Through The Looking Glass: A Place to Call Home

I’ve called Chico home for 30 years. I know it like the back of my aging hand, like a mother knows the sound of her baby girl’s cry. I can blindly navigate the curves along Vallombrosa as I drive to Upper Park on a hot July day, and I know that no matter how many restaurants I try, my favorite place for a killer burger and hot wings will always be The Bear. Chico is where I went to college, met my best friend and fell in love. It’s where my heart broke into a million pieces, and where I watched that heart glue itself back together from the inside out. It’s where I continue to grow up.

But before Chico there was my first home. And while I have been relatively happy here, I’ve craved something from my past I wanted to remember the nooks and crannies of where I started my journey, where I spent my first 18 years. I wanted to know it again like I know Chico now.

A trip back to San Carlos, my hilly little town by the Bay, did the trick. I drove up Hull Drive and slowed to a stop at the old family house. After decades, not much had changed. A white picket fence had been added and a new coat of bright yellow paint. The big frontroom window looked smaller than I remembered and the driveway that used to seem so steep was but a mild slope.

I wanted to be back inside the house, standing in the kitchen where my parents and grandparents played Pinochle and my sister and I fought over who would wash and who would dry the dishes. I wanted to remember the smell of Swedish pancakes cooked on the griddle of our old gas stove. I wanted to see if the second stair up to my old bedroom still squeaked.

I drove by Burton Park where we played softball as kids, then to my old middle school. They looked the same as 30 years before. I cruised down Laurel Street, where finding a parking spot is still akin to winning the lottery. I’d had my fix. I felt relieved, as if memories of my past had filled a void in my present.

The memories I feared had left me had simply faded and needed a jump-start.

As I watch my teenager reach adulthood, I wonder what memories she will hold tight, and which ones will dim. I feel a need to record every second of our being as testimony that we’ve lived, played and loved here. And I hope, deep down, that she will always remember Chico like I remember San Carlos: a loving place to call home.