Encounter on Tverskoi Boulevard*

It started to rain. Since midmorning I had been wandering around Moscow's inner circle, following the pathways trod by such famous Russian authors as Gogol, Gorky, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. The heavy overcast skies seemed to echo the mood of their novels. I felt cold and wet and needed a place to dry out.

I came upon a small entrance tucked in between two large grey concrete buildings on Tverskoi Boulevard. I could understand the word museum and so I opened the door and went inside. Since my command of Russian was scant, I gestured my way through ticket buying. I put on the provided slippers over my shoes. Strolling across the wooden floor, I entered the first exhibit room and discovered I was in a museum displaying artifacts, antiques and pictures from classical Russian theater.

As I entered each room an elderly Russian woman would flick on the light and observe my solitary viewing of the displayed treasures. In one room, even though I explained to the woman that I understood very little Russian, she tried to enlighten me about the pictures and the costumes. I smiled and absorbed as much as I could.

I returned to the cloakroom archway where I had given up my bag and umbrella. The woman in the cloakroom smiled and asked me if I was Bulgarian.

“Net, ya Amerikanka.”

Her smile broadened into curiosity.

“Amerikana!” She rattled off her few English words and I started drawing upon my few Russian words along with my fluent German. I pulled out my snapshots of my family and home. She bubbled over with warmth now and motioned me to come around inside. Having barely opened the small door to the cloakroom, she sat me down in front of a steaming glass of tea and mini chocolate bars. We excitedly shared what we could: I my American pictures, she a favorite art book and snatches from her youth as an architect. Soon the ticket lady was peeking through the archway asking to see my pictures; then the director of the museum stood beside us nodding her head in approval of our animated interactions.

I gave the cloakroom woman peace balloons and small toys for her grandchildren. She gave me a friendship hug, postcards of the famous Russian actress enshrined in the museum, an iris pictured wallet calendar and her message of hope and friendship between Americans and Russians. She hugged me again as I reentered the museum. It was still raining outside, but Tverskoi was no longer the Boulevard of fictional characters.

*Finalist Halekulani Travel Tales Short Story Contest, February 2011. See Sweepstakes and Promotions www.newyorkeronthetown.com

Part II: Floating Trees

 In our chaotic, gun-happy, war-torn world, I have been trying to figure out what makes it so difficult for humans to see the ties that bring us together rather than the cliffs and walls that keep us apart. And then I see these floating trees.

I am taking this six week workshop entitled “Race, Culture and Education.” Every Friday morning we huddle in a half circle with this tall, elegant African American man who labels himself “a little black boy from Tennessee.” My thoughts on race and culture keep evolving on this life long continuum with repeated bleeps of experiential learning. After 9/ll I developed a class for my high schoolers and myself titled, “Beyond Prejudice: Appreciating Diversity.” I brought in Islamic, African American, Hispanic and Asian guest speakers and we read literature written solely by minority writers. I quickly realized, however, this was just a drop in the all white bucket that spills out over and beyond my home state of Oregon and throughout many of our all-white lives.

I grew up in a mostly Caucasian community, absorbing the myths woven about non-white cultures with a father who frequently used those derogatory terms we all know are racial put downs. Language and prejudices are powerful ways of separating people. I knew from the moment I could talk that I wanted to keep talking; words were important. So I was born telling stories and I was born with an extremely sensitive nature. I didn't understand why there were White people over here and Black people over there and why one people didn't want to have anything to do with another people. As I grew up I literally felt pain and intense sadness about how hurtful people could be.

I have no idea where my thoughts of unity and human sameness originally came from. My childhood culture kept telling me I wasn't supposed to have anything to do with a Black person but in my heart I knew this was wrong. Why are we suppose to be so hateful just because someone's skin color, ethnicity or religion is different from our own?

On one of our beloved trips to the coast, Dan and I are standing on these huge boulders on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The tide is extremely high and the powerful waves come crashing towards us like a herd of storming buffalo. I'm scanning the far horizon, feeling like a new world explorer, marveling at the infinite beauty spread out before us. I squint my eyes, trying to envision the edge of the ocean and the lands beyond. Just then my attention is brought back to the inlet waters below where both Dan and I spy several gigantic drifting logs. My history-collecting, factoid-loving husband begins to unravel a story I have never heard before about ancient Hawaiians.

These warrior Hawaiians built seafaring canoes used in their battles of war and protection. But the island did not have the necessary straight and tall trees. West coast Cedar and Fir logs, including the Oregon ones in front of us, would float out to sea, get caught up in the current which circles the entire Pacific, some eventually ending up on the beaches of Hawaii where the natives would turn them into watercraft. Later, at home, Dan verifies his story further with the book he had read: “Any logs that got past Hawaii without being snatched or washed up would over the next five to ten years, complete a full orbit around the Turtle and/or Aleut gyres...such trees, the keys to wealth and war, transformed societies all around the North Pacific.” *

The high tide keeps bouncing the drifting logs back and forth, towards land and towards the sea. I am mesmerized by all the movement and by Dan's story. In my mind's eye, I see these logs surfing over the waves, traveling through storms and sun, being homes to resting fowl as they reach a distant shore. The metaphor of the logs overpowers me. It's as if I am standing on these jagged Oregon rocks, on the western edge of the American continent, holding a string strung out across the expansive Pacific Ocean. On the other side is another human being standing on her coastal boulders with the string's end in her hand.

Friday morning comes once again and I am sitting in the classroom with this brilliant, brazen Black man who loves telling stories and loves talking about the discriminatory, historical and stereotypical factors of race. This is one of my revolving doors of light, for every session brings clarity as to why we hierarchical humans are afraid of each other. I come to every class eager for connection, trying to understand this one human race. The conclusion I come to has always been right before my eyes: our connections as humans come through experiences and getting to know each other's true stories.

The floating trees are not bound by good weather or bad, by jutting, sharp, angled objects or seaweed-strewn surfaces. Whether these trees are seen as debris or treasured wood, or simple gifts of poetic meaning, these dead trees bind us to each other and to living.

A month ago, after one of my essays appeared on an online newsletter, I opened my e-mail to discover an address I didn't recognize. A young Middle East parent had read my online writing and wanted to send me an emotional message of gratitude. These parent's words were worth more to me than a bag of gold. That across the seas, half way around the world, I could have touched someone was almost more than I could bear. To also receive e-mail responses from friends in France, Germany, Britain, Australia and Japan shrinks the world's distance and disparity. From America to the Middle East and back again, this particular exchange gives me hope. It is as if this modern form of communication has become our floating trees.

We have divided our continents into black and white, gay and straight, female and male; we are encouraged to live in artificial categories, rather than reaching into real lives. During my last “Race, Culture and Education” class we were shown a clip from a recent CNN report where little African American girls continue to pick the White doll as the most beautiful, the most popular and the smartest. When will we understand that across the seas is another human being holding the very same string of needs and desires we are holding?

After what seems like a thousand seconds of freeze-frame stillness, I turn to Dan and say,“This history of the floating trees is the most amazing symbol of how necessary each human being's life is to the survival of the other.”

*Flotsametrics and the Floating World, Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano, page 198

Part I: Across the Seas

I grew up in a small San Fernando Valley town called Sunland. About a freeway hour away from the metropolis of Los Angeles, this pristine gem lived up to its name with its crisp, clean air and the bluest of skies. There was one pine-dotted park set back on the corner of our busiest boulevard. There was one newly built, modern middle school, Mt. Gleason, and the fairly large Verdugo Hills High School. In my kid-friendly neighborhood, no matter what the weather, everyone walked to school. Historians would label my childhood “the fifties” but I was simply a child growing up in a world I would later disagree with.

During my younger years, the park was our oasis. The boys got to be on baseball teams and my sister and I would bake cookies and cheer for my brother to get a hit or tag an out. The small oblong recreation house held one huge polished wooden floored room with a narrow side hallway space. There, after climbing the creaking, weather worn steps, my sister and I would regularly attend the Saturday ballet class, which cost 25 cents. My sister made it all the way to toe shoes, but I realized my lack of ballet potential much earlier on. I starred in a small play about a Missus and a Leprechaun, me being the Leprechaun, but all I remember from this acting debut was being nervous in the ante room before I went on the “stage.”

My childhood was in many ways idllic, with friends up and down the block, yearly Easter bonnets and dresses, backyard orange trees and a summer blow-up wading pool. Everyone comes from a dysfunctional family and I had mine: the mentally ill, frighteningly dominant father, the passive, hidden-strength-of-the-family mother, and times of poverty. But the stars aligned as I started middle school where I met my life-long best friend and had a homeroom teacher who nurtured the creative, loquacious person I had been forced to cover up. As I began 6^th grade, my horizons, as they likely should, began to expand.

She was half Hawaiian. Her skin was a lovely, warm, coco brown. She sat directly in front of me during our first homeroom meeting. To be honest, she was the second person I noticed. The first, was my teacher, Miss Isibashi. I was overwhelmingly wide-eyed and mesmerized. “My teacher is Japanese,” I thought excitedly. It was to me as if an exotic bird had landed on the front podium. She was a young, smiling, first-year teacher who in the beginning had no idea about my infatuation. Then Neilani, this tall Hawaiian girl in front of me, turned to introduce herself.

Neilani and I were opposites: She was a large girl who was already fully developed, and I was short, skinny, and flat-chested. She was outgoing and worldly wise; I was shy, over-protected and extremely naïve. But we bonded and later drew into our circle Rosalie, Naomi, Marcia, Annie and Sue. Through our religious and philosophical slumber party conversations I realized how “diverse” we were: an avowed atheist, several Jews, a Catholic and a spiritual explorer. This group rescued me from my boxed-in existence and gave me some perspective. Brilliant, authentic Neilani, the only brown-skinned person at school, went on to become a drama queen and vice president of our senior class. I began to question why my childhood town was so white. We had a few Asians. Did we have any Hispanics? Where were the African Americans?

I had to grow up and away from Sunland and California and America to find the answers to my questions. From decade to decade the answers only led to more questions, my life becoming like a revolving door that kept opening and closing to let in the light. No houses were sold to Blacks in our fair city. My gruff, outspoken gardener father used the N-word and S-word, yet had close Black and Mexican gardener friends. Generalities about Blacks, Hispanics and Asians wafted in the air. I attended college two hours from home where my father turned up unexpectedly at my doorstep because he missed me. 

For my senior year I crossed the Atlantic Ocean to live, study and travel in Europe for eighteen months. My despondent father looked years older when at 3 a.m. he picked me up at the Los Angeles Airport. We argued about race and culture. We argued about my future career. I was broadening my beliefs and my father said, “You're becoming a damned Communist and a Hippie.” Yet it is ironic how straight I was during my twenties. Some of our arguments made me cry. “Don't let your father see your tears,” implored my mother. I passionately loved my volatile, soulful, intellectual father and didn't understand how to bridge the divide between us until it was too late.

There would be several more journeys across the seas to once again live in Western Europe, to travel in the then Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and Mexico, to experience an eco-teach tour with my daughter in Costa Rica. These journeys gave me a much wider perspective; they also widened the distance between my biological family and who I became. Sunland gave me jewels and stones. Sunland gave me questions and sent me on my way.

Part II:  Floating Trees  (Next week)