During our first day in this Redlands apartment, D&I discovered that one entire wall was not wired for electricity. Basically, there was no juice coming out of the outlets. The super called in a team and they fixed it but it made me wonder how the previous tenants had lived here with one-half of the space not available to power anything. Mind you, it’s possible the fritz happened after they’d moved the week previous, but still, I wondered.

I’m always curious about people’s interiors, design-wise, thought-wise, and otherwise. It’s why I became so obsessed with staring at all the vertical blinds hanging from folx windows that I mentioned in my post Wavy a couple of weeks ago that made me feel as if every apartment was a cookie-cutter version of the one next door, down the street, two blocks away. With ours, though, I was delighted by our outdoor space. Being a girl from the city, New York City specifically, outdoor apartment space had either been a fire escape or a shared garden. I’m not a great sharer, so would rarely indulge if other people were around. But the fire escape was 100% my jam, despite the fact that it was a fine-able offense to do much with the space but sit on it. But here in Redlands, the front and back patios were delightful (I mean, they’re still delightful) with California native plants growing wild in the front even though a gardening outfit comes weekly to keep that wildness cultivated, which means they occasionally whack something down and that makes me sad for a minute until the plant grows back in about three days.

Within the first few days, we were unpacked and figuring out where things went and what we needed to do. D had built an L-shaped desk in the office for us to both have work space. The edges were going to be painted red and my dad decided he would help with that after he’d also decided he would carry in some boxes from the moving Pod. I became terrified that we’d come all this way to hang out with him, only to then break him within the first week we were here. I mean, at 94 it didn’t seem like crawling under a desk, then crouching with a paintbrush to trim the underside of a desk seemed like a thing he would (or should) be doing. I didn’t even want to do it. But yet, while I dissuaded him from the box carrying, the trim painting happened. Right now, this is the last blog post I’ll write on the desk before it’s dismantled for the trip back east and I can glance over at where the Dean Spencer paintbrush landed. Lots of feelings currently.

In the backyard, a kiddie pool with a wood surround that D built in my dad’s driveway, went in during the first pandemic summer. We sat out in the back under the few available visible stars with some solar-powered lanterns we had at the time and appreciated how beautiful it was. We had formed a nice bubble my dad, Dennis, and I. We didn’t go into L.A. much (or at all during COVID) nor did we make any new friends in Redlands. It was just us three: My dad would come over for Silver Sneakers on our TV set, then we’d sit out back and eat donuts and drink coffee. We’d go to his place for meals and martinis on his porch and let Bluey the Jay yell at us (or my dad at him if he tried to steal a cracker or cheese from his plate). That all feels both yesterday and years ago.

As we strip this place back down to bare walls, I think about how the space will fill up again with new lives, the air vibrating with other types of conversations, different cooking smells, TVs tuned to other frequencies, the mailman dropping another person’s mail in the box. Will they sit and stare out the window at Winston and his three-legged dog doing their morning and evening walk, Billie&Barb trotting their yipping pups out three times a day, the backward-walking man who was so mad at Hillary but still stayed a Democrat, Pete in his big red truck on his way to a gig, Abuela and her rolly cart going to get groceries, the family across the street with only one car and many many people who all leave at 7.30 a.m. each weekday morning to get to where they need to be, the lovely little lady across the street whose daughter just moved in with her who knows everyone and does, in fact, give great hugs? Who knows? But yet folx will still stroll outside these windows and someone will see them.

In the new place back east, the view will be different. More rural, one woodchuck has already been spotted in the backyard and is perhaps part of a story the last tenant is telling to someone about what they remember from when they lived there. I’ll be sitting at this desk where my dad’s brushstrokes are just underneath me, staring out at new plants, birds, and what-have-you, reminded that whatever energy bounces between these Redlands walls as we leave here, I’ll be taking bundles of what I’ve gathered while here and taking it with me in my heart.