In 1970 or thereabouts, the musical Hair came to Seattle. My boyfriend and I got tickets. My boyfriend was an amateur musician, and had done his own guitar arrangements for Let the Sunshine In, which he thought was pretty good – he often played it at parties. I loved to sing I Met a Boy Called Frank Mills, and although I had been told I had a good voice, I wasn’t as confident as my boyfriend, so I only sang at home, never at parties.  

The night before we went to see Hair, I washed my own hair, and when it was still wet I braided it in tiny braids all over my head. At that time my hair hung nearly to my waist and it was my idea to have a huge honey-brown “Afro” type hairdo. Sure enough, the next day when my hair was dry and I undid the braids, my cloud of hair stood out about a foot from my face. It was a statement – of what, I’m not sure, but I was pleased with my appearance, which I augmented with dangly beaded earrings, a peasant style long dress, and a leather vest with fringes. On my face I wore no make-up, but I did wear my John Lennon-type wire-rimmed glasses.  My boyfriend wore a headband around his hair, which was already curly and unruly, and hung to his shoulders. His vest had fringes too. 

Arriving at the theater, we stood in a huge crowd of excited hippies, most of them stoned out of their heads. I was totally straight and sober that night, because I thought I might be pregnant, and although I certainly didn’t look it, at heart I was responsible. It was a lonely feeling. But I loved the musical although its storyline was weak, and the famous nude scene was anti-climactic.  The next day my hair wasn’t quite so beautiful so I washed it and thus ended my Afro style – way too much trouble. I wasn’t pregnant, either.

As a young child in the 1950s, I thought Eisenhower was the most boring man alive. I couldn’t understand why my parents talked about him as if he was somebody important. I’d seen him on TV, and he looked about as boring as anyone could. He reminded me of the accountant who worked in my father’s office, a little old man (he was probably 50) who looked and smelled like he polished his bald head with Noxema. When I came to visit my father at work, this man would tell me stupid knock-knock jokes and then laugh at them himself.  

And I knew that Eisenhower, or “Ike” as my father called him (like they were best friends or something), would behave the same way, if I was ever unlucky enough to meet him.  But my father liked Ike. Dad  disapproved of Democrats because he said they spent too much of his money on things people should do for themselves. He liked Ike because he was prudent and frugal and never got excited about anything. My thoughts exactly.  

Ike’s wife Mamie was just like him. Really if you’re lucky enough to be the First Lady, should you be allowed to be so dowdy? Mamie wore stupid hats like my grandmother, and when she smiled she looked like she wished she didn’t have to. I was sure that Ike married her precisely because he didn’t want to be excited.  

For many years I equated the word “boring” with Eisenhower and it wasn’t until I was a grad student in history that I realized there was a little more to the man.

Before I got my new puppy, I resolved I would be firm. All the doggy experts say that crates are good things – they make the puppies feel secure. So I piled some soft blankets and towels in her crate for her to sleep in. No dogs in my bed!

I was going to put the crate in the kitchen, but she was so little – and so cute, with her soft floppy Beagle ears and her shining puppy eyes. It wouldn’t hurt if I put her crate in my bedroom. That way she could hear me breathing, and smell my smell.

Yeah. I put her in her crate, shut its grate, and climbed into bed. Said “Good night, Goody.” Turned off the light. Whining. I will just ignore it, I told myself. Right. Whining turned into whimpers. Alone and lost, the sounds infiltrated my ears as if someone poured warm honey into them, all sticky and gooey. How scared she must be. Where’s her mom, her brothers and sisters, that warm puppy smell?

Whimpering continued, and I got up and knelt down before her crate. I murmured “it’s okay, it’s okay” as I pushed my fingers through the grate, where a little tongue licked them desperately.

Who makes these firmness rules, anyway. I unlatched the crate and took her into bed with me, where she snuggled contentedly at the crook of my shoulder and neck, and where she still sleeps, every night, ever since.

My father bought me an electric organ when I was 7. He liked organ music, but this is not my fault. I was initially disappointed, for I had really wanted a piano, but I learned to love the electric organ. I especially loved manipulating the stops and sounding like a trumpet or a violin, or whatever instrument I chose. I guess it fed my need for control.

 My mother found me a teacher. She was old and smelled like old lady perfume and bologna. She gave me baby music, which I resented. My parents let me practice whenever I wanted and never ever complained of the noise I made while I learned – indeed, they often requested me to play for them, even when all I manage was Twinkle Twinkle.

When I was 13 it became uncool to play the organ and I wanted to quit, but my mother found me a new teacher. Her name was Ellen and my interest in the organ renewed, because Ellen was young, in her early 20s, and passionately dedicated to music. She thought I was cool because I played well, or at least she said I did. She gave me cool pieces to play, not stuff from the 40s and 50s like old bologna woman had. Instead I played Bobby Darin songs and Elvis songs and even – very daring for 1963 – Beatles songs. I still remember playing “Michelle” for my father and trapping him into saying he liked it – and then wanting to eat his words when he found out it was from the Beatles. Ha. I caught him.

I remember the boots I wore in 1968. They were dark brown leather and came up to my knees, hugging my legs so tightly they made my legs sweat. They had 3 inch heels so that when I walked across campus they made a clip clop sound like the hooves of horses, a comforting stylish rhythm – here comes someone really cool, they said. The brown boots went good with my bell bottom jeans and my leather jacket with fringes that nearly always got caught in my backpack – although it never occurred to me to remove the fringes – what was a little inconvenience compared to fashion? I remember being enamored of a guy who stopped me on the Ave and told me how much he liked my boots – today I’d think he had a foot fetish, because he couldn’t take his eyes off my boots, but I was too young to know about those things then so I found his attention flattering and validating to my sense of style.

In 1958 I was in third grade. On Wednesday afternoons our class had “Science Time.” At least, the boys had science time. They gathered on one side of the room to learn about things like chemistry – you could see smoke and smell their experimental concoctions from the other side of the room. Or they learned about astronomy and built scale models of the solar system and drew pictures of little green men with big heads. One day they even had an astronaut come and talk to them about space. 

Meanwhile on the other side of the classroom we girls had “Junior Home Ec” where we practiced sewing aprons and learned how to make chocolate chip cookies in a child’s “Betty Crocker” oven – which was pink, of course. We were taught not by a real teacher, but a teacher’s helper, usually a mother of one of the girls.  

I don’t think it was exactly forbidden for the girls to join the boys for Science Time, but it was definitely not encouraged. It was just accepted as the way it was – “Girls over here,” they called, and we went.  

I was puzzled that our teacher, Mrs. Scribner, taught Science Time, even though Mrs. Scribner was a woman. How had she learned enough science to teach it to the boys? Maybe she learned in secret, I thought. Or maybe she went to a special science school for girls. I thought about asking her if she would teach me too, in secret, so no one else would know that I was curious about science even though I was a girl.  I didn’t want anyone to know, but not because I was afraid people would think I was weird or unfeminine. No, I was afraid of looking stupid — I had already accepted that science would be too hard for me. After all, I was a girl. So I kept my mouth shut and made a crookedly-stitched apron that I forgot to hem, and gave it to my mother. 

This memory, which even today makes me furious, is one of the reasons I am so inordinately proud of my daughter – who is a scientist.   

I remember smelling the cheap wine we drank in college, so sweet it would make me gag now. It was called Ripple and was favored by winos, a class of people I knew absolutely nothing about, but we were liberal hippies and thought we should identify with the underdogs. At parties we drank Ripple a lot, because of the other quality it possessed - it was cheap. But I remember one party when I was introduced to other flavors, a dark party held in someone's third floor apartment, lit by blue lava lamps and the glow from the neon tetras in the dirty fish tank. An older guy came to the party - he was 30 at least - bringing with him a bottle of Scotch; he wore an army jacket and his hair in a ponytail. From this description you can tell that he was cool and all the girls wanted him, including me. My ego swelled to the exact same size as my fear when his eyes - and his hands - chose me. He smelled like leather and cigarettes when he kissed me, and underneath was the smell of dark wild masculinity, a thrilling smell that shrieked danger danger, and which of course I chose to ignore.