My 2001 year-end letter where I talk about letting a baby into my life, having a boy toy, and skinny dipping at the World Trade Center.
Katie at Cape Perpetua
December 2001
Dear Friends and Family,
I have a two-year-old in my life, Katie. She’s a foster kid my neighbors, Paul and Toni, took in last year. I’ve never been much for babies, usually viewing them as little more than cute spawn that leak from every orifice, so it took me a while warm to Katie. It also took her a while to warm to me. She came from an abusive family and when Paul and Toni first got her she wouldn’t look at people and she looked terrified every time you tried to touch her. A lot has changed since then and I melt every time I see her and she runs to me yelling, “T-!! Up!” meaning pick me up.
She loves going on nature walks where every few seconds she asks, “What’s that?” I expect that when her kindergarten teacher asks what’s she’s drawing she’ll say, “Can’t you tell by the bark that it’s a Pseudotsuga menziesii?”
I also have Gerry, a 27-year-old stud muffin, in my life. He prefers the term stud muffin to hunk saying that when someone calls him a hunk he thinks, “A hunk of what?” As most of you know, a 44-year-old woman in Waldport has a better chance of being abducted by space aliens than of having a man come into her life, especially a man who has his own teeth, is charming, kind, bright, funny, financially secure and good looking. That’s more farfetched than something on The X-Files.
That’s why it should come as no surprise that he’s a boy who’s a friend, not my boyfriend, and he’s my tenant. I am always amused–not to mention flattered–when we drive about in his convertible Mustang and someone assumes he’s my boy-toy. Then I come crashing to earth when someone asks if I’m his mother.
And just when I thought life couldn’t get any better, there was September 11th. I was immediately sad not only for those whose lives had just been destroyed, but for those–both American and Afghani–whose lives were about to be destroyed in the inevitable war.
Whenever I thought of the World Trade Center before 9/11 I thought of skinny-dipping. Huh? While traveling in Africa I declared one of my goals in life was to skinny dip in as many bodies of water of the world as possible. Knowing this, my friend Henry once rented us a pool in the WTC for an hour. Even though I’ve skinny-dipped in oceans and most of the major lakes and rivers on three continents, that one dip at the WTC is my most memorable.
Now when I think of the WTC? Well, I try to I think of how much I personally have to be grateful for, not the least of which are all of you, my friends and family.
Take care.
T-
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