A Dry Run

Here are the boys practicing for camping. They are curled up inside their fabric igloo, warn and cozy and, most importantly, inside.

We were supposed to go to the Channel Islands today, but the temperature dropped to high forties at night, low sixties in the daytime, winds, and rain. So we pushed our island adventure off for three more days. The day dawned wet and cold, but now, as the ferry would have been pulling up the pier at Scorpion Ranch on Santa Cruz Island, the air is clean, the sky is blue, and the breeze is spring sunshine. Gorgeous!

This is our transition trip. We have done endless car camping, and I long to do back packing with my boys. On the Channel Islands we will be a million miles away from civilization--in a world that feels like California before the white man--but we take a boat there, and only have to drag our stuff a half mile. That means we can still bring our big tent, our heavy sleeping bags and an unwieldy camp stove you wouldn't dare to take into the wilderness. There is water from a pump, and latrines for campers.

I have been reading the boys the Swiss Family Robinson, and a great book sent me by my sis in law, about a sailing trip around the world. Sometimes we read inside the igloo.

If the weather gets too rough out on the Channel Islands you can be stranded. Boats are cancelled if the waves are high or the currents too strong. The National Park service tells you to pack for an extra day, just in case that should that happen. The prospect of getting stuck out there only makes the trip more exciting!

Last time we went the island was lush like Ireland, and monarchs fluttered through the eucalyptus grove where we will be camping. We saw a whale and a bunch of midden sites. It will be too cold to swim, or kayak, but the ocean will be wild and beautiful. We also saw 25,000 dolphins on our last trip. Our boat got caught up in their migration. It was one of the most magical things I have ever seen. I pray we will see them again. But there is no way to predict, you can only hope. And if they come, those dolphins and their baby dolphins, leaping around the boat so the whole ocean is alive and we humans are NOTHING, and you can imagine the ocean before we harvested everything to dangerously low levels, then my heart will sing.

If it doesn't, that is OK, too. The wildflowers will bloom. The little island foxes will sneak up to our tents, and the wild pigs will snort around our tents and try to eat our food. The rats have hanta virus, which is a little scary, but the rats are mostly on Anacapa island. Still, that means the threat of disease, too! Pigs, hanta virus, foxes, whales, beauty and seclusion will be adventure enough.

Oh how I long for some time in the wilderness. I am counting down the minutes.

A Moment of Grace

I have a niece here in Los Angeles. She is adorable, like a big kewpie doll, but we barely see her, for a number of reasons I confess I do not fully grasp. It makes me sad.

Last weekend we saw her for breakfast. Her mother placed her in my arms. She is nearly two. She has seen me about eight times since birth. Usually in public places or large family gatherings. I would not call it intimate. I don't know that she even knows who I am. Memories are short at that age.

But that Sunday, her mama placed her with me, and she snuggled right in. She held me tight and wouldn't let go. I don't think she knew it was me. I was mystified.

But it was delicious. She is still that age when they fit perfectly on your body like a little koala. She is soft and squeezable, a feeling that disappears as they walk, then run, and their bodies turn harder, more muscular. My boys are cuddly, so cuddly, but this was different.

She clung to me as we walked in, sat down, ordered breakfast. She just sat and burrowed and nestled. She didn't talk or play or try to go to sleep. She just cuddled, and turned away from the table--seemingly as happy to be cuddling on me as I was to hold her.

Later I tried to figure out what happened. Why me? Why then? Does she really know me? Recognize me? Love me?

But then, I thought, it doesn't matter. When a baby loves you, you just accept that faith, that love, and savor it. There is nothing larger. It is just a perfect moment. And I got one.

It was sweet.

Why I Love My Mommy

This from Benji--in the giant puppy pile in our bed--as we laze around refusing to get up on spring break:

"Daddy, get away. You have spikes growing on your face!"

Piano Lessons

I took piano lessons, and I didn't love them, so why do I feel compelled to pass on piano lessons to my boys?

I took piano lessons first with Mrs. Knapp, a petite blonde woman with three daughters, who gave us rubber busts of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven as we progressed through various pieces. I dutifully did scales, and felt tortured when my parents made me practice. When my parents told me I could give up piano at 12 if I learned to play Fur Elise and promised to play the clarinet in the school band, I agreed.

Later I wanted to take piano lessons again, and I did. Again, I was not a stellar student, though I liked it better.

Still, though I cannot sit down and tinkle the ivories, or get a room full of people singing, I am grateful. I can play a few little pieces that make me happy. I can read music well enough to almost sight read when I sing. I can jump in fast with other instruments. And, I think, piano lessons hugely enhanced my love of every kind of music--even if all I remember was the torture of practice.

Yesterday I took my boys for their first piano lessons. Unlike me, they have been begging to play. Theo has already taken violin for a year, at a super cool place run by Flea that would have blown my mind at seven. There were concerts and young cool teachers and trumpets and bands and camps. And Flea.

But maybe this was better. A sweet, young teacher, who is using different methods with my two boys. A simple Mozart Mouse method with Benji, and songs and a move towards reading music with Theo.

Our teacher, Gigi, is married to a Japanese sculptor and lives in a house perched on a hillside with spectacular views over all of Los Angeles. She has an upright and a grand piano. She starts the boys on the upright, then moves them to the Grand so they can hear how grand it really is. There is even a mischievous dog and a basket full of squeaky tennis balls. When the dog gets too frisky Gigi yells out, "Piano lesson! Ball down!" And Chilo drops the ball and skulks sadly over to his big cushion beside the grand piano. The boys thought that was hilarious. Chilo reminded them of themselves.

By the end of the first lesson Theo was playing Hot Cross Buns and Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, and Benji was improvising with Gigi at the piano, playing beautiful jazzy improvisations to her beat, on the black keys. When we walked out they said, "Can we come back tomorrow?"

Another mother said she would only consider a teacher that came to the house. I get that.

But there is something so special about going to a place that is a shrine to music.

Flea and his Silverlake Conservatory made music feel like a social mission--a joyous, wonderful, community thing that everyone should know. Prices reflect that. It is affordable and there are scholarships.

Gigi has created a perfect aerie with magical pianos. It is a sacred place, with no distractions. You feel like musical music can happen there.

What do you think about piano lessons for little ones? Is it worth it?

Jamie Oliver is so cool!

Jaime Oliver's show about his food revolution in West Virginia--the unhealthiest state in the Union--starts March 26.

Here he is receiving his TED award, talking about food and kids.

Check it out.

He would love the ESY program. I wish he could come for lunch at LCW.

Musings on Stories

I am working my third time through on a memoir, which is now a novel. But as I keep writing, I wonder if I should return to memoir. Even if I can say less. I feel my voice is stronger as a memoirist than as a fiction writer. And sometimes I wonder if we are just living in the age of the memoir--no longer the novel. Though I love novels.

I just finished Patti Smith's memoir about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. It was fascinating for many reasons--a great portrait of NYC in the seventies. (And I should add that I did not come to this book a crazy Patti Smith fan. I had seen her commenting on other people, and was struck by her insights and articulate way of speaking, but really knew her only as muse to a generation of rock n roll guys before my time). But one thing I admired is that she -- at least in the recalling--tried every form of artistic maneuver. She tried drawing, writing, poetry, acting, poetry and rock n roll, rock n roll, playwriting, photography, and I am sure more. But as she did each thing, she was very conscious. She noted what felt good, what felt wooden and off track. Being on stage felt good, acting felt bad. Rock n roll felt good, poetry felt best.

She watched her reactions to others, too. Watching her reaction to Jim Morrison she felt, I could do that. Reacting to others she thought, I don't want to do that.

I am trying to look critically at what feels good to me. And what is hard, but also feels good. And what just doesn't feel good. Interest in watching does not correspond to interest in doing.

Just musings, as I put off rereading my latest submission John Rechy's writing class for the 116th time before printing out. I know it has problems, but I can't figure out exactly what they are. Humbling.

OK, I am stopping now because my son has set up a short wave radio right next to me at top volume.

Do you think he is trying to get my attention?

Alcatraz II

I signed up. It's official.

I promised last year that if I did Alcatraz this year, it would be skin--that is, no wetsuit. But sitting here, bundled in my post-yoga sweat shirt, I just could not bring myself to check the "skin" box.

If it is warm enough--that is 62 degrees or higher--I will try. But I cannot swim in 55 degree water without a wetsuit. I do not have a frigid enough body of water to practice in. That is my excuse! And, after last year, and reading Lynn Cox's amazing book, Swimming to Antarctica, I now know that getting your body used to cold water is a serious undertaking that takes commitment, and, to the truly dedicated, perhaps a month without hot tubs or warm showers. No!

I am swimming again because this year my brother will swim, and my aunt (again) and my cousin (I hope) and my soon-to-be 70 year old father. I worry about him a little. He tends to overestimate how far he can swim, and believe the water he trains in is colder than it is, and go into various kinds of shocks during extreme athletic events. But to not do this event, I think, would kill him. Last year it crushed him that three members of his family did this crazy endeavor without him. So this year he will swim. And my gift to him on his 70th birthday, is that I will swim, too. I believe he will live. And he will do it. But, I tell myself, because I worry just a little, if he does get in over his head, he will be threatening his life doing something that he dreams of doing, and that makes him feel alive. I want to be like that. So I am lending my support.

So I am in!

Sharks, cold, Alcatraz, waves, lightning, San Francisco, here I come again!!!!