Fare thee well, Long Beach

I’m walking out the door and heading for a jet plane to our new home in Fort Collins, Colorado. It’s hard to articulate how important Long Beach is to me. At 17 years, I’ve lived as long here as I did my childhood home, and did as much — if not more — growing here than those super early years.

I’ll let photos do the talking, one for each year.

I arrived in 2005. This might have been one f my most challenging years, but having my brother nearby helped a ton. And yes, I’m standing on a sand hill that makes my big brother look small.
I met Marcia in 2006. She flew out from Florida to meet me. This is the first picture we ever took together, in Venice Beach.
My niece Emme was born in 2007. I was over the moon with her and it’s tough to believe she’s now in high school.
Marcia and I married on October 18, 2008. Still the best decision I ever made.
2009 really marks where all our friends were meeting their significant others. Scott and Carrie met at our wedding and married the next year.
We celebrated our second wedding anniversary and got a dog we named Molly. I’ll remember 2010 most for the high of the SF Giants winning the World Series and the low of losing my dad the same year. I believe the Giants won it just for him.
I can’t say enough about our church and the relationships it’s given us over the years. I remember visiting multiple churches on Sundays to find the right place when I moved to Long Beach.
Hello, Harper Paige Dakota Graham.
Marcia and I moved to downtown Long Beach in 2009, but in 2011 it really started to feel like we were raising a family.
I’ll never forget taking Harper to her first Giants game. Pablo Sandoval hit a homer just as we took this photo.
Downtown Long Beach really shaped Harper and how she sees the world and the diversity it offers.
Welcome, Alice Meade Medora Graham. You complete our little family!
At my mom’s house in 2017. She bought a little place after renting in the area for several years, meaning my entire immediate family was in the same place for the first time since 1990.
Living in Long Beach made it easy to get to Disneyland. We were regular season ticket holders for several years.
Harper learning to skate in downtown Long Beach in 2019. She is a true LBC gal, from head to toe.
We left downtown for the suburbs in 2019. The 2020 pandemic forced us to travel to remote areas, like we did here in Big Bear.
Harper strums my ukulele, something I picked up during the pandemic and haven’t stopped since.
Our last family photo in Long Beach. We’re in front of The Ebell Club where Marcia and I were married in 2008.

Might as well share a poem I wrote about Long Beach the year I moved to town.

The cracks in her
sidewalks run miles deep and stretch
as wide as the smile of the elderly woman
who sells lavender and knock-off Channel
at the corner of East 2nd and St. Joseph.

I have trampled
over her dimples countless times,
whether in sturdy steps with the heels of leather
boots or the clickity-clack slaps
of flip flops under my feet.

If she could stand
I’d bet she would dance up and down
her waveless beaches
or hop the bus to Pine Ave.
only to sit in the furthermost seat
next to a man whose eyes met hers when

she batted her fronds provocatively
in his direction.

Between the big oil billionaires and plastic surgeons
that litter the streets of Beverly Hills
are the many Dons to toss money at her feet.

She was the pinup girl in the downtown auto garage,
laminated in a yesteryear calendar
sprawled across the sand in a square cut suit,
glancing toward the lens with a dare to come in

for a closer look past the glamour that was to be
but never was
the sticking point for a charming ad campaign
to coo attention from her angelic northern sister
or the bleached blond locks of the southern belle beside her.

If she could stand
I’d bet she would be the first one
to open her arms, offer a seat, and ask
everything there is to know about you,
before the other two girls are even awake.
It’s her charm that I have called home.

You can take the dude out of the LBC, but you can’t take the LBC out of the dude.

Fare thee well, Long Beach

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