Shoeprints

I am traveling west to east across the country to the place I still think of as home, and the time spent in airports facilitates the transition. Even before I am beyond the borders of Orange County, differences are apparent. I am reminded of the magnificent mix of peoples in America, not only in the obvious facial structure and skin color but the nuances that define our many geographical cultures. Different accents, different body types, different ways of dressing [picture the college girl with pink cheeks matched by pink sweatshirt, pink purse and pink rubber sandals, surely not a California girl.] But of all the clues to our inner landscape, shoes, albeit captive to trends and fashions, gives much of our identity away.

When I was a girl in the fifties, traveling to Manhattan on the subway with my mother and aunt and cousins, on our way to the cultural activity of the week-end, whatever was free and most interesting to my culture-obsessed mother, we played a game they devised to keep the children occupied during the long ride. We had to guess the occupation or pastime of the people around us based solely on their shoes. This was simpler then as there were only so many shoes and these restricted primarily to season or stature.

White of course was never worn after Labor Day, unless you were a nurse, so that was a dead giveaway. Laced rubber-soled shoes were a work shoe, reserved largely for those who spent time on their feet, meaning service or medical professionals, or retailers. Wingtips, a dressier leather shoe men wore to impress, likely meant a lawyer or businessman. Soft-soled shoes for men were rarely in evidence then and perhaps the dominion of physicians. Women had even fewer choices, largely some variation of a pump or, in summer, sandals, and these generally heeled for a dressier occasion. Sneakers were worn only by children or a serious athlete. Boots were the providence of construction workers, women having given up the Victorian lace-up before I was born. High heels were rarely seen on the subway, other than in the evening hours on the way home from a night on the town. Of course, we never knew if we had guessed correctly and thus enjoyed the private satisfaction of the clever who are never tested.

Today in the airport there are sneakers of all types and worn by all ages and rarely referred to as sneakers. The laced up formal shoe remains reserved for business types. Flip flops are iconic among southern Californians and I smile in recognition. It is summer, thus many versions of sandals, although few “hippie” types anymore like Birkenstocks, I imagine those are more in evidence in northern California still. Sandals now are rubberized or plasticized or Pradaized. People tend to travel in comfort these days, so serious shoes like Jimmy Choo’s are nowhere to be found, not on a summer Saturday in the OC, nor even in Dallas where I switch planes and see yet another round of shoes, more sneakers, more plain sandals, a few fashion icons here and there. Target and Wal-Mart shoppers are distinct from Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, the quality of the shoe, and, frankly, the quality of the clothes, a give-away, and yes, while not a fashionista myself, I know the good goods when I see them. However, the playing field has been leveled since I was a girl, in all ways, and the man in shorts and flip flops sitting next to me on the plane pulls out his Wall Street Journal and might be worth millions.

All I know for sure is that we are a melange of travelers, a complicated mosaic of life stories, which are less obvious than they might once have been. I, by the way, am wearing a low-heeled slide, my toes peeking out from the half-moon slit, and only because it was easier to pack my favorites flats then wear them, even though I wear an ancient pair of yoga pants and a linen shirt that anyone in the know will recognize immediately as J. Jill. This makes me a prototypical middle class middle aged female of indeterminate geography because I shop at a national chain. Thus, I am in some way indecipherable beyond my clothes, as most of us are in the end. Who might someone imagine me to be? Will they hypothesize that I am a bi-coastal woman who grew up poor and isn’t anymore, but lives a simple life and looks forward to a bit of time back in New York City where I will ride the subway and invariably find my eyes glancing downwards, wondering about the path each pair of shoes has taken, and what prints have been left behind.

Photo compliments of the Andy Warhol collection.

Bird Songs

Birds chirp almost incessantly outside my new home. Day and night. I have never been a fan, thus cannot identify them by their song, but I suspect the late night warbler, who begins almost on cue when I retire to bed, is perhaps a nightingale, and as such, to be treasured. The internet advises me there are many different types of warblers around here. Also mockingbirds, who I am told have a plethora of sounds. Mockingbirds are territorial and this, the spring, is their mating season, their nightly music their mating call. Their music is not only loud but powerful. Persuasive I imagine to those in wait. I lay in bed and try to decipher the code. What are the repetitions? Is there a coda? What makes them stop, and start again? I try to experience the music in what is otherwise merely sound that pierces the silence of night.

I never knew that birds were nocturnal. Not until I moved to California. A similar night bird serenaded me the first weeks, perhaps months I resided at my first Laguna Beach home, as if a reminder that I was no longer in Connecticut. I did not need a reminder then, nor do I need it now, and I imagine their east coast cousins also sing in mating season and beyond, however I hadn’t paid much attention. I was always more attuned to city street sounds. My new home is surrounded by interesting foliage and it is a quieter environ, equally as pleasant to birds who long to be heard. Is it warmer temperatures that encourage their musicality? Perhaps they are in effect celebrating the pleasures of life here.

If I am to sleep, I must make friends with bird songs. I try to think of it as music because music is a lovely lullaby. Mind over matter. I imagine the bird as philharmonic musician, replete with starched white collar and cummerbund. The image makes me laugh, not conducive to sleep. Now I try to imagine the bird as a street musician, which in fact it is, a tiny hat perched precariously on a neighboring branch to capture loose change. This is equally ludicrous, and makes me concentrate on the music, rather than relegate the bird to background. I harken back to the sound of the elevated subway that paced infrequently but regularly through the night only a few blocks away from my childhood home in the Bronx, New York. I rarely awakened to the sound. I took comfort in its constancy. This is the approach that might work – relegate the sound to white noise. Like sea breezes or the chatter of neighbors on a nearby porch. However these birds wants to be heard. I must find a way to honor that. Like any other voice. Perhaps the only way to make friends with the sound is to listen harder. Listen more actively. Active listening, the lesson taught at PTA’s so that we might truly hear our children, hear what they mean as much as what they say. The lesson of good communication. Listen well. A Buddhist parable.

Who would have thought that annoying loud little birds would convey such a profound message. I am listening little birds. I am listening very hard to what needs to be heard.

Photo of Mockingbird in Long Beach by Monte Taylor.

Tomorrow is Another Day

A stout woman with dark skin and hair, clothed in a housekeeping uniform, wipes down aglass paneled door, first outside, then inside, on the first of two floors of La Case del Camino, a historic hotel of plastered walls and classically Spanish tile sloping roofs that is just outside my office window. In the distance, a thick haze hugs the shore, inching to the lower rooftops and almost completely obliterating the ocean. On the expansive flat rootop, surrounded by a protective glass railing, tables and chairs sit idle, some folded against each other, while several broad white umbrellas, that will later shade guests from the sun that inevitably breaks through the haze, are so tightly closed and wrapped as to seem like a torpedo ready for launch into the sky. By sunset this rooftop will be bustling with locals and tourists who enjoy this perfect view of sunset, and enjoy being seen, but for now, the morning view is obscured and the stillness a respite from the nightlife of southern California.

I have never been much of a morning person and would have been more in tune with my body clock if I could have risen a bit later than most and worked from eleven to seven. However, life’s timepiece requires an early rise for school, work, children, and we tend to rush through our mornings as the conduit to the day’s obligations and activities. Few take the time or have the time to treasure the delights of morning, something I do more often on California time, as if an accommodation to my New York inner clock. I never need an alarm, I waken to the sunlight, ready for the day. Mornings, marked by the light, are measured by sound and scent more than action. The scent of freshly washed cobblestones on the Bronx street where I grew up, and the concomitant scent of eggs and bacon sizzling together in an iron fry pan on the stove. These delicious aromas co-mingled with the toxic odor of diesel fumes from delivery trucks and the ubiquitous thump of the loading ramp when opened from the back of the truck to start the slide of boxes of produce and bakery goods and hardware supplies to local merchants. It is a distinct and powerful sound – the opening bell of daily commerce, the energy of early morning, the powerful ring of daily momentum.

All these years later, so far from those early morning street sounds, I awaken now and then in the midst of the night to hear waves tossing their ocean froth to shore. This steady, rhythmic boom, muffled during the day by street noise, is a sweet reminder of my own journey. The power of personal momentum.

Objects or concepts moving forward are said to have momentum. Surely one’s life experience can be characterized as having momentum. Or, alternatively, stagnation. A third option: contentment. What a new friend calls harmony. Surely the goal, especially at this stage of life.

I move this week-end from the lovely ocean-view cottage I have happily called home for three years to a little house on an in-town street aptly named La Serena. One town south, just beyond the border of Laguna Beach, although I will retain my Laguna persona. After all, that’s why I’m here. No hillside or water views in my next environs. No sound of the surf. Rather the contented chatter of humming birds nesting on the hibiscus trellis atop a quiet patio garden. These will likely be my first morning sounds. Followed by the voices of NPR who accompany my every morning. They move with me wherever I go. Voices of reason. The echo of the city girl who never strays too far from her humble beginnings. A whole life reverberating through the air from a radio station.

It is these alternating sounds of morning that ground me to myself. Thus, one finds contentment within momentum. In defiance of metaphysical gravity. Or, as Scarlett reminded us, tomorrow is another day. Always another day. Therein lies the joy of morning.

In Between

Home on the mind again. Only in part because I am preparing to move. More so because I encountered an old acquaintance residing indefinitely in the in-between. That place that can be so disorienting to most of us, leaving the comfort of the known home and moving on to the lesser known, albeit just down the road.

He stood at the buffet piling his small plate especially high, as if the one meal of the day. When he turned, he smiled broadly. “I remember you,” he said, extending his hand. “Michael. We met at the bookstore, the signing for Faye.” “I remember,” I said, shaking his hand. He had introduced himself to me that night as a celebrity photographer, a Hollywood party-crasher. “Are you crashing this party as well?” I asked. “Not really,” he replied and shoveled a fork-full of pasta into his mouth. “Good eats,” he said.

We were at an opening at [seven-degrees] for a Laguna Beach artist, a friend of mine. Carefully hung on three long walls were richly colored depictions of local scenes. Zinc at lunchtime. Class at Laguna Culinary Arts. The view from the library. “Are you still writing for the newspaper?” Michael asked. “No, not for some time. I’m with Friendship Shelter now.” “Really? Wonderful. I’m proud of you,” he said. An odd response from a casual acquaintance, but I saw in his eyes a true sense of pride. “And you?” I asked. “What are you working on?” “I’m in between things. In fact, I don’t have a home myself these days.” He told me he was sleeping on the beach. He was freshly shaven, his pants and jacket clean and unwrinkled. One might never have imagined his circumstance. He explained that he cleans up at hotels and public restrooms. “Just in between,” he repeated.

I introduced him to the artist, Sue Thompson. He admired her work and we chatted about the richness of the Laguna Beach palette. “Proud of you,” he said as Sue turned to greet another admirer. He excused himself for a moment to seek a second plate of food. Another well-known local artist stopped to ask him what kind of wine he would prefer. “I don’t need any,” Michael responded, but the friend said, “Just $3 a glass – merlot or cabernet?” Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Merlot I guess.” The three of us chatted about politics and recessions. Good conversation, but I was conscious of the fact that I would shortly return to my digs and Michael to the darkness.

When I bid good-bye, Michael pressed my hand warmly. “Take care of yourself, Michael,” I said. “You bet,” he answered and nodded with appreciation. “You too. Proud of you.”

I wondered that night as I opened the door to my sea view cottage, what it might be like to sleep on the beach night after night. Not as an adventure or for the delight of a starry night, but because there was no alternative. One cannot escape such imaginings when working with the homeless. It is always top of mind. Michael is yet another reminder that these are not throngs of unknowns, these are more often the talented, the thoughtful, the dignified remains of human beings trapped in a very difficult place. In between the before and the unknown.

Note: Check out more wonderful paintings like the above at www.suethompsonart.com

Blessings of the Season

Self-determination. Among the many blessings one might achieve in life, self-determination should be up there, way up there, on the hierarchy of those most precious. Unhappy people are those whose lives are defined for them, dictated by others or by obligation. The best literature and the best drama is largely about the conflict between one’s self and opposing forces. Self-determination versus destiny, although surely these might constructively co-exist.

How blessed am I to be able to make choices. To have the brains and talent and skills, and damn good luck, to secure work when needed, and a history of judicious spending and saving to be able to take-off periodically when the opportunity presents.

More to the point, I am blessed with the support of good people and the light of the universe. Truly, that light shines on me even more often than I acknowledge. Today for example, when I thought oil was leaking from my car, so took it to my honest mechanic in town, only to discover that it was more serious than that, power steering fluid and a broken seal, which would have cost me over $500, except for the fact that is covered by the warranty. And no charge for the assessment. The same warranty that expires on SATURDAY! Off to Mazda dealership, and although a crimp in my schedule [not complaining entirely over the hour+ sitting in an empty waiting room reading, always a book at hand] and voila: fixed, washed, and absolutely no cost to me.

And then, my almost new landlord, confirms that I am indeed her choice for tenant, and that she accepts my offer for the lovely little house in Dana Point that I will, as of May 1st, call home. What a gift! A completely adorable house, clean and bright and with a wonderful English-style garden, close to downtown and the harbor and the beach and in an eclectic neighborhood that I have dubbed South-South Laguna, as it is only a mile or so south of the town I will forever think of as my adopted home.

And, icing on the proverbial cake, once settled in the new digs, I get to spend some time with my dear ones in NY-CT. Another gift. What were those lovely words of Oscar Hammerstein? “Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth, but somewhere in this wicked miserable life, there must have been a moment of truth.”

Just in time for Passover – renewal! How blessed am I!