My Love

The love of my life is the great state of California. (Bridge Man, of course, is the human love of my life but that’s a separate blog.) From the moment my family moved out of Cali, I’ve longed to go back. That is where my extended family lives, where my memories are, and where my heart belongs.

When I’m talking about California, I don’t necessarily mean, the state itself. What I love about Cali is something that only I know. It’s something that only I’ve experienced. Yes, the weather is nice, the ocean is beautiful, and there is always something to do but these reasons reside at the bottom of my list.

When I was little I belonged to a group of three friends who did everything together, my sister S and my aunt D. My sister is about two and a half years older than me and my aunt is just under two years older than me so I was the baby who shadowed them all day long. I know for a fact that I annoyed them because I was too young to play with the big girls. Regularly they would lock me out of D’s room so I couldn’t play Barbies with them. I would run to my grandma with crocodile tears in my eyes and she would force them to play with me. I was persistent in this way until I was old enough to fit into their little gang.

Not many people were allowed in our clique. A girl named Megan lived down the street from my grandparent’s house and she always wanted to play with us. Megan was an only child and was allowed to do a lot more than we were. The four of us would play together but eventually we would get annoyed with Megan and not want to play with her anymore. We didn’t like that her mom let her do anything; she got to wear acrylic nails, she had a bunk bed in her bedroom, and she could do a front-walk-over better than we could. So what did we do? We created a club for the three of us called “The We Hate Megan Club.” We were totally serious about the club. D was the president, S the VP, and I was the secretary. We would hold meetings once a week to discuss — well, I can’t remember. Though, I’m sure it had something to do with how much we hated poor Megan. We would turn on an Alvin and the Chipmunks tape or a Dr. Demento tape and play in the backyard until the coast was clear.

After an afternoon of ripping the lemons from my grandma’s lemon tree and throwing them in neighboring yards, doing cartwheels on my grandpa’s perfectly preened yard, and riding our bikes around the circle drive, it was time to go inside. My grandma scheduled dinners out for each day of the week; Monday was meatloaf night, Tuesday was Mexican night, Wednesday was chili night, and so on. Friday was my favorite because it was fast food night and I always, always, always got a kids meal for the free toy that usually ended up broken or missing by the end of the night. We would play Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo with my Uncle K. He would play until he got to the coolest levels in the game and then he would let us play until we killed off Mario and he’d have to start over again. When he got sick of that he would lie on his back and hold us up in the air with his feet until we became green in the face. He was one friggin’ great uncle.

When it was bedtime, we three amigas would crowd over the sink in the bathroom to see who could make the most foam in the sink with the toothpaste while brushing our teeth. D usually won that game. I would then beg and plead with my mom to let me sleep in my Aunt B’s room because she was older and cooler than me and would let me stay up late. B had a trundle bed and I would sleep on the pullout bed from underneath. We would stay up and talk for hours. I always felt so COOL when she would let me hang out with her.

Sometimes she would let me lay out with her. We would just lie there in out teeny-bikinis and fry in the sun. Once we were good and burnt, we would go inside to soothe our burns with vinegar soaked paper towels. It was so, SO stinky but felt so, SO soothing. No one but my family has heard of this sunburn remedy so I can probably predict your reaction. Give it a try before you judge. I promise, you’ll never go back to that green aloe goo.

I've been back to California several times since my family originally moved away and each time I've felt the same excitement that can only come with the memory of playing Marco Polo in a one-foot deep plastic pool in my grandparent's backyard.