My childhood home at 16 Paloma Court wasn’t built with the intention of housing a family. It was designed in 1987 in collaboration with the celebrated Japanese architect Arata Isozaki as a space for my art-dealer mother to showcase her burgeoning contemporary art collection, a space where she could host artists, collectors, curators, and museum directors. The house was a testament to my mother's refined tastes – spartan, monumental, and brashly modern. Seeing my friends' cozy, family-friendly homes with their grassy lawns, I built resentment and harbored confusion about growing up in such an inhospitable space. To this day I have important unfinished business with 16 Paloma Court: that of sorting through my ambiguities and ultimately expressing my gratitude, bittersweet as it might be.

In my early childhood, my mother appeared to be at the top of her game: a beautiful, lithe dancer formerly with Merce Cunningham’s company in New York, or so the story goes. She had deep auburn hair cropped short and slicked back and was eloquently spoken and neatly dressed, often in her signature Armani pantsuit. She was a woman in her early 40s at the seeming height of her poise, and yet her inner world was opaque with guarded hints of emotional anguish. She never married and was vehemently against the idea of another romance ever since my father opted out when she became pregnant with me. As her only daughter, I was left feeling unsettled and disconnected from her — never able to put my finger on who she really was or what was going on behind closed doors. Even though she raised me alone, I never met anyone in my mother’s family. The people I came from, my ancestors, were entirely unknown to me. I never understood why we couldn’t have an extended family, but knew better than to ask.

What I did know was that my mother’s proudest achievement was the Paloma house: a bright white beacon, a brilliant work of art in and of itself. The deceptively simple building consisted of two adjoining stucco rectangles with the corners lopped off, capped by massive triangular skylights pouring in natural light. The northern rectangle housed the main art viewing area — an echoing 40-foot-long room with 20-foot-high ceilings in which a rotation of monumental installations were displayed. It contained no furniture except for a large wooden work table with chairs and a small, creaking Murphy bed where my mother slept alone each night. The space was nothing short of impressive: a crisp and airy gallery smelling of fresh paint and paper where harsh, angular shadows dashed across towering walls.

The southern stucco rectangle contained the modest living quarters: one small bedroom, a simple bathroom with vibrant black and white terrazzo that was icy on bare feet, a tiny walk-in closet that we shared, and a kitchen with a generous dining area and a strategically-placed window overlooking the gallery below. Perched high above the staircase leading to the kitchen was a little sleeping loft, tucked away for the occasional guest. The surfaces were so clean you could eat off of them — a fact that made my mother beam with pride. This meticulousness spread throughout every facet of her life, from her impeccable cherry-red manicure and penciled-in lip line, to her waxed, jet-black Mercedes parked at a sharp angle in our dust-free garage. 

When my mother unexpectedly became pregnant with me at 40, she was faced with fitting a baby into the perfectly controlled environment she had worked tirelessly to create. Though I called Paloma home, I lived with a sour feeling in my throat that I was not quite welcome there. There was little tolerance for playfulness, because it inevitably led to a mess. Typical childhood transgressions were met with mounting agitation: dragging in sand from the dirty beach, coloring outside of the lines and onto the table, spilling brightly colored juice that seeped into the porous stone floor. A stuffed animal or utensil out of place was a punishable crime. I learned early on that my only choice was to keep myself in order, becoming small or disappearing entirely. 

Pangs of loneliness visited me frequently, so I would search for connection with my surroundings or in my imagination. I vacillated between a prickling fear and a giddy curiosity about what transpired just beyond our doorstep on the adjacent Venice Beach boardwalk. I felt safe and contained tucked under the starchy down comforter in my tidy, minimal bedroom, but I was also magnetically drawn to the colorful and chaotic beachfront just a short walk away. The buzzing would start at dawn: the steady rhythmic tapping of overturned buckets repurposed as drums, skateboards hissing along the asphalt, crackling tunes blaring from boomboxes, and exhausted-looking people with ill-fitting shoes pushing carts and mumbling obscenities to themselves. My mother warned that not only was the boardwalk unsafe and unsanitary, but what happened "out there" was beneath us, “those people” were beneath us. But I wanted to go outside and into the action, take a deep inhale of the thick patchouli incense. I felt the urge to explore my home’s surroundings and was also haunted by a crippling fear of it. What would happen to me out there? Would I be eaten alive by the chaos? Would I die?

On a typical day after school, a sinking emptiness present in the long afternoon ahead, I would make my way upstairs to the cool marble ledge in the dining room that overlooked the bustling alleyway below. I would open the clouded glass windows outwards, peering directly into the action: sirens blaring, cars honking unceremoniously, people shouting loudly about who-knows-what. My mother would float over, wafting with her the scent of her signature orange blossom perfume and spicy mint Clorets gum. Lint roller in hand, without saying hello or asking about my day, she would abolish stray lint from my clothing. “Close the window, Sonny, you’re letting in all the fumes. And straight into the bath, you’re filthy!” Before I had the chance to respond I would be alone again, lint-free. 

16 Paloma Court was there to hold me when my mother could not. I had a hunch I would join the outside world eventually — it was right there waiting for me. As for my mother, I wanted to know and understand her and for her to know and understand me. To feel safe and at ease around her. But instead I learned that something beyond our control was keeping her locked away, and that this was a reality I had no choice but to accept as a child under her care. And so I clung to moments of motherly tenderness when they came: a passing wink with a scrunched-nose smile, an “Ohhh” when I made a good drawing, a lively rendition of I’ve Been Working on the Railroad during a warm soapy bath, a cold washcloth on the forehead when I came down with a fever. After years of reflection I understand that by spending the first 11 years of my life at 16 Paloma Court, I had in essence lived inside of my mother’s head, inside of her aching heart, inside of her hopes and dreams, inside of her tortured soul. Airy and bright, but also withholding and chillingly mysterious. My mother and Paloma worked together to give me the fullness of their love and in recognizing this, I am amazed and so grateful.