Tanglewood

Woke up this morning (Thursday) to Julia, getting a hug after a long long long month. Only two and a half hours of sleep, but very happy to be with my kids again. Apparently no one has said the word “No” to them for the past four weeks — which is what you get when you let grandparents have unfettered access.

We drove up, spending four hours battling an overheating car, a malfunctioning air conditioner, no good radio stations, and four sweaty grumpy kids. But we made it to Red Bluff.

My parents have a house out in the dry dry dry dry dry hills of Northern California and it’s typically about one hundred and seventeen degrees during the day — it’s a dry heat, of course, but it’s still one hundred and seventeen degrees.

They’ve got five acres or so of hills covered with dry brush and twisted manzanita and oak. My mother tells me that in the winter it’s all beautiful, lush, and green . . . but at the moment it looks like Smokey the Bear’s worst nightmare.

It’s out in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of a town called Red Bluff in an area called Whispering Oak by the locals. There’s no cable (all of this is coming to you courtesy of a bullshit AOL dialup connection) and cellular service is a joke.

But I finally got my steak dinner tonight, by the way. And I just found where they keep the whiskey. Fantastic.

My father has cut a winding path back through the property and every night he takes a walk with all of the kids. Tonight I wandered along with them listening to them rattle off the different names for the trees. There’s the trio of manzanitas called Magda’s Tears, Magda’s Hair, and Magda’s Blood (not quite sure who Magda is, but there it is).

And there’s The Ghost Tree, a dead oak at the base of which (as I am assured by the Young Darkness) a man has been buried. This is the only tree they will not dare to hit with their walking sticks, for fear of awakening the ghost within. Although, there’s no story as of yet about who the man is, how he died, who buried him, or why he is haunting the tree.

The heat of the day pours out of the dry Earth as night falls. My dad sits with a glass of lemonade, talking basketball with my nephew and, although I am glad to be with everyone, I feel very far away from home.