AGAMA DAN SENI

We sip coffee in Aunt Shirley’s cluttered sitting room. Seashells, common and exotic, cover the top of an old, battered Queen Ann table. A baby quilt dated 1910 in embroidered stitches is neatly folded and placed with studied casualness on an old chest.

I sit across from a print of children playing in the sand. The original is a famous painting, but I can’t remember the artist’s name. It’s a woman artist. I know it is. But names escape me. Not remembering is disconcerting, but I shrug it off.

Outside it’s still bluish-black and quiet. We talk. In another age one would have written, “we talked of inconsequentials.” We are avoiding the word, “Goodbye.”

I dress sleeping and reluctantly roused children. My twelve-year old begs for more sleep. She plops herself on her granduncle’s lap and buries her face in his shoulder. I see the pain in his eyes. In her uncle she’s found a kindred spirit, and he found one in her. Some but not all of his tears are from arthritis, but he won’t shoo her off.

“You’re hurting your uncle. Get off the poor man,” I say.

She obeys but not happily. She sits next to her aunt and snuggles sleepily.

The car is packed. Raised eyebrows ask if I’m ready. I’m not, but I say, “We better go.” And as an afterthought I add, “It’s a long trip.”

We all know this, and I feel silly for saying it.

I don’t drive. A slowly dying mind makes driving unsafe. When I was a child I found a place in the back on the passenger side. Annalise would be on the back driver’s side and the smaller of we girls in the centre. Anna and I served as security blankets and pillows to smaller sisters. Now I sit in the front, and I feel the same drowsy satisfaction as when I was a child.

It seems strange to describe a journey as having legs. But, if journeys have legs, this one’s first is from Aunt Shirley’s to the Columbia River.

When I was small, this stretch was a paved trail, a wagon road turned by the magic of asphalt into a highway. It twisted its way along a desert canyon floor. I would try to sleep. If I didn’t, by the time we reached Plymouth, Father would be desperately trying to find a place to stop before I threw up. Now it runs in multi-lane splendor on the high ridge, and it is straight and true.

I try to see traces of the old road. I get one glimpse of crumbled asphalt preserved as a bed of black gravel on the canyon floor below.

There was once a ferry at Plymouth, and on the ferry road there was an abandoned house. I used to wonder about the house and those who lived in it. I wondered why they left it. The house is gone now, and the town persists as a name, a few buildings and a trailer. We pass it at speed and high on an artificial ridge. Instead of crossing on a ferry with water lapping at our tires, we cross a bridge the sides of which almost hide the river from view. Neither do we pass through the little town on the river’s far bank, though the road used to go that way.

The Second Leg.

We drive on without pause. The girls sleep. As far as seatbelts and child-seats allow, they puppy sleep. I mean they sleep in a tangle of black and blond hair, a tangle of brown and pale limbs. It makes me smile.

As I write “leg” an ill-formed visualization passes through my mind. I smile faintly as at a poorly-told but still funny joke.

The second leg takes us toward the sea, though we travel not that far. We will turn South. But for now we follow the river along its southern shore. We pass great dams grown old. They are stately with an industrial-era elegance. The waters they restrain bury wagon roads, farms, an occasional village now moved up the bank and well settled in its newer location. At low water there are traces of eras past.

Tribal fishermen and their nets are scattered on the water. The river is never still, but this morning it is glassy, mirroring the clouds and raising sun.

This is near desert, and we travel among rounded hills. In another place we’d call them mountains, but they are too small to be called such here. Great chunks have fallen, cracked off the rims of the hills above; they’ve slid partly toward the river below. There is latent violence and power in these great clods. They should move, finish their slide. Perhaps in a fit the earth will one day finish its work here.

The girls still sleep. It’s getting warm. It will be hot soon—over 100 the radio says. I find a new station. The old one’s voice has become unsteady and scratchy with distance.

We pass a sleepy Arlington and in time find Bigg’s Junction. We eat at a café. I remember it as a different place perched at the edge of another road. I am as fascinated by a mechanical orchestra with its long-stilled voice as I ever was. Uncle Bruce remembers it from when it still worked, moving in time to a jukebox selection.

The place needs a good cleaning. I can’t remember when it didn’t. I remember a giant piece of basalt cracked from the cliff by a dynamite blast. It had the tamp-hole still in it. I don’t see it now.

The girls are hungry. Pancakes are eaten. They aren’t what Aunt Shirley can make, but they are filling. We do the potty parade, and I thank God for inspiring disinfectant wipes and seat protectors. We get puzzled grins from two truckers who can’t figure out a troop of girls who all call me mommy but don’t all resemble me. My oldest draws stares. I wish she looked more her age and less like she were fifteen. I take my medication. It will make me sleep. It is an unhappy side-effect. I will sleep, but I won’t rest.

The Third Leg

We climb up and eventually out of the river-surrounding desert, and I lean my head into a pillow. Sleep comes, and the girls’ chattering becomes an unintelligible buzz and then disappears.

I dream. It’s the same dream I always have though in a new guise. It’s never the same, but it’s always the same. In my dream I struggle. My words, my well directed blows, my shots and arrows hit home, but to no effect. This dream no longer frightens me, but it still tries.

I awake to gentler scenes and a two-lane highway that retains some of its original curving flow. We pass an old gas station built in the 1920′s, I think. It’s trying its best to let entropy take it to its final rest.

“Was that a gaol?” Arpita asks.

I look. I mentally framed the same question as a child, but never asked it. On our right is a concrete building striped to bare walls and iron window frames. I don’t know why it reminds my eldest and me of a gaol. It wasn’t one. Perhaps it was a house or a store. Never a gaol.

It sits in a pasture, though I think it wasn’t always pasture. A young woman is riding one of the horses, galloping. We catch the tail end of mating ritual and horses mate. My daughter stops her chatter in mid sentence. We watch the brief termination of a dance we’ve seen before. There is something emotional, potent, powerful in this.

The pines and firs appear. I feel at home, though this is not where I live. Lodge Poles dance by our car windows in flickering display. I peer into the grove as if there is some great secret hidden there. There’s not, of course, but there should be.

There is a state park and we rest. The girls are anxious to be on their feet. Children’s feet are a precious gift. I remember my first-born, the first of my birth-children, sprawled on our couch playing the “smell-my-feet” game with her father. She would shove her toes in his face, and he would grimace and say phew!” She, in turn, would convulse with laughter and plead, “do it again daddy.” This would turn into a variation of “This Little Piggy” except its phraseology was, “this little piggy loves her mommy, and this little piggy loves her daddy” and on through other relations until the last toe. The last toe was always a question: “And this little piggy loves …?” Her answer was sometimes predicable and sometimes revealing. A shouted “Hayden!” revealed her first baby-crush.

Now she’s caught between being a toddler and being a young woman. She’s naturally elegant. She and Arpita lead the youngest and we follow, watching their puzzled amazement and listening to their questions.

This park is a logging museum. There is a touch of family here. The family connection to the timber industry is strong.

I let one of the girls climb into the cab of an antique locomotive. “I want to drive a train,” she once said. Now she looks around the cab of this engine built in 1864, and says, “This is dirty. Why is it so dirty?”

The answer is disuse, exposure, neglect. Sometimes I feel dirty for the same reasons. It’s hard to feel your mind dying, only to have it resurrected by a pill and brute mental force. And it makes me feel unclean, dirty, used. I feel put on display as a curiosity over which to wonder and speculate, and I identify with this neglected relic.

The girls grow quiet and, rocked by the car’s rhythm, drift into near sleep. We pass little towns grown up since I was a child. Much is the same, but more is not.

Uncle Bruce detours to find a place from his childhood. It was a place of rock gardens, buildings made of gem-like rock and concrete, a pond with lily pads and birds of glorious feather. We’ve come at the wrong season. It seems forgotten and nearly desolate. He shakes his head. We do not stay.

We climb into the mountains and back into forest. There is again in my soul a sense of home-coming. I remember another trip through here. It snowed unseasonably then. Grandfather was sick. It was, I think, the time of his third stroke. He died soon after.

A lake. A small city. Lunch.

For mostly sitting all day, we seem remarkably hungry.

“Are you okay?” Uncle Bruce asks. “Shall we stop here?”

I’m not okay. We stop. It’s early enough that in other, better times, I’d have pressed onward. Not now. We find a small mall. I buy a book. There is ice cream. I choose licorice. I haven’t had it in years. I still like it. A doll finds its way into Elizabeth’s hands courtesy of her grand uncle. Other things for the others bring smiles. Arpita slips her hand in mine. Of all my children, she does this the most frequently.

We find a motel. It was built in the 1960′s I think, and updated at some point. It’s on the shabby side now, but it is clean. Bruce offers to find another, better place. I’m just as happy here.

There is a small park. The girls play off built up energy. We watch. I wonder when the “huh uh” of my childhood became the girls’ “nuh uh.” It’s one of the mysteries of life.

Night comes, and the girls sleep. I must shoo Arpita to bed. She’d never sleep if she could avoid it. She doesn’t wish to miss anything. I felt such myself once. Now I avoid a great many things best I can.

Uncle Bruce and I talk. Inconsequentials matter. They’re important because they distract me from other less pleasant things.

We rehearse shared memories, and I listen to stories I’ve heard before. And he tells me things I did not know. I didn’t know my great grandfather played baseball back sometime before 1920.

Uncle Bruce has a photo of him in his uniform. He promises to send it to me. Then, he looks stricken. I hate this look, though I see it often. It isn’t parting with a treasured photo that brings on the look, but I pretend it is.

“You don’t have to give away your photos ….”

“I want to,” he says. “I want you to have it.”

I’ve been the repository of family history since I was ten or so. Who will treasure the accumulated junk when I’m gone? I’ve worried a lot about it, but it doesn’t seem important now. Only the look in Uncle Bruce’s eyes matters. I want to comfort him and don’t know how.

I sleep most of the night sitting up. I often do this. It’s less painful.

Last Legs

We don’t have fruits or vegetables for the State of California to confiscate. We drive on.

We eat in Alturas. I remember the restaurant from my childhood. Little has changed. The food is poor. The restroom is abominable. The waitresses seem to be clones of those who served us in my youth. I try to think of more pleasant things and fail.

We have trouble with a tire in Susanville. I’m impatient. The repairman is older but not old. He seems to move as does a truly elderly man. I wonder if it’s arthritis, but selfishly shake off the sympathy. We’re close now. I want to get on the road. I shush childish questions and feel guilty for doing it; so I answer them anyway.

The drive is short, much shorter than I remember, and we are in Westwood. It is not the same. Some things are gone. Trees are gone that were infantile growths last I was here. We do not take care of our forests as we should. We don’t take care of life as we should.

We drive around looking for things, places. My grandparents lived in this small house. It seemed so large when I was young. It is very small. Someone has installed new siding, replacing the narrow pine strips with wide boards that conflict with the house’s design. I feel connected to my grandparents, but no longer to this house or to the yard in which I played each summer.

We eat in a café. There are old photos on the wall. They are of old Westwood, the Westwood of my grandparents and great grandparents. Some of them sing “home” to me, but the village as it is, is not home.

We aren’t staying here, but close enough.

There’s a man – you’d know his name – with whom my grandfather formed an unlikely friendship maybe thirty-five years ago. Grandfather is gone, but, being younger, this man is not.

They both owned property on Lake Almanor, but they weren’t neighbours unless one can call someone who lives across the lake a neighbour. We will stay in his house. He calls it a cabin, but it’s a three-bedroom house. It’s simply furnished and very plain. It’s quiet, and I need quiet.

We find the short drive, pass with unconcern a “No Trespassing” sign, and stop just short of the front porch. I see the Lake. The water is dappled and choppy. I remember much. There is so much to remember, but some of these memories will die, having re-played their movements this one last time.

I cry.