Karl has nothing on the fog over the Grapevine: I can see only the first set of brake lights in front of me, barely, and those only when they’re on. The radio’s in and out. It’s fraught and eerie on the inside, but later on I’ll look down on the same sea of white from a deserted campground on Mt. Pinos and feel like I’m on an island in the sky.
I’m in Pasadena to visit my oldest friend, whose toddler and I have in common a skeptical countenance and a wild enthusiasm for dogs. She dozes through most of our hike up Echo Mountain: after setting out on the wrong side of a culvert there is only the briefest consideration given to backtracking before instead we hoist her, still sleeping, over the fence. I believe this is called raising them right.
My friend’s parents have also moved south. Their new home is a topsy-turvy world in which the fort-making furniture of our own childhood has been rearranged in space and time: where the rooms overlook an ocean instead of a swimming pool; when she’s a mother and not a child. We find a camcorder and screen our ’90s-era home movies, Python-esque productions that shake with the director’s laughter. We watch our younger selves play games of Hot Lava and Lost Kids.
The overall effect—and can you blame me? On a warm beach in a soft blue morning? Watching a school of actual dolphins?—is one of vertiginous gratitude and loss, of my heart in my mouth.
e.alia.salim 