California, As Is

Made up my mind, make a new start I'm going to California with an aching in my heart — Led Zeppelin, Going to California “Decided” may be too generous a word. It suggests two calm adults sitting across from each other at a sensible table, perhaps with tea, making a thoughtful list of pros and cons. What actually happened was more like life dismantled itself around us piece by piece until California began to look less like a destination and more like the emergency exit. First came the closure of Rowdy Mermaid. Then came the end of Jamba’s role as CEO after the brand’s acquisition. Thirteen years of work, friendships, ambition, identity, and the deeply held belief that if you built something from nothing, surely something of it would remain. Very little remained. Then came inflation. A trip to the grocery store became an exercise in courage. Limes were a dollar. Avocados were five. Lettuce had apparently joined the luxury-goods market and was now ten dollars a head. Every grocery run...

Sexton Road is in West Sebastopol, in what we were told is the “banana belt” of western Sonoma County. This information came from a very chatty handyman we ultimately decided not to hire, which means it may be either local wisdom or something he invented while standing in our driveway. According to him, the banana belt is a miraculous pocket of weather where you can grow anything. Anything. Bananas? Probably not. But the general idea was persuasive. The property already had pears, apples, walnuts, blackberries, roses, grapes, cactus, more apples, an Asian pear, and a plum tree. It was less a yard than an unsupervised fruit bin. And Sexton Road sits just off Bodega Highway, the road that carries you west toward Bodega Bay and the ocean, which is only about thirteen miles away. Around us were vineyards, apple orchards, sustainable vegetable farms, roadside stands, and restaurants serving things like rockfish tacos, breakfast polenta covered in edible flowers, local honey, artisan bread,...

We were eager to begin our new life on Sexton Road. So eager, in fact, that we persuaded the buyers of our house in Lyons to close early in order to accommodate our ten-day closing in Sebastopol. The schedule was breathtakingly efficient. Close on Lyons: July 7. Close on Sexton Road: July 8. Move an entire family, its belongings, vehicles, plants, emotional crises, and one unauthorized rabbit across several states: somewhere in between. Before leaving Colorado, we agreed to meet the new owners of our Lyons house on July 5 and give them a tour of the property. This was not simply a house tour. It was an oral transfer of civilization. We explained the hot tub, the irrigation system, the HVAC, the whole-house fan, the French drain, the garden, and the identities and personal histories of various plants. Erin had arranged the meeting before the official closing. The buyers arrived with their two small children, and we exchanged hugs, handshakes, and the strained smiles of people participat...

  We arrived at Sexton Road on the afternoon of July 8, 2026. There was no tea ceremony. There was no quiet moment on the porch. There was only the unlocking of the gate, the opening of the lockbox, and the discovery that the property came with a ring of seven keys. Every door had its own lock. The house had a key. The studio had a key. The garage had a key. The accessory unit had a key. Other doors appeared to have keys simply because no one had yet thought to make them match. It felt strangely special. Each building on the property was its own little island: the house, the ADU, the future RV area where another ADU might eventually go, the studio, the garage, the freestanding garden bathroom. Together, they formed an archipelago. Our own private chain of islands within the broader banana belt. We walked around in a daze, trying doors, peering through windows, and attempting to understand what, exactly, we now owned. Then I remembered the U-Haul. The truck had to be emptied. The Hi...

The next morning, we woke to find the property swallowed in fog. Not ordinary fog. This was theatrical fog. The kind that turns a backyard into a Victorian mystery and makes every overgrown shrub look as though it may be concealing either a deer, an abandoned vehicle, or a witness. The grass was impossibly high. Tree branches hung all th e way to the ground. Several bushes had grown large enough to hide machinery beneath them, and the entire yard disappeared gradually into a pale gray distance. It was beautiful. It was also impossible to tell what we owned. I finally made the cup of tea I had imagined drinking on the porch and followed the concrete path into the garden. The path curved between grapevines, passed a tree that had apparently been cut down without sufficient conviction and had since grown back in several directions, circled a magnificent magnolia, and continued toward the ADU. The little building was covered in white shingles and stood behind a brown picket fence overgrown...

Still thinking about the day before, I woke early to a much drier morning. The fog had thinned, the air was warmer, and I sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and listening to music while, across the street, three enormous white Colorado Mountain Dogs barked at the mailboxes. They had been doing this for days. I was not sure what offense the mailboxes had committed, but the dogs appeared committed to making sure it never happened again. My plan for the morning was simple: unpack the boxes stacked in the garage. But first, I needed to clean the garage. The garage reminded me of the one from my childhood in Southern California: dark exposed two-by-fours, dusty corners, layers of old spiderwebs, and the vague feeling that something might be living behind whatever you were reaching for. Only this garage had apparently spent decades supporting a thriving mouse and rat population. When we first unloaded the truck, we had noticed the droppings and decided we would deal with them late...

I woke in the middle of the night worrying about the ADU. More specifically, I was trying to solve, at three in the morning, how to turn a moldy ten-by-sixteen-foot outbuilding into a bedroom for our daughter, and what exactly to do with the freestanding bathroom in the garden that had wonky plumbing, no hot water, questionable electricity, and the architectural stature of a drive-thru wedding chapel. Then I heard something. A tiny sound. Nibbling. I removed one of my earplugs. These earplugs were designed to suppress jet noise. Grey’s crying had not penetrated them when he was an infant. Somehow, this did. I listened. Scratching. Running. Chewing. Wood, perhaps. Or wires. Rats! Or mice. In the attic. Something else for the list. By morning, though, I felt surprisingly refreshed. The valley was covered in fog again and the air was cool. I could get used to this. Erin was already outside on work calls, periodically announcing that the internet had stopped working. I made a ment...