I Never Want to Leave These People, This Place
By Laura Sturza
Los Angeles felt more like home than my suburban Maryland hometown. Every corner of the city on the edge of the Pacific was interconnected—dots on a map linking people and places that brought joy and grace into my life. There was the drab, crowded newsroom where I filed my first stories as a newly minted city hall reporter, anxious about whether I had gotten the facts right. There was the noisy restaurant where my future husband Tom and I had our first date and were thrilled we both looked like the photos in our dating profiles. It also had sites where my heart was broken—the workplace with the angry boss, and the second-floor apartment where my lovely neighbor and I swapped cat-care duties when we traveled, at least until my lush, long-haired Calico passed away.
Twenty years after moving there, my mother was in her nineties and needed help. Tom had just retired and was willing to relocate to Maryland to be near her. However, I didn't want to leave California, where I had become more fully formed, thanks to the communities I had joined, filled with people passionate about writing and self-transformation. Whenever I pictured our future, it was in L.A., but I hadn't factored in what the future might hold for my mom. Fortunately, I could talk it over with friends.
Pam and I had a morning routine. We traveled two of our city's busiest routes. She drove on L.A.'s west side along the 405 North while I took the 5 South on the east side. We talked on our way to work, parsing things out over our phones as if a string connected us between two tin cans. We discussed marriage, work, spirituality, culture, current events, and our bodies. Although we were in separate cars, it felt like she was sitting beside me.
Now, she listened to me wrestle over whether to leave L.A.
“Are you scared to move?” Pam asked.
"I am," I said while driving 25 mph on a 65-mph freeway, brake-padding my way alongside my fellow commuters. "If we do, I have no idea how Tom and I will make things work while living so far from people and places we love. I'm worried about how we'll get through the stresses of moving and helping my mom without being able to meet you, or Sarah, or Carol for a hike in Laurel Canyon or lunch at Bamboo Thai."
She and I were quiet for a moment. I passed the exit I took to shows at the Hollywood Bowl, including the Joni Mitchell tribute concert I went to with girlfriends who loved her as much as I did. I began to pre-miss the city and the people I feared Tom and I might leave.
"Your question about whether I'm scared reminded me of a retreat I went to thirty years ago," I said. "We could jump from a zipline that stretched from a mountaintop to the ground. We were instructed to hold onto a T-bar and leap off the edge. The coach urged me several times to ‘step up to the mark and jump,’ but I was frozen. Eventually, he told me to express my feelings. ‘I’M SCARED! I’M SCARED! I'M SCARED!’ I yelled as I jumped."
"I didn't know you'd ever done a zipline," Pam said.
“It was quite something. It felt like I was flying. I was crying, laughing, ecstatic. At the bottom were six huge, gorgeous men, ready to catch me. I landed with my body cushioned by them.”
"Does that mean you'll move?" Pam asked.
"We'll see," I said as we wrapped up our call.
I parked and walked from the parking lot to my office, careful not to trip on the city’s signature uneven sidewalks. When I got to a newly repaved block, I looked up and saw the street lined with dazzling purple jacaranda trees.
That's when my thinking about the move began to shift; my whole idea of where I had to be was getting unwound. I imagined a coiled, old-school telephone cord stretching across the country, connecting me and my L.A. friends. Even if the cord couldn't tether me to the jacarandas, I reminded myself, there are cherry blossoms in D.C.
A few months later, Tom and I said goodbye to people and places we dearly love and moved to Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
Since then, my friends on both sides of the country have seen me through the pandemic, through unimaginable changes in our country, and through the transitions my mother faces as she ages. They also cheer me on when I want to quit working on the book that has taken years to write, and they celebrate the exciting times when my stories are published after dozens of rejections. My friends keep an eye on me. I return the favor, witnessing their most impossible and glorious moments: the rounds of chemotherapy, the losses of family and animals, the books published, and the babies born.
My most recent visit took place during one of my favorite weeks in Southern California, between Christmas and New Year's Day, when the freeways are remarkably quiet.
Just after landing, I met Pam. As we walked toward the ocean, any thoughts of being tethered to one city or the other vanished. We planted our feet in the Pacific and let the sand and water fill the spaces between our toes. I felt the need to identify myself as either an Angeleno or a Washingtonian dissolve. Our visit started a series of crosstown jaunts that would take me to friends all over the city.
Aimee and I went to an outdoor concert featuring high school and college marching bands who came from around the world to perform the next day at the Rose Parade and in pre-parade shows. It was so warm and bright that we nearly got sunburned. Then, Safoa and I spent New Year's Day with 800,000 others at the Rose Parade, marveling at the floats adorned with 50,000 flowers each, crafted by communities of hundreds of volunteers.
What I couldn't have known was that my latest trip took place a week before the region's most devastating wildfires swept through large areas of L.A. Two close friends became homeless but later found places to stay. The 100-year-old Craftsman-style building where our family and friends had gathered for our wedding was destroyed. Tom and I were among the thousands who had married there. We thought of everyone who worked at that venue—the waitstaff, groundskeepers, planners, and cooks. Where would they earn a living? The next morning, I woke up in my Maryland home, unsure of where I was, mentally packing a "go bag" in case we had to evacuate.
For days after the fires, friends outside Southern California checked in with me to ask about my loved ones in L.A. I told my Angeleno friends that people they didn't know were holding them close.
I attended a meditation retreat two weeks after the wildfires started and one week after the 2025 inauguration. It was a good time to seek respite, as it felt like my two hometowns were ablaze. Even the workshop leader confessed she wasn't sure if she had anything to offer, but she promised to try. During a guided meditation, I fidgeted at first, then settled into a comfortable position and allowed her words to drift in and out of my thoughts.
"We can endure, resist, and find solace and moments of joy through our communities and friendships," she said.
When she stopped speaking, in the quiet and stillness, I winced at first as I saw myself walking through the remnants of my friends' scorched homes. Next, I thought of all the beautiful buildings on D.C.'s National Mall. I worried about what would happen to those buildings and the people who worked in them over the next four years. Many of my D.C. friends were federal workers, just as my father had been.
Then, those images faded as I pictured my loved ones from California, D.C., and beyond. One by one, they walked in until they filled the retreat room. I was no longer bound by proximity. Being together replenished us, and I knew that geography could not separate us. We would continue to rely on one another, no matter what came next.
Laura Sturza's work has been published in Lunch Ticket, Hippocampus, Oldster, The Mindfulness Bell, Washington Writers Publishing House, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Shondaland, The Boston Globe, The LA Times, AARP's The Girlfriend, and three anthologies. Laura has completed the memoir Better Late: My Midlife First-Time Marriage, and is in the process of submitting it for publication. She was a nonfiction editor on Transformation: A Women Who Submit Anthology. Laura wrote, produced, and starred in the one-woman show, Finding the Perfect Place to Live in 111 Gyrations in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She teaches memoir writing to older adults and is inspired by their bravery and talent. laurasturza.com