I imagine there are other highways in the country that are equally verdant, or dramatic, with majestic points of interest that catch your breath, but as I have lived two-thirds of my life in California, the 101, which travels north and south in the state, forever holds me in its grasp. Granted it is not totally coastal like Highway 1, nor super sonic fast like the interior 5, but it has the perfect combination of 1’s drama and 5’s rate of speed to make it my favorite. And it travels through the places where parts of my heart still live. With my family, with my friends, with my old life and moving into my new life.
I traveled the route from Santa Clarita through Santa Maria, past San Luis Obispo, north through Monterey and into San Francisco only a few days ago. And it is interesting to see how full the circle has come.
I began my California stay at the age of 25. I had moved from NYC to Fairfax, a sleepy little town in Marin, north of San Francisco, to stay with my sister. After three years in the Big Apple, most of my acting friends had traveled west – Every actor knew, and still does, that any money to be made was in LA. I, however, was not quite ready to make the LA leap, so I traveled further north with the safety net of my sister Joyce and brother Paul. I sang with bands, started to get my sea legs in terms of being a performer, and eventually did make my way south to LA. There I met the father of my girls and moved into the next 30 years of my life.
When my marriage dissolved twenty years ago, I continued to hang on to that life. As a child who lost her father at 5, my issues have always been of being abandoned. I have held close to the family I created. My girls are so very dear. Their father and I have quite a decent friendship – in spite of his short sightedness so long ago. But ever so slowly – I have had only one real affair in all that time – I have extricated myself from that person I was and that life.
It seemed so apparent as I drove the 101 North, back to my new home in San Francisco. I left the brown, baking desert of Santa Clarita, where my older daughter now lives with her husband and three children. I detested the heat and lack of vegetation when Steve first moved our family there in 1985, and that has not changed. Nicole luxuriates in the heat, but for me, the desolation, automotive isolation and overkill of soccer moms, box stores, Chuckie Cheese and consumption is everything I wish to leave behind. It is a blessing to no longer wish for so many things.
I took the 126 through the citrus groves of Santa Paula, where the cooler breezes blow, and the hills begin to turn green. This all used to be groves and groves, now it is a reminder of a California that once was. It meanders into Ventura, where the 101 reconnects. Eight years ago my Ventura move was one of my baby steps away from my girls. I taught in Oxnard for a year and a half then. Only 50 minutes from Santa Clarita, I could visit the girls easily; my grandson Eddy could come for the weekend to enjoy the beach, or pool in my massive and hideous complex. Now, I can drive through knowing where to post my mail at the main post office, hit the Starbucks, or even make a quick oceanside break to smell the sea. A few teacher friends remain. There are memories of how difficult that first teaching year was, my sister visiting with her puppy Meeghee, my solo trip to Costa Rica, when I swam with the dolphins. And the news that Nicole was pregnant with her second baby.
The stretch from Ventura to Santa Barbara is breath-taking as it skirts the coast. The late March and early April rains have made the hills so green, and the skies are California blue. The surf appears to be rolling in with the afternoon surfers, agile minute sea creatures from here. If I were closer I would know how turbulent the seas were. Atop the freeway, it is a memory from some Walt Disney film, with Hayley Mills no doubt. Santa Barbara has new memories of Michael and Fred, oldest of friends and newest. My sis had lived here briefly a few years back.
I drive on reflecting on the trip with Nicole. I should have cut my stay. A good performer always knows it is better to leave them wanting more, but I cling to my family, even when things are not going so well. I think of my mom, when she would visit me. Always she wanted to buy me things, to clean up my kitchen, to help make things better for me. Many of those things I had no interest in.
I clean Nicole’s kitchen because it is too dirty for me. I cook the meals because I want her kids to have something besides pizza or subway. I ride in her car and take tissues to wipe away the grime in the console between the seats, or sticky leftover candy. All the same things my mother did when she came to visit me. She wasn’t comfortable. I am not comfortable. I do not like the way her husband treats her, just as my mother resented the way my husband treated me. I try to be level and use some guidance with her children, just as Link did with me. How the circle comes round. One day when her own daughter is grown and with children she might remember.
I look in the mirror and am sad. My daughter is sad too, angry things are not better for her, but trying to make the best of things. It is she who must come to visit me now. The kids can come separately perhaps too. No one really needs my judgment, and it is so difficult not to judge. I miss my girls. I miss my grandkids. I miss my family life. And the sadness.
Further north I travel into Santa Maria. Many memories of Lilah there, a student at the acting conservatory. Some road trips with Steve, to catch one of her acting performances, getting filled in on his musical life in the LA studios, years after us, enjoying his creativity, baritone zaniness and analysis of the world. I miss that male adult friendship. And it is so easy to miss Lilah because she is so very much me, 34 flavors and then some. But she is 25 and in love.
And into San Luis I roll, a place where there were so many shows to perform in, a new turn at my cabaret life, decent money for a spell when I worked at the prison. Several really special friends and a recreated life, of only six years, that I have now left behind. The several wonderful summers I spent with my grandson, the wonderful chaotic years I had with my sister Joyce, her passing on. I ache for that loss, the sis I thought I would grow old with – surely I would’ve never left had she not died - my notoriety, my musicians, my small amount of being established as a singer and actor.
I move through Monterey with lovely 12 foot cardboard people populating the green farmlands. And I know, my life is no longer what it was. I relish the adventure and excitement of this new city and my pared down life. But the past is the past. I hope and pray that new friends, new music, new performances will continue. Of course they will. But the past still reaches for me. I am forever an abandoned child who must move on.
I will remember to wear a sprig of jasmine in my hair tomorrow. The smell of it carried me through this day.
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