It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Rap, River, and Rainbow

The calendar reminds me that we approach the season of chaos.  I’ve written before about the rhythm of the school year, particularly that of the Waldorf schools.  Though I’m not inherently a particularly structured person and my thoughts tend to jump from A to Q to 42, parenting has taught me to appreciate the value of structure and the discipline a framework provides.

Each of my children’s classes has had events or moments that bookended this school year.  The kindergarten began the year with their capes and swords of light, preparing to face the dragons of development.   They will close out the last week of school with a trip to the river, braving the chilly water and sailing wooden boats they have made with their own hands.  The third grade’s year has a more subtle rhythm: that of the season and of the harvest as they have tended their garden, learned to cook the food they have grown, watched the shearing of sheep, and learned to card and spin the wool.  (You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a 9 year old very seriously discuss fiber crimp while petting a sheep.)  But, even for them, the end of the year is a celebration, proof of their accomplishments – today, according to rumor, they will make cake and ice cream in cooking class.  And the sixth grade?  The sixth grade has completed the cycle with perfect symmetry.

In September, it was a rough and tumble class, pulsing with a fire of their own, that journeyed to Mt. Lassen to study geology.  In the fall, they were at the beginning of the metamorphosis of puberty, fluctuating wildly from child to teen at a moment’s notice.  Though they were a great and polite group of kids in the fall, there was, at times, an almost feral energy that mirrored the rugged mountains and geologic turbulence of the volcano.

We have just returned from another camping trip, closing the year with a visit to Cache Creek Canyon Regional Park.  Like the rounder hills of the Coastal Range, the children have matured.  Some of their rough edges have been worn away; the drama of their evolution has quieted.  Like the landscape, they are anything but static, yet rather than eruptions of steam, we saw the trickling cascades of miniature rock falls.  Meals and activities ran smoothly, even in the face of Wednesday’s rainstorm and subsequent flooding of a tent.  Changing the direction of the day was no longer (as Caitlin would say) like “herding cats with bagpipes.”

Were they perfect angels?  Don’t be silly; they’re 12 year olds.  There is still a wide range of maturity within the class and within each of the kids.  A few experiments in pyrotechnics still needed to be curtailed.  Two pairs of stray and sodden socks went unclaimed.  It was occasionally necessary to point out that rocks thrown into the river should be directed away from one’s classmates.  But something has shifted.

As a class, they have learned (thank you, Dr. Tan) to accept order as a natural part of things rather than a burden imposed by authority.  Their energy is (for now, at least) directed toward meeting challenges rather than resisting structure.  This will probably shift back in a year or two; eighth graders study rebellions for a reason.

Yet, on this trip, rather than whining about assignments, we saw focused work and rehearsals for their Talent program and “Zodiac Rap.”  Well, mostly focused – there were a few comments of “we don’t rap.”  But the talent performances were as engaging and as varied as the kids and showcased their uniqueness.   We saw a dance routine performed by a group of friends that almost always seems to function as a unit.  We were treated to an engaging storytelling set by a future Garrison Keillor or David Sedaris.  We saw a magic show accomplished with poise and panache despite an initial flub or two – and all the more impressive because of it.  A budding novelist gave a synopsis of her work-in-progress and displayed her fabulous illustrations to the delight of her classmates.  Forget American Idol: the song and acoustic guitar performance by one of the girls would put most of those wanna-bes to shame.  She even impressed the professional singer/songwriter that was the camp host.  And, of course, near and dear to my heart was the vocal/flute duet of “Rainbow Connection” sung by Caitlin and played by one of her friends.  Though they weren’t note perfect, I loved their performance for its sheer bravery: the flautist in question has only been playing for a year and I know for a fact that the music for the piece was only downloaded for her a couple of weeks ago, and to see my introvert daughter stand and sing solo in front of her class was a delight. 

They were all about bravery this trip, these kids.  Not the ‘I dare you’ sort of bravado, but a quieter ‘I can do this’ acceptance of challenge.  Tents were set up with minimal adult involvement.  Raps were written according to assignment and performed with a day of prep.  Even the least athletic joined in a volleyball game.  And currents were swum.

Our campground had an amenity one doesn’t expect in Yolo County – a beach, a real, sandy beach.  Bracketed by rapids above and below, our section of Cache Creek had a shallow, quiet bend near the beach, a moderate current one could cross to still water on the other bank, and a more intense current just downriver from the upper rapids.  Much of the trip was spent testing their strength, skill, and courage against the current.  A few of the stronger swimmers tried the crossing first, at the lower, slower current, adjusting their trajectory for the river’s flow.  Once the whole class had made the crossing, and a couple of the adults showed that even grownups could do it, they were off to a new challenge, swimming the slightly faster waters and even riding the current back to the slower waters.

The waters came from above as well as below.  On the second day of the trip, we were treated to a five hour deluge that resulted in one total failure of tent, and one failure of ground cloth (mine).  Yet, despite the clothing and sleeping bags spread on rocks and cars to dry, despite the hours in the tents in the morning, we heard few complaints, and if anyone said, “I want to go home,” they were well out of adult earshot.

Around 3:30, a rainbow arced over the hills to the east of us.  I yelled to my daughter, “Hey, Caitlin a rainbow!”  She looked up, shrugged, and focused her eyes on the net.  The child who said, “I can’t play volleyball.  I can’t do sports with balls.  I always get a bloody nose,” was ready to serve.  And, maybe, that was the real magic.

Tasting the Fruits

The last bite of the carrot salad lingers on my tongue – tart and crisp with the yogurt, and brightly sweet with a hidden warmth that spreads from the spoonful of chutney I stirred in.   A final sip of lemon water washes away the salad, and with it goes the tensions of the last month. 

Forgive the food references this morning; I’ve been re-reading M.F.K. Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me after reading an intriguing new biography of Fisher, An Extravagant Hunger by Anne Zimmerman.  My first journey through The Gastronomical Me took place nearly three years ago.  I picked it up in a San Francisco bookstore while alone in the City for a conference.  Fisher’s exploration of her growth and her sensual enjoyment of the world through her experiences with food seemed to perfectly mirror my solitary week exploring the culinary delights of that foggy city.  Just as I dressed in a black skirt and pearl necklace for a four-course dinner alone with my book, delighting as much in watching the people around me as in the feel of pate in my mouth, she wrote of crossing the Atlantic on her own, of solitary meals in France, and of discovering herself through her enjoyment of food.  The quote in the book’s preface spoke to me at a time when I felt that I was at last reaching an understanding of my adult self.  “To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.” –Santayana

That was not my first business trip alone, and I had been an adult for two decades, but for whatever reason, that was the week that I first began to ‘take the measure of [my] powers.’  It was one of the first times that I saw myself as directing my own life rather than living for the approval and pleasure of others. 

This most recent encounter with M.F.K. Fisher comes at the end of a couple of months in which my meals have too often consisted of such staples as: two Bao from Costco, microwaved and eaten over the counter with a handful of cashews and a couple of dates; or a grilled cheese sandwich on white sandwich bread, accompanied by a clump of chips.  My energies have been directed goal-ward with little left for inward maintenance.  Even the things which normally center me have this month gone toward other purposes: painting – auction, decorating – auction and Sierra’s party, writing – money or business building, cooking – sustenance only.

What I hadn’t realized, until Fisher’s loving descriptions of meals, friends, and family once more penetrated the fog of my mind, was that I have been living – and eating – therapeutically rather than preventatively.  I know better, of course.  I know the benefits, to myself, and to those around me, of living with intent, of seeking the foods, people, and activities that will make me feel good, rather than seeking out palliatives once I feel bad.  Instead of taking care of myself, eating light, flavorful meals that will sustain me through the chaos, I have waited until monsters were gnawing at my stomach lining and emotions, and then downed too-large portions of the sweet, salty, and doughy foods that make me ‘feel better.’  Even though I no longer have a job that mandates short nails and tears up my hands, my nails remain unpolished and have scarcely seen a file in 60 days.  The extra glass of wine with dinner tastes good and dulls the stress, but it also packs in the calories and leaves me feeling heavy and slow well into the next morning.

It is past time for me to stop, breathe, and focus on eating the foods and doing the things that help keep me from “feeling bad” in the first place.  It is time to run because it clears my head, centers, and energizes me, not because I want to lose weight.  It is time to prepare even meals I will eat alone lovingly, with consideration for myself and for those I feed.  It is time to be aware of, and to take pleasure in, each bite, and to stop when the bites become automatic or the food tastes of sawdust.  It is time to take moments in the day to breathe, to focus on my place in the world, and to give myself enough respite during the day so that I don’t reach the end wrung out, capable only of flopping into a pool of Jello on the couch.  As life presses me with new challenges, it is time to embrace the biggest challenge of all – to live.

Looping

 The Foundational Theory of Chronodiegetics: Within a science fictional space, memory and regret are, when taken together, the set of necessary and sufficient elements required to produce a time machine.-- from  How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe  by Charles Yu

The leaves are morphing and falling around my time machine.  The swishing of bicycle tires through damp leaves and the smell of wet asphalt pull across two decades. Driving down Covell Boulevard in Davis yesterday, on my way to collect the children parented by my present self, I realized that the city of Davis, itself, is in a way my time capsule.  I last lived in Davis between the ages of 18 and 26.  So regrets, yeah, I have a few.  If there is anyone who has managed to travel that expanse of early adulthood without regret, I take off my non-existent hat to him/her/it.  However, in my time machine, the memory drive is the stronger engine.

This set of musings came about while I was contemplating my forthcoming write-up of an interview with the terrific Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and searching for a lede.  The lede still eludes me, hence this rambling blog post of procrastination.  Part of my problem in writing up the interview resembles the same difficulty I had in reviewing the book as much as I loved it.  Yu, drat him, hits too close to home with his wry insights. 

Of course a person would choose to revisit the worst day of his life if given time travel.  That might not be the first destination, but it would make the top five, easy.  That’s what we do with our past – pick it apart, unravel it, looking for patterns, missteps, course-corrections.  We “what if.”  What if I had studied more?  What if I had changed my major?  What if I had thought before saying that?  What if I had stayed home that night?  On and on, we analyze and recriminate, until we find ourselves looping through what Yu calls the “Present Indefinite.”  Unable to move forward, we revisit our past, continually mining it for clues to illuminate the people we have become and the messy lives we inhabit.

Memory and regret drive our time machines.  They influence the choices we make and the things/places/people/situations we avoid.  Before we moved back to Davis, when I came into town, I would visit my old haunts – walk through campus, the Arboretum, past my old apartments.  I wallowed in memory.  Yet, since we returned here in September, I find myself confining my wanderings in town to areas that have been more a part of my life as wife and mother than as student: home to school, grocery store, Farmer’s Market, the occasional restaurant (not generally one that existed in the old days).  I wandered onto campus once to do some research in the Health Sciences Library (at the western fringe of the University); I jogged once past the house where I lived in vet school; and I have rarely driven by any of my old abodes.  I think, like the protagonist in How to Live Safely, I sense some danger inherent to mingling my past and present lives.  I don’t think that my past self is likely to shoot her future (my present), at least not literally, but some part of me seems reluctant to let the two play together.

Perhaps that is for the best.  Memory and regret are good teachers, but at some point, it is necessary to graduate into one’s own future.

Note: I still have no idea how I’m going to write the interview, but perhaps my future self will come up with something in a day or so.

Smoke, Fire, and Change

Scent ties to memory.  The campfire smoke will wash from my hair in another shower or two.  The memories will linger, blending with the smoke of other campfires, other marshmallows, other children’s voices, other tents rustling and pulsing with barely contained energy.  The smoke will fade; the memories will remain, tied with thousands of others to that smell.

Where there is smoke, there is fire.  Cliché, fine.  And mostly true, but fire exists without smoke.  Fire burns, but it also melts, cracks, ignites, and metamorphoses.  In the sixth grade in the Waldorf curriculum, our children study geology.  As the fires of change burn and erupt within them, they discover the shaping of the earth through fire.  For Waldorf schools in Northern California, this means a field trip to Mt. Lassen.  There were classes from one other Waldorf school and one Waldorf-inspired charter school besides ours on the mountain this week.

I wasn’t supposed to chaperone this trip.  I should have been working, set in my routine.  But, this has been a period of shifting for me as well.  Our move, the crack in my metacarpal bone -- the plates of our lives have jolted, reshaping the routine.  I was the working mother, the one who never had kids over for playdates, who never volunteered in the classroom, who rarely went on field trips.  My involvement with school came in bursts, projects that could be taken home, completed in my isolated schedule.  That has changed this fall.  This morning I looked at my husband.  “When was the last weekday that we had all of our children and no one else’s?”  “Monday.”  “No, last Wednesday.” “No. Wait.  That was the day we had…”  We finally realized that the answer was, ‘before school started.’  Years ago, when Caitlin was a baby, I attempted stay-at-home-motherhood.  I failed.  Trapped, bored, depressed, I felt completely inadequate – a failure.  But, the fires burn, the plates shift, the crust cracks.

This time around, things have changed.   I am surrounded by people living similar lives.  My children and their peers have progressed to stages of creativity, eloquence, and curiosity, making them entertaining companions.  And, admittedly, I have the luxury of knowing that my hand will heal, and that this phase of my life will pass into memory.

Though each of these moments with my kids – playdates, haircuts, watching small legs pumping the swing slung from the tree in the front yard – has meaning, the memories of this recent foray into the woods will linger long.  The sixth grade is, and always has been, a special class.  Even within a school of high-energy, bright children, these kids are well-known (notorious?).  I have heard them called a “challenging” class, with the tinge to the word that suggests an adversity in the challenge.  Challenging?  You bet.  Like the mountains in which we spent the last 48 hours, they are volatile, rugged, beautiful, and dangerous to take for granted.  And well worth the effort to explore.  This is a class of leaders; few in this group are docile, few are complacent, and few take anything at face value.

But this is more than a class.  Perhaps it is a result of the small class size, maybe it stems from their active and activity-based curriculum, or maybe it is just their nature, but these kids are family.  Even now, as the hormones begin to surge beneath the crust of childhood, my daughter and her classmates interact almost more as siblings than as friends.  The bonds, the rivalries, the name-calling, and the support against the outside all have the taint and glow of family.  Though the faces have shifted in the years that this group has been together, it is difficult in this class to tell the biologic siblings from the scholastic ones.

And yet, the dynamic is changing.  The make-believe games of a few years ago have shifted into “Truth or Dare” and “Would You Rather.”  On the second night of the trip, the dire phrase “spin the bottle” emanated from one of the larger tents.  (Further investigation revealed that the proposed game was “hug spin-the-bottle” because “the real kind is just gross.”)  Throughout the trip, the other chaperones and I watched these kids surge between childhood and adolescence – debating the merits of explicit vs. non-explicit downloads from iTunes one moment and finagling marshmallows for breakfast the next.  (If your child claims to have roasted marshmallows in the morning, it is a vicious lie; no responsible chaperones would permit that sort of thing!)  They are old enough to sleep in tents without an adult and young enough to need reminding to use the bathroom.  They set up tents with minimal supervision, yet can’t remember to wear shoes around the campsite.  They can hike up a steep trail of cinder and ash, but some are still confused about making (and packing!) their own sandwiches.  They are young enough to brave the frigid waters of a mountain lake, but old enough to panic at the scritch of a tent zipper while changing clothes.

Though many in this class have been together for years, this is their first year with this teacher.  Although the standard practice in Waldorf schools is for the teacher to matriculate through the grades with the children, through varying flukes of coincidence, this class has never been with the same teacher for more than two years.  Mike and I tease Caitlin that Voldemort wanted to teach her class, and so there is a curse.  It is a natural fit, though, for them to have a new teacher as they move into adolescence.  With this new expansion and turbulence of their minds and bodies, it is fitting, I think, for them to have a new guide, and one who can combine a love of the arts with the strong background in science that they need in order to make sense out of this chaotic world as they shuffle toward the edge of adulthood.  In their classroom prep for the Mt. Lassen trip, the kids learned the science behind the forces of magma beneath our feet, and then they created their own myths to explain the Pacific Ring of Fire.  From donuts to a god named Tim, we were treated to skits based on these myths on our first night camping near the base of a volcano.  There were no lectures while at the park.  We visited a museum and interpretive signs along the trails were pointed out, but the only school work was a daily entry into their “field journals.”  Geology will continue in the classroom, and the kids will bring to their studies the memories of their experiences – the smell of sulfur from the vents of Bumpass Hell, the crunch of the trail up Cinder Cone, and the smoke of the campfire.

Writing in Wonderland

The light from my headlamp bounced back from a pair of eyes.  My brain processed the data: close set orbs=eyes in front of head=predator, eyes approximately German Shepherd height from the ground=large predator.  The sky lightened slightly behind the silhouette; round head, short ears = cat.  Big cat.  Maybe the morning jog wasn’t such a good idea after all.  My feline friend and I reflected the light between us as we both wavered in indecision.  What is this thing?  Stand my ground?  Leave?  My head shifted to the left.  Uphill and slightly behind the first set of eyes, glowed a second pair.  Two cats.  Nice kitties.  I could see the headline now:  Veterinarian Eaten by Mountain Lions at Writers’ Workshop.  Darwin awards, here I come!

I had known that going to Tomales Bay would mean confronting some fears, but I hadn’t planned on those fears taking a physical form.  Flyers regarding the Tomales Bay Writers’ Workshops run through the UC Davis Extension had popped into my consciousness over the last couple of years.  Wow!  Five days of writing on the coast.  Maybe someday.  In the last year, I’ve made a promise to myself to embrace “someday” whenever possible.  On a whim, I downloaded the application.  Ten page manuscript.  Ok, one short story.  There was only one problem: while I had been working sporadically on a novel for the past four or five years, I hadn’t written a short story since college.  I stared at my journal; the pages stared back.  As I rolled the pen between my fingers, the memory of a long-distance train trip taken a couple of years ago surfaced.  I recalled the disembodied sensation of long hours in my sleeping compartment, the feeling that I was being carried along without my own volition.  What if someone had gotten on a train and left everything without consciously meaning to?  The story began to take shape.  Overcoming the first hurdle, I placed the story in a mailer and sent it off with the deposit.  “Don’t worry,” I reassured my husband.  “They’ll probably just laugh and say ‘sorry.’”  I still have the acceptance e-mail saved on my Blackberry.

Selecting the manuscript to submit for the workshop opened a new packet of insecurities.  The novel was about half way through a re-write, and I knew that it was time to get some feedback.  10-15 pages:  Should I just do another short story?  The author leading the workshop was a novelist; this would be a great opportunity to have a bit of the story critiqued.  It won’t make any sense as an excerpt.  Finally, I told the squirrels in my head to be quiet, and printed the pages and sealed them in the mailer.  Done.  Well, almost done.  While fairly naïve about the writing process, I am aware that writing critique exists on multiple levels.  Friends and family, while delightful, are nearly useless.  They are generally unable to separate the writer from the writing, and are completely uncritical.  The workshop would provide valuable insights and critique, but I did remember enough from my college days to be aware that the writing workshop is a pretty supportive space.  Writers are acutely aware of the fragility of the process and of the ego, and even criticisms tend to be softened a bit.  I needed someone who just didn’t care if my feelings were hurt.  I needed a professional.  Editors, agents, and publishers read thousands of manuscripts a year, and while I’m sure most are lovely people, I felt that I could count on one of this breed to be brutally honest.  I wrote the check for the publishing consultation and printed out chapter one with a mild sense of nausea.

The emotional stew that comprised the morning of my departure for Tomales Bay was far more terrifying than any feline encounter.  Anxiety, guilt, homesickness, inadequacy – you name it, it was there.  The month had been far from smooth already.  Due to a combination of work and personal commitments, I had been home one Sunday in the past 3 weekends, my father had had a heart-attack less than 10 days before, the previous weekend had involved an overnight campout with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop, and I had taken several extra on-call nights at work to cover for a vacationing colleague.  Then there was the expense.  Work has been slow this year.  What was I doing?  How could I justify spending money we don’t have so that I could spend five days away from my family, leaving my husband alone with the kids?  This was a ridiculous investment in a hobby that has, to date, provided no income whatsoever.  Between crying jags, I managed to finish packing and get on the road.  As I pulled out of the driveway, I had a sense that I was bidding something farewell.  I turned on the radio; thank God for NPR.

A couple of hours and a Swiss Milk Chocolate shake later, I felt better.  As my truck wound through the hills between Novato and the coast, I imagined a character in my next novel making her home in one of the barns that dotted the hillside.  ‘I can do this.’ Maybe if I repeated this mantra enough times, I would believe it.  As the car hit Highway 1, light fragmented on the blue waters of Tomales Bay.  I had never seen a place that looked so exactly like the pictures.  Tucked away on its hillside above Highway 1, The Marconi Conference Center is a world unto itself.  Historic buildings tuck with new friends among the redwoods.  The landscaping blends with the forest and is redolent with sage, rosemary, and lavender.  Deer, wild turkeys, ravens, and huge jackrabbits (oh, and large cats) populate the woods.  One of my classmates commented that he expected the rabbits to be wearing little vests, “and carrying pocket watches?” I asked.

            “Yeah, have I said that already?”

            He hadn’t.  But, it is that kind of place.  The workshops, too, are that kind of place.  From the moment one sets foot on the grounds, one is a writer.  The written word infuses everything.  The experience is by turns terrifying, exhilarating, frustrating, uplifting, and exhausting.  At first, I chalked the overwhelming sensations up to my distance from academia.  I hadn’t sat in any sort of  liberal arts class in over 15 years, let alone one that asked me to contribute.  Yet, the graduate students in my seminar seemed to feel the same way.  More than one person commented that the workshops were “intense.”  For five days, we existed in a space outside of the time and geography of the mundane.

            Ultimately, I believe my mantra to be true.  “I can do this.”  I went to Tomales Bay to see if I could write, to see if I could recognize successful writing, and to learn to do both better.  Lightning didn’t strike.  No one proclaimed my genius.  If I had a great epiphany, besides the minor revelation that I like oysters, it was that writing is something I must do.  I don’t do it as well as I would like, but better than I had feared.  More importantly, the path ahead is a bit clearer.  Oh, and the cats and I went our separate ways.

Showing Seams

I’m falling apart at the seams – literally.  The left shoulder seams of my work shirts are fraying.  At first, one or two shirts showed rough patches in the middle of the top seam.  Then, the holes started appearing.  “Cheap shirt,” I thought when the first hole made its presence known.  But other shirts followed.  Paranoia set in.  Why the left shoulder?  I began to check myself for strange deformities.  Had I developed some Cardassian-like bone spur?  I would run my hand over the top of my shoulder, peering into the steamy post-shower mirror.  No scales.  No wings.  I had lost some weight, but surely I hadn’t possessed that much padding.  And why was it only the left shoulder?  Why only my work shirts?  The next question brought reason.  Okay, my job is pretty physical.  I must be doing something that presses or rubs on that shoulder.  I searched my mind – blank.

Heading down I-5 in the pastel light of morning, the answer hit me.  I shifted away from the seatbelt that pestered my neck.  Aha!  My seatbelt is wearing holes in my shirts.  I took this as an indication of something I’ve suspected for quite a while.  I spend way too much time behind the wheel.  One hour each way to work, plus an average of 15 minutes out of every hour seeing appointments – on a given work day, I spend approximately 4 hours driving.  Wear and tear on my shirts, wear and tear on my joints, time away from my family – where’s the good?

The light clued me in.  During my adolescence, I became convinced that someone could blindfold me and set me down at any spot in the Central Valley, and I would know the general region into which I had been dropped.  Unlike most of my adolescent theories, this one seems to be supported by the experience of adulthood.  To most outsiders, this Valley appears as an endless stretch of monotony.  “Flat.”  “Hot.”  “Brown.”  “Foggy.”  “Muddy.”  “Boring.”  I’ve heard the epithets most of my life – uttered many of them at various points of disgust and discontent.

However, this Valley of mine is deceptive.  Like a plain or strong featured woman who becomes unexpectedly beautiful in moments of animation, the Central Valley shows her glory in the subtle shifts and minute scenes.  Hers is not a flashy beauty; no showy grandeur of cascading water or dramatic mountains.  Her loveliness appears in the quiet moments.  A lone and ancient oak presides over a field lit gold by a rising sun.  Wild blackberries creep in a tangle of green and purple over a wire fence into a fan of wild oat.  The diamond white head of an egret peeks above the stand of cattails rimming a small pond.  A Swainson's Hawk shrieks her shrill cry as she is pursued by a cluster of tiny blackbirds – prey turning upon the predator.  The ubiquitous summer dust softens into a taupe pillow as the sun blazes into the horizon in an incomparable blanket of tangerine and crimson.

We have done our best to destroy this beauty, to force her to conform.  We have given her ill-considered makeovers, thrusting upon her a style that is not her own.  We pave over her wrinkles and imperfections with the Botox of sprawling concrete subdivisions.  We poison her fertile ground with generations of chemicals and diversions of her water that we are certain will enable her to be more productive.  We apologize to others in hushed tones for her plainness – sorry that she is not as spectacular as her sister the Sierras, regretful that she will never have the vibrancy of her cousin the Bay Area, sad that she does not play as well as her Southern California friends.

Yet, she continues to feed, clothe, and house us.  Rows of crops blanket her flesh and feed the world.  Fields of cotton dot her southern regions.  She feeds and houses the livestock that give us meat and milk.  Into the endless subdivisions we have tattooed upon her flesh, she has welcomed all those seeking a better, easier, safer life – refugees from war, from poverty, from the Bay Area.  She shelters us from a myriad of disasters common to her more spectacular siblings – we are largely protected from disastrous storms, she muffles the shocks of earthquakes, through her landscape shelters us from the worst of fires.  Even those disasters which escape her watch are often brought through our own neglect.  Levees erode, ranges are poorly managed, soils in the west lie dead from years of toxic runoff.  We are poor tenants.

Perhaps our oblivion is not entirely our own fault.  How can a society accustomed to virtual explosions, digital sound, a constant barrage of entertainment see the value in a landscape whose variations are slow and subtle?  A few have managed.  Artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Deladier Almeida capture the unique light and shifting curves of the Sacramento and Delta regions.  Authors such as William Saroyan have caught the specific culture of the southern San Joaquin.  In isolated pockets, groups essay to preserve the heritage of the region through festivals, rodeos, historical societies, and museums.  Yet, it takes a careful and perceptive eye to appreciate the beauty that spans the heart of California.

Will enough of those eyes reach out before it is too late?  Unless we stop apologizing for and attempting to reinvent our Central Valley, she is lost.  We have permitted outsiders to pillage her land with the promises of jobs and have gained empty buildings and abject poverty.  We fight among ourselves over land use, water use, smelt, and shrimp. Instead of sewing the wonderful patchwork of cultures and languages of her inhabitants into a bright and warm quilt, we have allowed our fears and prejudices to bring our youth to violence.

Go outside in the early morning light.  Watch the gold of a wheat field reach into the periwinkle sky.  Walk through a downtown and listen to the music of different accents.  Eat from a mobile food cart or in an unfamiliar “mom and pop” restaurant.  Read a book by a valley author.  Visit an art gallery, take in the glorious swirling color of the California plein air painters.  Quit apologizing to out of town visitors for the weather or that “there’s nothing to do.”  Rejoice that there still exist towns with main-street parades and asparagus or crawdad festivals.  Stop at a fruit stand.  Look beyond the frayed seams.

Runners, Pipers, and Tambourines

Bagpipes as a Zen moment?  What can I say?  I’m Scottish. 

The soft skirl of the pipes drifted around the corner of the hillside.  The first hill had been a pain.  The incline did not challenge my body, but my patience had been sorely tried.  Foolishly, I had begun the race in the group with the posted pace for a 10 minute mile.  I knew I could keep the pace for at least 3 miles, though I was uncertain about the entire 6.  As a road race newbie, I hadn’t realized that this group would also include every person who planned to run at least a little.  A block or so past the start, the crush had thinned a bit, and my feet had found a rhythm.  Just as I began to feel that maybe this crazy endeavor was doable, the mob screeched to a halt.  Like gawkers at an accident scene, the masses ahead had hit the first hill and apparently said to themselves, “Oh, this is too steep.  Maybe I’ll just walk this one.”

Needless to say, by the time I crested the hill, I was ready to bite someone.  Then the moment arrived.  The first notes wafted down just as I heard someone say, “Bagpipes?  Really?”

Yes, really.  Silhouetted on an emerald knoll, a group of kilt-clad pipers played against the mist.  Perfect.  Wrong tartan, but that was forgivable.  My grandfather was a McIntosh.  The clan motto is “Touch not the cat bot a glove.”  Basically, mess with us at your peril.  A stretch of asphalt opened before me and my feet found their cadence.

Back in May as I descended from the endorphin rush of my first 5K race, the 6 mile Wharf  to Wharf (Santa Cruz to Capitola) seemed quite reasonable.  ‘Two and a half months to train.  No problem.’  Therein lays the danger of accomplishment.  The human brain is never satisfied.  I caught myself yesterday afternoon seriously contemplating a brochure for a half-marathon in October.  Endorphins are insidious creatures.  What I had failed to foresee in the balm of May was the effect of summer on my will to exercise, or really on my will to do anything.  My physiology functions best from 65-80 F.  I had also been unable to predict the case of shingles that made the notion of a sports bra unbearable for a full week before the race.  Yet, here I was.  6 miles.  The brochure stated quite sternly that runners must keep to a 15 minute/mile pace and that the course would be closed within 90 minutes.  I envisioned myself dragging at the rear of a pack of thousands, calling my husband for a ride somewhere around mile 3, the pointing and mocking onlookers.  I was dragged to the starting line by two factors.  I had told the children that the weekend camping trip was so that mommy could run a race, and I didn’t want them to see me backing out of a goal.  Also, my mother had told me that I should rest the shingles and scratch the race.  39 years, and my mother still hasn’t learned that the best way to get me to do something is to tell me I shouldn’t.  Sorry mom.

Another hill, another corner.  Passing a folk guitarist, a glimpse of the sea.  A Kiss tribute band played on my left, my feet grinned.  Pulling up a long slope I saw my favorite group of the run.  10-15 tie-dye clad musicians lined up behind a sign that read “Sons of the Beach.”  As I passed, a tambourine and soap bubble infused version of “Rawhide” followed me.  Ah, Santa Cruz.

Balloon arches marked each mile.  The first split time depressed me so badly that my feet almost halted there and then.  ‘19minutes, seriously??’  I told my feet that we had started at least 5minutes back and had been held up in traffic.  ‘Get with it.’  The legs heard and obeyed.  The second mile took just over 10 minutes.  At each rainbow arch, my body responded to the called time as to a challenge.  With each mile my pace increased. 

Onlookers lined the roadway.  Far from the jeering phantoms of my insecure imaginings, these people projected lifesaving goodwill.  Generous with their cheers and encouragement, they gave the impression that each of us had our own personal pep squad.  Some held out hoses or sprinklers for those of us longing for a shower.  One lovely man offered a tray of strawberries and orange segments.  The crisp sweetness of that kind orange carried me a full mile.  One mother and her two children held out their hands to ‘high five’ each of us as we passed.  Just past a percussion group, a lone man stood and banged with a mallet on the back of a skillet which rang sweetly across a slough. 

‘Come on,’ called Capitola.  ‘Come see me again.’ 

‘You can do it,’ Santa Cruz pushed me from behind.  ‘You started here.’

Start there, I did.  Certain places weave in and out of our lives like thin gold threads.  From early trips to the beach and Boardwalk with our grandparents through my college years and into those of my sister, Santa Cruz and Capitola have flickered in and out of my life.  Indirectly, my current adult life has its roots along that bay.  Had I missed a party in Santa Cruz 20 years ago, I would not have met my husband 5 years later.  Strange but true.  After all, it is all Dave’s fault.

Saturday had been spent dragging the kids from one old haunt to the next.  Plugging up the hill to the UC Santa Cruz campus, I demanded of the backseat, “Do you want to see where Aunt Steph went to college?”

As we entered the grounds, their enthusiasm turned to confusion.  “Where’s the college?”  “This is it.”  “This doesn’t look like a school; it looks like a forest.”  I grinned to hear them echo my first impressions.  20 years ago, my roommate and I circled the campus endlessly ‘looking for the college.’  It had seemed impossible that the random collection of buildings that sporadically dotted the forest was indeed a university.

Our next stop was Natural Bridges State Beach.  Flashes of the essence of Santa Cruz drifted past:  surfers floating like black seals on the waves, the requisite amateur-painted VW van, the skateboarder towed by a large, enthusiastic dog, the smells of brine, kelp, fog, and fish.  On the beach, the kids caught a connection to home.  “Come on, Aidan.”  Caitlin dragged her brother to a specific vantage point along the shore.  “Look!  See it?  See the rock; it’s the one from the painting.”  They knew the story, knew that mom had painted the scene in oils from a photograph sent by a college friend.  However, this was the first time they realized that mom painted actual places, and that they were visiting a place that had hung on the living room wall longer than their own lives.  Ghosts of my past walked the sands where my children frolicked.  Past and future joined near a crashing, grey surf beneath the spiraling wings of pelicans.

As we parked near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a more distant past floated through my memory.  The Boardwalk rang with the excitement of childhood.  Screams and laughter danced above the rumble of surf and roar of rollercoasters.  Grease, salt spray, and tanning lotion ran under the sweetness of cotton candy.  Clutching the hands of my children, I became the child.  My grandparents appeared at every corner.  Glancing at the waves, I heard my grandmother’s mantra as my sister and I ran toward the surf, “Don’t go in past your knees!”  We stopped for lunch and my husband’s jaw dropped as his calorie-conscious wife ordered deep-fried artichoke hearts and a linguica sandwich with grilled onions.  As the crisp grease and metallic artichoke melted onto my tongue, my grandfather’s grin appeared.  My children had a bag of plastic sand toys wedged under the table; the cups of neighboring beer drinkers evoked the memory of hops-scented sand castles.  Grandpa had always saved his beer cup for us to use as a sandcastle mold.  The first tower or two smelled faintly of beer and the paper had a tendency to disintegrate after a couple of trips to the ocean for water, but it was a tradition.  As we draped our bright beach towels over our patch of pillowy sand, I felt the rough edge of brown and white striped terry-cloth.  Grandma line-dried her laundry, and her towels had all of the pliability of coarse-grain sandpaper.  As we emerged from the waves, sunburned, salt-scoured, and sand-crusted, Steph and I stood with meek trepidation as Grandma rubbed us down with the agonizing vigor of love.  We were well into our teens before we managed to convince her that a) we could towel ourselves, and b) that we would really rather not change out of our bathing suits in the middle of the beach with only a towel tented around us.  I resisted the temptation to similarly torture my children.

On the beach, the kids proved themselves as individual as their nicknames – neither clones of each other, nor of my childhood.  Sierra, our “marmot” played happily on the sand, shunning the waves, like a good little land mammal.  Aidan, the “alligator” was happiest in the shallows.  An overly strong wave would cause him to tug at my hand with shouts of “Back!  Back!”  And Caitlin?  Caitlin stood as far into the surf as I would permit.  Two or more weak waves caused her to raise an eyebrow at the sea and ask sardonically, “C’mon, Poseidon.  Is that all you’ve got?”  (She’s re-reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.) “Do you really think it’s a good idea to taunt Poseidon while we’re standing in the ocean?”  “Moommm, I’m an otter.  I’m a creature of the sea.”  And so she is.

Aidan’s hand tucked into mine as we stood in line for the Giant Dipper, reminding me of the mingled excitement and guilt as I held Grandpa’s hand in the same line 30 years ago.  The thrill of riding a “really big, grownup rollercoaster” tangled with the fear that Grandma was right.  Maybe he really was too old for “those rides.”  What if he did hurt his knees or back or heart?  As Aidan’s face went still as the lap bar engaged, the old fears seized me from behind.  What if he was too young?  He was just barely over the height limit; what if it wasn’t safe for him?  What if he was scared?  I screamed with laughter around the dips and turns darting glances at my son’s white face.  The glory of risk-taking fought for supremacy with my need for a guarantee of security.  There are no guarantees; I abandoned myself to the last swooping turns.

Buckled into the car, the first bite of my caramel apple caught my teeth and dripped down my wrist.  In the back seat, the kids shared a bag of cotton candy.  30 years ago, the traditional treat “for the way home” invariably produced the need for at least one stop in response to my sister’s agonized cries of “I’m stickyyyyyy!”  From the back seat, a voice asked, “Mom, do you have any wet wipes?”  “Nope, they’re all in the back.  Do you want a napkin?”  “No, that’s okay.”

Feet flew the 6^th mile past the coast and into Capitola.  A man with a wig like a giant tribble skin ran on my right; I passed a woman with a tank top that read, “Never tutu old.”  She wore a red lace tutu.  I sprinted down the hill with the long galloping strides of my childhood.  My own children and patient husband waited just beyond the finish as I ran from the past into my future.