I've been alive for 16 years. Born Cali Rose Last-name undecided. My early years are foggy. My childhood was marked by migrations from state to state because of my mother's problem with staying in one place. My mother was a wild child, daughter of a Baptist reverand and a frail French immigrant who married young. A real Southern love story, my grandparent's life until my grandmother's death. Papa met grand-merie in college in 1976. Grand-merie was absolutely beautiful, with dark curly hair and pale almost transulcent skin and cupid's bow lips. Papa was a good ole' Southern farm boy and within a year they were married, the very next, my mother was born. Mom was a latent hippie, while everyone else was wearing side ponytails and leg warmers she was riding around with long, flower entangled hair, radical ideas, and medicinal "herbs." She only made it through eleventh grade when she had me.
From my birth on we've been running away from her life to new places. We even changed our names eventually. She changed my name to Dani California after her newest favorite song, and her name to Rhiannon Wild. She really was a Rhiannon--the woman taken by the wind. I didn't understand my name change because I didn't seem to be anything like Dani from the RHCP song, but then again, I was 11. By now I've developed into my namesake and my mother was taken by the wind to San Francisco, leaving me by myself in a motel in L.A. Her last words were "Sometimes your heart needs you to do some pretty tough shit, baby. But if you follow it, you won't ever be unhappy, or lonely. Follow your heart, Dani." Then she left money on the table and walked to the door. "And....try to loosen up a bit more. Bye, baby." And with that my mother left me to follow her heart and a dark headed drummer around the states on tour.
I was apathetic to the night she left, mostly because I always knew she would leave eventually; add that to the fact that I was slightly under the influence because I had been taking her advice to "loosen up." What kind of mother is OK with that? Who encourages that? Well. My mother. Normally I was the one holding her hair as she vomited the nights activities away, and helped her undress and watched for signs of an overdose. I went to school wherever we were, I took jobs wherever they'd take me and I watched my 33 year old mom party like college student on spring break. I can't remember a time when she was the steryotypical mom we all see on TV--the mom who gives the child rules and teaches her right from wrong in a comical awkward way.
The night she left for L.A. I left for Tenneessee on a greyhound bus for a faded address on the back of a Christmas card sent to me when I was 5 by my grandparents.
A few hours from Nashville I'm praying that I can find my grandparents here. They don't have to like me, and they probably won't, but all I need right now is somewhere to go until I can graduate. Then I suppose it'll be time to change my name again. But for now, Dani didn't go up in the smoke of gunfire, she's alive right now, in me. My only connection, and the only inheritance from my mother. A name and desire.
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