It’s a Tough Love, but a Westsider Learns It for Her Valley

I’ll admit I was in love with her. She was sweet-tempered, fashionable; she was smart. She was a silky breeze, a latte near the beach, a string of lights around the hotel palms at Christmas.

The Westside. For almost 20 years I considered her my home. It was pure delusion. I was living in a rent-controlled apartment. I could never claim a hold on her, her upstart mansions north of Montana Avenue, her penthouse condos on Wilshire Boulevard, even her split-level Mar Vista homes with ocean views would always lie beyond my grasp.

A modest inheritance came my way, and seeking square footage and decent schools, I headed for the San Fernando Valley, a place that filled me with dread as I approached from the Sepulveda Pass. Nestled under a blanket of smog, almost 300 square miles of affordable housing, flat as a pancake, predictable as plaid, as far as the eye could see.

I wanted to love her, but what a cruel mistress she turned out to be. In summer she shot down her fiery rays, baking the flesh through my shirt, then scorching it on the metal of my car. In winter her morning and evening cold penetrated the walls, the comforters, the flannel sheets.

I prowled the streets in search of her beauty, the stores and restaurants jammed the length of Ventura Boulevard, the broad vistas of parking lots and unremarkable shopping centers, the squat strip malls advertising products in alphabets I couldn’t understand.

I drove down Victory Boulevard, I tooled down Tampa Avenue, I puttered down Saticoy Street, I cruised down Roscoe Boulevard. My senses were flooded with budget apartments and single-family dwellings. How could anyone willingly live out here, I wondered? (Indeed, when I told people where I had moved from, they were incredulous).

Attempts to rationalize were futile. I’d sold my soul for a little space and a tax write-off. I was an exile from the promised land. So what if my digs had been a Brentwood apartment; it was the heart of civilization!

I’d traded chic delis for corn stands, overpriced boutiques for cheesy discount stores. In my Valley home, freeway-far from everything, my family and I were sweaty, we were bored, we were friendless.

“You’ll get used to it out here,” one neighbor said. “It takes about seven years,” admitted another, who’d also once lived in town. Meanwhile, they offered us the use of their tools and trucks. They invited our kids to join their carpool and soothed them when I wasn’t around. Through my new job as a teacher, I got to know some of the faces inside those tidy houses blanketing the Valley floor: legions of children from all over the world, dreaming their little dreams each night of someday becoming veterinarians, lawyers, basketball stars.

“Everything grows out here,” my neighbor said, referring to the vegetation, but I began to see this place as the great seedbed of the American dream.

We found our amusements. We took drives on bucolic Chatsworth roads, sweltered to hot jazz at Warner Park, fought for the perfect loquats at ethnic grocery stores. When I had the courage to let go of my Santa Monica dentist, the last ties to the Westside were severed. But the address changes on your driver’s license, long before it does in your heart. Like an old flame, the Westside still surfaced in my dreams, and her hip bars, edgy art galleries and beach-side cliffs filled me with longing.

The man who gave us our gardening advice has passed away. Another neighbor has become an aunt. One of my daughters has started high school, and the other just graduated from elementary. For three years now, this place has been the backdrop for the unfolding drama of our lives. The landscape is getting rich with memories.

“So how do you like it out there?” my Westside friends still ask me on my visits, expecting a confession of regrets.

“Not bad,” I say. I’m a little cranky from being stuck in traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Stopping for a gift, it took me an hour to find a parking place at Westside Pavilion. The air feels clammy--and I need a sweater.

Driving back on the 405, my car starts overheating. Yeah, the Valley’s tough love, but she’s got her charms. Even this time of year. Tonight, when her heat is spent, she’ll leave behind the scent of citrus and jasmine. The tiki torches and porch lights will go on, and people will come out and into her soft light, to sit on the curb and drink wine, play mariachi music in their backyards or lie near-naked by a thousand glowing turquoise pools.

Throw a tri-tip on the grill! I’m coming home.