It's a small world

Yes, I haven’t written in over a year. Normally, I could say, oh well, not much happened, but of course, I skipped 2020. The year from hell. I can’t remember wishing as hard that a year would end. The end of Trump’s administration, or at least the countdown to it. And this was before the terror of January 6.

Then there was the Pandemic, and Covid remains with us of course. But in March and April the growing reality of an illness beyond control of an entire planet felt like a movie, not, well, real. Like many experiences, Covid happened in waves, each stranger than the next. I laughed when I saw bare shelves in Target. People always panic and then the shelves fill up again.

You know what happened next. I had to buy a mask to go to Target and wait for one (1) package of toilet paper. It was difficult to find masks. I ordered some online. Advice on mask-wearing changed from day-to-day. Mostly I stayed home to watch the horror movie unfolding on television. Unfortunately, it was CNN. New York was loading bodies onto trucks. Our grinning President told us that everything was under control when clearly it wasn’t. The man who never wore a mask got sick himself. We’ll never know how sick because his doctor appeared to lie, and Trump received the kind of care the rest of the world can only dream of.

I say the rest of the world for a reason. Covid was and is a worldwide problem. Americans are notoriously isolationist. We try hard to keep everyone and everything out. Trump said with great pride that he closed the borders at the start of the pandemic to save us. But it was already here. Covid travels through the air. There are a number of things that can’t be stopped by physical borders and Covid is one of them.

As the year went on, I started to think about people in other countries, and how they might cope. I haven’t travelled much, but I know countries treat health care differently. Some places have state care. But if the people you love are sick, desperately sick, you want to do something. The whole world was like that in 2020. It was a small world.

Pitchers and catchers report

It comes around every spring. Hope for the year all over again. Football season has finally ended, and baseball returns. I’ve been a baseball fan forever. Which is another way of saying for longer than I’d like to remember. My earliest memories of going to a game are of my father and I watching the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park in the early 60’s. My father only had daughters, so, as the oldest, I got chosen to be the “son.”

Candlestick is no longer. It was blown up by a group of volunteers a few years ago. It was a terrible ballpark for players. Example? During the 1961 All-Star Game, pitcher Stu Miller was blown off the mound by the wind. Umpires called it a balk. Also, the layout of the dugouts didn’t allow the visiting players to go anywhere except the field. There was no access to the clubhouse, as in no bathrooms. The only exit was down the first base line past the Giants dugout. Whenever a visiting manager was thrown out, he would have to walk in front of the Giants dugout to the door. I saw Tommie Lasorda take that walk once, and blow kisses to the crowd on his way.

Candlestick was a challenge for the fans too. The best part for my father and I were the amazing players. We saw Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal, among others. We usually sat in the bleachers. At this point Candlestick was still an open wind tunnel. They hadn’t closed up the back yet and turned it into the mother ship. So, we would bring our cold hot dogs and partial sodas to the benches and nail ourselves to the boards. But what a view. The Say Hey Kid was right there in front of us.

Willie Mays had style. It seemed like he could run faster and jump higher than anyone. My favorite memory of Willie is of a time when he was on first base. Naturally, the pitcher wanted to pick him off. Willie took his lead. The pitcher threw over to first, almost coming out of his socks. Did Willie panic? Hardly. He lifted his left arm in the air and fell gracefully to the base, easily beating the throw. That’s style.

Years later, my husband and I took our son to Candlestick to see the Giants. By then it had been modified several times. For a few years the Forty Niners shared Candlestick with the Giants which meant the park was a stadium during football season. That was weird. They installed some strange stands that could be rolled in or out depending on the sport. The good thing was they charge less money for baseball game tickets in those stands.

They called them “the family pavilion,” and didn’t allow smoking or drinking, swearing was still okay. We went several times. Our son was little and liked to run around. We’d go early and watch batting practice. Eat hot dogs. Read the Chronicle that we brought with us. It was nice.

One Sunday when my husband and son were off getting food, I starting watching the players on the field. The Giants were playing the Philadelphia Phillies that day, and the Phillies were finishing batting practice. Now, as you are reading this, you know that I’m a writer. I’m also a big baseball fan. Those two things collided at that moment.

Baseball isn’t just a sport to me. It’s a memory of my father. It’s the sappy way I feel when I was the end of Field of Dreams. It’s the excitement I feel every time I look through that archway to see a baseball diamond again. The field is a color found nowhere else.

So. I was watching baseball players walk to the dugout. Phillies players. One player walked out of the door next to the Giants dugout and started walking toward the visiting dugout. A Phillies player with a bat on his shoulder almost strolling through the infield. He pauses at second base and looks around. For me, it’s almost poetic. (I’m sorry, it was). I wondered who it was, so I dug out my binoculars, to see. Mike Schmidt, the Phillies third baseman.

I told my husband about it when he got back, and he shrugged. We watched the Giants win the game. That evening, we watched some highlights, and then saw Mike Schmidt announce his retirement. He never played another game. I can still see him standing on the infield by second base taking in all in.

Never Not Writing?

I started a website as a way to share my writing. The home page has a significant scene from my first novel. I tossed in some poetry. This is where I hope to someday share my excitement about selling by book. And in the future, maybe chapters of my next novel. Sadly, it’s not finished yet, but one thing at a time.

My goal is to write everyday, but like eating right and exercising, I miss an occasional day. Well, let’s not go there. Some days I watch British Mysteries on BritBox. (Midsomer Murders, yay!). I do crossword puzzles because they’re good for writers. But mostly I knit.

I started knitting a long time ago. when the woman I was working for sat and knitted during a meeting. After watching for a while, I asked her if she would show me how to do it. Within five minutes I was holding a pair of needles and a skein of yarn. She showed me how to cast on, and sent me off to practice.

The next day I came back with something that resembled a knitted scarf in no way at all. She pulled it out and I started again. This continued for about a week until I created a four-foot scarf. I needed to be shown how to bind off. It was not a thing of beauty, but it was a start. I returned the borrowed needles and bought my own. I started buying what was to become a yarn stash the size of which my husband still doesn’t know. (Yarn squishes in everywhere.)

I fell in love. I bought more needles. I acquired many, many patterns. After scarves, I went to socks. They are small and travel well. I carried a project bag with me. Some knitters can walk and knit, but I can’t. I need to at least lean against something. Knitting in the car can be problematic. I knit socks using what are called double pointed needles, and they are pretty sharp. Also small. Fall on them and puncture an organ. Drop one in the car and kiss it goodbye.

As I live in Northern California, I started attending an annual yarn gathering called Stitches West. It happens every February, although talking about starts immediately after the previous one ends. It’s held in a conference-sized building and is four days of yarn chaos. I believe the attendance could run about 30,000 people. Don’t ask me, I was looking at the yarn.

Everything a knitter, crocheter, quilter, etc. could want is in that building. The sound level goes off the chart. We go inside and fall on the yarn. You think I’m kidding? Well, we do smell the yarn. After a few years, we get to know the owners, and greet them like friends.

When I started to write more, often hours a day, I had to cut back on my knitting habit. Now that I am resting my novel in order to query it, I am spending a bit more time with it. Several of the agents to whom I sent queries said on their sites that it might take up to eight weeks to respond. I’ll do more Querying, and work on my next novel, and I just might knit.

In the beginning

I’m launching my website with very little knowledge of what will happen next. I have been told that authors must have a “presence” on the internet, and, although I suspect my website will be ignored be hundreds if not thousands of people, here I go.

I find great joy in writing. I have always written something, whether it’s poetry or short stories, or even journal entries. Looking back, what I have written in my journals over the years really were early versions of blog entries. At times, they kept me sane. I had a safe place to vent. Often recording an event of the day led back to a memory.

A paragraph written in black and white in my journal could crack open a forgotten time in my past, suddenly flooding back, faster than my pen could move. Ah the old days. Pen or pencil to paper. More difficult to edit with smears of ink, words lined through, tiny writing in the margins.

I’m left handed which makes a variety of things more difficult, but one element of writing in particular. As I move across the page, my hand drags behind me, ink smearing and skin well-marked.