You know, when I tell people that I have three older brothers, I get this reaction a lot:
“You must be so tough, with three older brothers who beat on you.”

Or sometimes, people will say:
“You probably ran the roost and bossed them all around.”

I suppose this might be true if the situation happened on some kind of 70s sitcom, those two situations might occur. They bear no resemblance whatsoever to my life experience.

Basically, with three older brothers, a ittle sister was even less than an afterthought. Three boys could have a lot of fun together. My brothers had very little interest in me.

And I…Well, I didn’t enjoy getting dirty or other ‘boy’ things. Not that my brothers were so testosterone laden; they were fairly bookish. But , and I made my own friends.

And that was all years ago, when we were little.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. She ony has a sister, no brothers at all. Naturally, we were discussing men in general. And through out the conversation, I started to realize that she had a very different view of what men were about than I did. Just things about what men like and what they are like.

I guess I never realized that having brothers helped me get aquainted with the clay feet of the male. I have never felt the need to put them on a pedastel. That’s something to thank them for.

But my life has always been my own. I have always been so busy and full of my own life. I’ve writeen about it before, I am so full of ambition that I can’t seem to stop.

I had a conversation with another friend last night, and he was talking about his own ambition. That he was frustrated with his job but he just couldn’t move on. He didn’t feel like he had bested it.

This triggered a response in me; I’d been thinking some similar things. “Are you the youngest child?”

“How did you know? that has been such a huge part of my life, competing with my older brother.”

Huh. I have just been realizing that aspect of my relationship with my brother.

It’s amazing that it took so long for me to figure it out. I guess because I always felt like my brothers had nothing whatever to do with me.

But when I think about my brothers growing up, I remember this sort of exchange:

“Oh, man, long division is so hard…It takes so long….”

“Shuh! You think long division is hard? That’s nothing. Wait till you get to ALGEBRA.”

And my ten-year old self was set up to compete with my four-years-older brother. There was no way to get ahead. I had to scramble the whole time to catch up.

It was like I was conditioned to always try as hard as I possibly could. I always believed that I could catch up if only I tried harder.

And…I think my ambition and drive comes from that. In a lot of ways. I have this belief that was instiled and reinforced when I was little, that I had to catch up, and that I would catch up. Of course, I would eventually get to algebra. Of course I would.

And in fact, there are things I have charged into and taken on, that quite possibly I should have been more daunted and less sure of my success. But somehow, I just knew that I would take those on too, just the way I took on Algebra.

Now, I just have to learn to turn it off a ittle…When I need to back off from taking things on. That’s maybe the next algebra…

I should begin this all by saying Opa is doing pretty well, all things considered.

More than a week ago, Opa’s housekeeper Sylvia come by for her regular appointed time and found him in a pool of blood on the floor.

He was rushed to the hospital and put into the Intensive Care Unit. I guess his liver decided it was done and was sending the blood back out somehow. Just when they got that under control so he could leave te ICU, he quit breathing. Back into the ICU with a new breathing tube. Oh yeah then he got a blood infection of some kind.

My Opa is 80 and has had a lifelong love of liquor and cigarettes. He smoked 4 packs a day and drank more than the equivalent volume of liquor. I honestly can’t believe he’s made it this long.

Now, I don’t know him very well. Things I remember about him from when I was little:

Mom cried when she talked to him on the phone and felt compelled to explain her relationship to ‘Dad’ to me in incomprehensible sentences

Once, while driving in a car with mom and Opa, he explained that he didn’t want to be anyone’s grandfather, it didn’t feel right to him. So, that’s why he would rather be called Opa…Opa means old man, and he didn’t mind beign someone’s old man. We had never called Opa anything but Opa, so this was another incomprehensible explanation

Once, at his apartment in Vallejo (or was it livermore?) the family was fed on waffles made by mom and lemon sauce that Opa made…”his specialty”

As far as memories of Opa when I was a kid, that is kind of it. Of course I remember how Mom was always upset about him and how he unsettled her.

His drinking caused her the most consternation. She always wanted him to stop drinking. She tried to make a deal with him:
“I will come see you, but you have to promise me that you won’t drink that day.”
And she would go see him, and he would have been drinking. So she would turn around and leave.

Fortunately, this didn’t happen often. We lived to far away. There were four years of my childhood that we lived in the same state, but even then, we were about an 8 hour drive away. So, naturally, we didn’t see him much.

Mom was the oldest. My Grandma and Opa had married, and their little daughter remained their only daughter for a long time…I forget.. I think 10 years before my aunt Donnie appeared. And then next my uncle Marty.

But those were the days of Avalon. Swords had been melted into refrigerators and lawn mowers. The ones who fought in the war deserved their ranch-style with all the modern amenities. They had fought for it, hadn’t they?

And then after all, it turns out they deserved to get divorced. The way mom tells it, everyone up and down the street broke up. And when Mom was 16, her dad, my Opa, flew the coop.

Everything was shiny and new then, they had just invented divorce. People hadn’t worked out the kinks yet. I don’t think “visitation rights” were part of the general vocabulary.

My grandmother was a pretty lady and enough of a charmer to find a new husband since the old one was a dud. And Aunt Donnie and Uncle Marty called Granpa Jess ‘Dad’.

But my mother didn’t. She was already in college when her little brother and sister were learned to call this new man “dad”. Grandma and Grandpa Jess were the ones who send birthday cards and Christmas present. I called them Grandma and Grandpa. Mom called them Mom and Jess.

She is really the only one who remembers Opa as “dad”. She is the only one with any reserve of good memories, of good times together with this man.

Hey, it was the 60’s man! Freedom was in the air! Free love on the lawns of Berkeley or Frank Sinatra in Vegas with the liquor and loose women. Take your pick!

He was an aerospace engineer of somekind. He was making good money and saving the world from communists and space aliens. He was riding high.

But I don’t know. I don’t know what Opa was like before he become too dessicated to walk on his own. I don’t have clear memories of him from even the 80s. Anytime I saw him, I was too distracted by the force field of fear and throbbing of wounds that sprang up around my mother.

Opa was like some elemental, some force of nature. Fascinating to watch in it’s raw state, but like a tornado or hurricane, you couldn’t stay out in it too long or someone one would get hurt.

When I became an adult, I had the desire to reaquaint myself with the extended family I’d never known. My own parents were certianly out of reach, self-exiled to Russia.

I was (and am) intensely curious and somewhat wary about all these cousins and relatives who look and sound eerily like myself. The older ones were the ones who had the missing puzzle pieces, too. They were the ones who might help untwist the thread. So many incomprehensible choices had been made by my parents. The people who knew my parents before I did would have some insight. Or at least maybe they would confirm my assesment that my parents were crazy.

But I needed to know these people.

Let me tell you something about my immediate family. We are very literal. Do not ask if something is possible. If something is possible, it is possible. At high personal cost, death or dismembership, that wasn’t the question. So we will tramp ahead and do the possible thing, when we believe it must or should be done.

When I first came back from Russia, it was possible, though barely, for me to go to California to see my extended family. I saw almost everyone, but I didn’t see Opa.

He had been more or less cast to the wind.

I eventually moved here to California and felt bad about ignoring Opa. He landed in the hospital then, so I went to visit him. He hadn’t seen me since I was 9.

So. Nice to meet you Opa. Yes, this is me, all grown up. And Opa stepped out with inappropriate anatomical comments. SIGH. And there were the recent studies of anything in particular that he had read that he had to tell me, and there was his disinterest and frustration with any topic I might bring up to talk about. Of course, if a man were talking it was different.

And always, the alcohol.

I tried a few times, but after spending one particularly drunken afternoon during which he suggested that he might get a free drink if he pimped me out to the bartender, I just stopped visiting.

I thought, I should not visit him alone. What point would it serve? I’m not even sure if he’s clear on who I am; he’s always confusing me for my mother.

Except last week he was found in a puddle of his own blood. And he’s 80, and maybe this was it. It has been 6 years since I last visited him.

I talked with mom for a while about it. “What do the doctors say? Is he really in danger?”

I thought if there was a funeral, I should go. And I thought, “It would be nice to see everyone.” Which is not such a nice thought. Because, he wasn’t dead yet. And really, if he was still around I should make the effort to go see him.

It would make the funeral easier to enjoy.

So, I drove to see him. And he was doing much better by Tuesday, and even more by Wednesday. We talked for a bit. He was weak and tied to tubes. The alcohol wasn’t there, but he was still inappropriate.

And yet….I actually could see through what was left of him to catch glimpses of who he might have been.

It occurred to me that we have a similar sense of humor. When I told him that my cousin Dallass was having a girl and naming her Adelaide, he started singing a song about Adelaide.

I had thought that too, “Isn’t that a song?” He knew the song and was singing it, which is exactly what I would have done if I’d remembered the song.

He also made silly puns and goofy comments whenever he could.
“Why do little ducks walk softly? Because they can’t walk hardly”

and his favorite (He told it twice)
“Why don’t worms have balls? Becuase they don’t like to dance!”

He also had quirky little things to say in response to people; he liked to twist around the meaning of words. When I told him that I thought mom was crazy for working in Newark and living in Sacramento, he thought for a while and said,
Your mother’s center of gravity is closer to the edge than other peoples’

And then quoted “The road less travelled”
He tried to tell me about a study regarding the mining of helium from Texas (inspired by the balloon I brought him).

It wasn’t much, but I began to see a little bit of the person he had been. I thought, if he had been someone I met, someone my age, I might have really had a good time with him. I always like the smart boys, and have a lot of male friends that I love to verbally spar with. Yes, I could see that he might have been prickly in just that kind of way.

There were a few times when I fired back at one of his retorts. He said, “You catch on. Things don’t get past you.”

That made me feel good. It was then that I realized that feeling, the familiar teasy back-and-forth that I have with some of my friends. It’s the first time I really felt like I got a sense of this man’s personality.

I wish he didn’t make it so hard. I wish that we’d had a chance to know each other. Most of the time during my visit, he was uncertain of exactly which granddaughter I was even though he was glad to have the company.

But I’m glad I took the chance to go see him.

I need to talk for a little bit about where I come from.

I come from Alaska. I did not live in the absolute wilderness, but then again, the wilderness is never far from anywhere in my motherland. Moose wander through the streets, and the streets are literally ice for many months of the years.

The brand-new subdivision that I lived in as a teenager was virgin forest. I mean to say, a lawn was something of a futile absurdity. It made much more sense to leave the trees and bushes alone, and 99% percent of the homes in our area left their acre+ lots in their natural state.

We had a natural well that gave us water. It was ‘hard’ water which meant that the minerals coated our bathtub and left a funny taste when we drank it.

We lived outside a munincipality, the only police where the state troopers and they were seldom seen.

There was a lake full of fish a half mile a way, and our front window showed us a forest reserve that stretched for hundreds of miles long. We liked to pick berries and mushrooms there in the summer.

My parents drove to Alaska. They went their twice from their motherland in the golden rolling hills of California. First, in the 60s before Alaska was a state. Then again, for much longer, in 1972. During the new year’s party, Mom went into labor and produced me in a now-defunct Anchorage Hospital.

Now I live in the golden rolling hills of California. And only very recently, I realized:

Mom and Dad thought Alaska was exotic.

I never never never thought it was exotic. It was home, with all the boringness and familiarity that means. But for them, it was almost like living in a foreign country. It was exciting and new and unexpected almost every day.

Now, Mom and Dad live in Sacramento. They talk a lot about remembering different places around there. Things are the same for them. Things are a lot like how they left them when they went away. Not exactly, time takes its toll, but enough the same for them to remember.

But me, I feel like California is a very exotic place. With its short snowless mountains and lush vegetation, fruit trees and warm nights, its population density and freeways, California never quite fits. It’s always not home.

Not to say I ever want to live in Alaska. I am a permanent ex-patriate.

But I chafe at the expectations. I demand to know “WHY?” and resent every rule or expectation as irrational and irrelevant.

When I bought my condo, as part of the forest’s graveyard of paperwork required, I was given the Rules of the Condo Association. Chris read them with me.

“WHAT?! I can’t put my bike on the balcony.”

“No Pool parties? Who do they think they are?”

“No dog over 40 pounds? Why is that their business? IF I want a dog, it’s my problem.”

Every rule was an imposition. I was buying the home, I should be able to do whatever wherever I wanted. Every rule made me suspicious.

Chris told me, “That’s the price you pay to live in a condo with other people. If you had your own home, you could do what you wanted.”

I signed, muttering and rebelling, but I signed.

Now, I am looking to buy a home! HOoray! I can paint the outside, I can have a BIG dog, I can put my bike wherever I like and all the rules are gone.

Chris and I are buying it together, so, he wants to live in his hometown Claremont. A little tiny city that gives me the jeebies. Back to that in a moment.

We’ve picked a house, made an offer, and are waiting. Chris was telling me what to expect from his home town.

“Claremont does not allow parking in the street overnight. Between 2 am and 6 am, you can’t be on the street without a temporary permit.”

What is this? WHAT?! THEY ARE PUTTING RULES ON ME AGAIN.

See, I am feeling crowded about this already. This town is full of all kinds of customs and ways of doing things. Where I come from, independence is prized and conformity is despised. There is no set way that everyone should be or do.

And yet, this little city has all sort of rules and permit requirements.

But here’s the creepy part that gives me the jeebies:
Everyone from there or associated with that city, thinks that the city is great. They all say what a nice place it is, how wonderful it is for kids and for creative types. It is a college town after all.

And even more than that, everyone I’ve met from there is excruciatingly nice. I mean it! They are smart, and kind, and usually benignly humorous.

Is anyone else hearing the jeebie music in the background? I’ll admit, I’m probably scarred by too many church youth groups. They specialize in niceness, while holding the dagger hidden until your back is exposed.

But I’m uneasily assured of the Claremont niceness. I mean, Chris is more Claremont than anyone, and I’ve been in daily observation of him for more than 5 years. He remains nice.

I just am afraid I will tresspass on the customs or BBQ the sacred cows of this little town of Trees and PhDs. I know there are all these expectation that I am oblivious to, like being colorblind. And I value my independence. I cherish my non-conformity.

They expect me to wash my car whenever dirt is visible on it. Hey, where I come from, you are ahead of the curve if both headlights are working. What do they expect from me?

They will expect lawn maintenance. Lawns! And if there are weeds, I would have to pull them up. I’ve never had anything to do with a lawn. I will probably fail at this.

I could offer lots of advice on removing a car after it’s high-centered on a snow burm. But that is not useful in my exotic new home.

I recognize, intellectually, that with all these people crowded together on paved streets and highways, some rules are needed. But I don’t like it. Rules feel categorically repellent.

It will take some time. I’m not from here.

I remember learning about church history in my protestant church school. The time line went something like this:

God created the earth
God picked Abraham to father the jews and be the chosen people who wrote down what he said
God send Jesus to die and save everybody from the mess humanity had gotten into
The disciples became the apostles, started the church and wrote the new testament
Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses

Sometime after I learned history that didn’t come from born-again-authored textbooks, I realized that things had happened in the church between the first century and the 15th.

The protestant revisionist history had the catholic church sort of erased. As if, before the “real” church, the protestant one, there had been this big empty dark spot.

As I learned more I realized, that’s not true. There were all kinds of things happening, acts of faith and struggles. There were hundreds of years that the faith was preserved by the faithful. I was kind of surprised to realize that.

Now, from 1917 to 1991, communism was in charge of Russia. It was a totalitarian government, and here in the Democracy-loving west, we saw them as gray and robotic. They produced propaganda, and their biggest newspaper was called TRUTH, and they made it the truth by stamping out any other voices.

But I found this amazing book in a used book store: Writers in Russia: 1917-1978
This book explains what the writers were thinking. It talks about how they were excited and embraced the Revolution. That at first, they were inspired and producted good writing regarding their hopes and dreams for the new order.

And then, well, things got funky. All the intelligentsia revolutionaries had envisioned a utopia, a place where everyone would have everything they needed and be free to create.

As it turned out, people sort of had what they needed but they were less and less free to create.

But creative people will create. Their creativity compels them. And what things were happening behind that iron curtain?

THe official story was lockstep uniformity. But unofficially, the Russian people were as hungry for beautiful culture as ever.

This book tells of a really healthy underground publishing community. They would sent out the stories, the poetry, type up multiple copies and mail them out like chain letters. In this way, one officially unpublished poet was once able to pack out a soccer stadium to hear him read his poems.

PACKED OUT A STADIUM FOR POETRY.

I remember how we would hear of the strength of the first century Christian. HOw they were so vitallly involved with their faith. They went to their death in the jaws of lions.

The lack of something makes it so much more precious. THe lack of freedom makes the desire for it unbearable.

Here, we have so much freedom. And what do we do with it? We hardly know what to do with it. We are dilletantes with our freedom of speech. Toying with it…Childishly experimenting.

And yet, would we have it any other way? Freedom means contempt. I can toss off the most foolish nonsense with my power of speech, because it is free. Free is not important, doesn’t require any thought.

The Soviet writers were not automatons. They had truth that tortured them to be told. THey had the highest of formalism to deal with. Leave iambic pentameter aside, try working within the bounds of a capricious and murderous dictator. Stalin was no joke.

And yet, they did it. They worked and crafted and wrote. What an amazing history. It’s blowing my mind to get a glimpse of all these creative minds struggling with their surrounding and how to express themselves.