At my new house (which is not new), I have a yard — both front and back. The back’s quite a bit bigger than the front, but they’re both miraculous nonetheless. They’re connected by a driveway spanning the entirety of the left side of the house — part of it is clay, part of it is brick, part of it is concrete, and it’s impossible to tell which material was used to fix what when. In the front yard there is a bistro table with a succulent from Chyna, flanked by two chairs that are perfect for an early morning coffee or the very last rays of the sun. And in the back, we have a similar set (Lexi’s), nestled just underneath the garages west-facing window. It sits directly in front of the fire pit and underneath a canopy of string lights that span from the back door all the way to the property’s edge.
At my new house (which is now more than a year old), I have a garage. It’s not made for cars, at least not ones from this century, and the door is so stupendously manual that it’s often difficult to open. The garage has built-in wooden cabinets and a window, which are both quite nice but rather odd features for a garage to have. Now it also has a fridge full of wine and preserves, a butcher’s block I’ve been using as a desk, and a disco ball that catches the heavily saturated orange light from a lamp Jackie Lee gave me some years ago. The walls are lazily painted a limewash terra cotta, and they’re adorned only with an old Sinatra/Jobim vinyl case and some leftover Mardi Gras beads.
At my new house (which, at this point, is just my house), I have a garden. It’s not very big yet, but it’s still a garden. It’s got a baby lemon tree — complete with baby lemons — gardenias that simply won’t bloom, cilantro that won’t stop, and jasmine that grows up the side of the garage. Feargus has a habanero plant in between two Carolina reapers that were meant to be ghost peppers, and in a pot underneath the back window is a birthday gift of lovage from Anna and Niki that I’ve moved thrice. I used to have chervil, too, but it’s been unhappy every which where I’ve put it.
And at my [new] house, in my garden, I have a guava tree. It is as resolute as a man in his sixties and as luxurious as a woman in hers. It’s full of branches crossing every which way and spiders hoping to catch bugs from the river and budding blossoms on the parts that get too much sun. But mostly, it’s full of guavas. They’re yellow when they’re ripe — the kind of yellow that’s nearly chartreuse but isn’t because it’s seen too much UV light. They go from a deep emerald to an enlarged light green to that sun-soaked near-chartreuse, and they’re so ripe they begin to just fall off — into my mint and calla lilies and Jimmy Nardellos.
It’s prolific, this tree, and nestled underneath — just between it and the garage — is a handmade oak picnic table that I bought with the dream of a big dinner as relentlessly full as the tree above it.
I thought perhaps I’d finally ask everyone to bring something of their own, which is something I never do. I almost always make everything myself, down to the garnish on dessert. But this time, I’d assign everyone something, and I’d instruct them to dress like it was the very last day of summer because it would be.
I’d ask Allen and Danny to bring the wine, knowing Allen would do the bringing of the wine and Danny would do the bringing of something else — a camera, probably. Emj and her Josh would bring snacks, Monty would be in charge of some kind of vegetable, and I’d ask Alice and her Josh to make something and instead, they’d order takeout.
There’d be no guavas yet on the tree, on account of it being the summer still, but I’d pack each and every corner of my little clubhouse to the brim with bowls of citrus, fresh flowers, hanging garlic, & the like if only to make my memories of Chainsaw proud.
It would be the first time I’d get to actually have dinner in the yard. We’d eaten at Mardi Gras, and we’d had Friendsgiving the November prior in the dining room, but this would be a complete place setting outside — linen napkins, wooden and brass flatware, amber plates, & a wine glass for every seat.
My grandparents used have us over for country ham, cheese grits, & tomatoes after church on Sundays, and in the summer, we’d sit outside on their porch, looking out over their rose garden while the adults drank Johnny Walker and talked about things that couldn’t have sounded less important to me. Sometimes we’d play bocce ball or croquet or cards, but mainly we sat around the table and talked. Sometimes it was impossible to see the other side of the table over my grandmother’s floral arrangement, but you were expected to be listening nonetheless.
Most Sundays now, my parents, brother, sister-in-law, and cousin have dinner together, and often, I’ll join them. I sit on the phone with them after they eat roast chicken or dijon potatoes or something else my mother considers a comfort. They might play cornhole or watch a football game, but mainly, they, too, just talk. I drink wine and listen through headphones as they make each other laugh around the fire on my folks’ back deck.
At some point, the sunlight will fade on my Atwater home, the string lights will start to sparkle a little bit, and I’ll begin to get a bit cold. That’s normally how I know time’s run out on projecting myself into that version of family dinner, so I’ll go inside and bother Feargus & Lexi (Mom & Dad in Atwater) until Lexi asks if we can go to bed. Feargus will say, “Not yet,” and they’ll sit with me until the very earliest Lexi is allowed to retire.
A few weeks ago, Geoffrey James asked me what space I pictured him in most readily. Of course, I said this one, the one he shares with Anna in Mount Washington — dark wood and lofted where we rang in the new year to his vinyl collection. Until, of course, Mattie shouted, “When will you play something from this century?”
But the coffee table’s covered in books and the grill looks out over the hills. It’s the space that feels like him. Well, really, it feels like them. And I love them.
He then, unprompted, told me he pictured me in my old apartment — the one on Los Feliz — specifically when I lived there alone. All in all I was there nearly five years, but the last one was when the space felt like unadulterated me, Geoffrey said. No tv, iron candle stands situated underneath the bay window, the fake Eames chair in the corner flanked by vintage maps trimmed in brass — it was all as I had always wanted it.
“Not that I don’t love the new place, too,” he added hastily, “it’s just the old one is where I picture you.”
It’s where I picture me, too, though I like my new house better.
At my new house, I can have family dinner at a table, like a proper southern mother who insists her family eat together every night — no tv, no phones, no interruptions.
I am, of course, speaking specifically about my own mother, who in my head invented family dinner. I’m sure it never existed before her, and I have always wondered how it would exist without her. It was sort of a gamble when I put this together in my head, but I don’t really have family close. My lovely cousin and her wonderful husband live in the south bay with their two huskies, but an invite to their house is tough to secure if only just because they’re both consistently out of town.
My family here looks a lot different — it’s the people I met when I was right out of college, listlessly making a home for myself with the few tools I had at my disposal. We spent late nights together, yelled at each other, and above all, ate endlessly together. I don’t have an amber glass plate for everyone who should be at family dinner, but someday I will, and we’ll crowd cane chairs around my table as the earth begins to cool off and cheers to how much we hate each other.
At the end of the night, everyone thanked me for hosting, which they always do, and I thanked them for bringing food, which I have never allowed them to do before!
“Everything’s perfect,” I slurred as they each individually told me their dish didn’t “hold up to the house standard.” I just wanted to share a meal, I told them, and to be quite frank, we probably could have been fed just by the California Chicken Cafe salads Alice and her Josh brought.
But instead we ate roast chicken, as we always do at my mother’s house and now, I guess, at mine, and I remarked before we ate how grateful I was to have such wonderful chosen family.
And then I’m pretty sure they booed me.
To be honest, I don’t really remember what anyone said or even really what people brought (save Brando’s mash & five spice gravy). I mostly remember Feargus calling out of work the next day and a hostess gift I received — a very pretty bottle of wine — though I haven’t the slightest who gave it to me. I was far too drunk.
I think I’ll let Brando and Mizzy take the credit for it. It seems like something they would do.
Anyway, this was my family dinner. It’s not Mom’s French wooden table with the curved legs, and it’s no Dad’s grilled pork loin, but it did have Ray Charles playing right into George Strait, just as God (my mother) intended.
Thanks to Danny for the camera and my mother (God herself) for the autumnal equinox weather,
sL
Tfti*
Fit