San Diego: Space + Time

Ahead of the AAHPM Annual Assembly, I return to San Diego for a much-needed stretch on my own - my first solo trip since October’s overnighters in New Hampshire, and May’s trip to Andalucía before those. Travel, recently, has turned into intensive bouts of family time; meaningful, to be sure, but very different than relaxing and expanding into a space to call one’s own. When Jane and Jordan and I travel, inevitably I’m in charge of the plan and the itinerary and the driving there, the packing and re-packing, the documenting it, the getting on with it. Not to mention some large portion of the parenting and disciplining and boundary-setting and feeding everyone. On my own, things are different. After a relatively busy January and February at work, I’m trying to find a pattern that I can sustain. Atypically, I’ve shown up in San Diego with barely a plan except to check into the hotel and melt into a puddle until I feel right. I’m joined by my co-fellow Lindsey, this being our long-deferred conference in San Diego, exactly six years after the pandemic smashed its thumb down on the world in March 2020. After a significant amount of melting, we head out and explore with her parents, and on our own. We also meet up with my mom on a wildlife-filled day trip to La Jolla Cove. In between, there’s a lot lounging, reading (The War of Art by Steven Pressfield), napping, journaling. Lots of journaling. To go with the journaling, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week, which is good. In the mornings, after breakfast, I run to the water from the quiet, utterly deserted Gaslamp District and do miles up and down the waterfront. It feels good to be moving quickly again, and oh-so-warm in the balmy California sun; I develop a bit of a tan. In the afternoon (post-siesta), I look at the map and pick a random spot to reach by city bus or trolley at dusk, exploring different neighborhoods and continuing to experiment with my Evening Walks project. San Diego is a quirky place in the evening, with its Spanish colonial architecture and neon accents, its recognizably Californian suburbs that are at once familiar and a bit new. One of my favorites from the week is the photo above - a sidewalk snap near Old Town that reminded me vaguely of Ansel Adams’ Moonrise Over Hernandez when I passed by.

The conference is underway now, although per usual it has devolved into a motley mess of coffee dates and catch-ups more than actual time spent conferencing or learning anything. My obligate introvert social battery is sitting somewhere near 0% - but so, I suspect, are most of the other conference-goers'. These are my people, after all. After a week of just being and engaging in all the patterns of care and expression that I’ve built over the years, I’m beginning to feel a little more grounded in space and time. Something is crystallizing. Admittedly I don’t know what it is. But I suspect I have it just about figured out.

California: Joshua Tree National Park

Our second December trip to Southern California in as many years. On the cusp of Jordan’s 3rd birthday, we bring him “home” again, this time for a tour of the region that includes the high Mojave Desert, coastal San Diego County, and time again split between a few different houses, different family members, kids and cousins. His first visit to a U.S. national park: we buy an America the Beautiful annual pass (grabbing mine ASAP before a certain idiot-fascist’s face is printed on them). We rent out a house on the outskirts of Joshua Tree, an old California ranch home whose backyard is dotted with the funky, namesake trees, whose living room windows look out on the northward mountain slopes where the bajada meets the desert washes below. Jordan is growing into a resilient little kid, one who loves lying on the desert floor, sweeping sand up into his clothes, and tracing his favorite train tracks in whichever scenic patch of open ground we lead him to. He troops through these two weeks of late December, on long car rides, train trips, bouncing around the arid region like pinballs in a holiday-themed machine. He skips some naps and catches up elsewhere. Jetlag means he’s frequently up well before dawn; on our first morning in the state, we go out and grab breakfast at Black Bear Diner near my mom’s house in Chino. It’s the holidays, so I’m leaving everyone at least a $20 tip. After arriving at the Joshua Tree ranch home - home for the first stretch of the trip - Jordan settles into a nice pattern: exploring in the morning, coming home for lunch and a nap, playing with Mama in the backyard, and watching Thomas the Tank Engine and listening to vinyl records after dinner. My mom and I do groceries for the house, and wind up roasting a prime rib on Tuesday night; this is vacation, after all. We go out for little outings in the national park, walking the paths around the Hall of Horrors and Barker Dam. My dad fails to exercise basic outdoors safety and then throws a stink about it when I give him an earful. We head up to Keys View to take in the golden hour over the Coachella Valley, with views stretching southward toward Indio and the Salton Sea, and northward across the San Bernadino Mountains. A beautiful, memorable sunset sky - admired, as usual, from behind the steering wheel on our long drive back through the desert and downhill to the house.

At night, Jordan and Jane wander outside to stargaze. I find them standing in the dark in the backyard, singing “Twinkle Twinkle” rapturously. I ask Jordan how many stars he sees: “So many!” “Can you count them?” “One two three four five - TWENTY!” he yells. To his toddler brain, twenty is the pinnacle of multiplicity. He gets spooked when a bush rustles in the wind: “Is there snakes!?” “I think that was the wind, Jordan.” “I’m so scary [scared]!” He heads back inside for his bath and bed routine. I stay outside awhile with my tripod to frame the bristles of a nearby Joshua tree with Orion’s belt. On our last morning in the region, after firing off some time-sensitive, fellowship-related work emails, I head out for sunrise on my own while Jane and Jordan move through their jetlagged breakfast routine. On a pullout just inside the park boundary, I stop and inhale deeply. Fragrance of juniper and mesquite on the wind, clouds like wisps of fairy floss, and first light on mountains. I take long-lens shots of trees backlit by the rising sun. Satiated, I head back to help pack up the house and pick up the family. We drive back through the Inland Empire and to the Riverside downtown train station, to continue our journey in Orange County.

California: On Toddler Time

Near the end of our first week in California, we move down to Orange County. We stay this year with Jordan’s uncle Ray and aunt Kate, who bring us on a trip to San Diego along with Jordan’s cousins and grandparents. It’s been, more or less, exactly a year since we were with Jane’s side of the family, and it's both gratifying and bittersweet to see the little ones growing up and growing into their personalities more and more. In comparison to some of the extroverts we meet during the week, Jordan is moody and mellow, plays happily with others, but retreats into himself when things get a bit too much. At a holiday get-together at our high school friend’s house, Jordan leaves the other kids, opens a baby gate, and goes downstairs on his own. I find him singing to himself in the dark, and riding a little push-car at max speed around the empty kitchen (making use of those spacious, California single-family model homes). I watch him zoom along and see so much of myself (and Jane) in him. One night as I’m cuddling with him on the couch in Chino, Jordan tells me that he’s tired and that he wants to go home. “But we are home.” “I want to go to Brookline.” Two weeks and a total of seven changes-of-accommodation have taken a toll. I rub his back and tell him that I miss home too.

In between, lots of joy. Jane’s mom, who is sentimental without really knowing how to express it, invites us all to Jane and Kate’s childhood home in Anaheim for a Saturday family lunch. As the next-most sentimental person present, I corral everyone for a Christmas portrait and take shots of the house and the neatly-tended succulent garden in back. We ride the Pacific Surfliner down to San Diego with Jordan’s cousins and grandmother, and I spend most of the trip sitting next to and talking with cousin Luke, who at five years old tells me that he likes school more than home because he “learns a lot” and has friends. In San Diego, Jane and Jordan and I get a family caricature done by Khryzstof at his little booth next to the USS Midway, and Jane’s dad drives us to the San Diego Model Train Museum in Balboa Park, a building which essentially validates every fiber of Jordan’s being. The next morning, Jordan enjoys running around our hotel and nearby Seaport Village with cousin Clara, and swimming that evening with Mama in the hotel’s rooftop pool. The car ride back up to Orange County is heavy on traffic (the day before Christmas Eve), but Jordan talks through the whole two-and-a-half hour trip, our non-stop chatterbox and fount of stories, songs, and silly laughs. We head back to Chino to bookend the trip - by this point running on fumes, Jordan elects to spend most of Christmas Eve and Christmas hand-rolling model trains around the living room - the same model train set that my parents used to set up during my and Evelyn’s childhood at Rowland Heights. He also eats an entire bunch of organic bananas (six total) over 36 hours. We eat lunch on Christmas Day at the nearby Sizzler Restaurant - not our tradition growing up, but certainly the oddball tradition of Asians all over the region.

I tell my mom pretty frankly that we may not be back in California for a long time after this trip. She’s saddened and debates whether she should try to return the car seat that she recently purchased. Perhaps we said similarly a year ago (I genuinely can’t remember), but the feeling grows more acute the older we all get. I have a long conversation about this with Jane’s mom, one night in Orange County as the kids play before dinner. The feeling is that we have to focus on our own home life, and our home community now, much like how our parents did when they immigrated and left their parents behind in China and Taiwan. One generation later, the rulebook has changed. All of us (elders and children alike) have our own lives to lead in America, and family is created through choice and intention more than blood relation. Our grandparents crossed the Pacific to live with us throughout our childhood (or perhaps it was for air conditioning, says my mom); Jordan’s grandparents won’t do the same, nor can we expect them to. Perhaps most importantly, we can’t ask our two-going-on-three-year-old child to resolve these different worlds, different threads of his past, by himself. All we can do is to teach him to be strong and empathic, kind and capable of creating community - loving those who love him most, wherever he goes.

We arrive back in Brookline on a Saturday night; tired but quite happy to be home. For the first time ever, Jordan actually naps toward the end of the long plane ride across the continent. We set about chores: laundry, cleaning, ordering takeout for dinner, and swapping out an old battery in the hallway smoke detector. Detoxing from two weeks of whirlwind commotion and endless Bluey, Jordan occupies himself by flipping through his favorite books in the quiet of our living room. Somewhere along the way, we get a rather kind and thoughtful text from Jane’s mom, who says she appreciated everyone’s effort in bringing the grandchildren together for the holidays. We invite them to visit and tour New England with us in the new year.