Place Where You Live:

Carpinteria, California

My brother and nephew enjoying the warmth of a fire.

The morning sounds at the Bohlinger household vary between violin practice, dogs barking, my mother’s voice rushing her two youngest children to get ready for school, contemporary Christian music pulsating through my wall or, my personal favorite, my dad letting the entire house know that the French Toast is ready.  Generally a light sleeper, this cacophony of sounds is my morning alarm clock. Last summer I joined what seems like an entire generation of twenty-something-year-olds and moved back in with my folks. I graduated from law school in May of 2011 expecting my stay here to last twelve weeks, the time it takes to study for the California bar. Courtesy of an oversaturated job market and a down economy, I still call the small beach town of Carpinteria my home. Carpinteria lies along Southern California’s coast about ten miles south of the better-known gem called Santa Barbara. We live on a half acre property with ten avocado trees that bloom twice a year, two dogs, a lemon tree, an orange tree and three box gardens that lie sadly dormant despite good intentions. Having been “out of the house” for seven years it was a strange return when I moved my belongings back into the home of my parents. They do not live in my childhood home or even the home of my teenage years, they currently live in an altogether new house in a new city. They empty nested for only a few years before they adopted my wonderful, brilliant, athletic, stubborn, joyful, Haitian sister and brother Jenny and Jeffery.  As I prepare to move out and start my life in the endless urban sprawl of Los Angeles I am going to miss this location. The town of Carpinteria is great; it’s seven miles from world-class surf, and surrounded by some of the most beautiful hiking trails in Southern California. What will be the hardest about leaving here is a family, new and old, that has turned this relatively unfamiliar location into a home in the amount of time it takes a California law grad to find a job.