Author: Lauren Dean Spencer

Five days into our drive across the country, we crossed into Moline, Illinois, where my dad was born and grown for the first twenty-or-so years of his life. I’d been there once when I was a teenager for my grandmother’s funeral but all I remember about that trip was having a scary asthma attack in the summer-humid heat. This time, with my dad’s ashes riding shotgun next to me in the truck, I was more acutely aware of the place. The John Deere factory, which ran (still runs?) the town’s economy, the fields and fields and farms. Thinking about who he was back then, at the beginning, moved me, the force of it taking me a little by surprise. I could imagine him down the side streets, a little boy playing stickball with the local kids just as he’d described it. Summer afternoons, his scrappy self running around with his pals, in the fall and winter going to the local school, then in high school having to get the glasses that would keep him out of WWII, something he felt deeply guilty about. He wanted to go with his friends to fight. Instead, he worked with his dad supplying parts for the war effort, found his love for art and design, then made his own cross-country drive out to Los Angeles where he found his people, his home, his career.

Driving over the Rodman Avenue bridge, Dennis and I took my dad down to a pier overlooking the Mississippi River and sat down, then we let a bit of him drop into the water. Joining him with the fast current that would take him where the river flows and on from there, leaving Moline just like he did seventy-ish years earlier when he’d headed south with a pal to visit a friend going to college in Texas. Once there, my dad realized how amazing it was to feel hot sun in the winter and knew that’s what he wanted too, eventually deciding SoCal was the place for him. So he followed the river to the tip of Texas, then turned west toward the Pacific. The water guiding him both then and now.

I’ve been ambivalent about my dad’s ashes in that I haven’t really taken in the fact that they are the stuff of his body. The stuff of his soul, his personality, gnarled hands, and blue, blue eyes are the things I carry in my heart all of the time. So these ash bits feel abstract to me yet the the physical action of placing some in that water, in that town where he started, that felt very big, especially as we were putting more and more distance between the town where he ended, at least physically, and entered the place where he began.

As we’d driven out of Redlands, California, and crossed over state after state, I did feel a profound sense of leaving a place I felt I’d never see again. Specifically the Inland Empire, because as far as California goes of course I’ll still go there to see the people I love who live there. But this pinpoint place on the map existed for such a specific reason: my dad. And that was that. The really cool people who were his friends who I came to adore, they will always hold a huge part of my heart and they color the landscape of those memories. But the finality of leaving, that was something I’d never felt before. When I left Cali the first time for NY, heading off into my whole young future, I didn’t give a thought about whether I’d return, live there again, any of that. Why would I? When D&I left NY to go to Cali to be with my dad, there was a very large part of me that knew the East Coast held a sense of forever home. And now, I sit here back on the East Coast and am a bit agog.

I have a lot of thoughts on the beauty of nature outside the window, down the street, up the hill (lots of hills to walk and mountains to see in the distance). Also a lot of thoughts about what’s inside this house as we unpack and merge three different iterations of households. There’s what we brought with us cross-country from Cali, which contained both my dad’s and our place, then there’s the stuff we’d left here in storage four+ years ago. Every time I cut through the tape and the box comes open, there’s another surprise marker of history: the books I haven’t seen in years (hello, Sister Carrie, stuff of my master’s thesis); jeezuz-good-gawd, how have I ended up with so many shoes?, and then there are the two sets of drawers from Wayfair that I bought a year ago this month to go into my dad’s new space and to which I affixed little cards with “T-shirts,” “socks,” “hankies” to so he’d know where to find stuff. Those markers never took. He’d just stuff things wherever because, of course, the whole exercise in moving was just nuts. Completely discombobulating. Naturally, I get that acutely now that I’m doing it…again…and I have a sharpness of mind that he knew he didn’t, which was extra scary for him and for me. I have so much more to say about this process and no doubt will unspool it here over the next few weeks but what I’m coming to understand is that grief is the river that flows and flows. Filled with a lot of life, with currents of tears, with aching beauty, all constantly moving.

We’ve arrived. At some soon point (next post?), I’ll elaborate on the drive, etc. I have discovered this about myself: Six hours is about my sweet spot for piloting a car so the days of seven and eight-ers were knuckle-grippers. But, hey, we made it. Today will be photos mostly as I pull on my unpacking suit and begin that situation. Shout out to D who was failed on many fronts by truck mechanics and worker-bees who were hired to assist in the truck unpacking yesterday and never showed. He ended up doing it all himself with some assist from me. Another discovery: Manual labor is not my strong suit—specifically the moving of large furniture items. Really, that’s no surprise to anyone and I did what needed to be done and here we go into the putting together of this new place. Please to enjoy some photos:

We’re at it again, crossing the country back to the East Coast. This time with two little furries in tow. Day the first is closing out and, whew, what a day it’s been. Currently, I’m sitting in our pet- friendly Motel 6 off I-15, which was the interstate I was on for the bulk of the many hundreds of miles from Redlands. You may notice I’m using singular tense here. Yes, that is because Dennis is driving the rental truck with all our things (packed in like a crazy Jenga game) but he doesn’t happen to be here in the room with me at the moment. And why is that? Because somewhere in Nevada (a pretty toasty part of Nevada), a red light began flashing in the cab indicating some sort of engine emergency and he, wisely, pulled off the road to find out what was going on. (Me? I would have unwisely turned up whatever I was listening to and ignored it. I know. I know. This is bad and I really wouldn’t actually do that. I think.) Anyway, he called the truck people to send a mechanic while sending me on since I have the two furry felines in the back of the truck and gawd knows, we don’t want them in there any longer than necessary.

I’ll get back to the Dennis situation in a minute, but first let me explain with a visual prop the kind of spread our two cats are traveling in: The back of the truck was fitted with a shell and some all-purpose carpeting where on top is placed two cat beds, a random pillow, a water fountain/drinky thing, food, their cat box, and two plants (because sure, why not?). After some initial meowzing, they went quiet, which either meant they’d given up and fallen into a coma or they were just accepting it. At our first rest stop about an hour in, I checked on them and it seemed they were somewhere in between resigned and baffled but not at all suffering outwardly. This was obviously a relief.

So, Dennis: After calling the truck company, they sent out a mechanic although it took over two hours for said mechanic to reach him. Then they fixed it but (UPDATE) I just got a call from him that the truck crapped out again. So now he’s just past Las Vegas and waiting for ANOTHER mechanic. Holy sh**T. They think they know what it is and how to make it right but who knows if I’ll see him tonight. I do not care for Las Vegas. This may seem a misplaced frustration. More I don’t care for this rental truck company. Anyway. Apparently these are the adventures of cross-country journeys.

I have just finished a Subway sandwich after having taken a bath in the whirlpool tub that is actually a major focal point of this motel room (!?!?). I am attempting to breathe but until we get the whole band back together, I’m feeling a bit tense. By the time you read this, there will be an update, so **stay tuned.

This is the jumpsuit I wore today (I don’t do selfies very successfully and plus it was time for the whirlpool):

This is the welcoming Motel 6 maiden/gnome statue outside the establishment door:

This is the view outside the window here in Beaver, UT:

And here are the cats currently:

**Saturday late-breaking update: The map’s been altered to reflect the fact that after the truck broke down for a THIRD time an hour+ outside of Vegas (again with the Vegas), a tow truck came and took the truck and Dennis into LV so that today they can figure out what’s wrong. He spent the night there and what we’re hoping is that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas insofar as mechanical trouble is concerned but not when it comes to he or the vehicle having to stay in that city I refuse to name.

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.

Yesterday as I pulled out a piece of furniture as one does while involved in a move, I found a little book that had fallen behind a chest of drawers. It was my dad’s baby book and I was surprised at how sparsely populated with words the thing was, as if my grandma (the guy-father-fellas didn’t seem to get involved in this sort of baby tracking) had been given the project of notating baby’s life and really had very little time or energy to do so. And who can blame her given that the actual birthing and raising of a baby takes every ounce of life/time/energy based on what I’ve observed. (And really, it seems unfair to expect a person to write down all the details of this little newbie as they attempt to help them get on with the living.) Though there was one page of this baby book that held a piece of information I found priceless. The one that tracks the dates a baby begins to move. Top of page: “Baby Creeps” then in beautiful Grandma Spencer cursive: “Dean never learned to creep.”

“Dean never learned to creep.” I’m aware that crawling and creeping were, in the 1920s, the same activity. Yet in today’s parlance, “creep” I think delivers a whole other meaning, conjuring up thoughts beyond the physical stage around when a baby crawls on their hands and knees as a primer for standing and walking. My mind went to the M-W verb version: 2 b) to go timidly or cautiously so as to escape notice and c) to enter or advance gradually so as to be almost unnoticed; with a scoop of noun on top: 5: an unpleasant or obnoxious person.

Indeed, my dad seemed far from a creeper in any of those contexts although 5 b) in the verb category: “to change shape permanently from prolonged stress or exposure to high temperatures” seems to speak to me of just what happens in life to everyone. The creep of time. But where that line took me in the way of my dad’s personality was where I landed. He was not a creeper around the edges of a situation. He was not in any way invisible in a crowd but was also not overly loud while inside one. He enjoyed other humans, could tell a joke, tip a glass in a room full of people, hold attention, but never seemed to be angling to be the center of it. He took up space but also could inhabit the edges while letting others be more visible. Would ask questions that I realize now often deflected attention from himself. Boy, do I recognize that move. Apparently learned at the knee of. I’ve no doubt that during his alone-time, he would circle, perchance creep, around thoughts and feelings that were his alone. Because we all do that, don’t we? This carcass (the “living, material, or physical body” of it) carries our secrets and dreams along with the mundane white noise–stuff of day to day.

I think about the ways I’ve crept (&continue to creep) around inside my life, sometimes feeling as if I’m staring up from below level, watching myself interact with this&that. Specifically, I’m remembering how my entire music biz career seemed to be calculating the ways I could creep in and out of a moment with an eye toward feeling out the situation’s safety. The act of journalism was a just-right place for me to apply that creep around the edges. It was the point of the job. To observe, to take note, to be objective. So, sure, that last point was rarely achieved, but the first two gave me what I considered a free pass from having to state my position. A thing that terrified me in that I’d get it wrong, then be cast out into a social wilderness for real, forever. Sure, I can see now how exhausting it was, that constant check to locate intuition around whether something or someone was safe versus the general just-go-for-it expectations of the business.

I’m less exhausted now by a long shot, primarily because the people in my life are ones I dearly want to be there so I don’t have to crouch low while deciding who I need to be in their presence. That’s not to say I don’t still come up against the occasional work project that exudes a vicious vibe that makes me want to exit immediately, but it helps to remember that even though I’m in the tent, the thing is not my circus—I’m a temporary visitor under its big top. I will step out the door on two feet when the thing is done, no need to creep.

But back in the day, when I had no perspective on time, career, desires, my actual self, the responsibility to stay low in order not to get emotionally whacked was crucial. A survival thing that not until so many years later have I realized I was constantly working to perfect. Sounds relentlessly dark but there were also many many good times and I did always find a place for solitude so I could set down the mask and settle into myself, even if that self was a kind of Cubist rendition of me. I recently had a conversation with a friend from that time whom I hadn’t seen in years&years&years. She described the first time she’d met me at a bar during a birthday celebration in NYC back in 1997. It was the day the SPIN court decision had come down against Bob Guccione Jr., my ex-boss at who’s trial I’d testified for the prosecution. The picture my friend painted of me was one I don’t remember being. I do remember being the girl with the long red hair wearing all black, but the woman talking about the case with certainty and confidence and a belief that all women deserved respect in the workplace and world? Her I don’t remember so much.

I was struggling at the intersection between what I thought I needed to be to work as a journalist in the music industry and the peace, quiet, spine-up-straight honesty I craved as a human being. At the time of meeting this friend, I was uncurling a bit given I’d just left the music industry and felt much more freedom about calling things as I saw them. I wasn’t shouting from the rafters though. Nor was I that much closer to honestly knowing what I needed emotionally in order to be whole. I still had years of hiding behind others before I’d get an inkling of how to proceed with setting my own boundaries and desires. But baby steps were happening for sure.

I still creep around the edges of my desires before plunging into them, though now, when emotionally surfing, I do it with an abiding trust that I’ll be held up. I know my people more fully now. I know myself better too. My dad taught me to observe and also, subtly without me realizing it, to appreciate what it means to creep inside oneself to find solitude when the crowd becomes too loud.

When we moved into this Redlands apartment four+ years ago, one of the first things I fell in love with was the back patio—capacious and facing west for optimum sunset viewing. My dad was always amazed at how much we could fit back there. It seemed like every time he came over (once a week during the pandemic so we could take a Silver Sneakers class together on Facebook Live with his beloved teacher), there would be one more thing added. At the beginning we’d attempted a compost bin (disaster), then thought about a barbecue (not allowed per rental agreement), and finally, as the temperature creeped into the 100’s and the pandemic had settled in for real, we went with a wading pool, which D built a cool surround for. All this, along with a found sign and purchased plants, would turn up in the back and my dad would marvel “How do you fit all this in here?” But we did. I’d notice how quiet it was out there and realize folx didn’t really use their outside space (see: temp in 100s) but I did and loved it.

What I hadn’t fallen in love with were the vertical white plastic blinds that seem to be the standard-issue window treatment all around this (rental) area. I became weirdly obsessed with noticing all the windows where those blinds hung during my walks around the town. My extremely unscientific calculation put white plastic vertical blinds at 95% of the rental joints I’d stroll past, with the other 5% featuring the horizontal type. When I’d cross over into the house-owned area of town there would hang all manner of window treatments that reflected the owner’s style and taste. I would then come back and stare at our windows and crave actual curtains. But the taking down of said blinds and putting up of something different on all of the windows was daunting (&expensive) so we settled on just two windows—the ones facing west with the sunset—for something different. We took down the plastic and stored them in my dad’s shed.

Now, with the move, the blinds are back and (no surprise) have been affected by four+ years bent in half on a shelf in a shed. They are wavy, kinky, flowing not Marcia-Marcia-Marcia straight but Greg Brady–curly. I think they look cool and reflect the shadows in ways more interesting than the straight up&down slats but I realize this isn’t the point of them, or rather the point of a rental is to leave the place as you’ve found it. Naturally, my mind goes to things left as they’re found. It’s impossible to think as we gather our stuff for the move back east that anything would ever stay the same. I don’t mean that in any dark or foreboding way but rather just an as-is way. All the moments of our Southern California time have bent and shaped me in ways great and small. And I’m glad that many many times I’ve said “Remember this” whether it’s the way the three random-size Palm trees are clustered off in the distance that I stare at from my desk, sometimes with landscapers hanging off them trimming their beards, which, honestly, seems terrifying, or when I’d be having coffee with my dad outside chasing the sunshine and talking. A little voice would murmur “remember this” and I do.

All the wavy moments that have bent and shaped me over this last little while, over my life, really, they reflect the light differently than I thought they would and I’ve no doubt if I remember to remember to notice, that will continue.

It’s been said—and apparently, I’m going to say it here again in some way or another—that with age comes a kind of editing. I can obviously only speak on my own life at present but it occurs to me more than ever as I build boxes and roll tape off a contraption that took me way too long to figure out how to reload yesterday, that what I put in the box versus what I donate (or throw) away is happening with less gnashing of teeth/wringing of hands. I did make the mistake (not really, tis a brilliant show) of watching The New Look and now have an insatiable desire to go out and purchase a million-and-a-half pairs of wide-legged pants with perfect pockets while layering on all my chains and (fake) pearls (thanks, Coco!)…alright, I don’t have pearls of any sort and I have no need for any presently. So that’s my closet, but when it comes to just stuff, I’m happily culling along.

One thing that has featured prominently in most of my earlier moves was me sitting on the floor alternately laughing and weeping, photos spilling out of boxes, me studying every one as I remembered whatever moment was being had. Holding them close to my nose and studying details: “Whose apartment is that?” “Why did I give away that sweater?” “I wonder how she’s doing?” I had to really squint at these memories printed on little squares because that’s how photographs existed back before images were populated onto a cloud and zooming in can explode the details and the digital time stamp can tell you the when and the where of the moment. No more guessing at location but still a lot of speculation around what was actually happening in life right then.

Last year around this time, I went through this Kodachrome treasure trove process at my dad’s place as we packed up for his move. I found that he was a keeper (literally, I wanted to keep him always, but generally, he was, I discovered, the keeper of our family memories). Even though the dust was thick in the closet where all the albums were stored, they’d been moved from his bachelor pad in Pasadena where he’d landed after the divorce out to his place in Yucaipa. Last May, he went one way into a new apartment and the photos went another into my&D’s apartment where I sorted through them and felt many many many feelings and traveled to a lot, a lot, a lot of places, some of which I recognized, many where I’d never been. A passport into his young life all the way up and into middle age and beyond. I saw surrounded by a very close circle of pals: people from golf days, cocktail days, dating days. They show friendships—along with the Spencer ears, which jut out in a specific way.

Friendship. While I make lean my tangible belongings, attempting need / don’t need piles, I realize a similar culling has happened emotionally. With age comes an ache for simplicity. Not an impossibility to achieve, mind you, but more a recognition of what makes me tired and what brings me joy. Friendship does not make me tired and 100% brings me joy. I look around and realize that I’ve become really protective of the few rather than the many who occupy my heart. It’s an amazing circle of humans who, no matter the when&where of seeing each other, always hold space for me and me for them.

Currently a few of my heartbeatFriends are going through some very gnarly life-altering things. Big things. Challenging things. Bends in life wholly unexpected. I want to tell them I’ll take some of that load: Just make a pile over there of things that are really a lot to carry and I’ll pick them up and see what I can do. But I can’t. These aren’t those kinds of things. These are things that are theirs alone. As much as I want to lighten the load, the only way I can do that is to merely be present and hold them in my heart. To let them know that and also understand that they never have to acknowledge it by which I mean they can feel me always beside them. No words necessary.

Remembering the times I was life-challenged, felt total and absolute terror around my circumstances, and knew no one else could take up the situation although I was really aware that some would if they could. And that made the difference, that awareness. I felt the emotional hug and in my exhaustion was comforted even if I couldn’t quite say it or show it. I might have been frustrated, angry, confused—all those secondary emotions that step up to cover the main one: fear—making like a cat and pulling inside alone as I raged and wept in my singular tunnel until I could get into some kind of light but I did know the ground was seeded with my friendships and sometimes I did lie down on the grass of it to rest.

One dear friend recently pointed out that her perspective of life and challenges was directly impacted by the troubles she’d been through. The strength it brought on the other end even though at some point we may all look around and say, “Stop piling on weight,” as if life is some crazy trainer standing next to us on the gym floor. And in that moment, they might say, “I know you can handle it,” which is a phrase I don’t really care for. How do you know? I think. Can I handle it just because you say so? Are you an expert on me and what I can handle. Um, well, in the case of inner challenges, apparently yes, I am the expert. Even if I don’t necessarily want to pick up that weight, open that closet, pull down all the barbells to make me stronger.

And for my friends, I would gladly step up and offer to take up whatever particular weight doesn’t want shouldering … and yet that’s not possible. I can support from the sidelines, attempt not to use platitudes, have the water bottle (or wine glass) at the ready, and some kind of wicking towel to soak up the sweat of life. Just be there as they are for me.

I never used to cry during love songs. Maybe early on, young days, college, broken-hearted, alone in my room listening to Bryan Ferry’s cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” I would break down and while the tears felt necessary, they were also indulgent. I don’t mean that in a judgmental or dismissive way but more in a young, raw emotional way that, as I remember it, overwhelmed and occasionally ashamed me. Around that time, I decided indulging in tender emotions took me places I didn’t want to go. The river running through my heart was one that I was 100% too frightened to enter. Where that current might take me seemed altogether too rough a ride. I was sure I had no life vest for going over those waterfalls so I chose a walk in the desert.

The place I planted myself in music was dry as dust and filled with rattlesnake riddles. Although P.Jam’s “Black” could make me choke up for a love lost, for the most part my emotional musical moments rode on the backs of songs filled with angst and anger. Cathartic for sure and looking back, I loved that landscape. Yet also I recognized that there was a fresh-flowing tributary running alongside that would have offered me a cool release of tears and a rest on the shore of my emotions. But I kept on truckin’ into a music industry where snarling served me better than sobs.

I’m not here to bemoan that choice. I was (am) not unaware that in choosing that stance—a Nirvana-style nihilism over Rodrigo-esque release—I was figuring a load of stuff out even while my cup runneth over with untapped tenderness. Now, thirty+ years later, I’m all too aware that going forward also means going back. Looking into those depths and seeing the treasures down deep. When I was swirling up the waters, they weren’t so visible and I didn’t really take enough time to be still and let the ripples settle. Now I can at least know that standing at the edge of that fresh-water pond and being still, even for a little bit, can give me some perspective. I can spot the tools. I can decide how to use them. When I remember, I feel lucky in that.

And love songs. New ones that I’ve never heard before. D mentioned he listened to Cowboy Carter on a long drive yesterday. I’m curious again about music and I cued it up this morning. Taking in little sips of the new. As I’ve been dancing in the woods to Måneskin (and for sure “Valentine” is a worthy lost-love song), no deep tears have been shed, more joyous movement, which I obviously love. Yet today, wandering the premises and rolling along Beyoncé’s highways and byways a couple of love songs have dropped me into feeling some things. Not sad at all. Tears don’t mean heartbreak, but there is an ache in it. One that is actually quite lovely. Celebrations of love that have made me cry. “II Hands II Heaven” and “Bodyguard” in particular. A maturity. A connection that has taken years and years and years to find. A late-in-life place that could have only happened, I think, after wandering in the desert avoiding the river running just over the ridge. Learning that emotion can cover the waterfront of feeling. Just. simply. feeling.

For the last four years, I’ve sat here at my desk staring out the ground-floor window onto the sidewalk of our apartment complex and gotten to know folx. Maybe “gotten to know” is a stretch. More seen and then made up story arcs about a bunch of people who walk by. Some of them I’ve actually met so the made-up parts are just peripheral, but a few are total strangers. There’s the thirty-something guy who cuts into our property to make the loop past my window each late morning (except weekends) moving quickly on his daily walk in his sturdy kicks, cargo shorts, T-shirt or hoodie depending on the weather, and baseball cap. He’s a fast mover. Two months ago a tiny human became strapped to his chest bouncing in time with his footfalls, little arms and legs waving around, seeing what he saw but completely different. I “congratulated “awwed” him (in my mind) and noticed he was moving slightly slower because obviously he was exhausted from lack of sleep. A couple of weeks ago, I was out for my stroll and a few blocks from home when I saw the two of them coming toward me and I thought how funny it was that he had no idea what a regular presence he was in my workday. As we passed, he said Hello. His voice was deeper than I expected. I said Hi back and kept moving while feeling warm&fuzzy and loving them both a little more. Then there’s the abuela who lives down the way and for the past years has rolled her shopping cart with her little dog perched on a bunch of bags stuffed inside. For the last month or so, the little dog had not been in the cart and that has made a chunk of my heart hurt a lot. I don’t actually know her enough to find out what’s up. It could be that the pooch is just more interested in staying home or some such but I’ve been sad about it nonetheless.

I also now know that I’m noticed around town given in the last week three people I don’t know have told me a variation on that topic. One woman whose shop I go into all the time on State Street (the main twee-yet-adorable stretch of stores in old-town Redlands) said, “I saw you walking down the street last week. I recognized you immediately.” I don’t know why that surprised me but it did. I know I’m not invisible. I’m aware my hair is a bluish-purple and cut in a particular way and that I really do have a certain style. I can own that. But I’m taken aback when people point these recognitions out. My response meter around this and compliments such as two instances of early-twentysomethings randomly telling me I have style, is a wonky work in progress. I find I don’t know what to do with my face or voice and have settled on either, “I do like to walk around here” and “thanks” depending on the category.

Having lived my formative adult years in Manhattan, becoming a flaneur became an entry point into my surroundings. Strolling the streets, noticing people and places, and all other peripatetic this&thats made me feel connected but also independent given it’s a well-known fact that New Yorkers don’t acknowledge each other. In fact, there are a whole bunch of quotes about that, none of which I can find presently (if you, excellent reader, have some floating at your fingertips, please do post them up here). Of course I’d take note of the regulars I saw on the streets of my neighborhood or in/on the subway. I mostly felt good about them and had stories made up about their lives. The Shopper (a woman I’d see on the A train on the regular with posh bags seemingly filled with new loot with her always vintage-fabulous); Edge-Cut (a woman of a certain age whose blunt-cut, two-toned hair I became obsessed with when I’d see her each weekend at the bookstore across from our apartment); Mr. Bow-Tie (self-explanatory); and so on. When one or more of the people I took notice of disappeared, I would worry. Think: Hope they’re OK, then look around for a familiar face to settle me down. Or maybe a new personality to begin stories about.

Here in the Redlands, my invisibility cloak is wholly imaginary. I mean, it always was but now I’m just made more aware of the fact. There I am with my headphones strapped on listening to a podcast (just finished Death of an Artist about the life, art&probable murder of trailblazer, feminist Ana Mendieta), book (The Freaks Came Out to Write, an oral history of NYC’s Village Voice), or some combination of Maneskin, Bowie, Roxy Music and strolling up into the park or down the shopping lane, stopping by the Sprouts or wandering through a thrift store. I’m noticing but not necessarily looking too hard. When someone tells me they’ve seen me, it occurs that in a couple of months I will not be here to be seen anymore. And I wonder, should I tell some people I’m moving? That lovely lady in the store I always go into that’s slightly too expensive for me but where I treat myself to their cool collection of cards and she always makes a note to say Hi, and I saw you walking, and I pull off my headphones to respond because it would just be rude not to. Or my favorite thrift store The Blues whose proprietor brings the energy of her Hawaiian roots completely into her surroundings and who, after the devastation in Lahaina, was a human connection to that heartache. I feel like these are people I know in a certain way. They remind me I’m not invisible. They may wonder what happened if I never turned up in their spaces after May 1.

So as much as I pretend that I just like to watch, not get too involved, I’ve put the lie to that by moving myself into the space, putting one foot in front of the other rotating inside the world. And as long as I continue to step out into new and old spaces, being seen and seeing will obviously continue to happen. A continuing investigation of how much space I want to take up in the world, how loud I want to be about it, how it can be up to me the level of involvement.

Maybe in future writing about the issue of how women feel moving around an observable space, the sense of being exposed in ways not always comfortable. A partial reason as to how I came to always wear headphones starting in New York so I wouldn’t hear the stuff tossed my way on the street. How that barrier of sound became something of an additional soundtrack I now really enjoy. All that has been a scratch at my brain idea for some time.

In the meantime, it’s raining, but still awesome people roam in the vicinity and so will I.

When I started this every-weekend writing in January 2020, it was for a couple of reasons: as a view into how the transition from East to West coast was going, how adventures with my dad were unfolding, how I was changing inside it all. Also, it became a way for me to get my writerly self expressed when the rest of the week didn’t hold any of that. I didn’t have any real arc in mind except to probably record what was happening in the moment. Except that I also enjoyed going back in time to music mayhem moments, then, especially during the latter part of 2020, I got my righteous self agitating through words, yet ultimately the words swirled back around days with my dad: all the ups, downs, sideways, tears, laughter, creativity. Sometimes it would take me a whole day to write one post. Lately, though, my scribe muscle has been quicker to respond and I feel leaner in just going with what comes (altho for sure I give it a read to avoid any completely confused meanderings and mistakes). Then I post it up and feel better for the doing.

What I think of as a newsletter has carried on, will still carry on as D&I and our furry sidekicks plan for our return to the East Coast in May, that this period of time in SoCal has felt quick-like-bunny, yet full-like-…, er, a field of bunnies? is beyond true. Rich and satisfying with the intention of what I wanted it to be. Notwithstanding a global pandemic, the ability to know my dad in all his amazingness and be here as he exited, was always the plan. And this chapter is such a great one. I think of my life as containing chapters—some more blurred than others but with a running cast of characters from the way back to the newly introduced. Actually, there really aren’t so many newly introduced save for the amazing people I met through my dad who touched my heart (&still do even tho I don’t see them on the regular). Yet those longtime friends, cemented during early years of college and journalism days, those who moved out here from NYC or who’ve always called Cali home even with some roaming in between, those are the people I’ll now be adjusting time zones for calls and visits with, while I’ll be face-to-face with my East Coast people again.

Knowing how fast time flies (do I need another bunny metaphor here?), I’m for sure sensing that there are friends I feel I could have spent more time with (yes, keeping in mind that pandemic moment interruption) but I also know that with close friends that’s always the case. There’s never some kind of ceiling that’s hit where suddenly it’s like “Great, that was a perfect amount of time. Bye.” Yet also there’s a sense of flurry that has me checking my calendar for spaces to get together even as I walk out of certain locales (I’m looking at you, doc offices) aware it’s the last time I’ll cross that threshold. There’s culling going on of physical stuff, letting go of old, anticipation for new and that’s churning my insides as well.

I started off writing today with nothing but a vague idea around how to put into words what it feels like to be aware of both endings and beginnings around tangible and emotional space. Predictably it feels both adrenalized in that my heart shifts from poignant to excited depending on where my eyes fall or my thoughts settle. I’ll try and track that in this space upcoming or perhaps I’ll merely find new metaphors for bunnies and the like.