Been There, Done That: Life On And Off An Island

5:56:12 PM PDT
Feeling Happy
Hearing Sound Track from Winn Dixie      It wouldn't be enough to walk it.  Or hike it.  A visit to the Great Wall of China would have to include flying a kite, because kite flying in China is very popular, and kites were probably invented there, and it would be so much fun!
  That was the thinking of my husband and myself.  And of course our nine year old son, who we wouldn't leave home without.
(We've learned on our travels that cultures around the world are delighted that we travel as a
family, and are usually curious why Americans leave their children at home.)  We go as a threesome, so we often travel slower that others.
   No, we always travel slower than others.  It means we don't fit into tour groups, which is a good thing for groups and for us.  It also means we have
remarkable experiences, like one time in Mexico when a Mayan gardener took my son by the hand and shared a tour of his prize squashes behind a high wall.  Or the little hand-made gifts that often appear on his pillow at night or beside his plate in restaurants.
    We not only have rare and wonderful occurances as a family.  We are all more playful.  So when we realized we would be walking on that Wonder of the World, the Great Wall, I stuck a colorful dragon kite with a long, long twisty tail into the suitcase.  It was not only great looking, it packed flat, and had no cross-braces, so it made it an easy choice.
    And then, there we were.  Hiking a rough stone trail, sometimes so steep it took both hands to hang on.  Sometimes so disintigrated it looked like a path of weeds and dirt, with old gray brinks sprinkled liberally over the top, just to make it more difficult.  Around us in this remote area, not the least bit rebuilt for tourists, and without the cable cars,
the Warlords posing for pictures and the miles of kiosks selling "I climbed the Great Wall" t-shirts.  This looked nothing like the pictures in Google: Images: Great Wall.  Rather, it was just a winding trail separated by majestic watchtowers, also in crumbling conditions, some by barrages of bullets during attacks by the Japanese.  Some by the plants and lizards that pushed away the morter.  And some just by the weight of the wind and rain and years.  
    Everyone told us to take a jacket, because it would be windy up there on the Wall.  The wind always blows through those hills, now blooming with chestnut and peach tree blossoms, hinting at Spring just weeks away.
    But our first day of climbing was calm.  Not enough wind to send our dragon flying.  Not even breeze enough for a quick picture.  
    The next day, we went tourist, and visited Mutanyai, a section of the wall several hours from Beijing, where the Wall has been rebuilt for tourists.  Cable cars eliminate the rigorous climb up.  And a shiney, snakey tobaggon run makes the trip down something close to a carnival ride.  Today we were uber-tourists, though, and we bought our Great Wall baseball caps, climbed aboard our lift and found ourselves walking easily along the miles of bricks that seem to go forever.  It was a satisfying experience in every imaginable way.  We had our pictures taken with the Mongol barbarians, husband and son rode down the toboggan, twice, and though it wasn't the least crowded, (the Wall can accomodate five horses abreast on top, and there's room for dozens in the watchtowers.)  But we encountered
many delightful Chinese people, who also enjoy their Wonders.  And people from around the world, who might have sniffed a bit at the toboggan then complained about sore calves at the bottom.
    The wind was jus right.  And I'd forgot the kite. It wasn't until the next day, enjoying peace and quite of our little lodge with the Wall winding past the front gate and the astonishment of having it mostly all to ourselves did we get our kite into the air.  We hiked a good two hours to a perfect little flat spot where the old path got a little wider, and the peach trees were unable to reach out far enough to grab a fluttering tail and the wind was just right. A thousand years ago someone had business far more serious than sending a colorful kite aloft, and we thought about that, briefly, as the breeze caught the dragon and sent it flying high.  Just like we had imagined it would.

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3:39:12 PM PDT
Feeling Happy
Hearing NPR News Recently we went to China, and a visit was arranged for us to visit a grade school in X'ian.
My nine year old son prepared a little English lesson, showed pictures of Mt. Rainier, Vashon and an Orca Whale.
The headmaster hoped that some of the kids in my son's class would become penpals with the students at this Chinese gradeschool.
When we came back, we made a poster and took it to school  Yesterday he told me that almost no one wants a penpal.
Maybe we just need to give it more time.  Here's an article I wrote about a penpal I have kept for over a decade.


                Portrait Ten Years In The Making.

In my mind’s eye, I am looking at a portrait.  It was
ten years in the making, and I think it’s finished, but I
am not sure.
The style of the art is writing.  The artist is a young woman
named Crystal.  The picture was started long before I had
ever heard of E-mail.  Long  before people had their own
fax machines in their homes and in their cars and attached to their cel phones.
Crystal and I were penpals.  The type you get when
you send in your money and some poor little kid’s life is all of a
sudden better.  The only requirement is that they write to
you now and then and thank you for the money.  If you are
lucky, you learn a little about them and their family and
their life.
Crystal didn’t just write when the money came.  She
didn’t really tell me much about her family except her
dad is a cop and her mother is a secretary and most of the
time she couldn’t stand her little brother, who they obviously
favored and could never do anything wrong. I have no idea what
her house or neighborhood look like. I have no more understanding
of her culture, Navaho, than her suggestion about a book I should
read if I’m really that interested in it.
At first, she told me a lot about her dreams and plans
for the future.  They were soaring but attainable. She was
short with long hair.  Then she was tall with no hair.  Then
she was too fat with red spikes and a tatoo.  Her hair has
been blue and then short and then long again.
She told me about loving basketball and playing her
flute.  She told me about wanting to be an architect than
then a lawyer and then a pilot.  
She told me everythingthat she thought about
her fights with her father, and that  he had a gun and that
he hit her.   She told me about how young her mother had
been when Chrystal was born and that she, Crystal was



not going that dreary route.

Crystal told me about ordinary school days
in poetic, vivid details.  What she was studying and what
she loved and then who she loved.

When I told her that I was pregnant she wrote back telling me how     about three-quarters of the girls in her school get pregnant, and what  happens to them and how she and Dom would never do that.

She told me about rollerblading and piercing  her ears.
About band trips and summer camp.  And all of a sudden
she was in her senior year and she told me about
the prom and her dress and the music.  She invited me
to her graduation, and then told me it was a good thing
I didn’t come because she was really so sick and nervous
she was puking her guts out all day.

And oh yes, she wasn’t going to college after all and
that Dom had dumped her part was through the year and
she had tried to kill herself and had to stay in the mental
ward of a hospital on a 24 hour watch and they wanted
her to take Prozac but she wouldn’t.  She told me exactly
what she thought of the “shrinks” and I didn’t disagree.

Finally, she told me that she was leaving for boot camp
(Air Force) in three days.  She wondered what they would think
about her piece(s) and tatoo(s).  She added detailed strokes
that described her fear of leaving home and her family.
She added dark color in revealing she and Dom might be
back together.  She added the finishing touches to the
portrait ten years in the making--the little girl was
not covered over, yet the young woman was clearly
revealed.  At the end she told me that she has kept every
one of my letters to her, and that she loves me.  And maybe
I’d like to keep writing.  Yes.  I would, and I will.
‘
]’’?

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3:17:17 PM PDT
Feeling Happy
Hearing NPR Radio A washed-up romance.

    Who hasn’t spent a lazy afternoon beach combing on some secluded
shoreline around here?  After all, this is an island, and that should mean
all around prime possibilities tossed into the flotsam, jetsam and general
driftwood.

    While I have noticed a huge increase in the garbage on the beach
in the last year, I still (carefully) walk the beaches with my head down,
on the look-out for such treasures as agates and blue glass and perfectly
round rocks and heart-shaped rocks and pieces of wood that look like something else.

    Sometimes after a storm, we collect a bunch of sea kelp bulbs and
make faces on them out of little bits of this and that we find.  We
turn them into puppets and more often than not drag them home
to finally fall apart on the porch.

    Other times we make “floaties”, which are boats we construct
out of old pieces of Styrofoam, (sadly, there’s a lot to be had), and
we equip them with masts and sails, this, too, mostly made out
of wire, garbage sacks, and other trash in the tide line.  After sailing
them,  we drag home these boats, more popular than any present or
gift from the grandparents, where they, too, fall apart on the porch
and oddly, disappear.

    It’s not often we find anything of value.  Well, actually, never,
except for the time I threw a “wishing rock” over my shoulder,
hoping for health and happiness and five minutes later found
a bottle with a dollar bill in it.  That was quite a day.  Since then,
I always check the bottles for booty.  Twice we have found bottles
with messages that say write your name and when and where you
found this and throw it back in.  One was from Gold Beach and one
was from Brown’s Point.

    So of course I was curious when my son told me he and his “sitter”
Lizzy found a message in a bottle while they were down at the beach.
They brought it back, but Lizzy couldn’t read it very well, and it was
drying out on his bed.

What this time, I wondered, smoothing out the lined yellow
paper.  Dated March 9, 2001. ( Only it looked like Zool.)  Really bad
handwriting, I thought, or someone who’s first language isn’t
English?  Hmmm?  Or someone in a really unstable place or someone
with bad arthritis...”Dear Janet” I read, “You’re in my heart, thoughts,
prayers.”
Oh my gosh!  A love letter!  Do I keep reading?  Do I encroach
on this message of hope and desire?  Of course I do.  “Can we get
together in Chicago?”Then something waterlogged. “I hope to see you Sunday afternoon....something, something.  Call me between 10 a.m.
and 4 p.m. Always,” and the guy’s name.
And the guy’s ship’s name.  A name I couldn’t read, but must
be one that passes between the Port of Seattle or Port of Tacoma and
the world.
I looked at my watch.  It was Sunday.  It was 2  p.m.  Janet
would just have time!  A rendezvous with her sailor!
I dialed the number next to Janet’s name.  (A 503 area code, so this
spontaneous gesture was costing me about twelve cents already.)
A message machine.  This is Jan...blah blah.  So after the
beep,  I say I found
the message in a bottle and he is waiting for her to call, and that’s about it.
I didn’t leave my number or name.  Because I really don’t want to
know how it ends.  I don’t even want to know how it started or
any of the details.  I don’t know if Janet likes the guy, why they’d
meet in Chicago, why he put the message in a bottle.  He had her
number, but maybe he was afraid to call her.  Maybe he didn’t have
a phone--but then, how could she call him? Ship to shore? Laptop?
I’m glad Lizzy and Hart brought the message in the bottle
home from the beach--these days when much of the stuff that’s important
to kids is in stores or ads, they recognized a little possible magic washing
ashore.  And that in itself gives me hope for a happy ending.

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