I don't know how twisted it is for me to be wringing another blog post out of my soon-to-be-ending life of leisure when maybe I ought to be out in my garden breathing deeply, absorbing the evening into my skin and hair and lungs so the moment doesn't pass by unnoticed before the long rains settle in. At any rate, in honor of Labor Day I'm sitting near an open door and typing out some vignettes as they occur to me, enjoying the mild air and swatting at the occasional mosquito.
Exactly ten years ago I threw a few extraneous items into a suitcase and drove from southern California to this beautiful spot in the Pacific Northwest. Having decided earlier that day to leave my 21-year marriage, I phoned my brother on September 4, 1994, feeling distraught and terrified by the drastic free-fall change I was about to undertake.
"Can I come up?" I sobbed into the phone without offering any particular explanation or detail. "Is it ok if I stay with you?" I was unaware that my brother also was in the midst of making a difficult decision between two job offers that would lead him on divergent career paths.
"Uh, sure," he answered distractedly, little realizing that his crazy sister intended to move, not visit. "Stay as long as you like."
So I cranked up my a/c and left California that scorchingly hot, windy, electrically charged Labor Day weekend wearing a pair of short shorts and a sleeveless top, neglecting to bring anything resembling, for instance, an umbrella, closed-toed shoes, a jacket, interview clothing, or a resumé. I never faintly imagined that a scant month later a light layer of frost would coat my windshield in the mornings and that my brother would have started his new job in another town.
Still, they say, from the power of jumping into the water, the frog can float. In this case, she only barely avoided emitting an oafish, foundering CROAK with a whole bunch of help from her friends.
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I don't know where I'm going with this, but that trip reminds me of a family vacation we took when my dad's parents were living on the southern coast of Oregon. We drove up highway 101 from San Diego county about 35 years ago in the 1960-something Volkswagen camper our grandparents had given us. That was an adventure to remember. Seven of us slept cramped in that little camper van on the seemingly interminable drives up and back. As I recall, our parents lay at night on the stiff plastic cushion with our sister, who couldn't have been any older than my Grandson #2 is now. My three brothers found various airless hidey holes to sleep in on the floor under the bed and in the aisle. My own spot was painfully incommodious, but there simply wasn't another smidge of sleeping space to be found inside that van. In the aisle between the two front seats (this was in the days before seat belts were compulsory) sat a molded plastic chair with chrome legs where my sister rode. The sides of that chair curved forward from the back and up from the seat in a protective little arc that lovingly cupped a sitter's derriere; but, like those lovely looking park benches currently designed to dissuade the homeless, it cruelly tortured anyone foolish enough to try to recline across it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't think I've mentioned Novet Time yet, and I probably should introduce that concept before proceeding further. Whenever we embarked on a family drive, it took some time to assemble the necessary clothing and provisions, not to mention bathe, dress, and herd everyone out to the car. Well, let me back up a bit more, all the way to my parents' wedding. Neither of them was known by their collective parents for being, shall we say, early to bed and early to rise. At the wedding, one of my grandfathers skeptically queried the other, "So who do you think will wake the other one up in the morning?" It turned out to be a valid question. But anyway, once we were all awake and more or less functional, which may or may not have happened before noon (and definitely not without pouring multiple cups of coffee into the adults), it took awhile to get everything and everyone packed into the car. Oh! Did I say everyone? I meant everyone but our dad. After we kids had waited out in the driveway for a while, sweating and itching in the baking heat and fighting with each other and periodically ripping our legs painfully off the hot plastic of the seat, he would emerge from the house, slip cheerfully into the driver's seat, and turn the key in the ignition. We'd sit there for a few minutes while the engine idled, holding our breath and praying for him to please please please put the car into gear and back out of the driveway so we could cool ourselves with the breeze from the windows (and fight over who got to sit by the window, of course). But then he'd turn the car off and disappear wordlessly back into the house. This would invariably happen several times while he suffered the effects of all the coffee he had drunk earlier, sometimes taking advantage of the peace and quiet inside the house to read a magazine article or solve a puzzle while we waited out there in the car, which from our point of view very much resembled sort of a cross between a cockfighting pit and an oven. Sometimes our mom would get tired of waiting out there with us in the heat, listening to us bicker and cry; and she would stomp off into the house to convince him to put down the magazine and come on back out to the car.
So now you'll understand why we only made it as far as Santa Barbara, normally a four hour drive from our house, the first night of our trip. Our dad, who'd been nodding off along the way, finally and grudgingly gave in to our mother's increasingly shrill demands and pulled the van into a deserted parking lot where we made camp, of sorts. A very short time later, we were awakened by flashing lights and our parents were questioned by one of the city's finest, who took his time curiously shining a large flashlight back and forth over all our blankets and clothes and food bags and into each of our sleepy eyes. Eventually he received an all clear on his radio and grudgingly informed us that we would have to get our sleep elsewhere. Sworn to keep the city free of riffraff like us, he politely escorted us to the edge of town before accelerating off at warp speed into the night.
That's my foremost memory from that trip to Brookings, other than an extended practical joke I played on my youngest brother for far longer than it was actually amusing. Nobody killed me, though I'm sure they probably contemplated the odds of getting away with it. When we got to Oregon we did everything there was to do in that small, slow place, like picking berries and hanging out with our grandfather at the harbor to watch for crab boats and feeding the seagulls and listening to the low voice of the foghorn warning invisible ships at sea. And warming our dried up little hearts with our grandmother's wonderful food when we got back to their house. Oh, how she could cook! She knew I adored coquilles St Jacques, so we often started our meal with those, toasted and bubbling from the broiler. She also remembered how much I loved leg of lamb, so that appeared on the table with satisfying frequency as well, all brown and crusty at the edges and dripping with juice, studded with garlic and watercress on the side. Delicate, velvety flageolets (and the story of how she smuggled the seeds into the country under her coat), her homemade wheat bread and hard, cold chunks of raw butter, mashed potatoes and carrots. Whatever green vegetable was fresh and in season. And the wine, and the stories--of school and work and family and war, joy, and bitterness and trips across the sea--all long ago and far, far away. After finishing with a sampling of cheeses (and the story of her father-in-law and the cheese that was so strong you had to hold the table), as well as dessert and tea, it was almost always necessary to stagger over to a window, discreetly undo one's top button, and doze.
The last of which is what I very much need to do now.
