Turns Out You Can Always Go Home, But Be Prepared to Dig

From Buffy to Scarlett to Harry Potter to Shrek to Miss Jane Austen, my precious hoard

The leaves are blazing red and orange, fluttering restlessly in that crisp wind that calls to mind cold nights, warm fires and steaming cups of hot chocolate. The very air is like a siren-song to findingmoxie. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, but findingmoxie, you LOVE summer and you were born in the summer, how can you rejoice in the autumn? Well, after a long summer--and this year was the first proper, getting into broiling hot cars, sleeping without a stitch on, watermelon in the fridge summer--I simply YEARN for the feel of a fuzzy scarf wrapped around my neck and thick socks promising my feet a lovely winter's hibernation. But, for the rest of you, who may not embrace the creeping cold as much as I shall this year, I bring you news of summer. This past summer, to be exact.

The Findingmoxies spent summer in Los Angeles this year, as part of our gear up to move back to London. And before you imagine it as a temperate coastal Los Angeles, something achingly cool like Santa Monica or Venice, let me stop you right there. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, a deeply inland enclave, some 40 minutes away from downtown LA and Santa Monica. It is not the distance to the beach that I bemoan here, but inland in southern California could mean arid desert at the worst and arid desert built over with asphalt and malls at best.

In fact, I loved the distance to the beach. When we were teens, we'd head out to the beach on the hottest days of the year, driving through the canyons, windows down in my friend's hatchback Honda Civic because the air-con didn't work and you could literally feel the minute you crossed out of the valley. The hot air that was blasting your face and bushing out your hair turned balmy, cool even and soothed your feverish skin. That moment is one of the best things about growing up where I did.

Pretty much how it was in my day too

Mr Findingmoxie and nearly every other non-California native assumes that summer holidays were a child's paradise, where the minute I rolled out of bed, I was outdoors on my bike, riding about town, glorying in the bright sun and taking frequent ice cream breaks, only to stumble home for dinner at twilight, the day's possibilities exhausted. Hmmm. Here's what really happened. I would wake up sweating, pjs stuck to me and my head feeling three times its size (what I now find comparable to a jaeger hangover). I'd have a glass of ice water for breakfast, open the back door to water my plants (my granddad and I used to garden together) only to be assaulted by the first blaze of sun, hustle back into the cool dim living room and settle in for a day's TV. Lunch was mac 'n' cheese out of the box, Little Mermaid was our preferred viewing and only at 4pm, when the sun began gilding the valley in shades of gold and shadows of berry, would my sister and I pour out into the backyard for handstands in the pool or where there was no pool, a lawless game of badminton (which we called badMINGton). That's right. We HID from the scorching sun. Actually, the best time to swim was at 10pm, the pool would be so warm, it was like a bath and the pool light shimmered through your limbs--that's as close to paradise a valley kid can get if you ask me. That's the life of a kid growing up inland.

So hot, BBQ feels room-temperature

4th of July Alfresco

Back in the valley with my parents for the summer, Mr Findingmoxie, wanting nothing more than to jump on his bike and cycle through Malibu Canyon and me, wanting nothing more than to live in the mall, where the air was guaranteed to be cool. Fourth of July saw us having a BBQ and valiantly trying to eat outdoors in 40/90+ degree heat, a standing fan plugged in by extension cord, 'cooling' the patio. We were giddy enough to ignore the sweat dripping down our backs and enjoyed ice-cold beers as long as we could--'bout half an hour--and then we were back indoors, putting on a rousing ping pong tournament.

Needless to say, I tried to sunbathe, guzzling ice-cold diet pepsi and toughing it out. But when I became too slippery to hold sun cream or my headband, I had to call it quits. (Which led to findingmoxie's first ever self-tanning spray experience. I know, I know. But I couldn't stay yellow all summer. And it was kind of fun, I had a hoot reading poetry aloud to myself in an 'English' accent to pass the drying time. FYI, brown girls can go orange.)

The end of the summer was inching closer and with it, Mr Findingmoxie was flying back to the UK to get us settled. It's a lot harder to fly off the cuff or by the seat of your pants when you've got a chatty cat, so we had to trust that Mr Findingmoxie would find a home that would take us all and more importantly, send for us! Facing weeks alone with a nearly comatose black cat, I had to come up with a pastime. I probably picked the stupidest pastime for August, but that realization came much later when I was sitting in the sweltering garage picking spiderwebs out of my hair. I decided to sort my childhood things that were boxed in the garage. This was parts obsessive-compulsive need for organization of all my things and parts convinced a forgotten treasure trove awaited me in 15 year old boxes.

I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in Excavation Me. And it was glorious. Gloriously hard, gloriously funny and gloriously enlightening. My body became a lean-mean lifting machine as I hauled boxes around and up stairs. My sweat was the sweat of the righteous. And oh, what I unearthed. I unearthed old journals, all my precious things from long before I thought of things as precious, my Buffy madness in its entirety, a tea-stained pocket dictionary which practically wrote my Masters dissertation on its own, all my Nancy Drew books, a seriously clunky pair of mary janes and a seriously rad Egyptian mummy rucksack (which is back in rotation, oh yeah).

Found

Best of all, I unearthed that ridiculously enthused, slightly awkward, chatterbox of a girl I left behind in my parents' garage. I had always found her deeply, deeply embarrassing and would cringe away from memories of her--like everyone else about their twelve year old selves, I imagine. I mean, I used to scribble in a journal from front cover to back cover. What could I possibly have had to say that would justify writing it ALL down? And having read through some excerpts, not much. After all, nothing much happened in the valley. And yet. And yet. There was something endearing and hilarious about this girl who wrote every single thought she'd ever had and every single conversation she'd ever had (not too many, I chattered and very few people chattered back, yes, I was that child). She dreamed where her life was going to go--and I'd forgotten this, but this gauche valley girl wanted to be an international jet-setter, when she wasn't busy sleuthing or flirting with tall, dark handsome men, think Anne of Green Gables meets Nancy Drew meets Scarlett O'Hara meets Amelia Peabody--and unabashedly wrote it all down. And I LOVED her for it.

The Impractical, roller-skating in a bikini

the serious neighborhood journalist

the clown

the princess

It was like meeting all the versions of myself in one summer and they all became superimposed over the valley landscape. Suddenly, when I was driving to the gym, I would recall my favourite streets, where my long ago friends lived and where the cool kids I used to tutor lived. It was surreal and wonderful. At the risk of sounding all new-age, by the end of the summer, I felt as if I had taken in and absorbed all these holograms of me and finally, finally found a central findingmoxie. Me in its purest sense. I know it sounds like hooey, but the feeling was indescribable. It was a massive sense of well-being, peace, and pride. Maybe everyone else was already there, but after this last year of upheaval and loss, I needed to make that peace. It was like coming home. The best kind of home--the kind you carry around with you.

Anyway, if your stuff is living in boxes somewhere, jump in and excavate. It's the new yoga.