ALTADENA IS MY FOREVER HOME
The blue cashmere sweater gave me pause.
Which container? No, no way, not the one marked “thrift store donations.”Ah, my estate sale could be the answer.
But then I thought I’d keep it, even though I was too fat to cram myself into it.
It was a favorite, after all, and I knew, as I’d been saying for years, that I’d shed the twenty-plus pounds I’d gained since 1976 when I purchased our family three-bedroom home on a picturesque one-block street in Altadena.
But now, forty-nine years later, I had decisions to make, important things to consider, like where we going to live next.
Yet there I was piddling over whether to keep or abandon this soft baby-blue cashmere sweater that had been a major coordinating thread for so many of what I thought were eye-catching outfits.
I’d worn it to the celebration party the night the votes were counted and I was elected to serve on the Altadena Town Council.
It wasn’t just a sweater, it was a memory.
But with a lot of self-talk that snapped me back into reality, I tossed the damned thing into the donation bag as I sorted and boxed-up forty-plus years of stuff. The sweater was one of many memories that were not going with me, one of many painful choices I had to make.
Now that we’re unpacked and settled into new living quarters in Las Vegas, I frequently ask my daughter, Brandi, who moved with me from Altadena, “Have you seen my … ?”
Of course, her answer is always “No.”
But it goes back and forth because there’s a bunch of her stuff/memories that were donated somewhere, sold at our estate sale, or were picked up by the “Got Junk?” service.
“Oh, my Harry Potter collection should have never been left behind,” she often reflects.
Ah, memories of the favorites, of possessions unaccounted for, of things we don’t need but of things that remind us of who we are. Sometimes we experience this kind of revelation only when the goodies are gone
Fortunately, I came up with a phrase that grounded us and helped us move past what we’d left behind. I used it even when I’d look for my UCLA Gold Honor Braid I received as Departmental Scholar in Sociology upon graduating from those hallowed halls of learning.
“Oh well, lost in the Thomas Fire,” I’d announce.
On December 4, 2017, that California fire burned 281,893 acres, destroyed 1,063 structures, and took until January 12 of the new year to be contained.
That January 2018, also was the month when broken pipes underneath my Altadena home made useless my mantra that always annoyed my adult offspring:
“I’m not going anywhere, I’m here forever; they gonna carry me outta 2580 La Fiesta Avenue, feet first.”
Instead of being wheeled out by the coroner, standing tall, I left with the moving van.
I live somewhere else now, but Altadena will always be home.
Charles White Park, named in honor of the African American artist and Altadena resident, is a stone’s throw from La Fiesta Avenue. A hop skip and a jump from there is the Bob Lucas Library and Literacy Center, named for the African American journalist and literacy advocate who, like White, was a member of our Northwest community.
It was the Altadena main library, though, that grabbed my attention long before I purchased a home and moved to La Fiesta with my brood of five kids.
Hard to believe that a pond with flowing water, colorful fish, beautiful plants, and a bridge crossing over it could have such appeal, but it and the rest of the beautiful library and grounds reflected the wonders of the community.
My kids were captivated and spent their growing-up years crossing the bridge to make their way inside the library to participate in its many programs and to continuously pay late fees for books they weren’t quite ready to turn in on the due dates.
The forever-reading daughter, who even read the ingredients listed on the breakfast cereal boxes, in high school convinced her teacher to add the library to his list of civic-focused places where students could volunteer and gain community service credits. She was still volunteering (without credits) after finishing high school.
“I loved that place and the staff,” she says to this day, and early on in the Eaton Fire’s hours of confusion hesitatingly added, “I heard it burned down.”
It did not but our conversation reminded me of when I served as an Altadena Library Board trustee. How many times must I have worn my now-abandoned blue cashmere sweater to some of those meetings?
The giant trees on Christmas Tree Lane, where the library is located, also survived the Eaton Fire’s nightmarish carnage. They still stand tall and proud, there on Santa Rosa Avenue.
The wonderful volunteers who decorate them for the gala lighting ceremony every Christmas will return soon (not waiting for Christmas) to string the lights and turn them on.
.
When he was Los Angeles County Supervisor, Michael D. Antonovich performed the countdown for the ceremony, and one year held my young foster daughter, Brandi, in his arms to assist him.
Every visit we made to the library after that she’d rattle on about her and “Uncle” Mike’s magic.
Brandi’s a grown-up now, and has stopped bemoaning her left-behind Harry Potter book collection and his Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and wizardry pages, and instead reflects with gratitude on how fortunate she is to have been able to choose what to leave behind and to not have everything she owned reduced to ashes.
Photos by Nate
Since we live a four-hour drive from “home” now, I’m not there, but I’m always there—via phone calls and text.
A relative and former neighbor sent me the following text the other day: “Morning, I didn’t stop to take pictures, but I saw our little neighborhood Wednesday and the only homes standing are 2 blue houses. One on La Fiesta and one on the corner of Ventura and La Fiesta on the north/west corner. Should’ve left my color blue.”
Photo by Nate
It’s been five years since my baby blue cashmere sweater became a thrift store donation. I’m sure some fair damsel — one who it fits perfectly — has bought it by now and has been struttin’ through the town in it, knowing nothing of its history — certainly not the many people and places I had the opportunity to experience while wearing it, and never giving a thought, no doubt, to what the color expresses.
Blue is said to project calmness, relaxation, peacefulness, tranquility, security, stability and reliability.
Our famous Christmas Tree Lane will soon have lights again.
Altadena will shine again. Altadena will glow again.
It always has, and it will again.
When the volunteers finish stringing the lights and the community gathers for the celebration, I’ll be there. I’m going home wearing a new blue sweater.
