Monday, September 27, 2010

On Being Kinda Scottish



I was a pretty naïve kid.  Leave it to Beaver was right up my alley. My favorite episode was the one where he climbs into the giant, “steaming”  cup of coffee on a billboard. The most frightening program I ever watched was an episode of Wagon Train.  The crusty cook was buried alive and the shot of his hand clawing through the rocks and rubble of his grave scared me for months. 

So it was that I was not as literate as I might have been.  The fact that I grew up in a neighborhood laden with Scottish names and references went right over my head. The main thoroughfares of youth were Hyperion and Rowena.  I lived on Angus Street and went to Ivanhoe Elementary.  I just decided these were rather odd names and gave them no further thought.  I was too busy practicing the flute, watching Lon Chaney Jr. slog through fake fog as the Wolfman and wondering why Jane bothered to wear a dress in the jungle while she was with Tarzan.

Then one day my family went on a trip.  Where we were going, I don’t know.  But on the way we stopped in Carmel, California.  I vividly remember a street sloping towards the sea that had interesting shops on either side.  One of those stores specialized in things Scottish.  Without realizing it, I was hooked.

Why I was attracted to the shop, I have no idea, nor do I know why I was fascinated by a broach that I can still picture.  It was the claw of a bird—a real one--, a purple stone encased in silver and a feather.  Pretty disgusting.  But I wanted it.  I think I was 10 or 11.

Whodathunkit that many years later I would live in Scotland and walk regularly past Sir Walter Scott’s house on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.  And whodathunkit that I would fall in love with a Scotsman who knew that Hyperion and Rowena and Ivanhoe were not just odd names in Silverlake.

The next step was the tartan.  I couldn’t be involved with someone who had one of those orange and yellow plaids that look like the floor of a pub after the last call.   My man had a great one.  It is green and navy, a thin stripe of red and another of yellow. Very close to Hunting Stuart.

The coup de gras came when marriage was on the horizon.  I could “keep my name” as was the fashion or I could “take my husband’s name.”  He didn’t care.  But I did.

My “maiden” name was hellacious for anyone with a lisp.  You try it:  Kristie Smithson.  See.

The chance to have a “Mc” name was too hard to resist. No disrespect to my parents, but my new name just sounds better.


Sunday, September 26, 2010

Tiny Dancer


My mother’s mother died when she was twelve.  Even a long train trip from Seattle to the Mayo Clinic, halfway across the country, did not result in finding a cure for my elegant grandmother. 

Back in Seattle, her grandmother told my mother that the frail woman she loved had passed away in an upstairs bedroom.  The year was 1929; an all around horrible year for the entire country, not just my mother.

Her father, my grandfather, chose to lose himself in his work as the minister of the new church in the university district.  My mother’s brother, seven years older, dealt with the death in a way that was of no help to a twelve year old.  Philipino houseboys were hired to take care of the house, and the grandmother and her elderly friends tended to my mother. 

Fast forward to 1960 in Los Angeles, California.  My mother was now raising two daughters, and doing so without the benefit of maternal advice and care.  As a result, my mother opted to become Super mom.

Thus it was that I, being the eldest, was presented with a variety of mostly unwanted lessons.   Swimming lessons were fine.  I loved them and I am a damned good swimmer. But every other lesson given with the intention of making me into a well-rounded and successful woman went down the proverbial drain.  Ballet was an utter bust. “ First position, second…” To be honest, my only memory of those ballet lessons taught by the side of Echo Lake was a dead pigeon hanging from a palm tree  that we saw on the way to the car.

There followed piano lessons.  I was informed that these lessons would make me popular at parties.  Even as a kid I didn’t buy it.  Long gone were the Bing Crosby movies where everyone stood around a piano and crooned.  The 60’s weren’t about crooning, but my mother didn’t know that.

Then came probably the most ill gotten of all lessons:  cotillion dancing.  Somewhere near the golf course and horse stables that abutted Griffith Park on Loz Feliz Blvd was a hall that became the personal hell of many a Silverlake pre-teen.

One woman played the piano, one woman gave directions.   And a slew of Silverlakites were suddenly thrust into a dance hall.  Sweaty, pimply boys in suits and ties and girls in frou-frou dresses were ordered to move their feet to the rhythm of the fox trot and the cha cha cha.  This had absolutely no relevance to our real life…and never would have. 

The stress of not being picked to dance was equaled with the angst of dealing with the odors and damp fluids emitted by teenaged boys. The closest this came to having any meaning was when I watched the Sound of Music and knew that, if the odd happenstance occurred and  I would need to do the waltz surrounded by my seven children—I would be able to do it.   This is not something most people pay for.

I know parents do things with the best of intentions, but cotillion dancing was not something that I have ever used.   Once, when my son was at an un-named school, they asked parents to come in and talk.  I was sorely tempted to come in and tell the kids that algebra was of utterly no use.   But I have a few friends who are math teachers and thought the better of it.  Cotillion is right up there with algebra.