By: Aimee Shramko
“What’s wrong?”
Maggie knew, as she always did, that something wasn’t right. Friends since sixth grade, she was aware of every subtlety in the tones of my voice even from miles away.
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. It was a Wednesday afternoon in late October of 2019. As the one-year anniversary of my mother’s passing approached, I found myself consumed by chronic homesickness.
Struggling to verbalize what I was feeling, I stayed quiet for a few moments then said, “I miss my mom.”
It was the simplest of answers, yet it failed to communicate all the layers of what I was feeling.
“I miss my home and familiar things, the places that Mom and I used to go….she was my best friend”.
An only child, Mom and I were constant companions. We kept each other company when Dad left home on business trips that stretched into month-long absences.
I knew Maggie understood the emptiness I was feeling after losing Mom. We had both been strong advocates for our parents, taking charge and managing their care as they aged and developed dementia.
“I miss our home too, and our parents.” Maggie said gently. “Maybe the best remedy is a quick trip back? Revisit all the places you used to love? Go visit our ‘City by the Bay’! Santa Monica is gorgeous this time of year. I wish I could join you!”
By Friday afternoon I was in line at the designated boarding gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor. Scrunched in somewhere between the A and B boarding groups, my stomach did flips in anticipation. I clutched my boarding pass like Charlie Bucket’s Golden Ticket before presenting it to the gate attendant for scanning.
“Going home after a long work week?”asked an easily 6 foot tall man as he lowered himself into the middle seat next to me. Juggling his laptop, water bottle, and headphones, he tried to contain himself in the inadequate space allotted.
“Going home!” I said, trying not to grimace as his elbow hit my upper arm for the third time.
The ninety minutes passed quickly as we chatted about growing up in Southern California, and in no time I was on the ground at LAX and breathing in the soft, humid, and noticeably heavier air.
It felt strange to be checking into a hotel in a city where I’d lived for over 25 years. I’d chosen the Sea Blue Hotel on Ocean Avenue, an iconic spot (formerly named the Hotel California - really!) next to the Santa Monica Pier.
On arrival my room wasn’t ready, so I left my bag at the front desk and headed for the pier. A couple of hours before sunset, I was met by the usual throng of tourists posing for selfies in front of the “Route 66 - End of the Trail” sign.
In search of solitude, I walked to the furthest edge of the pier and leaned against the steel railing as I watched the waves below crash into the barnacle-laden wood pilings. Every now and then, a glistening greenish-grey wave was big enough to spray me with a light mist. I flashbacked to my Junior Lifeguard test which required jumping off the end of the pier and shuddered. I was braver then.
A seagull snagging a discarded crust of pizza reminded me how much I missed seeing these winged symbols of home. As I breathed in the briny sea air, I thought about how my parents and I, despite having no friends or family in Santa Monica, felt welcome here. I wished I could say the same for Phoenix, a place that still felt foreign to me after eleven years.
Santa Monica was full of happy memories of growing up in the 70s and 80s. The city got its character from resident retirees, hippies, artists, immigrants, and a strong community of families. It was quaint, quirky, a bit sleepy, and far enough away from the Sunset Strip and Beverly Hills to have formed a unique personality. Blessed with natural beauty, Santa Monica’s sweeping coastline always took my breath away.
I stopped to watch the infamous Merry-Go-Round with its dozens of brightly painted wooden horses plus a single rabbit and goat. Built in the 1920s, rumors of hauntings by shadowy apparitions circulate around Halloween.
The calliope music and whirling motion transported me to grade school, when Mom would meet me after class and we’d walk the mile and a half down to the ocean. I’d ride my favorite horse or zip around on the bumper cars while she watched and waved. The fog would roll in around 4pm, the sun would disappear, and we’d walk up the beach toward home in the damp and chilly air.
Heading back to the hotel, I passed Bruno’s Italian restaurant, a favorite of locals for over thirty years, and was drawn inside by the alluring smell of fresh bread baking. I ordered a glass of wine and pounced on the bread basket placed in front of me. Outside the window, kids carrying surfboards trudged up the steep hill of Appian Way from the beach as the sun slipped into the Pacific Ocean in a blaze of pinks and yellows.
The next morning, I walked up Ocean Avenue to Ye Olde King’s Head British pub for breakfast. The highly polished black wood tables, brick walls, and huge fireplace gave the rooms a cozy feel. Mom, who was proud to be part English, loved their mushy peas, Cornish pasties, and watching dart games being played in the bar. Once dubbed “Little Britain”, Santa Monica has been home to a large British community since the mid-1970s.
Rounding the corner, I became one with the crowd at the vibrant Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Its stalls lined four city blocks teeming with shoppers. Mom and I had been regulars following its debut in 1981. I sampled deep amber buckwheat honey from the family run Bennett Farms, and admired the locally grown citrus fruits, heirloom tomatoes, and berries.
At the flower stall, bright orange marigolds, on hand for the upcoming Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration, were crowded into plastic buckets. The strong scent of the marigolds is said to guide spirits of the dead back to earth.
As I walked through the Third Street Promenade, I was stunned by all the changes since I’d last visited, and had to call Maggie. A tattered pedestrian shopping area in the 1970s, The Promenade had been refreshed in 1980 to compete with the newly built Santa Monica Place Mall next door. Funky mom and pop stores like The Smuggler run by scraggly beach bums selling hookah pipes had been replaced by branded chain stores.
When Santa Monica Place was built, most of our friends, sophomores in high school at the time, got part-time jobs at the mall, as did Maggie and I.
“You wouldn’t recognize it, Maggie. The entire Santa Monica Place has been gutted and converted to an outdoor mall. The shops are all posh with designer stuff. The charm has been totally sucked out.”
“They’d never hire us now. We’re not that fancy,” she laughed. “Remember when I worked at Hot Dog on a Stick? We had those itchy red, yellow, and blue polyester uniforms with the goofy hats. The corn dogs and lemonade were bitchin’ though.” We laughed, enjoying the memories of simpler times and the Valley Girl lingo that went with them .
At Fourth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard I caught the local #3 bus, affectionately called “The Big Blue Bus” since the 1950s. Mom didn’t drive, and the #3 gave us access to a large section of the city from LAX to Westwood, home to UCLA.
I got off on Wilshire Blvd and walked past the former Lincoln Park, now Christine Reed park, to the corner of California and Seventh avenues where Maggie and I spent 12 years in school. After walking around Saint Monica’s Parish campus in disbelief, I had to call her back.
“I’m not making this up, Maggie. They’ve torn down the rectory and replaced it with a coffee shop called the Holy Grounds. They serve organic tea infusions and smoothies. I saw Monsignor Torgerson sipping an espresso!” Maggie giggled and I realized how comforting it was to know she understood my disbelief in what I was seeing.
Back at the hotel long after sunset, I crossed the street to the scruffy Chez Jay, a venerable, storied old dive bar and restaurant said to have been a secret meeting place for JFK and Marilyn Monroe. I asked for the last booth in the back where Maggie and I used to meet our friends, Frank and Chris, to complain about the challenges of adulthood in our late twenties. Our problems then seemed ridiculous now.
Happy to see the decades-old kitschy nautical décor had not changed, I ordered a drink and called Maggie.
“This trip is just what I needed, Maggie. The ocean is so therapeutic, I feel refreshed, restored to my old self. I guess it’s been harder to adjust to life in Phoenix than I thought. It’s challenging to meet people and make friends. In the summer, half the people leave the city and those that stay never come out of their houses. And with mom and dad gone, there’s a huge hole to fill.”
“I know, but you’ve done so well getting through the first year of loss. I have a feeling that 2020 is going to be your year. I bet there are a lot of nice people with common interests out there, you just have to find them. “
Find them, I did. I took my first OLLI class in February 2020. I managed to squeeze in a single in-person class before everything – seemingly effortlessly — switched to Zoom. While I had to wait a while for in-person classes to resume, I found a community of lifelong learners who were as curious and as excited about all the possibilities life has to offer as I was. And I’m still in Phoenix although my heart will always belong to my “City by the Bay”, Santa Monica.
“Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner. Sometimes I feel like my only friend.
Is the city I live in, The City of Angels, lonely as I am?
Together we cry.
I drive on her streets 'cause she's my companion.
I walk through her hills 'cause she knows who I am.
She sees my good deeds and she kisses me windy.
Well, I never worry, now that is a lie.”
Under the Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers
About the Author:
Aimee Shramko, a former advertising executive, grew up in Santa Monica, CA and received her undergraduate degree from UCLA. After earning an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management/ASU, she spent several decades leading creative and tech teams to develop branding campaigns and customer focused websites. A resident of the Valley of the Sun for fifteen years, she devotes her time to supporting OLLI, the arts, and exploring new destinations.
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