I don’t love L.A. I can admit that what you’ve heard about the weather is true: it’s almost always warm and sunny there. But most beautiful days are spent under pale skies, the horizon obscured by a haze so omnipresent you must love weather more than you love sky not to be bothered by it. On a few clear days in January and February, when you can see the ocean or the skyline in the distance, Los Angeles opens up and feels (almost) like a place I would like to live. Most other days, though, I find it crowded, polluted, and poxed by powerlines and a stripmall aesthetic.
Los Angeles has one singular redeeming quality for me, though, and it’s not the sunshine. It’s family. Goodlooking’s entire family lives there. His mother and her two siblings, their children, and his three sisters. For five years just after Girlish was born, we lived there, too, and in my life, there have been few things as sweet as watching my children grow in the bosom of a group of people who love them almost as much as I do.
I have been so happy on our London adventure. Seeing and doing new things, taking photographs, volunteering, traveling to Germany, Spain and France over the last six months. But yesterday morning, after a lovely wedding for Rod’s cousin at the beautiful Mission Inn in Riverside, we left L.A., dragging my thousand-pound heart behind me.
This visit, Baybish discovered her Grandaddy. She toddled up to him in his favorite kitchen chair where he sits, reading the paper much of the day. She handed him shoes and other interesting objects, or threw toys at his head when he didn’t notice her quickly enough. When she got his attention (which was always) she rewarded him by batting her eyelashes and babbling conversationally. And although I was ready to come back to London yesterday, it broke my heart to take her so far away from him so soon.
Then, around three a.m. this morning, a jetlagged Boyish crawled into my bed, wide awake and begging to get up and watch Scooby Doo. I kept him close, stroking his back in hopes of soothing him back to sleep. He tossed and turned, pressed his damp cheek against mine, and I asked him, “Are you sweating, Bear, or crying?”
He rolled over into my chest and sobbed, “I want to see my Grandma!”
“You’ll see her soon,” I whispered. “She’s coming to visit you soon.”
“Is she on a plane right now?” he asked.
It’s hard, see? I’m caught between giving my children the comfort of close family, close by, and the adventure of learning that the world is small and that the place they have in it is—complex. So here I am, pushing 40 with three small children, and still not knowing where I belong. I love the idea of settling down, raising my family in one place, but honestly, I don’t know where that place is, or when we might get there. In the meantime, I can only keep trying to make the most of where I find myself. For all of us.
