Notes From a Native Daughter

I've just returned from California. There are authors who know California the way I know California.  One of them is Joan Didion.  She begins "Notes from a Native Daughter" by suggesting that people from the East "have been to Los Angeles or San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon sun off Big Sur, and they naturally tend to believe that they have in fact been to California.  They have not been, and they probably never will be, for it is a longer and in many ways a more difficult trip than they might want to undertake, one of those trips on which the destination flickers chimerically on the horizon, ever receding, ever diminishing.  I happen to know about that trip because I come from California, come from a family, or a congeries of families, that has always been in the Sacramento Valley" (110-111).

My family has not always been in the Lompoc Valley, but it feels to me like I have.  And though I never lived there, this feels to me like the place where I grew up.  I recognize the smells.  I know how to pronounce the Spanish names even though I don't speak Spanish.  I still visit the same places there that I have visited since I was born.

This time around, I went to California to attend my dad's hometown memorial service, hosted by my grandparents and my Lompoc relatives.  First, we stood quietly as they placed a portion of Dad's ashes in a niche at the Lompoc Cemetery.  Vickie took this photo, which shows the view looking out from the memorial wall, across the Lompoc Valley.

I loved having the chance to talk to the people who came.  I only recognized a handful of them, but I spent the day hearing "I haven't seen you since you were...." various heights below waist level.  I got to meet people whose names I've heard my whole life.  I got to hear new stories about when my dad was a kid, when I was a kid, and when my grandparents were kids.  I got to see my dad's whole family- his parents, his aunts, my aunts and uncles, and every one of my cousins.  Everyone congratulated me on my pregnancy and told me how proud they are of my brother, my sister, and me.  (Thanks!  I am too.)  The sun was shining and the wind was howling, so it felt like an appropriate Lompoc day.  I missed Dad, but I missed him in a positive way, not a depressed way.  I still feel his absence all the time, but on that day, it felt more like he was just off talking to someone else the whole time.  That's the closest I've come to feeling his "presence" since he passed away.

Vickie and I spent the first few days at my grandparent's house.  They let me sleep in. Mimi made me breakfast and the same hot chocolate with whole milk and Nestle quick she's made me my whole life. Papa told me stories and made me laugh.  After such a rigorous couple of weeks, it felt great to sit on their couch with a full belly while I watched the French Open and to sit at the counter chatting with them about what's been going on around Lompoc.

On Sunday, we headed about an hour south to Santa Barbara with Mom to visit Gramma Kingston.  This was the first visit Vickie, Nate, and I have made to her new room in her retirement community, so it was nice to see her settled comfortably in a different place.

After chatting with her for a while in her room, we headed to the Montecito Country Club for dinner.  They used to live only a few blocks down the street from "the Club," so we spent a lot of time there as kids.  (I spent most of my time at the pool.)  My uncle and cousin met us for dinner, so we got to hear what everyone has been up to in Santa Barbara.  Vickie took this photo of the view from the Club, overlooking the ocean, which is the same view my mom had growing up.  Tough life!

After chatting with Gramma again on Monday morning, and watching some of Andy Murray's match, Nate, Vickie, Mom, and I headed to LA to Dodger Stadium.  Vickie and I had never been before, and Nate apparently has but doesn't remember it.  As far as I know, this is the only stadium that still serves chocolate malts.  Since I consumed at least one chocolate malt at every Oakland A's game I ever attended, the first thing I did was buy one.  It didn't have quite the right consistency, but it still came with a wooden spoon, so it was nostalgic nonetheless.  Vickie got us great seats, it was a fun game to watch, and the weather was absolutely perfect.  We spent a lot of time watching baseball when we were a young family, so even though this was the wrong team, it felt great to be at a game in California with Mom, Nate, and Vickie.  The stadium felt very 60s to me because there's cement everywhere (it was built around the same time as the Oakland Coliseum I grew up in), and its location inside Chavez Ravine gave it a cool feel.  Nate and I also noticed that there was a higher frequency of plastic surgery among attendees than we are used to seeing elsewhere.  I'm sorry to have to give the famous "Dodger Dog" a thumbs down, even though they were only $1 that night.  Mom took a photo of us at the game, decked out in our Lompoc Braves swag, which conveniently helped us blend in with all the Dodger blue.

Another highlight of the trip was getting to see my cousin Dalton's high school baseball team compete in two playoff games. Dalton is finishing up his senior season at Lompoc High School and is headed to Fresno State next year in hopes of walking on to their baseball team.  Last time I saw him play he was about 12, so it was fun to see that he is, as my grandfather says "a good little ball player."  The letter Dad left us to read after he passed away specifically instructed us to "go watch Dalton play baseball," so it also felt fitting that the Lompoc Braves had a home quarterfinal playoff game on the day of Dad's memorial.  In that game, I got to watch what were described in the next day's paper as "Chambers' heroics." Late in the game, Dalton made an excellent catch in right field and threw the ball home to complete a double play that prevented a run from scoring.  In the bottom of the 7th (the last inning in high school baseball), his team tied the game with two outs, after which Dalton ended the game by hitting a walk-off single that scored the winning run.  That advanced the Braves to the semi-final game, in which Dalton ended the opposing pitcher's no hitter with an excellent bunt that scored the go-ahead run, which turned out to be the winning one.

Dalton and the Braves are preparing for the CIF championship game as a type, so we'll be cheering him online from the opposite coast.  I hope we'll get to see Dalton play plenty more baseball, and I will enjoy getting to bring Billy next time around.

After our trip to Santa Barbara, Dodger Stadium, and Dalton's game outside LA, Nate and I returned to Lompoc to hang out at our Aunt Carrie's until Dalton's graduation.  Again, I really enjoyed having the chance to relax and spend a few lazy days with the family.  I spent another morning watching tennis at Mimi and Papa's and caught up on my reality TV with Nate, Carrie, and my Uncle Steve.  It's always hard for me to transition from the super-busy end of semester routine into the more laid-back summer routine-- I always feel like I should be doing something-- but being in a different place with plenty of family helped me make that transition smoothly.  While in Lompoc, I slept well and ate well, and aside from missing Billy and Oscar, I had nothing to complain about.

It was fun to be with the family for Dalton's graduation.  Since I haven't gotten to share too many of Dalton and Mackenzee's growing up milestones in person, I was glad to be there for his graduation.  It was funny to think that their parents, my Uncle Craig and Aunt Kim, were around my age now when I spent the most time in Lompoc.  I also enjoyed hearing about Kenz's freshman year, especially since she's the same age I was when Nate was a senior.  I forgot to count how many of us were in the stands to cheer Dalton on, but I find it hard to believe that any single graduate had a larger fan section.  (I can think of at least 21 people in the seats we saved for ourselves.)  At LHS the boys and girls sit on opposite sides of the aisle and walk out in pairs.  Below are photos of D making his entrance, Mimi and Papa watching proudly, and D giving his partner a piggy back ride off the stage after they accepted their diplomas.  (Note to self: Bring the bigger camera lens next time.)

I can tell Dalton has a great head on his shoulders, and I have such fond memories of finishing high school and heading to college that I can't wait to see what the future holds in store for him!

My whole trip back was relaxing, refreshing, and restorative.  I know Dad would have been so pleased with all the work his family put into planning the memorial, and he would have been happy to see all the people who turned out to pay their respects. Mostly, though, I think he would have been happy about the amount of time we got to spend together doing quintessentially Chambers family types of things.  I miss my dad terribly, but I know he wouldn't have wanted me to lapse into depression or to think of him with sadness as a result of his death.  He would have wanted me to continue doing the things he liked to do with the people we both love, so it was great to have a chance to do that.

I don't generally consider myself a Californian, even though I was born there and lived there until I was 10.  But when I go back to Lompoc and Santa Barbara, I feel like I came from California.  And not the California that I see in travel commercials or celebrity tabloids-- the California where people know my family history, where the wind blows, and where the air smells sweet and salty.  That California is less of a geographic place and more of a "place of the mind," as Joan Didion describes it.  I feel fortunate that even though my dad and I each moved away from home, this is still a place I can go.  And while I was there, one of Dad's (and Vickie's) favorite songs was on repeat in my head: Madonna's "This Used to be My Playground."



Don't hold on to the past?  That's too much to ask, indeed. Thank you to Mimi, Papa, Carrie, Steve, Kim, Craig, Dana, Nate, Vickie, Mom, Christine, Phillip, Dalton, Mackenzee, Gramma Kingston, Bob, and Blake for helping me to enjoy my trip, and to Billy and Oscar for sparing me for the week even though they couldn't join us.

("Notes from a Native Daughter" is the lead essay in the "Seven Places of the Mind" section of Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem.  I recommend it if you're looking for a good summertime read, especially if you share my nostalgia for California or my appreciation for thoughtful memoir.  I even mean this is a good book for regular people, not just literary studies people, since it has been recently brought to my attention that nobody really understands what I mean when I talk about books. : ) )