A Home of Her Own

---

Journal page with poem. The cottage on Lotus. Single wall construction, Sears prefab on the Wonderland Amusement Park Slab, 1980.

---

Himself: Found two jobs to apply for yesterday. Had a good day at an estate sale pulling boxes down from a garage top shelf. Thar be the Christmas Goodies. To Terry Gunthorp’s memorial…one good picture on Geeeee-zer’s blog. He’s celebrating his 25th sobriety date today too. Herself: I stood a safe way back and pointed to boxes for G to bring down at an estate sale. One had all the good balls….which I literally bagged for five bucks. Dressed in bright, happy colors we were off to Coronado and Terry’s gathering. I sure didn’t want to go. Very allergic to everyone’s perfumes, good to see cousins, good food, leaky eyes, left early. Today washing everything white in the living room. Balance: Washing the dust of the party off several times.

1980

June 24:
Tomorrow I will have been sober for thirty days. In this last month, I have gone to more social affairs and fun things than I have in years. I have seen more booze these last thirty days also, so it has been a bit as if I were waving a red flag at my demon. Determination has been the key, a determination not to end up like Charles or Peter.

July 5:
Too much Peter, dear drunk PeterPeterPeter, in my life this month. Most days I have been helping him paint big banners for the fireworks festival. Now they are up, I can say clearly, that was a learning experience and I don’t think I am cut out to be a sign painter. When I wasn’t with Peter, I waited for the tenant or the landlady of the cottage across the street to contact me. Hoping too, for I know the cottage will be vacant on the fifteenth.

July 7:
When I stumbled outside to grab my bike and head to the beach this morning, I saw the surfers had just moved out of the little cottage. I rushed over and discovered they had forgotten to mention me to their landlady. Anger and panic galvanized me into action. I got them to draw me a map to her house, borrowed a car, and arrived on the poor woman’s doorstep full of myself. I thought I could leave a note on her door, but she was home.
“I was on the verge of selling it when you came,” she said.

After a very long talk, she let me rent the house.

July 11:
Plans for the move and a party after the move are now underway. There is a schedule for the actual move. Today all the storage things go into the garage, the kids finish packing their rooms, and the Fiat repairs begin. Sunday it is move the piano and sofa. Tuesday everything else goes over.

July 16:
After days of struggle, days of sorting and decisions, and much caring company and help from JR and Fran, we are moved across the street. Moved in. All the boxes, all the trivia, all the heavy stuff has been carried over. Every friend I have carried boxes across the street. Even Jo came. My fireman friend, John, unhooked the gas heater and capped the gas line. Now there is room for the old white bookcase. The piano made it to the garage with only a little damage. Mother’s old sofa is back there too. I seem to have mislaid only the hammer and one of Raul’s stone grinders. They will pop up in due time if I don’t make a fuss.

Now that we are in, we can see that the cottage is falling apart. Every faucet leaks, the carpet is matted flat, half the old wooden windows do not open or are broken, and when I took a bath last night, the bathroom floor flooded. Every drainpipe is taped with duct tape and some have containers under them. The ones that don’t, should. The stove leaks gas. Yet it is ours and we can afford it no matter what is wrong with it. I love it; we are home.

As I carried one last box into the cottage, a police car pulled up. I was momentarily quite frightened thinking defensively, “I haven’t done anything,” but it was a police officer friend come to see if we had moved in all right. What a different life we live now. I don’t have to be afraid any more.

July 25:
I have been writing in my journal for hours each day recording in dizzying detail the lives of others. This voyeurism of mine must have a purpose, but I don’t know what it is. In five non-accomplishment months, I have seen no tangible finished thing from my brain. Not one thing of any weight that I can reach out to and touch to say this is mine, I have created this, I have added to the world with this in some small way.

July 26:
I put a whole conceptual piece together in my head yesterday. Conceptual art can be so silly. I’m still laughing about it today. The idea of drawing a blue chalk line around one block and recording the act as a finished piece of artwork seems to me to be typical of the conceptual art movement. I think I will do it keeping a log of all the actions, keeping a photographic record of each action…each photograph to be a perfect still life. Of course, the whole thing should be elaborately done…the more so the better to make it even funnier. Complicate things. “Blue Line”…media, chalk. Size: photographs, 25 feet apart. Twenty-five finished photographs. An edition of twenty-five. The whole idea gave me such a chuckle that I borrowed a chalk line from Peter. Jo and her sister Cosmom came to help me actually do the piece. We had a lot of laughs. How silly, yet how delightful.

August 5:
My day started with mother in the hospital with two problems. Her diabetes is out of control, and she was headed to the operating room for kidney stones. Stepfather Bob had been on the phone yelling at me, the why I didn’t understand, but screaming. Margot broke her wrist. I dealt with it. In the midst of being examined by John for a position on the Ocean Beach Planning board, two police officers showed up at my door. Now here were these two officers telling me they had a stolen money order with Lenora’s signature on it right in the midst of all my other chaos. I confess I dealt with everything well except Bob. I hung up on him.

I have not seen summer this year. The days of quiet dreaming never came, or if they did, I didn’t see them. I long for a nothing day.

September 20:
Time has passed through my life like a whirlwind, so very fast, yet left so little a mark of its passage that I have not cared. The kids are home full time again and have started back to school. I get up very early and drive them up that long hill every morning. The pill I have been taking to calm my stomach has been putting me to sleep. I haven’t even walked. The check was deposited, so I must have gone to the bank. A Planning Board meeting was attended, but I was so sick I kept having to go to the head. A Town Council meeting too. Once there was dinner out with a neighbor, but all I remember was the red meat. Many days have been spent baking the bowel pain out on the sand. The only memory I have of is sunburn. I take the paperwork for the board with me, but who knows how much I am absorbing of Proposition O, or revisions to the Preservation and Energy addendum to the Prepared Plan. Always distracted, always fuzzy.

September 22:
Get up and write early, maybe that is the way to do it. Write before the color of the sun touches the sky. I’m in a fog without my coffee.

November 5:
Fed up with being so ill, I went to the doctor again.

“Just gastritis,” he said authoritatively. Firmly.

I love these catchall phrases. Now I am on a bland diet, Tagamet, and antacids, and I am still painfully fuzzy.

Tchotchkes

---

Georgette on the south jetty. 1980. Photo: CA.

Himself: Found one job to apply for, and he is making a friend of the nice guy he volunteers with on Saturdays. Today we are off to Terry Gunthorp’s memorial gathering. From 4 to 7 the invitation says so we are assuming it is just a relaxed function. Herself: No swimming yesterday. That class let out just before I was to start work. Just work. More Christmas things to price which included one box of turquoise balls. G took me to two estate sales after work. Hundreds of cats at the first one…I bought two, and art at the second one. We liked two water colors, but the prices are outta our league. We are getting too much small stuff, too many tchotchkes, in our living room, in our lives. Reading: The Cooks Catalog: 1974. Witty comments on everything from soup spoons to casseroles. I can’t put it down. Balance: Reading The Cooks Catalog.

1980

April 27:
Full days now. Planning board meetings. Therapy appointments. Friends crowd into my life. One marvelous lifeguard charms me with his stories and fills my mind with fantasies. Dan’s 35th birthday yesterday. Dale and Fran to visit almost the whole day today. Dale commented that it is pretty bad when he has to come and read my journal to find out what is happening around town. Duck arrives on his new scooter all smiles in his helmet and leather jacket. PAH and his wife are here also, and as the neighbors and boyfriends fill the house and yard all I want to do is write in my journal.

I hate experiences that pile up unwritten. I lose them so easily. Sometimes I feel so selfish.

May 26:
What did I do, I ask myself? I came home from the beach, went to a big party up on the point, got drunk, and brought one of the honored big-shot guests home and balled him all night.

He was a cruel man. I feel all torn inside, torn and mangled. I am bleeding. I cannot move one arm, and my collarbone seems bruised. I hurt all over. Enough! Tomorrow Dorothy and I are going to get sober.

May 28:
Evening visitors made my day a joy. Dan arrived full of disgust for a friend who disappointed him. I put a certain amount of abstract effort into cheering him up before Will arrived straight from work. We enjoyed half an hour of bar bouncer stories while he wound down then got into a marvelous discussion of Kant, Nietzsche, Camus, and philosophy for the soul. More evenings should be spent this way. This is what it is all about.

Lenora has her wall up against me. I understand this, but I am frightened for her. She has been taking speed. No denial; she just avoids me. It makes me want to give up. Speed. I am so terribly frightened.

Jo has borrowed an apartment and is typing away madly on her play. Don said that she came back from the desert revitalized yet mellow. She has completed ten pages now.

“All I have to do is finish it,” she tells me. “I sat down and it began to write itself. Now I feel like a playwright, and I am really happy.”

Will has started an alternative world novel, and Dan has given up reading about religion and has gone back to painting full blast. Creativity. No creativity for Terry’s sister Cal, who moved in up the block. She was beaten up at work, and now doesn’t look like my friend any more as she is covered with stitches, and bruises are everywhere. No broken bones. Right now she is too fragmented to find creativity in anything.

I have been drawing and not drinking. The only time that I felt like drinking yesterday was when I sliced the hell out of my left thumb. In the midst of the pain, blood, and gore, I longed intensely for a little bourbon. Physically I’m still a wreck from that one-night-stand, and my abdomen is swollen as if I was six months pregnant. I know I will feel better in a few days, but I truly regret bringing that man home.

June 2:
One full week of sobriety now since I brought that horrible man home with me. It is not as bad as I thought it would be. I’m just doing it. If I didn’t have the bitter certainty of the long spiral into death before me, I would think all this too easy.

Projects cover every surface. I cannot see my house for the books. Any spare moment I have has been spent with a book lately. I am deeply touched by Reich’s The Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef as well as Mark Vonnegut’s Eden Express. Can you believe that I, this screaming liberal, have two books of William F. Buckley’s sitting in my book piles? Everything from mysteries to adventures of the mind takes me away from my own mind. Ted Simon’s journey on his motor bike competes with Quentin Bell’s biography of Virginia Wolfe. Both set me to thinking down new paths.

June 2:
Jo just called her voice full of joy. Her play is born. She titles it Diver’s Song. A friend has said he will see if they can get it a reading at the Globe.

June 4:
While I was out in front of the building helping a neighbor with the final loading for his move back east, the manager slipped me the news that the owner was going to raise the rent again. Not just once in August, but he will raise it again in February. All of a sudden, I felt so old and alone. So very much all of those…and defeated too.

June 14:
I’ve been hunting for somewhere new to live, and a few spots turned up close by. I applied for one small cottage. Hours were spent in the sun listening to lifeguards too. This company at the beach sent me home with a sense of momentary comfort and belonging that I do not usually have. Art world people are not the joining type, and these guards were all united in a common cause and on a common journey. I envied them this as I let the talk of buoys, rescues and boats flow all around me.

June 22:
In all reality, the kids have effectively moved out for the summer. I worry. Their absence gives me a physical peace that I have not had since last summer, but I still worry.

June 23:
I joined others who stood like sentinels on the sandy berm. What seemed confusion on the surface with this rescue was ordered chaos in reality. All my perceptions seemed heightened by the tragedy. The orange of the trucks, the clarity of the sea and the sky, the green blanket over the woman’s body on the sand, the flashing lights, all seemed magnified. The huddle of the lifeguards was the only still spot on the beach. Hoards of onlookers flowed like the tide around or in, or circling slowly pushing gently against the drama on the sand.

Suddenly the stillness of the water near the jetty was snapped. Two more lifeguards ran to the ocean….blue broken by orange clad bodies. Pushing outward, Bob held his bright orange buoy shoulder high. Katie swam. The ocean outlined her strong arms as they dug deeply into the water in a butterfly stroke again and again. Her suit was just a fragment of orange in the foam. They both reached the small, flailing children at the same time. I felt uncomfortable there watching these friends, these joking, caring, chocolate eating friends become so hard and certain in themselves. I felt more than uncomfortable watching tragedy unfold. It was not my place to be there.

Never Dull Or Boring

---

I bought JR’s Fiat, and daily for the next few weeks attempted to get it running again.

---

Himself: Swam. Job searching tho nothing to apply for, meeting, forgot lunch, did thrift stores for turquoise ornaments. Herself: Swam, wrote, printed five pages to take with me to the Thursday Writers, Kinko’s, coughed, Writers group, thrift stores when I got some modern turquoise balls…..more on Ebay but just am watching. Reading: The Cooks Catalogue Balance: Snuggled with G over a little TV.

1980:

January 18:
Mammograms this morning. They found a spot in my left breast when I had the rehab physical, and I dared not leave the mammogram undone. At the hospital, the office people were scattered, but the woman doing the mammogram was wonderful. I felt like a pancake, how silly. Then to Jo’s at noon. I woke her up, and she staggered around muttering about the sleeping pills she had taken the night before. I understand, for the pain must be intense. We chatted sitting on her bed sipping our respective coffee and teas as she woke up. I needed comfortable company, and she offered this.

January 20:
The doctor called. Nothing malignant, just fibroids!

I have done a trade with JR. He got my VW, and I got his Fiat sports car. Today I spent hours with Frankie and JR getting the Fiat running. Dear Frankie used his Datsun and pushed the Fiat around and around the big parking lot near JR’s house. JR tore the carburetor completely apart twice, the first time a jet had unscrewed itself and the second time he discovered that he had left out a major gasket. Eventually it started running, belched huge clouds of smoke, and then it went from four cylinders to two. A very frustrating time.

March 7:
Fran and I, blowing our noses constantly with a cold, spent the afternoon dickering with the Fiat. No running lights or brake lights yet. Fran was easily distracted from the electrical problems to the radio, and he installed a couple of his speakers in my car then gave them to me. What a dear man. Then he wanted to make a short test jaunt up to the corner store to see if they worked. Lessa hopped in the back. I started it up with a roar, and I hung a U-turn.

Fran yelled, “Wait. I have to shut my trunk. It’s full of tools.”

I pulled over to the left hand side of the street giving easy access to Fran’s car. As he jumped out and ran around to shut the trunk, I looked up to see a police van blocking the front of the Fiat with its lights flashing and a police officer standing there with a shot gun in his hands. The rear view suddenly matched. Frightening. They didn't want us.
All day across the street from us a 280Z had been parked. Now a young, golden haired man was spread eagled up against the side of it.

“Get that car outta here,” said the cop in front.

As I started it up I wondered if he was now going to turn that gun slowly around on me as I drove away with no muffler?

Lots of excitement when we got home. The Z had been stolen. The silly car thief had left his wallet and money on the front seat. Because this new car was so very out of place in our neighborhood, it called attention to itself. Someone called the dealer in LA whose name was on the tag.

“It isn’t stolen,” said the dealer.

“Go look out on your lot,” the cops said.

Sure enough it was.

March 31:
Two hospital trips in the last few days. Friday, after a day of errands and friends and a little wine, I was just settling down to decorate my new journal when Will called needing a ride to the VA hospital. I thanked God that I had eaten, was grateful I owned a warm coat with a hood as well as gloves. I did a rattling, seat of the pants, top down, ride over to Will’s house then drove him up to the VA in his own car. Four hours we waited and saw no one. There were only two pendings ahead of him and I didn’t understand the long wait. The warm heated hospital air combined with the wine to make me sleepy. A very kind clerk found me a corner out of the wind that had a light where I could smoke and read at the same time.

Sunday morning Lessa called with symptoms that sounded like appendix. The doctor, after talking with her on the phone, told me to take her to the emergency room. We found someone to give us a ride to mother’s Oldsmobile and that got us to the hospital easily. Tests, and more tests found out she had a white count of 17,000, and a severe kidney infection. She refused to stay in the hospital, who could blame her, so they shot her full of antibiotics and a painkiller, and sent home told to drink water, water, and water.

This morning she said she felt awful, but the pain has been pulled down to a point she could stand it. She has been making a lot of funny little jokes and smiling, so I know she will be fine. Lenora has been kind to her sister this morning; then again, Lenora went to a concert last night to see “Journey,” and poor Lessa missed it.

April 9:
Al and I left the bar laughing, and two blocks toward home we encountered a shopping cart.

“Would you like a ride home?”

“Sure,” I said grinning.

All the people who live on Abbott Street now have something to talk about for the next day or so. In the dark of the night, we careened madly down the center of the street laughing and shouting. I was waving my arms like a bird and laughing non-stop. Frankie jogged alongside talking and laughing as Al pushed me through the laundry-mat, through the liquor store and into Jimmy’s. More laughter…then down the block we went. There we ran into our resident police officer. He will never believe me a sober responsible person again. Later Al confided in me that he had always wanted to do that. Everyone had always turned him down. I’m so glad I took that ride, for it has given me one of those marvelous, hilarious forever memories all on two glasses of wine.

April 22:
I gave Jo a call. She borrowed one of my old journals to read, and it depressed her so terribly that she can’t talk about either the book or her feelings about it. I, who always so blindly just go on my way, had no idea this would happen if she read it, and I am truly horrified.

Duck brings me out of my funk when he calls. Everything is going so much better for him now tho he seems damaged and slow. It pleases me no end to hear that he is out and about going to the theater, concerts, or even hunting for a scooter. He can no longer afford a car.