When I was 8¾, we moved from New York to California. The New York airport was then called Idlewild.

I’d been to California once before, three years earlier. Me, Steve, Mom and Dad flew out to visit Dad’s family. I had loved that trip: the plane, Disneyland, even all the cousins and aunts and uncles.

This flight was not so good. Mom had to make the trek with three kids and no husband. Between loneliness and bladder distress I was not comfortable.

We changed planes in LA and continued to San Diego, toward our new Cinderella Home in Chula Vista. But we couldn’t live there yet. The house wasn’t finished. We stopped in Coronado for a few weeks. We stayed in a residential hotel called the El Cordova.

Across the street was the Del Coronado. It’s the biggest wooden resort on the west coast, then and now, and then it was more exotic because Coronado was almost an island. It was reached by ferry from San Diego or the long Silver Strand between ocean and bay, from Imperial Beach. The bridge wasn’t built until 1969.

So there we were, in a mission-style place, across the main drag from a beautiful monster hotel, a block away from the Pacific Ocean. It was pretty cool for us kids.

We had Halloween there. We ate those Japanese gel candies that are wrapped in edible rice paper. We were charmed.

The El Cordova had a pool too. Steve and I were not allowed in it without permission and supervision. Since Dad was away all day and Mom was busy with a baby and other things, we didn’t think we got enough pool time. We disobeyed and swam on our own. It was the only time Dad ever belted us. He bent me over one hotel room chair and Steve over its mate, removed his belt, and whupped our butts. I’m thinking now that my parents were probably pretty stressed by then. It wasn’t cool for them.