Life in LA

Almost There

I'm writing this from room 131 of my hotel in Rolla, Missouri. I'm only about eight hours from Chicago and my new life.

I'm feeling a little lonely and sad, this my third day on the road.

My hotel is kind of nice and quiet. My only dinner option is a Steak & Shake just outside on the corner. But that's not too bad, I suppose. I haven't eaten at Steak & Shake in a long time. My Dad and I used to go there a lot in Atlanta when I was growing up and later in high school I often went there late at night with my best friend, Liz.

After my mother's funeral, when I was eighteen, after I'd dutifully and numbly said all there was to say to all the people in attendance at the service, Liz and I hopped in her car and went to Steak & Shake. We sat in a booth together, just the two of us, and we ate a brownie sundae. My mother was dead. There was nothing to say.

Liz's beautiful sister Jen died last weekend. Of cancer. I still haven't been able to wrap my head around it. She was so young and Liz is so young and we're all so young and all these things keep happening...births and deaths and weddings and moves and it all just continues to surge forward with the most horrifyingly beautiful and streaming force. All the same, my heart is breaking for Liz. And any other week I would have been at her side through all of this, just as she has been through all the major events of my life.

I didn't think about too much today, my third day of driving. I just kept winding down the road, my foot hard against the gas pedal, and the day slid by quickly. Every once in a while little thrusts of anxiety about tomorrow would sift through me. I'm nervous about my new city and my new life, nervous that I won't love my apartment as much as my last, or of things being hard for a while.

When I arrived in Rolla this evening it turned out the hotel I had reserved didn't take pets and there was a sudden sinking feeling of trying to find another hotel and then there was a minor backing-the-truck-up in the parking lot fiasco and I almost cried but there was just no point. Instead I took a deep breath, figured out how to get out of the parking lot and found another hotel that accepts pets.

After I lugged everything in, cats and litter pans and laptops and suitcases, I poured a glass of Charles Shaw into a little plastic cup and sat outside on the concrete steps looking out at the sun setting in sheets of gold over the highway and the rolling green forests. I thought about how a year ago I couldn't have handled any of this. I would have probably dissolved into tears at the hotel problem and cried even harder about the truck-backing-up fiasco and then I realized that a year ago I couldn't have even driven across the country by myself in a giant truck with my car and my cats and everything that I own.

Thinking about all of this quelled my anxiety about Chicago. If I can handle all of this, I can certainly keep forging ahead. I can make a new life for myself in this new big city. I'm done crying and being afraid of moving forward. I want to live my life.

More tales from the road...

I'm writing this from room 114 of my hotel room in Erick, Oklahoma.

Today I drove another 11 hours and a total of 620 miles. It's torturously slow-going in this truck with the car behind.

Today was exhausting. More so than yesterday. It feels as though a month has spanned since I left Los Angeles, but really it was only yesterday morning.

I spent the majority of the day driving through New Mexico which was lovely and endless.

I'm feeling a bit more cognizant and a bit more settled into my move to Chicago. Last night, exhausted, and lying in bed with the cats curled around me it suddenly all hit me. I don't live in California anymore. My lovely little house in Venice which has served as such a sanctuary for so long is no longer my home. I won't see my California friends very often anymore. All the things I was planning to do had I stayed in Los Angeles have now evaporated.

It was a strange feeling and I almost cried but I was too tired. I spent most of my eleven hours today thinking about my new life in Chicago, all the things I want to do and places I want to see. I thought about how I'll set up my new apartment and about the ferocious job search I will soon embark on. I didn't think about the snow until just now, but even then it's a fleeting thought and won't be real until it is.

I stopped for gas in Tucumcari where Nyree wanted me to stay and made friends with a nice guy at the gas station who was driving alone to Florida. We talked about how boring and lonely these endless hours on the road can be.

And then I powered on. Through thunderstorms and a stiff neck, through cat cries and roaring trucks, and now here I am. In Erick, OK with a baseball game on in the background and the cats curled around my legs.

Tomorrow is another day and another 10 or so hours to Rolla, Missouri. And then Friday into Chicago.

Wish I could write about my dinner but Erick's only restaurant closed minutes before I arrived.

Life on the Road

I'm writing this from a booth in Jerry's restaurant in Holbrook, AZ. The full moon is hanging low and luminous over the dusky plains of Arizona and I've just order a Bud Light and the Catfish Special.

I left Los Angeles this morning at 7:30 AM. I'm driving a 16 foot moving truck towing my car on a trailer behind. Just me, my two cats, everything I own, and barely enough gas money to get to Chicago and my new life.

I'm so exhausted as I write this. I drove for eleven hours today. It really wasn't too bad. Yesterday I had a minor melt-down about driving the truck with the trailer (a last minute kind of forced decision) but it's really not that bad. And the cats—after an intial hour of constant yowling—have been very good. They are currently hiding under the bedskirts of room 112 and my navy bean soup has just arrived.

My last week in Los Angeles was a whirlwind of packing and friends and stressing out. I don't know what I would have done without all of my incredible friends. All week they showed up to help. Liz and Amber, Timbre and Abby and Lien. Aoife and Brian and Will and Francesca. And Rhonda, always Rhonda. They packed my stuff, labeled boxes with funny names and drawings. They gave me hugs and pep-talks and hooked my car to trailers. They loaded moving trucks impeccably and carted off left-over food.

I will never understand how I've come to be as lucky as I am to have these people in my life.

I've hardly been able to think about my new life in Chicago. Every moment of the last couple of weeks has required such meticulous attention to the present, the list of things I MUST do today, to making sure I'm not taking other cars out as I drive down city streets in my moving truck, not letting the cats make a run for the hotel room door, thinking about my route tomorrow. It's exhausting and strangely zen. I haven't shed a tear over the actual life changes.

I didn't cry saying goodbye to my friends or my favorite client, to my little home or to Venice. I just kept my foot steady on the gas pedal and since there isn't even a rearview mirror, I didn't look back.

There was a moment today, driving through a stretch of pine trees when I felt the anticipation of Autumn, something I haven't experienced in five years. I felt that old sense of September, of Fall, of things starting anew even as they're shifting form.

Tomorrow night I stop in Oklahoma and the next night Missouri. I'll roll into Chicago and my new home on Friday afternoon.

There's more to say, much more. More about being 29 and alone on the road, about changing my life and all the things to come, about letting go of the past and moving forward into my life but my catfish is here and it looks really good.

Saying Goodbye

I have officially begun my last week in Los Angeles.

Yesterday I hosted a lovely little farewell brunch at my house and all my favorite people came and the house was filled with laughter and mimosas and embraces and remembrances. Afterwards I went for a swim in the ocean, lying on the beach after, the salt water drying against my skin, my eyes closed to the luminous sky and ocean curving before me.

In the late afternoon I drove down to Orange County for perhaps the last time ever. I wanted to say goodbye to my father and to my time spent here with him. I drove the drive I've driven hundreds of times: the 405 South to the 22 East into Garden Grove. I turned the car onto Golden West Boulevard and then onto Lampson, pulling right into the old condo complex where my father lived for a while and where he died.

It all felt so familiar. Not sad, not even nostalgic, just familiar. I realized how long Southern California has been a part of my life. Long before I ever lived here I used to visit. My Aunt Jean and my grandmother Lulu lived here when I was growing up and often my parents and I would fly out for a week or so. The wide open boulevards and sparkling blue skies seeping into my being at a young age.

I drove around for a while in my Dad's old neighborhood, remembering all the time we'd spent together there. I even drove by his old grocery store and the bank, the Blockbuster where we used to rent movies and the old 1970s library on the corner. I didn't feel sad though, rather I enjoyed the feeling of something familiar, the sense of place and past evoked.

Afterwards I went to my Dad's favorite restaurant, an old windowless steakhouse with leather booths where he knew the bartender and all the waitresses by name and where we used to go whenever I visited him from New York. I sat at the bar by myself and I ordered a vodka martini in honor of my father and in between bites of filet mignon, I wrote him a long letter in my journal.

I told him how grateful I am for my time in California and how grateful I am for how much he loved me. I looked over at the booth where we used to sit together and I remembered his funny, bushy eyebrows and the way he used to laugh with a sparkle in his eye. I thought about how, without him, I would never be this woman, happy and kind and peaceful and young and alone at this old steakhouse in Garden Grove, California.

Driving home on the sun-flooded 405 I knew that my time here has come to a close. I knew suddenly that it was always going to be this way, that I was always going to leave California one warm August morning when I was 29, my foot on the gas pedal as I move forward into the rest of my life.

11 Days & Counting

Whoa...the time is flying by. Gone are the days from a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting around in my apartment not quite ready to begin preparations for the move but not really doing much else.

My life these days is a big swimming mess of packing preparations, goodbye dinners, moving truck reservations, Chicago job hunting, final sessions with clients at my clinic, and the soaking up of my last days in California.

I went to the beach with friends today and stood staring out at the wide expanse of the great soaring Pacific ocean. I can hardly believe I'm leaving. Five years was more than enough time for California to soak into my being. I woke up this morning to the cool ocean breeze flooding through the windows and felt a clutch in my heart, thinking that there are only so many more mornings of that.

I'm trying lots of things to stay sane. I'm trying to think about my new wonderful life in Chicago. I'm trying to simply stay present to my moments and days here in Los Angeles. I'm trying to check things off my to-do list. I'm trying to cultivate a new way of saying goodbye to things and places and people that doesn't involve the torrents of sadness that have come with such departures in the past.

And in the midst of all of this I've somehow begun working on preparations for my second book. The whole thing has coalesced strongly and firmly in my heart and my head and I suddenly have no doubt that this book is ready to come out and that I will indeed begin work on it in the coming months.

I can definitively say that all I've ever hoped for has begun to come true this year. I've found peace and balance and strength and love. I've graduated from my master's program and I've completed a draft of my first book and found the thread for the second.

So, despite the stress and hassles of moving, I really have to say that I couldn't be happier about my life. And for that, I am so grateful.

Onward and upward!

Home is Where I Am

I got home from Taiwan late last night.

I was really thrilled to be home, to be back in the good old USA. It was an amazing trip but really exhausting and a little lonely. I don't know what it was that made it so lonely. I guess just being somewhere so different and amazing out in the world and not really being able to share it with anyone. That said, I spent a couple of days on my own and those were my favorites moments of the trip.

I got a little sad last night on the plane thinking about coming home to my little house by the beach in Los Angeles that I'll only live in for two more weeks. I've adored this apartment more than anywhere I've ever lived and it's going to be hard to say goodbye to it. I was so happy last night to come home to my neat little hardwood floors and ocean breeze windows, my little deck with its flowering plants and the pots and pans hanging quietly in the kitchen.

But I'm also really excited about my upcoming move to Chicago! A whole new city! A new life! Another adventure! I don't want my life to be the same all the time. I can't just live in the same apartment, the same city forever. I'm ready for new experiences, new people, and a different set of hardwood floors.

Notes from Taiwan II

It's Sunday morning here...Saturday night in the places I usually live.

I'm in Kaohsiung, a bustling port city in southern Taiwan. The typhoon has been persistent and the humidity clings to your skin like a damp towel the moment you walk outside. It's warm and windy and the rain comes in short, intense bursts, shying away the butterflies who quickly reappear when the sun breaks through again.

I just took the nicest early morning walk along the Love River. It being Sunday morning, there were very few people out and I just walked by myself for an hour or so along the pretty landscaped pathways that run the length of the banks. The warm wind whipped my hair around my face and I sat for long moments with my eyes closed on a bench, the sun breaking through the grey sky and warming my skin.

I thought about all the things I'm grateful for, most especially this trip. As exhausting as it's been, and as lonely as I've felt in moments, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be out in the world, to be reminded that there is seemingly no one truth to life.

Notes from Taiwan

It's typhoon season in Taiwan, which means that it rains even when the sun is shining.

I arrived yesterday morning around 6am and my first impressions of the Taipei were bleary-eyed from the backseat of a taxi as we wound through the green mountains and into dawn breaking over the valley in which Taipei rests.

In the day or so before I left Los Angeles I became increasingly anxious about this trip, fretting about going away in the midst of my moving plans and worrying about the long plane ride. I even had moments in which I wondered if I should go on the trip at all.

But the moment I stepped into the international terminal at LAX all of my worries dissipated and I felt a deep sense of calm spread through me. It was almost midnight but the terminal was bustling with all kinds of people, everyone rushing about pushing enormous carts of luggage and in the space of one moment I heard five different languages. The names on the destination board flickered with places like Dubai and Guadalajara, Bangkok and Rome.

I felt a thrill run straight through me and already couldn't even remember what it was I had been concerned about before leaving the house. I checked in with glee, proudly presenting my passport and set off for the gate.

And I was so happy to be alone. It made everything feel all the more adventurous.

I find it so easy to get caught up in the minutae of daily life. It's so easy to forget that there's an entire world out there...one that I want to be a part of. I remember before I ever went on my first trip to Asia - a press trip to the Philippines - how it seemed as though one couldn't go as far as somewhere like the Philippines without a lot of serious planning and at least a few weeks of available travel time.

But that's just not true. It's absolutely possible to pop over to Asia or Africa or South America or anywhere really, with just a week in which to visit and little knowledge of the country. It's bound to be an amazing experience, no matter what.

And here I am in, in Taiwan - a place I NEVER imagined going - but one that I feel so grateful to be in. Taipei is endlessly fascinating, with strange little winding streets and beautiful incense-filled temples, the mountains are lush and green in the distance and like I already said, it rains even when the sun is shining.

Four Years

It was four years ago today that my father died.

I don't really feel anything particular about it. I'm tired of these death days, tired of carrying around the weight of all of this loss. I don't want to be sad for the rest of my life. I'm not sad at all, in fact.

It's a beautiful day here today, the sun just beginning to break through the clouds. It's cool out and I can smell the oean through the screens. A dear friend is coming over for brunch. I'm making a tomato & white cheddar quiche. I have more friends coming over later for dinner. And last night a friend of mine gave me a bunch of fresh basil from his garden so I'll make a fresh pesto tonight. I'm grateful for all these friends.

It's something they like to point out—my friends like to tell me how many friends I have. They marvel at how easily I make friends. I don't really think about it though. I don't really feel like I have an unusual amount. I like people. I like to talk to people. I like to get to know them and I like to share things with them. All the same, I really am grateful that I have so many good ones.

I'm leaving tomorrrow night for Taiwan. I'll be gone one week, traveling to two other cities besides Taipei, covering an international food festival. I'm the only journalist going on the press trip from Los Angeles so I'll  go to LAX tomorrow night by myself and I'll fly halfway across the world to an island off the coast of mainland China—a place I never in my life considered going to but one that I'm nonetheless quite thrilled to visit.

It was almost four years ago that I went on a press trip to the Philippines. My father had only been dead for two months and I remember the night that I left for the airport I wept, standing in my kitchen, here in this same little house. My bags were packed by the door and I just stood there weeping. I was so afraid of going out into the world. I was afraid that I wouldn't come back. My father was gone. My mother was gone. I felt that there was nothing tethering me to this life and that in going so far out into the world I might simply disappear.

In the last couple of days I've had little twinges of apprehension about this trip, about once again going so far out into the world. But for different reasons than I felt four years ago. Now, I feel that I have so much to come home to, so much life that I want to live, that the thought of getting lost out in the world and not getting the chance to live and love as much as I want to pricks at my heart.

But this trip will be wonderful. Before I move to Chicago and begin the rest of my life it will be so good to be me, Claire Bidwell Smith, out in the world. I'll come home and my life will be all the better for it.

My First Interview!

Mediabistro's Kate Coe interviewed me recently about the process of writing my book.

Read it here.