Outdoor Hallways

I started dreaming of living in L.A. after I saw my first ABC after school special. They had school hallways that were OUTSIDE. Harsh winters in the western suburbs of Chicago rendered this unbelievable.

After my college graduation, a wobbly plan to be an art teacher got sidetracked by two invitations. One was to study improv at Second City back when a mousey, overweight Tina Fey hid in the background aspiring to be a writer. The other was to sing with a band onstage. I began making decisions from a heartfelt pull towards outdoor hallways.

I left for Playa Del Rey on the day John Denver died and got California plates upon arrival. To give you an idea of how that went, three years later I was living in my van. Nashville was next, on the advice of a married couple, live music managers who saw me perform at The Bluebird Cafe on a solo tour. They got me gigs and offered a room in their Tennessee house. I stayed, and even found my own place, but wrote a lot of songs about LA and missed it terribly until the fall of 2008. Financial disaster spooked me enough to get a more stable job teaching yoga. It was a feeble moment for me. The headlines were screeching decline from metal newspaper containers in diners on the way back to the west coast, but I was feeling rich in faith. I was on my way back to L.A. for good, and I sensed in my bones that in California, I would find my true love. I was right.

My husband and I both had yet to experience the bombs of grief that went off in our then separate lives, within months of each other. We have the unique shared experience of 2011 being the worst year of our lives. (owe my gowaaa, aww!!) That was the year he filed for divorce upon his ex wife’s departure, and I watched a departure of the marrying kind. We simultaneously learned that sometimes life gives you a better deal. What we both thought was love wasn’t even close.

We eloped on November 29, 2013. As a new wife and stepmom I would still look up at sparkling palm trees on errands and say aloud “I live here!” like I did after my first move, back in the 90s. I’d wax poetic about the wonder of outdoor hallways so often, upon picking our kids up from school, that they’d say “we know, we know, you couldn’t believe the hallways were outside.”

I can still feel the wonder, but it is full of grief. My stomach lurches at moments on daily walks, especially when someone sees me coming and crosses the street, because I have stood for basic, conservative, Constitutional principles at Council meetings since 2020.

I still look up at sparkling palm trees and thank God I get to live this day in a beautiful place. I think of my Dad who used to ask about the weather and say “enjoy your life” on the phone. That was often because I was focusing on the seedlings of political and societal insanity in our community, which is now in full bloom. “c’mon, Aim. Ahhnjoy (beat) your life.”

I don’t think he’d say that anymore.

I am so, so sad about what has happened to California. God help us.