The View From Here

Felix and his boy cousins reconstructed a driftwood hut, then brandished sticks, ran around proclaiming their powers, and finally got naked to spray each other with a hose and engage in some communal peeing and penis comparison. (Is this how it all begins?) The backdrop is the Ranch, ripening recklessly in all its summer wonder and weirdness. A mahogany tree has burst into white feathery blossom, standing luminous in a shaft of sunlight, becoming at dusk a kind of candle. Mysterious stalks of Amaryllis Belladonna—otherwise known as naked ladies––are poking through the ground behind the house, pink spears on black stalks, and vibrant red flowers adorn the cactus on the deck. The other day we witnessed a pair of rattlesnakes in the canyon engaged in a haunting tango of mating. A passing train prompted a ruckus of coyote song, a rocket was launched, and the bat that strayed into our room has been successfully released through a window into darkness.

We are in the thick of the mostly-happy chaos that children bestow, but we are concurrently beginning the chaos of moving, gradually dislodging things from shelves, emptying drawers, and filling boxes. I have to admit it’s been stressful, but I also realize it is a blessing to have the kids around. I especially enjoy Felix’s narratives, articulated in his clear, crisp British accent. He acquires magical powers if he stands upon a certain tree stump, and he points out the Hill of Doom that he has managed to ascend and survive. He snacks on apple slices with peanut butter and has discovered a fondness for passion fruit sorbet, a “fancy” flavor. He launches a puppet show in the garage with the limp old puppets who populated the childhoods of his grandfather and his mother. He explains the Big Bang to me, and the general outlines of Star Wars, which sounds like a constant battle between good and evil, but although he is very graphic about the bad guys, he won’t tell me who the good guys are.

“It’s not real life, Nonna,” he assures me, but there are disconcerting parallels. He is a nimble-fingered whiz at Lego construction, insatiably curious, and remarkably observant. He can be bossy and insensitive at times, then wants to sit quietly on my lap. I read him the first chapter of an old edition of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and it turns out he is already familiar with Narnia. He charms and manipulates me daily, and I am exhausted, but already bracing for the leaving.

I have less to say about baby Alice, who remains a snuggly, blue-eyed enigma. She is adorably plump, and generous with her smiles, but also capable of robust bouts of crying. I look forward to getting to know her better; even in the few weeks of this visit, she seems to be coming into her own personality.

As for my daughter, this return to her childhood home is a kind of farewell, but also a gift to her son, who will remember it clearly now. But yes, the parting looms ahead, and soon they will be back in their England world, and despite my missing them, I know it’s a good place for them to be.

“You. Me. Two. Different. People,” said my daughter to me when she was about thirteen years old. The ramifications unfolded rapidly and exponentially, and at the age of seventy-four, I do accept it. Once upon a time, I too declared my autonomy, left the scene that had been set for me, and forged a journey of my own. That was before I understood the circularity of such departures, the tenacity of connection, the expansive and organic nature of identity, and the blurriness of its borders.

I long ago learned that you have to get used to saying good-bye if you want to live a life, and it doesn’t help to let the anticipation of parting spoil the time of being together. I’m trying to be less linear in my thinking these days, noticing the way hellos and goodbyes blend together, and how endings contain beginnings and new possibilities. And  I know very well that some spiritual essence of those I love can remain with me across time and distance, and that everything, in a way, is happening always. I have lived for thirty years in a place that lets me see this very clearly.

This place. “Isn’t it a little like living in a lighthouse?” a friend of mine asked me yesterday. And this seemed a fitting image, for it is indeed removed from the usual, and extravagantly inconvenient––but oh, the views, and the insights.

And yet, a lighthouse sounds lonely…doesn’t it? I have never been lonely here.

In the last month or so, ever since we began the process of moving away, each encounter with our neighbors has contained a morsel of goodbye and a veering toward tears, but it has been a reaffirmation of the continuity of friendship and the comfort of community, a renewed awareness of how much I have loved this land of miracles, and a surge of gratitude for the honor of having lived here for so many decades. As our time here draws to a close, I see even the everyday stuff more clearly and appreciate it more fully.

Yesterday at dusk I stepped outside with Felix ostensibly to close the gate, but really just to walk a bit and reset. The hills were still glowing with the last splash of sunlight and the evening came up close and cast its coolness on our skin. Sounding like a 5-year-old poet, Felix announced–-with passion––that his favorite times of day are early morning and this, because it’s peaceful and quiet, and he loves the way the air feels when it moves. He turned his face upward toward the sky.

“We’re the same in this way,” I told him. He had already bound ahead and into other ideas, but a woman and her grandson shared this moment, fully alive and together in the magic and mystery. Nothing can change that fact. The wind will whisper it sometimes.

The process of relocating is hard enough, but we are doing it within a deeply disturbing context. I’m trying not to let that dominate all my writing and thinking, but there is so much happening in our world right now that is unspeakably awful. There is work to be done in order to manifest hope as an active verb. Yet we are simultaneously trying to live our lives, trying to make a difference if we can and be compassionate humans, but sometimes remembering how to briefly forget, sometimes remembering to laugh and marvel at what is beautiful and wondrous. I have often said that it takes a kind of schizophrenia to live in this world. Or, since poets always say it better, I hold onto Mark Nepo's "Everything is beautiful, and I am so sad/This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief." 

A new morning has come. The resident bobcat has rolled an orange to the side of the road. The leaves are trembling with anticipation. The air is infused with the heady fragrances of earth, and my heart spills over with an all-consuming love.

I can see a little boy striding up the hill.