Whoa.  Didn’t really see this comin’, at least not a few months ago.  Al got a job in Orange County (California, not New York).  We will be moving. I will stay behind to get the house ready to sell in Lafayette.  We’ve been in the Bay Area since we arrived here after our honeymoon involved us and a little Subaru from Illinois to here on a road trip.  29 years.

This blog is bound to be very strange for the next few months.  I figure we’ll put the house up for sale in spring when the hills are Ireland green and my garden tends to look nice, although we’ll probably do one of those fake garden makeovers right before the sign goes up.  It will take me at least that long to get it ready to sell.  I have warned Al that although I am 100% behind this move, he will need to understand that when I burst into tears for no apparent reason, that is par for the course and doesn’t mean I don’t want to go.  It just means I will be cleaning up the garden and will find a little plastic Ninja Turtle toy and I will fall apart.

I already feel very similar to after the ’89 earthquake.  My senses are heightened.  Suddenly I am seeing things I had stopped noticing: the trees, for instance.  Not a whole lot of oaks in SoCal.  It seems surreal now driving around town.  It never really was mine, this town, but now it seems less so.  My stomach turns as I pass by the Little League fields where I never really understood why people would push their baby boys to be the best at such a tender age.   I always felt like a bad mother compared to the ones who seemingly reveled in the Saturday morning mayhem of crowded parking lots and juice boxes and whining babies and lost uniform hats.  It’s all behind me now, in theory, but when I pass those fields I think “good riddance.”  There are many other examples of place in this town that make me not sorry to go.  It’s helpful, no?

Before I go any further, I must say this.  There are people I will miss with the depths of my soul.  They know who they are.  I promise I will come back often, it’s a quick plane ride and/or car ride.  I’m not moving to Australia.   I am putting my best faith forward with this new challenge, but my positive attitude does not diminish twinges of grief at leaving you that are already wafting through my day.

Having said that, I am nothing if not someone who likes change.  I lived in Mundelein, Illinois until I went to college in Milwaukee, then moved to New York, then to Vermont, then back to New York, then back to Mundelein, then to Evanston, then to San Francisco, then to Lafayette.  I have always kept in touch with those I wanted to, and the advent of the Internet has added a few people from the past to my list of lifelong friends.

Off to SoCal.  How weird is that?  Very.  Surfin’ USA and all that.  When I first lived in California and went down to LA the first time, I was quite bitchy as Al can tell you.  I never wanted to go there ever again.  I just about went nuts when he missed a freeway turn and we had to get off at an unplanned exit and turn around.  I was sure we were in the likes of South Bronx and I was going to die.  But of course we had to return – to see Al’s brother and his family and my family in San Diego, to go to Disneyland, to see if the Pacific Ocean really did have warm water at some point south.

I remember the day it changed for me.  We were camping somewhere south of Disneyland. I wanted to go to a miniatures store and get away from the guys for awhile.  I got in my car.  I looked at a map.  I found the miniatures store, which required getting off at an exit and travelling on surface streets.  I did not die on a freeway.  I found my way back.  Suddenly LA was not a big scary conglomerate anymore but a big crazy place full of possibilities.

I never thought I wanted to live there, and I’m not sure how it’s all going to shake out, but I know I’m not scared.  I know there is beauty there.  I know there is culture – you just have to dig a little bit.  There are tar pits with prehistoric bones right in the middle of the city for heaven’s sake!  A couple of hours east is Joshua Tree National Park a phenomenal high desert and a wonderful place to be  –  in the spring.

I will live near the ocean.  If all we can afford is a hovel near the ocean, then I will live in that.  I cannot go inland – it is desert, dreadfully hot and dry most of the year.  I need the ocean.  The marine layer, as I know from camping, insists on fogging up the coast just as it does in San Francisco.  Of course, it burns off faster, but I have been cold at Disneyland more often than I’ve been too hot.

The best beach in the world is in the town where I hope to find that hovel.  San Clemente.  It was our favorite camping spot in SoCal and the idea that I will be able to go hang on that beach whenever I want soothes my soul when the waves of grief threaten me.  The boys had so much fun there – some of my favorite photographs are on that beach – a photo of Al flying a kite, then a photo of each of the little boys holding it as he handed it to them, their eyes squinting up at the sky earnestly and with postures of responsibility.  It was not a good thing to be the brother who would let the kite drop, but on that beach Al got it so high in the sky it had not a chance of falling. Another photo is the one of The Coaster commuter train flying by just off the beach – I know that sounds terrible, but the ocean is so delicious for body surfing there and the sand so castle-building perfect it didn’t matter.  I have a classic photo of all the kids on the beach stopping what they are doing and watching the train go by, beach buckets and sand shovels in mid-scoop, nothing in the photograph but little sandy butts and backs of tousled haired heads of every kid within the scope of the camera lens.  What that one photo doesn’t show is that the Coaster went by every hour or half hour and each time the beach full of kids would do the same damn thing, as if they’d never seen a train before.  It was pretty funny.

Here are the questions that cross my mind…

Am I too old to learn to surf?  Yes, I am, don’t even think of encouraging me.

Should I start looking for the plastic surgeon right away?  These twin pendulums just won’t do.

Will I have to succumb to spray tan, since I won’t go out uncovered but I also don’t want to look like Annabel Lee?

Does it rain there AT ALL?

How soon before I decide I want to  figure out how to witness a red carpet Academy Awards dealie-o up close and personal just once in my life?  Better not.  One glimpse of Johnny Depp and I fear I’d make an Illinois Girl Turned Northern California girl damned fool of myself.  He’s so nice though, right, he’d just offer to let me sit at his table?

OK, I’m getting ridiculous now.  What it really all will be about is a place to walk into the next phase of my life.  I’ll keep you posted, but not before you have to hear all about the insanity I will endure as I decide whether to take or leave the box of the boys drawings from when they were six.

It has been a trip and a half here in San Francisco for seven years and then Lafayette for twenty- two.  It’s time to go.  I can’t wait to see what life has in store for me next.  I will not forget, just as I haven’t forgotten Illinois, or New York, or Vermont or Milwaukee.  Each has a special place in my heart.  I leave with the San Francisco Bay Area, the honeymoon days, pregnant days, the elementary school days, the teenage days, tucked away in my heart now too.