My Grandfather: The Venice Beach Healer

My heart belongs along the coast of Venice Beach
where the ghost of my grander than grand, grandfather lived.
Glow larger than Malibu sunrise.
He said there was a pear tree
that I can go to if I ever need to find him
without GPS
along the boardwalk where the skaters and gurus
collide.His words have always been my compass.
Like the rose quartz I clutch on anxious days
like the ones he healed the
toned tanned bodies with along the shoreline.

Just ask for
Demetrius Tahmin
or Jim. The one with so much light energy
he glows. So much his shine got mentioned
in the L.A. times
The Legend with
Lightning in his hands, like Zeus.
Greek eyes
and spirit
as high as Mount Olympus

with the strength, of his Spartan Ancestors
Body made from Tai Chi
ginger
and wheatgrass
his spirit still healing all the souls along Santa Monica blvd.

The first time I meet my grandfather, I am about 11 years old,and my faith in magic hasn’t dissipated since. It’s the 90s. There is sand in my LA gears, and the feeling of friction between my chubby thighs is making me dread wearing those neon shorts. We had just left Rodeo Drive
and the dingy streets of Hollywood Boulevard in the red Eclipse my mother rented for our trip and we had now slipped into the soul circus that was the Venice Beach boardwalk.
In awe.
A far cry from the brick condo of our Wheeler Ave. apartment with it’s concrete playground.
This was an ADHD kid’s dream.
The psychics,the poets,the muscle heads,b ballers & Jim Morrison wannabees. Low riders and roller bladers skirt around us as the scent of Nag Champa saturates my curly mane.
Salt water taffy,sounds of ocean and soft strumming of aspiring song writers on acoustic enamor me.

And then, this Enigma,my grandfather,all in white, bandana and dark shades,surrounded by multicolored crystals all lined in a row. A doctor in his lab, with crystals for prescriptions. Almost like a border shielding him from the evils of the world. His hands. His hands hovering and scanning over a man’s body,just centimeters away from his skin. A houdini of the celestial realm.

“That’s him.” one of us say,and make our way to his doctor’s office in front of the Pacific ocean and across from
the man selling Bob Marley tee shirts and straw hats.

A line of people are waiting for him. To be massaged, healed, and taken under his guidance.

Each point on their body, has made conversation with a certain color crystal, and he intuitively knows, which one each Chakra needs.

There,my grandfather,homeless,living on a beach, and making a living off of his empathy,

is the richest man in the world to me.

As our feet shuffle across the wood panels of the boardwalk,a sand storm of emotions approach us.
He holds my mother for what seemed like two lifetimes.
He Hugs me for the first time,sends electric waves through me
and I understand why he left in seconds. I understand my lineage, and why I too, was a tiny healer. Why he fled from the Bronx, left my grandmother, abandoned his daughter and ran off to California.
All the negative feelings surrounding abandonment were heavy on my mother’s heart but I had absolved to be compassionate about the why’s and slipped into the sense of understanding that
This was his purpose.
He was a healer. He had to go away, follow his soul’s calling and be right here,
on this beach. For all the travelers, dwellers,truth seekers.

The second day we meet him, it’s to an undisclosed location that my mother must navigate to without GPS or mapquest or any of those things we rely on today.I anxiously wonder what more of an adventure we can access that can transcend the day before.
He blindfolds my mother with a satin scarf as soon as we get out of the car and I watch him guide her through a maze of evergreen paths. I wonder in my mind, if perhaps this is the first time, he has been given the opportunity to be trusted by her. She is startled, and watches her steps.
Open Sesame.
He uncovers her eyes and presents to us a huge lush garden of gigantic Buddhas, ponds of Koi fish and ongoing fields of cherry blossoms.
Uncertain of her reaction, he looks to her for enthusiasm. Perhaps she has never had someone present the things we often overlook,in such a grandeur way, but there it was, before us, the things he so immensely appreciated about life and his gift of lending us the awareness of it’s beauty.
It was the moment I took an appreciation of nature. The moment I became eager to always be surrounded by such zen. Of peace, tranquility and of finding joy in the simplest of things.
I had been to Disney world,and still, it was almost as if I had always had a blindfold on, until that day.
I leave the garden elated, quietly sinking into the backseat of the car, and wondering what the images of the Buddha I saw meant to him,and to everyone else. My curiosity ensued.

Days leading up to our departure back to New York,I held onto every word from his breath. At times,I could see the lament in his eyebrows. The longing he had to be in two places at once. The decisions and how they impacted his daughter,and the conflict it caused with his life’s purpose.

The night before we leave he sat next to me on a wooden stool and teaches me Acupressure and Reflexology. Terms I never knew before. He picks up my palm,created a fist with my hand, pressed his thumb firmly between my thumb and forefinger and says,
“Anytime you have a headache,you don’t need no Tylenol, none of that. All ya gotta do, is press firm right here for 2 minutes and poof, it’ll go away. And anytime you touch anyone..make sure you massage inward toward their center, never away from their center, that helps them keep their energy.Never take their energy away.”

He doesn’t ask me what my interests are, he already knows, I’m a healer too.

The second time,
It’s at Thanksgiving in the Bronx with a beat up mini book of poems he recites for us instead of prayer before dinner and makes sure I’ve been working on eliminating any toxic food from my life.

I don’t listen in 2005, but start to,as years pass by. When ill, I turn to the spirit of my grandfather.

The 6th time,
It’s the last hug I will give him as I walk him to his train going West from Grand Central station.

I have seen my grandfather maybe 6 times before he passed.
Each time,a new advice. A new sage wisdom. A new sense of attaching not to what is fed to us, but always questioning, always finding alternative, always remembering we come from a bloodline of healers.Sometimes in NYC, sometimes in California.
But each time, enough to sustain my need for magic,and remind me of my own,for lifetimes.

Every time I think of him, who I am, what I believe in, and the path I am on,
all make sense and give me infinite peace.

Rest in the same Peace you lived in, Papa.

Some mentions of Grandfather below!:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-09-03-cb-5755-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-12-me-53225-story.html