I lived in paradise

I am not a group. I am only me, making changes daily in an effort to save our planet. An Evolving Plan for "Going Green" in all areas of our home and life

My life started in San Diego.
My father and mother had moved to California in the early ‘20’s and bought some
land over looking the Pacific Ocean where they planted a small orchard, a field
of strawberries, a field of gladiolas, some red garnet yams and built their
home. They produced enough food for us to eat and to sell some to the local
shops.

One of my favorite memories from those years is of playing in the
orchard and eating apricots and big purple plums and moist figs off the trees
at will; believing as I did that this was how my life would be forever. My play area included the irrigation trough for the strawberries
and two stands of bamboo with small spaces between the trunks where I could
slip through a small opening and no adult could follow. I could lie on the deep
pile of leaves in the middle and look up to the sky and listen to the rustle
and crack of the bamboo for hours. Mine was a beautiful world with ocean views
and breezes and all the fresh fruit I could eat during the day and eggs from my
mothers chickens and the sweet smell of yams on a low heat as they baked and caramelized
cooking through the night.

In addition to the food and idyllic play spaces there was an
abundance of flowering plants; lantana, oleander, roses, geraniums, ferns,
gladiolas and on the hill over looking the ocean; majestic eucalyptus trees.
Truly, I lived in paradise.

Before I turned 5 my mother and father decided we should
take a vacation. We went to Yosemite for a few days and
drove through the Sequoia National
Forest on the way. Between the Sequoias and Red
Woods and the water falls we built more memories to last my life time. It was
confirmed, we lived in paradise.

Shortly after we returned home from our trip, one Sunday
afternoon, my mother sent me in to wake up my father from a nap. She had
finished preparing our lunch and it was time to eat. I went into their room
were he was sleeping and although I didn’t really understand what was happening
to him I knew he was dying. I went back to the kitchen and told my mother and
she rushed to the bedroom, but it was too late he was already gone. While he had left us quickly everything he had
given us left us slowly. There wasn’t anyone to make the irrigation system work
and so the strawberries died and over time the trees in the orchard died too. All
the yams were dug up, all the chickens slaughtered and eaten and no else seemed
to know how to get more. My mother was dieing of cancer as slowly as the
orchard had died from drought. I was 8 years old and paradise was lost. I could
see it happening, but I could not stop it. All that was left of paradise was the house,
the eucalyptus, and me. Sitting under the eucalyptus trees looking away from
the dead orchard to the beautiful Pacific trying to believe it was going to
return. Two weeks later I was on a Greyhound Bus headed for Houston
Texas.

It was 1951 when I arrived in Houston.
Actually the home of my Aunt and Uncle who raised me was a nice place, but
there wasn’t an ocean or an orchard. There was a pecan tree in the back yard and
while I learned to pick and enjoy pecans it wasn’t even close to having
tangerines, apricots, plums, peaches, oranges, figs and strawberries in my yard
and in my mother’s fruit cellar. The potatoes they called sweet potatoes and
bought at the store were mealy and bland in comparison to the rich orange color
and sugary goodness of the Red Garnet Yams I longer for. The sights and smells
of Shell and Gulf Oil refineries permeated the air of Houston
but everyone talked about how fine the refineries were because my uncles were
engineers who worked at them. At night I could hear the horns on the ships in
the Houston ship channel and so I
requested to go to the ocean. We drove over to the ship channel where the ships
were one Saturday afternoon and they marveled at the size of the ocean cargo
ships and tankers. The water was dark with oil slicks on top and the stench was
over powering and it did not smell of the sea. The next time they took me to Galveston
but the water wasn’t clear and there wasn’t a Silver Strand of lights
flickering at night across the water and the sand was a dirty grey with oil
smears in it.

Ten years passed and I grew up and made a trip back to San
Diego. I still wanted to go home, but home did not
exist so I got a friend to park his car on the street in front of the apartment
building and swimming pool that were where the orchard had been and we slept in
the back seat. The next day at dawn I crawled out of the car and walked through
the apartment complex to the hill over looking the ocean to sit once again
under the eucalyptus trees and look out to sea. I’ve only been back once more
with my daughter when she grew up she made the trip with me, but, she couldn’t
see were paradise had been.

When I watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, I finally realized that
everyone’s paradise is lost, not just mine. It had always been such a personal
loss for me, that while I had recycled and eaten organic foods and searched out
Red Garnet Yams to eat. I even lived in Hawaii
for 17 years. I had not seen my loss as
everyone’s paradise lost, many other people appeared to be ok with the ugly
sights, and smells as near as I could tell. In fact they often praised them or
ignored them and just kept making a bigger mess with their cars and ships, and
refineries. I kept pondering the problem
and my life time history of being unable to stop what I saw and then Living
with Ed came into my life. I don’t think they should have season breaks like
other shows, the work is too important. For the first time in a long time I
think we can heal the planet and that more and more people have the will power to
do so. I have hope, I believe in Ed and I believe we can figure it out.

You are the person you have been waiting for. I am the person I have been waiting for.