Thwarted by the cruel and heartless Valley, we wind our way back up the Canyon. Having taken to those lowlands for matters of commerce and business, we have suffered both insult and injury, due primarily to the loss of something once known as Customer Service. Beaten and bowed, I am in need of my hills and trees and mountains, glowing softly after the rain and as all-encompassing as a hug.
Now, the Social Security Office I can understand. One does not expect much to begin with, the bar is not high. And yes, granted it may not be the most thrilling of jobs to sit in the little glassed cubicle and deal with numbers, facts, forms, fluorescent lighting and baffled citizenry, but hell, it’s a job and ideally you are helping people and getting paid.
I realized the no-nonsense woman attending, (hardly) to us might have been having a bad day so, in an attempt at affecting civility, I tried to answer all questions clearly and concisely hoping to win her with my efficient enunciation and good posture. She seemed, however, to grow more impatient and sour by the minute and when she was having some difficulty with her computer I couldn’t help but feel she blamed me. I even began to become nervous and admit to stumbling over my daughter’s phone number, proving my efficiency was but a ruse after all. Alas, she offered no pity to an ageing actress, obviously no longer at the top of her game. We left without one smile from her young but hardened mouth. Oh, where was the “social” in Social Security?
Explain to me, if you can, how we could possibly follow up a trip to a bureaucratic government office with a stop at, of all places, Nordstrom Rack, to return some items? Whatever were we thinking? The parking alone was daunting. Upon entering the store, we beheld an enormous line stretching and snaking, long and far, as if every shopper in the place saw us coming and in mass agreement ran for the registers just to deter us. Their cruel plot worked. We turned and left still in possession of a pair of slippers that do not fit the Beleaguered Husband’s size thirteens. As we exited the building, walking out the door in retreat, I thought I heard muffled laughter.
And, yes, there was yet still another stop to make in search of customer satisfaction. We soldier on. There was the matter of overcharges I had noticed upon reviewing my receipt from the Ralphs market at The Commons. Evidently not once but two different times, I had been charged $11.42 for a bottle of chardonnay instead of the clearly posted $9.99 and the on-sale $5.99 eyeliner (only the finest for me) ran $6.99 on the receipt. Who knows how long this unholy gouging has been going on, for I do not usually check my receipts, being in a hurry to get home to play with makeup or sip wine. Clearly some conspiracy was afoot, but they were messin’ with the wrong gal and as extra backup, I had the Husband who even on a good day can appear unbalanced or deranged. It would be wise for those in authority to process our needs quickly and move us along before things get ugly and children are frightened.
Approaching the checkout counter with some items in our cart, we attempt to be casual while I calmly explain to the manager the overcharges, showing him both my receipts, and a bottle of the wine and eyeliner. After questioning our accuracy and ability in reading the prices posted, the manager begrudgingly adjusted the charges as if performing such a service was somehow beneath him. There was no apology offered. In fact I think he sort of huffed, dismissing us as old hippies, probably from Topanga. In the parking lot, looking over the receipt we noted that although we were refunded for the wine he had completely neglected to correct the overcharge for the makeup. Sometimes you got to know when to fold ‘em.
Two old hippies head home, leaving the Valley of Woe behind, back to our Topanga where flowers are just starting to shoot through crevices and crannies in the rocky rain-washed hills. Then a song comes on the radio. It’s that jazz piece! That one I love, heart-stoppingly beautiful in its lilting melody, uplifting and harmonious, as life should be. It is a gift and, this time, after years of not being able to identify it, of catching bits and snatches of it from time to time and listening madly for the title, and even attempting to hum it feebly to those who might know it, only to have those jazz aficionados look at me askance, finally I get its name. It’s announced clearly, there, over the airwaves, which stuns me, quietly. “Little Sunflower” by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. And it was made even more wonderful by the astounding Al Jarreau who wrote love lyrics for it and recorded with Hubbard, singing in that voice of earth and air,
As you turn to me, say it—We will grow, like a flower,
Ever heavenly.
Bless his soul.
Halfway across the country out on Highway 66, while driving through Kansas on our way from Ohio to California in 1959 my father stopped the Country Squire Station Wagon at a field of sunflowers and picked one for me. He explained that I had been born in Kansas and because the sunflower is the state flower, it sort of made me a Kansas Sunflower too. I kept the flower safe as we progressed west, keeping it in the cooler with the cokes, touching its bright velvet petals from time to time. Finally, we came to a desert. Like characters out of Steinbeck, we were advised to cross at night. It seemed an awful big and scary adventure. We could only imagine some kind of crazy, infernal heat beating down even in the dark as we passed the bleached bones of those who didn’t make it, glowing white in the moonlight. I was so alarmed about how hot it might be that I added my doll to the cooler to protect her from melting.
My mother gave Little Brother and me wet washcloths to keep us cool that we clutched tightly in our hands. We might have prayed. And, on that July night, the God of desert crossings must have been listening; flower, family and doll made it to the Golden State. When asked at the border if we had anything to declare, my father answered, “Two sunflowers from Kansas, one is my daughter.”
I just happened to be reading, “The Essential Ginsberg,” (is there any other?) and therein he writes of sitting with Kerouac on a busted pipe in a decaying railroad yard surrounded by rusted metal and broken things, scattered and shattered glass and cracked pavement. Amongst the rubble, there at that tattered, grimy edge of the world, Jack points and he says to Allen Ginsberg, “Look at the sunflower.”
And that’s all we need to do: look and see it bravely standing reckless, filled with jazz, yet refined in the middle of all the junkyards of America, following the light. Or better yet, to be it. Growing ever heavenly.
