http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/mar/24/common-ground/
By Chelsey Tobiason
March 24, 2010
My mom and dad raised me conventionally. We would spend our summers
skinny-dipping in the Yuba River and the winters huddled around the
warm fireplace, singing protest songs of the '60s. Accompanied by
guitars and harmonicas, the sound would resonate so loudly that even
Native American spirits could hear us.
My hometown, Nevada City, has a diverse mix of inhabitants. The aging
hippies, who still adorn themselves in Birkenstocks and loose-flowing
clothing, are still around. These are the true activists who attended
Woodstock and anti-war protests during Vietnam and who were part of
the back-to-the-land movement. These hard-core activists tolerate the
younger generation of Greens with nose rings, dreads, and babies
swathed in soft cotton, hanging like little monkeys from their bodies.
I loved growing up in a beautiful, small town like Nevada City, but I
also yearned for a place where no one knew my name, my family
history, or my shoe size. I wanted the anonymity of a big city, with
plenty of distance and more sunshine.
I'm done with Nevada City! I decided on my 16th birthday. Done. Two
years later, after graduating from high school, I packed up my trusty
Honda Civic and drove 85 mph toward San Diego.
"I've found us a great place," my boyfriend, also from Nevada City,
had told me. He'd found a job in San Clemente a few months prior and
had volunteered to secure us a place before my arrival.
My boyfriend was older. He was smart, funny, and very sweet, but the
man had zero street smarts. His idea of finding a house was clicking
on the first ad he saw on Craigslist and viewing it with the
enthusiasm of a four-year-old seeing a new bicycle on Christmas morning.
Instead of living in the posh, serene community of San Clemente, he
found us cheaper housing in what he called "The O'Side."
"It's dirty here," I commented on our first day in Oceanside. "There
are condoms all over the roads and flower pots are filled with
trash." It was not the sunny, happy San Diego that I had pictured.
"This place is great," he told me. "There's a Jiffy Lube across the
parking lot and a Ralphs within walking distance." But it took only a
few days before his vision cleared.
The location of our new apartment filled me with dread. In the small,
gated complex, steps away from Interstate 5, I unpacked my things.
The grey carpet felt dirty on my bare feet, and the broken blinds
that covered our sliding door cut off the only source of light in the
studio apartment.
The man who lived beside us ordered hookers like pizza, and that,
coupled with his habitual drug abuse and middle-of-the-night electric
guitar, made life hell.
The atmosphere of downtown Oceanside was no better. Gangs and the
military roamed the streets, and though I had craved something
diametrically opposed from my hometown, this wasn't it. Gang
shootings and packs of drunk, horny soldiers weren't all that homey.
The two of us would hide out in our apartment, watching cartoons late
into the night, searching for any semblance of innocence that we
could find. If we did venture out, it was always down to Ocean Beach,
where the streets flowed with bikini-clad girls riding beach cruisers.
Over the next year, I visited places all around San Diego. Though
many of them were beautiful, they never felt like home. But it was in
O.B. that I finally found my sanctuary.
The laid-back, pot-smoking folk of Nevada County intermingle with
retirees who have relocated from the larger surrounding cities.
Citizens of San Francisco, Sacramento, and even L.A., have crumbled
away from the city to enjoy the lifestyle of a small town.
Directions include phrases like, "Turn right at the rock shaped like
a moose, drive past the ridge, and then follow the wildflowers until
you see my teepee." Back home, marijuana and hippies grow wild.
The tree-huggers of Nevada City take their hippieness to the extreme
by living off of the land, building treehouses, and snubbing their
noses at The Man. (In O.B., there are also people who are obsessed
with recycling and who sleep under the night sky but here, we call
them homeless.)
"Silly liberals, paychecks are for workers!" is a bumper sticker seen
on many of gun-toting Nevada County Republicans' SUVs. These
deer-hunting folk tend to believe that homosexuality is a disease;
they add a certain je ne sais quois to the mixing pot of Nevada City.
"Left is Right" stickers are usually plastered on Volvos, in stark
contrast to the conservatives' jibes. It is an inside joke that Volvo
struck a deal with all of the liberals to buy their brand.
At my house, my dad's sweat lodge was a constant and unwelcome lesson
on anatomy. I learned from an early age the affect that gravity has
on the aging human body.
During these sweats, my friends and I would climb up the ladder from
the basement and gently lift up the trap door that led into the
house. This gave an excellent vantage point for the designated scout
to peer into the living room and see if the coast was clear.
If no saggy body parts were in sight, the scout would shout, "Go!" We
would scramble through the trap door, grab some food, then jump back
down the rabbit hole before the sweaters emerged, covered in hay,
eagerly awaiting the potluck in the nude.
When I first got my driver's license, I drove a yellow Toyota
pick-up. It was fairly distinctive, resembling a lemon that someone
had drop-kicked, stepped on, and left in the dirt. Excited to be in
the car all alone, I drove to the local grocery store. I decided to
take a shortcut. But as I was driving against the designated arrows
of the small parking lot, the keen eye of a fellow shopper followed
my every move.
While in the store, my cell phone rang. "Do you know what arrows
mean?" my dad sarcastically asked. "I heard you're driving horrible
already. You have been driving for one day. One day, and already I'm
getting calls." After that, city life had never sounded sweeter.
The woman who ran our apartment complex in O.B. looked pale and
fragile. She was barely tall enough to ride a roller coaster. She
took us on a walking tour around the parking lot, up and down the
cement stairs that led to the upper-level apartments. Along the way
she greeted tenants.
"Hey, Fred," she said. "How's your mother?" What a nice lady, I
thought. The image of the frail, old woman was shattered when we
entered the parking lot of our building and she cussed out a man
parked illegally in the alley.
"Goddamn son of a bitch!" she shouted. "I told you not to park here!
Get your ass out of that spot or I'll have you towed!"
The apartment was no utopia. Cracked, yellow stucco was peeling off
the sides of the building, and I found a cockroach in one of my
shoes. But outside our bedroom window hung a telephone wire that all
the escaped parrots of the world decided to call home. I was often
awakened by their squawking, preening, and chatting. If I listened
long enough, one would often slip up and say hello. Although the
birds were obnoxious, they were a much better alarm than the
Oceanside crackheads that perpetually tried to unlatch my sliding
glass door at 5:00 a.m.
My boyfriend and I only lasted two months in that apartment.
Somewhere along the way, the romance had faded and we became best
friends. Sitting on the hood of his car, we hugged and cried. I
tearfully waved goodbye as he pulled out of our parking spot and
headed home to Nevada City.
I fell in love with Selig by accident. He was a right-wing
conservative who didn't believe in evolution. He represented
everything I had been taught my whole life to despise.
"Well, he's a Republican," I explained to my mom right after meeting
him. "And he's also Christian." Her gasp made me feel as if I was
dating a terrorist.
"But I think I love him," I added softly.
I had known Selig for over a year because he had worked with my ex.
Our first date consisted of me badgering him to take me on a
motorcycle ride. When we rode home in the chilly night and his gloved
fingers shielded mine from the cold, I fell fast and hard. Me, the
girl who up-chucked at the idea of marriage, was becoming keenly
aware that there was something to the notion.
Being with someone whose ideals differed so greatly from my own made
me stronger. In explaining to Selig my beliefs on gay marriage,
abortion, civil rights, and other hot topics, I took the values I had
been raised with and I made them my own. Selig proposed in December
2008, and I am now becoming a part of a family that voted for George
W. not once, but twice.
Through our discussions we found a common ground that suited us both.
He was not intimidated by the fact that I am an opinionated liberal.
Through our differences he has taught me to be more unprejudiced. A
Republican teaching a Democrat to be more tolerant? My mother would die.
On a spectrum of opposites, Selig and I look mild when compared to
the extremes of our families. My parents have never been married, and
until recently could not be in the same room together. Selig's
parents have been happily married for 34 years and still give each
other piggyback rides.
My mom had her first pedicure last year, doesn't believe in makeup,
and takes nature walks to feel a closer connection with the trees and
fairies. Selig's mom is an exuberant volunteer for Red Cross who
looks too young to have three grown children and is a walking
advertisement for J. Crew. My dad is a lawyer whose specialties
include divorce and defending pot-heads. Selig's father is a
corporate accountant.
My parents give thanks to Mother Earth, while Selig's pray to God.
And while all four of them are kind, sweet people, we had our doubts
about how they would mesh.
I awoke the weekend of our wedding reception pondering what I would
find when I went down stairs. My family had flown out from Nevada
City, and we were all staying at the in-laws' house in Washington
State. I heard laughter echoing from the kitchen and entered to find
the conversation changing from the history of my hometown to the time
my mother was arrested.
"You see," she began, setting the stage for her story, "it was at the
beginning of the Iraq War, and we were gathering in the streets in a
peaceful protest."
I stood, grasping the rail at the edge of kitchen, trying to decide
if I should run back upstairs and hide my head deep beneath the
covers, or if I should brave the family fiasco.
The story continued, and in a partnership forged on shared protest
experience, my parents collaborated in explaining how my mother sat
in the street and refused to move, even when the police chief told
them, "You've made your point, folks. Let's move it on out. We don't
want to arrest you." I glanced to my right and saw the O-shaped
mouths of my newly acquired in-laws.
"The best part," my dad added with a chuckle, "is that Utah was there!"
Utah Phillips was a renowned musician and had been a peace activist
for decades. Utah, along with my parents, had experienced more
powerful protests than the one that they'd attended on the streets of
Nevada City.
"And Utah sits there," my dad said. "This old, bearded man, and he
shouts at the police, 'Hey, what's a guy gotta do to get arrested
around here?' "
My mom and dad erupted in a fit of laughter, and without making eye
contact, I resigned myself to giggling. I had just recently come to
the conclusion that my parents weren't just nuts they were
intriguing. The older that I get, the more that I realize that what
embarrassed me most as a child is what makes me love them more as an adult.
I have realized that the dynamics of my family and that of Nevada
City have engraved in me a love of diversity. I love that my
husband's family is so different from my own, and though it may lead
to some awkward moments, it is always a spark for conversations.
I like living in a world where extremes encounter each other every
day. I was raised to think freely and to be different. So being the
progressive, free spirit of Selig's family isn't a bad thing to me
it's a challenge. And besides, I am nothing compared to my parents.
I may eventually outgrow Ocean Beach. The loud, dirty streets may not
always comfort me, and the road less traveled may call my name. But
what I discovered in moving to San Diego is this: though the small
town girl in me needs adventure and new beginnings, I look for pieces
of Nevada City wherever I go.
The place where I have landed is a small community at the water's
edge that nurtures hippies young and old. The sound of the river has
been replaced by that of the ocean; the smiles and waves of those I
grew up with have been traded for those of new friends, and some
local homeless people. But when I'm sitting in traffic to get into
Ocean Beach, with the wind blowing my hair and the putrid smell of
the bay cleansing my nostrils, I know I am home.
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