Stories of the people and things that made me—spaghetti and garlic bread dinners around a lake house table, Irish heritage and Claddagh rings, the magic of San Juan Capistrano, the freckles on my mom’s arms & Sunday Mass with dinner at grandma’s after.
Static: How One Man and Radio Waves Held My Family Together
“Traffic on the 215 freeway is wide open- no Sigalerts today! Randy and the Rainbows live from KMEN…”
I used to spend hours prowling the internet for videos of my late grandfather Denis Melbourne, so when I found one with him in action detailing the traffic report and announcing songs on air, it was like seeing him in person and hugging him for the first time. He was a radio personality who went by Mark Denis, but he was so much more than his job. Someone online posted the memorial video that played at his funeral and the first time I watched it, I was surprised to see the family photos that decked the walls at my grandmother’s home in existence on the internet. It was bizarre to see my mom and her siblings in childhood stances on a stranger’s YouTube video, but the ending scene is Denis actually on air; he says the words italicized above as he plays the song “Denise” by Randy and the Rainbows. After he announces the song, he smiles and points to his co-host. The video has several comments, but I think this is the most striking:
“Out of nowhere, I thought of Mark Denis tonight and what a truly great man he was here on earth… Mark treated me like someone each and every time we were around each other. It’s said that the greatest people are remembered by how they made others feel in their presence. Mark was surely one of those guys!!! In my 44 years, Mark is still top of the charts in my book! God must have needed some help….”
For years, the radio was the ever-so-essential middleman between you and your favorite artists. Music is universal, time-tested, and well-loved more than anything I’ve ever seen. It communicates what we can’t say using just our words, expresses emotion in ways that don’t seem possible otherwise and it connects people who thought they had nothing in common at all. Music’s accessibility has completely changed since the inception of the modern radio, giving the 2000s’ iPod and apps like Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud almost dictatorial roles in the music industry. Music is streamed rather than bought nowadays, but that doesn’t mean that radio giants aren’t still making themselves known—you just have to disconnect your Bluetooth or aux cord to let their jingles and voices patch through.
For me, there’s something that feels like tangible magic when it comes to radio. The humanity within the experience is what comforts me. There are hundreds of people listening to the same station and song as you in that exact moment. Maybe they’re on their way to work, maybe they have a big presentation or test, maybe they’re in the back of their mom’s car hoping their favorite song comes on, maybe they’ve just had the hardest day of their life, or they’re just trying to get through the traffic on their stagnant morning commute. No matter what you’re doing, you’re all listening together. I love the slight static behind the music on the radio; it’s like there’s a little personality behind every song that isn’t there on streaming platforms or records. This personality is what brings me back every time.
KOLA 99.9, K-EARTH 101, KIIS 102.7, and 89.3 KPCC are the Southern California stations of my childhood. Riding in my family’s GMC Yukon through Orange County’s streets and freeways, one of those stations was always playing, sometimes all of them in a speedy, thumb-on-the-steering-wheel-button rotation. I’d hear KPCC’s program “Prairie Home Companion” and get lost in the sounds and storytelling that the narrators provided. KIIS is a top charts sort of station, pioneered by Ryan Seacrest himself. There was a teacher at my high school who played the program “Ryan’s Roses” on Friday during class; he was a campus legend for that. KOLA has far-reaching Southern California powers, but we’d typically listen to it on the drive to Lake Arrowhead where we’d spend our summers. On the Fourth of July, we’d go out on my grandpa’s boat and watch the fireworks over the lake. KOLA always puts together a soundtrack (always concluding with Ray Charles’s “America the Beautiful” of course) for firework-goers to listen to while the show is exploding over the mountains. K-EARTH is my personal favorite; I still listen to it when I get sick of my Spotify playlists. It reminds me of being little and caravanning around Orange County with my family on our way to dance competitions or football games, K-EARTH always being the calming force, the string that held our sanity together in the midst of nerves, the semblance of normalcy within our days of expectation.
The radio of today is a much different landscape than it was in the early days of broadcasting in the 1920’s. The radio was originally invented more as something used for military and maritime purposes by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894. When the 1900s hit, radio was used for both entertainment and news and anyone could have access to it. By 1927, NBC (National Broadcasting Company) and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) had regular broadcasts of news and entertainment. Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) was created in 1934—that was the home of radio dramas like The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman. By 1933, FDR was hosting fireside chats and by the 1950s, radio was the preferred way to get information. It was part of the everyday American life and it affected people on every level. My grandma listened intently waiting for The Beatles to be played every day after school, while her dad splurged on a bite-sized transistor radio to fit in his shirt pocket so he could listen as he mowed the lawn on Saturday mornings- he wanted to tune into the station KRLA as the morning sun was perching itself over his house.
Radio stations have disc jockeys, traffic reporters, and people who do specialized entertainment shows and informative sessions as integral parts of their staff. Disc jockeys were the kings of the 20th century music scene. Their static held together the sanity of humankind, their voices forging through the speakers in your home, your car or your Walkman, keeping you together with your favorite sounds. They controlled your day and what you listened to from the minute you woke up and turned on your bedroom radio to when you turned the key in your car’s ignition to kick start your morning commute. They sit with you through stalling traffic, ride out your grueling workday with you, carry you home from work and help you around the kitchen as you cook dinner.
My grandma was born in 1953, and by the time 1963 rolled around, she was a bright 10 year-old who adored all things music. The Beatles were just coming into the American music scene with their albums “Please Please Me” and “With the Beatles”. By 1966, my grandma was 13 and The Beach Boys’ album “Pet Sounds” was a sound that began to define Southern California culture. When “Surfin’ USA” was released three years earlier, its lyrics spoke of famous beaches in Southern California, like Doheny, San Onofre, Hermosa Beach, Redondo, and Manhattan. My grandma said that The Beach Boys shaped who they were as Southern Californians; that surf culture spread into the rest of the country because everyone wanted a taste of Southern California’s vibe. This 1960s and 70s surf culture music defined a generation and was further defined by the stations that played them.
Radio in the 1970s continued to be influential in many ways, one of them being the fact that it outlined who you were based on what station played the artists you listened to. My grandparents said that if you listened to The Rolling Stones back then, you were the kind of “bad-boy” type who you didn’t necessarily casually and calmly bring home to mom and dad. If you were into Fleetwood Mac, you were probably “coked out in Santa Monica in a long skirt with braids in your hair, or in your room dancing to ‘Dreams’ in a flowing shirt with billowing sleeves,” according to my grandma. If Credence Clearwater Revival was your jam, you were probably dropping acid in the Canyon in your free time. These stations, like KRLA and KEZY, shaped Southern California’s teenage music scene and therefore the culture around it.
By the time the late 80s-early-90s rolled around, those Beach Boys and Beatles-listening teenagers had a few kids of their own and the genres of music played on Southern California’s stations were different than before- lots of Madonna, The Cure, Michael Jackson and if you were on the right station, even early appearances of hip hop and rap like Run DMC and Long Beach’s very own Snoop Dogg. This was the era that my grandma met Denis. He was on the station KFI at the time, and they met at a Catholic group for those who had recently gone through divorce at Anaheim’s San Antonio Catholic Church. My grandma and Denis were reluctant to be there, and they both had a lot on their hands—each had full time jobs and several children. My grandma says she wasn’t too sure about him right away; he was apparently quirky, and she wasn’t used to that, but after a while, they hit it off and ended up married around a few years laters. My aunt was born in the late 80s and both Denis and my grandmother were busier than ever, my grandma teaching high school in Los Alamitos and Denis working long hours at the station in Los Angeles. This left my mom and her brothers heading to high school by themselves as soon as my mom got her license. My mom was sixteen when she saddled up for the 50-minute drive from Anaheim Hills to her high school in the newly formed Rancho Santa Margarita, making this somewhere around February of 1991. KLOS was her station of choice and men named Mark and Brian were the controllers of the music and morning talk, and therefore her moods, for the day ahead of her. Her brother and the carpool kids in the back were rowdy, but Mark and Brian’s voices (and their humor) were keeping her sane. In the afternoons, KIIS played the Top 40 hits as she’d make the trek back home after dance practice, songs like “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinaed O’Connor keeping her awake as the sun set over the winding Canyon road. After a weekend party on her drive home, she’d listen to KROQ’s late-night advice show called “Love Lines” which oftentimes attracted Southern California’s “angsty and depressed teenagers” to close out her night.
When my mom was in college starting in 1993, bands like Sublime and No Doubt were significant for Southern California teenagers and college-aged kids. She emphasized that these bands were the product of Southern California backyards making good music that everyone loved. Like with The Beach Boys and the purity of Southern California surf culture that came with it, this surf rock-turned-ska, punk style of music took over Southern California’s music scene, especially for teenagers and early 20-somethings. The station KROQ became a legendary home for music that was just outside of the pop genre, playing lots of alternative that defined a generation and a culture, especially in Southern California. My mom was a student at Chapman University around this time, which wasn’t far from her home in Anaheim Hills where her mom and Denis lived. He’d take her out to dinner (Marie Callender’s off the 55 freeway usually) and drop by to see how she was doing whenever he felt she needed it. Sometimes my mom would call Denis to ask him a question and he’d say, “Honey, I’m about to be on air—” and then the call would cut out as she’d hear the radio jingle and him giving the afternoon traffic report.
~
To his listeners and colleagues, Mark Denis/Denis Melbourne was one of the most well-loved, kind, entertaining and substantial radio men of his day. He had a forty-year career on air that began humbly at a junior college and ended at Los Angeles’s biggest stations like KFI, KOST, KEZY, KHJ and KRLA. To my family, he is husband, father, and grandfather. After marrying my grandma in the 1980’s, he changed the life of my family and the course of our history forever. Although he was my mom and her brothers’ stepdad, he was truly like her dad, seeing as he raised her with the care her own father could not guarantee at the time. He was the one who showed up for the father-daughter dances, he recorded the hockey games and cheerleading competitions and Christmas mornings and First Holy Communions on his video camera, and whenever my grandma had to work late at night, my mom and her siblings would sit in the station KEZY while he’d be on air; she says they had to keep her baby brother occupied with a bottle to keep him quiet when Denis would announce the next song.
Denis voiced the Disneyland Monorail and was KFI’s man for all things traffic and their tagline “more stimulating talk radio”. One summer, he voiced all the commercials for “The New Leave It to Beaver” which paid for a cross-country summer vacation for my mom and her family. At my parents’ wedding in 1999, Denis was the person who unified both my dad’s and my mom’s sides of the family; my dad’s parents had recently gotten divorced and their new spouses hadn’t met face to face yet. Denis introduced my dad’s mother to her ex-husband’s new wife, which might sound strange (and super confusing), but he was the ideal person to do so; unruffled, loving, level-headed. Denis walked my mom down the aisle of Lake Arrowhead’s Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, along with her biological father, too. That was a huge moment for those sides of my family. Just like the homecoming night, Denis was so beyond excited for this wedding that he announced it on air at the station before he took time off for it.
My grandma tells me stories of how Denis would send her messages over the air waves that they would know but the average person wouldn’t—the static was holding them together. He would do the same for my mom and her brothers, wishing them good luck on tests on the way to school when he knew they’d be in the car listening, or saying he’d hope his wife had a great day at work. He knew when his family would be listening and always wanted to make sure they felt loved. That was his biggest thing—love needed to be felt for everyone. Music is that way too: it’s there to comfort, to enliven, to calm, to quench, to keep company.
Denis died in 2000 around five weeks before I was born. I juuuuuust barely missed him. Denis had recently surgery on his heart, and all went well, until he started to feel sick one night. The doctor said he was fine, and that he might’ve had the flu, so he was sent home. Denis died hours later at their home in Anaheim Hills. He simply didn’t have to die—if only his doctor had kept him at the hospital that night, he probably would still be here today, working on KOST or KFI, getting lunch with me at the Marie Callender’s off the 55 freeway and going to my dance competitions and my brothers’ football games. I often wonder what life would be like if he was still here: my aunt (who was 11 when her dad died) wouldn’t have had to deal with so much trauma, the first few years of my life wouldn’t have been about building back my family’s life and identity, and I’d still have such an important and wonderful man in my everyday life. Then again, my grandma and I wouldn’t have spent so much formative time together (she was single until I was seven and I spent the night at her house every weekend), I wouldn’t have met my grandma’s new husband Jim (who is also an artist and who complements this time in her life so wonderfully), and our family wouldn’t have been so well-versed in handling tragic situations in positive ways.
Denis died on April 29th, and I was born on June 2nd. My grandma says we passed like spirits in the night, him leaving and me coming into the world, almost like we met in that transition. I surely feel that way. Everyone else felt like they knew him too—his funeral was overflowing with over 1,200 people in attendance at San Antonio Catholic Church in Anaheim Hills, far from Los Angeles’s main radio scene. His love for radio moved down the line of my family, and so we listen to the radio to try to catch glimpses of what he loved so much. My grandma used to listen to KFI even after he died because they kept Denis’s voice on one of their jingles; she longed for a bit of that leftover static.
One of the sadder things about this boom in modern 21st century streaming technology is the fact that this leaves radio men and women fuzzing out in the static—they’re on the wrong side of our lives. I do my part and listen to K-EARTH and KOST occasionally, but I end up just plugging in my phone and playing what I want because I pay for the access every month. The disc jockeys and hosts of these radio shows aren’t the gatekeepers of modern music and the way it spreads any longer—they talk and hope people are listening in, but at the end of the day, radio is sort of a dying art, a lost love. My favorite stations are still there for me, and sometimes when I’m having a hard day, I’ll turn on the radio and Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” will be playing on KOST. That was Denis’s song with my mom. Every time I hear it, I can’t help but feel like he’s still working at the station, putting on that song to encourage me and using the power of music and the radio static to keep me feeling okay.
On the 91/55 interchange, there’s a sign on the side of the freeway; “Mark Denis Memorial Interchange”. It represents the love, the care, and the dedication that he had not only to his family, but to listeners who became family. Radio has that power— the static reaching from one person to the next, connecting them with the voices and the sounds and the music that defines generations.
Papa’s Paradise
“Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweet fern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp and the paths leading back to the outhouses and the can of lime for sprinkling, and at the souvenir counters at the store the miniature birch-bark canoes and the post cards that showed things looking a little better than they looked. This was the American family at play, escaping the city heat,”
- E.B. White; “Once More to the Lake”
I desperately want a bucket hat tattoo. Just a small, thin outline of a little fishing hat to remember my great grandfather. Of course, he was not a fan of tattoos, even if this one were to be commemorative. I can picture him now, shaking his head and wincing, picking up my arm and running his hand over the ink lines where the little outline of his hat would be. Papa, as we called him, was a simple man. Coffee in the morning, one Wild Turkey whiskey at night. He was a WWII veteran, serving in the South Pacific at 17 after sneaking into the Navy. He attended USC on the GI bill, met his wife, settled down, had four kids, worked supremely hard until he retired at 60, and then he went to the lake. Papa had taken his kids to Lake Arrowhead in the 1950s, and when they all had children of their own by the 1970s, he purchased a home in an Arrowhead neighborhood called Shelter Cove. Papa tore down the house in the 1990s and rebuilt it to fit our ever-growing family; with 15 grandkids and 27 (and counting) great grandkids, we needed the room. Known for its quietness and always steady bay, Shelter Cove has lived up to its name for my family; our family home up there sheltered us from the world’s difficulties and has healed our family for generations. Through tragic accidents, divorce, mental illness battles, and troubles at work, our Lake Arrowhead home was our refuge. Papa knew this. That space was our paradise, and it was Papa’s, too.
My last memory of Papa took place in early July 2011. It’s maybe the most important memory I have of him. Papa was in his 80s by then but was still doing things he usually did—going for brisk morning walks, driving the boat, ending the day with his whiskey. He was in a full fishing outfit that day: tan cargo shorts, a tan vest with a few tears on the bottom, sandals, and his bucket hat I loved so much. I was sitting on the edge of the boat surrounded by family at all angles. Our dock was always controlled chaos, full of people and music and the smell of my uncles’ pipe smoke. I was swinging my legs off the back of the boat, dangling them over and into the water. Papa came and sat down next to me, smiling and saying nothing. We oftentimes didn’t have to speak; we could just sit in each other’s presence and feel seen and heard in some way. After a few minutes of watching family play in the water and waving to our dock neighbors across the water, Papa got up. I watched as he removed his shoes at the top of the dock. I looked back out towards the water and up towards the trees, feeling the usual peace wash over me. Just then, I saw Papa running down the dock and jump right into the water, his cargo shorts, fishing vest, and bucket hat still on him. His hat floated in the water and he emerged up from below it. Our entire family laughed in disbelief after seeing the leader of the family, well into his 80s, jump in full force in front of us. It was a beautiful moment for me. Papa, who was in pristine health, died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm a week later. It was a devastating, completely shocking loss, and our family was crushed by it.
I’ve often wondered what that moment really means. Is it just a nice memory I have, or did it mean something bigger? I wonder if Papa knew he was dying, and that’s why he jumped in with his entire family near him. Although healthy, he could’ve had some sixth sense telling him that this was the last lake day with family where he could be present physically. But also, he was just that type of joking, funny man who wanted to make you laugh. I suppose I’ll never know, but still, that memory is my most fond of him.
The quote from the start of this essay is from E.B. White’s piece entitled “Once More to the Lake”. In it, White takes his son to the lake he grew up visiting, and now he realizes in his age that the lake has stayed the same, but everything about him and his life has changed; he, along with his son, are older. Age is the thing changing and catching up to him—the lake stays the same. I wonder about Papa and how he felt seeing his ever-growing family on the dock that we all love so much. Did he feel the sinking weight of aging and the simultaneous joy of seeing his family move out of childhood and into their lives?
Papa’s Paradise were the words on the sign that was stuck on our front lawn just before the driveway of our Lake Arrowhead house. Put there by my cousins to celebrate the man who started it all, that sign was there every time we’d pull into the steep driveway to spend a weekend at our family’s paradise. I’ve always felt more connected to myself and my family up there, and when I was little, I used to say we were “closer to Heaven” and that’s why we feel as relaxed as we do up there. I’d say the same is still true today; I think the mountains are the closest you can get to Heaven these days. Papa knew that in our crazy world, this was somewhere we’d need to be as a family to forget about everything going on down the mountain.
I feel Papa watching me each day, and not even in a weird or scary way. I know he’s watched me grow older, he watched me dance on stage when I was in high school, he was with me as I took my first steps on Chapman’s campus, and he really was with me when I learned how to drive his Cobalt boat last summer. It was early morning on the lake and my dad and I walked down to our dock while the lake was still glassy. There were a few skiers out on the water, and I watched as they fell across the cove. My dad pulled out of our dock and we bobbed past the buoys as we headed into the middle of the lake. After we drove around for a bit to get the boat running, my dad turned off the engine and we just floated, letting the water get us lost and turned around. Birds chirped on the shore, the hum of distant boat engines purred through the mountainous hills around us, and the wind blew through, rustling the trees. I felt at peace, and I felt Papa with me. I thought I felt a hand brush across my shoulder while we were out there and knew it was Papa, happy that I was continuing the generation of his grandchildren who could drive his beloved boat. My dad turned the engine back on and moved aside so I could sit in the driver’s seat. I put my hands on the wheel, accelerated as I was taught, and headed straight back towards our cove. Wind picked up my hair, the sound of our engine tore through my ears, and for the first time in months, I felt the peace of our family’s paradise return to me. I am my truest self when I am in the mountains, surrounded by family, and spending enough time on the water. That was the biggest gift Papa has ever given our family.
Papa guides me back to my true self every summer. I feel him when the wind moves, and if I listen close enough, I can hear his voice still echoing around our dock, always urging me to “jump in, baby!” as he’d always say when I was too nervous about the cold lake water below me. So, this summer when I return for my 22nd summer on Lake Arrowhead’s waters, I’ll be the first one to take the plunge into the coldness. Now that it’s been over 10 years since my last memory with Papa, I know he’s encouraging me to make new ones as often as I can, and there’s no better place to do that than his Paradise.
“Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweet fern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end…”
The Chance to Fly
As someone told me lately
‘Everyone deserves the chance to fly!’
And if I’m flying solo
At least I’m flying free
The pads on my slightly crooked wire glasses were slipping down my nose, covered in tears, as I sat in a cushy chair in Segerstrom Center for the Arts watching Wicked for the first time. At just six years-old, I squirmed in my seat, pushing myself up so I could see the characters at every angle as they made their stride across the stage during the show. I’d never paid attention to anything more in all my six years on earth. After walking out of the theater giddy with happiness and humming what I remembered from the song “Popular”, I fell asleep in the car on the way home dreaming of the characters and dance sections. I still dream about them today, fifteen years later.
Wicked is the story based on Gregory Maguire’s book that tells of what comes before The Wizard of Oz. The main character Elphaba (soon to be known as the “Wicked Witch of the West” in Oz) is born green and with magical abilities, and therefore lives a life different than everyone around her. She’s made fun of, excluded, and treated differently throughout the show for the way her personality has been shaped by her green hue. She goes to college and ends up having to room with Glinda, the most popular girl in their school and the eventual “Good Witch” of Oz. When those around her discover she has magic powers, things change for Elphaba. She gets recognized by a professor and has the chance to work with the Wizard of Oz to hone her powers. I won’t spoil anything (because everyone needs to see it at least once) but the scene where Elphaba sings “Defying Gravity” with Glinda is a pivotal moment in the show and comes just before intermission. I still distinctly remember being deeply emotional after seeing Elphaba rise into the air and appear to be flying when I was little. Something has changed within me, something is not the same are the lyrics that change things for Elphaba, and the ones that have rung in my head when things have been changed for me throughout my life. There is a massive sense of comfort in this music for me, and to me, that’s the power of musicals—they can have the same effect throughout lifetimes. The characters have so much to say that they must burst into song; they can’t say it while just merely talking. Musicals are honest and human in that way. I wonder what our world would look like if we all had that musical honesty within us.
Now at twenty-one, the Wicked soundtrack is like coming home for me. It’s like the relief of falling into bed after an arduous day. It sounds like a summer afternoon running mindless errands with my grandma. It reminds me of dancing to the CD’s my aunt made for me after we saw the show—I’d spin around my room to “The Wizard and I” during the designated “quiet time” my mom made my brothers and I take every free afternoon. The inaugural orchestra surge of the opening song “No One Mourns the Wicked” still makes me smile each time I hear it. Some of the songs, though, have more meaning to me and have proven to carry more weight in my life through the years.
“Dancing Through Life” was the first song I memorized when I was little and one I internalized when things got hard. Some of the song’s lyrics are the perfect life advice for an anxious person like me, like “nothing matters/and knowing nothing matters/it’s just life/so keep dancing through,” and “if only because dust/is what we come to/and the strange thing: your life could end up changing/while you’re dancing/through!” This song was always my go-to comfort before nerve-wracking dance competitions or before a big math test. I didn’t matter if I bombed the test or fell out of my turns in my dance routine—it’s just life! The song almost sounds and feels sparkly to me. It’s like a big sparkly blanket that wraps me up and hugs me, telling me that nothing really is as serious as I feel it might be.
“Defying Gravity” is a song I’d always loved, but my dad really took ownership of the song for me; it’s my anthem, according to him. He sees the song being about ridding yourself of all the doubt and fear you might have and forging on into who you know you are…and showing others who that person is. My dad, a former college football player and intense businessman, melts for me and my love of Wicked. He’ll send me the link to “Defying Gravity” on YouTube when he knows I’m having a hard day, or he’ll blast it in our kitchen on full volume when he knows I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone. He has always told me he wants people to see me the way he sees me—which is someone who is confident, resilient, and the sole owner of her life— and “Defying Gravity” represents that to him. The lyric “everyone deserves the chance to fly” pulls that confidence out of me and makes me want to forge on.
My childhood and its trajectory were changed after seeing Wicked. I was mostly shy and preferred to do things by myself when I was young—it was just easier that way. Socializing with the kids at school was not something I loved. I was so anxious about everything that it was difficult and exhausting to put myself “out there”. The next school day after seeing Wicked was a day I felt untouchable. I felt sincerely changed. For Christmas that year, I received a book all about Wicked called “The Grimmerie” from my mom. That book made Wicked become my entire identity and I spent actual hours reading and rereading it for years. I wore the t-shirt with the lyrics to the song “Popular” on it as often as my mom would let me in between washes. I’d spend weekends with my grandma listening to the soundtrack on our hometown streets and having the songs stuck in my head as we perused the Nordstrom kids section. Being an anxious and deeply feeling little girl, Wicked gave me a sense of confidence and almost a sense of purpose that propelled me to get through my days; if Elphaba could make her own decisions, do things with goodness in mind (for the most part), and even fly, maybe I could tackle the hard things and big emotions throughout my days, too.
I recently got the chance to see Wicked again. Of course, I wish I could’ve seen every Elphaba played by a different woman painted green, but I’m almost glad there was a fifteen-year gap between shows for me. It allowed the magic to be perpetuated and remain comforting through the years for me. One of my best friends bought me tickets because she too had grown up loving Wicked the way I’d loved it, and as we sat there watching 15 years later, we both were in tears. To someone who doesn’t have an emotional attachment to a musical, this might seem funny, but think of it like not being able to see your favorite movie for fifteen years and then seeing it and experiencing the familiar magic once more…plus add the fact that it’s live, there’s a full, beautiful orchestra, and theater was in the midst of returning after a two-year COVID hiatus. “Defying Gravity” left me audibly sobbing in the back of the orchestra section. I emerged from my seat for intermission with lines in my makeup, feeling the way I’d felt when I was six once again. It’s the hymn of my existence that makes me take that one step forward into who I know myself to be.
Did Wicked allow me to be myself more fully? To grow into who I was meant to be because the lyrics and characters, especially Elphaba, told me it was okay to do so? I’d say yes. I think one of the reasons I am as confident and grounded as I am because I had this music to fall back on for all these years. It allowed me to be different, to be okay being unlike others, and that I could really defy odds when I felt like it. This musical allowed me to be fully myself and to love that person. Sure, I don’t have green skin, but sometimes I feel like I do in the way that I experience the world in a way that seems to be different than those around me. In all my dissimilarity, in all my anxiousness, and in all my doubt, maybe those are the things that can make me fly after all.
Hello, Passing Stranger
“Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you!” is my favorite Walt Whitman quote and maybe my favorite quote ever.
I remember everything about the people around me. I used to dislike this about myself, but I notice everything. I know the jewelry my managers wear by heart — the thick silver band on one manager’s left hand and the gold necklace with a meaningful Hawaiian word on the neck of another manager. I know my dad’s coffee order, juice bar order, and drink order by heart (venti vanilla sweet cream cold brew, peanut butter bowl add cacao nibs, Jameson preferably with one big ice cube). I know the slightest look on my little brother’s face when he doesn’t like the food he’s eating. I pay attention—maybe too much.
The concept of us as humans being “strangers” is interesting because although we don’t know each other as strangers, we’re showing each other who we are every day.
A girl in my poetry class broke her ankle and I watched week after week as she went from cast + crutches to boot + crutches to just the boot to no boot at all. I’ve watch that twice a week in class all semester, silently cheering for her, internally wishing her the best. I care about her ankle, yet I don’t know anything about her.
I noticed a family of four young boys at Disneyland in matching shorts and t shirts, over the moon to see Disneyland in all the glory it has when you’re little. The oldest boy was old enough to do oldest brother things, but still young enough to dance with his baby brother when a Christmas song came over the speakers and not have any concept of possible societal embarrassment. I will remember that sweetness for a long time.
I care about the girl on campus staring off into the distance, her laptop open and the pages of her textbook turning in the wind. I pray she’s okay every time. I want to cry when I see a boy in my class with his shoes turned inward, his old, graying white Vans slightly untied, looking like a little boy again.
I love the passing stranger untangling their headphones as they walk in their evidently new shoes. I wonder what they’re listening to through those headphones, hope they don’t get blisters in their new shoes, and I hope they have a great day.
I care about the 6 year old in a tutu who stares at me as she has her arms wrapped around her mom’s leg. Her hair is messy, her outfit is beautifully and brilliantly random, her face is so sweet and small, and she loves her mom. I see myself in her. Maybe that’s why I love her.
I see myself in all these strangers and maybe that’s why I care so much. We’re all still existing with and through our inner child, and that inner child shows through in every passing stranger I see.
43
The number across his back has always been 43. Worn for our uncle who sported 43 throughout high school and college, my brother Drew knew who and what kind of game he had in mind when he picked it. Always intense, ever focused, and perfectly in tune with whatever game he was playing, Drew is the ideal athlete. When he was little, I’d spend hours at his games when I wasn’t at my own activities, watching him give his all. I’d watch his little lungs move up and down as he sprinted from first to third base and then when he’d execute a perfect tackle-for-loss as a junior in high school, forcing the other team’s running back to lose yardage. Drew now plays linebacker at Cal Poly SLO, still tackling with intensity and fire in him.
My brother Noah, also now wearing 43 as a sophomore in high school, is my little light worker, but on the field, I’d be scared when encountering him. There’s a video of him during a kickoff return charging straight towards the ball carrier on the other team. He lays this kid flat out on the ground. I can’t explain the way he hits that poor kid, but the sidelines jumped up and down, and the crowd of fans was both amazed and shocked at the same time. He’s a massive 16 year-old linebacker who destroys offenses on Friday nights, but he’s still my baby brother, and I can’t shake the image of him as a baby wandering around our house in a diaper with his bottle in hand.
Being a sports sister, specifically football, has been part of my identity forever. I pay attention, I know the stats (Drew’s junior year, he led the nation’s toughest league with 88 tackles…and he missed a game), I was the one cheerleader on the sidelines that knew what was going on, I know what makes a good defense, I know that offense not working as it should is not always as a result of the quarterback like some might think. I sit with my mom at my brothers’ games while my dad paces the sidelines, and I get my hand squeezed as Noah goes in for a tackle or as Drew runs full speed ahead towards an offensive player. I yell “YOU BETTER GET HIM!” with my mom as we encourage our boys to enter attack mode. It’s embarrassing at times how into it I am, but this is how it is. I was raised to love fall for its football—it’s a dream to me. Friday night is for high school football, Saturdays are for sitting on the couch watching college football, and Sunday is for NFL all day long.
My brothers are powerhouse athletes, but they’re also much more than just that. The Drew that most people know is the perfect athlete, but he’s also the hilarious middle Sulick sibling, the good student, the great friend. Noah is the kindest person I’ve ever met, the most dedicated friend, and the best companion you’ll ever get the pleasure of knowing. The lessons I’ve learned from my brothers have been invaluable. Drew has shown me through nearly losing his senior season to COVID and dealing with the intensity of one’s mind that resiliency is essential and earned. Noah, through his genuine kindness and joyful existence, has shown me that both of those things make the world better; plus, life isn’t as serious as we think it is.
43 connects us as siblings, and although my mom will cry the day this happens, we all want tiny matching tattoos of the number 43 someday. Noah and I are different when we don’t have Drew around, and although we’re lucky he’s still in California for college, having him 4+ hours away is tough. We won’t get him for summers anymore, he can’t come home whenever he feels like it because he’s a signed D1 college athlete, and when my parents drove away with Drew to take him to college, I cried because I knew I’d miss him, but also because I knew our lives would never be the same. I won’t live in the same household with Drew full-time ever again in my life. That was a tough thing to realize, but I suppose it’s part of the deal of getting older with your siblings—you can’t live with them forever, things can’t be like they are when you’re little forever. Noah drives now. How is the baby driving?! I can’t really process the fact that we’re all getting older. I’ll graduate from college in a few weeks, Drew will turn 20 this August, and Noah will enter his junior year football season this fall. What is happening? In all the bittersweetness of getting older with my little brothers, my hope for the three of us is that we continue to bond over music we love, that we can still enjoy driving around our hometown getting food together in our mom’s old Ford Expedition, and that we keep our relationships with each other like they tackle people on the field: we lead with our heart rather than with our head, we wrap our arms around each other, and we go full force into whatever endeavor (or player) we’re pursuing.
San Juan Story
The age-old Mission bells resound through the town as I walk into work each day. That’s how I know I’m late. It doesn’t matter if my watch reads 3:58. If those 200-year-old bells are ringing, it is 4:00 and I am now late for my shift. The Mission San Juan Capistrano stands tall and satisfied, just off Ortega Highway’s congested streets. As the bells ring through the charm of our downtown, confused-looking tourists cross the streets, hurrying their children with tight grips along the Camino Capistrano crosswalk. Passersby stare up at the basilica tower, their hands perched above their eyes, tenting them from the blaring sunshine. I take all this in as I drive down Camino Capistrano, park my car, then bounce into work as the sun dips just below the Los Rios Street historical homes. There’s already a line out the door for dinner service. I rush inside, delicately pushing past cross-armed guests, ducking behind the front desk stand for a moment of peace before the chaos ensues.
I work at a restaurant that holds up history in this town. At the junction of contemporary and timeworn, the building was constructed in 1894 as San Juan Capistrano’s train station and was turned into a restaurant in the 1980s. With cascading, original brick lining every wall, I watch guests run their hands along the irregular-shaped rectangles, breathing in the history of the space and trying to feel the wonder train passengers in the 1800s must have felt. There is an immense sense of story that is laid within the brick of our walls. Our soaring, un-miss-able tower was raised in 1900, The Last Great Train Robbery took place just steps outside this property in 1925, and in 1940, the Southern Pacific 4449 train made its way right next to us on the train tracks, marking a historic day. I like to picture the people who must’ve made their way through the building, bobbing into the rooms still marked “baggage room” while waiting for their train to San Francisco. I remember when I first started at the restaurant, I loved to sit in the booth under the brick archway marked “baggage room”, taking in all the history around me. That childlike wonder and love for that history fuels me each time I clock in.
Reggae music and fragmented conversations from around the restaurant greet me as I walk through the patio checking to see what tables have their checks paid and will likely be heading out soon. This property is like an immense knot to untangle at first, and the chaos that surrounds it can be overwhelming. Now, silverware clanging into plastic bins, Steel Pulse’s song “Your House”, and the word “CORNER!” coming from the kitchen entrance are now safe sounds to me.
The restaurant is right off Verdugo Street and sits nearly atop the train tracks, so if I work an eight-hour shift, I’ll see ten to twelve trains a day. My most favorite thing about our guests is the way their faces light up when a train passes by. Everyone, no matter the age, stops, points, and always smiles, their mouths gaping open, their hands outstretched towards the tracks when a Surfliner or AMTRAK train car speeds by. When I’m closing at night, freight trains will rattle along the tracks, shaking the building in their wake. I usually stop to stare as the oranges and greens and grays of the train cars hustle by. Trains have a way of turning adults back into children even for a moment.
There’s a hauntedness and a history that hangs in the air through this town. Growing up in the area, urban legends are interwoven in the fabric of what makes San Juan so special. I was told stories by tour guides about a young girl who died in the 1812 earthquake. She would hang around the Mission ruins, appearing in the upper left corner of one of the windows with a candle if you caught a glimpse just after sundown. I used to fear the back room at El Adobe Mexican Restaurant; that was San Juan’s town jail when people arrived in the city in the 1800s. Where I work, I’ve seen doors slam with nothing but a sudden gust of wind behind them. In our back office, a manager once was sitting alone at her desk when all the papers surrounding her were picked up and strewn about the space. The folklore keeps us coming back…and keeps us on our toes when walking around late at night.
The annual Swallows Day celebration marks a sense of pride and sentimentality for the city. The story goes that Fr. O’Sullivan, the pastor of the Mission Basilica in the early 1900s, welcomed the swallows to build nests and stay after years of noticing that the birds would return around St. Joseph’s Day each year. The swallows are San Juan’s most beloved travelers and most favored residents. Swallows return with dedication each year, and with each year I celebrate Swallows Day in the city, I watch a population of beach-going, surf-catching, swallow-loving people return to themselves as the birds return in flocks to the Mission.
People came to San Juan through the Santa Fe railroad, and I feel that passengers still walk with us on Verdugo Street today. I think that’s part of what makes us so great: we allow history to walk with us, shape us, repurpose us.
And so, with every “hi, how can I help you?”, with every step through the brick-lined hallways, with every stroll on Los Rios Street, with every Swallows Day parade, and with every glance at the Mission tower as the bells ring, we hold history on our shoulders. We are the walking authors, writing San Juan’s new stories all along the streets of our town.