I can smell the sheer mintiness of it before it hits my lips and, all of a sudden, I am back in high school. I’m studying for an AP History exam and discussing the possibility of an interfaith library with two of my church friends. But I’m not really invested in the conversation. I’m – what? 16? 17? – and, at the risk of sounding like the heroine of a CW series, at this moment in The Living Room Coffeehouse, I am seriously thinking about prom. I’m thinking about prom and the fact that I have a huge crush on my date’s best friend. Major awkwardness. As I’m thinking, I sip my mint mocha, closing my eyes to savor the flavor but also to daydream for a moment. Would he even go to the dance? And if so, would he carpool with us? And if so, would it be totally weird if I start making out with him in the back seat while my date is driving? The sheer improbability of this scenario makes me laugh so suddenly that mint mocha almost comes out of my nose. My friends look at me and wonder what is so funny about an interfaith library. I look down at American History and blush, smiling to myself.
I am sitting today – quite a few years later - at the same coffee shop in La Jolla, and I’m writing. It’s been a while since I’ve spent significant amounts of time in San Diego, my hometown. Often, when I am here, I feel like a visitor, a transplanted prodigal daughter who is now out of touch with her roots. In connecting with my friends from high school, most of whom took a brief hiatus from “America’s FinestCity” for college and then immediately returned after their four year stint was over, I find that the social topography has changed.There are now countless new coffee shops, restaurants, wine bars, and comedy clubs – collective quarters that were hardly available when last I lived here as a college-bound 18-year-old. I try to keep up, to jump back into the scene, now that I am living on the west coast again and visiting home more and more often. I often find myself pretending that I am in the loop, nodding in agreement, and then quickly calling my friends who are more in “the know” whenever a visitor asks me for a local recommendation. Sometimes, I think it may take me another 18 years just to reacclimate myself to this new urban “gaslamp” culture. Until then, when I am in need of something familiar, I tend to migrate toward the old haunts, like this one, where I spent many an evening in my youth agonizing over homework, AP tests, musical theatre scripts and boys.
I now sip my mint mocha with relish. I bought it for the sheer nostalgia factor. I watch the waning light on the ocean through the wall of windows that make up the northern side of the coffeehouse. I love coming here, not just because it reminds me of days past, but also because this spot has a view of the water, a common denominator in growing up San Diegan. No other city, not even New York where I spent seven years of my life, knows me quite as well as the oceans of San Diego. I can hear the laughter of my little sister in the waves of MissionBeach, where I used to hold her over the foaming break when she could barely walk. I can see the sandcastles in Solana, where, as kids, my cousins and I spent hours crafting architectural inventions inhabited by white and gray sand crabs, our backsides bright red by the time we climbed into our parents' cars at the end of the day, cradling ziplock baggies of sand crab stowaways. I can still smell the gun powder from the fireworks at Sea World, my first summer job, where I watched the pyro guys launch flaming shells into the dark night over San Diego Bay. There, floating on the barge, we would lie on our backs in our blue and gray polyester uniforms and watch the lights explode over our heads, a crackling dome of shimmering color in the damp summer night air. I grew up swimming in oceans and have crawled into bed many a night with my body still swaying in remembrance of the breaking waves that day.
My general hypothesis is that the ocean is to San Diegans is what tea is to England. When I lived in Canterbury during my junior year of college, my English roommates used to joke about how a cup of tea could solve anything from a bad grade on a test to having your arm severed by a runaway forklift. The beach, for me, can have the same effect. More than just a sanctuary or a peaceful respite, I believe the common experience of taking in the glint of sunlight on the water can actually bring people together. My life near the water has taught me many things. It’s taught me that no matter how much drama has gone down, family bonding can always be done with a picnic blanket, a bonfire and a football. It’s taught me that sharing a moonlit conversation on the rocks at Windansea can cure years of unrequited love. It’s taught me that hanging out on the beachside patio at the Hotel Del Coronado after your best friend’s wedding can be so magical that it reignites your belief in happily ever after. My dad once showed me how to lightly brush my finger across the sticky tendrils of a sea anemone and watch it slowly curl in on itself in the hopes of snaring a morsel of food, its bright yellow or orange blossom slowly vanishing into its dark protective skin. Even though I still fear that one day my fingertip will become anemone food, it is a talent I proudly take with me wherever I go.
The sun sinks lower into the horizon and as I look around the coffeehouse this evening I see a handful of people with their laptops out, alternating, like I am, between writing furiously and staring at the ocean. Against our common backdrop of inspiration, this familiar staple of our experience of this town, I realize that this is the first time in a long time that I have felt a deep and abiding sense of peace inside of me. Is that the ocean working its magical balm? I think to myself. I take a deep breath, calibrating the authenticity of the moment. For once in my life, I slowly realize, there is nowhere else I want to be, nothing else I want to be doing. Could it be that, in this fit of nostalgia and philosophical waxing about ocean waves, I have finally come home again?
Yes, I decide. Today, I am a writer. Yesterday, I was a waitress and in the past I have been an executive assistant and college tour guide and a t-shirt vendor and a business writing teacher and a theme park employee and, oh yeah, an actress. But today, I am a writer. I am so happy about this realization that I feel tears in my eyes.So, this is what home feels like.
I pack up my computer, allowing myself a moment of giddiness as I drain the remnants of my mocha. I am off to see Cyrano de Bergerac at The Old Globe Theatre tonight. As I leave The Living Room Coffeehouse, I recall that when I was in high school, I received an award from The Old Globe for Excellence in Language Arts. The ceremony was held in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, the outdoor venue where I will be viewing tonight’s performance. I will watch Patrick Page as Cyrano and ponder how it is that this city has the power to continually to remind me of exactly who I am.
