June 8, 2016
2:06 PM – EST
New York, New York
I nearly forgot that it rains…anywhere. It's the result of living in Los Angeles the past two years. Last night my friend Ashley asked me to check my phone for today’s weather. I was happy to discover the temperature was going to be 66 F with a slight drizzle in the afternoon. I
“California actually has a Mediterranean climate,” I heard a gentlemen explain one night at the Pasadena Public Library during a workshop about the Golden State's current drought. Admittedly, I recall not fully understanding what that even meant though he seemed to have a firm grasp on what he was talking about. He then went on to bemoan the way the City of Los Angeles was laid out 50 years earlier and how it had contributed to the destruction to the environment.
What I love about being back in New York is how you can see several good friends in the span of a few short hours. The same is less true in Los Angeles. But when you’ve been away for some time catching up also entails reciting your current struggles over and over again. Perhaps more exhausting than the constant recapitulation is the slow realization that your “catastrophe” really ain’t that big a deal. By the time I'd sat down with the second friend I'd seen today I kind of wanted to punch myself.
I asked my friend Maria, 50, a paralegal from New York City, what the best piece of advice she received was during our lunch this rainy afternoon. Her parents, Irish immigrants, once told her, “In this country, you can be anything you want to be.”
