Leigh, the ultimate hostess would assign us a task for thanksgiving dinner. Mine was to grab the turkey or in later years, the pork roast with skin left on for chicharron. Call it crackling, that’s fine; I’m calling it chicharron, because that’s what it is for me. Nanner.
This year there’s no food assignments, only dessert. I picked up three pies, apple, pecan, and pumpkin and I will be baking an upside-down cake tomorrow. We’re not doing the dinner this year for a few reasons, primarily because Eileen is gone. Other reasons are that Leigh’s MIL is a PITA on a good day, nevermind an ardent trumpist, so there’s that friction point as well, and that’s for all of us. Jenny will be kind, but I’ve had quite enough of Ur-boomer nonsense to float a thanksgiving parade balloon, so Scott, Matt (her son) and I will call her on her bullshit.
I’m going to stop right here, because I’m discovering that I’m degenerating into complaint.
I was doing pretty well for a while, being diligent about entries here and more importantly, having something to say, but after my mother’s memorial and a wrestling match with covid, momentum shuddered to a stop.
We’re at the end of the first week of August, less infernal than July so far and I’ll leave it at that, because even the most empty-headed heliophile is figuring out that all sun, all the time is Not A Good Thing. I’d be perfectly happy with a summer of sub-100 degree days, but that will never be so, at least not here in this end of the valley.
I’m trying to corral the unruly herd of thoughts and ideas milling around in my head so I can write them down, but no luck, really, so stream of consciousness it is. I want a cookie and absinthe.
Absinthe, no cookie.
I don’t drink as often as I used to and nowhere close to pre-covid levels. I was a bit surprised by my desire for a drink today, and a rather exotic one at that. More importantly, at least for my weight loss efforts, I logged the drink.
Sixty is just a couple of months away. What will sixty feel like? Twelve, with a head full of experiences and a body eroded by activity and arthritis and physical labor and the diet peculiar especially to professional drivers- fast food.
2am spicy chicken burritos at the Del Taco on Alhambra near J street were a glorious mixture of rice, refried beans, cubed chicken product and cheese, with an industrial version of a tomatillo sauce tying the whole glorious package together.
If I didn’t feel like that tube of happiness, there was the rogue Burger King a block away on Alhambra that offered a version of their flagship burger with a twist- no beef patty. It was through this version of the burger, with the tomato and cheese taking the place of the patty that I learned that it wasn’t the beef, but every thing else that gave the burger its flavor, at least as far as BK’s offering went.
It’s impossible for me to order a fancified burger with a straight face.
AM/PMs were also a source of trashcan gourmet victuals for me, The burgers were, and still are reminiscent of the cafeteria burgers I’d had as a kid in both Jr. and Senior High schools, tasty but not delicious.
And suddenly that train of thought fell off of the trestle.
I’m not a fast writer; even the shortest entry takes twenty minutes or so. A lot of that time is fighting the internal editor who wants to critique everything and tells me my writing sucks, will always suck and why did you pick it up again?
I was planning on going to work today, but something still felt a bit off, so home I stayed.
It started a week ago Monday, with me feeling extra special crappy when I got home from work. I was attributing the malaise to my asthma, which had returned with vigor thanks to two very robust rainy seasons.
Asthma attacks, however, don’t come with fevers and I was feeling just that, feverish. I dig the thermometer out from whatever ADHD/Depression pile it was resting under and stuffed it under my tongue.
Dangit. Jenny immediately brought me a covid test.
Even more Dangit. I have covid.
I immediately broadcast my results to all in my office, feeling ashamed and foolish for utterly forgetting that covid is still around, still mutating and endemic.
Meaning like the flu, this shit is never going away, like we’d hoped.
Roll call over our text network revealed that one other person in the office also had covid, so of course, we two were isolating. I called Kaiser’s advice nurse, who immediately got me an appointment with my physician for the next day to discuss treatment options, with the scales tipping heavily towards paxlovid.
Tuesday came, along with the video appointment and a prescription for paxlovid- one for Jenny as well, because she had also had tested positive.
The covid fatigue was expected. What really got me was the utter forgetfulness that was presenting itself. I’d be doing something and wonder why I was even there, then remember: Oh yeah, covid.
Wednesday was a brief respite from the symptoms long enough for me to motor over to the Kaiser nearest us and grab our meds, as well as a very powerful cough suppressant that I’d taken to calling “Pearls Of Doom” due to the semi-dire warnings on the label of the medication. Due to the amplification effect that pax had with other meds, the pharmacist during the original phone appointment went over a lengthy list of side effects and meds to be discontinued- we pulled one for me, and one for Jen, to be resumed after the five-day course of three tablets twice a day was finished. “You’ll probably feel crummy during the course of the medication” the pharmacist said towards the end of the consultation. “Compared to how I currently feel?” I asked. She conceded the point.
At Kaiser, I was in and out in about fifteen minutes, that was including another mandatory consult with the pharmacist on duty. We took our first dose that evening.
Nobody warns you about the absolutely horrid taste that this medication develops when its active. Or if they did, it’s lost in the static in your head from the disease. It’s awful. Metallic and everywhere, it diminishes when it’s time for another dose.
Our final dose was Monday morning, after which we both went back to bed and woke a few hours later, around 11 A.M. I was feeling much better, but I’m also aware that this isn’t the flu and can come roaring back, even after a course of paxlovid.
From the dust of Durango, Mexico, to the dust of Delano, Earlimart and Bakersfield, to the green of Sacramento and then Elk Grove, then dust again.
Along the way, she grew, learned and worked. trying to reconcile the differences and demands of the two cultures she lived in, the agrarian Mexican and the modernizing American, lurching towards now.
Her aspirations were bigger than any field, than any vineyard, than any department store. A series of stages, spotlights, sashes and tiaras defined her late teen years, of titles recognizing her beauty, the cameramen’s flashes capturing those moments as she emerged from a car, standing with Koufax, lending her image to whatever was being promoted.
But the circumstances of a small town weren’t to be denied.
Wed at nineteen, then a child was born soon after, then two more, their married lives began like so many other couples of that time; a small apartment, then moving to a modest house, then to a larger house, the place where all of our friends knew her as mom.
And mom she was, happy to have such a varied cast of characters in and out of the house: cowboys, cliques of cool girls, nerdy bohemian musicians and artists, everyone was represented and fed.
Winter kitchens warm with the aromas of vanilla, butter and chocolate, winter kitchens heady with the tang of chiles cooking into a molé for tamales, a kitchen going nearly constantly.
Holding that kitchen up was the soundtrack. Of West Side Story, of Steve and Eydie, of Trio los Panchos and Javier and El Rey. Of Mananitas blared through the house speakers on the morning of a birthday.
there are memories of the parties that were frequently thrown, beer-soaked howlers with an overflow crowd, that crowd made up of familiar faces- Burkes, Magdalenos, Bakers, Franklins, the Swindlers.
Did I mention that she was a seamstress? That the garage wasn’t really a garage, but a workshop full of industrial sewing machines, French curves for drafting patterns, shears for every conceivable purpose. Bolts upon bolts of fabric.
Time passed; marriages were made, others dissolved, grandchildren were born and in turn married and had their kids.
Eighty years. too much has happened, too much to be touched on in its entirety. We are here to have a party in Libbys honor, a party in whose wake she will be remembered.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for thinking of her, now and always.
She died Saturday. Born in 1944, in Durango, Mexico, she died of natural causes in Sacramento, California, on April 27th, 2024.
Her life was complex and tragic, a telenovela writ real, the tragedy her inability to learn from her mistakes, the complexity stemming from a desire to go back to 1963/4, when she was a beauty queen in the small farming communities that included Delano and Earlimart, back when she could command the attention of men who encouraged her aspirations for the limelight.
She married in 1964, and had three children, Damian, Roman, and Suzanne. All three survive her
Jack and Libby settled in Sacramento, originally on U Street, in a small apartment, moving to Sacramento after Roman was born and then to Elk Grove in 1976, with a five year old Suzanne in tow.
She was a seamstress by trade, and she could do anything, from lovely Gunne Sax dresses by the lot, to couch cushions for furniture manufacturers…
From 1963
Above is the stub of my mother’s eulogy that I’m composing. Her death came as no surprise, and brings to an end a life that was beset with mental health problems, problems that affected everything, problems that she couldn’t see until they blew up in her face.
Problems that she attempted to fix with medications, food, and spending.
A charming, charismatic person, she was literally the life of any party and mixed well, this was her element, this was her inspiration.
The party was when the bad went away, when she could relax and be herself.
Same with creating. When she was at the sewing machines or the cutting table, she was at peace. No anger, no seething, simply making.
Sewing gradually dried up, and she renewed her insurance license, selling policies of all sorts to a Spanish- speaking clientele. After a decade or two, this also went away.
The reason the details are so spotty is that I went through periods of no contact. And it wasn’t just me. All of my siblings at one point or another simply stopped calling or asked her to stop. Everything. Our favorite saying was “Trail of Destruction” when it came to our mother, because that’s generally what she left behind. Relationships, jobs, friendships, all gone.
Maybe later I’ll be able to recall a kindness that didn’t have a condition attached.
Just not now. I’m happy her suffering has ended. Requiescat in pace, mom, you’ve earned it. I’m sorry you couldn’t grow beyond that star-swept year.
My head is feeling full of cotton balls. I’m blaming it on the particularly powerful pollen surge this year and the more effective antihistamines I’ve been taking. It’s been an effort to write through the fuzz, but an effort must be made if anything is to get set down.
But what ?
Let’s start with this:
Our anniversary was Monday, Earth Day. Jenny planned this deliberately so it wouldn’t be forgotten by either of us.
We celebrate Earth Day in the customary manner by commuting to work and commuting back after eight to ten hours of diligently making no difference whatsoever in ours or anyone else’s life. We might go do dinner, but usually we just wish each other a good night and go to sleep, cats eagerly piling atop her.
We met the way many folks do nowadays, which is online. It was on a now defunct site called Tickle, where one could take online tests for personality traits as well as other things, and by the way, would you like us to use that info to help you match with someone?
I was fresh from a relationship that we’d both mentally vacated a couple of years prior, primarily because she wanted to live an 18th century lifestyle, while I very much enjoyed our modern way of living. The breakup was mutual and amicable. As I’d written in a story somewhere, I did, she did, and she kept the dog, or something to that effect.
She kept popping up in my feed and mine on hers as well.
We both dropped a line to each other, and long/short, we met.
The place was a very nondescript place in Newark, California, called Sun Pub Martinis.
Ambiance. That and blown-out office furniture. (Grabbed from Yelp)
It was an informal date, as we were in our late thirties then and both done with the scene. We both very much liked dive bars, inexpensive cocktails, and lazy afternoons whiling away the day. I helped her get laundry done, and we went over to the Safeway to grab a quick bite.
What I wasn’t counting on was our chemistry scaring the dickens out of her.
She kept me at bay for a year, for fear she’d fall for me and I’d ditch her. I was sad when this happened, but the fear I heard through her tears told me this was real and no ploy to let me off the hook.
We reestablished contact a year later, a tentative call, then more and more comfort as affection grew. I knew she would be the person I’d wed after a talk we’d had while I was staying ahead of a snowstorm on a more desolate part of hwy 395, heading into Nevada. The phone signal faded, but our affection deepened. We began seeing each other, secure that no affections would be trashed.
Buzz came first. It was 2004. Binky followed, along with Boo
Buzzword.Binkersly. Boolebooleboo.
I’d deliberately stayed pet-free because I somehow knew that my partner would have cats. Buzz and Binky were originally Jenny’s, while Boo was given to us by a friend of Jenny’s from Newark.
Housekeeping was officially set up in 2005.
We married in 2011, at the county clerks office, both of us in agreement that wedding spectaculars were more trouble than they were worth. This came from experience. Libby was a planner, and that was awful, and Jenny helped plan her sisters wedding, which was successful, and still is, but it was a mind-numbing amount of work. Not for us.
We made a reservation and showed up, got wedded and hosted a dinner at a friend’s restaurant.
Thirteen years later, we’re still steady, unlike the venues that we ate and drank in that day in 2011.
I noted in my first entry that I’d always felt a bit out of place, and that the traits the majority of my family had, I wasn’t in possession of. Traits like extroversion, a love of outdoor activities with friends, having many, many friends, not reading much, or caring at all for reading.
I am the opposite. I recall standing in the room I shared with Roman at the family’s first house on Laramore Way, looking out the window at Ro horsing around with the Scoggins and Montoya kids. I sighed and said wistfully: “Oh, to be young again.” I was eight for crying out loud.
I was a voracious reader from 5, grabbing books to see what worlds were held between the two covers. Jack and Libby provided me with plenty of material, from Dr. Seuss, to a set of encyclopedias that had a series of books containing stories from many cultures and times. The encyclopedias were also read cover-to-cover, volume to volume until I was in my 20s. I preferred music to watching TV, and became a fan of Dr. Don Rose, the legendary morning DJ on KFRC radio.
Back to the story.
When I first had the idea that Jack wasn’t biodad, there were no genetic testing services available, at least not in the form they are today. I had hunches, but I was thinking in the family, as opposed to a late winter’s indiscretion. I asked Jack one evening if I was his son, and without hesitation he said yes.
About twenty years later, in 2021, my sister zaps me a text on FB messenger, saying that there was someone, Elizabeth Decker, looking for me to determine someone’s line of descent. I shrugged and didn’t think much of it until the “what ifs” got the best of me.
I began with 23 & me, but the results were in a vacuum, with no one closer than a second cousin appearing in my relatives group. Still, 69% European, with the majority being from the British Isles, piqued my curiosity enough to go ahead and grab some tests from Ancestry.
I did the usual, waited a bit, and literally on my birthday, my results were emailed to me.
There were no Solorzanos on the paternal side of the tree. The maternal side looked the way I expected it to, with my mother’s sisters populating the close relative slots, then cousins, but who was this, this person in the close relation side that bore a resemblance to me? I dropped a note into her mailbox and waited. Having no response, I followed up with a note to Tina, and then ordered a test for Suzanne, the sister I grew up with.
While waiting, Suzanne’s test came back: half sister. Good. Confirmed. Jack was pops, but it looks like this mysterious person on Tushi’s tree is my biodad. Suddenly, I yearn to know more of that winter and spring of 1964.
On my Instagram, I posted a picture of Jack holding an infant me, with the statement: I know now. This does not change who I am, or affect my identity in any way. That last statement was for myself as much as anyone, because I see that it’s impossible now for that news not to change you, even in a minor way.
I’m Damian. I’ve discovered that I’m the child of Anthony Pewitt and Librada Magdaleno, conceived in 1964 and born later that year.
The discovery began as an inkling some 20 years ago, when some things didn’t quite add up. Things like hair type, complexion and my personality, which was and is more retiring and introverted that of my brother and sister.
From left: Damian, Roman, Suzanne, and Jack.
The differences were small, to be certain, but I always had a feeling that I was a bit of an outsider.
Like any writer, my aspirations are to have constructed a magnum opus to fill you in on what this semi-known sibling has been up to these near sixty years, but like most folks who write, I’ve got a full-time job and the mundane responsibilities that hook themselves onto our lives.
So: I’m married, no children, we share a house full of books and four cats. I work for AAA, she for the State of California. We’ve been together for nearly twenty years, married since 2011. I’ll use this as my way of filling you all in regarding what has happened as I’ve traveled along in life. Here’s some baby pictures until the next time:
Eileen has been gone these past couple of days. We’re all wiped out and slowly regaining our senses. Eileen left us very early Monday morning, and Jenny was asleep all day Tuesday.
modeleccentric 