Memory Lane

I took a trip down memory lane last week by driving over Hecker Pass from Highway 101 into Watsonville, CA. This town is where my parents first retired after my dad’s time in the military. He went on to work at various jobs until he landed at Cabrillo College in the Community Services Department for the remainder of his working years. I attended my last three years of high school and all of junior college there. I also returned after nursing school in San Francisco for a few months until I got married and moved to Denver. I came home pregnant with my first child and waved goodbye to her father as he headed for Germany then I traveled there with a 10 month old baby. After five years of marriage, I returned a divorcee with two children for four years until I married again.

I’m not sure why I wanted to see all the different houses I’d lived in. Perhaps because there’s this big change in my life, and I wanted to return to a point in my past when I’d been in a similar precarious situation. Watsonville has been my touchstone, my grounding cord. It’s been the place where I’ve gathered myself together and shoved off again in another direction. I’ve been able to re-meet myself and my beginnings, see old friends and familiar places, reorient myself to who I am and where I might want to go for a next try at my life
But, I can’t return after 33 years; there’s nothing left there for me. I barely recognized the streets and the shopping centers. I did find the house I’d purchased on my own which reminded me of a kind of strength and decisiveness I’d forgotten I had at the age of 32. I sat in front of the dream house my mother had built on Pinto Lake, one which she can’t remember now because of her all-consuming dementia. I also found my dad’s grave and stood for a moment asking him to give me some kind of guidance.

What I’ve realized from my side trip is I wasn’t looking for a place all those years ago. I was looking for my roots, and the town wasn’t what I found each time I went back. My parents were what had given me the stability to find myself.
So I let the memory of my first driving expeditions with my mother fill my vision. She’d belt herself in and tell me where we were going and hope I made it. I remember her hands were gripped in her lap, and she’d hiss when I got too close to her side of the road. I can only imagine that sometimes she’d close her eyes to save her nerves.

She actually took me up the windy, switch-backed road of Hecker Pass as one of my driving assignments. Trucks routinely used it, and we faced many of them that first drive. I was moaning and groaning that I couldn’t do it. She must’ve summoned some super-mom strength and wouldn’t let me back down. “Just watch the center line of the road. Mark an imaginary point on the dash board so you can aim the car at that line and stay there. That’s the way you know you’re inside the line. Keep to it. Don’t let those trucks throw you off your aim.”

I remember aiming the first notch of the windshield wiper base at the center line, and I’d stay there. I didn’t have to keep gauging my distance from each of the trucks barreling toward me. I might have held my breath as each one blew past, but I held on, rather like holding to the middle of the road of life, I think.

As I stood by my father’s grave, knowing I haven’t finished grieving my loss of him for so many distorted reasons, I did remember one of his nightly remarks when I’d head for bed. Through the chirping, spring happy birds, I heard him say, “We made good memories today. More chances coming tomorrow.”

So many challenges seem to be heading straight at me. I can get so thrown off balance by bills I wasn’t expecting, downed trees in the driveway, roofing blown off the generator box and battery containers, frozen solar panels, and many more. Too many decisions line up in front of me: Do I move? Do I stay? What to sell? What to save? How do I make money to flesh out the minimal social security? And on and on. Some days, all I want to do is crawl back to bed and pull the covers over my head. I don’t want to think about anything.

I’ve tried screaming and shouting and whining and crying, but nothing changes my situation. Knowing where the center line is seems a better solution to stomping my feet and getting all bent out of shape because life isn't going exactly the way I’d planned. Remembering to make at least one good memory a day seems a bit easier than trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I did get a bit of the comfort I was seeking,and these memories are things I can carry forward as my life line into my future.