Chapter Two Instant Therapy and a Treehouse to Dream In
1987
We were
silent in the car on the way to the therapist’s office. My face was still red
from crying from the daily morning’s phone conversation with mother—she wanted
to come stay with us for the summer, which was fine, but she refused to accept
that I needed “writing time” from eight to eleven every morning. Her
unwillingness to accept any conditions around her visit made it into an either
or situation—she would come, with no restrictions, or she wouldn’t come. I had
to say no. Tears and pleading words ended every conversation with her every day.
What was
even worse was the hollow feeling inside me when I looked over at Harry. He
didn’t deserve this; well, neither did I. There was nothing truly wrong with us,
except he was overstressed with working at the pottery shop and I was
overstressed trying to write a book. Mothering our daughter Sarah was good with
its sweet highs and tender lows, but mothering my mother, wore me down.
Harry’s face
was looking thinner and I hadn’t seen the sparkle in his eyes in months. I
suspected I looked worse. The writing was going so slow and I didn’t feel that
deep connection to Annie that I had hoped for—I didn’t know all those little
things writers need to know about their subject. How was I to find out? There
was no Theosophical Society nearby—I was working alone in my room with a few books,
my electric typewriter, and a shortage of new inspiration. I needed to be in
California at the place where Annie had spent so much time, or in England where
she was born. I had yet to feel her “collaboration” with me on this project.
“So Harry”
the therapist said, “what would you most like to do now? You’re sounding like
you need a break; something new…what would that be?”
“I don’t
know, I just want Janet and I to be happier.”
Silence.
“What about you Janet?”
“I’m
restless and going out of my mind, that’s all. We’re in what astrologers call
the Uranus Opposition—we’re both around forty years old, you know—and this
passage calls for a big change in one’s life. Something is trying to come to
the surface..and often it just erupts. I’m nervous; scared. That’s why we’re
here—there are rumblings, but nowhere for us to go. I’m afraid we’re going to
implode.”
“And you’re
going through this too, Harry?” she asked. He nodded. She leaned over to him: “Tell
me, what would you most like to do if you could do anything in the world—anything.”
Harry pursed his lips, and then it looked like the proverbial light bulb went
off in his head. “I’d like to do what my father never had a chance to do. I’d
like to go to California. Just drop everything, and go.”
Wow! Did he
just say that? I hadn’t even told him that Krotona, the esoteric section of the
Theosophical Society, was in California, just inland from Santa Barbara. My
eyes widened. “Let’s do it Harry—let’s just go! I mean it!”
I shocked
myself.
And that’s
how we came to live in Ojai, California. We dropped everything and left—it took
6 months and 3000 miles to get to our new dream.
***
Luke, the
realtor, was reluctant to show us the last house he had listed. This was the
last day we had left to find a house before flying back to Rhode Island. Luke
had showed us over-priced houses hanging precariously off cliffs in the high
mountains of Santa Barbara and had shown us dark moldy homes under the oaks in
Ojai. We were willing to take almost anything that didn’t smell and look like
the owner had just died or looked like it was the next statistic in an
earthquake report. It shouldn’t have been so hard. “This one is a bit of an
embarrassment really, but I’ll show you if you want…” I couldn’t imagine any
worse. It was the end of three long days of looking at houses that were all
wrong.
As we drove
up the steep hill we passed a long row of cypress trees, till the road turned dry
and dusty. We passed what look like an abandoned sail boat hoisted on stilts on
our left, and a long red barn on our right. “I hope they have the chickens out
of the bathroom by now” Luke said. Harry and I looked at each other and burst
out laughing. We weren’t expecting a clean house after what we’d seen today,
but “chickens?”
“Yeah, and
there’s probably a few people still living here. The house comes with…well
let’s see…. two trailers, a teepee, the boat you just saw, and a treehouse. Oh
yeah…and more.” There was stuff everywhere. But that’s not what I saw.
The realtor
curved the car around past the front of the long house and stopped at the edge
of an orange grove that seemed to fall away for miles. We stepped out of the
car and looked around….and around and around. There was an almost 360 degree
view of mountains, sky, orange groves…and a gentle breeze. Wind chimes. The
sound of a horse’s whine. There in the distance I could see layers upon layers of
thin clouds like a Japanese painting.
My eyes
teared up. Harry looked over at me—the two of us smiling like Cheshire cats—and
my tears began to fall. “This is it,” I said, grabbing Harry and squeezing him
so hard he laughed. “You don’t even want to look inside?” He said, “To see the
chickens in the bathroom?”
“It doesn’t
matter. Look at this!” I extended my arms like Eve showing Adam paradise.
“But look at
this--” he said, his arms pointing to overhead electric lines crisscrossing the
land like a spider’s web.
“You
could…bury them. Couldn’t you, honey? And we don’t need all these other living
places…I mean just one house will do.”
The realtor
walked the land with us. “It’s what’s left of a hippie commune, I believe, and
there are people still here. He pointed to the tree house, teepee and boat. But
I’m sure they’ll be gone soon.”
“I want to
be here; Harry, what do you say?” We hadn’t even looked inside the main house.
“It’s five acres and $250,000, as is…right?”
He grinned at me from ear to ear. “We’ll take it, Luke.”
And that’s
how we got to live in the long narrow house with a treehouse, a barn for the
pottery, an occasional horse that wandered through the backyard, and a nest of
baby rattlesnakes in the front lawn. I planted jasmine and arranged to get our
furniture moved, while Harry got the guys to bury the electric and hire 4
dumpsters to take all the “extras” away. We certainly didn’t need all that
chicken wire and sheet metal and not even the cannabis growing in the backyard.
Instead we had a hot tub installed, so at dusk we could stare at what the locals
called the “pink moment” when the mountains would light up with a luminous
shade of rose. And at night we’d look up to the sky to see more stars than we’d
ever seen in our lives. At long last Sarah would have a warm pool and happy
parents.
And Sarah
and I found a place we could dream in—we would hang out in the treehouse with a
view that dropped away for miles and miles till the mountains rose up again. Sarah
would bring her “pretty ponies” up there and I would bring my first book by
Krishnamurti. Never had I read anything so dense, but when I stopped to look
out at the view, all the rationality dropped away, and I understood what he was
talking about. I guess that’s the only way to read a mystic. I felt a little
guilty about taking over someone else’s treehouse, but I sensed that Annie
would say we all occupy spaces for just a little while before moving on; yet
another angle on reincarnation. ~ (C) Elizabeth Spring
