hand, lived alongside me, seeing the world
through a lens of imagination and creativity in her little pink
stucco bungalow on Finger Avenue in Redwood City, Califor-
nia. Whenever I arrived at her door, I knew her face would light
up. By the time she was fifty-five, she had three marriages be-
hind her (the family average), and although she still kept com-
pany with one of her former husbands from time to time, she
had, for the most part, turned her focus from relationships to
art, landscaping, playing canasta, and, eventual y, to writing. She was home most days, working in her garden or her art studio or
at her drafting table or loom. Like her sister, the Zen Buddhist
Pat, JoJo knew how to navigate solitude. She lived the last thirty
9 0
WritingIsMyDrink_i-xiv-1-258_1p.indd 90
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W r i t i n g i s M y D r i n k
years of her life alone and never seemed too concerned about
it. “I found sex awful y repetitive,” she told me once when I was
twenty-three.
JoJo’s approach to the world excited my imagination. It
was JoJo who taught me about the missions that stretch along
California’s spine, dotting El Camino Real every twenty miles
from San Diego to Sonoma. “A day’s walk apart,” she told me.
I could picture the monks in robes like Saint Francis walking
steadily from mission to mission, just as I could imagine myself
beside JoJo in her white Buick Skylark with the top down, driv-
ing from mission to mission. The farther south we drove, the
further we’d go back in time until my California—the groovy
California of the 1960s—magical y transformed into the Golden
State of her youth. In her stories, California belonged to Stein-
beck, John Muir, and Henry Miller, a legendary, fertile kingdom
where orchards spilled into orchards and dirt roads puffed a
cloud of burnt sienna dust behind us as the Buick became the
black Model T her father bought her in 1924 to drive to Calis-
toga High School.
I’d often stay at JoJo’s on the weekends that my mom would
go away when I was a kid. It would take a long time for me to
realize where my mom had been on those weekends—even
years after my older sister said, “Of course, he was married!
What did you think?” Before my mom would leave for I did not
know where, she and I would wend our way toward JoJo’s, up
El Camino with its neon martini glasses flashing and forever
spilling onto the word COCKTAILS, El Camino with its liquor
stores that smelled of cardboard and Dubble Bubble, its gas sta-
tions and endless cheap motels.
9 1
WritingIsMyDrink_i-xiv-1-258_1p.indd 91
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T h e o P a u l i n e N e s t o r
When my mom and I hit Redwood City, we’d turn onto
Whipple Avenue, past the Wienerschnitzel hot dog restaurant
and the Shaws ice cream parlor and then left at the AAA office
onto Finger Avenue. Down Finger Avenue at number 173 stood
JoJo’s bungalow, with the lime and apricot trees in the back and
in the front, the modern, water-efficient landscaping that once
was featured in Sunset magazine. This was where JoJo wove wall hangings made of sticks, feathers, and dog fur (Samoyed,
to be precise), ran her landscape design business, and opened
her doors to the occasional undocumented worker to live in her
guest room. JoJo was the grandmother who thought coloring
books were immoral and that you should definitely know about
Picasso by the age of seven. She was my dad’s mother. I had al-
most no relationship with my biological father, Ted Nestor, but
it never occurred to me that it was special or strange or amazing
that JoJo made our relationship continue and flourish despite
his complete disinterest in being my parent.
Together, we ate vanil a ice cream in small glass bowls with
silver spoons and played War at the picnic table in her dining
room. The phone rarely rang. The occasional car rumbled by.
There was nowhere we were supposed to be; we were at the cen-
ter of a universe of two.
through a lens of imagination and creativity in her little pink
stucco bungalow on Finger Avenue in Redwood City, Califor-
nia. Whenever I arrived at her door, I knew her face would light
up. By the time she was fifty-five, she had three marriages be-
hind her (the family average), and although she still kept com-
pany with one of her former husbands from time to time, she
had, for the most part, turned her focus from relationships to
art, landscaping, playing canasta, and, eventual y, to writing. She was home most days, working in her garden or her art studio or
at her drafting table or loom. Like her sister, the Zen Buddhist
Pat, JoJo knew how to navigate solitude. She lived the last thirty
9 0
WritingIsMyDrink_i-xiv-1-258_1p.indd 90
6/7/13 8:19 AM
W r i t i n g i s M y D r i n k
years of her life alone and never seemed too concerned about
it. “I found sex awful y repetitive,” she told me once when I was
twenty-three.
JoJo’s approach to the world excited my imagination. It
was JoJo who taught me about the missions that stretch along
California’s spine, dotting El Camino Real every twenty miles
from San Diego to Sonoma. “A day’s walk apart,” she told me.
I could picture the monks in robes like Saint Francis walking
steadily from mission to mission, just as I could imagine myself
beside JoJo in her white Buick Skylark with the top down, driv-
ing from mission to mission. The farther south we drove, the
further we’d go back in time until my California—the groovy
California of the 1960s—magical y transformed into the Golden
State of her youth. In her stories, California belonged to Stein-
beck, John Muir, and Henry Miller, a legendary, fertile kingdom
where orchards spilled into orchards and dirt roads puffed a
cloud of burnt sienna dust behind us as the Buick became the
black Model T her father bought her in 1924 to drive to Calis-
toga High School.
I’d often stay at JoJo’s on the weekends that my mom would
go away when I was a kid. It would take a long time for me to
realize where my mom had been on those weekends—even
years after my older sister said, “Of course, he was married!
What did you think?” Before my mom would leave for I did not
know where, she and I would wend our way toward JoJo’s, up
El Camino with its neon martini glasses flashing and forever
spilling onto the word COCKTAILS, El Camino with its liquor
stores that smelled of cardboard and Dubble Bubble, its gas sta-
tions and endless cheap motels.
9 1
WritingIsMyDrink_i-xiv-1-258_1p.indd 91
6/7/13 8:19 AM
T h e o P a u l i n e N e s t o r
When my mom and I hit Redwood City, we’d turn onto
Whipple Avenue, past the Wienerschnitzel hot dog restaurant
and the Shaws ice cream parlor and then left at the AAA office
onto Finger Avenue. Down Finger Avenue at number 173 stood
JoJo’s bungalow, with the lime and apricot trees in the back and
in the front, the modern, water-efficient landscaping that once
was featured in Sunset magazine. This was where JoJo wove wall hangings made of sticks, feathers, and dog fur (Samoyed,
to be precise), ran her landscape design business, and opened
her doors to the occasional undocumented worker to live in her
guest room. JoJo was the grandmother who thought coloring
books were immoral and that you should definitely know about
Picasso by the age of seven. She was my dad’s mother. I had al-
most no relationship with my biological father, Ted Nestor, but
it never occurred to me that it was special or strange or amazing
that JoJo made our relationship continue and flourish despite
his complete disinterest in being my parent.
Together, we ate vanil a ice cream in small glass bowls with
silver spoons and played War at the picnic table in her dining
room. The phone rarely rang. The occasional car rumbled by.
There was nowhere we were supposed to be; we were at the cen-
ter of a universe of two.
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