sign me up, santa fe

a high-desert escape

It felt very bad to be in Los Angeles right now.

After losing our house in the Eaton fire, we shuttled between various rentals and friends’ houses, living in 4 places in the last 6 weeks. We carted around our donated things in tote bags and brand-new brand-donated suitcases (Beis, you have a FOREVER fan in me). Every day, I would wake up and apply to various schools, desperately trying to keep my kids with their equally fire-displaced friends to give them some sense of normalcy. I would then pore through rental listings, visit rentals, apply to astronomically-priced rentals, not get those rentals because we’re competing against thousands of other fire evacuees, feel despair about where we even belong now, attend miraculously generous and welcoming fire victim donation centers, and drive around in horrible LA traffic, something I’m less accustomed to now because among its 900 other magical features, Altadena does not have traffic.

After several weeks of this, we grew cold. My friend in Santa Fe sent me a beautiful rental listing there. I filmed a Nickelodeon show in New Mexico last year and said then that I couldn’t quite picture living there, but in this heartbroken headspace? I wanted all the space and quiet and peace and art and green chiles it could give me. The rental listing kept beckoning to me, but that was another hurdle - finding a school for the kids in New Mexico, having our insurance approve out-of-state ALE coverage, figuring out how to work remotely, and on, and on.

In the end, we made it work, deciding to move here for just under 6 months, until the summer, when the rental market hopefully calms down in Los Angeles, or we go somewhere else, who knows.

Last week, we packed up a rental Chrysler Pacifica with suitcases bursting with beautiful clothes, toys, and books that our wonderful, magical, munificent friends had donated to us, and we hit the open road. Just kidding. It took us 3 hours to get from LA to Claremont (a distance of 32 miles). It was as if Los Angeles was saying “Oh yeah, you think you’re gonna leave? FUCK YOU. Watch this.”

I drove in my electric car (great for cities, bad for road trips to high altitudes) and Tyler drove the Pacifica, and every step of the way I perseverated over what he was thinking there, in his van full of garbage bags stuffed with donated Squishmallows. It was my idea to spend a few months in Santa Fe, and though he of course joined the idea willingly, I knew it would take him actually being there to feel good about the decision.

Photo by my husband, who has finally gotten into to family photography right when his wife (me) is at peak trauma-haggard (not shown).

As we crossed out of Arizona and hit a snowy winterland, and the kids in the backseat looked up from their iPads for the first time in 5 hours to marvel at the white peaks, I wondered if he was shaking his head, thinking, What have I gotten myself into? This isn’t my topography. This isn’t home.

As we went a bit down in elevation and hit the high desert, with sandy mauve stretches of dust and rock, and a Simpsons-quality sky above, I wondered if he was crinkling his nose like he always does when he’s annoyed or displeased or trying to hold back laughter, or if he was calmly accepting our new reality, geopolitical or otherwise.

Just a classic codependent response to a new environment, I guess!!!! Which of course was all just projecting - what had I gotten ourselves into? What have I done to us, uprooting us for (just a few months!!) to a new land, with new (clean) air, snowy peaks, pine trees galore, where everything closes at 7???

Rowan looked around as we drove up what was to become our new street.

“It’s sandy. Which makes sense. Because it’s almost in the name of the city. SAND-y Fe.”

Before I clarified what Santa Fe meant (Holy Faith, but I definitely had to look that up, I figured it was Saint Iron? idk…#sciencegirlie I guess), I paused, as I always do when they say something wrong but cute and I want it to stick, just a little longer, because that means they will stay small, just a little longer. I imagine this is also why my parents kept referring to magazines as “mazagines” until I learned way too late, honestly, maybe in my teens, that it was the other way around. (Don’t worry, I still found my way to success in Adult Spelling Bees years later.)

(That’s us right there in the middle, a newborn Christmas tree, hoping to grow up and be taken to a beautiful house somewhere great.)

I played Beirut’s Santa Fe as we drove up the gravel road to our new home, welcomed by hanging ristras (bouquets of red chiles) at the door.

The future right now is a scary, sad, open road. It’s bigger than I can even begin to process, but hoping this sleepy, sunny town provides some of the peace we’re looking for right now. Everywhere we go, we hear the phrase “This is unprecedented.” The insurance companies, the lawyers we spoke to today regarding the mass torte lawsuit against the Altadena power company, our friends, the news, our family. What has happened to us and our community feels bizarre, too big, too scary, too abstract to get a handle on.

In her newsletter, Ann Friedman referred to the idea of “WHIMSY AS AMBITION,” and that’s my new mantra, going forward. I’ve taped it to my desk. Whenever I feel like crying and feeling completely hopeless, I’m turning back to this, which was a large undercurrent of my vibe anyway B.F. (Before Fire), and I need to get back to it. The happiness of my kids and my own sanity depend on it. Whimsy as ambition.

And whatever comes through the door
I'll see you face to face
All by your place

Sign me up, Santa Fe
And call your son
Sign me up, Santa Fe