HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE - RIP

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

LIFE WITH VAL
(The Party)

by
Eric L. Wattree
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Today, November 8, 2018, is a very special day in my family’s life. It’s the birthday of my late wife, Valdie LaVern Wattree, who died during the early morning of April 27, 2005. But to my entire family it seems like she passed just yesterday, because she left such an impact on all of our lives that we still haven’t managed to lay her to rest. I wrote the piece below while Val was still alive, and kept me scratching my head.
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Valdie was an amazing young woman. I met her when she was 14 and I was 16 years old.  But in spite of our youth, the first time I looked in her eyes, she made me feel significant. The only reason I'm even capable of writing this piece is because of her encouragement. Ever since I was a child I loved to jot down my thoughts, and even before I could write, I would draw my thoughts using little stickmen.  Val recognized that tendency in me when we were kids, while I just saw it dooddling. But after she dragged me in off the street and married me on Christmas Day, when she was 19 and I was 21, she began to push.
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This one’s for you, baby. Since you’ve passed, I’ve found that life can go on, but not without you in my heart. So as I promised on the day we were married, and again on your headstone - Until Death Do Us Part - and Beyond.
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Val and I are 44 and 46 years of age, and we've been married for 25 years. We were married on a Christmas morning, and she’s been an ongoing gift in my life ever since. We have two kids - a 23 year old daughter, Kai, and a 21-year-old son, Eric, Jr. They both graduated from college last month (Eric, on my birthday).
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I met Valdie when she was 14, and my life hasn't been the same since. I'm sort of a laid-back, ‘cerebral’ kind of guy who refuses to make a move without thinking it through. You know the type - the kind of guy who people aren't really sure about until they get to know him. Val, on the other hand, is a totally spontaneous, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person that everyone loves on first sight. But she's SO spontaneous that the kids and I have to keep an eye on her to keep her out of trouble.
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In both high school and college my son was the school basketball star, and before each game countless kids would congregate at my house waiting for Val. Others would go to the gym early to save seats in the bleachers, waiting for her to show up - and when she did, the party was on.

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The kids used to call the section where Val sat "The Dog Pound." More than once a player on the other team would miss free throws or plays because they were laughing so hard at something Val might have said about one of the referees or opposing players - and the funny thing was, in spite of that, the referees and the kids on the other teams loved her, and they all called her by her first name - though some of the kids called her "Nani" (baby-talk for mommy).
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Kids who were scheduled to play our team would come by the house and say, "Now Val, this is just a game. Don't be doggin' me on the court next week." And she'd say, "I ain’t gon have to, my son's gonna do it for me - and get out of my refrigerator. Don't Ruth feed you?" Sometimes after a game my son would say, "Momma, you know you were a bad girl at the game today, don't you?" And she'd say, "What? His toupee was on crooked!" Sometimes I seriously wonder was the Whoopie Goldberg movie, "Eddie," loosely based on Val's Antics.
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She is so out there. She lives in her very own universe. I tell her sometimes, "Val, if WWIII broke-out, you wouldn't even know it until you heard the blast. And it's true. Val is so oblivious to the things that the rest of us worry about that it verges on dangerous. In spite of the fact that she is well known as one of the top Property Administrators at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, Ca., she manages to leave all of her business acumen in her desk at work. One day, for example, she saw a very expensive household item that she wanted to buy. So she came to me and asked if it was alright for us to purchase it. At the time, we were sort of strapped, so I told her that we didn't have the money. She looked at me with deep disappointment and said, with total sincerity, "What do you mean we don't have the money? You have a box full of checks in your desk drawer." So, needless to say, I handle the family finances - and that's in spite of the fact that she made $37,000 a year more than I did, and I'm a government employee.
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Once when we went to have our taxes done and the tax preparer looked up at me and said, "I know you shame."  But I wasn't.  On the contrary, I was proud of my woman because she's the very best at what she does. Huges aircraft literally stole her from Rockwell International.  She's the only Black person I've ever known to have a corporation contact her and make her an offer to come to work for them.  Several years later I worked on a project with her and they even offered me a job, but I've always been a political person and I'm a union rep for the postal service.  I've only lost one case in over a decade, and I thoroughly love kicking them in their ass.  But Val wants me to be a "suit," a corporate executive, and she's convinced that I'll shoot right up the ladder.   But I pointed out to her that everyone doesn't see me in the same way that she does,  so that's been was one of the biggest fights we've had in our marriage. She also suspects that it's a male ego thing. She claims I'm just afraid that they might make me work for her. She never should have brought that up, because I'd never thought of that possibility until she mentioned it.  But now that she had . . .
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It's Val's disarming personality that makes her so successful, and it's also helped us out of a number of uncomfortable situations. About ten years ago when we moved from Los Angeles to Covina, California, we were one of just a few Black families in the area. Not being used to that sort of situation, we - make that I - was more than just a little uncomfortable. And to make things worse, one of the neighbors had a huge Confederate flag spread across one entire inside wall of his garage - and the garage door was always open, so whenever we drove down the street his blazing Dixie flag hit us right in the face. I felt uncomfortable with it, but hey, that flag was draped across that wall long before we moved into the neighborhood, and besides, the man has every right to be a bigot - the only thing I hate almost as much as I do a racist is a person who comes into a situation and thinks everyone else should rearrange their lives to accommodate him. So I just learned to ignore it, as I THOUGHT Val had.

About a month or so after we moved in, however, the lady from across the street invited us to a party that she was having. Again, being the laid-back kind of guy I am, I felt uncomfortable about the prospect. I don't like parties as a matter of course. You have to stand around laughing and smiling when you really don't feel it and discuss issues that you really don't care about (How about those Dodgers?). It's not my thing - it makes me feel phony - and I had the feeling that this party would be all that multiplied by a thousand - especially, not knowing anyone, and being the only Black couple there - "Hey, Bubba! Guess who’s comin’ to dinner?"
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But Val immediately lit-up. The lady had said the magic word - PAAAAAR-TAY! Before I could say a word, Val took the ball and ran with it. "I'd love to! Hey, can I be the bartender? I make the best...." The lady ended up at our house all afternoon laughing and talking with Val. By the time she floated back across the street, under the influence of a quart of Val's "sample" Margaritas, Val was up on all the neighborhood gossip, and the two women had forged an unshakable "Most Favorite Neighbor" Treaty.
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This was going to be more complicated than I thought - it had become serious. We had just moved to the area, and already, life as we were just coming to know it was about to come to a screeching' end. I could just picture this nice, quiet neighborhood under the influence of Val and her notorious mixed drinks. Once the neighbors came down from their hangovers they'd never forgive us. I could just see the headline of the next day’s San Gabriel Valley Tribune now - "BLACK CHICK CORRUPTS COVINA!" - and knowing my woman, there was no doubt in my mind that’s exactly what was about to happen.
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Val has a real knack for mixing drinks in a way that masked the liquor. She can blend various juices, fruits, and crushed ice with more artistic flair than a Renaissance master. If she could pull-off the same thing with paint and canvas we'd be instant millionaires. She can mix these drinks so well, and make them so pleasing to the taste, that people generally forget about the gallon of liquor that's in them. We'd have parties where I'd here non-drinkers saying, "Ah, Val, can I have another "slush," please?" I'd think, "slush," my ass. The only thing that's going to be slushed is you, in about five minutes." Val got a real kick out of it - and now she was about to do it to our new, unsuspecting, highly conservative, neighbors.
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The night of the party I wasn't as uneasy about it as I'd been previously, because by then I'd had a week to get to know both Rose, who seemed to have made Val her closest friend on the block, and her husband, Al, who was really a nice, henpecked, guy. But I still wasn't passionate about the prospect of being paraded about as the new Black guy on the block to a lot of people that I didn't know. So I begged off with a cold that I had made it a point to cultivate three days prior to the event.
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The night of the party I kissed Val on the cheek and told her to have a good time. But as she was leaving I held on to her hand and reminded her, "but not too good of a time." She promised to be good, and she was off.
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I then got comfortable and settled into the bedroom to watch television for the night, but I kept the window open and the blinds open so I could keep an eye - and ear - on the party.
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By 12:30 a.m. the party was going full blast. I could hear the laughter and the faint sound of music playing in the house, but by 2:00 a.m. I began to hear the sounds of Val working her magic. A couple of guys who I recognized as two of my more conservative neighbors were in front of the house arm-wrestling on the hood of a brand new Chrysler, and another guy was calling out to a woman who was struggling down the street barefoot in an evening gown. So I decided I'd better drop in on the party and rescue these people from my recklessly fun-lovin' woman.
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When I walked in it was clear that Val was in full control of the festivities. It was also clear that I didn't have to worry about uneasy small-talk, because everybody in the house was about as loose as you could get - and still stand up. Val walked up and hugged me, saying, "Hi, honey! Hey everybody! This is my Nu-Nu, Eric." I heard various drunken responses:
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"Hi, Eric!"
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"Hey, Nu-Nu!" 
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"What's his name? Nu-NU!!!?  What the Hell is that, Swahili?"
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"Big, ugly rascal, ain't he? Just kiddin', don't beat me up, brother!"
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Then this one guy walked up and said, "Hi, I'm Stewart. I live down the street. This is quite a lady you've got here."
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"Yeah, I know," I said. "I hope she's been behaving herself?"
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"Naw, I can't say that she has," the man said, in a Southern drawl. "First, she done got everybody drunk - but I can't fault her for that, because that's what I came here for - but then, she called me a Commie."
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I said, "what!?"
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Then Stewart's wife chimed in. Between the booze and her laughter, she could barely get her words out. She introduced herself as Sue, and said, "No, she asked my husband, 'Are you a communist or something?' And my husband said, 'No, I ain't no damned Commie. What made you say that?' Then Val said, 'Well, why you got that Communist flag in your garage?'" Sue went on, trying to talk through her laughter, "Then Stewart said, 'That ain't no damned communist flag! That's Old Dixie. We from Georgia.'"
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With that, someone else took up the story. "Then your wife told him, 'Same thing.'" With that, everybody fell out laughing all over again - even me, because I knew Val was serious - as Stewart stood there pretending to be incensed. But everyone knew that while the joke was supposed to be on Stewart, we were actually laughing at the childlike innocence in which Val viewed what should have been a very uncomfortable subject - especially in the current situation. But it turned out that Stewart had been receiving a lot of ribbing over the flag for quite some time, and Val's remark just put the icing on the cake.
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But it turned out that both Stewart and Sue were really nice people. Stewart is quite an intellectual, and believe it or not, he ended up becoming my closest friend in the neighborhood. We'd get us a 5th of Scotch and spend hours together debating everything - and the more lit-up we got, the more animated the debates became.  He'd say,  "Okay, I admit it. I’m a Southern bigot - I think we should lynch anybody who roots against Georgia Tech, but you're a radical revolutionary - and you're a bigot too." Then he'd raise his glass  and say, "So here's to two jive-ass bigots!" Then we'd laugh and continue getting our heads bad.
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But by this time both Stewart and I knew better.  We had long since agreed on one thing - since the essence of our being is what we think, and physical attributes are purely superficial, it makes more sense to define ourselves according to the way we think, rather than how we looked - and if that is true, then our preoccupation with race was an exercise in stupidity.  And Stewart had the last laugh in that regard.  The first time he invited me to his house I jokingly asked, "You don't have any  Poplar Trees in your backyard, do you?" He laughed and said, "Very funny. But you don't have to worry, I'm fresh out of rope."  But when I walked into his den I immediately felt ridiculous, because the first thing that smacked me in the face was two huge portraits, Miles Davis on one wall, and Charlie Parker on the other. So it turned out that I was the one who had prejudged him.  He had a larger jazz collection than I did, and I've been collecting jazz albums since I was 14 years old. I had to admire him, because by that time we had been drinking buddies for a couple of months, and even though he knew I played saxophone, he hadn't mentioned a word about being a jazz lover. He'd set me up, and that was the day I learned to never underestimate him.  He said, "You thought I was into Merle Haggard, didn't you?  So now, who's the presumptuous bigot?"
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I really liked that guy. He had also quietly taken down his Confederate flag. When I asked him about it he said, "To me it's just a regional symbol, but I can understand how it might be offensive to you, so what the hell?" If it hadn't been for Val I probably never would have met that guy, and I would have been poorer for it, because I learned several lifelong lessons during our friendship. But Val brought many other things into my life as well. I discovered my love for the mechanics of writing as a direct result of recognizing that I didn’t write well enough to answer the long love letters she used to write me while I was in the Marine Corps. Prior to that time I always loved jotting down my thoughts, but I only did it one thought, or one paragraph, at a time. But when I was faced with having to respond to her letters, it turned out that I had a problem with stringing my thoughts together in an organized fashion. So in order to get around that shortcoming, I would let her letters guide me. I would respond to her letters by writing a response to each paragraph one at a time. Within a year I was doing all the writing for my battalion commander. That became my job.
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While I was in the Marine Corps Val was working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and in spite of the fact that she was still living with her mother, when I came home she came by my mother's house to greet me and asked me to go for a ride with her. She had rented me a fully furnished apartment a block away from one of the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles.  She moved in 3 months later, on Christmas Day after we went to a Justice of the Peace and got married. She was 19, and I was 21. About a year later she encouraged me to quit my job and go to college on the G.I. bill.  Then several years after I'd finished college and had become a published writer for various publications, she came home one day with a newfangled gadget she'd bought me called a Commodore 64 Computer.  I still have it in my garage. So, while living with Val can indeed be challenging, I can’t imagine life without her.
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I could go on and on about this woman, but I'll put it all in a book one day.  But I’ve got to go now -   it’s time for me to mount a campaign for dinner.
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"Oh, Sugar Lips!"
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"Sugar Lips, my ass. Hit the microwave, Buddy!"
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EPILOGUE

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Well, it turned out that I would be forced to live without her, and every day of the 13 years since she's been gone has been agony. In spite of the fact that my educational background is in psychology, I just can't manage to move on.  I know it's dysfunctional, but everything I do has her fingerprints on it.  When she suggested that I take writing more seriously, I remember telling her, "That's a White thang," but she told me, "You can do this, baby."  Then when my book was published, she threw a big party to celebrate, and then suddenly died just one week before the publisher sent me my first copies.  I still have the box . . . unopened.

SOLITUDE 

There was a little house in Watts, in the back of my grandparents’ home, that sat totally silent just for me. It sat there in complete obedience to fulfil it’s one and only purpose, to accommodate, and give focus to the thoughts of a young and aimless mind. Totally vacant accept for a sofa and a table, there was no furniture to warm the air.  So as I sat in it’s embrace, and quietly drew the thoughts I couldn't express, I could feel the clean, cool air against my face as it locked the noise and confusion of humanity out of that small niche of the universe that I had claimed as my own.

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I loved that house, because it introduced the soul of a child to the beauty of solitude. I would sit there for hours with paper and pencil trying to bring life to my thoughts. I couldn't write back then, so I would breathe substance into my world by drawing the images of crude little stickmen that I would speak to, then patiently awaited the time when they could speak back.
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So all these many years later, I still go there, but only in my mind. I return to escape life’s horrors;  I also visit to celebrate life’s triumphs. I go there to commune with those who left me behind.  My grandparents are there, my mother is there, and my late wife is there to comfort me when I’m lost.  But my manhood is also there to reinforce me, and the depth of my intellect resides there to inform me and to give flesh to the stickmen I'd left behind.
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So, yes, I love that little house, and the perfect solitude that it made all mine. I also love the cool, clean air, and the crude little stickmen, it always brings to mind.

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Thus, life has come full circle for me. Once again I sit in solitude drawing stickmen.  But this time I  sit with sweet memories of Val to warm the cool, clean air.

Happy Birthday, Baby.
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Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.