I did not know how to understand home until I left it.

For pretty much my whole life up until I turned 18, I lived in Los Angeles, California. That’s what I say at least. You have probably never heard of my hometown, although it is mentioned in a song by the Beach Boys, and like Vancouver, has been the backdrop many movies and television shows. Even so, I like to think of all of LA as home. You cannot know one single piece of Los Angeles to know the whole story. It is why I have often been frustrated when people ask me if all anyone in Los Angeles cares about is fame and movies. There are Latine people, who have been here long before the cameras got their start and whose culture has woven itself deep into the fibers of the city. There are a great multitude of cultures and nationalities who have settled here later on, which has created new traditions and fusions, as well as moments of conflict. I see this in my own family from Los Angeles. They had emigrated to Los Angeles, seeking to escape conflict in the Middle East. Once they arrived, they too began to weave themselves into the framework of Los Angeles. This is evident by the Thanksgivings I would have back at home, where turkey would be served alongside hummus, and homemade tamales. Family and home are interconnected, as the majority of my Middle Eastern family settled between Los Angeles and Orange County, at most a forty-five minute drive from each other. To them, Los Angeles is so intertwined with the concept of home that they cannot imagine living anywhere else. Some of them fail to understand why I would leave, a question mirrored by those who have asked me, while glancing up at almost endless rain of Vancouver. But to know a place, sometimes it helps to have an outside perspective. I never knew the effect of three months with little sun has on your mood, nor had I ever experienced the ephemeral sensation of cherry blossoms in the spring before I left California. By leaving my first home, I gained a new appreciation for where I was born. I learned to miss the silhouette of palm trees along the freeways at night, watching like quiet guardians. It’s hard to express how it feels to drive the freeways late at night, when the roads are finally clear, but it feels like home. 

My favorite thing to do, when I am back in Los Angeles is to drive up to the hills of Palos Verdes. I take a few friends, and possibly some ice cream, and we drive up the dark and winding roads, winding our way through until we reach our vantage point. From it you can see out onto the bay where I learned to swim. If you look far enough out on the water, on a clear day, you can see Catalina Island, where I had my first kiss. If you look east, the waves crash onto the sand, which ebbs its way onto the various collections of towns which make up Los Angeles. At night, it is lit up, and you feel distant, but also you realize that you are a tiny speck which makes up a collective place. 

(The view from The Palos Verdes Hills, after a rare rain)

That is a home, not just a geographic place, memories, or the people that fill it all in, but all of it together. It’s impossible to parse together when you’re in the midst of it, but if you take a step back you might be able to see a complete picture.