COLLAGE CARDS
We also did fold-dye, as I did years later with my godkids (see 9-9-19), only instead of using paper towels, I bought large sheets of elegant rice paper from a Japanese shop. Back then you could also buy a high-gloss transparent contact paper. So we created collage...
BEETLES
When I found out that my friend high school friend Meryl had taught an art class for the kids in her neighborhood, I decided try to earn some money doing the same. I put up fliers and wound up teaching two classes, with a handful of elementary-age students. Besides...
DR. A
After Dr. G, I started therapy with Dr. A, president of the American Psychiatric Association. Who could be more of an expert? I reasoned. He was gray-haired, grandfatherly, and smoked a pipe, his office in a comfortable room in a beautiful Victorian house in San...
THE ULTIMATE DISCLOSURE
"Dear Ella, "I’m so sorry I missed seeing you and Dale in Healdsburg. I hope you’ll pardon my not getting back to you. That week was the end of a brief—traumatic—affair with a man named Bob. It was also a big, traumatic week for therapy—I wound up leaving Dr. G soon...
BACK “HOME”
When I first came home, my mother treated me better for a time—because of my abortion, I believe, realizing that it had been a painful experience for me. She even allowed me to keep the cockatiel I’d bought in southern California—“Mutty,” for “muttonchops,” because...
CREATIVE MENTOR
Mom’s friend Arlen was pretty, with a lilting voice and very precise diction (her parents were immigrants, and she didn’t learn to speak English until she was six); she was graceful—even taught ballroom dancing at an Arthur Murray studio at one time—and musical, with...