I first visited Pacific Grove, California 30 years ago, passing through the town after leaving Monterey on my way to the 17-Mile Drive and Pebble Beach. At the time, when there was no GPS, I assumed that I was still in Monterey. Driving along the coast, the Pacific Ocean on my right, on my left were lovely, well-kept homes. They were not the oceanfront McMansions of today. Although prime real estate, they seemed like residences where regular people lived.
One house in particular caught my attention. It was a two-story pink home with large windows facing the beautiful blue sea located just across the street. I was fascinated and still do not know why. From that day forward, when life was stressful or difficult, I would tell my girlfriends I was going to My Little Pink House In Monterey.
I would see the home several more times through the years but it had been over a decade since we last met. During that gap, the internet allowed me to see a picture of it, transporting me via the information superhighway to the front of the house I had carried with me for decades. I came to discover that its address is actually in Pacific Grove, not Monterey, and it is not a single family home as I had thought but rather an upstairs and a downstairs unit. It didn’t matter. Its place in my heart and mind had been established so long ago that the truth could not alter what I believed.
My husband and I just spent a week in California, traveling the coast south to Los Angeles after a few days in Yosemite National Park. I was excited for him to see the house, although I would have loved to be showing it to my girlfriends who had participated in its lore, fantasizing along with me about an escape we so often needed. We found it easily; pulling up in front I used my binoculars to take a look. It was exactly as I remembered it.
Now back in my brick home in Pennsylvania, the only water in sight coming out of faucets, the bubble gum colored home is in the forefront of my mind. I find myself thinking about it frequently, just as I did when I first laid fully-sighted eyes on it in 1995. You would think I would have chosen a villa built on stilts above the crystal clear waters of Bora Bora or a Swiss chalet in the Alps, wisps of smoke wafting out of its chimney, as my mental retreat. My Little Pink House is nothing special but it sure is special to me.
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