California Nightwatch Blue

Yeah, that’s me – the tough lookin’ one. The one with the Eastwood squint that says, “You got me now, but you ain’t holdin’ me long, Copper. You just try and make me talk. You ain’t gettin’ this jail bird to sing, Copper.” Huh, maybe it’s Cagney more than Clint.

The other gang members in the photo? That’s my family, or what’s left of it. Mom? She’s there, along for the ride … moving in and out of something akin to the “fog of war”, wearing an internal Thousand Mile Stare. Next to her, my brother Bill, the middle child. He’s given up and just wants to go home. You can see it in his eyes. The other brother, Jay, the tall one with the George Hamilton tan and Valentino bedroom eyes - he’s dreaming about California girls on the beach and wondering why the hell he was appointed man-of-the-house at the age of fourteen.

It was the summer of ’65 and my Pop had just shot himself, well … killed himself more precisely, in the driveway of our house seven months earlier. So, what’s a family to do after something like that? Well, mostly not talk about it and pretend that nothing had happened. It was the 1960s you know.

But something DID happen. In that millisecond it took for that bullet to travel down the barrel of my Pop’s rifle and into his chest - our family motto went from “All for one and one for all”, or a mildly dysfunctional version of that, to “Every man for himself”. And because of that new family motto each one of us saw the world, our family, and our tragedy through four different sets of eyes.

Take my Pop’s funeral for example. We’re all sitting behind that magic curtain at the parlor. We can see out, but no one can see in. My brother Bill, 11, sits next to me bawling his eyes out. Jay, 13, sits straight and detached. Our mom, though terror-stricken inside, sits strong and stoic with light overcast weeping. And me, I’m fixated on the box with my dad in it. I knew, without a doubt, that that coffin was going to open and my Pop would sit up drinking a bottle of Coke. No tears from me. Honestly, I don’t think my 6 year-old brain I had any idea what was going on. One thing I did know - I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I shed no tears when all those around me were. My Pop never did sit up and I never did drink another Coke – only Pepsi.

Another thing that changed was that my mom was left alone to deal with raising three kids with no job, all the while feeling anger, guilt, denial, and more anger. What was the answer to all our problems, in her eyes? Move to Spain!! Even as an adult now, I have no idea where this came from except I know she loved Anthony Quinn. Maybe that was enough. He was pretty damn sexy in Zorba The Greek. In the end though, more balanced heads prevailed (probably grandma and grandpa) and there we were – a fractured family making our way down I-5 to California – the other Spain – for a summer-of-fun road trip. 

We motored from Washington State through Oregon and into sunny California in a brand spankin’ new Pontiac LeMans convertible – thanks to my Pop’s life insurance policy. It set us up fine and dandy with a stylin’ ride down the Coast. Not quite the GTO muscle car version of the LeMans, but man … it was sweet. It was Nightwatch Blue with a 328 V8 engine and a black rag top. People who live in the Northwest normally don’t go out and buy convertibles, it’s not weather conducive.  But, my mom did and in my mind we were the coolest family on the road, despite the fact that I knew, with every fiber of my being, that every towering eighteen wheeler that passed us was destine to topple over and kill us all.  And, if that happened we wouldn’t be like the Kennedys anymore. President Kennedy was assassinated one year and one month before my dad killed himself. So, of course, I believed the Kennedys and the Keetons were kindred spirits. But, if a fifteen foot high semi-truck flattened us on I-5 in our bitchin’ new car we’d then only be akin to all the other millions of U.S. Highway death statistics and that’s just not quite as awesome as living life in Camelot.

In a weird way, life was good in my version of Camelot. I was just young enough not to understand the tragedy that had befallen our family. I don’t know exactly when my mom started drinking too much, but I would guess it wasn’t too long after the morning she found her husband lying on the ground in his skivvies with a bullet in his stomach and a second in his chest. That day in October was also the day mom disappeared. She just went away and never ever seemed to come back - not the way she was when Pop was alive.  But that was then - not now! Now we’re a family of four touring in our new Pontiac down Pacific Coast Highway. I’m in the backseat, my short cropped Spock haircut blowing in the breeze. It’s California! It’s the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and Eric Von Zipper in Beach Blanket Bingo. It’s Mustangs and Woodies, surfboards and sand and doing the limbo. It’s quintessential young America in the 1960s and it was breathtaking! This was my version of our trek to California.

My brothers? I’m sure they have a different version. Bill was five years older than me and Jay seven. They were old enough to understand the enormity of our catastrophic loss. I found out later in life that Bill was scared to death during the entire trip and just wanted to go back home to the stability of grandma and grandpa. Being alone with our mom was always an adventure and also most likely a little terrifying. One time she downed a bit too much Jim Beam, got in the car (with us in it) and took the pedal to the metal. My brother, Billy-boy, wrestled the wheel from her and we got home safely. Jay’s version of our California trek is yet to be determined. He was the oldest and it took its toll. With being the oldest comes high expectations and high guilt. Jay-bird, as our grandma would call him, never did find his way out of the maze of guilt that was placed on him by our mom. I hope he makes it out some day.

What was my mom’s version? What did her eyes see? What did her heart feel? I have no way of knowing. Mom died in 1987. Lung cancer pummeled her to death before I grew up enough to understand about regrets. How was I to know that twenty years later my heart would ache for one more conversation, one more birthday, one more Christmas, just one more summer afternoon on the back patio surrounded by her glorious hanging fuchsias. But wait a minute, have I forgotten how many fights we’d been in or how many times we’d go months without speaking to each other? No, I haven’t forgotten. I’m only five years shy of the age she died, 62. I’m old enough now to understand. She was a human being, just like everyone else.

When she was lying in bed at the nursing home dying I asked her if she had any advice for me. All she said was, “A girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do.” Pretty sound advice, though definitely in a tad bit different category as her “last words”. I’ll set the scene – mom is in a propped up hospital bed. Jay is on one side of her with his hand on her shoulder. I’m on the other side of the bed holding her hand. All she can say is, “Jay! Get me out of this God damn place, you hear me? Get me outta here!” Remember, the woman is hooked up to a morphine pump. She thinks Ted Turner is trying to murder her and knows for a fact that the nursing home is a front for a Chinese drug ring at night and then there’s the fact that the docs believe the cancer has gone to her brain. Mom keeps begging Jay to spring her outta the joint. We tell her everything is okay and we’ll be back tomorrow to visit. My mother turns and looks at Jay - turns and looks at me and then looks straight ahead and delivers the best, most rich (as far as a writer is concerned) last words ever, “You two make me sick.” Just imagine the way Bette Davis would deliver that line. That’s how she delivered it. Both my brother and I had to hold back from laughing. It was so mom. As Jay and I took leave I asked her if I could give her a kiss and in the very same Davis infection she said, “I don’t think so.” I left the room and as Jay and I giggled over mom being mom something tugged at me inside. I poked my head back in her room and said, “Can I give you a kiss, now?” Her response, “I suppose so.”  Those were the last words my mom spoke to me ….. and they were perfect. You know why? Because sometimes, a girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do.

I think that’s exactly what she was doing the day she packed us all up, shoved us in that Nightwatch Blue Pontiac and headed out on her “my husband just killed himself, I’m scared to death, what do I do now” fun and sun road trip to California. She was doin’ what a girl’s gotta do. She was trying to make sense of something that was impossible to make sense of.  It still doesn’t make sense to me 51 years later. Our family was never the same after that bullet entered my Pop’s chest. Every man for himself stayed with us for a long time.

In the end, all the life evidence, all the family evidence … it all points to the fact that there really is no such place as Camelot. But, I am my mother’s daughter and this girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do and there will always be a place for my dear tormented, angry, sweet, loving, tap dancing, dysfunctional, singing mom at my Round Table. She’s earned it.

My Mother's Voice

My mom died before we had computers, cell phones or any other high tech miracle. I have no selfies of us sitting together smiling, laughing, frowning. Not even a video of her at Christmas. But, I do have photographs. There’s one of her as a little girl wearing her cropped Buster Brown haircut, standing on the sideboard of a 1928 Plymouth. And another of her, in 1978, sitting in her 16 foot motor home heading out for Mexico. What I had left of my mother’s voice – the voice that loved me, raised me and sometimes hurt me – it was minuscule. It's only 30 seconds on a tiny micro-cassette tape.

Mom was in the hospital getting half of a lung removed. She had lung cancer. I knew she was going to die eventually, so I bought a recorder. I wanted her voice on tape. All I got was 30 seconds worth. It was just chatter. Could I bring her anything from home? Did she need a toothbrush? Where did she put her jewelry? They were all just simple everyday questions – no wisdom – no advice – no big deal. The voice I recorded was frail and weak and scared. This was not the mother I grew up with.

The mother I grew up with had the voice of a champion. She was never afraid to let you know where she stood. She had opinions and beliefs and they were strong. That particular “voice” took hold one year when she decided to fight City Hall. We lived in the country on five acres of glacial till prairie surrounded by more acres upon acres of the same rocky glacial till, which, by the way, is terrible for gardening. She voiced her thoughts about that and planted an enormous garden anyway. One day Little League Baseball entered our life and my mother’s mission became to make life hell for them. They wanted to build a huge baseball park next to and behind our house. We would be surrounded on all fronts by cars coming and going, screaming kids in the evenings and weekends. The park became the family enemy.

One of my most vivid memories of my mother is her sitting at the dining room table scribbling on a yellow legal pad. We’d always joke that she kept the yellow pad company flush with all the paper she’d go through. This time it was a letter to the editor of our local newspaper. It was all about fudged zoning regulations, property values dropping and noise abatement issues. My mom was a smart, persistent woman who always took a fight to the end. She even enlisted me and my brothers to paint protest signs and tape them to the construction equipment. “Go Home Little League Baseball.” Mom eventually lost the baseball battle, but not without tormenting the city, the county and the baseball folks. As we watched the bulldozers and backhoes move the earth around our house we knew our life in the country would never be the same – and it wasn’t. But Mom never gave up the good fight. Her voice WAS heard.

One of my mom’s other voices was much more beautiful than the voice she used to fight City Hall. It was her singing voice. It was rich and deep. My mom and dad were high school sweethearts who loved music. So much so, my dad formed a jazz trio – piano, string bass and drums. He played the piano and mom sang. As soon as America entered the war everything changed for my parents. While dad was on a destroyer heading to the  Philippines, Mom was studying music at Berkley. When the war ended life changed for her again. Dad came home broken and she stopped singing. That’s the way it was back then. In the 40s it was understood that when you got married you got to keep some of your voices, but others were expected to be “put away”. Mom gave up her dream of being a professional singer in order to raise three children. I think it bothered her for the rest of her life, but she found a way to pass her creative voice on to me. She taught me that music could be my voice in good times and bad.

One evening in 1966, she took me downtown to the Olympic Theater to see Pearl Bailey perform live. Mom knew music - from the Big Bands in the 1940s to Pearl, Dave Brubeck, Tony Bennett and all the rest in the1960s. It was my mom who taught me how to play the piano. And, it was my mom who bought me Judy Garland’s MGM Golden Collection of songs when I was sick in bed with the flu. The two-record album became my anthem. I knew every song by heart and sang each song with a passion my mom would be proud of.

My fondest memory of my mother is her opening up a cupboard, reaching for the salt and shaking it out onto our linoleum kitchen floor. That was the day she taught me how to tap dance. She spread the salt around a bit with her shoe, shook a little more out onto the floor and she began singing and tapping, "East Side, West Side, all around the town ..." Her feet moved in perfect unison - shuffle tap, step, hop with the right foot – shuffle tap, step, hop with the left foot … and so on. When it was my turn she sang and I tapped, but my tapping was not in unison. It was more of a shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, tap, tap, shuffle, shuffle. But it didn’t matter, my mom was teaching me to tap just like Judy Garland.

Mom used her many voices to live her life the best way she knew how. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t mention she sometimes used her voice to hurt me and others. It was a wounded voice. It was a voice that couldn’t help but lash out at others in a desperate attempt to quell her own pain. I don’t hear that voice much anymore. It’s worth remembering, but not worth reliving. I made my peace with that voice about five months before she died. In hindsight, that voice that hurt so long ago - has helped me live a better life than if I'd never heard it.

I realize now – I don’t need a recording to remember my mom’s voice. Her voices live inside of me all day – everyday. I don’t know what I would do without them. The older I get the stronger they become and the more I understand – I am my mother’s daughter.

I Feel Bad About My Nora Ephron

I’ve never met Nora Ephron. I don't know anyone who has ever met Nora Ephron. I haven’t even read all of what Nora Ephron has written - books, movies, essays, but still – I call her “my” Nora Ephron.

Ever since "When Harry Met Sally..." my Nora Ephron has sat in the back row of my brain – without me even knowing it -- just sitting there -- waiting. Just like everyone else -- if I knew Nora Ephron -- I would REALLY want her to like me. Well maybe not so much me, but maybe my writing or my dark sense of humor or the twisted “copy” of my own life.

And then came "Sleepless in Seattle". There she was, my Nora … still waiting in that back row, being patiently anxious -- her bangs hanging impatiently over her eyes. Someday. Someday she’ll rise up. She must be curious by now. Now ... was that me saying that to you reading this or was that her saying that to me writing this. I don’t know, but its 1993 and both of us are still … waiting.

Next it was "You’ve Got Mail", and oh boy – Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks AGAIN and a kinda remake of Jimmy Stewart and Margaret O’Sullivan in "The Shop Around The Corner". The wit, the charm, the romantic comedy at its best (well not really – if I had to pick - that prize would go to Harry and Sally). Dammit, come on, my Nora! Get your skinny New York ass outta that chair in the back of my brain and DO SOMETHING!

I have been waiting decades for you my Nora, the funny - clever woman, to rise up and be the goddamn f’ing mentor you were supposed to be. But nothing. Absolutely frickin’ nothing … that is not until you made your own “copy” by biting the big one, goin’ toes (and tits) up, kickin’ the bucket, pushing up daisies, expiring …. FADE OUT.

All I can say is …. you may have felt bad about your neck Nora, but I feel bad about my Nora Ephron. You see, – you were my ideal, my hero writer, the one I would most want to be like, write like (as do millions of other nobody writers) – you were just cool. It didn’t matter that you were (according to your family and friends) at times mean, judgmental, driven by ambition, obsessive, controlling, relentlessly opinionated and to be blunt – a royal bitch. You just saw life the way you saw it and turned it into funny funny or tragic funny or painful funny or hurtful funny or bitterly poignant almost funny or most likely snarky funny – sometimes at the expense of others. It didn’t matter --- we all still loved you --- wanted to be like you --- write like you --- see the world as clearly as you and be able to transfer it to paper.

Now, you’re no longer sitting in the back row patiently waiting for me to learn something. I think I get it. I got it watching your son’s story about you. Please don’t be mad at me, okay … but I don’t think I need to want to be like you anymore. My problem is that I can’t write snarky, it hurts me when I’m mean. I wish I WAS driven by ambition – it would make things so much easier – but I’m not. I DO have obsessive down pat and being opinionated, so I get points there – but judgmental -- I’m too messed up myself to pull that one off.

It gut punched me that while you were dying you told none of your closest friends. You had “goodbye” lunches with them without telling them it would probably be the last time they would ever see you. Now, THAT is seriously heartbreaking.

You’re still a hero, my Nora, a rock star ... and still the coolest one in the room. It’s just that you’re now sitting in the front row not the back. All I need to do is decide how I want to live my life, what I believe etc. and THAT is from whence my voice will come. You did it magnificently while you were here … by giving us so many unforgettable words seamlessly strung together.

I’m sorry you had to die for me to get it, but I’m sure there’s plenty of “copy” up there to keep you busy … wherever you are … for your next book … or maybe even a movie. Have you ever seen "A Guy Named Joe"? You might want to watch it …. I’ll be waiting.

My Irishman

The man of my life.

The man who loved me like no other, silently and keenly.

He believed in me when no other soul seemed to care.

He taught me how to work. Irish work ethic never failed him. Large strong, worn hands. Hands that deftly knew how to build something out of nothing. “If you’re going to do something, do it right.”

This was his wisdom to me from six years old on.

This Irishman would sit on his back porch and watch, patiently, as I ran circles in his back field wearing my new Adidas sneakers…running and running till I wanted to drop, “I’m going to be in the Olympics someday!” I would yell to him. He would smile and yell back, ”Good! Keep running then!" He would sit for what seemed like forever as I ran chasing my childish dream never letting me think it wasn’t possible.

He was a mysterious Irishman at times. A dark night driving through town, stopping on the 4th Avenue bridge. He told his 6 year-old granddaughter to watch for traffic and when no one was in sight he tossed a sawed-off shotgun into the bay. A mysterious man. A Union man.

This man liked adventure and the childhood dream of treasure. This man took an old MJB coffee can, filled it with very old silver coins, made me crawl under the house with him when I was 8 years old and said, ”Okay, now dig a hole and bury the coins. On your 13th birthday we’ll dig them up." This man made me feel as if adventure was a God given right and one should expect it.

This man with the straight, strong Irish nose sat up all night with me as I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. I was 11 years old and no one in my family cared about watching what I had dreamed of doing for many months - walking on the moon - except this Irishman. We sat in silence, both bursting inside with emotion as we witnessed the history happening before us.

This is the man who two weeks later said, ”I’ll help you build a replica of the lunar module, but only if we use what materials are already in the shop.” My Irishman was a creator. So, we built my module. A ten-foot high replica of what had landed on the moon on that hot summer night in July of ‘69. I, more than anything in the world, wanted to be an astronaut. That Irishman told me, “You can.”

This Irishman - MY Irishman - loved me and was a father to me. He gave to me what no one else in my life had ever given to me - belief in self, belief in dreams and belief in living a life void of fear.

This is for MY Irishman, who I just recently realized I look like. After 40 years of wondering who it is I take after in my family I can now see it is MY Irishman. The eyes, the nose, the cheekbones - I do have roots and I do belong to a family.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Grandpa. I miss you ... W.J. Mangan of County Kerry, Ireland.

Olympia Pet Parade

The year was 1969. I was eleven years old and in love with the space program. What a summer that was. Like everyone else, my grandpa and I watched the first lunar landing with heightened wonder and excitement. I’m thankful to have been a kid when the exploration of space still evoked that adventurous spirit inside of us. That moon landing brought to life, for the first time, the idea and feeling that anything was possible for me to achieve. From that day forward I was a different person. I truly believed I could do anything I wanted and I wanted to explore the skies like those men on the moon. As you grow older you sometimes forget how limitless your thoughts can be as a child.

After Apollo 11 returned to earth I begged my grandpa to build a lunar module for the Pet Parade. He agreed to help me build it on one condition - we use only materials he already had lying around in his garage. He was a creative sort who liked a challenge. So, we built my eight foot high lunar module replica – together. Working on that float is one of the strongest memories I have of my grandpa. A person who took the time to show me the possibilities.

Parade day that year was terribly hot and wearing my space helmet, my brother’s ski suit, boots and gloves didn’t help any. Both of my older brothers followed me from a distance along the parade route in case I either passed out from heat exhaustion or the float took an unexpected careening nose dive. That year I won the prize for ‘Most Patriotic Float’ - $5.00. It was a good day.

At the age of 36, I’m finally trusting my heart to go ahead and follow my dream of flight that began twenty-five years ago. Last month I began working on getting my pilot’s license. The day I solo may not be as historical an event as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon, but I will have become the explorer of the skies I had dreamed of as a young girl.

Only in Spirit

I see a scene that is surreal to me. Denise and I turn onto the small airfield named after Evelyn Sharp. It is 11:30 p.m., the night before Easter and also the 50th anniversary of Evelyn's death. The night is cold and my throat hurts so bad that I can barely swallow. I wear my World War II leather flying jacket with its soft, thick fleece collar. As we turn into the horseshoe shaped drive to the strip I see a scene that leaves me speechless.

I park the car. Both Denise and I just sit and take in what is in front of us. There is music playing in the car. It is magical music that brings the images in front of us to life. At that moment it is as if we are inside a Steven Spielberg movie. To the left stands a 50-foot tall tower with a white rotating beacon on top. As this beacon rhythmically rotates it gives the illusion of moving diagonally rather than horizontally, with the beam of light gently caressing the frozen ground with each circling.

To the right of the beacon is the faintest of images, an airplane. So dim is its outline that it seems to me a ghost image that could vanish at any second. On the ground, just below the plane, misty blue taxi lights lead out to a small, surfaced runway. The glow of the light is so rich in color that just looking at them takes me deeper into myself.

My heart is open and I am filled with wonder. It feels as though if anyone else drives up, Denise and I will still be the only ones able to see this surreal scene as if it was created for us alone. Standing next to the ghost plane is a small operator's building painted the color of Nebraska fields after the corn has been harvested - golden with a wheat brown trim.

After being taken in by this scene for some time, Denise whispers,

"You know what we have to do?"

"What?" I say.

"We have to walk the runway."

I smile to myself and reply, “Okay”.

We get out of our warm car and enter out into the freezing cold Nebraska night. 

I zip up my leather jacket and button my fleece collar to cover my throat. I’m amazed at how willing I am to venture out into the cold night when I could easily be lying sick in bed. This entire trip to Ord, Nebraska has been strange in this way. I began getting sick the day I arrived and find that the feeling of having daggers thrust into my neck every time I swallow doesn't seem to bother me. The pain is there, but it doesn't affect my ability to experience the magic of the trip.

The lighted taxiway extends only 25 feet and by the time we reach the small runway my hands, ears, and nose feel on the verge of frostbite. But again, it doesn't stop me from absorbing the experience. The night is dark. I look up to the sky and find it filled with the brightest, sharpest stars I have seen in years. As Denise and I walk we are ten feet away from each other, but it is so dark we cannot see one another. Denise seems playfully frightened, so I poke fun.

"What are you afraid of? There's nobody out here except maybe a coyote or two. Nothing is going to happen. We're meant to be here."  I feel opposite of Denise, safe and at home.

As we approach the runway I want to walk alone, so I separate myself from Denise even further. Within seconds, I have no clue where I am in relationship to her. We both sense the need to go off and explore the runway alone, solo. Stepping onto the runway, I look down it to the right and in the distance I see red lights. To the left, at the other end of the runway, red and white lights glow. I decide to go left. The red and white lights look more inviting.

Walking alone, I suddenly feel expanded - huge. I want to embrace the night sky with my arms, but the cold prevents that from happening. My hands stay warmly nestled in the pockets of my jacket and I walk briskly. I gaze up at the umbrella of stars.  I feel protected.  Far off in the distance a dog barks. That, plus the constant swirling of wind around my ears and my rapid cold breaths taken are the only sounds heard.  In this moment I am connected to all I see and hear and everything I cannot see nor hear. I am walking in total darkness, on a tiny airstrip at midnight, in a remote Nebraska town.  It is frigid cold, my throat is killing me, and I am feeling more connected to myself and my purpose than I ever have in my life.

As I walk further down the airstrip, my eyes latch onto a lighted windsock out in the middle of the field. The orange sock, which aviators use to determine wind direction, is attached to a tall pole that has four small lights atop that illuminate the nylon cone. The brightly lit sock demands to be looked at. So far out by itself, it is on center stage. I keep walking down the surfaced runway in the direction of the windsock, my eyes never leaving it. As I get closer I begin to hear the sound of it rippling in the wind.

The lit object stands alone in the dark commanding every part of me. I stop at the edge of the runway, transfixed. It feels as though I cannot take my eyes from it. I just stand and stare. My mind and body have gone to another place. With my eyes fixed, I realize that memories of this place are rushing through me. It all feels so familiar, everything: the stars, the wind, the cold, the windsock, especially the windsock. It brings to me an encompassing feeling of love.

Then I begin to feel something that is not familiar. I look to the left and then to the right. The red and white lights at the ends of the strip don’t make sense to me. Neither does the hard asphalt surfacing under my feet. The only thing my mind and body can make sense of is the lit orange sock, off in the distance. The runway lights and surfacing seem so unfamiliar that they give me a disturbed feeling inside. They should not be here.

I step off the surfaced runway onto the hard Nebraska landscape. Now, it all makes sense to me. The windsock is my focal point and the memories come. I am not a 35-year-old woman standing in this field. It is 1937 and I am a 16 year-old girl named Evelyn Sharp and this is the field where I learned to fly. My energy and Evelyn's mesh together as I stand on the good earth. I feel as though I have been transported to another time. The grass field and the windsock, this is what Evelyn knew, understood, and loved. They didn't have red and white lights or surfaced runways here in 1937.

A period of time rushes through my body. No definite or clear visual images, just the feelings of her life as a young girl. Some of the memories are sad, but most are of joy and happiness at the chance to experience and feel her own memories through a living human being - me.

I can feel the love she felt toward all I was seeing and feeling: the windsock, the solid cold ground beneath my feet. The same ground she walked as she dreamed of becoming a flyer. I feel waves of love directed toward me for participating in this odd adventure. When I arrived in Ord I, in my mind, had given Evelyn permission to come together with me and experience whatever it was she wanted of her hometown. I never realized that the shared experience would leave me feeling so connected to not only Evelyn, but to myself.

As I stand in the cold night I am transfixed on the orange sock whipping in the distance. I begin the 50-yard trek across the field. All of my senses are magnified a thousand times. Each blade of grass reaches up through my shoes to leave their imprint on the bottom of my feet. The crunching ground as I walk, the brush of frigid air across the soft hair on my face, and a pulsing heart that wants to jump out of my chest to better love everything in its path. I feel huge, like a giant. I am filled with everything I see, touch, hear, and sense. All increased now to what seems ten thousand fold.

The brightly lit sock pulls me closer until I stand directly beneath it. Head cocked backward, I look up as it ripples in the wind. As the remembering continues I can feel myself get greedy. I want to know more. What exactly am I remembering and maybe if I concentrate harder the memories will become clearer.

With that thought, the memories instantly stop. It's as if I just snapped out of it. I still feel connected to all that surrounds me, but the memories of Evelyn and her past leave. I pick up a piece of pipe that has broken off the windsock pole, put it in my pocket, and walk back to the runway to find Denise.

Although the memories of Evelyn had vanished, I knew I would return later that night, alone.