24
DIANA WAS THE last person I saw before I left for Santa Cruz. Edwin picked me up at her house, and there in her front yard, I said goodbye to her. I waved to her from the car window. As we drove down Colorado Boulevard, I promised myself that one day I would tell everyone about Diana, about this woman who had come into my life when I had most needed someone, and how she had changed it for the better.
On our drive up to Santa Cruz, Edwin said, “Your father is very proud of you, you know. He told me so.”
I didn’t say anything. I looked out the window, saw the fields stretch out before us as we drove up the 5 North. I thought about my father, about how eighteen years before he had been working in the fields near here, sleeping in an abandoned car in order to save money to build us a house.
“Try to understand him,” Edwin said. “He knew you were leaving at the end of the summer. He didn’t want to be alone once you left.”
“I could have stayed with him,” I said.
“For how long? One day, you’ll grow up and get married. Have your own family. You wouldn’t stay with him forever. He knew that. Besides, he didn’t want to hold you back.”
When Edwin and I got to UCSC, many students were already there moving in. Because I was transferring as a junior, I got to stay at the student apartments at Kresge East, not the dorms. I sat in the car with Edwin while I watched students and their parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters carrying boxes. I saw fathers patting their sons on the back, mothers crying while clinging to their daughters. “Do you need anything else?” I heard them ask their children. “We’ll miss you,” they said.
I thought about my father. I thought about my mother. I thought about Mago, Carlos, and Betty. I wished they were here now, sharing this special day with me. But we were three hundred miles apart, and this time, it was I who had left.
Edwin helped me take my few belongings to my apartment. It only took a couple of trips. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, although I wasn’t sure.
He pulled out of the parking lot and waved goodbye, promising to come back every weekend to visit me. It made me feel good that he wouldn’t be too far. I watched him drive away, and as soon as he was out of sight, I began to walk. It was late afternoon, the sun would be going down, and I wanted to see as much of the campus as I could before it got too dark. I walked and immersed myself in the redwood trees, smelling the pungent scent of their needles. The sky here was the bluest I’d ever seen. The air the purest I’d ever inhaled. I felt all the tension in my body begin to fade. There was a beauty here I had never imagined. I heard the wind rustling the trees. I spotted a family of deer, and I stopped and looked at them as they foraged for food. I couldn’t believe there were deer here! At the sight of them, I knew I’d made a good choice to leave Los Angeles and come here. I felt like Anne of Green Gables and her Avonlea. Like her, I had found my place of beauty.
I continued my walk and ended up by Porter College, at the meadow where I could see the ocean shining blue and streaked with orange. I thought about the first time I had seen the ocean in Santa Monica. I thought about my father holding my hand, about how afraid I had been that he would let go of me.
I looked at the ocean, and I realized there was no need to be afraid. I had gotten this far, despite everything. Now, all I had to do was focus on why I was there—to make my dreams a reality. I closed my eyes, and I saw myself at the water’s edge, holding tightly to my father’s callused hand.
And I let it go.