An Angel Named Hector

~ GrayMareWrites ~ 1 Comment

Who says angels can’t be furry?  And have a big pink mouth and giant brown feet?

Hector didn’t begin life as an angel.  The happy little hand puppet was a 21st birthday present from my BFF, Zan, the month before I set out from Massachusetts to California with my mother in an LTD station wagon packed full of our earthly goods.  He relaxed on the bench seat between us down the Eastern Seaboard and shared our shock as, driving from Nashville to Memphis, we heard about the death of Elvis.  He quaked as we drove through blinding sheets of rain in Arkansas and dodged bats at an eerily dark campsite in southern Texas.  He soothed me as I experienced my first desert—all that empty space and endless horizon freaked out this suburban girl.  He settled with us in Orange County, where we decided to start our new life.

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Thanks Pop!

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Like most families, our story is complicated.  After a fairly idyllic childhood, my father walked out the door and never returned.  Naturally, even that part is more complicated than a patently dramatic statement.  Suffice to say, there’s a longer story and someday, maybe I’ll publish it.  But for now, the fact is he turned the world my mother and I thought of as solid and comfortable into chaos one August morning in 1973.

For the next 47 years, after awkward initial attempts to stay connected while I still lived back East, I only saw him once.  I kept our contact to exchanging letters because talking to him was just too painful.    Even though he had my phone number, he never called.  But he did ask to pass it to his step-son, so he could call me in an emergency.

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The Lost Art of Editing

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I warned you I might include rants on my blog.  Hey, here’s one now!

Disclaimer: I’m not perfect and don’t claim to be but I do my best to publish with the least amount of errors possible.

I’m not going to mention names in this rant.  I don’t want to embarrass anyone.  But please, if anything I mention here gives you pause to examine your own blog or social media posts, print or online articles, self-published books, etc., then this rant will not have been in vain.

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Sleepy Hollow at Muzeo

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Not feeling too wordy today, so here’s a bunch of photos from the Legend: 200 Years of Sleepy Hollow at Muzeo in Anaheim, CA.  Muzeo is a lovely little museum up the street from Disneyland.  It’s basically a big black box that affords flexibility for each exhibit it hosts.  I’ve seen Napoleon’s hat, costumes from Downton Abbey, part of Cheech Marin’s Chicano art collection, Russian icons, Buffalo soldier uniforms, spyware and rad black leather jackets, among other things.  If you’re ever in the area, look them up at Muzeo.org.

Outside

The view from the courtyard
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Book Review * The House in the Cerulean Sea

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The Book:

Linus Baker, a by the book orphanage inspector for the Big Brother-like Department in Charge of Magical Youth, embarks on a life changing journey when he’s tasked with a month-long assignment at an unusual location at the end of the rail line.  Accompanied by his aloof black cat, Calliope, he finds a place both dangerous and hopeful that he’d never dared to dream of.  Will he summon the strength to defend the vulnerable children of Marsyas Island and claim the many kinds of love offered him by those he has learned to hold dear?

Approved by Miss Evie, the librarian.
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Time Enough At Last, The Happy Ending

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We probably all have stories, written or filmed, that had endings we hated.  Maybe we also revisit them from time to time and come up with happier endings.  For me, this is a pretty obvious one.

For those of you who’ve never seen Season 1, Episode 8 of the original Twilight Zone series, let me do a quick synopsis of Time Enough At Last, starring Burgess Meredith.

Here’s Henry Bemis, at his bank job.

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Older and Wiser? Not Necessarily

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Anybody out there feeling like a teenager again, but not in a good way?

Lately, as I near a milestone birthday, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life.  The phrase Older and Wiser makes me laugh because right now, I feel as untethered and generally fucked up as I did at 17.

The turtleneck was a bright lime green.
It was the 70’s, folks!!
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