Simplicity vs. Elaboration

I’m leaving. Again. I’m melancholy. Again. I don’t want to leave. Again. But I do. Again and again. 

Everywhere I leave I love. Same goes for the people I leave. Like my visit with Julie and Ken two days ago or my Littles in New York or The Big Kids in Southern California or my amigas, three nieces in Oregon, even my newly acquired campground neighbors, a couple from Canada, the other, a solo female from Northern California. I long to stay and stay and stay and saturate myself in all, and whom, I love until I’m done. But I never am. 

Most little kids don’t leave. They stay. They hang out with their families, surround themselves with toys and friends and favorite everything’s. At about 18 when they leave the nest and go to college, the dissolution begins. Home is no longer the same. Change, evolution, moving on and moving forward propels the crumble. Eventually, we get used to it. We take a tube of glue, pick up the pieces and puzzle -together the most puzzling stories, incidents, highs and lows, ins and outs, backwards and forwards of life. Some of us, if we’re lucky, get to examine the pieces—-some of which are salvageable, others smashed into dust—-then place our Self-Healing Projects on a shelf, take them down, re-examine, then rethink the odd contortions and like Disney Imagineers, reinvent ourselves. That’s what I’m in the process of doing: Act III: What to keep? What to toss? The Gail Sheehy “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life” Stage. The last and only time I read Sheehy’s book was something like 40 years ago when the notion of one day being 68 years old was incomprehensible. But when it comes down to it, we’re all pretty predictable. 

For instance, when we get older, like I am, we begin to take stock and strip down our lives into Need vs. Want columns. My priorities are clear: 

Need: Health, food, shelter, clothes, family and friends, being in Nature, quietude, writing and art materials, music

Want: Family and friends’ health and happiness, limitless funds, a kinder society that values Mother Earth and all her inhabitants, a world that celebrates innovation and creativity and supports those who struggle, the opportunity for everyone to discover their passion and have the ability to pursue it, an acceptance and appreciation of others’ differences, access to exceptional and diverse educational paths, hope that tomorrow will be better than today, especially for our children and theirs

Simplicity vs. Elaboration. Ideals that consume my thoughts vs. basics I take for granted.  

But shouldn’t. 

Every day, especially when I’m away from the fray, I’m reminded of my abundant blessings. The woman I’m camped next to at my current campground, Pismo State Beach, recently completed chemotherapy treatments following an aggressive breast cancer discovery. She was living her life as all of us, working hard as a school psychologist in the Sacramento area, when she felt a lump on her right breast and in her armpit; in that moment, her entire life changed. The doctors told her the triple negative form of cancer was likely caused by something environmental or stress.

“I’m pretty sure it was stress,” she said, then shared with me the trauma of growing up in Ukraine before immigrating to America, learning a new language, going back to college, divorcing an abusive husband, raising two children, one of whom has bipolar. 

” She refuses to take medicine. She says she’s going to kill me.”

“I can’t imagine,” I say, choking up.

“It’s OK,” she says. “Today I’m her enemy, tomorrow, who knows?”Numerous times, she continued, she’s woken up with her daughter’s face glaring at her. “Once, she had her hands around my neck.”

“What advice would you give yourself if you were a patient?” I asked my new friend.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “I’m too close to it.”

Last year, she continued, her daughter went to prison for burglarizing a neighbor’s apartment. “I don’t believe it happened. The guy was pissed off. He set her up.”

Frankie refuses to take medicine. She gets paranoid and screams all night. “That’s why the guy called the police,” she said, “to get her kicked out.”

One of the conditions of Frankie’s release from prison was that lived in a monitored facility. “She’s my daughter, I can’t throw her away. I had to bring her back home.”

“You’ve been through so much,” I said, holding her hand. “How do you take care of yourself?”

“I’m doing it right now,” she said. “This van is my escape, my freedom. Being in Nature is my therapy.” 

“Me too,” I said, as we changed subjects marveling over the glorious weather and bounty of clams she gathered the night before.

Like Natasha, whom I have so much compassion and empathy for, I, too, am on a quest for peace as I pull back, pull away, get cozy with myself and love the person God made me to be as I examine my mistakes and missteps and celebrate 68 years of life. 

I want to go back. Not just to the places I love, but to the wee girl I once was, the tanned, pigtailed child who danced under the stars and sang to the drum beat of a song she made up about gratitude and love. Not just in Nature. Not only when I’m camping. But in her own backyard. If she still had one. 

And that is the beauty of life on the road: everywhere you set out the camp chair is yours for the time you’ve claimed. Travelers, we all are. We just don’t know it. 

I hope to see Natasha again one day, give her a hug, and go for a stroll along Pismo’s forever beach. In the meantime, we remain in touch via text, encouraging one another, “Thinking of you this day. Hope you’re doing something positive for yourself. You are in my thoughts and prayers.”

Postscript: I wrote this essay in mid December and finally had a moment to post 24 hours after the January 7, 2025 Southern California inferno. I have read and responded to some truly demented souls’ comments that “weirdo” California and “Hollyweird” in particular “deserves” God’s wrath of fire and destruction. The cruelty, pure evil expressed by these troubled individuals is unbelievable, yet again, I suppose, it’s not surprising given our present-day politics of hate. We have to do more than shake our collective heads in disgust: We have to shut it down. Immediately. Hate has no place in an America we love. As my fellow Christians are fond of saying, “What would Jesus do?” I suspect He’d have zero tolerance for the haters; He’d be a vessel of compassion and love; instead of pushing people down in their time of need, He’d lift them up. As we all should, every day, whether we’re in the midst of a crisis or not.