Identifying Marks
This piece is a collection…a collection of words, thoughts, memories, drifting through my mind like sand. Have you ever been lost, desperately trying to get back home? I’m still trying, except I have no idea where home is.
I grew up in Huntington Harbour, a pompous appendage of Huntington Beach created out of marshlands and molded into man-made islands, five miniature replicas. Paradoxically, the houses were not miniature at all. They were so overbuilt that the “islands” seem to disappear, but it was not about land, it was about the water, narrow channels that led out to the ocean, out to wide-open spaces, to freedom. Although, the Pacific was not enough for my parents, so weekends and most vacations were spent at our second home in Palm Springs. While my parents sat inside the perfectly chilled rooms sipping martinis, listening to Andy Williams on the phonograph, watching golfers pass by in Rolls Royce Golf carts. We kids explored the sand dunes. We had dirt under our fingernails and stickers in our trousers.
The desert taught me many things. It’s the place where I began to collect: rocks, golf balls, crickets, people, experiences. Where I first learned the meaning of freedom then pain. At five, I stood on the Bermuda lawn and called out to my best friend, Chris, who was riding his red Schwinn bike, “Can I come too?”
Chris was smart, funny, a fair skinned kid in town that idolized bronzed bodies. When I think of him today, I smile. That day, when I was five, I jumped around frantically. I was barefoot and big red ants nipped at my toes. I hate red ants. I should have jumped on my bike and made my escape. Chris always let me tag along. We’d catch dozens of crickets in old coffee cans. I was so proud. One day I brought some into my family. My Grandmother screamed … kicked me out. It would not be the only time I’d be kicked out of a house.
The desert taught me freedom and sorrow. It was the place my cat died…the place my dog gave birth to five puppies…a place of wonder and contradictions. It was also the place Chris died…at the age of six, from diabetes. I’d never heard that word before. I put it on a list. My mom said his parents thought, “he had the flu.” I remember thinking how could anyone so smart have parents that dumb. I was mad! I threw my Bible in the trash and said, “If there’s a God…you take this bible out of the trash.” No one ever did, and I knew from that day on that there was no God. Just life and death and the desert.
There was also Lenny, the big, fat, ugly boy with warts. He lived halfway down the golf course. He was stupid, and I hated him. I hated him because he shot bb’s at my favorite tree. I hated him because he caught a turtle and let it die. He liked me forever until he was grown and married. Even so, with Lenny and without Chris, I still loved the desert.
Everything about the landscape soothed me. I would lie on a chair and bake in the sun, listening to the birds, the sounds of sprinklers clicking round and round. I was never afraid. Never…not even when the earthquake sloshed water out of my neighbor’s pool. Nothing could crush me there.
I was seven when I made this list, a list of good things in the desert.
1) The Donkeyman. (He gave donkey rides at the base of the mountains.)
2) A & W Root Beer (They had a drive-in service with real car hops)
3) The Easter Bunny (He made my basket so hard to find!)
4) Giving flowers to Mamie Eisenhower on Easter Sunday.
5) The cold air inside the house.
6) My slip and slide.
7) The stars.
8) Feeding the ducks.
These were the things I hated.
1) Dates and date shakes.
2) Lenny.
3) Tumbleweeds.
4) The trout farm. (My dad made us catch and eat the fish)
5) Grandma’s migraine headaches.
6) The long drive home.
We had that one home my entire childhood… it was the one constant in my life, a stabilizing influence. After my Grandma killed herself, Grandpa named the San Jacinto Mountains “Virginia Mountains” in her honor. They helped me remember her.
Then when I was grown, my mom let the house go. She’d entered rehab for the? Time, I’d lost track. And she stopped paying the mortgage. Suddenly there was a new family living in the old familiar space.
I drive by the house every few years. It is shabby and old now; nothing like I remember as a child, and I realize that I am trying to hold on to something that never belonged to me in the first place. The desert is ever changing… like my life. I have only memories now, of how it used to be, with Chris riding bikes side by side and laughing, innocents.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with me.