Judy Sunde Hanawalt

Things I'm Thinking About

Author: Judy Hanawalt (Page 5 of 23)

Living and writing in Berkeley gives me lots of inspiration. I am passionate about community, justice, kids and families. I love cooking and eating, laughing and sharing life with friends and family, especially over a glass of wine.

Seeing Homeless People

October 5, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I see homeless people everyday. They are sometimes on the streets asking for money, or near the grocery store asking for food, or sometimes just hanging out, sitting in the sun, maybe selling newspapers or trying to make a little money peddling embroidered patches or aluminum-can flowers they have made.

I see them ducking around the shelves in the aisles of the drug store, or pushing impossibly-loaded strollers full of what looks like junk across the street, stopping traffic. They are camped under overpasses and in parks. They are a very visible part of our community.

Many homeless people are pleasant individuals in need of a friendly smile, but some suffer from mental or emotional issues and are not pleasant at all. Usually, I have a few friendly words to say to them, and if I have cash, I buy a paper or give them a few dollars. I have gotten to know some homeless people over the years, and I talk to them when I see them, if they remember me (stories about some of them here and here).

Today I had a nice chat about water aerobics with the man selling the Street Sheet for two dollars in front of the Y. He recommended the water class, but warned me to eat something first so my blood sugar wouldn’t get too low.

Near there on another day, I was crossing the street and the person crossing from the other direction started screaming that I was attacking her. I was not; I was merely in the cross walk with her. A policeman rode by on his bike, and the homeless woman tried to call him over, but he just said, “Keep moving please,” and rode on. I was already on the other side of the street, wondering what had set her off.

Recently, I was walking downtown, crossing the street to a bar to meet my husband before a movie. I could hear the homeless group on the corner having a shouting match from half a block away; I didn’t want to walk by and catch their attention, so I skirted around the back of the bus stop and slipped past them. Over a drink, we wondered what the yelling man was upset about.

This sounds crazy, I know.

When we were new in Berkeley, I encountered a small, hunched woman downtown who was visibly angered by me and my son, then about 7. I don’t remember exactly how she said it, but what she said troubled me: You don’t understand what it’s like to have trouble. She pointed at my son disdainfully. He’ll never have trouble.

I sputtered something about just trying to live our lives like everyone else, having pain and hardship like everyone does. She scoffed. Flustered, tears came to my eyes. I was defensive—Hey! I have problems! Even as I said it, I knew that mine seemed insignificant to her.

What she said has rolled around in my mind since.

As I try to understand what happened there, and why it upset me so much, I think her bitterness was not only about a home or resources or a supportive community or even mental health—though those are certainly important and likely missing from her life.

She was angry that I could not see her. I was not able to take all of the circumstances and the contingencies into account, all the effort and the setbacks and the losses. I did not give her the dignity she deserved as a valuable human being because I did not know where she came from. I didn’t care to know.

I could not see past the present; the dirty, mean outside. Looking at herself through my eyes, she saw a failure, a broken-down, wasted life, a person I would never look at the way I looked at my son. Did anyone look at her the way I looked at my son? Protectively, with the full expectation that he would be smart and successful, and with love that would not change when the trouble did come?

Did anyone ever really see her?

Bay Blood

October 5, 2018 / / 0 Comments

It’s wedding weekend. My nephew on my husband’s side is getting married on Saturday. My sister-in-law flew in from Colorado this morning, and after a lunch at her favorite spot–Saul’s on Shattuck–we drove to the San Francisco airport to pick up my mother-in-law, who flew in from Oregon. Tomorrow more family will arrive from Colorado, Oregon and Southern California. We are a typical, far-flung family.

We ordered pizza and opened some wine and sat in the living room chatting. Two of the kids were home and joined us. Our conversation ranged from politics to old family stories.

My mother-in-law’s memories took us back to her elementary school days, when the family lived in Oakland’s Dimond District. After they moved to Walnut Creek, there were Friday nights out with friends cruising “the Main,” and late night races through the Caldecott Tunnel, using all the lanes and praying there wasn’t any oncoming traffic

One story led to another. My mother-in-law remembered a time in high school when she went out dancing with a date to the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and her date’s car lost its brakes on California Avenue and careened backwards down the steep street into a parking garage where they came to a stop. She was terrified, but somehow they were safe.

After marriage and kids, the family was true to their Bay Area teams. Apparently she was a very vocal fan at A’s and Raiders’ games. My husband inherited this trait, as those of you who have watched sports with him can attest.

We heard about the excitement (and an unfortunate loss of bladder control) when she was in the stadium for the famous “Heidi Game,”  when the Raiders pulled out a miracle victory. The network had stopped coverage of the football game and started playing the movie Heidi, causing fans watching at home to miss the last-minute touchdown that won the game. She also remembered going to LA to see the A’s in the World Series, and is still upset about that unlikely final home run by a guy with an injured leg that gave the series to the Dodgers.

The kids were amazed. They hadn’t realized how deep their Bay Area roots go. As far back as they remember, Grandma has lived in Oregon, but tonight they connected with the fact that their grandparents and their dad are Bay born and raised. They feel a new sense of belonging; their love of the Bay now justified. No wonder this feels like home–it’s in their blood.

I thought they knew this family lore, but somehow it didn’t get transferred. We better keep on talking–there are lots more stories to tell.

My Grandmother’s Dishes

October 4, 2018 / / 4 Comments

I was at the Good Will store a few months ago, searching among the glassware for cocktail glasses. Not the giant margarita glasses with the name of a restaurant on them, or the  martini glasses given away as a favor at a company party. I was looking for fancy crystal or fine glass in unique shapes. I found a delicate pair with hollow stems, a few with etched designs, and some with elegant, curvy shapes and colored stems. We planned to use them at a wedding shower for a fun, retro touch.

As I was moving things around and peering behind the less interesting items, a familiar blue and white pattern caught my eye. It was a little stack of dishes and a cup in the Currier and Ives pattern that I remembered from holidays at my grandparents’ house.

The dishes were sold at department stores, but could be collected piece by piece at the supermarket. I’m not sure how my grandparents came by the dishes, but I love the idea of my grandmother putting her set together week by week as she did the family marketing.

All the pieces have a Currier and Ives print on them, with names like The Old Grist Mill, The Old Farm Gate, Schoolhouse in Winter, and The Return from the Pasture. As a child at my grandparents’ table, I loved finding the different pictures and imaging life in their idyllic settings. The images of Getting Ice and Maple Sugaring captured my imagination about life in the “old days.”

Nostalgia made it impossible for me to leave the lonely, abandoned dishes behind. I came home with a vegetable bowl, two soup bowls, a dessert plate, a saucer and a coffee cup. I felt a little silly about it, but the thrift store pricing made it a small indulgence. I left them in the plastic bag, wrapped up in newspaper for a few days, like little stowaways. I did not need them, and probably wouldn’t actually use them, but I wanted to have them–a solid thing that represented memories of my grandparents and my childhood. These are not the actual dishes we used, obviously–but the forgotten feelings they brought back were so strong and sweet that I wanted to take them home.

I eventually unwrapped them, washed and dried them carefully to welcome them home, and tucked them away in the white, built-in cabinet where I store china, vases and knick-knacks. I remembered them today, and took the coffee cup out to use for my morning coffee. Gazing at the scene of a girl in an open carriage pulled by two prancing horses, I thought of my grandmother in her apron, fussing over gravy in the kitchen, my favorite pumpkin pie and coffee after a traditional Christmas feast, and our boisterous games of Pit after the table was cleared. I pictured my grandfather’s large hands holding the small handle of the cup, telling us stories about growing up on a farm in Michigan.

Such warm and vivid memories. They feel like the pictures on my grandparents’ dinnerware–scenes I wish I could step into and experience again.

Four Eyes

October 2, 2018 / / 5 Comments

Last October, I stopped wearing contact lenses. They started occasionally feeling uncomfortable a few years ago, and by this time last year, they were bugging me almost every day. They weren’t painful, just irritating. At my yearly check-up, the optometrist told me that the fit and prescription were fine, and sent me on my way.

I have glasses for back-up use, and with a fresh prescription, I picked out some new frames. When I started wearing them, they were so comfortable that I reached for them every day instead of my scratchy contacts. This may seem unremarkable, but for me, it was a big step.

I got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten. A friend of the family noticed that my right eye was turning in, and suggested I might need to see an eye doctor. I was diagnosed with a “Lazy Eye.” The doctor wanted me to wear an eye patch over my good, hard-working eye to get that lazy eye to step it up and start doing its job, but it didn’t help–probably because I didn’t wear it very much. I didn’t like the eye patch; everything was blurry with it on, and at age five I didn’t see the point and I cheated.

So I had to wear glasses. I was a four-eyes. I am lucky; when my vision is corrected by glasses or contact lenses, my eye does not turn in. My prescription was quite strong even as a child, so my glasses made my eyes look unnaturally large. I didn’t really mind wearing them until I got to middle school. That’s when I decided that I looked better without them. I took them off sometimes during the school day, but only when I wasn’t looking directly at people. A glasses-free side view was the most I could do, because I was very self-conscious about my eye turning in. People commented on that even more than on my thick lenses.

In eighth grade, my life changed. I started wearing contact lenses. Suddenly, I wasn’t homely Judy any more. From that day until about a year ago, I rarely wore glasses, except at home. If I ever wore glasses in public, I noticed–or thought I did–that people looked at me differently. Wearing glasses, I went back to being homely Judy with the crossed eye.

Ever since my eye-patch failure, I have disliked eye exams. My left eye does it’s job and reads the charts on the wall, but my right eye just can’t. The letters start to swim and merge, my eye starts to water from the effort, and I can’t pass the test. About 15 years ago, I started seeing a new optometrist after we moved. She checked my vision and told me I have amblyopia. She didn’t call it Lazy Eye, she called it Amblyopia.

One eye simply cannot be corrected as much as the other. No judgement. No need for shame. She also told me that my experience of the swimmy, bouncing letters on the chart when I read with my right eye is typical of amblyopia. I wasn’t failing the vision test after all. I started to feel less ashamed of my underperforming eye, and even have some compassion. It wasn’t lazy, it was just weaker than the other one.

When I started wearing my glasses again full-time, I had to face my homely-Judy identity. I know it’s not really a thing–glasses are fashionable, and I still look like myself whether I have frames on or not. I actually like the idea that some of my wrinkles and under-eye shadows are hidden by my frames. It’s my emotional memory, not current facts, that makes me feel like wearing glasses means that I am less likable and more vulnerable.

One benefit of getting older is being able to hold those feelings that come from painful memories at arm’s length. I can evaluate them and understand the shame I felt as a child, and then put them away. I feel the old fears and insecurities, but I don’t care as much if my eyes look oddly large or if I’m not looking my best in glasses. A year back into the four-eye life, I don’t equate my worth with how my eyes look or perform. I don’t really think about it.

Well, sometimes I do. With my daughter’s wedding coming up, I went back to the eye doctor on a mission. I wanted soft contact lenses. I didn’t want to wear glasses for the wedding and the pictures.

The lenses I abandoned a year ago were hard lenses, the gas permeable plastic kind. The optometrist did the exam, found the right soft lenses for me, taught me how to put them in and take them out, and sent me home with some to try. Amazing! They are so comfortable! I don’t wear them every day, because my glasses are just so easy; I use them 1 or 2 times a week when I want to be my glasses-free self.

Either way, two or four eyes, I’m comfortable. The eye turn, though–I’m still working on being ok with that.

Starting Where I Left Off

October 1, 2018 / / 3 Comments

My blog posts ended. They sputtered for awhile, then stopped.

I basically haven’t posted for two years. All the usual excuses come to mind–busyness, big events and long trips, but it really comes down to not knowing what to say.  What could be important enough to say about my ordinary, day-to-day life when it feels like so much is wrong in the world? When each day’s news is full of chaos and uncertainty, cute stories and small dramas seem frivolous. If I’m going to put more words out there, they should be addressing serious, important issues.

But those everyday, ordinary life stories are worth sharing, I tell myself, because the people and connections in my life are like the ones in all of our lives. My life is full of kids moving out and in, graduations, weddings, the hope of new babies, the complexities of parenting adult children, new and old friends, and the realities of aging parents. My place on the timeline of life may be a little to the left or right of yours, but we are all on basically the same course.

When I write about what I see and how I’m navigating my set of circumstances, I hope it resonates with what others are experiencing. That resonance–a calm, steady thrum of our shared humanity–may be able to smooth out some of the chaos around us.

I see life through my geography and my relationships. I live in the diverse Bay Area, in liberal Berkeley, in a neighborhood that I see gentrifying with every home sold, on a street with a mix of long-term residents, new buyers and come-and-go renters. My little lane has a wide variety of beliefs and family types–senior citizens, young families, same-sex couples, empty nesters, people living alone and multi-generational families. My family consists of my husband and children, but also my children’s husbands, my sisters, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, parents and mother-in-law, nieces and nephews. We have a dog, a cat, one grandcat and three granddogs. It’s messy and complicated, just like your life and your perspective.

We can meet in the common ground of our dreams for our children, our joys and struggles in our relationships, our need to make sense of what happens around us, our pain, disappointment and failures, and our hope for the future. We have different details, but common concerns. In our individual stories, we can find points of connection with almost anyone. Though I have often been incredulous, angry and sad about the current political power struggles in the United States, it has opened up a whole new opportunity for stories to come to light.

Sharing, understanding, and connecting feels like a big enough goal in today’s world, and yet it is a small enough project to attempt. Now that October has rolled around again with the Write31Days Challenge, I’m embracing another beginning.

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