Loyalties

Last night John and I watched game #1 of the World Series: Rangers at Giants. I said, “You root for Texas & I’ll root for San Francisco.” He had no problem with that because he has such animosity toward California and undying love for Texas. But for me it wasn’t so simple.

Growing up in Southern California, I felt that I was the luckiest girl in the world to grow up where the sun shone most of the year (barring of course the June gloom at the beach), and if we did want to experience snow, we could get in the car and be in the mountains in a few hours.

It wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco in 1970 that I discovered  everyone did not love L.A.  We were considered shallow and unsophisticated, more into our looks than books. The Bay Area was a hub of intellectual and cultural activity.    When I moved to Central California in 1990, I made friends with people who had grown up in places as far away as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky. My husband was from Iowa, for goodness sake, which we Angelinos thought of as some sort of purgatory. I remember watching the news, as a child, and seeing reports of blizzards in the Midwest, saying, “Why would anyone live there?”

My father always brought up the weather when we talked. The temperature in his back yard never got over 80, or under 60. He didn’t own a coat. He spent most of his time in zories and thin cotton slacks and shirts.  He never understood that I actually grew to love cold weather (but not snow, which was just too much of a pain to shovel and hazardous to drive in) once I had leaned how to layer my clothing.

Now here I am in the South, where for my first month the weather has been hotter than normal and the sun is so bright!  How I’ll deal with summer I have no idea.  But, do I long for coolness San Francisco? Not at all. Do I wish I were in California. Not really.

I suppose my strongest loyalty is to the L.A. Lakers, because I’ve followed them since 1977. When Randy Newman sings “I love L.A.” I think, yeah, I do love L.A.  Yet when I’m there I just want to leave. I can’t stand the congestion and the unfriendly, snooty attitude of people on the streets.

My loyalties even vacillate with my pets: Some days I can’t stand my dog. He follows me from room to room when he’s in the house; when we walk he pulls on the leash; he eats God-knows-what that he finds in the road. But when he calms down and lets me brush him, I look into his big brown eyes and feel an inkling of something akin to love. But then I’ll  see someone walking a smaller, calmer dog and I’ll wish Walter were different.

I won’t touch on politics except to say I was raised by Liberals, married a Conservative and became a Libertarian in 1996. This seems to protect me from either side trying to “convert” me to their views.

So, where are my loyalties? Am I just a wishy-washy sort of gal, or is it that I can’t stand the idea of being against anyone. What’s always in the back of my mind is that we’re all struggling to live our lives and none of us can outrun the Grim Reaper. So I tend to look for similarities between us rather than differences.

Go Giants! . . .or Rangers.