It’s August 28th, a sunny Sunday in Santa Barbara after a morning when the marine layer lay thick and heavy on the town. Five days ago we -- me, T, and M -- landed in Philadelphia, PA at 1:00 a.m. Twelve or so hours later, we were moving M’s belongings, the contents of four suitcases and a load of stuff we picked up from Bed, Bath & Beyond, into a dorm room at the University of the Arts. Room 401 at Furness Hall, which your niece was going to share with three other girls, is in an old building of dark brick, perhaps a factory or warehouse in the past. The weight of what we were doing hit me about now, the theoretical becoming material, when I imagined my 20-year-old daughter living in this space with two narrow beds and two wooden dressers, a couple of wooden chairs, and a large skylight overhead. No AC as we quickly discovered. It was a sunny, muggy afternoon in Philadelphia, and the air in the room was stuffy and warm. The AC unit was in the other room, which had already been claimed, occupied and furnished by a quiet Chinese girl and an African-American with her bleached hair in long, intricate braids. Not exactly an equitable division of space, but we did our best to keep the vibe as positive as we could. We unpacked, made our daughter’s bed, helped her put her clothes in the dresser. When we finished we went in search of lunch. One of the people working the orientation line told us to try 13th Street. We crossed Broad (also called the Avenue of the Arts) and walked a block or two until we found 13th. I was expecting some kind of restaurant row like in Mexico City, or even here on a smaller scale in Santa Barbara, but that wasn’t the case. A couple of places were closed. We walked on, thinking we’d find something further on, but didn’t even stumble across a coffee house or a Starbucks. The part of 13th we were on was dead. Off Broad Street we found a narrow cafe with only four stools. I saw some soccer paraphernalia on the walls and immediately got a good feeling in my chest. Tuscany, I think the place was called. The man and woman behind the counter were friendly. I talked football with the man. Over large, beautiful tuna salads our daughter was spilling large, anguished tears. The room situation had unnerved her and now she was sobbing.
That’s elite white-collar crime for you, right there; it’s conducted as an endless back and forth between lawyers for the parties. The fact that the crime itself is negotiable is mind-boggling.
The main lesson raising two children taught me was how insignificant my role in their development has been. I never imagined that either of my children was in my control; though I have always been involved in their lives, my role has mostly been that of a bystander. It’s more like I’m here in case they need me. My daughter needed us now to help her figure out what to do, who to talk to, and how to frame her request for another room. After we finished eating we walked back to the school. Orientation was almost over, but all the school staff were still sitting at long tables. Your niece went to talk to the man at the Housing table, and within half an hour we had keys to another room on the second floor, which until Thursday was vacant. We grabbed a large plastic cart like the ones they use in Post Offices and went to recover our daughter’s stuff from Room 401. I swear it felt like we were breaking out of prison. Old Furness Hall has some funky corners and odd hallway configurations, and after some fruitless wandering we had to ask directions to Room 212. Once inside, however, we knew this was going to be a major improvement. There were four large windows in the main room, three desks, a small kitchenette, a closet, and a bathroom. A wooded courtyard where students hang out was visible below the windows. We could see the laundry room across the courtyard and walls of dark brick. There were three beds in the bedroom, a large closet, and three dressers. One tall window with an AC unit, old, but still emitting cool air. Relief.
We found a CVS nearby and spent $200 on milk, water, canned soups, cleaning products, batteries, a shower curtain liner, paper plates and bowls. M has everything she needs, and when all the stuff her mother ordered on Amazon arrives, she’ll be set. Her name will be well known in the school mail room for a week or two. By the following day when we left, I felt a lot better about the situation, though tears flooded my eyes when I watched my daughter enter the building and disappear from view.
I remember feeling homesick for Santa Barbara when I joined the Air Force at 18 and was posted to Japan. Feels like a century ago, a strange time, decades before the Internet, social media, Facetime, YouTube, Amazon, UBER, and the iPhone. We wrote letters in those days, and waited expectantly for letters in return. I missed the mountains and the ocean, the view from the Riviera, but once I began my job I was too occupied for homesickness to linger for long. You just get on with it. I hope your niece will find that her courses and social life will do the same for her. She’s a sensitive girl, but she’s got strength in her, more than she knows. She’s all out of her comfort zone at the moment, off balance, far from everything and everyone she knows. She calls frequently, we Facetime, text. She cries, we offer encouragement, and try to reframe the conversation as part of the normal course of leaving home for the first time. All we can do now is encourage her to stay in the moment, breathe, and try to enjoy the experience. She’s in a hurry to be done because she can’t at the present see how she can be there for the next few years. I joke that she’s not serving a prison sentence. She sends me a sad emoji.
Humbling, man.
I’m trying and mostly succeeding in limiting my exposure to social media, primarily Twitter and YouTube, endless political news, in particular about the latest Trump doings, all the unfolding drama and laughable excuses being offered to explain Trump’s leaving Washington with thousands of official records, many of them classified, and some highly classified. People seem surprised by this; I never was. When the news broke around 18 months ago it made perfect sense to me. Of course Trump took state secrets with him. Think of a career thief sitting in a room with bundles of American dollars. No guard. The thief is loyal only to himself and a select few around him, he has no sense of a higher duty to the United States, so why wouldn’t he take a few bundles on his way out the door? That’s Trump. Information is valuable, useful for business, blackmail, currency for favors. The “noise” on social media is all about the tedious mechanics of the law, Trump’s reaction, speculation about Trump’s legal strategy, and running prognostications about Trump being indicted or the DOJ giving in to fear and precedent and letting him off the hook. Trump should be arrested for what was already recovered since he wasn’t authorized or entitled to any of it, but American justice, at least in the case of financial and political crime, works differently, when it works at all. I’m not optimistic. Imagine the back channel dealings between Trump’s lawyers, such as they are, and lawyers for the DOJ. That’s elite white-collar crime for you, right there; it’s conducted as an endless back and forth between lawyers for the parties. The fact that the crime itself is negotiable is mind-boggling.
Other than that, we are well. Water runs as normal, the power stays on all day and night; we have plenty to eat and drink; no shortage of distractions; war isn’t raging around us and the streets aren’t filled with murderous zombies. Bicycle thieves, yes, but no Zombies, yet. An acquaintance of mine rode a Specialized for 20 years, to and from her job downtown, to the store, everywhere she needed to go as she doesn’t own a car. She went into the main branch of a bank on Carrillo Street and when she came out less than five minutes later her bike, lock, panniers, were gone. A painful reminder to me of the December night when my Diamond Back was stolen from our downstairs storage unit. Bike thieves are like horse thieves in the old days, lowest of the low. You steal a bicycle and you steal a person’s way to get around, to a job or school.
I’ll see you soon for our annual get together.
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