No Running Around The Pool

 No Running Around the Pool, a painting by my sister (denisebrookstudio.com), is ‘an homage to mom, who forever yelled those words at us while she sucked down vodkas and made us lunch.’ Such rife symbolism. The San Fernando valley is blazing hot in the summer. A swimming pool is a magical escape. Splashing and laughing with friends. Soaking in soothing, invigorating womb-temperature water. That forty-thousand gallons of clear liquid was space to go all out, stretch, scream, play. Then lemonade, sodas and melon under the shade of the patio overhang. The safest of places. And yet.

The pain is palpable in the room---twenty, thirty, forty years later. Talk of patriarchs turns to tales of parents. Eight of us sharing life over warm gooey chocolate chip cookies. Tales of father wounds rendered physically by hand, emotionally by absence. Parent betrayals. “You have to make space for forgiveness in your mind or it’ll eat you up.”

If my mom had a love language it was food. Watermelon slices and snacks in abundance after swimming. Showering us with Michelin star morsels from Sunset magazine recipes. So we had that. There was no hugging, no personal contact and we never heard, “I love you.” Not even years after I’d been softened enough to say it to her. As for the vodka drinking---that left other marks; some visible in cigarette burns on the linoleum.

Growing up I wanted everything black and white. Easier to hold to artificial absolutes in a childhood that didn’t have many. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” says Solzhenitsyn. As I see more gray in me, I realize this: the rule, no running around the pool, applies to everybody. It’s easy to slip and cause harm. Forgiveness is similar. A rule to heal us from harm against us. Freeing us to get back into the swim.

Road Tripping Baja

The Mexican Federal Highway 1, was completed in 1973. Google maps claims that’s twenty-one hours of driving to La Paz (click on the ‘family road trip’ icon and that time doubles). Their marriage tenuous, my parents seized on the idea of going south through Baja. I was thirteen, my sister eleven. Was this road trip borne out of an article in Westways magazine? An aching hope that peninsular beaches would wash away present pain? For the kids? Adventure called; Baja beckoned.

A seed of the wild was at work in my folks. Evident in each parent when separately seen. Mom took us to the mountains. Dad played with photography. Somewhere in them, between them, this connection. A seed stifled.

An album in a box contains black and white photos from that trip. Taken with my Brownie camera; mom, dad, sis, a statue celebrating the 28^th Parallel. I have few memories of that trip. Fighting to stay awake---the rocking of the car lulling me to sleep. Watching the scenery in-between fights with my sister. Many bathroom stops—mom was taking a diuretic. Pemex gasoline—that’s funny when you’re thirteen. Roadside shrines, and ribs at Senor Frogs. I can’t say what the trip stirred in my parents. Still a portal opened, a seed planted. 

Is this hankering for road trips my nature? The same DNA driving my parents to drive? That same DNA motivating my grandfather to flee Russia—the most grandiose of road trips. Or was I nurtured by highway? Solid and safe the car takes care of all my needs.  Transporting me to a place where hope is just in the distance. A seed takes hold.

I've seen countless backroads since then. Cresting hills and plummets into washes. Hours in the cab with close friends. Honeymoon with the wife. Weeks in the summer with the daughter checking out ‘America’s best ideas.’ Every October and Summer seeking adventure. Other people’s stories. Vistas and visions of beauty around every turn. Hope just beyond the horizon. A seed blooms. 

Conversations With My Mom: On Aging

I talked with my mom tonight about getting old. We also talked about the invincibility of youth; how when you are young you think nothing bad can befall you.

" (During the war) I used to like to stay outside and watch the Russian bombs in Riga. My parents felt differently. They would come and drag me into the cellar.

One time, we were on a train, going somewhere, to nowhere. The train had red crosses on the top of it. Filled with refugees---the wounded.

I was laying down in the forest with this girl. I didn't really know her that well. She was a well established (well versed, well known--that's the gist of it) pianist. The Americans bombed the train. The bullet went straight out her hand and through her wrist......Maybe some 0f the trains with red crosses on them were'nt really what they said they were....this one sure was.

Even that didn't affect me. It was sad.

When you're older you have a different perspective. More fears."