to its welcoming porch, big enough to comfortably seat the three or four folks who were probably there on that evening, smoking or drinking or toking or maybe all three. Maybe one or more people were tripping on mushrooms that night or groovin’ on LSD, but probably not. Probably they were just hangin’ out, listening to each other fill the night air with plans and stories. The Pacific Ocean drew itself to and from the shore across the street, murmuring watery sighs to itself under their rolling notes, paying them no mind.
It would have been just about twilight when they pulled into the drive. Twilight in Sointula will beckon your very soul. You can feel utterly alone there if you are in good company. That type of solitude is luscious. In those moments the land opens out to you and entreats you to breathe with it. Into the thousand different shapes of not- quite-round rocks on the beach, into the wild ocean and the barnacles and baby crabs. Breathe with the trees bowing and stretching into the wind. It is the kind of place that has convinced me in certain precious moments that I am no more or less marvelous than the rocks under my feet and the ocean before me.
There was also the little sauna to their left as they drove in, catching the last of the day’s light on its two square windows. It had been converted for us into ten square feet of extra living space by a carpenter staying at Sue’s. My parents had already decided that I would be birthed at home on the island. They had been researching the process for months. Sue was all for it too and had found lots of information. Even so, they probably didn’t think as they drove up that day and passed by the little sauna, ‘That’s where we’ll have our first child and she’ll be born with the sound of the ocean in her ears.’ Probably they gave Sue a hug and made a bee-line for the outhouse around back. Dad had met Sue and her husband, Seth, at the University of California at Davis three years earlier. My parents spent a lot of time with them there, putting together seed orders and supplies to use in Sointula. They spent hours discussing political notions and the whole idea of having an open communal household, supporting draft dodgers and wanderers and the like. My parents were going to look after Seth and Sue’s house and property for them while they spent a year in Hong Kong. Seth was working on his master’s in Chinese philosophy.
The whole atmosphere around their place at that time felt radical and exciting. People were living out their ideals and dreams of a freer, more open life. A Vietnam medic who went AWOL after returning to the States came and stayed for a while. A black man who was all fun and play passed through. He was on the run from some Black Panther caper that we never really did find out about.
In the midst of all this, my parents moved into the sauna and made it their home. As summer wore on and Mom’s due date got closer, a lot of people asked if they could help or just be there. In this manner the unofficial guest list grew, and grew.
My mom’s parents were excited about the birth but knew nothing of the ‘home’ part. My mom thought it best to spare them the anxiety and decided not to mention it. She suggested that they come a week or two after the due date. ‘By then,’ she said, ‘things will have calmed down a little and we can all have a nice visit.’
I was due in June but like any well-grounded hippie child, I decided that I’d come on out whenever I was ready. Although I did not arrive in June, my grandparents did, along with my mother’s sister from New York. My grandmother took one quick look around that room and knew. The eye drops and gauze, the
She took my grandfather for a walk and said, ‘They’re going to have that baby at home you know.’ To which my grandfather replied, ‘No they’re not,’ as though the simple force of his words could bring modern medical care to the island. He essentially remained in denial right up until my mother was fully dilated.
There were about fifty people there on the night I was born. There was plenty of home-brewed liquor on hand, undoubtedly there was music, a guitar or two and maybe even a banjo or a jew’s-harp, and lots of potato salad. To this day everyone mentions the potato salad. Those homegrown potatoes are hard to beat.
My dad delivered me. My grandmother coached him. When Mom’s afterbirth didn’t come out right away, Dad was afraid to push her belly too hard and hurt her. My grandmother told him he bloody well better, and he did. All of us survived.
The AWOL medic was on hand that night, and he, along with several of my parents’ friends, provided the invaluable service of ensuring that my grandfather got pie-eyed during the course of the affair. My grandfather was an operatic bass and I like to think he was singing drunken arias with the bluegrass band when I emerged.
Later, that sauna became a chicken shed; Sue and her partner built a new house higher up on the property; and the old homestead is used for storage now. It is so much smaller than I remember. Mold is beginning to creep up the walls but it still feels warm to me.
The sauna is gray and hollow, abandoned even by the chickens. I return the odd time just to stand there and look and try to see it as something other than Sue’s chicken coop. The sun still filters in through those tiny windows and gaps in time in a way that whispers of a past I don’t remember. Maybe one day somebody will decide that the whole area is an historical hippie site and they’ll put a plaque on it: Sauna, Dwelling, Birthing Room, 20th Cent. (Actually, nailinga plaque onto that unassuming little structure would knock it down.)
Growing up in Sointula was in many ways grand. There were no locked doors and I had the whole forest, beach and ocean for a playground. There is a glimmer of peace inside me that comes from growing up in that place. My memory of Sointula goes beyond anything conscious to my salty core, which will always be grateful for having been born with the sound of the ocean in my ears. If nothing makes sense, I can look out over that vast body of water, and things won’t necessarily make any more sense. But that’s okay, because there I am with the whole Pacific Ocean at my feet.
Ariel Gore
You asked me once if I was alive during the olden days. I had to laugh. ‘What do you mean, the olden days?’
When I was a kid I’d pictured covered wagons and Model T Fords. You were thinking VW buses.
Later, at the winter assembly, your class sang ‘Free to Be You and Me,’ and you wondered how I knew the words.
Oh, I wish we still had a record player, girl-child, because I don’t have Marlo Thomas on CD. Maybe if I could play it for you, then you’d understand something more than I can tell you about those olden days-before your grandmother’s hair was gray (you know, she waited for you, didn’t stop dyeing it until you were born), before I ever thought I’d be a mother myself (we worried about nuclear war then, not Y2K), before I was dragged in my torn bell-bottom cords to White Flower Day at Macy’s (I would have saved those for you, girl-child, but who knew they’d be selling them at the mall now?), before kaleidoscope memory made your family history so hard to trace.
The stories circle now. They never quite line up. And you look at me cross-eyed as if to say, ‘Who are these freaks whose blood runs through our veins, Mama?’ And what can I tell you?
These are the answers I was given as a kid:
My father was a merry prankster.
My sister was born in a tent during the summer of love.
My mother was sleeping with Henry Miller.
Or was it Ken Kesey?
No, Ken Kesey was a madman.
Ultimately, she seduced the local Catholic priest.
He wasn’t supposed to marry her.
Vows, you know.
The family fortune is hidden behind door number two.
Millions.
