Home Again

I left California for college in August of 1986, and returned ten years ago today.



A few days before I left, YaYa Words of Thunder and her family hosted a bonfire in honor of me and Denver D, who had ditched his plans to move to Santa Fe. About a dozen of us went down to the field and YoYoWOT set a pile of brush alight. I think we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and we adults drank cocktails. YaYaWOT and I drank a lot of rum, and I remember tackling her in the spring mud to cheers.


The morning we left, I wept as I drove down the dripping green highway north of Vernonia. I was going home, but I was leaving home, too.

A Mocha Mix Moment

YaYa Words of Thunder and I spent two hours on the phone this morning having a virtual Mocha Mix Moment. Back when I started spending the night out at the family's place, she introduced me to Mocha Mix, which has about as much in common with cream as Gardenburgers do with hamburgers, but does make coffee creamy. I drank a lot of coffee today, with regular dairy in it. Zirpu doesn't approve of Mocha Mix, and it makes Mom apoplectic when I drink the space-age polymer that comes in the yellow carton.

YaYaWOT, YoYoWOT, Pia, Bug, and Boy lived in a split-level house in the woods outside Vernonia. YoYoWOT left very early in the morning and would make the coffee before heading out. Each morning of my Vernonia weekends (which were off days as I worked on Saturdays) I got up and poured myself and YaYaWOT coffee, added Mocha Mix to both and two teaspoons of sugar to hers, and got in on YoYoWOT's side of the bed. Bug and Pia would have left for school, and Boy would eventually come downstairs also to watch Blue's Clues. YaYaWOT and I laid in bed, drank our coffee, and talked every morning before our day really began.


That is how I adopted her and her family, and how they adopted me. In November of the first year I knew them, Bug turned seven and plans were made to take her and some friends to Chuck E. Cheese for pizza and games. YaYaWOT and her mother, The Is, were going to chaperone the kids and I volunteered to go along at the end of my weekend. There was no power out at the house for three days leading up to Bug's birthday party (trees often fell on the power lines), so we spent the days in the family room near the wood stove playing Scrabble and Uno. Everywhere else in the house was very very cold, and I slept with a hat on.

When I got home I sent a postcard to YaYaWOT and The Is on which I'd drawn a picture of all of us in a handbasket, with a thought balloon over the three of us adults thinking, "Where are we going?" I joke about it by saying that Chuck E. Cheese isn't hell, but you can see it from there, and YaYaWOT and I laugh about it because it was fun: We didn't have to watch the kids and every so often they would drop by and report how many tickets they'd won. The pizza was so bad we didn't attempt the coffee and just drank Cokes, but Bug was really happy with her birthday party and that's what mattered.


I had no idea I would still know this family eleven years later. I didn't think I would, but now I can't imagine not knowing them into the fourth generation (the third having arrived). YaYaWOT and I became sisters that summer and I gained a lot of family that way: her husband, her kids (one of whom has a husband and child of her own now), her mother, her sister-in-law, and the other YaYas.

Rarely do members of the same family
grow up under the same roof.

~ Richard Bach, Illusions

Clay Feet

When I was involved with Camp Odyssey I started working with the people who designed the curriculum and the program. I really thought that they embodied the values of the program. In fact, it was D who came up with the thing about staying in the boat, and T who encouraged everyone to close loops. M always seemed to bring a soft consciousness to the hard parts. Because J was so tall, I felt like he was able to see what was going on everywhere in the big meetings, and would step in if something was going haywire.


Then in the summer of 1997 we had the Camp From Hell, when it seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Because Camp was so intense, even small things going wrong felt much bigger. I had participants bolt out of meetings and people not talking to each other by the end of the week, and that kind of thing was happening in other meetings too. At the time I blamed a lot of what went wrong on one person, who happened to be someone with whom I had had a lot of personal conflicts and didn't like very much.


It didn't occur to me that maybe those people who were the Curriculum Committee had anything to do with the craziness. I now remember that, in a place where structure was the highest priority, they were deleting some things and reducing the time allowed for others while Camp was running. At the time, that seemed like the last thing that group of people would do, which is probably why I couldn't see it was they who were making those changes to the curriculum. It's so clear now, but that's partly because YaYaWOT, who was there, reminded me of some things that happened after Camp ended that summer, things that are reflected in my journal from that period.


I've recently come to see that these people were flawed like we all are. If I cared about any of it now with anything like the emotion I felt then, I would be angry at them for not being much like how I imagined. When I asked for help then and didn't get it I thought it was because they were too busy to help, but now I think it may have been because they were too overwhelmed themselves. It was so long ago that I don't now remember if I was disappointed in them then. I suspect that I thought that they would fix everything, because they could do what was best for Camp. They were giants to me.


I didn't go to Odyssey the next year, a long story sort of related to this post. I don't know what happened in '98 but the program as I had known it ended that summer or in 1999. YaYaWOT says that partly happened because some people chose to honor a personal relationship over Odyssey ideals. It's too bad Odyssey was the casualty, because I thought then and think now that it was a powerful transformative experience and could have had a huge impact on our communities. Choosing friendship isn't a bad thing for humans to do.

Journal Keeping

I mentioned not very long ago that I have been keeping a journal for many years. I remember when I thought that "keeping a journal" was something more dignified than "writing in a diary." Diaries were small books that locked, not notebooks, and something girly girls kept under their mattresses. "Real writers" used journals. In the past, I've used my journals for writing exercises, much the way this one started, writing on a word a day, as well as for "regular" journaling. I even did this at Camp Odyssey, and who knows how I found the time to do that while Camp was on!


I don't usually read my old journals, unless I'm looking for something specific I think I'm not remembering correctly or completely. Sometimes I can see my own evolution, but reading stuff like that only looks that way because now, with 20/20 hindsight, I know where it was leading. My experiences of "just flipping pages" have sometimes been disappointing - certainly sometimes I've written down things I was glad to have forgotten.


A good example of this is that my memory of a particular wedding I attended in 2000 is that I had a good time. What I remember is that I really enjoyed seeing some of the people who had come from out of state. The guy I was living with and I had decided to separate but had not actually done so yet, and we were getting along well that day since the pressure was off. My journal, however, records that I was miserable the entire time because these out-of-state friends were nagging me about the break-up. It's possible that had the wedding not been on a boat I would have left right after dinner - I wrote that I spent the evening wishing the boat would return to the pier.


Anyway, the other night I was moving some boxes and noticed a journal from the summer of 1997. In fact, it starts on the night before that year's Camp Odyssey began, and probably inspired me to actually write that post. Because I've been thinking about Odyssey so much lately I read a big chunk of that journal. I remember that some years ago I had decided that I would concentrate on writing what I felt rather than what happened to make me feel that way. This came about because I was spending a lot of time writing chronology and it was getting in the way of my feelings and/or thoughts about an event - especially when a lot of events tumbled close upon each other.


What I discovered the other night was that I didn't remember some of the things I was having feelings and/or thoughts about when I had written those entries. That night I read several entries in which I had written that I had found something or someone particularly challenging, and wrote why I felt so challenged, but not very much about what the actual incident or person was that triggered all those feelings. So it's rather obscured, especially as I do not remember names very well.


On the other hand, I was reminded of someone I really liked and respected in those days but with whom I haven't been in contact since I moved to California. I had forgotten that we had been so loyal to each other, and the journal reminded me. I asked YaYaWOT, who talks to him every week, for his email and sent one off to him, telling him exactly that.

What was Odyssey?

Recently I've been thinking a lot about my Camp Odyssey experience, which was transformative at the same time that it was difficult. Without comparing Odyssey to Peoples Temple, seeing that movie about Jonestown and reading Raven (which I got from the library) has me thinking about my own experience with "trying to change the world."


Camp Odyssey was an immersion diversity training for youth and adults. When I was on staff, I (and others, obviously) worked with youth entering 10th through 12th grades and examined all the "isms" - racism, sexism, heterosexism, prejudice against immigrants, ageism, and even touched on classism (when I moved back to California we were thinking about working more class issues into the curriculum). Everyone who attended was split into ethnic groups according to their identification, into gender groups, and into sharing circles which were carefully balanced for ethnic identity and gender. Each group would meet with each other group to talk about stereotypes and then the sharing circles would meet to process the experiences of the day. It is very difficult to explain, and it was really really intense.


One of the things I believed was that Odyssey was led by some amazing, fabulous, dedicated people who saw things clearly. I also felt like a lot of the "regular" staff people were pretty amazing as well - Odyssey consisted of two demanding weekends and one really demanding week each year and we all worked very hard during those times. Ironically, the person who was the Camp Director was not someone I believed was any of those things. He and I didn't like each other, and I thought it was because I was in the not-straight group and the only strongly-identified bi person in Camp for the time I was involved, which was about two years, I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. Also, I have a memory of heated disagreements between us, including at Advisory Council meetings when I was in the leadership circle.


I don't know where the curriculum came from, though some of it came from other diversity programs and some of it grew out of the work that had been going on. When I got involved in 1996 Odyssey had been around for about three years (it only lasted maybe two years after I left). There were several two or three day adult trainings a year, but Odyssey was really focused on the Camp for youth which lasted for one week in late June. After Camp in 1997 I "forgot" to turn in my script/agenda/curriculum and while I haven't looked at it in years I haven't been ready to shred it.


Hard as it was, I loved Odyssey. I thought the things we did were important and there are lessons I carry to this day. I wonder what the people who were 14 to 18 years old at the time think now of that experience (some of them are as old now as I was then). We had some guidelines that were posted on a banner in the main hall, and I have found them pretty good guidelines to live by, some of which I see now are woven together for me:

Be honest

Take risks - a hard one for me, being naturally risk-averse.

Respect others

Close the loop - it's not always easy to follow up when I think I've offended someone or when someone has offended me, but working it out means I don't have to fret about it anymore.

Take responsibility for Self - this ranges from going when I need to go to the bathroom to being responsible for doing something stupid or hurtful.

Use "I" statements - I joke that my favorite "I" statement is "I feel you are a jerk" but I've noticed I get heard more easily if I really do say "I feel X when Y" and "It's been my experience that..."


There's more to write about Odyssey but not today. Odyssey was hugely important part of my growing up, even though I was 27 when I got involved. I don't think I would be the person I am today if I hadn't had that experience.

Getting What You Ask For

Or, "How Zirpu and I Met." This is the story of how the Universe answers prayers even when you don't believe.


It was the Saturday of the Summer Solstice in 2001. That day had been declared a "voluntary blackout day" and I unplugged everything in my house (except the gas stove, because that made me nervous). I mostly sat outside and read a book. It was a beautiful day.


Shmeen had advised that while it's important to have a list of requirements for a lover, the list should be short, no more than five items. Otherwise, she said, the list is too specific and no one could ever meet it. I had my list: Smart, silly, sex-positive, willing to deal with emotions, and... now I always forget the fifth one. Probably something basic like "mature" or "friendly to my family." So even though I thought it was superstitious to do so, I set up a request - what some of my friends would call an altar - on the dining table. I wrote my list on a piece of paper, and next to it put a collage I'd made a few years before of my relationship to the Universe; pictures of two people I had really loved; a photo of Dad and one of Phil (for intercessionary powers); some jewelry that has strong sentimental value; a flower; and some candles. My deal with the Universe was that I would help it help me find someone.


At the beginning of July I started looking at the personals on Craigslist. I was looking at Men Seeking Women because the Women Seeking Women posts seemed to either be flame wars or very young women. I had dared myself to meet ten men, which worked because I didn't really want to be doing this at all. Ten meant I had an escape clause.


Zirpu was Bachelor #8. I had actually met about four people in real life by the time I met him. His ad said "Boring Southern Gentleman, 33, in Berkeley" and I thought, "I"ll give this a try, he's close to me in age and geography" because the previous two guys I'd dated hadn't been, one in San Jose, the other 22 years my senior. We exchanged a few emails - he sent a picture I couldn't really see because I only had 16 colors on my old machine (not to mention a 28.8 modem) - and then two phone calls to set up a meet. I'd learned from previous experience that you have to set up the meet quickly, before everyone loses interest in emailing.


We met at the Beanery in Berkeley, close to where we both lived, on July 29. I was 20 minutes late because I couldn't recognize him and because I didn't know the coffeehouse had a back room, and I still want that twenty minutes back. He was playing with Legos which he'd purchased at the toy store next door, to give his hands something to do and hide his nervousness. We talked and played with the Legos for three hours, up until the last possible moment before I had to get back home to meet the book club that was coming over.


When we walked out, he was a little ahead of me and skipped a few steps. So did my heart. As miraculous as it was that we met, the real miracle is that had we met any earlier than we did, neither of us would have been ready for the lightning bolt.


One and a half year later YaYaWOT and Boy made our wedding cake top out of Legos in honor of our first date.