Sunflower Forest

A Note On My Family

When I was little, my Dad loved to plant sunflowers in the spring to watch them grow as high as they could. As the plants climbed their way to the sun I would run underneath them, their stalks so thick and leaves so wide that I was completely shaded from the heat of summer arriving. Running in that little sunflower forest, I was convinced I lived in the jungle. I pretended that bengal tigers were attacking me through the blue-hued green trunks of the forest. I thought I was alone there in my jungle, the only one able to face the tiger.

But that’s probably not how it felt to everyone else. I could see my Mom or Dad, standing behind the camera laughing, and Dyll, beside me and my jungle, watching over me. I wasn’t alone, was hardly ever alone. Being from a family of three other siblings, and two parents, solitude was something rare to find, and something I always longed for — to be in a room alone with just my own pervasive thoughts to bother me, to shape me, that's what I wanted. It’s something, to one degree or another, I’ll always be seeking out. But that dream of being alone in the forest, of making ourselves without any influence, it’s just some individualist trick, or joke we play on ourselves, leading us to think we’re so perfectly original, un-shapeable.

We are never made alone. It’s only an idea. 

Often for better, sometimes for the worst, my family have been the ones to shape me, to dictate many facets of my being. Writing though? We never did that. But maybe its opposition to all of our visual creativity drove me to words. Regardless, these people, they’ve all shaped me greatly. 

My Mom, taking us on hikes, looking out for titmice and western bluebirds, sharing her love of birds and the life outdoors with us—the beginning influence on my brother Wyatt’s drive to study ornithology, and now draw birds and other critters for a living. She never stops moving, my Mom, Valerie. Most of my childhood I saw her coming in and out of the house, going from her office job out to her jewelry studio, then a farmers market to sell what she made—for us, her children. Making little bits of silver, colored with blue and green sea-glass, always finding a new project, or a new friend to help. I have never met someone more driven by the satisfaction she gets in helping.

Dad would take us to the city, looking up at old decrepit signs on windows pointing out the beauty in the shape of a hand-painted f, or the way one brick lay against the other as he laughed at how stupid we all are for thinking we humans are so smart. Once, a couple of years ago, him and I failed to look at the time when SFMOMA was open and so ended up wandering the city, going to Frankel gallery, a few others then heading to Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Shop for paninis and beer, laughing at the weird play structure near Ghirardelli Square and obsessing over the fabrics at Al’s Attire. He is forever a child at play, constantly observing, creating. 

I remember Cass, always on the hunt for the just, for some kind of ethic for all of us to live by. But more than that I think of how lovingly worried she was and is of me, how she loves by trying to protect that love. It’s something I look up to in her often — her determination to learn from and protect her loves, to seek a peaceable way of being.

I remember Dyll in childhood, often quiet, hanging out in their room that Noah jokingly called the Death Lair. I remember their quietness made their words have an impact on me that no one else’s in my family had, simply because of their rarity. Their passion to find meaning, love, to hold their authenticity close and not let anyone harm it, it still shapes how I wish to stay true to myself, the way they do for themselves.

I remember Wyatt, skater bro hiding weed in Altoids cans in the closet, either out with his friends, laughing, taking things so lightly, or sitting quietly in his room reading. Always up to so much but never complicating things too much. As he grew up, falling in love with drawing and wild places, I remember being so jealous of his life, but not in an envious way. Thinking of him as he lived in Chico and taught homeschooled kids about how to observe the natural environment, then leaving for months for the Sierra foothills to study bird populations in wildfire burn sites and beaver dam analogs. He went from one sort of quiet peace to the next, all in dedication to the land and other living creatures. And it made me want to seek out that kind of simple yet rewarding kind.

These are barely a brush on the surface of who my family is. What’s more, it's just my interpretation, just a view of them from my biased eyes. But, these are the ones that shaped that little boy in the sunflower forest, the ones who have made me reconsider again and again who I can be, and motivated me to seek out what is most necessary for my peace. This is my family, and while they can be a headache sometimes, I wouldn’t want them to be anything else than who they already are.

This piece, too, is really a promotion/ We, all six of us, are having a group show at Gospel Flats Farmstand this coming Saturday. The opening is from 12pm to 4pm and the show will be up all of April. Come through, drink some wine, look at some stuff on walls, and just lounge!