my gramma's house

Key to photographs:
1. My gramma, circa 1929
2. The wood circle floor in the atrium.
3. The art deco bathroom in the basement.
4. Gramma's baby shoes, picture of my dad in the 70s, picture of her house from the outside.
5. The phone booth.
6. The bar.

My grandmother's house is better than your grandmother's house. That might be petty, or beside the point, but it's true. I wouldn't say it if it weren't. I recently returned from a business visit to Minnesota, homeland of my ancestors. I was born there, my dad was born there, my mom was actually born in Virginia but should have been born in Minnesota, all four of my grandparents and five of my great-grandparents were born there, too. Deep roots in the fertile flat soil, or something like that.

My gramma is rapidly aging and has many myriad health problems, so now she has round-the-clock nursing care in her house. One of her caretakers lives in an attached apartment, and her nurses use the guest bedroom as their home base for watching TV while she's asleep and stock piling their various medical supplies. My parents were in Minnesota, too, but they were staying at a hotel downtown. I knew it was going to be sort of weird to stay at the house with the ever-changing shift of nurses, but I love my gramma, and I love being in her house. And anyway, the basement was free and sofa-bed equipped.

I don't know how old the house is, but I'm guessing the 1930s or so. When my grandparents got divorced in the late 70s, my gramma moved a whopping 3/4 of a mile down the road, to a house very similar to the fab post-modern one she was leaving behind. The house is old enough that it boasts features like maid buzzers built into the walls, you know, if you don't feel like getting out of your bath or whatever.

Since I was little, the way I see my gramma has been inextricably tied to her house. If you meet my gramma, or if you see her house, it just sort of makes sense that this lady lives in this house, or that this house is home to this lady. The upholstery looks like clothes she'd wear, or it's cushions she's needlepointed, Andy Warhol flowers or the ski lifts at Aspen. The art is the kind that's in museums she likes. And the house is full of things (bric-a-brac, kitsch, bona-fide artifacts) and pictures from all of the places she's been. I suppose it's a shallow idea that a person can be defined by their material possessions. And of course, my gramma is much more than the sum of her stuff. But I think it's OK in this case, wonderful, even, that I associate my gramma so much with her home.

The house isn't all that big, but it feels huge-- partly because of an open, airy, floor plan, and partly because there's so much to look at. The house is low and long and rambling, Japanese style, through the woods, almost up to the shore of Long Lake. The central room is called the atrium, and the entire ceiling's a skylight. In the atrium, it feels like whatever kind of day it is outside: snow covered and soft, muggy and overcast, or blazing sunshine. The floor is a series of cut tree trunks, and when I was little I thought that there had once been a whole forest standing there, that the builders had simply leveled to make the floor. (See picture above). There are nooks and crannies off of the atrium, including two of my favorite closet-sized rooms: the phone booth, and the bar. The phone booth echos and has a chalkboard for writing insults about your sister on. The bar is mirrored, walls and ceiling, and stacked high with glass. There's also a huge ice maker, lots of top-shelf liquor, and tons of garnishes I've been gorging myself on for ages: cocktail onions, cornichons, olives, maraschino cherries.

The house feels grand, and yet accessible. The carpet's white, but surprisingly stain-resistant. There's art all over the place (Matisse, Calder, Miro) but nothing is precious or protected. I was never told not to touch anything, and I can't remember if I ever broke anything or not, but if I did, I don't think it was a big deal. We played, we ran around, we picked stuff up. One of our favorite games when we were little was to feed endless rounds of dimes into this vintage slot machine she has. We did break that, come to think of it, it's jammed now.

My gramma has various post its stuck everywhere with weird notes on them. Instructions to herself for how to turn on her computer, for example. On the red velvet pool table in the basement, there's one that implores the reader not to move the table because it's been leveled and also it will scratch the floor. The pool table stands on carpet. My gramma's eccentricity is part of all the things she has, and the way they're put together. She's pretty tidy, but believes that objects should be used and enjoyed. She's also generous-- often when I'd pick something up, or try it on (sweaters, books, do-dads) she'd say "Oh, you like that? Why don't you keep it." This past visit I uncovered (and took home) a 60s era Gucci bag in one of the basement's endless closets.

Visiting my gramma is different now. When I was there a year ago, she made me scrambled eggs and orange juice, and I couldn't help but obsess about this, and how she can't do that anymore, as we hung out on the porch, she in her wheelchair. I don't mean or want to be sentimental. Yet it means a lot to her, to me, to be in her house, an affirmation of a terribly fabulous life.

I know it's just a house.

Vaya con Dios

Growing up, I had a serious thing for the ocean. We went to the beach fairly often, on vacations and such, but I think it had to do with living in the desert-- I still felt really tragic and as though I'd been deprived of something essential. How could my parents fail to understand my longing for, no, my deep spiritual connection to the sea? For a while, I even had it in my head that I'd drowned in the ocean in a past life. I still have recurring dreams about huge monster tidal waves coming to get me. It's always the same: I'm crawling on the beach, but the sand is crumbling underneath me, and for the life of me, I can't move quickly enough. I keep turning around to see this colossal wave of water about to crush me in slow motion.

This may be part of the root reason why I've decided take up surfing. The first time I tried it was in England, off the Southern coast of Cornwall, in October. It was cold, but probably no colder than the California coast on a chilly day. I had a mediocre first attempt, getting up only briefly, falling off, all of that. No matter, I thought. It's my first try. I'll get better.

I've surfed many times since then, in New Zealand and Mexico, in Hawaii, and mostly in California. Understand that I use the phrase "I surf" very liberally. I wear the wet suit, and I have a surfboard. Also booties, because the water is freezing. I paddle out. I get wet. I pee in the ocean. I sit on my board and keep my eye open for waves. Then I turn around and try to "surf" which usually just ends up being glorified boogie boarding. (I'm really good at getting to my knees at this point.) I think I'm too out of shape and uncoordinated to do a really stellar "pop up" (where, in one fluid motion, the surfer goes from being prone on the board to standing up and surfin' safari, baby). I took an all women's class in Pacifica, CA a few months ago, and have since been going every other weekend or so with two girls I met in the class. Fortunately, they also suck.

This weekend, K and I went to see a play called Point Break Live. Based on the 1991 classic, Point Break, the live version is low-budget, ultra kitschy, and tongue-in-cheek. The film stars Keanu Reeves as special agent Johnny Utah, and Patrick Swayze as Bodhi, spiritual surfer guru, in career-making roles. At Point Break Live, the role of Johnny Utah is played by a member of the audience. Four or five guys and gals get up and utter a few choice lines (and also bend over to show you their asses) and one gets chosen based on an applause-o-meter. A cue girl follows Johnny around for the rest of the show, and he or she reads off of cue cards. (The effect being, Keanu delivered his lines in such a way that practically anyone can replicate it, simply by reading off of cue cards). We had a great time, even though K was getting a cold, and we had to sit in bleachers with no back support. The cast members parody the over-the-top surfers featured in the movie (oh, they are also bank robbers, but really, this movie is about surfing) and do things like spray the audience with super-soakers and fake blood. It's a lot of fun, and I tend to really go for theatrical performances that require a degree of audience participation. I like interacting with actors, moving around in my seat, being surprised and amused.

Point Break is a fantastic movie because it takes itself pretty seriously, but is steeped in bullshit. We laugh at it because it's not exactly laughing at itself. Well, Keanu's definitely not... Point Break live is all ABOUT laughing at itself, something that surf culture doesn't do a whole lot of. I'm lucky, because I surf at a beginner's beach in Pacifica, and so far have come up against very little attitude. The two women I surf with are both ultra-liberal-and-liberated lesbians, and they definitely eschew the traditional macho bro culture that dominates most of surfing. The guys who rent us our suits and boards ask us every single time what our dress size is when getting us a wet suit. This past time, J, one of the girls I surf with, said to me right after, that what she wanted to say to surf shop boy was: "seriously, guy. Do I look like I ever wear a fucking dress?"

Amen to that, and I wear dresses all the time. I've been learning to surf for a while now, and I'm still not very good. But there's something inherently satisfying about sitting on your board after you've paddled out, going up and down with the waves, and feeling slightly nervous, because shit, that's a big one coming up, and it kind of looks like it's going to crash on you. While you're still waiting for the wave, you can pretend you're a "real" surfer, and not just delaying getting tossed off your board.

It’s a doggie dog world out there. *

Day One

I have this ongoing fantasy in my head that K and I should move to the country/the wilderness/ some quaint little rural village. I picture us communing with nature all the time, playing Frisbee with Belly, drinking lemonade and 40s on the porch, and getting to know our neighbors, who would be an excellent blend of cool creative types our own age and eccentric yet lovable senior citizens. We could do this in Vermont, or Colorado, or Oregon. (More likely, Chimayo or Woodstock). Even my mother agrees. She likes to say, on a semi-regular basis “You and K could start an organic farm!” I’m not sure where she gets this—maybe because K was a landscaper off and on for four years. He didn’t enjoy it all that much and it hurts his knees, but still. I think my mom thinks we’d give her heirloom tomatoes and sweet corn for free.

I know I’ve idealized this whole country life idea in my head, and that it’s about as realistic as me moving to New Zealand and starting a wildly successful boutique winery. Or, as fantastically anti-climactic as Diane Keaton in Baby Boom. (Seriously. Who wants to make baby food for a living?) But every now and then, I get carried away, and start speculating over homestead prices.

This is one of those times. K is in NY for a few days, and so Belly and I are spending the weekend up in the town of Point Reyes Station, about an hour and a half north of Oakland. The town borders the Point Reyes National Seashore, one of my favorite places in the whole world, and is situated in picturesque rolling hills and redwoods and pines and grasses giving way to long, epic beaches with sleeper waves that can come sweep you and your unleashed dog off to sea, if you’re not careful.

I love it up here. The first time I visited was on a day trip was when I was fourteen or so. I think—we have pictures and I still have braces, so, a long time ago, to me anyway. But I’ve never stayed up here overnight. Belly and I located some of the most moderately priced lodging in the area, the Inn of the Silver Foxes (link). The “inn” is a room with a full bath connected to this larger structure built sometime in the 1970s with two other rooms, and also the house of the proprietor. She’s this elderly lady called Anne Dick. When we first arrived, I could see her though the glass door and via a mirror sitting watching tv, and vaguely scratching the top of her head. I knocked repeatedly and loudly, but she didn’t hear me, so eventually I had to open the door and say “HELLO” nearly yelling. It took three tries before she came out and looked at me like I was trying to sneak into her house and steal her fancy Mac computer and vintage 1980 stationary bike and treadmill.

The inn is very nice, and very reasonably priced, if you were wondering. There’s a huge bed with a feather-topped mattress, stacks of National Geographics from the last fifteen years, even a Smithsonian with Mel Gibson circa “The Patriot” on the cover. It’s an oddly shaped sort of building, connecting four different structures, not unlike my temporary senior housing at Vassar. Plus, the place comes loaded with cute little extras, like instant Quaker oatmeal and juice boxes and not one, not two, but three Coleman lanterns.

There is no wireless internet up here, not surprisingly, but I also don’t get cell phone reception. When I first discovered this, I felt a little like I did on IHP (International Honors Program—my strange, awful, wonderful Junior year abroad experience) frantically checking my Blackberry when we arrived in some new remote area of a country to see if I would be able to call my mom and be neurotic, or conspiratorial, or weepy. Of course, this is quite different, and my “oh, man” feelings soon gave way to “ooh, this is exciting, kind of like the beginning of a psycho killer movie”. This is what people (urbanites) are talking about when they name-drop “getting away from it all” right? We are away from it all. It’s very quiet, just me and Bells puttering around. I came equipped with several DVDs, and who knew—no phones, but ol’ Anne has cable.

Belly and I took a walk into town in the early evening. The population of Pt. Reyes Station is 350, elevation 33 ft. And while I know I would probably move here and be disillusioned right quick, it seems really, really great. There’s enough of a blend of hippies, yuppies, rednecks, conservative retirees and escaping scensters that it doesn’t feel dominated by any particular demographic. (I’m basing this sweeping generalization on the number of Tibetan prayer flags, Remember 9-11 stickers, Audis, biodeisel vehicles, tie-dye t-shirts and dive bars I saw). The main drag of the town (Marin St?) is loaded with cute restaurants, yarn shops, and creameries. I’m already familiar with the seashore, but inland is equally enchanting, and believe me, I hate using words like “enchanting”. The light is perfect; the hills are covered in blonde wheat or pale green buffalo grass and dotted with fat Jersey cows. Little streams run through redwood groves laced with honeysuckle and blackberries and poison oak (stay away!). The air smells like eucalyptus, or juniper, or white pine, and oh my god, Belly, it’s a Shetland pony!

Fuck the “real world” I supposedly live in. I’ll see you at my organic vegetable stand—we live up the road, our ranch goes right down to the beach.

Day Two

I didn’t realize, when making reservations for the weekend, that almost none of Point Reyes National seashore and the surrounding region is open to dogs. This is a real bummer, seeing as I’m up here with a sixty-pound puppy who likes to run around off leash. We found a beach just north of the seashore called Dillon Beach, which allows dog to run free.

Belly just loves the beach. More than anyone, probably. She rolls in the sand, chases birds, tries to eat washed up jellyfish and stray pieces of kelp. She also poops, three times at least, which is kind of a pain when you’re trying to take a nice walk. Belly is afraid of waves, which is hilarious, because she usually wants to get kind of wet, but gets very upset when the water chases her. But basically, the beach is her nirvana. Crappy cell phone pictures attached illustrate unbridled joy.

*Full disclosure—I stole this phrase from my senior comp class.