Daily Archive

Every year, towards the end of it, I return to the town where I grew up – the city, I should say, because it is one. In some years, it’s been mere weeks since I was there last. Others, like this one, I have to stop and count up the months. There are never enough to amount to a whole year away, usually not even close.

I claim it as my hometown only with multiple disclaimers: that I’m terrible at being from here, that I was consumed with eagerness to formulate an exit strategy throughout both parts of my life during which I lived here, that the way my family does this town does its reputation for glamorous lifestyle attainment little to no justice.

I could go on, and still not make it clear how much I am not any kind of expected product of this environment. But I come back here, and so much about this place finds its way back into my soul. Or is roused from dormancy, I have to consider.

All the way up the 101, all these years since I drove it regularly, I’m not on autopilot, but close – in this zone of familiarity, knowing I could take any exit and not get lost. I’ve taken them all, at one time or another. And every exit has at least one story to tell.

There’s a tale of two Denny’s – the best of times, the worst of times, separated by a few years that made me older but none the wiser – making different choices with a different person, but for no better reasons.

The strong implication made by multiple highway signs just past Ventura, that the only next destination is San Francisco – there was a night not so long ago when that made perfect sense, which meant catching a slow-burn sunrise over the Bay.

The way the arc sodiums space out and then disappear right where the highway curves closest to the ocean and the mist curls up and the radio only tunes in static, making it seem, for several miles, like it could be any time since cars had headlights.

All of this comes to mind, and then some. All of it makes this unlike anywhere else is for me. I always thought that would change, eventually. Permanently, and not just gradually. And maybe it will. But permanence, at least the way I used to think of it, is no longer something I long for. This, whatever it is – it’s enough.