As I watched myself this late afternoon juggle a two year old who is starting to have tantrums, a dinner in the oven and on the stove, a four year old doing yoga while her sister tried to roll up her mat, I thought, "I should just describe these past three hours from start to finish and then people will understand the craziness of my life." So I put the kids to bed and took my bath and thought about my novel, and the work I have to do for my class (Who assigns group projects for an online class?! Argh!), and I thought about writing about those three hours and thought, "Nah. Maybe tomorrow."

So for now, here's a chapter of my little NaNo project. Read it if you'd like. If not, please describe three hours in your life recently. The crazier the better.

Happy Veterans Day to all who have served. I can't help thinking of my father and grandfather who both served during WWII. They are no longer living. They were both proud to have served. My grandfather helped conduct proper military funerals for his fellow veterans until the year he died. So in honor of them, I say thank you to all veterans.

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Chapter Four:

After tucking the girls into bed, I kissed Ben, savoring the warmth and firmness of his face. I quietly walked downstairs and headed towards the car, closing the door behind me. The weather was mild for an early November evening, It was also moist. I detected the sweet smell the Eucalyptus leaves. The rains hadn’t hit yet. We were having a late autumn.

Every Thursday evening I volunteered at the local history museum, training other volunteers in archival work. It was a small archive, but there were some gems in there. Fifty years ago, our town was dairy country, farmed predominantly by Portuguese speaking Dairy farmers from the Azores. The museum held records of farm sales, the minutes of the Knights of Columbus gatherings, and IDES, Irmandade do Divono Espirito Santo a.k.a. Brotherhood of the Divine Holy Spirit, a Portuguese society organized to celebrate the annual Holy Ghost festival that took place in our town every year, a tradition brought over from the Azores.

“Thar she is. Mommy librarian!” Jim Alameda teased, waiting with his buddy Dick Paladini on the front porch of the museum.

“You’re early! Did you skip dessert.”

“No. Don’t worry. I brought yours.”

“Cookies?”

“You bet. You think she’d forget?

Bill’s wife, Ann, used to bring cookies to the museum every Wednesday, the day she volunteered with her friends. Like clockwork, the trio of women would stop what they were doing every Wednesday at noon and pull out their bagged sandwiches and start doing cross-word puzzles at their work table in the back of the museum. Any visitors wandering in at this time would hear loud bickering, intermingled with whoops of laughter. When I came in occasionally to consult with the museum director, I’d always stop to enjoy a few cookies. I would challenge myself to answer at least one crossword clue before excusing myself from the table.

“No, I just never want to fall out of favor with her, you know.’ I said, winking.

“You and me both.” We laughed.

I unlocked the door. “Jeff is coming tonight. He’ll be here soon.”

I turned on the lights and we headed up the stairs. The museum had once been the home of one of the most successful ranchers in town. He grew fruit: apples, pears, plums, until the land dried up. Then as the ranch started to fail, he parceled up the land. The house stood on acre of land after the sales. The family lived there until the early 1960s. When the grandson of the rancher passed away with no remaining relatives, a group of hippies moved in and started a commune. It became dilapidated by the mid 1970s. The house was later donated to the town, and the historical society, a community of “old timers” devoted to keeping their memories of the town alive, started the museum on a purely volunteer basis.

This night, we set up shop upstairs in the archive. Each of us had a task. The volunteers of the museum thrived on routine. Every Thursday night, the same pattern was followed with unspoken regularity. Jim set up the computer. Dick arranged the notebooks. When it came time to take a break, Jim started the hot water, while Dick set out the napkins and the cookies.

Their work at the museum was more than work, it was interwoven into their lives as deeply as a family member might be. Their fellow volunteers were their childhood friends. The monotonous tasks of indexing, cataloguing, and filing were all part of a process of preserving everything that they once were.

I, on the other hand, was there for a different kind of companionship. I wanted to feel their world. I wanted to preserve it, too.

And somewhere in this process, we had become family. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was assured by Patricia, a woman who had assisted a doctor in the 1930s, that she could deliver my baby for me if an emergency came up. “Just give me a few hours, while my medication kicks in,” she said wearily. She was suffering from severe back pain. Her only concern was not having forceps handy.

We heard the jingle of bells as Jeff arrived and rattled the front door. I went downstairs to let him in. Jeff was a retired police officer.

‘It took me longer than usual to find parking. My spot was taken. They are meeting next door. Planning some kind of trouble, I suppose.”

Next to the museum lived a Quaker couple. Their weekly peace-nik meeting had been changed to Thursday this week. Jeff was a hard-line conservative.

“This country needs to be united right now. Tell those liberals to love it or leave it.”

“I’m sure they love their country, too.” I said, and then quickly changed the subject. “We’ve got a really interesting collection of papers to go through tonight. I think we’re going to have fun.


We were going start going through h a recent acquisition, four boxes of letters from the Azeveda family. The Azevedas had farmed in the western part of the country for almost a century. I had briefly scanned the letters. Most of the letters were written in the sixties and seventies. Tonight we were going to go through and determine which letters should be brought into the collection.

Each volunteer had a pile that he was to work his way trough and report about. I walked back and forth, looking over shoulders.

Then I looked through the oral history collection to see if any Azevedas had been interviewed.

Margarida Azeveda, 1972.

“Did you know Margarida Azeveda,?” I asked over my shoulder.

“She died a few years ago. We all knew her.”

“Well, they interviewed her back in the 70s. There’s a transcript here.”

I silently scanned the transcript.

“It was natural for my family to want to farm. Our ancestors farmed out of necessity. We were on an island and we had to grow our own food. We couldn’t just go and buy it at the local market. Our clothing came from the wool we sheared from our sheep. The women worked hard to weave this wool into cloth. It is in us to love the land. When we pick up the soil and feel it in our hands, we are connected with our ancestors.”

I wanted to hold that soil in my hand and feel connected to my ancestors, who were also farmers. The Azoreans in our community did not necessarily live on farms, but even those that live in tract houses had beautiful terraced gardens, which produced fruits in volume. Their churches and IDES societies had secured a connection to the land for gnenerations. Every year, IDES societies all over California elected IDES queens and princesses as they clebrated The Festa do Espírito Santo, a festival held every year in honor of the Holy Ghost. When our county was all farmland, this annual festival was a way to bring the community together from their disperate farms. It also brought county and county together as Festa royalty marched in every county within a reasonable distance.

Jim and Dick had grown up going on dairy farms, attending the annual Holy Ghost festivals. They had an ease and comfort in the community that was satiable, though I could sense a dismay developing at the changing character of the town. It was becoming a bedroom community. Families were moving from the city, buying homes from builders that had no sense of what the town had once been. Homes with 4200 square feet, granite counters with granite backsplashes, coolers for wine collections, designer SUVs. The houses were stunning and perfect in every way, once families moved into them they became involved in disputes with the builders about the quality of the foundation, or a faulty drainage system. The builders were in and out. The same houses were built across the country, with little thought to the difference in soil, or rock, or history.

Jeff was not an “old timer” in the sense that he was a transplant from Connecticut. He was not in good health. His hands shook, partly from an anxiety disorder. We had many conversations on our Thursday nights that has bonded us. Jeff grieved for the Connecticut of his childhood and blamed the liberalism of the 1960s for destroying it. I listened, always with interest, but a sadness usually washed over me, too. Sometimes I felt we were all heartbroken in this country, mourning for values and a country disappearing. We all blamed each other for our sense of loss.

The phone rang. It was Ann.

“Did you get the cookies, or did Jim eat them before you got to them?”

“He says he has them. I haven’t seen them, yet.”

“Bring some home to your babies. Will you be coming by on a Wednesday any time soon. We miss you.”

“It’s hard, you know with my girls and their naptimes. How are your grandkids?”

Ann’s son was a doctor with a young family. He was a reservist, and was now serving in Iraq. It was unclear when he would be back. His wife and children were staying with Ann and Jim until he was done serving.

“They’re keeping us young, that’s for sure.”

“Have you heard from your son?”

“Yes. It’s not easy there.” I struggled for something appropriate to say. She spoke first. “I have a mind to march in Washington on Sunday.”

“Would Jim join you?”

“I don’t know, ask him. Dick marched, you know. Years ago, to oppose the Vietnam war.”

“Really!?”

“He had a son that was draft age. It was 1968, and by then he had had enough. He just got up and marched without saying much about it. At least that’s how his family tells the story.”

After we hung up, I walked back to the archival room. Quiet, reserved, predictable Dick. I tried imagining him marching against the war. It was so very unpredictable.

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That night driving home, a downpour started. I struggled to see through the windshield. My headlights reflected the streams of water rushing down, not the street signs or shape of the roads. As I turned right, I saw a pair of headlights coming towards me. We both stopped. I had turned too far, into the opposing lane. I straightened the car and turned around. As the other car moved on, I parked my car on the side of the road to get my bearings.

On my right was the local Catholic church, Our Lady of Salvation. Every year for 80 years a week after the feast of the Holy Ghost, Pentecost, the Portuguese in the town had paraded from IDES hall to this church. I got out of the car, grabbing my jacket. Throwing my jacket over my head, I stood outside the car peering at the church, which was lit on the outside. This church spoke to generations. It spoke to my parents. It did not speak to me. While the church that my parents came of age in was looking forward, the church of my age seemed to be looking backwards. I wanted its warmth, but I was not sure that it wanted me at all. Had I failed or had it? Either way, it was a loss. As well as I functioned, somewhere my heart was broken.

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