A No Bug Girl: Palo Alto, California 1968

 

You left your childhood home on Waverley Street for Barron Park, the next town over. Catapulted into an adult life you had not at all planned, you later will discover that this particular episode is nowhere to be found in your memory. You didn't have a car, you were not getting a ride, and you had a bit more than you could carry. You also had Omar, your dear soul companion in the body of a black Afghan hound. While the details cannot be found, you do remember the fear in your body as you walked toward your future and the single-car, concrete floor, windowless garage you would be calling home. 

David has been living in the garage for the better part of a year. You'd been there numerous times and appreciated the dim candlelight he wrote songs to, day and night. Under the blare of a seldom used overhead light, you are shocked right back to your Uncle Albert's room on The Ranch in Santa Margarita where a single light bulb overhead revealed a ceiling covered in a mass of wriggling, place changing moths. The whole ceiling undulated. Horrors. You were already a no bug girl and slammed your head under the blankets, stifling in the summer heat, and stayed there whimpering, crying, short of breath. You knew there was no sense running to your mom and pleading to sleep elsewhere. You were trained to take it, hold it, stay silent. You would be spending the whole night here, and the next day too. You crouched further down the bed, way deep inside yourself, fully under the covers, hoping to live through the night.