May 2006 Archives

I'm almost 60, don't own a house, spend my money on travel, books, men's retreats, and medium lattes -- and these days I'm thinking about Joe Waters. To understand Joe Waters, or to appreciate him, you have to know something about the Bench. In retrospect, the name was surprisingly poetic for the likes of clapboard, desert-dried, post-Midwestern 1950s Banning, California. The massif named "the Bench" rose north of town and around the corner made by the deep and virtually dry bed of the San Gorgonio River. The bluffs to the west formed a high, vertical bank. At the top, elevation and proximity to the San Bernardino mountain range made another world, cool in the summer, occasionally snowy in the winter. On the Bench, peach and cherry orchards bloomed in the spring and set the packing sheds to work. Joe Waters lived on the Bench.

Let's start with his house. I recall it as slightly ramshackle, with the sort of lawn that belonged more to a farmhouse. The grass was mowed irregularly and not entirely flat, with a channel scooping its way toward the screen door. The latter led to a screened patio. A swing, a tricycle on its side, a beach ball, these were the objects that dotted the front yard. The road that led to the Bench from Banning climbed to the top of the bluffs in one big slant, made a hairpin turn, then led along the edge of the plateau, houses like the one belonging to Joe Waters on the west, the road's shoulder on the right with a vertical drop to the rocky wash of the dry river. The road itself deadened not far from Joe's house, stopping at a gate. In the winters, when snow dropped low on the mountains, people from the town parked their cars here and made snowmen, threw snowballs and slipped and fell enough on the white ground to test its softness and ability to melt into your butt. From Joe's house, a mile or so from the road's end, a walk across the road provided a view of deep brown foothills and a look up the canyon. The river gorge abruptly narrowed, steepened and made a mysterious turn into the mountains. Just before it disappeared around its own bend, pine trees grew in the gravelly canyon floor. They had crept down from the forests above, afraid to venture any further. In my mind, they marked the end of the desert. Above that point, the San Gorgonio River made a fast getaway from the dry lowlands, tilting up into the mountains and becoming what all the locals knew as the Water Canyon. Joe Waters, with this breathtaking view of the entrance to the Water Canyon, had a wife, Ida, a daughter named Maggie, another girl named something else, a dog, and an utterly admirable life.

He taught art at the local high school. Ida worked in the town library. Joe wore glasses with the thick, black frames popular among beatniks of the 1950s. His hair was cut very short. To be around his house was to feel calmed, opened up, elevated. They read, the Waters, and they knew all about the latest thinking, the trends in education, happenings in the world of modern art, politics and philosophy. Such matters rarely surfaced in the life of Banning, and Joe and Ida hardly spoke of such things when, before the divorce, my parents visited. Or after their divorce, when my father visited. The Waters had kids to raise, after all. But they were urban people, from Chicago, and they pursued the life of the mind, with what time and energy they had, in relative seclusion and safety. It was the 1950s, the latter 50s, leading into the 1960s, and the national tolerance for bohemian types like the Waters was still very low. If they had been born a decade earlier, coming into young adulthood in the late 1960s, the Waters might have been more overtly unconventional, perhaps hippies. But as it was, on their modest salaries, they managed what now seems to me like an enormously wealthy existence. You could see it all in the gentleness of their kids.

Joe drove a new Studebaker. The car must have been a luxury for someone on a teacher's salary. Joe talked to me about it one summer, how the car had been designed to balance form and function, not to mention aerodynamics. I had never thought about the design of anything, but Joe gave me the lightest, most offhand and enduring of introductions as we bounced through the summer peach groves. In June, when the schools let out, Joe began a job with the Department of Agriculture. His task was to inspect the work of the packing sheds that seasonally burst into corrugated-tin life beside the trees. Boarded up in the winter, the sheds looked like they might at best house a tractor or two. But by the end of June they were abuzz with workers, mostly women, mostly Mexican, who shoved peach after peach into purple paper, then lined the fruit up in wooden cartons. The labels in bright primary colors described their contents as Mountain Gems, River Treasures, Anza Wonders, or some such, though the actual names have faded from my memory. Oddly what hasn't, though, is the day I spent with Joe. How this day came about, I also can't recall. It must have had something to do with the fact of summer, that I was underfoot in the house, a desert house without neighbors or neighborhoods, while my father was working and my mother was home. Fortunately, someone had the good sense to suggest I spend a day with Joe as he drove about inspecting fruit packers. He wore a badge, a baseball cap and carried about him a sense of ease and peace. You lived in a simple house with screens and books and a woman who gave visitors a hug and you did things like this in the summers, in a car Le Corbusier would enjoy. And enjoyment was key. Impressing people was utterly absent from this life.

It was that car, on the front page of the Banning Record, that I recall most about Joe's departure from Banning. One night at the end of the school year, Joe and his teacher buddies had driven up the highway to the adjacent town of Beaumont. There they had had a few drinks, and Joe had driven home. Somehow, en route, Joe's path had become entangled with that of an enormous big rig. The result was a beautiful Studebaker, general outline still visible, flattened as though being prepared for scrap. God was not ready to scrap Joe, however, and he emerged from the experience bruised, fractured and in possession of a citation for drunk driving.

But that happened later. On this summer day in 1957 or 1958, Joe and I were driving the Bench. I must have expected to either be bored or uncomfortable in this day of fruit shed inspection. But Joe with his soft ways, his interest in me and what was on my mind, his talk about the car, his explanation of the fruit business, made me relax into the day. Joe knew all the back roads, all the half-paved tracks, even the dirt ones, that ran through the trees, over the gullies, and led into unexpected clearings full of cars and trucks and people with lunch boxes open in the sun. Here, sheds rattling with the sounds of old conveyor belts carried fruit from the trees to the packers. Joe knew the foremen by name. As we drove in, they walked out. Joe clipped on his USDA badge, rose from the car and guided me inside. He introduced me without explanation. I was not the son of a friend, or even a friend. I was simply with him, Joe and I, inspecting the fruit or the fruit boxes or the fruit packers. I was never sure. Joe was, though, and returning to his car he pulled out a pen, jotted something down, turned to me and smiled.

My father was Joe's doctor, and I heard all about the accident. The Highway Patrol had said Joe was so drunk that he hardly knew what had happened. My father, bemused, shook his head. Joe could have died, he said. Joe said much the same thing when I saw him, a week or so later, with a big bandage on his forehead, sitting in my father's waiting room. I was very foolish, Joe said. He was a short man, and seated on the low early-1960s couch, he seemed diminished. He spoke to me frankly, as though I was an equal, but not a peer. Joe was simply passing on information from one person to another, from one generation to the next, with no lesson, and no burden. I felt bad about his car.

Joe told me he would be moving. In a general way, I understood this. High school teachers couldn't get caught driving around drunk in Banning. Incredibly, Ida, his wife, had gotten a fellowship. Her childrens' reading program had won plaudits in a national education journal. I wondered then, and now, what Ida could have been up to the junior reading alcove of the town library. I knew that with Joe's going, there would no longer be visits to the house on the Bench. No more slow summer dinners, my brother and my father and me comfortably eating hamburgers in a real household with people who liked women. I asked Joe when he would sell the house. He wasn't selling, he said. They would be back in the summers. I can't recall visiting them in the subsequent summers, although I'm sure this happened. The reason this particular memory has faded probably has to do with my own disappointment. The Waters were briefly back, but the impermanence of their summer stays made everything feel different. Things were different enough with adolescence revving me into a new gear and a new body. Still, I must have kept in touch, for after high school I saw Joe one last time.

My father probably made the arrangements. For my graduation present, I took trains from California to upstate New York. Joe met me at Dearborn Station in Chicago. In the hours between trains, he showed me a Frank Lloyd Wright house near the University of Chicago. There wasn't time to take me to his home, but there was time for the two of us to have an Italian dinner somewhere near the University. Then it was off to LaSalle Street Station where what was left of the New York Central dispatched its dirty old trains to points east. It was over dinner, in a restaurant with gingham tablecloths and candles stuck in Chianti bottles, a wondrous non-California place full of garlic, bustle and urbanity, that I had the presence of mind to ask Joe about his job. He worked for an advertising agency, he said. At 17 years of age, I couldn't understand how he could be Banning High's art teacher at one moment, something else the next. He told me he could always find work as a graphic artist. He gave me a hug at the station, we both waved goodbye, and I knew I might never see him again. I was right. But I was witness. I had seen how to live a life and to have the quiet confidence that you could always find a job.

I have this powerful urge to tell my brother and sister about the weather. It's not raining. It was, but it's not now. Sunny. Well, partly cloudy, partly sunny, depending on one's glass-half-empty/glass-half-full position on the Pollyanna scale. My position is definitely toward the dark end, and my brother and sister tend to hang out there too. Although neither seems quite as somber as I. What we share is...I'm not sure. We shared a weekend recently. And even on a purely practical, logistical level, that was something of a miracle. Or, viewed from another perspective, a testament to our dedication to each other. For after years of protracted interpersonal strain over my mother, her decline and eventual death, I wasn't even sure we could pull this off, spending time together with a friction level low enough to be enjoyable. Yet, that's what we did. For the first time in years, just the three of us, siblings who did not entirely grow up together, but grew up anyway.

It's not that we don't know each other as individuals. We really don't know each other as family members. Our group identity was fractured early on. The brothers lived in one odd bachelor household. The sister lived with the unstable mother. Life moved on. Time flowed, and here we are in May, 2006, in and around Inverness, California, talking about the weather. Which has nothing to do with weather, it turns out. For all three of us have emerged from our life experiences with a similar regard for nature. I wasn't sure if my siblings would like the Point Reyes area, which isn't up there with Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon. It's just an open, windswept expanse of California maritime land, where the wild things appear only when you stop and take a look. Which all of us did. We are all in our 50s now, and it shouldn't be taken for granted, the fact that my brother and sister passed up no walk, avoided no climb and dissed no road in search of the seascape. Or, even better, that they both got into the wheel-brother-to-the-lagoon adventure one afternoon. That was the afternoon that wasn't supposed to be, rain having swept in the previous night and morning. But there it was, sun intermittent and photography students constant along the sandy walk from the northern road to Abbott's Lagoon. The wheelchair bounced, the siblings groaned, but we were all in this together. Stopping now and then to marvel at the iridescence of Day-Glo markings on red wing blackbirds, the two-tone fragility of California poppies and the scenery-obliterating power of Gortex. Actually, the latter was my brother's observation. A covey of middle-aged photography students had gone to ground only a few yards down the trail from the parking lot. My brother caught it all. The name tags. The likely expense of the seminar. The equally likely poor results. My sister caught it too, that and the power of the coastal lands. She was the one who saw the coyote the following day. I was the one who saw the dismal clown at the evening's village entertainment as a prime target for assassination. We share a dark vision of things. But at least we share it.

We encountered plenty of friction. My brother thinks I'm too psychoanalytical. I think he's too judgmental. I can't see why my sister expects the education bureaucracy in Arizona to ever change. She thinks I'm too impatient. And on and on. Still, when I hear friends talk about their brothers and sisters, I detect an indifference that doesn't seem to prevail in our family, or our family fragment, whatever this is. And what is it? Or, more precisely, why should anyone care what one calls a group of surviving siblings? Except survivors. When we look at each other, we do see that. It's a sobering reminder, and it's much of what keeps us in touch. Having grown up so far removed from the model family of TV sitcoms, our expectations of life and of each other have always been unconventional, unformed, up for grabs. So, we grabbed a weekend together and something about the natural setting, the openness, the peace, seemed to get to all of us. I hope we'll talk a little more about our years growing up the next time we get together. And there likely will be a next time. Allowing for mortality. Which, at this stage, we must certainly factor into things. I don't know where we'll gather in a few years, perhaps Arizona or the Northwest, but wherever it is, we know we can tune into something that bonds us. Call it the weather.

So Lester's wife has Alzheimer's, and so what? Because (1) that's life and (2) this is really not my business and (3) I tend to have this children-of-divorced-parents thing about trying to fix the world. So the wisest course would be to wish Lester and Gina all the best and kind of, you know, keep in touch. The reason Lester has kept in touch with me isn't all that clear, except that he likes me. And this is what he does, Lester. He keeps in touch. In fact, he got in touch shortly after my shooting at Berkeley, and although there were a couple of decades when we weren't in touch at all, he's been in my life more than lots of people have. Lester. Whom I remember strutting around a class on contemporary Russian drama, gesticulating here, pointing there. Little did I dream that almost 40 years later Lester and I would be sitting across from each other at a Berkeley espresso joint, me lecturing him. Lester wasn't looking too keen on being told how to care for his increasingly childlike spouse. Which challenged me to let the tables turn, as they inevitably do. The problem wasn't so much shifting generational roles as the fact that Lester and I are not connected by blood ties, community roots or even a consistent relationship. I'm quite fond of him, but we don't see each other all that often. And now when Lester needs some help, who am I to get involved? Isn't this a role for someone else?

Lester sighs quietly. He's 83 years old and quick as ever. When I make my coffee date with him he reminds me that mortality could intervene at any point. HA ha, I say, acknowledging that this is perfectly true. Somehow, it seems equally true for me. After all, I'm the one who darts around Bay Area traffic in a wheelchair. And, yes, I will admit that in one recent rash and desperate moment, I even zipped in front of an oncoming Caltrain local, right at the stage of bell clanging, lights flashing and guard gates lowering. A bit of risky quadriplegic bravado that may serve to distract me from the stenosis of my spine and spinal cord. The treatment for which my neurologist sums up as "don't get in an auto accident." Anyway, I like Lester and his offhand references to the imminence of his demise. I'm glad we recently got back in touch. Recently, meaning within the last few years. And what makes this "recent" has much to do with the fact that I am aging myself. Not so far behind Lester. But still far enough to see him as a father figure and find myself tentative and cautious in the table-turning role of advice giver.

Lester sighs again. He tells me that Jewish families in St. Louis, and everywhere else, used to be extended families. And what they extended was this sort of thing. People like Gina had a place to go when things got tough. There were no caregivers, because the word hadn't been invented, care being given all the time by all the people around you. Of course, sometimes this worked out, and sometimes it didn't. Being cared for by a resentful, embittered family member must have had its down side. But at least people knew where they stood. They stood side-by-side. Which meant that in those days people like Lester and me would not be facing off across a table, unsure of who could appropriately help whom, and how.

Lester tells me that he doesn't want to bother his son. He has a son in Denver with some challenging altruistic job who is getting divorced and has two kids. Lester doesn't want to bother him. Which I understand. Which also makes me understand why I want to help Lester. Help? Well, give what I can. Which is mostly advice. Although it's not free advice, that is to say, free-floating. I've had decades of being dependent on people, of putting up with care and caregivers, of learning how to receive help. And now I want to give that, all of it, or the knowledge goes with it, to Lester. Lester who keeps postponing appointments with the local Alzheimer's office. Postponing an unpleasant discussion of Gina's decline and his response, as things slip downhill. I tell Lester that I'm happy to help. I don't want to burden you, he says.

That's my problem, I want to tell him. I want to tell him that although I have many weaknesses, I've got this one odd characteristic. I won't get burdened. Maybe that's one of the benefits of being a quadriplegic for all these decades. Maybe that's why I want to give back. Helping each other is an instinct, just like aggression and food-gathering. We do it. We enjoy it. We must. America, land of fierce individuals, is one of the loneliest nations on earth. All these people staring out their windows at other people staring out their windows. Everyone wondering. When the sensible thing is not to wonder, but to walk across and knock on your neighbor's door. I brought you a cup of sugar. Here. Next time you need to cry, come to my house. I'm across the street.

A quadriplegic friend of mine recently began talking to me about cohousing. That's intergenerational living, more or less, with young and old deliberately residing in close proximity. People share certain things, depending on the cohousing approach. Then they eat together, launder together, garden together -- however things are set up. I looked at my friend in bewilderment. I wanted to tell her that Marlou and I weren't ready for cohousing. And although this may be true enough, this doesn't mean that we're not ready to discuss the concept of, God forbid, shared residency. Cohousing. It feels like such a defeat, growing older. But this is particularly true in America. We are stumbling our way toward something new, something less pseudo-independent, more interdependent. The land is settled. The arguments are settled. The situation has settled down. But day-to-day life in America remains unsettling. We need to settle this, Lester and I. At least settle on a plan and some agreement regarding cooperation. Such as, I will make an appointment with a social worker somewhere and Lester and I will go talk to this person. No, we are not family. I am Lester's former student, he my former professor. And it has all morphed into this: he needs help, and I need to help him. It shouldn't be this difficult, my role in helping Lester get things set up so that Gina's decline doesn't drag him down too. And I've done all these things, hired attendants, modified living arrangements, set up safety systems. This is something I can do.

Californians like me used to say that we needed space, meaning, leave me alone. And that in opening up we needed to share our space. A strange mood was a strange space. A distracted mood was spacey. The out of doors was, and is, wide open spaces. And what visitors to America often notice first is the extreme scarcity of public space. Meeting space. Gathering and congregating space. The small park in our suburban downtown where I often sit in the sun and drink my latte, is one of the few places in which citizens see each other. There's a meeting room in the library, but it rents by the hour. A few years ago, during the Internet boom, entrepreneurs used to gather at our local Starbucks, a meeting space that wasn't exactly free. There was no public room where people could reserve, say, an hour or so for a private meeting. And why not? This question of association and free association, it's one we're still working on in America. "There is no such thing as society," Margret Thatcher once famously observed. She was being remarkably candid, and Britons have never forgotten these words. In America, we are still trying to understand them.