Ocean Views

I spent the first six years of my life, the part that I like to refer to as the “first half” of my childhood in a small house on Highland Boulevard, in Santa Monica California. Those walls housed my life as an only child up until I was six years old and I noticed that my mother’s stomach was expanding at an interesting rate… I mean, nothing for me to be all that concerned about, because after all she was my mom, and I didn’t really see her as anything else, besides just a mom—not a lady who looked pretty in her sundress with the yellow Sunflowers on it, or the woman who’s eyes sparkled with the charms of youth while harboring a glimmer of sophistication gained from a life lived long in a short time.

My days were spent refining my first found talent in life; being a daddy’s girl. I was incredibly good at this, but I have come to realize that perhaps this may not have been all my doing. My mother informed me later in life, (I was probably around 14 or so), that when my dad and her found out she was pregnant with my sister, they made a deal with each other—My dad would make sure that after lil sis was born, I would still get plenty of attention from him so that I wouldn’t feel like I had been abandoned.

Looking back upon my youth, I still cannot decipher whether or not his behavior was indicative of this agreement, or if he simply continued along on the same path he was initially on. All this theorizing aside, the point of the matter is: My father gave me a phenomenal gift—a childhood marked with seemingly insignificant firsts, and a start in life with a full understanding of the basics.

I “helped” him build the second story for the deck in the backyard. We were a block away from the beach, but had no ocean view, so my father, never being one to bow to circumstances decided that we would have our ocean view even if it meant walking up a flight of stairs to get it. This deck must have taken a massive amount of planning to build, not to mention, a natural talent for construction (he built and designed it himself), but to me, it was just one more thing that my dad did… Didn’t all dads build things around the house? For all I knew, he could’ve built us a new house at the drop of a hat.

My dad assured me that my “helping” was responsible for the bulk of the work being completed… After all, in the twilight hours, we would sit up on the second floor, and he would provide me with a plank of wood, and some nails, he would let me know that my hammering those nails in would be the turning point for the work of the day… So while I labored on my nails, next to my father we would finish our work on the deck just as the sun was finishing its work in the sky.

I tasted gum for the first time on one of these sunset curtained nights. My dad chewed it while he was working, and I decided that I needed to be involved in this aspect of our project as well. My gum came with the standard explanation; “Now Hana, just chew it, don’t swallow it, you’re supposed to keep on chewing it.” “OK dad, I can do that.” It was delicious, spearmint, a bright green ball of flavor (I know this because when I took it out of my mouth to examine it, my dad added an addendum to his prior instructions: “You don’t play with it, you keep it in your mouth, or else you’ll get junk in it and then it’s not worth chewing anymore.”).

Back in my mouth it went, and as I sat on the deck watching the sun go down, my dad told me that I should watch closely for the green flash. He said that when he was a merchant marine, you could see the green flash every sunset, but now, on dry land, he was lucky to see it once in a while. “Everything is bigger and brighter in the sky when you’re on the water Hana. I swear there were times that I thought if I reached out far enough from the bough of the ship I would be able to take a piece of the moon home with me.” The night was dawning, and our time outside was winding down, he looked at me and noticed that I wasn’t chewing anymore. He chuckled saying, “You swallowed it, didn’t you?” “Well, I didn’t know how long I was supposed to chew it for, and I didn’t know what to do with it when I was done, and well, I was done.” Thus ended my day as deck construction worker extraordinaire and gum chewer novice.

Time to head inside, to the dinner table where the family all gathered after their respective days out changing the world to talk about exactly what kind of impact we had made, and what else we could do with the world tomorrow. My mother always had dinner ready when my father and I would come inside from our long days toiling on our ocean view, and while we ate, the plates were cleaned and our lives were shared. “I chewed some gum today.” “She swallowed some gum today.” “Kent, you let her swallow it?!” “Well, I couldn’t exactly stop her… I wasn’t about to stick my finger down her throat and pull it out.” “It tasted good, I wanted some more.”

Mom would tell me how proud she was of all the work I was doing, with helping out dad and all, the job couldn’t be done without my assistance. I would inform her that after the deck was completed, dad had promised to teach me how to “throw like a boy.” This first half of my childhood will be forever remembered for these firsts.