Won't you be my neighbor?

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of neighbors.  Maybe it’s because when I was growing up we didn’t really have them.  We essentially lived in the woods and none of our neighbors were visible.  Sure, you could hear them if they fired a shotgun or started up their chainsaw or four-wheeler or something, but I didn’t have that quintessential cul-de-sac experience where I could get to know my neighbors, watch them coming and going, and pretty much keep track of what was happening in their lives.

My first real experience with having neighbors was my freshman year of college in the dorm.  It was novel and delightful to live in such close proximity to my peers.  Being able to walk out my front door and end up in a friend’s room seconds later was a big shift from always having to make arrangements to drive or be driven anywhere from 10 minutes to a half hour get to my friends’ houses. 

About halfway through my freshman year, the girl who lived directly across the hall dropped out of school, leaving the room vacant.  I had not gotten to know her and I still had other neighbors, but her absence felt like a small step back to a more isolated living situation and it bothered me.  The room sat empty for what felt like quite a while, until I came home from class one afternoon to find the door of the room open and boxes stacked inside – finally, we were getting a new neighbor.  It would have been easy, not to mention rational and mature, to knock on the door and introduce ourselves, but for whatever reason, my roommate and I took turns monitoring the peep hole and making what we thought were nonchalant trips to the bathroom to see if we could get a glimpse of our new neighbor.  When we finally saw her, we were intrigued and pleased.  She was equal parts Goth and Rave with ripped up black clothes, vivid dyed-red hair and piles of jewelry – bright plastic mixed with heavy silver.  She was clearly not one of the all-too-common sorority girl types and we considered that to be a very good thing.  Unfortunately our new neighbor was completely uninterested in meeting any of us.  I think the best I ever got was a muttered “hey” as she slipped into her room before shutting the door.  She wasn’t mean or rude, we just rarely saw her, which made her that much more intriguing.  In fact, the only thing more intriguing than her was her boyfriend, Captain America.  That wasn’t his real name, or at least I don’t think it was, but that’s what we called him because of the red and white striped Lycra pants he wore with black combat boots and an overly-studded leather jacket. 

The Captain Americas were good, if somewhat strange neighbors (and I say “they” because we were quite certain Captain America was living in the dorm even though he didn’t seem to attend the university.)  They were mellow and minded their own business.  Shortly after they moved in, they embarked on a mysterious and epic project.  We caught glimpses of lumber and paint being hauled into the room and occasionally heard hammering sounds.  One evening their door was halfway open and I subtly peeked inside as I walked by.  What I saw was beyond perplexing – a bright green picket fence standing in the middle of the room.  Art installation?  Indoor garden?  Class project?  We never did find out.  After the construction stopped, the Captain Americas threw a party; presumably to celebrate the fence’s completion.  One of their guests threw up at the end of the hallway, just past our rooms.  The puddle of puke sat through the next day and eventually dried, at which point Captain America vacuumed it up.  My roommate and I had given up trying to figure out the green picket fence and didn’t think much about the party or the puke until the next time we used the shared vacuum.  Then it all came rushing back – literally.  We plugged the machine in and started it up.  A few moments passed before it hit us both at the same time – the rancid odor of vomit being blown, in the form of hot air, throughout our room.  Gagging, we struggled to turn the vacuum off as it continued to blow puke-air.  We finally gave up and left it running in the middle of the room as we ran to the hallway window, gasping for fresh air.  I don’t remember how long it took us or how we determined who got the job of going back in to unplug the thing; I’ve probably blocked it from my mind.  I do remember that the vacuum was sent away for deep cleaning and our windows were left open for many days.  I lived in the dorm all four years of college.  I had neighbors that were as uptight as elderly librarians and neighbors who seemed to be practicing for careers in the porn industry and neighbors who became wonderful friends, but no one ever topped the Captain Americas in terms of interesting neighbors.

The first apartment I had on my own after college was on Belmont and Howell in the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.   My building was called The Emerald Arms and it was colorful neighbor headquarters.  My first look at the building was on a sunny spring afternoon.  I called on a studio that was advertised in the paper and was told that while the unit was likely taken, I could come and take a look.  My friend Marla came along to keep me company and provide a second opinion.  The Emerald Arms is a lovely, old, six-story, brick building, covered on two sides with ivy.  Directly behind it, canceling out the idyllic ivy vibe is a bright orange garage with no roof.  Or maybe it’s a parking lot surrounded with bright orange walls.  Either way, Marla thought it was weird.  As it turned out, the weird was just beginning.  Julia, the building owner, answered the door with her long hair braided and wrapped into buns atop each ear à la Princess Leia, except Julia was 60-some years old, five feet tall and chubby.  She was wearing enormous round glasses and an alarming number of silver and turquoise necklaces.  Her flowing white blouse was cinched with a belt that had more heft and bling than a heavy-weight boxing champion could handle.  Julia showed us around the building and I was immediately smitten.  While the outside of the building was classic and dignified, the inside was anything but.  The hallways on each of the six floors were sponge-painted various electric shades of orange, pink, blue and purple.  The studio that had been advertised was a corner unit on the first floor.  Julia pointed to a tree outside the window.  “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked, “When you look out the window it’s almost like you’re living in the country!”  Marla and I traded glances; clearly Julia didn’t know she was talking to two girls who grew up in the forests of rural southern Oregon.  The tree outside the window on Howell Street was about as far from the country as either of us could imagine and that was fine by me because being in the country wasn’t a selling point anyway.  It wasn’t the tree that did it, but I was, in fact, sold. 

Marla thought I was more than a little crazy, but the Emerald Arms spoke to me.  It was home to an autistic musician, who marched through the sixth floor hallways practicing his trombone at all hours, a kilt-wearing handyman who could fix anything and a number of other oddballs and eccentrics.  Julia left Christmas trees in the stairwells through August (a fire code violation of horrific proportions my architect husband would later point out) and rotting pumpkins in the laundry-room until April.  She left a basement window open a crack and put out bowls of cat food, making the building home to who knows how many stray felines.  I came to refer to The Emerald Arms as “The Island of Misfit Toys” and, at that time in my life, I felt like a bit of a misfit.  So, despite Marla’s are-you-sure eye rolls, I gave Julia my number and told her to please call me if an apartment was available.  The unit with the “country view” ended up being taken, but a couple of weeks later, I got a call about a studio on the bright blue second floor.  I took it immediately, thus beginning six wonderful and interesting years at the Emerald Arms. 

In addition to the colorful residents of my building, the transitional, low-income building next door was jam-packed with fascinating neighbors.  One evening, after just moving in, I was folding laundry near the window in my apartment and someone started yelling.  “Hey!  You!  Knock it off!  Goddamn it, you better stop that shit right now!”  I carefully peeked out my window and saw a man from the building next door yelling up at what seemed to be my window.  “I see you, you asshole!” he shouted.  I panicked and ducked.  His yelling stopped but I crawled around on my hands and knees for a good 15 minutes, heart-pounding, wondering if he was really talking to me.  Nobody ever accused me of being a domestic goddess, but I didn’t think my laundry-folding methods were THAT offensive.  Several months later, I came home one night to find the street in front of my apartment closed and filled with police cars and ambulances.  A small crowd of people had gathered and I joined them, hoping to figure out what was going on.  A nice man with three little boys filled me in – a resident of the neighboring building had been shot in an altercation inside the building.  We continued chatting as we watched the police work and it didn’t take long to figure out that my new acquaintance was the man who had been shouting up at my window that day.  “Oh no!” he said, “Did you think I was yelling at you?”  It turned out he wasn’t yelling at me.  He was yelling at the man who lived in the unit below mine who had a habit of coming home every evening, settling down on his bed and masturbating with the curtains wide open, right when the three little boys were trying to do their homework.  I didn’t know whether to be relieved that he hadn’t been yelling at me or horrified about the pervert living directly below me. 

After a couple of years in the studio, I moved to a one bedroom on the neon orange and pink third floor, where my neighbor was a 40-something, chain-smoking, heroin addict who made her living as a maid and played bass in a rock band at night.  She was always coming and going with her bass in one hand, a cigarette dangling out of her mouth and her ancient vacuum cleaner dragging along behind her.  She was a quiet neighbor, but I lived in constant fear that she would pass out and burn the building down with one of her cigarettes.  During my last year at the Emerald Arms, my now-husband and I got engaged and he moved in, leaving his larger and much nicer apartment because his landlord did not allow cats and I had two.  Had there been any question about how deeply Matt loved me, his willingness to move into The Emerald Arms would have put those doubts to rest.  In the year and a half we lived crammed in the small space together, Julia inexplicably had his truck towed from the parking spot we paid for, causing us to spend a very long, rainy night waiting outside a sketchy tow-lot to pay hundreds of dollars to get the truck back.  She also lost the kilt-wearing handyman and replaced him with a well-intentioned alcoholic that we routinely found passed out in hallways, with the ring of master building keys in plain view.  Some thoughtful neighbor started letting bums and addicts into the building to sleep in the basement and to top it all off, a couple of prostitutes began turning tricks inside the bright orange garage walls.  So, as much as I loved the Emerald Arms, the time came to move on. 

We bought our house in December of 2001.  Moving into a house in a neighborhood was strange.  Even though I never got to know my apartment neighbors – we always allowed each other the psychological distance that living in such close physical proximity requires – it felt odd to be in a building, however small, all by myself.  And it was so quiet!  There were no hookers screaming in the street at 3 a.m. that they wanted the money they just earned and they wanted it “now, goddamn it!”  There were no people hanging out windows telling the skater boys who were practicing their ollies and kickflips at midnight to “Shut the fuck up!”  It was eerily quiet.  That is, until we met Carol.  Carol is our next-door neighbor to the north.  One evening, the doorbell rang and there she was, dressed in head-to-toe red and green, wearing a headband with reindeer antlers, holding a plate of Christmas cookies and exclaiming, “Welcome, neighbors!”

Carol-watching quickly became an entertaining pastime.  She wears floral print moo-moo dresses and giant fake flowers in her hair.  She plays banjo in an old-time band and is always going to and from gigs in some kind of crazy costume.  On the first Easter we spent in our house, I glanced out the window to see her dressed as a giant Easter Bunny, serving lemonade to her guests.  Carol leaves her Christmas lights up year-round and her backyard is perpetually decorated in a summery Hawaiian luau theme.  She is a widow, but is constantly surrounded by her children, her children’s spouses and ex-spouses, her grandchildren and lots of extended family.  Before he died, Carol’s husband was a member of the SEAFAIR pirates – the band of men who spend every summer dressing up like pirates and storming Seattle area beaches, festivals and parades.  Carol still has pirate gatherings at her house and proudly flies the Jolly Roger from her porch. 

Carol is wacky, but she’s a great neighbor.  She has lived in her house forever and knows everyone.  She has parties with people doing karaoke in the driveway and drum circles in the backyard, but she always shuts things down at a reasonable hour.  Her seemingly endless family goes crazy on the 4^th of July, setting off more fireworks than the rest of the city combined, but she shoos them into the street if they get too close to houses and she insisted they take the whole operation to the far end of the block the year that Chester was only a few days old.

My all-time favorite Carol story took place one December night.  Matt was away on a work trip and I was going about my routine of getting Chester ready for bed when a phone started ringing.  It rang and rang and rang and then stopped.  A few minutes passed and it started again . . . it rang and rang and rang and then stopped.  The pattern continued and it started getting a little creepy.  We couldn’t figure out exactly where the sound was coming from.  I kept looking over to Carol’s house because she and her sons have a habit of talking on the phone on the porch, but nobody was there.  It was freezing cold and snowing – not even Carol’s clan would choose to take the cordless outside in that weather.  The more I listened, the more it sounded like the eerie unanswered ring was coming from our basement.  I imagined horror movies and CSI episodes; surely The Cell Phone Killer was hiding in my basement, waiting for me and my sweet baby to go to sleep.  Once I got Chester to bed, I decided to investigate.  There was no way I was heading down to the basement without checking all other alternatives first.  I could hear the audience yelling at me, “Don’t go down there you idiot!  The killer is down there!”  The ringing continued at odd intervals and I kept looking.  Finally I went out onto the porch and noticed the dome light on in Carol’s car.  It was snowing and I was dressed in just slippers, sweat pants and a short sleeved t-shirt, but I cautiously inched into Carol’s driveway, where I saw her – facedown across the front seat of her car, her legs sticking out the driver’s side door.  I was sure she had fallen victim to The Cell Phone Killer or perhaps keeled over from a heart-attack.  I called out her name, which caused her to pop up and smack her head on the door. 

The good news was that Carol was not dead and The Cell Phone Killer was not in my basement.  The bad news was that Carol had lost her cell phone and once I was standing in the driveway with her, I felt compelled to help her look for it.  Again and again Carol went into the house to use the landline to call her cell phone.  It rang repeatedly, as it had been doing for an hour, but it was maddeningly difficult to pinpoint the exact location.  We searched her car top to bottom.  We looked under the car.  We tore apart the trash and recycle bins.  We groped through dried leaves and debris in basement window wells.  Finally ready to give up, I looked under the car one more time and saw a flash of bright pink.  I got down in the snow, reached as far as I could and managed to get my hand on the object, but it wouldn’t budge.  That seemed weird until I realized it was UNDER the tire of Carol’s car.  “Hey Carol,” I called out, “I think I found it . . . you need to back your car up.”  Sure enough, there it was and besides the battery cover having popped off, it was totally fine.  I was freezing, my slippers were soaked through and it was only then that I realized the full ridiculousness of the situation.  Not only was I out in the snow, rescuing a run-over cell phone that I thought was a violent serial killer, I was doing it for my crazy neighbor who was dressed as one of Santa’s elves, complete with Santa hat, green felt skirt with jagged edges, red and white striped tights and little green boots with curly toes.  I believe some jingle-bells were also involved.   

We have lots of nice neighbors now in addition to Carol – the family to the south with three teenagers, the friendly empty-nesters who drink wine and listen to classic rock on their front porch and the elderly woman who was born in the house behind ours.  There is the family across the street – likable, despite their very loud diesel truck and the fact that they put the Baby Jesus out in their manger scene before Christmas day every year.  (I have no idea why this is a problem because I’m a raised-without-religion-heathen, but it drives Matt crazy.  Apparently every self-respecting Catholic on the south side of Chicago knows that you do NOT put the Baby Jesus out until Christmas day.)  There are several other families with young children, including Chester’s little friend Kyrah who lives on the other side of Carol.  Listening to Chester and Kyrah talk to each other across Carol’s backyard is adorable.  “Hey Kyrah, I’m playing cars!”  “Hi Chester, I’m swinging.”  “My cars go really fast!”  “You should come over and see how high I can swing!”  Their conversations go on and on that way and it makes me so happy that he has a little neighborhood friend.  Growing up in the woods was an amazing experience and I wouldn’t trade my über-urban twenties for anything, but now I finally have the neighborhood experience I dreamed about as a kid.  It’s pretty nice.    

Happy Birthday to Me

I like my birthday.  Actually, that is an understatement – a gross understatement.  I LOVE my birthday!  It is, without a doubt, my favorite day of the year, rivaled only by the day I created a birthday for my son.  I love it because it is MY day – a holiday to honor me!  What could be better than that?  Of course I love getting spoiled with presents and special treatment, but the real reason I adore my birthday is deeper than that.  Birthdays commemorate the beginning of the crazy, complicated, beautiful mess of life.  My birthday is the day my life began and that is worth celebrating.  Each year I enthusiastically embrace it as a celebration of my life, and it never fails to remind me what a wonderful life I have. 

My 8^th birthday party.  That's me sticking my tongue out on the right. 

Growing up, I had mixed feelings about having a summer birthday.  On one hand, it was a bummer that school was out and I didn’t get to have a classroom party.  On the other hand, school was out and I usually got to have a party in some cool outdoor setting, like this riverside picnic area.  Check out the hilarious food on the picnic table.  I have no recollection of the crackers called “Dixies,” but they appear to be shaped like little chicken legs.  Delicious, I’m sure.  I can’t tell what kind of soda pop we’re drinking, but it features some nice retro-70’s packaging as well.

You only turn 9 once!

I look summery and happy here at my 9^th birthday party (on the left), and the expression on my face is so strikingly similar to the way my son looks much of the time that it amazes me.  I desperately wanted a teddy bear shaped cake and my mom figured out a way to patch one together out of various cake pans.  The cake had been beautifully frosted and set on the counter, where it was ruthlessly attacked by one of our cats.  It was almost party time when we discovered the damage – an ear had been devoured – and I was devastated.  My mom thought fast and managed to sculpt a replacement ear out of the little bit of frosting she had left.  I now know that this is the kind of mom-genius that can only be pulled off, out of thin air, when you’re about to watch your baby’s heart break.  Thanks mom! 

The big 1-0

My 10^th birthday was memorable for a number of reasons.  First of all, 10 just seemed so grown up – double-digits and all.  I remember it as a very lonely and very happy birthday at the same time.  We were living in Arizona, but my birthday was spent in Oregon where we were visiting my grandma.  She was ill and my parents were cleaning and organizing her house.  I spent the summer playing by myself in the trees and streams around my grandma’s house.  I was lonely for my friends and my parents were very busy, but overall I was enjoying the adventure of it all.  For my birthday, I wanted everything to be Snoopy-themed.  My cake is old-school perfection, but the best part about this photo is the napkins.  Look carefully and behold the fabulousness.  With a little help from my Magic Markers, I transformed ordinary, plain white napkins into lovely, personalized, birthday works of art.  What can I say, I was by myself and had nothing but time.  In retrospect, I can’t decide if the crude rainbows and childish “Happy Birthday Ronda” cursive are adorable, or sad, or both.    

The picture was taken at my grandma’s kitchen table.  I think the only people there were my mom, my dad, one of my uncles, his girlfriend and her daughter.  My grandma was probably home, but sleeping at the time.  She ran a tavern, so her hours were strange and I rarely saw her when we visited.  My smile is very genuine and a little devious because “The Huckleberry Incident” had just transpired.  My grandma’s huckleberry bushes were loaded with the most juicy, wonderful berries that year.  We got a call that my uncle and his girlfriend (who my parents weren’t crazy about) were coming over to pick huckleberries.  My dad couldn’t stand the thought of the girlfriend getting the berries, so we ran outside and started picking as fast as we could.  Every time we heard a car coming, we hid.  We left just enough berries to avoid arousing suspicion, hid the heaping containers of berries in a kitchen cupboard and scurried to the bathroom to scrub the tell-tale purple stains off our hands.  I was sitting there with my cake, half laughing, half terrified that a cupboard would be opened and the berries would be discovered. 

Happy 12^th birthday!  Welcome to the awkward age. 

This was my first birthday party after having moved to Oregon.  I am opening presents on the awful avocado-green shag carpet in the living room of my parents’ house.  My dad’s gun cabinet is on display in the background, providing the perfect ambiance for a 12 year old girl’s birthday party.  My teeth are a pre-braces mess, my hair is staggeringly boring and I’m like a walking Nike advertisement with the shoes and matching logo t-shirt.  My stuffed animal gifts are an unidentified white critter with fuzzy hair and two of the side characters from the Garfield comic strip – “World’s Cutest Kitten” Nermal and Garfield’s on-again-off-again love interest, Arlene.  The girl on the far left is Amanda, who is a dear friend to this day.  I don’t know if I’ve seen so much over-the-top girlishness in one outfit before or since.  She’s got it all covered: puffy sleeves, lavender plaid, a pink teddy bear and pastel pink pants.   

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed many (well not THAT many) birthday celebrations.  Gone are the themed parties, “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” games and teddy bear cakes.  As I’ve gotten older, the birthday celebrations have changed a bit, but one thing has remained the same:  The family members, friends, colleagues and acquaintances that go out of their way to help make my day special. 

One year, my birthday fell a month or so after I had been at a conference in Las Vegas with my co-worker Cheryl.  There are a lot of things I enjoy about Las Vegas, but I am a special kind of sucker for the Bellagio Fountain.  I can watch it over and over again, and I tear up every time the accompanying song is “Time to Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman.  Cheesy?  Yes, it is.  Do I care?  No, I do not.  Anyway, my birthday rolled around and, as was tradition, my officemates gathered in our conference room to celebrate.  When I walked through the door, they created a miniature version of the Bellagio Fountain with squirt guns, complete with “Time to Say Goodbye” playing in the background.  Four years later, there are still faint water stains on our conference room walls that make me smile.

My husband travels for work a lot.  (Actually, saying he travels “a lot” is kind of like saying I “like” my birthday.)  It was inevitable that he would end up out of the country for my birthday at some point.  When it happened for the first time, I was less than thrilled.  I whined to my friend and co-worker Dea, saying something about how I felt like my parade had not only been rained on, but completely canceled.  Well, being the amazing person and wonderful friend that she is, Dea took matters into her own hands.  On my birthday, a costumed, banner-carrying, instrument-playing group of a dozen or more co-workers surprised me with a parade.  My very own birthday parade!

Yes, my co-workers are pretty great.  My division shares a floor with two other divisions and we all celebrate birthdays and baby showers and the like together.  For a stretch of time (that we have thankfully gotten past) the custom was to create and participate in various sports-themed games during birthday celebrations – mini-basketball shoots, paper football goal shooting, etc.  I dreaded these games, mostly because I’m terrible at them.  Knowing and respecting my hatred of the mini-sports games, the crew promised to plan something different for my birthday.  My boss made her famous cherry-chip cupcakes.  They are pink and sweet and, in my mind, a symbol of birthdays like the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of freedom.  They honestly had me at “pink cupcake,” but they went above and beyond by reading haiku that each person composed just for me.  Haiku!  Just for me!  Pure birthday awesomeness is what that is.

I said my best birthday gifts are the wonderful people in my life and while that is definitely true, I must admit I love presents too; especially sparkly ones.  My first memorable sparkly present came from my dad on my 13^th birthday.  He gave me a heart-shaped pendant necklace with a small diamond in the center – the first diamond he ever bought.  He bought it long before he met my mom and vowed to save it for a daughter he would have someday.  My mom and dad apparently disagreed about when I should receive the necklace.  My dad insisted he wanted to give it to me for my 13^th birthday.  My mom thought he should wait until I turned sixteen.  She argued that thirteen was too young and that I would appreciate it more at sixteen.  My dad was adamant and my mom couldn’t figure out why.  Finally he confessed his reasoning – he wanted to make sure he would be the first man to give me a diamond.  To this day, the story melts my heart, as does wearing the necklace.  Incidentally, it was a good thing he stuck to his guns and gave it to me at thirteen. 

My dad’s sentimental diamond was a tough act to follow, but the overall sparkle factor of my birthday was elevated several levels when I met my husband.  Matt has many wonderful qualities, not the least of which is his ability to choose amazing gifts.  The first birthday I celebrated with him rolled around mere months after we began dating and he set the bar high with a Lisa Jenks bracelet I had been dreaming of for years.  It was the exact one I wanted and I had never mentioned a word about it to him.  Another notable example was when he pushed a tiny box across the table at my 30^th birthday dinner and sheepishly said, “I know they’re small, but I figured a girl should have some Cathy Waterman earrings by the time she’s 30.”  His gift-giving track record has never waned and he has been tirelessly supporting/enabling (call it what you will) my jewelry habit for more than 13 years. 

I was blessed with another fantastic birthday this year, including multiple celebrations with my family; flowers, emails and phone calls from my friends; and a handmade gift and lots of birthday snuggles from my son.  I even received a text from my friend Amanda (the one in the pink teddy bear outfit at my 12^th birthday party) telling me she dreamt of participating in a surprise flash mob that did a tribute dance in my honor.  How cool would that have been?!  Oh, and I’m pretty excited about this gorgeous Monica Castiglioni ring that showed up inside the little box this year.

Tough but refined, edgy yet organic.  Birthday perfection.  (Important Note: Please focus on the ring instead of my deepening crow’s feet – proof that my wonderful birthdays also mean I’m getting older!) 



My dad, the Disaster

My dad is what you might call accident prone.  My first clear memory of one of his gory accidents is from a firewood cutting excursion somewhere in the White Mountains of Arizona.  I don’t recall exactly how old I was – probably around five.  I thoroughly enjoyed our occasional trips into the woods, as I was allowed to run around and imagine myself some sort of woodland creature or forest fairy while my parents chopped and loaded firewood.  One afternoon, the constant buzz of the chainsaw stopped and my play was interrupted, first by my dad yelling for my mom, then by my mom just plain yelling and finally by my mom yelling for me to hurry up and get in the car.  I came scurrying back to the clearing to find my dad cursing loudly and limping about, his jeans soaked in blood.  He had slipped with the chainsaw, right into his leg. 

I recall feeling mildly concerned but more disappointed that my play in the woods had been cut short.  That sounds a bit callous, but these sorts of calamities were quite common and even though the Chainsaw to the Leg Incident is the first one I have a specific memory of, I had been witnessing others since my birth.  In fact, one of my dad’s accidents is responsible for my name.  Shortly before I was born, he fell off of a barrel (I believe he was substituting it for a ladder) and knocked himself unconscious.  A little neighbor girl named Rhonda saw what happened and ran to tell her parents, who came to the rescue.  After that, my dad refused to consider any other names or even the possibility of my mom giving birth to a boy.  Ronda (no “h”) it was. 

The accidents have continued in a steady stream, ranging from relatively minor to extremely serious.  I can’t begin to count the gashes and burns and punctures and contusions.  In one particularly grisly episode, my mom’s grocery shopping was interrupted by my dad racing into the store with a piece of metal sticking out of his eye.  She was forced to leave her cart mid-aisle and rush him to the hospital.  My mom began keeping a box of bandages on the counter inside the front door because she grew annoyed with blood being splattered all the way through the house en route to the bandage drawer in the bathroom.  I haven’t lived in the same town as my parents for more than 20 years and I still can’t hear an ambulance siren without momentarily being gripped with fear and wondering where my dad is.

Me and my dad, circa 1980.  He looks normal enough.  No visible ghastly injuries.  Speaking of appearances, I must have been at one of those awkward ages.  I was getting too old for the pigtails and my teeth are all messed up – some are missing, some are growing in and many of them are saying “You, my little friend, can look forward to years of orthodontics.”

My dad’s accidents have become a bit of a family joke.  “What did Larry do this time?!”  The frequency and freakishness of his mishaps truly stand out, and I think humor is the only way we know how to handle the situation without going out of our minds with worry.  Besides, he always bounces back like some sort of indestructible cartoon character.  Until a year ago this week, that is, when he fell off a ladder and suffered a serious head injury.  My mom was at work, so we’ll never know exactly what happened, but by piecing together various clues, trails of blood and vomit, and the condition my dad was in, we are fairly certain that he fell early in the morning.  Somehow he made it into the house where my mom found him late that evening.  An ambulance transported him to the hospital and from there he was airlifted to a bigger hospital.  I was at the beach, eating ice cream with my son when I got my mom’s call.  At first I thought it was going to be the usual “boy-did-he-get-lucky” sort of scenario, but it quickly became clear that this time was different.  I remember it in slow motion – standing there with ice cream dripping onto my legs, my confused and alarmed son staring at me as I said, “Mom!  NO!” after she responded to my question, “Is he going to be alright?” with “I really don’t know.” 

The good news is that my dad is alright now, or at least as alright as he can be after the kind of injuries he sustained.  He’s alright in the sense that he isn’t dead or seriously brain damaged.  The fall broke multiple ribs and fractured his skull in three places, resulting in brain bleeds.  When I first saw him in the ICU, he knew who I was but couldn’t remember or figure out much more than that.  Given the extent of his injuries, we are thankful to have him back on his feet and doing almost everything he used to do despite occasional issues with balance and short-term memory loss.  He is also now deaf in his right ear (which was previously his “good” ear) as a result of fracturing his mastoid bone all the way through.  To commemorate the passage of a year since his fall and to celebrate the fact that it turned out much better than it could have, I decided to compile a collection of some of my dad’s most memorable accidents. 

Ski Patrol

My dad is an excellent skier, so when I was very young and just learning, his habit was to ski with me in the morning and then turn me over to my mom in the afternoon so he could hit the more advanced runs.  At the end of one crisp, sunny day on the slopes, I was riding the lift with my mom, admiring the wintery landscape, when I noticed something interesting going on below us. 

“Look, Mommy,” I said, pointing at the scene below. 

“What?” she answered distracted and tired. 

“Look, Mommy!  Over there!” 

“Oh yeah, the ski patrol.” 

“What are they doing with that person on the stretcher?” 

“Well, that skier must have gotten hurt.  They’ll carry him down the mountain.” 

“But Mommy“, I said, “It’s DADDY!”  

And sure enough, it was my dad, bleeding all over the snow and being strapped to a stretcher for transport down the mountain.  Actually “mountain” is a bit of an exaggeration, seeing as he was on the “bunny hill” when the accident happened. 

Proper Pitchfork Protocol

Undoubtedly the most dramatic dad disaster I ever witnessed happened the summer I turned nine.  My dad was burning brush in a gigantic bonfire.  I watched him use a pitchfork to scoop a stray pile of branches onto the fire.  When he put the pitchfork down, I picked it up and pretended to do what he had done.  I made the mistake of putting it back down with the prongs pointing up and got a lecture about how dangerous that is.  “You see,” my dad explained, “if you fell down, you would land right on the prongs.”  I eyed the sharp, rusty prongs, clearly understood my error, and promptly turned the pitchfork over.  The next time my dad used the pitchfork, he set it back down exactly how he had just told me not to – prongs up.  Seconds later, he tripped over a can of gasoline and fell.  From the other side of the fire, my mom and I felt a burst of flames, heard my dad screaming and saw him writhing on the ground.  We thought for sure he was on fire and ran to him as quickly as we could.  Fortunately, he was not on fire, but he did have a pitchfork sticking all the way through his shin.  My mom helped him limp to the truck, where he grabbed the pitchfork and yanked it back out of his leg.  They were arguing about who would drive to the emergency room and for some reason, my dad insisted he would do it.  You can’t really drive a car with a giant pitchfork sticking through your leg, so I guess his only option was to pull it out, but based on how much it seemed to hurt, I’m not sure it was the right choice. 

Half the Thumb it used to be

When I was in junior high, two of my best friends had birthdays in November, days apart from each other.  It became tradition to combine the festivities.  One year we had a big slumber party planned – scavenger hunts, pizza, scary movies and Duran Duran videos.  One of the moms picked us up after school on Friday.  She had a very serious expression on her face as she pulled me aside and told me that my dad had been in an accident and was at the hospital with my mom.  I smiled and said, “OK, thanks.”  She obviously had no idea what a routine occurrence this was for me and was a little thrown by my nonchalant reaction.  By this time the other girls began to gather around.  “What happened?” I asked.  “Well . . .” she tried to choose her words carefully but ultimately decided to just tell it like it was, “He, uh . . . he, um, well . . . he ground his thumb off.”  Indeed, he did.  His glove got caught and pulled into a grinder, along with his thumb.  All that was left was a bloody nub at the knuckle.  Many years and surgeries later, most of the issues have been worked out to some degree of satisfaction, besides the obvious fact that half his thumb is missing. 

If the shoe fits

My freshman year of college, my dad was coming to visit for “Dads’ Weekend” and I couldn’t wait to see him.  A few days before he was to arrive, I got a call from my mom.  There had been an accident.  My dad was working on replacing a portion of their deck.  He had been removing old boards and throwing them on a pile below.  He was taking the nails out, but he must have missed one because when he jumped off the deck onto the pile of boards (don’t ask me why he did that) a nail pierced his foot – through the sole of his shoe and right out the top of his foot.  I know nothing about varying nail sizes, except that this one was quite large.  And the most gruesome part is that it wasn’t the point of the nail that went through his foot.  It was the head.  Ouch.  A trip to the emergency room resulted in a thorough cleaning and drugs that made my dad loopy.  It was not clear whether he would be able to visit as planned.  As it turned out, he did visit.  He stopped taking the drugs after the first day (because he is loath to take even an aspirin) and managed to drive the five hours to my college campus and hobble around for a couple of days.  “Dads’ Weekend” was a success, but many more weeks passed with the wound stubbornly refusing to heal.  I begged my mom to make my dad go back to the doctor, but she had long since given up trying to force him go to the doctor against his will.  Finally, she got sneaky about it and mentioned the foot injury while they were at the thumb doctor (I wasn’t kidding when I said the issues and surgeries went on for years.)  The doctor suggested they take a little peek.  It didn’t take much to see that something was very wrong, so without telling my dad what was coming, the doctor quickly and firmly squeezed his foot until . . . out popped a perfectly round piece of shoe sole.  Note to self: a wound will not properly heal if a filthy piece of rubber is left inside it.  Note to dad: go to the doctor sooner if a wound will not properly heal.            

Q-incidence?

Just over a year ago – right before the ladder accident – my dad had an incident with a Q-tip.  “How much damage could a Q-tip possibly do?” you ask, “It’s small and white and has soft cottony tips.”  Well, in my dad’s hands, even a friendly little Q-tip can become dangerous.  He has a habit of sticking them into his ears way too far.  He’s been warned about it but claims he simply cannot clean his ears properly without the deep Q-tip technique.  As if sticking something way too far into his ear wasn’t risky enough, he tends to walk around while he’s doing it.  I’m all for multi-tasking, but it didn’t work out so well in this case.  He bumped into the side of a door, causing the Q-tip to jam deeply into his ear and break off.  He couldn’t get it out.  My mom couldn’t get it out.  The doctor at the emergency room finally got it out.  All was well . . . we thought.  About two months later, my dad fell off the ladder and completely lost hearing in his right ear.  Months of appointments with doctors and therapists and hearing aid technicians went by.  Finally someone noticed a significant amount of wax build up in his right ear that would require cleaning by a specialist.  An appointment was made.  The doctor immediately noted that there was something strange about this wax build up – something “fibrous," something like . . . hmm, what do you know??  A piece of Q-tip! 

You might think that the severe ladder fall would have put an end to my dad’s constant stream of accidents.  You would be wrong.  In the year since his head injury, he re-fractured ribs by falling down a rocky ravine and was involved in another serious fall.  This time it wasn’t my dad doing the falling – it was his friend who was three and a half stories up in a tree they were cutting down.  The friend happened to land on my dad (I’m not kidding – I couldn’t make this stuff up), which broke his fall somewhat and quite likely saved his life.  Miraculously, my dad suffered nothing more than bruises and soreness.  His friend spent days in the ICU, recovering from broken ribs, punctured lungs, a torn liver, a shattered arm bone and various cuts.

About a week ago I got a call from my mom and I felt like the accidents had come full circle.  My dad was cutting brush on a steep hill.  “He slipped with the chainsaw . . . ,” she said.  In the seconds it took her to finish her sentence, memories of my doomed playtime in the woods flashed through my mind.  “. . . It went through his shoe, through his sock and stopped just short of slicing into his foot.”  Whew, an accident narrowly avoided.

I keep hoping my 72 year old father will take up crossword puzzles or painting or anything less dangerous than his usual shenanigans, but I’m not holding my breath.  He is who he is and he does what he does, which currently involves climbing around far above the ground replacing a garage roof . . . while my mom is out of town.  If you live in Brookings, Oregon and hear an ambulance siren over the next couple of weeks, please let me know.

We’ve come a long way, baby . . . maybe?

My five year old son is a little competitive.  (I have no idea where he gets that.  Okay, maybe I do.)  During his swimming lesson last weekend, I noticed that swimming alongside a more advanced girl was motivating him to try harder.  As I watched them swimming back and forth, Chester with a float belt, lagging behind Little Miss Float Belt-Free Swimming Star, I began to feel a bit sorry for her.  She was clearly a tad competitive herself and was enjoying leading the pack.  The scene reminded me of my own athletic prowess as a little girl.  I played soccer and was always one of the top players on my team.  I was faster, more agile and scored more goals than all the boys.  I loved it.  Sadly, it was short-lived.  One year, the soccer season started up and something had changed.  Suddenly and inexplicably my superiority had evaporated.   No matter how much I practiced or how hard I played, the boys were pulling ahead.  They were faster and stronger, and while I could still out-play most of the girls on my team, I found myself doing a lot of watching the boys from the bench. 

This course of events was devastating for a competitive little tomboy, and particularly one that was being raised to believe that the possibilities for her were endless.  It was a girl-power era; my parents, like many at the time, brought me up to believe I could do and be anything.  Title IX, the famous law stating, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance . . . “ was enacted in 1972, just a month and a half before I was born.  I played sports, I was in Girl Scouts, I was encouraged to try anything I had an interest in trying and I was interested in lots.  I often joke that I’m the only kid who begged to take piano lessons and wasn’t allowed to.  I’m sure my mom would have been happy to let me take piano lessons if it had been humanly possible to fit another thing into my schedule.  While most of my friends growing up had similar experiences, I recall one elementary school friend who wasn’t allowed to be in Girl Scouts because it (gasp) “taught women to be independent.”  Oh, the horror.  My mom was skeptical of that particular friend and nearly had a nuclear meltdown when I came home from spending the night at her house once saying, “Mom, is it true what Leslie’s mom said?  She said we have to be married by the time we’re 16 or all the good men will be gone.”    

I very much grew up believing that I could do anything a boy could do (well accept that writing your name in the snow while you pee thing, which I’m still insanely jealous of because it sounds ridiculously fun and entertaining).  After The Soccer Heartbreak, I eventually accepted that, in the athletics arena, no amount of practicing or conditioning or sheer will would make up for the physical advantages of being a boy.  I moved on and focused my energy on other interests – music, art, dance and academics.  I never felt discriminated against or discouraged in any classes.  I was never shy about speaking up and voicing my opinions in school settings and felt supported by my teachers.  It was the go-girl ‘80s and I basically got the same message at school that I got at home – you can do and be anything.  As a result, I felt lucky to be growing up in a time when girls had the same opportunities as boys.  I listened in horror to my mom’s stories of limited choices of classes and extracurricular activities.  I couldn’t believe she was forced to wear dresses to her college classes, even in the bitter cold of the Eastern Washington winters.  I went to college, studied what I wanted to study, discovered a field that I loved and plowed ahead into my career, full of ambition and energy. 

My experience was similar to that which Manhattan Institute Fellow Kay Hymowitz documents in her recent book “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys.”  She argues that among pre-adults (pre-adulthood is described as the modern stage of life that encompasses the 20s and early 30s), women are the “first sex.”

“Women graduate from college in greater numbers than men, with higher grade point averages; more extracurricular experiences, including study abroad; and as most professors tell it, more confidence, drive, and plans for the future. They are aggressively independent; they don't need to rely on any man, that's for sure. These strengths carry them through much of their twenties, when they are more likely to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace, to be buying apartments and otherwise in aspiring mode. In an increasing number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.”  

Hymowitz is careful to point out that she is speaking about young women in their 20s and early 30s.  Apparently out-achieving and out-earning drops off when women enter mid-career.  This trend seemed strangely familiar to me, calling to mind my childhood soccer devastation and that’s where I got more interested.

I ended up in a field – arts administration – that is dominated, in terms of numbers, by women.  (According to a nationwide study conducted by Americans for the Arts in 2001, 78% of the staffs of local arts agencies are female.)  Early in my career, I never felt any sort of gender discrimination and the young women I know in the arts now don’t talk about feeling it either.  As I advanced, I began to notice that most of my good colleague friends – fellow managers and directors – were men.  I didn’t think too much of it at first; I fit in just fine - it was like the tomboy soccer years all over again.  Unfortunately, the analogy extends beyond just hanging out and “playing” with a lot of boys. 

Now that I’m what you might call solidly into mid-career territory, I’m noticing an uncomfortably familiar dynamic.  No matter how hard I work, the “boys” seem to be pulling ahead again, and this time it can’t be explained by physical advantages like speed and strength.  The higher ranking (and higher paying) leadership positions in the arts seem to be disproportionately filled with men, despite the fact that the majority of arts administration professionals are women. 

Could it be that in a field where women outnumber men so significantly, women are still running into the proverbial glass ceiling?  I decided to conduct my own informal research, beginning with the Puget Sound region where I live and work.  I compiled a list of the “major” arts organizations in Seattle.  My list isn’t definitive, but it’s a good sample.  Let’s take a look at the gender of Executive or Managing Directors:

-Pacific Northwest Ballet: Male

-Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs: Male (recently hired to replace the former director who was also male)

-4Culture: Male

-Seattle Theater Group: Male

-Seattle Art Museum: Male (just resigned, position currently vacant)

-Seattle Symphony: Male

-Seattle Opera: Female

-A Contemporary Theatre: Male

-Seattle Repertory Theatre: Male

-Artsfund: Male

Of ten of the largest, most influential arts organizations in Seattle, nine have men in the highest staff leadership positions.  Wow, that’s 90%.  Pretty interesting for a field filled with women.  What about our state arts commission?  The Director of the Washington State Arts Commission is Kris Tucker, a woman.  If you put Kris into the mix, that brings the percentage of women in the top position to a whopping 18%.  Next I decided to look specifically at the field of performing arts presenters in Western Washington: 

-Mount Baker Theatre in Bellingham: Male

-Kirkland Performance Center: Male

-Edmonds Center for the Arts: Male

-Admiral Theatre in Bremerton: Female (While the Executive Director is a woman, the Business Manager who handles the majority of day-to-day leadership in the organization is a man.)

-Broadway Center in Tacoma: Male

-Washington Center in Olympia: Male (interim director filling in after the exit of a long-time male Executive Director)

-Columbia Theater in Longview: Male

-Capitol Theatre in Yakima: Male

-Meany Hall/UW World Series: Female (recently hired to replace a long-time male director)  

Huh.  This seems to be a pretty strong trend.  Of nine of the major performing arts centers/presenters in Western Washington, seven are led by men.  If I count the male business manager of the Admiral Theatre and had done this tally a couple of months ago before the new director of Meany Hall had been hired, I would have come up with 100% men in top leadership positions.

I had a feeling I was onto something but I was stunned when I actually counted it up.  Surprisingly, there seems to be a solid gender bias in the arts administration world here in super liberal Seattle/Western Washington.  So is it just us?  What’s going on throughout the rest of the country?  As a sample, I looked at the Directors of state arts agencies and United States Urban Arts Federation agencies (USUAF - the arts commissions and councils of the roughly 60 largest cities in the nation.)

Of the 48 state agencies for which I could find staff information on-line, 28 are led by female Executive Directors.  That’s 59%.  Of the 56 USUAF agencies, 30 have a woman in the lead staff position – 54%.  Both more balanced figures than we have here in Western Washington.  (Perhaps a dark cloud of gender bias hangs over us like the stubborn gray hangs over Puget Sound?)  While the national figures are more promising, they still do not reflect how significantly women outnumber men in the field.  

Just as I was starting to feel more positive about the rest of the country, I came across another finding of Americans for the Arts’ 2001 Local Arts Agency Salary and Benefits Survey.  While the staffs of local arts agencies are 78 percent female, at the president/executive director level, depending on budget size, women make anywhere from 11 to 27 percent less than their male counterparts.  The study is ten years old, but Randy Cohen, Vice President of Research and Policy at Americans for the Arts notes that there have not been discernible changes in gender make up or compensation in local arts agencies over the past ten years.

Younger women aren’t noticing gender bias (I didn’t either) because it isn’t happening to them yet.  As Kay Hymowitz notes, young women are often out-achieving and out-earning their male counterparts.  And the arts world is heavily dominated by women professionals.  Apparently we make excellent assistants and program coordinators and marketing and development staff, and mid-level managers, but what is happening with those executive leadership positions?  Why aren’t more of the talented, hard-working, ambitious women that fill the ranks of arts organizations being promoted into top positions?

As a society, we seem very willing to put women on an equal playing field when it’s about hard work, dedication and doing a good job for someone else.  Who doesn’t love an employee who is smart, highly educated, hard working and motivated?  That is exactly what girls of my generation were trained to be.  Unfortunately, those traits only seem to get us so far.  When it comes to leadership – actually running the show – women are largely being kept out of the top ranks.  We’re sitting on the bench, watching the boys play, and when we do get a shot, we’re getting paid less.  Organizations are overlooking half of the talent pool – and significantly more than half in the female-dominated arts field. 

Is it that we don’t want to believe gender discrimination is still happening?  I recently attended a panel presentation on arts participation.  Specifically, the session addressed how arts organizations can respond to rapidly changing demographics and patterns of arts participation among diverse and immigrant audiences.  At some point, during the question and answer period, somebody brought up the fact that, in a session focused on increasing ethnically diverse participation, there was only one African-American on the panel.  A brief discussion ensued.  This struck me as odd considering that the presenters consisted of two Caucasian men, a Hispanic man and the African-American woman, with an Asian man as the moderator.  The panel was actually quite diverse, ethnically speaking.  What nobody brought up or even noticed was that of five panel participants, only one was a woman.   

So what’s going on?  Why is this happening?  If anybody has ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Apparently we’ve still got a long way to go, baby.