Shining

Good morning! I got up at four-thirty by mistake this morning. That is, I awoke refreshed, and, looking at my watch thought that it was five-thirty.  Up betimes, and --wrong!  I knew that I was wrong when I went out to get the paper; there was a preturnatural stillness and darkness over all the earth, I mean, Fairway Court. Well, I'll take a nap this afternoon if I need to.  I find that a cup of coffee, or a glass of iced coffee, works well at midday to keep me from being too snoozy in the afternoon.

Let's go back to 1959.  Theodore and I lived in the best place I have ever lived in, well--perhaps second best--no, third best--anyway, it was an apartment on LeConte Street in Berkeley only millimeters from the campus.  The apartment was tall, and was built of brick and concrete, a large and imposing structure.  Our apartment was on the second floor, up a narrow and turning stairway. There was an apartment above us on the third floor, and every morning at two a.m. a woman came in and walked about on the hardwood floors with her high heels for about an hour before settling down to sleep. We complained a lot about that, but Mason Macduffie, the agents, did little.

The apartment had a tiny living room that was barely liveable but it had a fireplace, and a huge huge many-paned glass window that opened onto LeConte street. That place is still there and it amuses me to think that someone still lives there, now fifty one years later. There was a miniscule eating area and a very very tiny kitchen in which I managed to turn out plenty of eating in the Temple Tradition (more about the Temple Tradition later)...

There was a small bedroom which held our double bed and a dresser and not much more, and a dull windowless little bathroom.  Out in the hall, if you climbed the stairs you came out on the roof, which had a magnificent view of San Francisco for you to look at as you hung out the washing.  I wrote a great poem about that, and if I find it, I'll put it in tomorrow.  I really need to know where all that old stuff is....

Anyway, that November of 1959, we were blessed with a number of guests.  I remember a visits from three different women we'd known: Hortense, my old friend from Laredo; Irene, a really nice girl from Colorado U., and Petty, an older lady from Brownsville who came with her son Jimmy one evening in late November. We had a wonderful time, talking and laughing.  Petty later told my mother that I had looked beautiful that night, that my face was actually shining.  Shining with light, that is.  I've been told that another time as well, when I was in a friend's wedding--I took it that it was because I was wearing an orchid colored dress.

But that night in November, I was wearing my usual brown wool outfit because I 'd been in San Francisco that morning.  And my face shone.  I never talk about this because it is presumptuous if anything ever was. But I am writing this for my grandchildren who may inherit the gene, who knows? And I want them to know that it is real.

You know, perhaps, that Abraham's mother was said to have shone when she was pregnant with Abraham.  And you may have heard, perhaps, that the Annanaki (Zechariah Szitchen's extraterrestrials who came down to earth and tampered with the genetics here- about)..the Annanaki shone.  I shone that night, when I was pregnant with Alexander. That puts quite a burden on him, I know.  Nutty? Now hear this.

A Jewish gentleman who was quite taken with me once ventured to interpret the meaning of my name. Lon-gor-ya.  He said that in Hebrew, the word means "shining whelp of Yahweh."  Whoa.

A different Jewish gentleman told me that it could not be so, because the name of Y**h was not ever to be mentioned, and no Jewish person could ever bear such a name.  I didn't ask him then how come I shone? Of course this was twenty-odd years later and I knew nothing about shining and Yahweh and Annanaki then, in 1959.

I don't shine all the time, and in fact, only those two times have been mentioned to me in all my lifetime. But I believe they were real.  I may have shone at other times when nobody saw me or recognized what was happening, for all we know.

What a nutty thing to write about.  I probably wouldn't have mentioned it, dear readers, if I hadn't arisen at four thirty a.m. in the quiet, secret, dark. I will mention that Alexander, born nine months after that November night when I didn't yet know I was pregnant, was the darlingest, most remarkable little baby ever born....YAZZYBEL