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...How could I have known at the time how much that backyard meant to me?...
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Moving Away
Yesterday, I read that Kabbalists believe dreams can have many meanings, but, if a dream is especially intense, that dream has special significance.
Last night, I dreamt that I was back in my old apartment complex I was speaking to two neighbors whose child I had seen when she was first born, who now is l8 and graduating from the high school. I was saying very emphatically to these neighbors, "I knew your child from the day she was born!" In the dream, these neighbors lived in apartment l6K although, in reality, this was not their apartment number.
The next morning, I called to another former neighbor, a dear friend who had been ill, to see how she was. It was 10 in the morning, and as she did not respond, I assumed she had gone to church as she often did. However, shortly after, she called me and urged me to come over and have brunch with her on the Plaza, where we often had congregated with other neighbors. In a short time, I and my boyfriend, were over there, looking out at the beautiful water view, which had meant so much
to me when I first came there 28 years go, after a very bad marriage, to a view that reminded me exactly of a childhood picture I had drawn, which was my view of happiness. Water, with a small island in the middle.
I had lived in this complex, with this view, for twenty eight years, during which time I had raised my child. I knew almost every nook, every cranny. I had many friends and several very intense friendships with other mothers raising children, many of them single mothers. We were a group, unique indeed. One of us was a Supreme Court judge. One was a woman with a child who married a much older rich man for his money. One was a Hispanic woman with three children, who divorced her husband, and was struggling financially. We were always together. Our children were about of the same age, and we would sit at the restaurant on the Plaza, while our children played outside, or congregate in each other's apartment.
Because of the way the complex was set up, four large buildings around a plaza, whenever you came out, you almost always ran into someone you knew, which was exactly what happened to me when I came back to visit. Before meeting my friend, I ran into two friends, who were so happy to see me.
After spending hours talking with the dear friend I had called, I started to walk towards a building to buzz up to another friend, only to run into her. She told me she had just been talking about me and had wanted to reach me but did not know my number. In fact, her young daughter had just been putting on a dress that my daughter had given her. She remembered how my boyfriend had climbed 22 stories, using her daughter's play lamp, to rescue me and my daughters, during the black out.
Just as I was about to leave, another very good friend literally crossed my path as she came out of her building. She had been the one, when I wanted to adopt a child, who had agreed to sign as the person who would take care of my child should something happen to me. (None of my family members had wanted to take on this responsibility.) She also had been part of a close group who had practiced Yoga and meditation together. We talked about the special Yoga teacher we had had. Even going home in the bus I met someone who had had tried to help me with my work, when I had tried to do a medical writing business.
Yes, everyone remembered me, and I them, very well. Even the number l6K, in the dream, had special significance, because it is the apartment number of my close friend who had been ill.
So, why did I move away and how did I feel now? For one, the rents, which had been under a special plan, were being raised. We were being charged exorbitant fees for heating and electricity. The rents, according to the new agreement, were going to keep going up, and I felt I had to get out when I could still buy something, which I did, in another neighborhood, and lucky too, because shortly after, the prices shot up to a point where I never could have bought. I would have been, as one person there told me, locked in, really with no place to go when the rents really got high.
Yes, I felt I did the right thing. The place to which I moved, I thought, would be the same. It also has several buildings, is near the water, has a health club, though no plaza. The people are nice enough, yet I have not been able to reconstitute, in any way, the kind of community I had, and I miss it!
One thing I learned from my visit was that it still is there for me, not on a daily basis, but, close enough so that I can visit. Another thing I learned--as my dream cried out to me--is that was that what really matters to me are people, the people for whom I care, the people with whom I have a history, not just the place.
JRS
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House in Lakewood, CA, I will always remember you.
Weren’t you just a simple house? Yet you had hardwood floors that brought my attention to the pattern of the grain when I would stand over the floor heater grate wrapped in a towel to get warm after my bath. Didn’t Mom and Dad furnish you beautifully? Even so, I heard they had to buy the pieces one at a time. Didn’t Dad decide he wanted to learn to play the piano and so they bought one and he learned Moonlight Sonata and then he left us? Mom waited for my hands to get big enough before giving me piano lessons. The piano was always there to make sounds on though, in the meantime, right by our front door.
There was no real entry way. There was no foyer. From the front porch, we came right into the living room. Our front door was painted turquoise sometime after Dad left, because Mom’s friend Ginny suggested it. Turquoise was Ginny’s favorite color during the 50’s. Wasn’t the door red when Mom and Dad chose the color?
Didn’t the bathroom have really nice tiles? Mom mentioned that Dad always did have expensive taste. Wasn’t our backyard unusual for the neighborhood? A raised high brick wall was curved and deep for plantings and encircled a lower level. Two long, low, elegant, slow descending steps led down to the once grassy area. The stairs were flanked by large ginger jar shaped ceramic vases. They were turquoise too, but weren’t they placed there when Dad was in charge of having all that curved brickwork done in the backyard? Or did Ginny also choose the vases afterward? And remember the tree that got caterpillars every year? It grew in the middle of the circular brick planter that doubled as seating for probably ten or more people. The luxurious overhanging branches had to be sprayed when the caterpillars came. There were millions of them every year. Some cocoons managed to survive the spraying.
Didn’t we still have plenty of butterflies in those days? When Swallowtails visited it was a special occasion, and would be announced both inside and outside that one or two had been spotted. Monarchs were more common, and there were also plenty of those large brown butterflies with a yellow strip and thin blue line of color on the outside edges of their wings. In the corner by the lemon tree we had a flowery bush that always had those really small orange double-winged moths that were so plentiful as to be disposable. Neighborhood kids that came over to play sometimes pulled their wings off. Each flower on the bush was the shape of a perfect miniature bouquet.
It is our backyard that I miss so much. It was my paradise, and in my dreams it remains a place of refuge. I could go anywhere in there, and there were so many details to ponder. I was wary of the spaces left at the bottom of the retaining walls for drainage, and imagined creatures that most likely lived in there. Small scale versions of Puff the Magic Dragon and a miniature lion that came roaring out one day, circled the area, and then disappeared back into his little cave, one of the drainage holes left between the bottom bricks. It was a beautiful space; but wasn’t it a bit neglected? Wasn’t there an area of short dried crabgrass and plain dirt in the deep shade of the overgrown trees where low creeping mosses were trying to establish some territory?
Mom paid regular homage to the lemon tree, always exclaiming how wonderful it was to have a lemon tree in our backyard. It was a privilege to be asked to go out and pick a lemon; to be trusted to determine which one would be the best lemon to pick. It was considered offensive to pick one that wasn’t ripe. And although I could not save those little moths from having their wings removed, I staunchly defended the lemon tree from having small green lemons pulled off and pitched across the yard Mickey Mantle style. We had a pom-pom tree next to the lemon tree, and that was remarkable because it was the only one in the whole wide world. Had anyone else ever seen one before? I have only seen one other since. Occasionally it was visited by a huge bumble-bee that would send me flying back into your refuge.
A brick patio led up a short steep couple of steps to the standard issue four foot square poured cement porch that led into the service room where the new Maytag washer was. Occasionally the machine would go out of balance and try to dance across the floor. It was both thrilling and scary, offering unexpected entertainment. The kitchen was just inside from there, and the kitchen sink overlooked that beautiful backyard of ours.
How could I have known at the time how much that backyard meant to me? If life is lived in a garden, then it is assumed that all places beyond the garden are probably comparable. Is that what happened back in Eden? When I played in our garden, I thought that Adamaneve was the name of the first man and knew that Eve was the first woman. No one can know what it will be like outside the garden, until they actually experience not being inside anymore.
We moved when Mom re-married. It was 1965, $15,000 was triple the price Mom and Dad paid to buy you, and was considered a good profit. Several years ago I tried to have a peek at the backyard when I visited neighbors that still lived next door. But I was unable to get a good look.
I am grateful to you, and to our backyard, for the great start, the beauty, and the exciting adventures. Life outside the garden is, of course, a lifelong journey to return.
-April
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