For the first time all summer, our little family of five is reunited in the place where it all began 29 years ago: San Francisco, California.
We’re enjoying the fruits of all the technological pioneering that has made the Bay Area the city of the future: we’re staying in an Airbnb just around the corner from Katie’s Bernal Heights apartment; the kids are whizzing around in Uber vehicles to places the parents don’t feel like fighting traffic to get to; we ordered Friday night burritos through Postmates on-demand delivery service and settled in for a cozy night of Olympics viewing as the fog came in and swirled on the hills around us.
It’s our first visit to San Francisco since Katie moved out to take a job almost one year ago, and it’s a mark of pride to see how she has carved out a busy and fulfilling new life. We made the obligatory parental jaunt to her office in Redwood City to meet her co-workers at Ohana Re, the luxury real estate company where the least expensive unit runs about $3 million dollars. Not in our cards, but it’s nice to imagine what it would be like to own one of those places in the garden spots of the world.
In true egalitarian start-up fashion, every single person—from the president to the intern—is set up in a cube all laid out in a very large room. It is reminiscent of the newsroom where I worked in my own 20s, a wide playground of openness and collaboration. Opportunities for learning and advancement abound: Katie’s boss is going out on maternity leave for the next three months; during that time, Katie will assume her responsibilities, reporting directly to the president. It is a big task to be sure, but what an awesome opportunity to rise to the challenge and flourish.
She shares an apartment in San Francisco with two roommates that she met through the house-hunting process and they are both terrific people with interesting lives. Monica is the poster child for encouraging girls to get into the STEM disciplines. A math standout at North Carolina State, she decided to double-major in computer science as well. She participated in a number of hack-a-thons and made a name for herself on her college website; a summer internship at a tech company solidified her reputation in the college tech circles.
Lo and behold, her junior year of college, she received a phone call from a recruiter at Google. They flew her out to headquarters in Mountain View, and five interviews later, she had a job. I use Google multiple times a day to search for information and also am a huge fan of Google Maps, which gets me everywhere many times a day. But Google is about way more than tracking down information and getting from here to there; Monica moves from one project to another in teams—she’s been involved with drone development and now the self-driving car.
She says Google is still growing quickly, so girls, especially, sign up for the math and science courses and become the next Google recruit. It sounds like an awesome place to work.
It is all so different three decades later, and still so very familiar. The biggest difference, of course, is affordability. The two story flat on Russian Hill where I lived in my 20s, where we marveled at how the landlord had paid an amazing $450,000 to purchase, is now worth $3.7 million.
The three bedroom two bath house that was the very first Bill and I bought together for $287,000 and then sold for about the same, would list for just over one million dollars.
Not only would we find it difficult to get back into the San Francisco housing market, so would most of the rest of the world. Which is why the city and environs are becoming the bastion of well-paid tech employees and out-of-town speculators driving up the market prices.
This is a welcome interlude of family bonding time that has been rare this entire year. We’ve been doing the touristy things—yes, the first place we hit was Fisherman’s Wharf to see the barking sea lions and taste the walkaway clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. We did a family session at SoulCycle on Union Street, the capital of yuppiedom when I lived here. SoulCycle is not just a fitness class; it’s an experience, described as a phenomenon that has “revolutionized indoor cycling and taken the world of fitness by storm.”
All I know is that I survived 45 minutes of intense cycling in a body-heat driven furnace of a room with about 40 cyclists pedaling towards nirvana. Bill and I were clearly the oldest in the roomful of 20-somethings (and Will), noted by the instructor who cheerfully called me out to the entire group, “Great job, Mom!”
It’s ironic that as I was waxing sentimental about the olden days in this city and how I’ve missed it, Molly told me that as much as she’s enjoying vacation, she is homesick for Plainsboro: for her house and our dogs, for Sam’s Club and H-Mart and the Asian Bistro, for Planet Fitness and for the West Windsor Farmers’ Market. The big takeaway here is that home is where your family is; as with people, with the places you live, remember to love the one you’re with and not to regret the one you left.
suburban mom,
