A Los Angeles heritage that binds us all

It was a trip my daughter and I have made a dozen times, heading north out of the San Fernando Valley, up the I-5 past the orchards and cattle ranches of the San Joaquin Valley, west through the Pacheco Pass and up Highway 101 into the heart of the Silicon Valley.

But this time my daughter wasn't heading back to her messy, crowded dorm at college. She has graduated, found a job and is moving into her first apartment -- a sunny unit in a well-tended complex on a tree-lined street in Menlo Park. So why was she complaining the whole way up?

She doesn't want to give up Los Angeles.

No new driver's license, she insists. Never mind that a Northern California address could save her enough on car insurance to keep her in pedicures.

Four years away from home at school has taught her that an L.A. identity is a badge of honor.

Like most of us, my daughter has a love-hate relationship with this city. She loves the beach, but hates jostling for space among crowds on the sand. She loves her multiethnic collection of L.A. friends, but freeway gridlock makes it hard to visit them. She loves wearing flip-flops all year long, but moans all summer that it's too hot to go outside.

She doesn't always like being in L.A., but she knows that being from L.A. has its rewards.

When we visit relatives in Ohio, our Los Angeles address gilds everything we do with the patina of success.

People from L.A. are stylish and trendy, shopping, as we all do, on Rodeo Drive. Does my sister-in-law in Toledo really have to know that the purse she's raving about came from Target and cost me $25?

We have celebrity-sighting stories to tell. The rap legends Bone Thugs-n-Harmony played at my middle daughter's high school prom. But we don't tell our Toledo cousins the less-glamorous back story: The group played as a favor to the girl who baby-sits their kids, my daughter's classmate, who knows them from church.

Then there's the Rose Parade-fueled fantasy of our perfect weather. Never mind that 18 people in Los Angeles County died during last week's heat wave, because they were poor or old or isolated.

Thousands more sweltered for days without electricity because our local utilities haven't kept up with growing power needs.

I came here 30 years ago, a refugee driven by L.A. fantasies. Cleveland had just emerged from another harsh winter; I'd been stranded for days by snow-clogged streets. Why should I spend winters shoveling snow when I could be sunning on the beach?