Mom must have trained us, when we were younger. I can’t think of another explanation. It started with the outdoor pots. There were some saguaro palms, a pot of succulents, hydrangeas, and the forgotten pot of herbs. There were baby citrus trees, to be planted in the orchard come summer. There were pots below the double French doors, on the back deck, the deck with the wooden railing that was not up to code. There were pots lining the sandy pathway that led up to the side door-front door. It rained often, in the Bay winters, but never much before Christmas. The orchard had gone fairly dormant, the last of the neighborhood pomegranates hung from bare branches. The day after Christmas, we would drive down to the coast to Santa Barbara, to Baba and Pa’s. And though we had been on holiday for days at this point, though there had been many slow mornings of leisure, packing the suburban on December 26th required a minimum of three hours. This was for a few reasons.

In our younger days, we sent lists to the North Pole the day after Thanksgiving, if Mom allowed it. Even at 14, at 15, we gave gift lists to Mom. Sometimes, ten, twenty, fifty items long. Sometimes, categorized. Just ideas, Mom! Now we’ve grown older, wiser, so we just ask for one gift. In Caroline’s case this year, it was just a Tiffany bracelet. In Helena’s case, it was just a pair of Blundstone boots, followed by just a MZ Wallace bag, followed by just a pair of work pants. In Isabel’s case, requests were sent via email, one item at a time. In my case, it was just one online shopping cart at Tracksmith. Anyway, the point is, Mom likes lists. And while our lists were of priority in the days leading to Christmas, the 26th was when Mom’s list took full priority. This list contained every single task that had to be completed before we drove to Santa Barbara. You might be imagining small chores– take out the trash, fold laundry, pack a shoe bag. But the tasks were more like the items that appear on Martha Stewart’s monthly calendar. “Seed perennials.” “Clean gutters.” “Refinish dining table.” Mom’s favorite: water ALL outdoor pots. 

It was the easiest of the tasks, but the morning was challenging for another reason, and that is that Helena and Isabel, who shared the downstairs bedroom, liked to save their personal packing for the morning of departure. That left Caroline and I to pack up all communal items. This included the cooler and food bags (3-4 total, in order of importance: the car snack bag– easy access, the cooler lunch bag– medium access, retrievable at a stop, the cooler leftovers bag– for anything deemed too wasteful to throw away but perishable within the time frame of our journey. Often, these items perished on the journey, sometimes, they were consumed out of pity, and on some occasions, they were transported back home with us, if they did not in fact, perish). The food bags task was not easy, because it involved gauging every family member’s interest in a particular leftover item, and if its ranking was generally high enough, it made it into one of the two cooler bags. It also involved taking lunch orders, offerings of which were usually things like leftover steak sandwich, leftover chicken sandwich, leftovers on greens salad, and some things that we didn’t attempt to disguise, and were just served as leftovers in Tupperware form. 

There were also dog bags– their own separate category on the list– dog beds, blankets, collars, food, bowls– a relatively straightforward task. Then there was the Christmas card bag, which contained Mom’s address book, all the Christmas cards we had received and their envelopes for return addresses, the 100 or 200 copies of our Christmas photo, which we always printed at Walgreens and which always seemed to get cut off, on some edge of the 4×5 landscape, stamps, envelopes, and pens. Indeed, it was December 26th at this point, but we have always been more of a “Wishing you the best in the new year” kind of family. 

There were other bags, too, our suitcases (Helena’s was always the largest, Dad’s was always the smallest, sometimes consisting of nothing more than a double bagged Trader Joe’s paper satchell, his running shoes on top). There was a gift bag, for Baba and Pa. “The one thing, I cannot forget!” Mom would remind us all, for days leading up to the trip. There was usually a bag of oranges from the orchard tree, the winter citrus already making its appearance. A bag of knitting and a bag of magazines, for Mom’s spot in the passenger seat. So like I was saying, Caroline and I often got stuck packing the communal bags, while Dad was carrying items to and from the car, as we staged them next to the front door. (You might be wondering, if there was a baggage cut off time, like there is on the airlines, and the answer is yes. Duffels must be loaded on the bottom, of course.) And while Dad was carrying bags to and from, shouting out last calls, Mom was managing the list. Crossing off items, assigning next tasks, and adding the occasional new item. Clean screen doors– recalled from, August. Put away glass pumpkins– recalled from, November. Wash the dogs– recalled from, last week. Get the mail– certainly, we couldn’t have done that yesterday. By this point, we would be inching closer and closer to our set departure time of 10 am. And yet, the list would be growing longer and longer.

Helena and Isabel would have emerged from downstairs, only because Dad had emphasized, LAST CALL, again. Caroline would have folded the dog blankets and arranged Ella’s bed in the corner of the suburban. I would have taken and prepped the lunch orders, soft soliciting interest in the fusion of items our post-holiday fridge had to offer. It would become increasingly clear, that, the screen doors might have to wait until next August, that the pumpkins could find a place in the back of a kitchen cabinet, rather than being crawled up into the attic bins. The dogs were coming with us, and Baba and Pa surely wouldn’t mind smelly dogs. (Although come to think of it, we did once submit Reya to the DIY dog washing station at the corner of De La Vina and Bath, having arrived in Santa Barbara not ten minutes prior.) We could pick up the mail on the way out, fresh content, for the magazine bag.

But there was one uncompromisable task, that we could never leave behind, a task that required a true, bold, and final strikethrough. And that was to water the pots. They, surely, would not make it the two weeks while we were gone. So the car would be packed, the dogs loaded, the lunch perched in the back middle seat, the snack bag up front for passing back and forth. Dad would start locking things up, the only time we did lock the house, for these long periods away. Mom would be frantically reconfiguring the list, crossing off each item that could reasonably be considered completed. She would still have on her running clothes, Balega socks, and clogs, her car outfit carefully laid out for after her shower. She would have eight minutes at this point, but she would use seven out of those eight to water the pots. And then, declaring it was really time to go, she would hop in the shower, while one of us made her car latte, and finally, deem us all, ready.

I reflect on these times as I’m about to fly home to California, for the first time in three months, the longest I have ever been out of the state. I have been surprised, in these months, how little I miss it, when, for years, I couldn’t imagine ever leaving. When, in June, as I drove away from my home in Marin county, I cried looking at Mt. Tamalpais in my rearview mirror. When, in September, I visited for a friend’s wedding in the Mendocino redwoods, and I declared in my friend’s Bernal Heights kitchen on a sunny Sunday afternoon, that I would be back, just give me two years. But I got back to Raleigh, after that weekend, my red eye landed at 7 am on a Monday, and I watched the late minutes of the sunrise tinge all that green below in a hazy pink. I got home after work that evening, to witness the golden glare on the brick apartment walls across the courtyard from mine. I felt the air shift, the next month, from the drenched weight of humid summer, to a soft, welcome, cold, of my first real Fall. I rode my bike on the greenway lining Lake Raleigh, giving off early morning steam, and through the ombre canopy of Umstead Park. I returned to the neighborhood bakery, again, and again, and again, a Friday ritual. And I wondered, where is my longing for California? Where have I lost it?

Tomorrow, I will fly into Los Angeles, it looks like the skies may be gloomy at my 9:30 am arrival time. I will leave my Raleigh apartment in the dark, the first apartment I’ve called my own. A friend, who I met barely a couple of weeks ago, offered to drive me to the airport at 5:15 am, because I didn’t want to Uber. I’ll miss this apartment, while I’m away. Surely, I will arrive to LA, and smell the salt in the air, and feel the California fog on my skin, and it will feel like home. I will drive up to the Carpinteria farmhouse, through the rows of coffee lining the driveway, and the avocado trees, and Ramon will bray his welcome, and the chickens and the Navajo churros and the goats, family of three, that Mom added to the barnyard last weekend, will come out to say hello. If I’m lucky, I’ll spot one of the feral cats, one out of the five out of the fifteen Mom has adopted, that have stayed, rather than seeking out the comfortable life with canned cat food down at our neighbor Rigo’s. Five stayed, to fulfill their duty as barn cats, as rat catching cats. I’ll drive up to a house of three Ridgebacks, two doodles, and one collie, spanning the ages of 10 months to thirteen years. There will be an ever growing grocery list on the counter, a gift list tucked away in Mom’s room, a holiday cookie recipient list tacked onto the kitchen window. The sun will set over the coffee fields, maybe a sliver of winter yellow through a still rainy sky, if we’re lucky, the blood orange red that peaks, this time of year. And it will not be hard to remember, this, this is what I forgot to miss. 

I reflect on this after my own mad flurry of list making and self-tasking this afternoon. Do laundry– whites, sheets, exercise clothes from the week. Sweep floors, wipe down counters, unload, reload, unload the dishwasher, again. Put leftover lasagna in the freezer, toss leftover Brussels sprout salad, although, I did consider, for a moment, whether it might constitute a mid-flight breakfast. Pack, including an empty duffel for my “one” gift. The New Yorkers I haven’t had the time to pick up, the issues from November that I have yet to open. The satisfaction I get, from using up the last bit of things on the precipice of leaving, is monumental, and I run through the items in my head like they’re bonus points. Spinach clamshell, with eggs, for breakfast. Milk, in my 10 am latte. Salad dressing, at lunch. Dish soap, scrubbing out the lasagna pyrex. Lavender bar soap, shampoo, and my CeraVe night cream, during my evening shower ritual. 

I can wonder at the source of such satisfaction, what about leaving no last drop, no last traces, no greens to wilt in the fridge or milk that might go sour, drives me to check off these items one after the other. It might be the prospect of returning, to start fresh. It might be the concern of items perishing while I’m away, although surely my shampoo would survive on the ledge of my shower, two weeks longer. Perhaps I need not wonder what the source is, perhaps it is recognizing where it came from, what we hold onto from our years of training. Leave the house pristine, like Baba might come for a visit while you are away. I trace its source, as I write this story, in the flicker of the five candles lighting my living room. If I write long enough, I just might be able to burn their wicks down to the end. If not, blowing them out will be my one uncompromisable item, before I finally, go to bed.

As a footnote, I might add, I finished off two, half used, black pilot pens while writing this story, and had to switch to blue– one, last, extra tick of satisfaction.