Escaping LA, Almost

We left Los Angeles in August of 2021. The cut was sharp and final, as we quickly sold our home, packed our belongings, and boarded a flight to our new life. When the plane finally landed in Florence, I didn’t even care about how much I was sweating in the oppressive late-summer Tuscan heat. I felt that I had accomplished something miraculous: I had escaped, and everything was going to be okay.

People always ask me why we left the U.S., and the truth is that it wasn’t one thing. It was all the things, moving faster and faster, barreling into me every day. It was some of the people around me, acting as if the violence, the homeless people, the fires, the rising crime were nothing out of the ordinary. Hey, that’s life in the big city.

I don’t mean to bash LA. When I got a job at UCLA after grad school and moved to the City of Angels, I thought I’d never leave. I loved LA instantly, and the truth is that I still do. There are a lot of things I miss besides family and friends: sushi and any ethnic cuisine I can think of, beaches and the glorious coastline. I miss being able to drop my son off for school while wearing yoga pants and a tank top (it’s considered indecent to wear such clothing out of the gym here). And I really miss living in a city full of Jews—that’s the thing that stings most. I can’t pick up pretzel challah in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood anymore. When I need challah, I have to make it because there’s nowhere to buy it. We were the only Jews at the Chanukah party we threw last December. We’ve since met others, and my son is even learning Hebrew with Chabad of Tuscany, but by the time Sukkot rolls around I’m pretty sure we’ll know only a handful of Jews to invite to our Sukkah. As much as I was ready to leave LA, there were some important things that I took for granted when it came to living there.

I realize in writing this that despite being happy where I now live, I’m a little angry that I was forced out of a city I loved. It’s complicated, as people say. Perhaps any authentic grappling with the emotional cost of leaving or staying in a place you love, one that is also rapidly changing, must be complex. Is there any genuine feeling that doesn’t look like ambivalence when all is said and done?

I’ve heard that a lot of people have left LA in the past year, citing the same issues that drove my family and me out of the city. Still, the rising median home price shows no signs of slowing, which means that a lot of people still believe in the city. I hope their optimism is prescient.

I’m a doomsday prepper at heart. After years of teaching the Holocaust, how can one not be? I have always been determined to not be someone who doesn’t see the signs, someone who doesn’t get out before it’s too late. Expect the worst and prepare for it, my father always said, and so I do.

In the summer of 2020, I was sickened, along with everyone else, by the murder of George Floyd. But then the protests started—the ones that were deemed necessary despite the fact that we were in a pandemic that required social distancing. And then the fires and the looting and the broken glass appeared along with swastikas on synagogues, and whole rows of shops on Ventura Boulevard, just below our home in Studio City, were boarded up. One night, there were calls on Twitter for protesters to go into the hills of Studio City and loot and burn the homes in my neighborhood. I was terrified. That night we kept watch until the sun came up, ready to do whatever necessary to protect ourselves. Nothing ever happened. No one came. But it didn’t matter. The fear, the threat, the sleepless night—it was enough for us to say “No more. It’s time to go.”

The mildly distressing detail in this story—distressing because, after all, I am a proud liberal—is that both my husband and I were armed with guns as we sat watch. The previous year we had watched crime rise exponentially in our area. Once when someone banged on my door in the evening, trying to get in, I called 911 and no one answered. Another time I called 911 because a vagrant who was using meth was wandering erratically around the neighborhood. No answer. When we finally spoke to friends in law enforcement, they advised us to arm up. “We can’t guarantee that we can protect you.” And so we armed up, after undergoing more defensive handgun training than the average American police officer.

That comfort only revealed the deeper issue: We were suddenly living in a place that made owning a gun necessary, and I didn’t want to live like that.

We had always hated guns. We still hate guns. But given what was happening in our city, we were thankful we had them. And yet, we were also angry that we had them in our home. On the surface, every night I went to sleep I felt good because I knew that if something happened and the police didn’t come, I had both the skills and tools to protect myself and my family. But that comfort only revealed the deeper issue: We were suddenly living in a place that made owning a gun necessary, and I didn’t want to live like that.

Earlier that year, before the lockdowns commenced, there was an active shooter drill at my son’s elementary school in Hollywood. They didn’t tell us it was going to happen. My son came home one day and said, “We did something like a fire drill but for when a bad person comes in the school.” In the U.S., we live in a place where active shooter drills are necessary, where children have to be taught to fear in order that they can survive, hopefully.

There’s a short story by Ida Fink called “The Key Game” in which two parents (non-Jewish mother, Jewish father) play a game with their 3-year-old child in Nazi Germany. Every night, the mother knocks on the door and the child must verbally answer the door and then pretend to run around looking for the key and make as much noise as he can for as long as he can in order to give his father time to hide behind the wall before the Nazis enter. I started thinking more about this disturbing story with the advent of active shooter drills in schools. The idea that children—anywhere, but especially in the U.S., the land of vast freedoms and enormous opportunities—must constantly be alert and ready for violence is a sad indictment of our society. 

And yes, we’re all responsible. It’s not just the monsters who pull the triggers. It’s not just the politicians who oppose stricter measures on guns. It’s everything that goes along with those things. It’s the way that our growing mental health crisis is treated like an afterthought. It’s the way all of us scream and bicker and hurl accusations at the other political side every time something like this happens. And it’s something else. It’s something about us Americans, culturally and collectively. What is it? Like many, I’m struggling to figure it out. This epidemic goes much deeper than guns. We have a lot of thinking and soul searching to do.

I took a walk this morning around my neighborhood in Fiesole, in the hills above Florence. I expected that the mesmerizing beauty of this small town, with its cypresses and its jasmine and its wilting wisteria—with no graffiti or homeless tents or drug addicts in sight—would help me forget. But I still found myself in tears, thinking about all of those little fourth graders and their brave teachers, all those lives blown away in a little school in Texas 7,000 miles away. But what about the rest of the children, the ones left behind? I cry for them too.

I’m not okay because I didn’t really escape. As much as I don’t like to admit it, part of who I am will always be in the place I left.

My son is in fourth grade. I have the luxury of knowing that, here, no one ever hears of killers walking into classrooms and firing at children. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay. I’m not okay because I didn’t really escape. As much as I don’t like to admit it, part of who I am will always be in the place I left.

Monica Osborne is a former professor of literature, critical theory, and Jewish studies. She is Editor-at-Large at The Jewish Journal and is author of “The Midrashic Impulse.”