Last week I wrote about our pets we adopted on Thanksgiving in years past. This year, we visited friends and met Buddy. I would have taken him home — if our friends allowed it. Buddy was a rescue dog who is seven years old. According to our friends, he was being abused by his owner. The owner’s daughter already had several dogs and cats and couldn’t keep him. I’m not sure how our friends found him, but they are fortunate they did.
He was the most delightful, happiest little creature I’ve ever met. He was so happy to greet us. Happy to sit by us. Thrilled to go for a walk. His entire little body vibrated with his happiness that he shared with us.
We’ve spent many Christmas and Thanksgivings with our friends of 30 plus years. They moved to Arizona before us and have a new home two hours south of us. It’s the first time we’ve visited them in their new home by Tucson and we laughed and shared stories the entire weekend — with Buddy enjoying every moment.
Here’s a view of the dramatic mountains near Tucson while out walking with Buddy.
Did you enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend with family and friends? Who was “Buddy” during your weekend?
I normally love to read books and only listen to them while we’re on a drive of more than four hours.
This past week, I listened to “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane” by Lisa See, published in 2017.
I highly recommend this book. A friend of mine in Santa Barbara only listens to books, she never reads. That’s because she is constantly moving and busy. She never takes a break from work around the house, yard, cooking or her business sewing for interior designers until bedtime. She also works at a school during the week. (She’s exhausting to be around!) She finished this book and said it was “so good!”
It was! I have read other Lisa See books including the novel “Shanghai Girls” and her family’s biography, “On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family.”
I’m a Lisa See fan.
I decided to experiment and listened to this book, rather than read it. It seemed like cheating, but I enjoyed it. The narration was good and I wasn’t hung up by trying to pronounce Chinese words in my head.
Here’s an overview of the story from Lisa See’s website:
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, a moving story about tradition, tea farming, and the enduring connection between mothers and daughters.
In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.
The stranger’s arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock—conceived with a man her parents consider a bad match—she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city.
As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her insular village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins, and across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.
A powerful story about two women separated by circumstance, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and a celebration of the bonds of family.
I loved the characters, the drama, learning about the different ethnic groups of China, how the Akha people believe in spirits and how they were untouched from the modern world until after the Cultural Revolution. I also learned about tea farming, connoisseur’s, and the many health properties of tea.
After I finished listening to “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane,” I decided to try another book on Audible. I chose an Elin Hilderbrand novel called “The Castaways.” I have to confess that it did not work for me to listen to it. It’s about four couples and I can’t keep the characters straight, not did I care about them.
I’m not sure if it’s the format of listening to a book that made the Lisa See book so accessible and enjoyable — and it doesn’t work for Elin Hilderbrand. Or, maybe I don’t like the second book as much even if I read it?
What are your thoughts of reading versus listening to books? What’s your preference and why?
My dream home of 28 years in Palm Springs, built in 1937.
I was home caring for my dad, who had shoulder surgery. My daughter and husband were in Los Angeles at a swim meet for the weekend (son in college). I had to pick up my dad’s meds at the pharmacy and I told him not to leave the recliner we had rented for his recovery — placed in front of the TV.
When I returned, he was on the floor. Of course, he didn’t listen to me and didn’t stay put.
“I can’t get my dad off the floor!” I called my husband on his cell. After numerous attempts with Dad, neither one of us made an inch of progress.
In the background, I heard my daughter say “Call Mr. Siffleet!”
Of course, why hadn’t I thought of that? Karl was married to one of my close friends who lived less than a mile away. They had a daughter who went to kindergarten through high school with my daughter. Karl and my husband swam 5:30 a.m. Masters together.
Within minutes, Karl came over, picked my dad up as though he was a bag of potatoes and placed him comfortably in his chair. Thank you, Karl!
I can’t remember all the things Karl did for us during the decades we lived in that home. But what I do remember is going to a post-op appointment after knee surgery about thirty minutes away. I realized I left the stove on for vegetable soup I was cooking.
Yikes! I called Karl and he came over to the house, turned off the stove — and put the burnt pot outside.
Yes, this family had a key to our house. They even took care of Olive the cat while we were on vacation.
Another time, our swim team was hosting a meet at the city pool. We had an extensive set up of pop-up tents constructed from poles and tarps, tables, electronic timing equipment, scoreboard, snack bar, grills, timing chairs, etc. We’d have more than 1,000 people to host at swim meets for a three-day weekend — including swimmers and family members.
One morning, my husband (who was Mr. Meet Manager) arrived at the pool at dawn to find tons of equipment in the pool. We blamed the skaters from the next-door skate park. But it could have been any gang of hoodlums. My husband called (I was comfortably asleep in bed) and asked me to drive our daughter to the pool. Karl also showed up — probably to help with set up — and they dove in and retrieved equipment from the bottom of the deep end, hours before the meet began.
I miss living near Karl and his family. I’m glad we are still in touch, but I really miss a neighbor like Karl who always came to the rescue! He was our local superman.
What have your neighbors done for you when you needed help? Do you play that role with any neighbors?
“All right mates! Let’s go.” Rob, an Aussie, called out to us when we parked in front of an apartment complex in Santa Barbara.
We jumped into his car without unloading ours. Off we went to the harbor where he said his wife Debbie was waiting for us on their sailboat.
That’s the first time I met the couple who would become our close friends. It was “BK” before kids — and around 35 years ago. My husband and Rob met on the East Coast training with a large brokerage firm. They had hit it off and decided we all needed to get together once they returned to California.
On the boat, Rob shouted orders like “Skirt the jib!” “Ready about!” or “Trim the main.”
My husband and I were expected to jump in and help, but we didn’t now what to do. Debbie showed us “the ropes” and how to respond to each command.
Years before, I had taken sailing at the University of Washington in college with my brother. We were in a small sailboat and I remember getting hit in the head by the boom. My earrings popped out and a clump of hair ripped out of my head onto the boom as we “came about.” I had a small amount of experience — which was more than my husband had.
We soon learned that this was not a leisurely sail. We found ourself in a Santa Barbara Yacht Club race!
That weekend was the beginning of years of friendship. In the early years, we visited them and stayed in their apartment because they were too busy to visit us. Rob left the brokerage business and they opened a savory Aussie pie shop that sold hand-held pies about the size of hamburgers.
My favorite pies were scallop and cheese, spinach and feta — and best of all — Shepherd’s pie. The pie shop was the first of several entrepreneurial businesses.
I remember one afternoon driving to a beach for a picnic. We got stuck in traffic that wasn’t moving. They pulled off the road and set up a picnic on a red and white checkered tablecloth with smoked oysters, tomatoes, cheese, crackers, and a bottle of “cab sav” in a field dotted with cows in the far off distance.
Time spent with Rob and Debbie is always an adventure. I can’t wait to see them in August on our vacation.
My husband and me on our friends’ sailboat decades after meeting them.
Rob at the tiller with Debbie.
Fred and Honey, our friends’ Galahs. Rob had to give up his Australian citizenship to bring them to the U.S.
How did you meet your close friends from decades ago? Do you stay in touch today?
My toddler daughter at Aliso Beach in Laguna, California.
My daughter called and asked me about a letter from her best friend that I never gave her. I had forgotten all about it. But wouldn’t you know, my husband on a separate phone call with her, brought it up.
“Why would your dad say anything about the letter?” I asked instantly upset.
“Mom, I’m 27 years old. I can handle it.”
At the time of the letter, my daughter was 13 years old. My daughter and her best friend had been together since birth. We (my friend and I) helped each other out with our second children by taking turns having them together several times a week. That gave one of us time to clean, shop or sleep! The older siblings were in half-day preschool.
I homeschooled our daughter sixth through eighth grade when our son began high school. Our daughter’s best friend was at a public middle school and we agreed to pick her up once a week while her mom was at work.
The plan was to have a craft or art project each Wednesday. Sometimes my daughter wanted to hang out with her best friend and not have a designated project. I thought everything was peachy when my friend said she had a letter to drop off from her daughter to mine.
She told me to read the letter before I gave it to my daughter. I was shocked. My daughter’s best friend was ending their friendship and said she was promised an art project on Wednesdays. She hoped my daughter would understand if they saw each other that she wouldn’t speak to her. She was never speaking to her again. I can’t remember exactly what else was in the letter, but it was mean and there was no way I’d let my daughter read that letter and be hurt.
I threw the letter away.
Of course my daughter wanted to know why Wednesdays were off and why she wasn’t going to her best friend’s house on Saturday, or having her over to our house.
I explained as best I could that her friend was going through some troubling times and to be patient and things would go back to normal. There were three major upheavals in the girl’s life that she was struggling through that I won’t share. But they were major and beyond what I thought my daughter needed to learn about at the time. I do think this rejection from her best friend without explanation has affected my daughter’s relationships today.
Their friendship was never the same again, although later in life they became civil.
Question. Would you have given the letter to your daughter or thrown it away like I did? Why or why not?
My new view while I work. This is the courtyard at the entrance to our house.
We are having houseguests for six nights beginning this weekend. My friend who moved from my Palm Springs neighborhood to less than a mile from us in Arizona is having a birthday party. She has four children who went to the same school with my two kids — K through high school. Although none of our kids were in the same class, they were like stepping stones, my two fitting neatly between her four.
These days there are a few spouses involved and she doesn’t have room for everyone — so I offered our two empty bedrooms. She took me up on it. I decided to get started de-catifying and cleaning Wednesday and not wait until a few hours before they arrive.
My refuge and work space is in our casita. Although I set up an office for myself in what was supposed to be the formal dining room, I’ve never used it — except the bookcase and to file paperwork. I have never sat at my desk and worked.
We knew right away that we didn’t need a formal dining room. We’ve never had one. I didn’t have one growing up, either. We’ve always had a table off the kitchen. We aren’t formal dining folks.
This is our dining room table and chairs that we moved from Palm Springs. I love the tree stump base. We acquired the table in the early 1990s when we bought our Palm Springs home. The prior owners of that house left it and it’s been our dining room table ever since.
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My husband works remotely and he is on the phone all day long — and he’s LOUD. The formal dining room/office is too close to his office and I can’t focus.
I found a work around. Headphones. I’m sitting at my desk in my office with headphones on listening to music and podcasts in the background as I write. It’s working.
It felt like moving again to get all my stuff out of the casita. I can’t believe what I squirreled away including snacks, books and papers.
At first I felt out of sorts working at my real desk, but I’ve decided it gives me a new outlook. A new perspective to my day. There’s also no sofa and TV to tempt me.
What is your work space like? Where is your favorite place to write and read?
A neighbor asked me to go to a driving range. We set a date to go yesterday. When I woke up it was 33 degrees.
And look at this:
The weather on my first day back to golf.
I haven’t golfed in years. I think it was my ski accident and knee surgery that put golf off my radar. That was 2018. Of course the day I make plans to golf again we get snow?
I grew up in a golf family. At least my dad was an avid golfer, my mom wasn’t as serious. He started playing when he was a kid and still plays. He’ll be 91 this week.
My first golf tournament I was five or six years old. I’d stare at the beautiful first place trophy in the clubhouse after Dad signed me up. I just had to win.
It was a three-hole match. I tied for first place with another girl my age. We went on to sudden death. The fourth hole I scored 13 to her 12. The match was over and she took home the trophy.
I had one friend growing up who also golfed. Her older brother was friends with mine and they were on the high school golf team. They’d take us out on weekends to golf (not with them, but following them one hole behind.) At least they’d give us a ride to the golf course.
In high school, my friend and I asked to join the boys’ golf team. They didn’t have one for girls. They let us go to daily practice, but we never got to play in a tournament or match. I think we were as good as a few of the boys.
My friend and her brother got jobs at a local golf course. Once the patrons were gone, we’d grab the golf carts and joyride. Our brothers and a few other employees made a race track in the woods. My friend and I were stationed up high on a hill next to the woods. If we spotted the owner’s car coming, it was our job to yell to the golf cart racers.
One day it happened. The owner’s station wagon was driving up the long gravel drive. We yelled, then floored it back to the clubhouse. We got there before the station wagon was parked and tried to act nonchalant.
The owner said, “What’s up?” He pointed at the golf cart we were in.
We looked down at the engine and it was smoking. Oops.
Then we wondered what happened to our brothers. They didn’t make it out of the woods in time. I think they either flipped a golf cart, or got one stuck in the mud. I can’t quite remember.
In the end, my friend and her brother kept their jobs at the golf course, but that was the end of our joyrides.
What sports or activities did you do when you were young that you enjoy today? Or look back at with great memories?
