Aloha Wiz

Shirley dances with death, smiling of course.

Shirley Fong-Torres practiced a peculiar style of driving, down roads as well as through life. It probably suited her sense of direction that the last man in her life was there, for over 14 years, as a very long distance relationship.

I met her, by kismet, in the Spokane airport in April of 1997. My hotel had forgotten my reservation and courtesy van while United Airlines had lost her baggage. The first thing I ever heard her say was “Don’t turn your back on me, I am a problem that wants to be in your face.” We decided to share a taxi to Coeur d’Alene Resort and impressed each other with our bizarre travel habits. She explained her method for extracting comps from airlines. I told her that I had flown from Des Moines to Spokane via Chicago and San Francisco, to accumulate extra legs toward elite status and a free ticket promotion. I also explained that a long layover in San Francisco allowed me to catch a Giants game. She said she lived in San Francisco most of her life and, never having been to a Giants game, wondered who the weird people were who did go. “Good to finally meet you,” she said.

For most of the next seven years, we spent at least one week every month visiting each other in San Francisco, Des Moines or other destinations. The following seven years I averaged just six trips to San Francisco a year. Longer but fewer.

In addition, we took 60 other trips together, to 45 different places on three continents. Three of the most common repeat destinations will surprise no one who knew her - Vegas, Reno and Honolulu. However, the most common repeated destination probably will - San Antonio. Most of those trips were taken during Shirley’s Country Western era when Dale Watson became her favorite singer, and a good friend, and she traded her Mercedes in on a red pickup truck. Tina correctly identified that truck “as a phase Mom’s going through.” Shirley responded “You’re doing such a good job raising me honey.”

The first seven years we often scheduled trips to coincide with baseball games, particularly on bobblehead nights. For those, we stood in line through hours of rain in Seattle and 105 degree temperatures in Phoenix, Shirley keeping everyone else entertained with her banter. She became an instant baseball fan at her first game - Giants vs. Dodgers. She was attracted initially by the trash talk between fans of the two teams. I had to restrain her at times in Los Angeles.

The second seven years, we scheudled all our trips, even mine to San Francisco, around babysitting opportunites with her grand daughters. There was no where either of us world travelers would rather have been than with Maggie & Stella. Their different personalities mirrored our own. Maggie was the wiser, more cautious one, capable of deep deductive reasoning at a young age. Stella was a bundle of irrepressive joy, more easily distracted but with a keen sense of how to make other people laugh.

One day as we drove over a Pacifica mountain from her valley home to the sea, Stella exclaimed "There's the ocean."

"And the beach," added Maggie.

"Do you girls want to be surfers when you're bigger," I asked.

"I don't think so," Maggie replied, after reflection.

"Really, I always thought one of you would be a surfer girl," I said.

"OK, I'll do it," said Stella.

"Stella, do you know you have to learn how to swim to able to surf?"

"OK, I'll do that too," she replied, without much thought.

I think our long distance, part time relationship suited Shirely better than me. She said she’d tried marriage and was so terrible at it that she would never try it again. She compared it to eating lamb, something else that someone had persuaded her to try one more time than her instincts advised. She preferred a system in which she “renewed my contract one year at a time.“ But nearly every single day for 14 years she insisted on talking to me first thing in her mornings and every single night she insisted that we talk, on chat on the internet, for at least an hour. before I went to sleep. I don’t know of a better way to get to know someone.

Shirley had trust issues. Because of that I always said goodbye as “I love you, always.” Sometimes she’d respond “Or till some skinny young slut calls.” In the last year, for the first time, she occasionally said “I always love you too. Just don’t think it’s good for you to know it.”

We built a surrogate family our first seven years. Others call them stuffed animals, she called them “kids.” We adopted a new kid in every city we visited.

The last time she took an official census there were 76 whose names she could remember. All had unique voices. Wroburlto (who added the W to his spelling in exchange for jewelry at a W Hotel) was the most complex. He was her only “bipolar bear.” He traveled everywhere with us and often became a major player in our travel writing. She loved Wro the most because he was the most difficult but she never told him. She always told him “I love Happi more,” provoking fits in Wro.

Wro overcame the mood swings to become semi famous. He was a much requested guest on the Gene Burns show. Public relations companies would include Wro’s name on invitations to press trips and strangers would ask to talk to him. He usually asked them for jewelry first and they almost always were happy to oblige him. Shirley would scold him but accept it. Wro was also well dressed. Shirley sewed his wardrobe before she discovered the BABW stores. Then she, or Wro, wrote the CEO demanding style changes. The company CEO responded and began sending new clothes to Wro for his approval. The company once invited Wro to a new store opening in a new mall. He was introduced to the developer of that mall who said “My you’re a very old bear.” The BABW CEO responded “We like to say ‘much loved.’” The developer said “That would be the correct euphemism I guess.” Wro corrected him. “No, moron, that would be good manners.” The developer laughed hard and then bought Wro a new jacket.

Shirley did not have a childhood or adolescence like most kids do. She said that as child she actually thought her name was the Chinese phrase for "wash rice," as that was the most common way her mother addressed her. She said that she would be slapped in the face for laughing or smiling too much, or for winning at games. Irrepressible, Shirley refused to stop smiling or making al the rest of us laugh with her. "You should have a sit com" was a frequent comment left on her tour reviews. She also never stopped winning at games, carrying an uncanny lucky streak to casino after casino, but not to hospitals.

Notice the angel on her left shoulder.

During the last 15 years she experienced simulated, vicarious childhood. The last eight years, she finally made “best friends forever,” with Maggie and Stella, “Aglaia and Euphrosyne” as we called them for the different ways they incarnated the personas of the Graces. She would show their photos to anyone who asked and many who didn’t. When people would say “Do you get to see them often?“ Shirley might respond “No. Turns out there is a thin line that separates devoted grand mothering from stalking and I’m not really good at boundaries.“ She often said that those years were the happiest time of her life, "except for each time the girls leave."

God grant that it carries over to wherever it is that He has summoned the Wok Wiz. The only way I can accept that there might be a higher justice in the universe requires that Shirley is now in a better place - and the rest of us are stuck here in a world terribly diminished by her absence.

It is a sad day in Iowa and San Francisco today but it’s a glorious day in heaven: Stir fry is now being served there, with sassy love.