30 April 2020. The Eucalyptus.
That stretch of sidewalk passing the Flowerland nursery--a photo from before shows the gates spread wide open, people inside, wandering about in the sunshine, very inviting. Such a contrast to the situation today, when it's closed up, just the sign, with a message about no winter lasting forever. And yet with the season about to become May, it seems true.
But we're in a new time, and the contradictions between what we feel and what we know are going to be a part of it.
This drawing from last night. I'd come back home, washed up after dinner, gave the plants on the porch their water, swept a little, even. Then a long talk with C--everything that had happened with Odette. Dear sweet Odette, 14 good years in a Leucadia garden. They buried her next to Chauncey--near the fence, in back. Señor Ramón dug the place for her--so carefully and cleanly, C said--and they'd laid her in the ground while C was inside for a bit...
All the events we shared--even my dropping her way back when--Odette was still a puppy--not quite ready for that, was it an accident or a new game? But we all survived, and the story became a part of our song...
_____
The eucalyptus is a large tree--one of the four that were planted in front of the nursery half a century ago. A massive trunk--you feel the weight of it, the tree's bulk--like some animistic presence. California style, of course--something that feels like it belongs here, on this beautiful dry coast. Even if they were brought in from Australia--immigrants like the rest of us.
Actually, I am a native (people like to say that, it seems). Mercy Hospital in San Diego, on the bluffs in Hillcrest, 1945. The neighborhood always feels familiar when C and I visit. But when I look for the corner with the Ace Drugstore, it's not to be found. From childhood, a memory of the long drugstore counter inside...
___
Note: It occurs to me this morning that I could have put Odette in the drawing, on the walk next to the tree...
