My Cousin Charles

In the late summer of 1995, the VW van I had precariously driven through the deserts of Arizona and up the coast of California went kaput. 

With a vague idea of making it to Alaska, I had odd-jobbed my way through the last four months, pulling weeds in a friend’s backyard in Los Angeles, picking up trash at the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival, giving tarot card readings at a gas station in Santa Cruz (the owner felt sorry for me and gave me a free sandwich.) 

My tin can of a van had gotten me past San Francisco with the check engine light flickering pretty much the entire time, which I had discovered I could get to stop temporarily by pouring a quart of oil into the engine every few days. I’d spent some weeks sleeping in a friend’s driveway in the wine country, then circled back to Marin County, where I thought I might pick up some custodial work at the theater atop Mount Tamalpais before heading towards Portland. 

But my time and transmission had run out. With the smell of oil still fresh on my fingertips, the VW expired with a terrifying *clunk* in front of a frozen yogurt shop on Sir Francis Drake Avenue. 

I had eleven dollars, a beat-up trumpet, and a bag of trail mix with all the chocolate chips picked out. 

After having a good cry wrapped in my tie-dye blanket on the foldout bed, I walked until I found a pay phone (remember those?) and searched my worn address book for my cousin Charles Dines, who lived a few towns over. 

He showed up 30 minutes later, handed me a bowl of NoCal’s finest green and took me out for sushi in Sausalito.

“You are going to be OK. You are OK,” soothed Cousin Charles, who is exactly ten years my senior. I’d really only met him a handful of times, but he collected weird things like stamps and old watches and always made me laugh.    

“You’ll look back on this moment and realize this is the moment you found your fate.”

He let me crash in the downstairs office of his cabin in the steep hills of Fairfax, where I was graciously tended to by his lifetime love, Sheri Lee Williams, who with her cups of herbal tea and honey Louisiana drawl cushioned my fear and loathing about whatever it was that I was supposed to do with my life.   

After a few weeks I found a job in a coffeeshop and a room to rent, which led to an assistant editor post at the weekly newspaper and a fortuitous introduction to a certain fine fella from Savannah. 

My parents helped pay for a rebuilt engine for the VW and also, therapy. 

From that point, I seized upon a trajectory that included claiming my dream of being a writer and learning how to take care of myself in all the ways that count. Cousin Charles will always be the person who showed me unconditional kindness and love even though I was a complete dumbass who didn’t know an oil leak from the Five of Pentacles. 

Cool story, sis, you may be thinking. But as there so often is with these little anecdotes of mine, there’s more Savannah to this story.