Tribute

Driving on Highway 50 from Placerville to South Lake Tahoe on a clear day after a storm is like stepping into a Cody Hanson photograph.  The road is wet—that slick black color—and it winds its way along pine trees in various dressings of snow.  Along the river, which meanders translucently over rounded rocks and under the watchful gaze of lichen covered oaks, the trees have just a light dusting of white, like someone came and sprinkled powdered sugar with a spare hand.  As your gaze moves up, tracking the charred fallen trees covered with new growth which gradually give way to sparse pockets of granite and living pines, your eyes finally will land on the ridge where there are kid-applied frosting portions of snow weighing down branches and piling on the rocks clinging to the mountain side.  It’s one of my favorite drives anytime of the year, but especially after the first big snow storm.  

This weekend was spent with some of the people, actually most of the people, I love most.  Those times together get rarer and rarer the older I get and I crave them more and more.  Friday night, despite the “storm of the century” rolling overhead, Huck gave me a ride to El Dorado Hills to celebrate my best friend’s 25^th birthday.  We met almost 20 years ago, and I absolutely did not like her.  It was a sunny day on the playground (probably), sometime during our first grade year, and I thought she was an alien for eating salad.  What kid eats salad?  I couldn’t wrap my little mind around willfully eating vegetables, apparently.  Fortunately, I got over my green things judgementalness and realized I would never find a better Robin (in the interest of full disclosure, she is probably more Batman and I’m Robin, but this is my blog and I can paint it how I want).  We then proceeded to follow each other around for the next 20 years. 

Women like Natalie should be celebrated everyday- she’s a 3^rd grade teacher, an incredibly supportive daughter, the most loyal friend.  She’s creative, imaginative, playful.  And she has an old soul.  I’ve always thought it’s fitting that she’s older than me- she simply has an interior that far outdates mine.  She’s so much wiser than her 25 years would suggest, and she carries herself with this antiquated air of class that isn’t common in women my age— antiquated in a tragically-lost-to-another-age kind of way.  You won’t ever meet anyone like her.  I think one day I may write a book about her.  

I also got to spend time with my lovely mother, who is the opposite of Natalie.  My mom has the most beautiful, almost effervescently youthful soul.  I’m not saying she acts like a child; I am saying she has the charisma and joyfulness and vitality of a child— the kind of character that has the power to light a room with warmth and comfort.  Similar to how a child can make you smile without trying, how they are curious about life— all those things we hope to capture about our youthful selves, the things we don’t want to lose while we “grow up”—I have always thought my mom has cultivated in herself.  She makes me feel cherished and just spending a few hours with her is revitalizing, rejuvenating, invigorating, and inspiring.  My Grandma Lois, my mom’s mom, was like that, too. 

To top it all off, I then spent most of Saturday and Sunday with my Grandma Joyce.  Writing this now really makes me realize how I am surrounded by incredible, strong women.  Grams and I drove up to Tahoe Saturday morning together, winding our way along the freshly coated Highway 50.  Our objective was to pack up as much as we could at her house, which has renters moving in the beginning of January.  I am not sure exactly how long she’s owned the house in Incline Village, but some of my most cherished memories of my family were spent there.  It’s strange to think of a new couple making memories in that house.  A bittersweet feeling— to be able to share a place you love, but to not be able to go back for a while.  This weekend will be another one of those cherished memories.  Grams and I packed up the China Cabinet (also something that is antiquated), and the time that was filled with stories.  I love my Grandma’s stories.  She’s like a family history book, and through her stories I have gotten to know my grandpas (both of them), my great-grandparents, her brother, my dad.  Listening to the histories that start in Nevada, Italy, or France and are filled with recipes and customs and family gatherings, makes me nostalgic for a time before I was even a twinkle in my parent’s eyes.  She may be 75, but when she tells these stories it’s easy to imagine her as a girl burying food in the backyard to get caught with later, or as a young woman working in my grandpa’s family business, or as a young mother cooking complicated meals and drinking Manhattans with my great-aunts and uncles.  She’s been through so much, and hearing about her life before she was one of the most important figures in mine is fascinating.  Maybe one day I’ll write a book about her, too.

I think that drive up Highway 50 will always remind me of these women- the most influential and loved women in my life.  They all have had a hand in shaping me, and I have tried to emulate character traits that I admire in each of them.  It’s interesting to me now to connect the idea of place, that I have driven that same stretch of highway with all three and have vivid memories with them tied to that corridor— one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in California.  Natalie and I drove that road countless times in high school to go ride at Sierra—memories of thermoses full of coffee and tea, pre-made sandwiches and snacks, reggae and Ben Harper, wool socks and beanie’s and a sense of freedom to be on our own and mobile.  We dreamed together on that stretch of highway.  Memories of my mom driving with the sun roof open, pulling over on the highway to change out CDs from her trunk, with an ever changing selection of friends in the back seat (often times it was Natalie), laughing and talking about life and school and friends and boys.  Then, of all the times I have been on that road with my Grandma, this one may be one of my favorites.   It was just her and I, and we talked the whole way there, never once turning on the radio.  We both love that drive, and I distinctly remember her leaning forward at one point close to the Horsetail Falls turn saying how beautiful it all looked.  And that moment will remain one of the most beautiful in my mind for a very long time.