My fascination with Los Angeles began quite young, younger than I can pinpoint. But my first visit to the West Coast occurred the summer after I graduated from 8th grade. My parents sent me to spend the month of July with my aunt and uncle who lived in a LA suburb with two of their four children still at home. This was fairly common practice in a large extended family. A few years either I had been sent for a two week stay with relatives in Montreal. But this trip, to California, made me the envy of everyone I knew in New Jersey. I pictured myself an overnight surfer girl. Taller, leaner, tanner, practically living on the beach, basking in the sunshine. It was the assumption of everyone I knew that I would return with golden hair and honeyed skin (despite the fact that my hair was a deep auburn and had skin that only reddened under the sun). Instead of this fantasy, my days were quite mundane: I learned to sleep to noon, eat drive-through burgers, and in fact, spend hours driving, for nothing was close in sprawling Cali. Strip-malls were everywhere and really there were as far as my aunt and uncle’s cultural foray drove me. I stepped onto a beach once. After the month, despite my friend’s disappointment over my pasty complexion, I vowed to return to the indigo sky lined with tall palms and air perfumed with night-blooming jasmine. Even that one could glean from the backseat.
Tag Archives: Women Writing
On Holiday!
Nine Cent Girl is headed across the pond to take in all the London sites, fab theater, and tasty food for an adventurous week!
I promise a full report upon my return in March. Until then, stay in touch!!
xxoo
My Room with a View
During November my world revolved around lugging boxes from my old home to my new one. In December that shifted to unpacking boxes in one room and then another.
For over a decade I’ve used a laptop and written where-ever when-ever but in our new home we designated the “extra” room for me; yet while the kitchen came together fast, my writing room was last on the list. There were files and papers, books and electronics, odd pieces of furniture and far more non-essentials piling up before I had the time to sort through them all. This was a first for me, having a window with a view, a solid door to close, and a vaulted ceiling high enough to let my dreams float before landing on the page: a room of my own.
Nine Cent Girl 