Thoughts on a Child
Erin Douglass
Road TripApril 2008
1.
One Wednesday night last October, after feeding and bathing Roxy, we zipped her into a sleeper, grabbed a pile of blankets, and then tucked the entire droopy, sweet-smelling package into her carseat. Luggage piled high, Thermos of tea an arm's reach away, we pointed our Toyota Matrix north and headed for I-5.
It was 8:30 p.m.
Six hours and 15 minutes later, we pulled into the driveway of my parents' home in Healdsburg.
Yes, a drive that can last anywhere from 7 1/2 hours to 3 weeks with an antsy toddler (20 months, to be exact) was accomplished, more or less, in one fell swoop. Our only stops: a pause in Grapevine to put air in a tire, a 10-minute gas-up in Kettleman City, and, at 2:31 a.m., a bleary Chinese fire drill (minus the little girl) to re-deposit Jon in the passenger seat and me behind the wheel.
Through it all, Roxy slept. Sure, there was a peep here and a cry there, but they didn't amount to much. At one point, near Livermore, a particularly rough patch of road jostled her from deep baby slumber. I pretzled around and presented a bottle. She sucked it down, tossed the empty on the floor with the practiced flair of a frat boy, and immediately fell back to sleep.
I was grateful for her solid sleeping — especially as the night wore on. She missed her weary parents' loose interpretations of "driving between the lines."
"Whoa, there!" Jon cried out, just south of Santa Rosa, as I whirred over the rumble strip.
"Just checking," I said, guiding the car back to its centered state and squinting ever harder at the dim road ahead. "Why is this freeway so curvy?"
In spite of the painful last hour, our late-night haul was a success. And, frankly, it will be hard to return to the ways of day driving. Who can beat tearing through the legendarily congested 580-to-80 split east of the Bay Bridge with but 10 other cars on the road?
My parents, who had only just fallen into bed, shambled out to greet us in their flannel best. "The front room is ready for Roxy," they stage-whispered as Jon carried the warm, groggy bundle up the stairs. Into the crib she went, while I hauled our luggage to the back bedroom. Ten minutes later, everyone was asleep.
2.
I come from a family of road trippers. Not only did we disappear on month-long adventures every summer, we'd take off on fall-color excursions, spring weekend jaunts and winter back-road drives at the drop of a safari hat. Other families loved Disney World and the Jersey Shore. We loved 600-mile days and desert-motel pools.
It amazes me now to think of those long hours in the car crossing vast expanses like Eastern Texas or Saskatchewan. My sister and I read countless books, listened to piles of cassette tapes and gazed out the window, imaginations flying. With Mom — and sometimes Dad — joining in, we'd play excruciating rounds of The Alphabet Game, shouting out all 26 letters, sequentially, as they passed on billboards, license plates, storefronts and bumper stickers.
One summer, as we ambled home from California to New York via most of Canada, my father forgot to pay for our hotel room before we pointed our packed Volvo toward the closest interstate. We were a good 100 miles away when he realized the mistake.
"You'll be arrested!" my sister and I shrieked the moment we learned the news. For the next several hours, scissors and notebooks in hand, we cut out paper toothbrushes and paper pillows, paper saws and paper cakes, — all that our beloved father would need for his unavoidable and lengthy prison term in the frigid Canadian slammer. (He ended up calling the hotel when we stopped for gas and paid over the phone.)
I recall my mother remarking years later that her friends were shocked by our family travels. "How can you stand to be around each other that long?" they'd ask, mild horror in their eyes. "We look forward to it all year," she'd say, smiling.
I can see how we would. Gone were the workplace pressures, school-year schedules, practices and rehearsals, deadlines and tests. Stripped of our obligations and separate-sphere activities, each one of us would relax into a loose, easy rhythm. Out of it came a quartet of conversation, observation and scissors-enhanced silliness.
3.
Roxy stirred at 6 a.m., her usual waking hour. Unable to convince her of the joys of solitary crib play, Jon tucked her into our bed. We all slept fitfully for another hour until the little girl decided enough was enough. Off the mattress she squirmed, heading straight for the nightlight. I grabbed a bag of toys and waved it at her, shaman-like. Would Elmo stickers and new crayons buy more time?
"No more night. No more night," said Roxy thrusting a lift-the-flap book into my face. Realizing the futility of feigning sleep, Jon and I dragged ourselves from bed and greeted the Sonoma County day.
In spite of overcast skies and a chilly breeze, the day was perfect. We ate waffles made by Papa Ron, Roxy's name for my dad. Along with piles of books and toys, we drifted, flotsam-like, as the Roxy tide pulled us from room to room. We visited an awesome playground, sliding and swinging and climbing rope walls until rain chased us to a cafe. And we watched Roxy delight in being a stranger in a strange land. "Tamp!" she'd call after Scamp, my parents' cat, before heading to the stairs for her 30th ascent to the second floor — a novelty for our single-story child.
4.
Raising Roxy in Los Angeles, even living as we do in a hilly, rugged neighborhood more reminiscent of Griffith Park than Melrose Avenue, I feel it is essential to show her the customs of life beyond the county borders. How else will she learn that not everyone thinks "The Industry" means Hollywood, "the" precedes all freeway numbers, and winter equals 65 with partial sun?
Five months after Rox was born, we drove north to spend the July 4th holiday with my folks. Thanks to national seatbelt laws and the physiological limitations of breastfeeding, we had to stop every few hours to top off the girl. Those feedings plus diaper changes and carseat breaks made for one long travel day.
It was worth it. We splashed in the pool, explored a fresh basket of toys and reveled in grandparent enthusiasm. Two days later, we celebrated the Fourth in tiny Boonville with my sister and her family. The town's annual shindig felt almost surreal with its stilt-walking Uncle Sam, auctioned homemade pies and south-side/north-side tug-of-war. Jon and Rox, who was decked out in shades and tucked into her Baby Bjorn, even won a prize in the parade as "Bib free or die."
Sunkissed and relaxed, I spent much of the drive home wondering why we live where we do. Was Boonville — Northern California even — The Life that everyone yearns for? Gorgeous, winding vineyard roads. Small-town connections. Hands-on living and creating. It sure seems like it. Yet something about it makes me itchy.
I delight in beauty that surprises from a concrete corner. I thrive on the hum of lives, worlds apart, lived side-by-side. I want to turn down new streets and not be known.
5.
On Day Two of our most recent visit north we hauled out of bed, grabbed coffee at a cafe, and drove out to my sister's place in Boonville.
Our route was, of course, Highway 128, the sole east-west road through Anderson Valley that doesn't require a pack animal. A serpentine thread of asphalt boasting hairpin curves and shoulder-free edges, 128 isn't for the faint of heart. Signs warn trucks to stay away. Passing lanes provide only fleeting relief. Deer threaten to tango with your grill.
As challenging as it is to navigate 128, I wouldn't miss the trip for anything. The road winds up oak-covered hills and drops into stream-carved valleys — and then does it all over again. Bushy barns peek through the trees. Golden grasses soften slopes. The land, without effort, invites.
I only wish I didn't still get carsick like a five-year-old.
By the time we pulled up to the local bakery, 60 minutes after leaving Healdsburg, I felt queasy and irritable. Roxy, too, was out of sorts. We stumbled inside, but could only stare at the scones and muffins before turning to leave.
Our visit to town scratched, we headed to my sister's farm, a verdant patch of land and stream off an L-shaped road on the edge of town. The dog barked as we pulled into the driveway and Sam, my sister's five-year-old son, dashed out to greet us, while Willow, her two-year-old, watched from the porch.
As the rain started to fall, we headed out to the gardens and fields, Jon carrying a wide-eyed Rox. "Look, Roxy, COWS!" we said in unison as Rose and Thorn stared from the far corner of the property. She watched them from her high perch, sucking her fingers in delight.
Stepping carefully through the sculpture-and-decorative-salvaged-machinery-filled vegetable garden, we approached Wild George's pen. An enormous, sweet-tempered pig, Wild George, it turns out, is both female and named after my sister's long-deceased English father-in-law. The color of mud, George snorted and wallowed and rubbed her great girth against the pen's slats. Rox, clinging to Jon, said, "No more pig," the sign to move on.
At the other end of the garden sits the chicken house. A wonderful creation complete with recycled windows and a corrugated metal roof, the house shelters a collection of multi-colored chickens that wander the yard by day and keep my sister's family in eggs for most of the year. Rox, breathless, watched the plump birds totter to and fro until the rain urged us inside.
I love that Roxy can experience a little bit of farm life for herself. Her books and Baby Einstein DVDs drill the names and nursery-rhyme noises of these beasts into her head. But nowhere is there a cow pie or pissy rooster or standoffish bull in all those primary-colored, placid fields. Getting an idea of how a real farm — at least a small, family, hobby farm — looks and smells and sounds strikes me as a good thing. My sister's animals are treated well, but make no mistake about it: they either produce food or will become food.
In other words, "No more pig."
6.
After a puddle-stomping walk in the pouring rain and a women-and-children-only soak in the hot tub, my sister and I drove into town to snag a few groceries for dinner. On our way out of the tiny market, three bearded, flanneled young guys asked, "Got any work?" My sister smiled and shook her head.
"Cutters," she said once we were belted into the Volvo and pointed toward home.
"What?"
"Those boys at the store. They're up for the pot harvest. All they have to do is wave their cutters and people know they're looking for work."
I pondered this — the out-in-the-openness of it all.
My sister started musing on what it will be like when her kids are older. How to present the whole idea of marijuana — a "light" drug but illegal all the same (and one she and her husband don't use) — to her locally-born children. After all, Boonville is a proud vortex of the "Emerald Triangle," the collection of northern California hamlets famous for its cultivation and acceptance of pot.
"Nice to know you have some time," I said as we pulled into the driveway, "before that conversation comes up."
Falling asleep that night back in Healdsburg, I couldn't stop thinking about communities, especially the choices they make. What if your neighborhood/city/ZIP code decides — in the informal, fuzzy, but still powerful way collective anythings can — to embrace life outside the law? Think of Salem and its witch-burning. That stone-flinging burg in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." Colorado City, Arizona, which not only endorses the polygamist branch of Mormonism, but the practice of running young males out of town and betrothing girls to older men.
Of course smoking pot is a far cry from raping girls and killing people. But what these and other communities sanction — whether fictitiously or in an all-too-true reality — is Group Think. Tribalism.
7.
The summer before my junior year in high school I spent several months living in California sans family.
Basically, I'd become a pain-in-the-neck, idiot teenager and my parents needed a break. They arranged for me to stay first with friends in San Diego, then with friends in LA, and then finally with my life-long friend David and his family in Healdsburg.
By the time I reached Sonoma County, I'd already learned how to use tampons from a fabulous feminist, ridden on the back of a 20-year-old's motorcycle and mellowed out thanks to countless walks and hikes and soul-searching talks. And the summer wasn't even over yet.
One evening shortly after I arrived, David and I stopped by his friend Tony's farm down the street. His parents pointed to a building beyond the house and said we'd find Tony in there. Turns out "there" was the family-owned slaughterhouse.
Seizing an opportunity to impress a visitor (and a female, teenaged one at that), Tony gave me a tour of the place. Even in its hosed-down and swept-up state, the slaughterhouse was utterly creepy. Cold, gutter-lined cement floors. A hair room. The eyeball bin.
By morning, I'd decided to become a vegetarian.
I took baby steps on my way to meat-free life, saying adieu first to beef, then to chicken, and finally to fish several years later in college. While I don't exactly practice strict vegetarianism today — my husband bought me a "Bacon is a vegetable" t-shirt recently — I more or less hew to the line I drew in the sand all the way back there in Healdsburg.
8.
We left my folks early Sunday morning. As always, I felt a mix of heading-home excitement and waving-goodbye melancholia. The fact is, it's nice to be near them, especially now that Roxy knows who they are — and responds so eagerly to their company.
We stopped in San Francisco to have breakfast with our friends, Linda and Brad. After catching up in their apartment while Rox eyed Darth Tater (a fully-assembled Mr. Potato Head varietal), we caravanned to a favorite brunch spot. As usual in San Francisco, the wait was long, the crowd aloof and stylish. I froze in what passes for sun in those parts, as Jon and Rox ran around, keeping hunger pangs at bay. When the five of us were finally seated, we pounced on the muffin basket like hyenas.
After ordering, Linda caught me staring at one of the hostesses near the door.
"You look like you just ate something bad," she said.
"I can't stand everything about that outfit," I said, gesturing to the young woman. "She's attractive, but you'd never know with that saggy, beige get-up. Why wear something just because it's trendy?"
Linda agreed. "But you can't stop staring! You're disgusted. I've never seen you like this."
I shrugged. What is it about San Francisco, particularly many of its inhabitants, that gets under my skin? I lived in the Bay Area for four years and loved my time there, full as it was with Tilden Park hikes, Rockridge hang-outs, SFMOMA exhibits and Noe Valley strolls. Some of my closest friends have called the area home for decades.
Yet when my husband and I, freshly wed and out of work in the post-9/11-dot-com-meltdown, decided to seek our fortunes in LA, the response wasn't pretty.
"Come on south and visit any time," I said at the end of one goodbye dinner with friends.
"Why?" sneered the girlfriend of Jon's buddy. "It's El AY." She practically spat on the sidewalk as she jammed an arm into her black wool coat.
I was taken aback, but not shocked. During my first week ensconced in Oakland, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a column with the headline "Why I hate LA." Local alternative weeklies regularly bashed the Southland. In casual conversation with friends and strangers alike, the code word for all things shallow, ridiculous and superficial was often a simple, eye rolling "El AY."
Sometimes I took a stand, publicly declaring my affection for Los Angeles. The response was as uniform and inevitable as the evening fog: "Seriously?" I'd look around for a little support — wasn't there someone who liked something about the City of Angels?
No one ever said a word.
A native Angeleno raised in New York, I didn't learn of northern California's loathing of my homeland until I reached Pomona College on the outskirts of El AY. Surprisingly, packs of northern Californians come south to the Claremont Colleges each year. You'd think this cultural and academic exchange would promote more understanding between our tribes, but alas. Most return to their side of the state upon graduation.
I wonder why I never hear Angelenos bashing San Francisco. Are we too dumb and self-absorbed to have such opinions? I don't think so. I suspect we're used to the groaning and finger pointing, the easy potshots about sprawl and traffic, smog and actors. Such accusations have come from Easterners and Europeans for years.
If forced to make a choice, I would pick LA. I already have; it's my home. The crowded landscape of opinions isn't easy, but it leaves room for whomever — and wherever — you are.
9.
The drive east, then south went smoothly. We couldn't move as quickly as we did during our night voyage, but — stops for diaper changes, snacks and stretches aside — we made pretty good time. Rox dozed, occasionally waking to take in the orchards as they sped by.
In Grapevine, we stopped to get gas and run around on a thick pelt of lawn. Jon and I traded Baby Tackles — rolling tumbles while holding the girl — until we all ran out of breath from giggling and yelling.
While Jon chased Roxy down the sidewalk, I admired the plump, yellow hills that began just over the fence from our well-watered spot. The quintessential California landscape, these hills make me want to throw on my hiking boots and take off towards the top. They look soft and secretive. Welcoming. Vast.
We tucked back into the car for our final leg of the journey — the steep climb up the northern side of the Tehachapi Mountains to the Tejon Pass; the blur of small towns like Lebec and Gorman; the flash of blue at Pyramid Lake; followed by the drop into the pile of identical houses, chain stores and Magic Mountain Amusement Park that is Santa Clarita. I could picture it all even before we pulled back on to the 5.
As we leveled off in the Tejon Pass, I noticed a billowy red cloud on the western horizon.
"Wow. What a sunset," I murmured. Then I realized it was 4 in the afternoon and the sun still high.
We zipped along. I kept checking the cloud. It was getting bigger. And darker.
"What is that?" I asked.
"I don't know," Jon said, staring at the now rusty-colored puffs.
Finally, after a long silence, I blurted it out. "It's fire." Roxy fussed for her sippy cup, a sign that trip fatigue was starting to sink in.
The smoke clouds continued to bloat and shift. This wasn't the smoke pictured in children's books, curling placidly from a chimney. This was the smoke of nature — enormous, thick, fragrant. My beloved hills were burning.
We sped into the Castaic area past Pyramid Lake. The smoke hovered above us, browner now and flat. We couldn't see flames, but a neon red glowed in the distance.
Then we were barreling down I-5's steep decline into Santa Clarita and Valencia. The sky, so blue just moments earlier, was gone. In its place, a red-brown haze as far as we could see. Bone-dry hills covered with rock and brush glowed faintly in the weird light. Even the sun had transformed, its white disk hovering moon-like behind the dirty scrim.
"Holy shit," I said. I couldn't help it. We'd driven into Blade Runner. Or a Mad Max movie.
Something white flickered into sight. I leaned forward. A flock of white gulls, in perfect V-formation, was tearing across the sky, back and forth, dropping, diving. Searching perhaps for an opening in the clouds — and the relief of blue behind them.
10.
Recently I read this essay aloud to my mother and Jon as the three of us hung out in the kitchen. I'd intended to see if I'd gotten several details straight — and then ended up sharing the entire thing.
"It's fine if you want to keep the 'idiot teenager' line in," my mom laughed. "However, the real reason we sent you west was to get you away from Scott."
"The rebel boyfriend," I said, nodding my head. "Of course."
"Do you know that Ron still has all those paper cut-outs you girls made for his prison term?"
"You're kidding."
"He couldn't bear to part with them. I think they're in a file in the office."
I promised myself that the next time we visit Healdsburg, I'll find my dad's file and check out the goods. And not simply to re-experience the silliness. I'd like to see if I remembered the episode accurately. Will there be a cake? A saw? I think so. Will I be able to tell who made what? Will it matter?
Ah, memory. You're so fickle and unreliable. What a far cry I am from that woman I read about the other day. She's 50-something and can recall every detail from every day of her life since she was, what, two?
I'm in awe of such abilities, a little horrified as well. Why carry all that around? How about a few simple, yummy morsels from each year — adding a traumatic patch or two for color — and call it a wrap? I'm not sure I need to remember the awkward fifth date with a junior-high boyfriend, the banality of yet another walk home from school.
Give me choice experiences, Self. Surprise me, too. But keep me free to add plenty of new life and love into the rich mix of my days.
And, please, leave me some time to write about it.