Flutes, AHS, '76

Some have many friends. I can count my friends on one hand; and no matter how many years between visits or conversations, when we get together it’s like we were never apart. 

And that’s the way I feel about Becky and Diana. Flute players. Band friends. When you’re in the school band you spend a lot of time together. There was a ridiculous day in high school–I think it was called Friend’s Day—when everybody partnered up with someone, dressed alike, and spent the day together. In the box of memories stored along with my flute in the attic, there’s a picture of Diana and me wearing colorful overalls and big smiles—she was dark, I was blond; she had long bones and I, sadly, was stocky like my grandmother. And Becky and I—oh my—right under the band director’s baton, scribbling silly notes on our music folder. Sometimes we got to laughing so hard that tears ran and we couldn’t control our snorts.

These days Becky and her husband, Bob, live in Switzerland and plan to retire there. They’ve spent their teaching careers in international locations. In our overseas lives we met up with them occasionally—once, a dinner in Bangkok; and they visited us in Singapore a time or two. Bob teaches math and music, and Becky is a school counsellor. Every once in a while they come to the Texas Hill Country to visit family and I appreciate that they always make time to stop by. Since I’ve known her, Becky’s been in a constant state of evolution. Currently she’s vegan, has taken up running, and is learning French.    

Toward all this self-improvement, I’m ambivalent. How admirable. How exhausting. 

Diana shares her time between a home in San Antonio and a house on Lake LBJ. There was a twenty-five-year period when I had no idea where she lived or how her life was going—but when we met up again eight years ago, it was like we’d never been apart. It turned out she and I had followed similar paths—neither of us had pursued careers and we both had two sons of similar ages. We acknowledged that we were lucky. Few people on the planet get to spend their lives making their own schedules and pursuing good times. 

When Becky lets me know she’s coming, I plan a small reunion. Also invited are common friends, MaryAnn and Nonie. Nonie also went to Amarillo High but wasn’t in the band. I didn’t know him back then, though Becky did. Oddly, I became acquainted with him through my husband, David, as he’s a Waldo family friend. Small World. 

Anyway, seven of us are around the table and I am deeply content. True friends. If they’d move into the cul-de-sac and learn how to play Mahjong my life would be perfect. 

Mostly the dinner conversation is a combination of high school memories and what’s gone on since. Nonie’s a storyteller and he tells how, when he was fifteen, he got arrested over something stupid—a rambling wrong-place-wrong-time sort of deal that has us all laughing. I’m also a storyteller and I share the one about the woman in front of me in church who had a tiny spider making its way from her hair, along her shoulder, into the neckline of her dress, out again at her nape, up into her hair again, and back out. Believe me, I heard none of the sermon that day. The wine flows and the food’s great. We move out to the back deck for our pie and cognac.  

Later, after everyone’s gone and all in the house is quiet, I take time to think about how the years have changed us and how we’ve stayed the same. 

For one thing, it’s been years since Diana and I have touched our flutes. I exchanged mine for writing long ago. Becky still plays. She’s in their town band. 

Here’s a thing that hasn’t changed about Becky: A few years ago she showed up at our flat in Singapore with some random guy at her heels. There’s always been something about her that causes guys to follow her around—her attitude? Her smooth walk? Her sly snickery laugh? I never figured it out, but there’s no denying it. As to other qualities she possessed then that are with her still—she’s open-minded, big-hearted, and empathetic. I think, though, that she used to be someone who followed and now she makes her own decisions. 

Diana. Well, her journey’s been a spiritual one. Her plans were shattered due to a crushing and indefensible betrayal, and she’s having to deal with that. Digging for strength when you don’t have the energy to do so; achieving peace in solitude when you don’t want to be alone—well, it’s been hell and I pray for her daily. The thing about her that hasn’t changed is that she fits in everywhere and in all circumstances. Since David and I have moved to the area I’ve hosted many get-togethers filled with disparate, sometimes difficult guests, and no matter how offensive some can be, Diana is never offended and she never offends. The perfect guest, she easily begins conversations with strangers, which is uncomfortable for me but doesn’t faze her. It’s her gift. 

As for myself, I remember being annoyingly self-righteous during those high school years. I abhorred hypocrisy, rationalization, breaking rules, behind-the-back whispers, thoughtlessness, and cruel jokes. Yeah, I’m not like that anymore. I no longer get ruffled about things I can’t control—though I still have very little tolerance for stupidity. Like, if someone has lung cancer and as soon as the treatments are over they start smoking again. Or when someone believes that a nurse is injecting a microchip along with the vaccine. Or when someone deliberately hurts themselves just so they can post it on YouTube. Or when a driver is so unaware of where they are that they sit through a green light. Or when a mature human being barks at a dog. So I still enjoy a good rant now and then because there are lots of stupid people in the world.

As to old friends, they’ll always be my home. 

Here we are. Good times then, good times now.

Saint Sea World

We’ve lived in Marble Falls for six years, and the whole time San Antonio has only been an hour away. Well, we haven’t taken advantage of that; and as we’re ready for a short break from the same walls, we decide on a quick overnight trip. Sea World during the day, a nice hotel, and a meal at Boudro’s on the Riverwalk.

People say, “Sea World? This time of year? It’ll be so hot!” Well, yes, this is indeed the scorching time of year, and we anticipate sun burn, dehydration, and heat exhaustion; but Sea World isn’t open during the comfortable months. In the end it turns out not to be all that miserable. It’s cloudy, rain’s expected, and the predicted high is eighty. 

The first attraction of the day is the sea lion show. It’s high school themed with the sea lions trying to graduate, and even though everyone in the audience knows that sea lions don’t know history and science, we play along as they show how accomplished they are in these subjects by flapping flippers, diving and leaping out of the water, and making soulful sea lion sounds. It’s all very silly, but also cute, especially the otter who runs around the stage, scolding every time someone litters. Explanations about how training and performing is good for the animals are sprinkled throughout the light-hearted routine. I’m dubious; though admittedly, the sea lions do seem to be having a good time. Annoyingly, the baby next to us screams and screams. Her father tries to soothe her by shaking her up and down rapidly. Doesn’t work. 

Next we’re off to see the rest of the park, which has four roller coasters, each wilder and more horrifying than the last. Not my thing—but also, why? Roller coasters have nothing to do with oceanic life. For some reason the rides I would enjoy—an oversized innertube that’s certain to offer lots of splashes, and a sort of up-and-down octopus themed merry-go-round—are closed, no reason given. At least half the booths and restaurants are closed as well, so I conclude it’s a money-saving decision based on the lower weekday population, which is irritating. We paid as much for our tickets as the people who attend on Saturdays and Sundays—shouldn’t we have the same opportunities for fun and sustenance?

We stop in at the penguin house. It has a belt conveyance—step on at one end, move along and watch the penguins play on the other side of the window, step off at the other end. Here, too, a baby screams. Her father stands behind me, resting her on his protruding abdomen; and she kicks me in the back with surprising force—whack!

Next, the beluga and dolphin show, which is interesting and entertaining, though the belugas with their pale skin are sort of creepy—but their sincere efforts to please tell me that they have kind hearts. Struggling to hear over the screaming baby behind me, I listen as the announcer tells how holding these animals in captivity and teaching them to do tricks helps marine biologists know how they live in their natural habitat, how pods are formed and decisions are made within the pod; and how this information enables scientists to safely intervene with the wild population when needed, and to understand and predict their behavior.

At this point the underlying message becomes clear. Quite a number of years ago an orca killed a trainer, which caused animal rights activists to rise up in vociferous protest, accusing Sea World of cruel exploitation. So now, in reaction, during every show the internment and training of these animals is touted as a valuable aid to biologists, the environment and, by extension, all mankind. We’re told that Sea World saves animals in distress and provides injured creatures safe harbor and medical care. Also, a major portion of the money Sea World takes in goes toward animal rescue and efforts to save the oceanic environment. So now I understand why a bottle of water at Sea World costs four dollars and a piece of chicken accompanied by cold fries costs fifteen dollars—it’s all for the animals. This place should be called Saint Sea World!

The restaurants and rides clear out as everyone in the park makes their way to the orca show. And it is wonderful! How majestic the beasts! In comparison, how tiny the trainers—yet how powerful they are to hold sway over the huge animals! How impressive the whales’ synchronized leaps! We all go “Ooh” and “Wow.” And during this show, too, we’re told how helpful Sea World is for science and our planet and, by extension, the universe.

Also in the orca show, a screaming baby. “Waaa!” she cries as she kicks the back of my bench. “Stop it or I’ll carry you out of here!” a man forcefully warns. He says it at least ten times, each time in a more agitated tone, but he never actually tends to the howling infant.

It occurs to me that these furious babies have all been girls and that the adults in charge have been their fathers. Dads need to bond with their daughters, but taking your tiny girl to a hot crowded place and yelling at her isn’t helpful. Sea World, the birthplace of feminine neuroses. 

It starts raining after the orca show and we both decide we’ve had enough. We get soaked on the way to the car, and my hat, which is cute but more for show than protection, disintegrates into a mushy pile of straw. 

We check in to the hotel, relax a while, and then step out on to the Riverwalk. At Boudro’s we settle at a table beside the water to people-watch. I have a bloody Mary and David has a martini. People stroll along, old and young, all races, all sizes. A guy, mid-twenties, comes toward us. Wearing cargo shorts and a white sleeveless T-shirt, he’s got antlers taped to his head. I point him out to David. When the guy sees us looking at him, he shoots us a dirty look. 

“I will never understand why, if people don’t want you to notice them, they do weird things like tape antlers to their heads.” 

David shrugs in puzzled agreement and we both turn our attention to the other side of the river where a tall woman wearing a short dress with thigh-high boots, and with her face painted Smurf blue, marches purposefully alongside a man wearing only a swimsuit and a Santa Claus hat. Also, bare feet. 

Yay! Magnificent!

The grin makes him look happy, so it must be true.

We came across at least ten of these in the park. What’s the deal?

Our view of the Riverwalk from the hotel’s deck.

Typically Texas

On Facebook I come across a picture of the United States with Texas highlighted in red, along with Oklahoma, Tennessee, Idaho, and Iowa. “TEXAS PASSES CRITICAL RACE THEORY BILL,” is the headline that accompanies the article. One of the comments below the posting reads, “It’s about time.” Another declares, “Go, Texas!”

Race again. Hasn’t this issue been dominating our lives for long enough? While I believe that systemic racism should be taken seriously and that it has ruined lives, I also believe that minds have been opened and the majority is ready to move forward in making the changes that need to be made. Like many, I have a short attention span and I grow bored with discussing instead of doing. Though admittedly, I leave the doing to others. 

But wait: I’m not actually sure what Critical Race Theory is. I look it up. According to Wikipedia, Critical Race Theory is “a theoretical framework or set of perspectives by which structural and institutional racism may be examined.”

That sounds worthwhile. Someone, not me, should definitely look into it. 

However, knowing my fellow Texans, and knowing the person who shared the article, I doubt the implication of the heading, which is that Texas is on board with adopting a policy dedicated to examining the history and causes of systemic racism. This doesn’t sound like the Texas I know; so I look up the bill. Well, no. What’s really going on is that Texas has banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory in our schools. 

But wait. I see that I’ve landed on an adversarial website that wants me to think that Texas is against teaching kids not to be racist. Looking into it further, I see that the law doesn’t ban Critical Race Theory: it bans schools from being required to teach Critical Race Theory. Does this mean that all those states that aren’t red have a law requiring their schools to teach Critical Race Theory? Does this also mean that, until this law was passed, Texas teachers were required to teach it? Because here is a law that implies exactly that; and this, I highly doubt. Although please, if you know of a school system in the state that, up to this point, has required the teaching of Critical Race Theory, let me know, because I sure haven’t been able to find one.

So. We have a state legislature legislating something that doesn’t need to be legislated. And politicians using the education system like a tool. 

With federal, state, and local powers all weighing in, our education system is unwieldy enough without superfluous interference. As to Critical Race Theory, do teachers need a bill for them to know that their job is to teach children how to think, not what to think? And do they need a law to know that preaching against opinions that’re passed from parent to child over the dinner table is overstepping and futile? What teachers do know, without it being legislated, is that the best place to learn empathy concerning race is found in literature—A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee—and so many more. Also, history is right there in the classroom, presenting facts to be discussed and interpreted, offering lessons about morality, greed, power-grabbing, land-grabbing, and political manipulation.

On the lighter side of the race issue—and believe me, if there’s a lighter side, I’ll find it—here’s a story of racial diversity in the workplace: 

A friend of ours works in a business office in Dallas. Every couple of months a memo about diversity is circulated wherein personnel are encouraged to contemplate how the firm can obtain a more diverse standing. But realistically, workers are busy doing their jobs and there are no qualified brown people applying to the company, so what is the expectation here? People of color with higher degrees are rare and, in light of the country-wide drive toward the appearance of diversity, understandably sought-after. She told me that when Juneteenth was declared a national holiday, everyone was given the day off and instructed that they should use the time to reflect on diversity and racial relations, which I’m certain they all did. Also, it was suggested that the employees attend an online seminar concerning racial relations, which meant, for her, sitting in front of her computer, wearing a nice blouse, and listening to Latino lawyers share problems and suggestions concerning issues in the Latino community, while she ate fine cheese and sipped a robust Bordeaux. 

I always enjoy a verbal ramble, but this post’s so scattered that I’m confused about what I wanted to say in the first place. Scanning back to see what the take-away is—if there is one—I find my three points. One: While teachers don’t need the government telling them how to teach kids to be human, they also don’t need legal protection from something that doesn’t exist. Two: Passing unnecessary laws just to look like you’re doing something is self-serving and stinks of duplicity. And three: There’s no such thing as one-sided diversity. 

The hat is a rather weak symbol of Texas, but it’s all I had at hand.

An indication that construction’s fixing to start across the street. From this moment on, they have six months to get their house built. The guy moving in is Sgt. Sam, a conservative talk radio host in Austin. Predictably, he’s quite popular in this area.

These guys are heavy, made of ebony, and quite old. Considering the subject of the blog, I thought that they were quite delightfully inappropriate.

Can't Be Unread

My son, Sam, tells me that he’s reading Shuggie Bain. Though they’re grown, I like to know what the kids are reading, much in the same way as, when they were younger, I paid attention to what they were watching on television. When they became enamored with The Sopranos, I watched it right along with them with my finger on the pause button; and every thirty seconds I’d pause the show and say, “This is not the way nice people speak to one another.” Or I’d say, “Never, never say that word.” 

Thinking about The Sopranos reminds me of an amusing story about how, when we lived in Kuwait, the German in the downstairs flat kept getting fired from his jobs, and he seemed confused as to why. But I thought it was probably because his vocabulary was so offensive. And it turned out that, yes, he’d learned to speak English from watching The Sopranos. He had no idea that normal people didn’t sprinkle everyday conversations with obscenities. 

Anyway, Shuggie Bain. I look it up. It won the Booker Prize last year. Richard Russo, one of my favorite authors, predicts that it will knock me sideways—though I question whether being knocked sideways is a good thing; but it must be or why else would the publishers have posted the review? On the other hand, being knocked sideways might be one of those ambiguous things someone says when he can’t think of anything that’s not insulting. But look—the Booker judges call it intimate, compassionate, and gripping. Wow! I am compelled to download it. 

What the reviewers don’t say is that it’s a depressing slog through a nasty Irish bog. To sum up, an alcoholic woman’s adulterous husband moves her to a poverty-stricken mining village and dumps her and their young son there while he goes to live with his latest lover. When the little boy gets raped by an older boy I read no further. In the portion of the book I do manage to read, I come across not one kind soul or object of beauty. Every character is cruel and crude; every wall is peeling and moldy; and every landscape is smelly and bleak.  

I hate to spend money on a book and then not finish it. But sometimes that’s just the way it goes. As to Richard Russo’s line about being knocked sideways, he’s a humorist that I’ve studied to the point where I’m almost as familiar with his work as I am my own; and I’m certain my interpretation was correct—while he was reluctant to slam a Booker prize winner, I can’t see him enjoying this laborious dragged-out moan. 

Also, it’s my belief that what goes into our heads bumps around in there forever, influencing us in ways so insidious that we don’t realize it. So why deliberately plant ugliness in our brains?

To be fair, Sam didn’t exactly recommend it. He simply said that he was reading it. This happened to me once before when I mistook an off-hand comment for a recommendation when a friend told me that The House of Mirth was a must-read. She might’ve meant that it was an important read in the literary sense, not that I would find pleasure in it. In a nutshell, the main character, a young woman from a good home and with a hopeful nature, endures a decline in circumstances until she dies poor and alone. 

As to the author, Edith Wharton, I can’t count the number of times people have said to me, “As a writer, you must love Edith Wharton.” Must I? Have I read anything by Edith Wharton? Maybe. I look her up and find that, indeed, I have read several of her books—but all the titles bring to mind are feelings of betrayal and oppression. No joy to be found. So no, I’m not an admirer. 

My older son, Curtis, reading the remarks I make in the family email chain about how I disdain depressing novels, sends me a link to The Early Morning Riser, which The Washington Post says is the funniest novel of the year. Marian Keyes, another favorite of mine, says that The Early Morning Riser is “. . . very, very funny in a knowing wry way. . .”

Funniest novel of the year? Funny is what I write! These reviews stir my competitive nature. Okay, I think, Katherine Heiny let’s see what you’ve got. 

Well, for one thing her last name makes me smile. When I was a little girl I had a friend who said, “My hiney!” the way other people said, “Boloney!” It was cute. And I, too, have a whimsical last name that leads to lighthearted thoughts. So we have that in common. 

I analyze her work carefully. She adroitly contrasts solemnity and humor by presenting a tragic circumstance laced with absurd description or dialogue. She serves up clumsy or inappropriate remarks that lead to embarrassment or misunderstanding; and she uses amusing words like befuddled or confounded to illustrate how the main character is never quite in sync with those around her. Her dialogue flows naturally and her characters are audacious. She writes well and meets her goals and I will happily read her next book. This begs the question—does she leave me in the dust? Absolutely not. I do all the stuff she does; and I do it just as well if not better. Yet famous authors and notable publications are touting her. How can this be?

I received an email from a reader in the UK a couple of weeks ago asking when my next book will be out, which, believe me, is a question that looms so hugely in my mind that if I’m not vigilant it will consume me. A grad student in England recently wrote her dissertation based on the theme of materialism that runs through both my published novels. Since Old Buildings in North Texas and Why Stuff Matters were released, I have written six novels. Where are they? With my agent, who is presenting them with regularity. Who is she presenting them to? Who is reading my work? Is there any feedback? This lack of knowledge and control is the most frustrating thing about being a writer. I’m despondent to think that my lovely and funny Fran Furlow mystery series may never see the shelves, may never be enjoyed by anyone other than me. 

However, reality offers bizarre distractions. Yesterday in the parking lot of Ross Dress for Less, I came across a pair of athletic shoes in pretty good condition sitting side-by-side on the yellow line, as though they’d been carefully arranged. What’s that about?

Seriously. Whose? Why? The shoestrings are clean and white and tied in neat knots. Is the cigarette butt a deliberate placement? If so, what’s it meant to convey?