Windchimes and Chaise Lounges

When I was thirteen, my family drove from Pennsylvania to settle in San Diego. This post describes what happened after Our First Day in Paradise.

It wasn't a bad six weeks, really. Besides that first night at Harold and Barbara's* place, when my sister and I were put up in the small house with the older ladies out back and I knocked over a potted plant, life took on some satisfying dimensions.

First, realizing that we needed a place of our own where we wouldn't upset the current residents, Barbara quickly appointed us four siblings a small trailer in a corner of the property. Now we could arrange our bedding without causing a problem for anyone else. This detached bedroom with a bunk and double bed, cozily lit each evening, was probably more helpful than we knew--we could sit inside and relax, and not always need to be on our best behavior. (Not that we always were on our best behavior. But secluded in our room, we definitely didn't have to be.)

Second, my mom took us on destination walks, sometimes to the bakery and other days to the library. Years later, I found out that our particular neighborhood was not especially safe. But at the time, we tripped contentedly to and from the library without encountering anything unusual. I do remember going out front one morning and being puzzled about shattered glass over the sidewalk. A car had been broken into, someone explained.

Then there was the back patio of our hosts' compound: concrete, bordered by plants and dotted with a tree or two planted in squares of soil. I remember reclining on the chaise lounge in the dappled shade of the tree, reading my library book while a breeze rustled the leaves and the windchimes kept up their gentle clamor. Under that tree I was drawn into daily life in the Annex with thirteen-year-old Anne Frank, my agemate. The story made such an impression on me that I had the impulse to shush family members, lest we be overheard and betrayed.

Sometimes that summer, we would draw, tucked behind a table in our trailer. I practiced sketching faces as my mom had shown us, starting with a face shape and adding intersecting lines where the eyes, nose, and mouth would go. My people were clumsily rendered, but could seem eerily human, staring out of their intense irises and pupils at unsuspecting viewers. Once I drew a whole family with a satisfyingly compact baby and a tall father with a mild, kind face and glasses. He looked like a Kevin**. That could be my family someday, I thought, and I'd marry a man who looked like this Kevin. Life with Kevin and our cute, compact baby. Perhaps.

Barbara didn't seem to mind this family of six descending on her in addition to her other guests. The couple apparently provided a temporary home for an assortment of Christians in ministry or in need, and Barbara took it all in stride. I remember her cooking at the stove, talking good-naturedly, serving us tea one afternoon. I found I liked black tea with a little sugar in it, and after three cups or so she pointed out that I'd be bouncing off the walls. I couldn't understand why a little tea would wind me up. Once, Barbara commented on the energy of the church activities next door. For sure, you knew just by the sound of that the service that it was nothing like the sedate Baptist churches we'd always attended.

She got a kick out of my younger brother. He would have been nine at the time, had red hair, and a temper to match. Somehow, Barbara found his vulnerability: being called "hush puppy" would send him over the edge. One evening, I was lying peacefully in the trailer reading another Encyclopedia Brown book when he came crashing in, ranting about something. He hurled himself onto the bed, lay on his back and whacked his head on his pillow a couple of times, pretending to be his tormentor encountering a cushion rigged to deliver an electric shock to its user. I was finally able to get out of him that Barbara had committed the outrage of using the phrase "hush puppy" around him again.

I remember when Harold packed us into his truck, with a couple of us jostling back in the hardshell-covered bed, and took us to a giant store called Price Club. It turns out you paid a yearly membership to get to shop there. Harold bought some construction materials he had to push through the store in a large trolley, and I think we all got hot dogs that day. After that, he drove us over a big blue bridge over a bay, and then showed us "The Strand." I caught bits of his explanation that it was a manmade strip and an option if you weren't taking the bridge. We also went to one of his softball games after dark. I wasn't so interested in the game, but it was nice to be outdoors and walk around.

Sometimes, the couple's adult daughter would come over with the (so far) three granddaughters. There was a five-year-old, a two-year-old, and an infant with an elegant name that I would hold as she slept with her head against my collarbone. The toddler wore fresh white sandals and was of a sensitive disposition. As she cried angrily at some perceived slight, her grandmother picked her up, cooing, "Phony baloney. Phony baloney." If I think about it, those babies are my age today, in my peer group. But I won't think about it.

Approving of my baby-cuddling skills, the daughter and her friend decided to go out one night and engaged me as the babysitter, since her husband was out of town. I was responsible for five or six small children, including the baby, who decided to take a night off from sleeping and relaxing in my arms. It was her appointed evening to cry, and I couldn't seem to soothe her. There was a neighbor whom I was told I could consult, and I'm sure I made use of her services.

My two younger siblings and I found out how much our living situation had grown on us when we were all invited separately to spend some days at another four-kid household. It should have been fun: lots of company and toys, a perpetual state of sleepover, and classic TV running all morning: Lucy, Andy, Jeanie, Perry, and Gilligan, all with their theme music, should have helped to settle in. But not long into the visit, I found myself thinking of that lounge chair, longing for the tree, remembering its persistent wind chime. And I was ready to go back.

Postscript: These days, every time my siblings and I recognize the old house above us on the freeway, unmistakably squeezed between a church and the row of other homes on the street, we point and exclaim. So my younger brother and I decided to make a small pilgrimage to the neighborhood and see what had transpired there since 1987. The house had changed, not least because now the property was connected to the church. And we found a little plaque that named the house after Harold's mother, in honor of the woman who had donated the place to them.

*Not their real names.

**I'm remembering it as Kevin. Whatever it was, it seems like I associated the drawing with a mild-mannered personality, with someone who would be interested in academic pursuits and slightly absent-minded.