Today's writing

I was supposed to be in Ojai right now. Okay, not Ojai. I was supposed to be in Oak View. That’s 10 minutes west of Ojai. But I came home.

 

I’d made the plan with Marie. We knew each other from back before the day. We hadn’t seen each other in the better part of a year. She was going to be on retreat in Ojai. “Come down,” she wrote. Well, why not?

 

Baz. My 5-year-old son, that’s what. Adam was going to have to work; no time to keep an eye on the kid, who was out of school for the summer. So okay, I was going to take him along.

 

I need to pause here and say that Baz was going through a bathroom phase. I mean, a serious bathroom phase. As in, obsessed with bathrooms. But it gets better, or worse, depending on how you see the matter. He wasn’t just obsessed; he was also hyper-picky. So after dragging me by the hand to whatever restroom he’d happened to find in whatever place we happened to be, he would then decide fuck this, I’m not going in here.

 

Is it too dramatic to say that kids are nuts? That they have their own dungeon of logic and you may only enter it if you’re wearing the right equipment, which very few of us seem to possess? Look, don’t ask me about kids. This one wasn’t planned. He was just willed into existence. And I love him. I know that sounds like a duh, big 10-4, buddy, but it’s not. Some people don’t love their kids. Others don’t like them. I both love and like my son. Except when he’s being insane. Which these days he so often is.

 

So yes, I was supposed to be in Ojai. We packed yesterday, took toys and books and his nasty-ass loveybear of a teddy, Tahoe, along. I neglected to fix Tahoe’s seatbelt the way Daddy did it. Somehow this escaped Baz’s notice and I took it as a good sign. We left the crunchy neighborhood I’d longed to leave for good, turning right onto California and left on Alcatraz and then right on Adeline toward the freeway, and soon we were southbound.

 

While I went to school in Santa Barbara, I’d never been to Ojai. I’d heard things – hippie, outdoor, Bart’s Books – and knew I wanted to experience it. More than anything, I wanted to get the fuck away from the rote: the loud, obnoxious apartment complex next to our duplex, the living room that sometimes felt more oppressive than comforting, the rutted roads that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere. Berkeley, my home for the better part of 20 years, but no sort of home for anyone with any shred of sanity.

 

What I didn’t realize – or more likely didn’t allow myself to understand – was that I was taking 45 pounds of responsibility along with me. Talk about rote. I don’t care who you are or who your child is, if you tell me that taking care of them isn’t all about repetition, I’m going to tell you you’re a son of a bitch and to get the fuck off my lawn.