arleta

This is home.

It's the only picture I could find. When I was a little girl, we moved from apartment to apartment and so on. I didn't have that special house I was born in and lived in for a decade.

But I did have this house.

Whenever we didn't have a place to go, we went to my nana's house in Arleta, Los Angeles. Every Easter, Christmas and Palm Sunday, we went to mass and met up after with our extended family. I remember going there after the '94 earthquake when our house wasn't livable. Arleta isn't the safest or nicest neighborhood, but it's home. It's where my family is. It's where my nana is cooking constantly and scolds us for going out on the street. It's where we hear the ice cream truck a mile a way and my grandpa buys us the best soft serve in the world as it comes by. There is always mariachi music playing, relatives visiting, and a novela on the TV. This is my safe haven, my favorite place in the world.