Grand Canyon Twice Over

When you live close to one of the natural wonders of the world, you want to share it. By close, for us Californians, I mean under a thousand miles. Thus the first round included bonding with children and grandchildren

who joined us in Vegas for our April journey to the Grand Canyon by train

 First Stop, Bearizona with it's closeups of owls, falcons, timber wolves and . . .

bears that climb trees, not to mention bison!

Of course the Grand Canyon takes all, but kids love trains

And so we return with a friend two months later for the awesome sight at sunset.

 Looking into the sun.

       Each Church, each city, shaped my brother and me, as did Mother’s European  heritage  Like her  counterpart, Lily Marlene, Mutti always dressed well. She could afford to, having been employed by Dr. Gutseit Mueller, a Munich lawyer. Her shorthand skills were valued, along with her organizational skills. She knew how to calendar important dates. As wife, friend, and later as mother, she would never miss a birthday or special event.

      During her Frau Lang years, Mutti wore full length furs so appropriate to Munich winters. There’s a 1920’s photo of her dressed in mink (the real thing), standing by Mr. Lnag’s automobile, that chic boxy Mercedes. Today, furry trappings anger animal activists, so the black lamb’s wool coat she once sported and turned into a cape for the California scene, ended up Salvation Army fare. Monetary constraints eventually forced Mother to switch to polyester imitations. Fake furs are sweaty affairs, but Mutti always glowed in them.

      She once told me that the black sequined jacket in the photo on my wall was a product of her hands. Its puffed short sleeves that tapered to a narrow cuff just above the elbows required careful pre-cutting. A wrong snip and costly cloth would be ruined. Mutti could sew as well as a tailor and took time to outfit herself in the latest styles. Later she would help me when school plays demanded  it, staying awake half the night to finish a costume. Everything my mother wore looked classy, chic. It didn’t matter that when she followed me to California she would switch to casual attire. Even her sweats had a finished look, because she coordinated, pressed, and accessorized, and because she was a classy chic(k) herself.

      Mutti stood out among her large circle of friends as one who knew what to wear when. At social gatherings of her cronies, where Russian, French, and German filled the are, cultural distinctions had given way to New York couture. Mutti managed to outshine anyone who had more money with bargain basement fare, because she knew  how to put it all together. She had no need for designers. She could look at the latest fashions and match the look on a shoestring.

      Photos of her youth show her hair changed color with each season. She said it was because her friend was a stylist. I think she just liked being in and being lovely. I never saw her dragged out or undressed, except in the bathroom where she unabashedly took her sponge baths in full view of my innocent eyes. Makeup followed that first splash of the day. Mother took time to look right, wrapping her hair at night to shorten the morning ritual.

      Her clothes reeked of Tosca, her favorite perfume (mine too). Its sweet trail mingled with curls of tobacco. Mutti nursed her cigarettes, a throwback to her era of smoke filled salons and parlors that during her childhood depended on gas lighting. She could have starred in a Bogart flick even had she let her brunette tresses grow out. Mother quit the nasty habit eventually but not completely. Whenever her breath gave her away she’d excuse herself. “A social moment with friends,” she’d say/ “Besides, it helps me keep the weight down.”

A Classy Lady

     The photo paper, a stiff weighty stock with matte finish, gives substance to Mutti. Sepia tones gentle her classic German face, “Marlene,” people would say. “You look like Lily Marlene.” They referred to her contemporary, Dietricht.  Signed on the back, the 1930’s photo portraits the twenty-seven year old with pathos and a womanly fullness too common in today’s Hollywood club scene, thanks to implants. Mother was genuine.

     Turn of the century hardships might have shaped her youth, but no hard lines taint this visage. Mutti wears only a dreamy look of unknowing that the future would bring romance, two children, and “so much pain.” The photo belies the tough outer shell Mutti wore in later years created by too many disappointments, mistakes, and lies. I never saw her cry, though she surely must have, perhaps in the privacy of her room or church. Indeed, church shaped her bitter-sweet life, because to her last breath, she would worry, “Do you think I’ll get to heaven?” I’d answer, “Gee Mom, you say your daily Rosary, you taught us our prayers, and you gave us a firm foundation in Catholicism. However unworthy you feel, doesn’t matter. You have fulfilled God’s will.

     I recall a photo of her at age twelve, sitting in tight pig-tailed seriousness. Erste Heilige Kommunion (First Holy Communion) on the back, it remains the only picture of a sacred event from those early years. Mutti, no doubt, threw away later memories of her Catholic wedding to her first husband, Mr. Lang. His cover up of an illegitimate child would have annulled the church marriage, but Mutti didn’t know that. So she suffered the remainder of her life after divorce under the notion that she was a reprobate.

     Mother loved the Church, refusing to discard it the way she discarded some of the regulations she couldn’t come to terms with. Aside from a short defection during her Florida years, she went regularly, and sometimes daily, to mass. I sort through connected memories in her boxes of photos. There’s a postcard of Munich’s Buergersaal where her favorite Saint, Pater Rupert Mayer, sleeps. Close and personal, the local Jesuit’s sermons circulated Munich’s Marienplatz.  Mutti once spoke of how she listened enthralled, adoring this lone voice against Hitler. Half a century later her admiration extended to Edith Stein, the outspoken young Jewish philosopher turned Catholic nun. Both saints were canonized recently in the same year.

     In a snapshot of a high school play Mutti claims her position as the Angel of Comfort during Christ’s agony. Other photographs of familiar churches and events are too many to count (Mother was a shutter bug). Most include main altar views of many places I remember: The Gasteig Kirche in Haidhausen, OLM (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) ), Bronx, St. Mary Magdalen’s in Winter Park, Sacred Heart Church, Covina. They time line her restless soul.

     Each Church, each city, shaped my brother and me, as did Mother’s European heritage . . .

 

The West

The West appears bland. From the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada’s and beyond, it flows, an endless sea of sand, rock, scrub brush and sun. Traveling through the expanse brings on highway hypnosis, that limbo of relaxed libido and drooping eyelids that can be deadly. Nothing to see. . . nothing to do. . . 

Not so. Desert colors: striking orange, gentle pink, and dusty sand offset by patches of green seep into the consciousness. Easy names: big sandy wash, rattlesnake gulch, and Grand Canyon, feed the psyche.

Sun-lit mountains rise behind red wind worn cliffs and darken beneath passing clouds. 

And then flowers:  Desert Dandelions, Globe Mallow, and Brittlebrush (or is it Spiney Senna?) match the colors of the land.

Kingman should have become the halfway point to the Canyon but there are grandchildren to meet. What else to do but travel north.

 Sin City again becomes our launch pad, Circus Circus our RV hook-up. It’s not hot in April, but hot in action and people, and big city life that doesn’t stop at midnight. We opt for the simpler pleasure of hanging out by Mandalay Bay beach/pool with family, a great start for a hot vacation.

The caboose waits in Williams where Bearizona brings animals up close, where real bears climb up trees and white buffalo gallop up so close you can touch them; but don’t, you’ll lose a hand. And the baby is just as dangerous.

 And down Williams’  short Main Street  the whine of the train howls. The caboose is for sleeping, the train for our trip to the Canyon, frought with mounted robbers and fiddlers giving the kids lessons.

 A grander vacation couldn’t be asked for.