Six years ago, I decided to attempt to matriculate through 365 days without uttering one word of complaint.  I failed miserably, so I kept the effort going. i continued being accountable for the effort by blogging.  At the end of year four, I suspended my other, weekly blog; closed my law office and art space; sold my house; took possession of a newly constructed tiny house on wheels; and headed west.

For the last two  years, I have struggled with the new life that I seemed to eagerly embrace.  What was I? Not a California girl, no longer a Missourian.  Not married, uncomfortably divorced.  With my one child grown and my siblings all engrossed in their own progeny and careers, not really a family person.  

In 2019, I have watched an astounding number of videos on YouTube in which people shared stories of their own journeys to self-acceptance.  These ranged from college students struggling with body positivity to fitness coaches to book reviewers to one young woman in Scotland who has an extraordinary vocabulary and a PhD in literature based on her dissertation on Joyce’s Ulysses.  That last vlogger speaks in stark terms about recovering from anorexia and expounds upon books of which I have never heard and doubt that I have sufficient intelligence to understand.  She also did an entire video on not giving any more F*cks, in which she managed to bleep that word all but one of the dozen or so times in which she used it.  

One of the exercises in which I engaged in 2019 involved listing all the criticisms that have been leveled at me in the past decade and examining them for accuracy.  Believe me when I tell you that doing so humbled me beyond expectation.  Assuming that every insult contains at least a nugget of truth forced me to ferret through the exaggeration to find the uncannily perceptive accuracy.  If those bits had been pebbles, I could have paved the muddy path from my car to my tiny house and walked with ease for the better part of a rainy winter.

I learned from that endeavor.  My coldest suspicions about myself found both confirmation and refutation.  In short, I concluded, for the hundredth time, that I have attained neither perfection nor utter failure.  I hover in the region of midway between the two.  With a long way yet to traverse to my best self, I’ve still moved forward, if only a click or three.

I have a list of goals that I did not meet in 2019, along with, yes, the unattained principal objective of going a year without complaining.  I’ve managed to anger a few people;  and I’ve disappointed some whom I dearly love.  That last failure hurts the most, a self-inflicted wound made bloodier because I could not resist pulling the dagger from my heart.  But the salve of forgiveness brings healing; and I remain hopeful that I will earn my bandages by and by.

It’s already 2020 in Asia, in Russia, and across the Atlantic.  Soon, the earth’s orbit will close the decade even here at the edge of the nation.  I will wash my dinner dishes and hang the towel on the stove.  The porch light will be extinguished and the heat turned to a lower temperature.  I will gaze around the 200 square feet of my home, contemplating the changes that the next week will bring as I undertake another declutter and a few house modifications.  Tomorrow gives me an unbroken day in which to set the tone for the three-hundred and sixty-four days to follow, during which I will try, with every ounce of my energy, not to utter a single disparaging word.  Happy New Year, everyone.  May the coming months hold peace, prosperity, glory, love, and grandeur for you all.

It’s the thirty-first day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I don’t know many ugly people.  By “ugly” here, I do not suggest judgment of physical presentment.   I use “ugly” to describe the snarled heart, the curled lip, the squinted eye.  Such people ooze their own self-loathing as they castigate others.  

Most of us muddle through our lives.  We hold doors for others.  We offer smiles, even grins, through fatigue and pain.  We strain to use words of encouragement.  We forswear complaint; or hustle around behind our clumsy selves, tendering apologies if we have erred.  We do the best we can.

Ugly people fume.  They stew in the sad juices of their disappointment.  We all experience such phases —  weeks, months, maybe even decades.  Most of us look back on these unfortunate interludes as dark, lamentable wanderings in misty, murky forests where we would never choose to linger.   But some folks have hearts grossly marred by anger.  They cannot tear themselves from the clutch of brambles.  I fear such folks need a soothing ballad sung by a more noble troubadour than I.

Recently, an artist friend  messaged from a far-away country where he lives with his family.  We talked for a few minutes about the relentless current of life.  The waves rise; the jagged rocks loom; the banks of the river seem distant and unreachable.  Yet we grab an oar; grin over our shoulders; holler at the moon; and plunge forward.  

I think maybe the ugly people have lost their paddle, or their compass, or that precious packet of belongings stowed beneath the seat.  Maybe they need a different soundtrack to their desperate efforts.  Maybe they need not an ode but a serenade, or a symphony, or a sweet soft lullaby to comfort them as they throw themselves exhausted on the shore.  

Maybe if we join hands and form a circle around them, we can sing away the pain of whatever sorrow has claimed their wretched hearts.  I’m game to try.

It’s the thirtieth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

In my sister Ann’s house, cookies and tradition sit plentifully on the wooden shelves.  The children have grown but they return for holiday dinners and long walks on Sunday.  Everyone flashes genuine smiles beneath dancing eyes.  They speak in cheerful tones and write thank-you notes, which my sister says are the last bastion of a civilized society.

When my sister learned that I would be alone for Christmas, she bought a plane ticket with her airline miles and planned my visit.  I slept in the little bedroom off the dining room under a hand-made quilt, with her childhood afghan in pristine condition folded at the foot of the bed.  Glass globes hung from the dining room light.  Fairy lights twinkled in the schefflera plants on either side of the bay window.

My sister joined the army before I finished elementary school.  With her nursing degree, she spent a year in Korea at a hospital caring for wounded soldiers coming from Vietnam.  She met her husband in the army.  When I asked Ann and Bill how long they had been married, Bill said, “I have no idea,” simultaneous with Ann’s “too damn long”.  I didn’t believe either of them.  I don’t know what their forty-three years together have brought them; but I heard no grumbling, no disagreements, no painful sighs.  The silences between them seemed companionable.  

In my sister’s house, yarn gets spun, tapestries woven, and bread kneaded.  I’ve always called my sister Ann “the perfect one”.  She made her oldest son’s blue-jeans herself, for goodness sake, at least in his  tender years.  With double seams, no less; just like in the store.  Ann remains connected  to each of our siblings, while the rest of us fall into factions with lingering and petty disputes driving wedges between us.  

I wonder what would have happened if Ann had stayed at home longer, into my high school years.  Would I have struggled less?  Would she have suffered more?  Would her marriage have lasted as long; could her children have grown into such  happy young men?  With her influence stretching into my college years, might I have learned a few lessons sooner than I clearly have?  I cannot say.  I came away from Christmas at my sister’s house with two balls of yarn, a pair of borrowed socks, and the lingering feeling that I have missed so much these last decades, when we lived just a few hours away from each other.  I rarely saw her. Even less frequently did I turn to her for comfort or counsel.  I did not give my son the benefit of her wisdom.

I spent the better part of this afternoon making a little neck  wrap from the yarn which my sister gave me.  I hope I did her justice.

It’s the twenty-eighth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I came back to Missouri from Arkansas in late December of 1990, two months pregnant and determined to reconnect with family for Christmas.  My close friends in Kansas City gave me safe harbor — a bed for as long as I wanted it, offers of  dinner, presents, comfort.  But I craved something indefinable which they could not provide, a certain meaning stamped on common DNA.  

I had intended to drive to St. Louis on Christmas Eve but a snow storm blanketed the stretch of highway between the two cities.  Desperate, I phoned my brother Mark.  In his measured voice, he suggested the train.  He offered to meet me at the station and promised their guest room for as long as I wished to stay.  I did not refuse; in fact, the eagerness with which I accepted must have surprised him.  We had never been close.

At Union Station, I struggled with my small bag and my  bundle of presents.  But angels stepped forward.  A gloved hand came under one elbow.  An arm entwined my shoulders.  Someone hoisted my belongings to the corridor above me.  Another person practically lifted me from the packed snow through the frigid air, into the car.  All the while, I murmured meager words of gratitude, barely discernible over the heavy noises of the train as the crew readied the long train for departure.

I have always enjoyed the space of time and sense of isolation of travel by rail.  Nothing takes place while you huddle against the glass and stare at passing farmhouses.  Though modern times have brought USB ports and hand-held electronics for distraction, 30 years ago, one could still sink into blissful oblivion.  

The eternal clanging lulled me into a drowsy daze.  My hand sought the rounded curve of my belly, where I thought, just thought, I could feel a newness of texture even beneath my heavy garments.  In that space of time between the last call for boarding and the cry of entry into my station, the life within me unfolded.  Birth, babbling, steps, cries, laughter, hugs, songs;  an endless delightful film unfurling itself in my sleepy brain.

I don’t remember that Christmas celebration.  Except for my mother who had died in 1985, everyone in my family of birth must have gathered at some point during my visit.  I could extrapolate from other times to describe the likely festivities but as for actual memories, I have none.  Whatever I retained of the celebrations has faded now.  Dinners were cooked and shared; gifts exchanged; snow felll upon the city.  Eventually I boarded a train, traveled  back to Kansas City, and eventually, south, to my home in Winslow.  Of those days, I recall nothing.

But of the hours on the eastbound train, my recollection remains clear.  I hear the voices, the laughter, the greetings, the offers of help and the glad acceptances.  The sense of calm which settled over me as the train sped across my home state to the city of my childhood lingered and I can recall it to this day.  I summoned the memory of that journey when immediate events overwelmed me in the tumult of the years which followed.  Somehow, its quiet moments came to signify something to which I can turn within my darkest hours.  In gladder times, that tender respite can still convince me of the potential that I will, after all, find peace.

It’s the twenty-fifth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I cannot avoid this brief check-in, for I have had a keen reminder of the goal which I set for myself in December of 2013. 

After my mother-in-law died, I listened to the pastor at her Episcopal church speak of her uncomplaining nature.  I resolved to matriculate an entire year without uttering a word of complaint.  I started this blog to hold myself accountable.  

Life lobbed repeated curve balls in my direction over the ensuing months.  I staggered under the weight of each new insult.  By year’s end, I had fallen so far short of my objective that I decided to keep blogging, keep straining, keep endeavoring to live joyfully and cheerful.  I re-watched Dr. Rosenberg’s videos, hitched my big-girl britches, and set forth.

The end of my seventy-second month in the endless year approaches.  And still my obective eludes me.  

Yesterday, I sat in the Sacramento airport, content with a book while waiting for my flight”s departure.  A wiry man approached, leading a rambuctious dog and loudly declaiming in profane lanuage on a cell phone held four inches from his ear.  I happened to be browsing social media at the time, and I posted some snotty sally about the fellow.

Amid the commiserating comments, I found a pointed, amused barb:  “How’s that “Year Without Complaining” going, Corinne?”

Ouch.

I get a chance to start anew.  I can assign a new task to myself.  I can designate any day to be the commencement of my effort.  I can remind myself that empathy is a two-way street which my feet should navigate with sound steps.

I woke this morning in a guest bedroom half the size of my tiny house. I padded through my sister’s lovely house, to the kitchen where she had laid out the accoutrements of coffee-making for me.  As I waited for the kettle to boil, I studied the baskets, the delicate Christmas ornaments, and the little trinkets on the window sill in my sister’s kitchen.  I suddenly thought of my son, who gave his blessing for the breakdown and sale of his childhood home.  He spoke not one word of reproachment.  He helped me pack, and sacrificed his vacation time to share my first California Christmas.

The kettle whistles.  I pour hot water over the grounds and stand at the dark window, wondering, for the thousandth time, how anyone can live for sixty-four years and remain so unenlightened.  I wondered if that man and his little dog found their way to his son’s house.  I sent a wish for peace into the universe, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down to read the morning news.

It’s the twenty-fourth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I stand beneath the loft rail gazing at the ornaments strung on jute. 

They sway in the slight current from the ceiling fan, tapping against the pine.  I run my finger along the old wood. We brought a stack of boards from my house in Missouri two years ago this weekend, strapped to the roof of my car.  One of the glass globes came from Jackson Hole.  Another honors Lucia, my mother’s patron saint  A third proclaims that sisters endure forever.  The final one announces Baby’s First Christmas, 1991.

I turn to study the baubles on the western wall.  The God’s-Eye from my friend Basimah Kalusi has protected my front door for twenty years.  My son bought the little license plate with my name while on an elementary school field trip.  I cut the butterfly and little flower from a card that Sally Kerchner sent to let me know that she keeps me in her heart.  I pasted them on a “Hope” tile which I found at a thrift store just when I needed its precise, enduring message. 

Penny Thieme gave me the little brown angel.  She’s lost one arm.  She suits me better with that handicap.  Beside her hangs a little glass ornament from Jennie Taggart Wandfluh, along with the flashlight which everyone in the Delta must keep handy.  I’ve had the brass key holder since my college days.  Each time I moved, I carefully taped its little brass screws to the back.  For reasons I can no longer recall, I left it in the junk drawer for twenty-five years at my house in Kansas City.  My builder affixed the holder to the wall right after he unhitched Angel’s Haven from his truck.

The rain has stopped.  I did not accomplish much today.  Yet I do not feel useless.  I lower myself into my rocking chair.    I close my eyes.  A sort of stripping away has begun.  I feel a flutter somewhere deep, as the grimy surface yields to the keen edge of the palette knife.  I cannot say what lies beneath the overlaying picture, but I eagerly await the revelation.

It’s the twenty-second day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Friends: I will be traveling this week without my laptop.  If I do not contrive to write for the next five days, know that my quest to go a year without complaining continues.  I will resume my account upon my return to California.  If you enjoy my writing, please stay tuned.  I intend for 2020 to be a year of plenty in that regard.

Joy to the world.

P.S.: I borrowed my title for this entry from one of my favorite books, Pentimento, by Lillian Hellman.

Darkness shrouds the Delta when I leave work.  A snarl of traffic east of the Rio Vista bridge suggests that I am not alone in my urgent need for home.  Ahead of me, a truck slows just before Jackson Slough.  The delay draws anxiety from the pit of my stomach.  I tap the steering wheel.  My eyes flick to the side view mirror.  I gauge how close I can get to the corner before I slip to the right of the semi.  But I wait.  

When I pull my car onto the loop I have no thought of my surroundings.  Then a rush of feathers and a broad silver wing swoops in front of me. I brake.  My heart pounds.  An owl; I’m sure of it. I saw the green gleam of his wary eye.  I slow my breathing, shift my foot to the accelerator and continue towards Brannan Island Road.  By the time I reach the climb before the San Joaquin, I am calm.

Boats moored in the marinas to my right stand still in the moonlight.  In the silent fields of Andrus Island, occasional flutters signify that flocks have come to their nightly roost.  They will huddle until daybreak, then lift as one into the whispers of morning fog, toward the sun’s warmth and out onto the river in search of food.

When I have parked outside my tiny house, I sit for a few minutes listening to the cooling of the engine, the ping and tingle of hot metal in the damp evening air.  Across the meadow, Christmas lights twinkle on a neighbor’s rig.  Caws high overhead tell me that the crows have lighted on the towering branches of the park’s old trees.  Everything falls silent as I exit the car and start towards my tiny house.  I open the door and step into a waiting peace which defies the sadness lurking in my heart and strengthens my fragile grasp on tomorrow’s potential.

It’s the twenty-first day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

My mother converted to Roman Catholicism at Blackburn College in 1943 or 44 while working on her Associate’s Degree.  She met my father two years later and married in October of 1946 before finishing her nursing degree, which she later confessed regretting.

I never considered myself a “Christian”.  Despite a white-knuckled near-miss encounter with the mighty Missouri in the mid 1990s during which my friend Alan White challenged my lack of belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, I continue to bypass the alleged son in favor of a more broad understanding of an omnificent deity.  Perhaps this proclivity flows from an early realization that middle-men rarely deliver the full goods — you should pardon any perceived sacrilege.

Though raised Catholic, I came to a different manifestation of faith than my early schooling relayed.  God and me — we have a basic deal.  I do the best I can by God; and God does the best God can by me.  I avoid pronouns; I skirt around an anthromorphistic view of the Almighty. I go right for the big picture.  “Do unto others” gets immediate acknowledgment from me.  “Father, son, and Holy spirit” not so much.  I mean, let’s be real:  I can’t buy the concept of a Heavenly Father, my earthly one being a bit of a rotten bastard.

But I have never doubted the existence of angels.

I had my first celestial encounter in 1976 while living in south St. Louis.  I kept coming home to signs of intrusion, creepy manifestations that suggested a person with a key and a grudge though I knew of neither.  My clothes would be tossed on the floor.  A record spun on the turn table, needle scratching in the last track.  Pictures throughout the apartment mysteriously turned themselves downward or face-to-the-wall.  I stopped drinking alcohol for weeks, in case I was over-indulging without memory and trying to freak myself out.  Still the weird happenings continued.  My father changed the locks on the apartment one Sunday afternoon.  On Monday I came home from work to find that the ice cube trays had been taken out of the freezer and left on the counter to melt.

One night, late, I struggled from sleep to the sound of a voice whispering my name.  In the darkened room, a figure stood over me.  Wake up!  Wake up!  came the urgent whisper.  There’s someone in the house!  I leaped out of bed as the shape vanished and the back door crashed.  By the time I got into the kitchen, whoever it was had gone, leaving the door to the building swinging against the bricks.

I stepped in front of a VW on Westport Road in Kansas City on 09 February 1982.  The impact threw me three stories into the air.  I felt my essence fling itself from  my body. Hovering higher than the tousled curls on my head, I found myself wondering what it would be like to be dead.  A sort of peace spread through me.  Then I heard a noise and turned my gaze.  A light spread across the sky; from it, a face emerged.  I watched as the being raised a hand, touched the place where the top of my head would be.  It’s not your time, said a gentle voice, and pushed me downward, into my falling human form.  I coiled myself into a ball just before landing on the hood of the VW and crashing into its windshield.  Well, I’m not going to die of a head injury, anyway, I thought,  as I flew forward and smashed on the street.  I heard the voice once more, reassuring me:  All will be well.  My leg had broken in 32 places and I had lost a contact lens, but shed not a single drop of blood.

In September 1984, I walked with my mother in her garden, just months after her cancer diagnosis.  An angel came to me last night, she calmly disclosed.  She said I had less than a year to live, and I’m okay with that.  I asked how she knew it was an angel.  She rendered a perfect description of the being who had shaken me awake nearly a decade before then.  I didn’t explain the coincidence, but I never doubted the celestial nature of her visitor.  My mother died on 21 August 1985.  As I watched them load her body into the back of the hearse, I searched the sky for signs of a heavenly choir.

I named my tiny house “Angel’s Haven” because of these stalwart guardians which have taken care of me so well over the years.  From the wall near my writing desk, my collection of china angels watches the Delta seasons change through the eastern window.  I found a new one this weekend on a crowded shelf at a thrift store in Sacramento.  My little treasures seem to come to me when I most need them.  The newest angel sits on the table under the tiny Christmas tree, a serene smile adorning her delicate face.  I have no doubt that she will keep me safe as winter unfolds and this wearisome year draws to a close.

It’s the sixteenth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Here is the wreath which my sister Joyce made from the grapevines in Mother’s back yard, the year that Mom succumbed to cancer.  Dad hacked down the plants as summer waned.  I wept, but Joyce charged outside and salvaged what she could.  I thought I had lost the wreath in the many moves; the mad house-cleaning before each marriage; the weary packing as love died; the wild dash to cram everything in boxes before the house sale.  The bow hangs a little crooked and I’ve had to replace the garland.  But it’s still in good shape.  Hard to believe, after 34 years.

The writing on my wooden star has faded and there’s something in my eye so I can’t quite focus the camera.  I think Grandmother Corley had this ornament made for me.  My brother Frank has one, too; but none of the other kids.  We hung them last, right before the tinsel, because they were special.  We stood in the darkened living room watching the tree lights shimmer and waiting for signs of snow.  Mother always made sure we had plenty of presents, even in the years when we barely had food.  I remember once how she fell to the kitchen floor and wept in a puddle of milk and shards from the shattered bottle.  I don’t know how she did it.  She was my hero.

When I told my friends that I was going to have a child, they called me crazy.  Somebody — I won’t say who — said I should give him to a real family, with a father and a mother and a suburban house near a good school.  I turned away and hugged my growing belly.  I would love him all I could, as long as I could, with every ounce of faith that I could muster.  I look back on those early days and wonder what I was thinking.  How could I make such a monumental mistake as to think that I had something to offer a helpless infant?  But I did do one thing right.  I found a village, and I raised him there. A cluster of people who leaned into our little house when I couldn’t muster the energy to do what needed to be done.  And once more my sister Joyce came to the rescue, giving him dinosaur sheets, and Batman pajamas, and Baby’s First Everything.  I touch the little angel which hung from our first Christmas tree in that funny apartment in Fayetteville.  I knew nothing of child-rearing.   But I never looked back, I never regretted my decision.  With a heart full of unreasonable hope, I reached for his impossibly small hand and wished on the evening star that Santa would find him wherever he roamed.

I kept a small selection of ornaments from home when I moved.  I sent some to my son in Chicago.  I’m not sure if he kept them.  Maybe he hasn’t unpacked any of the stuff which I foisted on him after I sold his childhood home and moved to California.  I ran not from him but from the mess I had made of my life.  The price he paid for my two decades of bumbling cannot be measured in gold.   Now I lift the baubles from their tissue and slip them onto the branches of the tiny tree which my son got for me.  He had it delivered to my tiny house just days after I arrived.  I drove to San Francisco to meet him at the airport.  He bugged the park office for any signs of packages.  When the tree finally arrived, we slid it from its box with eager hands.  It took just a few minutes to decorate, to dangle the smallest ornaments from the tree and hang others from the railing.  I had gotten a banjo for him.   I gave it to him that night, two days before Christmas.  He deserved it.  He’s tolerated so much.  He gave me his blessing when I told him what I planned.  The greatest gift.  He trusted me.  He let me leave, despite the fact that some would say that my time had passed.

There isn’t room on the miniature tree for the dove he made  in kindergarten, or the photos of Caitlin and Chris Taggart.  I tack a piece of jute on the wall.  A little heart plays Silent Night, tinny and tender.    I sit and gaze at the tree for a long time.  I close my eyes.  For just a moment, the kiss of winter air seems to touch my cheeks.  But then I realize that tears have begun to fall.

It’s the twelfth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

A Winter Night

The crows warn of the coming storm.  I stand on my porch and listen to their cries.  They soar in pairs, or singly, or all of a sudden in a great rush across the meadow.  Branches bend under their weight.  A smattering of leaves floats around me.  I shiver in the rising wind.

The roar fills the air, whistling and rushing.  I cannot see the river but I know its cast against the shore has deepened.  The masts of the boats in the marina sway.  Hulls bump against the dock.  Again a shudder runs through me.  It could be a train that I hear, sounding forlorn and steady through the afternoon air.  But no trains pass this way.  It is, it can only be, the winter wind.

A little critter scurries across my paving stone walk.  A lizard, perhaps; I’ve heard talk of mice in our fields but I have never seen one this close.  I pull the deck chairs closer to the rail and roll the rug against the base of the porch.  I lean the umbrella against the house. I have no storage for the trappings of summer.  My feeble efforts mean little when the Delta gale blows, but I can do no more.

Clouds gather across the sun.  The wide expanse of blue fades to grey.  I go into the house and think about a cup of tea.   Night draws near.  I gather my sweater around my shoulders and close the door.

It’s the fifth day of the seventy-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

There’s a Certain Slant of Light by Emily Dickinson

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

Friends:  While I certainly intend to continue on my #journeytojoy, and my quest to attain #MyYearWithoutComplaining, this blog nears the end of its sixth year.  I feel that it will soon morph into some new iteration.  Please be patient if the entries become more sporadic, more intense, or — God forbid — more maudlin.  My thanks to each person who reads:  for their loyalty, or, in the least, for their time.   Your comments, your caring, your concern, and your sharing make any effort involved in the creation of this blog completely worthwhile.  Thank you. 

Happy Holidays.  Be well, be joyful, be at peace.

F everyone’s I: The photos in this gallery were shot, as you see them (unretouched, unmanipulated, unedited) with my trusty but quite rudimentary Canon Powershot while standing on the porch of Angel’s Haven at Park Delta Bay, in the California Delta, Isleton, California, on 06 December 2019.