My Origin Story

Family matters and what made me.

This has been a repeated question. Can you tell us your story? What is your family like? What’s your parents’ story? This may be an unconventional and far too long answer, but this is my origin story. I’ll be back on Sunday with regularly scheduled travel programming. If this isn’t your jam, no hard feelings whatsoever – no need to unsubscribe, I will only tell this tale once :)

It all started when my mom met my dad, at Cantinetta Antinori in Florence.

But let’s back up.

If I’m going to answer this question I’m going to start with the ancestors that directly impacted me. I feel like people often skip that, and I feel it’s important to keep family history alive.

My mom is also Bay Area born and bred, East Bay for her, although Sausalito and the City became her home after high school.

My mom was the first born to my grandparents, Joyce and Jack. They were essentially set up in childhood, because their parents were friends (not an actual arranged marriage, let’s be clear). Oakland was home for both, Castlemont their high school.

My grandma wasn’t an easy mom, but she was the most incredible grandma in the world. We called her Nani (every grandchild spells it differently). She was a matriarch, through and through. Born in Oakland but she spend her childhood until 11 in Lima, Peru, the oldest (and only daughter) of four. My great-grandma, Grandma Connie, was also a matriarch. The softest, sweetest, kindest, cutest woman you’d ever meet. A tiny woman, like me. And my grandma was the fiercest, boldest, most unapologetic (I do get it from her). She was a grand master bridge player and the best cook in the world and the best storyteller and keeper of every arm of our family. I am my grandma’s granddaughter, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

My grandpa, Grandpa Jack, was the All-American, tall, handsome, genteel gentleman. He worked his whole career as a sound engineer at KTVU 2. He also invented some version of the skateboard, or so the story goes. It was called the sidewalk ski. I get part of my imagination from him. The punnet square did not align to get his verticality, nor blonde hair, nor blue eyes, nor musicality - oh well!

Nani and Grandpa Jack got divorced when my uncle went to college (I have the best uncle in the world, and that may be a reason I’m so picky with men these days), and they both found new loves of their life. My grandma once said, after her second signature nightly martini, “I knew it was doomed when he didn’t want to have sex very often after our wedding night.” But they did stay together for the kids, until they didn’t and each found their match.

For my Nani, it was Grandpa Bob, who she started dating after a Castlemont High School reunion, where he also went. He was a championed Oakland firefighter, and the world’s best garage tinkerer. Like my Grandpa Jack, he was gentle and soft, balancing my grandma’s fierce and grand.

For my Grandpa Jack, it was my Grandma Gloria, my last remaining grandparent. She is from Curitiba, Brazil, and is sunshine in human form. They moved to Brazil, to be close to her family, just before I was born. Sadly, I didn’t get to know my Grandpa Jack and Grandma Gloria, the way I knew Nani and Grandpa Bob. But, whenever we would visit Brazil, my grandpa would grace us with his magnificent piano playing, and my grandma with her genuine happiness at every turn. While it is a blessing to have grandparents physically close to you, I feel grateful to have had a reason to visit Brazil many times, from a young age.

When my grandma died my Freshman year of college at UCLA, I was (and still am) gutted. Everyone loves their grandma (most), but I was obsessed with mine. I remember once I had strep throat for the umpteenth time, and I’d been home sick for many days. My mom had to go back to work, but I was old enough to fend for myself at home. She asked what I was going to do all day, and I said “talk to Nani.”

A quick aside, she loved elephants, and staying at Hotel Elephant felt like a hotel hug.

My mom’s side of the family is bigger, but I’m not particularly close with many people. I love them all, of course. I really, really wish my Uncle (and aunt) and only first cousins didn’t live in Colorado. I’ve always been obsessed with them, too. I have a lot of family in the East Bay (pretty much all Danville), and a lot of distants I’ve never met in Peru, of which I’m unsure of my actual relation.

Part of the reason that I’m not so close with them is that I’m the only person in my generation that lives here in the Bay Area (where the majority of us do). Growing up, my second cousins were the closest to me in age, but they were graduating college as I was graduating kindergarten. Growing up, I saw myself as my grandma’s little sidekick at all the family gatherings, and she always made me feel included. Or, I knew that Grandpa Bob would always play a game with me, as he was often itching to cut the small talk with the grown ups. I’ve always felt more at home with the oldest people in the family.

But while I’m not particularly “close with the family,” my mom very much is. She’s a great niece and aunt and cousin. On Christmas Eve, at my second cousin’s, it was really beautiful watching my kid (to varies degrees) third cousins open their gifts from Auntie Mitzi (if you use this name and are not part of the family, you are in big trouble!). My mom goes out of her way to remember and make time for everyone in the family and these kids really, really appreciate it. I hope I get to make my mom a grandmother, and watch her thrive in that role.

My mom’s childhood has less anecdotes to share, but it was a true middle class upbringing, filled with family. She got the short stick a lot, and the nub of that stick naturally still lingers today.

Like my grandma, my mom is and has always been a social butterfly. Just like me, her friends are old friends. In her case, from her 20s, in San Francisco. My mom is a realtor in Marin and has been since I was a kid, but I think that’s the least interesting thing about her.

My mom has always loved the arts and community and wellness and…travel. She went to Esalen way back when, and has been a patron of the arts for her entire adult life. She’s licensed in the Chinese Medicine energy healing technique of Jin Shin Jyutsu. She has been a docent at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco since 1994, when I was three (for my local fact checkers, while the current building was in construction, she was a docent at the Palace of Fine Arts). She’s a fantastic entertainer, and a fantastic friend. She has aged like a fine wine, of which I am grateful for and optimistic about. She lived in Venice (Italy, you can always assume I’m not talking about LA) when she met my dad.

Now my dad. On his birth certificate, his name is Arthur Mary Klurstein. Because his parents were immigrants with thick accents and the hospital staff misunderstood when they said “Morrie” would be his middle name.

My dad’s parents I know far less about than my grandparents on my mom’s side. Sadly, this is a reality of many Jewish families who’s grandparents immigrated from “the old country.”

My Grandpa Max died in the 70s, and my Grandma Gina when I was 5.

What I do know about them has been from a lifetime of my dad telling stories revering his parents. They were absolutely fantastic parents and he has taken delight in telling me all the stories of their parental sacrifice.

My grandpa was from Russia, although we don’t know for sure. He would never talk about the “old country,” nor his age. I never knew how old he was when he died until we sold our house a few years ago, and I went through all the documents my dad had kept. My dad thinks he made up this birth date – we will never truly know. I decided to look for these documents within my 86,522 (actual number) screenshots, and just now am I learning my great-grandmothers name, Somia – I have never heard that name in my life. I wonder if it was Sonia, and again, something got lost in translation. Nor did I know he died at the same hospital where my dad was born, or that Chevy was his last employer within the GM world of Flint past. No, I have never been to Flint (Michigan at all, for that matter), but I would love to. Especially now that I just unearthed where my grandfather is buried.

Grandpa Max worked his entire career at the GM factory in Flint, Michigan. He worked so very hard, chasing the American Dream. While he was an immigrant, he felt very strongly that he was an American, and was raising American children. My dad admired his dad so much. He still tells the story of when he was a little kid and really, really wanted a bike. They were very poor, so when his dad came home with a bike for my dad, it was an incredibly big deal. My dad was elated, and my grandpa equally so. It was soon stolen, crushing the hearts of both of them.

I thought Grandma Gina was from Hungary, although the borders have changed many times, and again, she didn’t talk about the “old country” and we don’t know exactly where she was from. But just now, I went to re-read any documents I have of her, and on her naturalization document it states she was born in Czechoslovakia and on her death certificate, it says Hungary. I feel the generational effect of not knowing what country was truly your country. I do know that she was the kindest woman, and the best mom.

My grandparents met in Flint, where many Jewish immigrants arrived. My grandparents were Jewish, very Jewish, and my dad was raised that way. The no tearing toilet paper on Shabbat type.

My dad started working at 11 years old, never had a bed until he was 18, yet felt such love and support in his childhood, it extended well into me and mine. My dad was raised in a home of kind people, who although had very little, would invite the neighborhood homeless man to Thanksgiving every year. Thanksgiving was important to them, as Americans. And that was always my holiday with my dad’s side of the family, growing up.

On my dad’s side, I am not the smart cousin. Teddy is the smart cousin. He is now the Music Director of the Louisville Symphony, and went to college at age 11 and became Michael Tilson Thomas’ protege. For anyone wondering if anything momentous happened when I was 11, I got my period :) I’ll never forget going to a concert at Davies Symphony Hall, a true treasure of San Francisco, when I was a pre-teen. After the show, Teddy brought me on the stage alone. I sang Sk8erBoi as my cousin played the piano. When I sit in the audience today and marvel at the acoustics, I’m also remembering the feeling of hearing my (so very bad) voice echoing through the grand and empty hall. What a memory.

I never really realized it, but as a kid, Teddy was the tether to my dad’s side of the family. Everyone was so proud of him. We had so many things to show up for, all of us, together. He was the youngest person ever to conduct at Carnegie Hall in New York, an occasion which the whole family attended, and had corned beef and pastrami sandwiches at the Carnegie Deli to pregame.

Teddy is my second cousin, his mom my first. My dad had me at age 55, whereas his sisters took the traditional route (the clock has always ticked).

Teddy’s parents got divorced when I was in high school, and that was the end of my dad’s side having an extended family that saw each other. It’s full of big and contrastingly opinionated personalities. I haven’t been to a family gathering on that side of the family since high school. There are weird stories abound.

But my dad is consistent. Like me, he knew who he was from a young age. Always curious, admittedly lazy, and deeply driven by the pursuit of knowledge. Opinionated as all hell. Larger than life but barely 5 feet.

My grandparents saved up to be able to send my dad’s sisters, my aunts, to University of Michigan. Education is extremely important in the Jewish faith, and in my family. But as the only son, my dad also drew the short end of the sibling stick (like my mom), although he never tells it that way. His sisters did not start working at the grocery store at 11, and they had a bed and shared a bedroom.

My dad could have gone a totally different route. He almost didn’t graduate high school, as he was frequently truant, more interested in playing pool than anything academic, and he couldn’t (and still can’t) swim - a graduation requirement he somehow got around.

A quick segue, at my high school, Tam, we had to pass a diving test in PE. I have spent my entire life trying to learn how to dive, but my body simply will not do it. My head will just not go in water first! I tread water for an hour as an alternative, to “pass,” thank you Ms. Sturgeon. The apple doesn’t fall far, in the strangest of ways.

But despite my dad not having an initial interest in school, he went to community college, where he started to become an academic, something that has become full-fledged throughout his life, despite never working in the field. He went to Michigan State, which I’m grateful for because he finds such joy in being a Spartans fan (he doesn’t care much about sports otherwise). He then went on to Wayne State University for his first law degree, and then NYU Law School for his second. He graduated at the top of his class. My dad is smart as hell, and I’m really grateful for that DNA. He has always maintained his childhood curiousness, and a desire to see and experience it all.

My dad’s career was short lived, and it’s going to sound confusing because it is. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand or have concrete answers. He worked as a lawyer, very successfully, for four years. And then he retired. I have no idea how, but he lived a modestly grand life until the past 5 years and has never worked (in the traditional sense) my entire life. He was the worlds best Stay at Home Dad.

My dad, at his tallest, was 5’3”. Now, barely 5’. But, he had always walked into any room and commanded attention and interest and authority. He has a big personality, filled with opinions, and a lingering, meaningful presence. Every year, in Capri, people still want me to FaceTime my dad, always forgetting my dad has never had a cell phone. In my life, if someone doesn’t remember me, all I have to say is “Arthur’s daughter” or “la figlia di Arturo” and I’m in. No one forgets my dad.

After law school, my dad met an older woman from Flint, who came from a more prominent Jewish family. She owned a clothing store. She was cool. Her name was Betty. Although they never got married, they had a life together for 20+ years. They lived in a killer Upper East Side apartment, and in Paris, and in Florence, and in St Barths. They would wake up and say “where should we go today?” and end up in Egypt. At least, that’s how my dad tells the tale.

Betty taught my dad how to travel, and for that I’m forever grateful. Because my dad taught me how to travel. And I, in turn, get to pass it on to you.

Betty had two kids before meeting my dad, and one, Barbara, lived in San Francisco and had two kids – my idols, Dagny and Whitney (Mendelsohn). While I’m their “aunt” by non-blood or legal manners, they have taught me so very much and they are my family. And they are the coolest of the cool. If you know them, and some of you may, you know that to be true. I feel so lucky to have been accepted as one of them since day one, despite the many, many hurdles that have come in the way. My eye, in large part, comes from the Mendelsohns – I need to make sure they are all on the paid subscription list, stat.

What I have absorbed from idolizing Dagny and Whitney my whole life has, through osmosis, given me a gift that I feel weird talking about, but I feel it to be true. I have felt lacking in many ways in many times throughout my life. Family and health, mostly. But I have always felt cool, and I think others have always felt the same about me. This is something I’m hugely grateful for – I never had a friendless stage, and while I most definitely had awkward-looking phases (denim headgear, what it do) I never felt the brunt of childhood and adolescent bullying or exclusion. Anytime anyone in my life says that I’m strong, for something another, I always attribute it in my mind to this one security I have always had. But fear not, something Dagny and Whitney always showed me is you can only be cool if you’re kind.

Anyway, back to the origin story, I should delete that last paragraph but I won’t.

Barbara, Betty’s daughter and my dad’s step daughter (not legally, but in spirit and practice for decades) and Dagny and Whitney’s mom was friends with my mom in San Francisco. Barbara and Richard are the coolest of the cool of the coolest to ever exist, and they threw a whole lot of parties back in the day, many of which my mom attended. My mom had seen photos of my dad many times, in family photos or with Betty.

So, when she and my dad were both eating outside in the courtyard of Cantinetta Antinori one day in Florence, she approached my dad and asked him if he was Arthur. He was most definitely Arthur. You could say the rest was (short) history, but I don’t actually know all the details.

Stories vary by storyteller, and I don’t exactly know if either of them were single or were at the end of a long-term relationship. I do know they fell in love in Italy and were always at their strongest while traveling.

To people reading who are the closest to me in real life, yes, I am leaving some stuff out all over the place. To the people reading who didn’t realize that – it’s nothing integral, and all stuff that isn’t my business to share or I don’t know the truth about it.

I’m not sure exactly when or why or how long my mom had been living in Italy at that point, or why she was in Florence. I think my dad was still living there at the time, but then I also thought he had given up his apartment there before that time in the late-80s. I do know that my parents wanted to have a kid, and that wasn’t in the cards with either of their previous relationships.

My dad was in his 50s, my mom in her mid-30s, and sometimes it really does come down to timing.

I think my dad might have proposed to my mom by renting out the restaurant on the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower, Jules Verne. But the only person who told that story with any frequency and consistency was my grandma, and she hasn’t been Earth-side since 2011. I think I believe my mom on this one, and it was my dad professing his love (definitely still a thing in the 80s, apparently) and “intention” of marrying my mom on my grandma’s first trip to Europe. Anyway, this silly unsure story is only to illustrate that a deep seed of seeking special and feeling contentedness abroad is rooted in my origin story.

When my parents were engaged, California was calling. My mom’s whole family lives here. Strangely, much of my dad’s family also lived in California. One sister in Ventura County, one in Napa. One niece in the South Bay, one in Marin. And the Mendelsohns lived in San Francisco. My dad never felt excited to live in California, but he made a fantastic home on Mt. Tam that he loved dearly for 24 years, and that’s one point in favor of the “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” perspective.

Despite all my grumblings, I want to make it very clear that I feel really grateful to have been raised in the Bay Area of California. It is one of the most extraordinary places to be from. I feel really grateful my parents made that choice.

I don’t know exactly what the timeline was, but they moved to California together, to be close to the vast majority of both their families, and my mom had (thank G-d) always loved Marin. They found one of the very best pieces of land in Marin, at the very top of the hill in Belvedere, with unobstructed face-on views of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a house from the 50s that needed a lot of work, so they hit the ground running. Soon, I was on the way, naturally and quickly which blows my mind today, knowing the vast difficulties many women have in pursuing their desire to be a mother.

In self-written revisionist history, the first brick fell when my mom was on a run around the property (she used to love to run, before I was born) and fell and messed up her knee and was told to never run again. I think, for women like my mom who were born in the 1950s, a therapeutic act and habit like running is a way to self-regulate when therapy is generationally still somewhat of a taboo.

My parents got married on a boat in the San Francisco Bay, and my dad gets seasick and doesn’t like boats, which he says was a harbinger and I think is a testament to love. Because my mom loves boats and the San Francisco Bay. My mom was very pregnant with me as she walked down the aisle, in a new wedding dress she had to get to fit my bump.

For a short time, my two families unified.

My parents relationship was always a series of real-life would you rathers. As their choices lay, my mom rather choose my godparents and first name, and my dad my religion and middle name.

I was going to be Marissa Faith Klurstein and raised Jewish (my godparents’ names are not important).

I got my name from one very cool woman. When my mom lived in Venice, Marisa Berenson was her neighbor. She always thought she was the coolest and most stylish and elegant, and loved her name. My dad wanted Ellen, go Mom for choosing the right race in this game. But with two s’s – to make it easy and the same to pronounce in both English and Italian. My dad thought that “she has to have faith at some point, it might as well be from birth” – and that’s how I got my middle name.

One of my most cherished photos is of both my grandmas at my Jewish baby naming at our home in Belvedere. My Catholic grandma (not all that Catholic, in the grand scheme of things) and my Jewish grandma, both immigrants at some point in their lives. Coming together for a baby, in faith. My family loves babies (I love babies).

While I was still a baby, my parents were still married and we kept the apartment in Paris. Our first international trip was when I was 11 months old, to Paris for some time and also to Italy.

Our Paris apartment was pretty perfect. An Art Deco apartment in a perfectly-preserved building in the 6eme, just around the corner from Jardin du Luxembourg. One bedroom, one and a half baths. Geraniums in the windows, Art Deco furniture and a Fornasetti screen filling the jewel box. My dad’s landlord had always said that he could have the apartment until his first grandchild graduated college. She stuck to her word.

Of course, that was the same trip that we found out I was anaphylactic to nuts, in Santa Margherita on the Portofino Coast of Italy.

For the next few years, things got rockier in my parents’ marriage, but it was always strongest when we were in Paris or elsewhere in Europe for the summer. I have only a handful of memories from when they were married.

One was in Paris, at our apartment, an ordinary day. My mom made the vegetable soup like from Brasserie Lipp that I liked (I have never liked vegetables) and my dad and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle that was far beyond my years. My mom told us to put away the puzzle, it was time for vegetable soup. That’s it, that’s the memory. I can still smell it, though.

Another was also at the Paris apartment, where I had my first sip of a Diet Coke, laying on my dad’s chest on the bed. My parents were laughing and I still remember the love. I fell asleep that night laying above the headboard next to the mirrored wall – it was summer and we did not have AC and I have always hated being hot when I sleep.

The last was at a hotel, in Seville, Hotel Alfonxo XIII. Naturally, my last memory of my parents before they ever split was at a hotel, a historic one, on vacation.

From then, we sold the house in Belvedere and moved to Mill Valley. In self-revisionist history, once again, thank gd for this (at least at the time, growing up in Mill Valley was very different than growing up in Belvedere or Tiburon).

My parents were still together, but for a very short time, at the cute rental house in Blithedale Canyon. I loved that house. I felt it was the only place with my mom where I really had a childhood. It was a dead-end road and friends lived up the street, down the street, and a few streets over. A dream, one that I never really had again.

My parents separated, and my dad and I went on to a string of short-term rentals, in a white house in Fairfax, to The Cove, to a cute (dark) house on Molino. Looking back on it now, I can’t imagine how hard of a time this was for my dad. He had a kid at 55 with a woman he loved who was falling out of love with him and he had no idea where was home and was just trying to make one for me.

My mom has done a great job of never getting into too much detail of the reasons why they got a divorce, which I know has been the best decision and for that I’m so grateful.

That’s not to say I wasn’t a child of divorce through and through. I was always the middle man. Every day. Money, negotiations, plans, you name it. I think that’s why I didn’t like being a travel agent. I don’t like being a middle (wo)man!

At school and socially, I always thrived. I can’t tell you how lucky and grateful I am to have been born with the gene that makes it easy to thrive academically. Because I did, in pretty much all the ways, kinderarten through eighth grade.

Because my parents were separated but not yet divorced as they were applying for elementary schools, they decided to go the private school route, much to my dad’s chagrin. I very much wanted to go to the local public school with my friends from preschool, Old Mill. But I ended up at a small, highly privileged private schools on a pristine property up in the hills of Mill Valley. I have certain gripes with the school, and having a private school education in general, but that school gave me a whole lot.

I had great teachers, all who believed in me, but three that made the long-haul difference. I’m going to talk about them because teachers do not get nearly enough public recognition. We called our teachers by their first names, to get that out of the way.

Nancy taught social studies and study skills, a class which I had always wondered about when I saw it mentioned in the yearbook. It was that class that, with social studies (history) really taught me how to think. Also, Nancy is a small, smart, bad-ass woman with a big personality and who was very sure of herself. She was powerful and she impacted so many lives in realizing her power. And then there was Mitch, Nancy’s 6th grade homeroom teaching partner. He taught us English, or did we still call it language arts? He made raps and rhymes out of grammar and made it seem so very cool to be able to write well. MITCH, WE ALL THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE! And there was Deborah, who taught drama and also the after school middle school elective, Speech.

I’m pretty sure I took the elective because of Deborah and also because the cool girls in the grades above me often took speech. I’m so glad I did.

As an only child, I have always known how to get attention, for better or worse. I’m unsure if this would have ended up in the latter camp if not for speech. I learned how to turn my “voice that projects” into a voice that’s listened to. I wouldn’t have gotten any of the “lucky breaks” I have undeniably gotten throughout my career without this skill. I am good at public speaking. I like public speaking. Because of Deborah! And because I cast myself as the girl who always wins at all the academic tournaments (because I sure as hell was not athletic enough to ever make it to any tournament of that sort) and I made it my mission to win the Speech Tournament, held every year for the middle schoolers of Marin, in Ross. I did it!

At my school, nearly everyone played all the sports. For girls, that was soccer and basketball and volleyball. Soccer was the only non-school, town club sport. The only award I won there was the Roeper award, which is for people who are good team players but really are not good at soccer. Basketball was hell for me, always having to run off to use my inhaler. Volleyball was better, but let’s face it – I am just not athletic, and honestly, that’s ok with me.

My parents put me in singing lessons and tennis lessons and piano lessons and guitar lessons and tap classes and hip-hop classes and I…hated it all. I was bad at it all.

I didn’t hate reading and I didn’t hate research projects and I didn’t hate art and I didn’t hate the symphony and I didn’t hate museums and I didn’t hate school and I didn’t hate school plays or dances.

That’s what I wish someone reminded me, because often I did feel like “I was bad at everything.” But, cool! And smart. At least there was always that!

And, I always had Capri. I made it this long without mentioning Capri.

At the same time that my dad was trying to figure out how and where to make us a home, he was also trying to make traditions.

I have best friends and then I have one true very best friend in the whole wild world, we will call her AJ (she’s private). We were born four days apart, so we have been best friends since the day I was born.

Our dads had been friends for decades and decades, through the Mendelsohns. Our moms were in the same birth preparation class. Both marriages had 15+ year age gaps, and they were both having girls, which united them and us instantly.

AJ and I had always done everything together. I am an only child but I have a small semblance of an idea of what it’s like to have a sister.

Her parents got divorced before mine, and both our dads had a big interest in playing a big role in their daughter’s life. My dad had been going to Capri since the 60s, and AJ’s had loved the island and had taken her mom their on their honeymoon. It’s an island with no cars, that changes little from year to year. They were taking us to Capri.

That first year, AJ and I flew from San Francisco with her dad. My dad was already in Europe, at the Paris apartment. It all started with the first aliscafo ride, the first ferry ride from Beverello in Naples to Capri. We have a picture of the four of us and it is, in many ways, the Happy Hoteling origin photo.

Year one was two weeks at Hotel Luna. Two rooms next to each other, with balconies facing the sea. AJ and her dad’s luggage was lost, but all we cared about was the Spice Girls and there was a lot of Spice Girls merch to be had. Something about that mishap made it all very magic. It was clear it would be an annual tradition, and Capri our place.

We only stayed at Luna for one more year before moving to Hotel Mamela, room 360, every year. They kept a set of our (non-linen) sheets and down comforter and pillows. Yes, you do get a discount when you stay in the same room at the same time every year, for a long time.

That hotel was where I became the me I like most. Curious and creative, social and engaging. A part-time Eloise, but with very good manners and no pets.

There were years where AJ and her dad didn’t come, but we never skipped one. Same time, next year. That was the magic of it all. We had a whole arsenal of Vacation Friends. People we only knew from the hotel – breakfast, by the pool, at lunch – from all places around the world, that we saw once a year. We didn’t connect on our dates, it was just assumed “see you next year.”

The Biasioli family was always my favorite, they were from Genova and as my dad put it, “a beautiful family.” The Sapers were always great, and they have done really great things in the time since. The Wadsworths I wonder about all the time. I could go on and on, but before I made my Capri Friends, I had my Vacation Friends, of which very few were still in any form of school.

We had been going to Villa Verde since our first year, which happened to be their first year as well. It was owned and run by three brothers. One of them was an early favorite, and a photo of us by one of the paparazzo ended up on the wall next to Mariah Carey for about a decade, which I have made it this long on the internet without saying and for that I should win some sort of Only Child Award.

One of the other brothers had a daughter, just a year younger than me. On the years where AJ didn’t come to Capri, he would always say “you have to meet my daughter.” I only knew her as the only other kid on the wall, and she was so tan I was envious. Finally, when I was 11 I believe, Franco arranged a pre-teen playdate. Only, his daughter, Giordana, didn’t speak English and I spoke very rudimentary Italian – “senza prezzemolo, per favore.” But, his daughter had a friend, Alexia, who spoke perfect English as she had lived in Bermuda. They came together at the end of dinner and picked me up and took me to “artigianato” for the first time. If you’re really curious, this is the area in front of Hotel Luna and Carthusia di Capri. A place where young locals (and this random girl from California) hung out and still do today.

My good Italian accent and any Italian I know today was learned right there. I was immediately brought into the fold, and met everyone. A year or so later, we don’t exactly remember why or how but I became very close with Alexia’s sister, Stefanie. Yes, the same Stefanie I talk about all the time, one of my very best friends who owns and runs the best cooking school in Capri, The Blue Kitchen. (Also! Alexia just got married! And Giordana just got married in October and it was the most beautiful thing to watch the island celebrate one of their most beloved)

From this point I had a true crew. And lots of crushes. You do not need to know a lot of the same language to make out, it turns out!

We went back to Capri every summer until the summer after I graduated high school, going somewhere else in Italy either before or after. We didn’t intend for it to be the last year. But, my dad stopped driving and walking got harder for him.

Back in the states, the other 11 months of the year, I finally fulfilled my dream of going to public school for high school. Tam! I loved my high school. I loved high school, in general. I know this is a tremendously lucky perspective to have.

I found my people. And most are still my people to this day. I won the lottery, on that front.

My high school had this great program called AIM, which you applied to at the end of your sophomore year for your junior and senior years. I got in and so did all of my best friends. It was not not like a club, I must admit. We had our own building and our own schedules. We had one subject of focus each semester (race, class, etc) and would make one documentary short film in groups per semester. I could write a whole Substack post about AIM, so I’m not going into too much detail here and now, but it served me incredibly well.

And, it got me into UCLA, which is truly an IYKYK (not unique to me) situation. I’ve said it before and any and every time I’ve ever said it, for as much as I loved high school I did not love college.

In retrospect, I was a judgemental little shit because I partied in high school and many did not. But also, I went through sorority rush before freshman year even started and was bid promised a house I really wanted and ended up being the crying girl on bid day when I got the other sorority, the one that everyone above me from my high school was in but that I just didn’t feel like I fit in. I’m pretty sure this is the first time my ego got bruised, and I never got over it all four years.

But also, after my AIM high school experience I felt as though the professors were just so…inadequate. Sure, some were true experts in their fields. But they didn’t want to be teaching a class about it, to freshmen, nonetheless. They didn’t want to be in a lecture hall in front of 500 people. And mostly, I found a complete lack of curiosity in the world and in learning among my peers. Everyone was just so obsessed with their grades. Participation didn’t matter, in fact, you could opt out. UCLA is a great school if you’re in the sciences, in many fields but I can’t say it’s where I would recommend you get your art history education. It did have the shiniest silver lining, however, which was Nasty Gal, which gave me everything else. I’m skipping my career in this story, I wrote about that here.

By the time I was in college, my mom was at the peak of her career as a realtor, and my dad was starting to slow down. He couldn’t walk steadily anymore. We took our last vacation my sophomore year, to Round Hill in Jamaica for Thanksgiving. My dad still complains that “the beach wasn’t like St. Barths” but I’m immensely grateful our last true excursion was to a Special Hotel.

My dad had bought our house when I was in kindergarten, and my god how I loved that home. Because that’s what it was. In all the ways. Everyone loved coming over. I was proud to have people over. It was never the big house or the fancy house, but it was our house.

My mom had bought a condo on the water, which she also made our home. She sacrificed a lot, and gave me the master bedroom, so I could have a larger domain for my friends.

My dad and I would travel a couple other times a year as well, to somewhere new every time. Bali, Japan, you name it. And my mom and I would travel as often as possible – often to Mexico (where my godmother lives), to Thailand, lots of places in America I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

In 2011, the three of us took a trip, to Paris. We stayed at the Biasioli family’s apartment (one of the Capri Vacation Friends), also in the 6th, and spent two weeks living as if they never had gotten divorced. This trip is something I will treasure forever.

I am so very lucky that my parents agreed on one thing – the importance of travel.

Lastly, as I’ve mentioned, my dad is now 88 and did not save and is thus in the final chapter of his life in the same financial position as he was as a child, but he’s not unhappy. I think he feels at peace with it all because he spent it all on experiencing the world.

Thank you so much for reading. Thank you for being here. Happy, Happy New Year!

xMarissa

P.S. We are back with the 6 posts a month for paid subscribers