We entered at noon and we left after midnight. Never before had twelve hours felt so short; seemingly mere seconds that I wanted to stretch to eternity. The truth is, I didn’t want to leave that place that night, because it meant the final end to our last bastion of Bunting Circle. It was two doors down from the house I grew up in and had moved away from seventeen years earlier. Now, the Olmsted’s, the last remaining family from the block, was moving away too, and the last get-together was scheduled to begin on a Saturday at noon for one final BBQ.
I have vague memories of being in that house as a small boy sipping hot cocoa at Christmas with the family that lived there before the Olmsted’s moved in, but possess vivid memories that dance around my heart from all the time I would spend there once the Olmsted’s arrived when I was eight years old. During the nearly thirty years Steve, Bernie, and Andrew occupied that space, it was my favorite place to be. My dad would become best friends with Steve and Bernie and my little brother Stuart would become best friends with their son, Andrew, and I just kind of third-wheeled them all.
There was never a time with the Olmsted’s that was a bad time. There was more light in their home than in my own. Two doors down was a friendlier place. Magic seemed to come to life there. From the literal train track that hung from the ceiling, to the game room with slot machines, pool and foosball tables, vintage cinema regalia adorned the walls, large windows letting the light in from the front patio and French doors that opened up to the backyard pool, jacuzzi, and outdoor fireplace. This place was a child’s paradise.
Even in paradise, pain can creep in, but true love weeds the wounds out. Not long after the Olmsted’s moved in, Steve’s first wife, Amy, moved out. She was friends with my mom and that would cause a chasm which would rattle both houses in ways we couldn’t yet fathom. In the beginning, my dad was there for Steve. In the end, Steve would be there for my dad. Steve was determined to be a good role model and create the right upbringing for his son Andrew, and the rest of the boys on the block who lacked his last name. Soon, in the midst of his despair, a meteorite from Michigan flew in and would light up all our lives. Her name was Bernie. She was this hip, Bacardi and Diet Coke drinking, Eminem listening, Nascar watching, cig smoker, swearing bundle of fire, whose glow all us kids wanted to be around and soak in.
Bernie was different from the rest. She was funny and more importantly to a kid, she was fun. She spoke to us, she listened to us, she played with us…and most of all, she loved us, and we knew it. She made us silver dollar pancakes and French toast. She let us build stuff and break stuff. Together, we tore up the old tile floor and helped put in a wooden one. We painted the walls and we built forts. We had water balloon fights and pillow fights, we went to the local arcade and road trips to Vegas, and we went camping in Catalina and had camp outs in their front yard. At Halloween we craved pumpkins there and built haunted houses. Christmas was celebratory, too. And during the Superbowl, it was at the Olmsted’s house where we joined people from all over for their annual party. Steve and Bernie were great hosts, but even better, they were great neighbors. The kind of neighbors that would make Mister Rogers weep with pride.
Not long after Bernie’s arrival would be the departure of my dad. Following in the footsteps of a few of her friends, my mom wanted to experience the single life too. But, unlike Andrew’s mom who went and got her own place, my mom told my dad he had to get his own. The only problem with this, is my mom wasn’t motherly. It was my dad who always did stuff with us and took us places. It was my dad who made us dinner each night and made sure our homework was done. It was my dad who attended our games and tucked us in at night and got us ready for school in the morning. When she was home, my mom would be on the phone for hours every night chatting with her friends. I used to wish I could become a phone and grow an antenna so I could get some of my mother’s attention. I didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with my mom and so my dad was everything stable, and now life felt like a never-ending earthquake.
So, one morning, my brother and I were woken up for school by my dad like always, but this time was different, this time my father was crying, and my dad grew up in an era where men weren’t allowed to show hurt. It was only the second time I had ever seen my father cry. The first was a couple years earlier where I came home from school and my mom in one of her rage episodes had given away our dog and my dad had to tell me Coconut would no longer be part of our family. Now, he told us that when we came home from school that day he was not going to be there. Something about him and my mother were going to separate for a while but hopefully he would be back home soon.
I had just begun my freshmen year of high school, had watched my grandparents, aunts and uncle die the last four years, and seen my mom stumble into a deep dark depression where she rarely left her room, so to hear the one stable person in my and my little brother’s life was about to be gone from it, I had to grow up quick. I wouldn’t be afforded the care-free teenage years where you get to explore and find yourself. I now had a little brother to look after, and that responsibility would weigh heavily on my young soul. For the next two and half years, my grades would plummet and so would my happiness, as I spent every day at school secretly praying that today would be the day my dad returned home. I just wanted to know what it felt like again to go to sleep and hear the calming sounds of my father downstairs watching television and the reassurance of waking up and my dad is home. That wish would not be granted and never again would I be able to fall asleep with my father home and from that point on I’ve always had trouble falling asleep and over twenty five years later and my insomnia has only worsened.
At first, I think my father stayed at a hotel for a while, but soon, we would be told that my dad was moving into the guest room of Steve and Bernie Olmsted’s house. Being a fourteen-year-old boy there were two actions I couldn’t really comprehend at the time. First, the amount of love shown from one neighbor to another with Steve and Bernie letting my dad live with them. The second, the amount of pride my dad had to burry to be sleeping two doors down from the home he bought just so he could be close to his children. My dad would end up living with the Olmsted’s for nearly two years and he never returned home.
The best kind of person you can be is a kind one. The highest achievement you can obtain is to be a loving neighbor who gives with no receipts because you never expect a return. Steve and Bernie Olmsted meet both markers of success. And here we were, after all these events together, reunited for one final evening. My father had moved to Michigan so he could not come, but for twelve hours, we reminisced on twenty plus years of kindness and giving. It was Andrew and his wife Janine, Steve and Bernie, Steve’s father and step-mother, my brother and his wife and two daughters, and me, still third-wheeling it.
I was last in the home about five years ago. Covid took away years together as did my father moving to Michigan years before that. There were boxes everywhere, old photographs and mementos to gather over, and love abound. Andrew found a handwritten letter I had given him twelve years earlier when I ran for city council. Andrew was the first person to donate money to my campaign. Steve and Bernie also contributed in so many ways. We filmed our campaign video inside Steve and Bernie’s boardroom to give it a business-like vibe. Andrew was also one of the first to encourage me in my writing when I was in college as did Steve when my first poem was published in a local magazine where he was a college professor and still serves on the Board of Golden West College today. Steve continued to pull out relics from out past like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat leaving us all enthralled with each new item. He found pinewood derby cars from when we were in Indian Guides together. Old toys, costumes, and jerseys from Andrew’s youth. Numerous photographs that sparked unlimited joy and stories that would erupt us into laughter.
My brother’s youngest daughter, Avery, played in the pool. A pool I remember the mounds of dirt when Steve had it built. I got to meet Don Olmsted’s new bride. Don is Steve’s father and he tutored me through Algebra both in high school and college, for free. Don’s wife Sandy, Steve’s mother, had passed away a few years earlier and Mr. Olmsted’s new wife seemed full of love and life. Everywhere I looked was the familiar but also all new.
Andrew’s wife Janine is remarkable. Full of kindness, strength, and a true passion for wanting to help people. I was impressed with how gracefully she interacted with my two nieces. I know both hers and Andrew’s parents are nudging them for grandchildren, and I have full confidence her and Andrew will be stellar parents who raise up kids who know how to do what’s right. As we all mingled, the new children and new neighbors of Bunting Circle came into the Olmsted’s home multiple times to get candy and chat with Steve and Bernie. Each time I met a new neighbor, I learned who they were based off the neighbors I once knew. This is so and so and they now live in the Edmunds house, they live in the Stanley’s, they live where the Luther’s used to, and they the Ferraro’s. After some years of silent streets, Bunting Circle is bristling with the noise of children at play once more.
Steve made the most delicious cheeseburger I have ever had. He was aways good on the grill. We all hugged, we all laughed, and, well, at least me, hid back tears. I felt like a kid again, at the place where I felt safe and happy. Sadly, their house, was the only house I ever felt completely safe in. As we chatted, and they learned I lived nearby, they wondered why I never came over. I was waiting to be invited over. They mentioned how they see themselves as old people and didn’t think we wanted to be around them. We still saw ourselves as children, waiting for them to make the plans like they always did in our youth. We let them know we always enjoy being with them. All I wanted to do, was slow down time because I knew once this party ended, the last part of my childhood did too.
There have been so many times where I have driven by and walked around Bunting Circle. Each time I wanted to open up those white gates of their courtyard and ring the doorbell, but I was always too shy to do it. For some reason, I felt like I was intruding and didn’t want to be a burden. A few times, however, I actually mustered up the courage and knocked on their door but no one ever answered. I would find out last night that for the last couple years they had been spending most of their time at their place in Palm Springs. The place they were fully moving to now. And in true Olmsted fashion, had been letting a friend live their as she and her daughter were transitioning through a divorce like they did for my dad.
We continued to look through photographs, actual printed ones on paper, not swiping through someone’s phone, and all the faded memories once more were illuminated in full color. There was the team photo where Steve and I coached Stuart, Andrew, Mike, and Matt’s basketball team. I was a junior in high school and wanted to coach and so Steve who had coached the boys before, signed up again so I could be his assistant.
It was never lost on me that we shared the same name. Two Steve’s. I wasn’t sure if he ever realized how much I looked up to him. One of my mentors, Pat Williams, told me: “be careful of what you do because people are always taking notes whether you know it, or they know it.” I knew it then, but I wanted to make sure Steve knew it now. I had given him a John Wooden book when I was younger and a handwritten letter explaining I admired him years ago and wrote a story about him for my monthly magazine column that the publishers never printed, but the thing is people need to be reminded. At one point Steve mentioned how much it mattered to him to be a good role model for Andrew. I said to Steve, “I hope you know this, but you were a good role model for both my brother and I as well.”
Someone needs to see someone do it first so they realize they can do it too. So much of what I do is because I saw my dad and or Steve do it first. Steve helped me when I wanted to coach. Steve helped me when I wanted to write. Steve helped me when I wanted to lead. Steve helped me when I wanted to serve. In my early twenties, I started interning at City Hall and then became part of the planning committee for something called Summerfest. It was the city of Fountain Valley’s first carnival. It continues to this day. The first year I was responsible for getting sponsors. Steve and Bernie’s accounting firm Olmsted And Associates were the first sponsor I got. The second year I was in charge of securing entrainment for the stage and Steve and Bernie were there rocking out to the music.
I always liked going to Steve and Bernie’s office. It was cool to me as a kid that they owned their own business. Last night, I got to have some in-depth conversation with Steve and learn the courage it took for him to take the risk and branch off and start his own firm. There were issues he delt with in leadership dealing with people and coaching dealing with parents that I would deal with later, some of which by the very same people he experienced it with. I felt even closer to him on my final night in his home and my admiration grew deeper.
As the night grew closer to tomorrow, someone brought up my dear dog Kramer. The Olmsted’s always had dogs. Whenever they would go on vacation, they always paid me to house sit and play with the dogs. From middle school all the way through college, for a couple weeks a year, I was solely responsible for the Olmsted’s house. They gave me my first glimpse at independence and always paid me well. They also showed they trusted me at a young age and gave me an escape from my own home which was always a needed reprieve. To be in high school and college and have your own house a couple times a year was a thrill. I brought some of my former players over at times to play in the game room. I brought a girlfriend over too. As I looked around the room, I realized I was the only person here not named Olmsted that used to have his own key to this house I was spending one last night in. I pictured Zack, Mindy, Echo, and Abby (their dogs), and of course, my Kramer.
I was there the day they brought Echo home. A baby German Shepard they got from our neighbors the Nolan’s. Echo laid in my lap that day and wouldn’t move for hours. For years, I loved coming over and playing with Echo. She was such a good girl. A few years after they got Echo, we got Kramer. A male German Shepard who was part wolf. We thought Echo was big until Kramer became fully grown.
One day when I was about twenty-one years old, my mom told me she was selling our house and that Kramer had to go. At this point, my mom had already given away my first two dogs without notice, and the pain of their loss made me adamant that she wasn’t going to do this crime to Kramer too. But where could I keep Kramer until I found my own place? The only place that came to mind was the Olmsted’s. They took my dad in once; would they take my dog in now too?
I explained to them it was a chance for Echo to have a husband and I would come over every day and feed him, pick up after him, and walk both Kramer and Echo. Once I found an apartment of my own, I would take Kramer with me. The hearts of Steve and Bernie always have vacancy. Miraculously they agreed. Kramer and Echo quickly became sweethearts, both being German Shepard’s and all. Walking both of them at the same time became a challenge as these were big dogs. Once again, as I, a young man, trying to find my way in the world, Steve and Bernie where there to assist me. Each evening as I closed their gate behind me and said goodbye to Kramer, I could feel a sadness in him as he didn’t understand why he wasn’t coming home with me anymore and sleeping in my bed like he used to. I knew how he felt when I used to leave that very house saying goodbye to my father at night wondering why he wouldn’t come home with me.
Some months went by, and I got a call from Steve as I was driving home from class that day at college. I was on the 405 and had just passed the Boeing building where my dad used to work in Seal Beach. Steve was always very stoic but this time his voice was riddled with concern. He told me I needed to come to his veterinarian office right away. He was there because something happened to Kramer. When I arrived, Bernie was already there too as she left work to support me. They explained to me that they noticed blood coming out of Kramer and took him to the vet and a large tumor was found inside Kramer.
I was too naïve to know what that meant. I remember I asked Steve, “Okay, so when can I take him home?” And then, for the first time in my life, just like my father when my mom gave away our first dog, I saw my surrogate father cry. Steve said, “Um, Kramer isn’t coming home buddy. We offered to pay for any surgery that could help but the doctor said there is noting they can do. They have been waiting so you had a chance to say goodbye.”
It was in that moment that it all hit me. It hit me so hard I literally fell to my knees and started crying. Both Steve and Bernie picked me up off the floor and held me. The place closed at 5:00pm and it was already past that. They were staying late so a boy could say goodbye to his dog. I walked to the back on my own and was greeted by my best friend for the last time. He was frantic. I held him and pet him while blood leaked out of him onto me. Twice the worker came in and said, “it’s time.” And twice I begged for more. Kramer licked my face for the final time and I told him I loved him and thanked him for always being there for me. I felt like Wyatt Earp saying goodbye to the dying Doc Holliday in the movie Tombstone (a movie I first watched and The Olmsted’s house). I walked out of there with Kramer’s hair and blood all over my pants and drove to practice to coach my JV basketball team I was the head coach of. Both of those moments only possible because of the other Steve in my life. It would be the first time I would cry in front of my players.
And now the clock stroke midnight and the evening was at its end. It felt like Cinderella, and the magic of childhood was about to disappear, and the horse and carriage was about to become a pumpkin. Jennifer had taken her daughters home hours earlier and then came back. And now, it was my brother and his wife, his two childhood friends Andrew and Jon and their wife and girlfriend, Bernie and Steve, and me stretching out our goodbyes, trying to soak in a few more seconds if possible. Earlier, Bernie had walked around my brother’s eldest daughter Lily filling up bags with free stuff to take home making her young eyes sparkle with wonder and excitement the way only a child’s eyes can beam. And now Steve took me to the game room where this signed Michael Jordan jersey had ben resting on the wall since I was a kid. I remember the day he got it and hung it up there some twenty years earlier and I was in awe of it every time I came over. There was a little Post-It Note on it with Steven S handwritten.
I said, “You’re giving this to me? Are you sure? This is very generous of you.” In a place, unlike any other place, a palace in the eyes of a child, where so much had been given to me and my family from this family, Steve’s final act in the final minute I would be in the house I spent millions of minutes in both in-person and in-memories, just like the name of the jersey, Jordan, Steve Olmsted was taking and hitting the game-winning shot and making me feel like a champion. What a way to end an evening, to end an era. Where the greatest neighbor I have ever known gave me the jersey of the greatest player I have ever seen. Bernie then gave me a framed poster off the wall that had a note on it that said Pete and told me it was for my dad and then gave me this pocket watch clock that had always been on their wall and I always was enamored with as I’ve always been a watch aficionado.
We all walked outside to the front patio. My feet never moved so slowly. I could see in my brother’s eyes he didn’t want it to end either. I asked for some more photos to stall. I felt like the college kid in the vet’s office holding my dying dog begging for more time. Both my brother and I mentioned to each other that morning that we were fearful this could be the last time we ever see Steve and Bernie. I didn’t want to leave…I didn’t want them to leave either. I thought of a comment my eleven-year-old niece, Lily made earlier that this was her “dream house” and that “they should just sell it to her because she had been saving her birthday money.”
If only she knew how many dreams of her dad’s and mine came true or were created in this house. The little boy in my brain hoped that all these twelve hours of nostalgia would suddenly make Bernie shout out, “Okay, we are not going to move. We are going to stay!” But then I glanced down to one of the moving boxes and on top were those orange pumpkin carving knives used to make Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Then I looked at my watch and it was now past twelve and I realized the spell of childlike wonder was over. It truly was a Cinderella story with this omen of a pumpkin carver saying, “Time’s up.”
It’s about fifteen minutes past midnight now. I mentioned to them how grateful I was for this day and evening and all the years that preceded it. I gave each a hug. We took a photo together in front of this magical house. Andrew thanked me for being a good role model for him and I thanked him for all his encouragement to me and for being one of the best human beings I have ever known. His wife mentioned she has a friend who is also a teacher who might be a good fit for me, but she lives in northern California, and we all had a nice laugh, but I said, “I’m willing to move.” Before I walked to my car, I turned around and yelled, “I love you all.” I got in and drove away from the last piece of Heaven left on beautiful Bunting Circle. I thought of my comment of “I’m willing to move” and realized as sad as I was, I was happy for their move. Movement is the maker of life. Had Steve Olmsted not made the decision to move here to Bunting Circle when my brother was five and I was eight, think how different our lives would be and every life we have interacted with. Think how many new lives will be elevated and transformed because of their willingness to move. I’m happy for the new family that gets to move in, and I will be forever grateful for the family that moved out and all the love they gave to my family. On behalf of my dad, my dog, my brother, and myself, thank you Steve, Bernie, Andrew, Don, Sandy, and Amy, for all the moves you made that made my family and I move closer to knowing Love.
