I'm All Agog

Good evening! These breakfasts are getting later and later.

I am all agog, because I have been set back today in many ways.  Set back in more than one way, in many ways.

My church, as I believe I may have mentioned, had a tea party today, to which I took four dozen little tea sandwiches...

The tea party was held in an old old San Diego house just off  Balboa Park, in the home of an old San Diego family, two of whom go to my church.  I'd never been in this particular house before, and it was stunning to behold, house and garden.  Not a pretentious house, just a perfect family house of the past century, of red brick and plaster and masonry and wide halls and rooms large enough to live within without feeling cramped.  It reminded me so much of the house I lived in for twenty-odd years a few miles to the north in Mission Hills.  Things like old moldings and old window sills and old floors and old doors...we don't realize the hold they have on our memories and our emotions.

Then, the people I go to church with at the early communion service every Sunday were there, all happy today in the bright clear sun of an afternoon on a blessed day between rainstorms.  Sometimes they all seem so privileged, and they seem different from this little Texas Mexican girl who just lucked into moving into this beautiful city so long ago.  But then, I am set back into realizing that they do not know how privileged I was to have had the unique life I had as a girl, in a unique town of Brownsville, with unique parents of intelligence and graciousness who could make a fine home under trying circumstances in a harsh climate like South Texas. 

 So here today were all of us, members of the Eight O'Clock Club, all so different, all drinking tea and sherry and eating little sandwiches and scones and sharing conversation...I learned things about lots of people today that I've not known before. I have learned how kind most all of these people are.

I walked out of the party with a young man who showed me a way to the path that will walk you east out of the park, across a hidden footbridge in the trees, and bring you out way over in Hillcrest not far from the Junior High School where my kids went to school, toward Essex Street and  Myrtle Way where this young man lives.  I mentioned that I'd lived for many years on a canyon in Mission Hills.  "Where do you live now? " asked the young man. "Chula Vista," I replied.  "Oh, my, " he said.  "How did that happen that you came down so far?"  A blunt thing to ask, but I did not mind because this is a day for setting back, in many ways.  "Oh, I wanted to live with my husband," I said.  "Well, I hope he is worth it for you to have given up so much."

My goodness.  What an astute thing for him to have said.  Yes, I did give up a lot. Yes, Chula Vista is a big comedown from what I had firmly within my grasp and loved.  "Yes," I said. "I love my husband and he is worth it," (said lightly.)  But the living of it has not been light at all, and it has set me back today a lot remembering all that, the home  I loved, the husband I loved, the sons I loved more than anything, the trying to hold them all together. Something had to be sacrificed, and the little Texas Mexican girl knows that I sacrificed the right thing. YAZZYBEL