Once, There Were Orange Groves
In Waikiki, thinking of the role L.A. played in so many new American lives. I wouldn't be here without Los Angeles.
Aloha Beautiful Friends,
Yesterday my mom and I landed in Waikiki on a last-minute trip. An hour after checking in to our big beautiful touristy hotel, we were in the soft salty Pacific Ocean. I strapped on my goggles and went for an easy swim, very close to shore, moving over white sand, then gray coral reefs that reminded me of what’s been lost.
And then: a flurry of bright-colored fish came out of the gray reef🐟.
And THEN, a sea turtle passed underneath and let me follow it around. Talk about the senses being exulted!
I once traveled to the Caribbean, where I swam through the healthiest, alive-est underwater habitat—there was brain coral!—and never got this close to a sea turtle. I was beside myself.
My mom and I have been talking about my dad’s family on his mom’s side. Russian/Ukrainians, my grandmother, Baba, was born and raised in Harbin, China. It’s a long story, but she and her four sisters ended up living in Hollywood.
My grandmother arrived there by way of Harbin-Peking-Montreal-then-Detroit, as a fresh divorcee with one child, my dad, barely a teenager. My dad went to Hollywood High School. He toned his muscles at Venice Beach after getting sand kicked in his face by bullies (it happened!). He became a competitive swimmer, did gymnastics, worked at health clubs training movie stars.My grandmother worked her way up from sweeping floors at a beauty salon to becoming a beautician and owning the business.
The navy sent my dad to college during WWII, to USC, in downtown L.A. Afterwards, he sang opera, but eventually used his engineering degree to get a job at Boeing.
My dad was an only child, but he had aunts and uncles around who loved him, cousins, and a strong Russian community. His adult relatives spoke lovingly and gratefully of America for taking them in and giving them a new life. It was a good life, there were tragedies, they considered themselves lucky.
My dad was sent on a business trip and came back in love. By now he was living in Seattle. My mom came to Seattle from Sydney to marry my dad.
There were just the four of us living and making our way, figuring things out in a Seattle suburb: mom, dad, son, daughter. Growing up, we went to Hollywood to see extended family, and in the Seventies, Laguna Beach.
**
My parents married in Vancouver, BC, after a short courtship, then hopped in my dad’s MG and drove down the coast straight for Hollywood. There, my mom met my dad’s thick-accented (devoted) mother, the aunties, and the whole “Russian mob,” as my mom called them.
“They loved me, accepted me on the spot, and for the first time I had a home.”
My parents started their life together in a log cabin on the chilly shores of West Seattle, but they went to Los Angeles for family and holidays.
My grandmother and her husband, Vasia eventually left Hollywood for Laguna Beach in 1970. In no time the four sisters (and husbands) were living in a quiet beach town, walking distance from each other. Playing Canasta, getting into tiffs, telling secrets, going to dinners at the Jolly Roger, where my aunt Asia putt bread rolls into her purse as soon as they were being served.
We spent summers at Main Beach learning to body surf, and climbing over reefs, sticking our fingers into the bellies of sea anemone. My first swim team and track team were Laguna summer leagues.
**
Last week, I watched a video of an LA resident giving an update on the fires. His house was OK, but his family had evacuated. In the background, you could see mountains of smoke. In the foreground, the birds chirped so loudly, I had to lean in to hear the resident’s words.
Around the turn of the century, I went to grad school in LA, a low-residence writing program, mainly because I wanted to visit Los Angeles regularly.
Walking down the wide busy streets of Marina del Rey I was bewitched by a scent: the smell of shiny hot cars, black asphalt, sweet florals, and the salty sea. It was like life kicked me in the gut, gave me a mix of nostalgia and euphoria, a nutty-swoon-y sense of being home, at last, after a long odyssey away. I smelled that sense of home in the LA airport.
“The California dream is alive and well,” I said to my dad, after that first residency. “I can still see why people still want to move to L.A., even when they should know better.” We laughed.
“Oh sweetheart,” my dad said. “Los Angeles was miraculous back in the day. I’d drive through town past orange groves, then arrive at the beach, lift weights, and swim in the ocean. If that’s not a city of angels, I don’t know what is.”
**
Tonight, my mom and I watched the sun set over Waikiki Beach, waiting for my brother to arrive.
The only thing better than a sunset that looks like this—
—is all the people that come to watch this everyday magnificence, together.
Wonderful read!