Getting Ready to Say Good-Bye to California

I think it's time to start the good-bye process. That's the nice thing about having a few months before you leave somewhere for an extended period of time - you can do all those "last things" that will allow you to create a series of lovely memories to take out and handle when you're feeling lonely and homesick. This last weekend - Father's Day - I enjoyed what will probably be a last Father's Day for awhile with my family in Pasadena, starting at Louise's Trattoria with my mother, father, and brother, and then (when my parents had to go to a badly-timed baptism in LA), began an evening of drinking and poorly-played pool in a pleasant drunken haze with my brother, starting at Lucky Baldwin's in Pasadena, and ending with an impromptu dinner at Barney's Beanery (Irish-Style Omelette and Newcastle was a new - and delightful - combination for me) and the always-fun atheist-full conversation which inevitably accompanies beer and eggs.

Last weekend was my nephew's first birthday, which was wonderful, and beautifully orchestrated by my sister: a taco bar, monkey piñata, scores of friends and family, and a monkey-shaped cake which Lindsay and I were up late frosting with squishy pastry bags and tiny star tips, smoothing buttercream frosting with toothpicks and milk . . . oh, never again. I don't know when I'll be here for his birthday again, and it was very poignant, knowing that it was his first, and probably the last I'll see for awhile.

Next weekend is the Fourth of July weekend, which means the lake and sun and the boat and all sorts of enjoyable, hedonistic delights (probably including more beer). Then the weekend after that is a good-bye to Little Tokyo, with sushi and drinking and ramen, oh, my! And the weekend after that is the annual family jaunt to the spectacular gem of June Lake, nestled in the Sierra Nevadas, although I'm hoping sincerely that I won't miss it next summer, since it's something we've been doing for almost 30 years now, and is a sacred tradition. Then . . . after that . . . I have one more weekend, and then I'm gone. At 11:30 AM PST, July 30th, I'll be flying out of Ontario International Airport, and then at 9:10 PM EST, I'll be flying into Dulles International Airport, for the start of something new and wonderful and utterly exciting.

It's almost terrifying how few weekends there are left, and how much I'm going to miss everyone. But, to be perfectly honest, there's so much that I won't be missing. California is a great place, but despite the fact that I was "born and raised" here, and have even spent 5 years here as an adult, I've never really loved it the way some people do. There are parts of it that I like, but, well, I'm not in love with it. Aside from the fact that there are so many people, and I am not a crowded-city kind of person, there is so little of the natural beauty left in the populated areas. I miss the open, green spaces of Ohio, and when I was in Virginia, and saw it again, I got homesick for the green. I hate the traffic, and the fact that it takes ages to get anywhere. Life is so fast-paced, it's as though there's never any time to stop and think, as if you're not doing something at every minute of the day you're wasting your life. I could go on, but why? Mostly these are just things that I say when people ask me why I don't love California. I've never really loved it, and there's no easy way for me to explain why.

People do keep asking me when I'll be coming back, as though there were ever any question that I wouldn't. It's funny the assumptions they make - as though this time in Virginia was a brief period in exile, and that I can't wait to come back. Of course, when I moved to Ohio, that's how I felt, too. I had never lived anywhere other than California before then, and I really did view my time in Ohio as exile. I remember on a visit in 2004, in fact, 2 years before we moved back, we went to the beach, and I wrote in the sand, "I WILL come back." When a sure-thing job opened up in California, I didn't hesitate a minute, and ran back as fast as I could. And what did I find? That everything I had left California to escape was waiting right there for me, with open arms, to drag me back down into the muck and unhappiness I thought I had left behind for good.

It's one of those painful things you have to learn when you're "growing up". It's not that you can't go home again; it's that you shouldn't go home again. Well, maybe not you. But certainly me. Essentially, I won't be coming back to California. My family knows, too. Not in the obvious, let's-talk-about-it kind of way, but in the sad, quiet way you know things. They've all alluded to it a few times, and in a desire to be honest, I haven't contradicted their allusions. My father was very sad, actually, when he heard that I would be going to Virginia. When he heard how long it would be, it was quite cute how he said, "Well, that's too long. We'll have to talk about it." I think they all know that it means that once I leave, I won't be coming back except for visits.

On the train a few months ago, coming home late from work one night, I started talking with a German professor at one of the Claremont colleges. She's from Germany, but has been here for many years. I asked her if it was hard being away from family, and she said that when she was younger, it wasn't quite so hard, but now that she was older - and they were older - it was especially difficult. I also know that spending your life away from your family is difficult. My aunt has lived on the East Coast for all of my life, anyway, and I know that the isolation from her family - despite the fact that she's built a beautiful life for herself there - has been hard on her. She's very excited, in fact, that I'll be out there, and I'm actually pleased that she's so close. She's in Annapolis, which is only a few hours drive from Charlottesville (and which takes you through some of the prettiest country), so I envision many little trips back and forth.

I'm digressing. The point is that I know that it is difficult to be away from my family - I was away for 5 years! - but that at some point, I have to make a decision: to live my life for my family, or for myself. It's a difficult decision, but I know that, ultimately, I'll decide to live it for myself, and that I'll have to keep my relationship with my family strong through mediums other than frequent visits. I'm lucky that things like Skype and Facebook and email exist; they create ways to interact on a personal and intimate level with people, and while they certainly aren't the same as a face-to-face visit, they can't still be wonderful. Even the phone! My mother and I aren't 45 minutes away from each other now, and we can still spend 2 hours on the phone - easily - though we'll see each other the next weekend, or we saw each other a few days before. So I know everything will be okay; we'll get by.

Still, it isn't easy to say good-bye. I know that I'll shed many tears when it comes time to leave, and probably many before then. But at least I get time to say good-bye, and time to do a few "last things", so on those nights when I miss my family so much it hurts, I can think of them, and feel like I'm home with them, even though I'm 2,600 miles away.