Home in San Diego

The van pulls into the carport and my sisters and I are woken up by the lack of noisy engine, the lack of Johnny Cash on the cassette player, the lack of cigarette smoke filtering into the backseats. We grab our blankets and pillows and stumble into the house in the middle of the night. Or we are fully awake when we get home in the late afternoon and we bound out of the yellow Vanagon and call dibs on the toilet. I'm seven years old and it smells like summer inside the closed up house. We've only been gone for a week, a week of fishing and hiking and oh boy burnt pancakes and greasy Bishop bacon and driving through the mountains of the High Sierras and the desert that is Southern California. We're home and the blinds are closed and the cats and dogs haven't been picked up from the animal hotel (fleas!) yet and the green shag carpet harbors the smell of small chlorinated feet and the damp towels laid out to watch movies- the smell of summer break.
Whenever I come home I expect that smell. Maybe remodeling and insulating and tile instead of shag changed the smell, but the feeling of walking in the door is nearly identical.
The feeling of coming home to the house you grew up in.
I get a glass of water, walk through the house to see what has changed, go into my old bedroom and fall into a deep sleep under the glow in the dark covered (still!) ceiling beams.
The yellow Vanagon is long gone but my dad's legacy of sturdy cars remains. On my first day out of the house I jump into the Chevy Blazer and bump onto the main road. This is what I do:

1) I get a burrito. Usually bean and cheese, maybe a little sour cream and guac thrown in. Any displaced southern Californian can tell you that there is nothing, nothing like a lard infused tortilla full of beans or carne asada, dripping with smoky hot sauce and fresh guacamole, wrapped in paper as an attempt to contain the tasty mess. And at one o' clock in the morning on a foggy San Diego night, even New York pizza can't compare.

2) I drive through my favorite neighborhoods: Kensington, North Park, South Park, Hillcrest and into downtown. Most of the neighborhoods have changed dramatically since my high school days. Hillcrest used to be filled with coffeeshops and used bookstores and sketchy kids asking for money on the street. I used to drink lots of coffee and buy far too many Beat poetry books and makeout with those kids between clove cigarettes. Now there are a few Starbucks and less bookstores and I don't smoke cloves anymore now that I'm in my 30s. I guess Hillcrest and I have grown out of our "pretending to be tough" phases. I keep driving. I mentally list the restaurants and bars I Need to visit. I probably won't but I like the myriad of possibilities.

3) I stop to get coffee, to write, to observe life at one of my favorite coffee shops. It's hard to believe, but San Diego has cooler cafes than New York City. The kind of places where you can sit all day with a mug (hot warm cold coffee) and a crumb of scone on your plate and write and read and just be. You get to know the people at the counter, the regulars. Soon you are a regular and start dating the cute guy with long dark hair who smiles when he serves you tea but he's not the cool intellectual you thought he must be working at a coffee shop full of people studying and you break it off before you go away to college and at college you miss all the neat coffee shops of your hometown and you boycott Starbucks (still do) but meet real intellectuals in sweaters and thick framed glasses. (this is what home does- nostalgia full force)

My favorites:

Claire de Lune in North Park http://www.clairedelune.com/

976 in Pacific Beach http://www.cafe976.com/

Living Room in the College Area (my second home during my teenage years) http://www.livingroomcafe.com/sdsu.php

Zanzibar in Pacific Beach http://www.zanzibarcafe.com/Pacific-Beach.html

There are so many more (and so many that closed down) but these are the must visits.

4)The beach. I head to Pacific Beach. The drive through the bay park area is always surprisingly exhilarating. The water (desert? water shortage?) is everywhere and there are always sailboats and kite surfers and fishing boats making fluffy white wakes in the inlets and under bridges and through sets of jetties. I park at the end of Grand Street where I used to skateboard or go up to Law Street where I used to surf and I walk along the concrete boardwalk and watch the waves.
And I finally breathe out for the first time since getting home.

5) I eat another burrito. I realize that eating burritos for 10 or 20 days in a row before I go back to wherever I may be living at the time is probably not a good idea for my thighs or heart. But I do it anyway because frozen burritos suck and Chipotle is not quite the same.

6) I take walks with my mom and sisters to the end of our street. We talk and we vent and we discuss and we let down guards and we breathe. And we dodge cars with ancient white haired people and surly teens clipping the gutters of the sidewalk-less neighborhood. We look for coyotes and mountain lions and comment on houses (one still looks like a Sizzler, one is painfully misguided Tuscan Villa) and we talk some more.

7) I hang out with friends who still live in San Diego (this isn't necessarily a hometown people are eager to leave) and they show me the new cool spots or we revisit old haunts. We drink beer and wine and eat sushi and sliders and catch up on life. That's what you do when you come home.

8) I go to a film or a play, usually by myself. When I was growing up I would take advantage of the numerous art house movie theaters (all but one or two gone now) and prestigious theaters and dream about acting. The velvet seats of the Old Globe theater, the edgy experimental pieces that La Jolla Playhouse would throw at its patrons (the fudgy brownies I would eat at intermission), the smaller theaters with a few seats but lots of heart. I was a part of that community and I happily did my duty several times a month supporting the local arts when I wasn't in a show myself.
These days when I come home its harder to time my visits with the live shows I really want to see, but there are enough films in non-stadium seating movie theaters to keep me satiated. Even if I am the only one in a theater at the 3:50 showing of a New York City based indie.

9) I go to the Red Fox Room with my family. My grandfather went there, my mom and dad went there when they were young and childless, we Goff girls go when we're all in town (cheers to Dad) and eat carrot sticks and olives dipped in ranch dressing and cold iceberg salad (blue cheese please) and petite filet of steak (medium rare) or halibut almondine (rice pilaf or baked potatoes or fries) and split the carrot cake. We sip small goblets of wine and always comment on how cool it is that the interior wood paneling used to be a bar in England and that the piano singer is really live, not a recording, singing out in the dim red light.

10) I go downtown and walk around and pine for the days of homeless and junkies and falling apart buildings and funky coffeshops and retro hotel lobbies. Yes, I know that San Diego is better off economically with a vibrant downtown, but the rough edged downtown I grew wandering around had more charm. At least to my 17 year old fishnet stocking wearing, Shakespeare tragedy reading, black and white photographing, oh so soulful self.

11) I sit in the backyard and look out at Mission Valley, listen to the cars speeding between the beach and snow covered mountains on the freeway, breathe in the blue sky and green lawn (desert! water shortage!) and slight smell of chlorinated water drifting from the pool I used to splash around in all summer long. I wonder if I could live in San Diego again. I wonder where I am flying off to next. I wonder when I will be back...

...To do my list all over again.