Life is a Highway: Exit 2
Haunted outdoor malls and magical backyards
101 TO SANTA BARBARA
On the Fourth of July, historically the worst holiday of the year, my husband I decided to get ahead of our malaise by simply…leaving town. My friend Frankie was home in Santa Barbara for the weekend, and that seemed like as good a destination as any. Plus, it would be at least ten degrees cooler than LA, where the temperature was supposed to hover somewhere between “unbearable” and “punishing.”
From the get-go, this trip was a better time. Maybe because we weren’t traveling for a funeral, maybe because it was two hours instead of six, maybe because we were on the 101 North, which snakes right next to some of the most beautiful beaches in California. A little depressing that some of the most breathtaking scenery in this country has a giant highway running through it, but when you’re on that giant highway you really enjoy the view, and maybe that speaks to a problem with society in general.
The 101 cuts through towns with names like “Summerland” and “Montecito” and “Ventura” (they can’t all be winners). Towns that are populated by polo fields and vineyards and Gwyneth Paltrow. Close enough for a last-minute meeting in LA, far enough to feel like you’re a world away.
Eventually, we exited for Santa Barbara. Immediately, you’re transported to the Mediterranean, albeit in an uncanny valley kind of way. Kind of like when you watch a movie that’s supposed to take place in New York that was clearly filmed in Boston.
We parked the car and headed to brunch at a Swedish bakery that was doing quite good business for an American holiday. Eating out these days consists of my husband and I taking turns 1) shoveling food down our mouth / our child’s mouth / each other’s mouths and then 2) exiting the restaurant with the baby so she can run and scream away from other diners (see: yesterday’s Denny’s anecdote).
The restaurant was next to an open-air shopping arcade littered with bronze statuary in a variety of forms—people, porpoises, and everything in between. This made it somewhat confusing when we approached a fountain that contained bronze turtles and real turtles, a distinction that only became clear when the real turtles began to turn their heads. The walls were starting to close in—and we were outside. It was time for a change of scenery.
When I worked in publishing, there was an author who, when touring, required being near a yoga studio. I once read that when Samuel L. Jackson works on location he needs to play golf. My child, equally high maintenance, always needs to be directed to a local park.
Luckily there was a large, beautiful one nearby. It had a playground with a gorgeous wooden castle play structure. Part of the charm was it was the perfect size for children—something that became immediately clear as my husband and I tried to follow our child in our enormous adult bodies. We squeezed through tiny passageways, crossed mini bridges, and scaled small staircases, visions of weight limits dancing in our heads. Occasionally a roving band of older kids galumphed by, and we would throw ourselves over our child, smashing her against the wall until they safely passed.
When our lower backs told us it was time to abandon the play structure we got some fruit and sat on a wraparound bench under a tree in another part of the park. On the other side of the bench a man wearing a cycling cap held a mandolin. We chatted and I discovered he was a cyclist and played mandolin. He was meeting his friend there, with whom he makes up (perhaps) Santa Barbara’s only bluegrass band, The Bombastics. We talked about the city and the surrounding landscape and all the wildfires that have changed things. Eventually his friend joined, they began practicing in earnest (gig in August), and we headed to our car to go to Frankie’s mom’s neighbor’s barbecue.
Frankie’s mom’s neighbor and Frankie’s mom are Italian-American. Not to generalize, but Italians are pretty good at “food.” And as we know, good food starts in the ground, so Frankie’s mom’s neighbor’s yard and Frankie’s mom’s yard were brimming with vegetable beds and fruit trees. In Frankie’s mom’s neighbor’s yard, in the shade of a cherimoya tree, was a full size bocce ball court. The tiny path next to it continued on down a small hill, to a clear creek, where our toddler threw rocks and splashed her feet. Practically we had driven 100 miles North on the 101, but existentially, we had entered a portal to Fourth of July Narnia.
Sadly, as anyone who has enjoyed a magical children’s book about a different land knows, you do have to return home again. Our plan to bed down in the soft grass seemed less practical as the light dwindled and our drive back stretched out ahead.
We arrived just in time for our neighborhood to erupt in a billion fireworks. Our child didn’t seem to mind much, though bedtime took approximately three times as long as normal, but luckily there was no regurgitated milk from Denny’s involved.