Home. For the longest time I called a small gray house on Westminster Avenue in Alhambra, California home. My family lived there since a few years before I was born: my parents had graduated three children from Fremont Elementary and Alhambra High. This house remained home until early in my college career, when we sold it and moved to an apartment in South Pasadena.
It was strange coming back to a place I did not know, strange sleeping on a couch when I used to be able to sleep on a bed. I didn’t know the new area very well, passing through South Pasadena only to get from Alhambra to Old Town Pasadena. And my father had recently been diagnosed with kidney disease, meaning his health was always uncertain. That apartment on Huntington Drive, new and without the comfort that came from years of familiarity, certainly didn’t feel like home.
Some years have passed. I graduated from Berkeley, worked for two years at LegalZoom.com, and am in the middle of my second semester at law school in Washington, DC. Although I started to really like South Pasadena during my two years as a working stiff, it wasn’t until I left California for the far-off Eastern Coast that I truly started to consider South Pasadena home. We are still living in that small apartment on Huntington; it sounds a bit strange for someone coming from the historical hubbub that was the site of the Inauguration, but I can’t think of anything better than returning to South Pas for good after graduation.
Vinicultured: A Wine Blog 