Out There

Fears in Jacaranda Season

It’s jacaranda season in Los Angeles in all its lavender and purple glory, and this is a picture I took a few years ago.

And here is Olive amidst the jacarandas. This picture is around the corner from one of the Title One schools where Kiffen taught for LAUSD for thirty-five years, Betty Placensia, where our youngest attended from kindergarten through fifth grade. Here is a picture of Bo’s fifth-grade graduation.

***

It was a steamy Saturday in Birmingham yesterday, and now a breezy, lazy Sunday. My muscle memory wants to write “in Los Angeles,” but we don’t live in Los Angeles anymore. Yet I think of California when I take a walk, when I’m in the garden, when I’m doom-scrolling, and when I’m thinking of our son, who lives mostly out of touch, out of reach.

Out there.

In the earlier days, when people asked, I gave long, lengthier explanations as to his whereabouts, which were pure speculation, but now, when they ask, I’ve dropped the details only to say, “He’s still out there.”

And I’m grateful he is.

The only time I knew for sure where he was in the last several years was the six months he was incarcerated at the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where we visited him weekly and spoke daily from December 2022 to April 2023. He called every night around 6:00 PM, and we talked for an hour. It was miraculous to have those conversations be about anything and everything, full of goodwill, funny stories, and updates. And I reminded myself daily, even if he goes back out there after all this is over, at least we’ll have had this precious time.

And for a time, we had him back, and we talked of books, family, and memories. Friends sent him books, and I sent care packages ordered from the prison website, where I could pick out goodies for him. Sometimes, it was like he was at camp instead of the Men’s Central Jail.

I am aware of how absurd this sounds, but I could order him up to $68.00 of snacks and toiletries from the AccessSecurePak Store, and I filled each order to the brim at least once a month.

He went back out there three days after his release.

So I don’t know where he is most days, but now amid the chaos of the city that is happening now, it’s harder to keep the anxiety at bay, so I’m trying to stay in the moment. When I began writing this yesterday, the National Guard hadn’t yet been deployed in my beloved city, where I no longer live but is forever in my heart and head, especially today, but also every day. I’m grateful my friend Nancy Rommelmann is going back to LA to cover what is happening.

And I’m grateful for the two tiny miracles that arrived last week via email - a stranger and a former neighbor wrote to say they’d seen our son. The stranger, who took the time to write, told me how much he enjoyed talking to him at a local coffee shop. The neighbor said, “I would have stopped to say hello, but I had three twelve-year-olds with me.”

I’m so glad the neighbor didn’t stop with the three twelve-year-olds.

I didn’t even know unhoused camps existed when I was twelve years old, living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the sixth grade. My dad was coaching the defensive secondary at Pitt in the glory days of Tony Dorsett, while I was reading about Sara Crewe living in an icy garret, Oliver Twist in a cruel workhouse with gruel on the menu three times a day, and Francie Nolan climbing up the steps of her Irish tenement in Brooklyn, but that was the extent of my experience with poverty. At twelve, you can’t imagine growing up and marrying someone, raising children, and then having one of them decide, through a series of opening and closing doors, that home is the street.

I tried to stand in front of so many of those doors to block all exits, and he slipped through anyway - always the escape artist.

So when strangers or neighbors in our former Los Angeles home write of a sighting or a conversation, it’s a sweet relief to know he’s out there in the world living his life without any interference from me, who was once a know-it-all martyr, begging, pleading, and keening, trying to lasso him into the life I wanted for him.

For years, I thought I knew best, and I knew/catastrophized what was going to happen without a doubt, and I was going to do everything in my power to stop the slow-motion disaster, chaos, and nip it all in the bud. I was positive, so certain about everything, and now all I know is I don’t know anything. I can’t predict anything, and so I mostly don’t live in fear anymore. It was an awful state to live in, with hair on fire, random sirens late at night, deciding which one was heading my way.

None were.

But of course, watching what is happening in Los Angeles in the name of political theatre is devastating - the sweeps, arrests, kidnappings - what this monstrous, bullying administration of vicious narcissists is doing with such callous cruelty and hatred, so naturally, around three AM, the last few nights, my bewitching hour, the big gaping hole of fear moved in again, and I let it be - hello fear.

Where are you, son?

No reply.

So hello fear, come on inside and hang out for a while.

***

When I was twelve to fourteen, I also lived in fear. I grew to be what I considered huge. I was so tall at 5’7 that several sixth-grade boys, Eddie, Bobby, Scott, and Norbert, used to ask regularly, “How’s the weather up there? Moose? Skyscraper? Wilt, the Stilt? Dog Face?”

For some reason, the nickname “Moose” hurt worst of all, and I felt like a girl with a moosehead walking around the halls of St. Teresa’s School in Perrysville, PA, where on Wednesdays, sixth graders got out of Sister Matilda’s math class to sing at funerals.

How’s the weather up there, Moose?

Eddie, Bobby, Scott, and Norbert made me tense and nervous, so I always replied, “Fine” instead of a pithy comeback like “How’s the weather down there?” as my kids, much later, advised me on what I should have said when I talked to them about bullies.

Once, my daughter, Lucy, came home from school and said, “Mom, I think I saw a girl like you at school today. She was super tall with glasses and looked really depressed and super sad, so I smiled at her, and she smiled back.”

I can’t remember what I said, but I realized that I had probably over-described the isolation I felt as a child to my children. Still, I always told them - be kind, don’t be mean, and don’t be a bully. You don’t know what other kids are going through.

I didn’t want to raise mean kids, and I didn’t, but I do remember that I wasn’t kind to a girl named Winifred at St. Teresa’s in Pittsburgh. I wasn’t mean, but I wasn’t kind. Kids bullied her in Pittsburgh without mercy, and I never stepped in to protect her. I was too terrified to speak up for Winnie lest more nicknames come my way.

As a tall girl, the adults in my life gave me a lot of responsibility.

You’re the oldest. You’re the responsible one. We expect you to get the job done. You’re so mature for your age, and your talent is taking care of everyone.

So caretaking became part of my marrow, and I took my responsibilities seriously, whipping up dinners, treats, and punishments as I ruled my charges.

I did this for my siblings and sometimes my cousins, and for the kids I babysat where I was paid .75 cents an hour, before I upped it to one dollar an hour. My mother used to say, “And be sure to scrub their kitchen clean or they won’t ask you back. And if their kids misbehave, don’t tell the parents, because NOBODY wants to come home from a fun Saturday night to hear a litany of complaints about their rotten kids. Got it?”

I got it. So I scrubbed kitchens and assured the returning parents that the kids were lovely and sweet, even if they were absolute brats.

And I felt old. Just old. And big. And rather moose-ish. And scared that this would always be my life.

When I was fourteen, my uncle, Michael Madden, a photographer and art student at Notre Dame University, decided he wanted to take pictures of all the grandchildren to give them to my grandmother. We were in Washington DC, where all the cousins gathered every summer on Burlington Place, a brick house my father had moved into when he was three years old. I loved this house on the corner of Burlington and 44th Street.

All the streets had alphabetical names - Albemarle, Brandywine, Burlington, Chesapeake…I would walk the streets until I reached River Road, and I knew that if I turned left onto River Road and walked along enough, I could reach my Aunt Sally’s house in Bethesda. Or was it if I turned right? I think it was left, but I’m no longer sure. Of course, I never did such a thing, but we drove out to the farmhouse plenty.

But that hot July day, Michael was gathering the little ones to take pictures. At some point, he said, “Kerry, I want to take your picture.”

I said, “No way. Why?” I really couldn’t understand why.

“Because I do. You’re the oldest grandchild.”

“I know, but the little ones are the cute ones. Keep taking their pictures.” Somehow, I thought I would ruin whatever Michael had in mind if he included my picture too.

I don’t remember what Michael said, but I know I argued with him, and he must have finally said, “Please?” because it was like Michael to ask “please.”

And these are the pictures he took.

My brother, Duffy, was probably at football camp, and I don’t know where Cousin Megan was, but Michael was able to capture these pictures on Burlington Place on a summer evening in DC long ago. Cousin Ray (upper left) recently sent all the cousins copies of this collage, still hanging in Aunt Sally’s basement.

I love all these faces in these pictures, and I’m so glad Michael had the wisdom to take these pictures for GrandMary, our grandmother.

There are more stories, but I think I’ll leave it for now.

Except for one final story.

My grade school, St. Teresa’s, had a reunion a few decades ago. I went and I saw Winnie, and she seemed happy, still living in Pittsburgh with her family and a baby, talking of her job as a flight attendant. And I was glad.

I even talked to Eddie, one of the bullies, at the long-ago reunion, and he was kind and friendly, and said, “Hey, I hear you’re a writer. What did you write?”

My first novel, OFFSIDES, had been published by William Morrow, where I featured a composite bully of Eddie, Scott, Bobby, and Norbert. I remember turning red and deflecting the conversation with him, because I didn’t want Eddie to read it and find himself, but read it he did, and he wrote me a letter a few months later that said something like:

I think I recognize that short bully in chapter fifteen. I am really sorry for how I treated you. Tall girls always win. I am a lawyer in Pittsburgh, but I love writing. Can you give me some advice?

I often tell this story to kids on my school visits, and it makes us all laugh and cringe together. Then I tell them, “So no matter what meanness or hard things you’re living through now, it can be material and stories for your future novels, plays, poems, and screenplays. I promise.”

When I give kids this advice, I know I’m telling it to myself, too - especially when those 3:00 AM bewitching hours roll in and I wake up and wonder - where is he? And then I let it go - he’s living his life. Give him the dignity to keep living his life, and then I try to live mine.

Eddie at 8th grade graduation - he’d caught up with me in height. This was an accidental picture, but that’s another story - my Captain and Tennille hairstyle was going strong.

And just because pictures…