This morning was spent making lists, grocery shopping, and choosing clothes for our trip to Palm Springs. The afternoon was spent putting it all in its right place in the RV. Now it will be early to bed so that the last minute items can be added in the morning. We have a 11:00 departure time in our minds and so far it looks like we will make it.

We will be staying at a RV Park in Palm Desert, close to Palm Springs and we will be meeting up with a World War II reunion group. This group were 90 day wonders from Northwestern University. Bob was a 90 day wonder from Columbia University. We are attending their reunion in the hope that next year the two groups will join together to make a larger reunion group. It is sad, but inevitable that so many members of the Armed Forces of that era are no longer able to travel or are no longer with us.

Two years ago, Bob and I hosted the Palm Springs reunion of his group so we will skip some of the tours this time. We are planning to attend two of the dinners, and a planning meeting. We also have tickets for The Follies and and for the Air Museum. The rest of the week will be ours to relax and explore on our own.

I plan to post every day or two and take lots of photos. We will have all three dogs with us, plus the two parrots so our travel will be somewhat limited, but the RV park has a beautiful swimming pool , a beautiful golf course, and lots of places to walk the dogs. Best yet, the weatherman has promised eighty plus degree weather with great California sunshine the entire time we are there.

This week Judy of A Creative Writer in Process challenged the LBC with the phrase ” If I could travel in Time, I would……” I have listed all the writers on the right hand side of my blog under Writer’s Consortium. Please take time to read some of their varied and interesting responses to Time Travel.

If I could travel in time would I travel backward or forward? If I chose to travel back in time, would I want to meet famous people, live the life of a Roman Courtesan, or travel to exotic places? On the other hand, if I chose to travel forward in time, would I be in awe of a new century and new politics.? Would I space travel, take part in a revolution, and meet my great grandchildren ten times removed.

Funny that when I was younger, I would have found time travel most exciting and glamorous. Now, when I think of time travel, I think of plagues, and bombings, and hunger and other most unpleasant experiences. This may well be the result of the head cold that is hanging on, the codeine in my cough medicine, and the lack a good night’s sleep. Perhaps it has something to do with the wisdom of maturity or the grouchiness of old age. All I know is that I want to stay right here, steady on the course, with a prayer that my little boat of life sails on smoothly for a long, long time.

To be honest, I have in my own way, experienced traveling back in time . The year was 1987, my father was nearing the end of his life. He was back in the hospital for the umpteenth time and as his main caregiver, I was tiring out. I had been up with him most of the night, taught school all day, and was now headed back for a long evening at his bedside.

As I walked down the corridor to his room, the nurses cautioned me that he was still under the influence of strong medication and quite disoriented. With these words of advice in mind, I entered the hospital room. My father’s bed was close to the window and the fading sunlight of late afternoon played on the white spread of his bed. He raised his head and asked, “Is that you, Grace?” “Have you seen Mary Lorraine? She has grown so much since your last visit. ” Then he paused, laughed and boasted, “She talks a blue streak and you must ask her about the ice rink.”

The voice was vibrant and full of life. It was not the voice of a 90 year old, but the voice of a younger man. Startled at first, I soon realized that my father in his confusion had gone back to a time around 1939. He had mistaken me for his sister, Grace and he thought Grace had come for her annual visit. He was telling her about me. So much love and pride echoed in his words as he spoke about his little girl.

When I was three years old, my dad made an ice rink in the back yard for me and my brother. I am certain it was more for my brother than for me, but I was thrilled with sliding across the ice on my new double bladed skates. “Ask her about the ice-rink” relates to a family story about my inability to pronounce the word “ice”. My word came closer to arse so that I was frequently asked about the skating rink to which I would gleefully reply, “I skate on my arse.” One of those little jokes that soon became part of the family legacy.

As most of you know, I chose to be called Maria because in my Catholic school, I was surrounded by Mary’s and I longed to be different. My entire family was very patient about going along with my name change, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear my childhood name, Mary Lorraine, again.

I was also delighted to be mistaken for my Aunt Grace. My father had four sisters and his sister Grace was always known to be “the family beauty’” As I was growing up, I would look at old family albums and I remember trying to look at my profile in the bathroom mirror. Did I resemble Grace? I could see some resemblance if I squinted my eyes, but truthfully, I would never have Grace’s classic good looks.

In that hospital room, I was transposed back to a time before my own memory. I glimpsed what it must have been like when my father’s favorite sister came for her annual visit and I was given the unbelievable gift of hearing him speak of me in a way that demonstrated the depth of his fatherly love for a three year old daughter .

So does this confirmation of a special bond between a young child and her father qualify as time travel? Probably not. It does however, qualify as a sweet snippet of time. One that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

It is Friday and time for the LBC theme. This week Gaelikaa chose “The Wildest Thing I Did in my Youth” . I am posting a story that I did years ago for Gate Night for two reasons. First I still have a bad head cold and second, there is no reason to write something new because this event was not only my wildest, but was also my one and only brush with the law. It resulted in what my daughter Kristi, (a Police Officer) laughingly calls ” Mom’s Black and White Anxiety” . Please remember to visit other bloggers from the Loose Bloggers Consortium. They are listed under Writers Consortium on the right side of my web blog.

When I was growing up in Minnesota, the night before Halloween was called Gate Night and was the night of mischief. I think it was called Gate Night because young people took the gates off of people’s fences and hid them in various places. I know of no one who actually did this, but in my neighborhood, it was a night where kids soaped store windows and tipped over garbage cans.

I could hardly wait to be old enough to participate in this mischief. It wasn’t parent sanctioned of course, but I have the feeling that they looked the other way on that night. At last, I reached the age of eight and along with five of my neighborhood friends set out after dinner to have a little fun. It was already dark and we soaped the window of Stanek Grocery and Kranz’s drugstore and then headed for the alley behind the nearby apartments. They were about a block or two away. The rule was that you never tipped a garbage can on your own block. After all it might be yours or a neighbors and you would be stuck cleaning up.

We approached noisily and full of adventure. Unfortunately, the police lay in wait in the alley with the lights off on their patrol car. Everyone picked up a can and I chose a large silver colored beauty filled to the top with ripe garbage, bottles, and papers.. Just as I picked it up, the lights on the patrol car flashed. There I stood guilty as hell, right in their spotlight. Petrified is hardly the word for what I felt. My legs turned to rubber, my stomach turned upside down and my arms became permanently glued to the sides of that garbage can.

I couldn’t put it down. Not for love nor life. Everyone else dropped their garbage cans and ran between buildings. Not me, hugging that silver albatross, I made a beeline straight down the center of the alley with the police car quietly following me at something less than a mile an hour. I know they were laughing, because I glanced over my shoulder and I could see these two huge faces in the patrol car window grinning. I still kept running.

The street loomed ahead and as I made a hysterical dash across it for the next alley, I still held the garbage can firmly in my arms. The police car mercifully turned right onto 36th street heading toward Harriet Avenue and disappeared into the night. Some more important call probably came in on their radio or they knew they had already scared the bejezus out of me making me powerless. I finally placed my dreadful treasure on the ground, sat down next to it, totally out of breath, and vowed never to lead a life of crime at least, until the next Gate Night.

The cold bug has caught up with me. I spend a few days last week with Kristi and the twins. I had a great time visiting Danica’s Nursery School and Eric’s Head Start Program. It amazes me how Theresa and Kristi juggle schedules, driving kids to and fro, and accomplish all that goes with raising three year olds.

I can’t believe I have a cold. Well, that is not quite true. Twins and Kristi were in various stages of fighting their own colds so I am not certain which one gave me this wretched one, but it is here and I am travelling no further than bed to couch and back.

The dogs are my constant companions. Sammi loves to cuddle close to me on the couch. Lucky and LuAnn are content to play in the backyard and have not begged to go for their afternoon walk or if they do, it is only half-heartedly.

Bob keeps me supplied with hot tea and a good rub-down with menthol Vicks which as old-fashioned as it is. . . works.

Once again it is Friday and time for a topic chosen by the LBC, a group of writers who take turns choosing a subject to write on and to post weekly. This time the subject is” Fifteen Minutes of Fame”. I have listed all the writers for this group on my sidebar under Consortium Writers and I invite you to go to their blogs and enjoy their different writing styles and their creative approach to the subject.

I think that all of us have had fifteen minutes of fame, but I am willing to bet that not too many have had their fifteen minutes of fame with a 280 pound gorilla.

In the 1980’s my husband John and I were active in the Cat Fancy. We had converted our double garage into a cattery and were breeding and showing Manx cats. It was hard work and it was challenging, but oh so much fun when we left a cat show with a blue ribbon or two.

As it happened at that time, a famous study of the Gorilla’s ability to communicate was taking place in Northern California. Dr. Penny Patterson began her study of Koko, a young gorilla at Stanford. The Gorilla Foundation was formed and her study moved further away into the hills near the Bay area. Dr. Patterson along with Ron Cohn photographed and documented Koko’s abilities in many books and publications including National Geographic.

This celebrated Gorilla adopted a little kitten which she named All Ball because All Ball was a Manx and had no tail. which to a savvy gorilla resembled a ball. All Ball was the love of her maternal life and she was intrigued with the little kitten and very protective and caring toward it. All of this is included in a popular children’s book, Koko’s Kitten.

Those of you who are familiar with the story know that tragically All Ball lost her life when she wandered into the road and was hit by a truck. Koko grieved the loss of her friend and the newspapers found the human interest story a major attraction for their papers.

So when my husband John saw the article about Koko’s sorrow over the loss of a kitten and the foundation’s search for a new pet, he called the Gorilla Foundation, announced that he and his wife owned the Bear Den Cattery and we were expecting kittens within the next ten days. He offered one of the kittens from that litter to Dr. Patterson for Koko.

As it turns out, our mother cat had a false pregnancy and we had to let the Foundation know that there would not be a kitten soon. Most kittens are born in the Spring or the Fall and this was mid-winter. By this time, I was as determined as John to find a Manx kitten for Koko. So we called around to friends in the Cat Fancy and luckily found a little orange kitten that the breeder was willing to sell to us to take to Koko.

Meanwhile, I was teaching at Inyokern Elementary about 13 mile from my home town of Ridgecrest, California and my students were fascinated with my stories of Koko. We made a huge bulletin board on one wall and titled it “Koko, We Love You”. We studied Gorillas and we studied their natural habitats and we wrote letters to Koko, and drew pictures of cats to entertain her.

It was a month before the kitten would be old enough to leave its mother, and during that month phone calls flew back and forth between Penny and us. She received the letters and the pictures that my students had drawn of kittens and Koko had chosen a tail-less one that she liked. We thought this was a good sign.

Then it was time to take the kitten to its new family. We picked it up from the breeder and headed for the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside about 2o miles from San Francisco and the kitten’s new home. Penny and Ron were waiting anxiously for us at the house and after greetings and breeder advice about care of the six week old kitten, all of us headed toward the area that housed both Koko and another gorilla named Michael.

I was thrilled with seeing Koko. As Penny suggested, I sat down near a barred floor length area. Koko came over and sat on the other side of the bars. She looked at me and signed “Visitor Stinks”! Being insulted is never easy. Being insulted by a famous gorilla is mind-shattering. Penny explained that she used the same sign for flower and she thought that Koko was intrigued by my humane society pin which resembled a four petalled flower. Koko put a hand through the bars and looked closer at the pin. Then she signed “Open” and Penny said, “Open your mouth, she wants to see your fillings.” Well, I wasn’t about to say no, so I opened wide while Koko looked inside at the many silver fillings in my mouth. Then there was a strangely quiet moment when Koko and I simply looked at each other and I saw intelligence and dignity that will always be remembered with awe.

The moment was quickly broken when Penny put the box down on the ground and signed that she had brought Koko a kitten. It was obvious that Koko was interested. She motioned for Penny to turn the kitten around so she could see the back side. She seemed happy to observe the lack of a tail.

It was at this time, that John and I said goodbye and headed back home . It was important that there be as little distraction as possible when the kitten was actually given to Koko and we wanted it to go as smoothly as possible.

Of course, for the next few weeks, Koko and the kitten which she named Lips or Lipstick were photographed, and video taped, and all of it documented for publication. Our own paper called and interviewed us and yes, we had our fifteen minutes of fame.

Looking back, I am glad that we made a grieving gorilla a little happier. Lipstick was not as close to Koko as All Ball had been, but Michael surprisingly was completely besotted by the kitten. He called it, Banana. We were told that Michael’s reward for good behavior was having the kitten in an area where Michael could watch it play. I believe Lipstick or Banana was finally won over by Michael and Koko, some years later was given another kitten, named Smokey.

My 15 minutes of fame burned brightly and flickered out, but every once in awhile, I find myself reading the story of Koko’s Kitten to a group of young children and then telling them about how we brought Koko her little orange kitten. I can hardly wait until my grand babies are old enough for me to read the story to them. I think they will like the idea that their Nana brought a kitten to Koko and stayed to show her tooth-fillings to an interested gorilla.