (or something like that). He was a Full Colonel by that time and I was an avid war protester showing up at the terminal with my very long hair, a pair of his army issue khaki’s and one of his WWII wife beater tee shirts dyed camo green. I waited with anticipation as my dad and his buddies walked up the ramp and into the terminal. It was the usual crew, a few Colonels like my dad and a couple of Generals, men that my father had known for years. As I stood there watching he turned to each of these men and hugged them, not the shoulder bumping, homophobic hugs that straight guys are so fond of giving these days, no, these were long, loving hugs shared by men who had survived battle together, men who had seen too much at a time when they shouldn’t have. And I was jealous, I was very jealous and I was angry.
As he parted from his buddies my dad turned around and saw me, his flesh and blood, his youngest son. . . and he stuck out his hand. Now I know this is my “family and friends” Facebook page and I hesitate to write what I actually said but for the sake of authenticity and power I’m going to say it anyway.
I looked at my father’s hand and looked up at his face, his smile, and I said “Fuck you.” “Fuck you if I, your son, get a handshake and those guys, those army buddies of yours get a hug goodbye.” I remember my father’s face turning red as he looked at me incredulously. Within one heartbeat his arms were around me and the year’s long boycott on hugging and kissing his youngest son was over. It’s funny, I don’t remember there being any words spoken about the whole thing as we drove home, I just remember helping him up the walk with his bags and him hugging me once more before we said goodbye. He was a wonderful man and I miss him every day.
There’s another point to this story though, one that I hesitate to mention for fear of ruining the continuity of the already told tale but in fact, it’s the most important part. You see, my dad wasn’t a particularly huggy, kissy kind of guy anyway, not until his older years that is. But did I know that he loved me? I did. I knew that he loved me because every day, no matter how tired he was, no matter how disillusioned by his life he became, that man got out of bed and drove to a job he hated. That man worked with a broken back, a failing heart and a marriage that lay tattered at his feet for one reason and one reason alone, to care for his kids. He put food on our table, clothes on our backs and even laughter in our hearts and he didn’t complain, he just did it.
The moral of the story, if you want to call it a moral, is that Love has many faces. The easy love that falls off our lips when describing our feelings for our new Iphones, our new cars, our morning waffle is not the same love as that shown by a man through his daily actions. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here and now, I’d give all the “I love you’s” I’ve ever heard for one, “I’m here.”

The Last of Everything

The Last of Everything

I've been thinking about this title and what it really means to me for quite a while now, years really, but an event that took place this weekend made it's meaning clear to me and why I had to write about it. I've often thought about "the last time," the last time we make love with a partner, the last time we eat with a friend, the last time we say, "I love you," the last time we say, "good bye." I've thought about these things for many years but it is the last man I dated who brought the questions to the forefront once again and until this weekend, it was remembering the last time we made love that occupied my thoughts and the context of the title. Where we were, what was said, the feelings, the emotions, the intensity. I really didn't think it was going to be the last time and I guess that's my point, we often times don't have a clue that it is the "last of everything."
This weekend my closest friend, a woman I have know since I was 20 and she was 18 lost her lover of 5 years. It was unexpected, incredibly brutal and possessed of a finality that made any question of his return impossible to contemplate. He was riding his bike with his cycling club when an eighteen wheeler semi-truck filled with dirt drifted into the bike lane and clipped his left arm. He was knocked off his bike and thrown into the path of the truck which hit him, ran over him and killed him instantly.
Susan, my friend, was inconsolable. Saturday night she got the news that he was dead. After she went through the first bout of hysteria she called me and I rushed down to be with her. I spent the night holding her and talking to her about her years with Sandy. She kept saying, "thank God we made love last night, thank God it was so wonderful, thank God, thank God."
And so it is with me, I think of my friend Doug, how we had a stupid fight after over thirty years of friendship and how we didn't speak for two years before finally being brought back together by Susan. Once we were speaking again we couldn't believe we had wasted so much time. We started back with our weekly lunches at a favorite restaurant and our daily phone conversations (he lived in Santa Barbara and I in L.A.) that sometimes lasted minutes, sometimes lasted hours but always included us laughing, God did we laugh!
And then one day I dropped him off at his car after lunch. I told him how great he looked, lean and fit in a new pair of pants and shirt given to him by his mother. As I drove to the gym I got a call from his assistant telling me that Doug had had a massive coronary in the elevator at the design center not ten minutes after we had said good bye. They brought him back to life but his brain was gone and as I waited in the emergency room with his family they brought out those same clothes that I had just complimented him on, they were shredded now by the paramedics as they fought to get to his chest, his heart, and they handed them to me. And all I could think was, thank God we had the time we had, thank God my last words to him were, "I love you Doug" and thank God it was a smile on his face that I saw as he said, "I love you too Rolfie."
And that's how it is I guess, we think we will always have a next time. I can cite so many other examples, my sister kissing her husband goodbye and getting a call twenty minutes later saying he was dead, his car smashed into a phone pole at the far end of a curve in the road that he just couldn't negotiate. My mother saying, "I love you sweetheart" and dropping dead hours later of a heart attack; my friend Michael saying, "let's go for it" as he turned the crank on the morphine drip that would forever ease his pain from the ravages of AIDS in a time when there was no hope. Always a next time.
I don't mean to be maudlin, I really don't but it's the truth I'm talking about here and each of us will be touched by it at some time, in some way for one reason and one reason alone. . . we are all human. So often I close my letters to friends and family with the words,"take none of it for granted, not even the bad stuff" and this is why. We never know when it is the last of everything.