The "Real" OC

-Our dear friends Scott and Kimberly, who sometimes comment on my blog, live in Alaska.
-They left their car behind in San Diego when they moved north three years ago.
-We tried to sell it for them, unsuccessfully.
-It is now sitting outside our house since Scott used it to drive here from San Diego when he visited last month.
-If anyone wants to buy a beautiful 2000 Volkswagen Passat in great condition, please let me know.
-Scott also blogs.
-Lake Forest, the town I live in, is one of the top ten safest cities in America.
-So are Mission Viejo and Irvine, the two cities that border us.
-The people here credit the amazing police department.
-The real reason we are in the top ten is that only upper middle class people live here and there are no stores, only tract homes with Nazi-like home owners associations, so not much reason to be here wandering the streets at night.
-The Real Housewives of the OC is a new reality TV show.
-I don't know why they need a show for that. Just rent the Stepford Wives and/or read my blog.
-Along with The OC and The Real OC: Laguna Beach, that brings the total of unrealistic Orange County shows up to three.
-My next door neighbor stopped by this weekend with this announcement: "We are knocking on doors around the block to see if we can find the owners of that red Passat with Alaska plates. It is against code for it to be here for more that 72 hours and we want the association to look into it."
-Lake Forest might be in the top ten due to the extreme measures of the neighborhood watch program.
-I think a good new show would be: The "Real" OC: Neighborhood Vigilanty Justice.
-They could have an entire, heart-stopping, jaw-dropping episode on finding the owner of the red Passat on our suburban cul-de-sac.
-The car is going back to San Diego next week.
-I hope that will bring our standing from 9th safest city up to at least 4th or 5th.

Homer and his Ukelele

Why, when we are planning to get together with family and friends, do we always need "something to do?" Remember when you went to college and you stayed up til 4:00 in the morning doing nothing but talking with the people who happened to get placed in the same dorm as you did? You found yourself pontificating on Kurt Cobain being a hero for our times and why organized religion is anti-productive (he's not and it's not, but you were 18 and questioning everything). There was something about that moment in the common area of the dorm, shared with new aquaintances, deep into the night, where people expressed themselves and you felt part of something new and yet familiar all at once.

I have early memories of standing around my mother's parlor grand piano, which was passed down to her from my opera-singing and composing great grandmother Grace. Mom would play and we would sing, harmonize, laugh, roll our eyes, and encourage impromptu solos from each other. At Christmastime, we would gather with my parents' best friends and Mom would put down her glass of wine to come over and jangle out some beautifully cheesy Christmas songs, like "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and "Up on the Housetop." My sister and the kids of their friends seemed embarassed but I secretly adored these moments of communal performance and shared creative expression. (I do not think it a coincidence that my sister, embarassed to sing impromptu at 12 years old, now heads up an organiztion that uses artistic challenges to bolster creative courage in girls and women.)

My mother didn't invent this family music time, either. Her earliest memories are of sitting in her parents' living room, watching their friends pour each other bitters or coffee while one of their best friends, Homer, played his ukelele and everyone sang and danced. And my mom's dad, Paul, would dance with the women since he was the best dancer of the group. I think my mom misses Grandpa Paul the most when she recalls these memories of seeing her father swing her laughing mother around the room while people clapped and sang. She was a little child, peering into the life of her parents, and learning how families and friends actually meant something to one another.

Does this sound cheesey to you? It's not to me. For the past few years, I've been craving more home time and less party time. More countryside and less subway ride. More Homer, and less American Idol. Real time, not reel time. This is why we do not have TV.

This is also why we will be purchasing a real piano in the next few months, despite the furniture designer lady who said, "Why don't you just get an electronic keyboard? They are easier to maintain and are essentially the same thing." I no longer take advice from that woman. The "same thing?" Great Grandmother Grace must have been rolling in her grave. More on the imporance of pianos in a future post.

Besides those great late night conversations in the dorm, my favorite memory of college was the night my choral group went ice skating/hay riding/apple cider drinking and there ended up being an impromptu bonfire where bongos were brought out of people's trunks and guitars were borrowed at a moment's notice and Indigo Girls songs were sung and someone did a bold verion of U2's "Pride in the Name of Love" and it all ended way too soon for me.

And Saturday night, a new favorite memory was made as Mike and Alec came over to unveil their new music video and drink hot chocolate and ended up sitting on my daughters' child-sized chairs with their guitars and played a brilliant version of Dave Matthews' "Seek up" as well as some John Mayer and other original material, and Scott and I warmed ourselves under homemade quilts stiched by my sister and our friend Sasha, and we had to pause several times in fear of waking the kids, and I harmonized and our laughter drifted it's way into the middle of the night before people returned home. But I secretly hoped that Grace would be awoken by the soothing strains of guitar and hushed laughter and that we would find her at the foot of the stairs, listening and peering into our lives, the very incarnation of my mother as a young girl. May my children know from my actions what I think of time spent with family and friends.

Navigation

You know when you are driving to a destination and you pretty much know how to get there, but you definitely don't know any of the street names, or even the landmarks themselves until you are within a block of them? The kind of path that you could never give directions to.

And I don't mean the well-worn journey you know like the back of your hand but only by landmarks, like "turn right just past the dive bar," and "if you pass the middle school you've gone too far." I mean the kind of place you drive to with tension in your gut because you keep feeling like this is the right way but isn't it taking mighty long to get the where you're supposed to turn next? I am talking about the kind of pathway where you are always traveling at night and you are late and you have to pee.

So that tension in your gut ends up making you want to scream when you realize you've gone too far and need to turn around--or is it that you haven't gone quite far enough? You begin to feel like biting a hole in your arm just as you recognize the next landmark--a landmark you couldn't have named but now remember as you drive by it. You momentarily cease the desire to bite your own flesh until that tension creeps up your spine again within 45 seconds because yet again you wonder if you have gone too far. If only you had given yourself more time, you think. Or if only you had gone pee before you left. Why didn't you look up the specific directions, you are thinking.

This is the drive home I took tonight from the movie theater on the plaza in the town my parents live in. I didn't grow up here but I come three or four times a year now and because of some construction all the usual pathways are blocked and I find myself panicked every time I drive anywhere here.

This is also how I tend to fake my way through conversations with people who are smarter than I am, or who read the New York Times, or worse, the New Yorker, or who took liberal arts classes in college and remember what they learned. I glean from their expressions and the cadence of their tone how I am supposed to respond to whatever commentary they are making. I feign recollection of famous people's names. I say, "I have heard that name," when I haven't the foggiest clue of whom they are speaking. "I have heard that name" keeps me in the know without getting me screwed when I pretend to know something I don't.

A philosopher or two recalled from college, a few current events taken from the headlines of msnbc.com or All Things Considered while driving home from the library, a passing knowledge of hip hop music from skimming Rolling Stone before falling asleep in bed. I utilize surface sources like these to approximate a position on welfare reform or the apologetics or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But these conversations inevitably result in my face feeling hotter and hotter and me wanting to gnaw on my arm really hard until we turn to talk of parenting, or Indigo Girl lyrics, or the liturgical year. Ah, the safe streets of conversation, places I know how to navigate through safely and honestly.