Castle Rock 
Santa Cruz Mountains
Blanket | Overalls | Sneakers | Bag | Picnic Basket
Want to know one of my secret, weird reasons for wanting to move here? Every single one of my friends from college who grew up in California ended up going back. They spent a couple of years in Boston or New York, maybe a year or two going to grad school somewhere else…and then they went home. They tell me that they couldn’t imagine living any other place; that once you know what it’s like to live in California you never want to leave – and even if you do leave for a moment, you always return.
I feel that way; I do. I’ve written about this before, how I feel like California has always been in my blood. But we have kids, and we have to think about things like house prices and school districts and college funds, and so Kendrick and I have been forcing ourselves to talk about what our alternatives are should we one day, for any reason, find ourselves needing or wanting to move.
We are certain that we want to live in California, but do we want to live in the precise part of California where we are? For the long-term? The truth is that I don’t know, and our kids are reaching an age when it feels like we need to give them stability, so this is a big question for us. The schools seem good, but are they good enough? The weather is great, but would we pay hundreds of dollars less for utilities elsewhere? Our neighborhood is populated by some of the most wonderful people we’ve ever met, and for the first time ever we feel like we have a village…but the closest thing we have to a “downtown” is a strip of pavement with an Apple store tucked in between a Safeway and a Five Guys. We love lots of things about it, but can’t say for sure that it’s where we’ll want to be for the next fifteen or so years, until our kids graduate from high school.
What if we can’t stay here, and want to? What if we can, and don’t?
I want my children to adore the place where they grew up. I know they’re entitled to their own lives and I know they will do what they will, but I want so badly to feel like one day, when they have their own families, they’ll want to come back home, back to California. And I worry that if we stay in this exact spot that they won’t. I can already hear them as teenagers: This place SUCKS. There’s NOTHING TO DO.
It’s the suburbs. I get it. I grew up smack in the middle of New York City, with prostitutes screaming in the middle of the night and the lights of Times Square illuminating the early morning sky and always something to do, somewhere to go, something new. I’ve sought out peace and nature and space for years now, and I can’t think of many things better than a sunlit home and a yard with an orange tree and dogs who lick your toes when you walk through the door – but I understand why teenagers in search of adventure might not feel the same way; why they might want something more…I don’t know. Something unexpected.
So I worry that if we stay in this home and this life they won’t love it, and will think of it as a place they “escaped” once they’ve left. I worry, but I still try to remember this: when we look out our window we may see nothing more exciting than a playground and some hills and a few friends playing basketball in the street while the sun goes down – but it is those friends who help you find the building blocks that make a life.
And also there’s this: our block may be sweet and calm and happy and sleepy…but if if you just get in your car and go – and we do, every single weekend – what you discover are boulders that the ocean tossed to the top of mountains, and then left there just for you to climb.
