Day 4

North Park

Day 4 was spent roaming around my neighborhood. North Park has it’s own little downtown section and we hit up all the good stuff—Verbatim Books, Pigment, Artelexia, and some vintage shops. We had boba tea and sat at Swami’s Café for lunch. After two long, planned out days, it was nice to have no direction; just hanging, just wandering, just poking around. Happy to say the teenagers really liked my ‘hood.

Balboa Park

Trying to maximize the time, I brought the family to Balboa Park to check out the artists’ village and the main strip on El Prado. To be honest, it was try-hard and ended up being kind of a bust. The day was SO hot, and we had already been out all morning. By the time we tried to rally, in the mid-day San Diego sun, we were completely exhausted. Better luck next time!

Airport

I packed up my people and headed back to the airport to bid them goodbye. Four days was probably the perfect amount of time, but watching them leave, I felt like I could do 14 more. They got on their flight home, and I went back to “real life.”

There are so many things we didn’t get to do, because four days is not enough to see and do everything. Some of my favorite things—like an afternoon at sunset cliffs didn’t make the cut. Some other things got cut because of time crunch, things I thought would be fun for each teen—the USS Midway Museum for B, the history nerd, the Comicon Museum for S, currently very into K-pop, Korean culture, and comics. We didn’t get to go to PB or OB or La Jolla cove—important San Diego spots, to be sure, but it was more pressing for me to show them, glowingly, adoringly, my new neighborhood, North Park.

Getting to share my new favorite place with my old favorite people felt like a full-circle experience of “home”. The vibe was so cozy it could have been fall, despite the blistering heat and the palm trees swaying.

Teenagers (Get a Bad Rap)

My visitors included my mom—my biggest supporter, who has already been out to San Diego twice to visit since I moved here four months ago, and my niece and nephew. Since they’re not my kids, I’m calling them by their initials, S and B. My niece and nephew are 14 and 15, respectively. And I think teenagers get a bad rap.

Babies are cute and toddlers are wild and kids are precocious, but OMG I am LOVING these teenage years. It is so cool being able to hang out with my niece and nephew and get to know them as people, their individual personalities developing roots and offshoots. It is so nice to not have to plan “kid-friendly activities”. We can do normal stuff adults like to do, since they’re (kind of) almost adults. Last summer my nephew, B, and I had a day in Portland ME, where we hit up a book shop, a coffee shop, went out to lunch and then perused an art museum. We would go to open mic nights together at a local brewery, me drinking NA beer and him a lemonade, and play a stupid table game while we listened to the people sing and play. My niece, S, and I go for drives to coffee shops, walk the beach together, shop, listen to new Taylor albums, (and Doja Cat, don’t count her out) and she is always down to watch something creepy or scary.

I love seeing the things they’re into—which stores they want to go in, what they’re practicing, reading, wearing. I love when they tell me something personal, or—bestill my heart—ask me for advice. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I am victory dancing on the inside. (Eyes forward, playing it cool on the outside, obviously.)

I want to be someone they can come to with problems. I want to be someone they come to with a fun, spontaneous idea. I want to stay young enough, in spirit, to hang with these two for as long as possible. Forever maybe. And I really, really want to be a different kind of example for them. I’m a single 38-year old woman. I work a weird job that gives me an alternative lifestyle. I’ve traveled alone—a lot, and to places some people wouldn’t. I bought a little house by myself. And then I rented out my little house and moved across the country just because I wanted to try something new.

I don’t think my life choices make me better than anyone else. I don’t think everyone would enjoy my life choices, and I’m sure some people are horrified by them. But I do like the feeling of knowing these kids have a weirdo aunt that walks to the beat of her own drum. I do like my niece seeing me single and HAPPY, living my best life. Because the narratives for little girls in our culture often direct them towards men and motherhood as the only source of that. I like my nephew seeing me travel to places where I don’t speak the language, going alone, staying a couple months. I like telling him about my trips, how the more places I go, the more I see, the more I know I don’t know much. They’re both at the age where, in your (kind of) almost adult brain, you think you kind of know a thing or two. You might think you know a lot.

They probably won’t know until they’re well into their 30s that none of us knows anything about anything, but at least to plant the seed of thought, to show humility and openness in front of them, awe and wonder at other cultures and ways of living, is something. If watered enough, it might just germinate and grow. They might just be open and humble and full of wonder, too, know it’s okay not to know everything. It’s not that I want them to be like me, but that an expansive, open view of the world is something I wish upon everyone—especially the people I love most.

I hope they see my 38-year-old ass still living with roommates and having the time of my fucking life and think “Well, that’s one way to live.”  I hope they think I’m cool forever, or at least cool enough to show me their real, unfiltered selves when they’re nervous, or uncertain, or brimming with excitement. At least cool enough to want to hang out with me, even if it involves eye-rolls when my back is turned.

The point of this post is nothing. It’s just spits and dribbles of joy. Musings of a lucky girl sharing so much love, and her new life, with her favorite people from the old one.

Have a COOL weekend, or at least cool enough.