A little over 2 years ago I left the land of pig pickins’, sticky summer nights, wide parking spaces and even wider smiles to make a life in the land of vegan restaurants, cool (in both senses of the word) summer nights, cars in numbers akin to Moses’ plague of locusts, and smiles so bright you have to wear sunglasses (of a very expensive nature) to look at them.
I was ready for an adventure when I left the South, but it will never really leave me. I can relate to that whole “Steel Magnolia” thing, except of course, that no one who knows me would ever use “steel” to describe anything about me. But if I were a tree, I’d be a big Magnolia tree, like the 3 enormous ones that stood guard in my childhood yard. I’d be a Magnolia tree with huge white flowers that smell so big and sweet and kind and soft that I’d make you cry for all the lost childhoods and new beginnings and lightening-fast thunderstorms and purple tie-dye skies that you’ve ever seen and never seen. I’d have roots. Roots that run under the pool in my parent’s backyard where I busted my lip NOT walking on the concrete when I was a pot-bellied, skinny-legged 3-year old. Roots that run across town to my grandma’s little white house and under her sturdy, simple table where we ate so many Sunday lunches peppered with talk of tobacco and sweetened with that thick, black molasses. Roots that stretch under the road that winds from Gaga’s house to my sister’s house where her little boys who are not so little any more are turning into young men.
Sitting in this house in L.A.’s uncool (again, excuse the pun) San Fernando Valley, I might not be a tree, but those roots feel more real than ever. If you were to see me walking down Ventura, you might not peg me for a Southerner on site alone (my 1 pair of cowboy boots are Steve Madden and they only get occasional use.) My family has always been of dubious ethnic decent. In a home decor store in Glendale, I disappointed an Arminian grandma when I couldn’t answer the question she asked me about tablecloths in her native tongue. (I’m assuming it was about tablecloths, because we were standing on that aisle. It could have been about beef jerky for all I know.) With olive skin and dark hair, I look like I’m SOMEthing, but no one’s sure what. Growing up, when people would ask “what we were” (just like that) my mom would say “Heinz 57.” That is, we are made up of 57 ingredients. I’m a little French, a little American Indian, a little Filipino, a little Italian – you name it- it’s probably in there somewhere. If, however, I asked you for directions (my iphone’s dead) or for your opinion on beef jerky, you would immediately be convinced that I cut my teeth on sweet tea and grits. And this, dear Angelinos, is the rub.
I’ll tell you why next time…
thatthingthathappenedthatonetime 
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