Kintsugi (#1)

I’m writing the story of my life in shards. These are the memories that stuck.

And now for something completely different . . .

I’m spending this week in Ojai, in the house where Krishnamurti once lived and worked. It’s a retreat center now — serene and silent, on a sprawling property covered with apricot orchards, orange groves, and animal sounds.

A fitting perch from which to share the first part of a new creative project.

I’m calling it Kintsugi because it feels akin to the Japanese art of repairing broken objects.

From the pieces of our past, we are formed and re-formed.

What are the memories from your own life that have stuck?

Here is the first of mine . . .

1973

The man we are waiting for is large and friendly. The whiskers of his mustache tickle my cheeks. His hair is long and blonde. If I ask him, he will take my mom’s mascara and draw glasses and a pointy beard on my face. The car he drives is blue and shaped like a beetle, so I know I will know that it’s him when he turns onto our quiet road.

While we wait, the insects outside our house talk in their different languages. The screen door taps slightly against its swollen frame. There is no dog yet to join me in the waiting -- just my mother and me, about to be three for the second time.

I don’t remember the first, even though I’ve held the pictures that prove it. I’m told I used to ride in the bus the other man is sitting in. My mom swears I’m the naked baby holding the bottle of beer in his lap. But those pictures don’t fit into the timeline of my remembered life. They belong to someone else, not the boy waiting at this door on a peaceful summer night, somehow aware that everything is about to change.

My mom comes to stand next to me. She holds my hand and points at the edge of our road. I watch as the beetle rolls its way towards us, past the Marcusas and the Farrs and the nice older couple with the metal sculpture of a racing dog in their front yard. The lights are on inside the car, so I can see Vic’s face when his beetle comes close enough to begin pressing its wheels down on our gravel driveway. The sound of it fills my ears as he smiles and waves at me, his arms as unbreakable as a pair of giant river stones.