Road Trip, Days 1-3

Day 1

Beautiful day of fog and eerily warm weather on the central coast.  Tightly wedged into my ordinary car (which is not as zingy as Robert’s, but does have the advantage of being cheaper to fuel), we made the now-familiar drive down 101: past Salinas and Gonzales and Greenfield, past exits to Fort Hunter Liggett and Paso Robles, down the precariously steep Cuesta Grade into San Luis Obispo, through Pismo Beach and Nipomo (“Gary Bang Harley Davidson”) and the seaside splendor of Santa Barbara (which is starting to look like a strip mall for rich people).  On to Ventura (which always makes me think of Tori Amos) and the gloriously named western suburbs of LA: Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Calabasas.

Eagle Rock is a funny little corner of Los Angeles: still full of neighborhood shops and small, well-kept bungalows that haven’t been McMansionized.  It’s a neighborhood that isn’t particularly pretty or quaint, but it’s a neighborhood—it has that kind of feel.  You can eat at the Oinkster or Auntie Em’s Kitchen, where the red velvet cupcakes are divine.  There’s a Baptist church, a Christian Assembly, a church for Seventh Day Adventists, and St. Dominic’s.  I overheard someone at Swork Coffee say that most of the parishioners at St. Dominic’s are Filipino.

We had dinner with both of my kids at our favorite area restaurant, Café Beaujolais, whose authentic French food is served by authentic French waiters.  One always wonders if they are out-of-work actors.  I ordered a chicken leg stuffed with cheese.  “I have a big one for you,” our waiter crooned Frenchly.  I said the only possible thing there was to say—“I like big ones”—which thoroughly mortified my daughter.  We split a bottle of wine.  This marks the first time I have ever had wine in public with both of my kids.

Lots of fun conversation, which involved discussions of relationships, school, work, west-coast swing, whether my daughter should text her boyfriend (who was partying with fraternity brothers in Vegas), why my son should date Jennifer Connelly, should she ever become available, how I have a huge personality and interrupt people when I am comfortable with them.  And how I am quirky. 

Now it is 1 AM and I am suffering from the insomnia that arises from a combination of an unfamiliar bed, the roar of an overzealous air conditioning unit, and the peculiar-but-ultimately-gratifying realization that my children think of me as an actual person rather than just their mother

Day 2

We drove down to Del Mar because Robert is training to ride his bike cross-country in a year or so, and we wanted to scope out the beginning of the trip from the safety of a car.  We wound our way through endless housing developments, none of which existed when I lived in San Diego in 1979 with my then-soon-to-be-husband.  Eventually, we ended up in Poway (“the city in the country” said the sign, which was lying, because “the country” is actually “the Godforsaken desert that no one in his right mind would live in”).  More driving up hills studded with brush and some sort of burnished grass.  Julian, at 4200 feet, is home to Mom’s Pies and a crowded biker bar, but we couldn’t linger. 

Onward through hot, desolate, mournful desert.  Twenty cars all afternoon.  Temperature hit 112 at 1:30 and remained there for hours. 

We passed a camel farm (selling milk, cheese, and rides for children).  It was like Afghanistan, except for the music we listened to: CDs of Buddy Guy and Andrea Bocceli, a couple of decent rock stations.  Weirdly, just east of Yuma, we heard part of a documentary on Count Basie narrated by Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Treme).

After descending the mountains east of Julian, we turned onto a road with a sign noting that it was the southern stagecoach route of 1849.  Apparently, no one has been on it since then.   Forty-seven miles from the turn-off to the town of Ocotillo.  The only people we saw were some Border Patrol officers about a mile outside of town.

I’m always fascinated by the kind of terrain that people find appealing.  I know lots of people who like the desert.  I do not.  I like farmland: old houses with porches, rolling, green hills which speak to abundance and self-sufficiency.  The desert is terrifying and angry and sullen: a surly teenager in a nasty snit.  Halfway through the afternoon, I started to wonder what I would do if one of us had a heart attack or (almost worse) if the car blew a tire.  What I realized is that there’s no margin for error out there.  One mistake and that’s pretty much it.  You’re done.  (In my head, I’m hearing my friend Jim saying, “A roast is done.  You are finished.”  But in 112-degree weather, I’m sticking with “done.”)

Robert is discouraged.  We have to find another way for him to get over the mountains.  More research necessary.

Billboards outside of Yuma: “Do You Miss Me Yet?” (over a picture of a smug-looking George Bush; “Remember When We Really Had Hope and Change?” (over a picture of Ronald Reagan).

Outside of Tucson, a jagged mountain looks like an open-mouthed fish emerging from the sea.    Who the hell lives here?  At 9 PM it was 100 degrees.  At Texas Road House, where we went for steaks, enormous TVs broadcast the Arizona-Iowa game.  Men and women all over the restaurant were riveted, silent.  I am so glad I don’t live here.

(Lest anyone think I am incredibly self-deluded, I would last about three days on a farm.  I am not built for chores that involve sweating, tractors, or smells.  I would like the pie, though.)

Day 3

Temperature as we loaded the car at 9 AM: 97 degrees.

Drove past Tucson developments in which all the houses look like clay adobes.  Lots of Saguaro cacti.  Sky a brilliant blue, except at the horizon, where it was tinted sepia, as though it had been singed.

Near the New Mexico border, we noticed a billboard advertising a winery in Fort Bowie, Arizona.  We couldn’t pass it up.  We drove into a sad, dusty town, past metal trailer homes, a wooden house painted pink, in the shape of a teepee (with windows), boarded up, a For Sale sign out front.  The only thing that seemed to be thriving was a beautiful orchard of tall, thick pecan trees. 

We found a little store by way of a sandwich board out front: “Wine, fudge, pecans.”  

Nothing else about the building looked remotely like a retail establishment.  But we went in.  There were shelves of wine made from the grapes of a local winery, “chocolate merlot” and “caramel chardonnay” sauces for ice cream, and a variety of fudge home-made on the premises.

I skipped the mint julep fudge and settled on peanut butter chocolate.  Quite wonderful.  We bought a  syrah and can’t wait to drink it at home.

New Mexico was all sky and puckered clouds.  Crossed the Continental Divide, where successive billboards advertised a trading post selling moccasins, saddle blankets, turquoise jewelry, Mexican pottery, cowboy boots, porcelain dolls (“from $18.99”), and leather whips.  Far-off, smooth-sided mountains with severe peaks looked like pyramids.  Temperatures in the high 90s all afternoon.  Happily, we had good CDs: Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Smith, the best of Sly and the Family Stone.  And just outside of Las Cruces, El Paso’s KOFX 92.3, playing 60s R & B.  Sang along to “Wooly Bully” and “Papa Was A Rolling Stone.”

Seen on the back of a semi: JESUS CHRIST IS MY LORD AND SAVIOR, NOT A SWEAR WORD.

Reached El Paso mid-afternoon.  Situated directly across the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico, where crumbling shacks and huts crowd the riverbank.  From the freeway, we saw an enormous Mexican flag flying proudly in the near-distance. 

Once out of El Paso, we drove through more high desert, then mountains, then more desert.  “Drive Friendly—The Texas Way,” warned the signs.  The clouds were different from those over New Mexico: scattered, but thick and dark.  Serious Border Patrol guys held us up for a few minutes while their dogs sniffed our car.  We had to open our cooler.  The agent, wearing a bullet-proof vest, seemed disappointed at our cache of Crystal Geyser Sparkling Waters and waved us on.

We saw a rainbow and what looked like dry lightning.  At sunset, the light against the clouds was very Sistine Chapel-y, which went well with the Marfa NPR show featuring West Texas swing from the 1930s.  We drove in the dark for a time, coming to rest in Pecos, Texas.  I can hear the semis out on the interstate, heading back to El Paso, or north to Odessa, where just today, a Vietnam Vet and rabid Republic of Texas supporter was finally captured by Rangers after a shootout. 

What I Don't Blog About

Someone I know casually through my blog said recently, “Your life is so great.”  There was something about the tone that implied that 1) having a great life is unseemly and 2) I should shut up already.

I have a wonderful life.  I am happy.  But that is not to say that I don’t have problems, challenges, sadness, fear, generalized ennui, crankiness, angst, and moments of supreme irritation.  I just choose not to blog about those things, usually.  I’m not sure why.  I guess I exorcise those demons in my fiction, and with my friends-in-real-life.  Nobody who really knows me can accuse me of unfailing optimism.

Here are a few of the things I don’t blog about:

--anything that violates the desired privacy of people I love;

--anything I would be embarrassed for my kids to read;

--anything associated with chronic, treatable-but- nonetheless-extremely-unpleasant illness;

--politics (unless I can’t help myself);

--anything that would necessitate a lot of swear words (unless I can’t help myself);

--anything that lays bare the truly ugly, mind-numbingly-hideous-but-with-any-luck-fleeting thoughts I wake up with at 3 am and gnaw on until the sun comes up.

A note on swearing: I love to swear.  I believe in swearing.  But I write for children, and this blog is linked to my website.  So I try to keep a civil tongue.

Which is not to say that I didn’t swear in front of my own children.

 

When my daughter was three, she stormed in the back door, slammed it, then opened it again and yelled outside to her brother, “I’m never playing with you again, you idiot asshole dick!”

Okay, I couldn’t help myself.

Thoughts on Fall, School, and Being A Good Girl Who Occasionally Broke the Rules

I love the fall.  Coming as I do from California, I can’t say it has anything to do with the leaves.  I think it’s a holdover from my childhood, when I loved school.

I loved everything about school: order; the comfort of being told exactly what to do (even if I was told by Mrs. Parker, who had nine fingers, or Miss Pennykamp, who looked just like someone named Miss Pennykamp ought to look); the smell of chalk, the slow tick of the old wall clock toward 2:50; SRA readers, their color-coded bindings gleaming in the box at the back of the classroom (I still remember the one about Roger Bannister); the creak when I pulled up the desktop to retrieve my workbooks; the joy of producing a perfect row of lower-case, cursive ‘r’s; the collective ecstasy as we all waited for the film strip to start.

I liked summer well enough.  I especially loved its approach and its first days, which coincided with my much-longed-for birthday.  I had no use for Independence Day, a holiday that went unheralded by my parents, who were averse to crowds, traffic, hotdogs, the out-of-doors, and almost all manner of celebration.  But I did enjoy July.  We belonged to a swim club at the old Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, which, in those days, boasted a Jacuzzi, a sauna, and a high-dive.  My pre-adolescent self hadn’t yet learned to fear heights (or much of anything).  I spent my days jumping off the towering board and lying on the cement pool deck, leaving behind at the end of each lazy afternoon a watery, steaming silhouette of myself.

Most of the kids in my Berkeley neighborhood belonged to the Claremont swim club.  In addition to hanging out at the pool, we also liked to sneak up to the hotel’s top floor and slide down the old, covered fire-escape slide.  We only got caught once.  Hotel management was displeased.  But we kept doing it.  I still remember the delirious thrill of slipping into the darkness, defying authority.

At heart, though, I was a conformist.  The life of the rebel was not for me, which was why I so looked forward to the beginning of school, with its newly sharpened pencils, blank notebooks, and uncluttered expectations.  August crawled along.  I couldn’t wait for September, and I still can’t.  The leaves have nothing to do with it.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that I had my moments of school-related bad behavior.  In third grade, I passed a note—intercepted by the dour Miss Roach—to Laurie Bradshaw in which I made an indecorous reference to Batman’s wiener.  And in tenth grade, Bea Treinen and I were made to leave the classroom when another student blew her nose and we couldn’t stop laughing.  So yes, even I experienced the occasional bliss of breaking school rules.  Which, as a law-abiding, rule-bound fifty-three-year-old, I now know was not such a very bad thing.)

Thoughts On the Music In My Ipod

This morning on my jog through the neighborhood, I listened to the following songs on my ipod: “Highway to Hell” (ACDC); “Get Low” (Flo Rida); “Garden Party” (Rick Nelson); “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” (Bobby Womack); “Tired Of Being Alone” (Al Green); “Take Me To the River” (Al Green); “Jungleland” (Bruce Springsteen); “Night Moves” (Bob Seeger); and “Oh, Boy” (Buddy Holly).

These are some of the things I thought about:

--My daughter and I used to drive through Briones Regional Park when she was in high school.  We would listen to a tape she made, and “Highway to Hell” was on it.  We would turn it up loud.

--Robert and I love “Get Low.”  “Them baggy sweat pants/And the Reeboks with the straps/She turned around and gave that big booty a smack.”  It just makes us laugh.  We like the guys in the background.

--No one except for me likes “If You Think You’re Lonely Now.”  No one.  It gives me chills.  It’s religion.  Except I don’t like the lyrics.  They don’t go with the music, which sounds like religion and sex together.

-- My ex-husband and I had a thing for Jennifer Holliday and went to see her whenever she was in the Bay Area.  Al Green opened for her at the Circle Star once.  “Take Me to the River” is just, well, amazing.

--“Jungleland:” Bryn Mawr College.  Freshman year.  Leslie Whitaker’s room on the third floor of Rhoads North.

--In 1977, I was a sophomore in college.  My father was dying. During spring break, I drove from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale with three male friends who were seniors.  (I am glad I got to experience spring break once, but really, once was enough.)  On the trip home, “Night Moves” came on the car radio, and two of my friends high-fived each other.  The air smelled like orange groves.  I have never forgotten.  It’s funny, what manages to worm its way into your brain for all eternity. 

--I imgine that no one else in the world has the same songs on her ipod that I do.  (“Get Low” and “Garden Party”?)  It is probably a reflection of the fact that no two people in the world have quite the same personalities. 

--I am always a little bit embarrassed when other people hear my music.  I used to think it was because I had lousy taste in music.  But now I think it’s because the music you like is so personal—so expressive of who you are—that it feels revelatory, confessional.  Whenever I drive with my window open, I turn the volume on the CD player down.  I just don’t think random truck drivers have to know that I harbor a secret penchant for “Runaround Sue.”

On Debutantes, Bruce Springsteen, and Why We All Need Lockers

Busy working on my next novel, so haven’t written here much in a while.

My thirty-fifth high school reunion is coming up, and one of the characters in my book is (very loosely) based on someone I knew in high school.  So I’ve been thinking a lot about high school, which is something I don’t usually think about all that often.

My high school was located in a very affluent, very small town in northern California.  I moved there at the beginning of eighth grade, which is a terrible time to move anywhere.  I always felt like an outsider: I hadn’t grown up with these people, many of whom had known each other since kindergarten. 

There was a lot of culture shock.  I’d gone to seventh grade in Berkeley, which, in 1970, was awash in hippies.  My new school didn’t have hippies.  It had social-dance class and school-approved sororities and debutantes. 

I cannot say that I liked high school very much, but I wasn’t someone who was abjectedly miserable there.   I had wonderful teachers and friends, some of whom I’m still in touch with today.  My closest friend is someone I went to high school with.  She introduced me to the joy of eating raw cookie dough.  I wrote her from college in Pennsylvania about a singer I liked who was unknown in California.  That was how she found out about Bruce Springsteen.

I think the thing about high school is that most teenagers—not all, but most—are inexperienced in the business of having their hearts trampled.  They haven’t yet learned how to weather anguish.  High school will teach them, if they are lucky.  If they are not lucky, they will have to learn out in the big, bad world, which is a shame, because by then their best friends will have jobs and husbands and children and be too busy to leave sympathetic notes in their lockers when something bad happens. 

In high school, people really care when bad things happen to their friends.  They are really paying attention.  Otherwise, there is just geometry and John Steinbeck to think about.  (Note to teenagers: once you turn 18, you will never think about geometry or John Steinbeck ever again.)

Actually, as we all know, there are no lockers in the big, bad world.  This is too bad.  Lockers were one of the things I liked about high school: a place that was just yours, to be decorated as you chose, where you could unburden yourself of books and binders that would otherwise need to be hauled around all day. 

That is what we all need now: someplace where we can put the heavy things down.

Ano Nuevo State Park

We are lucky enough to live 30 miles south of Ano Nuevo State Park, a preserve comprised of pinniped rookeries, native dunes and coastal terrace prairie habitats, and various inland plant communities, including old growth forest, freshwater marsh, red alder riparian forest and knobcone pine forest.  (So says the website.  My knowledge of the outdoors is limited to impressions related to weather [hot, windy] and smells [grassland: fresh, loamy; elephant seals: really, really bad].)  Today we drove up, passing participants—some in masks, one sporting a pink feather boa—in the AIDS/LifeCycle bike ride—on our way.

We got a map at the Visitors’ Center, a converted dairy barn, and headed out, through fields edged in cattails and bordered at their far edges by thick pines.  To our left: the ocean, littered with whitecaps, an impossible blue.

We passed a pond, the nesting ground for red-winged blackbirds and marsh wrens.

Lots of mock heather, lupine, lizardtail and coyote bush.   (Again, thanks to the website.  When it comes to plants, I [to quote my mother] know from nothing.  I think these yellow flowers are mock heather, but I’m not sure.)

Halfway, we stopped and spoke with a genial ranger, who advised us to stay 25 feet away from the elephant seals.

 

The path gave way to sand dunes.  We trudged on, hearing the bellow of the seals, which convinces you before you ever lay eyes on them that you would have to be some kind of prize idiot to ignore the 25-foot rule.

The seals themselves were sunning on the beach.  They are quite enormous (an impression not well conveyed in the picture).  Occasionally, one of them raised a flipper in the manner of a royal wave.  I wanted to wave back.  The presence of thirty Japanese tourists was inhibiting.

We stood at the viewing stand for a while, reveling in the sun and the sea, the proximity to magnificent animals, the sense that the natural world is glorious beyond description. 

On the drive home, we were quiet, and I knew without asking that we were thinking the same things. 

That we are lucky to live where we can breathe in such beauty. 

And that people—who can turn away unmoved from pictures of pelicans suffocating in oil, who expect their need for fossil fuel to be gratified no matter the costs—can break your heart. 

For Robert, With Love and Thanks

This weekend marks Robert’s and my five-year anniversary.  We met via the Internet, Robert after fifteen years of what he likes to call “power-dating,” I after a dismal four months, during which time I met a variety of men clearly put on this earth to dissuade any woman from even so much as thinking about dating ever again.  Occasionally I wonder about them: what they’re doing now, if any of them found any takers.

 

This is what I would say to them, if I could.

--If you are 70, do not say you want to date women 47 and younger;

--If you are 70, do not say you are 53;

--Do not tell your date that the reason you don’t have any male friends is that men are jealous of how good-looking you are;

--Do not tell your date that you are giving away most of your possessions because “as long as I have my computer and my antique sword, I’ll be fine”;

--Do not meet your date through a Jewish dating service and then, over coffee, respond to her story about a skinflint by saying, “He’s Jewish, right?”;

--Do not call your date forty-five minutes after she tells you what an asshole you are for making anti-semitic remarks and start to tell her about a dream you had;

--Do not neglect to mention that you owe the IRS $100,000 in back taxes and also have a girlfriend;

--Do not initiate first-date banter by reminiscing about your ex-wife, who is bi-polar and likes to say she lives to make her ex’s life a living hell;

--Do not spend ten minutes explaining why the woman you are looking for must have clean fingernails;

--Do not, during the course of an introductory phone conversation, announce that you are wearing a Versace suit and a thong;

--Do not then say, “You like that, don’t you?”

To the other women these men have dated, I would say, Do not give up.  Because the world is wide and wonderful, the heart is resilient, and the extraordinary and the impossible can present themselves at any moment.