I Was Thinking About Something Today

I love when I have very specific memories of my father. They are fleeting, and the happy ones seem so very distant now that he has been dead for fourteen years. I really didn't even know him for almost a decade before he died, so he doesn't feel all that real to me anymore. Maybe he never was really real at all. He's like retro faded wallpaper that has been scraped off the original walls in a rental property: mostly gone, but thinking long and hard enough, I can almost will the image that once was.

I was thinking about something today. I was thinking about how very difficult it is to be a parent. I am always hopeful that I am a better parent than what was modeled to me. Despite all of my limitations and brokenness, I hope that maybe I can still be a successful parent and raise healthy, confident children who know they are cherished.

I remember my dad's awful temper. That man could fly off the handle at a moment's notice for almost nothing at all, and he was terrifying. His thunder brought down the house. Maybe this is why I don't tolerate yelling well. But I remember a softer side of him, too. He had nicknames for everyone and his gray blue eyes were kind even in anger. He smoked like a chimney burning in winter, but never seemed to age. His sandy brown hair was soft and feathery, and his skin was a rich olive color for all the time he spent out in the field at new housing developments.

He loved animals and used to surprise us with baby rabbits at Easter time, bringing them home in cardboard boxes.

"Lainey," he would say to me when he hit the door, "go down to my car and bring me the plans I left in the front seat." My father was a landscape architect, and he always had blueprints with him. He was a workaholic and had big corporate jobs, as well as Hollywood-type houses to design. He had beautiful block printing and only ever wrote in all even capitals like a typewriter. I can't look at Sharpies and not think of him.

I would run down the three flights of stairs in our house, happy to be of service to a man who rarely asked for anything, running my greasy hands down the white walls the whole way. I loved the squeaking sound it made. My mom would later hand me a bucket and sponge to clean those stupid sterile walls for this infraction, but it was always worth it. Skipping out the back door and kicking it shut with a satisfying slam behind me, I stepped into the garage. My bare feet always stung when they hit the cold concrete, but I couldn't be bothered to wear shoes.

There is no joy comparable to that of finding something so unexpectedly magical in a box that was meant to be something boring. My father always had boxes of plans in his car, but this time, it didn't smell of chemical blueprints when I opened the passenger side door. There weren't rolled plans when I peered in, but two fuzzy dwarf rabbits huddled together. My heart skipped a beat.

Maybe this is why I love surprises; my father was the king of them, and they were always thrilling. From new pets to trips to new places, my father loved to give the unexpected. He lived for it. Bikes mysteriously found their way into our garage for good grades, and they were always top of the line. My father never did anything second rate. "Camping" for my father meant staying at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. "Roughing it" was a four star hotel. That was as close to nature as he got.

I remember my dad giving us wagon rides down the steep hillside in which our house was built. As a kid, that road was a mountain, and even now all grown up, I feel it when I run the neighborhood. He would sit us in front of him in that Radio Flyer and with only his feet as the "brakes", we would roll full speed ahead down the hill, squealing with delight the whole way. He would steer the ship single-handedly and the wheels would get dodgy from speed wobbles. As a parent now, I wonder how my mother even stomached this scene from her perch out the kitchen window as she washed dishes, her precious babies in a death basket out of control down the steep asphalt. I wonder how we all managed to keep our teeth?

My dad couldn't swim. He grew up in New York and somehow there was never a reason to learn. I guess playing in the fire hydrants in the city streets was enough to keep him cool during the sticky East Coast summers. He was adamant, however, that growing up on the beach in Southern California, we were going to be water safe. We had swimming lessons--private lessons and semi-privates--all summer long for as many summers as I can remember. He would sit in the hot tub and watch us swim laps.

I remember when he killed a huge diamondback rattlesnake in our backyard. It had slithered behind the trash cans in our driveway, and he had to coax it out before it disappeared into the abyss of the woodpile. It became severely agitated, coiled in an angry heap, tsk, tsk, tsking us with its tail. My father instructed me to stand back. He took a shovel and swiftly and accurately, severed its head clean off its rattling body. My father wasn't a large man (he may have been 5'9" on his tallest day), but in that moment, he looked like Paul Bunyan to me. City boy he was, he still somehow knew to bag that snake's head, full of venom, separately. Then he called the fire department to dispose of its still twitching scaly body. That frightened me. As a child, there was something foreboding about a creature so dangerous that even in death, it had to be handled by firefighters to avoid an unfavorable outcome.

As we got older, my father wouldn't allow us to ride with teenage drivers or to get into cars with the nannies that took care of our neighborhood friends. My siblings and I would beg and cry to go with them when the invitations came for movies and the beach, but he never moved on that point. He didn't trust these trusted friends with our young lives, yet he insisted on only owning Porsches and he commanded those vehicles as if we were on the autobahn.

I had never seen that man so upset as the day he came downstairs into the garage and found my baby sister, probably three or four at the time, stark naked, building sandcastles on the hood of his new cherry red 911. Her impish grin and glistening eyes told a thousand stories of how proud she was in that moment. I guess she was drawn to the car's color as much as my father had been when he purchased it days before, but she was less inclined to like her bare tush the same hue when he was done with her. My father was a spanker. And he was anal. He liked his cars kept a certain way, sans sand.

There are a lot of things I would tell my father if he were still alive. I would tell him I don't believe in spanking, but that I love to gift surprises, too. I would tell him I let my kids have food in the car because I care more that they eat, even if it means spilling, than about the leather seats.  I would thank him for teaching me to love climbing trees and for appreciating the rain, what little fell in Southern California. I would let him know I never became the veterinarian he thought I might be, but I love animals anyway.

I would thank him for loving me enough to keep me out of inexperienced teens' vehicles, because I now understand that fear every time my kids climb into someone else's car. I would tell him how much I appreciate how hard he worked to provide us with all of the luxuries we had growing up, and for the sacrifices he made to ensure we had the best education possible. I would tell him I still love flying down hills, but now my choice mode of transit is a racing bike over a wagon.

I would apologize for hating him for all of those difficult years, but mostly, I would like to tell my dad I forgive him for the things I thought he lacked because through my own deficiencies, I get it. Only now do I understand just how difficult it is to be a parent.

Abandonment

Why does it take an outsider to connect the dots for us? Maybe we become lost while leading our own lives, so focused on the details, we forget about the picture at large. We can't see the journey because we are so intent on navigating the immediate road before us. I have been in desperate need of refocusing my vision, and I love when a prelude of that comes in brilliant, albeit sometimes small, projects, particularly in unexpected epiphanies. I want to believe that every project is one step closer to a greater big picture success.

Sitting in photography class tonight, I nervously wrung my hands over the assignment due. I absolutely was not pleased with what I had turned out and I knew the photo teacher wouldn't be all that excited, either. I had tried to fake it. I limped along this week, uninspired by the whole idea of it. We were to take one photo every single day at 11:11 (either am or pm) to document our lives. How boring is that in my case?

As a homeschooling parent, I have a lot of freedom and flexibility with the schedule, however, 11:11 am most days finds me sitting at the kitchen table pouring over decimals with a squirrelly fifth grader or teaching Ancient Inca Civilization to a reluctant third grader. How exciting can a photo of text books and erase shavings really be? 11:11 pm was really not an option, considering my days begin at 3:30 am. I am rarely awake in the 11:00 pm hour to read the clock, much less cognizant enough to think about taking a photo of any real value.

In a panic, I emailed the teacher early last week, seeking guidance over (read: exemption from) such a rigid time constraint. He graciously yielded and suggested I document my life as related to training for a triathlon, regardless of the time. His profoundly simple statement, "Be one with your life" has rung in my head ever since. And so I took pictures of my bike, pictures of my cleats, pictures of the pull buoy, goggles, and kick board, pictures of running shoes, and pictures of compression socks. I took photos of weights in the gym and jump ropes and planks and aero bars. I photographed gears and helmets and the mountain of dirty laundry churned out by said workouts.

I guess I didn't get the assignment. I hated my photos. They all sucked.

As passionate as I am about working out and training for these endurance events, the photos absolutely did not convey that message. They spoke something else entirely, but I couldn't put my finger on it....wasn't able to decipher it. One dimensional in theme, my photos had some original composition, but absolutely no "wow" factor. I threw in a few other randoms that photo teacher spoke about more compassionately; those were photos of burned out, weathered, tattered buildings I consistently pass on my afternoon runs.

As is the case in many stories in life, there was another parallel story going on in my photos. From my workout photo journal came a story of abandoned structures. (Stay with me.) All this week while photographing various workouts around town, the assignment evolved into one of abandoned groves with rotting buildings and barely-there thatched roofs. I absolutely adore the numerous old skeletal structures around this podunk town. Why? I really couldn't say until tonight, and maybe I still cannot articulate it, but I am going to try here.

The framework of what is left of old houses, barns, and sheds, useful in a past life, evoke in me a feeling of such utter sadness and despair that only rotting beams and tattered roofing can. Something about the juxtaposition of an ancient dilapidated barn in an abandoned dead grove of black, brittle trees is enough to drop me to my knees and cause me to succumb to the emptiness in my stomach until it swallows me whole. It turns my belly inside out and eats me alive. I love the feeling of it.

I want to tell the story of the weather-worn shed that suffers year after year under the unforgiving sun and humidity, struggling to keep its frame intact in seasons of relentless rain and wind. I want to document the broken sheds long forgotten in the tall grasses of groves that no longer bear fruit. I want to photograph the community of trees that after planting and nurturing, someone gave up on--left them alone to die in the scorching heat...walked away from. Those hollow structures, transparent walls, and lifeless branches take on a whole new life and meaning all their own to me.

Photo teacher was quick to point out that my images from last week had a similar flavor of abandonment. He referred to the shattered eclectic bottles and dismissed broken pottery abandoned in the middle of a trail to nowhere that I had photographed. Those shards of glass and China had called to me. I found them quite by accident while out scouting scrub jays, but they screamed to be photographed, so much so, I had to make a second trip back to their burial ground and unearth more of it for photo ops. I couldn't get enough of it. Something in me needed to tell the story of the unwanted glass and pottery. Where had they come from and why did someone deliberately dump what was left of them out in the middle of exactly nowhere?

I absolutely adore a teacher who can surmise so much of the big picture with so little before him. It took a mostly perfect stranger to look at just two weeks of my photos and help direct a creative vision. I love his suggestion of getting "out in the field" because this project is "calling" me.

I love photographing nature. I enjoy trying to capture birds doing birdlike things in their environment and manatees in their habitats grazing on hydrangea. It's thrilling to see a gator up close and personal in a canal, or to be lucky enough to steal a few macro shots of zebra swallowtail butterflies as they grace the Brazilian pepper trees.

However, I am never going to be an avid photographer of these moments. I am mediocre at best at capturing these slices of life because I am just not as passionate about them as I am of the broken and neglected. I want to be an advocate for the care and proper treatment of abandoned churches and graveyards. I want to document the dismal groves and their original outhouses before they blow away and disappear forever. I want to tell the various stories of the abandoned and unwanted without voices.

I love that photo teacher called me out on it. My heart aches for the abandoned. Why? What story does that tell of me?

Running From the Fire

I love the smell of a forest fire. It always reminds me of being a kid growing up in Malibu. Every year the Santa Ana winds would come and bring with them the threat of fires, especially during an Indian summer. It was almost like clockwork. Just about every October we could count on fire warnings. Then, with the smell of the world around us on fire, the dry, hazy air would burn my eyes and sting my throat. The swirling ash, like something right out of a Tim Burton movie, taunted and irritated my lungs. Neighbors sat watching the news intently, waiting for the mandate to evacuate their homes. 


When I was really young, it wasn't all that scary. It was exciting. I didn't understand the gravity of what it all meant. My father would climb to the roof of our three story house with the hose to saturate the wood. Unlike at Christmastime when he would allow us to trudge atop the roof with him to "help" hang lights, burning blazes caused my father to be intensely serious and focused on his mission, moving in fast forward all the while. We knew not to ask if we could climb the ladder to help. He would turn on the lawn sprinklers in a last ditch effort to dowse the property, hoping it might aid the firefighters and save the land from the angry encroaching flames. 


Even in the midst of all of this panic, I still loved it. I was elated. The frantic chaos of my parents bustling around in a frenzy to batten down the hatches, the red horizon in the not-so-far-away distance, the choking smoke scratching at my throat, to me, was an adventure. It meant we were packing the car and leaving...going somewhere exciting--away from the howling winds and the oven-like heat. Without a plan. That was the best part. We never knew where we were running to....just running away.  


I can remember one year in particular when it looked as though the flames were going to devour all of the parched land in a ravenous feast on their way to the Pacific. The fire was so far and wide, it appeared nothing in its path would be spared from a fiery death. Firefighters waged an endless and exhausting battle that seemed futile. 


Calling in men and women from several other counties, the LA Fire Department knew it was licked. This was no longer a battle against some rogue embers out of control, but more like a war straight from the depths of hell. Trees for miles and miles were charred to brittle twigs, and mountains as far as the eye could see were painted with charcoal. Torched houses fell like decks of cards in the wind. The snap and crack as they disintegrated was deafening to my young ears, a sound I will never forget. We were sent scurrying like rats to escape the blaze before we were trapped. My family went north that year, uncertain of what we would return to, if anything at all.  


Of course, as I got older, I came to understand the seriousness of raging fires. With maturity, evacuation no longer meant piling in the car with my siblings for an impromptu road trip and jumping on the beds of a hotel during our respite from a county in turmoil. I eventually came to appreciate what was really at stake in the midst of the confusion and hustle. For a brief interlude, I distinctly remember thinking I would feel disappointed and empty if my house were to burn to the ground and all of my belongings disappeared into ash. 


Beyond the material items, however, even when I was still relatively young, I thought about how very precious life is. From the smallest pine tree struggling to find its footing on the mountainside, to the creatures trying to escape the relentless flames with endless endurance chasing them, I knew how very much I wanted to have security and feel rooted myself. My house was just that. Security. It sheltered me from rainy days and bitter cold on winter nights. But it also provided a sanctuary to return to since it was home. My room was full of all of the things that made it mine: art projects, posters, souvenirs, letters, cards, clothes, and various books. Of course, I would have been sad to lose those items, but I know I would have been devastated to feel as though I had nowhere to return to if my home had vanished. I was fortunate enough to never know that grief. Until now.  


Living in Florida these last four and a half years has been a journey.  All of this time, I feel like I have been living in limbo, watching for flames and waiting for the evacuation drill. I still feel as though I am trying to find sanctuary, trying to get home. In my dreams, I sometimes see my childhood home that my mom still lives in to this very day. It's not the house so much that I desire, though. While lovely in architecture and location, I don't long for that building. Most often, I really just want a place that feels familiar. I miss the feeling of home. I miss the life I had planned on. 


I love the smell of a forest fire.