from santa barbara

As soon as I arrived back in Santa Barbara from Palm Springs, my grandmother burst out of the door, exclaiming, "it's not pouring! I want to take you on my walk!"

So we drove a small distance to her favourite walk by the beach, which she takes every day. She had told me when I first reached out that she hoped I could join her for this daily ritual, and I could feel it was important to her for me to see this part of her life -- so I joined! Distant memories of this seaside came back to me from childhood, of visiting with my parents before the estrangement, but I couldn't quite place any of them. A relative's wedding, perhaps, or seeing dolphins in the water, swimming at the pool nearby and feeling very exposed.

It was dark outside when we got back to my grandmother's house from our walk, and I wandered a bit in the quiet home. My grandmother's kitchen! And yet, she is not keen on cooking (and I don't begrudge her that). The real cook in this kitchen is Ophelia, who has been my grandmother's housekeeper for decades, and who helped raised my father and his siblings. There is no irony lost on me that my half-Latina grandmother employs a Latina housekeeper while claiming to be white, and that Ophelia helped raise her children.

My grandmother had mentioned in passing when I first arrived that my father had put in these cabinet lights the last time he visited, at least 10 years ago. She was proud, and I am left wondering what compelled him to install the lights then, and where that feeling sits in him now.

Prior to my pre-symphony wanderings, I fell into a bit of a meltdown, frustrated after an onslaught of passive aggressive comments and questions from my grandmother, laced with guilt and shame. It was her Sabbath, that Saturday, as an Adventist, and there was certainly an energy about her, a trembling, almost a mania. I was having a hard time staying level in the face of her energy, dodging land mines left and right. Eventually I burst out some excuse about needing some exercise and went for a run in the rain, listened to my lesbian drag playlist, and screamed a little bit.

On my way back I danced in the streets, wildly, probably surrounded by rich people's cameras, and I felt free again, dirty and wet and improper and me.

Getting dressed for the symphony, I put lipstick on, took it off, put earrings on, took them off, put my hair down, put it up. I wanted to be the appropriate sidekick for my grandmother, among her peers at the symphony. I did not want to be part of her shame. And yet! I couldn't do it. I love being femme when it's for me, or for the purpose of joy and freedom, but never for propriety, or dignity, or for being easy.

Anyways, there I am in the mirror with the cross, figuring out how to reconcile both objects in space and time.

What a beautiful place. When I see places like this, I think they should be filled with laughter and gossip and flowers and flowing beverages and lusty gazes and dancing. Such a majestic hall requires exuberance! And yet, propriety reigns.

I wandered around the hall for a while before the show and got a Shirley Temple, devilishly, gifting my child self a little sensory trip down memory lane. I remember these kinds of fancy spaces from childhood and the joy I once got from measuring up to them, following the motions, upright and stiff, a great performance. Wandering around seeing elders, children, and working people, though I gave my heart a hug thinking I ever gambled to belong in this world. I wonder why my parents did, and think perhaps they inherited it, too, and maybe it fits a bit better on them, but now I can't say for sure.

Regardless, I got two cherries in my Shirley Temple, which was the height of ecstasy when I was 8 years old and has not diminished a bit since.

I went in the women's bathroom and felt uncomfortable, wondering if I was being mistaken for a man, or simply spotted as queer. This doesn't happen to me often, and usually I like being "sir"ed, but in the bathroom, it is scary. I think I passed fine this time around, perhaps thanks to a lot of apologetic and feminine smiles on my part.

I did see some other queer folks at the symphony, which was lovely. They looked uncomfortable too, but hey, they were there.

Writing all this out reminds me how often I am thinking about being queer, and being perceived, in my daily life, just about everywhere besides San Francisco. I wonder how much energy I used to put towards monitoring my queerness before I even realized what it was. Now, I know what I'm doing and I almost wish I didn't. I hate performing acceptability.

The next morning, my grandmother showed me around her garden. I remember when my family would visit when I was a child, I would wake up at 5am before everyone else and sneak out into this garden and wander for hours, investigating the snails and touching every fruit and flower. I told my grandmother about these memories and she says she had no idea I was out there adventuring.

She says she reaps more fruit from her garden than she knows what to do with, so she donates most to her church, and that it makes her feel good to know she can offer something.

She tells me over and over again what she gives to the poor souls at church, and I know she is telling me something else, a story about who she is to counteract a ghost story she has conjured in the eyes of my father which she assumes I carry with me. I do not.

I look at her persimmon tree and I think about picking persimmons with my father not a week prior, and I wonder about all of our parallel lives and the impossibilities laced up between us.

Before I leave for my flight that afternoon, I snoop a bit more, and when my grandmother catches me looking at this photo, she says, "that's the last photo of everyone together before the family broke apart."

I don't know how to respond to that, but I ask her to show me more photos.

She brings me upstairs to her bedroom and shows me the photos she keeps by her bedside, of her parents. There is another photo of her parents with her and her brother as children, and a third of her parents as elders, with my grandmother and her husband, and their two kids, my father's half-siblings. Those two half-siblings, my grandmother's second set of children, are both still quite close with her. None of the first set of brothers are.

She tells me she lies in bed in night and looks at these photos of her parents and that they give her comfort. She tells me with tears in her eyes.

I ask her about her mother and she says her mother was the most wonderful and loving woman (I have heard this account from my father, too). I ask her about her father and her face darkens and turns inward, and she says that's more complicated.

She gives me a book that was written about her father. I still haven't mustered up the courage to read it.

Before I go, I return to my room, my father's room, and I think about this woman who raised my father, at least in part. I wonder what her life was like as a young girl, pictured here. She does not speak about her childhood, and the stories I have heard from others are not mine to tell.

I am compassionate to the struggle for autonomy by which she defines her life -- for independence, as she says. The way she tells it, she has only just arrived where she had always meant to be in the past 10 years (her 80s). I wonder what that feels like for her.

Here she is at her first wedding, to my grandfather the cowboy, with his fancy Southern California parents on his left, and my grandmother's cousin on her right.

Here she is at her second wedding, with her still-husband, Guy.

Just before I leave for the airport, she spontaneously tells me that she had two "great sexless romances" in her early life. I am caught off guard and don't know how to respond. Gently, I inquire, and she tells me that she had two great loves before she met her two husbands-to-be, but that ultimately she chose her legal partners based on upbringing, convenience, and propriety. She says she is grateful she experienced love but is not sorry she let it go. She describes both of the men she loved, in her own words, as manic-depressives.

I ask her if she found love in her marriages, too, and she says no, but with her current partner at least, she found companionship. She says she thinks my grandfather loved her.

I am left without words after hearing these stories, and then I am off to the airport. Just before I leave, I run into her son, my half-uncle, who is lovely and very friendly and upfront. We agree that everyone in our family is crazy but that the two of us seem normal. He feels like a comrade -- a fellow tattooed bartender, in fact!

I fly into SFO with a 4 hour layover before my flight back to Vancouver, and I have one last lunch with my parents near the airport so that they can (extremely kindly) deliver me the duffel bag of 20 books I ordered to their house to avoid Canadian import fees.

I think our fortunes are quite apt. My father's on the top left, my mother's on the top right, and mine on the bottom.

I tell them a bit about my time with my father's family and it is awkward, and he is visibly agitated, but I can tell he is trying to be neutral and supportive, and I appreciate that. My mother says nothing, and I worry about her, but then remind myself that she is an adult and so am I. I am grateful to be able to tolerate the awkwardness.

I bring a sweet gift home to B.C. with me from my parents, this hand-woven basket from a recent trip of theirs, and five little acorns from their land where we picked persimmons. One for each of my family members, and one for Cinny, my own family, always with me.

Back in Gibsons, I array my new little assemblage of family, my old poppy-head altar to our lineage in storage for the winter. That was an altar to grief, and it was true for so many years. Now, I don't know what comes next.

All I know is I've always been a little weirdo, even when dressed like a wedding cupcake.