Time and a Remembered Tree

In his book, Berlin Childhood Around 1900, Walter Benjamin brings together a fragmented series of images and memories that for him evoke the lost and treasured happiness he had as a young boy. The adult writer had a dream of 'mapping' his life through these memories, by associating them with very specific places in the city. The first chapter of the book talks about the beauty of courtyards, noticing the life given to them by trees as focal points of activity. The rest of the book uses other objects and souvenirs as flashpoints for thinking about his family, his city, and memory in general. What is implicit is the understanding that how we see the events of our lives -- changes, according not only to who we are speaking to, but also reflecting what has surfaced or evolved about the remembered events over time. Objects, photos and other souvenirs help to tell the tale.

I've been thinking about this recently, and especially that first chapter of Benjamin's book, while reflecting on one small corner of my own memory: when I lived in Los Angeles and went to film school in the early-mid 1980s. I have very little in the way of souvenirs for any of it, but in particular I have had no souvenir over these 40 years to remember the times that I spent as a babysitter to a Hollywood family, when they brought me with them on some weekend days in 1984, to visit their friends Robin and Valerie Williams. I was a babysitter to several Hollywood families -- one of whom I knew for a much longer time and with deeper and more meaningful relationships. But for now I'm focused on this one, because of today's date and its history. (Following Benjamin, could I map Los Angeles with the memories of a babysitter?)

When Robin died eleven years ago today, I wrote several different posts on Facebook, customized for different groups of people (proving Benjamin right). I talked about what was surfacing then, in 2014, because of the death. It was a strange mourning: so removed in time from when the connection had happened, but acute nonetheless. My grief felt moorless, irrelevant and even inappropriate. I posted uncertainly, afraid of looking like I was capitalizing on those long ago days just to meet a public moment of loss. I took the posts down soon after they had gone up.

The years pass, and I have gone past this date each year, still feeling that complexity of 'so long ago,' and 'such a different time.' Last week, I logged into Netflix to see that Dead Poets Society was being featured. I realized the anniversary was coming up. (The internet seems to like to remember it.) I started to watch the movie. Though it was made two years after I left Los Angeles, it really brings him back. I didn't last long in the viewing, however. It's a brilliant film, a classic, but I found it different this time. Instead, I switched tabs on my browser and revisited those 2014 posts and messages on Facebook, including the reconnections I made with the children I had babysat more than thirty years previously, now grown up with children of their own.

That evening, feeling the familiar groundswell of mixed emotions, I decided to try once again to see if the internet knew where that house was which was so vivid in my memory. I’d tried before with no luck. (By contrast, the other family's house I spent time in I can go to without even a search.) I had a vague sense of neighbourhood and no address, but I could offer a specific year. To my surprise, a breakthrough: after decades belonging to the same owner, the property was put on the market last December, with the listing noting that Robin Williams had once lived there. When I clicked on the realtor link, I knew immediately.

Here’s some of what I wrote in 2014: “Often we would be playing at the base of the long slope under an enormous tree and we'd look up and he'd be coming down to see us.” When I tell the story, I talk about that tree, under which we sat on tree stumps. (These might be the same tree stumps that are now on the upper terrace in the photos.) Marsha was the nanny to Zak, and I enjoyed learning a little Spanish from her. The two nannies and kids would be in that outdoor lower space to hang out and play, while the other adults were up in the house. But always, he would come down to see us. I always thought he spent more time with us than up in the house.

According to the real estate listing, the property was for sale for six months and finally sold in July. I was dumbfounded by my luck, because any minute the listing will disappear. As I cycled through the photos, I had sparks of recognition on the interiors, but it was the outside areas, and in particular the oversized tree -- that made me take in sharp breath. That tree, and the conversations that took place underneath it over the visits, had been the axis of my storytelling all these years. Now here it was.

I have always enjoyed talking about this connection. At the same time, telling the story has left a strange spiritual after-taste and feeling of exposure. It has always been hard to convey, for instance, how a half dozen visits could have such a lasting impact. It felt impossible even, to try to nuance how he was a well-known TV actor who had made a few movies, but in these pre-internet days, you had to watch a show in its broadcast time slot, or go to a movie in a cinema, to see it at all. I had never watched Mork and Mindy. I hadn't seen the films. So even in an era when I was celebrity-infatuated, he didn't really excite me in that way (and I was babysitting for a number of movie actors and writers and artists). It was only later, after I left LA, that those days became so vivid. I realized how rich they had been, how much I had enjoyed them. As he became more well-known, it seemed natural to mention it, if also unfulfilling. How to frame these days for storytelling, when the persona had become so public and beloved? The need for narrative seemed to be uppermost, yet I made an internal pact that I would not embellish or exaggerate it. I seemed to intuit that if I made stuff up, I took the risk of losing touch with that underlying experience.

I never really had a single story, but a series of image-stories, short vignettes: that he was very kind to me and always asked about my film school life and projects; that he liked talking about screenwriting (I was an AFI screenwriting fellow) and showed me the script for Moscow on the Hudson; that he teased me about my food preferences when he barbecued; that he was mostly shy and reserved. All that remains true.

Now I understand that Benjamin is right, but not in the way I've always thought and taught. It's not that the narrative changes, it's that the needing narrative at all, changes. When rings of water settle into a clear smooth surface of a lake, you see more below the surface. When you take away the need for narrative, the essence is vivid. That's what has happened with the photos: the need for narrative has disappeared and I realize and feel once again the 'essence'. This would appeal to another aspect of Benjamin's work, but I won't go into that here.

It is the non-narrative that I actually hold close: just being under that tree, in the times when he came down to see us, or maybe to see Marsha whom he would eventually marry. It is the 'just being' that was best. Like the trees of Benjamin's Berlin courtyards, this tree seemed to anchor us in a grounding, its orientation entirely to gather us in. Sitting under this tree, I had a peaceful joy: mostly because there was a lot of conversation and a lot of quiet time, just watching the kids.

Now I feel set free by images. After so many years of memory only, now I have something: a glimpse of the memory made tangible. Here is the house, here is the tree, and in a strange slanted picture with chairs underneath that brought tears, here is that quieted place of memory (though in truth it was likely noisy with kids). My recollection is that there was also water -- a stream or a creek, but I don't see it in the listing. So not sure where that's coming from. Perhaps I've fused it to the story from something or somewhere else. The Berlin courtyard of my memory is a ravine and a tree in Topanga Canyon, c. 1984. A towering house above us.

In August of 2025, I feel only this: I am so so grateful to have known in a small way, for a short time, so long ago, such a beautiful human being. May he continue to rest in peace. His death (and how he died) no longer troubles or saddens me. I give thanks for him, and for these pictures, that bring to life the moments of casual connection and simple being that took place so long ago. Hello, goodbye and I see you Robin (in the briefest of flashes), under that tree.

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Addendum: It is now 10:00 in the evening of August 11th, and I've just noticed looking closely at this picture, that I think there are actual tree stumps behind the green chairs. This would fit perfectly the memory. The final blessing.