The Last Few Days

I have passed a few really lovely days.



On Saturday, Arabis and I went to Children's Fairyland with my friend Lisa and her son, Blue. Arabis and Blue have known each other for over two years and it is adorable to watch the two of them together. He is enamored of her and she being the strong-willed creature she is, gladly tugged him along after her. If anyone is interested, the full set of photos is here. For contrast, check out Blue and Arabis on their first trip to Fairyland together, almost two years earlier.

On Sunday, Mojo and I went to Forbidden Island to hear Meshugga Beach Party, a mock-Hassidic surf band while my mother agreed to spend the afternoon and evening with Arabis. Mojo and I got three and a half hours of alone time together, something we haven't had for far too long. After two sips of my first fruity rum drink my head began to spin and I remembered that the last meal I'd had was breakfast, having forgotten to eat lunch. Oops. We ordered food, had drinks and I got delightfully tipsy. We flirted and joked and managed to not talk about either kid for almost an hour and a half.

After Meshugga had packed up this woman came up to Mojo and I and handed me a flier for her book, Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe. We started talking and after a while she said, "You are Jewish, aren't you?"

I laughed, "No. I'm Armenian, but I get that all the time."

"Wow. I totally thought you were a member of the Tribe. That's okay. Do you still want the flier?"

I told her I did and would pass it on to a friend in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Arabis was at home with Grandma having a tea party. As Mojo and I were walking out the door I realized I had forgotten my phone and ran back in to get it. Arabis was sitting very primly at her little table while grandma sat on the sofa at the other side. She was holding out a demitasse cup and saucer to my mother and saying very properly in a mock British accent, "Would you like a cup of tea?" I melted just a little bit.

Yesterday was relatively mellow at home, culminated by two hours in the community garden. Some other tenants were there as well, and as the sun set my neighbor Brad blew bubbles for Arabis which she danced in and then gleefully popped. The two of them were laughing hysterically and I found myself sitting back in the twilight, watching and smiling and daring to think that life was actually pretty good.

I took a few 30 second videos but unfortunately cannot download them since Arabis spilled yogurt on the USB connector cable for my camera and it is dead. If anyone has a spare Sony VMC-MD1 Multi-Use Terminal Cable for Cyber-Shot cameras, I'd be eternally in your debt! I'll have to wait until the first of the month to order a new one.

Today, we got up early and made pancakes, Arabis helping me in the kitchen. I had her stir the batter and she started singing the Mexican Chocolate Song at the same time, while shaking her little hips back and forth:

"Bate, bate, chocolate
Tu nariz de cacahuate
Uno, dos, tres, CHO!
Uno, dos, tres, CO!
Uno, dos, tres, LA!
Uno, dos, tres, TE!
Chocolate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, bate, bate,
Bate, bate, CHOCOLATE!"

I had to call her padrino (godfather), Tio Riqui, and held the phone near her so he could hear her singing in Spanish. Hopefully she's going to have a good grasp of both Spanish and Armenian as well as English.

I think today we may head up to Lake Anza and go swimming. She has been asking for it since we woke up and I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Oh, before I forget, I had the oddest dream this morning. What I remember of it is this:

Robin and I are going to Cat and Peter's house for some unknown reason and we are standing at the front door ringing the bell. Only it is not their house, but a house across the street with the last two numbers reversed (this actually happened. To my mortification, I transposed the numbers of their address one night and spent 20 minutes outside the wrong house waiting for them. In my exhaustion and distraction, I was convinced that they had given me the wrong address and admonished Peter for it. But it was my fault all along). So Robin and I are standing on the porch of this yellow house, ringing and ringing the bell and finally the door answers and there they are, still in their pajamas. Cat is wearing a loose fitting, light-colored, pajama top and bottom set with white bunny slippers and Peter is clad in a pink bunny suit with attached feet that zips up the front (like the sort kids wear, only much bigger). Robin and I ask why they aren't ready and they tell us that daylight savings time has ended and it is an hour earlier than we think it is. Embarassed we apologize and offer to go have coffee on Castro Street while they get dressed. Peter is laughing at us and then I woke up.

Very strange place to live, my brain. Hope you all have a magical day. We're going swimming!

Brian Dall'Armi

I wanted to get out a public post for any of our lost and scattered Tribe who may google Brian's name in search of information.

Photo by Peter Overstreet of Brian and Cat Taylor, February 2007

Brian Dall'Armi
5 August 1946 - 9 August 2008

Brian died last night a few minutes before midnight. Nell was at his side.

I spoke to Nell for almost an hour today and here is what she wanted me to tell all of you:

"Brian got away in time to make the 12 o'clock show. There won't be any arguing over who will drive (the band) because Ricker will take over as he always did, and Bob Thomas and Brian will be goofing off in the background. Most likely, they'll both be kicked off the stage at some point.

I can hear Ricker yelling at them now: 'No Middle Eastern hootchie-coo on my stage!'

Bob and Brian will sneak off to the coffee house in the sky and sit around the table telling stories and laughing. No one else will be able to get a word in edgewise!"


The Brian Dall'Armi Memorial Tour will include stops in Vallejo, the Northern California Renaissance Faire at Casa de Fruta and the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. Exact dates have not been set at this time, but expect the Vallejo memorial to be anywhere from two to four weeks away, perhaps the beginning of September. Once plans have been solidified, I will update everyone.

Nell thanks you all for the visits and the emails she has received. She read the emails aloud to Brian in batches and is awed and blessed by the love that is coming from our community, our family. Many stories made her cry, more made her laugh and a few she hadn't even heard before.

She also wants to thank everyone for their offers of help. She has more than enough food in the refrigerator and even more in the freezer, and asks that everyone save their food and beer offerings for the memorial. She did mention most emphatically: NO CASSEROLES!

Please feel free to contact Nell by email but to refrain from calling as she still has many details to iron out and needs to keep the phone relatively open. If anyone would like her email, please comment here with an address I can reach you at privately and I will send you that information.

I was able to spend the afternoon with Brian and Nell yesterday. Many of the Brunos and other friends have been coming by in the last five days to sit by Brian's side and play music for him.

Brian was loved and respected for his many talents and he will be sorely missed. Another fiddler has joined that amazing band in the afterworld.

Goodbye

There are things it's hard to let go:
The turn of a head
a look
the sound of a laugh

So the shock of seeing is tempered by a misleading familiarity
Despite the years, I smiled
Despite the years, I wanted to embrace you

That is my own foolish nature
I soften as I age
as the gray in my hair curls
as my daughter grows tall
This is what comes of laughing every day
a hope for the future and a sense of forgiveness
of myself and of you

Because what I remember is your laughter

So I smiled and opened my heart

It missed, you know
That dagger flung so casually
Shattered at my feet
The bitterness that you have become
Dissipated like fog before a breeze

Some women deny their power
Some women revel in being what men desire
Some women live to punish those that hurt them
never acknowledging the hurt they themselves inflicted

It feels like an undeclared war
that should be over
Not nurtured and cherished
I feel a chill from unexpected corners and realize that other doors have closed
blown shut by the winds of your influence

You've grown hard and brittle

I watched you across the room like a stranger who captures your attention
because they remind you of another
But it was clear you were unknown to me
The unfamiliar you in a form so like yet unlike
I felt like I could reach out and settle you gently in the palm of my hand
a fragile figurine
a walking voodoo doll cursing only herself

I say goodbye and go through the doors already open
The ones opening daily

There is a hole in my heart shaped like you
That no other can fill
It gets smaller with time
I'll always miss you and mourn a lost reconciliation
But I'll never lower myself to you

I love you
I mourn you
I walk forward

Friendship

I am amazingly grateful and blessed to have this woman in my life.

We survived our parents.
We survived being poor.
We survived depression.
And, damn it, we're going to survive motherhood, too!

I love you, Shemena.

In Which Our Author Crumbles

At last. I have been desperate to write all week and the time to do it has eluded me. Arabis has hit a new high in teething misery and hasn't been sleeping at night. Therefore, neither have I. She's been napping during the day, thank the gods, and though that is an opportune time to write I find myself joining her in the land of dreamy dreams instead.

So now I sit here and stare at the screen with my lids getting heavier and heavier. It's cold and rainy. Has been all week. I've got bread dough attempting to rise in the kitchen and I am praying it will do so though I am beginning to have my doubts. It's too damn chilly in this loft.

I have stopped counting the deaths that have occurred this year. I can't keep track. On Friday I learned of the death of another close friend by drowning. His name was Jorge and I worked with him for many years teaching sea kayaking. He was killed in a kayaking accident in Mexico and his body was never recovered.

Learning of Jorge's death stripped me of any last vestige of "strength in the face of adversity" that I had left. I broke down over the weekend. Called my director at the Dickens Fair on Saturday morning and said I would be unable to make it this weekend (something I have never, ever done {i.e.: not honor a theatrical commitment}). I spent the weekend with my little warped family, cuddling with Arabis and Mojo, watching telly, eating soup, regaling Mojo with stories of kayaking exploits we (Jorge and I) had shared and crying. But it was what I needed. The world had suddenly become sharp and painful and I needed to retreat to a place of greater safety.

Come Monday morning I felt almost human again.

And the irony of this all? All week I have been frantically searching the time to sit and pour my little dark soul out into the ether. So here I am, having achieved my goal of the time to write, and all the words that I had been forming in my head are gone. All the witty stories and pithy sayings I have been mentally composing to get me through the lack of sleep and frustration of being unable to provide long-term relief to my miserable toddler: gone. I have nothing left.

I guess sleep it is for me.

The River is Wide, The River is Deep

I spent a long time sitting on the floor with Arabis just watching her. The pants which were last week too long and required rolling up a few times now fall just where they should at her ankle. Her hair seems to have had another growth spurt as well and is beginning to wave slightly away from her head and behind her ears, like a strangely winged bird. She looks like a little miniature human now (not that she didn't before).

She is her own person, my daredevil daughter; climbing up the dining room chairs to stomp on the table. Other milestones include:

• Opening the bottom storage compartment on the oven to play with the pots and lids.
• Getting into the bread crumbs and spilling them on the concrete floor where she proceeded to make snow angels.
• Climbed out of the restraint system of her high chair, then climbed the rest of the way down while I was doing the dishes. I admit, I stopped to watch her do it, only intervening at the last minute to prevent her plummeting to the concrete floor.
• Has completely rearranged my tupperware drawers. I found a rubber penguin bathtub toy in amongst the lids this morning.
• Once again got into the croutons and fed them to the cat.
• Walked to the refrigerator, opened the door, took a sip from her bottle, put it back, closed the door and walked away.
  

The weasel's getting clever. We're doomed.

Today has been a strange, quiet day. I am tired and feeling anti-social. Not that I don't want company, but walking out amongst the people is a feat too daunting for me.

Mojo also woke on the wrong side of the world this morning. He was visited by strange dreams. He said I tried to push him in front of a car. I'm not even going to hazard an analysis.

My forehead aches. I have a piece of brain stuck there. And it hurts.

Ari came over for dinner last night and we looked through her photo albums. Memories of a shared past, people we both knew, others who I didn't but were central to her life, we all had such a wonderful upbringing at the Faire. And then, in amongst the myriad of faces, Robin's would appear; here as a teenager, there as a man. And we would be quiet for a moment in grief.

My daughter kept turning back to one page in Ari's book, with a particularly striking photo of him. Over and over she would turn back and there he would be.

Sigh. No point to this post, other than grief. Also joy. A strange dichotomy.