Some of our neighbors

 
In our close knit community, we would often run into each other walking on the palmtree lined trails or in our private fitness club. We would also make more acquaintance with neighbors during the kids’ fund-raising visits. 
 
That’s when we realized we neighbored with a few semi celebrities.
 
Grandma Marge is one of them but she is not a semi celebrity in our eyes. She is the celebrity with so much human perfectness honed through her sufferings, trials, and difficulties run through nine decades of her life. She and her friends experienced the Wars, the elegant era of Hollywood and the industrialization of this nation. She weathered through quite well, gaining more wisdom, strength and faith in Him along the way. Her messages on the Peace for Today radio program have brought encouragement and inspiration to many.
 
Grandma Marge, in some ways, is like my own beloved paternal grandma: living in old age, understanding the young hearts, full of love and compassion for others. Their advice to me transcends age and cultural boundaries, revealing only the universal yearnings and caring from a doting grandma.
 
See and listen to Grandma Marge on www.peacefortoday.org

Old Man Bill liked sitting in his wheelchair sun-bathing by the pool with Dog Rickie. On his lap there was always a dish of M&M chocolate placed by his Philippine nurse Landy.
 
Old Man Bill had a large build and impressive height. Whenever we saw him, I tended to imagine his body got stretched out of the wheelchair and stood towering over us.
 
He was chatty and lonely so we spent some time keeping his company while we were out at the pool. We were not the only neighbors who enjoyed doing so. Paul and a few others did the same thing. In short, everyone in the community seemed to know Old Man Bill. That is, until he passed away a few years back.
 
Old Man Bill was old, reaching 97 back in 2003. He repeatedly told us that longevity ran in his family with his grandma died at age of 107 and his own mom at the age of 103. Whenever he mentioned that we would say, you will surely surpass your grandma and your mom. He would stare afront, remain unusally quiet and not making any comment. Only years later I was able to understand his silence over our good-will wish. How could he? Life is uncertain as is and it can only be increasingly so at the age of 97. As the end approached, he must have thought the age of 103 was so unreachable!
 
We were invited to Old Man Bill’s house a few times. The truth was, we were given the green light to go and see him anytime we wanted. We loved that. The front door was the divider of two worlds apart. Entering his house was like entering a Hollywood museum, seeing Old Man Bill and his wife hanging out with the 30s and 40s Hollywood stars in the enlarged pictures almost at every corner of  the house. Old Man Bill was not a movie star himself but he had a famous Hollywood wife, whose name I did not register though, being ignorant as I. He must have loved his wife very much because he kept the house exactly as it was like on the day she passed away in 1987. The casually spread out papers on the desk seemed to invite its owner back at any moment. The closets were still full of the glamorous outfits that can only be seen in pictures now. I started envy his wife. Being loved, admired and adored this much by your spouse is every woman’s dream and she had it all. What a fortunate woman she was!
 
Old Man Bill had no children of his own. His two distant nieces he had never seen but only heard of. Nevertheless, the two nieces would inherit his property when he died. I was hoping that I could purchase a few items from Bill or his inheritors but that never happened. We did not know Bill was gone until we saw the For Sale sign popping out by his front door.
 
That was shocking to us. It was true we did not see him for a few days but it turned chilly and windy and understandably he would stay inside. Then the few days turned into a few months during which time I went back to China to visit my family. Then Bill was gone! I even got a bamboo back scratcher for him from China!
 
We visited the house for sale. It was completely empty, bare floors, bare walls, empty rooms, empty closets, devoid of any emotions! Where were the memories? Where were the people who used to call this place home? Has Bill ever existed? It seemed otherwise. The thought was quite unsettling to me. In a flash, all was gone, without a trace. The safe haven we tried to create as our home, the carefully selected items, the lovingly placed pictures—the life—was all gone! Just like that!
 
Once in a while, I would still wonder where his collection went. If they were resold, do the new owners know how much love was poured into those items? How much they once meant to someone in this world?
 
 
My husband used to watch the show Married With Children. Later we learned that one of the casts, the dumb Kelly Bundy, actress Christina Applegate, also owns a property in our community. We even spotted her a few times making quick exchanges with our guard in her car. She definitely looks different from the notoriously dumb TV character.
 
We have no personal contact with her but I do not like her at all. How funny it is! My dislike of her comes largely from her role in Married with Children. Rational told me that she is a good actress, bringing alive such a character in an unusually interesting way. But I don’t like Kelly Bundy. In fact, I don’t like the show at all and despised the fact that my husband was so much into that. I am glad he is over with it now. Or, is he really!

I first learned that Pilar Wayne is a neighbor when my husband brought home a package. Inside I found a black linen apron, a pair of matching oven mittens, a couple of kitchen towels and some other kitchen use items all embroidered in cursive with Pilar Wayne. I also found a video called Wild Goose among the pile. The kitchen towels and other misc items were long gone but I am still using the durable apron and the oven mittens, though I did not quite like the black color in kitchen items. I also watched the video, featuring John Wayne’s favorite megayacht The Wild Goose, which is still running in the Balboa harbor as a commercial yacht. Every time we went down to Balboa I would see it carrying groups of merry customers back and forth across the harbor. It is humbling to see how time fleets and how wealth changes hands so quickly.
 
Pilar Wayne is John Wayne’s last wife. Being a Peruvian  beauty in her youth, she had easily captured the heart of the Western hero in movies. Later I learned that Pilar Wyane is also a famous artist whose art pieces were sought after by the new generation of Hollywood stars. Through her open widows and doors, I have seen parts of her art display and interior decoration, typical of people of her background, age and status.
 
As she gets older and older, she is seen spending more and more time in the house not too far from us. Rumors say that she still keeps the large ocean front house at Balboa. We ran into her a few times while she was out walking her dog and me walking the kids. In her pajamas, she looked quite lonely and reserved, not ready for conversations. Could it be that she is still reminiscing of the good ole times, secretly living the old memories in her mind? 
 
Watch the Wild Goose on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbvzxcQCJWg  
Learn about Pilar Wayne at http://www.pilarwayne.com