Lost
There is a hotel on Western Ave. in Los Angelos. I can’t remember the name only that my father took a picture of me in the parking lot in front of my first car- 2007 Honda Civic the color shiny golden sand, It was hotter than I expected for December and I sweated under my thin grey sweater. I was smiling to the camera. I traditionally don’t like taking pictures. My smile comes out lopsided, like I’m having a mild stroke. I was thirty-five years old and she is my first car. I still have her now, seventeen years later. We look like each other. When I see her I say- There I am, that’s me. She could be the color gold, or a shiny taupe, and in summer my hair has gold highlights twirled amongst the red. She is a bit banged up, none of it my fault, a victim of circumstance. A survivor; she has lasted over seventeen years. I hear we look like our dogs, and often I think this is true such as the young twenty something year old women who wears her hair up in a ponytail. Her hair is messy and popping out of the rubber band as if she has only woken up to take out her dog. When I worked early at Trader Joes I would walk to my car at four in the morning and most likely this is true, She has two caramel colored pommoranians, energetic and fuzzy, their fur static like someone took their hand and rubbed hard.
My car has travelled 1,615 miles from Chicago to California, and she would travel back again.
I was moving for the first time, for acting, something big. We found a pleasant place to eat with a a lawn containing quaint tables and chairs. You could choose to put cucumber, orange or lemon in your water and we all thought that was so typical L.A. We ate there every morning for breakfast while I set up apartment viewings. On my thirty-seventh birthday, two years into living in L.A., I went there after work and bought myself a piece of thick rainbow cake. I ate it outside near the sidewalk, drinking a homemade cream soda, and thought it was going to be a good year.
We stayed in the hotel for four days. It was beginning to feel like home. We hurriedly looked for apartments on streets requiring the use of emergency breaks. This made my father nervous. On the fourth day, I signed my new lease for an apartment that was just okay but good enough for now. When I moved out to the apartment I would live in most of my time in L.A., my favorite apartment found with my dear friend my mother’s age and who made me feel safe, I had survived tiny shocks in the water in which, thankfully, I wouldn’t pay rent for six months, and would leave- good riddance- as tiny mice ran inside the walls. While waiting for the moving van ,I smoked inside, something I wouldn’t normally do, leave a stink- Fuck You.
My parents would be going home the next day, leaving my in my apartment with Katie, my cat, no furniture. My stuff would be arriving on a truck in seven days. I was afraid, to live far away from them for the first time, take care of myself, find a job, make friends: drive them to the airport and drive back home by myself for the first time and not become lost. My father feared this, too, my becoming lost in the physical sense, and him nowhere near to help.
California was windy sidewalks and hilly streets. The Midwest, where I am from, is flat. The streets would start here and take you to an entirely wrong there. In California the ocean is West and in Chicago the lake is East. My dad says, “If you remember where the lake is you’ll never get lost. “
The ocean was one long left shoulder taking me north and south; freeways went in all directions like a bunch of pick up sticks thrown on the ground. Freeways took you somewhere and somewhere was a place I needed to be. Somewhere is defined as your home existing in a particular place. Somewhere was at Vermont and Griffith Park in a white stucco building dating back to the 20’s, and had been only somewhere for under a month. The freeway always lead me somewhere. I was near the 101 and not far from the 5, across from the swimming pool I swam in during the summer for four years. The 5 travelled North and South and could take you to San Diego. 5 led to the 2. My dear friend lives off the 2. It takes me to Colorado Boulevard, into Eagle Rock. There is also the 110,405, 710. The 105, 134,605, 118 (105 to the 405 leads to the airport. My first year this was my favorite place). There are also freeways with names; Santa Ana Freeway, Hollywood Freeway, the Ventura Freeway. It is not uncommon to take many freeways to get to one place, your somewhere.
The 1, also known as PCH to those familiar with the West coast, that long shoulder I would grow to love, takes you along the coast, which when in the driver’s seat, if you looked left you would see the ocean. Up through Big Sur, where my dearest friend I found in L.A. and I would camp, setting up tent late at night with my car lights on to see, where I would have my best sleep while tiny frogs ping ponged on and off our tent in the rain. When we hiked down to the waterfalls she would identify deer poop. She was the person who knew a lot about everything and although this trait would often annoy me, I wish I had her to identify my later phase, skilled enough to prevent it from happening. She was like my dad, she would never get lost.
Becoming lost has always been easy for me: Avenue instead of Street; Slight right not hard! Once, when visiting Paris, my husband and I became lost after turning the wrong way simply by searching for something to eat. Two hours later and a bad fight we found our hotel, only two blocks away. We ate our cheese sandwiches on the hotel bed and drank a bottle of white we opened with out new bottle opener reading- Paris. On my keychain is a tiny key to a lock which hangs off a bridge near the Musee d’Orange. Couples purchase locks and attach them to the rails for luck? To keep them together? In marker we wrote- SF- initials of our last names. Team SF. Pronounced like it sounds. My husband says when we return he will find the bridge, and our lock amongst the hundreds of others.
One night, soon after my move, I was going to see a new friend in Santa Monica. We had met online. West Coast directions were typically vague, like colored hair faded from the sun, their collective characteristics slightly the same, non committal, in case you changed your mind. Midwesterners were direct: when you see the 7-11 store on the right turn there, there won’t be a sign. I liked direct. I understood direct. It was eight o’clock and I had finished working. After circling for an hour I sat on a hill where I could see the freeway I knew I had to take. I had yet to own a smart phone. I called my dad. I was crying and trying hard to smooth my voice. “Hey, dad. I’m a little lost.” There was a pause and within the pause slight irritation, a shrug, “Honey, I’m in Chicago.” I was 1615 miles away in a city that called the expressway the freeway. He would know how to get me somewhere even if I was so far away, even if he could not see me . “Hold on while I go downstairs.” He carried the phone at his side, his breath bounced as he walked down the stairs. He was great with directions. He didn’t understand lost. He went onto his computer and looked on Google Maps. “I see you, you’re ten minutes away,” he said as if I were only ten minutes away from him- Somewhere.
This year my somewhere is an unspecified place called lost, the kind you can’t find your way out of on google maps, or connect the freeways, or call my dad. My therapist calls it a Perfect Storm. On October 30, 1991, the Andrea Gail while on a swordfish fishing trip nearly 900 miles away went missing along with its six men. The winds were at 70 miles per hour, people complained of salt water on their lawn. It was a Perfect Storm. A meteorlogical phenomena! A tragic form of lost.
Perfect Storm is a particularly bad or critical state of affairs arising from a number of negative and unpredictable factors: a pandemic (negative and unpredictable), two shoulder cuff surgeries (unpredictable) which brought about a depressive episode (unpredictable) and creating for me a negative and particularly critical state of affairs- a rare phenomena in which I became lost, the worst kind of lost.
Lost is to be ruined or destroyed physically or morally as in “Lost Soul”; Taken away or beyond reach or attainment; Insensible and hardened; Unable to find the way; No longer visible; Lacking assurance or self confidence: Helpless; Hopelessly unattainable. I was no longer visible, left helpless, unable to find my way- left hopelessly unattainable. Loose words. They hang down from my hips like my favorite pants which have become too big since the pandemic. It’s a definition possessing possibilities but not the right ones, weaving me further into Lost. In medical terms depression is described as a mood disorder involving feelings of sadness, worthlessness, loss of interest. Depression is also described as the the action of lowering something or pressing something down: hands on risen dough, a weight on unyielding paper; a plunger. I like that one the best.
I’ve been back in Chicago for ten years and living in our current apartment for two, almost as long as I have been lost. I’ve looked up the word, again but its definition hasn’t changed. I’ve look up ——West Eastwood on Google maps. Our address comes up as “Home,” my somewhere. There is a picture of our building. In the picture it is daytime and our window is open, I’m thinking it is spring. The facing windows are in the sunroom and the front room. The sunroom is my favorite room. It’s too hard to see inside. A sister of one of the men on the Andrea Gail said, “You know in your heart how could anyone survive that storm, but all you have is hope. You sit around together and you wait for news, and you hope”.
My husband and I sit on the end of our couch closest to the window, We look at the dead branches we have been waiting three years to be cut. We watch people succeed and fail to parallel park. We watch for the sun to move further to the right. The window is open and the scent of cold has finally faded. I smell the color green. The depression has lifted, the storm is settling, we are grateful for that, too. I am certain I am crossing my fingers, speaking to my Papa who has been dead thirteen years, asking him for help. I don’t tell my husband any of this so not to worry him, so not to lose hope.
