Double Wide

11.25.07

We wend through the Kern Valley on a post Thanksgiving quest for nature, get serenaded by a caroling cuadro at Uncle Leo’s pizza parlor and end up in a double wide trailer on the shore of Lake Isabella. The full moon is incredible and shines on the water like a vanilla ribbon and promises a peaceful night. Yet inside I am surrounded by naugahyde, formica, and wood veneer paneling, a hodge podge of 50’s Bauhaus, 70’s Hippie, 80’s mafia gold flecked mirrors and some god-awful pseudo Victorian lace-y lamps. A huge wide screen TV dominates one room and the kids are thrilled. A cabinet displays over a hundred videos and we argue about which to choose, Hollywood Crap or Old fashioned Crap. I feel like a stranger in this land even as the kids pull me in to their world of Americana.

A local camping store is a Boy Scout’s dream with camo gear, regulation issue army coats and “coon skin” caps which the kids don with flair. They meld in anywhere and leave me wandering in this landscape, one foot in and one foot out.

On the drive up, the rolling hills look like borderless landscapes, the flats could be Mexico, Zaire or New Zealand. These places I have imagined moving to. I have been in LA for 15 years and yet still don’t feel at home. It’s the second longest amount of time I’ve lived in one place since growing up in New York for 18 years. I have friends, my family, community and work here in Los Angeles, yet haven’t found the soil to root in and wonder if it’s me or the city. I think I feel this sense of belonging when I’m in certain places that evoke memories of other times in life when I was young and with my father. I felt wanted and engaged with. I felt visible. Perhaps it's this feeling more than the place that I seek when traveling. Will I ever find it? They say wherever you go there you are. Is it it whoever you're with that defines your sense of belonging?

This trailer is huge. The portion sizes at the local steak house are huge (40 ounce steak, a desert the size of ½ quart of ice cream and when I ask them to split it in to they drown each half in even more whipped cream.) The TV is huge and Noah’s appetite for adventure, jet skis, ATV’s, extreme sports, just as large. I feel small in comparison to all these American appetites. And have shrunk by 10 pounds these last 2 years.

I look around the restaurant at all the happy families and couples in their flannel and pasty faces and lacquered hair. It all feels so normal and yet I know that behind every face is a story and I cannot presume to know anyone’s. The kids have taken over my social life and I delight in their growing worlds and the tales they have to tell. These are two stories I will know well, as well as my own, until they choose to separate and create their own worlds apart from me. I help shape them and in turn am re-invented by the experience of mothering them.

Hanah’s smile is huge. Noah’s hug as well. I wrap my arms around them many times a day and wonder when it will end, their need to connect physically like this. We see sailboats in the lake and I describe what a small one looks like inside, remembering my childhood summers. The cabins were tiny, cozy and just the right size for children to feel large in. Everything had its place and nothing superfluous found its way inside. We had no TV or I-pod or cell phones, just a nautical radio and books, games for entertainment. And the ocean. This floating world was small, but filled with joy and smiles and warmth and laughter and meant everything to me. Home is where the heart is and mine danced around the world, following a 56 foot ketch and the captain at its helm.

Sommeil

11.7.07

She sleeps with leopard ear muffs on and often a NY Yankees cap as well. Wrapped around a scruffy stuffed mutt, she holds on to her dreams and wakes heavily, dragging her eyelids open only after my prodding and coo-ing in her ear. This girl lives more fiercely in her moments than anyone I know. Whether telling stories at the dinner table while her food grows cold, then guzzling her milk so she can catch up with the rest of us, or reading the latest Harry Potter so intently, she can be lost on the toilet for 1/2 an hour. I love that about childhood and mourn my own lack of complete concentration as I try to balance so many demands in life. Even sleep, that surest sanctuary is divided by dreams and other worlds than my own.

We speak of dreams, places in our minds where the world is different from our reality. In sleep those places can be marvelous or treacherous, but in waking our "day" dreams are usually of the wishful sort. During the night we battle demons and re-visit old haunts. When distracted at work or on our commute, however, it is the sandy beaches or the bachelor next door that we think about, not the torments of life. Are the dark hours our battle and the light our playgrounds?

When we wake panting from the chase or aroused from a seduction, our bodily reactions are the same as if the action were real. Our heart races, we may scream or feel the after maths of an orgasm. So, how is this cerebral and corporal experience not as real as if we had been chased by our psycho neighbor or royally screwed by the pool boy? What then is real if we think and feel the same way regardless of conscious state?

What is reality when an group of people can experience an event in as many different ways as there are pairs of eyes watching? My daughter the other night asked what the word "exit" means and we got into a discussion of whether or not her bed railing really was wood when on a "subatomic level it's all just bowling balls whirring around" as she put it. On the one hand we perceive it as solid matter, but under an electron microscope it is indeed just a massing of atoms careening against each other. Is one more correct than the other?

George Bush perceived 9-11 as an assault against our sovereign soil and a Jihadist saw it as self defence against our evil empire. A wife percieves that her husband "never" puts down the toilet lid. He's convinced he does. One person thinks the word "never" means 0% of the time ("I never drink cider.") and another thinks it means %100 of the time. ("I always dont' drink cider.") Who is right?

Perception is our reality, then, at any given moment. A person who was once beloved to us and thus beautiful can look like an ugly ogre when they break our hearts. Same person, different point of view. When worldviews collide it is because we refuse to see anything from any other perspective than our own and this inflexibility is the source of all conflict from interpersonal to cross cultural.

A child sees the world in black and white, and sleeping in ear muffs makes complete sense even when it's summer. Even though Hanah dresses like a "ragamuffin," in her eyes, she has "Hanah style" and flaunts it. We think we live in teh land of freedom and Ossama Bin Laden thinks we're slaves to our corrupt corporate and god-less culture. Who's right?

Today, my 9 and 11 year old turned a corner and begain cooperating with each other without my input. Are they seeing each other's point of view? Or are they choosing paths of least resistance? Either way, they are learning to navigate their worlds, flexing their perception muscles. Whatever they are doing, it must be working, for they sleep without remorse and wake with open hearts.