This afternoon an accident snarled traffic on the freeway that I've been traveling to take my son to his new school and pick him up later in the day. I saw the highway patrol officers arriving on the other side of the cement divider and realized that it would be politic to choose a different route home, so after joyfully reuniting with my boy we turned our car in a new direction as we headed back to our house.
Navigating mainly by instinct, I drove further up the hill beyond his preschool and then veered in the direction where I thought there might be another freeway onramp. Rounding a corner - out of nowhere - we came face to face with a panorama that I can only describe as Divine. If God had a face, this vista might resemble its magnificence. A vast blue sea stretched out before us, blending into the equally blue sky right at the horizon line. I literally caught my breath in surprise, it was so unexpectedly stunning. Green foliage tumbled down the hill at our side, extending at least a mile below to the edge of the cliffs.
"Oh Wow..." I breathed, and my little son piped up,
"What is it, Mama?"
"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" I sighed with shivers running down my spine. "Honey, we LIVE here now! I can't even believe it."
I have enjoyed and mainly thrived in this city for the better part of my 35 years, with a brief collegiate hiatus. Yet even now I find that it is rich with surprises... new vistas, nooks, even neighborhoods that I have never seen or explored before. I can literally round a bend and experience something unexpected and surprisingly lovely for the very first time.
An extremely close childhood friend (still one of my best friends today) grew up just two blocks from the house where I lived for the first 17 years of my life. She lives a few states over now, and throughout the years I have often encouraged her to come back to reclaim our city. I hope some day she will. In fact to this very day, many of the most amazing people I have met in my life just happen to be friends that I literally grew up with here - riding bikes, roller skating and taking long walks along these same sunny streets. Was there something in the water, I wonder? (Yes!)
For me this town is vibrant and full of possibility. This will actually be the eighth neighborhood I have lived in here and I find that each time I change neighborhoods everything else opens up as well. There are so many pockets of culture here completely dissimilar to one another... in one area I would be completely at ease in flip-flops, eating fish burritos and watching the surf at sunset... while another neighborhood lends itself to dark jeans, fashionable blouses, big sunglasses and popping in to local galleries and cafes. A wide variety of cultures intermingle - all infused to some degree with a delicious Latin flaire.
We have a great indie music scene here, completely disparate from ample beach reggae and ska music offerings. We have our own incipient foodie revolution with Slow Food events and Farmer's Markets on the rise all over town. If you want it, you can find it - excellent theater productions, successful sports teams, a symphony, campgrounds, amusement parks... whatever one could wish for.
If I sound like a walking advertisement it's probably because I realized a long time ago that the rhythm of this desert beach town hums in my blood and flows through my veins. Whenever I have moved away for any length of time I have deeply missed it... most of all I have missed the way that people look you in the eye when you pass them on the street here: and then THEY SMILE. Eye contact and smiling ~ basically the two most important things I could ask for in a home town.
It's pretty lucky (coincidence? destiny?) that I managed to find a life partner who feels even more strongly about the city where we live than I do. Like me, he grew up here. In fact, we grew up only a fifteen minute drive apart. My husband is just one year older than me so we share much geographic and cultural history. We listened to the same radio stations in high school, hung out at the same coffee shops, frequented the same all-ages music venues, went to the same beaches, traveled to the same local mountains... all essentially at the same time. (We never met.) Even now twenty years later a retro song will begin to play on the radio and we can reminisce about what our lives were like when it first came out, and what our city was like back then.
I can talk to him about the way the sunsets looked after a particular volcanic explosion or where I was during a specific event - earthquake, fire, 9/11 and he shares essentially the same (or a very similar) memory. This creates a special closeness -- there is much less to explain, much more which is simply understood. We spent a good deal of our post-college twenties living a single block apart (still never met) and have many similar experiences from that time, that neighborhood, those streets - that stretch of beach. It seems like before we found a home in each other, we'd already chosen the same plot of land to tend.
Many close friends that my husband and I cherish have left our city for greener pastures, only a handful of them choosing to return so far. Most of our siblings also live far away in more urban hamlets... having discovered that they too beat to a different metropolitan rhythm. They will probably never come back for more than an occasional visit - yet is is comforting to know that they will always have a second home to return to as long as we are here.
Despite our plan to spend a year abroad with our children, it's pretty much a sure thing that our family will be rooted here for the long haul. I do wonder where our children will end up down the road as they spread their own wings and look for the perfect place to create their unique nests. With three children, it's a fair bet that at least one of them will feel drawn to the East and we'll rely on Skype and other technologies to stay closely linked. I hope at least one of them falls as deeply in love with this city as we have done.
I wrote in December about yearning to find our home in the world. In retrospect, I think I should have said "house" rather than home. The truth is, I was lucky enough to find my true home in the world 35 years ago... the city I was born into which has since brought me the abundant joy of a husband and children who now represent my home as well.
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