I still have last year’s volunteer badge for Topanga’s very own literary festival, Transport.
Thanks to the guidance of visionary Kim Zanti, Library Manager Oleg Kagan, Jenni Klemp and their dedicated team, the second annual event took place in spite of a road closure, at the Topanga Library September 23 and 24, but I am not there. I’m unable to take part in the discussions or hear author, Diana Mather read from her series, “The LindenTree & the Legionnaire,” or be moved by poetry or grab that open mic until they wrestle it away from me.
We are not there because the Beleaguered Husband and I are experiencing a transport of a different kind. We are transporting our daughter to college in Santa Cruz.
We do not even clear the City of Ventura when I reach for the Kleenex. I am crying behind my sunglasses because I must let Miranda go into her own Brave New World—which is, of course, what I raised her to do—but I don’t quite know how to take up a life where I do not see her face each day or hear her voice calling out from another room, filling our house with the sounds of life being lived, “Where is my gray top?”
Oh, it’s not as if I didn’t know this day was coming and, in fact, we had seen our son off to college and, although teary, I had managed it pretty well, but then I’d still had the girl. There was just so much to accomplish and do in the past week, collecting all the things for the dorm room, more forms to submit and last-minute financial negotiations, one more trip to the mall and remembering to pack the belts and dear, stuffed bunny and what about a beach towel?
With all the distractions, there was little time to prepare emotionally so I am hit so hard as we drive along that I am thrown into some state of super-heightened awareness where everything is precious and meaningful because it is part of life. All the cars filled with people coming and going, even the rude and reckless driver, are all to be cherished; the guy on the tractor in the field, the kids playing miniature golf, a couple entering a Denny’s, all so ordinary but not ordinary because it is life passing and you can’t hold on to it any more then I can to the young woman in the back seat who was once my little girl. Transport.
At Avila Beach, the ocean is so beautiful I just want to check into a beachfront hotel and stay there forever, forget college, we’ll be beach bums, fish for our food, eat seaweed and see every sunset, every day.
We have lunch there together. When will I see her eat French fries again? She takes a picture of the beautiful, shimmering sea as we are leaving but I don’t need a photo. I see her clearly, there in the rainbow tee shirt that we were not sure she should really get and now I am so happy that we did. A rainbow is a bridge. She is about to cross one. Transport.
We stay that night at a friend’s riverside house in the mountains of Santa Cruz. They are gone so we have the place to ourselves. Over a take-out dinner we attempt to watch TV but cannot operate the cable connection so we are stuck watching what I call American TV: “Wheel of Fortune” followed by “America’s Got Talent” (the girl with the puppet won). Even this banal programming, based on the concept of winning money and fame, takes on something more meaningful because we shared it and I wonder if, in future family reminisces long from now, we will include the question, “What was the last television show we watched together before you went to college?”
In the morning, I do not want to open my eyes, get out of bed, face the fact that before the day is over I will hug my daughter good-bye. The river flows along, past our friend’s deck, under the early morning sky of another city not Topanga. Transport.
There is nothing like physical effort to snap one out of reverie. We’ve arrived at the beautiful campus and all the items in the car must be unpacked and carried up two narrow flights of stairs at eight in the morning yet, and we’re operating under a half-hour, unloading zone time limit. I’m dragging things up the stairs and as much as I’d like to stop for a moment and catch my breath there are others behind me and I have to keep going, hoping I don’t fall backwards, knocking everyone behind me down like a row of dominoes.
Miranda’s small dorm room in filling up rapidly and we’ve already moved the chest of drawers around the room and then back to its original position. She unpacks and organizes while Michael and I continue to bring in bags and boxes, suitcases and silverware, bedding and breakfast cereal and even a fine, round tree stump her father collected amongst the redwoods and lugged up those stairs for her to use as a base for her full-length mirror. Soon the plain, institutional room takes a new shape, emanating a personalized cozy charm, complete with pretty pastel party lights, the big trees visible out the window over her bed. Yes, I can leave her here. Transport.
After lunch and a quick trip into town it’s time to go. It’s time to let our daughter begin her new life and adventure and walk her own path amongst those trees and form friendships that I hope will last forever. A wave washes over us, my daughter and me, as tears at this parting pour down our faces. Daddy, too. She walks with us to a bridge crossing through the forest, like some magical passage and so it is. We hug good-bye there and turn to leave on a day in early autumn as she skips into the future.
On Sunday, we actually make it to the Festival. We want to see the Historical Society’s presentation of, “Tales From The Beach.” Pablo Capra, Eric Dugdale, Paul Lovas and Gail McDonald-Tune share their photos and stories of the days when there were houses on Topanga Beach and a thriving community in Lower Topanga. Now gone, but still vibrant in their memories, transporting us from the present to the past and, yet, somehow into the future.
The next day Miranda tells me the owl is the symbol and mascot of her individual college at Santa Cruz.
On my Transport badge is an owl.
