Paradise

When my dad, a New Jersey boy, retired from the Navy in 1948 and bought a house in Pasadena, he must have thought he had found Paradise. Southern California looked like paradise in those days, a land of orange groves, great weather year-round, and a house on a lot filled with apricot, lemon and avacado trees. Indeed, dad talked all of his siblings into moving to Southern California but after a large earthquake in the nearby desert only a year after their arrival, all but one high-tailed it back to New Jersey where they'd feel safe. But we stayed, and slowly paradise grew into something else. While I was in the Army, my parents and brother moved to Medford, Oregon, and the northwest would become our home for most of the subsequent years. Yet when I visit Pasadena, I feel nostalgic and feel a little bit homesick. Good memories of childhood.