Ah, Santa Barbara: land of the free, home of the SUVs that sport "Respect Mother Earth" stickers while driving exactly twenty-five miles per hour in school zones, even on weekends. I've been home for exactly five days, and I already feel the fog (and by 'fog' I mean crystal clear and a perfect 73 degrees) of Santa Barbara creeping in.
Maybe it's the fact that I've spent more than a fair share of the past few days sitting on the couch reading The Hunger Games, but Claremont--and the highly-stimulating workload that I left there--already feels lightyears away. Is it true that, mere weeks ago, I began my mornings by going to the gym and actually reading the BBC homepage that pops up when I open the internet, and didn't just use my computer to constantly update my screensaver with new and exciting photos of cats? For every poetry reading and/or lecture that I regularly attended in Claremont, I have now been to one beach BBQ populated by shirtless Swedish exchange students who manage to drink beer AND slackline at the same time, all without mussing one perfectly coiffed blonde hair out of place. Was Santa Barbara always this way, and I just never realized it, or has it taken it upon itself to use my homecoming as an opportunity to flaunt its most superficial--and naturally, most seductive--qualities?
I think part of the issue is the fact that, after years of relative non-accountability, I have moved back under my mother's roof. Don't get me wrong; it's a great roof. We have matching plates here, and little vases lined up on every surface. Plus, there are cats--and when he is not eyeballing Estiké with a look that says "I could eat you for lunch and still have room for a few gophers," Ernest is actually being pretty tolerant. Still, after one look at our whale of a cat, Estiké ran behind my bed and didn't come out until Friday. I, however, had no such option. I threw myself into the masochistic job of unpacking all of my belongings as quickly as possible, desperately trying to mark my territory in a house and a town that no longer feel like my own. Now I can't remember if they ever did.
No one ever warned me about the fact that it is entirely unnatural to live at home after graduating from college. If they did, it was probably in the context of a Nora Ephron movie in which the heroine--besides being played by someone in their thirties who wakes up looking like sunshine and wearing way too much lip gloss to be having an existential crisis--miraculously has her shit together, so the message is lost. The truth is, there is a window of time between the ages of--oh hell, about 18 and 38--where living at home is depressing as hell, especially if it comes after a period of relative freedom. Even if it is necessary, even if the home conditions are beyond wonderful, it feels like a backslide. The truth is, I love it here--I love my family, and I can practically smell them making an effort to leave me alone--but I've still found myself resorting to bizarre and extreme measures to forge boundaries. For example, I have my scotch tape, not to be confused with the communal scotch tape, which sits approximately ten feet to the left of it. I cleared out a drawer in the fridge so I would have a place to put my groceries, which as of now consists of a wilted bunch of kale and a bottle of cheap wine that I bought because it had a cartoon on the label. Mature? Hardly. But if I don't enter the house from a separate entrance than the one my parents use, if I don't dry my towel on a rack by itself, I'm afraid I'll get lost. I'm terrified that I will get gobbled up by this beautifully cushy place.
Last night, after working for nine hours straight--four hours wrangling kids at the Santa Barbara Dance Institute Show, where of 300 performers, about 299 refused to wear their costumes on their natural waistlines because it "DOESN'T LOOK COOOOL," followed by five hours hostessing at Aldo's--I came home and collapsed. Enough complaints from my shoulders, though, and I decided to do a little bit of yoga before bed--and rather than quarantine myself in my room, decided to stay next to my mom as she sat in the massage chair I brought back from school. As Elena Brower's digital form told me to let three-dimensional breath permeate my being, my mother was emitting a series of sounds that sounded like she was either being fed to a pit of scorpions, starring in a particularly vocal adult film, or both. It was awful, and I had no idea why it bothered me so much. Here she was, just unwinding from a day as stressful as mine was--clearly trying to do something for the knots in her back, just as I was--and it was all I could do to keep from screaming. Each time she moaned and grunted, I felt like an angsty teenager, pissed and hormonal and confused as hell. And why? Why do our parents make us so angry, embarrass us to no end, when the parents of our friends--even the ones who, at graduation, wore matching lime-green tee shirts and used the "official family birdcall" to announce a photo opportunity--are deemed acceptable? I can only hope that I get to embarrass someone like that someday. I hope I get to make my kids angry. I hope I make them furious when I make puns and wear butterfly hair clips (both of which I do now, by the way) so that they--like me--will want to move out and do things with their lives, and go on adventures with their parents without having to share a bathroom with them.
The truth is, Santa Barbara is a lovely place to be; and on the cool parents meter, my parents score high. They always have. The thing is, I'm afraid of getting sucked under, and losing the momentum I've worked so hard to gather. Perhaps the very fact that I'm terrified, though, is what will keep me from losing it. Plus, I've been here a week and haven't yet incorporated the phrase "cool, bro" into my vocabulary...so I suppose there is hope for me yet.
On the phone with my grandfather the other day, I got to thinking about the different expectations for old and young people. Before anything, before I even got a chance to wish him a happy birthday, he said, "Hello! I'm not sick! Still standing, doing well, can't complain!" as though the inquiry was implied by my very presence on the other end of the phone. How different would it be if every time someone congratulated me for graduating, before they even got a chance to ask what I am going to do with my life, I was able to say, "I don't know, probably walk around? I got out of bed this morning, and I'm going to go to the kitchen in a minute. Life is good!!" instead of the more standard post-Scripps response of, "Oh you know, I'm going to start a couple NGOs this summer before taking off for my 25,000 Fulbright grant to Nepal to cure cancer."
We're not that different, you know, twentysomethings and senior citizens. We both want to get up each morning and have someone pour us cereal in our favorite bowl, save us the cartoon section of the newspaper, and treat us like reasonable beings who are worthy of conversation. I think we both just want to find a little peace.
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