Bookmarks

Los Angeles, California


When my mom was little, her family took a driving trip from their home in Parma, Ohio, to visit relatives in Los Angeles. My grandmother, Lillian Laule, who had been born in Cleveland, had eight surviving siblings -- seven of whom were sisters. Had there been Title Nine, they could have created a Little League team of their own. One or two of those sisters had followed the sun out to Southern California. And that put the wandering urge into my grandmother. A few years after that first driving trip, they relocated to Hollywood, California, and a few years after that my mom graduated from Hollywood High School.


My mother, who still likes to tell a lot of stories about when she was growing up, collected bookmarks on this road trip. When I was young, I remember seeing those bookmarks, which were stored in an old candy box from a store located in downtown Cleveland. Inside, there was a leather bookmark from Yellowstone National Park; one from Mount Rushmore. And, nestled there amongst many others, one from Santa Fe that looked to be cut from an Indian blanket.


When I was around the same age as my mom had been during that excursion, my parents decided to mount the road trip from hell -- traveling from California to Washington, DC. The plan, fastidiously executed, was to visit Civil War battlefields, which entailed spending endless hours in historical museums (you're gathering the enthusiasm I can still garner for this expedition, right?), ultimately landing at The Smithsonian.


Luckily, shortly after the RTFH (road trip from hell), my parents decided that the jet age was the way to go when it came to family travel. So this RTFH turned out to be our last family vacation on the road. And ironical at that, as the following winter my father went to work for a different company, and we moved for a short while to Cockeysville, Maryland; located not far from Washington, DC (again with The Smithsonian, National Archives, etc., etc.).


Don't get me wrong. I actually do like museums -- and historical ones much more than art museums. I very much enjoyed a museum at Kings Wharf, Bermuda which is dedicated to shipwrecks around that area (so cool) -- including the one that shipwrecked John Smith (of Pocahantas fame), which was when he planted the Union Jack, claiming the island for England, ostensibly before his boots dried. Museums weren't the problem on this trip, the RTFH, however. The major problem was about the eight or so hours spent each day in my father's car -- a 1959 Thunderbird coupe with what can only laughably be called a back seat. My dad had fallen in love with this car when it was new and given to him for use as a company car. So in love, that he subsequently bought it and lovingly cared for it for many years. Now, my dad was about six feet tall, and with his bucket seat in a comfortable position for him, the comparable foot room behind him made coach class on Air Tahiti Nui (the most uncomfortable flight in my life, so far) seem luxuriously roomy. A few years after this trip, my dad fell in love again -- with a red Alfa Romeo convertible which had a tiny shelf of a back seat. You think maybe this guy never really wanted to have kids? Naaah. He just loved cars.


Now, back to the RTFH -- the highlight of this trip was when we got to Mount Rushmore and my sister, who suffers from a bee/wasp phobia, saw bees buzzing around a trash can and refused to get out of the car. If she's not getting out, I'm not getting out, I declared. Obviously, I hadn't seen North by Northwest by that time, otherwise I would have eagerly rushed to see the cafeteria where Cary Grant pretended to be felled by Eva-Marie Saint's faux bullet. Such is the power of films. Anyway, by this time, my parents were pretty tired of the two of us, so they shrugged and went off on their own. Leaving us to swelter in the space capsule of the T-bird's back seat.


But, let's return to the bookmarks. My mom suggested that I collect bookmarks on the RTFH, as she had, but I was so pissed off at having to leave both my girl scout troop and my Ponytail League softball team again for a long summer vacation, that I dug in my heels. Instead, I collected shrimp dinners -- eating so many of them that I broke into an iodine-induced rash. That'll show 'em.


The funny thing is that I now have a collection of bookmarks. It's not a formal collection -- no tooled leather or commemorative message. It's just a hodgepodge of bookmarks, casually accumulated over the years. While not a Mary Engelbreit kind of girl, I do have a favorite bookmark displaying her art which has a girl wearing a crown and the message: It's good to be Queen. I always took this one with me to the Kona Village every October where I celebrated my birthday (resplendant with the wearing of the daytime tiara and nighttime crown on the actual day of the event). Ah! Those were the good old (pre-tsunami wreckage) days.


My friends, and favorite salsa dance teachers, Mike Ticas and Christina Haggarty promote their skill at teaching salsa (and especially spins) on bookmark-sized laminated cards. I don't know if they intended this, but they make a perfect bookmark. I often pick one up when I see them.


My favorite bookmark was one I gave away. It was made by a child attending the Serra School in Carmel. Last year, on a Sunday in late January when Catholic Schools Week is observed (an event that Billy and Brendan and a few other friends, all disgruntled by having come up through that system, aren't likely to celebrate), the students of the school came through the sanctuary during Mass and distributed their handmade bookmarks. They were laminated and had ribbons through them. The one that was handed to me was pale green and pink. It had a primitive drawing of the Mission and the following writing: I Love the Serra School. At the time, Sandra (my Sandra -- see name of blog and picture with spoons) was undergoing difficult treatment, and I was sending her care packages. I placed that bookmark on top of one of the bundles before sealing the box and shipping it off. It was a good thing.


I keep an everchanging stack of books on my nightstand, and work my way through them until the stack is almost depleted. Then I get panicky. When I drop off my business books at my bookkeeper's office in Calabasas, I often stop by the Barnes and Noble that is across the street. As I know that the flagging marketing of real, hardcover books increasingly mimics the sales curve of, say, buggy whips; I savor my time spent in bookstores, much as I did libraries as a child -- even big ole' bookstores like Barnes and Noble, who now refer to their stores as showrooms (huh?). Anyway, once at the store, I gather food magazines. I browse cookbooks. I often pick out an empty book to use for my next journal. But mostly, it's about fiction, so I buy books. Real books. I stack up. Panic recedes. My motto, as I continue to resist the lure of readers like Kindle and Nook (I'm just an old-fashioned girl), is that you can never have too many books. Nor, come to think of it, too many bookmarks. Thanks again for reading my blog.