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.