Carolyn Brager

March 2017

Honors 345 A

Final Paper

The Eyes She Gave Me

I grew up in a house with a tree inside of it, was raised by a family of burners, spent my

childhood summers covered in dirt, and my winters covered in snow. I was taught that if

something is not understood, it is not valued; if it is not valued, it is not loved; if it is not loved, it

is not protected, and if it is not protected, it is lost. All of this I owe to my mom.

* * *

My mom supplied the spirit of adventure in our family. After 26 years of marriage to my

east coast prep boy dad, she’s managed to infuse some of it into him over time. But that spirit

was written into her DNA and ran through her blood, so now it runs through mine.

First, let me tell you a little bit about her. After graduating high school early, my mom

left home and headed to UC Santa Barbara to start college at age sixteen. Fueled by the pursuit

of longer trails, deeper wilderness, and far away ranges, she would go on backpacking trips for

weeks at a time, sometimes hiking distances close to two hundred miles. She would start these

treks with seventy pounds on her back, carrying all the food and supplies she would need for

sometimes three weeks at a time, as there would be no mid-trip chances to re supply. Starting on

the east side of the Sierra Nevadas, she would climb over passes, wander south through the

mountains, come out on the west side, and hitch-hike home.

 On one of these trips, she told me, she started by climbing Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak

in the lower 48, then got caught in a rainstorm after descending the west side. For 3 days, water

pooled up around her sleeping bag every night. Once the rain stopped, she spent a whole day

finding enough dry wood to start a fire and dry out her gear, spending hours holding up one

corner of a tent or sleeping bag at a time against the heat.

She used to tell me her favorite part was going days without seeing anyone. In this

solitude, she told me her favorite places were the high alpine meadows just below tree line,

where it was still wooded but the expanses were full of sunny meadows, clumpy grasses and

wildflowers everywhere, always surrounded by snowy peaks and water. She told me it was a

sense of peaceful bliss. In the photos I’ve seen of her on these trips, she looks young, tough, fit,

and fearless, with wildly long hair and a mischievous twinkle in her eye. When she sees these

photos, she says she sees me.

Since she was young, my mom’s parents nurtured her love for nature by taking her family

to a place called Tuolumne Camp every summer. Decades later, when my mom started her

family, she continued the annual tradition. I went to this camp for 15 years, never missing a year

since the summer after I was born.

Tucked in the mountains beneath the towering pines and firs of the Stanislaus National

Forest, Tuolumne was my mom and I’s favorite place on earth. It was a week in July where each

day was filled with a dozen different moods: the warm bliss and dopiness of an afternoon nap

under a canvas tent, followed by the electric shock of diving into a river of snowmelt and then

the smooth refreshing swim to climb onto a warm rock. Tuolumne camp was a cloud castle of
best selves, campfire songs, happy families, fishing awards, and daring adventures. It was the

scent of pine needles, a culture of horse shoes and badminton. It was where darkness came every

night and the entire solar system would come out to play. At Tuolumne, the college kids on staff

were Olympians, Miss Americas, and the best big sisters and brothers you never had. At

Tuolumne, books read better, ice cream tasted better, and horribly executed acts at family skit

night were somehow brilliantly witty.

When I was little, Tuolumne was a week every year where my mom gave me the freedom

that children once had: years before I could tell time, my mom would hand me her watch after

breakfast, instructing me, "Come back when the little hand is at the top of the circle" and I’d

scoot off. When I got older, Tuolumne was a week every year where my mom and her hormonal

teenage daughter could reconcile the slamming doors and silent treatments becoming more

frequent at home-- when I would crawl into her sleeping bag in the frigid mornings and wish I

was little again.

When I had kids, I vowed, I would take them to Tuolumne like my mom took my family

after her mom took her. I wanted to be a grandmother one day that got to come back and watch

the cycle start again.

I remember one time at camp, when I was older, maybe 14 or 15, my mom and I

wandered off together up the river that ran through camp. This particular time, we kept hiking

farther than we usually did, scrambling over rocks and occasionally walking straight through the

water to explore just a little deeper, just a little farther up. Usually, I was the mountain goat

yearning to be the leader on these adventures. But this time, I happily followed as I watched her
childlike playfulness come alive. We passed all our familiar swimming holes, all the popular

river bank beaches and lunch spot rocks. We were in uncharted territory. Climbing over a foreign

incline in the river, and coming around an unfamiliar bend, we stumbled upon a pristine

widening in the river that formed a nearly still pool of water sparkling in the afternoon sun. I

smiled at the new discovery and glanced at my mom who was already looking back at me, with a

suspicious grin growing on her face.

“C’mon, no one’s around!” she said through a playful smirk.

I looked back sincerely confused what she could be talking about. Letting out a giggle as

childlike as her river stomping, I watched my mom gracefully strip off her all her clothes and

dive head first into the river. Normally, these moments would call for an obligatory teenage sigh

or eye roll, a desperate objection of “what if someone see’s you”. But when she emerged from

the water’s surface with her glowing golden retriever smile, any possible facade of

embarrassment vanished. Shaking my head with a skeptical but eager smile, I followed in her

suit and jumped naked into the river with a giddy squeal.

When I grow old, instead of forgetting a first skinny dip drunk in a hot tub with some

fleeting high school acquaintances, I’ll remember how it was in a sierra mountain river with my

mom. I’ll reminisce how it was in my favorite place on earth with my best friend.

On August 25th, 2013, when the Rim Fire, one of the largest and most damaging

wildfires in California’s history, tore through the Sierra Nevadas near Yosemite National Park,

Tuolumne Camp sat helplessly in its indifferent path. When we woke up to the news, the loss cut

deep, like that of a dear friend. When I cried, my mom cried with me. Imagining the

heaven-on-earth of a place all alone under the heartless roaring flames invoked a consuming
helplessness. It’s still hard to visualize such a pure and serene place that maintained the exact

same breathtaking beauty year after year engulfed in cold-blooded heat that leveled it in just a

few hours. But, Tuolumne wasn’t a place, or even an era. It was a dream. And a dream that

magical doesn't die with the trees.

* * *

When my mom and dad built the house I grew up in, they found a plot of land with a

wildly untamed backyard. As an architect, my mom was in charge of the landscape design. She

could have turned this tangled mess of woodland in the back into a manicured lawn, garden

patch, or architectured patio, as you would expect to see behind every other house in my

California suburban neighborhood. But, instead, she left it wild.

Instead, she gave her kids an unconventional backyard that stretched down an expanding

slope into dense forest. She didn’t fix the broken fence leaving the division between the house

and the river behind it seamless and united. She left the blackberry bushes that grew in thickets

up to my waist and the thick redwoods that rose from a soft dark carpet of soil. She left this

“backyard” a limitless playground made of earth.

Defining memories of my childhood resided in these woods. I spent years building a

narrow trail along the creek. My small hands would trace logs and leaves with so much delicacy

and tenderness as I played beneath the trees that I was convinced they seemed to turn towards

me, craving my affection. My youthful vitality and carefree spirit fueled the natural processes of

the roots I danced on, river stones I balanced on, and branches I played beneath. I swore my

heartbeat had a way of energizing the singing birds.

 My mom taught me that if something is not understood, it is not valued; if it is not

valued, it is not loved; if it is not loved, it is not protected, and if it is not protected, it is lost. She

taught me to ​understand​ that those woods and that stream were not mine, but that I belonged to

them, that I was born into this world; it was not given to me. I learned to ​value​ those woods

because, for me, they were the place I went to seek relief from the noise, haste and crowds that

too often confined me. I ​loved​ those woods where my mom let me run free, giving me room for

boundless imagination, and replacing childhood constraints by a brief sense of freedom and

independence. For all they had had me, my mom taught me these woods were mine to ​protect.​

The wild may be ​lost​ to most, to many unknowingly, but for my mom and me, it was in our

souls.

* * *

In 2012, while I was getting a routine doctors checkup for an unrelated medical issue,

my doctor discovered something wrong with my heart. After several more appointments and too

many different kinds of blood and imaging tests, I was diagnosed with a rare connective tissue

disorder where the most concerning associated problem was what they called a dilated aortic

root.

I remember one particular moment in these doctors offices distinctly. A cardiologist came

into my room, sat down, and asked me straight, “Carolyn, do you play any sports?”. I answered

honestly. At age 14, I was the fastest girl in my grade and played multiple sports year round.

Being an athlete was something that had always defined me. Without this outlet for my excessive

and incessant energy at this age, I would literally go crazy. As I would soon be heading to high

school, being an elite competitive athlete was eagerly in the plans.

 And then, in an instant, this integral part of my identity was ripped out of me. My doctor

explained to me that, because this important valve of my heart was enlarged, the intense physical

exertion and contact involved in competitive sports could potentially risk a catastrophic

complication such as an aortic rupture. He said to me straight, “You can’t play the sports you

play, anymore”. Looking back, I assume he probably sensed a likely propensity for the shock on

my face to turn into denial later so, I remember, he looked me sincerely in the eyes and said,

“Carolyn, if something happened during, say, a soccer game, and your aorta were to rupture, do

you know what would happen? If that were to happen, you would most likely die”. I stared back

with the most overwhelming tightness growing in my chest, holding back the most consuming

surge of hot tears. He apologized, said a few more things I have completely blocked out of my

memory, and then he left.

I tell this story not for pity, not even for the story itself. In fact, for a very long time, I

didn’t tell anyone. I tell this story now, years later, because of how my mom helped me get

through what for me was a really hard thing to go through at that age of my life. I tell it because,

afterwards, during the months of anger turning to depression turning to restlessness, she told me

the same thing relentlessly, one thing I will carry with me as a way of walking through the world

for the rest of my life. She would tell me, over and over: “When one door closes, another one

opens”. She would tell me “I’m ​not​ saying everything happens for a reason-- sometimes shitty

things just happen to good people” (When she was in her late twenties, my mom’s house burned

down two months after her mom died. She lost absolutely everything. She understood shitty

things happening for no good reason).

 She told me, “Don’t waste your time trying to figure out what you did wrong to deserve

this. Some doors are going to close and leave beautiful things behind. Just don’t close your eyes

or you’ll miss the ones that open”.

I see the world differently because of the eyes my mom gave me. I walk through the

world differently because of the way she raised me. She taught me to always remember that “this

too shall pass”-- all the good, and all the bad, so cherish the beautiful and move through the hurt.

She is my role model of womanhood, my epitome of motherhood, and the essence of a best

friend.