F is for Family

 

F is for Family
Baby Katharine’s Alphabet Adventures

A special ABC to celebrate alternative, extended, blended, and birth families! 

Welcome to the world, Katharine,

How wonderful you will be!

Because you are the blossom,

Of the most amazing family tree!

Christmas in Tunisia

The horse's hooves thundered past me, kicking up ash and sparks from the roaring bonfire. A dozen jet black Arabian steeds, adorned with maroon leather saddles and bright festive pompoms, raced around again, as the audience ululated and drummed under the vast desert sky. Exhilarated, I caught a glimpse of my aunt’s ebony hair and gleaming teeth as she whizzed by, a blur of white thigh and proud black boot firmly in the stirrup.

Aunt Silvana reminds me of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. Since she would not lie down beneath him, Lilith was expelled from the Garden of Eden. First demonized as the untamed woman, Lilith is now known as the goddess of radical self-empowerment, according to astrologer Adama Sessay.

Silvana was the paragon of an independent woman living in Italy in the 60s. She only married once - her husband committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window just a couple of months after the wedding. Now ninety-three, living in a hospice facility outside of Milan, after traveling all over the world by herself, even though partially blind. She combined La Vita Dolce with La Vida Loca, racing her MGM around the dappled hillsides of Pozzol Groppo, drinking dry martinis, eating endless pasta, smoking cigarettes, and popping pills. Like Lilith, she lived fiercely, fully, and always on her own terms.

It had been a long, dusty bus ride from our plush hotel in Tunis to the full moon festival at the oasis. The bus had been crammed with people, packed with their kids, shopping, and other belongings, while muslim prayer music continuously wailed over the constant conversations, adding to the cacaphony.

Once there, we met a snake charmer who pulled a tongue-flicking cobra out of a woven basket. He casually draped the hooded serpent around my twelve-year-old neck, popped his red fez on my head, and laughed at my shocked face as he casually put his hot hand across my chest while tourists nonchalantly clicked their Kodaks. Nearby, women draped in saffron silks crouched by adobe ovens, busily kneading dough, their beaded bracelets jangling. These little loaves of bread were the only thing I’d eat, repulsed by the bowls of what my brother assured me was steaming camel hump meat.

The next day, we wandered around the bazaar, admiring the brass pots and copper trays, piles of oriental rugs, and enjoying the fragrances of cumin, cinnamon, and turmeric in the tangy air. Crowds of people jostled through the stalls, bartering furiously with the merchants, arms raised in the air, making magic gestures to conjure the right bargain. We entered a striped tent filled with an array of sparkling jewelry. I was entranced by a silver filigree ball that had a dangling Hamsa, the Hand of Fatimah. I had always loved jewelry, and the exquisite craftwork sang to me. I turned to ask my Dad if he would buy it for me.

“You like?” said a big bearded man in a cream robe, who pulled me over onto his lap. “How much for your daughter?” He asked my Dad, who just laughed. “I have many camels, many!” he insisted. As he squeezed me closer, I could smell his greasy skin. I pried myself off, somehow escaped the labyrinth of the market, and ran back to the hotel, furious.

“What’s wrong, my little monkey?” Aunt Silvana had found me brooding in the shade by the cool, quiet pool. As I poured out my rage, dismay, and disbelief, she simply held my hands, her dark brown eyes moist as she listened. “I’m glad you got away,” was all she said.

As we departed home to Luxembourg, there at the noisy airport, in a little souvenir kiosk, was the same Hamsa pendant on its fine silver chain. I counted out the last of my dinars, feeling smug and satisfied as I slipped the cool chain around my neck, filigree ball dangling on my chest, healing hand protecting my heart.

Just for Today

I let go of anger,

knowing I can gently express my inner needs.

I let go of worry,

choosing to trust that I have been heard.

I am deeply thankful

to a kind and benevolent universe.

I am focused on my work

in creative and productive ways.

I am kind and loving,

to myself and all beings.

(Adapted from the 5 principles of Reiki)

Vibrissae

 

Vibrissae
A Collection of Cats, Facts, and Whiskers

Inspired by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art And History's exhibit on local collectors, this book was a collaboration between a mother and daughter. Kayla Rose, a crazy cat lady at heart, has collected over a hundred cat whiskers that she found around the house over two decades from a medley of family pets. She wrote the poem to honor all the past, present, and future cats who bring joy into their lives. 

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty and Perceptive.

Kayla and Amber Rose are wise in the ways of cats. No subtlety escapes their eyes. Full of humor and insight, this small book reveals much in its short pages. Well worth the time.

Dream Box Joins the MAH’s New Permanent Exhibition: HERstory

I am thrilled to announce that my art piece, Dream Box, has been inaugurated in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History's new permanent display, HERstory, A Celebration of the Important Women of Santa Cruz County—Past, Present, and Future, which highlights the important contributions that women and female-identifying individuals have made globally and locally. From Yaquenonsat to Angela Davis, Santa Cruz has long been a stronghold of women’s activism, creativity, and courage.

Inspired by the MAH’s beloved annual HERstory event, this addition to the MAH’s History Gallery features significant moments in women’s history through the lens of important Santa Cruz women and events. This interactive exhibition will include features on important women, such as:

• Yaquenonsat, a Native woman who in 1812 led the local indigenous resilience to colonization
• Heather Edney, who founded one of the earliest harm reduction programs in the United States in 1990
• Dr. Rebecca Hernandez (Mescalero/Warm Spring Apache and Mexican American), the first nominee and recipient of the annual HERstory Award in 2024, for her work as a Community Archivist and previous Director of the American Indian Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz.
• Bettina Aptheker, founder of UCSC’s Feminist Studies Program
• Madeline Aliah, a local trans femme teen poet. 

See all honorees and learn more about HERstory here!

I first started making shadow boxes after picking up some old spice racks at the flea market in the early nineties and wondering what to do with what I like to call my spiritual smegma - pebbles, crystals, special buttons, miniatures, all the collected minutiae of friends and relationships past. 

These curiosities became the foundation for my 2005 art show Sacred Spaces in Small Places: Shadow Boxes, Spirit Shelves, and Altar-Egos, which spoke to the need to incorporate the spiritual in both our daily lives and in the mundane world by transforming everyday items into altars for meditation, reflection, and rejuvenation. Throughout history and across various religious beliefs, altars have served as a means to focus intentions, honor ancestors, affirm values, and reaffirm our connection to the divine.

I made a dozen or so over the years, some with themes such as the story of Amateratsu and Uzume, some were specific for Love Magic, and the Dream Box was mostly comprised of the eclectic snippets, tokens, and ephemera that once decorated the register on at Herland. Most of them I gifted away, notably to Melissa Bernstein, who later gifted it to the MAH, where it was first a part of the Infinite Other exhibit in 2018-2019, and in Then & Now: LGBTQ+ Gathering Spaces in 2023.

What do I love most about the Dream Box? The incredible amount of detail and how salient it is for the time. Inluding:

• Political buttons ("My Goddess Can beat Up Your God") 
• Magazine cutouts ("Americans are ALTARING Their Lives" is my favorite)
• Fortune cookie fortunes - ("Your Mind is Your Greatest Asset") Herland was neighbors with the Mongolian Barbeque, and every day I would sweep up fortunes
• Objet-trouve: lost marbles, single earrings, orphaned keys, a lucky wooden nickel from Lovedog Tattoo

Inside this 3-D collage live Asian drag kings and radiant black queens, butches and femmes, Aztec goddesses and Feng Shui cures, Zen tarot cards, babes on unicyles, and an abundance of body positivism. Condom references in a time when safer sex was being fully embraced during the AIDS crisis. Stickers promoting same-sex marriage.

And the symbols! Pink triangles, labryses, Venus and double Venus, cowrie shells, salamanders, butterflies, hearts, cats, marijuana leaves, and rainbows aplenty. All of the tarot - chalice, blade, pentagram, flame, plus the wheel... A chorus of affirmations: "Double happiness"  and my personal favorite from G9 - "I will never underestimate my body's capacity for pleasure." Michelle Tea even sneaks in a cameo.

And at the heart of it all, nestled quietly among the glitter and the grit: a single pet rock, painted with one word—Hope.

Troll Bridge

 

The Backpack

It was a cool fall day as I crunched along the red and gold leaves. It was not that I was lost, but more at a loss. I knew where I had come from, but up ahead were the crossroads, and I’d need to make a decision. Wearily, I shrugged off my backpack and sank into the little wooden bench on the side of the pathway. Time to do inventory.

It was a dark blue Janson backpack, which had belonged to my daughter in high school. The zippers felt sticky as I began rummaging through, discovering all that I had been secretly carrying for years.

In the outside pocket was the little pack of white lies, crumpled Kleenex already pre-stained with crocodile tears.

In the side pocket were all the things that I had lost or pawned for drug money - my dad's little gold travel alarm clock, encased in green leather; my mom’s platinum wedding ring, both of my grandmother’s sets of pearls, countless single earrings.

The other side contained all the locked diaries, stale letters, and old emails that I should not have read, but felt compelled to know, much to bitter regret.

I reached into a center pocket, but sliced my fingers on the sharp blades of blame, those barbed shurikins flung out in anger. They were protecting tiny packages of grief, each beautifully wrapped and tied with silk ribbons; no need to get into them just yet.

As big as it was, the medical scale - the kind you hate stepping on when you go to the doctors, the nurse pushing the weight more and more to your growing dismay, no matter what the numbers actually say - came out easily with a resounding thud.

Then the snarled ball of jealousy, a sickening chartreuse, not worth untangling the infidelities, the betrayals, the love triangles, the ins and outs of nonmonogamy, all the bad breakups despite good intentions.

So much shame came tumbling out, as acrid as yellowed cat piss, while I tipped the backpack upside down. Memories of shoplifting the gold and jade pin in elementary school, stealing rolls of quarters from Sunshine Farms for laundry money when in college, and all the times of driving drunk.

I scraped out the mouldy helplessness, the ineffective thoughts and prayers, the absolute despair at the news each day, whether it be Ukraine, Gaza, or L.A.

Now, for the main large pocket - I lifted out the gilded crown of thorns, studded with blood-red rubies, and noticed how easily guilt lay on my head, keeping me frozen in victimhood or too busy being a martyr. Too busy feeling guilty to do anything of consequence.

By now, the trash can by the bench was overflowing, as I dumped asthma inhalers and Sudafed, vestiges of allergies and illness, as well as the albatross of a failed business that kept haunting my dreams. I let go of each of my masks, the fake mustaches and the clown shoes, all the props of feeling the imposter.

The blue canvas backpack felt light, filled now only with stories of survival, a few bad puns, and those precious packages of grief. With a sigh of relief, I unfolded my astrology chart as a new map, checked my moral compass, and knew that I was headed in the right direction.