hometowns
winter break chronicles
I feel like I have lives that exist in different places. Or, I think about the ghost version of me that exists in different cities even though I only have one life and one city to be concerned with at any given moment. I wonder if there is a finite amount of life to be had, and this Life is spread out in different places at fluctuating percentages. Like, I am living 40% New York, 50% San Francisco, 10% Orange County. Or maybe I have dormant lives that pick up right where I left them, in my friend Jeremy’s kitchen or at a boba shop that hasn’t changed its interior or prices in ten years.
Southern California
“It’s so strange driving around here,” my mother said, “Because I really know this place, and I don’t feel that way up north.” We were driving my uncle and aunt to Long Beach airport, telling them the names of the neighborhoods along the way: Los Altos, El Dorado. We passed by the Weight Watchers location my mother would take me to on the days her meetings and my days off from school overlapped. I hadn’t been back to Southern California since February 2024, though my parents still make the trip down for dental visits and to see doctors they trust.
Two days earlier, I arrived at Long Beach airport, then my father drove us 20 minutes to our friend’s house in Los Alamitos. Then my high school friend picked me up and drove me 20 minutes to the table tennis club in Fountain Valley. Then we drove 30 minutes to have dinner back by the airport. Then my other friend drove us 15 minutes to get boba elsewhere in Long Beach. Then she drove us 15 minutes back, and my first friend drove me 20 minutes to my family’s hotel room in La Palma, where my parents were sharing a full-sized bed, both snoring.
We were in town to surprise my great uncle for his 88th birthday at Panda Inn. Through a trivia game, we learned that my uncle loves gardening, his cat is named Sweetie, he watches Hallmark movies every night, he collects Hot Wheels, and he has a pinball high score in the millions. I don’t think my uncle knows how much of a star he is to me.
To kill time on the day of our flight back to Oakland, my dad decided to drive through our old neighborhood. I always think seeing the old house is going to hurt more than it actually does. It’s been sold twice since it belonged to us; I’m the house’s great-grandparent. We drove at a snail’s pace around the block as my parents studied the cars in the driveways and concocted theories about who had died and who had moved away. In all my memories of my neighbors, I am selling Girl Scout Cookies or magazines. We drove around the elementary school field I played in all throughout my childhood, looking for an entry, but the entire campus is locked and gated off now, the buildings have been repainted a garish hospital blue. We took two or three laps. Because I know my hometown very well, I wondered if someone would make a paranoid Nextdoor post about a suspicious vehicle driving slowly, up to no good.
Salt Lake City
I used to hate my chubby cheeks as a young adult. Even though they have hollowed out in recent years, sometimes I still zoom in at the problem area in photographs, looking for trouble. When I see the same cheeks on my little niece, I wonder how a person could find the feature to be anything except exquisitely lovable. In case you were wondering, my niece has three identical stuffed bunnies all called ‘Baby,’ loves throwing pebbles into her Home Depot bucket, takes carpeted skiing lessons, and has a zipper fixation.
Since my brother moved to Utah, I’ve visited about six times. During this most recent trip, my boyfriend would look up a cafe or a restaurant, and I would realize that I had been there before. In the backseat of my brother’s SUV, I recognize everything. Maybe I’ve set aside a small percentage of my life there without knowing.
This December in Salt Lake City was the warmest ever recorded.
The Bay
My mother kindly signed me up for a month-long membership at her gym while I was home, so I joined her for a Friday morning Zumba class. I was the youngest person in the room, probably by at least thirty years. I was also the least vocal, as the rest of the class whooped and hollered and oo-la-la’d whenever our instructor introduced a more sultry move. A man towards the front of the aerobics room had clearly memorized routines, throwing perfectly-times adlibs over a salsa remix of “Roxanne.”
The first night I went back to my old apartment in San Francisco, I felt sick inside and sad. Valerie answered the door as I rang the bell from outside. I used to do the same for her in the year before she lived there. It helps knowing that my old room is thriving without me: the person who moved into it has tricked it out with minor home improvements, transforming the space into a small and stylish studio apartment. I miss having a large bathroom and a dishwasher and a big wooden table for gabbing and Catan, most of all I miss living with Valerie and Kenny and watching bad movies while crafting into the night, but oh well. Life calls.
I’m embarrassed to admit that the Stranger Things finale made me feel so upset I could not sleep for days. I think the person who is upset is not a 26-year-old, but is instead the 16-year-old version of that person. I watched the series obsessively when I was home alone for a week my junior year of high school, at the recommendation of someone I spoke to solely via Snapchat. I let my dog Mia sleep in my parents’ bed and we watched it late into the night together. In all my most powerful and lasting memories of high school, I am alone. The lobotomy of my once favorite show is a lesson I know I need to take to heart: any creature built from nostalgia can become a nostalgia monster.
At the Sutro Baths, if you stand in just the right place, you can see a little heart of light through a rock formation in the water. <3
Home
I spent about a month in California, bouncing between friend’s couches and friend’s beds and my parents’ guest room every 2-3 days. Lugging library books and heattech across the ferry. I feel grateful to be back in a room that is my own again. I feel grateful to be back in a city that accepts winter as a reality and thus offers adequate heating and insulation. I also think being with my parents for weeks on end activated some unfortunate Diva Behavior. At one point I found myself home alone in a hot tub at 11 PM on a Wednesday — I cannot be doing stuff like that without severing a connection to reality. So I am grateful to be back in my own routine. I do not doubt I will be humbled soon.
My 2025 vlog:
Basically I used to take videos to prove that I had friends, but now the only things I want to capture are campfires and moving water. Music is a live performance of “Appointments” by Jay Som.
Thanks for reading as always. Fuck ICE forever. Mutual aid link tree.