On the Arroyo
Hello dear friends, I am co-hosting a holiday gathering with Jessica Kraus from House Inhabit on Sunday November 12th from 11-4 pm.
My intention behind this is to join together in community more often and also celebrate a lot of the local artists and friends I'm surrounded with. We have a new showroom for our company Yeah! Rentals and I am wanting more and more to be with community in this space. I also know how hard this time of year can be for families with the holidays approaching and wanted to be of service earlier than later. I have a story below that will speak to this but first...
It has been ten years since Michael and I moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. During that time, we have slowly grown our family and drifted further east - first Echo Park, then Mt. Washington, and then with the birth of Francesca we moved once again to call Garvanza our home. We live right at the beginning of the Arroyo and our lives revolve around it in many ways. For those of you who don't know this area of East LA - Garvanza, Highland Park, South Pasadena, Pasadena and Altadena - there is a wide, dry gulch running through it leading to the foothills of the Angeles Crest Forest called Arroyo Seco. We walk and hike through it. We ride our bikes alongside it. We drive past it every day to get to school. It is peaceful full of old trees and lots of wild life and in some ways defines the East Side. I love that even here in the bustling city of Los Angeles we live in such a beautiful area, filled with old oaks, pine trees and eucalyptus.
This community offering has another component. When I was little, there was one Christmas while my mother was raising my older sister, my younger sister and myself as a single mother that we very nearly missed Christmas. Were it not for the charity and love of our church we would have had a very different experience. I remember the sisters from my church bringing us a big holiday meal, a bag of navel oranges (I remember this the most) and small gifts. I remember they filled our home with song and candle light and our home was warmed by their giving spirit. When you live with just one parent, the connection becomes so strong between you - as if a thread is running through you filling you with the same love for each other. This Christmas I know must have been incredibly difficult for my mom to feel powerless to not give us the things we had asked for. Filled with surrender and acceptance. I still don't know if she experienced it the way that I did, through a child's heart feeling supported and loved.
We will be hosting a raffle and bake sale that will support a local East Side organization called Families Forward and hope, in a small way, to lighten the loads of local families with children. That would be my greatest wish. We are on this earth at this specific time for a reason. To lift each other up and be of service. Attached below are some of the wonderful artists who will be there. I hope to see you too!
4514 N. Figueroa St. Los Angeles, CA 90065
