On July 26th, 1947 my grandmother gave birth to her third child. A long-limbed little girl with brown hair, brown eyes, they called her Susan Elizabeth.

In the 1950’s Susan loved Little Lulu comics, her dog Penny, wearing dungarees and playing with the kids in suburban Philadelphia neighborhood. A dyslexic in a family of intellectuals, she was a shining star when it came to sports.

In the 1960’s she learned to drive, graduated from high school, went to Europe and Mexico, lost her father to a heart attack, graduated in film from Temple, got engaged twice, wore miniskirts in winter and saw her mother remarry.

In the 1970’s she met and married my father (all in a six week period), changed her name to Leana, moved to San Francisco, moved to LA, moved to Santa Cruz, opened a toy store, cooked meals for HeadStart, moved to Chicago, taught montessori school, moved (back) to LA, worked in television, and had me.

In the 1980’s she had my sister and spent most of that decade just trying to make sure my sister stayed in one piece. She struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome and still took amazing care of my sister and me. She made Halloween costumes and honey popcorn balls for school birthdays. She helped my father start a business and moved our family to Portland, OR.

In the 1990’s she watched her mother lose her mind to a stroke. She traveled to Europe and Hawaii. She helped me survive middle and high school. She sent us to sleep away camp in the summers, took our dog Toasty (who was suffering from cancer) to be put to sleep and sent me off to college. She started to write poetry and began meditating daily.

In the first five years of 21st century, my mother is a triumph. She writes, she prays, she walks, she heals (while still struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome), she grows, she learns and she loves. She appreciates each moment of life and connects with the universe with each beat of her heart.

I am blessed to be her daughter.

Happy birthday mommy.

I used to have a dream of opening up a pizza place in Walla Walla. There’d be five or six beers on tap, pizza by the slice and live music five nights a week. Well, I better get a move on, because according to the New York Times, Walla Walla is the capital of a new Napa Valley.

Gosh, I’m cute,
originally uploaded by Marusula.

Red in the face.

Remind me not to highlight my hair orange and get a bright sunburn on my face in the same weekend.

It’s now hard to tell where my face ends and my hair begins. Definitely a fashion don’t.

(The picture was taken before the sunburn. I’m much [MUCH] redder than that).

Let’s bowl,
originally uploaded by Marusula.

I had a fun weekend, there’s no other way to describe it. Saturday night we got a group of ten together to go bowling. I haven’t been bowling since I was an RA my sophomore year of college, which was a good six years ago. I had played skee ball recently, but I don’t think that the skills necessary to play skee ball and those needed to bowl are really comparable. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, because I sucked. But, I had an excellent time while I played miserably, so I don’t really care. There was also a great deal of alcohol involved. My ability to hit the pins went up a bit during the first drink, but by the third, it was all downhill. But, the music was good, the people were excellent, Long Island Iced Teas were $3 a glass, and I entertained my friends with the song “Let’s Bowl Tonight” from Grease II repeatedly. Can’t much better than that.

One week ago today, I experienced perfection in the form of a sandwich. It was a roasted turkey and havarti on wheat, with red onions, dijon mustard, ripe tomato, avocado, cilantro and dark green lettuce. I split this sandwich with my mom. We ate slowly, taking time to put our sandwich halves down between bites to grab fresh pea pods from the plastic bag on the bench. We didn’t talk much, our eyes and minds too full with the view of the pacific ocean, the delight of our perfect lunch and the rare joy of being in each other’s company.

When the food was gone, our trash bagged and discarded pods from the peas gathered for the compost bin back home, we headed down to the beach. Oregon beaches are different than any other I’ve known (and I include both Bali and Hawaii in my beach experiences). They are wide, brimming with living creatures, sparsely populated and absolutely lovely. I stood in three inches of water, my jeans rolled up to my knees, and in that moment, I knew with certainly that I had found my heaven.

My dad got on a flight in Portland, OR this morning. His final destination is Innsbruck, Austria, and he should get there around 10:30 am tomorrow morning. Conveniently, he booked his flight to stop over in Philly. His layover this time around was only three hours, but he’ll be spending a full weekend with me on his way back home from the Subud Congress.

Tonight we had planned that I would meet him at the airport during his layover, bring him dinner and a couple of books and generally make the time go faster. He was supposed to call me when his flight landed at 5:10 pm. I started calling his cell phone at 5:15 and called him about seven times from 5:15 until 5:45. He had gotten on the flight in Portland with his back acting up, and I was spinning all sorts of worries in my head about how his back had gone out on the flight and he was unable to get off the plane without paramedical assistance.

At 5:55 I parked my car in the short term lot and headed into the terminal to look for him. I managed to ask the right question in front of the right person in the baggage claim area. A Frontier employee was taking reports of missing baggage and was helping the last guy in line. I interrupted really quickly and asked about my dad. The man who was reporting the missing bag had been sitting behind my dad on the flight and said that he had heard him saying that he had lost his cell phone in the Denver airport. It’s a classic move for my father, but at least I knew that he wasn’t in an ambulance somewhere.

So I headed to the US Airways International check in terminal and started whistling the family whistle. And there he was in line. I waited while he checked in and then handed him his (as requested) a roast beef hoagie from Wawa (I am a good daughter). We sat, we ate and I watched him (with a little jealousy in my heart) walk his way to the security check point, and head for three weeks of Subud fun. Have a great trip, Dad.

Just got back to Philly about half an hour ago. The wonderful Seth picked me up at the airport and waited while I filed a claim for my missing bag (left Portland with two, arrived in Philly with one, the math doesn’t add up). Hopefully the bag will show up tomorrow.

I’m totally awake and experiencing that weird perception moment that happens when you walk back into a very familiar space after awhile away. It’s home and yet it feels slightly different. But that’s already being to fade.

It was a great trip. Portland is paradise.

Whenever I come to Portland, I make sure that my stay includes a Monday. This is because when my mom turned 55 three years ago, the only good thing (by her own admission) about becoming a senior citizen, was the 40% discount it entitled her to at Value Village on Mondays.

One summer, years ago, we were at another much beloved thrifting warehouse (Bargain Station, torn down four years ago to make room for an super Wal-Mart) on a Wednesday, which happened to be their senior day. My mom was in her forties at the time, nowhere near the required age for the discount. We were buying quite a bit that day, and so she asked an older woman to pretend that she was our grandma and go through the checkout with us, so that we could buy our goods at the discounted price. This woman, who looked like she was native american (I can’t believe we fooled anyone, my sister and I both have blonde hair and blue eyes) was a born thespian and took on her new role with her all. She joked with us and played with our braids and at one point reprimanded my sister for picking a china cup and saucer that was on display. Once through the check stand and out at the car, my mom thanked her repeatedly and tried to get her to accept $5 (only a portion of what we saved) for her time. She refused the money, thanked us for the fun and went on her way. We always hoped to see her again at Bargain Station, but we never did.

So, while this entire trip has been slightly thrift store focused, today was the big enchilada, the main event of the thrifting rodeo. We went in, primed for bargains and we found many. There is something about finding treasure (in this case linen DKNY pants) in rows of acrylic and tacky that is deeply satisfying. It may be warped, but hey, it’s fun.

There is a thrift store, just down Sandy Blvd. from my parents’ house, called the Teen Challenge. It is a international program to help young adults deal with issues of substance abuse. A good cause, but not why we go there.

There are occasionally phenomenal deals to be had at Teen Challenge, because often they just don’t know what they have. We (my mom and I) stopped there today, on our way to the very large, very wonderful, very expensive Goodwill. Think of it as an opening act for the much awaited headlining band. The selection was kind of sparse, but I stumbled across a very cool old coat rack (okay, I know it sounds weird, but really, it’s a great coat rack) for $5.95. So what if it’s just going to sit in my parent’s garage until I:

a. Move back to Portland

b. Decide I’m staying in Philly and rent a trunk to drive all the stuff I have in Portland across the country

c. Let my sister sell it (cause she’s always selling stuff)

The best deal of the day was the very soft, very gorgeous leather Fossil bag I found hanging between the business logo giveaway lunch bags and the naugahyde pocketbooks. It didn’t have a price tag, but when I asked the guy at the counter, he took at look and said, “$1.95.” I said, “I can do that” while internally gleeful at the bargain.

A nice pair of Diesel sneakers drifted my way at Goodwill, although initially I could only find one. I had to send my mom in to find the mate, because, isn’t that what moms are for? Finding missing mates to shoes, socks, gloves and the like?

So yeah, that was my day. God, I love vacation. We really should do this more often.

I finally made it to Portland, landed at 11:52 am and I have never been so grateful to get off an airplane. My mom came and found me in the baggage claim, and we both giggled and cried at seeing each other after seven months of distance. On getting home, I took a shower, ate a big salad made mostly of ingredients from my parents’ garden and went blueberry picking on Sauvie Island with my mom. Standing in the gentle Oregon light, the breeze gently rattling the branches of the bushes, eating sun-warmed raspberries and blueberries, it became hard to remember why I ever left.