Our House

a eulogy

It was an old house. A small one-story rancher on a big lot, an English Tudor with a sprawling backyard full of fruit trees, and an old weeping olive tree whose foreboding dead branches could no longer support a treehouse, though they still sprouted new life periodically. During the summer the wraparound garden was reminiscent of a Seurat, thousands of luscious shades of green with dashing little dots of yellow and pink, all begging to contribute to a child's lemonade stand. In the back of the garden, where the sun doesn’t penetrate was a malnourished guava tree. It bore fruit but was almost always devoured by the Palisades rats before the Laupa family could pick them.

The Palisades had one of the most impressive rat populations in the world. The legend goes that two old lesbians who lived in a teardown off Toyopa kept them as pets, and when they died the breeding expanded exponentially until the rats were just as prominent a demographic as wasps, and old racists.

The Tudor house was transformed into a home by the Laupa family, one of the last great holdouts of the American middle class. The patriarch, Armen Laupa, bore two sons, and with his wife, they lived the American dream. They cooked family meals with the antique stove, whole turkeys and jello pudding on Thanksgiving, Scrambled eggs on Sunday brunch, paired with fresh squeezed orange juice from the backyard.

The boys, with their own bare hands, built a loft above the attic to hang out in. With supplies from the neighborhood family-owned hardware store, Norris Hardware, they constructed a space fit for the Hardy Boys. Newspaper floor stapled to a platform of jigsawed two by fours, and a small couch for reading comic books. There was a wall full of pegs, which the boys used to store their tools for their next big project. The boys were really handy, they even created a macgyvered buzzer system that led to the kitchen so mom could buzz them when dinner was ready. They walked to the park, went to church on Sundays at Corpus Christi, and fostered a beautiful life together.

As the boys got older they brought girls up to the loft and orchestrated a schedule with one another so they could both have privacy with their high-school sweethearts. Beers were stashed behind couches, and cigarettes were silently smoked out screen windows to avoid filling the home with the ashy smoke of adolescence. Girlfriends came and went, friends moved away, and hairlines matured and thinned as the fifties turned to the sixties. Time began to play its cruel trick of pressing fast forward, and soon decades passed by like a tsunami spreading the family from one another.

Armen Laupa died in the house of natural causes, and little by little the family home fell into disrepair. The old pipes under the house dripped into the walls causing mold to spread throughout the drywall, and the asbestos insulation leached into the lungs of the Laupas.

The house naturally fell to the children. They had both moved away and started their own nuclear lives and were looking to sell their house, along with its treasure trove of happy memories.

They wanted to sell to a similar family, one that could get as much joy out of the house as they did. My mom wrote a compassionate letter to the Laupa boys, writing of her admiration for the house, and her vow to keep its original charm. They gave us the house under-asking price, which allowed us to move up in the world – to be what my father jokingly referred to as the “Palisades Hillbillies.” It was definitely a “fixer-upper,” but we were in a good neighborhood that overlooked the Pacific Ocean, and cool sea breezes periodically danced through our French doors and uplifted the home with a salty kiss.

We, of course, had to remove the asbestos and revamp the heating and the electrical system. Unfortunately, the boys’ loft had to be removed as it was now a breeding ground for black mold, and the miniature replica of the house in the backyard had to be demolished for similar reasons. We left our mark on the house and redid the driveway to accommodate two cars. We renovated the garage to house our musical instruments and massive oriental rug – it was also the only room in the house with air conditioning.

Our two dogs lived in that backyard, they loved to bask in the summer sun like preening lizards and buried their many toys in the yard with their tiny jack-russell paws. We went through two hammocks that oscillated between direct sunlight, and the nurturing shade of the olive tree. My dad loved to pass out shirtless on the hammock with his Kindle on his stomach. He would come back in hours later as red as a lobster, with a kindle-shaped white patch on his stomach, ready to fall asleep during one episode of the crown.

I walked to the park nearly every day. I would challenge random strangers to games one-on-one, and talk about how I was going to talk to pretty girls across the park with my middle school best friend, Julian Sachs (we never did). I lit fireworks and smoked weed in the massive, sloping ditch that lay adjacent to the park. I bought fruit from the “fruit guy,” his mango was always hit or miss, but his grapes were always crunchy.

During the pandemic, I walked seven miles every day around the beautiful neighborhood. I made a point of seeing the ocean everyday and even would forgo video game time to go on my daily walk.

As sunrises turned to sunsets, the years flowed swiftly, seedlings turned overnight to sunflowers, and our turn to live at the house came to an end. We admittedly didn’t leave on great terms, we had to sell much under-asking to buyers that shook us down for every penny. They had all the cards, and we were jobless and in debt. Though it broke our hearts, we knew it was time to say goodbye. My brother was moving out, and I was heading to college, and the house was far too big for my parents’ empty nest.

Less than three months after handing in the keys the whole of Palisades was consumed by a fire, the biggest one in the city's history. As I write this, the fire is still ravaging the city of Los Angeles robbing people of their homes, their community, and their family.

Fire is the most indifferent natural disaster, it has no motivation but to consume. It wants to expand, and feed its flames with the lost stories of historic houses. It feeds on memories and spreads its embers along with the help of the Santa Ana Winds. Climate change deniers like the amorphous blob of mucus known as Mitch McConnell would argue that this is an act of god. But it was only through the ignorance of politicians that the Albert Hammond song could become a prophecy, that it would “never rain in Southern California.”

I imagine my house was scared when it burned, like a dog alone at the vet. It’s glorious Olive Tree standing like a sentinel against the hurricane winds, valiantly defending its fruit knowing its efforts are in vain. The work of art that was my backyard was reduced to ash and rot, like the lost pointillism masterpiece that it was.

The garage where the Laupa boys grew up, where the Orenstein boys grew up. Where maturity watered seeds of joy, where hardwood floors soaked up the tears of heartbreak, and felt the dancing feet of lovers. The sweet sway of the hammock, the sea breeze, the graceful fall leaves, the freshly mowed grass, the smell of freshly baked cookies, the room where I faked being sick to avoid school, the backyard in which my dogs soaked up the sun like furry sunflowers.

All gone.

Nothing is permanent, even houses you own are merely vessels for the memories you make. We are just nomads passing through a meaningless, senseless world trying to connect the dots. The one thing fire cannot burn is the potent indomitable human spirit. A feeling so palpable you can almost touch it, and what connects us all to one another. In times of distress, the community comes together, barriers are broken by fire and rebuilt by love and hope.

Helping hands are lent, and humanity is restored. I am so lucky to be alive, and that my family is safe. As I sit in New York, obsessing over the people I love, and the life I lead, I can’t help but be foolishly optimistic. What’s beautiful is that we all know the boulder is insurmountable, and yet we all can't resist helping one another push it up the hill. In vain, and in triumph, LA is strong.