How many times did I live in California? In a minute, I'll count them up, but right now I'll tell you why I ask. Yesterday, Valentine's Day, I got all tenderhearted and had a crying fit over missing Stephen. As I cried, I whispered, I'm sorry Stephen, as I often do when one of these moments attack and I'm sure I meant that I'm sorry I failed him, sorry I didn't save him, sorry for all the moments I was angry or disappointed in him or in something that he had done, sorry for not being the mother he deserved. As I sit here typing, tears fill my eyes. I'm always going to be sorry, it seems.
I also whispered, I'm sorry Mama. In that moment, I was sorry that I had failed her as well. I felt the weight of all my mistakes, all my yearnings to make it right, all my desire for love and acceptance, not just for me but for all three of us. In that moment we were connected, my son, my mother and me, like we had never been before, my two loves, the ones I would always miss.
As I sat weeping, the opening notes of a song began playing in my right ear, I heard them drift to me as if the song had just started playing on the radio or an mp3 player next to me. I listened and the song continued, clear and soft and the wonder of it coming to me like that seemed surprising, like a gift.
"All the leaves are brown .... and the sky is gray ... I'd been for a walk .... on a winters day ... I'd be safe and warm ..... if I was in LA ..... California Dreaming .... on such a winters day ...."
I sat there and listened to the entire song play in my head and I knew that Stephen had sent it to me. He had sent many songs to me since he died and each had started softly but usually I don't catch on until the song is in full swing. I tell people that I have a radio in my head and Stephen is the DJ just as he always had been in my car. He was the playlist king, he always had just the right music with him for any occasion. But this was the first time I had been quiet enough to hear the song from the beginning and recognize it for what it was: An answer to a question that I had been asking for weeks.
How can I tell this story? What is the theme? Where do I begin? There's too much information here, how can I tell what to write and what to leave unsaid?
With that song came the answers, the puzzle pieces of this story fell into place and it all made sense finally --- California is the key! Each one of us, my mother, my son and me, had a special story and relationship with California. It begins with my mother in 1956 and ends with Stephen's death in 2013. In a story spanning 57 years, I have a three generational epic tale to tell and most of that time, none of us lived in California but our feelings and yearnings were captured there and in a way, none of us ever left. Certainly Stephen never left. He died in North Hollywood and if the story were never told for real, his would drift into the ether as just another tragic tale of shattered dreams in the Land of LaLa.
So the new title for the story I'm going to tell is:
California Dreamer
A Memoir of Life and Loss in the Golden State
OK, let's see where this goes. How many times did I live in California?
1) 1956, with mom and Gerald. Mom was a nurse and sang in night clubs when she could get gigs. I don't know a lot about this part of the story. I know she took pills, uppers and downers, and I suspect she had big dreams for her talent .... she had a beautiful singing voice, lovely and unique. She sent us back to Oregon when it became clear that she was in no shape to be a mother at that time. She was 20 years old, we were 3 and 4.
2) 1958, after mom married Richard, she came to Oregon and got me but left Gerald with Auntie Jan. I lived with mom and 'dad' in an upstairs apartment. They got me in the fall and I remember a Christmas there with them. I was placed in kindergarten and was doted on and spoiled and I loved being an only child. We moved to Oregon in 1964 and that's when my yearning for California began.
3) 1981, I met John Sandknop and moved in with him in Hanford, 30 miles north of Fresno. We married, had a baby in March 1983 and lived there until January 1984 when we moved to DC area with the Navy. The yearning began again.
4) 1990, we moved from Florida to the Bay Area in time for John to join ships company on the USS Lincoln and deploy yet again in March 1991. We left Alameda in December 1992 and moved to Chicago area for John's last job with the Navy. More yearning.
5) 1998, we fled Quincy, IL and went back to Hanford for a retirement job for John as a simulator instructor for new pilots at NAS Lemoore. We lived there until I left John for good in 2002 and moved to Oregon. California was finally out of my system, I knew I couldn't sustain my life in that expensive state and I went on a six year quest for Home, finally deciding on Boise, ID in 2007 and I've been here ever since.
6) Stephen never did get California out of his system. He moved back with his partner in 2011 and he never left.
So, shall I format the story around those dates and include the houses we lived in, the parties we had, the fights, the dreams and plans and the epiphanies? Why not. It can be a story in six parts, the last one being Stephen's all alone.
So many stories have been told around that state, they all see so hack right now. How am I going to make our story uniquely ours? I can use each date above as the pole around which the story in that time frame wraps ... like a May pole, I'll weave the story in and around the date and location while filling the details in time around them.
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