One of the great things about living in a great city is that it gives you room to grow into the person you want to be. And on this day before Mother’s Day, I would like to thank San Diego for giving me the people, places and pizzas that helped me become the wise, loving, not-crazy mother I would like to think I am today.
You have to love a place where you can let a toddler burn off steam at a world-class zoo, give a voracious reader her literary fix at multiple friendly neighborhood bookstores, and travel the globe just by lifting a fork. And you have to toast a city that can make a mom feel like a magician.
So allow me to raise a mug to San Diego. On Mother’s Day weekend, this oat-milk latte made with locally roasted coffee and served with a locally baked vegan doughnut is for you. Cheers.
Balboa Park
In 1986, my husband and I got married in Balboa Park’s Casa del Prado. In 2013, our daughter, Natalie, graduated from San Diego High School in a ceremony held at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion just down the hill. In between, the jewel in San Diego’s civic crown treated my family the way it treats visitors and locals alike. Which is to say, like royalty.
It still does.
Camps at the San Diego Junior Theatre and the Girl Scouts’ Balboa Park campus made for summer vacations stuffed with music, crafts and camaraderie. Weekends could bring a trip to the San Diego Zoo, a spin on the historic Balboa Park Carousel, or some quality time with our fossilized friends at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
As any mom could tell you, when your child is happy, you’re happy. My child is a grown-up now, but Balboa Park still means visiting the zoo, ing our museums, and keeping a standing family date for the annual International Food Festival.
And whether we are sitting in a plush seat at the Old Globe Theatre or watching the diverse world go by from a shady spot by the Botanical Building, Balboa Park is a happiness gift card whose balance never runs low.
Bookstores
There are many advantages to raising a bookworm. Books are bribes you can feel good about. They are babysitters that never flake out. They are entertainment that doesn’t require batteries, Wi-Fi or a case-sensitive .
Perhaps best of all, bookworms love bookstores. And for a book-loving mom in San Diego, that means the decompression chamber of your dreams is just a short drive away.
When Natalie was younger and chain bookstores were anchoring every mall in town, that meant weekend afternoons at Borders or Barnes & Noble, where she could easily spend a rapt hour (or more) in the children’s section, while I checked out the guilty-pleasure magazines or must-read bestsellers that I couldn’t otherwise cram into my working-parent life.
And now, loving books means loving San Diego’s independent bookstores.
It means stocking up on small-press treasures and local-author offerings at the North Park Book Fair and The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Festival of Books. It means dropping in on the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in the Midway District for Dungeons & Dragons sessions and sci-fi offerings, and browsing at The Book Catapult in South Park, where mother and daughter go in for one novel and leave with three.
It means comfort and joy that you can hold in your hands and treasure in your heart. Then, now and always.
Food, glorious food
Boba tea every Friday. Sushi almost every weekend. Slices from Pizzeria Luigi, pad-see-ew from Saffron Thai, handcrafted everything from Eclipse Chocolate. Do you see a pattern emerging?
Unlike my childhood, which was a white-bread blur of Hamburger Helper, frozen chicken-pot pies and special-occasion dinners at Bob’s Big Boy, my daughter grew up with an international palate fueled by local shops, food trucks and restaurants. With the help of San Diego’s astounding collection of cuisines, we were able to raise an omnivore who is just as crazy about pho and butter chicken as she is about burgers and fries.
Thanks to my husband, I do not cook dinner as often as my mom cooked dinner. And on those nights when cooking is the last thing on any of our minds, we know that San Diego’s crazy-delicious food scene will provide. And it will taste like home.
San Diego Comic-Con
We hate clothes shopping, love Taylor Swift and live for ice cream. And then there is San Diego Comic-Con, which has helped us forge a mother-daughter bond of Hulk-like proportions.
Since I am usually working and Natalie is usually combing the Exhibition Hall floor in search of original artwork, funky pins and Funko figures, we do not experience Comic-Con together. Not physically, anyway.
But when we both head out for the day with our backpacks, badges and game plans, we enter a shared world of obsessive fandom that feels like it belongs to just us. And a few thousand of our closest friends.
We know how to navigate the lines, snag a good seat at a packed , and survive on peanut-butter sandwiches and adrenaline. We know how good it feels to be with our people, even when they are dressed like “Walking Dead” zombies and carrying extremely realistic machetes.
When it’s over, we collapse on our entryway floor to compare swag, discuss our favorite cosplay sightings and thank the pop-culture gods that we live in the city that made this miracle possible. And then we start thinking about what to order for dinner.
Because as any San Diegan knows, superheroes are everywhere. And sometimes, they’re wearing chef’s hats.
