California felt different. We now lived three thousand miles away from everything and everyone I knew and loved. I had had no idea this would make me feel rudderless and homesick, no idea California would feel like living in another country!
Len, on the other hand, had arrived home. He loved everything about it. He started to run every day for miles at a time. He loved the smell of the air, the warm weather, Marie Callender’s restaurants, Laguna Beach, the avocado trees that grew in our yard, and Taco Bell.
It certainly was an interesting place to land, but it wasn’t home for me. I was used to the quaint country roads in Westchester, narrow lanes with no street or traffic lights, and driving through hills and fields and by houses on two acres. I had liked the fact that our neighbors could only be seen through clumps of trees, that a fire in October smelled like woody perfume in crisp air, and that we had a white Christmas. Everything was different there. Our stores were not chain stores like in California, but mom and pops. People were kind but reserved. You voted in a regulation voting booth, not in someone’s garage with black garbage bags as privacy dividers. The hospitals back home didn’t have cameras that broadcasted your baby’s face from the nursery into the main lobby like a TV show, and neighbors welcomed you to the community and did not allow their kids free reign to put dog poop in your mail box or rummage your garage for bikes and toys.
Len, on the other hand, had arrived home. He loved everything about it. He started to run every day for miles at a time. He loved the smell of the air, the warm weather, Marie Callender’s restaurants, Laguna Beach, the avocado trees that grew in our yard, and Taco Bell.
It certainly was an interesting place to land, but it wasn’t home for me. I was used to the quaint country roads in Westchester, narrow lanes with no street or traffic lights, and driving through hills and fields and by houses on two acres. I had liked the fact that our neighbors could only be seen through clumps of trees, that a fire in October smelled like woody perfume in crisp air, and that we had a white Christmas. Everything was different there. Our stores were not chain stores like in California, but mom and pops. People were kind but reserved. You voted in a regulation voting booth, not in someone’s garage with black garbage bags as privacy dividers. The hospitals back home didn’t have cameras that broadcasted your baby’s face from the nursery into the main lobby like a TV show, and neighbors welcomed you to the community and did not allow their kids free reign to put dog poop in your mail box or rummage your garage for bikes and toys.