Counting by 7s(3)

If you could see me, you would say that I don’t fit into an easily identifiable ethnic category.

I’m what’s called “a person of color.”

And my parents are not.

They are two of the whitest white people in the world (no exaggeration).

They are so white, they are almost blue. They don’t have circulation problems; they just don’t have much pigment.

My mom has fine, red hair and eyes that are pale, pale, pale blue. So pale they look gray. Which they are not.

My dad is tall and pretty much bald. He has seborrheic dermatitis, which means that his skin appears to be constantly in a state of rash.

This has led to a great deal of observation and research on my part, but for him it is no picnic.

If you are now picturing this trio and considering us together, I want you to know that while I don’t in any way resemble my parents, somehow we just naturally look like a family.

At least I think so.

And that’s all that really matters.



Besides the number 7, I have two other major obsessions. Medical conditions. And plants.

By medical conditions, I mean human disease.

I study myself, of course. But my illnesses have been minor and not life-threatening.

I do observe and chronicle my mom and dad, but they will not let me do much diagnostic work on their behalf.

The only reason that I regularly leave the house (not counting going to the forced-prison-camp also known as middle school and my weekly trip to the central library) is to observe sickness in the general population.

It would always be my first choice to sit for several hours every day in a hospital, but it turns out that nursing staffs have a problem with that.

Even if you’re just camped out in a waiting room pretending to read a book.

So I visit the local shopping mall, which fortunately has its share of disease.

But I don’t buy things.

Since I was little, I’ve kept field notes and made diagnostic flash cards.

I am particularly drawn to skin disorders, which I photograph only if the subject (and one of my parents) isn’t looking.



My second interest: plants.

They are living, growing, reproducing, pushing and pulling in the ground all around us at all times.

We accept that without even noticing.

Open your eyes, people.

This is amazing.

If plants made sounds, it would all be different. But they communicate with color and shape and size and texture.

They don’t meow or bark or tweet.

We think they don’t have eyes, but they see the angle of the sun and the rise of the moon. They don’t just feel the wind; they change directions because of it.

Before you think I’m crazy (which is always a possibility), look outside.

Right now.

I’m hoping that your view isn’t of a parking lot or the side of a building.

I’m imagining you see a tall tree with delicate leaves. You catch sight of swaying grass in a wide field. Weeds pushing up through a crack in the sidewalk are in the distance somewhere. We are surrounded.

I’m asking you to pay attention in a new way and view it all as being Alive.

With a capital A.



My hometown, like a lot of the central valley of California, has a desert climate and is flat and dry and very hot for over half of the year.

Since I’ve never lived anywhere else, whole months of days where it’s 100 degrees outside seems normal.

We call it summer.

Despite the heat, there is no escaping the fact that the bright sun and rich soil make the area ideal for growing things once you add water to the equation.

And I did.

So where once our house had a rectangle of grass, there is now a forty-foot-high stand of timber bamboo.

I have citrus trees (orange, grapefruit, and lime) next to my year-round vegetable garden.

I grow grapes, a variety of vines, annual and perennial flowers, and, in one small area, tropical plants.

To know me is to know my garden.

It is my sanctuary.



It’s sort of tragic that we can’t remember the earliest of the early years.

I feel as if these memories could be the key to the whole “Who am I?” question.

What was my first nightmare about?

How did the first step really feel?

What was the decision-making process when it came time to ditch the diapers?

I’ve got some toddler memories, but my first sequence recall is kindergarten; no matter how hard I’ve tried to forget the experience.

My parents said the place was going to be all kinds of fun.

It wasn’t.

The school was only blocks from our house, and it was here that I first committed the crime of questioning the system.

The instructor, Mrs. King, had just plowed her way through a popular picture book. It featured the hallmarks of most pre-school literature: repetition, some kind of annoying rhyming, and bold-faced scientific lies.

I remember Mrs. King asking the class:

“How does this book make you feel?”

The appropriate answer, as far as she was concerned, was “tired,” because the overly cheery instructor forced us to lie down on sticky rubber mats for twenty minutes after “lunchtime picture book.”

Half of the class usually fell deeply asleep.

I remember distinctly a boy named Miles twice peeing his pants, and, with the exception of a kid named Garrison (who I’m certain had some sort of restless leg syndrome), everyone else in the room seemed to actually enjoy the horizontal break.