Go'd B'ye

Go to Echo Park. Dig up the two foot square of cement embedded in front of the playhouse. This is my waking thought at 1:30 a.m., born of the reality that my brothers and I are saying good bye to our family home soon. The doorstep, to what is now a storage shed, holds the hand-prints of the kids who attended my 8th birthday party in 1956. That square has been there for nearly fifty eight years. It is a testament to something, that I cannot quite name.

Were my folks forward thinkers? Did they fancy that it would be a monument to their love for me? Were they hoping to keep us all little - at least our paw prints - forever etched in concrete? Was it the fad of the day?

Friend Lynn proposes a tidier solution to unearthing the slab: do a temple rubbing of those hand-prints! Paper can be rolled-up with greater ease than a chunk of concrete, or even saved digitally. I could simply take a photo of it.

I remember receiving a cat, which was all black, save for a circle of white under his chin, on or near that same birthday. We named him “Eight Ball.” He promptly ran away or became coyote lunch, or some other way got poked by the giant cue-stick called life… We never found him in the side pocket. The folk's marriage ended a year later; eaten by tricksters for sure. Side pocket residue quite slimy and putrid… took years for the stench to subside.

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It’s a process, this saying good bye. The land itself saved me. I shall miss it and always be grateful to the hills, trees, bugs, weeds and flowers, among which I took communion daily. I’ll always treasure the memory of the “Wedding in the Weeds,” which united me and my husband, there, overlooking the sweet valley of sleepy Echo Park, and the sun gleaming on the sliver of ocean out there beyond Wilshire’s Miracle Mile.

Even when totally empty, as it was Saturday, when Mark and I went to retrieve my grandmother’s dresser from the room with the closet where I hid out for much of my childhood, the house itself feels haunted, and viscerally challenging for me. I cannot be IN those bedrooms where icky things went down without feeling nauseous, and wanting to bolt. My final gesture was to make giant raspberry sounds into all three rooms. Echoes into the past: Cathartic.

I am so happy that the folks who seem to be buying the home and adjacent empty lot, truly love Lautner, revere his work, and are willing to renovate this "long lost Lautner" to its deserved and former glory. As for me, and at least my older brother, it’s the land that we love. Our father who aren't in heaven, Howard was his name, has forever tainted our relationship with the glass, wood, and cement bones of our childhood home. Little brother has done a fine job of preparing and presenting the whole package for sale. For that, we are all grateful.

May the new owners derive much pleasure, peace and prosperity from their purchase. Objectively, it is a gem!

I thank my folks for their far-sightedness. This gift of home will be transformed into useful cash and handed down to the next two generations.

Words wrung from wraiths rarely heal retroactively. Reverberations run deep. Reminiscences, of racing along dirt roads, must raise dust. Remembrances, residing in the hills of Echo Park, take up residence - wreaking havoc in the reticulum of my roof brain. Nittery nattery; chittering chattering. Stop the ride… 
I want off. 
Good riddance.