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By Root 1157 0

years in Sylmar, California, which my mother had always said were so miserable for her. Dad was at ease remembering he was still in love with Mom during this time, although he thought they would have been better off choosing a different community in which to settle initially, one where Mom would have been less isolated. In pictures, my family looks normal, my mom in a pixie hairdo and short skirts, Dad in bell-bottoms with some gnarly sideburns, standing in front of goats at a petting zoo and at other family tourist attractions. I love the photos of my sister dressed up in her cowgirl outfit, strumming a tiny guitar with a harmonica in her mouth. My favorite video is of her appearing with flair from behind a curtain, performing a magical show, singing into a xylophone’s drumstick, giving a confident shimmy of her wee shoulders. The photos of me show a smiling, dark-eyed baby who seems well fed and well loved.

We talked about my earliest memories in Hollywood, and Dad filled in some of the gaps for me. After he left the house on Larrabee Street, moving to Manhattan Beach, Mom had told us that he was a good-for-nothing bum, or words to that effect, but in fact he was going to grad school at UCLA, earning a 3.89 average toward an MBA. (If his being in school came up, she cut that conversation short with a dramatic, “He cheated.”) But he never finished his master’s.

Mom and Dad’s divorce was final in 1974, and Dad requested, and was granted, a promotion and a move back to Chicago at the home office. He recalled that she asked him to come by before he left for Illinois, and over breakfast in a McDonald’s she said, “I want to tell you that you’re not Christina’s father.” He responded blithely, “Yeah, I know.” They had simply never discussed it before. Despite his suspicions, he had always unequivocally accepted my sister as his own daughter. For that one morning, there were no accusations, there was no acrimony. They finished breakfast, and he started up the new MGB he had bought for the trip to Illinois. “I drove off into the east into the sunrise, to a new job and hoping for a new life,” he said.

He came back fairly often to see us. Always one for an adventure, he took me on a long road trip up the Pacific Coast Highway, all the way to rural Oregon, just him and me in his MGB, making stops along the way to see friends. I was still in kindergarten, and Dad was engaged and caring, working on spelling lessons with me and patiently helping me learn to eat new foods, like yogurt, that I wouldn’t try at home. It was an interesting odyssey into the alternative lifestyles of the Pacific Northwest, circa 1974. My list of new experiences included sleeping in a yurt; stopping in on a friend, who happened to be in her hot tub, and thus seeing a grown woman who was not my mother topless; playing hide-and-seek after dark in a national park in which friends were squatting; watching a ten-year-old handily roll a joint; and various other oddities of the era. The trip became a mainstay classic of my show-and-tell performances.

My memories turn spottier and darker the next year, when, after the usual blissful summer with our grandparents, Mom moved us back to Kentucky and we lived on and off with Dad at Camp Wig, south of Lexington. Even at that tender age, I understood that my parents were not reviving their marriage, we were just grouping up for a while, trying to make the best of things. My feelings from that time are mostly of low-grade, chronic loneliness and fear, with hazy suggestions of a few good memories.

Along with the blackberry bushes and swimming holes at Camp Wig, I loved the cats we kept there. They were definitely pretty wild and free, so when they materialized, it was exciting. I remember them having ear mites and the like and my arms welting up from flea bites. But they were entertaining, and I could spend hours tracking them. My dad is a great cat lover, enjoying them with deep attachment, sensitivity, appreciation, respect, and humor. It’s something we have been able to share, and I enjoyed learning all about the cats