I acquired my second car ever, another yellow volvo named the creme brulee. It's funky in all the right ways along with being quite comfortable. On the road I listened to the gritty old cassette tapes dad "archived" from my childhood. One of my favorites is Don McLean on side 1 and Elton John's first album on side 2. This is the song I especially liked while driving north from Mt. Shasta: Winterwood on American Pie (1971)
At Grandma Betty's house, overlooking the oakey banks of the Sacramento River, we enjoyed our usual activities: knitting, watching Judge Judy, talking about genealogy, and doing chores. After my morning Yoga on the patio, I watered the plants to prepare for weeding. Then Grandma got out her favorite long narrow spade and I grabbed a five gallon bucket for the weeds. She sat down and worked on some insidious oxalis while I wrestled with several tall, prickly milkweeds (the kind that I had to squat down and grip with both hands to uproot). A few times when I finally yanked the stubborn ones up out out of the ground I fell back on my butt and got a tickley sprinkling of dirt all over my face and hair.
The last place we weeded was the wine barrel planter under the fig tree. There were a few scrawny reddish leaves shyly stretching up from the dark brown soil that was nearly vacant but for the leaves and a few acorns the squirrels buried for later. The leaves were two lonely beets, no bigger around than a quarter. My favorite of grandma's pickles (although they're a close second to dilly beans) are pickled beets. I remember delighting in them as a child and always being warned that they were capable of causing eternal stains on carpets, counters, clothes, and anything else of consequence. Grandma planted those little beets in the hopes that by my next visit there would be a few jars of my favorite pickles. For reasons unknown, the messy dark red (usually pickleable) roots averted their destiny and became weeds.
During my trip, I most vividly remember two feelings. The first was the overwhelming feeling of seeing people who really love me and really appreciate our time together (even though they know I'm a bit nutty). There was something very reassuring about all the hugs I got along the way from the Bay Area to Eugene.
The other feeling I had was a weird intrigue at the diversity of memories that all mean something like "home." Here are some tidbits from the dictionary:
Home: the place or region where something is native or most common. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered. the dwelling place or retreat of an animal.
I am most commonly found in the greater bioregion of Northern California and Southern Oregon. I have many dwelling places and retreats. A few of the ones I visited last week were:
Cal's used bookstore in Redding where I used to spend countless hours in dusty corners reading hardback copies of Vonnegut and Jean Rose's Herbal Body Book while the owner and his yellow cat got stoned together up front, filtering through the romance novels and setting aside beautiful art books, rarities, and poetry anthologies. I bought a large illustrated hardback called The Art of Natural History, a small cheap paperback from 1968 called Zen Macrobiotic Cooking, and a long awaited art book of Picasso.
Jasmin's room: My friend Jasmin has a simple, beautiful room with a strangely hideous light fixture on the ceiling. She lives in a classic San Francisco victorian flat with wood floors, tall ceilings, picture molding, and the light fixture in question has two off-white frosted glass pieces on it with tacky coral colored roses painted on the inside. The wires dangle out of the top. I like to rest on her bed, talking to her about our lives, and analyzing how such an otherwise beautiful room can have such an incongruously strange thing on the ceiling.
Eric's Car: A few years ago, after work my friend Eric would drive me home even though I lived only four blocks away. Four small San Francisco blocks. He would drive the 2 minutes then park in front of my basement door and we would talk and laugh for sometimes as much as an hour. Last week I got another equally short drive from his parking space on 19th and Valencia to a bar on 16th and Mission. Four short blocks. We circled around a few times to make sure our conversation could last as long as possible.
My parent's couch: It's not really for short people, as is true of most futons. They lean back just so that my legs don't touch the ground and the couch kind of eats my butt so it's hard to get up. Yet we all pile on there, cat included, to watch movies and laugh together. My parents have a whole house full of chairs, yet I can't resist the mostly uncomfortable couch.
As for the place where my domestic affections are centered, I must admit my affections are decentralized into many connected yet independent entities. I can't call Eugene home, and I learned by walking, driving, and singing my way around my commonly inhabited bioregion that there's no need to have just one home. In contrast to the certainty of the hugs, I remember thinking about the ambiguity of home. Like those sneaky little beets that refused to become my favorite pickle, I don't want to assume the inevitability that if I'm planted in Eugene, it will become my only home. I like the air, the ground, the sun, and the beets around here better if I know there are endless varieties of beets.
