Good Kharma

An old AA story is of the man who didn’t believe in God at all. A friend wondered how he could be so sure. The man told his friend he had proof. His friend asked what was that. “Well I was hunting in Alaska right next to the Bering Sea and a wind came up and I didn’t realize I was on an ice shelf and the piece I was on broke off. And there I was on an ice floe floating out to sea. I couldn’t see the shore and I began praying to god to save me. I prayed and I prayed and he didn’t save me.”

His friend asked, “Well you’re here now. How did you survive?”

“Oh, some Eskimo came along.”

I got up this morning, showered and got ready because I was going to coffee and socialize with parents after I dropped my kid off. Escuela Bilingüe is a great school. The parents are wonderful people, professors, lawyers, engineers, and artists; they’re an interesting mix. The once a month Coffee Cart is always an enjoyable social occasion, we stand outside at a picnic table near the drop off and do a cocktail hour with coffee instead of drinks. We mix, we talk, we listen and I float from conversation to conversation. We talk about school, kids, jobs, work, politics, it’s one of my favorite social connections. This morning at  EBI, as we call it, the Coffee Cart was canceled.

At the gate to the school Irma said they tried to get Peet’s this morning, but Peet’s canceled and they had to cancel the Coffee Cart. There was one other parent, someone I didn’t really know. He said he’d wait and see if anyone shows up and would talk to Irma in the meantime. I walked past them at the gate and went to the picnic table. Even though they canceled it, someone’s bound to show up, the notice was in Parent Square online.

In the meantime I talked to Carolyn, while she unloaded kids with Luis at the dropoff. She is from Coachella, down in the desert Southeast of Palm Springs. She’s Spanish speaking as are most of the staff at EBI and I tell her I’m trying to learn Spanish. She’s a young woman, a teacher’s aid but she begins to relax. I learn her husband got a job here and she moved with him. She prefers the warmth of Coachella to the chill of winter in the Bay Area.

Then I go over and talk to Luis for a moment and find out Luis is actually José and I’ve had his name wrong for five years I said. He said we’ve known each other for 7 years, well maybe, but he’s a good guy and we laugh. He speaks Spanish with a wonderful Cuban accent and to my amazement I understand some of it.

The other parent comes back and I offer to share the coffee I’ve brought for myself. His daughter is in the third grade and we chat for a few minutes. I tell him I’m Irish and that they say if the Irish weren’t in AA they could have their meetings in a phone booth and that in AA even if only two people show up they go on with the meeting and before I finish my observation, he interrupts, “I went to a meeting last night in San Mateo.” “A meeting?” I ask, “An AA meeting?” “Yes,” he says. So I tell him “Next week is my 39^th AA birthday.”

Matt is two years sober. He’s dropping his daughter off, whom he is just getting to know and getting involved in her life. He left Kerry’s mother when she was pregnant and they don’t have much of a relationship but it looked like maybe things were changing with Kerry and her mother. But Kerry’s mother is getting on with her life and has a boyfriend and the boyfriend moved in and likes being a foster dad and Matt wasn’t nice about it when he saw him this morning. He doesn’t like him, even though he seems like a pretty good guy. This guy stays overnight with Kerry’s mother, gets up in the morning, serves Matt’s daughter cornflakes and puts her to bed at night.

Matt has been struggling, but he’s got it, he’s sober now, but this is hard. We talk about patience, and meetings. He has a sponsor, but it’s hard. I say, “You know I don’t much believe in god as some sort of chess master, but it’s hard not to feel like you and I a couple of pieces he just moved to where we need to be.”

Matt doesn’t slow down. He is hurting and he needs to talk. He’s a good guy and he knows he needs to be patient but when it looked like he might get a chance to be a husband and a father there wasn’t and Kerry's mother is moving on, it hurts.

I tried to be a good listener. Matt is a good guy. He’s staying sober and trying to lead a good life. But doing that in the beginning is hard, particularly for people like us who began drinking before we had grown up and getting sober hasn’t fixed everything yet. I tried to interject a few AA clichés. It will get better if you don’t drink. Working the steps helps. The shit doesn’t stop when we stop drinking. Patience. Things like that.

I could feel Matt was in pain and this was a crisis. It takes a few years for us alcoholics before life is no longer one crisis after another, before we learn how to live life on it’s own terms, the gifts of sobriety as they come. Everyone around us seems to get it, have the good things, doing well and we’re still struggling. I told him after 39 years I didn’t have a strong urge to drink anymore, but that was only good as I long as I worked the program.

As they remind us in AA, meeting Matt sure helped me, made me grateful, and reminded me that Sobriety is a great gift, a grace from god. It reminded me of my early years in AA and the struggles I had. It reminded me when Church Carmalt, my sponsor, said “work with newcomers."  Of course, I’m still growing and I still struggle a little, but I didn’t drink and over time it got better, and it’s still getting better.

I hope I did Matt some good. It sure helped me.

I had to laugh. Newcomers see god’s hand in everything that happens to them. I had that kind of higher power for awhile and it helped. I don’t believe that’s true anymore, but it’s hard to deny when something like this happens. I may not have been his Eskimo, but maybe I’m someone who listened along the way and shared a cup of coffee.

Another coincidence, this morning I meditated on listening, becoming a good listener. I may not believe in god exactly.  But kharma makes sense to me. I am grateful for good kharma when I see it.

Note:  A few days later I ran into Matt again.  We sat in his car and talked.  He's still in crisis.  Exploring ways to deal with that, he said he wouldn't smoke pot that day and hadn't for some hours.  I'm not sure if pot was his word, like everything else I'm dated but nonetheless he hadn't smoked pot for some hours.  It seems for the last two years Matt has been on what we call the Marijuana Maintenance Program.  In my experience that's not sobriety, better but not good enough.  The first rule of working the 12 Steps is to be sober.  In my experience, if I don't drink things get better.  I'm pretty sure if I do drink they're going to get worse.  And as I heard it in the beginning and believe, mind altering drugs and alcohol are the same thing, just a question of getting to Omaha by plane or train, you're still in Omaha.  I shared my opinion and my phone number with Matt, I haven't heard from him since.  

My meeting with Matt kept me sober, my Higher Power at work.

Disclaimer:  I’m certainly not a representative of Alcoholics Anonymous nor can I say I’m even a member but I know people. Saying that, this is a story. It could happen.

Teacher's Aid

One more time I asked myself what do I want to be when I grow up? At 67 it still resonated. I tell people, I’m no longer immature, I’m young at heart. The last time I asked that question, I became a Park Ranger. I wanted to do something that would be new and fun. And the answer came back, an elementary school teacher. I didn’t want a job, but a job like volunteer gig. On a school tour for Adam I asked the principal how I might do that. She was enthusiastic and told me first to go to the district and get cleared as a volunteer, get a badge and we’d go from there.

Lisa Kantor and I exchanged a couple of emails and we were getting ready to start. In her last email she asked what experience I had. I told her I was a kindergarten Sunday School teacher. I didn’t hear back from her. She didn’t respond to any of my emails or phone calls. She was unreachable. I think maybe Ms. Kantor didn’t want a Sunday School teacher at her school. By that time I had stopped qualifying my church attendance as being Unitarian.  Be honest, let people think what they want. I was in good company with Jimmy Carter. I think maybe I’d just been stereotyped as a “Christian Evangelical.” That didn’t feel good. Even Evangelicals have a right to be in our schools.

Not long after in February 2014 I was registering Adam for Transitional Kindergarten at Colorado Elementary School in Richmond and I asked to speak to the principal there. I met Linda Cohen, a legendary principal in Richmond Schools. We talked and she was quite eager to have me as a volunteer. “When can you start?” she asked. “Tomorrow,” I answered. And so I did, the very next day. Linda had me go to each class from 3^rd to 6^th grade and ask the teacher what they would like me to do. The first year I tutored math, babysat or just distracted disruptive kids, worked with a new immigrant from Mexico who did not want to learn English and worked one on one or in small groups.

I volunteered two days a week. At lunchtime I went to the teacher’s room. I met some teachers, I was part of Coronado Elementary School. After a few months, one morning I got up with that feeling, oh god, I don’t want to go school today. A moment later I realized, wow!, just like a real job. I was showing up.

The next year Adam started Transitional Kindergarten at Coronado and the first day I asked Linda what she wanted me to do. She was busy and said, “Well why don’t you just go to Transitional Kindergarten for now.” We’ll figure it out later.

I found a home. There was no later. For the next six years I was a volunteer teacher’s aid in Transitional Kindergarten. I worked with Licet Santos, the regular teacher’s aid and Pat Boyne, the teacher. We were a team. I did what I could to help, supporting the kids, encouraging them and enjoying them. Little people have always fascinated me, the amount they learn just to get started in life and the physical changes are astounding, learning to walk, to talk, and in TK to be part of a group and that squiggles and symbols can have meaning. It is their first formal step in learning to learn.

My TKers were learning more in that year than graduate students at Berkeley would learn in a year.  I was in awe at what we were part of. These kids were laying the very foundation of their education. They were learning life skills. Recess was just as important as the classroom. They were being domesticated, like wild horses they needed to be gentled. For some kids it was their first experience in the system. They couldn’t leave, it wasn’t voluntary and making a scene didn’t help.

One day I was telling my good friend Bob Weiss about what I was doing and he said, “You know these kids are going to remember you for the rest of their lives.” I hadn’t thought of it, but of course. What a responsibility, memories of Mr. Jack into the next century.

Licet, Pat and I worked together for six years. Licet was wonderful, local, very bright, she should have been a teacher herself, but after a marriage, two kids and a divorce, she needed to earn a living and it was our good fortune to have her as a teacher’s aid. Pat is a professional teacher and did the magic of curriculum, lesson planning, pacing and all the paperwork. I appreciated that I got to be a part of teaching children hands on, but I didn’t have to do the bureaucracy. My style is more Ranger than Teacher and with Pat and Licet, that worked.

In 2019 things began to come apart. Pat was getting toward the end of her career and had a hellacious commute. She had injuries and health problems. Licet was having a hard time too. There were sick days and substitutes and it wasn’t going very well and then we got a substitute who stayed, Miss Chavez. She was a graduate of Cal but had been a truck driver between LA and San Francisco. It was her first year as a substitute and we were fortunate to get her. She didn’t have the experience of Pat Boyne, but she had a lot of heart, wanted to do well, and loved the children. So it was good and then in March of 2020 Covid came.  We were doing distance learning. I tried to join in, but a teacher’s aid on Zoom is just one more complicating element and it didn’t work.

In September of 2020 I didn’t participate but when in person classes started again in the Fall of 2021 I came back. Miss Boyne was the TK teacher again but struggling with the administration over medical leave. She mostly didn’t show up. We had a series of substitutes and just no teacher at all. We did have Miss Pinkston, a wonderful teacher, She was the new Reading Resource person at the school and it wasn’t her job to take over TK.  She did what she could to help.    

I needed something more consistent. I talked to my friend Lourdes, a great 2^nd grade teacher there. She recommended I ask Terra Doby, the kindergarten teacher if she would like a volunteer. She did and we started working together.

What good fortune. Terra Doby is an amazing teacher. If Kindergarteners are a little wild, she is a Kindergarten Whisperer. Her oft repeated phrase is, “Ignore to learn.” And so the class seemed wild from the outside, slowly she began to work her magic on the kids and all but one became happy students, and even the most difficult child improved, got a little better. Instead of letting the difficult kids take over the class she was able to gently bring them in. She didn’t let them distract her and the class. They were ignoring to learn. It was a wonderful experience for me.

During the summer break, Adam and I went to lunch with Miss Doby. Afterwards Adam said, “I wish we had a teacher like Miss Doby in our school.” She is gentle, loves her job and is very good at it.

For their own reasons the administration decided Miss Doby was going to the 4^th grade the following year. She asked me if I was staying in Kindergarten or might want to come along with her. I tell my friends that after 7 years in Kindergarten I’ve been promoted to the fourth grade.

This year has been different, fourth graders are a lot different than Kinders, but they’re still wonderful kids. Working with Miss Doby has been a pleasure. It’s enjoyable just to watch how she teaches.  It's fascinating to watch a Kindergarten teacher who is very different in the 4th grade but just as good.  As her aid, I do what I can to make that easier, copying, cutting, sorting books, just doing a lot of the time consuming jobs that leave her with more time to teach. I also do assessments. I tutor a little and sometimes I walk around and just help. I’m older than when I started this and I found two days a week was taking it out of me. I cut back to one day a week and it made it much more enjoyable.

I love being around the kids, participating in their growth, helping where I can and being Miss Doby’s assistant, doing whatever I can to make her job easier and give her more time to teach. I am amazed and delighted how much the kids appreciate my being there, how they miss me when I’m not there and happy to see me when I return.

Arom, Writing and Retirement

On November 5, 2011 I retired. Sixty-five is too old to wear a badge and a gun and answer 9-1-1 calls in the middle of the night. When I quit I thought I could still do it but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. I had these ideas of starting another career, maybe going to law school or just going to college. People wanted me to stay in Parks, become a boat operator. My heart attack a year before made me realize that I wasn’t going to go on forever, that I needed to stop and enjoy life and that would be OK. So I quit. I retired.

I had some money saved. The last year or two in Parks I even put some more aside on top of the generous retirement credits I got from CalPers. My investments, mutual funds, had grown back after the market crash of 2008 and by 2011 were nearly back to what they had been. I applied for Social Security and there was Social Security for dependents under 18. With my City of San Francisco time and then the State I got 20% of my final pay in CalPers retirement. And with my 30 years of paying Social Security tax there was no reduction to offset the CalPers.

I think this was probably one of the most anxious times in my life. What would retirement be like? I focused on money but really it was about not having a job, connections, identity and status. I had resisted being a retiree when I quit work in 1999 but this time I had no claim to anything else. I didn’t have a good image of retirees. What does a retiree really do? I knew the stereotypes and what I had seen. I didn’t want to raise tomatoes and talk about writing a book. I didn’t want to buy an RV and tour America. I certainly wasn’t going to become a gardener. I had no role model that worked for me.

My Dad didn’t retire until he was 75 and could no longer work and then he just stayed home and puttered. My mother said he was writing a book. When he passed away I found a notebook about the Balkans but it was mostly gibberish and didn’t make much sense to me. My grandfather was still a drunk when he stopped working. My Lashley grandfather was a cripple and sat in the doorway of his tar paper shack and smoked hand rolled cigarettes. My uncle was a working artist and kept working until he passed away. 

I wasn’t going to be a police officer until I was 75. I really never liked working. Before retirement we moved off the island to an apartment near Lake Merritt. As to what I was going to do in retirement I’d made a few transitions in my life so I had at least an idea of how I wanted to start retirement. I would be on vacation, put off making any plans for three months. I don’t remember much of what I did, puttered around, enjoyed living on the Main Land in one of my favorite neighborhoods anywhere, Grand Lake in Oakland.

Suzette and I planned to move to a Spanish speaking country for a year. I was beginning to settle on Uruguay because it has a good government and a European feel to it. Then I realized if European was an appeal that maybe Spain was the right place to go and we began looking into that.

We went to the Spanish consulate and started learning about moving there. We met friends of friends who had lived in Grenada for a couple of years and he had written a small book about it. Then sometime in that year my Father-in Law convinced his daughter that that was a bad move for her in her career, too risky and she listened to him. His torpedo sunk the plan.

When my Social Security check went into my account, it was like magic, we were there, and it was bigger than I thought it would be. My CalPers check arrived and it was a real check bigger than I expected. CalPers seemed like a gift. I didn't get the Juvy job and then State Parks thinking about retirement but CalPers turned out to be a very good deal for me. Medicare kicked in and I got the Senior Advantage from Kaiser. Adam’s Social Security check game and that was another gift. There was a final check from Parks for compensating overtime and unused vacation and it was about 3 months pay. At least for the first year I had plenty of cash and Suzette had a good job. We had money in our pockets, paid our bills and got by. We were going to be just fine.

And in December I started a blog. I wrote a piece about making bread. The ember of writing a biography that had been smoldering for years flamed and in January I began it.  

In retirement, I had the time, and I did what I enjoyed, I wrote every day. I was a writer. One of the things I enjoy about writing, is that when I do a piece, some work on it, an hour or two of intense writing, I feel free for the rest of the day. I produced something and that’s enough.

Suzette went off to work, Adam went to daycare and in the evening I picked them up. I had the whole day to myself. I wrote, I bicycled, I enjoyed the lake, I read, I met with friends, I did whatever I wanted.

The results were readable. Nothing I write is good enough but readable is good. It was a biography for my family, for my great grandchildren, people who will never know me. It was a gift to them.

In July, 2012 Arom, Suzette's 17 year old son moved back in with us. Before in 2007 and 08 Arom spent a difficult year with us on Angel Island and then went to Florida to live with his dad. John was in grad school and it wasn’t a good time for either one of them. One night Arom threatened his father with a knife, the cops were called and Arom picked up a Juvenile record. Arom told us after that John got a teaching job in Brazil and couldn’t take Arom with him. He was coming back to California. As far as I know there was no job in Brazil.

Arom is a good kid. He’s bright, he’s handsome, and when he’s himself he’s very charming; he has a wonderful smile. I knew that from my coworkers and friends on Angel Island.  But the Arom I got was angry. The way I came into the picture didn’t make him any happier. I think Arom was really upset at all the changes in his life, things were out of control and when I was around I was the focus of all his problems. I understood as a kid he was doing the best he could to survive. I tried to be helpful. I think sometimes he’d recognize that and occasionally I’d be asked for advice or help, but most of the time Arom was just angry.

Suzette found us a house to rent in El Cerrito and we moved there, Suzette and I, Paloma and Arom. It was three bedrooms and had a large family room downstairs. Arom had found The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s a popular book in Juvenile Hall and prisons. It’s the Thug’s Handbook or how to be successful by being an asshole. Greene was a minor entertainment company executive, an industry well known for it’s lack of ethics. He rewrote Machiavelli in present day. It’s been one of the top 10 books read in US. prisons ever since. Arom carried his copy around like a bible and did everything he could to make my life miserable. Whenever our eyes crossed he gave me the mad dog look.

At heart Arom really was a nice kid, sensitive and thin skinned; his intimidating angry Black Man never really quite worked. But as a 17 year old with focus, persistence, and righteousness he did a good job of making my life as miserable as he could.

I continued with my writing and got to the end of my story at that time, to retirement and I was done. It was good. Each piece I had done what I needed to get that, wrote first draft dumps, let them simmer, and then rewrote them.  Sometimes I started over with more focus. I'd polish it, revise it and then I post it on my blog. My goal was to publish one piece every week or two and I did. The pieces had to be good enough to put out in public. Years ago my writing had taken a leap forward when I heard the Hollywood saying, “Did you want it perfect or do you want it done?”

I had done it, a first draft a full biography. I knew I needed to go over it, sew it together and make it flow, but I had a first draft and for then that was good enough. I was going to let it sit for awhile before I went back to it.  I needed a break. I was tired of writing.

After that I would occasionally write something but I no longer wrote regularly. I didn't give myself goals or deadline and not much happened.  

It was hard to work with Arom around.  He was the angry young Black man at every opportunity intentionally self centered and rude. He was going to join the Army and began the dance with the recruiter who became his best friend and encouraged him to think of himself as already the almost war hero. Unfortunately he omitted his Florida Juvenile record on his application. When they did a background check that was enough to disqualify him.

He finished high school and graduated. Arom had a sister in Boston who had lived with Suzette, John and Arom in Berkeley 12 years before. She had had a break with the family and moved out of the apartment and went to live with a friend’s family. She had formed a bond with her friend’s mother, Cricket. Cricket was willing to take Arom in when he graduated from high school.

That lasted for most of the summer when Cricket told him they were moving and  he had to leave.  He was coming back to us.  

About that time his grandmother my mother-in-law came up and took over. Arom was going to live with us and somehow he was going to get his life together and go on from there. I put a time limit on that and said he couldn’t stay with us forever unless he was going to school and had a job. We were not going to support him laying around the house radiating anger. It was sad, his real nature being so sweet and his efforts to cope so sincere, but he was making my life miserable. Suzette was passive. Somehow I was the adult who was supposed to give Arom what he needed, to finally begin to cope and grow up. I was the last adult in the world that Arom would listen to. There was nothing I could do to make it better.

He went to Berkeley City College but his attitude had if anything turned worse. The Army had been a big disappointment to Arom and Arom’s coping skills, being a hostile and scary young man, did not help. He looked for work and couldn’t find a job. I asked him how he was going about that. He said he presented himself very professionally and gave me his deepest voice and angry young Black man war hero look. It was unfortunate that Arom did not have anybody whose advice he could accept. He was doing the best he could but with 48 Laws of Power and professional demeanor it wasn’t working very well.

As Fall came I had had it with Arom. He went to classes part of the day and was an angry presence in the house the rest of the day. My agreement with his grandmother was that he could stay with us a short time if he went to school and had a job. Now he was planning to join Job Corps on a nonresidential program and live with us. I had not worked my whole life and retired to be responsible for someone else’s angry teenager.

His grandmother had a big family gathering to celebrate her 65^th birthday with friends and family from all across the country. Arom went down to Corona to stay until Christmas. In the passive way that we  all had it was understood that  Arom was leaving and so he packed everything in his bag and gave me his keys. I knew staying with us wasn’t doing Arom any good. 

After the celebration we returned home and then in December went to Corona for Christmas. Everything was OK, and then it came time to leave and I said we weren’t taking Arom with us.

Elvia, her brother Ervin, and James his grandfather all seemed to think I was responsible for Arom and told me I had to take him. That was one miserable afternoon. The whole Anderson clan screamed in my face, especially Uncle Ervin. Suzette was there but she didn't take part either way. There’s no doubt that people had abandoned Arom when he needed them, but it wasn’t me.  He was 18 now and I wasn’t the person who could make up for that. We left without Arom.

And life went on. Since then no one in the family tells me anything about Arom. When I ask Suzette she says she doesn’t know. At his aunt’s wedding a year or two later he was there and still giving me the mad dog. I figured Arom will be one of those kids who never get to grow up and lives in the nether world of dependency on whomever will let him. Eight years later we were at the Andersons for Christmas and like the good dysfunctional family all is forgiven, or at least not talked about. Arom is not there and no one says anything about him.  And then I see on the wall a diploma from UC Santa Cruz with Arom’s name on it. I did a quick internet search and Arom is working as an IT person in Santa Cruz.

After being with Arom at what was probably the most difficult time in his young life, it gives me a very good feeling to see he succeeded. I don’t know how he did it but to me that diploma said he figured it out and was doing well in life. I didn’t think he was ever going to be able to right himself and he did. Good man!

Unemployed

In 1993 my youngest son Benjamin graduated from high school.  For twenty years I'd been dreaming of quitting my job when I didn't need to earn good money.  I wasn't quite ready, I needed a little more time to think about it but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There were parts of banking I enjoyed and a lot I didn't.  I liked working with the customers, doing a service, I liked analysis, but the most of it was a pain.  It's what I did to make a living.  It was how I payed the bills.  

About this time I was learning to speak Spanish. I was speaking Spanish in LA, listening to tapes, and doing weekends once a month in Tijuana and then I did a two week immersion in Cuernavaca. I returned with a head full of Spanish dreaming of speaking it one day. Back at work I got a call from an attorney. I was reputed to be a CRA expert, a Federal regulation called the Community Reinvestment Act. There was a bank in CRA trouble. Could I recommend somebody? Everyone knew BanaMex, the big Mexican bank, and their California subsidiary California Commerce Bank were having a hard time with the Feds over CRA.

I recommended me. I met with the President of the bank, Salvador Villar, and we argued for an hour. After that personnel called, could I come to work for them? I figured if I stayed at Dai Ichi Kangyo Bank I’d have a bad year trying to appear enthusiastic but at BanaMex I might have a bad year and learn to speak Spanish. I started there January, 1994. One great advantage of a Mexican Bank, during the World Cup, that summer we had extended management meetings in the conference room with a wide screen TV.

I met Suzanne in August of 1994, 8 months after going to work for CCB. In that short period CCB’s CRA problem had been mostly solved. In February I was going to move to the Bay Area. I told Salvador I was quitting. He said, “You can’t quit. Work up there or something, go to the San Jose Office. But you can’t quit.”

So I moved up there and made do. At first I went to the office in San Jose, three days a week, a two hour commute, but that didn’t work very well. Then the San Jose office was closed. I worked at home in Mill Valley. I went down to LA when I needed to. I took care of CRA. I did the job. That did not require 40 hours a week and I didn’t work 40 hours. In Marin I became a regular kayaker. I enjoyed life.

The Mexican nationals at California Commerce Bank were all bilingual and the gringo credit officers were fluent in Spanish. The rest of us, mostly admin, wanted to learn to speak Spanish and two of us were serious, Tom, the bank’s in-house attorney and myself. Salvador hired a private teacher, who came in once a week and tutored us, mostly Tom and me, in Spanish for a couple of hours. 

Eventually at California Commerce Bank I felt I’d worn out my welcome. I had been good insurance for five years, but they didn’t need me after the first couple of years. They were doing just fine. It had been good for them and good for me but it was time to go.

So in October, 1999 I quit. Ironically five years later Suzanne, my wife, got a job with Citibank doing PR and CRA in Southern California. Citibank bought BanaMex and CCB’s CRA officer worked for Susan. Not too long after that Citibank shut CCB down, they didn’t need an in-house competitor for offshore Mexican dollars in the US . In the process they slandered Salvador and the Mexicans for questionable banking practices. Citibank should ever be as professional as CCB was.

In November I started “my year off.” I packed my Honda CRV with supplies, a laptop computer and a bicycle and started a road trip. I would have liked a year to wander but I had a new wife and a month would have to be enough. I got on Interstate 80 and headed East.

My first night camping was at Pollock Pines in the Sierras. I camped on a dirt road deep in the woods well away from the highway. The next morning I started writing. I had recently started working with the book, The Artist’s Way. It was an enhancement of my journaling practice. I can’t remember what I was writing but I do remember from that day on I began to think of myself as a writer. It wasn’t planned or anticipated, I just began to relax and let it be.

In Reno the newspaper had a short article about Shoshone Mike and the Last Indian Massacre near Winnemucca in 1911.  The story seemed incomplete and it started me d reading old newspaper accounts at the Winnemucca library.  Camping near Great Basin National Park I had this daydream, the full moon, the desert, the mountains and Shoshone Mike and his renegade band.  I began writing a story. I don’t think I had written any real short stories since my college days and certainly never finished anything.

The rest of the trip was dreamlike. Years before I had met someone from Nebraska, a place I had never been so that became more or less my destination.  What's Nebraska like?  I spent a week or more in Nevada and then continued East. I passed through Nicodemus Kansas, a Black pre-Civil War farming settlement, where Suzanne’s mother was from and eventually Lincoln, Nebraska. The West ends at the 100^th parallel and as I traveled further East I felt out of place. There were fewer open spaces. At Lincoln I turned around.

I stopped for a few days at a cheap no name motel and spent my days writing. I had begun the writer’s life and I enjoyed it.

North of Scott’s Bluff I detoured to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument. Now that I think of it the whole trip was detour. At the National Monument I saw a painted deerskin, the History of the World by the rangers and local Lakota artists.  It began at creation and spiraled through time to the present, battles, births, horse raids, barn burnings, the Dawes Act, World War I; it was personal and rooted where it was and universal at the same time.

Later I had the same experience reading Norman Davies Europe, A History. No matter how objective the historian tries to be, it always is like the Agate Fossil Beds history, told from the place where the historian is. For Davies it was the edge of Europe. For the Lakota it was Nebraska. 

I finally made it home after a very magical journey and continued to write. I wrote a Shoshone Mike Story. I joined Zoetrope, a writers’ workshop online. Zoetrope is this wonderful mix of new and experienced writers. My first attempt, which I published on Zoetrope was a real lesson for me. Voice, tenses and point of view as badly set as jello, wiggly and all over the place.  I kept writing and workshopping. I did it for a year and the stories got better, much better.

I had a regular routine and I worked every day. I was a writer. Like all of my writing, when I’m good I’m pretty good, but never quite good enough. I have these flashes. My last short story on Zoetrope I really liked. I had learned some things.  I told myself, this life I'm learning, if I keep at it in my next life I might be a Nobel Laureate.  

At 54 people would say to me, “Oh, you’re retired.”  My answer was “No, I’m unemployed.”  I didn’t feel like I retired, I had just quit banking and was clearing my palate before I looked for work again. I didn’t want to be a banker anymore or anything like it.

Who knew about age discrimination?  In Los Angeles I had a reputation and credibility.  In the Bay Area I had none.  What I thought would be an easy task turned out to be damned hard. I started working temp jobs just to get back into the swing of it. They were interesting, sometimes very hard work. My idea was to get into fund raising. I wanted to start at a low level job working with an experienced fundraiser. Learning the trade did not fit anyone else’s idea of what a man my age should be doing. What was wrong with me? To myself it felt like I was disabled. I had a serious lack of ambition and they knew it. I just wanted a decent job.

After a year and a half I needed to earn money with benefits. I got a job at Consumer Credit Counselors of San Francisco. Back in LA in the 70s I had met CCC and admired the manager and the work he did. CCCSF was an affiliate. It was banking related but god’s work and I needed the paycheck. We did a lot of phone appointments. I hate talking on the phone. The salary was half of what I had been making as a banker. Less was OK, half was not good. At the same time I had applied to CCCSF I started the paperwork for San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  Six months after I started at Consumer Credit Counselors I got a call to be a substitute or on call at San Francisco Juvenile Hall .

I worked weekends at Juvy, weekdays at Consumer Credit Counselors. And when I was sure I liked Juvy and might last I quit CCCSF.

I did the on call with San Francisco Juvenile Hall and then went full time in December, 2002, three years after I left banking. A year of wandering, a year of looking for work, and then a year of getting work. It was a long time. The pay at Juvy was not great but it was OK, a good job, and I enjoyed it. Now I wasn’t unemployed I’m a juvenile hall counselor.

Second Wife

I liked to sleep with the window open                                                   and you keep the window closed.                                                                    You’re Kind                                                                                           Paul Simon

A friend of mine invited me to San Francisco to meet an interesting woman who might be interested in me. She said, “By the way, she’s the daughter” and she named a well known political leader in LA. Suzanne and I met for dinner at Kathy and David’s a few weeks later. Suzanne was interesting, charming, a good dinner guest. We were both on our best behavior and it went well, we liked each other. We agreed to meet again for a date after she returned from a vacation in the Caribbean.

And so we did. She flew down to LA and I planned a date that started with tea at the Biltmore. I didn’t know Suzanne had spent a half year in England on a fellowship and had a taste for tea and things English. I think we went to dinner after that and finished up at the dancing fountain at the new Water Plaza on Bunker Hill. It was as I had planned it a romantic evening. A week or two later I flew up to San Francisco. From the Oakland Airport we went to lunch at an Italian Cafe Deli Market in the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland, my first experience of the wonderful neighborhoods in the East Bay. And then we went to her house in Mill Valley.

The romance began on our second date and after that we became distance lovers, exchanging hot and heavy letters. I think we were still using the post office. It seemed more appropriate than emails. The letters were passionate, though in person we were stiff and out of synch.

I think we were both ready for a longtime relationship even marriage. Suzanne was a manager at the Phone Company and like me active with community groups and causes. She was 36. I was 47. At the phone company her cause was disabilities. She had an older brother who was developmentally challenged. At one time she had worked for Willy Brown and had been very active in the early response to the AIDS epidemic. She had a network of gay friends. Suzanne fancied herself a libertine, but like me at her core I think she really was a prude.

We fit in many ways. She was a successful middle manager and community leader. I respected that instead of staying in LA in her mother’s shadow, she had gone up to the Bay Area and made a life for herself. She had graduated from Cal and gone into politics working for Ron Dellums and then Willy Brown. She might have had better contacts than most people but she wasn’t capitalizing on her mother’s name. She was committed to equity and working for a better community that included everyone. She was also a longtime member of the Sokka Gakai, formerly the Nicherin Shoshu of America, NSA, the people who chanted “nam-myoho-ringe-kyo” and in chanting sutra discovered a new life. When I was in college in the 70s they, like the hare krishnas, actively proselytized everywhere particularly on college campuses.

She wanted me to join the fellowship and I was happy to go to meetings with her and chant but not to dedicate my life to chanting for long periods in Japanese and follow the teachings of their sainted leader. I was an active member of AA and got the results of surrendering myself to powers that be and the contradictory empowerment I found in doing that.

Suzanne had a similar middle class background mine. The Givens had a house in a middle class area of Los Angeles. Walt Givens had been a designer and aircraft worker like my father, but as an African American he was the last hired, and the first fired and he had tried his hand at various ways of making a living. Her mother had been activist in the school district on behalf of her special son, and then ran for elected office and had a successful career as an elected official and leader in education and civil rights.

Suzanne's parents divorced when she was a teenager. Her brother’s health and special needs had been at the center of their family dynamics. She had a great need to be recognized and acknowledged, not to be overlooked.

Her way of living was to create challenges and to struggle for status, income, and respectability. For her success was a beautiful home in a tony neighborhood of Marin, corporate success, recognition and a good salary. Suzanne also had an interest in theater. She traveled to New York when she could and attended shows and was a board member of an experimental theater in San Francisco. She also was a key person in putting on Soka Gakkai public events that highlighted their involvement with world leaders and peace.

Suzanne worked hard with great intensity at everything she did. She could be abrasive and demanding but she was respected and appreciated. She had street cred. We seemed compatible. I had a good education, a responsible corporate position, served on a number of non-profit boards. While she was driven and always pushing; I was more self effacing and downplayed status in a perverse sort of way.

We went forward more a willful choice on both our parts than a giving into passion. I moved up to the Bay Area and we shared Suzanne’s house in Mill Valley in February 1995. I had been working for California Commerce Bank a year and had helped solve their regulatory problems by then. My boss said, “you can’t quit, so work up there, go into the San Jose office, do whatever, but stay.” That summer Suzanne and I went on vacation to the Caribbean and stayed in a luxury time share she had bought the year before and went on a short sailing ship cruise. Our differences, her demanding the best and luxury and my trying to blend in, go below the glitz, conflicted. We are both strong willed and as much as Suzanne tried to dominate I clung to my independence and my way of doing things. We got through it but there had been some bad moments.

Nonetheless I proposed either before or after that vacation together. Suzanne planned a big wedding and I went along with it, so in April, 1996 we got married before hundreds of people. My professional friends in LA were impressed that I was marrying into power. I was impressed by the easy way Suzanne traveled in the world of community, state and even national leaders.

One time a young African American working with Suzanne in San Francisco learned who her mother was and said, “Oh my god, you’re LA royalty.” And that’s what she was, LA royalty, a princess living anonymously in the Bay Area. My LA friends were quite aware I had married into royalty, particularly my African American friends. I think that was an attraction for me.

We did well together at first. I think we were both people of good will. Each of us had married for our own reasons and maybe it didn't run as deep as it should have. My attitude was this could work, we’re compatible and for me it was a new life, Northern California, the Bay Area, Suzanne traveled easily in the world of foundations, community activists and political power.

Over time our differences grew. I am maniacally punctual. Suzanne was notoriously late. She was a take charge, always in control person. Her drive to be successful came out in being decisive and aggressive. I like to just go along and get along.  For me when it doesn't go my way I detach.  And I can be very independent or stubbornly perverse.  Some people called that passive-aggressive.  Our qualities or flaws didn’t mix well. Our relationship devolved into a contest more than a partnership.

Long before we actually divorced I knew I didn’t like being married to Suzanne. About the time I was done Suzanne got a job in Southern California. I was working at San Francisco Juvenile Hall and establishing myself in San Francisco. We decided to get an apartment in Los Angeles and a small apartment for me in the Bay Area. And that worked well for almost three years.  When I was getting the job at San Francisco Juvenile Hall I started on-call as a substitute. I was stuck in the hiring process, Juvy had terrible personnel department and things could go on forever without resolution. Suzanne offered to call her friend the Mayor, Willie Brown. I let my boss know she might do that and the next week four of us in the limbo of on-call, were hired full time. They were always short handed and they paid comp time for overtime. I worked a few double shifts every month and took a week off to stay in LA. With distance and long breaks Suzanne and I were OK.

I’ve always loved women and enjoy women friends. Sometimes as someone described it, there were inappropriate female friends. I am too much of a prude to really have affairs, but I enjoy flirting and lunches or getting together with a friend where there’s attraction and a little tension. A few years before I had made an inappropriate friendship with a young woman I worked with at Consumer Credit Counselors. It was fun, a little strange, we didn’t touch or hold hands, but the tension was there.

Suzanne changed jobs and moved back to the Bay Area. By that time I had a Ranger’s House in the State Park. They’re not all that great, the maintenance isn’t good and the landlord is your boss. I was new at Mt. Diablo State Park and not doing all that well with my boss. Suzanne in her take charge way, demanded repairs and improvements to the house and then we had to have an antenna for her internet that violated park rules. She was making my job difficult and not willing to go along with things. That wasn’t her way.

My inappropriate friend seemed all that more attractive and her situation was changing and she was more available. I realized I was risking “my marriage” but I went ahead. At that point I was getting ready to quit the marriage anyhow. Living with Suzanne seemed impossible and just a constant struggle.

So my friend and I began holding hands. I informed Suzanne we were done. She accused me of having another woman and I denied it since that wasn’t really the reason and it got worse from there. Suzanne was very angry.  I didn't do it well but I think in the end I certainly didn’t regret our breakup. I didn’t want to live with her any longer. Life with Suzanne had been like a battle  not just between us, but Parks, and airlines, and restaurants, and contractors, and doctors and nearly everyone else.

And so we went our separate ways. I lived in Parks and flew as low under the radar as I could, but punctually, and Suzanne went back to her home in Mill Valley which she had been renting out for three years and started another remodel project. 

75 and getting older

I recently congratulated a friend on his 75^th birthday, a few months late but I’m 75. Denis and I had attended Ranger Academy together becoming California State Park Rangers, police officers. We were 57 at the time. In turning 75 I’ve thought about the age and tell myself, 75 is just plain old. It’s not the new 50 or anything close, it’s just old. Denis’ perspective is that 80 is really old.  He stopped for a moment, he was thinking, and then said, "75 is pretty close to 80."  

I’ve been retired nearly 11 years now. In my 20s, I dropped out of college, served 4 years in the Air Force, got married, had three children, finished college, started a banking career, and bought a home, all in less than 11 years.

In the past 11 years, I’ve retired from working at all. I got married and we’ve had a child. We’ve moved four times and finally bought a house. I wrote a first draft of a memoir that takes me up to retirement, been a board member and then president of the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist congregation, been a volunteer teacher’s aid in transitional kindergarten and now kindergarten, and most importantly raised my 1 year old daughter to 12 years old.

Two sisters have passed away, one at 74 and more recently my eldest sister at 81. I have a third sister, younger, who in the 60s dropped out and I haven’t seen since. A few years ago I heard she’s doing OK in Hawaii. At 72 she’s probably retired too.

My friend and I agreed our retirement checks feel like free money, even though we paid social security taxes, put aside the savings, and earned the retirement, I get money and I don’t work. I find my net worth and my income put in the 80 percentile. I may not be as comfortable materially here in coastal urban California as I might be in Indiana or Ohio, but I am certainly not poor.

Twelve years ago I had a heart attack, major blockages repaired, but a minor attack. My best friend in high school had a heart attack about the same time and died. I’ve had minor aches and pains, inflammations, infections and that sort of thing, but for the most part I’m in good health. I have diverticulitis, stenosis, hypertension, high blood sugar and I’m overweight. 39 years ago I dealt with the alcoholism and stopped drinking. Up through my sixties I was still physically active, but now at 75 not so much. Hikes are out, I don’t run and if I walk too far my hips and my feet hurt like hell. BUT, I bicycle. I ride 30 minutes to an hour nearly every day.

It’s been a good marker for my aging. I used to ride 10 miles or an hour most days. Now it’s more often 40 minutes and 5 miles. Still at it, but slower.

And sometimes I go in a room and ask myself, why did I come here. I know, it happens to everybody, but at my age it happens more frequently. My mind isn’t untethered yet, I think I still have a long ways to go but my moorings are beginning to feel a little loose.

So I was chatting with some parents at my daughter’s school, people in their 40s and 50s and revealed that I was 75. Oh no, they said. And I told them, yeah, 75 is the new 74. I’m OK, but I’m old.