Grandpa’s Slides

Grandpa’s Slides-Phil and Milly Danielson, Marjorie Kowlaksi with Findley.

I went through them all, as I told my cousin I would. My mission, to rid all of us of the burden of Grandpa’s slides. There were hundreds and hundreds of them and I sat, with a portable viewer, and looked at every single one. You can’t go through all those slides without a comment or a thought, or a laugh, or confusion. You can’t review them all without tears or regrets, a plethora.

 As I clicked each one into the light, I felt a rush of time like the current of water surging over  the boulders of the Frying Pan River.

There were moments at Thanksgiving tables, forced smiles, faces giving away hidden irritations. Pictures of our mothers, in different stages of pregnancy with us, with siblings, with cousins.

 Since this chore, my dreams have become old movie frames in vivid Kodachrome. Reliving my life before I was born and after and reliving those of people I knew so well, most now gone.

Slides of Grandpa Ralph with fish, hundreds of them . . . I mean hundreds of slides and hundreds of fish.  Grandma Luverne among the flowers, every type. Flowers in Hawaii, in Oaxaca, in Sweden, in Maine, in the Colorado Rockies.

Dan and Luke and  Stephen and David, and Ken, fly rods in hand, hovering over a good spot for trout. Girls didn’t fish apparently, no fishing photos of me or my sister.

Horses, long gone now, pack mules and donkeys. Grandpa took pictures of animals of any type, trained monkeys in embarrassing outfits, dancing; young  cows in feed lots ready for slaughter as veal, muddy pigs in disgusting styes, big horn sheep, mountain goats, elk, and deer.

There was an alligator in a wrestling match with some poor fool. Dogs, plenty of dogs: border collies, Labradors and shepherds. Old dogs, young dogs, stray dogs and pampered ones.

Grandpa  took pictures of every mountain he ever saw. Mountains rising on multiple continents, in different countries. Rocky Mountains, in multiple views, multiple years, multiple months, multiple angles.

Slides of glaciers now gone.

His love of mountains gushed through the films.

Grandma and Grandpa had friends, many. Friends from college, work, travels, from a distance, close up.

And there were their relatives, my relatives, our relatives. Grandpa captured them in Sweden, in Iowa on the farm. He snapped them in Nebraska in front of white picket fences and in Maine, all of them squinting into the sun. Relatives in Massachusettes, in his beloved Basalt and Aspen—family from way back—people curved over from hard work. Swedish aunties who dared exchange the harsh Colorado winters for the baking sun of California. As I clicked through each glowing slide, I fell deep with the weight of all their lives. This one  now gone, that one now gone—all now gone.

Slides, more slides. Grandma and Grandpa on their travels: in foreign living rooms, at a distant church, outside old cabins in Wyoming, in Banff, in Glacier, in Alberta, in Guatemala, in Panama, Oaxaca, all over Mexico, posing in the stocks in Salem, at the Mayflower. How did I not know how much they traipsed around? I suppose they lived while we were ensconced in our growing up.

I drank wine through a wearisome series of shots in  graveyards: graves, flags on graves, Grandma in front of graves, flowers on graves. Then there were the churches—Lutheran churches, Episcopal churches, Who-Gives-a Damn- churches.

Of course, I could have predicted this grouping— trains, train tracks, train trestles, train equipment, train spikes, train smoke, if only slides could chug-chug and whistle.

There were the family events, usually fraught with tension, I could read it on the faces frozen in crafted smiles: Christenings, weddings, funerals, holidays. Each event with multiple angles, multiple groupings, multiple table settings, multiple coordinated outfits: hats, white gloves—Grandma particularly liked mauve and lilac. Pictures of family in interiors and exteriors.

The Faculty Ranch, the cabin that now rests deep in the waters of a reservoir. A vivid Kodachrome trip back to another age. All Grandpa’s colleagues at gatherings, fish fries in the columbine, aspen, on the St. Vrain before they dammed it up. Young children in  short sets frolicking in the meadows

Then there was Ridge View, Grandma’s place in Maine. 1798. It’s quaint construction, Grandma smiling among her Maine family—Clayton Weymouth and others, Colorado family that trekked across the continent to see their ancestral home:  DeWitt, Maxine, Stephen, Vince, Michael, Dan, Dave, Ken, Keith.

Holy Cow did Grandpa love trees and Lord help us the flowers! All labeled with their specific names! I envy the detailed knowledge of varied species.

Cactus! They loved cactus . . . and lizards.

My grandparents were creatures of their surroundings, their environment, they saw such beauty in the small things and held it tight in slide film.

Many, many photographs of rattlesnakes in different stages of coil, most snappped with a hoe in the picture, ready to end the poor things lives on this earth, gone now, like Grandpa himself.

It is impossible to  name everywhere that Grandpa fished, except did I know of his men’s fishing trip on Lake Mead by Hoover Dam? There may have been alcohol involved. Don’t tell Grandma

Did I know that Grandma Luverne actually laughed a lot? Or was it just for the camera?

Aunt Lucy did not smile, ever. Grandpa clowned around whenever he could, even in Grandma’s dresses or with goofy hats. Aunt Vivian lingered in the back with a snarl. Mr. Jones and Mr. Burdette, who “married in” were saints, Uncle Clarence, a bear of a man. Missing always, Uncle Myron who was hidden away somewhere in shame. What photos of him existed, long gone.

I have now seen every float of the Rose Bowl Parade of some year when the University of Colorado  went to the Rose Bowl. And every float for CU Homecoming for how many years?

His slides wrapped me in a familiar blanket, in his basement, lights off, the glittery screen and the smell . . . what was that smell? Dust burning on the projector? Or the future lighting incense for us all?

As I went through hour after hour, day after day, I made a little pile for each of us, special slides that I hoped someone would want for whatever reason soon to be transformed into the digital technology of our time, technology Grandpa Ralph never lived to see, his life cut short while fly fishing in his favorite stream.

The “to keep” piles grew slightly, but the piles of the rejected grew into mountains like the peaks of the Colorado Rockies. After many deep breaths, a tear or two,  I took Grandpa’s hundreds and hundreds of slides, all neatly captioned and categorized by his very hands, the letters getting more spidery through the years, the slides that showed the heart and soul of his life and those of his generation, slides of things now lost and gone, the slides he snapped and developed and organized and labeled and  I took them and threw them in the trash.

I hope to be forgiven.

My Picture in the News!

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ten-years-of-trump-with-a-bit-of-light-ahead-no-kings-resistance-military-iran-israel (Photo from The Bulwark William Kristol, Andrew Egger, Will Selber, and Jim Swift Jun 16, 2025)

Since November 2024 …I descended into hopeless despair—negative, alone, bothered, burned, depressed, stuck, furious, cynical, listless, suffering from malaise. I banned the news in any form, left for Canada—a frozen hide-e-hole full of generous people who patted us on the head and said, “We are so sorry.” It didn’t help.

On our return, I buried myself in Swedish Death Cleaning, writing about death, scribbling angst in notebooks, scrubbing out the dreary washing machine. I attended boring, useless meetings with friends suffering the same as I. No spark, no hope to fix it. I assembled three enormous jigsaw puzzles. I plugged my ears when others brought up my banned topics, read only ancient literature about far-off lands and books about fictitious detectives with chips on their shoulders.

Nothing, nothing could alleviate this, I thought. Impossible to change it, we were doomed, my grandchildren were unwitting victims of a devil. The workman tnext door shouted, “Es un demonio! Es el diablo! Que vamos a hacer?” I told him that I had no idea what to do, that perhaps we are destined for ruin and should just accept it.

But just the other day—I sensed a glimmer of a long-dormant sensation—a childish twinge of excitement. Before, I’d felt worried maybe, apprehensive, yes, but excited—not in the least. Yet here I was, actually bursting.

Why? I am embarrassed to admit…

In a rash moment, when no one else did, I volunteered to help carry the banner that led the  No King’s demonstration. Me, way to long in the tooth, carrying the banner, right in front!

How ridiculous, I thought, I’ll probably be the one who is blown to bits!

 Of course I’ll fall and take everyone down with me—

I’ll be too slow and the younger banner bearers will get annoyed!

I fervently regretted it the moment I volunteered. But . . .

We arrived early at the march’s launching point so we could set up and be ready promptly. My companions went off to various activities. At the stage, as the program of speakers started I walked around in my volunteer vest feeling important, answering questions. I even officially blocked the men’s room so the women’s line would be eased. Nothing like a vest and no authority to make a person heady with power..

I thought maybe a few thousand die-hards would show up, the old guard—all of us who got tear gassed in the 60’s—with our gray hair, walkers, and our new hips.

I looked up and stood in stunned awe. The arriving crowd! Thousands and thousands of people headed my way down into Waterfront Park. They were young, old, brown, black, white, gray-haired, bald, blonde, and tattooed. They had on funny costumes, t-shirts that expressed their views. Angry, hilarious, artistic and slapped-together signs. Hundreds, thousands—Hand-Maid’s Tale women, monarch butterflies—the only monarch’s allowed—polite signs in Spanish, rude signs in Spanish. There were Pride banners, and signs that cried “No to Kings but Yes to Queens!”   60,000 plus of them.

And there I arrived in the very front. Sage smoke drifted over me as the Kumeyaay people did their prayers for our march. I felt joy, a rush of it, a shower of joy, a gall darned-rainbow-colored wash of happiness like I haven’t felt in months. We yelled, chanted, wiggled the banner; we clapped, laughed, cheered and danced.

And this a lesson I need to learn and relearn and remind myself of the rest of my life . . . that joy and the best of us are always just around the corner when you least expect it.

Loneliness Stalking

When Loneliness Comes Stalking

It happens at odd times, unexpected, vaporous, a loneliness combined with longing. A stabbing, hollow loneliness, a perpetual one.

All those babies, I miss them everyone, miscarriages, only a few weeks, but real nonetheless. They never got to see the light of day, nor feel the thump of a heartbeat.

But the worst is my loneliness for a baby boy named Joseph, a perfect child, his name came to me after he perished and I held him in my arms. That was after I pushed him out too early. A boy whose life was sacrificed to save my own.

He is a secret I’ve kept, or at least only whispered about. But now the need is great for the world to  know about the loneliness that stalks me, many women, the knowledge that I could have been . . . would have been . . . one of those new Georgia statistics, that I live, but that meant he would die.

That choice, I don’t wish on anyone and it is not done frivolously, only through desperate moments of terror, pain, tears, screams, confusion, dread and no escape. Worst of all that moment, that decision never dissolves or fades, no matter how it ends. The loneliness stalks even when you least expect it, when you are suddenly feeling happiness, or hope, or joy, that’s when the loneliness comes in stealth and can surround and choke me until I am robed in the cloth of grief and yearning and loneliness for that little Joseph whose hand I held, who I apologized to, who I apologize to every day when loneliness comes stalking.

And why loneliness? Because a decision like that was made by me, I had to make the call, alone, in my fright, alone and lonely, looking for anyone, anything besides me to blame.

Yet I will always be grateful for my few moments with my baby boy, and forever grateful that the choice was mine with the compassionate honesty of a trusted physician and not a stranger in his leather government chair passing his draconian judgement from afar.

Selling the House

It’s been over six months since my mother died. The worst of the necessary things we had to do after she went have passed, I have helped arrange a Celebration of Life, divided up most of her property, dealt with my irritating step brother, kept the peace with my siblings.

All that is left is the sale of her house.

My siblings are eager to get it sold, off our hands, no emotional connection to it at all. Whereas I find it the most painful  part of all this after-death business. A little miffed that they are so cavalier, I began to think about it. They never really lived in that house. They were off to college, European trips, busy with friends and starting new independent lives. When we moved to that house, I was still a kid in junior high.

It was in that house that I lived alone with my two parents, suspiciousof the decline in my father’s health. It was in that house that I survived the aftermath of his death, the shock and horror of his demise at forty-two. I also lived through the horrific death of two friends, survived the death-like grip of anger at my mother’s new single life. It is there that I coped and wilted while she vanished to New Zealand for a while. I experimented with marijuana and drugs in that house and had sex for the very first time there. I fled home to that house when college became intolerable.

None of this was part of my older siblings’ lives.

The house sale is different for each of us, but I have been surfing on waves of sadness.

Goodbye house.

Odds are you will be “a scraper” and all your bits and pieces will be ripped and smashed and tossed in the landfill. A new house will rise on the spot. One without the leaky basement, the metal window cranks that don’t work, the unusable fireplace, the rickety shed in back.

I hope though, that the ghosts of our dogs, Gus and Rollo, skitter invisibly around the alley, that the buzz of passionate human endeavor—the laughter and the tears—float somewhere above, going about their business; that my dad is still hiking to the top of the first ridge and inhaling the dry Colorado air.

All this happens as  I have finished the first draft of my book about my life with my father. When the house sells and the book is finished in whatever form it will take, I think I am going to feel a burden lift. I’ve carried it around for far too long. When the house goes, it will be like when a kite string has broken and the colorful kite has slipped away into the distance.

Only I am the kite, and I will be set free.

Oppenheimer

(To hear audio of author reading this selection aloud, go to https://dimestories.org/uncategorized/san-diego-dimestories-august-spotlights/ )

People asked me daily, hourly, “What did you think of the movie?”

I had no answer, I purposely avoided seeing it until finally some friends and my husband said, “Come on, we will go with you.”

So yes, I’ve seen it now. It is a masterpiece,  and true as far as I know.  But I was a child, a little pixie, fixated on horses. What did I know of hearings and Communists except those cars parked mysteriously in front of our house.  Men with suits, white shirts and black ties. 

All I knew is that my father loved Frank and Jackie. That was enough for me, and Frank rode a horse better than anyone I have ever seen.  Jackie laughed and swore and brought out the best in my mother.

Frank’s frizzled hair, balding, smoke encircled him wherever he paced.

He and my father were a pair.  Irreverent, they loved to brew up trouble, loved to talk, over Jim Beam into the wee hours of the night. 

Dad and Frank got so wrapped up in my brother’s science fair project, that my brother, exasperated, went to bed and let them finish on their own . . . both on precarious ladders, ball bearings and feathers dropped from the ceiling, proving Newton’s Second Law—and tempting the law of gravity, two drunk men on ladders at the height of a fourteen-foot ceiling.

Frank gave me binoculars and a little knife, he let me use his  saddles—used in the years they were hiding, far from Senator McCarthy’s reach, in the high mountains of Southern Colorado near Mount Blanca. 

We rode together, Dad and Frank and me, through the foothills of the Rockies near Boulder, cutting fences and trespassing on rancher’s lands. We got shot at once, but they just laughed, experts at re-wiring the fence cuts so the cattle couldn’t escape. 

Dad and Frank played flute duets, both wept into the finger stops.  They argued politics, Dad practical—it ended the war . . . Frank a dreamer, almost a mystic—it will end ALL  war.

Dad died when I was fifteen. Frank and Jackie stepped in.  Long hours at the Exploratorium, working as an Explainer.  I learned to make holograms with red laser light in the dark.  Sometimes I worked with Jackie in the gift shop, one evening at a fundraiser, we hid  on the floor behind the counter, the two of us drinking scotch out of one bottle.

And I guess it was inevitable that my mother married Frank after Jackie ‘s cancer.

Yes, I met Robert.  Yes, I met Kitty, but they were peripheral to my life with dogs and horses and staying alive after my father’s passing.

So, I’ve seen the movie, I did, but it didn’t touch my memories, my grief, my gratitude, my bewilderment, my yearning to have them all back again—me hiding under our grand piano listening to flute duets.

Deluge and Thunder

Injury hangs like weighted shrouds,

cloaked, hoarded,

maintained, worshipped in secret.

Curtains drawn down in defiance with darkness.

Injury materializes through years.

Through mother’s milk,

Through father’s shaky hand.

It transcends generation . . .

Sticking its nose in

Where everyone has forgotten

Injury needs a summit,

A reckoning. It needs

To be reopened, stitches torn

A gash here, a breach there,

A gnashing of teeth and snarl.

Injury needs to bleed its bile,

needs to scour its wound with pumice stone.

To lie in the stifling air, to desiccate,

to be picked to the bone.

It needs to feel the deluge and the thunder.

But we, we keep it nice.

Smile when spoken to.

Swallow the raging vomit.

Keep the curtains closed and drawn.

Inflict more damage to

our collective entrails

And weep alone, in bitterest darkness.

Self-Portrait

Straight, wispy blonde hair
blue eyes, large, best feature—
healthy limbs, muscles that
defined themselves on a Schwinn bike,
on monkey bars, in Charles’ Trees,
bareback on Rebel or Venus or Big Red.

Shorts sets–—striped short-sleeved tees,
pull-up elastic-band pants in matching solid—
Nothing frilly, nothing pink, no looks in the mirror.

Teeth, buck, often reminded
by beautiful siblings,
all of us islands in our ocean
at home.

Legs—summer brown, scarred.
Covered with
mosquito bites, over scratched.
Winter, wrapped in ski pants,
gliding up and down, up and down
Rocky Mountain slopes.

A broken finger, stupid trigger
on that air gun.

Perfume—Eau de Horse Hair,
Dog Slobber, Cat Musk, Sand,
Pre-Puberty Sweat.

Born homely
Born lonely
Born sad
Born anxious.

As though
prescient of what lurked
on the murderous edge of the time.

Fortieth Birthday

It’s our daughter Alissa’s fortieth birthday. My first impulse was, “That can’t possibly be true!” My second was to remind myself that it will be my seventieth birthday this year. My third was to sit down and stew. All the cliches about time flying whizzed through my head. I didn’t like that most of my reactions could have been written on a Hallmark card. I wanted mine to be unique and all my own.


I still remember that moment when, in the hospital during a tropical storm in New Orleans, I gazed at her for the first time. And you guessed it–love at first sight. Her cries were something new, something never before heard because they were the cries of my child in my arms, hers, her very own. I know that at 2 a.m. when she started letting out a racket that could wake the dead, I wondered indignantly, “Someone ought to take care of this baby,” and then I suddenly realized that someone was actually me and I better step up to being a mom, not a kid anymore. Someone else was taking my spot.


There are glimpses of memories of her giggling, learning to sit up, learning to crawl, learning to walk. Her little behind wiggling in her diaper. I can see her dancing and singing into her toy microphone, blond hair flying, big green eyes full of everything new, full of first times, full of potential and future.


Then the divorce, the sadness, the realization that no matter how I tried I could not protect her from the shit life throws at you. But her resilience astonished me, her drive for a good life, her acceptance when I dropped a new dad and three brothers in her lap. I wish I could go back and make that easier, too, wish I could have had more time, less stress, more money, shorter work hours.


So many things I would do differently, so regretful of mistakes I made.


Then I suddenly sat up straight with an epiphany. That baby, that day in that tropical storm, she survived it all with grace and humor and ambition and kindness and love and anger and hard work and strength of character because she came like that, into the world; I got to watch her grown and be. She became a mom herself, and she is shouldering that new role as she has always done, with, “This challenge is here, let’s get busy making the best of it.” I relaxed finally and felt a release. It is her turn now, mine to just watch and applaud. Mine to smile and clap. I felt a shift, a moving over, resignation, an acceptance that my job is done and that I must have done something right.

She is the evidence.

Fox Glacier, New Zealand

End ings

End ings

Sometimes endings happen without fanfare,
it's just over.
     
     No celebratory toast
          no gold watch
               no kiss goodbye.

The electric door swishes open. 
Two steps 
         
      it's done.

You inside, me outside.

      No awkward goodbye,
           no promises we know we won't keep
      
      just done.

The air is different, thinner.
I float ahead on zero gravity.
     
     Connection broken,
          gentle snap of heart strings -  
               no blood, no pain.

You inside, bustling, busy.

Me outside with nothing pressing,
     no one expects me. 
     
          I might soar away 
               like a helium balloon      released 
                    by a willful child.

So easily severed, this bond,
     like cutting a raspberry with
          a sushi knife.

We don't even turn back to wave goodbye.

You on to the next task, the next headache.
     Inside, through the window
          you button your jacket
               against the air conditioning.

I face the sun, relish it’s warmth.
     Life's ties so easily broken.
           Laugh, at this cruel joke.

               I skip away     elated 
                     no longer      related.

Circular Logic

I want to simplify my life to have more time to do things I love…

Hmmmm…

What things are frivolous enough to drop?  Is it the minutes watching goldfinches fight at the feeder, no, hardly that.

I’m compelled to witness tiny black wings battle the crowd, an eternal combat for enough nyjer to survive another day.  And I am their quartermaster filling feeders, scooping black sunflower, millet, and safflower in great piles as the chickadees watch from swaying branches. 

So, I must do that. 

Well, what then, what should be stripped? Is it tending to terriers? Three sets of eyes fixed, anxious, waiting…waiting…waiting. The squeak of pleasure when I give in, set the computer aside and scratch behind their ears.

No abandoning that.

Should I expunge my hours writing? If so, this bit of text would never emerge on this page, in this dawn light at my desk.

Forego time with my grandchildren…their pink faces growing every time I turn my back?

What should I erase? Is it reading lovely novels? Is it plumping the pillows on the couch?  Maybe I could resist the smell of homemade bread, whole wheat with sunflower, honey, and flax?

Should I flake out on my glorious hour of yoga…delicious shavasana at the end? No Namaste?

What do I delete? How do I choose? Do I cut loose beloved friends, wash my hands of foremost family?

Where is the manual, the guide to live an uncluttered life?

Do I kick my hiking through wildflower-strewn-meadows to the side? My husband? He of many intimate years?

Is it podcasts that need to go?

Or should it be my loom?  Should I pack its warp and weft and throw it over?  Stop caressing the soft wool as under-over it emerges into a living marvel? 

What is it that I can sacrifice for efficiency, peace of mind, and order?

Then the revelation, the circle…

What would I do with extra time found in a trimmed-down life? I would observe the chickadees, scratch the terriers, write, frolic with my grandchildren, amble with my husband, chatter with friends, devour a novel, lose myself in podcasts, I would dream weave on my loom.

And I’m right back where I started…how do I find time to do the things I yearn to do? I’ll go watch the goldfinches, have a slice of warm buttered bread, and chew it over.