HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

One last day for 2004. (Perhaps for some of you reading this, it is already 2005)!

Here in Southern California, the Good Lord has chosen to force us into a day of contemplation. The rain is coming down fast and furious, and as you probably know by now, Angelinos do not travel in rain. We hunker down in our homes, doing yoga, writing screenplays, and talking on our cell phones. (You probably also know by now that you should avoid talking on landlines during thunderstorms lest you be zapped).

My to-do list is strange and varied:

1) Write blog.

2) Pick up turkey at store for my sister’s wedding tomorrow.

3) Make pasta salad for my sister’s wedding tomorrow.

4) Make a pot of vegetable soup (We’ve still got to eat tonight).

5) Practice song I am to sing for said wedding.

6) Figure out what to wear for said wedding.

7) Figure out what my husband will wear for said wedding.

Listen to reasons husband will not wear suggested attire for said wedding.

9) Take a walk if there is a break in the weather.

10) Get on Health Rider contraption for a half hour if there is no break in the weather.

11) Call family back East to wish them a Happy New Year.

12) Do laundry so there will be clean underwear for said wedding (if the electricity doesn’t go out again).

13) Shower and wash hair so that I will not offend at said wedding.

14) Clean entire house for the new year (or whatever I can accomplish in half an hour).

Not glamorous. Not even coherent. Just what is (off the top of my head, actually).

And one more item for my list: 15) Try to avoid any new year’s resolutions.

I can’t even remember what my new year’s resolutions were for last year, so I can’t tell you whether or not they had any impact on my life. What I can tell you for sure is that such resolutions achieve only one thing for me – guilt, as in, “Oh look! It’s only January 3rd, and already you are in flagrant violation of your own New Year’s resolution!”

Okay. So actually, I do have a resolution for the New Year: Resolved. Not to make any New Year’s resolutions!

I wish you and yours a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year.

© 2004, Robin Munson

A DAY WITH MY SISTERS

A DAY WITH MY SISTERS

Some of you may remember that my sister, Michele, is getting married on January 1st, New Year’s Day, 2005. Our whole family is in happy anticipation of the event. There is a tradition that has evolved in our family. When one of us gets married, she treats the others to a manicure and pedicure a day or two before the wedding. So today I rendezvoused with my mother, my younger sister, Sherry – herself a bride of five months – and my older sister, Michele, the bride-to-be. We met at a mall in West Los Angeles and giggled and had our nails painted. As a friend of mine would say, it was “too much fun”.

At one point while our nails were drying, I looked around the salon. The place was packed with women of every description – from the very young to grandmothers, from reed-thin to zaftig, women of every ethnicity, and if I could have talked to them, probably of every religion and political stance. Women come to these places to pamper themselves, to relax, to maintain their appearance, and I think, to be among other women.

Most of the time in this world, we are required to assume the role of the “second sex”. We are helpmates to our husbands, secretaries to our bosses, nursemaids to our children. We are caretakers. We are the ones who do what others cannot or will not do. We take on the mundane tasks. We run our households. We “man” the mops. We polish the silver. We go to the market. We chauffer the kids. We call the plumber. We make the social arrangements. In short, we gather up life’s loose ends and make sense out of them. Isn’t it amazing? Doesn’t this sound pre-Betty Friedan? And yet this is the end of 2004. We are four years into the new millennium, and the only thing that seems to have changed is that now we type on PCs or Macs instead of Coronas or Olivettis.

Not that I’m complaining! I’m one of the lucky ones. I actually like my lot in life. Call me crazy (you won’t be the first) but I really like doing all that stuff. I was born to be a caretaker, so I’m not going to go into a tirade about being mistreated. Au contraire!

But for just a moment as my mother and my sisters and I sat in that overcrowded salon, I listened to the murmur of women’s voices all around me, and I imagined that there were other places all over the world where women were doing the same thing – Prettifying themselves for the new year. Laughing. Allowing themselves to just be girls for a little while, not much different than they had been as children, playing dress-up with Mama’s clothes and getting all dolled up just for fun.

It’s good sometimes to be enveloped in the feminine. I felt such solidarity with my Mom and (biological) sisters here in California, as well as my “sisters” all over the world. A picture came to mind of women in India decorating their hands with henna before the wedding day. “We are all exactly the same”, I thought. Not an original thought, but it struck me as if I had never heard the phrase before. I imagined that every woman there in that salon was a “sister” to me. If we wanted, we could probably sit down and have long conversations and feel as if we’d known each other forever. And if I spoke their language, I could probably have a coffee klatsch with women from any country, any culture, and any era, even, and we could laugh and giggle and throw off the cares of the world for a little while that way.

I wish I could give all my saddened sisters in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and coastal Africa a day like the one I had today.

© 2004, Robin Munson

RAIN ON THE DESERT

RAIN ON THE DESERT

Last night the rains came.

We live in Southern California, which is, in fact, a desert community. Of course, no one ever thinks about Southern California as a desert community, because we siphon off water from the Colorado River and use it to irrigate our green lawns and fill our swimming pools. We import plants from every climate imaginable and root out most of the cactus. The other day when Art and I went for a walk I saw a great big ball of twigs floating towards us. “Isn’t that tumbleweed?” I asked. Tumbleweed is probably native to Los Angeles, whereas the ubiquitous palm trees are not.

But most winters, we can count on a certain amount of rain. Mercifully, we only get a few good downpours, and the rest comes in drips and drabs. Last night we got a storm worthy of Tennessee or Kansas. The rain pounded down so heavily that I thought it would break right through the roof. It came down so hard that several times my husband, Art, had to go out and drain the water from the swimming pool lest it flood the back of the house. We even got lightning and thunder last night – bright and loud!

Naturally, since we live in the hills, we lost our power. (I don’t mean our personal power - I mean our electricity). This means that not only did all of the lights go out, but our heat went out, our electric hot water heater went out, the cable went out, and the ringer on our phone went out so that we couldn’t tell if anyone was calling.

As we dragged out our flashlights, our candles, and our forty-dollar black and white television set with the six-inch screen that runs on eight D-cell batteries, I had this vision of us as pioneers back in the covered wagon days. For the first time maybe in my whole life I began to appreciate what brave, indomitable spirits these people must have had. Even in sunny California, the sun goes down at 4:30 in the afternoon on December 28th, so that even though we were far from ready to go to bed, there was almost nothing else we could do! At least we had our battery-operated lights and our little almost-worthless TV to keep us sane. Those poor people had nothing.

Anyway, when the sun went down I walked into our darkened kitchen with my flashlight and opened the warm refrigerator. I found some eggs and figured I had better use them up before they went bad. I lit the stove with a log lighter (thank God that’s a gas appliance, although it has an electric starter). I fumbled in my cabinets and got out the necessary bowl and a pan and managed to make us an omelet, some bread and butter, and some steamed broccoli.

We sat down by candlelight and ate our humble dinner at 5:00. We straightened up the kitchen as best we could with cold water in the dark. Then we settled down on the couch in the living room and tried to drown out the sound of the pounding rain with the noise of our little TV. We couldn’t make out what the people were saying and there were multiple ghosts fogging the image on the one channel we could get, but the light from the TV, if not the content of the programming, was somewhat comforting. I even took out my crocheting, put a flashlight on my fingers, and made a little progress on my afghan. Art picked up his guitar and plinked on it for a couple of hours. We both kept staring at that miniscule screen.

That’s where we were sitting at ten o’clock when the power was finally restored. After only a few hours of being power-less, as it were, I was pretty rattled. This morning when we woke up and turned on the news we learned that there had indeed been at least one tornado in the area. Trees had been uprooted and cars had been smashed. Roads had been flooded. Homes had been damaged. There may be more to come before it’s all over.

It occurs to me what a thin veneer of progress separates our “modern” culture from that of the cavemen. If you think we’ve “come a long way, baby” – Think again. Try cutting off your own electricity for about six hours, and see what happens. You may find yourself wondering if that howling wind is indeed a manifestation of angry gods. You may wonder what you can do to appease said angry gods. You may find yourself growing edgy, bored, and anxious – all at the same time. Amazing to think that all of our supposed sophistication can be wiped out, literally, at the flick of a switch. Try it. It will give you new appreciation for the Amish.

© 2004, Robin Munson

A DISORGANIZED REVIEW OF 2004

A DISORGANIZED REVIEW OF 2004

I have an undisciplined mind. Even eighteen years of school could not change that fact. My mind swings from idea to idea, like a monkey swinging from tree to tree. The connection between ideas may be paper-thin, but my mind leaps and soars without hesitation, in spite of the fact that often, that fragile connection actually snaps, leaving me with a string of virtually unconnected ideas that vie for my attention. When I write my blog, I pick one of them and try to ignore the rest, chattering in my ear.

So, my idea this morning is this: Goodbye to 2004.

It was a good year. I survived, as did most of my immediate family, in spite of a couple of scary health issues. However, we lost our beloved cat, Natasha, which was incredibly sad. We spent lots of time back East with Art’s family. That was wonderful. My younger sister was married. That’s a plus, since she falls into the category of “happily married”. My other sister got engaged. Hooray! Everyone is happy about that. My nephew started college, which is a bittersweet thing. Another nephew moved to New York City and launched his career. Spectacular, but we miss him, here in L.A.

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series – I consider that a plus. . There were no terrorist attacks on American soil. That’s a huge plus. S.U.V.s began to fall out of favor – that’s good – because gas prices soared – that’s bad. There are promising new treatments for cancer out there, the so-called “targeted therapies”. I think that’s good, but with the way health news has been shaking out lately, we won’t really know for a few years for sure. “Reality Shows” saved the networks bundles of money, but dropped the average national IQ by a couple of points. (No, I don’t know that for a fact, but I suspect it’s true).

George W. Bush won a second term. Saying that is like presenting an image on a Rorschach test. Some people will interpret it one way and some will interpret it another way. Some people will say, “It was the will of the people, so it’s a good thing”. Others might say, “It was the will of Karl Rove, so it’s a bad thing”.

The war in Iraq got stickier and trickier.

Colin Powell resigned, or was resigned to resign.

There was no shortage of natural disasters – There were multiple hurricanes in Florida and of course, the catastrophic tsunamis in Asia. There were huge winter storms in the Midwest.

And here we are, only a few days left in 2004. It feels like the dregs at the bottom of the cup. You just want to empty them out quickly so that you can get a fresh, clean cup and start all over again. You think that next year will be different, and better.

It’s kind of the attitude my husband has when the jelly jar is almost empty. He doesn’t want to bother with scraping the little bit at the bottom out. He just wants me to discard the old jar and crack open a new one. I have tried to reason with him, “But it’s exactly the same at the bottom as it is at the top!” Nothing I can say deters him. So I surreptitiously wait until I’m alone in the kitchen. I take the last of the old jelly and mix it into the new jelly, because I hate to waste anything. For a long time he played along and pretended he didn’t know, but then one day he looked up at me and smiled and said, “You put the old stuff in with the new stuff, didn’t you?” We both laughed.

Well, I think someone is going to put the old stuff in with the new stuff in 2005. I think we’ll have more than a few S.U.V.s on the road. I think the war in Iraq will still be sticky and tricky. I think we haven’t seen the last of so-called reality shows (sigh). The Bush administration will still be here.

But there will be surprises, too. As all new years are, this will be a blend of the old with the new. I hope it tastes more sweet than bitter.

© 2004, Robin Munson

OUR GLOBAL NEIGHBORHOOD

OUR GLOBAL NEIGHBORHOOD

We heard on the news last night that there has been a catastrophic earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia, which has caused tsunamis – giant tidal waves - in many locations along the Indian Ocean. Thousands of people are known to have lost their lives, and perhaps tens of thousands or more have lost their homes and their livelihoods. Already, the pictures pouring in from Sumatra, Thailand, India and Bangladesh, are haunting me.

When I hear of a disaster of this magnitude, I generally feel as if the bottom has fallen out. I like to think of this earth of ours as a benign, bountiful mother who provides for all our needs, so long as she is respected and cared for. In the face of such a major catastrophic event, I feel helpless, impotent and frustrated. And I feel scared. You often hear people say, “There, but for the grace of God go I”. I’m not convinced that the “grace of God” has anything to do with who is selected as victims of Mother Earth’s wrath. I rather think that it comes down to a matter of who happened to be in the way of an energy wave or a tropical storm at just the right moment.

We live in Los Angeles, so we’re not exactly strangers to earthquakes. The last major earthquake here was in 1994, so, as those cheery little folks from Cal-Tech like to point out, we’re due any time, and they’re not giving us too much reason to hope that we’ll be spared what the scientists like to call “a major event”. (Doesn’t that sound like a movie premiere?) No, the best and the brightest periodically point out that we’re headed for something pretty spectacular.

Well, we’ve got our supply of bottled water, our cell phones, our first aid kits, our auxiliary lighting, our battery operated TV and radios, and our emergency suitcase packed. We’ve figured out the “safest” spot in the house. We’ve “earthquake proofed” what we can by securing objects to the wall and putting special latches on our cupboards to keep the dishes from flying out. All those provisions are of some small comfort to me.

But no matter how well prepared we may be, we cannot prevent the earthquake from coming. I would like to think that when that happens, the world will not turn its back on Southern California. There are always unexpected contingencies that arise at such times. No country, no people, no matter how advanced or affluent they may be, can single-handedly provide for all the crises that arise from a natural disaster.

This planet is our neighborhood. If our neighbors in Indonesia are in trouble, eventually, that is going to spell trouble for all of us. Last night I tried to reach the American Red Cross in order to make a donation for the victims of the earthquake. Apparently, I was not the only one! I tried several times to get through without success. Finally, this morning I went on line and made a donation. It was not huge, but even a small donation can make a difference.

Maybe we can’t control natural disasters, but we are in total control of how we respond to them. If you have a little of the Christmas spirit left, please consider a gift to our global neighborhood.

There are many ways to help. You can call the American Red Cross at 1-800-HELPNOW, or you can donate on line. Their Web address is www.redcross.org. If you would rather give some other way, perhaps you can take up a collection at your school, your church or your place of business. I’m sure there are many organizations that will be setting up drives to help. But this is really much more important than anything else I could have written about this morning.

The Red Cross has a motto: “Together, we can save a life”. And, who knows? Next time, it might be yours or mine.

© 2004, Robin Munson

PEACE

PEACE

It is December 26th. There is a hush over our house. My husband is asleep, and our cat, Henry, is curled up at the foot of the bed.

I have just made a brief tour of the wreckage that was Christmas Day, 2004. There are bits of raffia scattered all over the kitchen counter and strewn throughout the house. Pieces of red and green wrapping paper and bits of shiny ribbon no bigger than a thumbnail are distributed everywhere. Our coffee table is littered with melted-down candles of every size and description, and there are rings of purple on the blond wood from last night’s wine glasses. Unwrapped gifts are now placed haphazardly under our tree, which has dried out quite a bit since we first brought it home. We ourselves are happily worn-out and sloppy. I think we probably both gained a pound or two from all the holiday candy, cakes and cookies, which were showered down upon us like manna from heaven.

Outside, I can hear the world moving on. There are trucks and cars already out on the freeway shushing along, although the sun is barely up on this Sunday morning. I wonder where can they possibly be going. But then, I realize that there are people whose lives don’t go on hold just because of the holidays – hospital workers, convenience store clerks, news anchors, the people who magically appear to take your order when you’re just too blown out to cook breakfast.

Today I will slowly regain my equilibrium. At a leisurely pace, I will sweep, vacuum and scrub the floors, wipe the counters, put away the wrapping paper, discard the used candles, clean the glass rings from the coffee table, change the sheets, change the kitty litter, water the Christmas tree and all the other dried-out houseplants, and do the laundry which has been completely neglected for the past week.

It feels as though I’ve been on a merry-go-round for the past month and a half. Time to slow down, breathe, put away the party hats, and get ready for the coming new year. It feels very good, returning to normal, after all the hoopla.

Yesterday my Christmas prayer was for peace. For now, in this house, at least, my prayer has been answered.

© 2004, Robin Munson

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Dear Friends,

I am posting the lyric to one of my songs which I think is in keeping with the season. It was inspired by a comment made by Norman Rockwell towards the end of his life. He was responding to the criticism of his work as being unrealistic and too idyllic. (I paraphrased his answer).

This is my Christmas card to you. I wish you the happiest holiday. May God (or whoever runs the Universe) grant us all peace in the coming year.

Dona Nobis Pacem — Robin

LIKE I SEE IT/ROCKWELL

HE WAS A YOUNG MAN FROM NEW ENGLAND

AND HE HAD AN EYE FOR LIFE

AND HE MADE SUCH PRETTY PICTURES OF IT ALL

AND THE PICTURES TOLD A STORY, AN AMERICANA DREAM

AND HIS WORDS WERE PLAIN AND SIMPLE

WHEN THEY ASKED HIM WHAT IT MEANS

(HE SAID). . .

I PAINT IT LIKE I SEE IT

LIKE I WANT THE WORLD TO BE

CAUSE I CAN’T ACCEPT THIS DARKNESS

THAT’S BEEN PLACED IN FRONT OF ME

OH YES I WANT IT, SO I PAINT IT

AND I PRAY THAT SOME SWEET DAY

THE WORLD WILL BE MORE BEAUTIFUL

AND I CAN PUT THIS BRUSH AWAY.

AND HE HELD A MAGIC MIRROR UP

SO THAT ALL OF US COULD SEE

THE SIDE OF US THE HEADLINES WOULDN’T SHOW

THE MOTHER AND THE BABY, THE FATHER AND THE SON

AND HE TOLD WHAT HE BELIEVED IN

WHEN ALL WAS SAID AND DONE

(HE SAID). . .

I PAINT IT LIKE I SEE IT

LIKE I WANT THE WORLD TO BE

CAUSE I CAN’T ACCEPT THIS DARKNESS

THAT’S BEEN PLACED IN FRONT OF ME

OH YES I WANT IT, SO I PAINT IT

AND I PRAY THAT SOME SWEET DAY

THE WORLD WILL BE MORE BEAUTIFUL

AND I CAN PUT THIS BRUSH AWAY.

OH, WE CHOOSE THE LIFE WE’RE LIVING

WE SAIL THE COURSE WE SET

AND I BELIEVE THE BEST CAN HAPPEN

CAUSE IN THE END, WE MAKE THE LIFE WE GET

AND NOW I SING THIS SONG FOR CHILDREN

AND FOR CHILDREN WHO’VE GROWN OLD

AND CHILDREN ARE SO FRAGILE

THAT THEY BELIEVE THE THINGS THEY’RE TOLD

(THAT’S WHY I). . .

SING IT LIKE I HEAR IT

LIKE I WANT THE WORLD TO BE

AND I WON’T ACCEPT THIS DARKNESS

THAT’S BEEN PLACED IN FRONT OF ME

OH, YES I WANT IT, SO I SING IT

AND I PRAY THAT SOME SWEET DAY

THE WORLD WILL BE MORE BEAUTIFUL

AND I CAN PUT THIS SONG AWAY

THE WORLD WILL BE MORE BEAUTIFUL

AND I CAN PUT THIS SONG AWAY.

© 2004, Art and Robin’s Music

PLAYING HOOKY

PLAYING HOOKY

Of course, one good thing about having a cold is that nobody expects anything of you.

Let’s just say, for example, you’re expected to show up at an annual Christmas gathering where you’ve never felt entirely comfortable. Well, you can call the host and plead infirmity. Voila! You’re off the hook! (If there is a note of doubt in the voice at the other end of the phone, allow yourself one polite little cough to make your point).

Suppose you are expected to cook the turkey for Christmas dinner. Well, you don’t want to spread all of those cold viruses around to the guests, so once again, you can say something polite like, “I don’t want to sneeze on the turkey”. Your worries are over. (Besides, you can’t very well cook the turkey and then not show up at Christmas dinner).

Now, let’s suppose that you’ve been shopping and wrapping presents for the past three weeks. Your house has gone to wrack and ruin. There are ants on the kitchen counter. There is mold on the bathroom tile. There are dust bunnies flying around every room. The windows are smudged. The laundry basket is overflowing. You’re in luck. Your partner takes one look at your pitiful face and says, “Lie down. I’ll do it.” Once again you have the option of dramatizing the moment for effect. You could say, “No, no darling! Let me! You’ve been working so hard!” Then you have the added pleasure of appearing virtuous in spite of the fact that you are stretched out on the couch eating bon bons and leafing through a magazine while your husband does the dishes.

When I was a very young child, I hated school. As a matter of fact, I hated school until I went back as a graduate student at the age of thirty. (But that’s another story for another day). Anyway – I was not above faking a stomachache or a headache or a sore throat. It wasn’t so much that I lied about it, but rather I would take the tiniest bit of discomfort, real or imagined, and would magnify it just enough for my mother to keep me at home “as a precaution”. Sometimes she would call Dr. Silverberg, bless him. He was the old fashioned kind of pediatrician with a little black bag and wire rim spectacles that would come to our house. He would look down my throat, examine my ears, and palpate my tummy. Then he would take my temperature. This was the true litmus test. If I had a fever, he would pronounce me officially sick. Then (to my horror) he would give me a shot of penicillin. More than once I was shocked because I knew I wasn’t “that sick”. Or was I? (Did Dr. Silverberg give me placebo shots to scare me out of my hypochondria?)

But the upshot of all my shenanigans was that I got to stay home and watch old movies on TV. That was my secret guilty pleasure. I loved to watch movies from the thirties and forties. If there was a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical on that day, I was in heaven. (“Heaven – I’m in heaven. . .” I would sing along with Fred). My mother must have wondered that I was such a cheerful little sickling.

When I was thirteen I contracted viral pneumonia, somehow. I was sick in bed for two weeks, and this time, I was really, really sick. I couldn’t stop coughing. I had a high fever. I couldn’t keep anything down and got a terribly undernourished look. For the first time in my young life, I understood that being sick is not a good thing. But the consolation prize then, as now, was to be totally without responsibility, except to take my vile-tasting medicine and to rest as much as possible. So I was able to watch old movies to my heart’s content. I watched classics like “Casablanca”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” (loved Shirley Temple – wanted to be Shirley Temple), “The Wizard of Oz”. I feasted on movies for two whole weeks.

Some time between first grade and the winter of my pneumonia, my mother caught on to my scheme. She wisely realized that I was actually teaching myself how to make myself sick in order to stay home from school. Not wanting to reinforce that behavior, she actually began to let my sisters and me have a day off school once in a while. We didn’t have to be sick, either. She would keep us at home and let us play Monopoly or Scrabble, do arts and crafts, and of course, watch movies. She would then calmly write each of us a note the next day saying, “Please excuse Robin’s (Michele’s, Sherry’s) absence from school yesterday. She was sick to her stomach”. I was sick to my stomach, alright. Sick to my stomach of school.

So, if you are among the millions of Americans who find themselves just a teensy bit under the weather on Christmas Eve, my advice is to play hooky. Get plenty of fluids, rest, and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life”. You’ll feel better in no time.

© 2004, Robin Munson

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

In spite of our colds, Art and I spent the day yesterday in that old holiday tradition of buying a new car. We’d been having trouble with the old car off and on for as long as we have had it, and so we decided to go for something a bit more dependable this time around. I know you think I’m going to talk about the process of buying a car, which is interesting in and of its self, but I’m not. I want to tell you about the people I met in the process; a subject of much greater interest to me.

We dealt with three different sales people yesterday. I’m not sure what their official titles are, but each one had a substantial hand in helping us. Each of them was so surprising!

First, there was a middle-aged Mexican-American man. (I’ll call him Ruben). Ruben was so unassuming, so low-keyed, and so friendly, that at first I thought maybe he was a recent hiree in training who was just helping out the sales staff on a very busy day. He sat us down and went to get the car, which was parked behind many other cars. He had to move all the cars just to get to the one we wanted to test drive. He returned about ten minutes later and ushered us to the car. He politely opened all the doors, lifted the hood and opened the trunk. He said nothing more than what was absolutely necessary. He answered our few questions simply and quietly.

Then, while we were driving the car, he told us that he had been with the company for over twenty years selling cars. He opined that the car we were interested in was a good car, but that it had “too much power” for him – that it scared him a little. He mentioned his grown daughter, and how he had bought her one of these cars, but had opted for the one with a little less power, feeling it was a safer option.

As we sat at the desk inside the showroom, Ruben asked us about our livelihood. When he heard that we were musicians, his face lit up. He told us that he had just taken his family to see the movie of “Phantom of the Opera”. They had seen the stage version many times. He had also recently seen the Baz Luhrman production of “La Boheme”, which he thoroughly enjoyed. He and his family had already bought tickets for “Les Miserables” and he was very much looking forward to the experience. As we sat filling out our credit application, I looked over at Ruben and noticed he was wearing a very tiny diamond stud in his ear.

Then there was a young woman of about twenty-three, also of Mexican descent, but she had been born in this country. (I’ll call her Sarita). Sarita talked very fast and had a hint of the Valley girl cadence to her speech pattern (You know – The “upspeak” where every declarative statement is made to sound like a question because the voice goes up at the end?).

At first, I imagined that she was going to be the “smooth talker” who would try to persuade us to spend more than we wanted to spend on all the bells and whistles attached to the car. But when Sarita asked us what we did for a living, and when Art told her we were musicians, she broke out in a big grin. “Me, too!” she exclaimed. “I am a mariachi musician!” Sarita plays guitar and sings in a mariachi band. And like Art and myself, Sarita and her husband share their musical interests. (Her husband plays violin). Sarita and her husband both have “day jobs” along with touring in their bands. I was amazed by her sheer energy and openness. Before we left Sarita gave us one of her cards and wrote down the name of the restaurant where she plays at night with her all-girl mariachi band. Even though it’s a pretty long drive from where we live, I think we’ll have to go out and hear her play.

Finally there was a bespectacled gentleman in his sixties wearing a sport jacket and tie who came in to ask us more questions for the credit application. (I’ll call him Joseph). Art, making friendly conversation, asked Joseph how long he had lived in Los Angeles. This launched Joseph into a very condensed version of his life story.

Joseph was a black man from Mississippi. His mother had abandoned him at birth. He never knew his father. He had lived the first nine years of his life with his grandmother in Mississippi, but at the age of nine, his mother had reappeared and taken him to live with her in Los Angeles. Being suddenly dropped out of the sky, as it were, in a totally strange culture where the school system was very different than the rural one he had experienced in the South, Joseph almost got lost in the shuffle.

He managed to get through school for the next few years without really learning to read fluently. He dropped out of high school. Then, he somehow managed to land a job selling cars at this very dealership without knowing how to read or write a contract. Soon he was enrolled in night school and within six months he had earned his G.E.D. His next hurdle in life was overcoming an alcohol addiction, which he obviously had done quite successfully. I watched him as he perused our contract carefully. I was incredibly impressed.

Oh, by the way, we did get our car, and we’re very happy with it. But we got so much more along the way! I don’t know if or when we will ever see any of these remarkable people again, but I’m so grateful to have known them, however briefly. I am constantly reminded that no one and nothing can be judged by outward appearances. Ain’t life grand?

© 2004, Robin Munson

WINTER COLDS

WINTER COLDS

My father-in-law gets a cold every winter like clockwork. If you ask him how he feels some time between December and March, he will inevitably say, “Oh, I’ve got my winter cold”. It’s not exactly that he likes having a cold in winter; it’s just that he expects it. We develop a strange, grudging fondness even for unwelcome-but-regular visitors.

Now, Art and I both have colds. As a matter of fact, Art is over on the sofa right now alternately coughing and swearing. It’s not really a surprise, since everyone we know has had a cold within the last two months, and everyone we don’t know, as well. Last week we were at a restaurant and I witnessed our waiter turn away from the table to sneeze. I saw that he tried to cover his mouth and nose, which I appreciated, since he was carrying our food.

The form of the winter cold is always fascinating. I guess the viruses keep mutating, so you’re never quite sure how they will manifest. Art has been coughing for two weeks, and I’m pretty sure his cold had its origin in Connecticut where we visited with his family for ten days. His mom’s cough sounded exactly like the one he is sporting here in California. My cough is a little different than Art’s. Art and his mom have the “dry” type of cough. The kind where it sounds like a bad actor trying to pretend to have a cough. My cough, on the other hand, has a subtly different nuance. It starts out dry, but ends up by squeezing my chest uncontrollably into a wheeze. My mom’s cough, on the other hand, was more of the rattling type. Thank God, she’s over it. (Mom has other health concerns, so she can’t afford to get a common cold). I think maybe my cough is a hybrid of the coughs on both sides of the family.

My older sister had a cough for quite a few weeks, but she seems to be over it now. She described her own cough as a “dry little cough”, and she didn’t seem to have any other symptoms. However, her “dry little cough” lasted for months, so she was finally forced to take drastic action and consult with a doctor.

Oh, that’s another thing about colds. Everybody says, “It’s just a cold”. Well, they’re right – it’s not a life-threatening disease. On the other hand, everybody gets fairly miserable with a cold. It disrupts your sleep and the sleep of anyone within earshot. It makes you feel kind of lousy in general. And it puts a crimp in your social life to boot, because (if you have any sense at all) you don’t want to spread it around. And yet, so few people seem to do anything about their colds.

Sure, you can go to the drugstore and get a dizzying array of nostrums and remedies. There’s anything from decongestants to cough suppressants to homeopathics. Conventional wisdom is, you can take the medicine and the cold will last two weeks, or you can not take the medicine and it will last a fortnight. If everyone were convinced of that, no one would buy the medicine to begin with. But here is the confounding part. Everyone buys the medicine. And almost nobody takes it.

I have observed this in certain people who shall remain nameless. If you look in their medicine cabinet, on their nightstand, in their refrigerator, in their kitchen cupboards, or on the bathroom sink, you will notice every conceivable kind of cold remedy. Typically, though, they take one dose immediately upon purchase. The verdict is: “It tastes awful”, or “It makes my stomach queasy”, “It makes me drowsy”, or simply, “It doesn’t work”. Then there is the aging hippie objection: “Look at all these chemicals! I’m not taking this stuff!” There are logical answers to all of these objections:

It tastes awful because it’s medicine. It makes you queasy because you took it on an empty stomach. It makes you drowsy because you’re supposed to take it at bedtime. It doesn’t work because you have to take the recommended dosage (not the child’s dosage) and wait at least half an hour. If it’s a homeopathic remedy, you cannot expect one dose to do much of anything. Homeopathics, if they work at all, work after repeated doses, in my experience. And as for all those chemicals, well, that’s the stuff that’s supposed to cure you. Furthermore, if there was a real magic bullet out there, no one would buy anything else, and everyone would know what to do, and you’d never see anyone with a cold because they would have taken the magic bullet at the first sniffle.

I have another theory about why people tend to be so slow to help themselves with colds. People can’t believe they’re being brought down by a common cold. They tell themselves that if they were “any kind of a man/woman” they could lick this by sheer force of will. They don’t like to feel vulnerable to tiny microscopic organisms, so they try to defeat the illness by sheer force of denial. But just to hedge their bets, they buy the medicine. This puts us into the realm of superstition. Has that ever worked for anything?

Anyway, I’m taking everything I can get my hands on. I’m living on hot soup. Pretty soon I’m going to tie a necklace of garlic around my neck. After all, being the nice Jewish girl I am, I want to be cough-free by Christmas.

© 2004, Robin Munson

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