Red Room Where the Writers Are

            Three years ago, my aunt Chia called my mom. "How would you like to live in a four bedroom house in Lafayette?" she asked.

            "I would love to," Mom said, "but there's no way I can afford Lafayette." Lafayette is a very la di da suburb near San Francisco. It is mostly old money and very small townish, very quiet.

            "You can get a deal on the rent. Matti (my cousin's husband) knows the lady who owns the house. Come on Jean, what do you have to lose?"
            Mom said why not, and she said we would see the house the next day. I was interested but I was also in Mills at the time and very busy. However, I thought it would be fun to see the house and Sericea and my nephew. The next morning we drove down a tree lined street to the house at the end of the road. Sericea met us and introduced us to Dr. Kathryn Smick, who owned the house.

            Kathryn was about five foot two and weighed a hundred pounds easy. "I heard her exchange information with my Mom, "I'm a physician," she said as we looked at the funny old house with mismatched door knobs. That was who she was, a physician. We saw her medical decree on her wall, and when she took us on a tour of the house. It had a lovely cozy feel about it, a house you would like to be in on a rainy day. By the end of the tour, we knew we had to move in. No matter what.

            Kathryn lived in an apartment connected to the house. The mail box was on the street, at first Mom and Kathryn would walk down the long drive-way to pick up the mail.  We started to visit her once a week and found out more about her. When she went to medical school, she was usually the only woman in her classes. Not to mention that when she was in medical school, she was a mother of three young boys. That wasn't done back then. No matter. Kathryn Smick smashed a glass ceiling before there were glass ceilings.

            She was a physician with Mt. Diablo Medical Group for years before retiring. While there, she helped found Physicians for Social Responsibility and also helped found the Mt. Diablo Peace Center. "I'm very political," she told us, "and I don't know if you know the show Democracy Now, but I watch it every day and I love Amy Goodman." Mom and I smiled. I loved Amy Goodman too. She was one of the reasons why I took a journalism class at Mills.

            Soon it became part of our day to check in on her. I always delivered the mail to her and there was always plenty of it; mail from PBS, NPR, Pacifica, the Wellstone Center, The Nation, you name a liberal cause, they probably got money from Kathryn Smick.

            Mom and Kathryn had rituals. They would talk everyday after Mom would get home from work. On Sundays, they had breakfast and read the Sunday paper while watching Tim Russert on Meet the Press. When Russert died earlier this summer, they were saddened because they felt like they knew him. On Friday nights they watched Belva Davis on This Week in Northern California and Gwen Ifill on Washington Week in Review. We always referred to the people they watched on a first name basis: "Amy" "Belva" "Gwen" and "Tim" as if we knew them.

            Kathryn's ex-husband John would visit everyday. It was always comforting to see John's Volvo there, because I knew they were busy talking about something in the paper or John's chore list.  John is one of those men who fix things; you name a household item, he would fix it.

            Kathryn was eighty-eight when we moved in. She had macular degeneration, which meant she was legally blind. A highlight of her day would be when tapes would come from Sacramento. She loved anything political, essays by Anne Lamott, Barbara Kingsolver and Eckhart Tolle. She also loved listening to The Nation on tape. She wrote a memoir about her sister Helen in a book called Queen of the Derby Pub. It was published in 2002, when Kathryn was eighty-five. If this isn't proof never give up on wanting to get your writing published, I don't know what is.

            She lived near Matti's family for years. Matti's dad Eero always referred to her as "The Doctor." When Matti was in his teens, she taught him how to ski on a vacation to Lake Tahoe. Both my niece and nephew called her Dr. Kathryn.

            I mentioned in one blog Kathryn had a special relationship with my late cat Electra. Electra would visit every day and one night when Kathryn wasn't feeling well, Electra went under her bed and looked at me as if she was saying, "Dr. Kathryn needs me! I will spend the night with her!" When Electra died last fall, Kathryn was just as sad as we were.

            At Kathryn's 90^th birthday, we had carrot cake and celebrated. John came of course, along with her sons, her daughter in law and her grandchildren. During the night she walked around, almost strutting in a sweater John gave her. She was ninety, by God. She was almost a century old, born when women still didn't have the vote and World War One was fought overseas. So much had changed since her birth, and she had every reason to celebrate.

            Kathryn had several health scares over the past couple of years. Always she bounced back, even when things looked bleak. This past spring her health took a downturn and she spent more and more time in bed. Her daughter in law came with another nurse to help her during the day. John came as always. Family came to visit and my mom and I helped when we could. Last weekend we realized that this time she might not recover.

            At first, we were in denial. She was not going to die. It was simple as that. My grandmother died when I was so young and I never knew my father's mother, so Kathryn was the closest thing I had to a grandmother for a while. However, it became clear she could not bounce back. We visited her, we prayed, and we held on.

            On Wednesday when I found out about the grand prize, I was thrilled of course. I called Mom and Sericea, and I knew that I had to tell Kathryn when we came by for a visit. Mom picked me up from BART and we were walking in the front yard when one of her sons appeared, shaking his head. She was gone.

            I'm still in shock about it. I had to return some e-mails and then to see so many "congrats" e-mails was just simply bizarre. How could it be that something so wonderful could be happening yet I lost someone that meant so much to me?

            I don't know. I really don't. Life is odd like that. What I do know is this: I was so lucky to have met her. Even if I hadn't ended up living here, I would've wanted to know her. She was a physician, a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She was a true lady. She wanted peace and worked hard for it, and never stopped believing it could get better. I miss her very much. I always will.