Memory Lane

Metaphor became reality for yours truly the last two days as I returned to a place where I spent high school through young adulthood. (Okay, I'm asking you, dear readers, to accept without close examination the premise that I've actually become an adult. Please, just walk with me.)

I flew to San Jose to attend a family funeral, and spent the evening before with a wonderful friend of forty years and her daughter and her daughter's  best buddies. The into-the-wee-hours talk about where we were, where we are now and how we each got here was a blizzard of old remembrances, dawning understanding and nodding gap-filling. This meeting became a soul-fulfilling, thrilling adventure at the confluence of "where did you go" and "you've always been right here." It was truly remarkable and life affirming.

The next day found me attending the funeral of a family member whose affect on my life was sometimes positive, sometimes less so, but always profound. Leaving my GPS forgotten on the kitchen counter at home made me a last-minute arrival and allowed me to sit in the very last row and I unintentionally but thankfully assumed the role of observer. It was revealing and frequently wrenching to listen to the accounts of folks who knew a person much different from the one I knew. In the end, a life is defined by an amalgam of partially obscured views and the best path is simply to allow each their own legend according to the memories they hold.

Neither of these meetings is the raison d'etre for this blog entry, although without the framing perspective provided by loving reconnection on the one hand and ambivalent goodbye on the other, there would have been little reason to write today.

It was on the drive from Soquel to Morgan Hill that I found myself assailed by a flood of disparate memories. Bouyed by the unabashed joy at a friendship confirmed and the dread anticipation of a relationship that could now never truly be resolved, my mind was opened to the past in a way that was quite unexpected. I found my psyche flooding with acknowledgements of formative events that until now I hadn't realized were so.

I wouldn't have thought a 20-odd mile drive along a long-familiar, twisting mountain highway would be so cathartic. But as I drove along, the road became the thread linking old memories to the me I've become. I've travelled these curves with girlfriends and buddies, on the way to work and relaxation. I have driven this route possibly hundreds but at least many scores of times.

There's Cat's where I spent so many hours watching Lindy sing and across from which Dave's mom died one careless night. And Mountain Charlie's where my buddy Dan won the World's Belly Bucking Championship and where I was spotted by my friend Joe and called to the stage to sing Lazy Bones with him and then sang Lush Life for reasons I didn't understand at the time and then walked out through a silent crowd who somehow sensed that this would be the last time I'd ever sing Vala's anthem. Or the Wine Cellar where Bill and I pretended to be lounge singers (ahem!).

The esses remind me of the eternal argument over which is THE Dead Man's Curve. And driving to Pat's wedding where I would share the best man slot with a six foot blow up Gumby and a moth eaten, stuffed lion named Kippy. And to lots of places but nowhere in particular on Steve's last night before going off to join the Air Force. And to Summit to watch the show Sherree and Tom directed with the kids of Loma Prieta.

I rode shotgun with the careful Anne and the terror-inducing Bill. And then again with Bill the day before his wedding when what he needed most was a friend who would shut up and drive. This road took me to the camp the Ee-girls had set up at Sunset and the overnight solitude and white noise of Red, White and Blue.

The Alameda overpass that I can't pass under without wondering what was the last disappointment that led the guy to pull himself out of his wheelchair to topple to momentary but anonymous fame as the suicide of the day. And the perc ponds where people would raced radio controlled model boats. And Lake Vasona, where Dave and I went unintentionally sailing in the Volvo.

The tilt-up industrial park where I worked after the Navy is still there, as is the brooding Lexington and the turnoff to Roaring Camp. And of course the way to Highway 9, where I went with Sherree for an ill-advised hike without supplies on a hot day that led to heat exhaustion and a mad dash to find something, anything to drink and all the time frantic in the knowledge that I had broken Tom Young's younger daughter but more immediately, had failed in my boyfriend duty to protect the last person in the world I'd want to hurt.

I remember the drive back to my Mare Island base when I bet Steve five bucks I could open the bottle of soda without a church key before we reached the 101 overpass and at the last moment tossing it over the side and proclaiming, "Well, it's open now!" And seeing the Lost World dinosaurs and wondering but never bothering to go look, becoming one of thousands who thus consigned it to financial ruin.

Santa's Village is still there - sort of and as something else. As are the memories of innumerable friendships. Sort of and now, perhaps something else. And there was the awful, solitary drive the night that I realized she was with someone else now and that it was time to think about moving on. I did that drive twice, years apart and in response to rejection from two different women. It hurt both times and it helped both times. The highway was my confidante and mentor in ways I guess I never understood until just now. And maybe not now.

And the time my agent decided it would be a hoot to tell me she'd wangled a dinner invitation at my favorite sci-fi writer's home in Bonny Doon and driving there wondering what to say and finally practicing opening remarks until I was confident and the confidence flooding out through my toes when the woman of the house made clear there was no dinner party planned for that evening and "What did you say your name was?" and then the bewildered acceptance that I'd been had and the desire to turn and flee until the smirking woman asked "Did Elizabeth put you up to this?" and I knew and wondered which way to turn until this God-sent woman said well, I was there and I might as well come in for a bite  and later that night, getting home and realizing I could not recall so much as a word of a two-hour conversation or a yard of my drive back along 17.

17. It was a road and a destination and the freedom to have no destination in mind.

This highway connected me to so much and the memories of it to much more. Memories distorted by time and hopes, triumphs and disappointments. Memories that may or may not be factual but are nonetheless perfectly true. I wonder who that boy-man was who drove those twenty-odd miles all those times.

I may never really know.