California - Ten Years Later

Los Angeles has not changed much since I lived here ten years ago. I have have changed a lot since my (now) husband and I moved back east a decade ago. The Angelinos seem younger now - many of them were just kids when I, too, considered this city my new home. While it has been a lifetime ago when 90025 was my zip code, it feels like just yesterday.

I have visited Los Angeles only once since moving back. During this visit, my husband and I brought our son who was just over a year at the time. We spent Christmas on the westside with our family and friends. Like now, it was so great to be back. It has been less than three years since we moved, so we still felt relevant. We were newlyweds and new parents. It was fun taking our kid to the Santa Monica Pier on Christmas eve morning to ride the caraosel and hanging out on Christmas night drinking wine by the fire pit.

Add six more years to the equation, another kid, almost ten years of marriage, and we enter Los Angeles county early this week. We made the long anticipated trip back to our California, our westside, our Santa Monica and West Los Angeles.

My husband and I still *feel* like we live hear even though we know we are just "playing house" with the past. We rented an AirBNB and are staying in a cute flat in one our old haunts. Our kids are older now - only one left in diapers - and they are soaking *it* all in. Well, we are trying to *make* them fall in love with this place where mommy and daddy fell in love and began our lives together. In reality, they are more mesmerized by their gadgets and the fact they get to eat pancakes everyday.

Day three and we have barely left Santa Monica. With confidence, we traipse the kids around town showing them exciting landmarks like our old apartment, our old Ralph's grocery store, our favorite coffees shops and bars; you know, things that little boys love to explore when they are 3,000 miles from home.

Not much has changed. Santa Monica Place is new. There are more fancy vehicles parked in enclosed car dealerships. If possible, LA is even more health conscious than before with an superfluous amount of juice shops and pressed juice options adorning menus. Especially in Santa Monica there seems to be more people riding bikes. Billboards still adorn the streets promoting films and television programs. And, Angelinos wearing shorts and T-shirts walking alongside folks wearing jeans and puffy coats still pass by one another each comfortably temperate in the southern California sun.

While LA has not changed, we have changed a lot. Gone are the relatively care free days when our to-do lists included items like find a new brunch spot and bar. Traveling with young children require that we consistently wondering about things like when did we apply sunblock and which restaurants offer gluten-free options for our little Celiac?


Style and fashion have not changed much, but my fashion and style has reverted to east coast cool - lots of black, boots, sweaters. Our here I stick out like a sore thumb with folks hanging in their yoga pants, fashion sneakers, and white tops. Leaving Boston after the epic winter we have been having I do not think flip flops even floated into my consciousness - for me or for my kids. My husband is another story - he is a Californian at heart and brings his California cool everywhere even the frozen tundra of winter in Boston early 2015.

Regardless of the trends or the forecast, it is so great to be back - to be back home - or where we once called home and to be back in this perfectly odd city with our kids. It truly feels like we never left. This place will forever be our place and this is rad.