Safety

There was a bat in the house, a strange and erratic intruder. It was 3 a.m., and I was sleeping, but my hyper-vigilant husband tapped me on the shoulder and announced the presence of a guest. “Put the covers over your head, lie still, and stay calm,” he instructed, “and I’ll deal with it.”

Among his admirable qualities is this ability to “deal with it” whatever “it” is. I complied, no questions asked, and lay still beneath the blanket, aware of subtle movements, sensing occasional moments of pressure on the bed, the closing of a door, the sliding of a window.

I was a little girl again, lying still and safe and hidden, protected from harm.

The bat was now not exactly outside, but trapped between the screen and the glass windowpane, clinging to a corner of the screen. It seemed a precarious situation, an uneasy coexistence within the boundaries of our bedroom, but Monte was confident that in the morning he could open the screen enough to coax the bat out without harming the creature or dropping the entire screen, and even that wouldn’t be a catastrophe, and I could lift the covers from my head.

But I didn’t really want to. It occurred to me that lately, all I have wanted is to pull the covers over my head and tune out the onslaught of disturbing realities. I had found a brief, regressive little retreat and rather enjoyed it.

I will spare you the litany of everything that’s bothering me and shift instead to a scene that delighted me.  As I was driving out past Gaviota State Park yesterday, I witnessed a procession of children walking along, flanked by a couple of adults, happy chaos in containment, keeping carefully in line, some holding hands, a colorful parade, a string of excitement and wonder and mirth. I assumed they were on their way to the beach. It was hot, and the air held the ominous haze from the devastating fire raging thirty miles to the north of us.

I slowed my car to a stop, rolled down my window, waved, and smiled, and wished them well. Dear little time travelers, please be safe.

In my own childhood, I was fond of cover caves and secret spaces, as I suppose all children are. I might drape a bed sheet over a table, crawl beneath it, and make it my home for a while, or eavesdrop unseen from behind a chair as the familial discord filled the air. I remember sidewalk games of chase and tag, and how we would arbitrarily proclaim a certain doorway, stoop, or lamppost as safe, then run to it and touch it. Maybe sometimes, out of breath, we would fully lean into it, relieved and secure, sheltered in the framework of our own invented rules.

My fortunate grandson has a tent of his own in the backyard already, a tiny, silly striped one, but it serves its purpose. I have watched Etta, our 9-year-old neighbor, construct a fort of pillows and blankets, and slip into it with a flashlight and a book, happy and oblivious. Once we went to a real cave together. We sat on the sand, soft as talcum powder, eating marshmallows that Etta had packed, listening to a canyon wren, looking out, not thinking. It was a perfect hide-out.

Maybe all of us are simply looking to be saved or be safe, in one way or another. Maybe we just need to call a time out, or claim a safe zone, or retreat within, or take a leap of faith. 

I sent a sentimental letter a few years ago to my old friend Jo, with whom I went to high school in the 1960s. "You are the one with whom I sat beneath the oak tree near my house, and we pondered many mysteries together," I wrote.

A few days later, I received an email reply: “That I do remember, and it is a vivid memory. In fact, I think we must have done it several times because if memories were colors, then this one would be a vibrant yellow, bright as the sun. Unfortunately for me, I am still pondering the one big Mystery as I approach my 70th birthday.  The more I know, the less I know, and so it goes...”

The more we know, the less we know, and so it goes…and lately it feels like we’re being grabbed by the collar and shaken to the core, and it takes some stamina to stay upright. But I’m following a path of vibrant memories, bright as the sun, and they offer a sweet respite.

Jo was forged, in her own words, by “a childhood fraught with misery” but she was irrepressible. In what struck me as an extraordinary act of bravery and rebellion, she left her family home when still in her teens and rented a room––a room of her own—from an elderly lady in town. It was a tiny room in a small house on a lazy street with the charming name of Lace Lane. I went to visit her there once, late in spring, when the air was fragrant with blossoms. (Lilac, azalea, hydrangea, hyacinth...old-fashioned flowers with heady scents.) The still-new leaves of the trees were pale green and lacy, and there were lace-patterned shadows on the walkway.

There was something lonely and cloistered about the room, but the space was to Jo’s liking. She sat on the edge of a narrow bed, and sunlight poured through a window behind her. She held a key, a hard-won key, that could open or lock her door, and in that moment, she seemed almost regal, the Lady of Lace Lane. I don’t recall how long she stayed there, perhaps for a summer, paying a few meager dollars earned babysitting, or working as an usher at the theater. I don’t even know the precise circumstances that prompted her self-imposed exile. But I did instinctively understand the appeal of having such a room, and marveled at how she had leap-frogged into so sophisticated and enviable an arrangement.

For we all wanted freedom, didn’t we? But we were still a little tentative and unprepared. We wanted freedom that was safe, autonomy while nestled snugly, a place enclosed by walls where we could dream, and from which we could come and go without explanation. We wanted to experience life, then go someplace and write about it. Beyond whatever rooms we had, the world was coming apart, but we didn’t know it then.

And here we are again.  Well into our seventies, still being reminded of how little we know, and so it goes. Once I asked my cousin Gianni in Italy why his father had such sadness in his eyes. “He is an idealist,” said Gianni, “He thought the world would change. But it did not.”

I finally understand, for here I am, chronically disillusioned, conjuring, wishing, waiting for the resolution that is never forthcoming, but bolstered by wonders, nonetheless.

Yellow roses keep erupting from the neglected bushes Nancy planted years ago. They are scraggly and windblown, a little bit buggy, but fragrant and defiant. Nancy was the lady of this land, the diligent gardener, she who planted the macadamia orchard forty years ago, and the citrus trees, and the whispery gatherings of native shrubs, and I can hear her telling us not to be discouraged.

There is a snakeskin by the stairs, a long length of translucent skin, fully intact from head to tail, a customized carapace vacated by its occupant. Like so many things around here, it’s a cross between creepy and amazing, but to me it hints of rebirth and reinvention, the ever-present possibility of a new self.

I live in a place that should be impossible, which reinforces the idea that anything is possible. Who could have imagined this place and these times in which we live? I pluck pieces of story from each passing day, like layers of old wallpaper or paint on a wall, trying to learn or salvage, turning what is fleeting into something to keep, in case perhaps it matters. I traverse the landscape yearning for the tent, for the sail, for the cape to be woven from the threads of my unraveling. I carry a cargo of humility and gratitude for the love that I was given, often undeserved, and there’s a weighty ache to that, but the love is an umbrella, unfailing.

Sometimes at night the sea’s familiar salty song reaches my room. I can hear its muffled crashing behind a foghorn or a passing train. I can hear pigs in the orchard crunching on nuts, and the yapping of coyotes. There was a boy who lived here a century ago who went to sleep on a bed of kelp in the middle of the day, cradled and rocked, lulled by green-blue sea song older than existence.

The fire is still burning, and ash is snowing on the steps. A bat enters stealth and silent, perhaps regretting its decision, but freed in the morning, while I sleep. Once the moon broke into pieces that floated on the surface of the sea and I tucked a shard of light into my heart.