From Boulder, Colorado, we took the back way across Rocky Flats. We drove through Golden, past Red Rocks Park and on toward Morrison. During the years we made that trip, I remember it was almost always sunny. Oh, there was usually a hint of an afternoon rain during July, but to mountain people such a shower is just part of a sunny day. By the time we made Morrison, we could smell home. The Deckers were only minutes away. Captain Coors, the Red Headed Mexican from La Junta, Heidi and Gretchen would all be waiting. A party was about to begin!
I drove the Great White Hope in those days, a 1962 Ford Fairlane. It's name came from our hope it would start. It lived up to that name. The only time it failed us was three blocks from home. By Morrison we were probably having the second beer of the day to celebrate our country's birthday. It would be one of many, though we joked there was something about the altitude in Colorado that kept us from getting drunk. We were wrong about that like we were wrong about lots of things, and we have a Christmas crash to prove it. Still, those were days of wonder and adventure, celebration and friendship. The White Hope cruised the mountains as if under a spell. No harm taken or given. We lived in the moment, careless with our gift but blessed beyond understanding. The Deckers on the 4th of July was an easy magic we would seldom know again.
We always arrived early. Dot Decker with her flame-thrower red hair assigned us our jobs. Danny would take care of the beer, the only job he was good for in those days. Bill helped Art with outdoor preparations. Bruce set things up, arranged things, put our lives in order so speak; and I sat in the kitchen snapping beans or shucking corn, talking like an old woman at a quilting bee. Dot didn't really need any of us to make a perfect meal, but she knew we needed to have a job to feel part of the family.
Danny Brown made everything we did a party. He and Mr. Decker were kindred spirits with a staggering taste for beer, Coors beer in particular, the brand from which Mr. Decker derived his nickname. Of the four of us, Danny would become the best cook. Bill Tharp was smarter than all of us put together which made him a good match for the Captain. Bruce Ehlenbeck was our reluctant leader and spiritual guide. Buah, as he was called, connected with everyone. His dad was dead and so there was an especially large hole to fill in his life. The Deckers were his "family" just as they were ours. Me, I was the guy with the car who laughed too loud and got carried away too often sitting in the kitchen snapping beans with Dot.
The Decker house backed up to a circular park. The families in the homes surrounding the park were always invited to the 4th of July bash, in fact the entire planet was welcome. At the Deckers, there was a standing joke. Whenever you were offered anything to eat and drink (which was all the time), the Deckers always said, “Take all you want, there's more!” There always was more. The result was an enormous string of picnic tables stretched across the back of the park loaded with food. Not just food, but the delicacies of the Gods. Mrs. Decker could cook anything better than anybody else we had ever known —with the exception of Mr. Decker's barbecue ribs.
Picture this: huge platters of chicken, ribs, corn on the cob, green beans, scalloped potatoes, jello salad, potato salad, three bean salad, Waldorf salad, taco salad and enough ice cream, cookies, cake and pie for us to eat like horses and then take home a treat. The aroma alone alerted half of Denver the festivities had begun. Neighbors started milling around. Captain Coors raised his beer to the world and welcomed it. He drew people to parties like mountains capture snow. People we had never seen before in our lives just kept on coming. They would be our best friends by the time the party was over. Everyone was welcome. Everyone was cared for, and hospitality ruled the day. It was the Decker way.
Looking back, I now know that what seemed so effortless for the Deckers was really an astonishing feat of organization and acceptance. We thought we were so generous to bring beer that we promptly drank. I am certain they knew we were four young men in search of something, four guys living in the mountains without careers or future plans, four guys who lived on the edge of every moment just happy to be in Colorado and to be together. Not many families would take four free spirits into their homes like the Deckers did. The Deckers knew we needed something to believe in, to hold on to, and call family. They supplied everything and when they gave it away, there was an assurance of more.
Captain Coors was a conservative, trained by the Navy, a salesman, father of two girls, who trusted four rascal boys in his home. Dot was an equally conservative stay-at-home mom who could be fierce in her defense of her children and strong-willed in the making of a home. She took us on, took us in, and then took us over. Neither ever gave us a lecture except to tell us where the best skiing spots might be or the asked-for advice on cars or cooking. Still, all four of us hung on to their words and those happy days as clear markers of how we wanted to live our lives. I marvel how they knew so much and had so much to give.
The focal point of a Decker 4th of July was the softball game. Skinnies vs. the Fats. Art led the Fats with Danny as his assistant coach. Bruce and Bill were the Skinny leaders. I played for either team depending on how much I had eaten the week before. This was not an ordinary ball game. Each game was a game for the ages, or at least for a year of bragging rights and a night of gloating. We were all worthy athletes, and some were great. Diving catches, grand slams, constant chatter and endless fun ruled the day. Everyone played -from six to sixty, if you ate at the Decker table you played on the Decker field. Art would lob pitches to weak hitters to make sure they got a chance, but he would throw out his kid in a heartbeat to honor competition. Danny slammed massive home runs. Bill was a wizard with a glove and could lighten even the intensely competitive moments with his wit. Bruce was a regular Joe DiMaggio. That we all played with a beer in one hand and a glove on the other did not seem to diminish our ability. In the mountains you can't get drunk, and you play ball at your peak potential.
Remembering back, it must have been the beer. Art and Danny drank the most and played the best. You can't imagine how much we laughed and enjoyed those days. We saluted America and Captain Coors. Legends were created, myths born and for a while we believed our run of magic would never end.
By nightfall Danny and I would pull out our guitars and the singing would start. Bruce had a soulful, clear tenor voice and could hold a drunken crowd in the palm of his hand. When he sang Groovin by the Rascals, the world was ours. We even called ourselves "Rascals" in those days, and we were. While we sang and played, Gretchen and Heidi, Art and Dot formed the perfect compliment to our night. They listened and laughed and applauded and told us if we were getting stupid. When we rocked, the girls danced. Art and Dot danced, the dog danced and the neighborhood joined in. Dot and I danced, and I never felt so at home. Bruce sang ballads that pulled in the dark and lit candles in our soul. Gretchen stole drinks and got tipsy while Heidi and I stole glances. We were lovers every one — big dreamers on our big night.
The next thing we knew we were sitting around the dining room table looking at old photo albums, seeing Dot in La Junta or Art in the Navy. We saw the girls when they were very young and heard the stories of how Art and Dot met, their marriage, Christmases past and things still left to do. Later in the dark park we set off fireworks, laughed and talked. We amazed ourselves at how many cases of beer we drank and joked we would be lower than Freckles, the Decker's dog, the next morning. Sometimes we gathered in the kitchen and played cards. I was Lucky Pierre with an outrageous French accent! Bill would tell hilarious, long, involved stories of our misadventures. The 4th of July was charmed.
Well past midnight, it began to wind down. I couldn't believe it was actually ending. Dot and I cleaned up the kitchen while the others patrolled what they could around the house and park. Dot was an amazing talent when it came to packing dishes into a dishwasher. She had worked the entire day fixing food, suppling drinks, straightening up messes and keeping things going. Art was a bit dazed after drinking beer with Danny for a day, but he always had a boyish grin and a sparkle. I'm sure on one or two occasions they wondered if we would ever leave. We were not good at taking hints. At the Deckers there was always more, and even time seemed to be in abundance.
We first met the Deckers the summer of 1969 when we rented one of the houses that backed-up to the park. We were college boys on a summer lark. The majority of us worked in the Einsenhower Tunnel. Gretchen Decker got us all together. She was our little sister. Eventually, the neighborhood kids were playing ball with us in the evenings and coming over on Saturday mornings to watch TV. The neighborhood parents panicked. We heard rumors that children had been advised to stay away from us. We decided to approach the problem head on. We bought (and one of our friends stole) enough beef to feed all of our parkside neighbors. We sent out invitations, but nobody came. We were not deterred, and packed up huge slabs of sirloin to take around to the neighborhood, door-to-door. It worked. Over the next few weeks we were invited one-by-one to dinner with different families. We all got acquainted, but the Deckers became our friends.
Driving home after the 4th of July is an enigma to me now, but I remember the feelings that we were the only people in the world. The axis of the earth cut straight through that Ford Fairlane, and what we did and said turned the entire world. Huge constellations of brilliant stars floated in the night sky. I marveled at our luck. Most people are left to lie about their youth or honestly say they left a lot undone. Today when I see my peers baying for money, building their life around possessions, filling room after room with things and then adding on garages to hold more stuff; I think back to the Ford Fairlane and my sleeping partners in the car. We'll never have to lie to ourselves about chasing dreams. There will be few regrets for living those days in "the eternal now," just the reminders that you can only take what freedom gives away.
All of us are married now with children around the age we were when we embarked on our great Colorado adventure. We have built nests and given flying lessons to our children. We coax them to the edge and then push, trusting that whatever forces guided us will guide them.
Some count their good fortune as a prize for their own hard work. I don't know how to count our good fortune to know the Deckers. Unfortunately, the story does not end well. We moved away and let our connection slip. We never told them they were our Rocky Mountains in the landscape of life. The girls married and we partied with them at weddings. Art and Dot moved to Arizona and then divorced. Art got sick and by a freak of medicine was left to slowly die in a hospital bed, estranged from his children and Dot. We never visited; never went to the funeral. Dot's huge heart was hurt and we didn't send our love. Bruce called with the sad news about Art's death, and I felt a loss so deep it called on the death of my own father. The Deckers had taught us to do better.
Tonight, however, I'm taking the Ford Fairlane out for a drive. I'll be picking up Danny, Bill and Bruce. We'll head for Red Rocks Park and try to throw a frisbee on the stage from the last row of that great outdoor theater. We'll hit Morrison and stop for a beer, maybe even buy a six-pack and sit by the creek and let the water flow. When we're ready, we'll drive by the Deckers. It's all still there. Whatever magic carried the Great White Hope in years past will do its work again. This time we'll watch as the 4th of July rolls by. Tables filled with food, friends gathering, the game, the dance and music in the night— it's still there. I'll load the dishwasher with Dot and then by magic I'll say, “Mrs. Decker, thanks for giving us our lives when we were so lost. Thanks for giving us something to believe in. Thanks for loving and accepting me even if I'm too loud, too moody, and play Lucky Pierre too much.” Dot will step out of her moment, knowing all that is to come in life, hug me so tight and say, “You boys are all right, you know.”
Then, we rascals will walk again in that park with Art at our side. It's nighttime, but the moon on the mountains puts their jagged edge in clear view. We'll be drinking Coors and the five of us will stand in silence, taking in the moment and the mountains. We won't talk because that's not our way, but he'll know what we never said. Then he'll tell us about some unknown drive by Poudre Canyon, and we'll turn and head for the Fairlane. Back on Rocky Flats under a brilliant canopy of stars the words will whisper. “There's more,” we'll hear Art and Dot Decker say as we drive back to our lives today. The Great White Hope makes its final run of magic. The great eternal now must be obeyed.
To be honest, the memories do slip away, and we seldom gather to mark again our coming through. They say the light from any moment in time is still hurtling undiminished into space, and if there were a ship fast enough to outrun light we could go and see it all again. Science is always trying to explain the things the mountains taught us long ago.
The mountains don't explain broken hearts however. We never learned that lesson, and we know now that our days of immunity to life's hard lessons are over. Still, when Bruce plays his guitar and sings, Bill tells stories, or Danny cooks a meal; we gather in our safe harbor and sit out another storm. We have placed firm pitons in time and hang suspended from the ropes attached to them, even as time would have us falling away. Art and Dot Decker are the pitons in our nap-sacks. They have held us before, and they will hold us again. They taught us to live in the mountains of our youth, and we cherish those memories to this day. Time and change cannot take that away. The feast on the Fourth is spread before us. We carry it with us and pass it on. The Deckers gave us that, and more.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Say You Love Me, Sayulita
A stand of palm trees etched a silhouette against the last trace of sunset. We stopped for a moment on our hike into town to try to capture this photograph. Behind the palms a jetty of land stretched into the ocean. Clouds shrouded the true sunset and a blanket of soft darkness covered the sand and sky, water and rock. Mostly black and grey in the faded evening light, Sayulita, Mexico softened its edges for effect. Paradise in twilight offered itself before us. We stopped almost by instinct to witness and confirm a moment that came easy in the viewing, but so complex in understanding. The day, and indeed the entire week, settled into this moment’s memory, and that photograph is now a shared slice of history, all completely true and full of misconception.
Sayulita is the hot new destination in Mexico. Supposedly savvy tourists, longing to know what Puerto Vallarta was like thirty years ago, are discovering this quaint fishing and surfing village 20 miles north of the airport. Brochures and Internet blogs paint a lovely picture. Here is the real, authentic Mexico and way of life. The vacation homes are beautiful and tastefully decorated. The beach is clean, the waves are good, and the nightlife is original and fun. You would think most every good restaurant in Mexico had pulled up stakes and moved to Sayulita, from the sound of some articles. Sayulita is the sexy, mysterious new girl in school and the boys are checking her out. We found her in the palm tree photograph. But be warned, sometimes Sayulita can be coy and fickle. She is not, and never will be, “your girl.”
In travel, we agree on shared impressions more than fact. All history, and certainly travel, is interpretation. Who knows what truth is in a week’s visit? Tourists find what they look for. Dark palm trees are an instant warm magic and gentle balm to balance reality. We wanted a trip metaphor, and the twilight coughed up a shoreline and lacy palm branches. A clouded sun and busy surf played their part. For a moment, we were not coddled Americans tourists, out-of shape and constantly expecting to be served. And, for her part, Sayulita gave up her ubiquitous dust, barking dogs, constant challenges and menacing darkness. Time sputtered, then stopped. The miles that separate us from understanding a moment, ourselves, and other cultures simply collapsed. Improbably and fantastically we came face to face with our expectations. This is the gift of exploration. You find the prize and it’s everything - and nothing - that you wanted. We stood in silence and took our photograph. Later that same night, we ate one of the great meals of our lives in an open courtyard under crimson bougainvillea and blazing stars. Sayulita, Mexico offers both love and torment without promise. We offered back our best and took a photo like any good tourist should do.
Taxi to Sayulita
-or How We Learned We Were Not In Missouri Anymore
Be warned that when your plane lands in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico you will be besieged by earnest people hawking every dream of Mexico you have ever had. Time-shares on the beach, fantastic voyages to exotic islands, and zip lines through the jungle. Cheap treasures and romance at every turn are all just pesos away. Keep moving. Your job once off the plane is to find transportation. You will come to a booth where you must make a choice - official taxi or off-airport-save-money taxi. Supposedly the official taxi is the safer/easier way to go, even if it costs a few pesos more. We found out that was not the case for us. Here is our story.
“It is a problem for me,” Marcos said in his broken English.
He pointed to his watch and then pushed his palms into the steering wheel of his Mexican taxicab. In any language, you could tell Marcos was not happy. My Spanish was worse than broken.
“Por favor, hablo (Please, I talk) con su jeffe (with your boss). Primero, vamanos (first, we go to) Sam’s Club, y segundo, (and second) vamanos a la Sayulita (we go to Sayulita), es verdad (is the truth).” I actually gave my own English translations to my horrendous Spanish.
Marcos pointed at his watch. “400 mas pesos, por favor. Is problem for me.”
I already had paid 650 pesos, 500 pesos for the trip to Sayulita from Puerto Vallarta, and 150 pesos for the stop at Sam’s Club. I had been very careful to make sure everybody knew where we wanted to go and had not questioned the price.
Now, it was just Marcos and me in the cab, and that understanding was lost. Matthew and his mom were inside buying beer, tequila and anything else useful to a week’s residence in Mexico. These complex international negotiations had been going for 20 minutes by now. Months of careful planning, reading and preparations were helplessly falling into the cultural cracks of reality. “Who comes to a new country and makes their first stop at Sam’s Club?” I thought to myself. I can barely work my way through life in Liberty, MO. Why did I think this would be different, I wondered?
“No mas dinero!” I said digging the hole deeper. Something in me felt a fair bargain had been reached, and now I wanted to stand on that sinking hole.
Marcos signed and checked the rear view mirror. “Es problem para me,” he said, and showed me the receipt he had been given. It had 500 pesos written on it, and nothing about Sam’s Club. I sighed and looked desperately for Kathy and Matt.
“Vamanos a la Sayulita, OK (We go to Sayulita), “tip” para usted (and there is a tip for you); pero primero, vamanos al la Sayulita (but first we go to Sayulita),” I said knowing I was butchering Marcos’s language. But now, fairness was not the issue. I just wanted to make it to Sayulita without forever paying and promising as I went.
“400 Pesos!” Marcos said.
“Tip,” I said, “Grande tip a Sayulita,” hoping it made any sense. Now it was really tense. Marcos was making two fists on his steering wheel.
I caved in.
“Marcos, estoy un hombre, bueno (I am a good man). Tu es un hombre bueno (you are a good man). Es me famialia vacationes (It is my family vacation). Quiero vacationes estar simpatico para me esposa y me nino (I want the vacation to be good for my wife and child). No problemos. (No problems, and here I put my two fists together as a gesture). “Vamanos a la Sayulita. Grande tip. Verdad.” (We go to Sayulita, big tip, I promise).
Marcos stared hard into my eyes, and then his whole presence changed. He smiled and lifted up his palms as if saying, “What’s a person to do?”
“No problems”, he said. “Vamanos a la Sayulita. He shook my hand, and then the only tension left in the cab was in me.
Matthew and Kathy returned, laughing and excited; and we loaded beer, tequila and prune granola bars into the cab. I tried to alert Kathy to the issue with the taxi, but by now, Marcos was smiling and helping, moving on to another part of the day.
We traveled a city highway and out into the hills. Lush jungle claimed our attention as the first of many sites we had not seen before. Marcos wanted to talk, and all of us matched Spanish and English ideas as best we could. Our packed taxi raced around traffic like a miniature NASCAR winner on the final lap. The exhilaration of putting oneself “on the line” and shifting perspective and expectation with the car’s gears was amazing. Things went so well, Kathy even asked if Marcos would come back to pick us up in a week.
And then we were off the highway, going over a small stone bridge, and finding Sayulita right before our eyes. Narrow, crowded streets and an assault of people, movement, dust and decisions do not make for a thoughtful arrival or transition. Bags, boxes, bottles and people were unloaded like abandoned refugees. It was time to resolve the tension of Sam’s Club’s parking lot, and Marcos and I struck our deal. His broad smile and generous hug meant the tide had turned for good.
The search for our house and house manager was opened in earnest, but would not be resolved easily – until Marcos claimed the role of unexpected guiding force. To be certain he could find us for our return trip to the airport, he offered to take us to the house. A frenetic exchange of information between Marcos and a local real estate agent produced the bare bones of directions. We re-packed and re-claimed our taxi and headed to the north end of town. Our road was gouged by deep ruts. Street signs were haphazard in appearance – if around at all. Key landmarks came into site, and we began climbing what would become a very well-known hill. Then we were there – Casa Kai. A two-story palapa-roofed house, nestled against the hillside, facing the ocean.
The Sense of Sayulita
-- or How to Leave Expectations and Find a Gift
Sayulita, Mexico is a town of contradictions to any hometown North America sensibilities. The beach is astonishingly beautiful. Palm trees grow at water’s edge. Clouds linger in the deep blues of ocean and air, whimsically dismantling our cherished concepts of time and space. Time becomes a function of sunlight and stars unmarked by minutes, hours or days. You lose track, and once free, the privileges of living fully in each moment are offered without charge. There is no reality quite like the present.
Sayulita, Mexico is also sweating out-of-shape and overdressed tourists lugging huge suitcases on cobbled dusty roads; each worried sick about the safety of their priceless possessions and who will be there to meet them in the next seven minutes and 16 seconds. These earnest, untested, and gullible Internet travelers’ first impression of Sayulita is most often: “My God, what have I gotten my family and friends into!?” After that first impression, Sayulita is a beach town mixed with taut young surfers, free spirits and locals in an eclectic gumbo of extremes and world/life views. Savvy, free roaming dogs, claim full ownership of the town and everything in it. The ubiquitous dust, a base layer of beach sand, and an open sewer of a river/lagoon give the town a third world feel and odor that is at first alarming and shocking. Your ability to enjoy what is beautiful about Sayulita will be dominated by this first impression. From then on, your vacation will be judged by how by much these trials become irrelevant.
There is, on the other hand, so much to enjoy in Sayulita. So much is authentic. It is a real paradise at times. Birds roam morning skies to the calming presence of almost perfect surfing waves. At no time, ever, is anyone rude or pushing. We never felt afraid walking in town, or coming and going. Dogs bark, birds sing, and people offer their presence to a faithful warming sun. Winds blow in and out, and the day turns.
What is urgent in another life is not important here; and the important things are not urgent in Sayulita. Our deeply ingrained otherworld biases; the need to keep track of every little thing, to make comprehensive lists, to plan away spontaneity, or keep a constant sharp focus on today’s goals falter and then lose purpose and meaning. As a result, books get read, hands get held, blow driers turn off, and sports/news fades in meaning. The once necessary winter garments of protection and regret are left on the hanger. Walking five blocks to use the phone seems just about right, a proper trade for privacy. A daily drink of tequila to greet the sunset seems as normal as the now standard afternoon nap. Each day a few more closely held notions are shed. The talk among friends becomes more open and natural. A live-and-let-live mentality smoothes down the rough edges of relationships. You discover you need each other again and remember why you were drawn together in the first place. Lovers make love for no reason at all.
I think it was Tuesday when I got sick. My bowels groaned and bloated; streaks of heat and sweat lined my forehead. A dull ache settled in my head and the walk to town on the dusty cobblestones became unbearable. Miniature dams broke on the hour, signaling pain and brief relief. The diarrhea drove me to the bed next to the bathroom. An orange and black centipede-like bug waited on my bed to sting my foot. The misery index rose. By sunset I could not open my eyes and slipped in and out of sweat and cold -- the new passing of time.
You do not flush toilet paper in Sayulita, and the house water heater, like everything else in town, including electricity, worked occasionally. In attempts to remain human, I took shockingly cold showers to a full stadium of cheering jungle bugs. Another round of diarrhea would hit. My eyes closed. The only reality left was sound - the steady roll of ocean waves. The cacophony of waves became dump trucks, trains, loose boulders, landing planes, and terrorist bombs all rolling in through the darkness of my imagination. Slowly, however, each fear and ache was ground down to the fine sand of an alternative meaning. The hard rocks of pain and broken shells of disappointment were churned into a level layer of walkable sand. The sound of the ocean eventually defined hope and continuation. It washed out the impurities. I slept unaware and at peace; still sick but attended to, and calmed by, the sound of the ocean waves.
In the end it was the ocean and the promise of seeing whales that marked a truce with Montezuma and his revenge. Thursday morning we were to go out on a boat to visit an island, snorkel, fish and see whales. Montezuma granted a day’s truce based on sheer mind over matter.
The first whale we saw seemed to be a lumbering spinal chord sewing its way though inky water. Fidel, our boat captain guided the five us along side the enormous creature. Fidel was as real as the ocean, and he could tell we were delighted and a bit afraid to be so close to earth’s largest living creature. That same day Fidel led us on visits to ocean islands and private beaches, snorkeling in flowerbeds of colorful fish, and then we watched in awe as Fidel caught us foot long fish for bait to fish the open ocean waters. From Fidel’s boat we could see that along the shoreline new house after new house lined the once pristine beach.
The second whale was a youngster swimming playfully next to its mom. While mom threaded her way in a slow undulation, the calf leaped out of the water, it’s entire head lifted above the water line. By now four boats were following, cameras popping. We pointed and wowed, clapped approval, treating nature as our circus show.
They say Sayulita is what Puerto Vallarta was 30 years ago. Zoning laws forbid the high rise beach hotels of the south in Banderas Bay, but it is clear things are changing. As if sensing things were getting too crowded here, Fidel left the entourage of boats following the mother whale and its calf and we headed for home. It was a jarring ride in rough water going home, and we were quiet. The cost of convenience was on my mind. The dirty, rocky roads of Sayulita were a price we paid for this moment. The cold showers, loss of electricity, bugs, raw odors, disorientation, sickness and bad water had been a down payment. Our collective memory now holds a day on the ocean with Fidel in an era that is slipping away. The young calf, lifting its head out of the water as if to watch for its mother hangs in my mind’s eye. Who will know these things when the last house is built? the last fish is caught? and people move on once again? The ride home is a wonder to me.
I cannot say I am sorry enough to my family. Our long dreamed vacation was not what we expected. The help our homeowner promised was not available. The Sayulita on the Internet and travel books is all coded in messages I did not understand. We were, at first, just not ready for the bigger journey that we took. So we hung in. We called our setbacks adventures. We found great restaurants. We lost our cool and then found our peace. We named the bugs in the bathroom and tried to tame the geckos on the wall. I fished out the misplaced toilet paper and admitted to my fears that I had ruined everyone’s long-awaited vacation.
To my everlasting thanks and appreciation, nobody in the family seems too mad, and I think I need to get well and get over it. I was the clueless Internet traveler, flabby and over-packed, wanting to be served and coddled, but the rest of my family was better that that. We took our lickings, but we did not spoil in the heat. Instead of bitter we got better. I was proud to be with my family, especially my sister and brother in law.
We all took bets on whether Marcos would return at the end of our week. Kathy was the only one to truly believe he would come; I had contingency plans in my head so we could still get back for our plane. Kathy first heard the car crunching gravel in the driveway. And looking over the wall upstairs, we saw Marcos, fresh and smiling and ready to handle the chore of returning us to reality.
Driving back to Puerto Vallarta with our new friend, we conversed in broken Spanish and communicated rather well. We ventured into politics, families and the beauty of Mexico, which brought forth Marcos’ deep pride in his country. We talked food and found that he had been a chef and loved to cook. In a deeply generous gesture, Marcos invited us to join him at his home, meet his family, and share a meal – “one year from today; you come to my house; big fiesta.” It was a high honor, and we cheered the opportunity to dream of drinking cervezas and indulging in Mexican specialties together. Should it be hard to leave your taxi driver at the end of a trip?? There is a special joy in finding the goodness in people in unusual places. We received this unique gift gratefully – and parted with genuine affection shared among us.
“It is a problem for me” Marcos had told us that first day in the taxi at Sam’s Club. But then he dropped it, and we became friends. We learned to drop a lot of things in those seven vacation days, and now it feels good to tell the story. Say hello to Sayulita for us if you ever get a chance to go there. Capture the photograph that tells your story and send it on. Accept what is given without too many preconditions. I put too many expectations on Sayulita. She was on a pedestal no vacation would ever deliver. Sayulita was to be the surfing safari of my youth; the Girl From Ipanema walking on the beach, sunsets with green flashes; and the honeymoon we never really took. I wanted to show my in-laws how “cool” I was; instead, they showed me how to be “cool.” I expected to hike for miles on bum knees and it never occurred to me that I was the one who would get sick. This was to be my retirement celebration after 35 years in education. This was to be my time. This was to be all about me. “It was a problem for me!”
“Say you love me Sayulita,” I had whispered in my dreams. She did not whisper back. Instead, there is a photograph of palm trees against a clouded and setting sun. Take what is offered the travel books say. All this obvious truth that I should have learned so long ago lingers now in this photograph. The beautiful Mexican girl, Sayulita, had looked me in the eye, held my every expectation, and then given me only what she had to offer. The photograph we took that January night was a mirror of my self-centered expectations. What I saw that evening was not all that I had wanted, but it was more than I had hoped to find. Sayulita did not say she loved me, but she did hold my hand. For an old guy who had behaved so badly, just the chance to learn about another culture and way of doing things meant a lot. The Mexican night turned all purple and dark with guitar music and flowers riding the evening waves. Here I danced with Sayulita.
We now hear there are islands off of Costa Rica with great surfing where you can see both an ocean sunrise and sunset on the same day. There are beautiful beaches for hiking and the fishing is fantastic. But now I think, who needs the pressure of all those expectations. Now I’m thankful for the chance and health to go anywhere, and the hope my family and friends can come along. Whatever is offered will be more than I expected. Whatever small pleasures we get will be our gift. If we are offered a picture, we’ll pass it on.
Sayulita is the hot new destination in Mexico. Supposedly savvy tourists, longing to know what Puerto Vallarta was like thirty years ago, are discovering this quaint fishing and surfing village 20 miles north of the airport. Brochures and Internet blogs paint a lovely picture. Here is the real, authentic Mexico and way of life. The vacation homes are beautiful and tastefully decorated. The beach is clean, the waves are good, and the nightlife is original and fun. You would think most every good restaurant in Mexico had pulled up stakes and moved to Sayulita, from the sound of some articles. Sayulita is the sexy, mysterious new girl in school and the boys are checking her out. We found her in the palm tree photograph. But be warned, sometimes Sayulita can be coy and fickle. She is not, and never will be, “your girl.”
In travel, we agree on shared impressions more than fact. All history, and certainly travel, is interpretation. Who knows what truth is in a week’s visit? Tourists find what they look for. Dark palm trees are an instant warm magic and gentle balm to balance reality. We wanted a trip metaphor, and the twilight coughed up a shoreline and lacy palm branches. A clouded sun and busy surf played their part. For a moment, we were not coddled Americans tourists, out-of shape and constantly expecting to be served. And, for her part, Sayulita gave up her ubiquitous dust, barking dogs, constant challenges and menacing darkness. Time sputtered, then stopped. The miles that separate us from understanding a moment, ourselves, and other cultures simply collapsed. Improbably and fantastically we came face to face with our expectations. This is the gift of exploration. You find the prize and it’s everything - and nothing - that you wanted. We stood in silence and took our photograph. Later that same night, we ate one of the great meals of our lives in an open courtyard under crimson bougainvillea and blazing stars. Sayulita, Mexico offers both love and torment without promise. We offered back our best and took a photo like any good tourist should do.
Taxi to Sayulita
-or How We Learned We Were Not In Missouri Anymore
Be warned that when your plane lands in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico you will be besieged by earnest people hawking every dream of Mexico you have ever had. Time-shares on the beach, fantastic voyages to exotic islands, and zip lines through the jungle. Cheap treasures and romance at every turn are all just pesos away. Keep moving. Your job once off the plane is to find transportation. You will come to a booth where you must make a choice - official taxi or off-airport-save-money taxi. Supposedly the official taxi is the safer/easier way to go, even if it costs a few pesos more. We found out that was not the case for us. Here is our story.
“It is a problem for me,” Marcos said in his broken English.
He pointed to his watch and then pushed his palms into the steering wheel of his Mexican taxicab. In any language, you could tell Marcos was not happy. My Spanish was worse than broken.
“Por favor, hablo (Please, I talk) con su jeffe (with your boss). Primero, vamanos (first, we go to) Sam’s Club, y segundo, (and second) vamanos a la Sayulita (we go to Sayulita), es verdad (is the truth).” I actually gave my own English translations to my horrendous Spanish.
Marcos pointed at his watch. “400 mas pesos, por favor. Is problem for me.”
I already had paid 650 pesos, 500 pesos for the trip to Sayulita from Puerto Vallarta, and 150 pesos for the stop at Sam’s Club. I had been very careful to make sure everybody knew where we wanted to go and had not questioned the price.
Now, it was just Marcos and me in the cab, and that understanding was lost. Matthew and his mom were inside buying beer, tequila and anything else useful to a week’s residence in Mexico. These complex international negotiations had been going for 20 minutes by now. Months of careful planning, reading and preparations were helplessly falling into the cultural cracks of reality. “Who comes to a new country and makes their first stop at Sam’s Club?” I thought to myself. I can barely work my way through life in Liberty, MO. Why did I think this would be different, I wondered?
“No mas dinero!” I said digging the hole deeper. Something in me felt a fair bargain had been reached, and now I wanted to stand on that sinking hole.
Marcos signed and checked the rear view mirror. “Es problem para me,” he said, and showed me the receipt he had been given. It had 500 pesos written on it, and nothing about Sam’s Club. I sighed and looked desperately for Kathy and Matt.
“Vamanos a la Sayulita, OK (We go to Sayulita), “tip” para usted (and there is a tip for you); pero primero, vamanos al la Sayulita (but first we go to Sayulita),” I said knowing I was butchering Marcos’s language. But now, fairness was not the issue. I just wanted to make it to Sayulita without forever paying and promising as I went.
“400 Pesos!” Marcos said.
“Tip,” I said, “Grande tip a Sayulita,” hoping it made any sense. Now it was really tense. Marcos was making two fists on his steering wheel.
I caved in.
“Marcos, estoy un hombre, bueno (I am a good man). Tu es un hombre bueno (you are a good man). Es me famialia vacationes (It is my family vacation). Quiero vacationes estar simpatico para me esposa y me nino (I want the vacation to be good for my wife and child). No problemos. (No problems, and here I put my two fists together as a gesture). “Vamanos a la Sayulita. Grande tip. Verdad.” (We go to Sayulita, big tip, I promise).
Marcos stared hard into my eyes, and then his whole presence changed. He smiled and lifted up his palms as if saying, “What’s a person to do?”
“No problems”, he said. “Vamanos a la Sayulita. He shook my hand, and then the only tension left in the cab was in me.
Matthew and Kathy returned, laughing and excited; and we loaded beer, tequila and prune granola bars into the cab. I tried to alert Kathy to the issue with the taxi, but by now, Marcos was smiling and helping, moving on to another part of the day.
We traveled a city highway and out into the hills. Lush jungle claimed our attention as the first of many sites we had not seen before. Marcos wanted to talk, and all of us matched Spanish and English ideas as best we could. Our packed taxi raced around traffic like a miniature NASCAR winner on the final lap. The exhilaration of putting oneself “on the line” and shifting perspective and expectation with the car’s gears was amazing. Things went so well, Kathy even asked if Marcos would come back to pick us up in a week.
And then we were off the highway, going over a small stone bridge, and finding Sayulita right before our eyes. Narrow, crowded streets and an assault of people, movement, dust and decisions do not make for a thoughtful arrival or transition. Bags, boxes, bottles and people were unloaded like abandoned refugees. It was time to resolve the tension of Sam’s Club’s parking lot, and Marcos and I struck our deal. His broad smile and generous hug meant the tide had turned for good.
The search for our house and house manager was opened in earnest, but would not be resolved easily – until Marcos claimed the role of unexpected guiding force. To be certain he could find us for our return trip to the airport, he offered to take us to the house. A frenetic exchange of information between Marcos and a local real estate agent produced the bare bones of directions. We re-packed and re-claimed our taxi and headed to the north end of town. Our road was gouged by deep ruts. Street signs were haphazard in appearance – if around at all. Key landmarks came into site, and we began climbing what would become a very well-known hill. Then we were there – Casa Kai. A two-story palapa-roofed house, nestled against the hillside, facing the ocean.
The Sense of Sayulita
-- or How to Leave Expectations and Find a Gift
Sayulita, Mexico is a town of contradictions to any hometown North America sensibilities. The beach is astonishingly beautiful. Palm trees grow at water’s edge. Clouds linger in the deep blues of ocean and air, whimsically dismantling our cherished concepts of time and space. Time becomes a function of sunlight and stars unmarked by minutes, hours or days. You lose track, and once free, the privileges of living fully in each moment are offered without charge. There is no reality quite like the present.
Sayulita, Mexico is also sweating out-of-shape and overdressed tourists lugging huge suitcases on cobbled dusty roads; each worried sick about the safety of their priceless possessions and who will be there to meet them in the next seven minutes and 16 seconds. These earnest, untested, and gullible Internet travelers’ first impression of Sayulita is most often: “My God, what have I gotten my family and friends into!?” After that first impression, Sayulita is a beach town mixed with taut young surfers, free spirits and locals in an eclectic gumbo of extremes and world/life views. Savvy, free roaming dogs, claim full ownership of the town and everything in it. The ubiquitous dust, a base layer of beach sand, and an open sewer of a river/lagoon give the town a third world feel and odor that is at first alarming and shocking. Your ability to enjoy what is beautiful about Sayulita will be dominated by this first impression. From then on, your vacation will be judged by how by much these trials become irrelevant.
There is, on the other hand, so much to enjoy in Sayulita. So much is authentic. It is a real paradise at times. Birds roam morning skies to the calming presence of almost perfect surfing waves. At no time, ever, is anyone rude or pushing. We never felt afraid walking in town, or coming and going. Dogs bark, birds sing, and people offer their presence to a faithful warming sun. Winds blow in and out, and the day turns.
What is urgent in another life is not important here; and the important things are not urgent in Sayulita. Our deeply ingrained otherworld biases; the need to keep track of every little thing, to make comprehensive lists, to plan away spontaneity, or keep a constant sharp focus on today’s goals falter and then lose purpose and meaning. As a result, books get read, hands get held, blow driers turn off, and sports/news fades in meaning. The once necessary winter garments of protection and regret are left on the hanger. Walking five blocks to use the phone seems just about right, a proper trade for privacy. A daily drink of tequila to greet the sunset seems as normal as the now standard afternoon nap. Each day a few more closely held notions are shed. The talk among friends becomes more open and natural. A live-and-let-live mentality smoothes down the rough edges of relationships. You discover you need each other again and remember why you were drawn together in the first place. Lovers make love for no reason at all.
I think it was Tuesday when I got sick. My bowels groaned and bloated; streaks of heat and sweat lined my forehead. A dull ache settled in my head and the walk to town on the dusty cobblestones became unbearable. Miniature dams broke on the hour, signaling pain and brief relief. The diarrhea drove me to the bed next to the bathroom. An orange and black centipede-like bug waited on my bed to sting my foot. The misery index rose. By sunset I could not open my eyes and slipped in and out of sweat and cold -- the new passing of time.
You do not flush toilet paper in Sayulita, and the house water heater, like everything else in town, including electricity, worked occasionally. In attempts to remain human, I took shockingly cold showers to a full stadium of cheering jungle bugs. Another round of diarrhea would hit. My eyes closed. The only reality left was sound - the steady roll of ocean waves. The cacophony of waves became dump trucks, trains, loose boulders, landing planes, and terrorist bombs all rolling in through the darkness of my imagination. Slowly, however, each fear and ache was ground down to the fine sand of an alternative meaning. The hard rocks of pain and broken shells of disappointment were churned into a level layer of walkable sand. The sound of the ocean eventually defined hope and continuation. It washed out the impurities. I slept unaware and at peace; still sick but attended to, and calmed by, the sound of the ocean waves.
In the end it was the ocean and the promise of seeing whales that marked a truce with Montezuma and his revenge. Thursday morning we were to go out on a boat to visit an island, snorkel, fish and see whales. Montezuma granted a day’s truce based on sheer mind over matter.
The first whale we saw seemed to be a lumbering spinal chord sewing its way though inky water. Fidel, our boat captain guided the five us along side the enormous creature. Fidel was as real as the ocean, and he could tell we were delighted and a bit afraid to be so close to earth’s largest living creature. That same day Fidel led us on visits to ocean islands and private beaches, snorkeling in flowerbeds of colorful fish, and then we watched in awe as Fidel caught us foot long fish for bait to fish the open ocean waters. From Fidel’s boat we could see that along the shoreline new house after new house lined the once pristine beach.
The second whale was a youngster swimming playfully next to its mom. While mom threaded her way in a slow undulation, the calf leaped out of the water, it’s entire head lifted above the water line. By now four boats were following, cameras popping. We pointed and wowed, clapped approval, treating nature as our circus show.
They say Sayulita is what Puerto Vallarta was 30 years ago. Zoning laws forbid the high rise beach hotels of the south in Banderas Bay, but it is clear things are changing. As if sensing things were getting too crowded here, Fidel left the entourage of boats following the mother whale and its calf and we headed for home. It was a jarring ride in rough water going home, and we were quiet. The cost of convenience was on my mind. The dirty, rocky roads of Sayulita were a price we paid for this moment. The cold showers, loss of electricity, bugs, raw odors, disorientation, sickness and bad water had been a down payment. Our collective memory now holds a day on the ocean with Fidel in an era that is slipping away. The young calf, lifting its head out of the water as if to watch for its mother hangs in my mind’s eye. Who will know these things when the last house is built? the last fish is caught? and people move on once again? The ride home is a wonder to me.
I cannot say I am sorry enough to my family. Our long dreamed vacation was not what we expected. The help our homeowner promised was not available. The Sayulita on the Internet and travel books is all coded in messages I did not understand. We were, at first, just not ready for the bigger journey that we took. So we hung in. We called our setbacks adventures. We found great restaurants. We lost our cool and then found our peace. We named the bugs in the bathroom and tried to tame the geckos on the wall. I fished out the misplaced toilet paper and admitted to my fears that I had ruined everyone’s long-awaited vacation.
To my everlasting thanks and appreciation, nobody in the family seems too mad, and I think I need to get well and get over it. I was the clueless Internet traveler, flabby and over-packed, wanting to be served and coddled, but the rest of my family was better that that. We took our lickings, but we did not spoil in the heat. Instead of bitter we got better. I was proud to be with my family, especially my sister and brother in law.
We all took bets on whether Marcos would return at the end of our week. Kathy was the only one to truly believe he would come; I had contingency plans in my head so we could still get back for our plane. Kathy first heard the car crunching gravel in the driveway. And looking over the wall upstairs, we saw Marcos, fresh and smiling and ready to handle the chore of returning us to reality.
Driving back to Puerto Vallarta with our new friend, we conversed in broken Spanish and communicated rather well. We ventured into politics, families and the beauty of Mexico, which brought forth Marcos’ deep pride in his country. We talked food and found that he had been a chef and loved to cook. In a deeply generous gesture, Marcos invited us to join him at his home, meet his family, and share a meal – “one year from today; you come to my house; big fiesta.” It was a high honor, and we cheered the opportunity to dream of drinking cervezas and indulging in Mexican specialties together. Should it be hard to leave your taxi driver at the end of a trip?? There is a special joy in finding the goodness in people in unusual places. We received this unique gift gratefully – and parted with genuine affection shared among us.
“It is a problem for me” Marcos had told us that first day in the taxi at Sam’s Club. But then he dropped it, and we became friends. We learned to drop a lot of things in those seven vacation days, and now it feels good to tell the story. Say hello to Sayulita for us if you ever get a chance to go there. Capture the photograph that tells your story and send it on. Accept what is given without too many preconditions. I put too many expectations on Sayulita. She was on a pedestal no vacation would ever deliver. Sayulita was to be the surfing safari of my youth; the Girl From Ipanema walking on the beach, sunsets with green flashes; and the honeymoon we never really took. I wanted to show my in-laws how “cool” I was; instead, they showed me how to be “cool.” I expected to hike for miles on bum knees and it never occurred to me that I was the one who would get sick. This was to be my retirement celebration after 35 years in education. This was to be my time. This was to be all about me. “It was a problem for me!”
“Say you love me Sayulita,” I had whispered in my dreams. She did not whisper back. Instead, there is a photograph of palm trees against a clouded and setting sun. Take what is offered the travel books say. All this obvious truth that I should have learned so long ago lingers now in this photograph. The beautiful Mexican girl, Sayulita, had looked me in the eye, held my every expectation, and then given me only what she had to offer. The photograph we took that January night was a mirror of my self-centered expectations. What I saw that evening was not all that I had wanted, but it was more than I had hoped to find. Sayulita did not say she loved me, but she did hold my hand. For an old guy who had behaved so badly, just the chance to learn about another culture and way of doing things meant a lot. The Mexican night turned all purple and dark with guitar music and flowers riding the evening waves. Here I danced with Sayulita.
We now hear there are islands off of Costa Rica with great surfing where you can see both an ocean sunrise and sunset on the same day. There are beautiful beaches for hiking and the fishing is fantastic. But now I think, who needs the pressure of all those expectations. Now I’m thankful for the chance and health to go anywhere, and the hope my family and friends can come along. Whatever is offered will be more than I expected. Whatever small pleasures we get will be our gift. If we are offered a picture, we’ll pass it on.
Redwoods Baseball
This story begins with explanations. It’s all true and the characters are real, but the point of view is distant, filtered and subjective so it must be called a work of fiction. This version all happened just as it is written. It is a story of love and loss, death and denial, alienation and loss. The happy dénouement is only suggestion. Conflicts with nature/god, others, and self move the story, but the truth is fluid. This account is like a Homer Winslow watercolor, frozen in time, and/or a Brian Eno or Philip Glass composition about the meaning of change. The story is about wine and hippies, religion and physics. It’s about classical music and the sound of the “Summer of Love.” There is a hero, and she is magnificent. All the characters are good and trying to be better. San Francisco provides the backdrop and becomes it’s own character, a kind of sidebar narrative or Greek chorus. We go there now.
It rains more days in San Francisco than in Seattle. The greatest surfing wave in the world is at Mavericks, just south of the city. In the summer, it disappears. But around Christmas and January, the monster roars full force and the word goes out across the globe that the wave is right, and the surfing competition begins. Just as quickly, the wave is gone again.
San Francisco’s great legacy of the tumultuous 1960’s and early 1970’s, when a generation of children symbolically put flowers in their hair and dreamed new dreams, is now a sad row of tattoo parlors, dives and spiritless tie-dye shirt shops. The co-ops and open couches, street dances and park bands are gone. San Francisco could once name an entire summer after love, and it was pure truth. Not even a credit card can buy love now. Illusions dance in memories of Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and Moby Grape. In 1968, the first bearded male transvestites danced in a review called the Cockettes and everyone knew everything would be different. Now, in the greatest contradiction of all, the most vibrant, alive, and reckless city in the world seems spent. From the north end of the great San Francisco Bridge to the callow, digital Google fields to the south, a city waits for its Stravinsky to usher in a new Rite of Spring. Uncle John’s band is silent.
It was Clinton’s bombs in Eastern Europe and the promise of a job that brought Boris to San Francisco. Reducing meaning to “+ and –“ was changing all communication, and Boris had the knack for computers, as well as the will to move to a strange, new country. When you use an Internet phone, Boris probably had a hand in it. Fortunes came and went and then mostly came again for Boris. Children grew up Americanized but with a keen sense of their homeland. They all talk about the day they went to the redwood forest and played baseball, speaking their native language but immersed in California culture. It is a great story and a great family. They miraculously kept their feet in two worlds. Boris and his wife Mirjana created a safe harbor for their cultural heritage and enjoyed an extended family of fellow Croatians along the wondrous San Francisco Bay. Boris taught his children to take the time to prepare fine meals and then to linger over them. He loved a great wine and liked it all the more when it cost less than $12. A committed atheist, Boris honored facts and scientific proof. Nothing scared him, and when he first saw Mirjana, the story goes that he courted her on his motorcycle with an unwavering faith that they would be together.
A cancer diagnosis and then a lingering, painful death took Mirjana, the wife and mother, in 2007. Mirjana was exceptional. She brought a family to a new world, learned the language and ways, mastered it all; but kept her core. At her memorial service, speaker after speaker explained M. had been the rock. M. had diffused the hardest situation. M. was the one they wanted to be like one day. A picture of her just days before her death tells the story best. In her face you can see the spirit that the cancer could not ever take.
Mirjana was central station to the lives of her husband and two children, Lana and Igor. Every departure, every incoming train, every connection to another destination came though Mirjana. She was the huge sun around which her family circled, held in check by the unalterable forces of gravity and light. Lana, the youngest child, and Mirjana’s treasured daughter, circled in her orbit taking so much life from a mother sun. Lana turned her back from time to time, but her rotation continually spun forward toward the light. The elliptical orbit meant summer always returned.
Mirjana ran a daycare for children. It was a natural calling for somebody who cared deeply about children and the smallest detail. Coming to Mirjana’s home was an invitation to join the amazing extended family she had helped create. Every detail was attended, but all was inviting and made soft by grace. When Mirjana died at home, the mirrors went dark, reflecting no light. The trains stopped running, and the chaos of earthquake came upon the City by the Bay.
Lana is beautiful. Her kindness and sensitivity sparkle in dark European eyes. Hands that comfort and arms that hold are graceful reminders of a good heart and caring ways. Her hair shines black and her lips twist, smiling when she’s trying to find her way to help. She has all the gifts, all the basics made even sweeter by her personhood. She is a social genius and can master every situation that involves human contact with such apparent ease as to make one think relationships come easy. She too has contradictions -- a delicate beauty with tomboy surfer-girl ways. She laughs too loud and seems too vulnerable to handle social vagaries with such ease.
Lana is so California and yet, has never seen ‘Star Wars’. She can look like a girl next door one day and then show up at the Absinthe bar looking like a gypsy goddess fortuneteller. You would never know the challenges she faced with language, culture and society as a small girl. Lana is a survivor. To know her now, you must look deep in her eyes. Like a Van Gogh painting, every stroke means something that means something more. What you might see first is not what you get. Her mother’s death brought a loss of light and balance.
San Francisco, the city and the idea, is a force of nature. Like the winter storms that cause Mavericks to erupt, there are times the city can force its will on everything. Moth to flame, the kids come to see how close to the sun they might fly. The bar exam in California is legendary hard. A law career in the city proper belongs only to the rich, connected and crazy smart. Renting a “room” in a house is $1,300 a month on Craig’s List. Still they come to the city to paddle out to a four-story wave, or to work 80-hour weeks in the financial district and to test youth’s metal in the earth’s hottest furnace.
Like the great earthquakes that will one-day devastate the city, a zeitgeist fault line runs under San Francisco. Somehow, every few decades the connections crack and the city shifts. It burns and shakes, roads ripple and lines burst; but in theses times of crisis genius, resilience and ingenuity also ooze from out of the cracks. Artists and composers, dancers and poets, chefs and confectioners, vintners and prophets, peacemakers and earth lovers, sky pilots and needle dancers --all the children know San Francisco’s core, and they come, pounding the pavement with giant sledges of creativity and change. San Francisco is their distant drummer. They say great wine must rest, but the truth is a chemical firestorm changes the grapes. San Francisco is resting now, spent from the rigor of many magnificent harvests. Still, young people and dreamers must come. Their music is forming, taking spirit from the very ground and air where so much meaning still remains. The artists are starving, but the ground is cracking; its 8:05, and we are leaving soon.
Before Mirjana’s death, Lana and her then boyfriend Zach moved in with her Mom and Dad. They would bring comfort, concern, witness and presence to Mirjana’s death. Unfortunately, California Christianity barged in as Hospice help. For the already hurting, heaven and all the hope of meeting again in some fantastical afterlife is aggravating, insulting nonsense. A difficult time was made worse. The edges became jagged and then chunks of life’s meaning broke off and disappeared in the sadness. A sun was going out. Such times enter the realm of raw emotion and are best understood as music. Beethoven showed that what is not accessible with words, can be approached in sound. It was his powerful Fifth Symphony that played as six months of unrelenting death drained even the shadows from the lives of those at the epicenter. Mirjana suffered beyond comprehension, railing against the unfairness and the diminishment of her living. The swirling banshees of anger, relentless pain and grief consumed both light and air for Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach. Everyone gave all they had to ease Mirjana’s journey, to salvage dignity, and to hold the soul’s light for as long as they could.
Zach is rare good spirit. He has had to fight for hefty doses of value in his life. They would not put him in advanced math as a third grader until his parents pitched a fit. He then became one of the stars of the class. That story was repeated over and over, from college to law school, from the bar exam to staking a claim to a professional life. Zach was always underestimated and sometimes misunderstood.
Z is the glue that holds circles of friends together. Z is the tour guide who makes everything better. Z caries the pain of other, Z is an utter failure at lying, reading minds, and playing cool. He is the heart that reaches out and is all-encompassing, the visionary that seeks to make a difference.
San Francisco drew him because California was the hardest bar to pass. He wanted to make it big in the biggest show. Zach likes fine things, and for a child from modest means, he had to earn his way to San Francisco with grit, sacrifice and sheer guts. He would not hurt, use, or intimidate people to get what he wants. He could not sacrifice his values or his personhood to succeed. The limits, then are tangible, and the rewards elusive. Still, he states his case, defying odds.
Zach too is a survivor, a dreamer and lover of the arts. And though he is too smart for his own good at times, he can learn. When the call came to support Mirjana, it was not a choice for Zach. As a result, San Francisco, like most everything else in his life, would be a winding road. Like the San Franciscan he had become, he should have known that underneath the present situation, fault lines were ever shifting. Zach too would be spent.
Zach and Lana have the same birthday in the same year. She was born in Croatia and Zach was born in North Kansas City, Missouri. Both were living the life of liberal, young intellectuals when they met through a common friend. Zach was in law school in Tucson. Lana was an accomplished young contract wizard in San Francisco in her first year of law school. They shared an interest in a band and would travel to hear the music and enjoy explorations and friendship. Eventually they just started visiting each other without the band. Zach graduated from law school and planned a move to California to take the bar. Lana told Zach he could stay at her place while she traveled in Asia for the summer. The two ended up living together in a very small apartment together when Lana learned her mother’s health meant a choice. She could not choose travel. Zach failed the bar on his first try. Lana left law school. Mirjana’s illness was just beginning to take its toll.
They did seem to love each other. When traveling to wine country they would bend over maps and Lana would laugh her wonderful laugh and Zach would suggest one adventure after another. They had a life in San Francisco, an apartment, their neighborhood bar and their drink – a devastatingly dangerous French 77. Zach passed his bar exam, and it looked like some good things were about to happen. Then they moved into Lana’s parents home to give support to Mirjana and Boris. Choices were put on hold. Life got complicated. Some important things were unsaid. Other things were assumed. The dark tones of a hard death were beginning to fill the time and space of their living. After the memorial service they moved back to San Francisco. Lana got a job. Zach got contract legal work. Both were unsatisfied and unsettled in new ways. The fault lines broke and the earth began to move.
The San Francisco Bay Bridge is to San Francisco what the Statue of Liberty is to New York. They are reminders of what has become a core value for each city. New York loves its liberty and freedom. San Francisco is a bridge to the next new thing. That the road from the San Francisco Bridge leads north to the Muir Woods and wine country is significant.
All the religion anyone needs is in the Muir Woods. Cathedrals, a sense of place and purpose, forgiveness and praise are constant, natural elements. Mix in a liturgy of survival and hope, all blessed by a brook sheltered under a canopy of leaves, and you have as much religion as we all might need.
Further north in wine country a miracle of mind is happening. Almost nobody in wine country is from there. They all had callings of nature and chemistry, worth and being. They had some kind of other life and it did not fulfill. Life moved too fast and they missed connection to earth and people. As a result, they are now working harder for less money that at any time in their life, and are happier than they have ever been. They make wine that is communion, and their wine carries the tastes and flavors of the soil, light and rain of their daily existence. They love what they do. That spirit flows south, down through the redwood cathedrals, over the bridge and into the city. It is a part of San Francisco now. A real taste for wine is acquired. It takes time and work to appreciate the complexity. The hot days, cold nights, picking, barreling and resting all change the final product. In the fall, the grape leaves turn colors and the wine is best served with bread, cheese and a companion on a blanket overlooking a field. While the city waits for a revival and its earthquake, some things still nourish the artist and the dreamer who wait as well.
Lana and Zach separated. They have reasons. Like the city they live in, they wait to move on – young, beautiful artists fashioning amazing lives. Over this grand landscape, the first rites of spring whisper the notes of an awakening new day. Crocus and daffodil emerge. Vintners are pruning the last of the vines and wondering about the taste of tomorrow. The slow drips of forgiveness and understanding are seeping through the hard days, breaking the ice and softening the soil for new growth. The night winds carry voices and the branches make music. They both are waiting for wines from older days to have their full depth and meaning. They might drink them one day and understand the complex overtures and understate hues …but, then again, maybe Zach and Lana are just bitter and angry—happy to be apart.
This then, is for Mirjana; the story’s hero. May her light and gravity once again, and oh so slowly, move the planets, though they are newly aligned, still lost, and cold. The long reckoning that must finally grip reality will come. What bitter taste there might be from taking a wine too soon will, in later years, mellow and smooth through time. As there is peace in the still earth, there is a hope of peace in the new landscape.
Before her death, Mirjana wore a smile and gave exquisite oriental bowls as a gift to Zach’s parents. The parents cherish that gift and its connection between two families. The old folk know we all live life on fault lines and that earthquakes happen. Moments of beauty and meaning, connection and love, are rare. They are worth the holding and honoring.
The story ends as it should. The picture of Mirjana once wordlessly left at Lana’s door hangs on a wall. Mirjana’s great, good spirit can still permeate the room. On the shelf below is a bouquet of lavender generously wrapped with a purple ribbon. The old ball and chain is so many little pieces of heart now, at last given place, soul and sound. Somehow, somewhere, there is a happy memory of Mirjana singing a Croatian folk song. The music is light and clear; children are listening and smiling.
When things are done right and the last person is properly cared for with written thanks; when all guest are graciously welcomed and the place settings and napkins are perfect; when all children are honored, cared for, and included... there is Mirjana. A way has been set. A cascade of thoughtful, thankful mementos continues from her life. A fierce, unrelenting love of family that honors and holds both old world and new lingers on in Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach.
Mirjana’s rich tapestry with its woven strands of steel and velvet, tradition and youth, lover and mother, protector and provider, creates a comforting backdrop for lives that can, and somehow do, go on. The fault lines that cracked open and took so much have been given to artists and dreamers, caring elders, and still young but healing hearts. Now is Mirjana Krtolica’s dénouement.
It’s another day in the city by the bay. Riding his motorcycle up the coast highway, Boris sometimes remembers the Aegean Sea and still feels Mirjana’s young arms and hands holding him close. Up at Stinson Beach a quiet, confident surfer is on her board, alone, waiting the next wave. It is morning and the rising sun on a blue ocean brings a special peace to Lana’s life. A fine young man is planning adventures, going north over the Golden Gate Bridge to drink good wine and eat worthy food with close friends. When the Grateful Dead comes on the radio, Zach laughs and remembers the box of DeadHead tapes he and Igor sent his old hippie dad. Both Zach and Lana are again survivor spirits anxious once more to be on their path. In a redwood forest clearing, more toward Saratoga, children play baseball. Errors are forgiven, everyone gets a second chance, and the Mirjana stories go on as long as the tall trees stand.
It rains more days in San Francisco than in Seattle. The greatest surfing wave in the world is at Mavericks, just south of the city. In the summer, it disappears. But around Christmas and January, the monster roars full force and the word goes out across the globe that the wave is right, and the surfing competition begins. Just as quickly, the wave is gone again.
San Francisco’s great legacy of the tumultuous 1960’s and early 1970’s, when a generation of children symbolically put flowers in their hair and dreamed new dreams, is now a sad row of tattoo parlors, dives and spiritless tie-dye shirt shops. The co-ops and open couches, street dances and park bands are gone. San Francisco could once name an entire summer after love, and it was pure truth. Not even a credit card can buy love now. Illusions dance in memories of Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and Moby Grape. In 1968, the first bearded male transvestites danced in a review called the Cockettes and everyone knew everything would be different. Now, in the greatest contradiction of all, the most vibrant, alive, and reckless city in the world seems spent. From the north end of the great San Francisco Bridge to the callow, digital Google fields to the south, a city waits for its Stravinsky to usher in a new Rite of Spring. Uncle John’s band is silent.
It was Clinton’s bombs in Eastern Europe and the promise of a job that brought Boris to San Francisco. Reducing meaning to “+ and –“ was changing all communication, and Boris had the knack for computers, as well as the will to move to a strange, new country. When you use an Internet phone, Boris probably had a hand in it. Fortunes came and went and then mostly came again for Boris. Children grew up Americanized but with a keen sense of their homeland. They all talk about the day they went to the redwood forest and played baseball, speaking their native language but immersed in California culture. It is a great story and a great family. They miraculously kept their feet in two worlds. Boris and his wife Mirjana created a safe harbor for their cultural heritage and enjoyed an extended family of fellow Croatians along the wondrous San Francisco Bay. Boris taught his children to take the time to prepare fine meals and then to linger over them. He loved a great wine and liked it all the more when it cost less than $12. A committed atheist, Boris honored facts and scientific proof. Nothing scared him, and when he first saw Mirjana, the story goes that he courted her on his motorcycle with an unwavering faith that they would be together.
A cancer diagnosis and then a lingering, painful death took Mirjana, the wife and mother, in 2007. Mirjana was exceptional. She brought a family to a new world, learned the language and ways, mastered it all; but kept her core. At her memorial service, speaker after speaker explained M. had been the rock. M. had diffused the hardest situation. M. was the one they wanted to be like one day. A picture of her just days before her death tells the story best. In her face you can see the spirit that the cancer could not ever take.
Mirjana was central station to the lives of her husband and two children, Lana and Igor. Every departure, every incoming train, every connection to another destination came though Mirjana. She was the huge sun around which her family circled, held in check by the unalterable forces of gravity and light. Lana, the youngest child, and Mirjana’s treasured daughter, circled in her orbit taking so much life from a mother sun. Lana turned her back from time to time, but her rotation continually spun forward toward the light. The elliptical orbit meant summer always returned.
Mirjana ran a daycare for children. It was a natural calling for somebody who cared deeply about children and the smallest detail. Coming to Mirjana’s home was an invitation to join the amazing extended family she had helped create. Every detail was attended, but all was inviting and made soft by grace. When Mirjana died at home, the mirrors went dark, reflecting no light. The trains stopped running, and the chaos of earthquake came upon the City by the Bay.
Lana is beautiful. Her kindness and sensitivity sparkle in dark European eyes. Hands that comfort and arms that hold are graceful reminders of a good heart and caring ways. Her hair shines black and her lips twist, smiling when she’s trying to find her way to help. She has all the gifts, all the basics made even sweeter by her personhood. She is a social genius and can master every situation that involves human contact with such apparent ease as to make one think relationships come easy. She too has contradictions -- a delicate beauty with tomboy surfer-girl ways. She laughs too loud and seems too vulnerable to handle social vagaries with such ease.
Lana is so California and yet, has never seen ‘Star Wars’. She can look like a girl next door one day and then show up at the Absinthe bar looking like a gypsy goddess fortuneteller. You would never know the challenges she faced with language, culture and society as a small girl. Lana is a survivor. To know her now, you must look deep in her eyes. Like a Van Gogh painting, every stroke means something that means something more. What you might see first is not what you get. Her mother’s death brought a loss of light and balance.
San Francisco, the city and the idea, is a force of nature. Like the winter storms that cause Mavericks to erupt, there are times the city can force its will on everything. Moth to flame, the kids come to see how close to the sun they might fly. The bar exam in California is legendary hard. A law career in the city proper belongs only to the rich, connected and crazy smart. Renting a “room” in a house is $1,300 a month on Craig’s List. Still they come to the city to paddle out to a four-story wave, or to work 80-hour weeks in the financial district and to test youth’s metal in the earth’s hottest furnace.
Like the great earthquakes that will one-day devastate the city, a zeitgeist fault line runs under San Francisco. Somehow, every few decades the connections crack and the city shifts. It burns and shakes, roads ripple and lines burst; but in theses times of crisis genius, resilience and ingenuity also ooze from out of the cracks. Artists and composers, dancers and poets, chefs and confectioners, vintners and prophets, peacemakers and earth lovers, sky pilots and needle dancers --all the children know San Francisco’s core, and they come, pounding the pavement with giant sledges of creativity and change. San Francisco is their distant drummer. They say great wine must rest, but the truth is a chemical firestorm changes the grapes. San Francisco is resting now, spent from the rigor of many magnificent harvests. Still, young people and dreamers must come. Their music is forming, taking spirit from the very ground and air where so much meaning still remains. The artists are starving, but the ground is cracking; its 8:05, and we are leaving soon.
Before Mirjana’s death, Lana and her then boyfriend Zach moved in with her Mom and Dad. They would bring comfort, concern, witness and presence to Mirjana’s death. Unfortunately, California Christianity barged in as Hospice help. For the already hurting, heaven and all the hope of meeting again in some fantastical afterlife is aggravating, insulting nonsense. A difficult time was made worse. The edges became jagged and then chunks of life’s meaning broke off and disappeared in the sadness. A sun was going out. Such times enter the realm of raw emotion and are best understood as music. Beethoven showed that what is not accessible with words, can be approached in sound. It was his powerful Fifth Symphony that played as six months of unrelenting death drained even the shadows from the lives of those at the epicenter. Mirjana suffered beyond comprehension, railing against the unfairness and the diminishment of her living. The swirling banshees of anger, relentless pain and grief consumed both light and air for Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach. Everyone gave all they had to ease Mirjana’s journey, to salvage dignity, and to hold the soul’s light for as long as they could.
Zach is rare good spirit. He has had to fight for hefty doses of value in his life. They would not put him in advanced math as a third grader until his parents pitched a fit. He then became one of the stars of the class. That story was repeated over and over, from college to law school, from the bar exam to staking a claim to a professional life. Zach was always underestimated and sometimes misunderstood.
Z is the glue that holds circles of friends together. Z is the tour guide who makes everything better. Z caries the pain of other, Z is an utter failure at lying, reading minds, and playing cool. He is the heart that reaches out and is all-encompassing, the visionary that seeks to make a difference.
San Francisco drew him because California was the hardest bar to pass. He wanted to make it big in the biggest show. Zach likes fine things, and for a child from modest means, he had to earn his way to San Francisco with grit, sacrifice and sheer guts. He would not hurt, use, or intimidate people to get what he wants. He could not sacrifice his values or his personhood to succeed. The limits, then are tangible, and the rewards elusive. Still, he states his case, defying odds.
Zach too is a survivor, a dreamer and lover of the arts. And though he is too smart for his own good at times, he can learn. When the call came to support Mirjana, it was not a choice for Zach. As a result, San Francisco, like most everything else in his life, would be a winding road. Like the San Franciscan he had become, he should have known that underneath the present situation, fault lines were ever shifting. Zach too would be spent.
Zach and Lana have the same birthday in the same year. She was born in Croatia and Zach was born in North Kansas City, Missouri. Both were living the life of liberal, young intellectuals when they met through a common friend. Zach was in law school in Tucson. Lana was an accomplished young contract wizard in San Francisco in her first year of law school. They shared an interest in a band and would travel to hear the music and enjoy explorations and friendship. Eventually they just started visiting each other without the band. Zach graduated from law school and planned a move to California to take the bar. Lana told Zach he could stay at her place while she traveled in Asia for the summer. The two ended up living together in a very small apartment together when Lana learned her mother’s health meant a choice. She could not choose travel. Zach failed the bar on his first try. Lana left law school. Mirjana’s illness was just beginning to take its toll.
They did seem to love each other. When traveling to wine country they would bend over maps and Lana would laugh her wonderful laugh and Zach would suggest one adventure after another. They had a life in San Francisco, an apartment, their neighborhood bar and their drink – a devastatingly dangerous French 77. Zach passed his bar exam, and it looked like some good things were about to happen. Then they moved into Lana’s parents home to give support to Mirjana and Boris. Choices were put on hold. Life got complicated. Some important things were unsaid. Other things were assumed. The dark tones of a hard death were beginning to fill the time and space of their living. After the memorial service they moved back to San Francisco. Lana got a job. Zach got contract legal work. Both were unsatisfied and unsettled in new ways. The fault lines broke and the earth began to move.
The San Francisco Bay Bridge is to San Francisco what the Statue of Liberty is to New York. They are reminders of what has become a core value for each city. New York loves its liberty and freedom. San Francisco is a bridge to the next new thing. That the road from the San Francisco Bridge leads north to the Muir Woods and wine country is significant.
All the religion anyone needs is in the Muir Woods. Cathedrals, a sense of place and purpose, forgiveness and praise are constant, natural elements. Mix in a liturgy of survival and hope, all blessed by a brook sheltered under a canopy of leaves, and you have as much religion as we all might need.
Further north in wine country a miracle of mind is happening. Almost nobody in wine country is from there. They all had callings of nature and chemistry, worth and being. They had some kind of other life and it did not fulfill. Life moved too fast and they missed connection to earth and people. As a result, they are now working harder for less money that at any time in their life, and are happier than they have ever been. They make wine that is communion, and their wine carries the tastes and flavors of the soil, light and rain of their daily existence. They love what they do. That spirit flows south, down through the redwood cathedrals, over the bridge and into the city. It is a part of San Francisco now. A real taste for wine is acquired. It takes time and work to appreciate the complexity. The hot days, cold nights, picking, barreling and resting all change the final product. In the fall, the grape leaves turn colors and the wine is best served with bread, cheese and a companion on a blanket overlooking a field. While the city waits for a revival and its earthquake, some things still nourish the artist and the dreamer who wait as well.
Lana and Zach separated. They have reasons. Like the city they live in, they wait to move on – young, beautiful artists fashioning amazing lives. Over this grand landscape, the first rites of spring whisper the notes of an awakening new day. Crocus and daffodil emerge. Vintners are pruning the last of the vines and wondering about the taste of tomorrow. The slow drips of forgiveness and understanding are seeping through the hard days, breaking the ice and softening the soil for new growth. The night winds carry voices and the branches make music. They both are waiting for wines from older days to have their full depth and meaning. They might drink them one day and understand the complex overtures and understate hues …but, then again, maybe Zach and Lana are just bitter and angry—happy to be apart.
This then, is for Mirjana; the story’s hero. May her light and gravity once again, and oh so slowly, move the planets, though they are newly aligned, still lost, and cold. The long reckoning that must finally grip reality will come. What bitter taste there might be from taking a wine too soon will, in later years, mellow and smooth through time. As there is peace in the still earth, there is a hope of peace in the new landscape.
Before her death, Mirjana wore a smile and gave exquisite oriental bowls as a gift to Zach’s parents. The parents cherish that gift and its connection between two families. The old folk know we all live life on fault lines and that earthquakes happen. Moments of beauty and meaning, connection and love, are rare. They are worth the holding and honoring.
The story ends as it should. The picture of Mirjana once wordlessly left at Lana’s door hangs on a wall. Mirjana’s great, good spirit can still permeate the room. On the shelf below is a bouquet of lavender generously wrapped with a purple ribbon. The old ball and chain is so many little pieces of heart now, at last given place, soul and sound. Somehow, somewhere, there is a happy memory of Mirjana singing a Croatian folk song. The music is light and clear; children are listening and smiling.
When things are done right and the last person is properly cared for with written thanks; when all guest are graciously welcomed and the place settings and napkins are perfect; when all children are honored, cared for, and included... there is Mirjana. A way has been set. A cascade of thoughtful, thankful mementos continues from her life. A fierce, unrelenting love of family that honors and holds both old world and new lingers on in Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach.
Mirjana’s rich tapestry with its woven strands of steel and velvet, tradition and youth, lover and mother, protector and provider, creates a comforting backdrop for lives that can, and somehow do, go on. The fault lines that cracked open and took so much have been given to artists and dreamers, caring elders, and still young but healing hearts. Now is Mirjana Krtolica’s dénouement.
It’s another day in the city by the bay. Riding his motorcycle up the coast highway, Boris sometimes remembers the Aegean Sea and still feels Mirjana’s young arms and hands holding him close. Up at Stinson Beach a quiet, confident surfer is on her board, alone, waiting the next wave. It is morning and the rising sun on a blue ocean brings a special peace to Lana’s life. A fine young man is planning adventures, going north over the Golden Gate Bridge to drink good wine and eat worthy food with close friends. When the Grateful Dead comes on the radio, Zach laughs and remembers the box of DeadHead tapes he and Igor sent his old hippie dad. Both Zach and Lana are again survivor spirits anxious once more to be on their path. In a redwood forest clearing, more toward Saratoga, children play baseball. Errors are forgiven, everyone gets a second chance, and the Mirjana stories go on as long as the tall trees stand.
What If
So much is made of chance. A butterfly’s wing so slightly moves the air and the end result is a hurricane in Mexico. A one in 10 million chance on a lottery ticket wins big and lives are forever changed. That is not Kathy Dunn. There is no accident of fate that confirms her worth or the difference her life has made
Kathy’s contribution is not a result of chance or circumstance, luck or happenstance. She has left, day by day, a signature of quality on everything she does. Her fingerprints permeate the pages of all the stories of all the people she has known. Her thread is in every tapestry her friends hang, and her note is in every song we sing. Kathy’s life is like an enzyme –she allows so much else to happen. Kathy’s difference is best explained by some crucial forces of nature.
Let’s begin with gravity and light. Einstein said the two prevalent forces in the universe are light (speed of) and gravity. It is gravity that keeps things in place. Gravity holds the planets in their orbits and the universe in order. Of course the planets think they are whirling and spinning their way madly though the cosmos on their own terms; but no, it is gravity that creates the order and structure that allows time and circumstance to form their meaning. Light, the most mysterious of all substances (Kathy too is mysterious) provides/creates life as we know it. Though light neither has weight nor occupies space, it bends to gravity and carries heat that sustains life.
Here’s the point. Kathy has kept untold and uncalculated things in motion and in place. Kathy gives life, is life, to almost all she shines upon. What if Kathy had never lived? How would the world be different? Here’s the existential “What If?” written for Kathy Dunn.
Loreta and David would live different and sadder lives; maybe not even be alive. K gives them their most vital portal to the world, the most compelling reasons to connect to life. She is the one who is there for them.
Let’s assume that Z and Matt miraculously exist in the great “What If” but their constant, 24/7, defender of the faith, keeper of the meaning; wellspring of consistent, clean, flowing love; champion; Mother Superior; and fan club president, however, is gone. The boys perhaps would have found other, lesser suns around which to orbit. Less light, less heat, fewer bits of structure on which to hang dreams or rest broken hearts/spirits/expectations-- who can say what affect this, would have? It sure seems barren, cold and distant, lacking life -- feels like a frozen Pluto, not even a planet now, that circles, wobbling and uncertain, around a distant star. This imagined planet is so unlike earth; no atmosphere, no water, no light. That is what Kathy means. Zach and Matt without Kathy’s light heat and structure are distant planets, cold and less alive, perhpas.
The work: The Jewell Fine Arts Program, Folly Theater, Young Audiences, Missouri Repertory theater, UMKC Law School, UMKC Office of Advancement, countless charities, Heartland Men’s Chorus, foundation consulting, sister research, and on and on and on: so much has been done so right. Never a glitch at the gala; the seat was found at every concert, the call returned (always), the pledge drive exceeds expectations and a new direction is taken; the gala is revived and the stage is set for a new era, the Trustee Board hands over its money as the plan was ordained, and the vote is unanimous. The $200 million is raised, the series is a success, countless artists are treated with respect and dignity, friends are inspired to do and give more to causes. An entire community of fundraising and advancement begins to circle her sun, draw from her light, and experience the gravity of dedication, excellence, ethical behavior, and Kathy’s trademark quality: care and concern for others. The influence spreads. Things sprout, ideas are nurtured, and people hold on longer. Friends gather more often and with greater affection. Kathy is the campfire around which the pilgrims gather on the coldest night or the wildest celebration. What is that worth? What does that mean? Kathy’s gift is everyday life itself made straighter, smoother and more clearly marked. Every day is better because of Kathy. All of Kansas City is made better, and will be made better yet, because she made and then showed the way to so many.
CONCLUSION:
Our friend Judy MacDonald said she had an “Intense” marriage. I liked that term. We have an intense marriage. We love and live at the extremes sometimes. We demand so much of each other, and we use each other up at times. There is nobody I would rather be beside in a crisis. There is nobody I would rather be with to watch a great movie, go on vacation, cook a great meal for friends, grow flowers for, talk to when I am sad, be a keeper and forgiver of my failures, or to talk about our children with. We know the soft spots however, the weak links and the sore scabs that must not be picked. We are vulnerable to each other. After all these year we still can be wonderful (and sometimes challenging) enigmas to each other –taking delight in the new discovery or astounded by the different point of view. We delight and disappoint with intensity.
The light and gravity for our relationship also comes from Kathy. Intense love would have passed me by without Kathy. I would likely have dominated, or sunk into passive hostility in another relationship. I would not have grown - not been nurtured by light (or burned); held in check (or held to hard). Living in her light; living with her gravity, living in the real world she offers is not easy for me at times, but oh so much better than orbiting a lesser star. Living without Kathy would have kept me shallow and slow. Gold nuggets of love exist everywhere between us, but we still must dig to find them. The water of refreshment, rejuvenation and rebirth still flows, but the spigot must be turned on. The road not taken (the Great “WHAT IF”) is not completely unknown. Robert Frost said he took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. Jimmy Dunn took the road untraveled. There, in the wild, and in the wilderness of those early days, Jimmy Dunn needed what Kathy offered, and he still does today.
And that has made all the difference for me.
Kathy’s contribution is not a result of chance or circumstance, luck or happenstance. She has left, day by day, a signature of quality on everything she does. Her fingerprints permeate the pages of all the stories of all the people she has known. Her thread is in every tapestry her friends hang, and her note is in every song we sing. Kathy’s life is like an enzyme –she allows so much else to happen. Kathy’s difference is best explained by some crucial forces of nature.
Let’s begin with gravity and light. Einstein said the two prevalent forces in the universe are light (speed of) and gravity. It is gravity that keeps things in place. Gravity holds the planets in their orbits and the universe in order. Of course the planets think they are whirling and spinning their way madly though the cosmos on their own terms; but no, it is gravity that creates the order and structure that allows time and circumstance to form their meaning. Light, the most mysterious of all substances (Kathy too is mysterious) provides/creates life as we know it. Though light neither has weight nor occupies space, it bends to gravity and carries heat that sustains life.
Here’s the point. Kathy has kept untold and uncalculated things in motion and in place. Kathy gives life, is life, to almost all she shines upon. What if Kathy had never lived? How would the world be different? Here’s the existential “What If?” written for Kathy Dunn.
Loreta and David would live different and sadder lives; maybe not even be alive. K gives them their most vital portal to the world, the most compelling reasons to connect to life. She is the one who is there for them.
Let’s assume that Z and Matt miraculously exist in the great “What If” but their constant, 24/7, defender of the faith, keeper of the meaning; wellspring of consistent, clean, flowing love; champion; Mother Superior; and fan club president, however, is gone. The boys perhaps would have found other, lesser suns around which to orbit. Less light, less heat, fewer bits of structure on which to hang dreams or rest broken hearts/spirits/expectations-- who can say what affect this, would have? It sure seems barren, cold and distant, lacking life -- feels like a frozen Pluto, not even a planet now, that circles, wobbling and uncertain, around a distant star. This imagined planet is so unlike earth; no atmosphere, no water, no light. That is what Kathy means. Zach and Matt without Kathy’s light heat and structure are distant planets, cold and less alive, perhpas.
The work: The Jewell Fine Arts Program, Folly Theater, Young Audiences, Missouri Repertory theater, UMKC Law School, UMKC Office of Advancement, countless charities, Heartland Men’s Chorus, foundation consulting, sister research, and on and on and on: so much has been done so right. Never a glitch at the gala; the seat was found at every concert, the call returned (always), the pledge drive exceeds expectations and a new direction is taken; the gala is revived and the stage is set for a new era, the Trustee Board hands over its money as the plan was ordained, and the vote is unanimous. The $200 million is raised, the series is a success, countless artists are treated with respect and dignity, friends are inspired to do and give more to causes. An entire community of fundraising and advancement begins to circle her sun, draw from her light, and experience the gravity of dedication, excellence, ethical behavior, and Kathy’s trademark quality: care and concern for others. The influence spreads. Things sprout, ideas are nurtured, and people hold on longer. Friends gather more often and with greater affection. Kathy is the campfire around which the pilgrims gather on the coldest night or the wildest celebration. What is that worth? What does that mean? Kathy’s gift is everyday life itself made straighter, smoother and more clearly marked. Every day is better because of Kathy. All of Kansas City is made better, and will be made better yet, because she made and then showed the way to so many.
CONCLUSION:
Our friend Judy MacDonald said she had an “Intense” marriage. I liked that term. We have an intense marriage. We love and live at the extremes sometimes. We demand so much of each other, and we use each other up at times. There is nobody I would rather be beside in a crisis. There is nobody I would rather be with to watch a great movie, go on vacation, cook a great meal for friends, grow flowers for, talk to when I am sad, be a keeper and forgiver of my failures, or to talk about our children with. We know the soft spots however, the weak links and the sore scabs that must not be picked. We are vulnerable to each other. After all these year we still can be wonderful (and sometimes challenging) enigmas to each other –taking delight in the new discovery or astounded by the different point of view. We delight and disappoint with intensity.
The light and gravity for our relationship also comes from Kathy. Intense love would have passed me by without Kathy. I would likely have dominated, or sunk into passive hostility in another relationship. I would not have grown - not been nurtured by light (or burned); held in check (or held to hard). Living in her light; living with her gravity, living in the real world she offers is not easy for me at times, but oh so much better than orbiting a lesser star. Living without Kathy would have kept me shallow and slow. Gold nuggets of love exist everywhere between us, but we still must dig to find them. The water of refreshment, rejuvenation and rebirth still flows, but the spigot must be turned on. The road not taken (the Great “WHAT IF”) is not completely unknown. Robert Frost said he took the road less traveled and it made all the difference. Jimmy Dunn took the road untraveled. There, in the wild, and in the wilderness of those early days, Jimmy Dunn needed what Kathy offered, and he still does today.
And that has made all the difference for me.
Vladimir's Place
Vladimir's Place
Inverness, is a small hamlet on Sir. Frances Drake Blvd. beside Tomales Bay near the magnificent Point Reyes National Seashore in California. It is here you will find Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. Here you will find draft Pilsner Urquell on tap, an authentic Eastern European crystal chandelier to greet you as you enter, and, if you are lucky, Vladimir himself tending bar.
Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant is not for the faint of heart or the hopelessly pampered. Your grandfather would have liked this place with its dark paneling, impossibly old photos on the wall and nick-knack,-in-every-nook and cranny decoration. It was hot inside. Furnace-like hot. Vladimir, somewhere in his 80’s, shuffled back and forth on the edge of lucidity sloooooooooooowly tending our beers, setting them aside for several minutes between each draw to let the foam settle. Legend says Vladimir crawled under a barb wired fence over 40 years ago to freedom; and, if you ask him, he will say he once worked for the KGB, FBI, CBS, IBM, FOB—or something like that. He maintains a quirky, irascible freedom in his restaurant/bar that is wholly unique. Some will find the restaurant too old and too much like a visit to a museum. They will find it uncomfortable and taxing to take a beer with Vladimir; and they would miss much for their narrow, needy ways.
We came to Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant from a picnic on the seashore and hikes on the windy desolate beaches that make up the northern stretch of beach at Point Reyes. This area, like everywhere else in the park, is completely undeveloped except for bleak ranches named “A” through “H”, and a few commercial establishments that seem marvelously stuck in a time before marketing, standardization and branding took their toll. The scenery on the drive to the beach changes from deep wood, to scrub undergrowth, to grass and rock, creating the impression that one is driving to the end of the earth. Indeed, you get the sense you have left a lot behind to walk barefoot on a wild beach, hair blowing and waves roaring.
As a result of our beach visit, we came ready to Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. Life in the present tense offers its gifts as well as challenges. Today the gift was an accordion player, playing the restaurant’s borrowed instrument. He was a wine-maker from Napa who sat with his lady-friend at the end of the bar. He was skilled – amazingly so- and chose music to fit the mood and the day. He played music from the movie Amelie, and you could just sense the child-like main character Amelie, so afraid to love, so anxious to do good, so mischievous, and so ready to learn more about herself, sitting with us at the bar. Vladimir poured us a Czechoslovakian liquor in a blue stem martini glass to chase our enormous beers. It tasted faintly of cloves. We raised a toast to the accordion player. The train to the present tense left normal behind.
I asked for a Spanish Tango, which he played with enthusiasm, and we laughed, dancing with our eyes, tapping our feet on the bar rail, not sure and not caring what we understood. I would not take off my hooded sweatshirt even though it was maybe 100 degrees in the restaurant and wondered why. Perhaps it was to take what was offered as it came – something we so rarely get to do. Maybe it was my small sacrifice to pay homage to a moment I did not comprehend but enjoyed so much. “Be here now,” Bamma Rama Das would say, and I kept my sweatshirt on to enjoy the heat.
The stories from Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant took us laughing/thinking down the road to San Francisco and on to Missouri. We are back now, but the accordion is still playing. That wild wonderful beach is still there; the friends, the days away, and their witness are here. Like a shocking big yellow moon over a verdant vineyard or a magical sunset in Mendocino, Vladimir’s place gave balance back to the hard mystery of life. Quirky and mystical, the playful charm of Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant makes the road go on and the story turn a page. Our box of memories not yet full, we are thankful again for the chance to have a life.
Inverness, is a small hamlet on Sir. Frances Drake Blvd. beside Tomales Bay near the magnificent Point Reyes National Seashore in California. It is here you will find Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. Here you will find draft Pilsner Urquell on tap, an authentic Eastern European crystal chandelier to greet you as you enter, and, if you are lucky, Vladimir himself tending bar.
Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant is not for the faint of heart or the hopelessly pampered. Your grandfather would have liked this place with its dark paneling, impossibly old photos on the wall and nick-knack,-in-every-nook and cranny decoration. It was hot inside. Furnace-like hot. Vladimir, somewhere in his 80’s, shuffled back and forth on the edge of lucidity sloooooooooooowly tending our beers, setting them aside for several minutes between each draw to let the foam settle. Legend says Vladimir crawled under a barb wired fence over 40 years ago to freedom; and, if you ask him, he will say he once worked for the KGB, FBI, CBS, IBM, FOB—or something like that. He maintains a quirky, irascible freedom in his restaurant/bar that is wholly unique. Some will find the restaurant too old and too much like a visit to a museum. They will find it uncomfortable and taxing to take a beer with Vladimir; and they would miss much for their narrow, needy ways.
We came to Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant from a picnic on the seashore and hikes on the windy desolate beaches that make up the northern stretch of beach at Point Reyes. This area, like everywhere else in the park, is completely undeveloped except for bleak ranches named “A” through “H”, and a few commercial establishments that seem marvelously stuck in a time before marketing, standardization and branding took their toll. The scenery on the drive to the beach changes from deep wood, to scrub undergrowth, to grass and rock, creating the impression that one is driving to the end of the earth. Indeed, you get the sense you have left a lot behind to walk barefoot on a wild beach, hair blowing and waves roaring.
As a result of our beach visit, we came ready to Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. Life in the present tense offers its gifts as well as challenges. Today the gift was an accordion player, playing the restaurant’s borrowed instrument. He was a wine-maker from Napa who sat with his lady-friend at the end of the bar. He was skilled – amazingly so- and chose music to fit the mood and the day. He played music from the movie Amelie, and you could just sense the child-like main character Amelie, so afraid to love, so anxious to do good, so mischievous, and so ready to learn more about herself, sitting with us at the bar. Vladimir poured us a Czechoslovakian liquor in a blue stem martini glass to chase our enormous beers. It tasted faintly of cloves. We raised a toast to the accordion player. The train to the present tense left normal behind.
I asked for a Spanish Tango, which he played with enthusiasm, and we laughed, dancing with our eyes, tapping our feet on the bar rail, not sure and not caring what we understood. I would not take off my hooded sweatshirt even though it was maybe 100 degrees in the restaurant and wondered why. Perhaps it was to take what was offered as it came – something we so rarely get to do. Maybe it was my small sacrifice to pay homage to a moment I did not comprehend but enjoyed so much. “Be here now,” Bamma Rama Das would say, and I kept my sweatshirt on to enjoy the heat.
The stories from Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant took us laughing/thinking down the road to San Francisco and on to Missouri. We are back now, but the accordion is still playing. That wild wonderful beach is still there; the friends, the days away, and their witness are here. Like a shocking big yellow moon over a verdant vineyard or a magical sunset in Mendocino, Vladimir’s place gave balance back to the hard mystery of life. Quirky and mystical, the playful charm of Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant makes the road go on and the story turn a page. Our box of memories not yet full, we are thankful again for the chance to have a life.
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