My grandma once told me about her early days in San Francisco, waddling up and down the hilly streets, massively pregnant with my mom, laughing with her equally pregnant friend.
That’s how she described it, “waddling” and “laughing.” I could tell by her face that this was a joyous memory — the Idaho girl had escaped the beet fields and made it to the big city at last.
Grandma was proud of living in the Bay. My mom was proud of growing up there. I am, too.
It’s where I had my first kiss, smoked my first joint, got my first period and my first paycheck.
In second grade, our class created a massive mosaic of the California flag. We wrapped white, brown, red, and green tiles in cloth napkins, then took them to the basketball court to smash them with hammers. Then we glued the pieces on a 10-foot-by-6-foot piece of plywood. The final result was beautiful. It probably still hangs on the auditorium wall. How I loved that magnificent bear.
In third grade, I had plans to run away and live in the Exploratorium after I read From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler.
In fourth grade, a classmate of mine was knocked off the rocks into the bay by a wave. She drowned. That winter, we obsessively listened to Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers until someone told us the song was actually about L.A.
For fifth grade camp, we went to the Sierras and tried our hand at panning for gold, 49er style.
Every couple of years, we went to Alcatraz for field trips.
I could go on.
I list my Bay Area credentials here because even though I’ve been gone for over 20 years, I still claim to be from the Bay. No other place looms as large, and I’ve never lived anywhere else long enough to see it as home.
But I know I no longer belong to the Bay, and it hurts.
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I discovered that I no longer belonged this summer. It was mid-pandemic but before the smoke.
My 92-year-old grandma lay battling Covid-19 in a nursing home in Idaho, trapped in the beet fields again.
We could only visit her from outside her window. Actually, we weren’t even supposed to do that, but my intrepid aunts learned the rounds of the nurses, learned which were rule-followers and which would turn a blind eye. They skulked around outside like a couple of older, female peeping Toms, tapping on Grandma’s window and calling her room’s phone. They’d talk on the phone while smiling at each other through the window. Grandma would gesture to the door, “Come in, come in, what are you doing outside the window?”
Nothing about the pandemic made sense to her. Sometimes Grandma would forget they were there and wander around the room, phone to her ear.
Later, when she grew worse, my aunts peered through the blinds at her sleeping form, comforted when they saw movement.
“I don’t usually say this,” one of her nurses said, “but I think she’s going to pull through. I really do.”
As this was happening, I was driving the familiar streets of the Bay and snapping pictures. The goal was to drop an envelope full of Polaroids into a local mailbox at the end of my trip so Grandma would see the old postmark and the photos of her old stomping grounds and remember how it felt to be young and strong.
I wanted her to kick Covid-19’s ass.
She didn’t.
My grandparents’ old house is in Marin, with all of the wealth and amazing views that name suggests. As a young child, I secretly believed that they must be royalty. My older sister was quick to disabuse me of such a stupid notion.
“They’re just really, really rich,” she said.
Oh. So that’s what that mysterious sheen was. Rich.
Right then, I knew it was something I should want for myself.
Looking back, most of us can remember childhood moments when the shape of the world starts to break through the haze, when we begin to understand the forces at work. One of the more potent forces, I was beginning to understand, was money.
And here I am, decades later, driving through their old neighborhood, remembering that old revelation and realizing that I’d forgotten to do it. I forgot to get rich.
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I live in a van. Not even a nice one. It’s a beat-up late-’90s Ford. You can usually find me parked somewhere between Seattle and Cabo San Lucas.
That’s right. I live in a van. And I like it.
Even Grandma liked that I live in a van. One of my favorite memories is of my uncle and her standing in her driveway, waving me off as I left to go no-one-remembers-where. My uncle leaned over, whispered something in my grandma’s ear, and she beamed. I asked him later what he’d said.
“I said, ‘there go your genes, out there traveling the world, having adventures.’ She liked that,” he told me.
Rolling by their old house, I think about how pleased Grandma would be that the new owners have kept the yard almost exactly the same.
I pull up to the curb, van still running, hop out, and aim my Polaroid at the street sign bearing the name that used to be in her address.
After I get the picture of the street sign, I consider knocking on the door to see if I can get a picture of the front of my grandparents’ old house.
Then I see a neighbor woman talking to a man over a short hedge, gesturing to me. I call out, “I’m just taking a picture for my grandma! She lived in that house for 30 years, and now she’s recovering from Covid. She’s 92!” but they can’t hear me over a leaf blower nearby.
I step forward, and the woman brandishes her phone, holding it up as if to ward me off. Is she calling the police?
I don’t want to deal with her, so I jump in my van and drive away. “I grew up going to that house,” I say in my head to the neighbors. “That’s right, the one that’s nicer than yours.”
I decide to leave Grandma’s old neighborhood and return to the one where I grew up.
Driving down my old street, I call a childhood friend.
“Remember how much we used to hate [name of neighborhood]?” I say.
“Yeah,” she says.
“I’m there right now. It’s so nice here. It’s just… so nice.”
“Yeah, I went back a couple of years ago, and I was like, this place is amazing. My parents gave me everything.”
“Everything,” I said, “They worked so hard, and they gave us everything, and we hated it. Took it for granted. Thought we’d do better.”
She laughs.
Then she cries, “We could never afford to live there now!”
“We could never give our children this good a life!”
“If we ever had children!!” she howls.
The lament of the Xennial.
After we end the phone call, I look up at the roof of my old house and my upstairs bathroom window.
I imagine 15-year-old me peering out at the creepy van down the street.
“Hey, young me,” I say. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but I actually have a pretty great life. I get to focus on the important things. I travel whenever and wherever I want. I visit friends all over the world.”
She doesn’t respond.
“I camp all the time. My wardrobe consists almost exclusively of sundresses. I almost never wear a bra,” I say. Not having to wear a bra is one of my favorite parts of van life.
“Gross,” she says.
“You’re viewing me through a very narrow paradigm,” I tell her, “Look, I don’t have to leave at dawn every morning for work like mom did. I don’t lose three hours to my commute each day. I work online. On the internet. So I can work from anywhere — in a hammock at the beach or a coffee shop or on a date if I want to.”
She raises an eyebrow. To her, the internet is that computer thing her friend Adam uses to research which cold medicines can mess you up. Which is useful, but Adam’s kind of a nerd.
“I learned to surf,” I tell her, “I surfed nearly every day for seven years. In Asia. I’ve lived on three continents!”
“Cool, I guess,” she says and shrugs, then turns away.
Even if she doesn’t know how to verbalize what she’s thinking, I do.
I was supposed to do all that stuff in my twenties, while it was still cute, and get back to the U.S. and down to business earlier. Early enough to secure a well-paying job and a husband with a well-paying job. After succeeding on worldwide-traveler terms, I was supposed to come back and succeed on upper-middle-class-suburbia terms, too. I was supposed to do “better” than my parents, better than my grandparents. But I didn’t.
When I arrive at the grocery store where my mom used to shop, I’m famished. While grabbing some essentials, I see a gaggle of teenage boys, and my heart races. I probably know them from school! But then I remember that I’m 38, and I haven’t gone to school in a long time, and while I might know these boys’ dads, I certainly don’t know them. I laugh at myself, then wonder what their dads do to afford to stay in the Bay.
Out in the parking lot, the boys walk past my van ahead of me.
“Ohhhhh shiiiiiit, that van’s creepy as fuck!” says one, and the others laugh.
“Lester, Lester, child molester,” they chant as they pass my van.
I hang back until the boys are gone. Then I claim my poor, down-trodden van. Climb in the driver’s seat. Start eating my sushi.
I’m startled by a loud rapping. I jump, splashing soy sauce, and turn to the policeman standing outside my window.
“You can’t stay here overnight,” he says.
It’s 3 p.m.
“It’s 3 p.m. I’m just eating sushi I bought at the store. I’m not trying to stay here overnight,” I say, even though I’d been considering it.
“Okay,” he says, “I just wanted to let you know.”
It occurs to me that he’s about my age. I search his face for a teen remembrance, but there’s nothing.
“Thanks,” I say, and he returns to his squad car.
Was it always this way? Did my hometown used to be so unwelcoming?
I need sand. I need salt. I need waves.
I drive to the beach and stare at the point where the sea meets the sky until it all goes dark.
When I return to my van, I turn the key in the ignition and nothing. I check my headlights. On. They’ve been on this whole time.
I consider my options. The beach has “no overnight parking” signs, and the last thing I need today is another run-in with the police.
There’s only one other car, a Lexus populated by two teen girls, lit by the overhead cab light. By the look of things — hazy smoke and riotous laughter — they’re very, very stoned.
I search frantically for my brush, pull on a better sweater, and throw on a hat and some lip balm. I look in the mirror. It will do.
When I approach the car, the girl in the driver’s seat rolls down the window a couple of inches.
“Hey,” I say, and the girls look panicked. Am I really that scary? “I left my headlights on, and my van won’t start. I’m wondering if you can give me a jump.”
So, so pathetic. What has my life become?
“I don’t know how,” the girl says.
“I know how,” I say, “I have cables.”
She stares at me. She looks scared. And really, really stoned.
“Dude,” I tell her, “don’t trip, I used to smoke weed when I was your age.”
Instant relief. She and her friend look at each other. She gets out of the car and pops the hood. I hook up the cables, and she watches in silence.
Then she asks, “Did you really smoke weed when you were my age?”
I don’t answer for a moment, worried about glorifying drug use in front of this child. Then I realize that, as a lady who lives in a van, maybe I’m the cautionary tale she desperately needs.
“Yeah,” I say, then I add, “a lot. But not anymore.”
“Do you live in your van?” she asks.
Here we go.
“Yup,” I say.
Silence.
“OHMYGOD that is SO COOL,” she gushes, “I totally want to get a van as soon as I graduate. She does too,” she says, gesturing to her friend in the car.
The friend rolls down the window.
“You live in your van?” she asks.
I nod.
“We’re both going to do that as soon as we graduate.”
“I just told her that!” says the first girl, then she whispers, “She’s copying me. I gave her the idea.”
“Mmmm,” I say. “When will you guys graduate?”
“Next year. We go to [high school].”
“Oh, I went to [another nearby high school]!” I say, thinking how long it’s been since I said those words.
“Hey! My dad went there!”
“What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”
She scoffs.
“Yeah right, my dad is waaaaay older than you.”
Bless you, child.
“I like how your van is, like, vintage,” the girl says.
It’s a 1999, but okay.
Looking at the cheerful face of this little stoner, I’m reminded of another revelation I had as a kid after I realized I should probably get rich.
Watching my mom battle traffic, seeing the wild amounts of stress she endured as a commission-only saleswoman, raising three kids on the battleground of constantly rising Bay Area prices, I realized that she’d done well for herself. But as a single mother, she was never going to do as well as my friends’ parents.
I promised myself that money would never be my primary ambition. By the time I was this stoner kid’s age, “mortgage” was a bad word and the 9–5 looked like a prison cell. I wanted money, but I also wanted the kind of joyful, lackadaisical existence best epitomized by a Labrador puppy. I grew up and realized that both weren’t an option, so I chose Labrador puppy mode. Spending 90% of my time way out in nature, my failure to make money isn’t usually in my face.
I’ll probably always crave space and time more than money. I want to sit and stare and think more than I ever wanted money or a nice car or a certain zip code. I want to wake up to a different view every day, each nicer than any I could ever afford at Bay Area prices. I want copious time in nature, a joy that was our ancestors’ birthright but now feels like an extravagance to modern man.
Even now, I can’t wait to get out of the Bay and to Yosemite, maybe, or the Sierras.
“Well, I better go,” I tell my little stoner friend, “it’s best to drive for a while after a jump so the alternator can charge the battery.”
“Okay,” she says, “but do you have Insta? I follow a ton of van lifers on Insta.”
“Uh, no,” I say.
“Oh. You gotta get on Insta. I’d totally follow you.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I hop into the driver’s seat, grab my phone, and search for a “Post Office near me” to send my grandma the pictures, not knowing that by the time my envelope of Bay Area memories arrives, she will be too frail to register what she’s seeing.
“Here go your genes!” I whisper to Grandma, and I drive my cool, vintage van into the night, with no idea where I’ll sleep.
