The Stories

The Gaviota Writers gathered for one last time in my living room to read their stories. Jim made a brief appearance on the screen of my tablet, calling in from North Carolina, and Jan sang a song that rose like smoke from fire, and everyone seemed vulnerable and brave. We are navigating loss and illness and disconcerting change, maintaining our footing on shifting sands, and looking back with wonder at the years amassed behind us, happily surprised by the resilience of these friendships and that we are here together in this moment. Our tears do not embarrass us.

Elsewhere, on a different day, my friend David wears a brightly colored batik print shirt as he steps off the edge of the familiar and into the possible, embarking on a journey to another side of the world and a woman he loves, and he isn’t young, but he knows he will regret it forever if he doesn’t give this a chance. It’s touching, and scary…and beautiful.

And a very dear lady named Jean passed away peacefully last week at the age of 94. When she was very young, Jean and her friend Nancy hitchhiked in England, and a man came along on a motorcycle. Jean told me the story years ago. “Nancy got in the sidecar, and I got on the motorcycle, and off we went. We were going to Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford on Avon. We stopped and the man bought us a basket of strawberries, and then we saw a play at the Globe Theater.” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t even remember what we saw,” she added. “It doesn’t matter. We did that.”

I understand what she meant. Even if the passing years blur the details, we forever feast upon the times when we said yes. The small elations live inside of us, coloring our character, feeding our spirits.  “We must risk delight,” as Jack Gilbert proclaimed.

Delight aside, it takes a lot of courage to live a life. I marvel at the bravery of my friends with broken hearts still being of service to others, of those plucky protesters, of the folks outside their comfort zones, the ones who risk, who push the envelope, who do humble work with diligence and kindness, who face the challenges of change with guts and grace.

I love the tiny twinkling triumphs too. “I walked all the way to Junction Boulevard,” my mother told me once. She was well into her 80s when she made this announcement. I don’t know what precipitated it, and I had never heard of the street, but I looked it up and it’s in Corona, Queens, where she lived in the 1930s and 40s. She was still proud of having walked that distance.

I keep looking back at my mother, even a decade after her death, trying to understand her, trying to glean glimpses of her being happy. Now and then, there is a flicker. I see her with self-confidence, I see her with a sense of her own autonomy and desire. It is quickly obscured by the chaos and tragedy that prevailed, but sometimes I find light in the flickers. These too are real. The fleeting brightness happened. Such threads can be gathered and spun.

I remember her putting on red lipstick. There was a certain technique, then she would pat her lips together on a tissue, leaving the print of a kiss, and steal a glance in the mirror, satisfied. She looked good, and she knew it. The time would come when, still a young mother, all her teeth were pulled (“too much candy”) and her dentures were never right. But she had great legs. She wore high heeled shoes, and walked amazing distances in them, all over the city. Walking was her therapy, and I understand that now because it has become mine as well.

I seek the little slants of sunlight, retroactive balm. I recall my mother weeping, but she also rode the trolley in flower print dresses and she walked to Junction Boulevard and remembered it to the end of her days. She was swept off her feet by the handsome man she married, and an operatic epic ensued, its reverberations still resounding in my heart, along with a billion other stories that contribute to the music of the spheres.

And the Gaviota Writers join the chorus, one last time in this house, but there will be other settings. We are the elders now, but our young selves are still looking out the windows of our hearts, astonished. We don’t want to lose each other, so we gather together and speak our words out loud..

As for me, I hail the delights of now and long ago, and I chronicle the sadness and the learning, remembering the times when we chose not to be frightened, finding new courage in those memories and in the fellowship of friends, moving forward, saying yes.

Meanwhile, our walls and bookshelves are bare, and the rugs have been lifted from the floor, and at times I have felt that the scaffolding of our lives was disintegrating, but in the course of this week, I discovered it was fully intact, for it is friendship and community that upholds me––and the stories that we share.

Monte went down to the ocean at the end of the day and swam from the ramp to the reef and back, and the water was warm but refreshing. My daughter wrote a gorgeous essay about visiting this ranch where she grew up, and saying good-bye to it too. Ellie brought us a loaf of freshly baked bread.

The other day, we had lunch at an outdoor cafe beneath a green umbrella in a deserted shopping plaza, by a fountain and a palm tree, mountains in the distance in that Santa Barbara way, and everything glared and glinted in the very hot sun, and I looked outward and beyond, absorbed into the moment, not a separate being but a part of it all. “You have had an extravagantly generous life,” said the universe. I am grateful, I replied, and not quite done with the doing or the telling.