California, Coming Home

At 52—after five years in New York and some life changes—Meghan Daum migrates back to Los Angeles.

Meghan Daum at 52, and recently re-transplanted in Los Angeles.

I turned 52 last Sunday. It’s an unceremonious age and I passed the day unceremoniously, talking on the phone with well-wishing friends and doing my usual end-of-weekend fretting over the pile of work I’d managed not to complete. I’ve never been a big birthday celebrator, but it was Super Bowl Sunday and I admit to taking a certain pleasure in the ambient festivity. Bursts of cheers tumbled through neighbors’ windows and more cars than usual were parked on our quiet, narrow street. When the hometown team won, fireworks sputtered out in the not-so-distant distance, setting off a nervous call and response from barking dogs, a faint chorus of coyotes yipping and cackling behind them.

After more than five years away, I am back in Los Angeles. I’m not sure for how long—maybe six months, maybe forever—but after a stint in New York City that was supposed to be temporary and lasted far longer than anticipated, I have returned to the place where I spent what is arguably the most significant chunk of my adult life. I didn’t have a specific reason for coming back right now, but five years is a long time to live with one foot out the door. “I’m here but I’m not really here,” was my constant, and ultimately crazymaking, refrain.  

After a stint in New York City that was supposed to be temporary and lasted far longer than anticipated, I have returned to the place where I spent what is arguably the most significant chunk of my adult life.

As such, in Manhattan, I built a little nest but lay down no roots. I rented a very small apartment (and installed a wall bed that I took down every evening and folded up every morning) instead of buying a place or even moving to a bigger apartment. I chose not to pursue job opportunities that would have tied me to the city longterm. I even found myself ducking out of potential romantic relationships because I didn’t want to risk getting entangled with someone who might complicate my escape from New York. The avoidance was understandable at first, even perversely noble. Then it was just kind of fucked up and weird. And so at the beginning of January, I sublet my apartment and drove west.

The first time I moved to Los Angeles was almost exactly twenty years ago. I was 32. My earliest memories involve driving around with the thick, spiral-bound atlas known as the Thomas Guide perched on my lap at all times. For the first few years here, my baseline feeling was the feeling of being lost—and moreover of being wrong. I was forever on the wrong freeway exit, in the wrong lane at a traffic light, frantically pacing the wrong level of the behemoth parking structure in which I’d managed to lose my car. Once I found my way back to wherever I was living, the sensation of having taken the wrong exit never quite left me. I lived in a string of sublets and rentals and there was always something about them that gnawed: an intrusive landlord, a troubled neighbor, a pest problem, a pain-in-the-ass parking situation. There was always something not exactly right about the neighborhood. But that is so often how it goes in a new city. It’s not right until suddenly it is. After my first year, I weaned myself off the Thomas Guide (mostly). After the second year I found a neighborhood that was exactly right and bought a tiny stucco bungalow for which I could just barely eke out the downpayment. I was 34, which seemed like a very good age to be.

Daum in 2009, at 39, in front of the small LA bungalow she owned then.

The ensuing eighteen years came with a lot of the typical stuff that happens between 34 and 52. Houses sold and houses bought. Deaths of parents and pets. Professional crises weathered and medical ordeals survived (mostly). Marriage and divorce. It was the latter that made me think it would be a good idea to go to New York for awhile. I’d spent my twenties in New York, so it was in many ways a homecoming. But the return also produced a vexing deja vu. It was as if I’d aged twenty years and been dropped back into my old life with only the faint memory of what had transpired in between. To walk the streets was to see some version of my younger self at every corner. It was to be haunted by this younger self’s discordant admixture of naïveté, sadness and hope. There she is, going into that overpriced vintage clothing store, with no clue how to dress. There she is, walking at night past those yellow-lit brownstones with the abstract art and houseplants inside and wondering if that guy is going to call her. To see her was to understand that twenty years had passed in an instant. It was to understand that death was now just down the block. That’s a hard way to walk down the street. At a certain point, I just couldn’t do it anymore. 

The first time I moved to Los Angeles was almost exactly twenty years ago. I was 32…For the first few years here, my baseline feeling was the feeling of being lost—and moreover of being wrong.

So I return, at 52, to the place I first came when I was 32. Here, my younger self generally leaves me alone. She does not haunt the streets, perhaps because fewer people are on the streets, but nor does she haunt the car. There is no need for the Thomas Guide now. A GPS lady tells me what to do, even what lane to be in, so I drive around in zombie-like serenity. I think of my 32-year-old self hyperventilating around the city, cursing and apologizing under her breath as she makes one wrong turn after the other, pulling onto side streets to consult to Thomas Guide, taking a gamble as to which way is north and which is south. If you’d told her that some day a lady robot voice would be her constant guide, that an indicator light on the windshield would tell her which direction she was going, she’d never have believed it. She would surely have loved the thought of it. But she wouldn’t have wished to speed up time in order to experience it.

In New York, I could afford a nicer apartment at 46 than I could at 26. In Los Angeles, I’m not all that better off at 52 than I was at 32. The tiny bungalow that I could just barely afford when I was 34 is now worth probably three times what I paid and completely out of reach. I will never be able to return to the exactly right neighborhood, not even as a renter. When I visit friends who still live in that neighborhood, I almost have to look away as I pass the corner where I once turned off to go to home.  If I spotted my younger self ambling about, perhaps walking her dog in the hilly streets up to the hiking trails, I would shout, “Don’t sell! You’ll never be able to come back!” 

I can only imagine she would look at me, perplexed, and think, “What am I supposed to do with that information?”

The birthday girl at 3.

Currently  I am subletting the house of a woman who has exquisite taste and is for some reason charging far less rent than she probably could. It is a gift—and a ticking clock—to live here. I am using the time to (and here’s a phrase I’m beginning to think is cognitively impossible) “see how I feel.” If Los Angeles starts to feel like home again, I’ll cut the strings to New York and find a way to stay here and make peace with a not-exactly-right neighborhood. If I miss New York, I’ll go back and find a way to have more space, at least enough space for a real bed. Fifty-two is too old to keep your bed in a wall—or to keep one foot out the door.

It’s been restorative to see old friends again in person, though the pandemic still presses down on social life, turning every plan into a health and safety referendum. Everyone seems just a little bit depressed, though surely this is not unique to L.A.

As of now, I honestly have no idea how I feel. It’s been restorative to see old friends again in person, though the pandemic still presses down on social life, turning every plan-making text thread into a health and safety referendum. Everyone seems just a little bit depressed, though surely this is not unique to L.A. I love hiking the hillside trails as much as I ever did, but at the bottom of the hills in many places lies dystopia. The homeless encampments are just as vast and confounding as reported. Sometimes it really does feel like the world is ending. Last weekend the temperature reached 90 degrees, which for February is simply, well…wrong.

I will say, though, that when I checked the Super Bowl score on Sunday night and saw that Los Angeles was trailing in the fourth quarter, I felt a twinge of alarm. “What? That’s not right,” I thought. And a few minutes later, when suddenly the neighbors were cheering and the rockets were flaring and the canines were caterwauling I thought, “Okay, that turned out the way it was supposed to. All is as it should be. At least for tonight.” I wouldn’t ascribe too much meaning into that moment. I’m not even a sports fan. But it was a pretty good birthday overall. And if the world really is ending, this isn’t a bad place to be.

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Ed. note: This week I appeared on Meghan Daum’s podcast, The Unspeakable, talking all things Oldster Magazine, age, aging, Gen X and more. Check it out! - Sari Botton