Leave Taking

These are the people I'll miss most when I leave my job at the end of this week: 

David...

            Donna and Nicola...

 Bogdan, who taught under Bulgarian 

Communist rule, making 40 dollars a month

(and the only one of us who appreciated our salary)

and...

Our Bahá security guard, Komy, funniest guy around, if it wasn't for him, we'd all have lost our minds.

 and...

 Beker's granddaughter who sang for us

 and my crazy Korean students...

and my beautiful Farsi Students.

Ah Parvin, how you drove me crazy,

 

and all the parties we had on company time...

I will miss it all, but I'm ready for my leave taking. Good-bye colleagues, good-bye Komy, good-bye students. Good luck to us all!

Highland Park Utility Boxes

 

 

Viewed from north and south perspectives of the street, these Highland Park utility boxes were found abruptly transformed one morning on Figueroa, at Ave. 50. Who is this mystery artist, who knows firsthand the viciousness of wolves and the playfulness of coyotes and skunks? Please step forward so I can tell you how much I like your work. (note: panther, which appeared earlier at Ave. 51, was drawn by an artist at Franklin, the local high school.) Could it be the same person? I doubt it, but what do you think?

This is what I love about Highland Park; it always surprises, and lately it's been surprising a lot. 

***

What else surprises? A daughter who comes home for a week, spends most of it away with friends, and leaves only the scent of her coconut shea butter moisturizer behind. AS IT SHOULD BE! (I keep telling myself...) I already miss her. We had a lovely tea in the garden with her superlative, talented friends— and admiring, superlative moms— before she left, and that will hold me, at least for awhile.

Maya with best friends Frankie, Theresa and Lucy

Holding Hands

Whose hands are these? I wonder. Surely, they can't be mine! They look like fat juicy sausages, fingerling potatoes, roots of the agapanthus plant, old as Moses. They remind me of the Buddha Hand I saw in the produce section at Whole Foods...

(Is that fruit giving me the finger?)

....Or that gloved hand perched on a pipe at the LA Arboretum. Stiff and strange.

I've been thinking of hands lately: my own, because I've been neglecting them; my children's, long and lean, without nary a wrinkle; my husband's hands, hardworking, warm and firm, full of pain at times, good to hold. 

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. Holy moly, that's a lot of years! Happy Anniversary dear Husband! Happy Anniversary to us! Your hands have held firm, even when mine have not. Look, even in the midst of everything, we're holding hands.

 June 7, 1987

This post wasn't meant to be about our anniversary, at least, it didn't start out that way; but there it is, the nature of blogging, one thing leading to another— hands to a long marriage. 

***

While I'm on the subject, I made a little video over the weekend (a nightmare experience, since iMovie changed a perfectly good operating system into a two-headed drunken monster...with google ads I can't stop!), with my rats, Blu and Lily, and Dylan's little cousins. A big thanks to them for being such giggly, good sports. Here's the video... called, Washing Hands.