I recall the night my father fled with me...

 

The last thing I remember is the black blur of her raging silhouette in the glowing doorway of our Airstream, screaming. She hurled a cast iron skillet from the opening of that tiny trailer like a volcanic eruption. Her rage was bigger than all of us, me, my dad, my tiny baby brother hulled up inside the trailer, even the night sky and that Bonny Doon mountain top.  This woman was my mother, my world, my huge angry world. Exploding.  I was in my dads arms when he grabbed the back of my head and tucked my three year old body into his, as he ducked in what felt like a slow motion eternity. The pan flew over the top of us, but hit the tree behind us, cracking the cast iron, splitting it in two.

 

That pan was not the only thing that broke that night.

Our family, too, shattered.

  

We backed out of the long dirt driveway and drove down the winding roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I awoke the next morning to the sound of gulls, and waves crashing and the smell and mist of salt air. I was curled up in the passenger seat of my dad’s old green International Scout, parked on a cliff between Highway One and the Pacific Ocean.  

 

It was just me and my dad... And peace and silence. I was safe.  Nothing had ever felt more like home, than the morning we woke up homeless.

 

Though this may feel like a raw and gritty story, to me it is just another example of beauty in the world.

 

Everybody has a story, this is just the beginning of mine.