By Boyd Lemon / Guest contributor
I was born in Alhambra, California, 9 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and at the age of 63 I hadn’t strayed far across L.A. to the west side. For many years I felt trapped. Although I enjoyed traveling and learning about new places and cultures, I was a lawyer with a clientele primarily in the Los Angeles area. I couldn’t leave, except for short vacations. I dreamed of faraway places.
Contemplating retirement from the practice of law, I moved to Ventura, but I dreamed of living on a boat and sailing around the world; then a motor home and driving round North America; and finally just traveling around the world for the rest of my life. I left California and lived in Boston for three years. I loved Boston. I moved from Boston to Paris, planning to live there for two years and traveling the world after that. After almost a year in Paris, I wasn’t so enamored with traveling. I left unsettled. I loved Paris, but I felt like I didn’t belong.
When friends who own a home in Northern Tuscany stopped by Paris on their way back to California, almost without thinking, I asked them if I could stay in their home in Tuscany for a while. They said yes and seemed delighted. They rented it out when they weren’t there, but only in the summer. After they got back to California we exchanged emails about arrangements. I surprised myself by asking if I could stay in their home for three months, and they agreed.
I enjoyed the serenity of the small village in Northern Tuscany and loved the great Italian food and wine, but I never lost that unsettled, unconnected feeling. I had no feeling of home, no place that was familiar, and it didn’t feel right. After a month, I moved back to Ventura. I had planned to move to Portland, Oregon after leaving Europe, but that would have been another unfamiliar place. When the little cottage (La Casita) in Ventura became available, I said, yes. It really wasn’t even a decision. I didn’t think about it much. I didn’t weigh pros and cons of Portland and Ventura. Ventura drew me back like I had a magnet inside me. The force just pulled me back. I didn’t need to think about it.
As soon as I moved and retrieved my furniture and stuff from storage, I began to feel my roots burrowing into the Ventura soil. Mi Casita, in a beautiful garden behind a main house just off The Avenue, felt like home. I’m writing this in my garden. I’m connected to something familiar. It’s a new neighborhood for me, but in five minutes I can be back where everything is familiar, Main Street in downtown Ventura — Palermo, Jonathan’s, the Mission, the movie theater, Ben & Jerry’s, Chicago for Ribs, Bank of Books, the beach at Surfer’s Point, the pier — all the old, familiar places.
I think it’s two things: familiarity and roots. I need a place where I can stay indefinitely, that is familiar, where I can bury my roots. I need a place that I can really get to know, where I can meet a friend when I’m lonely. Everything in Ventura is familiar, not just the sights, but the smells of the hills and the ocean, the sound of the Amtrak train whistle. To me, this familiarity is of great comfort, and I miss that comfort when I don’t have it.
I am considering buying that motor home and driving across the country, but I know I will come back to Ventura, and I bet I won’t feel as disconnected, knowing that I will come back. I won’t just drive around North America until I die or am too feeble to drive.
I know people who sold their homes and traveled around the world for years. One couple has been traveling for fifteen years and don’t know if or when they ever will settle down in one place. Some people are happy without the roots, without the connection to a familiar place. That is not me.
Other people live in the same town their whole lives. This was more common in previous centuries. Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, had never been more than 20 miles from her girlhood home until in her 50’s she sailed to France to visit her husband, who was United States Ambassador to France. My parents moved to California as children and never left the State, even for a vacation. Even today there are some who spend their entire life in the home they were born in. That’s not me either.
I crave the adventure of travel. I want to learn about different cultures and places. That is why I moved to Paris. But I have learned that I still need the roots and connection of a familiar place. How about you?
— Boyd Lemon will read from his new book, “Digging Deep: A Writer Uncovers His Marriages,” at Bank of Books, 748 E. Main St., Ventura, at 3 p.m. Saturday July 23. “Digging Deep” is a memoir about Boyd’s journey to understand his role in the destruction of his three marriages. He believes it will help others to deal with their own relationship issues. Excerpts are on his website, http://www.BoydLemon-Writer.com. Boyd is a retired lawyer, who re-invented himself as a writer, living in Ventura. He recently returned from a year in France and Italy.