To Pay Attention

I have lived my whole life in one place: Chico, a town nestled in Northern California. It’s not the Bay Area. It’s not even Sacramento. Go up even farther north — almost midway between Oregon and San Francisco.

It’s a small town, the kind where you walk into Costco and see your fifth grade teacher, but it’s somehow still the largest city in California north of Sacramento. Although it’s in California, the apogee of all liberal safe havens, my congressional district has elected a Republican incumbent every election since I was in third grade. In Chico, it’s impossible to escape its tendrils: between its lack of anonymity, meager Chinese-American population, and conservative views, I felt it was suffocating at times.

This past December, I flew back to Chico for my first winter break of college. It was a rushing blur of sweet reunions with high school friends, wisdom teeth removal surgery, and much needed family time. Above it all though, one experience sticks out: I watched the 2017 film Lady Bird.

In one scene of the film, lasting barely 30 seconds, Christine, the main character, discusses her college essays with the principal of her high school, a nun named Sister Joan. The entire movie is predicated upon the fact that Christine loathes Sacramento, her hometown, and dreams of escaping to the East coast for college. Yet, in the scene, Sister Joan tells Christine, “you clearly love Sacramento.” Christine is visibly surprised. Sister Joan says Christine writes about it “so affectionately, and with such care.” Christine shrugs. “Sure. I guess I pay attention,” she says. There’s a slight pause. Then Sister Joan says, “don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”

Growing up, like Christine, I yearned for something greater, unfathomably larger. I craved a place “where culture is…where writers live in the woods,” as Christine pronounces to her mother. I dreamed of a place where culture and art teemed unruly between every skyscraper, and artists created beautiful things kindled by the city around them. But if I wanted that, the closest thing to inspiration I could turn to was the acres of monotonous farmland on the outskirts of Chico that blanketed my world like a vast green quilt.

When my brother, nine years older than me, attended college at UC Berkeley, my family and I would sometimes go to San Francisco when we visited him. The glass towers, salty air, and pastel condominiums that stretched past the horizon were a stark departure from everything I had ever known. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone of their own volition would stay in Chico.

I trained my eyes onto college — the day I could finally begin my life. And in the dazzling, sticky, summer before college, the fact that I was the only person from Chico at Harvard seemed thrilling: I could finally become untethered from its weight.

A photo of birds that the author took one day as she lay in the grass at the park by her house. By Courtesy of Summer Z. Sun

When I finally arrived at Harvard and met people who knew other students from their high school there — three, eight, even ten — I was shocked. I was overwhelmed by the concentration of students from what felt like just a handful of well-known places: New York City, the Bay Area, big cities in Texas. The idea that a person could attend Harvard and know people from their high school and their hometown was utterly incomprehensible to me. I watched them glide with ease and familiarity guided by shared connections. When asked where they were from, people’s eyes would light up in recognition at their answer.

But when people would ask me, it was a different story. Northern California, I would say. Oh, so like the Bay? They would ask. No, farther north. A few might then ask, Sacramento? But I would shake my head again. Chico, I’d say. And my hometown — everything I had ever known — was met with a confused stare.

So from 1 a.m. nights cross-legged on the linoleum floor of Weld to Annenberg at peak dinner hour, I couldn’t stop myself from explaining Chico to people I met. Yes, I needed them to know its odd conservativeness and sprawling almond orchards — but also to know the playground by my house where, enveloped in cold January sun, I had my first kiss; the barren airport parking lot where my dad taught me how to drive; the pizza place downtown I would walk to and grab a slice from after school nearly every day freshman year; or the Saturday farmers market trips my mom and I took to get the best carrots.

The features of Chico — soft, tender, yet incredibly intricate— lay within me. While I had been waiting for college, some bombastic idea that vaguely involved strobe lights and a faceless friend group, I discredited the place that made me.

I never thought I loved Chico. But that December day as I sat curled up in my childhood bed watching Christine and Sister Joan on my iPad, I realized that I had paid attention to it. And if I really hated it, why did I spend so much time telling other people about it?

The last scene of Lady Bird is a montage of Christine driving around Sacramento. Snippets of Sacramento tinted with golden light flit through the car windows while her hands rest on the wheel, her face relaxed and her eyes clear. The soundtrack title that accompanies it is called “Reconcile.”

I hold onto my memories of Chico, but not with resentment. Now, more often than not, they exist around me, cast in warm light — tableaus only I will ever truly understand — while I drive onward.

— News writer Summer Z. Sun can be reached at summer.sun@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @summerzsun.