After returning to Modesto, my hometown, I found family | Opinion

Twelve years ago, I was living in a beautifully forested area across the street from a serene, inviting beach in Depoe Bay on the Oregon Coast, when my younger son came for a visit. Gorgeous surroundings beckoned every morning and rewarded the early riser with surprising treasures, including a rainbow of agates, perfectly preserved sand dollars and an amazing variety of shells deserted by their inhabitants, now decorating the pristine sands.

My son, Jason, and I were walking along my regular five-mile morning beach trek when he turned to me and said, “Mom, Kathi and I have been talking. You need to be closer to family.”

What he meant was that I should move back to Modesto — where I was born and raised until 1941, when my mother moved us to Salinas when I was 9.

Technically, Salinas was home, but Modesto was where all the cousins were. We spent glorious summers there. Modesto meant licking a maple nut ice cream cone as we walked barefoot on sun-drenched sidewalks; Pepsi sipped slowly from ice-cold bottles to make it last longer; bologna and cheese sandwiches on Rainbow bread munched on the way to Fourth Street Park, where the wading pools were.

Modesto always meant fun.

All those years later, when Jason suggested that I needed to be closer to family, I thought of my charmed childhood spent in Modesto.

So, I put my little cottage on the Oregon Coast up for sale, packed my belongings and in November 2016, I came home. Upon moving back, I found that every memory beckoned and winked, and assured me that homecoming was exactly what I needed at 74 years old.

Family? You bet. I was immediately welcomed into the noisy, exuberant sweet complication we call family. Weddings, birthday celebrations, anniversaries, holidays, births and, yes, the occasional funeral and celebration of a life well lived. That was what Jason and Kathi knew I was missing, and I happily took my place amid all of it.

But there was more. Although I had “retired” when I was 66, I still had a lot of energy and enjoyed being a part of something bigger than my own four walls. I talked to the director of the beautiful Safeway Supermarket on McHenry Avenue and persuaded her to let me be one of her opening courtesy clerks.

For me, it’s not a financial necessity, but I need activity — and, most of all, I need lots of people in my life. What I found at Safeway is another family. The crew I work with every day has become an important part of my life, no blood connection needed. We are family by choice.

And there is still more. Many of you know me because I have bagged your groceries or answered your questions or located a shopping cart for you. You are my customers. Hundreds of you. I am a part of yet another great big family: The people who light up my day and warm my heart with smiles and happy words of greeting.

And, still, there is more; for the past couple of years, I have been honored to write a column in my hometown newspaper. At the age of 4, I remember standing in front of the Lemar Café next door to the Strand Theater in the wee hours of the morning while my mother got the shop ready to open. This was when I first heard of The Modesto Bee. A newspaper boy was standing on the corner shouting, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Japan surrenders! Get your Modesto Bee paper!”

Now, I’m a part of something that has been an important affirmation of life in Modesto for all those many years. And my readers are the necessary component that completes the circle. Without people who read and think and appreciate, there would be no reason to remember, to write, to immortalize. I may never meet each reader in person, but those who read me are a beloved family that I am aware of with every word I write.

Jason and Kathi were right. I needed to be closer to family. And now I am, right here in Modesto, my home.

Bunny Stevens lives in Modesto, her hometown, and has served on The Modesto Bee Community Advisory Board. She is the opening courtesy clerk at the Safeway supermarket on McHenry Avenue and an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. Reach her at BunnyinModesto@gmail.com