Falling Apple

My mother did not like to swim. She had a bathing suit when I was a kid. It was black watch, skirted and piped in white pique. I know she put it on at least once but she did not go near the water: not the scummy, frog-choked pool at Buxton, not the sleek, shallow bright blue plastic pool in the Jays' back yard, not Cape Cod Bay or the Atlantic, off of Nantucket. She didn't lounge around in the sun, either. Her skin was very fair. Even her arms stayed pale when she gardened in short sleeves.
I never thought much about her not swimming. It was just what she didn't do. Other mothers didn't get up in the morning or didn't drive or didn't work outside the house. Since outdoor water recreation was only enjoyable about four months out of the year in Massachusetts, Dad - on a teacher's schedule - could be the lifeguard parent.
In the last few years of her life, when she was happier living inside her memories than trying to make sense of the present, Mom retrieved a bittersweet episode from her young adulthood which she had never told us before.
She had a beau at Ohio State who was a racy sort of guy. He had a car. He belonged to a fraternity. He liked to dance and joke. And he was captivated by my innocent, doe-eyed mother.
He drove from some distance to visit her during the summer. She was living at home and working at a bank, languishing for something to do. He showed up to take her swimming.
By the age of 20, my mother had learned a little something about swimming. She had to take it as a gym course every semester until she could pass a basic swimming test. Students were not allowed to graduate until they could swim. Mom struggled against the water and failed the test over and over again.
When she and her beau got to the lake, he dashed into the water, racing her to the raft which was floating 50 feet from shore. She got wet and started swimming and couldn't stay on top of the water. The lifeguard spotted her and got her safely back to shore before she had time to drown. Her beau saw none of this occur. He showed up some while later, wondering why she hadn't swum out to the raft. This probably had a lot to do with why my grandmother didn't like the young man.
Some 50 years later, Mom took my sister and her family and and me to Hawaii. My brother-in-law was eager to do some snorkeling, so we rented equipment and headed to the beach across the street from our condo. I had heard that one should never turn one's back on the ocean but I did, and got slammed and dragged by a series of breaking waves. My sister and her husband had swum on ahead and had no idea that I was in trouble. Since then, my enthusiasm for ocean swimming has pretty much disappeared.

In Passing

At 9 a.m. this morning we will be attending a dog memorial event in our local park. Most of the morning dogs and their human companions will attend as well, since it's prime time for dog bounding. A pinch of ashes will be scattered at a major dog sign post and anyone who is so inclined can speak. Dog treats will be on offer.
The dog to be remembered was not a dog's dog. She had long since forsworn mindless charging around and had honed her treat detection and dignified begging skills to an enviable art. Her name was Porsche. With Paul, her escort, she roamed the park and surrounding streets in a stately manner, allowing affection to be bestowed, gracefully avoiding the body-slamming young punk terriers and Boston Bulls, being a quiet, wise and good companion.
Porsche and Paul had lived in many places and travelled far. When she was diagnosed with cancer, two months ago, his world imploded.
About a week after the diagnosis, Porsche came to the park with some guy no one had seen before. Paul was in the ICU, the guy said. Don't know how bad it is, I'm just a roommate. Bleeding ulcer, something like that.
Paul came back, thinner. He had recently dieted off some extra pounds and bought new jeans to fit his smaller girth. They now hung, low and baggy. His jacket billowed, full of air.
And then a neighbor reported a half-hour morning traffic jam on our main street. We get traffic there and trucks double-parked but no prolonged stopages. Some nut, my neighbor said. Just found out his dog has cancer and lost it, I guess. Stabbed some guy at an intersection. Nobody died. Lots of cops and stuff, given there's not much else to worry about in our neighborhood in the pre-noon hours.
What would Judge Judy do? (WWJJD)

Doll City

I keep trying to write romance novels. It shouldn't be that difficult, right? They're positively formulaic: girl meets boy, hatred and antipathy and rafts of misunderstanding, every good deed misinterpreted, blah blah, until she finally notices he's really good with kittens and he admits that it isn't just her ability to flip a grilled cheese sandwich that has drawn him to her, something about that cute little booty in a microskirt too, and then they cozy up and it's on to the epilogue where she's pregnant or they're gushing over their little tax exemption. If it's a more pretentiously literary bodice ripper, maybe one or the other of them goes back to a previous partner. And gender isn't a complicating factor. Girl can meet girl and go through the same patterns.
I've read lots of romance. Maybe too much. I've even read Luanne Rice and Jayne Ann Krentz, from which you don't want to know. I've avoided nurse/doctor protagonists, so far, but I'm afraid they loom in my future. Because I still want to write one.
Three or so years ago, I actually came to the end of my most ambitious attempt. Didn't "finish" - it really needed some amplification in some areas and fine tuning in others. It was about a friend of mine who was adopted by a sadistic madwoman, who sent her to school with bruises and slashes on her arms. Maybe not romantic enough? I did invent this utterly gruff and charming private dick, to help with her search for her birth mother and fall in love with her, so what could be wrong? Harlequin Books didn't like it, even for their emerging middle-aged-broads-daring-to-love-again market.
I've let that one sit ever since it bounced back with its form rejection.
It's probably time to pull out the first two incomplete manuscripts again. One is about a (what else?) middle-aged dollmaker in the Santa Cruz area, slowly coming back to life after a nasty and unexpected divorce. She was fun to write about, living in her little old farm house up a canyon road, lots of fabric and yarn and vases of flowers, a wood stove for her teakettle. She falls in love with a furniture maker. There are many complications
Earlier this summer, I was wandering through the crafts part of the Saturday Market, in Eugene. We were loaded down with blueberries and blue flowers and various tasty Middle Eastern dips, but a short run by the artisans seemed harmless. I moseyed down an aisle full of long, soft capes, toe rings and salad bowls. At the end of the row were shelves of whimsical dolls - quizzical, painted faces, all sorts of outlandish outfits, including tutus and wings. And lots of red hair. Pretty much exactly what I was picturing when I wrote my romance. I asked the woman in charge whether they were her creations and, if so, whether they were modeled on anyone she knew. She chuckled.
"That's my mother," she said, pointing to a pudgy doll with a sliding bun of hair and a tiny vodka bottle in her hand.
And yesterday the Blog of Note was by a dollmaker down in the bayou somewhere, whose dolls look like the Geico Gecko.
I'm not making this up.