Mama

“Traditionally, new students of Zen are cautioned against meditating too close to the open sea, since the passion of the tumultuous ocean is so overpowering that it may be too difficult to quiet one’s inner being. Better to sit in meditation next to a stream, where its gentle energies can become more peacefully assimilated. And perhaps even better is to sit in a garden of stones resembling islands surrounded by etched gravel resembling the sea, to find that still point, that unwobbling pivot from which any obstacle may be confronted from a position of unflappable strength.”
--Abd Al-Hayy Moore, Zen Rock Gardening



“Where are you from?” A question that precedes an innumerable number of lengthy replies, while its answers hint at a deeper subtlety lying just below the surface of the initial asking. When we inquire this of another, are we asking as to where a person’s body first came into being on this planet, as in the geographical location of a birth? Or, do we really want to know, where home is, - that palpable location of nostalgic memory and that blissful illusion of nativity? If “home is where the heart is” are we not technically home no matter our situation and circumstance?
I was born in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While residing in that northern clime, in a town named Scarborough, indelible moments were seared into my tiny child’s recollection. At the time, we, my four-member tribe and myself, lived in a three-story town home. On the bottom floor, in the basement, half of which had been allocated for the children’s playroom, sat a regulation sized Air Hockey Table (still a favorite to this day) along with all of the toys and games that three children, each four years a part, could possibly need or want. Within these safe confines, my two older siblings and I spent hours, - stuffing a poor, helpless hamster into our ‘Little People’ villages, while birds, that had found themselves trapped within our air duct, made a loud ruckus on the metal pipes as well as on our amalgamated childhood imaginations.
Our neighborhood was a closed community, within which two parks and a pool were located. The ‘big kids’ (a demographic that just barely included my eleven-year old brother) had their own park, which primarily consisted of an 8’ slide. In a large group, the big kids would commute the short distance to school, walking back and forth together while stopping along the way at the market (on the rare occasion when my sister and I accompanied them on these trips, we were always treated to sticks of Popeye gum that resembled cigarettes in their shape and were coated with a white powder that, when blown on, would usher forth a plume of what looked like smoke). Us smaller kids also had our own park, in which a sand box, a slide, swings, and other treasure troves of childhood play were kept, and on our way to and from school we were watched over with independence and care by the big kids. On one such excursion, we had all stopped at a nearby local haunt, where my sister was pushing me in a swing and the older kids were busy with their inter-gender drama. After too large of a push, I flew out of the swing and came crashing to the ground with a thud. In mere seconds, the teenagers were there to dust me off and help me up to my feet.
During the summer, the one entrance to our circular housing tract was closed to through-traffic and our own mini-Olympic games were held. There was: a bubble gum blowing contest, a Big Wheel contest, and a ‘Lil’ Hobo’ contest for the smaller children and running and bike races for the larger kids. At the conclusion of the individual pursuits, after which ribbons and trophies were awarded, a large parachute was produced and the entire community came together to watch the brightly adorned material make objects airborne. The pool, around the circumference of which was an ambling bike path, was a favored destination during the hot summer days. My siblings and my love for the water, our fearlessness around it, and our abilities to make like fish within it, were nurtured during these early years. To this day, the laughter and the trauma that this time period made room for is collectively recalled.
After four years of Canadian living, my American, and predominantly Californian, family was ready to pack up and head home. In the summer of 1981, the five of us hopped into a heavily weighted down deep purple station wagon and made that proverbial car trip west. Stopping along the way at numerous locations to sight see, to enjoy evening dips in motel pools, and to release the angst of too many people cooped up in too tight of a space, we bumped along 3,000 miles of American roadway. My sister and I would stretch out in the back where we would ask our mother for a tissue, upon which receiving we would rip it up into tiny little bits that we would stuff through the small hole in the rubber lining of the trunk door. With pleasure and glee, we would sit back and watch the small, white balls of cotton take to the air, floating on the car’s momentum and flying into the windshield of the vehicle behind us. During this time, I would also recite a commercial jingle, remembered from the days spent in front of a television screen. “Kentucky Fucky Chicken,” my tinny voice chirped out. To this, my mother would laugh uproariously.
Years later, I learned, through my older siblings, that the real reason why we fled our beloved community was because there was murmur of an indiscretion. My brother recalls talk of infidelity, between my mother and the father of a little girl, who was close to my age, and who my mother wanted to be my best friend. On a warm, autumn day, my father pulled the sagging wagon up to the gates of a seaside, sprawling condominium complex in Solana Beach, California. Life, as we had known it, changed.
We still had a community pool, idyllically located on sandy bluffs above a churning Pacific, within which we could submerge our whole bodies while temporarily forgetting the anger that was beginning to unfurl within our daily lives. However, friendship was different in this new location, as the division between the haves and the have not’s became visibly clear. At five years of age, it was not yet unacceptable that my new best friend lived in a multi-million dollar home on the hill. Unfortunately, I do not believe that either of my siblings had such luck in developing new relationships. At nine and thirteen, the hard reality of status quo and the awkwardness of not fitting within popular culture reared its ugly head. After one brief year, our parent’s had purchased a two story home in a town twenty minutes north. Life in Vista and Oceanside, for we lived right on the border of the sister cities, came to resemble more of what we had experienced while living in Scarborough.
It was in Vista where I grew through the joy of adolescence and the pain of being a teenager. During the twelve-year time span, I moved from an elementary school playground, to the hallways of one middle school, and into the lockers of the only high school I attended. Along the way, my parent’s home phone number became an effigy scrawled in black pen on bathroom stalls and haphazardly written in dozens of handmade “Sign In” books as well as in cheap phone books.
In the early to mid-eighties, our household developed a tight-knit bond with our neighbors on both sides of the fence as well as across the street. Representing a diversity of world cultures, we would come together every holiday season to break bread and toast to another new year. My family represented a blend of east coast (as my mother is from New Jersey) and west coast values along with the traditional sentiments of pre-World War I babies (my father was born in 1933, and my mother was born three months before Pearl Harbor was bombed). Our neighbors to the south were an elderly, white couple who had not produced any offspring. On the other side of us, were our Palestinian-American neighbors whose four children were in their late teens. My sister and I especially enjoyed the scent of home baked pita bread that permeated their household. Across the street was a Mexican-Italian-American family whose two children, a boy and a girl, were closer to mine and my sibling’s ages. For a number of years, we all enjoyed affable times spent in one another’s company.
Over the course of ten years, before both of my siblings flew the nest for a home located eight hundred miles north, our most favored past time was the beach. My brother was a prolific boogey boarder who would take to the waves for hours on end, paddling out past the break, where my mother, my sister, and I would all loose sight of him. My sister and I were just as adventurous in our own way, for the ocean came to be a nurturing force that would gently rock us within the ebb and flow of each tidal rhythm. Even when the ocean seemingly rollicked in thunderous passion, we knew quite well the art of duck diving under gigantic waves of white wash, grabbing a hand full of sand along the way.
On one overcast day when, instead of our mother taking us to the beach our father had, my sister and I were rough housing with one another just a few yards off of the shoreline. The sky was vacillating between a stormy gray and a more typical marine layer, when we noticed a lifeguard running up and down the beach, motioning for the swimmers to come in and out of the water. We glanced around ourselves, noting that there was not a sign of either thunder or lightning in the air. In defiance, we resumed our child’s play with delight. Soon, my sister was following suit, making a difficult to attempt beeline for the shore. Once safely upon it she turned and motioned for me to follow. “I don’t have to, if I don’t want to,” I retorted, as my head rolled around its socket. Annoyed, she pointed in a direction just beyond where I was swimming. With bated breath, I turned and saw, less than five feet away from where I was standing, a fin swimming around in circles. With a fire lit under my ass, I ran in water as fast as I ever have on that day.
In the end, the shark was dying and was just attempting to beach itself. Once all of the bathers had been accounted for, the lifeguard dove in and pulled the creature from the water. It was hoisted on to the back of a jeep and, before it was dead and the jeep driven off, I walked up and stroked the slimy skin of the dying animal. I remember being saddened by its loss yet invigorated by the small amount of time that I had spent within its company.
Under the warm rays of a yearlong southern Californian sun, the ocean was a dear playmate. Wielding a peculiarly dramatic ability to be simultaneously gentle and rough, hard and yielding, I looked forward to any and all time spent within its great belly. However, at night, I would toss and turn in fitful sleep as the ocean plagued my anxious subconscious life. A re-occurring dream that I frequently found myself trapped within was of an epic battle in which I would attempt to pull myself up a steep beach and out of the voracious claws of a hungry ocean. It would require all of my resolve and my strength to finally, after what seemingly felt like hours of struggle, beat the beast, and to land, fully collapsed and desperate for air, onto a safe harbor. In my dreams, the ocean was a controlling and domineering force, near to devouring me whole. I wanted nothing more than to escape its tight grip. I fought with all that I had, and though I always succeeded, I was left nearly spent and in complete disarray.
Like my siblings, I too flew the nest just as soon as I possibly could. In my case, like my sister’s, attending a four-year college and living in a dormitory my freshman year was the opportunity needed to escape the cycle of abuse that had wound its way around our parent’s home. As I grew into my early adulthood, I spent less and less time at the beach and in the ocean. In my mind-twenties, when my travels had taken me around the world and back, I had discovered serenity and a peace of mind within a jagged landscape of up-thrusting rock. My heart had come to reside in mountains.
Seemingly closer to the sky overhead, my eyes feasted on constellations and sweeping vistas while I channeled a little girl who would run from her parent’s house at night, to lay on sun-warmed sidewalks, and to greedily soak in a reflection of light from up above. It was an early form of meditation, for the heaviness of gravity seemingly dropped away, and I was transported to a quiet, and calm repose. I wanted nothing more than to stay in this place, forever. I wanted nothing more than to never have to return to the hurt and pain of the dualistic forces of life, pushing and pulling me in opposing directions, while ripping my heart in two and sewing it back together, time after time again.
Five years ago, I returned to San Diego living. My parents still reside in that same house, on Ridge Road, and though I make an effort not to visit, I am consistently wearied by the sadness that drips from that house’s windowpanes. However, I have recently come to consciously understand that I can either continue to choose to carry the heavy baggage of others or I can simply put it down. I have been attempting to let it all go, - to sit the duffle bag and the rolling backpack down, and to lay the suitcase and the trunk to rest.
Now, as I amble along a Pacific shoreline, I take refuge in the beach’s daily evolutions. During low tide, I walk along and discover fully intact shells that have pieces of seaweed rooted to them. I marvel in the beds of kelp that look like tide pools. And I relish the sound of seaweed popping underfoot. At high tide, I walk under the wooden beams of Crystal Pier and I reminisce about the difference in water level. I note the soft sand that provides very little to no traction. And I listen to the waves as they reverberate off of the cement-encrusted pillars. These days, I gaze upon the mighty waters and a desire to intimately know the ocean’s push and pull once again grips my being.

An Anatomy of Shorts

Navy blue and nylon, they are sewn together along the inner recesses of invisible thighs. At the apex, at the center of the crotch, fine threading has twice before been sewn. Begging yet another go at it with a needle, a dime-sized hole slowly pulls the fabric apart. The tenuous opening casually flirts as fingers gingerly probe the six-year old piece of clothing. Young hands gracefully glide over fading material while a mind conjures up images of past travels and nostalgic tribulations.
A bottom hem falls just above vertically challenged knees. An elastic waistband is stretched beyond recognition, retaining the contour of a voluptuous shape once worn like a scarlet letter. These days a plastic, blue button, with the emblem of two women sitting back to back, and a Velcro fly, struggle to keep the shorts up. A white and black label at the back reads “XL.” Random stains, a yellow dot on the rear, left thigh, pay tribute to the life of a struggling artist. Stitching is coming loose along numerous lines. On the right butt cheek, the cloth was once torn and then stitched back together using royal blue thread. What remains is an L-shape, which is also pulling apart at the seams.
Washed into the layers of silky fabric, the sweat of a time now past. Ground into the highly resistant textile, the dirt and soil from spills taken and adventures pursued. Today, even after having purchased the infamous pair of shorts from a department store in a suburban neighborhood of Lake Geneva, six summers ago, I don the gym-like garb and I wear it with a mix of pride and melancholy.
A bumbling twenty-four year old, I worked as a camp counselor for an American company based out of Switzerland. The first six weeks of my sojourn had been spent on an amazing landscape. Living in a tent and sleeping on a cot, I was privy to the southern, rolling hills of France’s wine region. I spent weeks underneath a canopy of limestone caves while learning how to perfect the j-stroke as I attempted to guide Canadian canoes down the river Ardèche.
Meals were spent out of doors. Media and mirrors were few and far between. On nights off, I would drink red wine by the glass full, oft times alone and sitting beside an ambling river. From the get-go, I did not know how to canoe even though it was my job to lead children on such an excursion. My peers, like-minded college aged folk with a penchant for both travel and experiential education, all but rejected me. I was certainly tolerated, just not accepted. The feeling made for an uncomfortable first few weeks yet somehow, as painful as this was to my ego, I was galvanized and invigorated. While the others were entranced by videos and television during their meager time off, I was out of doors, teaching myself to juggle, picking up the guitar again, or riding a bike up undulating, narrow roads and over to the singular nudist colony on the river’s banks.
I found solace in strolling along country roads and over to neighboring village castle ruins. Once, while returning home from such a journey, night had fallen and a strange grunting sound began emanating from the dense bush to my right. Initially humored by what I mistakenly thought were humans, I employed a singing voice after my laughter had dissipated and fear was quick to replace it. Pleading with whatever large creature was foraging nearby, I sang that I was just a harmless human out for an evening stroll. The tune soothed my panic and I high-tailed it over to a play structure where I found refuge up off of the ground. With my composure regained, I quickly walked back the few remaining steps to camp.
Weeks later, while in the office of a photographer who captured our descents down a specific rapid along our canoeing route, I gazed at framed photographs that lined a wall. In a few of them, large, waist high, feral pigs were fording the river. Finally, I had discovered the source of my earlier cause for concern.
As summer approached the riverbed began to recede, and along with it the judgment of my peers was also giving way. I had proven myself. While the majority of the male staff would help beach the canoes and carry all of the gear up the hill, only then to prepare their own campsite for the night and rest for a period of time, I along with a few other women, continued to prepare the campsite and meals, and then play with and keep the children occupied until night had fallen, stars were overhead, and we all fell into an exhaustive heap on our sleeping bags. Not to mention, my paddling skills had improved 100%. I was, at last, accepted.
With my acceptance, came less alone time. I joined the crowd, in drinking red wine by the river, in rock diving, and in skinny-dipping. One day, I even borrowed the camp cook’s moped and attempted to ride it over to Vallon-Pont d’ Arc, the nearest commercial village. Desiring to show off after first sitting upon the vehicle, I accidentally rode into a wooden beam adjacent to the camp’s recreation room. I then cruised the two-wheeler over to town. On my way back, I somehow, again, pressed on the accelerator, instead of the brake, causing the bike to rear up, and my rear end to fall off of the seat. Humorously, I tore a hole in the back of the orange pair of name brand board shorts that I had recently purchased. With borrowed thread, I had to sew up the mistake prior to the next week’s canoe trip.
At the spring season’s conclusion, I spent the following week traversing the Heidi-like mountainsides of Andorra, a principality that lies between France and Spain. Supple, rolling hills; rushing white water streams; wildflowers of every shape and hue; wild horses grazing in verdant meadows; slanting, scree slopes; towering granite peaks, - the Pyrenees has it all. Like a Billy goat, I leaped and jumped from one stone hut to another. (A series of 25 huts, or stone refugis as they are called, dot the Andorran countryside. These shelters are free of charge and well tended to.) For days on end, I swam in chilly, fresh water streams and I sunbathed on snow-patched mountaintops, attempting to make snow angels in the evaporating, white matter.
Again traveling alone, I was greeted by numerous other trekkers including hunters, hikers, and even a few rogue revelers. I had arrived into Andorra late on an inauspicious evening, not knowing a soul, and bedded down behind a sandy rock formation in the back of what appeared to be an empty ski chalet. My trip had included the stashing away of cumbersome clothes, on the hillside and in a hut, and the escapade of making friends with four Belgian men who had backpacked in cans of red bull and a bottle of vodka, marijuana in numerous forms, and mushrooms and ecstasy. During my last night there, I had a gentle make-out session with a Catalonian boy who could not have been more than twenty. I awoke only a few short hours later to ask him the time (which was a difficult task, for he spoke little English and I did not speak Catalan whatsoever). After realizing that it was 5:30am, I jumped up with anxiety. I had a mere hour and a half to run down the mountain and make the bus that would carry me back to France and, eventually, on to Switzerland.
With only minutes to spare, I bounded down and onto the main thoroughfare just a few short blocks away from the bus stop. After boarding, I fell into a seat with relief and quickly dozed off. Seemingly only minutes later, I was awoken with a start. A French policeman was shaking me awake, inquiring as to whether or not he could check my purse, which I had haphazardly tossed into the seat to my right. Immediately, I knew that an action from the night before, of moving a small metal pipe and a remaining tiny nugget of hash that I had on my person, stashed in a front pocket of a Mt. Hardware fleece jacket, and into the dainty bag I wore around my shoulders, was a mistake. “Pipa,” the man cried out. “Le pipa,” he alerted his co-workers. I sank down further into my seat, as they ransacked my bag. I was escorted off of the bus, while the driver patiently turned the engine off, and into the back of a marked police van. A minor strip search was conducted. (I had to take my shoes and socks off, and they searched my larger backpack for more paraphernalia or illegal substances.)
With my passport noted, a fine paid (50 French francs, I believe it was), the pipe and hashish confiscated and, essentially, a slap of the hand, I was loaded back onto the bus to continue along my journey. I refused (and, still to this day, refuse) to be ashamed of my enjoyment for smoking marijuana. However, I was a little embarrassed for slowing down the other passengers’ and the bus driver’s morning commutes. Nonetheless, I had a new job, and another foreign destination, to get to. Thus, again, I and we were off.
The excursion was marked with continued mishaps and stories in the making but I eventually arrived to the Auberge, a small hotel, bar, and restaurant that would serve as “home” for the next month and a half, located in a suburban village town just due east of Lake Geneva (or Geneve, as the locals call it. Also, the lake there is, actually, called Lac Leman.) The newest set of employees, fresh off the boat from their teaching stints and other day jobs in primarily the States and Canada, were already gathered and mingling. They were excited by the journey that they were embarking upon. Meanwhile, I was physically exhausted from being smack dab in the middle of my own exploits. I retreated early, to the comforts of my own bed in a room that I shared with three others, to write and contemplate. This behavior remained consistent throughout our short time together.
The day-to-day of summer camp life quickly came to emulate a pattern that I had only been too eager to escape. Monday through Friday, at 8:30am, we were to be outside and ready to hop on a short bus for the quick ride to the Chataigneriaz (the school grounds where our summer camp was held). Usually, I skipped the bus ride and walked up the hill along fields of sunflowers and lines of grapevines. Over Monday morning breakfast, which was comprised of cereal, yogurt, or bread with jam and Nutella, talk usually centered around the weekend just had, - a quick trip to Italy; our group celebration of the Swiss independence day; or the time spent partying down in the streets of Geneve. By Wednesday, conversation had already lapsed into what the up and coming time off had in store. The monotony quickly wearied my being, and I was acutely and sensitively aware that my life had segued from living in close commune with the land to a life further removed from it.
I began to question myself and whether or not what I was doing was of meaning. As the sole gymnastics coach, I ran the ‘Gymnasie de Cara’ with a solid hand. Managing all of the hundred plus children as they moved around the apparatus, from the floor, to the beams, to the mini-tramp, I was simultaneously coaching my peers on how to spot while trying to learn a few French verbs. The depth of the experience was cemented when, one night, while languishing around the Auberge, I decided to take a bicycle that a co-worker had found (deposited along the side of the road, it had been headed for a landfill), for a dusk lit ride. I rode east along the curvaceous, lake road and towards the nearest large town, Nyon.
In Nyon, ancient Roman columns are crumbling on an overlooking hill. At night, these relics of a civilization past are lit like beacons, brightly displaying the opulence of western thought. I rode around, enchanted by the sights my eyes were consuming while my thoughts danced merrily in stony daydreams. I headed towards the commercial district, where cars were forbidden, and I continued to steer in the direction of a sign that read “Do Not Enter” for I was a bicyclist and a privileged American who had the right of way (no matter what). A woman’s deep gasp alerted me to my folly.
I went flying, head first, over my handlebars, while my womanly thighs slammed into the gearshifts. I had attempted to ride between two cement pillars, across which an eight-foot long, black chain link was suspended. My training, from a lifetime spent in gymnastics, dance and other movement classes, kicked in and I instinctively tucked my chin to my chest. I performed a dive roll, jumping up at the tail end of it with my hands in the air. “Ces’t bon,” I exclaimed. “C’est bon,” (“I am good”) I tried to assure the on-lookers whose jaws were agape as they stood staring at the stunt. I picked up the bicycle, hopped back on it, and rode back home while the adrenaline pumped its way through my body, and my heart beat out a loud, rhythmic “holy fuck.”
The following day, while recounting the tale with my comrades, I had deep, purple bruises in the middle of each thigh. Corporeal reminders that what I was actively teaching to the kids, day in and day out, was a skill that could one day save their very real human lives, - just as it had mine on that very memorable occasion.
In the time that has since passed, the navy blue, nylon shorts have continued to play an integral role in my life. As a graduate student, they accompanied me to my first residency at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont. While rubbing elbows with artists of every craft and medium, I fled from the typically scheduled cabaret, an evening of live music, dance, and theatre, performed in a refurbished hundred plus year old barn, for a quick respite. Under a warm August sky, I climbed the metal roof of a greenhouse. While careening back down, the shorts caught on a metal bracket, thereby ripping and puncturing my behind. With my ass partially visible, I wandered back into the event and proceeded to get my groove on as our local hip-hop artist and beat boxer spun the records (or, er, pressed buttons on his computer’s keypad).
Weeks later, after having returned home to San Diego, I was again out in public in these same shorts. Still torn, and still refusing to wear underwear underneath, I gallivanted on a Pacific beach with a dear playmate who was quickly becoming more than just a friend. We tossed a Frisbee disc to and fro, I in the torn shorts while also wearing a tank top, without a bra, that read, “Put the Fun Between Your Legs” (it had an image of a bicycle drawn in between the wording). Meanwhile, he had taken off his jeans and was running around catching the disc and flinging it back at me in nothing more than boxer shorts (which, he initially realized, he had forgotten to button). Indeed, we were a sight for sore eyes.
When we tired, we began to play in the sand, - creating sculptures out of found materials and objects. Bent at the waist, I was not afraid to raise my head and offer a “Hello” to the lifeguards as they drove by in their jeep. We capped our lovely afternoon off together by enjoying a meal of sushi at a local restaurant. Still parading in the fading shorts, I moved around with a little bit more apprehension as I ambled in and out of a black, leather booth.
That was two years ago. Today, the shorts hang from a 31 year-old waist. They hardly stay up, yet I cannot bring myself to part with them. My partner, the same man from the story above whom I now live with, scoffs whenever he sees me in them. Still, as old and failing as they are, they represent more than just an item used to cover up shameful body parts. The thinning remnant is a hint at a body embodied, - it is a historical artifact of lived experience. Stories are woven into the very makeup of the precious fabric. Parting with them would be like turning the last page on the chapter of my twenties and I guess, well, I guess that I am not quite ready to do that yet.