The Valley Girl and the Wrong Trousers

Growing up I had no special fondness for my home and native land, California. The way I saw it, the 'real' United States lay east of the Rockies, where the mayonnaise  labels read 'Hellman's' rather than 'Best Foods', and where winter meant snow.  Not until I left the West did I come to appreciate its beauty and its relentless appeal to my soul.

Last week, during a visit home, I stopped by my father's office on Ventura Boulevard, in Encino, and feasted my eyes on his view northward across the western San Fernando Valley, mountains in the distance-- the Santa Susanna range running into the San Gabriels-- under a wide cloud-brushed sky.  As a child I had looked at the same view many times, counting the backyard swimming pools and disdaining the suburban sprawl. I fancied myself a cosmopolitan type and determined to live in the heart of a city when I grew up, not to skulk around its outer edges.

San Fernando Valley in December

I was always bad at being a Valley Girl. I failed my spoken 'like' quota and I truly loathed shopping. I still do; I'm terrible at it, always making silly mistakes and bad choices. Nonetheless, I found myself at the Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills on Christmas Eve day, prepared for fight and poised for flight. But it all turned out okay. Pre-teen daughter needed to do some gift exchanging before our return to Toronto on the 25th, so while she considered her choices, I browsed the sales rack, where I found a pair of nice black trousers, not jeans, with an interesting cut and a mysterious size label that made no sense. Held against my legs, they looked about right and just what I needed for work. I asked the shop assistant where to try them on; she gave me a funny look, but pointed the way to the changing room. A hasty check confirmed that the trousers zipped up and didn't require hemming and that the price fit my budget. They were $9.99! How could I go wrong? They also had enormous pockets. How, um, handy. I bought them. Daughter meanwhile selected bath bombs, lip balm, and walkie-talkies.

When we got back to my parents' house, my sisters had gathered with their children for an impromptu farewell deli brunch. Before piling pastrami on rye, I showed everyone my new purchase. One sister gave me the same funny look as the sales clerk. "Aren't those men's?" she asked. "No, they can't be. They were in the women's section," I replied confidently, but of course she was right. Stupid me. This explains the strange sizing and the backwards buttoning, as well as the capacious pockets. From the thighs down, the trousers fit me perfectly, like a glove. From the hips up, they are oddly roomy. Comfortable, mind you, and very convenient should I ever have a spare banana I need to store somewhere. 

I really am, like,  a terrible Valley Girl.

Warm with a chance of sane

Canada feels different lately. For one thing, today is December 11th, and it's practically balmy in Toronto: we had sunshine and a high of 14C (aka 57F). This is not Los Angeles warm, I admit; but just as I've converted from centigrade to Fahrenheit mentally, I've converted from southern California to True North sensually. (When I was a child, anything below 80 degrees Fahrenheit meant we had to wear a cardigan to school.)

The warmth extends to the social as well as the meteorological outlook. Yesterday the first 'wave' of Syrian refugees arrived at Toronto's Pearson airport, and the media coverage highlighted the effusive welcome extended to these new Canadians. That's what they were called, on CBC radio. The contrast to the media coverage of Donald Trump's 'keep out the infidel' rhetoric couldn't be more stark.

My Canadian friend, Nicole, says 'It's Trudeau. That's what's different. So quickly, it's like we are living in Canada again.' Her words make me all warm and fuzzy inside and lift my hopes for the quality of life here in the north. I'm worried about the USA though.  No doubt about it: Trudeau trumps Trump in every way possible. The First Amendment and the Constitution's insistence on a system of checks and balances may be all that stand in the way of (another) bigoted despot's attempts to destroy the American way. I wish Trump and his misguided supporters would read the poem by Martin Niemoller, 'And Then They Came for Me':

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me .

(http://hmd.org.uk/resources/poetry/first-they-came-pastor-martin-niemoller)

Lost and found

Once, in my freshman year at Cal, I lost an earring at an Oktoberfest dance. A few girls from my dorm, Cheney Hall, had piled into someone's car to drive over the hill to St. Mary's College in nearby Moraga. We felt bold and adventurous leaving our own domain. Arriving at the small, pretty campus, we found our way to the festivities, drank illicit, bitter beer, and turned our attention to the heaving room. One boy invited me to dance, then another. Being asked to dance thrilled me more than the dancing itself, which in the crowded darkness involved more dodging than actual dancing. There were flashing colored lights and a hanging mirror ball. Sophisticated it was not. Somewhere after the third or fourth boy I missed the earring, and became upset; it was an opal, one half of the first pair my parents had given me when I got my ears pierced, age thirteen. The friends from Berkeley and my dancing partner kindly helped me look, but for nought. No earring. I resigned myself to its absence, mourned, moved on, kept its lonely twin in my earring tree, to remember. Freshman year held much of excitement, and there were classes and exams and term papers, too. I recovered. 

In late spring, a friend,  Carol, who also lived in Cheney Hall, invited me and a couple of other girls to stay at her house in the Waimea Valley, near the University of Hawaii’s Honolulu campus, in the summer vacation. I couldn't wait. As soon as finals were over, I packed up my possessions, moved them back to my parents’ house in Los Angeles, and flew to Hawaii from LAX. (Eventually, that is. I decided not to board my original flight because the airlines received a bomb threat. The flight departed anyway, and was fine, but I opted to go on the next one, which also got a bomb threat. By that point I felt as desperate to get to Hawaii as I was scared of blowing up, so I boarded. The plane arrived safely. Obviously.) 

Carol's house was lovely, and had as much living space outdoors as in, with guava trees and plumeria and birds of paradise in the garden. The four of us girls crammed into Carol’s bedroom, on mattresses and folding cots and sleeping bags. I didn't really unpack, just shoved my suitcase into Carol’s closet, shaking out and hanging up the one dress I’d stuffed into the sea of shorts and tank tops and bikinis.  I don't recall us sleeping much; we were too busy. We hiked and snorkeled and shopped. One night we attended a comedy show at which Carol had to translate for the rest of us, because we didn't understand the lingua franca, Hawaiian Pidgin. 

Her closet had two sliding, overlapping hollow-wood doors that ran in a track, and on the second or third day, I found I couldn’t close one of them. To my dismay, it was stuck. Shit, I thought. I had broken Carol's closet and dreaded having to tell my hosts, her parents, a lovely Okinawan couple who spoke minimal English. How much might it cost to fix a closet? How many travelers cheques did I have with me?  It was as embarrassing as blocking their toilet. Before confessing, I investigated, discreetly,  having really no idea how the thing worked, just praying. Lo and behold, I found the problem: my opal earring lay there in the middle of the track. Its 14-carat post was slightly bent but the opal and its setting looked completely unscathed. I pinched it out from under the door's leading edge, stared at the thing in joy and amazement, and carefully secured it in my zippered jewelry bag. The closet door now slid smoothly; no confession necessary. I reunited the opal with its mate two weeks later back in LA.  The whole thing seemed miraculous and unbelievable. Eventually I settled on the explanation that somehow, the earring had been jostled during the dance at St. Mary's, had fallen into my clothing and become entangled, had hidden for months in a drawer in my dorm room, and then had ended up packed in the suitcase I brought to Hawaii. The scenario reflected badly on my laundry practices but short of invoking perfidy (someone stealing the earring and covertly returning it?) I could think of no other. I still can't.

I often remember this earring when I've lost something. Lost things and found things, the impermanence of possession, the illusion of loss. One of my children recently unearthed a cache of photographs and fridge magnets that had been packed away since the most recent move (2.5 years ago) and which I thought had gone for good. Now here the things are, back again, competing for space on our crowded refrigerator and on the bulletin-board photo gallery mounted on our kitchen wall. The kids as babies; husband and me on a holiday in Wales before we had any children. Things found, for now. Memories held, for now. Our eldest child, a tiny newborn in a fading snapshot, is currently applying for university places. He is already anticipating what he will need for his own dorm room, in his own freshman year. 

Talk about impermanence. 

I wonder where the opal earrings are now.

Rocky trip

Every year, thousands of anthropologists gather to talk to each other. It's kind of weird. We could all email, or phone, or facebook, or tweet, and in fact, we do quite a lot of that too, before and after and even during the meeting. Yet we still seem to want to get together face-to-face, microphone to mouth, bum to chair. (Good anthropological subject, no doubt.) This year, the conference took place in downtown Denver, mainly at the convention center, a place with the cavernous feel of an airport, albeit in this case an airport under attack by a giant blue bear. 

Blue Bear outside the Colorado Convention Center

Denver is an odd city even discounting King Kong's ursine cousin. Spread on the high plains that abut the Rockies, it has a western feel, though it lies east of the Continental Divide, an invisible geological feature that figures strongly in the Coloradan imagination. 'The Divide' comes up often in names of Denver's restaurants, bars,  menu items, and, cleverly, a fencing business. The downtown pedestrian mall looks shiny and tall and new, but is also home turf to a downtrodden lot of individuals who, in mid-November, already looked pretty darn cold. Upon arriving at our hotel we went for a walk and right around the corner found a posse of six or eight thick white policemen surrounding a small, dark, handcuffed man. "You're fine," one officer said cheerily to husband and me, "Go on through," as we hesitated, wondering whether to cross the street. Sure, we were fine. 

In the olden days, when they were small and inexpensive to transport, husband and I packed up the kids too and dragged them along with us to whichever North American city was hosting the anthropology gathering that year. We would fly in from England, and my parents would join us from LA,  to bond with and babysit for their grandchildren while we attended symposia, dinners, and business meetings. A little chaotic always, but fun. One year, in Washington DC, when the second child was a toddler, he got hold of his father's glasses and yanked, breaking them. Husband does not function well as a visual being without his specs, and the very next day he had to deliver an important paper (well, important to his audience). Disaster! My mother and I took three little boys-- my two plus the infant son of a friend-- to the Washington Zoo, down the street, while my father served as guide dog to my husband as they sought out an optometrist who could repair the damage. Fun times (mostly).  

The kids are less likely to destroy personal items these days but are also too old and too busy with their own concerns to tag along with us; they have school and friends and activities. (Plus we would have to pay the full price for their airfare.) So they stay in Toronto and I spend about as much time sorting out their schedules as I do preparing my presentations. Phone calls, emails, texts whiz back and forth.  Complex negotiation coupled with a sort of auctioneering generates a spreadsheet. "Who will have this child for Thursday night?... Sold to the highest bidder."  Eventually, we establish which child spends which night at each venue. But then who will walk the dog? Back to the drawing board. 

This year we considered leaving eldest son, age 17 1/2, in charge. But it turned out that he had joined his school's Model UN team and would spend three of the four days of our absence in camera at the university, arguing the case of Persia in the Peloponnesian War. Impressive and all that, but not much use to us. 

A workable spreadsheet emerged eventually, a column per child, a row per day. A list of names, numbers, email addresses below: in case of emergency. Kind friends new and old stepped up to the plate. The kids helped each other too. Everything sorted; we could head to the airport confident that our children would be safe, fed, and warm. The pets too. Off we flew, ready to conference. We kissed the children and told them we would see them in four days. Except, of course, that's not really how it works any more, is it? Before we even boarded our flight inToronto, we rang the elder two to ensure they had woken up in time for school. "Don't forget to walk the dog!" we admonished.

Soon after we reached Denver, eldest child emailed to ask where his father keeps his dress shoes, required for the Model UN stint. From our hotel room in Denver that night, via the magic of Google Docs, I helped youngest child edit an assignment she had to hand in the next morning. (The only problem was that she was working on it in real time, with me, and it was midnight in Toronto.)  The next day, after my presentation finished, I found a quiet corner of the convention center, beneath the Blue Bear's beady gaze, and set about sending and receiving a dozen texts to ensure that the younger two had met, walked the dog and that elder had escorted younger to home of the weekend hosts. "She hasn't arrived yet," reported my friend, the incipient hostess. "Where is she?" I texted middle child to find the answer. "Where are you both?" I typed, hoping he couldn't hear my gritted teeth. "At home, drinking tea," he replied. "We'll leave when I'm done." He had instructed his younger sister to walk the dog while he put his feet up, it seemed. Not a lot I could do about it.

And so it continued. I lived in two worlds, anthropologist at work and play, and mother supervising the home front. On the one hand, how nice; I could be away and yet still feel connected. On the other hand, 'connected' wasn't quite the right word. 'Tethered' might be more accurate. Electronically staked out. Unable to escape. Unwilling, perhaps, too, but sometimes that's not the point. Often we don't want what it is we actually need. (Who sang that?) 

Still, it was a good trip. I presented some work on how clinicians manage their chronic pain patients; husband spoke about seduction. I obtained a wonderful new book by Frances Larson, published by W.W. Norton: Severed: the Story of Heads Lost and Heads Found, a historical perspective on decapitation. I met interesting new people, real people, not their email accounts. Husband and I managed a romantic interlude, skiving off for the last half-day of the conference to visit the gorgeous, delightful town of Boulder on a sunny blue day. We wandered the Pearl Street Mall, and the university, and then we managed a short steep hike up to the Flatirons, stopping only when the trail became too icy. 

As soon as I could, I emailed a photo to our children. "We're on our way home!" I told them. "We can't wait to see you." 

But of course, the electrons got there first.