I spent the first 12 years of my life in Upstate New York, close to the Massachusetts border. We lived about a half mile from a dairy farm, in a rural/suburban community that seems impossibly idyllic in my memory.
In the second week of January, 1987, my mom finished up the last of the packing and got my brother and I on a plane to San Jose, California. We probably flew out of Schenectady, and I remember it being -30 degrees with the windchill. It was 70 and sunny when we landed. My dad, who’d gone ahead some months before, picked us up at the airport and drove us to our new house in the East Bay.
The first years in the Bay Area were difficult for me. Moving in the middle of 7th grade was disruptive. I went from straight As to Cs, had few friends, and spent a lot of time missing New York. Eventually things got easier, and I came to like, even love our new life in California.
After 24 years, the move West was probably the most important change that could have happened to me. Dad’s work in Silicon Valley fascinated me, and is the reason I first aspired to work in software, and then the web. I miss the East Coast, and visit as often as I’m able. I’ve even left California for long stretches, living and working abroad in Stockholm and Tokyo. But I always come back.
Because this is home.
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