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)