Today driving down a pretty tree lined street in Mar Vista (a neighborhood in West LA), we were struck by the reds amongst the green foliage, the brown leaves on still-lush lawns. It was warm today, a change from the we've had. Today was a sunny California day, this week felt more like sweater weather, more like East Coast October. Drizzly gray days, turn the heat on in the morning, pile under the downy comforter at night, dig out your sweaters and your jackets and let the rain kink your hair and kiss your face. With the car windows closed today, that street in Mar Vista turning red and brown, we could have been anywhere but here. We could have been in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts. We could have been home.
Yes. Home, still, after all these years, is there rather than here. Here is where we live. Home is where we feel most comfortable, that sense of rightness, where outside matches interior landscape, where the people sound right and where we can find far more like-minded souls per square foot than we ever could in this Land of Sun. But I've talked about all this before. What I haven't talked about is this:
What would happen if we moved back tomorrow? What would it be like if we found a comfortable Colonial style house across the river from downtown Manhattan, a short train ride from Penn Station and a local phone call to so many of our friends? Part of me thinks it would be fantastic, that I'd fit right back into that world. We'd go down to my mother's family's house in Delaware each summer. Head to the Berkshires for fall foliage and stay at Dan's aunt's cabin there. Go for Thanksgiving dinner in Boston every year at my aunt's house. Drop off Damian with Dan's parents across the state line at least once a month so we could have a cozy dinner in a local restaurant. Not to mention Passover seders with close friends and undoubtedly many weekend days wandering around old haunts (and new ones) in the city, or should I say the City, as all good tri-state area residents do.
Sounds idyllic. I want to dive into the screen and make that my new reality. But even if we could afford it, even if Dan could find reliably steady (and satisfying) work there in film editing and I could, well, start to make money too, even then, would it work? What would it be like, really and truly, to move three thousand miles in our forties, with a child in tow? I don't know and the idea gives me pause. The climate would of course be a shock. The first winter I'm sure I'd curse my decision daily as I stamp around and try to recover from incipient frostbite and the first summer, too, drenched in sweat, wondering what on earth made me move to that hellish mosquito-infested jungle-wet-hot land. But other things too. Finding new dentists and mechanics and favorite restaurants and libraries and local produce and, yes, missing friends and colleagues and also the depth of knowledge of the place, the roads and the flow of life.
It's one thing to move when you're in your 20's and god knows, that was hard enough. Terribly hard. I was in a deep depression for over a year, lost and lonely here. It seems on the surface like it would be simple to move back but I’m not so sure it is. I'm not a California native and I may never be one but I've tentatively, gradually grown roots in this sandy soil. And it might hurt to pull me up. Would I transplant well? Who knows? Am I after all an Angelino now? Or am I this hybrid, half New Yorker and half sunbaked Californian? And will I ever have the chance to try and re-acclimate? If I had that chance, would I take it? I think I would, but in truth I don't know. I just don't know. And that thought is odd. So very odd.
Well, I did it after 10 years in San Francisco (which, despite its slightly more New-York_like qualities, had slowed me down a lot). And despite the climate stuff and all the auxiliaries, I've never felt more at home.
Of course, I don't have a child, let alone one with special needs; I also suspect you feel far more rooted in L.A. than I ever did in S.F.(despite my networks and jobs and dancing life).
But much of what you list regenerates far more quickly than one expects, as if the ground were just waiting to be watered and throw up what you need. (Mind you, I said "need," not "want." There's a little bit of the Rolling Stones to the entire project - but isn't that true of life in general?)