The birthdays a kid remembers

surviving my weird year in California

One night at dinner when I was eleven, Mom and Dad told us they had a big announcement. I am told it was a “family meeting,” but I really can’t speak to its democratic element. Dad had accepted a one-year posting with the Navy to Mare Island, California and we were moving in January. Half-way through my fifth-grade year. We would rent out our house and return the following winter, but I was still not too keen on the prospect and let them know it. As consolation, my parents promised me an extra special birthday when we arrived in California. I could pick three different activities for us to do as a family.

So in January of 1979, the five of us crammed into our Chevy station wagon along with half a dozen Cairn Terriers and a fresh litter of puppies. We stowed our suitcases in Dad’s ‘61 VW Bug which we towed behind us. I drew signs and taped them to the windows, “California or Bust.” We put the dog crates in the rear compartment with a sleeping bag laid down next to them so that one of the three kids could rotate back there to lay down. Which meant me. A pile of Tintins and Tomy handheld games sustained me through thirteen states.

As a going away present, Jeff’s friends gave him - inexplicably - six miniature cacti, literally the one thing we were not allowed to bring into California. We smuggled them in anyway. Susan had just recently discovered the Grateful Dead, so she spent the trip listening to them on her cassette player with a single ear bud dangling down her cheek, singing “Tennessee Jed’” over and over until we all about lost our minds. Once Mom entrusted her with buying us car snacks on a limited budget, and Susan proudly returned with several jars of baby food. Somehow we survived the trip.

Once in California, things were pretty much as bad as I expected, especially on the school front. It was a strange land of colorful concrete, brown grass, sharp plants, rock gardens, and God knows why, no squirrels. Mom dressed me to impress for my first day of class in a long sleeve button down and sweater vest with a train across the front. Paired with my horn rimmed glasses and bowl cut, that did not go as well as she had hoped. The kids in my new school surrounded me at recess, gawking at me in their Star Wars and Farah Fawcett T-shirts, the ugly kind with the rectangular iron-on prints. It was the age of Saturday Night Fever and I was Beaver Cleaver.

A few days later a gang of bullies began to shove and pick on me. When I told our teacher, Mr. Cortez, he was angry and vowed revenge. Mr. Cortez was a retired US Army Sergeant with a crew cut and sharp jawline so I knew I was in good hands. But when I told him the bullies was a group of fourth graders, he looked appalled, and in his strong, beautiful Mexican accent told me I was on my own and to toughen up.

I came home in fifth-grade level despair and asked to cash in on one of my three birthday activities - to go see Pete’s Dragon at the mall. I can remember bawling in my bedroom by myself and saying over and over, “I wanna see Pete’s Dragon.” Pete’s Dragon was the only elixir which could make my pain disappear. So we went. It was not that good. Of course, I had no idea of knowing that Disney was in the middle of its decade-long slump before they found their stride again with The Little Mermaid. Pete’s Dragon was firmly a part of that canon, not “Black Hole” bad, but not good either.

And yet it was good. It was Mom and Dad keeping their promise to me. It was them sitting next to me as a family, my Mom with her glasses on, munching on homemade popcorn we had smuggled in, some kernels burned black as always. The other two birthday events were even better - putt putt at a ridiculously garish course, and the Tactile Dome in the Exploratorium in which we climbed through a maze completely in the dark. I slid down a slide half-way through, landing in some sand, and there was Mom sitting quietly at the bottom, scaring me half to death. I threw a handful of sand at her and it went down her blouse. We both laughed.

These are the birthdays a kid most remembers. Not the presents, not the games, not the kids crying because their cake hit the ground. But birthdays in a strange land, with family, getting by together.