San Diego in Retrospect

The West Coast tasted like salsa fresca and American Spirit to me. It was laying outside and talking for hours about life and men, and food, and choices, and change. It was hands in soil and conserving water by keeping a bucket in the shower and watering flowers and vegetables with it, and it was picking snap peas. It was new bathing suits that just barely fit and coconut oil instead of sunscreen. It was down comforters and a warm puppy at night and puffy eyes and wild hair in the morning. California was San Diego for me. It was the zoo and the beach, and crumbling cliffs and late night lounges with wooden floors that pulsed with bass and heels. It was all woman, feminine and strong, more leisurely than I'm used to and I loved it. It was shorter dresses and no makeup. Pride in being a female and forgetting about what I was supposed to be. It was unemployed hipsters with prominent hip bones and bodies that wrestled waves and kind eyes and unassuming curiosities. Herbs from the garden and wine with dinner, San Diego was windows rolled down and arms singing along and sunglassed eyes. It was Lemon Grove and adobe houses and it was dancing with the doors open and shedding layers of clothing, layers of pain, layers of what was and what would have been. It was being a woman and being young and feeling every second of every day of every year that I've lived and not doing anything about it but feeling it. I felt it all. I felt everything that I could and then I slept. I slept and I woke, but not to bells or nudging, not to agendas and foot tapping. I woke to every day and was alive and stretched my body like the cat that I often am, and San Diego was not cell phones or computers. It was being there and nowhere else, because I was there, and not anywhere else. It was finishing Kerouac’s On the Road and knowing that I had my own stories to tell. San Diego made me wonder why purpose and productivity instead of simplicity and survival? It reminded me of the me that loves water and sunshine and let me forget for awhile about the me that thrives on change. It smelled like salt water and cooled the skin at night that it had warmed so well in the day. It begged for balance and I yielded and promised fulfillment and I found it. Because San Diego was God’s gentle hand and His easy gait and I rested in the yellow comforter and purple sheets of His goodness and walked in His gardens filled with tomatoes and cilantro and knew that He was good. He must have been to make oceans so big and stones so smooth and conversation so rich. I knew that He was good, and that San Diego was where I needed to be when I was there. Knew that I would return. Know that I will return.