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I’ll take another of these pictures in September, when the girls are fully grown. Right now, they are getting trained, and as of this morning, they are also getting their first inner pruning. More on them next week. But in the meantime, I’m in a nostalgic mood as we approach another summer solstice. I sit here in my beds, blissing out, at the angle of the sun, the length of the days, and the flood of memories that fly in and out of frame like the looming overcast. Like apparitions.

My first summers were in San Mateo, south of San Francisco. Our backyard was small, but for a child left mostly alone, with two much older brothers and an overprotective mother, it was where my imagination was born. It’s also where my undiagnosed autism was allowed to foster, grow, and completely take over my life. Autism runs in my family.  We know that now, though we didn’t know it then. We just knew there was one confirmed autistic child on my mother’s side who was barely functional. To my mother, I obviously wasn’t like that, so that meant I was fine. My high functioning neurodivergence was allowed to fully form without anyone paying attention. All of which would have been brutally ironic for my mother had she ever realized that, on her watch, her fears had come true about me. I can laugh about it now—she passed 30 years ago and never would have found it the least bit amusing.

All that time alone only fueled my neurodivergence. I went completely inside myself to find entertainment and stimulation. If this sounds lonely, it was, but it was also the start of who I actually am. My mind always keeps me occupied. A writer was being born. I learned to read early in life and I read many hours every day. I read Lord of the Rings for the first time the summer after I turned seven.

I would spend hours every day in the garden, studying bugs, plants, fruits, flowers, everything and anything that was growing. No radio out there, unless there was a baseball game on. I was fascinated by growing things, fell in love with our apricot tree, and had my first experiences with pruning. I revered ants, because they work so well together.

During my time in the yard, I would talk constantly. I would announce and broadcast everything happening that I noticed. It was largely imaginary, but an active imagination can be as real as it gets for a little kid. I felt truly free in my mind, and that helped me cope with my isolation.  

My father was a football coach. He was the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, with the unlikely name of Howard “Red” Hickey. He invented the Shotgun Formation.

After the 49ers, my Dad became an assistant with the Dallas Cowboys and eventually became their head national talent scout for over 20 years. Our family lived in Texas for two years.

In Texas, I had to get used to the heat, but once I did, I loved living near a ranch in North Dallas. In those summer days there were mostly empty lots around us and just down the road from our house were horses. That’s where I learned to ride. No one taught me, I just figured it out on my own. First, I coaxed an older mare to the fence with treats. After a couple of weeks of this, I climbed onto her back using the fence. She didn’t mind and within a few days, I was riding bareback on a horse. I got her to gallop. No one in my family knew, but some of the ranch hands did.  They hooted and waved their hats. It was such a rush for me. I understood that I would be in huge trouble with my mother if she found out, but she didn’t until years later and only because I told her. That was my big secret as a kid.

But that, readers, was my true introduction to summer. Sunny, warm, and free enough to walk down the road and unknowingly risk my life by learning to ride a horse by myself. I did it, and nothing in my life has been the same since. I was filled with confidence that I wasn’t even old enough to understand. I was much stronger physically. The change in me from the start of summer was pronounced. My Dad was gone a lot, but when he came home, he noticed the change in me and asked my mother, “Are you feeding him something different?” I was suddenly developing muscles, and what my Dad didn’t know was that I had begun doing daily pushups, something I’ve done ever since.  

My folks were both from Arkansas, so we visited there in the summer, and that’s where I fell in love with fireflies. It’s also where I had my first real tomato, not the tasteless garbage in most markets. That experience stayed with me until I could finally grow my own tomatoes, which I did, and still do, in abundance.

Eventually we moved to Santa Monica, California, because although Dad still worked for the Dallas Cowboys, he only needed to be in Texas a few weeks out of the year and Mom wanted to be back in California. Dad was on the road scouting over half of every year. 

Santa Monica meant living near the coast and the love of that has never left me, even though I wasn’t really a beach kid. I preferred Northern California’s trees and forests to Southern California’s desert and sand. I also choose empty beaches over ones where people are crammed in like canned fish. I need the North coast, no smog, and redwoods. 

All that said, to be truly happy in Southern California, it’s advantageous to be water and sun friendly. I have fair skin, burn easily, and don’t know how to swim. I tried to learn two different times, but I’m allergic to chlorine. I was in the hospital once when I was six years old, and almost in the hospital again decades later when I tried to learn while Karen was pregnant with our twins. My doctor asked me if I was trying to kill myself. 

Consequently in LA, I was the whitest white boy at the beach, and spent most of my summers playing sports with a group of kids on an elementary school playground with little to no adult supervision, which was very cool. Compared to youth today, we were so free.

My favorite summer job–although  likely the lowest paying–was as a counsellor for the Tocaloma Club summer camp in Los Angeles. I had a “tribe” of children to play with and take care of for the summer. I loved those kids and they loved me. During my third summer with the same group of boys, the sister of one of my kids had an accident and died. When that boy returned to camp, he had a special request. Whenever I drove our kids in a van to whatever event we were part of, they knew that when a Beatles song came on the radio, I would sing along. They would listen respectfully and silently. That day, the grieving boy asked if we could have a circle in the woods. I figured it was going to be emotional, but I had no idea.

When we formed our circle, we waited for the boy to speak and when he finally did, he had one request. He asked me to sing him, “Yesterday.” To this day, I don’t know how I got through it, especially with all the boys crying, but I did. When I finished, the boy wiped his eyes and announced, “Let’s play!” He was okay. I still get choked up thinking about that moment. I’d love to know how those kids turned out.

Even though I never learned to swim, I was occasionally coaxed into the ocean when I was a young man. Almost didn’t make it back to shore a couple of times. But being young, and being invited to skinny dip under a full moon, was something I wasn’t going to pass up.

While I was in college, this was my view:

My housemates and I had a third floor flat on Union Street in San Francisco. We had a ladder in the pantry that led to the roof, which we called “The Beach.” This was in 1978, I paid $115 a month for rent, and this was our view. That summer on the beach was, well, quite a party. I still love that city, but unless you got into a place 40 years ago with rent control, I don’t know how you can afford to live there.

Since then, I found my way to Karen, and we moved over the Golden Gate Bridge to start our own family north of San Francisco.

Core summer memory with our kids. Shout out to all Dads.

Once you have children, everything is a whirlwind. Our best summer trip, in my opinion, was two weeks on Kootenay Lake in Canada, the longest lake in the country. Until we moved where we live now, that trip was our family favorite. We were astonished to be someplace where water could run 24/7, because of the lake. Gardens in British Columbia are something to behold. I miss you, Canada, and I’m so sorry for how our country is treating yours right now. 

Another prime adult summer memory for me is when Karen and I went to Ireland the summer of 2013. I was invited to do a reading from one of my novels at the White House pub in Limerick, one of Europe’s most famous reading spots. All the greats of the last century had read in that pub, so to be invited was one of the honors of my life. I’m someone who LOVES to read aloud, because I’ve been doing it by myself since I was seven years old.

Pretty pumped that day in Limerick. It was the 19th anniversary of the passing of my mother. She taught me how to write and would have been so happy.

This is Skellig Michael, an island off of Ireland where the puffins live. It was the location for the Jedi Academy where Luke was hiding in the later Star Wars movies. The day we went and climbed that rock, it was 90 degrees (32.2 C) well into the Atlantic Ocean.

It was summer in Ireland, so it stayed light until almost midnight. The weeks we were there were among the hottest on record. Karen swam in the warm Atlantic at 10:30 at night. We both miss Ireland, and would love to go back. Wouldn’t mind living there. 

Found out an interesting thing in Ireland. My people were named O’Hickey for a long time. The O’Hickey family name comes from the Gaelic “Ó hÍceadha”, which  translates to “descendant of the healer.” 

Given my twelve-year pursuit to find help for my wife, I find this interesting. It also might help explain how I got into growing cannabis so easily. It seems that healing is in my blood. And my blood, ironically enough, is O negative, which made me a universal donor until I got cancer.

This is me with Suzy. She liked to walk with me, and though she followed, she was clearly in charge.

I love where I live now. This is where our children grew up. It’s where I was always meant to live.

I first came to this part of the world when I was three years old. I don’t remember much else from that age, but I remember that summer day. Dad, Mom and I drove to a brand new, Czechoslovakian restaurant. My mother was Czech, and on that day, for the only time, I heard her speak a foreign language. She and the restaurant owner spoke “hunky” together–that’s  what she called it. She smiled the entire time, something I’ll never forget. So I remember that day, and when we walked to our car, I grabbed my Mom’s hand and made her stop. I said, “Smell the air, mommy. It’s the sweetest I’ve ever smelled. Someday, I’m gonna live here.”

Next month, a month after Solstice, while my plants begin transitioning towards flowering, Karen and I will celebrate 27 years of living where we live now, just up the street from that Czech restaurant, having recently passed our 40th wedding anniversary, and 43 years of living together. 

By the way, I’m married to one of those girls I skinny dipped with.

Happy Solstice, everyone.

This blog is dedicated to my Tocaloma tribe. By some miracle, if one of you reads this, please reach out.

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