New LA Life: Chapter 2

"I have an old surfboard at the house, can get you some lessons, if you want," Auntie Laine told me on the drive to her house. She practically had to shout over noise coming in through the open windows and the old school R & B blasting through the stereo, "Smooth just chillin' on a Sunday afternoon..."

I nodded even though she wasn't looking at me and I wasn't looking at her. I peered out the window and try to guess which street we would to take, which turn off of Redondo Beach Boulevard would take me to this new place called home. I tried to let the mellow grove play like a soundtrack for a my life, of a happy moment, to forget what had brought me here.

A sign welcomed us to Gardena but I didn't see any gardens. All I saw was concrete, asphalt, anemic palm trees rising up from sidewalks and a few trees planted in mini-mall parking lots.

We passed by a Starbucks and an In 'N Out burger and my stomach rumbled again but rather than stopping for lunch we turned right on Harvard Avenue and pulled into the driveway of the house that would be my new home.

The house looked different than the others on the block and I figured it was because she was an interior designer. Most of the homes were older, one story ranch homes, or two story duplexes and they all looked like it they were built in the late seventies. The paint on these homes had faded from day after day of sunshine and the trim was peeling around the edges. Most of the lawns were cut and maintained and had these plants called Birds of Paradise with red flowers pointed like a beak planted around the edges. Auntie Laine's house was once one of those one story ranches, but in a recent remodel the pitched roof became straight and the windows wide with neat white trim. The rest of the house was painted a dark gray and her lawn was perfectly maintained and trimmed with succulents and pointy desert plants. I figured she must hire a gardener because I couldn't imagine her actually mowing this lawn or pulling weeds around the desert plants.

She pulled into the garage and pulled up the parking brake. "Welcome home, Kiddo," and I remembered how Grandpa used to always call me kiddo and both Mom and Auntie Laine must have gotten that from him.

We grabbed my bags and the room grew dark as the garage door slid down behind us. Auntie Laine opened a side door that opened to the kitchen and the first thing I noticed was how clean the house was. I wondered if Auntie Laine had cleaned up for me or if she always kept it so neat. I learned later that the house was always clean on the weekends and during the week dishes might pile up in the sink and mail would fill the woven basket on the kitchen counter but that was as messy as her house got until Friday night when out of habit or some sort of ritual Auntie Laine would clean like crazy until order was restored, the floors shone, dishwasher was loaded and everything placed back where it ought to be.

She glided down the hardwood floors, past the living room where there was a huge tv flanked by two paintings with browns and greens bubbles of color. A mini-grand piano in a deep chocolate color sat in the corner of the room and an acoustic guitar gleamed from a stand next to that. Across from the TV there was a big leather couch a couple of chairs that matched but didn't match perfectly. I followed her down the hall lined with black and white family photographs and recognized one from Mom and Dad's wedding with Auntie Laine as the maid of honor.

"This will be Jem's room when he gets here," Auntie Laine said pointing to a room off to the right, "And this is you," she said as she plopped my bag onto a bed with an icy blue comforter and pillows with big white flowers on them. I hate flowers, but how could she have known that.

"Thanks," I said and my voice sounded quiet even in the completely silent house. I walked around the room and noticed that it was bigger than my room back home. Everything in the room looked new and I hoped Auntie Laine hadn't bought all of this just for me. The walls looked like they'd just been painted a light brown and the trim a clean white. There was a little desk in the corner that had that perfectly distressed look and there was a pile of books on each bedside table. A wide window was covered by a white sheer curtain and there was a full length mirror with a fancy scalloped trim. I was way too tomboy for that room. I was about to sit down on the bed when Auntie Lane asked, "You hungry?"

"Starving."

"Okay, well, take a minute to get settled and then we'll go grab a burger or something."

I thought she was going to leave then but she stopped at the door. All I wanted was to be alone for a minute but she turned and looked back at me. "You're so quiet, Erika, and I understand. This is all so completely crazy, but you can talk to me. Really, you can."

I could tell she wanted me to say something. "Sorry, Auntie Laine. I'm just..." and that was when my voice faded away again and I didn't know what I could say to her. Not yet. I knew I wanted to talk to her but I didn't know what to say. Not yet; not then.

A little more of New LA Life

My sister asked for the next installment of the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo, so here it is, for my audience of... ten? twelve maybe?

Auntie Laine parked the car and plugged the meter with a few quarters. Then she took me by the hand and said, "Come on, my favorite niece," (I'm her only niece) and I walked with her down the sidewalk toward the beach. All I really wanted to do was see where I was going to be living for, for, who knows how long, but instead I followed her down a steep sidewalk toward the beach.

Auntie Laine was wearing flip flops, a tank top, and a little skirt that flounced with every step. She belonged here in this world. It had been cloudy and rainy when I'd left Portland so I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt from my soccer league and grey Converse low tops. The sun shining off the ocean looked like glitter scattered across a crinkled of piece of blue construction paper and I couldn't look at it without squinting. I was getting sweaty and wished I had sunglasses.

We reached the sand and Auntie Laine waited for me as I slid off my shoes and socks. Beads of sweat started to drip one by one down my back and the sand was hot on the soles of my feet but Auntie Laine seemed determined to get to a shoreline crowded with sunbathers and kids splashing in the break. The temperature dropped as we got to the water. I stopped and sat on the sand to roll up my jeans so I could dip my toes in the water.

Auntie Laine neared the water. She hadn't noticed I'd stopped following and walked straight into the surf. She must have felt my eyes on her though because she turned and waved for me to join her, ankle deep in the water. I stood up and walked toward her, a feeling rising up as I neared her silhouette against the shimmering wall of water. Maybe it was because she reminded me of mom, standing there in the water, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, reaching back for me.

For a second I wanted to cry but then a breeze blew past and I took a deep breathe of salty, ocean air. I closed my eyes and walked toward my auntie, my mom's sister who was so much like Mom and still completely different. For a minute I stopped worrying about being dressed all wrong for the beach, or that I was thirsty and really wanted a pop with lots of ice or that my stomach was growling. I forgot that I was stuck living here for good, that this wasn't just a summer vacation.

For a second I felt happy and I let the happiness wash over me like the waves rushing across my feet. I let the water pull at some of the heavy weight that I had carried down with me and let it wash out to sea.

New LA Life

Here is an excerpt for my new NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) work in progress. It's a YA book but it doesn't have anything on the novels my students are writing. If you don't know anything about NaNoWriMo... here's a link. http://www.nanowrimo.org/

LA is nothing like they show in the movies but I didn't know that as I was flying into LAX last summer. Now I know, reality isn't something you watch on tv and celebrities never make their way to Gardena, the suburb I moved to a year ago.

Sure, there are palm trees, sunshine all year round, and the beach is just a few miles away, but Hollywood (even though it's just a few freeway miles to the north) is a completely different LA than the one I moved to.

My Auntie Laine picked me up from the airport that afternoon and for once she wasn't late. Well, she wasn't early either, but she pulled up there at the curb in her little white Audi just as I walked out of the terminal.

She looked nervous. She glanced around the airport like a little squirrel, gave me a quick, rough hug and then grabbed one of my two bags. Her keys jangled as she popped open the truck and as I watched her fumble with my luggage it occurred to me that even though I'd spent every Christmas with my mom's sister, even though she'd come to visit us every summer, I'd never seen her look uncomfortable or uneasy.

Usually, she flew into Portland all tan and golden. She wore jeans and traveled light and always seemed so much younger and hipper than Mom ever did. It was hard to believe Auntie Laine was two years older than Mom, but they were two extremely different people.

First off, Mom had me and my brother Jem. She married Dad right out of college and stayed home to take care of us. Auntie Laine is single. She works out every morning, drinks wine with dinner and watches more tv in one night than we watched in a whole week at our house.

But when Auntie Laine picked me up, and I buckled my seat belt in the passenger seat, I wasn't all that worried about her. I was worried about me. Even though it had been almost a month, I couldn't talk about it, couldn't make the words come out my mouth about what happened to Mom and Dad. I could talk about them no problem, but I still can't talk about that night, what I saw or what I heard once I closed my eyes.

Grandma, she's a psychotherapist, and she says that's okay. When something terrible happens you can put it in a box and lock it up, shove it on a shelf in a closet far away from everyday life. It's called coping and I don't know how I'm coping and when people ask I don't think they really want to know about it so I tell them I'm okay.

It was warm in LA, way warmer than it was in Portland, but it wasn't too hot and Auntie Laine had her sunroof open even with the air conditioning on. The combination made it cool in the car but I could still feel the dry air of LA and smell the exhaust from all the traffic as Auntie Laine pulled away from the curb.

I wasn't in the room when Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Kev and Auntie Laine talked about where Jem and I should go. All I know is that it wasn't really up to me or Jem. Who knows what Mom and Dad would have wanted for us under these circumstances. I tried to listen from the tv room where I was watching the Wimbledon final while the adults discussed my fate. Venus and Serena were playing and I didn't know who to root for. I wasn't really watching the match anyway. I was trying to eaves drop on the conversation that would determine where Jem and I would land for the rest of our lives.

Uncle Kev kept saying, "They'd want them together," and Auntie Laine agreed but they also knew that I couldn't stay in town, not after what I'd seen, which was already boxed away and on a shelf in a closet far away so I didn't have to think about it.

I don't know how it was finally decided but I ended up on a plane and the plan was for Jem to come down in a few weeks later, right before school started.

Auntie Laine drove fast and I felt like I had to hold on but didn't because I didn't want her to know she was scaring me to death. The sky above me was perfectly blue and that definitely didn't fit my mood.

"Well, welcome to LA," she said and as I looked over Auntie Laine steered us out of traffic. She put her hand on mine and gave it a squeeze. "We're taking the scenic route home," she said with a smile, but I could tell she was still freaking out. Just like my life had changed completely, so was hers and I didn't how she was feeling about it.

I did know she was missing her sister, maybe as much as I missed my mom, so at least we had that in common.

She turned left and the ocean appeared before us, reflecting sunlight and stretching all the way to the horizon. The palm trees, the sand, sea and sky all made me want to cry just like so many things did lately. But I didn't cry so I wouldn't have to explain that I didn't know why I was crying so I fought back the tears and wondered how Auntie Laine was coping. Did she have a box stored away on a shelf in a closet somewhere or was she handling this differently? I thought about asking her but she seemed preoccupied by driving and finding a parking spot so I figured we'd have time to talk about it some other time. In fact, we had the rest of our lives.

Disguises

A story for a Moth evening (that I didn't perform...)

The unintentional disguise I don is the mask of racial ambiguity.

Particularly if you don't hear my name, pronounced with the proper Japanese inflection (Noriko Nakada desu. Hajimemashite) then the chances of correctly identifying my half-Japanese ancestry diminish drastically.

See me walk down the street here in LA and you might assume I'm Latina; speak to me in Espanol. Or maybe you'll read my name, assume my identity, then meet me in person and struggle to reconcile the name and the face.

But it isn't only strangers who ask, "What are you?" Growing up multiracial I struggled with my own identity issues. Born and raised in small-town, Oregon, the only half-Japanese family in town, we were accepted as one of their own, just another rural, middle-class white family. The closer we were to the Kah Nee Tah reservation the more likely people were to assume we were Native American but for the most part people ignored our foreign look, name and culture.

I couldn't shed my subtle Asian features even though I shortened my name to Nori, spelled like seaweed (Nodi) but pronounced Nori, like Lori but with an N. I pretended I was like everyone else even though my "exotic" look set me apart.

In the summer we'd drive to Los Angeles to visit family. We'd go to Disneyland or eat sushi with Dad's side and around my full Japanese cousins with their shiny, black, straight hair woven into thick braids I hated my fine brown hair and honey-colored eyes. With Mom's side of the family we'd drive from the valley to Zuma Beach and in that world of sand and sea, blonde hair and blue eyes I couldn't believe I was related to them at all.

A few years after moving away from that small town I traveled to Hawaii for the first time. You know how every year there is one Halloween costume everyone wears, the year everyone is a pirate, or a princess, a vampire or a witch. In Hawaii, my disguise was just like everyone else's. Instead of my identity setting me apart, being Hapa meant I belonged.

"Howzit?" a local asked as I browsed through ukeles and plastic leis. "You playing one tourist today?"

I looked at the woman behind the display of puka shell necklaces and paused. If I kept quiet I could stay in costume, just a local girl stopping by the gift shop. Open my mouth, release my mainland accent without a hint of pidgin and my real identity would be revealed.

"Oh, I just visiting," I said trying to mimic the rhythm of the locals.

"Ha! I thought you one local," the woman said with a smile. "Shua look like one."

After years spent wishing I could shed my disguise, in Hawaii I saw another possibility. If I'd lived in the islands since small kid time I could fit in here, fo' shua, no act, local style, brah. I suddenly saw how banana I was, yellow on the outside, but white inside the peel.

It's taken years, a few more trips to Hawaii, countless questions, explanations, and looks I've learned to ignore in order for me to figure it out: I'm not Latina or Native American or Alaskan Eskimo. I'm not white, not Japanese, and not Hapa from Hawaii.

I don't fit neatly into one of those boxes used to make sense of a complicated world.

The disguise isn't about me. It's about how you perceive me because this is no disguise. This is me and I have no choice but to keep the world guessing.

Being There: September 18, 2006

My husband, David, and I fell in love watching the Dodgers. Soon after we met, we found we shared a history in Fernando's no-hitter and Kirk Gibson's post-season homerun. But the problem with being a Dodger fan is that they'll break your heart. They blow 11-game leads to lose pennant races. They move to LA from New York leaving devastated Brooklyn fans behind. They trade away your favorite players. So on this warm September night, with the Dodger's tied for the National League West Lead, David and I drive through the streets of Chavez Ravine hoping for a win, but we know our team can and will break your heart.

We take our seats high in the reserve level, finish up our hot dogs and garlic fries as the sun sets behind us sending streaks of red and purple across the darkening sky and shake our heads as the Padres score four runs in the top of the first.

Our disappointment is familiar. The Dodgers have been struggling at the plate and it seems unlikely that our boys in blue will be able to make up the deficit.

But as we crack into our bag of peanuts, the Dodgers chip away at the Padre lead and by the end of the fourth the scoreboard shines from the dark sky: Padres 4, Dodgers 4.

The pitchers for both teams settle for several innings but in the top of the eighth, the Padres score two. It's nearly 9:00 and I'm tired. I've had a long day at work and wonder if just this once David would be willing to leave early. But the Dodgers need this win to stay at the top of the division so I don't even ask. The Dodgers get one run back in the bottom but in the ninth the Padres score another three.

"Bye, bye Dodger fans," David says as fair-weather-fans stream out of Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers come up in the bottom of the ninth trailing 9-5, and even when Jeff Kent sends a homer out to center, I cheer, but don't get too excited. We're still down three.

JD Drew comes up next and when he homers, David and I stand and cheer. After all, back-to-back homeruns are rare, but it's still a two-run game.

Russell Martin steps to the plate and the instant we hear the crack of the bat, our cheers explode into the night. Back-to-back-to-back homeruns? No way.

But the Dodgers are still losing. It would be crazy to hope for another homerun, but Marlon Anderson grants the wish none of us could imagine tying the score.

David and I sit back down, in awe, but the Dodgers make consecutive outs to end the inning and we're going into extras.

It would be a shame to lose a game like this, but the Padres aren't done. They score a go-ahead run in the tenth forcing the Dodgers to perform again.

I look up at the line-up on the scoreboard. Lofton and then Garciaparra. Garciaparra. If Lofton could just get on, Garciaparra might be able to do it just like he has so many times this season. A little hope sneaks in and I pray the Dodgers won't let me down.

Lofton does his job with a walk and Garciaparra walks toward home plate. David and I stand shoulder-to-shoulder and hope. For all the games we'd seen this season, last season and the season before that, we hope.

"Come on, Nomar," I whisper beneath my breath as Nomar fidgets with his batting gloves, and taps his toes in the batter's box. He leans back, there’s the pitch and the swing.

I leap with that ball as it flies off his bat and into the night and we jump up and down just like Nomar does out of the box.

The Dodgers win. The crowd, or what's left, of it goes wild and the Dodger players welcome Nomar at home plate.

Tonight, being there was everything. And tonight, even though it was just for one Dodger night, believing didn't break my heart.

Cockroaches

I wrote this for The Moth live storytelling. I didn't get called up to perform and this is a little long for their five-minute limit, but here it is. My story on "the dark side."
http://www.themoth.org/

I've avoided the dark side my entire life. I come from stock that, for generations, has avoided the shadowy aspects of life. In fact, my parents were both born and raised in Los Angeles but chose to leave behind any dark side elements this city or their families might present: memories of poverty, alcohol, abuse, war-time internment. So instead of growing up in LA, I was raised in beautiful Bend, Oregon.

If you've ever been to that part of the country it really is gorgeous. The Deschutes river flows through the middle of town, the Cascade Range's snow-topped peaks gleam in the west and it's sunny and clear just about every day. Bothersome urban problems like pollution, gangs, homelessness, or racial diversity don't exist in Bend providing the perfect façade for a family like mine.

And if the sky isn't clear, if the sun isn't gleaming through ponderosa pine and juniper trees then the town is buried beneath several inches of pristine white snow. Snow: the antithesis of the dark side, a light, fluffy, glittering blanket burying all that is dead or ugly or dark.

But I pledged to be different. I didn't inherit that bright-shiny, passive-aggressive Asian thing. I wouldn't walk around pretending the outside world didn't exist. No, I would embrace the dark side and confront issues head-on.

So, I went to college on the dark side of Oregon where it rained every single day and under those gray and soggy days I explored my shadow. I became despondent, listened to Morrissey and Counting Crows all night; drank a little too much. But I kept it real. I wasn't one of those hippies you see around U of O pretending that life is all sunshine and flowers.

Then I moved to LA. Urban grit? Loved it. Tagging? Got it. Pollution? Awesome. I embraced the poverty of the city so much I started teaching for LAUSD. I loved LA and I couldn't understand why my parents left. I failed to notice that I'd managed to follow my parents' pattern. I left my family and all of its deeply buried baggage far behind.

I fed off of LA's blue skies even if they were a little smoggy. I fell in love with a guy from another anti-dark-side family, and we got married.

We bought a condo and then a house and in living out that American dream the house we bought put me back in touch with the dark side.

It was a small house in Highland Park, in the heart of Avenues gang turf and it was old. Those walls held history, but fortunately I had lots of practice ignoring the past, ignoring any problems that might impact my future, that ARM mortgage that could have us teetering on the brink of financial ruin, those strange phone calls my husbands kept getting late at night, I was the master of avoiding these problems. Even though my family lived a thousand miles away they had taught me exactly what to do.
We got the keys to our new house but before we moved in we wanted to clean and paint, to start fresh and new. I was mopping on our first night in the house when I saw a cockroach skitter across floor. I stomped on that big, fat, crunchy roach so fast and then convinced myself that the previous owners must have left that roach behind. We wouldn't have a roach problem.

I cleaned those hardwood floors over and over and over to remove all the possibility of dirt, or grime, or roach tracks. We painted and repainted every wall and every bit of trim. We white-washed that house so even though the roof had a leak and the windows weren't properly framed, from the outside it looked all right. And our marriage didn't look too bad from the outside either.

But, every so often I'd spot another cockroach scurrying across a counter or I'd find a dead one lying on it's back in the living room. Those cockroaches started to freak me out. If David was home I'd scream and make him find it and kill it. If I was home alone my heart would race. It was me or it was the cockroach and there was no way they would win. I learned how to hunt down and kill roaches with the intensity of an assassin.

We talked to a friend who was an exterminator and he told us these particular roaches actually live outside so you can never get rid of them. Apparently Highland Park isn't just gang-turf, it's roach-infested gang turf and no matter how clean I kept the house, no matter how air-tight we made the door jambs, roaches snuck in.

I'd come home from work and scan the floors and counter-tops for roaches. I'd step out of bed with the fear of something crunching beneath my bare feet. All of the energy that should have been looking my real life problems, my husband and I were hardly seeing or touching one another this point, all of my energy was focused on hiding our roach problem from myself and from our family and friends. They didn't know our marriage was in trouble and there was no way they could find out the roaches.

After a while though, I managed to keep most of the roaches at bay. I'd see one or two a month but it seemed bearable.

Until the night the power went out. LA was in the middle of a heat wave so the AC was cranked up and David was out of town. The Dodger game was on and I was reading a book in the living room when everything went dark. In inky darkness I lit a few candles, grabbed a flashlight and moved to the bedroom with my book.

When I was ready for bed I blew out the candles and grabbed the flashlight for one last trip to the bathroom. I slid my feet into my flip-flops and then, in one flashlight's sweep I saw the floor move.

Cockroaches. Everywhere. I felt them all over me even though when I brushed my shoulders and hair there was nothing there. I shone the light across the floor again and a straggler scuttled across the floor and into the darkness. I grabbed a magazine and it was on. I would kill. I would kill them all.
With the flashlight in one hand, a magazine in the other, and a roll of paper towels under my arm I started in the bedroom and made my way through the darkness shining the light and slamming the magazine on floor with each step. Smack, smack, smack. Then I swiped away the disgusting, crunchy cockroach bodies and guts. It was frantic. I'd shine the light and there were more. Slam, Slam, Slam. I killed and cleaned in the darkness with sweat pouring down my body.

It was so hot and dark and I couldn't see my way out. I made my way through the house shining my beam of light into a darkness that was alive and creeping and unstoppable. It was worse than any horror movie I'd ever seen. Alone in a black out, surrounded by cockroaches hiding just outside the flashlight's beam.

And then the lights came back on and the ac kicked in. I could see the hardwoods and the walls. I made one more trip through the house to make sure the roaches had retreated into the night, washed my hands, tried to cleanse my body of the cockroach evil and climbed back into bed. I tried to sleep but every time I closed my eyes I saw roaches everywhere.

David came home the next day and I told him how I'd survived my darkest night. We talked about selling the house and three months later we did. We also agreed that there were problems in that house besides the cockroaches, and the commute and drive-by shootings. There were problems that we couldn't ignore anymore if we were going to survive.

Maybe I should be grateful to those cockroaches. They saved my marriage. Because no matter how hard I tried to keep them out, no matter how much I wanted to pretend they weren't a problem, those roaches didn't quit.

My husband and I are in a new place now and it's taken a long time for me to stop scanning the floor for roaches. Even though there aren't any roaches in our new place, I know about my tendency to white-wash life, to bury my problems under a layer of cold, brilliant snow. But the dark side is there. It survives and it thrives. And the more time I spend with it the less I have to fear.

Mailbox

A former student of mine just moved away for college and the other day on Facebook she posted this plea: "Please send mail." She's been sharing her excitement about leaving for school all summer: purchasing a new computer, getting her dorm assignment, buying books, packing, but it was this last call for mail that took me back to my first year at University of Oregon.

I watched my high school classmates depart for schools on semester schedules, leaving me behind in post-high-school-limbo as they started their new lives. Over a month later it was finally my turn and I unpacked my life into a tiny dorm room with its own key and phone number and address.

Walking over to the dining hall at University Inn, meal card and keys in hand, I passed by the mailboxes before every meal. The box-fronts were made of clear plastic so from about ten feet away I could tell if anything waited inside. Those few seconds of anxious excitement almost made my hands shake as I fiddled with my little key to open the box that wasn't attached to anyone's name but my own. That mail wasn't Mom or Dad's or my siblings. It was my own and although most mornings and afternoons the box was empty, I savored the sporadic letters from high school friends at other schools, siblings in distant cities, or packages of cookies from Mom on my birthday or Valentine's Day.

I've since learned not to get too excited about the mail. Most of the time it's junk or bills. The only mail room excitement now comes from a wedding or shower invitation. Magazine subscriptions and wine clubs help a little, but really I should write more letters. I should use those note cards sitting in the box on my desk, put pen to paper, pour out my thoughts and slide that paper into an envelope. I should write the address by hand, apply the stamp and seal it. I should walk the dog to the post office and stick those letters in the mail. Then maybe I'll feel a hint of what I used to feel with that little key at University Inn in the fall of 1992.

But if you should write me first, I promise to write back and then you can look for me in the mail.

Fresh Peach Cobbler

If any of you are friends with David on Facebook you already know that this is summer I've made several batches of fresh peach cobbler. Here are some pics of my latest pie plate of deliciousness and the recipe (which I stole from somewhere on that world wide web but I can't find it again so if this is your recipe let me know and I'll credit you.) Anyway. You can experiment with the amount of milk you put in the topping depending on how biscuity/cakey you like your cobbler. Yum.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a pie plate or other smallish baking dish mix together 4 cups sliced peaches, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, fresh grated nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.

In a bowl mix 1 cup flour, ¼ cup sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Cut in 3 tablespoons cold butter cut into small pieces. Beat 1 egg with 3-6 tablespoons of milk (depending on how you want your topping to turn out) and combine with your dry ingredients.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the topping is golden and the peach are hot and bubbly.

Serve warm with ice cream and because it's made with fresh fruit it's healthy and you can eat the rest for breakfast tomorrow morning. Yummy deliciousness.

Fertile Soil

We're trying to get pregnant again. Well, not really again.

The last time I was pregnant we hadn't been trying. It was an accident in a moment when I demanded passion and spontaneity from of a marriage that was falling to pieces. I hadn't been tracking fertility cycles or taking pre-natal vitamins and I continued to drink. It wasn't until after the Thanksgiving Katrina was dating the wine-maker and the Christmas party of White Russians that I realized I'd missed a period.

I took a pregnancy test on New Year's Eve and stopped drinking immediately. I started taking the prenatals and scheduled an appointment with my doctor. I told her I drank before I realized I was pregnant. She told me, "Don't beat yourself up about it. There isn't anything you can do about it now."

But just before my first appointment with my ob-gyn I cramped. I bled. I drove with my husband and roommate to the immediate care center downtown and made tasteless dead baby jokes. We waited until the ultrasound tech confirmed the miscarriage, "I can't find anything, no heartbeat. Are you sure you were pregnant?" The doctor's paperwork said something about a threatened abortion.

I kept my appointment with the ob-gyn: she could schedule the DNC or I could just let my body take care of it naturally. I decided to let it happen. The cramping had been uncomfortable but not unbearable. It took almost three months of nausea and spotting before my levels evened out and I didn't have to have blood drawn every week to ensure that my body had shed my failure.

I learned quickly that miscarriages happen all the time. 20% of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. My sister who also miscarried told me, "It's not your fault. There's no way of knowing why we miscarry." Women at work mentioned their own miscarriages: their mother or sister or friend who miscarried. But people don't like to talk about it and my mind swung back and forth between blaming myself and giving thanks that we weren't getting ready for a baby because although I thought we were ready, I know we weren't.

A few weeks after the miscarriage we took Scout, our chocolate lab, to be spayed. I walked her gingerly after the surgery and cried over the stitches along her belly. I watched the wound and waited for her to heal. Maybe when her belly was smooth again I would feel healed too. But Scout never had the belly of a puppy again and I could relate to her empty insides.

I started going to therapy. We worked on our marriage. And two years later we have healed. We are ready, really ready, to try; to track fertility cycles and take prenatal vitamins and stop drinking alcohol and caffeine.

We get to work on baby making and now we wait.

Civil Disobedience

This past spring I was arrested for the first time. My perfect record (except for the car accident and tickets from high school and college) now showed an arrest for refusing to disperse.

I did it on purpose. I sat in the street with other teachers to protest class size increases and the district's decision to balance the budget at school sites rather than eliminate superfluous waste at this high rise in downtown Los Angeles. A noble cause, I think.

It's best to travel light when you know you're about to be arrested. No jewelry. No cash. No cards. No cell phone. No keys. Just ID in your pocket and the number of a lawyer written in Sharpie on your arm. But even though I traveled light I still spent ten hours in custody and I felt the heavy power of The State.

They took my ID, my glasses and my shoelaces and in the heat of that afternoon, time moved slowly. It moved strangely as we were cuffed, transported, processed, transported again, held, booked and then finally released.

A former student of mine was one of the arresting officers. When you've taught long enough you never know who you'll run into. By the time I was released he'd already friend-requested me on Facebook.

The LA Times ran a picture of six of us sitting in the street with the police surrounding us so I heard from friends all weekend as I tried to recover physically from my day without food or water or going to the bathroom. I ate Goldfish crackers and drank Gatorade until I could hold down more. Then I slept.

Monday at school colleagues thanked me or teased me, "Where's your ankle alarm, Nakada?" Students with records felt we had something in common and my best-behaved students looked at me with disappointment. "You, Ms. Nakada? You got arrested?"

I tried to place my actions in the context of others like Ghandi, Dr. King, Cesar Chavez but what I did was so small in comparison to freedom fighters who stood up before me, often alone, enduring days, months, or years in jail. They risked being beaten or killed and all I did was spend 10 hours in custody.

At the end of the day when the teacher next door asked me how I was doing I wept. Even though I knew I'd done the right thing it weighed heavily on my heart because my actions changed nothing in terms of the big picture. But it had changed me.

I experienced a little bit of what so many of my students of color must feel when the police stop them, cite them, or arrest them. I knew a little about the pressure, the heavy weight of this system designed to break you. I understood the power of the police state and all that you can lose when you break the law.

I don't know what I expected that Friday morning as I drove through the quiet LA streets to be arrested. Nothing can really prepare you for that kind of experience but I'll never be able to travel like I did that morning with no jewelry, cash or cards, no cell phone or keys. Teachers were still laid off and hundreds of district administrators continue to walk in and out of the high rise where I protested far away from the students I teach everyday.

Now, I carry a new weight with me, no matter how lightly I try to travel.