1950s

LYNELL GEORGE

Growing up I used to wonder if I might be able to customize a time machine to carry me in time to my mother’s arrival in Los Angeles, shuttling me back but also allowing me to up my age so I could be her “ace,” the best friends we were meant to be.

Much of this wish was inspired by the stories she, an only child, would tell me about her years growing up in New Orleans. One that floats to the top is about her ritual of ferrying her toys onto her front steps. There, with a window dresser’s care, she would arrange items—the paper dolls, the tiny tea sets, and whatnot—and wait as if onstage, hoping she might entice some passerby, some kindred spirit, with her carefully arranged bounty, her smile. I felt badly for my mother, and hence, the time machine, so that I could wander up those three steps and get lost in child’s play. She never told this story to garner sympathy, and there is no photo to document it, but I think it was more of a measure—a check-in for herself about how far she’d come.

She captioned this photograph “Summer in Santa Monica” in white ink on black heavy scrapbook paper. In this image I see my mother’s curiosity and enthusiasm. She’s about eighteen here and has, it’s very clear, fallen in love—with Los Angeles. My mother was far more extroverted than I tend to be. She sang, was a classically trained pianist, and studied drama. I see this in her eyes, too. An animation and intensity. As I examine her gaze, I wonder if she knows that this isn’t just a summer detour. I wonder if she knows yet that once she graduates from college, she’s not going back to New Orleans. That chapter is over, and somehow that little girl, who felt she had to coax company up three narrow steps to pass the time, had bloomed into something unforeseen. Did she know that she would find a vast and loyal cadre of friends—natives of this new place or transplants like herself? Did she know that she would coax her mother west, and her mother’s mother? And she would try so very hard with her father, my grandfather, but he was as strong willed as he was wily. But that didn’t mean that she would quit trying. I see this in her eyes, too.

I can’t seem to square the lonely little girl on the porch with the young woman radiant in this photograph. What the “time-travel” of age tells me now is that she found not just a community but an essential part of herself here. Something that was activated. She loved Los Angeles—the hills, the ocean, the orange blossoms, the grand streets, its movie lore—but mostly it was the possibilities it offered. LA was a grand stage. She chose the mystery, not the familiar, a city that put everything on the future—as did she. That’s in the smile.