For the first time in almost 3 years, I just almost had to blink back tears for missing California. I just read a Slate essay, Disinheritance: The Sisters Welcome Their New Brother, written by a dad (Michael Lewis) sharing the experience of introducing his two daughters (4 and 7) to his brand new one-day old son. The whole thing was very real, and for that reason, touching.

But that's not the part that got me. He first mentioned finding a parking spot in the Bay Area. That perked me up a bit, "The bay area, I used to live there." But then he said "Alta Bates" - the name of the hospital where his son was born. The name of the hospital where e. and j. were both born. He mentioned the room number his wife and baby were staying in ... on the same floor as the room I stayed in when MY kids were born. I could picture the rooms perfectly - their set up, the positioning of the beds, the damned television that the ex wouldn't turn off (even during delivery -- after all, basketball was on) - all of it.

Then, if you click on the link, you see the photo of his daughter at the top of the article? I don't know her from Adam, and she looks nothing like my kids. But the PICTURE was taken from the parking garage across the way from the hospital. If you click to enlarge, you can see the door for admitting, and the little turn-about for cars to pull up and let sick people out. This wasn't only the place that I was wheeled through twice while discharged with my 2 babies ... it's also a place, a view, a sidewalk, that the girls and I walked THOUSANDS of times between their school and home - between our favorite cafe and home - between a park and home. You would see the park, the playground, if the picture would just pan slightly to your right (the little girl's left).

It had a name, but we called it "Regent Park" b/c it was on Regent Street. It had (has) this spiral slide, which is pretty high up, and made of metal. Once, j. went down the slide, and started crying as she got to [what I thought was] the bottom. She said, "Mommy, I fell off the slide." I thought (my view was obstructed) that she just meant she went flying off the bottom too fast, and hit the sand harder than she wanted to, so I told her to stop crying or we'd go home. She tried SO HARD to stop crying. Then e. and j. started talking about it, and it became clear that the child went flying off at one of the curves, and was holding onto the edge, feet dangling over the ground. She REALLY fell off the slide. She didn't just go flying off the BOTTOM. Once I realized what happened, she had calmed down, and we all laughed about it.

We *still* laugh about it. When I made them their scrapbooks for this past solstice, there were pictures of them from this park (I wonder if, since I don't have a photo scanner, I can take a photo of that page in the scrapbook later, and upload it?), and we remembered.

I remember at least 2 melancholy walks to the park with my sister and her son and the girls. I think one was the one that's in the photo in the scrapbook, and it was our last weekend all together before my move. I had a lot of fun, hanging out in Berkeley with my sister and our kids. Neither of us were in the most stable parts of our lives, which actually may make the memories so special, because we had each other, and while the kids were all 3 dealing with different stages of their parents' separation, divorce, and visits between - they had all gained something in the form of aunts, and cousins.

The girls loved walking by the hospital, knowing it was where they were born. It's so strange to see it, in that picture, and know those people are there right now. They live there. It's close to them. It is in my old town, my old neighborhood. It's like a block from the Whole Foods that we lived around the corner from. From the ever-present smells of jasmine and honeysuckle in the air, that I loved so much. From the casual, easy feel of Berkeley in general, that made me feel at home, and okay - even though by many different New England standards, I was probably NOT okay (i.e., a single mother, working full time, letting my kids run around in hippy-clothes [god, i miss those thrift stores] with dirt under their fingernails and e. with her hair cut short (like she wanted it) so people thought she was a boy).

And of course, we can go back to none of it. We'll never be those people again - we can't. e. won't be 6 again. j. won't be 4. I will never again be the Zuska who always wanted to, but never went to law school. Hell, I'm even done being a single mom. We can visit, and re-trace our steps, but they won't be the same. We'll still be remembering when we walked from home to Espresso Roma, where the girls got hot chocolate and/or lemonade with a cookie the size of their head, and I got some strange Caramel Macchiato-wanna-be, and we all read books - my first taste at having kids old enough that we could all enjoy doing the same things. e. sometimes remembers that cafe and feels sad. We don't have a place like that here. There are Starbucks, with way too little seating, and that "there's another one 2 doors down" feeling. Espresso Roma didn't have that. It was unique, it was big. People from the neighborhood studied, talked, sketched, goofed off on their computers, read books, ate LUNCH (and the food was freshly made, right there - not wrapped in cellophane in a case), ate dinner, sipped wine, sipped coffee. We have *nothing* like that here.

Ah well. There's plenty to love about our new lives. Plenty of things here we didn't have there (although this winter is taking the SNOW off that list). Fortunately, at least, I was good enough about taking pictures. And I am glad that despite the circumstances that were swirling around us then (financial unrest; divorce), we all 3 have some pretty damned good memories that dominate our image of that time.

posted by Zuska @ 3:58 PM

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