  This is a photo of my grandmother and I in 1982. I was 12. It was taken in front of the John Wayne statue at Long Beach Airport (John Wayne Airport), on my first trip to California ever. At the time, we lived in Phoenix, having been recently transplanted from Chicago. It was a simple family vacation; we did the touristy stuff like Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, the Queen Mary/Spruce Goose, and Huntington Beach. I remember it as a good trip for those things, but mostly I remember it as the first time I was ever in love with a place. Standing at baggage claim, I looked at the differently-dressed people, I felt the moist air and saw the colors of California. I was hooked. I loved Southern California on sight as much as I had hated Phoenix two years earlier. I can still run the images through my brain like a movie reel. There's a clip looking out our rental car window from the 405 freeway, getting lost. A shot out of the porthole in our stateroom on the Queen Mary. Sorting through postcards on the bed in Dana Point. Standing on the beach, looking out at endless blue water. All the cars, tons of cars everywhere.
At some point, I made up my mind that I would live in that place someday. Since then I've lived in lots of places, and some of them have felt like home. My first glimpse of Germany felt that way, and so does Chicago still. But no place gave me the feeling that I belonged somewhere like Southern California did.
I had never really belonged anywhere up to the time of that trip. I just read another article that blasts California and takes the usual potshots at the traffic, the hodegpodge architecture, and the vast spread of Los Angeles County. I can't deny that traffic gives me a headache just like anyone else, and 2nd Street between Figueroa and Larchmont isn't exactly a string of Parisian Boulangeries. But something connects me to this place and makes me feel as if I was meant to come here. The beach in Malibu, the trendy cafes in Los Feliz and the galleries in Laguna Nigel definitely outweigh the potholes in Historic Philipinotown.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I still see the kid who got stuck on a place and never forgot to come back. Then I look at this photo and I see the kid who had no idea what his life would be, only that he wanted some part of it spent where he was standing right at that moment. Yeah, it's weird to look at a photo and know what you were thinking at the time. But I do. It's hard to see behind the goofy glasses and the hair, but the kid in the knit tie is having a religious experience. 
