Month: July 2020

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Marquis’ Birthday

After a successful camping trip the year before, Julie, Marcie and I decided to try another one. Something new.

We rented a large cabin on top of a hill at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park CO. Marcie and I said “no tents this year” but we were willing to try a family cabin in the woods. We were delighted to find a beautiful cabin in a campsite far away from any neighbors.

The weather was cold, the creeks were flooding and we should have gone back to sleeping in tents! Because we had electricity, a real kitchen, four bedrooms and two bathrooms, the boys thought they were on vacation. They reverted to their at-home behavior and became unbelievably lazy. We learned that the boys worked together only as much as the elements required.

Our first big challenge came when we realized that they had smuggled a small television in one of their suitcases. Instead of being outside enjoying nature, as we had hoped, we found them huddled together in one bedroom watching an afternoon soap opera. We confiscated the contraband TV and listened as they protested, as one loud vocal group, about how unfair it was of us to take away the TV, when they went to all the trouble of sneaking it in. The louder they got, the more we just shook our heads.

The most memorable part of the week, however, had to do with Marquis’ birthday, which fell on the third day of the trip. At first he balked at even coming on the camping trip because. as he said, “I have a life.”

We reminded Marquis that his entire “life,” other than his mother and grandmother, would be in Estes Park that week. And besides, we would make him a cake.

From that moment on, the cake took on a life of its own. What flavor should the cake be? What about the frosting? What size? ~ all decisions of great importance.

On the day of his birthday, I brought Marquis back to Denver in treacherous, pouring rain, for a job interview that was canceled thirty minutes before we got there. By the time we got back to Estes Park, Marquis and I had spent five hours together in my car while the rest of the guys cleaned the cabin, baked his raspberry cake and frosted it with butter cream frosting.

After stuffing ourselves with spaghetti and salad, it was time for the birthday celebration. We sang Happy Birthday and told Marquis to make a wish.

Marquis thought a long time about his important wish. And then he blew out the candles. Through his NOSE! It was so gross. Marquis had seen a similar trick in a movie and couldn’t wait to try it. Needless to say, he killed the cake!

Even though everyone was dying for a piece of Marquis’ birthday cake, very few were brave enough to scrape the top layer of frosting off the cake and eat it. 

Happy Birthday, Marquis, wherever you are. I hope you are doing well. I’m making a wish for you today.

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Glendale Boys

My last years working as a social worker were the best gig ever. I worked part-time for the Cherry Creek School System and part time for the city of Glendale.  I started my day at noon and worked until 8:00 p.m. visiting families and supervising a tutoring program for students. Together with the city recreation direction and the victim’s assistance social worker, we planned social events and ran a support group for teenage boys.

We started the group when the boys were in middle school. Our goals were simple ~ keep them in school and out of trouble. We started with six boys, a mixture of ethnic groups and ages. We later added three more boys, refugees from Ethiopia and Bosnia. The refugees were no problem. The American-born boys were a handful.

In the beginning we bribed the boys with food to come to the support group. They didn’t like each other and they didn’t like our rules ~ things like staying safe and not hurting each other.  Gradually they began to see the value of the group. They learned to trust us and each other. They learned that the group was a safe place to talk about being angry instead of needing to fight.

The boys group stayed together for almost four years. At the end of the first year, the recreation director decided that we should all go camping. In the mountains. In tents.

I’m not a great camper. I much prefer a hotel with a pool. Except for the boys who were refugees, our guys had not spent much time outside the one-square mile, Glendale city limits. I wasn’t convinced this would work but I was willing to try.

Our campsite was on top of a very steep hill at the YMCA of the Rockies, near Winter Park, CO. It was rugged. There were no bathrooms. No showers. No kitchen. The boys had to carry huge containers of water up the hill every day, for hand-washing and cooking. They had to pitch a tent and cook over an open fire. I think we were there for three or four days. As you can imagine, these were not Happy Campers. Most of the time, they were Grumbling Campers. Dissatisfied Campers. Campers Plotting A Revolt. 

We didn’t allow them to use racial slurs against each other. In fact, the penalty for a racial slur was push-ups, in multiples of ten, for every offense. One boy did fifty push-ups before he got the message that we were serious.

I’ll remember a conversation with one of the boys about why we didn’t want to hear him use the n-word. “There is nothing wrong with that word,” he tried to explain to me. “It just means a lazy, useless black man.” 

I was incredulous. “Did you hear what you just said?” I asked him. He never did another push-up in front of me.

When it was time to go to sleep the first night, after an exhausting day of setting up camp, hauling water, and a goodnight campfire, the boys came to tell us three adults that they couldn’t sleep. They heard noises in the woods. They missed their families back home. They asked us if we would please, come and sleep in their tent. 

“Are you sure there is room?” we asked. It was not a very big tent.

“Sure. We’ll make room.”

So we dragged our sleeping bags into their tent and prepared to go to sleep.

One of the boys suggested that everyone say goodnight to each other. One by one, we went around the tent saying, “Good night…Sleep Well…Sweet Dreams…See you in the  morning…” and adding the name of their friend to the list. It was a tender moment in the lives of six boys I will always remember with a smile.

I don’t know where these boys are now. They would be in their early 40’s, probably with children of their own. I believe they all finished high school. I know that some of them went on to get mechanical certifications and college degrees. I pray that none of them got in serious trouble along the way.

Good night, my sweet boys. You will always have a place in my heart, if not in my tent.

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Camp Hitaga

For six years, while I was in college and graduate school, I spent my summers working as a counselor at a Camp Fire Girls camp near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I knew I didn’t want to go home after my freshman year in St. Cloud. There were no jobs for me in North St. Paul. I would have been a lousy waitress. I wasn’t certified to be a life guard. The few businesses in town weren’t hiring. And although I passed my driver’s test, I really didn’t know how to drive a car.

Ah, ha, I thought. Maybe I can work in a summer camp? I like being outdoors. How hard can it be?

The application process was easy. Back then there were no background checks. I’m not sure I even had to submit a letter of reference. 

I was accepted almost immediately. I later learned that the director wanted counselors with a music background. She hired me to be on the nature staff, not because I knew anything about nature, but because I could play the piano.

Camp Hitaga turned out to be a good fit for me. The camp director, Noel Newell, and the culture she promoted completely transformed my life.

Noel was a kind, gentle, gracious, quiet woman. I have no idea how old she was. She had beautiful white hair, so we all assumed she must be really old. She was a music major, who ran the camp like a choir. We sang all the time. We met at the flagpole and sang patriotic songs. We sang at meals, on hikes and canoe trips, in the shower, walking along dusty paths. 

Every night, the counselors met around a campfire. We sang in harmony, accompanied by guitars. Folk music by Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan drifted from every hilltop as counselors sang their campers to sleep. After the girls were sleeping we slipped away to the kitchen, searching for ice cream and dessert left-over from dinner.

Being on the nature staff allowed me to be outside all day. There were two of us on the staff plus a head counselor, who was a real biology major. We worked in a small cabin, filled with plants and animals ~ including an eight-foot bull snake that terrified me. I led nature hikes in the forest, where we identified plants, met for early morning bird hikes (supplied with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) and late night star-gazing lessons.

The picture at the top of this page is of three campers building a bird bath. I don’t know whose idea that was. Probably not mine. I always learned far more than I taught.

One day, on a hike to the mail box, there were cows in the field next to the road. And one bull. There was mating going on but I was so clueless, I didn’t know what was happening. 

One of the campers asked, “What are they doing?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “I guess they are playing a game. It looks like they are having fun.”

I loved they campers and the other counselors. I’ve lost touch with all of them, except for one fine woman, a previous camper with whom I’ve shared a lifetime of friendship.

It was an idyllic time for me. I went from being a very shy, completely non-athletic young woman to someone who enjoyed social encounters and being physically active.

I spent every minute soaking up sunshine, in the company of like-minded women who were smart, funny, creative and energetic. Because this was the early 60’s, most of us went on to teach school and raise families. 

Noel guided us with a gentle hand, even though none of us were as quiet and well-behaved as she would have liked. She recognized that each of us had something special to offer, something that made us worthy, something that made us capable of being leaders of this new generation.

I never went back home again.

 

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El Mirador

El Mirador, or Lookout Hill, is one of three very high hills that offer a magnificent view of Mazatlán below. The road up the hill began behind my house, wound back and forth until it reached the top, and then descended onto Olas Altas beach. 

The climb to the top of El Mirador and back down took forty-five minutes. It was a great work-out for my legs and my nalgas, which had never been in better shape.

I sometimes climbed the hill alone, early in the morning, huffing and puffing all the way. Later, in the evening, Neto and I walked the road together, reaching Olas Altas in time to see yet another beautiful Mazatlán sunset. We always ended our ritual with the Buddhist prayer for our friends and family: “May you be happy …May you be healthy …May you be free from worry.”

The road was peaceful and quiet in the mornings, with very little traffic to interrupt my solitude. Occasionally I would see other hikers or men riding to work on their bicycles. I was curious as I saw beautiful homes along the way. Homes that obviously once belonged to Mazatlán’s rich and famous. Homes that were now neglected and abandoned  by owners who had long since disappeared. Who were these people, who let the jungle take over their gorgeous homes and property? I wondered. 

There was more activity on El Mirador later in the day, as vendors set up stands at the top of the hill to sell hats, rosaries, and shiny wooden palm trees to tourists coming from the cruise ships below. In the evening, taxi drivers congregated to drink beer and tell stories, blaring loud music from their radios before going home to their families for dinner.

The view from the top of El Mirador is picture-perfect. It stretches for miles into the ocean. Caves in the hillside, once used by the Spanish to guard the harbor, and later used by Mazatlán soldiers to defend their port from the French, now provided shelter for homeless men and their pets.

 I took the picture at the top of this blog early one morning as I trudged up the hill.

The homeowner had just ushered seven cats out of her house and into the street to spend the day. Some of the cats hurried to get back inside before the door shut tight. But they were too late. They would have to spend the day being outdoor cats, lounging in the sun and picking up garbage from the street when they got hungry.  

The next time I walked past this house all seven cats were still there, along with six newborn kittens. Unlike the once beautiful houses along the route, these cats weren’t abandoned. They would be allowed back inside before dark.

On another walk, this time coming home from my Spanish lesson, I saw a cat procession. At the head of the parade was a female cat, obviously in heat, screeching  and waving her hips at the male cat, who followed close behind her with a grin on his face.

Walking behind both of them was a woman with a handful of rocks. Every time the female cate let out a scream, and the male cat licked his lips in happy anticipation, the woman yelled curses at both cats and pelted them with her rocks.

I don’t think La Señora hit either one of them but it wasn’t from lack of trying. Her method was not good kitty birth control but it obviously released some pent up frustration on her part.

There was always something interesting going on behind my home, along the path to El Mirador.

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The Fourth of July

What fun! Spending the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C!

My grandson, Connor, and I traveled back and forth to Minnesota while he was in elementary school but now he was finishing fifth grade. We wanted to celebrate. Go some place different. Some special, knock-your-socks-off kind of place. 

What could be better than Washington, D.C. on Independence Day? Connor liked history and traveling. I loved fireworks and outdoor concerts. It was going to be a perfect vacation.

When we told people about our plans ~ go to Washington, stay in an Airbnb near the Mall, see the museums, the parade, the concert and the fireworks ~ they all said the same thing, “You are crazy! Do you know how hot it will be? How crowded? Do you know what you are in for?”

Our answers were: 

Crazy? Probably.

Know how hot it was going to be? How crowded? We had no idea.

Know what we were in for? Nope. No way!

Connor had just turned eleven and I was a lot younger than I am now. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!

We flew to D.C. on Monday, July 1st, and took a cab to our Airbnb, a private room in a beautiful, modern condo within walking distance of the National Mall. Our hostess was a lovely young woman from Vietnam. She gave us our keys, announced that she was leaving to visit friends in New York, told us to make ourselves at home, and walked out the door.

Here’s what we learned in six days in D.C.:

  • Washington is a beautiful city with flower gardens and large trees everywhere. 
  • The museums are outstanding. Almost all of them are free.
  • The monuments are incredible. We saw monuments to the Korean and Vietnam wars and monuments in honor of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King. 
  • The National Zoo is phenomenal. We took the subway to get there and back, another new experience for both of us. The line to see the pandas was too long and the weather was sweltering, so we mostly saw elephants and lots of fish. 
  • The Smithsonian Folklike Festival is a wonderful, two-week celebration spread out along one end of the Mall. The 2013 themes were Hungarian Heritage, Endangered Languages, and African American Style and Identity. We spent most of our time exploring African American Identity, including eating fried chicken and waffles for breakfast. 

On Thursday, July Fourth, we got up early to find a good place to watch the parade. Floats and marching bands were lining up along the street. We saw the Budweiser Clydesdales and men on giant, old-fashioned bicycles cruising up and down the street. People were putting last minute touches on floats that celebrated cultural and ethnic diversity. Tourists from all over the world, wearing red, white and blue, were waving flags and snapping pictures.

We found a seat on a wall along the parade route and made friends with those around us. The parade lasted for hours, every float more beautiful than the one before. At one point, Connor found a cool spot under a tree and took a nap. 

A bicycle-rickshaw driver took us home, where we stayed until it was time to walk back for the concert on the lawn of the Capitol. We found a place far in the back, put down our blanket and watched the concert on large screens surrounding us. The concert finished to the roar of cannons and the 1812 Overture. We were in a perfect spot to watch dazzling fireworks right in front of us.

That was the last time Connor and I traveled together. I smile every time I remember it.

“We did it, Baby!” I said to Connor as we sat in a crowded airplane, on our way back to Denver.

“That’s right, Grandma.” He shook his head in disbelief. “We just did something no one else has ever done.”

“Indeed!” I thought to myself.

We did something that I will hold in my heart forever. Something that no one else has ever done!