By the Sea

After my parents' divorce, with my brother and I in the care of my father and living in the upstairs above his office, life was emotionally arid and infused with paternal depression, but it least, there was change.  Every month or so I found myself in Santa Barbara, home to my mother, her erratic mood swings and the Pacific Ocean.  Whatever was unreliable in my life, one could count on the sea.  From my mother's house, it shimmered, the Pacific luminescence glinting, the swells rolling.  Small boats came in close to shore, cutting kelp.  What they did with their seaweed harvest was a mystery to me, though I never cared one way or the other.  The ocean was vast, constant and hypnotic.  I needed all the constancy I could get.

Which may be why, as one of my visits came to its close, that I conceived of a plan.  I was lying on the sands of Arroyo Burro State Park, just up the coast from my mom's, when it came to me.  Take it home.  Pack it up and bring it with.  My high school science teacher would be delighted.  Or, at least, accepting.  I would arrive with several gallons of seawater, anemones, barnacles and sand crabs, pour everything into an empty aquarium, plug in the bubbling aerator.  And voilà.  That was the vision, and in retrospect, the unfolding of this plan would be as revealing as any personality test or vocational aptitude exam.

First, the gallon jugs.  I emptied bleach out of this one, retrieved that one from my mother's garbage and probably scrounged a couple from the neighbors.  It didn't take long.  What I may lack in focus, I generally make up for in obsession.  Once assembled, it was easy enough for my brother and I to fill our plastic containers with gallons of seawater.  My mother looked on skeptically, kept asking questions which I kept ignoring.  Never mind.  A vision was a vision.  Things were going to unfold, mother or not.  I had adopted a certain perseverance during years of sandlot play, and now this was coming in handy.  Yes, my mother's big suitcase bulged ominously once the heavy jugs were inside, but that was why God invented rope.  I wrapped the luggage tight, cinched the knots and hit the road.

The road was the railroad, the Southern Pacific.  And the grumbling began at the station.  Too heavy.  The porter lifted the bag with obvious strain, muttering.  The cab driver in Los Angeles did exactly the same.  "You kids with your damned books," he said.  At the Greyhound bus station, he swore again.  Being all of 14 years old, I did not have to feign innocence.  All I did was watch, keeping an eye on the straining rope around the bag, and hoping.  Hours later, 9:30 p.m. when the Greyhound pulled off the freeway at Banning and paused, engine running, while the driver heaved bags onto the sidewalk, it seemed a miracle had occurred.  The bag was intact, ropes still bound.  And all my brother and I had to do was to heave the sloshing load up the hill to my father's office and home.

In retrospect, what I was doing at that age traveling unassisted with my younger brother through Los Angeles, waiting at a bus station in what, even then, was an unsavory part of town...all of this seems incredible.  Yes, it was another era.  But only partly.  Even then, the experience was a bit frightening.  Yet it speaks of a certain trade-off in my life.  If the Bendix kids had been emotionally abandoned, we also made the most of being on our own.  We learned to travel.  We learned to endure.  Yet what I anticipated in learning from the seawater aquarium was less clear.  My only goal was to set it up, get it bubbling and keep it going.

Did I convince my father to drive me to school the next morning with the bulging suitcase?  This memory has faded.  It is entirely possible that I dragged the bag to school myself.  Certainly I had the motivation.  What I do recall is arriving in the science room with my seaside loot.  I did not expect my teacher to be impressed.  He had studied oceanography in college.  Still, I thought that once my seawater was bubbling and the anemones waving, he would find something encouraging to say.  Instead, he left me on my own, as I poured the jugs into the tank.  A sand crab floated to the surface, legs motionless.  An anemone sank to the bottom, tentacles limp.  The aquarium pump frothed, churning the sand.  This was the sea in a glass container.  Lifeless, not very promising, many miles from the nearest tidepool and any possible reinfusion of live creatures.  I dropped some kelp in the water and decided it was alive.  The next day, it floated in a way that seemed promising.  The day after that, the seawater still bubbling foolishly, I saw the writing on the wall and quietly dumped the aquarium down the drain.

In retrospect, much of my life course stands revealed.  Compulsiveness or dogged perseverance driven by an image but no particular plan -- followed by a premature acceptance of failure.  Down the drain in the end.  In the case of my science teacher, what strikes me is that he was not in the way.  At the same time, he was not at the helm.  In an ideal world, someone would have intervened, shown me how to make lemonade from my lemons.  He was a good guy, I recall that.  He loved science and enjoyed teaching it.  His hope, I surmise, was that I would show some interest, ask for some help, try to turn this thing around.  While I, used to things not working out, was determined to avoid humiliation.  Dump the aquarium, cut my losses, pretend it hadn't happened and wait for the next thing.

The problem, of course, is that in life there are only so many next things.  I'm facing that reality now.  I have a book to finish.  The task seems impossible.  There is much in me that wants to dump and run.  This is what I have done much of my life.  Over the weekend, at a family reunion, I spent time with a young boy, once a foster kid, now recently adopted.  He has had a traumatic background, demands endless attention, yet cannot be still long enough to take in the very love he seeks.  He has learned to keep moving.  He will have to learn how to stop and be still.  Can I?