Things Consumed

 

Thanksgiving

It was another one of those gorgeous days that made me want to stay in the City, but it was also Thanksgiving, a good time to visit my parents.

My parents live in the town of Riverbank, California, a few hours away from San Francisco by car, and slightly longer by train. (Amtrak used to stop in Riverbank and a very old-fashioned, simple looking station stop, rather than in Modesto, the largest town in the area. Eventually, Modesto built a better station (this being quite relative), and the train started skipping the Riverbank stop. Vagrants moved into the tiny Riverbank building, and it was eventually burned to the ground. Now, when I take the train out to see my folks, they pick me up in Modesto.) They moved there about 14 years ago, after a struggle to sell my childhood home in a weak housing market. They sold the house and managed to get two (and for a time, three) separate, look-alike houses out in new developments in the Central Valley. They had sold the SF house, in part, to be able to live separately, yet somehow managed to purchase separate homes on the same block in Riverbank's River Cove development. For a time, my father moved into another house a town away, in Oakdale, but returned to Riverbank recently.

At the time they moved out of the City, they spoke of what 'my room' would look like when the houses were finished and they could move in. And I kept pointing out that I lived on my own in SF. Which did not deter them. It's nice that they wanted me to move with them. But... You know that saying about how you can take the girl out of the City, but you can't take the City out of the girl? It's wrong. You CAN NOT take the girl out of the City. Not if the girl is conscious. She will not go willingly.

My parents' ever-changing neighbors found their living arrangement to be a sign of (a) wealth, since my parents could mysteriously afford TWO $114k or so homes, and (b) peculiar. After my parents had been living there for some time, my mother introduced herself to a new neighbor who was just moving in and talking to the folks around her, seeking the gossip of her new block. She told my mother that she had just been informed that there was a married couple living separately on the block, their houses nearly (yet not quite) back to back, and that they had dug a secret passageway in between... Which made my mother laugh, because the story had to be about my folks. (Note: they do not have a secret passageway. Or a non-secret tunnel. Just so you know: they live separately because they do not get along very well.)

Even though they aren't very far away, I do not visit my parents very often. There are a few reasons for this. The main one is that their area becomes unbearably hot in summer. Wretchedly, praying-for-nightfall, shriveling up like a raisin hot. A college classmate of mine worked near Modesto, and ran a harvester all night, explaining that the grapes and other crops had to be harvested at night, because during the day, the workers would faint in the heat, and the machines would overheat and malfunction. You can imagine what that heat does to a native San Franciscan, whose maximum functional temperature is a mere 78. My earliest visit in summertime occurred during 112 degree weather. It was one of my last summer visits.

Also, I am not partial to the smell of fertilizer, natural or synthetic, and it appears to be a dominant regional fragrance. Also, I am allergic to... well, everything. During their first few years there, I would visit quite frequently, but was plagued by what I thought were weekend cases of the flu each time. Eventually, I figured out that it's grass seed and other things that are abundant there.

My parents aren't much hardier than I am: they've just adjusted their lifestyle to include cable television (Sci Fi!) and hiding indoors during daylight hours half of the year.

There is an oddness of visiting my parents in 'not-home.' When I visit, I am not going home. Home is HERE. Home is in the City by the Bay. When I visit, I am visiting my parents in their new houses, which is different. I feel sentimental about my dear parents, and my younger sister, and her sweet children... But I have no connection to the place where they live now aside from my visits. There are things that are familiar to me that they took with them from the City, but it's kind of like seeing your things on display in a museum: they've lost their context.

I have even had trouble photographing there. It took years before I could really get a camera out during my visit and point it at anything. I have lots of photos of my nieces, or my parents, but... they're all indoor photos. There was nothing outside that really attracted my attention. At night, I would step outside and look at the wide, starry sky, and marvel at how it stretched all the way from horizon to horizon... and then rush inside to avoid the mosquitoes. Or, I would walk around the development, and try to decide if there was any reason to photograph more than one of the houses, since they all looked alike...

Then my mother took me to Knight's Ferry. KF is a historic spot where people were able to safely cross the Stanislaus River back in the day. There is an old mill; the river, which is dammed about 7 times between the town and its headwaters, looks somewhat natural, in a lovely, rocky channel with deep pools; the river is surrounded by oak woodlands and pastures... It's just gorgeous. And it's especially gorgeous in infrared.

So I'm loosening up. I'm now dedicated to photographing the Stanislaus in the dozen or so parks run by the Army Corps of Engineers, who have apparently claimed the land downstream of their dams for public recreational purposes, which is novel. I've only photographed in three or so of the spots I'm interested in, and plan to explore more of them with my mother on future visits. (In temperate weather.) I can usually only photograph things I am sincerely interested in and/or have some affection for, so this is a pleasant sign that I'm forming a bond with their new home region.

My mom took us for a walk in the town of Modesto during this visit, along the Tuolumne River. The Tuolumne, whose Grand Canyon high in the Sierras is one of my favorite spots on the earth, is a completely different looking river by the time it reaches this section of the Central Valley, but there is a charming park along its banks which was nice to walk off some of our oversized meals in. And so, to even my surprise, I now have a set of the only photos I have ever taken in Modesto, California. I have never given Modesto much thought, aside from a brief analysis during a ride through town that involved comparing the number of fast food joints to the number of cardiac care facilities. But now I have visited a river I'm sentimentally attached to in town. Which gives the experience a strange context, but there it is.

*

Our Thanksgiving feast was great: a vegetarian lasagna (full of fresh spinach, fresh mushrooms, roasted sweet peppers, ricotta, and mozzarella, layered between pasta in a homemade sauce); a green salad with artichoke hearts; black and green olives; home made pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and Breyer's natural vanilla ice cream. My mother prepared everything and accepted little help in cleaning up, so it was luxurious for us.

We walked in a little park along the Stanislaus River after feasting, watched Transformers and Happy Feet, had more lasagna, went to bed... And woke up to my father preparing fried potatoes, pepper jack cheese omelets, and biscuits...

Then came the walk in Legion Park in Modesto. (Sights seen in passing: the Gallo Winery. The City-County Airport. A police action involving a public park and several police cars. Jacked-up trucks.) And then more pie, and ice cream.

Then we returned home, miraculously bypassing any sort of traffic jam in Tracy, to sleep away the afternoon while trying to digest all that food.

I really couldn't ask for more. Except perhaps to see my newest nephew, who is several months old. Or for my parents to move to a spa town, so I could spend every visit soaking in hot, gloriously sulphur-filled water. Or a million dollars and a pony. Oh, never mind - what I mean is, I had a pleasant visit.

Labels: holiday feasting, overeating

posted by Arlene (Beth)11:52 PM