Keep In a Cool Dry Place

Two weekends ago, I spent another few days on the coast, comprising the Guitar Shorty concert, encountering the tour bus the night before the show, time in the ocean, a new tattoo, Tsunami Nacho food, new friends, old friends, and some of the best sleep I ever get—nestled in the Redwoods, and within the smell of the ocean. 

It’s the smells that really provoke me in this life.  My eyesight, like most middle-aged humans, is waning, but smells seem to cloak me in old memories, new moments, and reminders of things that should be eternally embraced. 

My drive home along the lakes which hug Highway 20 was unremarkable on many counts.  The weather was scorching as usual for August, the traffic was doggedly slow in all the wrong places, and my patience was a little worn as I sought to break free onto I-5 and race home for a client who would be waiting for my arrival.  I felt annoyed as I pulled into a convenience store parking lot, stopping primarily because of nature’s call.

After relieving that immediate need, I gazed furtively around the store, deciding to find something cold to drink, as the beverages in my ice chest were beginning to warm in the water that had transformed from ice the day before.  I was even more compelled to purchase a cold drink when I realized that I was going to be afforded the luxury of walking into a cooler to select an item.  The mere thought of being embraced by 38-degree cool air was enough to propel me to the other side of the store and into the refrigerated haven. 

The chilled air hit me like enthusiastic embrace of a long-lost friend.  As I took in my first deep breath of the cool air, the reunion hit a horrifying snag.  The cold, musty smell took my breath away.  I knew that smell from my childhood, when my parents operated a small restaurant resort.  Something living was decaying inside that walk-in.  My in-the-moment, logical brain told me, ‘probably lettuce or a soft cheese,’ based on the fact that the store made deli sandwiches.  But that logical order of thought was completely usurped by the invasion of a dark, coarse, damp, wet memory—one I had no idea I’d been housing for over thirty years.

What overtook my road-weary, slightly hung-over, completely over-indulged-from-the-weekend body at that moment was a point in time from late 1982.  Decaying produce, the cold-yet-swampy smell of an ancient ‘beer cooler’, the dim lights of same, all swirled in my brain, along with the smell of a cigarette-stained, beer-infused, bearded, dirty man. 

Somewhere back in that place in time, this man would regularly take me into that cooler, with permission from at least one adult who should have been keeping me safe.  Inside that cooler, I smelled, felt, and tasted things no child should ever have to recollect.  I am thankful for a brain which barred the memory from me for three more decades.  I am angry for a lack of recollection which has probably subconsciously driven more than one of the many poor choices I have made in my lifetime.

As I stood in the cooler somewhere in Lake County, I was overwrought with the flood of memories rushing through me.  On the verge of totally losing my cool, I stood in a corner, pretending intently to be deciding between cranberry juice and sparkling water.  I pretended to make trivial choices while tears flowed wholesale, in cascades, down the side of my 46 year-old face.

Wiping tears and mascara on the bottom of my tank top, I finally made the decision to just leave the store, making no purchase at all.  I got back into my car, pulled out a luke-warm bottle of water from the ice chest, and started the car. 

The drive from there to Redding was a bit of a blur, but this I do know—it was a swift one.  And a teary one.  And one that had me singing to every rock song I could find on the radio—at top volume—anything to avoid getting hit by The Feels on any more intense of a level than what was already battering me. 

Most of last week was also a blur, in terms of this situation.  I didn’t sleep well.  Nightmares were in high supply.  Sleeplessness was prescient, as was anxiety, and a mess of additional memories returning for some really fucked up homecoming. 

By Tuesday, the sleepwalking, and the attendant sleep-shenanigans had manifested.  My beloved “Hugger” pillow had been ripped open as part of a dream where I was trying to claw my way out of the beer cooler. 

I finally took some control over the situation.  I met with my counselor, who has had to walk me through other similar childhood traumas.  I was super honest with him:  I don’t want to be raw through this.  No Feels.  To that end, I have nursed a $120 bottle of Gold Reserve Jameson whiskey this week.  I have had an outing with one of *those* friends.  I have gained twelve pounds in eight days in an attempt to board up the hurt, anger, disappointment, shock, and sadness.

Despite those efforts, still I’ve been overcome with the return of this situation.  By Thursday, I had replaced The Hugger—with an even better version.  And I made a phone call, one which put me in contact with the violator in this situation. 

When he returned my call, I was on the other end of the line with a gravelly-voiced, aged, ailing man who did not have any recollection of me.  The comedian in me couldn’t help but giggle.  I mean, really, I didn’t remember him until a week ago.  The little girl in me was wholly pissed off.  What happened in that beer cooler should never have occurred.  That he was claiming no recollection was an affront I didn’t quite know how to accept, or process, or understand how to redeem. 

Though he was initially reluctant, he agreed to meet me.  Sunday morning, I drove to the small town where I grew up, down a familiar dirt road, and to a place that held other more pleasant memories for me.  It was some real irony for me that he now lived in a place that I associated with good times. 

We talked.  I confronted.  He shrank.  He denied.  He wilted—sort of like lettuce sitting too long in a beer cooler.  Finally, after assuring him that I only want to make sense of something so senseless, and that I want this shit to be back in his lap where it belongs, he confessed.  His apology was weak, or at least I think it was.  There may have been a sincerity there that I overlooked, because I have honestly had it up to *here* with people from my childhood blaming their drugs and their booze for a whole lot of abuse, neglect, and general lunacy.  

Regardless of those degrees of humanity in something so messy, I feel like I have offloaded the burden.  The process in doing so may not have been as perfect, or as exacting as anyone would want, but I am at peace with that much of it.

This is the second time I have confronted someone like this.  This is the first time I am still angry after the confrontation, but for now, I am okay with that, too.  I think it will dissipate.  The anger I shared with him yesterday made an impression.  To the extent he remembers, I am sure he will not forget.  And with that, I am carrying a lighter load.

Summer Drives

As I traveled between Sacramento and Mendocino via the I-80 corridor yesterday, I experienced something akin to déjà vu as I recalled making the same drive along I-80 several times in the summer of 1987.  It was a curious thing to think about the similarities and the differences between then and now…

The destination—in 1987, I was taking trips right into San Francisco, meeting up with friends I’d ironically made working at the Big Wheels in Shingletown.  George and his buddies were regular visitors to the area.  At eighteen years old, I was all agog at being in The Big City.  While I had lived in my very early years in the Los Angeles area, my parents transplanted us to Shingletown when I was eight, so my growing up years were rural—very, very, rural.  Weekends in San Francisco were filled with evenings quietly tiptoeing through the KPIX studios where my buddies worked, and then checking out interesting angles and lines to the city’s night life.  I fell in love that summer with the architecture and design of the beautiful city. 

This summer, almost 30 years later, I have been frequenting the Mendocino area, loving the interesting and eclectic blend of offbeat culture, beautiful forests, and the Pacific coastline.  There is something so soothing to me about walking beaches, and communing among the redwoods.  And the people I meet here are awesome. 

The music—that summer in ’87, I was constantly on the lookout for Huey Lewis and the News, the first couple of visits missing him by days in one direction or the other because of the band’s tour schedule.  My persistence finally paid off, having met him at a media event and winding up with opportunities to see him perform, and even attend Forty-Niner games at the sideline as he sang the national anthem at the start of the games. 

This year, with a verve that seems to come from the same youthful resonance all those years ago, I have been chasing after musicians all summer, enjoying the music, and meeting people who have that beautiful hunger and passion for the talents they’ve been given.  In 1987, the pursuits were completely successful only because of luck and happenstance.  As a woman in my forties, I am equipped with a radar, and intuition, and a perseverance of a woman on a mission.  I want.  I seek.  I find.  Tour buses, meals, after-hour jams, and new friendships have all fallen out of the musical tree in my pursuits this year. 

The wheels—in ’87, I was cruising around my universe in a 1975 Mercury Monarch.  I had bought it from Chuck and Carol Ann Dinning, as Carol Ann had upgraded to a new ride.  It had four doors, of which only two fully worked from both the inside and the outside.  Ditto on the windows.  But wow, that car could go fast.  Typical of a teenager, I was not fully satisfied with the ride, and longed to have a car that was smaller—cuter—and more fuel efficient.  In retrospect, I really had it all with that car.  The back seat was so huge I could—and did—sleep in it on some of my longer adventures.  I recall longing to get into a car with a car payment back then, as I felt that would be some sort of rite of passage, some big deal that made me more adult. 

This year, I’m driving a smaller, “sportier” car that probably would have filled the bill for the longings of eighteen year-old me.  As a middle-aged woman, I try not to curse on my longer road trips as I sit crunched up in my little Mitsubishi Mirage, a veritable ergonomically-incorrect torture machine that leaves me in need of body work after every adventure.  And there is no way I’m going to sleep in the back seat of this thing! 

This car also brings with it the unique opportunity to be ‘profiled’ almost every time I drive it in an urban area, as with its large rims and slim tires, it apparently takes on the look of gangster trouble.  While not the ideal ride, I love this car, as it has helped me travel thousands of miles over the past fifteen months I’ve owned it—seeing, living, loving, learning, and moving on in life.  I paid $1500 for it, and could not be happier that I don’t have a car payment or the need for an upgrade. 

As I drove through Fairfield yesterday, listening to Hall & Oates on CD, I thought about how many times I’d listened to that same band in the Monarch, on cassette tape.  Back then, I would sing along, but look side to side, furtively, so as not to be caught by other drivers.  Now, I roll down the windows in the slowed traffic, crank up the tuneage, and dance it out.  Sometimes, along with whomever is driving along side along the highway. 

It fascinates me, the things in life that change, and the things that don’t.