Seven years ago, we moved into this house: the week the Magnolia tree was in bloom. It would have felt fortuitous if I had known at the time that Magnolias, at least the one we have in our yard, only bloom for one week out of the year. But I didn’t know that. Not yet.
And while everyone knows that LA is built on a battleground of fleeting beauty, it is also a city that reminds its people that even though we do not experience seasons with their snow and turning leaves, we do have bloom cycles.
Last year, after an especially rainy season, the Jacarandas bloomed much later than usual. And I became obsessed with their lateness — as if Los Angeles had skipped her period and was potentially pregnant.
“BUT WHERE ARE THE BLOOMS,” I would shout out to God while skirting down 6th street for the hundred millionth time.
And my kids would roll their eyes. “WE GET IT, MOM. The Jacarandas are late…”
I equate the Jacaranda trees to birth because they are always at their most potent on May 23rd which is the day I became a mother. (In fact when I went googling to make sure it was indeed last year that they bloomed late I found this article published … on Archer’s birthday.)
And even though I have lived in Los Angeles since the summer of ‘99, Jacaranda trees will always remind me of my first days of motherhood and how the purple blossoms stuck to the wheels of Archer’s GRACO stroller, becoming a sticky paste on the hardwood floor of our tiny apartment on the corner of Detroit and 3rd circa Spring, 2005.
I have lived in the same neighborhood — more or less — ever since, but we have moved as a family, four times. First from Detroit Street to Windsor, just below the entrance gate to Paramount Studios, and then from Windsor to Edinburgh, just south of Beverly and then to our first and only purchased home on Crescent Heights between Rosewood and Oakwood — the house we lived in until we moved here… to a house in the same neighborhood as the apartment we first became a family.
After Hal died, I wanted desperately to move but the kids wanted to stay so of course we stayed. Until they didn’t want to stay for other reasons but by the time they were ready to move, rents had nearly doubled and I couldn’t afford anything even remotely the same size as our house. The price where we are, was right, even though we had one fire, a second almost-fire, two gas emergencies (hence the first fire), a heater that didn’t work for a year (hence the other almost fire) and a roof that was caving in so badly in two places my friend Veronika called it my “Cy Twombly” because it took on a sort of sculptural life of its own.
In fact, this house has had so many close calls, whenever I catch up with an ex who knew me during this house’s “derelict years” they often ask me how my house is doing before they ask me about my kids, my work or even me.
It is perhaps for that reason, that last year was the first year since Hal died that I stopped checking Zillow, making peace with staying in this house for as long as it will have me/us. We have been through far too much here, I guess. Both as a family and as tenants in a house that should have killed us multiple times.
***
When the Jacarandas bloom everyone in LA gets so excited about it — until the petals start falling off and everyone’s windshields are suddenly covered in goo. It is not unlike every relationship I have ever had with its honeymoon phase of deep purple, followed by a mess I have to decide whether it’s worth parking under.
For the years I didn’t have a parking space and had to move my car for street cleaning, I often exchanged the closeness of cruel beauty for the distance of a clean windshield I wouldn’t have to scratch sap off of with broken nails. And then there were the years when I didn’t have a choice. From 2002-2003 I lived on 6th street and while the Jacarandas only bloomed for a few weeks out of the year, my car was permanently damaged from the potency of sticky flowers.
All of this to say, I felt the same intensity of excitement for the Jacs to bloom as I did relief when they were finished.
It is one of the more sincere conundrums that all beautiful things, over time will go from pinning you to your chair in awe to becoming mildly annoying for one reason or another. Mainly, for how impossibly high maintenance their upkeep.
The fact that we worship beauty seems to ignore this finer point which is that time will age everything, including our concepts of beauty. Which is why beauty doesn’t actually come from the eye of the beholder, it comes from the influences on our perception, be them emotional, societal or both.
This is why the beauty industry is such bullshit. The impermanence of “beauty” is what makes it the very thing it claims to be. So does finding new ways to redefine it. But trapping it? White knuckling it? Like trying to glue petals back to the branches after they fall.
This reminds me of a lunch I had with my kids a few years back. We were seated next to table of women who all had the same exact face. It appeared that they were related until I realized, that actually, they were not. The journey I went on between thinking they were related and then realizing they were just friends who had the same work done sent me into a panic-induced-reverie where in the future — a la that scene in Being John Malkovich — every woman would have the same face. Plump lips. High cheekbones. Tiny nose… That evolutionarily, after centuries of surgical enhancements, we would all end up looking exactly the same. Our bodies, responding to a cultural need to erase and pull and fill and plump and nip and tuck and enhance.
I have never admitted this fear to anyone before because it is impossible to have this conversation without appearing judgmental and I would rather hang out with the most plastic-surgeried people of all time than hang out with anyone who would judge them for it. (I will ride for the Kardashians for this reason.)
My only issue with plastic surgery or cosmetic procedures in general is that everyone starts to look the same when they do it and this terrifies me. It terrifies me so much I won’t even do Botox out of fear that if I start fucking with my face I’ll end up looking related to everyone at the table.
Because the thing is, you cannot reverse age, but you CAN certainly try and once you start trying you can’t really stop.
I don’t know a single person who got Botox just once.
All of this to say, I do not want to look old — I am as vain as anyone, but I will not fight a losing battle to stay young either.
Which is why I haven’t even bothered to try.
Instead I purchased a lifetime subscription to a different, but nonetheless potent fountain of youth: rebellion. Which is the other reason why I won’t get Botox. Because, I’ve been told repeatedly that I’m supposed to.
***
Last night, Fable wanted to watch old videos from when everyone was little. And all she had to do to find them was search my name on the YouTube search engine. This is wild to me even though it shouldn’t be. I’ve been on the Internet long enough to know how it works. But it still always comes as a shock to me when my kids send me photos I took of them that I forgot about that they found in the bowels of my former blog or videos on my long lost YouTube channel.
I don’t remember filming the video Fable found wherein Bo, in real time is figuring out how to wave her hand and I can hear my voice in the background so proud. I’m elated to witness this moment. Like how amazing to watch someone do something for the first time. And it makes me think of how we put the emphasis on very specific firsts like words and steps and kisses.
How we do not ask, “when did your child crack her first joke” or “do her first swear” or “wave her hand for the first time.” How milestones are so boring if you think about them. Especially when everyone’s first word is either mama or dada or no.
Whenever I watch old videos, I cry, but not because I miss my children small. I love them the ages they are now. (An hour ago I took five t(w)eens to Ralphs to buy stuff to make brownies and as I type this they are blasting music and baking together at 10pm on a Saturday.) Teenagers are my favorite and there are always a million of them here and it’s the best. Toddlers are extremely cute but a lot less fun on late night grocery runs so it’s not that I miss the past — that’s not why I started to cry last night. I cried because I don’t remember so many things and that makes me feel like I’ll forget about this too. About the grocery store runs and watching old videos with my daughters. And the fact that it’s now 11:14pm and I am typing this with one hand because the other one is wrapped around a sleeping child who is also woman adjacent.
I am convinced that the reason I have always written everything down is because I have a terrible memory. And when Hal died, it got worse. I had to lock so much away in order to keep moving us all forward. The pain of seeing our family one way before we knew how much would change was too much for me to look back at. The babies learning to wave goodbye before they understood loss in their bones.
This is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere as an adult and it will be the longest my children have every lived anywhere as children and so much has happened in this house — a lifetime of so much, but only seven cycles of Magnolia blooms.
Seven weeks in seven years is such a blip and yet, when I imagine this house, I see pink flowers in the same way I imagine Jacarandas when I think of Detroit Street and 6th Street and Crescent Heights — their petals like seams in my memory amongst so much blank fabric.
My landlord and I disagree about the way the plants should grow. He insists on cutting the bougainvillea that used to pour down both sides of our deck because he claims it is ruining the patio fencing which is hideous by the way.
Years ago I sent him a photo of the flowers gone with a crying face emoji and his response to me was “it looks great.”
And one year, when the gardener trimmed the Magnolia tree during its bloom cycle and I came home to a garbage bin full of flowers, I collapsed in hysterics, clawing the blooms like they were the only love I’ve ever had.
I don’t give a shit about owning a house. Owning anything. I love not owning things, actually. I’m not trying to be more responsible than I have to be in this life. But one day, if I can ever afford to buy a house again, it will be overgrown with flowers and vines and all of the things that have been cut away from this one. And I will never — not ever — trim the trees.
Anyway, this post really went off the rails there for a minute but in the end, what I really wanted to share was that this week, the Magnolia tree bloomed again.
The same week it did seven years ago EXACTLY.
And the only reason why I know this is because I remembered that we moved to this house the first week of March.
And how excited I was that there was a beautiful pink tree in the front yard that, at the time, I didn’t realize would only be a pink tree for one week out of the year.
How I didn’t know the blooms were temporary.
That the pink against the blue sky wouldn’t last.
But I did learn the following Spring, that the blooms would return.
(They always return.)
And right now, they are here.
I love this. Actually autocorrect first wrote I live this- and that is also true.
Our magnolias started blooming this week too (in Seattle). 💖💖