Moving Day [memoir]
It was Martin Luther King Day in LA, January 17th, 1994. It was a Monday. We’d moved back to LA with our not-quite-one-year-old son after a year of living in Redondo Beach, in an apartment just across the street from the Pacific. It’s where our son was born and I spent my days taking him on long, quiet walks along the Esplanade that bordered the oceanfront. During the week, the sand and the sea were beige and blue stripes that stretched forever with only the seagulls, and a stray beach goer here and there, breaking the pattern. Riviera Village, a few blocks inland was full of sleepy stores, hushed boutiques just out of my price range, and cafes where I had no one to join me for a cup of latte. In the early days right after my son’s birth, my friends found their way down to Redondo to pay their obligatory baby visits. After that it was mostly just the baby and me, and often my mother who was in the habit of visiting a couple of times a week. My father had died the year before