Lucia Mae Barrett passed away on October 4, 2010 — on her own terms, in her own bed, surrounded by the love of her family. She passed quickly and peacefully to that giant coffee shop in the sky.

I never met a person who didn’t love Lucia.

So long, Mom. See you on the other side.

Just when you think it can’t get worse, along comes an irresistible knight in the shining armor of a brand new 1925 Chrysler. It would be almost 10 more years before this particular knight would even meet Lucia, but when he did, he surely planned to save his little damsel in distress.

Bruce W. Barrett — his brothers used to call him B-Dub — had big plans and dreams of becoming an architect, which fizzled out when he refused to not smoke on the job, as was required by the one firm in Oklahoma City that considered hiring him on as an apprentice.

“To hell with that!” was his motto.

So instead of designing homes and remodeling projects for an architectural firm, he went to work as a carpenter. And he was good. Very good. He quickly rose to foreman and eventually worked on a number of huge projects that would become historically significant. During the Great Depression, he was a foreman for the building of Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam by the Republican Hoover Administration) . During World War II — he was too old to enlist at the time — he was again a foreman on the construction of the Al-Can Highway that connects Alaska to the contiguous United States via Canada.  He worked on those mighty projects, but was unable to be there for the christening of either one. He got drunk and told his boss where to go on the Boulder Dam job, and he got pneumonia on the Alaska job.

When he came home from the Boulder Dam job, he worked on local construction projects in West Texas and hired Lucia’s grandpa and brother Joe to work on one of them. That’s how he met Lucia. She once told me that Bruce never brought Grandpa’s pay to the house without also bringing something for the rest of the family — including once an entire bag of oranges, considered a delicacy worth their weight in gold during those terrible Depression years. When Christmas of 1933 rolled around, Lucia recalled, her family had no money for gifts or decorations of any kind. Bruce came over with Christmas stockings stuffed with nuts, fruit, and hard candies. Lucia was 19 — and crazy about that knight in shining armor. He didn’t have much, but what he did have he splurged and shared.

Not long afterward, he came by and took Lucia with him. It was 1934. She was 20. He was 30. The Dust Bowl blew out and they came to California as migrant farm laborers. They moved back and forth from Texas to California in search of work until mid 1950, when they finally came to the San Francisco Bay Area to stay for good.

Against all odds and despite decades of hardship and alcoholic battles, Bruce and Lucia stayed together until the day he died — with 17 years of continuous sobriety — in 1980. They had been together for 46 years.

After Daddy died, when the next Mother’s Day rolled around, I remember telling Lucia how grateful I was that she had endured all of those difficulties and heartaches of life with an alcoholic. I told her I didn’t know how the other kids felt, but it meant a lot to me that my mother was still married to my father when his life ended. I asked her:

“Did you really love him?”

She squirmed a little in her seat. She never did like any mushy talk. Then she looked down at her newspaper, picked up her coffee cup and said in an offhand voice:

“I must have.”

That beautiful young woman on the West Texas version of a beach is Lucia as a teenager.

Where her family lived was a lifetime away from a real beach but, like so many Dust Bowl towns, it had a sand problem. When you’re as poor as her family was, you learn to make the best of every situation — and no one was more resourceful than Lucia.   She and her sisters would find a nice sandy patch where there weren’t many rocks sticking up and pretend they were bathing beauties like the pin-up girls in the magazine ads.

They didn’t have bathing suits, but Lucia found a way around that, too. For years she had sewn hand-made slips from muslin flour sacks. All she had to do was shorten them a bit and they turned into tunic-style “bathing suits,” even if there wasn’t a a swimmable body of water for miles.

One day a cousin who had somehow gotten hold of a box camera took pictures of the girls as they pretended to be modeling for a magazine or a postcard. The result was this priceless photo of an unspoiled beauty who had no idea how pretty she was.

Now she has discovered the “porch” at the Masonic Home and she makes a point of sitting there whenever she can. It’s a screened-in deck off of the solarium that also doubles as a sort of mini-greenhouse for flowering plants. She loves just relaxing there with a magazine and a cuppa joe.

Yesterday, we sat there for a long time and she had a lot to say about feeling at home and what that involves.

“Sometimes I get an urgent feeling like I’ve just got to go home,” she said.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “But tell me, when you think about going home, which home are you thinking about?”

“I just feel like I have to get home and check on things,” she answered.

“I think I know that that is,” I said. “Your whole life you’ve had to take care of everybody and everything, so sometimes it’s hard for you to just relax and believe that other people are taking care of it.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Do you feel at home here?” I asked her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “This is a wonderful home.”

Then she paused for just a second and said emphatically:

“I take my home with me wherever I go.
My home is within me.”

Who needs Buddhist lamas when you have Lucia?

This is the drive up to Lucia’s new digs at the Masonic Home in Union City (the last one is the view of the gate as you leave). It’s the longest, windiest, most scenic driveway she’s ever had, to be sure. As you can see, it’s groomed like a lush resort. You have to drive really slow because peacocks and wild turkeys have the right of way — and they know it.

There are birds inside, too. In fact, Lucia’s favorite hangout is the solarium at the end of her hallway, where three very fortunate little tweeters (I think they’re finches, but I’m not sure) live in a custom-made, glassed-in aviary. They play and sing all day long. We often enjoy lunch at one of the dining tables right beside them. Sometimes we just relax on the sofa and read. Whatever we do, it’s Lucia’s domain and she loves it.

She told me repeatedly on Monday how much she likes living there.

This is a wonderful place. So much space everywhere. The men who built it really knew what they were doing.

The people there already call her Grandma, at her insistence, and treat her with love and kindness all the time. I’m basking in an attitude of gratitude.

]]> http://iluvlucia.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/lucias-hood/feed/ 0 iluvlucia luciasdriveway http://iluvlucia.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/coffee-country-is-a-wonderful-country/ http://iluvlucia.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/coffee-country-is-a-wonderful-country/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:39:27 +0000 iluvlucia http://iluvlucia.wordpress.com/?p=234 ]]>

Lucia moved to the Masonic Home for Adults in Union City a few weeks ago and she told me today that she loves it there.

“It’s just like home.”

The food is great (I know, I eat there with her a lot), her room is lovely, the nurses and caregivers love her — and she gets all the coffee she wants, all day long. It’s coffee country. And today she told me it’s a wonderful country.

We were concerned that she might not respond well to the more hospital-ish setting, but every time I see her she seems to be doing great. Her mentation level seemed really good. She asked me how my new job is going and told me that she completely understands that I haven’t been able to see her as much as I’d like due to a heavy work schedule.

You don’t need to worry about it. All those years Bruce worked so much, I was by myself a lot of the time, so I know how to make the best of it.

What a gal. I only hope and pray that I am as grateful and well-adjusted as she is if I am lucky enough to make it to 96 years old. (She looks great, doesn’t she?)

This is Lucia around thirty years ago — she was about 66 — doing what she loved most: working in her garden. You can see her quasi-anarchistic approach to cultivation. No need to go overboard with neat little rows or store-bought fertilizer. Lucia used what she had on hand and only occasionally made a trip to Navlet’s for a tomato cage or a new sprinkler. For fertilizer, she preferred her own open-air compost heap, where egg shells and coffee grounds mingled freely with cantaloupe rinds, half-eaten tuna sandwiches and that last little bit of oatmeal you never quite scrape off the bottom of your bowl.

She pulled weeds when she could get around to it, spent most evenings watering, and turned every seed or sprout she ever touched into a lush, flowering, fruitful plant. Her yard and garden had a completely organic feel, as though it had designed itself and begged her to come along for the ride.

At one point, Lucia’s backyard at 145 Via del Sol was home to a veritable orchard: There was a fig tree, orange tree, lemon tree, grapefruit tree, cherry tree, peach tree, plum tree, apricot tree, loquat tree, and walnut tree — all of which bore fruit so bountifully she had to stake up the branches to hold the weight of the harvest. That was in addition to the vegetable garden, her many flower beds, and a lawn big enough to host a croquet tournament (which it did).

We had many a high school slumber party in that back yard, and later used it as a stage for casting spells to bring back wayward boyfriends and husbands. Every few years Lucia would come into the house with some buried treasure she’d just dug up — an old T-shirt, a string of pop-beads, a bottle of 1967 vintage Pagan Pink Ripple — and have fun trying to figure out who put it there.

The house is now home to a new set of people who are making their own  memories there, but those 47 years of history will live in that back yard for years to come.

How could you have anything other than a fantastic visit when it starts like that?

I had brought her a gift of an artisan-made coffee mug, so naturally we had to go test it out at Starbucks. Lucia was in top form—positive attitude, high-level mentation, happy, calm and just enjoying life.

We ordered our coffees and some lemon pound cake, then sat down at a sunny table. Lucia took a sip of coffee and then looked up at me and said:

We got it made!

As she continued to enjoy her cake and coffee, we chatted about my new job and the beautiful weather, but her mind was focused on the moment. She loves Starbucks. She said:

People just don’t know how fortunate they are to have a wonderful place like this to come and enjoy a good cup of coffee whenever they want to.

She’s right you know. It feels great to remember how lucky we are. To have my mother still alive at 95, to have time to spend with her, to have a job that allows me to set my own schedule, to have enough money to pay for the coffee, to have a reliable car with gas in the tank, to live where the weather is great . . .  oh yeah, we’ve definitely got it made.

Lucia had a rough morning today, but once she got up and about, she was in good form. Jayme is flying in from New York tonight and Lucia really, really wants to see her. Here’s what she had to say about it:

I’d just have to hug her and turn her around and around and kiss her.

A mullet and a shag. God help us.

Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself for bad hair choices. In my defense, I must say that it was the Eighties and mullets were practically mandatory in my circle of local rock legends. I also was responsible for Lucia’s shag.

Mea culpa.

The difference is, I paid big bucks for my haircut (sheared by the lead singer of my favorite band) and Lucia’s was free. Yes, I admit it. I gave her the haircut. And the perm.

Mea maxima culpa.

But forget the haircuts for a moment. Isn’t this a totally sweet mother-daughter photo? Lucia and I have been resting our heads on each other’s shoulders and smiling as big as the sky for as long as I can remember. We’ve had our share of nasty spats, but we’ve always been each other’s security blanket, through good haircuts and bad.