For the 12 years that Eddie and I lived in San Francisco, I planted shallow roots that I easily ripped out of the soil each year. Our garden blossomed with tomatoes and lettuce, but I was hesitant to put my lemon tree into the earth for fear that when we moved on, we could not take our fruitful tree along.
Though a simplistic example, my relationship with my San Francisco garden represents my restlessness. Like the Jews, who wandered for forty years before finding a home, I have been wandering my whole life. My mom likes to say I was almost born on a plane and I haven't wanted to get off one ever since.
By the time I was ten, I had visited almost every state in the USA, and by the time I was 23, I had circumnavigated the planet by ship. My desire to be elsewhere has become an essential part of me, the same way my curls and my thyroid issues happen to be-I have accepted that I am restless, a wanderer.
While my friends sit on the couch late at night watching Game of Thrones or Chopped, Eddie and I ping pong ideas of where to go next. For the past almost 15 years of our relationship, we have been in a sort of dream state. The restlessness has taken us to China and Costa Rica and Europe and Japan and New Zealand and Australia and Thailand and the list goes on. And these excursions curb our need for change for approximately 3.4 days and then we are back at it.
Should we move to Hawaii? Or Holland? Or Mexico? Or Costa Rica? Or LA? Or Santa Cruz? Or Pacifica? Or Santa Barbara? Or San Diego? Or Ventura?
This restlessness is a trait that I have always felt proud of, yet now it seems to plague us. We could not settle in San Francisco, a place I love more than any other. Of course much of that was due to the jaw dropping cost of living, but it was more than that. Staying felt like giving up on all the other experiences we wanted to have. What about living closer to family? Living in a small beach town? Living in better weather so we could be outside more? Living in another country?
So Eddie, my partner, my catalyst for change, finally, after years of talking about it, grabbed change and took a job in LA, so we could live near family. We had a massive goodbye party, the house bursting with friends. I cried for over a month until I packed my kids into the car and drove out of The City on the 280 towards the Peninsula, where the sun broke through the clouds and showed me, quite clearly, that we were embarking on a new adventure.