So Yeah, California is Nice

I was 22 years old when I drove cross-country with a car full of laughing friends. I'd graduated from college at the end of a rough year, which concluded a somewhat rough four years, and to me, getting in that car signified freedom, sweet relief from the stagnation of staying still and being me.

I wasn't the one moving to California, but I was still at the beginning of something, at the start of a journey, and that's what counted. With every mile of wind in my hair and every radio song blasted in my lungs I felt better. Lighter. Stronger.

As we left the desert and pulled towards the coast, my friend who was moving grew nervous. What if she was making a mistake? We said to her the soothing things that friends say: you'll be fine. You're so brave. We'll be here if you fall down, if you want to go home again. And then the sea appeared over the sandy California hills and her nerves slid away under the weight of all that perfect blue light. We blasted up the coast laughing, towards her new life, away from our old ones.

I wrote this essay about that time. It's one of the first essays I ever "tried" to write deliberately, one of the first things I didn't just blurt into a journal or an email. I wrote it about a year ago, and I've learned so much since then that I can see the holes in it from miles away, but I'm still proud. That essay was another beginning of something, the start of another journey, though I didn't realize that until much later. And now I'm at the bottom of a new mountain, which is my favorite place to be - metaphorically and maybe a teensy bit literally - and nothing in the world excites me more than beginning something hard that is also loved. I'll climb this new mountain word by word and phrase by phrase until I learn a little more about this fancy writing thing.

After that drive nine years ago, we dropped off my friend into her new life, and another friend at the airport for her flight home. That left my best friend Mike and I with the day free to explore before our own flight home, so we left the airport with our rental car and headed into San Francisco.

At 22, I still had the vague idea that I might live in Los Angeles someday. I'd dreamed of it since I was a little kid with actress dreams, and hadn't quite outgrown it yet. But from the first moment I saw San Francisco, I realized - nope. This is it, this is the California spot for me. This land of hills to climb, of sea views from every corner, this gorgeous town that is still California but slightly more serious, slightly more internal and misty and soft, would be mine.

Mike and I squirmed in our seats in excitement as we neared the Golden Gate Bridge. I was a film major deep in a phase of videotaping my friends every words and breaths, incredibly annoying and aggressive with my camera, so I held it high from the passenger seat as we advanced. As we left the land behind us and darted out onto the open bridge we both burst into goofy singing, blaring out the lyrics to the Full House theme song at the top of our lungs, fancying ourselves clever and hiliarious.

Then the video ends, then abruptly begins again. I am laughing so hard the camera is shaking, almost falling into my lap. Michael is cry-laughing and wheezing as he drives, and it's frankly a miracle we survived this particular vehicular moment.

I'd realized, in the brief dark moments the camera was turned off, that I could, in fact, see the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance, that burnished orange steel shining under the sun. This of course meant we were not actually on it, we'd realized with a startled snap. And as that thought crystalized, Michael gasped and said we were actually singing, so loud and with so much heart, the theme song from Family Matters. Not Full House.

And so, two goofy fools singing the wrong song on the wrong bridge in a new state in a rented car 3,000 miles from home became of the most hilarious and ridiculous moments of my life. I hope when I am dying, crinkled and decrepid and gasping my last painful breaths, a moment that flawless, that absurd, is still fresh in my mind, and I cross over smiling.

Being friends with a like-minded fool is a beautiful thing.

Last night, I flew again to San Francisco to visit my beautiful friend who was so brave so long ago, who moved far away on a whim and into a new life. I met Mike there at the airport, and today we'll rent a car, drive over a bridge, and for a little while we'll all be together, plus a brand new little California baby.

I was afraid, at 22, that we would all lose each other, that we'd each spin off into the big world in different directions and the threads that kept us together would break under the weight of all that empty space. And I was right to be afraid, because that is often what happens when you grow older and dig your way into your own space on the earth.

But if you're smart, and you try really hard, the threads don't have to break. They just stretch out into the air to impossible lengths, and if you feel for them in the dark, they will guide you each home to each other. For a little while at least. Which is sometimes enough.