They were politically incorrect years, the fifties.

It’s Halloween, 1955, and I’m an Indian brave. Being only seven years old, I don't realize that I'm politically incorrect.

I love the costume my mother made for me from a gunnysack. It’s like buckskin, I'm sure. I feel authentic: a headdress of feathers, war paint on my face, armed with my rubber knife, bow and arrow. The arrows have little suction cups--which is kind of inauthentic--but I imagine they're poisoned-tipped arrows.

If I am a politically incorrect Indian brave, my four-year old brother is even more politically incorrect. He’s dressed as an Indian squaw—gunnysack dress, long black braids, lipstick. What were my parents thinking?

In my imagination I am Cochise. I am Geronimo, I am Hiawatha. It’s a little embarrassing that I have to have Pocahontas for a brother.
What if my friends see me? How am I going to explain that my brother’s a cross dresser?

We head out on our hunting expedition in the true spirit of Halloween. If someone doesn’t give us a treat, I'll shoot them with my poisoned-tipped arrows.

We first go to the Shapiro’s house. Mr. Shapiro comes to the door.

“Trick or treat!” we shout.

“Oh, my goodness!” says Mr. Shapiro, expressing true surprise, probably at the political incorrectness of our costumes, and he gives each of us an apple.

An apple? Apples I can get at home. Maybe I’ll shoot him anyway.

Hiding our disappointment, we thank him politely and go next door to the Gardners.

“Trick or treat!”

“Oh, how adorable,” says Mrs. Gardner.

I feel insulted. I’m a fierce Apache Comanche Blackfoot warrior, with some Cherokee blood. How dare she call me adorable?

She gives each of us a cellophane-wrapped rhubarb crisp that she baked herself, she says. The rhubarb came from her very own garden.

What about a Milky Way candy bar from your very own supermarket, I want to say, but Mom’s standing behind us.

Apples and rhubarb somethings. What’s next—a broccoli strudl from Mrs. Heinsch across the street? It wasn’t shaping up to be a memorable Halloween. In fact, I don’t remember much more about that night.

It was only years later that I recalled this experience, accompanying my young nephews and niece on their trick or treat expedition. At least they didn’t have to worry about being politically incorrect. They were all little Jedi knights.

 [First posted: October 20, 2014]

Last weekend our family gathered at the lake to learn the gender of our newest incoming member--due to arrive in February 2015.

My nephew Ryan and his wife Jen had delivered the sealed envelope with the ultrasound results--unseen by them--to my other niece-in-law, Robyn, who was the only one to know the sex of the new baby.

(This is the same niece-in-law Robyn who begins books by reading the last chapter to see how they end, so Ryan and Jen clearly recognized that Robyn couldn't possibly wait another 4-1/2 months to learn the baby's gender.)

With the special knowledge Robyn alone possessed, they asked her to bake a cake for the family gathering that would reveal whether it was going to be a little boy or little girl.

On Saturday, with everyone hovering around watching, Jen cut the mystery cake, revealing...a pink center!

So, it's a girl--Unless Robyn was making a statement against traditional sex role stereotyping.

The family then celebrated by consuming the cake. Twenty-two-month old Kelvin took a fistful of cake, unaware of its symbolism and significance for his future role as big brother.

His life is about to change. He and gentle dog Zelda will need to make space for a new addition in the hearts of Ryan and Jen.

Fortunately, there's ample room.

 [First posted: October 20, 2014]

In December 1982, on a visit home from Japan, I greeted my new nephew, Ryan.

In December 2012, I greeted his son. 

So quickly the generations slip by! (This is a good thing, evolution getting personal.)

My nephews and niece, and now my grandnephews and grandniece, re-affirm my faith in the rightness of it all. They give me hope for the future.

Witnessing the procession of life, I stand in awe and wonder, grateful to have been part of it.

[First posted: December 22, 2013]

Memories seem to attach themselves to certain places.

When I think back on my years in Australia, I invariably wind up at the farm
at Barwon Downs, a weekend getaway owned by John and Janet, Graeme’s
brother and sister-in-law, who made it freely available to the rest of the family.

Lying in western Victoria, two hours outside of Melbourne, it had a 100-year old farmhouse set in the middle of 60 hectares, where we spent many weekends. 
A place I remember of immense solitudes, with equal parts intimacy.

I especially enjoyed the winter months there, when storms would roll across the flat landscape while we were tucked away inside: a fire going, a crock pot of savory something cooking, both of us in our books, listening to the thunder rumbling overhead and the rain pinging on the metal roof.

It’s where I did much of my early writing on The Legacy of Emily Hargraves and Tales of Tokyo, when they were both still sprawling stories, threatening to go nowhere.

[First posted: October 27, 2013]

Spent Saturday evening at the family property on Lake Merwin with my brother Gary
and sister(in-law) Kris .

Soup and salad and then a game of Scrabble as the mountain glowed in the north and
the harvest moon rose orange in the northeast.

Kris trounced us once again in a series of humiliating defeats. To be expected.
It’s in her genes. She comes from a long line of ardent and ruthless Scrabble players
who honed their skills over generations. I'd never played cut-throat Scrabble
before meeting Kris and her family. They're from the small town of Elgin in eastern Oregon, so, like, what else was there for them to do?

I am on one of my visits home from Australia. My sister-in-law has asked me to watch over the children—hers and the children she cares for. No problem. Working on a story, I watch over them from downstairs as they play upstairs.

I don’t really need to be upstairs since my 7-year old niece Renee provides me regular updates on how bad the other children are behaving. Especially Ryan, her younger brother. Ryan is being very bad. I thank Renee for the report and ask her to keep me informed if the situation upstairs deteriorates any further.

She leaves. I see my niece having a promising career with the NSA.

Within ten minutes she's returned. Apparently, Ryan is achieving new heights of badness.

Renee loves bunny rabbits. Ryan loves to give her drawings of bunny rabbits with daggers stuck in them, bunny rabbits decapitated, bunny rabbits hanging from a noose. Based on everything Renee has told me, it seems my youngest nephew is growing up to be a sociopath.

She hands me his latest drawing. I offer that maybe it’s not a bunny rabbit being roasted over coals. To me, it looks more like a hippopotamus--with a cotton tail. (Clearly, Ryan is not going to be an artist.)

Renee wants me to punish him—severely—or even better, give him up for adoption before her mother gets home. I explain the complexities involved and that we probably can’t do it within the next 30 minutes. She thinks it’s worth a shot.

I really want to return to my writing and I suggest she not come downstairs again unless there’s blood. If there’s blood, then come and get me.

I can see that I'm a disappointment to my niece and have probably lost my Most Favored Uncle status, but God never intended me to be a disciplinarian.

At the time, I was working on The Legacy of Emily Hargraves, and I would use Renee and Ryan’s relationship—less like typical sibling rivalry than a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction—as a model for that between Emily and her younger brother, Earle, a natural born imp who delights in getting at his sister whenever and in whatever way possible.

[First posted: October 21, 2015]

Bone tired and world weary, I left work,
frustrated by Congress and politics and pettiness and ego
(or am I  being redundant?), driving home 
in a daze of dejection and despair.

Coming up my hill in the failing light, I reached the top and the world—
my world—was a panorama of clouds and setting sun, of vistas and vision. 

And I thought, “Thanks, I needed that.”

[First posted: October 5, 2013]

 










In the early 1980s, when living and teaching in Japan, I enjoyed playing tennis with Japanese friends. During my first year, they invited me for a “tennis weekend” at a mountain resort in central Honshu.

The second day was hot on the clay courts, and at one point I stripped off my T-shirt. While culturally appropriate on any tennis court back home in Seattle, I apparently scandalized all of Niigata Prefecture. With great embarrassment, my doubles partner whispered that I could not “play nude.”

I quickly apologized, slipping my shirt back on. However, I'll admit this embarrassment struck me as odd since just the night before, we--men and women--had all bathed together in the resort’s large o-furo, which I’m pretty sure is not culturally appropriate in Seattle, without anyone showing the least embarrassment.

It was my first lesson in understanding the peculiar logic of a different culture, and I later included the experience in Tales of Tokyo.

[First posted: October 21, 2013]

 
Since 1970, our family has enjoyed this property perched above Lake Merwin.
It lies about six miles as the crow flies from my own hillside (I consulted two crows.)

A special place, retaining the moods, moments and memories of now four generations.

(Thanks to nephew-in-law Nick for his photo capturing one of its moods.)

 [First posted: July 21, 2013]