The Artist Presently Known As Ed

Ed, 1977

I think this is from about 1977, and is here mainly to just situate me in the house that I have written about so much here. Yup, that house was my second home, both as a child who had pretty loving grandparents, but also as a young adult who lived there for seven years. But before all the drama, I was just a kid who visited nice people there.

Mara and Ed, 1980

My first pet was a German Shepherd mutt named Mara. I got her as a pup when I was about four and she was sent off to doggy heaven when I was 11. She was an outdoor dog, and in retrospect, I wish I was allowed to have her inside. The outdoor environment at my house had some rough stuff—lots of equipment, junk, and sometimes chemicals—and besides, it is just outdoors. Sure, she had a dog house and other protection from the elements, but I recall one time that still angers me when my dad threw her over the 5' fence for being in the way of some of his steel fabricating work, welding, moving gear, or whatever. That still turns my gut. It wasn't Mara's fault she was in the only area she called home.

Christmas, 1981

Another picture to illustrate the old days at the Quapaw house. The table we are sitting at went on to figure into some stories later on.

Christmas, 1981

A lot has been written about my old man here on this blog, but once upon a time, before all the complications of exploring my complete family, life in the Lucas world was about as idyllic as I might have hoped for.

Gramps as chair anchor

My grandfather Norman used to sit in his chair so regularly that we used to joke that he was the anchor keeping it in place. While he was alive until I was 22, he and I were not particularly close. I was far closer to my grandmother in actual interaction, though I feel maybe he knew a lot about me because I wasn't usually talking with her out of earshot. But he brought out the shy and restrained side of me. In this picture there is a glimpse again of the table and the older patio, years and years before it got turned into the jail cell by my father.

Note to the divorce judge

Back in 1984 the cracks in the family were only starting to appear, as far as I was concerned. Eda, my step mom, left the family in July 1983, and most of that was highly shrouded for my protection. I still don't know very much about it. But back then, a bad day was a bad day and not yet seen as part of a pattern of larger pattern of family dynamics and strife. This is dated less than a year after I started at Longfellow school. It was out of my neighborhood and it was the first time since starting school that I was put into a wholly new place to learn how to socialize again. Not one person I knew. I had to cope with a couple kids' tormenting me about my mom leaving me because I was deficient in some way. I got into a few fights before I had to start to ignore it with the help of Clayt Wright, my teacher who mentored me during that time.

I totally don't remember writing this and it was unknown to me until one time during one of the troubled periods with the old man in more recent years that he dug it out and presented it to me. He has done so with other documents, including the final divorce paperwork associated with the short marriage to my mom. He seems to dribble this stuff out to me, I think, when he is overwhelmed and doesn't want to show it, or in a case like this, to perhaps propagandize for himself. He has a fondness for claiming that the presence of Eda in my life was one of the best things he provided me. A letter like this, taken out of context, might make it appear that Eda left in some kind of abandoning, selfish way. Not so. I believe her testimony that she was threatened with physical violence. She has told me she was once threatened with "a beating so bad no dentist could fix the damage."

I actually think for my old man to pass this stuff off to me is to wash his hands of things and let me sort it out. I doubt he thought I would do so on the Internet.

In my diggings through the archive I found this note to the divorce judge and another note from a few months later, that one written to my school principal. I don't know if either was delivered, but it was interesting thinking that I wrote to two authority figures that year, pleading my case.

Lucas Men, 1984

I think this is from Christmas 1984, judging by what looks like cider on the table. This is our usual family deployment around the dining room table. Obviously grandmother Virginia is taking the picture. The thought of placing myself in the midst of Lucas men still puts me at unease. In some ways I loath what they stand for. In other ways, I am obviously made of some of the same stuff. 

Birthday card from mom, 1986

I know it is damned odd to put it this way, but I met my mom when I was nearly 13. More specifically I met her in a Bob's Big Boy restaurant on August 12, 1986, just two months before this card was given. That day I was introduced (by notes on napkins) to two sisters, three brothers, two nephews, an aunt and uncle, all of which I pretty much didn't know I had.

She wrote in this card:

Our family is whole again having you with us. We have a lot of time to make up for and the future holds great promise for us all. God Bless you Eddie.

We had a couple reunions here in San Diego in the couple weeks before school started. After that, I began a period of biweekly trips up to her place in San Pedro, spending weekends up there with my younger brother Steve and his full sister Nikki. Also around was our older sister Christie, the one who has really turned my life inside out, and her kids.

Read more about the early reunion times in 1986.

Steve Weiss letter to me

My brother and I took to being the terror twins in the early days, but by Easter 1987, the party was mostly over. He enjoyed having me up where we'd torment Chris, our oldest sister. I think he was happy to have another guy to hang out with. That is, until he got more shit for the antics we both pulled, but that for a while, I was given a reprieve from so as not to scare me off and make me not want to come up there on the biweekly schedule. 

I remember there were plenty of times when I was driven home after a weekend up in San Pedro, only to have one of our households get on the phone to call and talk a bit more before bed time on Sunday night. And on a couple of occasions, Steve or Nikki would mail me something in between times. 

Nikki envelope, 1986

This is two sides of the envelope that my baby sister Nikki sent. At the time, I was thirteen and she just nine (our birthdays fall four years and four days apart). In the early days, up until Easter 1987, there was not the strife and confusion that fell after that fateful day. We really were just kids with no agenda but to get to know each other. Nikki was as cute a baby sister as I might have hoped for at the time. I suppose the bike accident that happened in the spring of the following year started to change her view of me, and subsequent times certainly did, but in that first few months of the reunion period, things like this flowed from her. To me, even now, they don't seem loaded with conflict and ill will. They may or may not be staged and prompted, but a few cards and letters were just gleeful and vibrant and colorful. Full of promise.

Years later, upon the reunion weekend that started the second major period between me and that side of the family, a sixteen year old Nikki half joked that I should be her prom date. No one would know we were related (because so few people knew about me anyway). But by several months after that, that period of relationship was winding down and later on, things from that period would be used against me. But no one ever remembered that whenever Nikki and I started up these new periods of relations, she was my kid sister all over again, giddy to have a brother she had not seen enough of.

I think it is one of my great hurts in this life that she has become so hostile to me while not even knowing me or the life I lead. But some little artifacts like this still melt me some. I don't hate her. I wish we were close like before.

Nikki's letter, 1986

The letter enclosed in the gushing heart covered envelope above is even more of a display of her excitement. It might be fair to say that only my later love interests ever wrote me such demonstrative notes! You can see the ghosted images of the field of hearts on the back of the letter.

Birthday card from mom, 1987

Recall I met my mom in August 1986. This is just 14 months later, but by then, we had already hit a rough patch. It came on Easter Sunday, April 19th. I was at their house and was smarting off with my sister Chris. Something about tomatoes. She's got a short fuse and whatever jokes I was making stopped being funny in an instant, and it all brought the Easter dinner down in a hurry. It was the end of my weekend there anyway, and it was nearly time to leave, so I was banished until it was time to drive. I had always been a foreigner there, but this was the first time I wanted out. The party was over. Prior to that, many weekends were excuses to have some kind of festivities, go shopping, and all that. But by Easter, that had wound down. My mom, used to working overnight on Friday and Saturday, was back to working those hours after taking some time off in the early months of our reunion. But the first major crack in the wall was on Easter 1987, when all of a sudden my mom became a parent and not just a party host.

I got to ride in the back seat of the car on the way down the I-5 to the place where my parents traded me in San Juan Capistrano. It was a quiet ride. Maybe crying. Definitely heard Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer, and that song still brings to mind that silent ride and the first time I remember my mom selling me out to my dad after many months of presenting a Good Cop side that generally was contrarian to my old man's Bad Cop.

I went there one time, four months later in August. It happened to be the week I got my braces put on, and I was agonizing at the pain. It was a weekend that came back to haunt me years and years later, as any of my misdeeds was recalled by my mom, citing experiences my little sister Nikki had. For this entry, the card is referring to how we could not get a shared birthday weekend scheduled (Nikki's is on 10/16, four days after mine), and how we might need to reschedule for the 23rd of October.

Another thing to note is that she tells me to NOT put the enclosed check in the bank—a jab at my old man's legal manipulation to get her to pay $50 a month in so-called child support. Later on, she ended up paying $25 only on account of financial hardship. That money, saved from Spring 1986 until my graduation in 1991, was used for my first trip to Europe after high school. But she resented the payments at all, and at a time like my birthday, she wanted to be sure that it wasn't serving any program of my old man's. She had been suspicious that he was using it for himself. She only agreed to send the funds if she could have visitations with me, hence meeting her in the Bob's Big Boy across from the Superior Court house.

How I Got To Europe

By my graduation in 1991, I had saved about $3700, mostly from the payments my mom sent as part of the ill-gained "child support" that my old man got a court order to have her pay. She was relieved years later to hear that I used it for Europe, and that it didn't just go to the old man. During this time in 1991, I was the better part of a year from my last conversation with my mom or anyone in the family, and three years from the next reunion.

As I said before, I didn't intend to go to Europe, and it wasn't even a thought of mine until I was prodded to go by the old man, who now knew I had enough money to pay for it. The second trip, in 1992, was paid for by my hours at Subway.

Letter to Willy, no snooping! 1994

My old man lost his job in the middle of 1993. He took the opportunity to work on his electric car project and other things, often using the assistance of Bill Francis who moved in to the trailer in the back yard around that time. He did not seem concerned with getting work, or as much as he had required. So he was home a lot of the time. Where for years he was gone at six in the morning, now he was at home all day long. By the time this was written in the spring of 1994, I was just about one year away from the most recent class I had taken at Mesa College. He was starting to think of me as a deadbeat, despite my having a job at Subway for nearly a year by then. I think he wanted me to get a "real job" but it was about this time that the news was becoming filled with talk about even college graduates aspiring for jobs that didn't exist, and often turning to places like...Subway.

He became incorrigible with his campaign. I had a basic bathroom privacy lock on my door that he would open up as he pleased, using nothing more than a wire poker. He'd storm in at eight in the morning, telling me to get up and get a job. I guess it didn't matter that my work lasted till midnight or afterward and I usually was up till 3 am or so. He didn't mind intruding on my sleep that way. I found things upset and moved at times, despite locking the door myself. It was during this period that I got news about brother Steve's graduation and I was making travel plans for Las Vegas, which I had to try to keep under cover.

I guess I also feared for my journals which might have had some girl talk in them.

Mom suggests my direction

I need to articulate that this is one of the few unambiguously valuable things given to me from anyone. But there is of course, a story and an irony in that it came from my mom. This arose as a response to at least one letter that I wrote to her shortly before, trying to redraw my life with her and the family in it again. The trip to Las Vegas was a one-shot deal. I returned and within a month mom and Steve and Nikki all piled into Chris' two bedroom Torrance apartment where she lived with husband Gary and her three boys. I stayed there in the midst of that crowd for the Independence day weekend in 1994. Shortly afterward, mom and Nikki moved into a newer and nicer apartment in Long Beach. Steve had joined the Marines in the midst of all this moving and was not there to help move to Long Beach. That put me in a new spot of being the one son available to help, and I was glad to do so. It was perhaps the first genuinely normal thing I had done. Getting a chance to be among mom and Nikki was nice during August. Having them alone gave a bit more focus since the giant crew can be noisy and distracting. This letter followed that weekend of moving.

I never really forgot that she wrote complimentary words about my writing. Over the years I've tried to improve it and to deepen my messages. While I have not gone on to school to do either a proper journalism or photojournalism degree, you can see that TAPKAE.com owes itself in part to a love for writing and chronicling things with words and images.

Nikki's prom idea

In late May/early June 1994 I began the second major period of relations with my mom's side of the family. This time it felt new and promising. I was in the midst of a new period of vitality during that time with the help of some adult mentoring from Bonnie Hanika. The period was mainly marked with new music opportunities opening up to me, finding some new music that energized me (deeper into Yes' catalog, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Tool), and some interesting times at work at Subway. Into the midst of this was a letter that arrived from my brother Steve (Nikki's full brother). He invited me to Las Vegas where the family had moved. He was graduating soon, and longed to have me as part of it.

Immediately before flying up there, my grandfather Norman gave me the first $600 of an inheritance that later added up to nearly $11,000. At the time, he was seeming quite ill and I wasn't sure if he'd be there after I got back. (He lived another two years and more.) The Las Vegas reunion was something for sure. Mom appeared to have a nicer place to live, clean and fresh feeling. The kids had their own rooms. Brother James (one of the twins) lived in town. It was fun. I was excited at a deep level.

Nikki, now a 16 year old high school junior, was happy to see me. She squirmed from as many photos as I dared take. She and I spent time together connecting after some years of no contact. She had some guy who was courting her and she sought my brotherly counsel. And then this letter that appeared after we talked into the wee hours one night. She wanted me to take her to her prom the next year.

The division that has arisen between us was a unilateral one. I know there are occasions that she or my mom has pointed to that have helped bring that division, but they don't seem unsurmountable to me. Exaggerated misunderstandings, I think they are. As 1994 wore on, the division increased. I suppose Nikki was conflicted with the presence of Robin, who later in 1994 was part of the wave of vitality I was enjoying. Bringing her to see my family seemed like a party at the start, but the conflicted Thanksgiving debacle changed that.

Still, here is some more evidence that Nikki wasn't as cold and sour (and frankly, mean spirited) as she's been since then. I think at times she enjoyed being my sister.

21st birthday card from Virginia

This is my grandmother's card to me that commemorated my 21st birthday. She really loved me and wanted to perhaps shape me in a way she could not have shaped her son William. She had a lot of hope for me. Even though by this point there was a bit of distance between she and I (on account of my new forays into a love life that already saw the Melissa era come and go and at this point was exactly two months into the Robin era), but things were not broken like they would be from 1996 onward. I guess I wish that I had consulted her more during the hard times that followed. But I was on a bad course of learning too well from overexposure to my old man, living with agnostic-athiestic tendencies, concealing details like Robin's abortion, and so on. Maybe my grandmother—64 years old than me—was as ideal a person to consult, but it didn't seem right after about 1992 and the onset of my love life.

This is collaged into one image, but it was originally a brochurelike bi-fold presentation. 

Gma birthday envelope, 1994

Virginia tended to dote on me perhaps because I was her only grandchild, but also that I was the only one with whom she could be herself to this extent, and hope to get some genuine feedback. She was a long time contributor to the church and special occasions with various table decorations, writings, drawings, and the like. She was the family's poet laureate. This is the envelope into which she inserted another home made and heart felt note for my 21st birthday.

Letter to Willy on rent payments, 1994

After the general feeling of being intruded upon early in 1994, there was one specific event that caused me to put a real lock on the door to my bedroom in October. 

At about the crack of dawn on September 30th, my old man decided to do one of his lock popping intrusions into my room. This time though he was super, super careful and deathly quiet. But instead of waiting for a time when I was gone at work or off at a gig or something, he did it while I was in there with Robin. These were the days when Robin was still very new on the scene, and we were starting to get comfortable with each other sexually. Since she was effectively my first girlfriend in this regard, I recall those first couple overnight encounters as being quite short on sleep, shall we say. Combined with the late hours I kept anyway, I was really just getting to sleep late, if at all.

But the old man felt it his responsibilty to unlock my door and peer in, thinking we were asleep when we weren't. We happened to hear the shifting and quieted down and played like we were asleep. The old man probably thought he was clever and was getting away with something. (At another time I found him above my room immediately after getting off the phone with Robin. He was on the roof, eavesdropping.) It might have been years later when I confronted him about it. In the mean time, I had Bill Francis install a lock right afterward. As a countermeasure, Willy decided that for me to partition off space that I had lived in for 21 years was now a thing that could be billable.

He charged me $100. I know it is not that much money, but there were three bedrooms. I had lived in that room since I was born. All of a sudden, the terms changed. It wasn't just that he charged me money. It was that it was sort of an extortion racket to feel secure in my home. It felt like I was literally buying off my old man so I could retain privacy. I understand the arguments in favor of learning to cope with the hard world out there, but this was two years before I entered that, finally having the last straw added in August 1996.

Recall that my 1980 repayment of my vehicle registration sticker debt was rather innocent. This was far more hostile and was the first big issue associated with the mixing of roles: parent and landlord. It is this hostility he references from time to time, but especially in the letter from December 2000 when again I felt like the only way to stay sane was to lock him out, that time at "my house" where he was never really a resident, and at the time, was not yet an owner. It was his parents' place that he held a key to, but after his antics, I promptly changed the locks again. That gets his goat. It doesn't suit a man who likes power like he does.

Mom's letter on repayment

In the same weekend as I helped her move house to Long Beach, and with her awareness that I just inherited $11,000, mom asked me if she could borrow $300 to help get past some rough times associated with moving. I obliged. She said she'd pay me back in a couple months. To me, that sounded like October. She had also said she wanted to buy Nikki a violin for her birthday that month. Now I, having come into money that was partially spent a couple weeks before that—$3,000 on my Premier drums—was ready to roll with promoting musical activity. I offered that if mom was going to get the violin, I'd waive the repayment AND throw in another $200 so that she could get the violin. 

By mid October, on a visit timed just before my birthday, Steve came downstairs and got in the car with Robin and me, and said it was kind of a bad scene, with mom taking up smoking again, and being upset. I don't know the details but from that time on, it was a bad time with mom again. Even that weekend with Robin present ended up working against me. (I guess that she was a third wheel when Steve and I planned a weekend together.) Time passed. I quit work at Subway in August and was living on the inheritance. No payment in October. The Thanksgiving debacle happened where Robin and I cancelled our appearance at dinner at the last minute. Eventually, I got in a panic about funds being depleted (my trip to Alaska was nearly $1,000) and sometime in early 1995 I wrote to see how mom was doing, and to inquire about the state of things. I got this letter in return.

No salutation. No signature. No love. She did make some attempts to pay me back, but I don't think she finished it. I could bear with that, but I was also hurt that she never got Nikki a violin. Years later, trying to preserve one of my grandmother's pianos (mom's mom) was a divisive point that helped bring the crash of 2001. Maybe it is better to not encourage musical activity with these people.

Whatever I did obviously reminded her of my old man. On my birthday in 1995, Robin and I took a day up at Disneyland (I hated the place but the old man paid for it to the tune of $50) and on the way back, tried to visit mom's place in an effort to put right whatever I could. She wasn't home. That meeting did not take place until early March 1996 when it was a dismal display of finger pointing and vitriol like I could barely imagine. Robin was gentle and reminded me that my mom should love me unconditionally, and that was no such thing. That actually came as news to me, being unaccustomed as I was to being a mother's son after so many years of neither mom nor Eda in the household.

The second period of relations had come to an end. Silence until late 2000...

Birthday card from Willy, 1995

I had a chuckle finding this and the repayment letter from mom in the same box, dated about five months apart. On the one hand, she was berating me for some monetary habits and views that she attributes to my old man. She wishes to convey it was all corrupt. And then, at least taken at face value, here is his card that says that money isn't everything. It was an interesting juxtaposition from these two characters.

With the fifty bucks included in this card, Robin and I went to DismalLand in Anaheim and on return tried to meet up with my mom to talk through the whole matter. It took until early 1996 before we did get that done and it was hell.

Another note about Robin's presence in the mix. She came onto the scene at the same time as mom was moving to Long Beach. At first it was party time. But after the Thanksgiving mess (when we happened to be rocked by the fact I just broke off our premature engagement to be married) her name seems to have become mud. A number of later accusations revolved around her being present when she should not have been (two weekend outings with Steve while he was on liberty) or our tardiness to his Boot Camp graduation. The thing is, Robin was the ONE person from my regular life in San Diego who ever was a part of things. To me, it was unthinkable to exclude her from what seemed at the time to be my life in bloom, with family and love interest able to intersect and make life feel full. Robin was witness to the fury unleashed by mom in early 1996. It wasn't until Kelli and I did a similar drop in on mom (now at her present place in Long Beach) in late 2007 that anything of my "real" life was introduced to the mix. And that was just a couple hours that were filled with Chris blowing her top at my presence, and mom already well sauced up with vodka and tonic. I contend that the one-sided terms of the relationship with mom (i.e. I go to her world, but never does anyone come to mine) has been a detriment to things. They never know me or the life I lead. Fitting into their world is always racked with the added novelty and stress associated with reunions and trying to fit in under abnormal conditions.

Cemetery of High Hopes, 1996

This is a bit of musing by Bill Francis, a man of about 42 who had by this point lived at my house twice (in a trailer and later in a shed, so graciously offered by the old man), and now lived at my grandmother's house in the wake of Norman's death in early July 1996. It is difficult to tell how twisted and crazy that period got. There were shifting allegiances between the four of us that year and a half after Norman died and while Bill lived at the house there.

This is one scrap of evidence showing how Bill was mocking my old man and his post-Solar Turbines business endeavors.

First, the notorious electric car conversion of 1993 that turned a used Ford Escort piece of shit into a heavier piece of shit that no one wanted to buy. It became the laughing stock. Willy was betting on the future that people would flock to his and other conversions of regular combustion engine cars, instead of buying them new as through-designed electric or hybrid cars. 

Next, Ezee Traveler Saddles. This was a legit name in BMW motorcycle saddles in the 70s, started by a cranky and caustic, tobacco-chewing Jewish geezer named Ez Berg. Ez had a real manufacturing facility and was well regarded as the finest to get for a BMW aftermarket seat. His company bore his own name so he delivered the goods. In the 80s he was running a shop from his house in Allied Gardens in San Diego. I used to go there sometimes while Willy was negotiating for Ez to turn the thing over to him. Finally, in 1989, the old man bought out what was then known as EZee Traveller Saddles, and learned the craft of mixing the foam and pouring the molds and then adapting the giant dual dish saddles to the bike's steel pan. He used the same upholsterer as Ez did so the outer quality looked identical. After making a few batches of foam saddles, he was not finding the success he anticipated so it all kind of withered. People might find out about ETS but his publicity skills were none and he rejected a lot of input I had. (If things were different between us, I might have been his graphics and web guy. He did ask me about it years ago.) Eventually, ETS was another laughing stock, particularly when he decided to get into the upholstering himself, not farming it out to the guy that made the distinctive cross stitch that was basically the mark of the Ez Berg Saddle. That was a colossally dumb move. (As a side note, my drum throne is one of his practice projects from 1990. It's been upholstered a couple times, but wherever I take it, people remark on it. Right now it is a hybrid of the cycle saddle with the base and back of an office chair.)

Fiber Tron was another project that used an electrostatic charge to cause little fibers to cling to nearly anything. It was a way of making your cycle gas tank fuzzy or other equally dumb applications that cater to vanity. Hardly a recession-proof endeavor. 

The note at the bottom of the image is my grandmother's. It reads: "Oh shed a tear for hopes once held dear/The riches he aimed for he got nowhere near." Wow. Usually she isn't so pointed.

Note from G-ma, 1996

It is hard to convey what an agonizing couple days I had on August 25/26 1996. The last straw of the old man pushing my buttons with his intrusions into my bedroom had come on the 25th. While showering from an insanely humid day, briefly home from a break between gigs with Rockola, he took my car keys, and with it my room keys. That led to my demands for them back. He refused. He was working on pushing me out and said (like other times) that things needed to change, that he had new plans for the house. Now he had my keys to everything and it got me scared that nothing was secure. A fracas broke out when he tried to unlock and come in while I was getting dried off, or maybe trying to figure out what to do about the situation. I tried to hold the door shut but I grabbed a snare drum stand and maybe tried to wedge it up against the door, but failing that, I swung it through the hollow door. That was definitely the end of my stay there. He has a way of using such outbursts as justification for more draconian deeds later on.

That day sucked, but the following one was a day when I attempted to get the spare key from my grandmother who would have had one from the days when Norman had the car and of course, a key to the house. I had to move. My stuff was not secure at home anymore. After having to argue the wisdom of raiding my own house to get stuff, she and Bill Francis relented. I I was driving Robin's mother's minivan, and Bill Francis came over with me. I was able to unlock the front of the house but had to bust the door to one of my two rooms. I raided everything I had and loaded two drumsets, recording gear, guitars, clothing, books and whatever I could within the couple hours before the old man got home from work. It was hell upon hell. Bill stood by, not wanting to do anything to be involved. I filled my car and the minivan like I was robbing the place.

Heart pounding, we drove over to my grandmother's on Quapaw and proceeded to load stuff in. She stood there aghast at how much I was bringing in. She thought I was petitioning for a few things. I had to get it all (almost). The old man found out what had happened and came over and began petitioning her to reject my moving in. The alliance had shifted. After the debacle of Bill Francis and I cleaning her room out a month before, she was ready to keep me at a distance, fearing my presence would cause more harm. She wrote this note, and my heart was broken more than from the actual smash and grab earlier in the day.

Virginia, 1999

This is from a party at church in early 1999. The guests of honor are all people who will be celebrating a "5" or "0" anniversary or birthday that year. She was about to turn 90 in October. This picture seems to be before she really lost even more weight than I knew her to usually carry. By her death in 2001, just over two years after this, she was quite gaunt and had other signs of breaking down. My own burden is the fact that for the couple years I lived with her around this time, I was quite distant and alienated. She did carry on a life separate from me, mainly with the help of our neighbors and their family, or church members.

Grandma Virginia

Virginia, my paternal grandmother, lived during the most complicated century on record. Generally she was an even keeled person who for all my youth was the one source of groundedness and compassion. She was a confidante for years until about the time I started dating. Unfortunately that began a silence that rarely was breeched in a way reminiscent of the old days. Upon the death of my grandfather after their 61 years of marriage, that too upset the balance pretty much irrevocably. For some years I lived at her house but was a shameful roommate and family member, and lots of pixels on this blog have been shed to process that and put her back into a place of respect and reverence for being a great woman who loved me like no other for a lot of years.

Virginia, 2000

Virginia at Eda's place in La Mesa.

Virginia and Eda

My dad and stepmom separated in 1983 and from then until early 1992 I went pretty much without seeing Eda. I did however have written contact with her for a year or two prior to our reunion. My grandmother and Eda were always close, and perhaps once reunited, they seemed closer. This is from year 2000, and among the last ventures out of the house under normal conditions, this time over to Eda's place. Age wise, Eda was 51 years older than me, and about 13 years younger than my grandmother. Essentially, Eda is grandmotherly in age to me, but was in the picture as my stepmom.

Easter 2001

This was Virginia's last Easter Sunday. She died on the Monday just a week later. This picture is also the last record of us together, and the occasion was the last time I saw her alive. It is taken in the room where she lived out her life in a kind of quasi-hospice arrangement at the neighbors' place. They had been taking care of her for a few years, coming to our house for her meals and chores.

From left to right there is Rene, Eda's son and my step brother; Jessica, the daughter of Connie, who was the main caregiver for Virginia; Gma Virginia; Eda, my step mom; and me.

This was a time when I knew she was going to die, and in doing so, the center of the family was about to fall out between my father and me. So far I have been right. Her death sent us into chaos. At the time of this picture I was also not far removed from the revelations of molestation that my older sister Chris had to report earlier in the year. This was a devastating season, emotionally.

Kelli at the tidepools

Kelli and I inaugurated our present relationship pretty discreetly among church folks who knew us for years and years, but we plunged into a life of togetherness right away in 2002. That time coincided with my returning to church after a decade away. We left and went to the tidepools on Point Loma, and for me it ushered in a new period in my life, a period marked by a return to wonder-filled eyes and a sense of coming home. This particular picture was taken in January 2011 but the image with the blazing January sun on the water is so stunningly close to the image in my mind from 2002 that I could not resist using it.

Ed and Eda, 2003

My step mom Eda and me, October 25th, 2003. The day is quite memorable because it was the day just before San Diego county was set on fire, shutting the place down for a few days of chaos. On this day it was gloriously clear. The next day it was pumpkin orange and ash gray.

Eda was in the picture as partner to my father from 1974-1983 when she left. Their divorce was conducted out of my sight so to this day I know only what they told me and how I was affected. But during my senior year in high school I was able to rather surreptitiously get in touch with Eda. In early 1992 we got back into an in-person relationship and slowly "came out". If not for her fundamentalist religious views, I'd spend more time with her. But for most of the years since 1992, when I spent time with her, she'd get a lot of hours of my time. We'd be able to talk about a lot of things, and she was a great person to share with. But somehow, in the 2008 period in California, with all that "proper family" and "traditional marriage" talk, I began to notice a hostile streak in her when the topic came to my marriage to a smart and no-bullshit woman who happens to be a preacher. For Eda, from a whole other generation by birth and another theology by assent, Kelli is just about everything wrong with the world for Eda. So the friction has led me to ease out of that relationship too. When she started hanging up the phone upon hearing why I am what I am, I knew there was a new threshold we had passed.

Ed and Kelli 2003

Circa 2003. Kelli and I were long time friends and had joined into a romantic life (in our own way) at the start of 2002. But I think it took until late 2003 when I gave myself to the idea that we were entering a real relationship. For all the time since we started "dating" I never felt that my feet were touching the ground, and sometimes acted pretty removed. But around the time of my stay at Halcyon house, Kelli was so undeniably supportive in a dark hour that it became clear that this was true and should be embraced fully. After some months of couples' therapy, we got engaged, feeling empowered by our long history as friends and a  new sense that we had some viability as a couple.

Ed and Kelli 2004

2004 was the year when we got engaged and married. It was a wonderful time of togetherness. But in all honesty it was a time of my personal awakening after my Halcyon house experience. Still a lot of stumbling, but the path was becoming clearer, and the spirit was helping draw me that direction.

Ed, Kelli, and Okua, Christmas 2004

By the end of 2004, we were able to be on the permanent dogsit job with Okua, on loan from the Calabrese clan. She stayed with us until the next summer when we got evicted and could not keep her. We had her again for another year when we moved into HER house at Calabrese West.

Pardon the silliness of all our collective costumes. Christmas morning is always an embarrassment when preserved in photos!

Okua the Wolf Dog

Okua had a good share of wolf blood in her. She was a gorgeous dog with massive power for running, and a mighty maw that would clamp down on a booda bone. But she was a sweetheart. That is, when she wasn't a terror in the household. More times than we can count did she tear the trash apart on the carpeted floor. A few times she yanked plates of food—cookies, sausages among her favorites—down to the floor where she had a hoover-like ability to clean up in record time. She was also a nimble jumper and escape artist.

Ed and Okua, 2004

A moment of tenderness with Okua the Wolf Dog. Other pictures of this series are rather savage because she is chomping onto a Booda rope bone that she can grip with mighty force.

Christmas Day, 2008

Not being particularly linked to any tradition and for the first time in years finding ourselves without the Calabrese family dinner, Kelli and Buber and I went for a bit of a Christmas Day drive around to Sunset Cliffs and the Presidio monument at Old Town.

Christmas Day, 2008

The town was delightfully empty and still on Christmas Day 2008, with an intermittent rain that suggested we run for the cover of the Presidio monument in Old Town.

Ed and Kelli, 6th Anniversary

On our anniversary in 2010, we took a senseless drive up the road to Orange County and went across the CA-74 into the woods for some scenery that I don't get in my delivery jobs in the city. Lake Elsinore in the background.

Ed and Kelli, 6th Anniversary

On our anniversary in 2010, we took a senseless drive up the road to Orange County and went across the CA-74 into the woods for some scenery that I don't get in my delivery jobs in the city. Lake Elsinore in the background. I just noticed she wears pink and blue in these and the pictures from Christmas '08, and I wear the earthy browns and tans!

Ed with beard-in-progress, 2011

Getting a new camera for the first time in eight years is cause for all sorts of experimentation. Oh yeah... it is also the debut of a patch of facial hair known as a beard. That is new stuff too. First time ever, new for 2011. Glasses are newish too!

Ed, 2011

Just one of the many shots that have to get taken so that a couple are worth putting on the website. Usually the idea is to get header imagery for whatever collage goes into that space. This is shot in a rather undignified area outside my house next to the trash cans. I love Photoshop!

The Chair

My grandfather's beloved recliner chair was kept for a good many years after he died. Exactly fifteen years, in fact. On July 4, 2011, I set it out to the curb in front of the house, certain it would be lifted in short order. After a day or so it was gone. It wasn't anything to get teary eyed about this year. Back in 2005 I was keen to hang on to all I could that I inherited from my grandfolks. But this year I decided to start pruning things to save space and trouble when moving things. This chair, a dining room table, and two end tables all got the figurative ax this year. Only the dining room table was spared from damage or the wear and tear of regular use. I'm getting closer to seeing things as they are, and stuff is stuff. It doesn't contain the spirit of the people. And they probably don't care now if I keep things or offload them.

Onyx pass

For our 7th anniversary, we took the weekend to hit up Big Bear Mountain and some of the desert area around it. We didn't like the commercialism of Big Bear and beat a path to the more exotic roads we did not already take. The Onyx pass was pretty high on the map and we pretty much went for photo op only but ended up being delighted with the landscape and spent a couple hours there in silent time, apart for a couple hours.

Onyx pass goofiness

The camera's self timer has been well employed since I got it and we've been getting on the road a lot since about the same time.

Mt. Jacinto State Park desert view

A rather spontaneous last ditch effort to enjoy our Big Bear trip resulted in a barely planned spur off to the Palm Springs Tramway. It's a two mile long climb of about 6000' up from the desert to the Mt. San Jacinto state park where there is an absolutely amazing view of the desert of Coachella Valley, San Andreas fault path, and sometimes even the Salton Sea. 

Mt. Jacinto State Park

And just a short way down the hill from the desert overlook at the park is the equally gorgeous pine forest at the top of the hill at about 8500'. I had been there once as a child when my grandparents took me there. This was the first I had been there since, and it was like seeing it all for the first time. It was rather like paradise, if you excuse the presence of noisy kids and tourists of all stripes. But it was not crowded as it could be on that Monday. We took the short loop hike among the trees—towering pines of a few types, and their fallen brothers that themselves were like works of art in the various stages of decay. After some disappointing sights on the other mountain at Big Bear, this was a splendid way to make up and end our trip with something more like we had in mind.

Surreal Badwater

Badwater has to be one of the most amazing places I have ever been. It is the low point of Death Valley. Kelli and I went there twice on consecutive trips; the first trip in 2010 had us get to Badwater too late for good pix. Our 2011 trip on the same Thanksgiving weekend we returned and got some more pix under more favorable light. The amazing vista from the lowest point in North America is ready for lots of surreal looking pictures. Here I composited a few of the timed/tripod steadied shots and then added some fun effects in post using the cheap and easy Pixlr-o-Matic app.

Titus Canyon drive

For our 2011 trip to Death Valley we took the Titus Canyon drive—a 24 mile, one way, one lane dirt road that cuts through the mountain range, with some rather stark switchbacks and elevation changes. My truck was just enough to handle it though I was rather worried about blowing out a tire or two. That would be a deal breaker because the one-lane aspect would mean that I could clog the entire path for everyone else. No problems though. But next time we go, we're anticipating needing to rent a truck with beefier tires and higher clearance to get help us get to some of the remote places.

Ubehebe Crater

On our second trip to Death Valley, we scrambled to get to Ubehebe crater in much the same way as we scrambled to get to Badwater on the first trip—just at sun down. Each requires a walk to get to the optimal spaces for the superb shots, but each can be special just for getting out of the car and leaving the parking lot. 

I find I like the fun of putting the Pixlr-o-Matic processed shots up for the blog entries, so bear with the trashy look. It's neat to see what things might be like if I wasn't using digital.

Reunion with Eda, 2012

After over two years of distance with probably just one attempt to be in touch, I called Eda and Kelli and I came over on January 7th, 2012. The date was not really arbitrary. It already was 20 years since our original reunion, bringing a new chapter after the divorce in 1983. In this picture, Eda is 89 and newly moved into an apartment with her son and his lady. We chatted for a couple hours and it wasn't enough to get into the thorny spots. Actually, Eda seems to be fading now that her ears and eyes are less reliable than before. Her walking is more labored too. So the others carried the conversation more than Eda did. I wrote a massive entry that narrates the general course of Eda's comings and goings in my life.

Parents

Okay, I have to warn you. This is entering the danger zone of TAPKAE.com. I don't mind if you read all this, but it is indeed the savage picture of my family drama.

Here are my parents and my older sister Chris. So much angst has come from my interaction with them all. You could read all the posts in the You Can't Choose Your Relatives category if you want to get all the gory details. Good luck. I can barely make it through that terrain!

Anyhow, the stuff that follows is some correspondence that may or may not bolster my case, but it is some of the record that at least shows what has gone down here in the land of the Greatest Story Ever Told.

Profile of a young man (right click to enlarge)

This is dangerous personal territory but I need to put a light on it after years and years of lurking in a box or folder somewhere in my grandmother's stuff. It was marked "personal and private" in her own hand. Here is a three page letter merged into one file for simplicity's sake. The document is written by one Rev. Paul Gaston. At the time he was a young pastor at the church where my grandparents and father were charter members. Paul later baptized me and married my parents.

This document is from my father's youth, dated on his 20th birthday. As much as he would love to portray a story of my mother messing up his life at the age of 28-31 or so, this just shoots that argument down in a ball of flame. That is not to say she did nothing to mess things up, but this document established that by the age of 20, some of the stuff that has gone down in my lifetime was done by a person who was already known to have the kinds of antisocial and abusive and emotionally abusive traits.

Discovering this was enlightening and actually led me to a new kind of compassion for my father and whatever it was that happened in the family before this—all stuff that I probably won't ever know of. Personal as it is, I insist that it be known so the delusional thought is kept in check. The mythology handed me by my family was that of a far more mellowed and typical white middle class American family of the mid century. This proves that a lie.

Letter, 12/6/00

This is the beginning of the end of a whole part of my life. A dying of sorts. This letter is the first document from my father, placed on my truck window at night in a drop-and-run gesture, too chickenshit to hand deliver it. This is written on the day when he found out from his mother (who I lived with until a week before when she went to the hospital for a fall and a stroke) that I was in touch with my mother and her family and planned to have some holiday time with them after many years. He could not abide that. So he presented me this letter, imploring me to keep away from them because he could not handle it. I had two other prior periods of engagement with my mother's family and this was the first one that I initiated out of a feeling of necessity to get out of the accumulated funk of my 27 years. So my motives were to man up and try to relate to them on new terms.

He didn't get that. He doesn't get it. He won't get it. So he can write shit like this. I took it to mom and Chris and they responded. And that was the thing that set them onto a path of finally telling me their truth about what happened when they lived at the same house I was raised in, but just before and around the time of my birth.

Letter, 12/27/00

After he got a fiery response from my sister Chris, he wrote this letter declaring he could not see how the future could be good for us now that the genie was out of the bottle. At the time, I still didn't know what they were talking about. It was all coded and talked around. I contend that it was this letter in particular that shows the axial point where my father, if not already attached to the idea of getting the house where I lived, decided that I must pay somehow for doing this terrible deed of relating to my family. I think it was this letter that started the idea of evicting me when the time was right.

The reference to Eda and Stephan in Germany is deliberate manipulation of my feelings, referencing either his good choice for a mother figure for me or his brilliant engineering of an opportunity to go to Europe in 1991, something he connived my mother out of nearly $4000 for over about six years.

Letter, 12/27/00 (back)

This is the back of the previous page. The reference to changing the locks points to a time in 1994 when I did change my bedroom lock. There had been a toy lock that was suitable for privacy only, but was nothing in terms of actual security. Knowing that, one morning in September 1994, when my girlfriend Robin was over, my father popped the lock discreetly at about 5 am and peered in on us. That was a time when we were new at that stuff, so we weren't even asleep, and we were conscious through the whole thing. He had already been known for rummaging through papers of mine, journals, pictures. So we let him do this little stunt.

In the period around this letter, he's talking about my changing the house locks after he stormed out after letter #1. It was oddly empowering but I realized he could easily be up to no good. So here is making the promise that such a unilateral attempt at privacy and being left alone is cause for him to up his campaign ante to be a pain in the ass. For nearly two years after my grandmother died he did not have the key to the house. But he sat in wait until one time there was a plumbing crisis and I had to turn the key over. And that was the start of the end.

Letter, 1/24/01

This was the first letter on record after my sister finally spilled the beans (all over the place, I might add) on her experience being molested by my father when she was about ten. That news took a few hours to sink in, but when it did, I was devastated in a way like nothing else had done before. This letter followed an instance of me going to his house to claim my childhood photo albums. It took some displays of power and rage, and one window in his door was broken from losing my stance, but I never intended to actually destroy anything. I just decided finally that my albums, my life, were better in my possession so I could do the work of putting myself back together from the zillion pieces that I exploded into that month. It was a very cold January.

This letter says I must not step foot on his property for a year. My grandmother died three months later. Guess who set foot on MY property just days after that?

Letter, 1/30/08

Another chickenshit letter delivered to me not by the mail man or any of that. After a year or more of silence between he and I, and particularly after a hot period at the end of 2007/early 2008, my father dropped this off at the church (where I had since departed a year before) and told my former pastor that it needed to get to me. So Jerry sent it to me.

This is an excellent display of thought distortion. He loves his Manichean colors of black and white thinking. Here he wishes to make the point that my Lucas family taught me love, and that my mother taught me hate. And to pile ridiculous on top of ridiculous, he wants to make a point that my marriage now is founded on this glorious Lucas past. Ahem, that is the domain of much effort between Kelli and me, and a good load of grace! Almost everything I learned about marriage has been from admitting what a failure I can be and trying to repent of that at each turn. Only my grandparents at 61 years of marriage can be said to be a family influence upon me.

My father seems to confuse my candor with hate. Calling a spade a spade is not calling it evil or hating it.

AntiSocial media

[Right click while in lightbox view and you can see the whole thing like in a browser]

In a parallel track during early 2008, I was trying to make a few points on MySpace after my sisters Chris and Nikki decided to be bitches again, choosing to disown me for the joy of scapegoating. In November 2007, I made a surprise visit to my mom's house in Long Beach, CA. This time it was with Kelli, and the first time my wife and my mother ever met. I came in with heart in throat, wishing to make a case for myself that since we last met, I had time to understand their pain from years before in a new way, and would she listen? It was a reasonable response from my mother, but Chris came home to find us there and she flew off the handle in a fit of rage that makes good daytime television.

After that period of a few weeks gave way to the inevitable pattern of decline that usually defines these interactions, I turned to their MySpace pages to get a few other words in, and the following thread ensued. By the end of this overall crash and burn period with ALL my family members (except Eda, and that changed later in the year too), I began to entertain the idea of having a formal memorial ceremony at church to get it behind me in a public gesture.

There are a few tricks I employed here that I use when people are subject to warping things. This entails copying one of their posts into a current thread so that if they change the source, I could have some record of it to reference. I never liked MySpace so I was operating as Herbert Kornfield from the Onion. I guess I found it my place to call all these people out into the open, so I give away all their secrets. I was done with the whole scene of lies and coverups and blame. So I tried to walk through the middle of it.