I just finished putting together a field trip for my daughter’s homeschool group to visit King Tut at the deYoung in San Francisco. I remember when I was young and King Tut came on his first US visit. Time Magazine ran a big cover story, and it was Egypt-mania amongst all the kids I knew.
Of course, I grew up in a place that King Tut would never deign to visit. Northern Midwest, middle of nowhere. My husband is from New York City (Flatbush, to be exact), and he grew up with being able to take a bus, or even walk or bike, over a bridge to see the most fabulous stuff of the world. For me, King Tut was everything Michigan was not: exotic, wealthy, mysterious, and very, very old. It didn’t occur to me that I’d ever get to visit him. But I dreamed of going to California, and decided that college was my ticket there.
California, here I come!
My kids have things that I never even thought possible, the least of which is fresh vegetables in the wintertime. Of course, these days they have those even in Michigan, but they’re largely imported from California. Like their movies, their favorite websites, a lot of their music, and most of their movies. I grew up with a culture of appreciating the other and disdaining what I had. It’s sometimes a weird feeling to realize that my kids are growing up in a place that I dreamed about.
My husband and I marvel sometimes that we’re here, on one of the most beautiful coasts in the world. We know that our kids have no perspective about this, but still, we’re inclined sometimes to say to them, “Do you know how lucky you are to live here? Do you know how amazing this place is?”
They don’t, but we do.
King Tut!
OK, I have probably admitted this before, but when I moved to Santa Cruz I didn’t realize how far from civilization, as I defined it (i.e. San Francisco), I had moved. The other place I lived longterm was Palo Alto, 45 minutes and a whole world away from San Francisco. But when I didn’t have a car, I could jump on the train. And when I did, I’d zip up 280 to find culture, art, and people with good taste (OK, and bad taste) in clothing.
Santa Cruz is far enough away from San Francisco that you can’t make an easy day of going there, especially with kids. I have come to realize that this is precisely why Santa Cruz is a cool place to live and, for example, Pacifica is not. If I lived in Pacifica, I’d be up in SF with my kids whenever I wanted culture. Down here in Santa Cruz, we have to make our own culture. Which is why we have a culture.
But we do not have King Tut. Can you tell I’m looking forward to this? And so is my daughter. We went to the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries book sale (one of the best SC events of the year), and she found a book about Egyptian art. “Can I get this?” she asked. Good Homeschooling Mama said, Of course, darling, if you think it would be interesting. Like the Good Homeschooling Girl that she is, she’s kept it in the car and read it from cover to cover. So when I opened up the paper one day and said, Hey, King Tut is coming, she said, I know who that is — he’s in my book!
The one thing that’s more fun than doing a cool thing ourselves is doing a cool thing with friends, so we rounded up some of the usual suspects and we’re off to SF to visit the King. I figure I should probably find that song on the Internet and play it for my kids. There’s no way they can imagine the Tut mania of my day; their childhood is one of connectivity and masses of information. Mine was a childhood of long, hot (or freezing) days, a glossy magazine coming each week to bring the outside world in. Where I lived, you couldn’t stand at the ocean’s edge and see forever; you couldn’t get the world’s most exotic foods at your grocery store; you couldn’t even see a movie right when it was released. You learned to wait and to dream, and your dreams made things bigger than they really were.
When I dreamed of California, it was something more fabulous than it’s turned out to be. But when I dreamed of King Tut, he was only in glossy 2 dimensions. I’m guessing that the real thing will be all the better for the waiting.
