Dreaming Ever After

Memory

Dreaming Ever After

Michael Sedano

Who can count the life’s ambitions that find fulfillment only posthumously? Probably most people die without seeing their most important plans come to the best conclusion. I get to be one of those people who see it all come true.

Michael and Barbara Sedano. Scan by Mario Guerrero, August 2021

I was at a trade show in Washington, D.C. when I called home to learn Barbara found a house. She had a caveat. It has a pool, and I’d declared an oath not to have a water-filled hole in my backyard. I bit my tongue and we moved from a small Eagle Rock bungalow in April 1985. When Barbara retired from being an English Teacher, her students wrote glowingly of Barbara their English Teacher, unanimously they praised Mrs. Sedano’s pool parties. Barbara always knew best.

In '85, my employer quoted a lavish salary to the bank and we got the loan. The home, a beautiful 1921 Normandy style has 5 bedrooms and 5 ½ bathrooms, dining room, dinette, sitting room, two fireplaces. Including the pool, the backyard was crowd-ready for gala pachangas that became CasaSedano signature events. The Perle Mesta of Pasadena, Barbara added a bit of Roz Russell flair and the joy of sharing her home with friends.

Barbara and I intended to leave the house to our daughter. It would be the kind of windfall my parents left behind. Our granddaughter’s schooling would be assured. Our daughter’s mortgage would disappear. Luxuries and a solid bank account would remain. That’s what Barbara and I wanted that house to turn into when we were gone.

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Every morning I burn sage to the Four Directions. Ancestors are in the smoke, and on February 4th, 2023, Barbara became an Ancestor. She rises in the morning with my mother, my grandmothers. Those Souls who gathered silently at the cavemouth were waiting, I knew that. Then I  got sent back, told to get out of line (link). As Barbara’s hospice sped to a close, I understood. I was sent back not because it was not my turn then. Barbara would need me. She was my Prime Direction and I held to the Prime.

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Shortly after Barbara’s Alzheimer’s Dementia diagnosis in 2018, we sat to talk about her future. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, we had dreams. I asked Barbara what she wanted people to remember her for. Without hesitation, Barbara declared “I was Amelia’s mother. I was Charlotte’s grandmother. And I was a Teacher.”

I carry a piece of tierra from Redlands with me. Here, no thing, no artifact, has much value for me. I hold no memory of this place more important than those quiet moments of Barbara’s declaration. I take with me from here Barbara’s fierce determination to be remembered for the essential goodness that defined her Soul.

Someone will run away with all of my stuff, or my daughter will figure out what to do with all of my stuff.

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To build a house in 1948 take a loan for lumber

My Dad hand-built the first family home, in his home town Redlands, next to the orange groves that made the town the navel orange capital of the world. Dad exulted when he’d get home grimy and smelly but he’d picked a hundred boxes. At a nickle a box, Dad had pulled down five dollars that day. 

the house beyond the jaulas in foreground

Like almost every orange-picker with imagination, my Dad wanted to own a grove someday. He never got it. He wanted to live in the hills of Redlands, on a view lot looking down on the miles of groves filling the valley. They did that. Mom and Dad bought land and built a house at the highest elevation in the Redlands city limits. 

From the back yard the vista takes in all the citrus groves Dad picked at a nickle a box all those years ago. Canyons my grandmother herded sheep lay at the foot of our view lot. We planted a few trees, no grove, and we could see as far as the eye could see from up here on Sunset Drive.

McDonald's Urban Farm, the farmhouse and my new digs

I am moving into my Daughter’s and Granddaughter’s home in the foothills of Altadena. It’s a home that owes much of its construction to the house on Sunset Drive.  When I sold that house, my daughter, Amelia, used the money to remodel a mountainside home with a spectacular view of the Channel Islands, the San Gabriel Valley, the Los Angeles coastal plain, and the Angelus National Forest at the backyard fence. On a clear day you can see just over the ridgeline to where the sun sets in Santa Monica Bay.

Dad gets his dream, que no? There’s a citrus grove in the front property. Stone fruit trees and extensive vegetable plots fill part of the rear. Beyond the plants, hens and goats and ducks and turkeys live in cages lions and bears can’t penetrate. No surreys with fringes but McDonald’s Urban Farm has an electric cart.

When escrow closes and that check goes into my name, the sum, Pay to the order of… is not the number it appears. Sabes que? It’s a nickle a box. 

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I had to get out of this place. If it’s the last thing I ever do, goes the song. I did, have to get out of this place, but sat immobile in the silence and absence grown of five years full-time caregiving. I’d been defeated.

My daughter works wonders in her world as mother, farmer, lawyer. She worked her wonders in getting me out of here. No sooner had I made myself clear--I’m rolling around in this space, help!—than she gained a good sense of the market, made contacts, and had this place sold within a few days of my saying “sellit”.

Not only do I get a new home, I get an assured schooling for my high school age granddaughter. I get to satisfy my daughter's mortgage. I'll buy a bus or train ticket and travel, take roadtrips, and do a lot of the same old stuff from a new H.Q.

Órale, Barbara, we did it, we brought the familia dream to fruition. Mom and Dad get the grove and the view. You leave an inheritance, and I spend it, in advance of it becoming my inheritance.

There's a check with my name on it out there, waiting for escrow to move the sum into my bank. 

A nickle a box got us started, y mira nomás.