Our lives changed when we moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1985

Unlike California, we could afford to buy a house in Phoenix (just barely).   We found one close to the downtown, and got a mortgage at only 11% interest!  And with the unexpected  "S&L banking crisis", many new homeowners - like us - were now underwater 😮

Welcome to life in the late 1980s...

KC's story continues a small-size "Anything™Book" journal, covered with Red Flowers on Black Fabric, and spans the first couple months of 1988.  Our son, Miles, would have turned seven a couple months earlier.

However, my job working on NASA's Space Station Program was put on hold following the tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger's final mission two years earlier; plus with a buy-out by another company, my job had become precarious...

I just finished looking at the numbers in our checkbook and am wondering how we do it.  Over $200. spent at the Price Club.  Over $150. at the grocery store.  Nobody, I read in the newspapers and magazines these days, has sympathy for yuppies. 

I don't feel like a yuppie, though we have a Braun coffee-maker and are rehabbing an aging house in the middle of the city.  We finally got a blind for the kitchen window, two years after moving into the house.  The floors in some rooms are still bare concrete.  The roof leaks, the faucets leak, and the money goes in a flood. 

We were supposed to get a call this weekend from someone at a company, a job offer for Peter in the offing?  Possibly. 

We went shopping in the morning, Saturday, took a neighbor's boy with us.  

Blew almost $300., came home, checked the answering machine, went out and did more shopping, came home, no message, I went to bed — , Peter stayed up until 3:30 AM listening to records we bought Friday night ($50).  

Sunday morning, got up, spent $15. at Café Casino for breakfast, went to Home Depot ($10) and added to our wish-list: a skylight for the back room so I can Paint there, screen doors for the back-room for ventilation, a folding wooden door for Peter's Office, and numerous light fixtures. 

Came home, no message on the answering machine, went to the cleaners, dropped off clothes ($50. charge), went to a store in north Phoenix, a sort of grown-ups Five-and-Dime ($40.).  The light fixture we got there was intended for over the kitchen sink, but looks awful there, the feeling sunk in this morning that fixing this house up is some sort of psychological trip, rooted in insecurity, partially, in the creative drive, partially.  

Watching the place emerge from forty years of benign neglect is fascinating.

Oh, I forgot, the early Saturday morning trip to the Antique Store, ($30.), an "art deco" statue and vase. 

Peter's brother, the academic, would despise all this middle-class consumption — it's the sort of thing people like him like to poke fun at, in a mean, pedantic tone.  

For awhile there, that really irritated me, until he cashed his $10000 retirement check and bought himself various electronic toys. 

This morning at 7:45 the guy from the company called, Peter was backing his car out of the garage as I ran out in my nightgown, flapping my arms. 

"He called, he called", I yelled. 

The management at Peter's present job is having a field day of arrogance in the authority vacuum created by a buy-out.  

The boss-man brought in a buddy, a guy no one could think what to do with, he got passed around from manager to manager like the little metal ball on a roulette wheel, and landed on Peter's supervisor's number.  

The buddy got appointed "administrative" manager over the supervisor.  "I need a five-year plan tomorrow.  You don't have one ready?  Why not?"  That kind of guy, that kind of place.  

The tension sits on the people that work there like coal dust on a miner, right into the lungs. 

On the news there's talk of another market down-slide, similar to the one that happened in October.  

The "eat, drink, and be merry" philosophy is immoral, but natural in the face of catastrophe.  To whom shall one answer when the system cracks, then splinters?  

We have an aging, forgetful leader and a jalopy full of circus clowns competing for his position.  

On these cold nights, when the temperatures in mellow Phoenix dip to the low 40's, I think of the homeless who live underneath the bridges that span the Rio Salado and know that we are several paychecks away from that place ourselves.  

Social security and welfare benefits mean nothing if there's no one to tax.  

As it is, we unofficially sponsor our neighbor, a woman with three kids trying to get by on $650. a month; her rent is $265. a month.  She gets food stamps and free day-care from the state — that's it.  

She, too, is a paycheck away from the bridge. 

In the midst of this atmosphere I have this art career, currently going no place special.  

In the last year I've geared up, produced some pictures, but presently am back to my old, familiar condition: blocked.  Nothing happening. 

The usual advice is — set up a schedule, work every day, whether you feel like it or not.  That sounds like a prescription for suicide to me on days like these.  An hour or two of staring blankly at my table might be just what it takes to push me over the edge.  

How to summon the spirit when I have no voice?  That's because I feel like no one wants to hear what I have to say.  The words of soul fall on deaf ears.  It's sheer torture to keep saying them when I feel like no one gives a damn. 

All a projection of my childhood onto the big world out there?  Maybe, but as Von Franz says, every projection has a hook.  

There's something to it. 

I need to take stock of my own life, this thing I call my art, my hopes, my fears.  

Our house is small, but pleasant.  The previous owner's wife lived here for forty years until she died in the room I sleep in now, and from what I can see, she wasn't big on cleaning, or decorating, or gardening.  

She had two children whom she raised here mostly alone while her husband travelled doing academic research around the world.  

I have one son.  If I had a daughter I would have to give up my own room, the room I sleep in alone.  

I need that space so badly that without it I would withdraw within myself and Peter would lose me completely. 

I recognize in our spending habits the cycle of manic depressions.  I believe such cycles are a result of environmental stresses — remove certain factors and the cycle would change its configuration, flatten out.  Increase the stresses and the cycle oscillates in increasingly extreme fashion. 

Of course, the question arises, how accurate is our perception of the environment?  If the stresses are imaginary, we're reacting to phantoms, ghosts, shadows.  

But then again, there's always the hook.  Something is out there, 

even if it isn't as bad as we imagine.  

Faith and reason only carry us so far; the unknown acquires a texture and substance unique to itself.  If death were certainly a finality, the power of the unknown would dissipate like smoke. 

Facing death squarely is facing the unknown without flinching.  If science could extend the sum of our years to infinity, we'd still have to deal with the unknown.  It would haunt our days and drive most to despair. 

So, we are afraid and we go out and spend money, doing our part for the economy.  I can return the chaise lounge I bought if need be.  

I pictured relaxing under the sun, book in hand, breathing in Phoenix' fetid air, in our postage-stamp back-yard. 

Well, that wasn't what I pictured — I'd glossed over the brown smog and the nearness of our neighbors and their dogs. 

This is part of the cycle — thoughts that range from the meaning of life to how we'll balance our budget.  

A person of wide-ranging vision!  A plump housewife in her kitchen, writing at her table, wondering if it's too soon to eat lunch.

Got ahold of some Robert Theobald books — finally, someone who speaks to the issues that confront us.  

I guess ever since I was in my teens I've been increasingly aware that I don't fit into the present culture of consumerism.  

But politically I couldn't accept socialism, communism, or any other such ideology. 

As a Christian and an admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas, I've always felt there ought to be a more rational way to live, one that people would choose if presented because it would be good and perceived as being in people's best self-interest.  

In light of historical events this position seems naïve, more an article of faith in God than faith in my fellow human beings.  

Though I've tried to live according to my belief, the struggle has been enormous — the "easy" way out, very tempting. 

Nonetheless, I believe that most people I meet have their heart in the right place.  

They're shaped by their experiences to be hopeful or bitter, loving or spiteful, and their personalities also dispose them one way or another — but at the core is goodness in most souls.  

Alongside Original Sin I'd like to consider Original Innocence, which you easily see in children. 

I think when Jesus spoke of punishment for our sins he meant primarily regret, because he knew that nothing stings more than the lash of regret.  

Once something's been done, it's, at least in part, always irretrievable.

I found myself having to withdraw from the field, something we have to do in life, even if it is inconvenient (very inconvenient), when we don't understand what we're doing or why we're doing it.  

I was fortunate that I had a good friend in Peter because everyone else I knew at the time acted as if my dropping out of the picture was either a luxury they couldn't afford — though we were the one with a kid — or a self-indulgence.  

They were just ordinary folks caught up on the consumer train, as we are all conditioned to be.  Desperation forced me off, though.  The courage born of desperation. 

I was very alone in the early years I raised Miles — very afraid, very broke!  

We were stuck with high rent, a couple of car payments we couldn't keep up, and a pile of debts.  

Not the way middle-class people generally choose to live these days. 

But I had the legacy of my parents confronting me full-force when I had Miles.  Was I going to let history repeat itself?   Because I could see how it might.  

It amazed me how little I knew about being a mother — how frustrating and difficult a job it was.  

Because of my experiences as a kid, losing my brother, I put a very high value on life.  I knew that Miles would be a child only once — and how important that time is. 

I knew at heart that I wouldn't regret putting his needs before my own.  

At this particular time the media continually spread simple-minded dogmas about women in the workplace, how many kids were in daycare, how daycare was as good as mothering, maybe better. 

But I knew that Miles didn't really connect with me until I stayed home with him. 

In fact I know right now that the mothering job I took on seven years ago will continue for a number of years ahead, as well.  

I can go to school part-time, but I plan on being here for him — and Peter — and myself — in the years to come.  A full-time career is out of the question. 

When we lived in Newbury Park and I stayed home with Miles, I got involved — I was the family glue because I decided to be.  It was my choice. 

Now I'm getting ready to go back to school part-time, get education and skills more suited to my talents. 

The point in all this being that I've had to define for myself what I really want out of life — which I wasn't raised to do.  

I'm proud of myself for going ahead and having the courage to believe in myself enough to make decisions for myself, about my life, even if those decisions meant that I went counter to everything in my past and everything in the world around me. 

It wasn't as if Peter was egging me along, either.  He was supportive, but he didn't tell me what to do.  His respect for me helped me to respect myself. 

I think we've reached a point, women have, where we can acknowledge the fundamental need and desire we have for males to be supportive in the ways that males are uniquely suited to be.  

We can't define ourselves as if males didn't exist.  

With men around like my father it's very tempting to want to define oneself in such a fashion, but it takes away all the meaning of being a woman in the process.  

At least for me it did.

I believe now that I'm competent as a mother, as a wife.

I'd like to live a balanced life rather than alternate between frenzies of inadequacy and bouts of compensating rewards.  

It would be nice to face life with a more realistic sense of where I am, who I am.  In the end it boils down to the question of what I really need. 

I agree with Theobald's idea that each individual ultimately has to answer that question for himself — rather than letting others take that responsibility. 

He also says we have to be educated to make good decisions — and be presented with good choices. 

We have a unique window of opportunity historically.  On a personal level I see the same in my own life — the opportunity to learn how to make good choices — and to teach others how to make good choices, too. 

A time of growth, a time of balance.  

I understand now that education will provide the soil in which my art will grow.  

Art without those nutrients doesn't mean much to me — junk food rather than substance. 

Our situation stabilized for the most part, and KC continued taking classes at Phoenix College (PC) in numerous subjects, including English Literature, French, Spanish, Psychology, and Women's Studies.

She also ended up working part-time at PC tutoring students in ESL (English as a Second Language) in their Learning Center, but that started in the early '90s, about 5 years later.