as1.e5 – Come in from the Cold

as1.e5

Come in from the Cold (Joni Mitchell)

            I was looking forward to third grade, a lot. And, sure, I could skip ahead to it, but I’d decided by this point to, at least for the most part, keep going in chronological order. It would give the present more context if I took things more gradually, and help me to remember each new little chapter of our lives. And there was no way that I was going to let myself skip right past our July, 1993 summer road trip. It would be hot, long, and I’d be stuck in the middle backseat the whole way, but dang did I think of it often. It was memorable for one big reason, which Dad made a clear reiteration about that morning.

            “Our first family vacation since we left Illinois, guys!” he said as he brought his and Mom’s just-packed suitcases out into the living room while us ‘kids’ tiredly ate our breakfast over in the kitchen. “Oh, this’ll be a special one. Our St. Louis and Graceland trips were nice and all, but this is California, where there’s actual landscape.”

            “Daaad…” River, never a morning person, groaned. “Did we have to get up so early? The sun’s barely up. I’d even quit Little League if they made me get up just fifteen minutes earlier for practice, I swear. And why can’t we take a plane to Los Angeles? It’s not fair. I’ve never been on a plane. Olive got to be on a plane once.”

            “Quit whining, Riv,” Olive sighed, her hair a mess as she bit into a muffin. “You really didn’t miss much. O’Hare was backed up, the flight to New York was delayed four hours, it rained the whole time, and Greenwich Village smelled kind of bad.”

            “Sorry, buddy,” Dad said, and came over to give River’s hair a ruffle. “We’ll take you on a plane sometime, I promise. It’s just that me and your mom have to fly to LA for work already, and then take a thirteen-hour flight to Auckland. There’s only so much of that we can take each year. We’re itching for a good old-fashioned station wagon trip.”

            “You gonna take us to Wally World, too?” Olive asked cheekily.

            “Never heard of it,” River, not yet in the know, said. “But Disneyland would be cool if we’re going to be in Los Angeles, anyway. Maybe a little less camping, and…”

            “Oh, River,” Mom spoke over him as she left the bedroom holding the camping supplies and the big bags containing the tents, “we’ve told you—we’re not really going to Los Angeles. We’re spending a few days in Topanga to rough it and see some beautiful scenery, and then we’ll be at a hotel in Laurel Canyon for a couple more to check out the music festival. You know how I feel about Disneyland, but we will still go one day.”

            “Yeah, I know…” he grumbled. “You think it’s a ‘celebration of corporate greed and the chokehold on creativity,’ or whatever it was you said last time I asked.”

            “Close enough,” she said with a smile that likely irritated him more.

            To be fair, the two of us really were still kids who didn’t understand how adults could see anything cynical in the world. We did end up going there, and Universal, just not until 1996. River would have to be patient, but he’d end up enjoying that trip.

            But, wow, Laurel Canyon. It was hard to top a place like that if you were a buff of music history of the 1960s and early 70s. Not that I cared about any of that or really knew of its significance when I was a kid, but now, with an adult’s mind in my head, I could really appreciate this trip. True, the peak of its counterculture was in a brief period of time followed by gang violence and the inevitable gentrification that by far priced out any rising musicians from living there, but people always loved to celebrate the what-was of a place. The Laurel Canyon Indie Music Festival was a good time, even if none of its performers could ever really be local to the area again. All it had was the nostalgia factor.

            “Maisy,” Dad said after shuffling up to me and standing there a tad formally. He took a small rectangular thing from his shirt pocket and handed it over. It was a little tan point-and-shoot camera that I’d forgotten all about. “Your mom and I really liked the photos you took last year, during our weekend getaway to San Francisco. You got a real knack for it, kiddo. So, do you mind being our backup camera girl on this trip?”

            “Um… Sure, Dad,” I replied and almost greedily took the memory-keeper.

            If he thought those original-me photos were good, wait until they saw them taken from a kid who had been around and had an eye for composition and proper framing.

            “Come on, guys!” Mom gestured for us to get moving. “We’re burning daylight.”

            I’ll never be certain, since even if I did ask he’d just deny it, but I was pretty sure River wished he had a Game Boy before we left the county. By the time the skyline of Royal Valley disappeared beyond a desert hill in the rearview, he already looked bored out of his mind. In the seatback pocket in front of him was a starter bundle of what had once entertained kids on road trips: Mad Libs book, where the random objects, actions, or descriptors that you penciled in before seeing the mini-story were supposed to make it funny, and bingo boards that used sliding plastic squares to form lines of spotted car brands, or license plates, or scenery. He did have a couple of Tiger electronic games, the cheap and low-effort single-game handhelds with annoying beeps and awful on-off LCD graphics, but those only ever held his attention for a few minutes at a time.

            Olive, on my right, was always just fine with bringing some issues of Time and People magazine, and a murder mystery book or two from the library. She also made for a good, soft pillow that rarely complained. Long car rides, especially when the sun was on my face, always made me doze off pretty quickly, but this morning River was ahead of me as he might’ve already been asleep on his real pillow that was against the door.

            Our folks had their road trip traditions, too. I swear that there were some albums they only ever played while we were going down stretches of highway, and I wondered if it had something to do with a subconscious association with driving, or if some songs just played on the radio way back when they took their trip to Newport and stuck with them. Dad had three old mix tapes he’d play on the road, put together in the 80s.

            There are a few tunes that I agreed sounded like they should be played on the road. I Get Around by the Beach Boys is always an obvious pick, and the opener to one of his cassettes, but Spirit in the Sky and Fortunate Son just vibe with the nostalgic melancholy of summertime faded asphalt for me, too. But then there’s the other stuff on the tapes, like The Doors, Captain Beefheart, or bluegrass and country; all rarely heard at home.

            As desert hills, farms, and small towns went by and blended together outside, I faded in and out of different states of alertness against Olive. Over the years, I’d had some of the oddest dreams in my life in the backseat of moving vehicles, from some combination of the music, the sun, the road noise and bumps, and the always-changing scenery. You wake up for a few seconds, see you’re somewhere new, and then you close your eyes and lose track of where you are. There’s an ethereal timelessness about it.

            This was also our first trip with a portable CD player, which was plugged into the wagon’s auxiliary input. Dad was giddy to try it out, and after his tradition of playing the first mixtape was fulfilled, he put in a disc of novelty music to test it out; it was loaded with 50s and 60s stuff like The Purple People Eater, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, and They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! Real high-class music from forgotten bands. Maybe he was trying to get us back-seaters to laugh or sing along, but they failed to rouse us. They were followed up on with a Riders in the Sky album and some Bonzo Dog.

            I could easily skip ahead. Maybe other time travelers in my position would. The thing is, I wanted to experience a slow and dull moment like this again, because I hadn’t in so long. Being in the back of our folks’ car, listening to the music they grew up with while I had no obligations and could zone out all I wanted—it was a small part of my life I could never get back or re-experience. It had happened, and it’d been over for a long time, and I missed it because damn if I didn’t miss almost everything from my past.

            “Daaad,” River groaned and took a gulp from the lukewarm bottle of water in one of the cupholders. “I’m getting hungry and the music’s giving me a headache.”

            “It’s okay, buddy, we’re about to stop and get some lunch. It won’t be much longer to the park after that. Maisy, Olive, how are you two doing back there?”

            “I’m almost finished with The Pelican Brief,” Olive replied.

            “I’m amazed you can read in the car and tune out all the music,” Mom said from the passenger seat. “Maisy and River, good behavior. Kids your age can be fussy on road trips. You two haven’t been picking on each other and being quiet about it, have you?”

            “They’ve been fine, Mom. Sleeping, mostly.” Olive then shifted uncomfortably next to me. “Maze, you’re putting my arm to sleep again. You’ve gotten big, you know.”

            I groggily sat up and wiped a little drool from the corner of my mouth. It was hot back here, since we were in a desert valley and everything, and packed together, so I had left my beanie jammed into River’s seatback pocket with all his neglected “fun” stuff. It wasn’t enough to keep me from sweating, though. After I opened my eyes, I saw him staring at me—my hair, to be exact. I knew it was a mess, and I tried patting it down.

            “Maisy,” River whispered. “You were murmuring in your sleep again.”

            “Huh? No, I wasn’t. What do you mean again?” I replied, this being news to me.

            “Yeah. You do it at home, too. You go on about… Never mind. It’s too weird.”

            River brought it up but then didn’t want to talk about it, and I was the weird one? I briefly considered going back and then skipping the trip so far, since I assumed I wouldn’t talk in my sleep as the old me, but what would be the point if he’d already heard me doing it? At least now, he would have already taken the first step in telling me about it the first time. It would probably be important to find out just what I was saying, since if I was talking “nonsense” related to time travel, things could get bad.

            If I pressed the issue right away, though, River might see it as me being worried about something small, so I chose to wait and return to the issue more naturally. In any case, we’d just pulled off the interstate somewhere a little north of Santa Clarita to stop and get some fast-food. We were a lot closer to the Los Angeles area than I expected.

            Long John Silvers. That was the restaurant our parents chose. Not any of the big ones, the places people think of when they hear “fast food,” but a venue that never went huge or was known for more than the bell you could ring at its doors, and its fried fish and hush puppies. To be fair, those pups were all right, at least. Royal Valley didn’t have a local branch, so our folks sort of saw LJS as something mildly exotic and exciting.

            “Okay, guys, here we go,” Dad said as he brought a packed tray of five meals and drinks to our table in a random seafood restaurant off the interstate just north of one of the country’s largest cities. “Smells pretty good, doesn’t it? Looks like… we got three fish and two chicken lunches here, and puppies all around…” He put down two of the fish and chips, and then looked curiously at Mom. “Honey, who had the other…”

            “It’s mine,” I said, instantly garnering strange looks from the rest of my family.

            Ah, crap, that’s right—I didn’t really eat fish until I was fifteen or so. Should I go back? Would they expect the other Maisy to start eating seafood all of a sudden? Or could I simply pass this off as a random fluke or experiment, soon to be forgotten?

            I shrugged and added, “I just thought I could try something new.”

            “Oh. Well, um… good for you, sweetie,” Dad said and gave me my cheapy flaky whitefish and a side of deep-fried cornmeal. “It’s good to branch out now and then.”

            “There’s a Cracker Barrel across the street. That was usually our road trip stop. Why are we eating here?” River questioned after biting into one of his chicken tenders.

            “Your dad and I used to eat at one in Chicago pretty frequently,” Mom replied.

            “That’s really all it is,” Dad said. “They’re okay, nothing special, but sometimes you just want a bite of food from your past that you haven’t tasted in a while.”

            “Ugh…” Olive muttered quietly and wrinkled her nose as I took my first bite. “I could never stand the smell, even if it’s mild. But good on you, Maze, for being brave.”

            Right. Brave. A little further inland, and I probably wouldn’t be so courageous.

            “Kids, we’ve been meaning to tell you,” Mom changed subjects, “that there’s been some buzz about this festival. Joni Mitchell lives in the area, and there have been rumors for a while that she might show up and sing a few hits. The tickets are pretty affordable, so we’d be getting a really good deal if we see her perform. She’s a legend.”

            This was one of my core memories about the trip. I remembered how it ended, and what I always suspected about the supposed rumors. I was so tempted to speak up.

            “Your mom and I came very close to going to Woodstock, you know,” Dad told us, Olive looking disinterested because she must’ve heard this anecdote countless times. “But we couldn’t tear ourselves away from college work. We were there in spirit, though. Proudly part of the counterculture of the day. I like to think we made a difference.”

            Sure, Dad. That’s why we’re eating chain fast food right now and you lock people into timeshare commitments these days. I couldn’t help but scowl at my thoughts.

            “Oh, but honey, you know Joni cancelled her appearance at Woodstock, anyway,” Mom reminded him. “You’re probably just thinking about her famous song.”

            “I know that, Denise,” he replied after coughing on some fish. “I’m not saying she was there; I just went from talking about her to the festival she could’ve been a part of.”

            Agh, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t annoyed by them in the moment, at least not more than usual, but now I really wanted to know what would have happened way back if I dashed their hopes. If Charlie was having his “fun,” I could enjoy a little, too.

            “Joni Mitchell isn’t going to show up,” I stated confidently, no longer sounding like a kid. “It’s a rumor the organizers began to generate buzz. Attendance at the festival has been declining in recent years, because it’s hard for new folk singers to get traction.”

            My family stopped eating all at once and stared at me like I had bugs crawling out of my mouth. I stared at them, and they stared back. I snickered, but it was more from the awkwardness than anything. I thought that this would’ve been more… interesting?

            “Maisy… Who… Where did you hear… all those words?” Mom asked blankly.

            “Maybe from a… a TV show?” Dad replied, equally befuddled. “Or something on the radio. They could be from an opinion piece in one of Ollie’s magazines.”

            “Don’t look at me,” Olive said defensively. “I only brought national magazines with me. There’s no way any of them were talking about a little festival in the canyon.”

            “Maisy, um… She talks all smart sometimes,” River spoke up. “I think she’s just really good at repeating what she hears from TV, or adults, or… something.”

            “Oh!” Dad suddenly smiled. “Is that true, Maisy? That’s quite a talent you have. You’d make a good singer one day, if you can easily remember all your lyrics.”

            I just frowned. I didn’t know what Charlie was out there doing with our shared gift, and I didn’t really want to know, but he must’ve been getting better results than this. Either way, who was I to be an eight-year-old crusher of spirits? Back I went.

            “Oh, but honey, you know Joni cancelled her appearance at Woodstock, anyway,” Mom repeated, and I tuned out the rest as I re-ate my last hush puppy.

            Then I took my first picture, of our folks eating their chicken, fish, and chips.

            Flanked by Encino to the north and Beverly Hills and greater Los Angeles to the east, Topanga was a rocky, semi-arid range of mountains full of old trees and tribal lands that the metropolis couldn’t conquer. On its trails, one could forget how close they were to LA, only for a skyline sinking into an ocean of haze to emerge again on the next hill.

            It was a large park known for its own music festivals and bohemian culture, but if you weren’t about all that, its landscape and vistas were worth the footwork, too. I had only ever been in the place once in my life. Twice now, if this counted, but I still debate if these revisits or “reruns” did in any way. I could experience things differently, alter how it all played out if I really wanted, but it was still the same time and place.

            We left the city behind and climbed up the hilly terrain, in a station wagon that must have looked out of place to anyone on the outside. It only took a half hour to get to the Musch trail camp after leaving civilization behind, where we were about 1,500 feet up in the air and surrounded by rugged terrain, and other hikers and campers.

            Our parents were no strangers to camping; they had stayed in a tent during the Newport festival to save money. It was dry and hot up here, so they got right to setting up our pair of mini-homes in the shade of a big tree, between some other taken spots.

            Me and River weren’t expected to really help out much, so the two of us mostly just walked around and hung out on a picnic bench while the adults established base camp. For me, it had become an uncommon, and almost strange sight to see a kid just sitting somewhere bored with nothing to do again other than let their mind wander. As I watched River sit at our table, head on his arms, a conditioned part of me actually felt a little worried, like something was wrong with him. He had no iPad, no social media, no apps, and in this day and age, that usually meant a kid ended up just staring into space.

            In the 1990s, that was normal. Maybe even psychologically healthier, I dunno. But I was no longer used to seeing it, and I couldn’t refrain from eventually speaking up, “Hey, Riv. Play a game of catch? You must’ve packed your glove and a ball, right?”

            His pupils moved up towards me from his prone head and he muttered, “Really? You want to… Um, okay. But I only have one mitt. You’ll have to use your bare hands.”

            I shrugged. “That’s okay. Not like I’m the one who needs to practice with it.”

            This wouldn’t be the first time I played a game of catch with River, but before, I only started doing it on occasion after we both became teenagers, usually in the park or at the community center. But it just hurt a little piece of my soul seeing the kid looking like a neglected dog on a hot day, and Dad rarely found time to do it with him, so we got into a shady spot, put about thirty feet between us, and started the old, simple, and pure pastime of chucking a stitched ball into the air while shooting the breeze.

            After a few minutes of chatting about nothing of importance, River hung onto the ball and stared at something. I followed his eyeline to see that he was looking at the teenage boy in the next camp over, who was drinking a can of soda and seemed to be ogling Olive, in her khaki shorts and hauling our large blue cooler to the tents.

            “Hey, Riv, throw the ball back already!” I shouted over to him. “Stop worrying so much when boys look at Olive. She can handle herself.”

            “Urk…” he grumbled, and tossed the ball while blushing. “Maze, what if she gets some creepy boyfriend and then moves out of the apartment? Who’ll take care of us then? We might have to move again, to Aunt Judith’s, and start all over.”

            River could dive into spirals about future hypotheticals pretty quickly, and it was something I’d gotten used to over the years. I knew how things shook out, but my gift of foresight, or hindsight, wouldn’t benefit him, so all I had to offer were platitudes.

            “River, you worry too much. One day at a time, you know?” I said, and just to throw him off guard, I switched up my pitching style and threw an overhand fastball.

            If I beaned him, or heck, if he simply missed, I would’ve gone back and not given into impulse. But, credit to where it was due, he reacted in time and caught it.

            “Dang, Maisy, where’d that come from? You could be a pitcher on our team.”

            “Got you thinking about anything else for a second, didn’t it? How are things with Penny and Carlos, by the way? Are you ever going to invite ’em over?”

            “There’s not that much for us to do at the apartment, Maze… They’re kinda all about outdoor stuff. We hang out, but I haven’t seen much of their places, either.”

            Olive finished filling up the bigger tent us sibs would be sharing, then slipped inside and zipped it close as Mom and Dad slipped into their hiking shoes. I knew what was coming, and it was one of the other reasons I came back to this moment.

            “Kids, we’re going on a little hike!” Mom shouted out. “Put your boots on!”

            “Man…” River moaned after his final catch. “Can’t we just chill for a bit first?”

            Olive came out of the tent wearing shades and a new and light Royal Valley Blues Fest ’93 shirt—which I couldn’t stay up late enough to attend this year. I had a pair of sunglasses, too, while River preferred wearing a baseball cap in the sun. Despite being outdoorsy, he wasn’t big on nature walks. Little did he know I’d be saving him today.

            “Each time we get to the top of another hill, have a look around,” Dad said as we traversed the relatively easy-going dusty terrain that took us up and down again often. “You might just see some of the city in the distance, and get a sense of scale out here.”

            “Dad, how far are we going, anyway?” River asked him from the back of the line.

            “Don’t you run bases, buddy? I thought you’d be leading the pack.”

            “I’m a sprinter, not an endurance runner. I just wanna know where we’re heading to. Is it some overlook like Castle Hill, an abandoned mineshaft… or a dangerous cliff?”

            “Can’t it just be a surprise, River?” Olive said with a sigh. “You gotta learn how to live in the moment, bro. What happened to your pioneering spirit? You liked going to Camp Morning Dew, so I thought you’d enjoy roughing it around some real mountains.”

            “I liked the activities there—not the cabins and the heat and the hiking so much.”

            “Riv’s about games, teamwork, and competition, Ollie,” I reminded her.

            We reached another little rocky summit on our journey south, and looked around for any signs of the nearby metropolis. We only saw other small mountains again, and I couldn’t remember if we ever would spot and look out at Los Angeles at all; our parents didn’t exactly have the best sense of direction. Thankfully, we did bring some compasses.

            As memories and a sense of familiarity about this trip and the local topography gradually returned to me, I kept my eye on River, lagging behind us, more and more. I realized that he noticed me repeatedly looking back at him, and I knew that it would eventually either irritate him, or he’d assume I was teasing him in some way. So, before my watching over him got on his nerves, I slowed my pace and steadily got behind him.

            Speaking of watches, I kept trying to check mine for steps. My smart watch had become a part of me in the 2040s, so it was a hard habit to break. What a shame that I was out here, enjoying nature and the cooling breezes, and I couldn’t fitness track.

            “Oh, ah… Yeah—this way, kids,” Dad said at a fork in the hiking trail after he checked a signpost. “There should be something really nice down this way.”

            The moment was imminent. I still couldn’t recall if it happened before or after our stop, but I swore I’d be ready. Down we went into a valley and rest area, passing by a few hikers on their return trip on the way. I picked up my pace again and got closer to River. Now he could hear the soles of my boots hitting rocks just behind his back, and that probably annoyed him even more than my previous glancing.

            “Ugh, Maze,” he groaned, “stop bugging me.”

            “I’m just walking,” I said in my best little sister voice.

            He got irritated easily by certain sounds, so it wasn’t a surprise when he started going faster to get away from me. And maybe I was being a little high-strung. It’s not like I didn’t have infinite tries to get this right. But I still didn’t want to see and relive it again.

            What I was waiting for didn’t happen, and we made it to the modest waterfall that fed a small stream in a slightly greener area. Dad took a picture of it, and then I took my own—spending more time getting the composition just right.

            “What a lovely little place,” Mom said and took in the local sights.

            “Mom, this is, like, the tiniest waterfall ever,” River shared his opinion.

            “It probably dries up completely during certain times of the year,” Olive added.

            “Well, yes, maybe,” Dad replied. “But there’s still nowhere else just like this spot.”

            “That’s what you always say, Dad,” Olive said with a friendly eye roll.

            “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? The world’s huge, so everything, no matter how small or plain, can be seen as something special,” Dad said with a chuckle—and it was that line that brought it all back and put this tiny moment of our lives into renewed clarity.

            But it was too late. I heard River trip behind us just a split-second before I turned around; a subtle sound of moving fabric, and a shoe scraping against dirt as it hit a rock gave way to a gasping “wah!” before gravity took over and he hit the ground, hard.

            Damn it. I guess the accident occurred during our stop at the baby waterfall.

            “Oh, River! Oh, no, are you okay?” Mom was the first to react. She knelt down and checked for injuries on the groaning boy. “What happened?” She looked up at Dad and Olive. “Do we have any disinfectant spray? He has a scraped knee for sure.”

            “Argh, nothing hurts like that…” River moaned, looking more upset than in pain. “I know what scrapes feel like. It’s my wrist… I-I caught myself, b-but I think… N-no! It can’t be broken, right?” He whimpered and gave his right wrist a poke. “Practice for the next season starts in a month! What if I can never play ball again?”

            “Riv, I’m sure it’s just sprained, at most,” Olive tried to reassure him.

            It was sprained, and he would be able to practice, but it certainly put a mark on the whole trip and made Mom and Dad have an argument about whether or not to take him into the city for an x-ray. We’d go right back to camp and probably miss an amazing view, he’d soak it in cooler ice, and it’d feel better by the morning. But I hated seeing my brother suffering, and kind of hated myself for not doing anything to change it.

            And there I was, standing around while everyone else tended to him, watching.

            Done doing nothing, I went back a minute and immediately turned around. With the other three focused on the waterfall, I saw River balancing on some shoe-sized rocks like any carefree yet bored and idling kid his age might do. The instant he began to wobble seconds later, I reached out, yanked his hand, and pulled him safely down.

            “What the heck, Maisy?!” he snapped, unaware that I had just ‘saved’ him, which was fine with me. I just smiled playfully, and he muttered out, “Weirdo…”

            He probably forgot about me being an annoying younger sibling by the time we all made it to the scenic overlook thirty minutes later. Santa Monica looked beautiful in the mist of the Pacific Ocean. It was worth giving my family the gift of the memory.

            I gave the old me the return trip—and the strain on our leg muscles, though I still felt it later that evening—and within five minutes of my time after seeing the city from above, found myself at the family campsite as we sat around a firepit. I came in right as Olive was finishing telling us all about her new job at the record and music store just off Main Street back home. Above us was mostly light pollution, but still a few more stars than we could see from our place. With Jurassic Park fresh in our minds, I wouldn’t have been surprised if River thought that boy from before was out there in the darkness, staring at Olive with night-vision goggles. At least his wrist was been spared.

            “It sounds like you enjoy working there so far, Ollie,” Mom said as she swatted away a flying insect. “You certainly know plenty about instruments and discographies.”

            “Hm, but how’s your boss treating you?” Dad asked.

            “Mr. Kratt? Oh, he’s great. Very knowledgeable about music history,” Olive chirped, with River at her side roasting a marshmallow. “You guys would like him. He has this long, gray biker beard, even though he hasn’t ridden in years. He grew up in the valley and used to go out to, like, all the music events within a thousand miles.”

            “That’s great, honey. If you like where you’re working, then it’s hardly work at all. Well, speaking of music, that’s as good a cue as any. I got a little surprise for you all.”

            He went up the nearby wagon, opened its rear hatch, and took out something that had been covered by a blanket and gone unnoticed the whole trip. He didn’t have a case for the family guitar, so it was just suddenly in his hands again after all these years, in the firelight. Olive let out a happy gasp and clapped her hands a few times when he returned to us and sat back down on his chair. I remembered this, too. Very clearly. I doubted this moment would change too much just from River’s now unhurt wrist.

            “Dad, it’s been forever since you touched that,” Olive said excitedly. “Do you still know how to play? Oh, are there any of the band’s songs you can remember?”

            “I still know how to tune; the rest, I’m not sure on yet,” he replied between string plucks and tightening. “We only ever wrote five original songs, you know, sweetie. Your mom can be credited for three of them. I’m sure they’re still written down somewhere.”

            “I remember playing the tambourine to something called… what was it…? It was sad, I think, and about this guy who had been saving up for a bus ride to see his aging mom, only for the bus to break down outside the city? So, he hitchhiked, and, um…”

            “The driver robs him of everything and takes off, leaving him stranded at an abandoned papermill, yes,” Mom finished for Olive. “The Easy Things are Hard.”

            “Geez, Mom, why would you write something so depressing?” River grumbled.

            “Music is about telling a story and sharing a feeling,” she reminded him. “It was our most popular song—we sometimes got requests for it after our covers. But, Marlon, if you can’t remember how it goes, it’s okay. It’s been a while since we’ve performed it.”

            “Just give me a chance, now, honey,” Dad said and tried to get the opening notes right. “I know I can remember most of the words, just maybe not the tune so much.”

            For five semi-agonizing minutes, we all watched Dad struggle with the first verse. Not that I knew what the song was supposed to sound like, since there weren’t any known recordings and it was before my time, but he had clearly forgotten most of the chords and the progression. No amount of correct lyrics could cover up his mistakes.

            “They say there’s a list of things to do in life, to be a good guy, to keep in the light. Don’t go stealin’, givin’ girls a beatin’, but most of all you’re gonna, go see your momma. Shouldn’t be too hard, with God on your side, and a new bus card, so go take a ride. Take a ride, man, take a ride…”

            He stopped and looked like he was in pain while deep in his memories. “Damn, now I can’t even remember the words. Not like I’m playing well, anyway. How does it…”

            “Really, honey, you did even better than I expected,” Mom attempted to comfort him. “I know how much you hate forgetting how a song goes. Don’t get mad about it—it was a long time ago. That part of our lives was great, but it’s all in the past.”

            “You sounded like Dylan for a second,” Olive worked out a compliment. “But, Mom’s right. Don’t stress over it. It’s nice just being here, with music under the stars.”

            “Okay, okay. You all don’t need to try cheering me up. I’ll play some classics, but I also want to see if I can still do Honest Ragamuffin. It was my personal favorite.”

            “What the heck is a ‘ragamuffin?’” River asked the adults.

            “It’s what you’ll look like if you don’t update your wardrobe soon,” Olive teased.

            I sat quietly on my folding chair, taking it all in as I often did when I revisited treasured memories. The setting and Dad’s attempts at reliving his musical yesteryear were special, but what really set this moment apart was that it’d be the final time I’d see him play a guitar. He didn’t know it yet, but we were seeing the last whisper of a passion.

            “This was our dream once,” Dad sighed as he tried to get more first notes right.

            Olive had a quiet, but strangely discordant snore that I could never stand, so it was a good thing we usually didn’t share a room. It woke me up early the next morning as dawn’s light hit the fabric of our tent, and I stirred and sat up next to her, with River all the way at the opposite side of the tent, kind of dug into the corner. He wasn’t much of a snorer, but he was a roller who often ended up in weird positions.

            I couldn’t remember if I got up so early the first time this day rolled around or not, and it didn’t really matter. I was awake in a beautiful place I’d probably never see again, and I was going to enjoy the sunrise. With the chilly desert morning air pervasive in the tent, I got out of the sleeping bag, threw on a jacket and my hiking shoes without the socks, then moved about and unzipped the flap as quietly and smoothly as possible.

            Upon leaving the tent and stepping out into the crisp air that did still smell faintly of big city pollution, I was greeted by the rays of the sun just peeking over Topanga’s eastern features. Down here—maybe it had something to do with the Los Angeles air quality—dawn was uniquely vividly orange, quite unlike the blue hues I was used to back in Royal Valley. I sat in one of our folding chairs and admired the live landscape painting ahead of me, snapping a few pictures with my little camera meanwhile as the guitar sat in the back of the car and under a blanket again, after Dad murdered more songs last night.

            It was nice and everything, but I was about to head out and skip the rest of this portion of the trip. Our parents made a little bit of a mistake in making our stay here last three whole days; we’d all be bored and ready to move on by tomorrow evening.

            “Maisy?” I suddenly heard River after he nearly snuck up behind me. I turned to see him half-asleep, his hair a mess and his head tilted to one side. “Augh… did you have trouble sleeping, too?” He gave his neck a massage. “How is it that sleeping bags look so comfy, but once you’re in them, they do pretty much nothing to keep you off the hard ground? I don’t know how people do this… By the way, you talked in your sleep again.”

            “Um, I did?” I asked, and held off on my skip momentarily. I was getting worried about this stuff, since there was nothing I could do to control it. “What’d I say?”

            “I have no idea,” he groaned and grabbed a water bottle from the cooler. “It just sounded like a bunch of nonsense to me. Anyway, I was only thirsty,” he added, twisting off the cap. “Maybe don’t stay out here too long all alone, okay? I’m going back in…”

            Awesome, bro. Really helpful. If this kept up, I’d have to forgo the joys of sleep.

            Having gotten much better with my precision, and making it a habit to check my time and date following each skip backwards or forwards, I sent myself into the moving car again a few days later, right as we were turning into the house-filled hills of Laurel Canyon. Us kids were all aching, and a little chafed and sunburned, and something else I remembered were the faint gasps that had a tinge of disappointment from our parents when they first laid eyes on what the place became over the recent years. But, I get it; we didn’t have internet yet, and they couldn’t hop onto Google for the latest local pictures.

            Dad let out a sharp “Tch,” and added, “I’d read articles, but I didn’t realize all the new homes out here were this upscale. Jesus, is there anything left from the 60s?”

            “It’s like they’re trying to turn it into another Beverly Hills,” Mom said, shaking her head in disgust. “This is just like when they demolished all those lovely little cottages along Lake Michigan and replaced them with hotels and condos. It’s people who are struggling and trying to make a life for themselves somewhere new that always end up having to leave again once money gets involved. Ah, well… at least this festival’s still holding on and probably bringing some of the old blood back.”

            “Yeah. I guess. But for how long? Eventually, the wealthy out here will forget what this place was known for, and then complaints about the event… and the sorts of people that come to it will pile up, and this last gasp will disappear, too.”

            “Oh, Marlon, try not to be so pessimistic. Some things do hold on for a while.”

            Dad huffed and asked, “Can you look at the map and tell me what road to take? They’re all really curvy. I hate trying to turn around on a dead end that’s on a slope.”

            “Honey, I think we just passed a sign telling us to stick on this road for the event. It’s not far from the Houdini Estate, I believe,” she noted and dug around for the map.

            I randomly remembered that Dave Grohl moved out here sometime in the late 90s. Shame we were a little early; I could’ve asked him for tips about starting a band. Not that I planned to play either grunge or hard rock. On that thought, what, exactly, were we going to play, anyway? I didn’t even know yet, or have a name for us. It was never too early to start thinking up ideas, but I had time to let inspiration hit, too.

            “Almost there, kids,” Dad promised. “I know the outdoor stuff wore you out.”

            “Did we have to stay up in the mountains for so long?” River moaned in pain.

            “I thought it was nice to get away,” Olive countered, her sunburned face smiling.

            We pulled into the dirt parking lot at around noon, where Dad paid five dollars to get a spot, which was “very” anti-capitalist; but to be fair, any open, flat space up in these hills came at a premium. Music was piped in over loudspeakers to get everyone in the mood, and once we had settled between two other dirt-encrusted old cars, the song switched over to 1966’s Gimme Some Lovin—another tune that had that “road trip beat.” The so glad you made it almost made it feel like we hiked down from Topanga to get here.

            The canyon was hot and bright, which was how I remembered the summer of ’93 in particular, and wow, did these crowds bring me back. There was an eclectic mix of everything from the bright pastels and denim shorts of the era, to jean jackets or vests on the Gen-X teenagers, and some tunics and floral shawls on the older set like they were still living in the golden age of the protest song. Sunglasses and caps were plentiful, and we were parked not far from a bunch of bearded dudes in leathers, who seemed a little hesitant to leave their Harleys behind as they chatted it up with lunchtime beers.

            When your festival’s only suggested guideline is that you’re in an indie band, you really will attract people from all walks of life. Of course, today only had the classic rock and folk music block, and we’d be missing the other two thirds of the three-day event.

            The outdoor, minimally-shaded venue, which basically used a line of food trucks as the front fencing, gave me the same “county fair” vibes that it did when I was here the first time, and Dad put down a fifty at the cash-only ticket booth to get us all our orange wristbands and past the gate. The stage was dead ahead, across an open field that provided no chairs. Mom and Olive, carrying all five of ours between them, found the same cozy spot they had fifty-two of my years ago, close to a gazebo where the sound technicians operated. It wasn’t in the shade yet, but it would be in a few hours.

            “Sun lotion, everyone,” Mom said and handed Olive one of the two bottles, for her skin and my own. As she got to work covering River’s exposed arms and neck while he stared at the crowds, I tried to feel more present, and sharpened my senses. “Hold still, River,” Mom sighed. “I know you hate the smell of this brand, but you burn easily.”

            This was my first music festival, and I’d been too young last time to appreciate it; with that haze of childhood “what is all this?” gone, I was determined to enjoy the music from every band today, whether they were playing originals or covers. Many would be lost to time. For some, maybe this was the last time they played. I wanted to remember.

            “Your turn, Maze,” Olive said and squeezed out a dollop onto her palm for me.

            I looked at her, seeing the very visible white coating all over her red forehead and cheeks, and couldn’t help but reply, “Not taking any chances, huh?”

            “Hey,” she scowled as she applied the cold lotion to my arms, “I did put this stuff on yesterday. I just misjudged how long we’d be outside. You’re a little burnt yourself.”

            “Ollie?” I struck a curious tone as a band took the stage and started testing their instruments over the so-so speakers. “Why do you think Mom and Dad gave it all up?”

            “Well. That sounds a little judgmental,” Olive sighed and finished by wiping some of the sunscreen on my nose. “A lot of bands don’t make it and have to break up, Maze. Just like so many artists and writers have to move on, too. It’s not always because they lack talent, or motivation, or just aren’t making enough to get by. I mean, so much of it is timing and luck and getting noticed by the right people, sure, but sometimes you do it for a while and the passion and love you had for it just… stops being there.”

            I was trying to ask her about our parents specifically, because I never believed I had found out for certain in all the time I knew them. True, it could’ve been any one of those typical factors, but the exact reason had always eluded me, and it was painful for them to talk about whenever we dug too deeply. My most solid assumption had always been that it involved their debt situation, but I wanted to hear what this younger version of Olive thought about it, long before I originally asked her when she was thirty.

            “But why do you think our parents broke up the band?” I pressed. “I mean, that’s what happened, right? They chose to end it, and everyone went their separate ways?”

            “Maisy…” she puffed with an air of agitation. “Mom’s right. It was long ago.”

            “But you were there, even if you were a kid. Do you remember the main reason?”

            For a moment, it almost looked like Olive was working up to giving me a direct answer. But she deflected, either because she thought I was too young to understand or that it simply wasn’t worth bringing up, by answering, “Let’s just enjoy the music of the bands that are still around, okay? Maze, it’s your first festival! Have some fun and maybe do a little dancing, would you? I promise we won’t take too many embarrassing pictures.”

            I wasn’t solving this family mystery, at least not yet. I shifted focus to the present, and took in the sight of music-lovers and a crowd that had no cell phones, with maybe just a handful of bulky old camcorders among them. What an extinct, melancholic sight.

            With the headlining band of four ready to go—consisting of three guys on guitar and a woman on the keyboard—the festival organizer hopped up onto the stage, took the microphone, and smiled as a smattering of applause hit his ears. The grounds looked to be roughly three-quarters full, which I suppose wasn’t too bad, but 1998 would end up being the tenth and final year the event took place. Like King Arcade, it was a thing that existed and brought people together, and then one year, no one came back.

            “Hello, everyone! Hi!” the fifty-something man said peppily. “I’m Michael Kine, the manager of this wonderful celebration of music, and I’d like to welcome everyone to the first day of our fifth year. Yes, thank you,” he continued to speak pleasantly and took in more claps. “I’m so glad to see so many people passionate to hear some independent artists today, who work with small labels or sometimes none at all. The next four hours are going to be a rocking good time, I promise you, and we’re opening with a rising local favorite: the folk-rock group, Sierra Hunting Lodge. Okay, yeah!” he spoke over more applause and cheers. “Great! It seems some of you have heard of them. So, with that, let’s bring a little music from the heart back to the old canyon and get started!”

            The band, dressed in unassuming work-like attire similar to how Weezer would present themselves, which kept the focus on the music and story-telling, stepped up and began their set of three songs with one that would always occupy some tiny corner of my mind from this day on: Lost Under Stars, a bit of a haunting piece. I’d eventually wish that my parents had bought the limited-press CD when they had a chance. But I would make sure to undo that mistake today, with the fifteen dollars in my pocket.

            For the first minute, they played a rising, amorphous ambient sound, interspersed with string plucks that seemed to emulate crickets, to set the scene of being alone in the woods at night. Suddenly, with a striking clamorous chord, they woke up the audience. Our narrator realizes he’s lost in a forest, but the sky is clear, and surely the stars can help. The bassist treating his strings more like percussion, the lead guitarist gets into the lyrics. He sings in a stressed cadence, evoking both sorrow and being lost in pain.

“Hey, hey, can’t find my way, in dark of night, with stars too bright. Pines and bark in all directions, I’m all alone, lost in reflections. Nana said, that when we die, our soul will fly, to the sky. Then why do they all look down at me, show no interest in guiding me? Now, now, don’t get me wrong, I want to believe, and put spirit in song. But until they speak to me, I’ll only trust what I can see.”

            The next verse had a similar structure, with the storyteller finding a calm lake, where he sees that the stars are in the water and existed below, too, and he treats this as a minor revelation. They weren’t the deepest of lyrics and the message was unclear by the end, where it’s implied that the narrator decided to turn his back on civilization and stay lost in the woods for some reason, but I did really like the catchy melody.

            Their next song was your typical exploration of heartbreak, but was a little more upbeat in comparison, and they ended the set with a more satirical darkly comedic tune about a music executive losing his mind and running over a rock-n-roll band that had driven him crazy with their own tour bus. They then took in their applause, smiled and waved, and left the stage. Whatever group was coming up next had drums to set up, and would need a few minutes to make sure they sounded right.

            “Daaad… I’m hungry,” River complained. “Can we have lunch now?”

            “Well, could we all agree on one kind of food, so I don’t have to stand in more than one line?” he asked everyone. “There’s a burger truck, a barbecue one, pizza…”

            “By the slice?” Olive replied. “Sounds fine to me. With a Diet Pepsi or Coke.”

            “All in agreement, for once?” Dad looked at our faces. “Great. And who wants to help me carry the plates?” When he saw me stand up, he smiled. “Thank you, Maisy.”

            The only reason I wanted to go with him, was to simply experience more. When I went to moments I just had to relive, I’d try to absorb everything about them. The smells of the food, the old-fashioned menus and their prices—heck, even getting to see the lineup of old soda cans and their designs was another little bite of nostalgic bliss.

            “When do you think Joni’s showing up?” I overheard one of the two women in line ahead of us ask the other. “Have you heard anything about what she’s singing?”

            “Not yet, but I heard one guy say that Neil Young might be playing, too!” her friend or sister replied. “Could you imagine? Oh, I’d love to get his autograph.”

            “I’m starting to think the rumors are unfounded, Maze,” Dad said quietly to me with a sigh. I looked up at him, and he explained his reasoning, “I don’t see any press around. Usually, famous people show up at things like this to get at least some PR.”

            “… Pizza Restaurants?” I asked in my innocent tone, just to make him smile.

            He did, and patted my cap as we inched forward. “Food’s on your mind, huh?”

            I smiled back, and closed my eyes as the next band began a cover of Heart of Gold.

            After standing in a long line, we returned with five drinks and five slices of pizza in hand just as a Stones-Jefferson cover band took the stage, opening with the latter group’s Volunteers. Hunger pangs were now aplenty, so everyone dug into warm pie.

            “Mm… Mm-hm,” Mom murmured as she tried to wrangle melting cheese. “Not bad for food truck pizza. It’s no Cosmo’s, but I’ve had much worse. You kids should’ve seen the food options at festivals in the old days, if we were lucky enough to get any.”

            “You ever get food poisoning at one?” Olive asked over a song about revolution.

            “No, but we usually couldn’t afford it, anyway,” Dad replied. He then let out a contented sigh, soaked in some music, and added, “Ah… I do miss this scene.”

            While it did feel impulsive and inappropriate, I couldn’t hold it anymore and just had to blurt out from the blanket where I sat cross-legged, “What happened to you both?”

            “Maisy?” Mom asked, my comment clearly heard and landing with an immediate impact judging by her taken-aback appearance. “What… do you mean by that?”

            I wiped my greasy fingers on a napkin and continued, painfully, “How did you guys go from attending these events and loving music, to getting into timeshares of all things? I get that you needed jobs, but why choose to trap people into commitments that are really hard for them to get out of? I just don’t get the link between A and B.”

            It’s unlikely that I’ve ever said the word “flabbergasted” out loud in my life, but if there were ever a time to apply it to a reaction, this would be it. Our folks stared at me, then looked at each other, and back to me again. This was the problem with being so young at the moment: when I said anything that sounded remotely adult, that would be barely passable from the mouth of a teenager, it was out of the natural order and no one knew how to react. I could already tell that this conversation would have to wait.

            “Maisy!” Olive said in a scolding tone. “I don’t know where you heard that about our parents’… professions, but that’s rude. They work hard and sacrifice half a year for us.”

            “Um, Maze… Are you being bullied at school?” Mom managed to squeak out, Dad still unable to find the words as River just glanced back and forth at everyone. “Did another student find out what we do, and maybe… repeat something their parent said?”

            “Y-yes, that might be it,” Dad said quietly. “An unhappy signee, maybe…”

            I groaned, and went back a minute. This just wasn’t going to work yet, and I’d have to let it go for now. But it wasn’t a total waste; half of my pizza slice had returned.

            We left at around the three-hour mark, having seen most of the whole thing. It looked like close to half of the crowd had departed by the time we did, likely due in no small part to the steady realization that no famous faces would be showing up today.

            “Did everyone have a good time?” Mom asked us after we packed everything away and were heading out. “It’s a shame about Joni, but they were just rumors.”

            “We still got to hear a lot of cool music,” Olive, always thinking positively, said.

            “I heard more bad words than I expected, though…” River mentioned.

            “It’s okay, Riv. Better to hear the real form of expression instead of a radio edit.”

            Near our exit, where there were lines for several merch tables, Mom took quick notice of the stacks of CD albums that had tags claiming they were marked down, but they all actually seemed to be at typical prices you’d find in a record store.

            “Oh, honey, look!” Mom said and picked up the top copy of Night Ride Home. “It’s her album from just a couple years ago. I’ve been meaning to pick this up.”

            Dad took out his wallet without an argument and handed over a pair of tens, replying, “They sure have a lot of them. We can listen to it on the way to the motel.”

            Huh. What a coincidence that someone at this event had a surplus of Joni CDs they were unloading. Meanwhile, I happily grabbed Sierra Hunting Lodge’s album.

            With our quick and nearby 1993 trip ending, we headed back north through the hills towards Santa Clarita, where we’d stay at a Days Inn motel before making an early return home. As the sun dipped over the city on our left, a certain song played on the speakers; a lengthy one comparing childhood dreams to middle age realities. Seconds into it, River tapped my shoulder, and I turned to see his semi-freaked-out expression.

            “Maisy,” he whispered. “Come in, come in from the cold… This is crazy, Maze! That’s one of the things I heard you saying in your sleep! So weeeird…”

            I felt my heart skip a beat. All this worry about muttering plans and stuff about the future, and it turned out I might’ve just been repeating lyrics? Maybe it wasn’t always the case, but if that’s what he thought, he might excuse any future actual subconscious temporal incursions the same way. Perhaps I’d been thinking of this drive for a while?

            “Yeah,” I shrugged and came up with something, “Olive mentioned that, too.”

            He tilted his head. “You also talked about ‘eye phones.’ Any idea what that is?”

            I’m writing this at a desk in a cheap motel room, in my backup notebook. I’d call it a burn book, but I’m too young to play with matches, so public trash cans will have to do when it comes to the disposal of these sensitive journal entries after I digitize them.

            The trip went as I remembered, and outside of being present all over again, I’m pretty sure I didn’t alter much of anything other than River’s wrist injury and going with Dad to get our lunch. River, in pain… That always felt like a tragedy. I will see my share of Little League games where he takes a ball to the body and gets his free walk. He’ll get fully beaned a few times, too, but keeps playing anyway. That was always the thing with my brother. Deep down, he was a sensitive, maybe even old soul, but he keeps so much pain, both emotional and physical, inside, and like a game of baseball, walks it off.

            Until, of course, the day he couldn’t anymore.

            River Samson Wilkins was born a week early on April 5^th, 1983, two years and five days before I came along. Our birthdays are so close, that I often shared his leftover decorations when my turn came around, which could make a week feel like one long celebration. Some siblings don’t get along, or at least not all the time, but that was rarely a problem for us. Though he’d never admit it, Olive is his hero. He always saw her as an overachiever and protective guardian; the “coolest babysitter ever,” in many ways. When it came to me, he dabbled in those old defensive instincts, but I was more of a “younger twin” instead; an almost-equal. Despite our interests diverging, we were thick as thieves.

            We could never really explain just why he was the one member of the family that never had the same passion for music the rest of us did. He did like it, and most genres, sure, and was always ready to listen to the newest album with us, but by age six it was clear he was more about listing off baseball players than artists. Looking back, I used to sometimes wonder why a sensitive kid like him took up a sport where his team tended to lose half the time. I would think… Didn’t that hurt? Didn’t that tear him up inside?

            Now, I realize that maybe it didn’t, since it was never all on him. He didn’t lose; the team did, but he and his friends were also all in it together. Baseball was an objective game of numbers and stats. But getting a bad review or audience reaction on a song you and your bandmates passionately created together? Well. That right there is true pain.