touching base in california
Monday morning at the office, San Diego style.
Knowing that we are going to be out there for some unknown period of time, we wanted to visit my family as the first stop on our tour. This was bittersweet, of course, because we are all getting older and knowing it might be a while before we see each other again is tough for everyone. That meant first heading to San Jose, California to see my aunt and uncle for a few days and then on to San Diego, where I grew up and most of my family lives.
The reality was the entire month before we left, we were on a Goodbye Tour, seeing most of our friends for dinners and parties, saying goodbye to our coworkers, and giving final hugs to our cherished neighbors. We lived in a small cottage community where people were literally and figuratively close. My liver was aching, but my tongue was so happy as I pulled my best bottles to share. A few were pulled from cellars to share with me, too. It was astounding.
The best way to describe this time is like dying but having the privilege of hearing what people say about you at your funeral. We have heard some of the most humbling and heartfelt expressions of love, gratitude, and “I will miss you’s” that create enormous feelings of guilt. Like we’re hurting people. And for me that is almost unbearable. But I also understand that people need to express themselves and tell you what you have meant to them, how you’ve impacted their lives, and what kind of empty hole you are leaving in their tapestry of human connections. I don’t recommend going through this kind of process for the faint of heart, but it has also been a profound experience learning that we are good people. Don’t we all wonder about that? Now I know where I stand.
There has also been joy as everyone wraps their head around the concept and once they have felt the pain of loss, it is replaced with the excitement of understanding. Even my parents got there, which makes me feel a lot better. After the shock of the news, the myriad questions about our safety and sanity in choosing to do this, they eventually got very excited for us. We’ll speak each week on Facetime like Somebody Feed Phil, when he used to Zoom his parents at the end of each show.
It doesn’t feel like we’ve started the journey, however. We go to California every year and so it really felt like a normal family visit only we didn’t have to leave after a few days to go back to work (How sweet the sound). In San Jose, we did our favorite thing there, which is to sit on my aunt and uncle’s back terrace, and enjoy the beautiful weather, the lemon and lime trees, the water fountain slowly trickling, Bailey, the dog running around or just laying on our feet under their huge table for 10 from Mexico. We talk and talk, and laugh and laugh, and drink many bottles of excellent wine.
In San Diego, we managed to get to the cliffs in Ocean Beach. We stood at the top of the steps and looked down on the private sandy enclaves open between the rocks where people can lay out. (Don’t these people have to work? It’s a Monday.) Their NFL football-colored skin roasting in the sun, reading books, eating salads, or taking a dip in the warm mid-September Pacific. Do I sound jealous? I stood there thinking, my whole life when I tell people I am from San Diego, they usually react with something like, “Oh, I could live there.” Or “Why would you ever leave San Diego?” At that moment at the top of the steps I fully understood. Why did I leave?
I was wearing my U-Dub hat (GO DAWGS!), my eyes drifting out to sea in a glazed thought bubble when I heard a man’s voice say, “Are you from Seattle?” Snapping back into reality, I saw a man in his 30s smiling at me. I said that I was, and I was down visiting family. He said he was, too. He was having his own little existential crisis, apparently, because he said he was standing there trying to decide if he should move to San Diego or not. I scanned the scene below me, the pelicans dive bombing for lunch, the blue-green ocean, the ochre cliffs, and the people who had clearly figured life out, and I looked at him and said, “Really?”
We had a party at my Step-Mom and Dad’s house and my family and friends-that-are-now-family came to send us off. We also got to see my Mom’s widowed husband after quite some time. We even had dinner with two of my best friends from high school that came from a far just to see us. We felt the warm embrace of all of them—happy to see us, sad to see us go, but happy for us.
After a very long preparation, selling the house, the Goodbye Tour, and the family visits, we are tired. And now we were starting in earnest. Our flight leaves at 6:20 a.m. tomorrow morning. First stop Chicago.