[Fandfs] Things Cynthia gave me.

[Barbara James <barbarajames@redshift.com>]

1.  They are, of course, way too numerous to recount, but they start  
with providing me a safe place where I was always welcome, with no  
requirements other than not roughhousing in the living room and not  
being mean.   From the time I was 3 my family spent summers and many  
holidays at my grandparents' amazing house just  down the highway  
from the Williamses.  It was very  grand,  huge,  echoing, frequently  
cold, and fraught with precious items that were not for children:  
sort of an anti-Cynthia's.    Consequently, I walked up the road   
whenever I could, and found the same unquestioning welcome that my  
father had found at the Crileys' when Tootie took him in.  Both she  
and Cynthia were of the opinion that only children needed more care  
and kindness than most if they were to grow up properly.

Her way of dealing with me included a lot of giving me tasks - do the  
dishes, sweep the floor,  run out and fetch her some parsley, poke up  
the fire.  I liked that a lot.  It meant I really was welcome,  
something I have been unsure about for most of my life.  When I moved  
back to Carmel thirteen years ago, she suddenly decided she wanted to  
learn to read Greek, and I came every Wednesday and we read  
together.  She saved my face by insisting she was getting educated  
rather than setting up a morning a week when we could be together.   
I'm dumb -   it took me a while to figure that out.
Steve Gally once told me that Cynthia had carefully instructed him to  
be pushy when he was dealing with me "because she's shy."  She knew  
me better than I did.

2. She gave me the habit of consulting Webster II for instant wisdom  
on almost every thing.   I have one in my living room, and every time  
I use it I think of her.

3.   She gave me perspective on my family's fondness for drama.  Once  
when I was sleeping in the old playroom on a cot, I was taken by a  
horrible stomach ache..  When Cynthia wandered up the hall, I managed  
a couple of feeble moans, and she came in.   "What's the Matter?"   
"OOOOOH I have a horrible stomachache!  It's going to burst!  OOOh!"   
She says, "Oh that's too bad - I'll bring you a nice hot cup of tea."

I was outraged!  Tea?  Here I am at Death's Door!  This is SERIOUS!   
When she came back with  the tea I had balled myself up under the  
covers and was moaning feebly. If I were home, my mother (the  
hypochondriac) would have fussed and  worried and considered  
emergency measures.  My grandmother, (who had lost her first child to  
measles) would have hovered and held me and brought nostrums and a  
hot water bottle.  TEA??!!  If I hadn't felt so bad I would have  
crawled out of bed and down the highway and left my poor little  
corpse huddled up on the Seaward doorstep.  I told her that tea was  
not going to help.  She said "Well, I'll just leave it here then."   
After she left, seeing as it was tea or nothing, I drank it, and felt  
better almost immediately.  Which taught me a lot about my  
relationship to drama in general, and whom to trust in particular.  I  
owe her any common sense that I have.

4.  Some times when I came, the Williamses were in Las Vegas, or  
Topeka, and that was a bad holiday.

5.  I have always kept my dishtowels in the bottom drawer, like  
Cynthia.  She did it because that's where the cat has her kittens.  I  
haven't owned a mother cat in any house I have lived in, but the  
dishtowels go in the bottom drawer.

6.  She let us bounce on her bed.   She fostered the amazing events  
that Uncle Ted used to bring when  he came.  I particularly remember  
the Sitting Highjump. You sit on the floor without touching your feet  
to it, and see how high you can get using just your gluteus muscles.   
It's measured in razor  blade widths.

7.  The unbeatable and everlastingly changing comic book collection.   
Who else bought us  The Heap. Little Lulu, Pogo, Wonder Woman, all  
the way to classic Kirby,  Scot Free and New Gods?  Glorious mind  
rot, and no bad jazz about wasting long hours wasting our time  
reading that trash.

8.  One year Red and Bee and I spent days digging The Mississloppy  
river down by the big pine next to the driveway.  It turned out to be  
very cold and very muddy and we did too.  Who else would let the kids  
make a huge trench in the yard and try to fill  it with water?

9.  I remember the Easter Egg and Beer hunts,  the swimming pool  
excavation, the time Red and I tried to saw down the big redwood tree  
by the camp at Rocky Creek, and the songs _ Union Maid, Streets of  
Laredo, the Abalone song, Bury me out on the Prairie, the Lavender  
Cowboy.  The beach party where my father swam out to sea in a game of  
Capture the Flag and came storming through the  other team's  
backfield flag in hand.  And the one where Tiger Balusteri tried to  
jump over the fire, and was partly successful.

10.  Tootie's contributions to civilizing us little savages, reading  
David Copperfield to us after dinner in her upstairs bedroom.

11 Gong down to Criley Beach at Thanksgiving with all the colored  
glass bottles and jars we could dredge up and running into the surf  
and throwing them at the rock cliff so the shards would mellow out in  
the winter storms and come ashore as jewels for the children to find  
in the spring.  Noxzema jars were a good saphire.  Gingerale mean't  
emeralds.  Pieces of a broken tail light were precious rubies.  Who  
but Cynthia would think of doing that?  and then do it?

12 She taught me to grow freesias.

13.  When I was 19 and going to have Martha in Hawaii, Cynthia came  
with my mother  and Cathy and Honey.  Mother was trying hard to be  
positive and reassuring, but she had had a bad time having me and  
Cathy, and it was not convincing.   Cynthia was so supportive and  
loving and sure that she gave me the confidence to bully the doctor  
in the military hospital into a non-anesthetized birth.   In those  
days, that was unheard of.   She also convinced me that I was capable  
of caring for the baby, and the baby was actually not all that  
fragile.  So. in a way, I think of Martha as partly a gift from Cynthia.

I've never known anyone as wise as Cynthia, or as kind.  She has been  
my source of absolute safety and love for 68 years.  If she hadn't  
taught me better, I would be crying in the dark and hopeless without  
her.  Bur she did teach me and so many others.  So I am grateful, and  
can celebrate the love we had and the strength she gave me.  My  
insides tell me I am an orphan now....and wishing for a nice cup of tea.

Let's be kind to each other.  We've all been taught how.  Love, Barbara
>

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