I Believe In Magic

“Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart?”

I remember the lyrics to that song by The Lovin’ Spoonful as if it was yesterday when the tune poured out from the AM radio in my mother’s light blue Chevrolet Corvair onto the leather seats. Newly widowed, my mother tucked her three daughters into the compact car with our small suitcases and filled, wicker picnic basket. She drove us down to San Diego, three short hours from our home in the San Fernando Valley to see the zoo, to stay two nights in a roadside motel, to get away from her dining room table covered in bills and responsibilities.

“How the music can free her…whenever it starts.”

It was 1976. Gasoline was 33 cents per gallon. My sisters and I all had long, straight hair and wore patched bluejeans. My older, teenage sister sulked through the entire trip, glum to be away from her girlfriends on a long, holiday weekend for Memorial Day.

“I don’t want to remember anything,” my mother mumbled, insisting that a trip would “do us all good.” Her dark brown eyes looked almost black, empty now that my father was really gone. She would never hear the screech of his Sunbeam convertible pulling into the driveway in front of the detached garage.

It wasn’t just the song that made me a believer. It was my maternal grandmother Mary, known to have “the gift.” She knew things before they happened. She had a habit of calling out of the blue and asking about the child who had fallen that afternoon on the hard patio pavement and skinned her knee. As a teenager herself, just sixteen, after her step-mother had died suddenly, Mary was the one who went down into the cellar and intuitively found the mortgage money hidden in an old coffee can. “She saved the family farm,” my mother declared, repeating that story many times throughout my childhood.

“I’ll tell you about the magic, and it’ll free your soul.”

My mother had her single parenthood pushed upon her against her will. She never liked the widow brand that had been seared into her skin overnight, when the phone call came in the dead of winter. My father had died suddenly, tragically. There was no funeral for him, no memorial service, no wake. He just died, disappeared, vanished. I think a ritual would have helped to honor him, the good parts, and enabled my mother to let go of the bad. Instead, she buried him in the pit of her stomach, all of him, as if she had swallowed him whole. And she died too that year. Not in body, but in spirit.

“If you believe in magic, come along with me.”

I didn’t have single parenthood thrust onto me. I chose it. When I took my newborn baby boy wrapped in a blanket in one arm, and his kinetic, three-year-old brother by the hand, and moved into my own house. Maya Angelou said that every woman should always have enough money in the bank to move out. I agreed with her. So I took funds from my hard-earned savings account and I moved, just two blocks. But it was into my own house with my tiny boys and just my name on the rental agreement. In that small green house with the dew-covered garden in the back, I healed. I meticulously filled up the cracks that had been eroded away, like a bricklayer does, rebuilding and retrofitting an old wall that had once looked like it might give way.

After I escaped, my boys’ father was so angry with me, at night, I could feel his anger directed at me, at us, at our little house. Things began to break. A glass I was washing in the sink shattered. A bowl that was firmly in my hands mysteriously dropped to the floor, becoming shards of glass. A r – a – t appeared underneath the house. I still have to spell it, cannot say the word out loud. After the pest control technician trapped the critter, killed it, the mites that lived on its coat swarmed up into the house, into our bedroom, our beds, and bit us raw with teeny tiny little red bites under our pajamas all over our bodies.

I began to pray, to Archangel Michael, to save us. I also boiled vinegar on the stovetop and burned sage. The next night out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a quick, sharp flash of light on the roof above the chimney. My prayers were answered.

“How the magic’s in the music and the music is in me.”

I don’t live in that little green house any longer. That was two homes ago. It was built in 1925. They tore it down in one day. My name now appears on a mortgage. In the city hall of records, the property deed literally says my name and then “a single woman,” as if that is so surprising. My boys have long, straight hair and wear blue jeans now. They are tall, thin and do not sulk on road trips. Gasoline is three dollars and thirty cents. And, I know things before they happen.

How I learned To Love Texas

Being a Los Angeleno from birth, visiting Texas had never really appealed (okay, occurred) to me until this past March when I had the opportunity to attend the SXSW Film Festival in Austin. Prior to my trip, I already admired many things Texas — like singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett, autobiographer Mary Karr, and former Governor (pronounced Guv-ner) Ann Richards. I had just never put Texas on my “Places I Want To Go” list until this spring.

With Park City and Sundance fading into the distance (see “Postcards from Park City”), my friends and I once again packed our weekend bags.

Together, we headed for the unknown land of Texas.

 Staying in downtown Austin at the Radisson, also known as “The Rad,” we were just a few blocks from the convention center and most screening venues. Arriving early to register, we had just enough time to catch a cab to the Broken Spoke, a true Honky Tonk venue, some 20 minutes from downtown.

There we were, all four of us, standing outside the convention center. It was hot and threatening to rain. We were hungry. And we were failing miserably at hailing a cab. Just then, we saw a young cowboy get out of his car and yell: “Y’all need a cab?” (Ladies and gentleman, in Texas, “Y’all” — the conjunction of You and All is a real word, said often, and with a special southern lilt). Yes, I nodded, and then watched him walk half a block to the main street, smoothly and successfully hail a cab, and then direct the driver to our feet.

From that moment on: I LOVED Texas.

That March weekend in Austin, I took in a total of 14 films. Okay, only 8 were SXSW fare. The rest I watched in my cozy “Rad” room. You know, those films you want to see but just can’t quite be motivated to leave your house for? When I wasn’t watching films, I was eating authentic BBQ. What more could you want from a weekend away?

In fact, back in L.A., I spent April and May pining for the easy-going ways of Texas:

I enjoyed being greeted wherever I went with a genuine: “How y’all doing?”

I liked how the bartender remembered me, and my drink.

I even got used to asking how long something would take, only to be told calmly and confidently “Not long.”

If I could just get away with that at home!

Then, my wish came true. Just last month in June while trying to fly home to L.A. from two weeks in New York, my friend and I got stuck in Dallas.

His grumpy (NY/LA-centric) question:

“What the hell are we going to do in Dallas?”

My answer: “Y’all wanna find the grassy knoll?”

Texas has a way of growing on you.