Finding Home

I miss home.

I’m not even entirely sure of where “home” is. When I find myself referring it to it lately, I’m talking about San Diego. It’s where Mike and I lived for 10 years before our recent move. It’s where we got married, bought our first house and had both of our kids. It’s where we made lots of wonderful friends who became like family.

For many years — decades even — before we lived in San Diego, “home” for me was where we live now, the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s where I grew up from preschool until the start of my sophomore year of high school. It’s where I returned for college and later business school at Stanford, where I held my first real job and where I met my husband.

It made me kind of sad to see friends’ photos on Facebook of the start of school, birthday celebrations, sunsets at the beach and other scenes that we used to be a part of — everything continues. We’ve been up to fun things too. Even though I grew up here, I’ve done my best to re-enter the Bay Area like a tourist, taking the kids to amusement parks, zoos, theater shows, farms and getting the lay of the land. We’ve made a few good friends, mostly through school, and it’s been fun to reconnect with lots of people I’ve known over the past 30 years. My sister and her family live an hour away, which has made it much easier to get together for birthdays, Thanksgiving or for no particular reason at all. I’ve even run into a few very old friends randomly around town, which pretty much never happened in San Diego.

Southern California sensibilities managed to set into me — I’ve had to make a few Northern California adjustments. The kids and I now own coats (and wear them). I get to the movies a lot earlier, as there aren’t any theaters near us where you can reserve seats online (let alone order a glass of wine to your seat — I got really spoiled by that!). I kind of can now determine whether my trash should go into the regular bin, recycling or compost (shhh…I still carry disposable water bottles!). I’m not yet cool with the fact that it would be cheaper to buy one of those beautiful ocean view villas in Wailea on Hawaii Life on HGTV than it would be for us to buy a 60-year old ranch in desperate need of a remodel near my kids’ school here in Silicon Valley. Internet on my iPhone is now lightning fast and I can power up just about anywhere!

Change happens, and adjustments take time. It’s only been 6 months since our move — and, generally speaking, it’s gone pretty well. When will it feel like home? I’m guessing it will be the day that I allow it. 🙂