{"id":1160,"date":"2016-04-15T06:20:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T13:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2016-04-14T19:18:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T02:18:01","slug":"a-mockingbird-and-a-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2016\/04\/15\/a-mockingbird-and-a-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mockingbird and a Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the challenges of playing \u201cthe step game\u201d on the road, is finding a place to do it. \u00a0Hotel corridors work, eventually, but they are terribly BORING!!! \u00a0So are treadmills.<\/span><\/p>\n

This past weekend I was the keynote speaker at the Desert Dreams Writers Conference in Scottsdale which was held at Chaparral Suites on Scottsdale Road. \u00a0Between the time the appearance was scheduled and the time it occurred, the hotel had been sold to Embassy Suites and is currently undergoing a massive remodel. \u00a0(Our room, by the way, had already been completely remodeled and was lovely!) \u00a0The restaurant is currently open, but under a massive outdoor tent called the Pavilion with service that is not unlike that found in an army mess. \u00a0Under the circumstances, the food was surprisingly good.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hotel includes a large conference center and an equally large parking lot which, for this weekend at least, was entirely underutilized\u2014by everyone but me. \u00a0I found what seemed like several acres of empty parking lot entirely suitable for walking, and I quickly established a 2000 step lap. \u00a0Most people\u2014the ones who aren\u2019t looking for steps\u2014tend to park very close to the building. \u00a0That means the outer limits of the lot are generally wide open.<\/span><\/p>\n

One has to be wary when walking in a parking lot environment. \u00a0For one thing, you have to be on the lookout for DWTs\u2014those driving while texting. \u00a0I suppose doing that in a parking lot is less dangerous to yourself and others than doing it on a street would be. \u00a0Still it is not recommended. \u00a0You have to watch out for motorcycles. \u00a0\u00a0There may have been a Harley convention somewhere in the vicinity. \u00a0They tend to give plenty of advance audio warning concerning their proximity because the noisier they are the better their owners seem to like them. \u00a0As for everyone else? \u00a0Not so much. There were any number of occasions when I would cheerfully have throttled their throttles! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The parking lot is surrounded by a block wall. \u00a0Just inside the wall is \u00a0a narrow strip of desert landscaping chock full of mesquite trees, creosote, and oleander. Most of the people I saw lingering in the parking lot were workmen who left their pickups parked in the shade of leaning mesquite trees and came out to their trucks to eat their lunches. \u00a0You would be amazed at how much heat a little bit of dappled mesquite shade can remove from a baking piece of asphalt. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And so I walked\u201410,000 steps a day for three days. \u00a0And despite the fact that I was in the middle of the city, I discovered an interesting collection of wildlife. \u00a0There was a medium-sized jack rabbit. \u00a0A number of years ago, there were people who went on a single-minded campaign to obliterate oleander in Arizona and California because the leaves are supposedly poisonous to wildlife. \u00a0Obviously that one jack rabbit in particular knows better than to nibble on the stuff. \u00a0I also saw a very scrawny feral cat who came tiptoeing across the parking lot late at night to take up a position close to the trash cans. \u00a0I\u2019m guessing the kitty comes more for mice and rats than for the garbage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly what I noticed on my solitary walks were the birds\u2014a pair of glossy black Phainopepla; a dozen white winged dove\u2014which locals refer to disparagingly as rock pigeons; a fly-over Canada goose whose squawking was surprising similar to the bark of an unhappy dachshund; a pair of nesting quail; some house finches; a hummingbird feasting on a blooming desert spoon. \u00a0And finally\u2014a mockingbird. \u00a0It was that bird, with his uncanny ability to imitate the sounds cars make when they are being unlocked remotely with key fobs who took me on my trip down memory lane.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the spring of 1966 I was a senior at the University of Arizona. \u00a0In order to receive my teaching credential, I needed to do a semester of student teaching. \u00a0I was assigned to Palo Verde High School and commuted there with another Pima Hall girl, Sarah Sue Sparks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah Sue\u2014always both names\u2014hailed from Bisbee\u2019s sister city and chief football rival\u2014Douglas, Arizona. \u00a0She was a year older than the other girls in our class because she had spent a year between high school and college working as a clerk typist at Fort Huachuca in order to earn money for school. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah Sue was the quintessential \u201cgood girl.\u201d \u00a0If she was assigned a duty, she did it promptly and well and without complaint. \u00a0She abided by the rules. \u00a0When the rest of us got caught up in some kind of high-jinx? \u00a0Sarah Sue didn\u2019t participate. \u00a0She wasn\u2019t an obnoxious goody-two-shoes about it, either. \u00a0She didn\u2019t do those outrageous things, but she didn\u2019t cast aspersions at the ones who did.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember her major. \u00a0Home Ec, maybe? \u00a0But whatever it was, we both had to be all the way across town, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and in our respective student teaching classrooms at six AM on the dot, five days. \u00a0At the time many of Tucson District #1 high schools were all operating on double sessions. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even energetic twenty-somethings require some sleep in order to function at that hour of the morning. \u00a0Back then freshmen girls at the U of A had to be in their dorms by 10:30 each night. \u00a0Upper class-men had an 11:30 curfew. \u00a0Birthday parties inside the dorm were usually celebrated after that 11:30 deadline, but for those of us who had to be up and out at the crack of dawn, 11:30 PM parties were out of the question. \u00a0We had to hit the hay much earlier than that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Please remember, these were the \u201cold days.\u201d \u00a0We slept in bunk beds on sleeping porches. \u00a0The dorm itself was air-conditioned; the upstairs sleeping porches were not. \u00a0By about the middle of spring semester, the windows on the sleeping porch were left wide open in hopes of capturing the smallest breeze, but it was still warm in those upstairs rooms and not exactly conducive to sleeping when there were other people out in the hall, laughing and giggling and have a great time.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there was the damned bird\u2014a mockingbird who had taken up residence in a nearby palm tree. \u00a0He raised hell each and every night screeching and squawking to his heart\u2019s content until all hours. \u00a0I\u2019d be almost ready to doze off and then that bird would go off on another screaming banshee tantrum. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was on one sleeping porch. \u00a0Sarah Sue was on the other one, but we\u2019d both stagger downstairs at five AM each morning, setting off bleary-eyed to do our student teaching on much less than the daily recommended amount of sleep. \u00a0Eventually we made it through the semester and graduated. \u00a0The next thing I heard, Sarah Sue had a teaching contract in Las Vegas. \u00a0That was where my first husband\u2019s family lived, and so that Christmas when we went there for the holidays I gave Sarah Sue a call. \u00a0I don\u2019t remember all the details of that conversation, but I came away with the general sense that she was very lonely in Vegas and that she and her boyfriend, a guy from school whose name I have forgotten, were involved in a long distance relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n

After that single conversation, Sarah Sue and I lost track. \u00a0I heard from someone else that she and the boyfriend had married. \u00a0He came from a well-to-do family\u2014something to do with a chain of newspapers, I believe\u2014so theirs was a bit of a Cinderella\/Prince Charming story. \u00a0Within weeks or maybe within days of learning she was pregnant with her fist child, Sarah Sue also learned she had cancer. I have no idea exactly what kind, but now that I know a little more about such things, I suspect it may have been ovarian cancer. \u00a0\u00a0That often strikes young women, and Sarah Sue couldn\u2019t have been more than 22 or 23 at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Worried about her baby, she refused any and all treatment until AFTER the baby was born. \u00a0I believe the baby was a girl, but I don\u2019t know that for sure, either. \u00a0Remember these were the old days when making a long distance call was a budget-busting event. \u00a0There was no Facebook, no twitter, no Internet. \u00a0I know that she and her husband and baby moved to Texas where he paid for the best cancer treatment money could buy at the time\u2014probably at M.D. Anderson.<\/span><\/p>\n

So Sarah Sue Sparks is who I was thinking about as I strode around the parking lot at Chaparral Suites\u2014Sarah Sue and her baby. \u00a0That \u201cbaby\u201d is close to fifty now. \u00a0But I wish I could reach out to him\/her and be able to say, \u201cI knew your mother when she was a young woman. \u00a0She was gentle, wonderful, and smart\u2014a Pima Hall girl through and through. \u00a0She wanted your desperately\u2014enough to risk her life to save yours. \u00a0You can\u2019t ask for a better mother than that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Right now, saying those words in my heart and in this blog is the best I can do, but if there\u2019s anyone out there who can guide me to Sarah Sue’s \u201cbaby,\u201d I would love to say them in person.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the challenges of playing \u201cthe step game\u201d on the road, is finding a place to do it. \u00a0Hotel corridors work, eventually, but they are terribly BORING!!! \u00a0So are treadmills. This past weekend I was the keynote speaker at the Desert Dreams Writers Conference in Scottsdale which was held at Chaparral Suites on Scottsdale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[49,6,110,168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-tour-2","category-tucson","category-u-of-a"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-iI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1161,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}