Isabella Andrade is a self-described homebody. She likes locked doors, early bedtimes and the sound of the rain outside when she’s snug under her blanket on the couch. She rearranges her furniture sometimes, but any change bigger than that makes her nervous.
So it’s not by choice that Andrade, 27, has spent most of her life on the move. She’s originally from Berkeley but relocated often as a child — her mother, she said, has a lifelong habit of following a “spark of interest” to new places.
Andrade didn’t inherit her mother’s restlessness, and they sometimes butted heads while living together. When she had her first daughter, Saraiya, at 18, she moved out, hoping to find the stability she yearned for growing up.
“I was stepping into adulthood, but I was still mentally a child,” Andrade said. “I wanted things for myself. I ended up getting a car and getting a job, just to have my own something.”
The following nine years have been turbulent: She bounced from job to job around the Bay Area, renting rooms or taking her baby to friends’ homes until they gently asked her to leave. When Andrade got pregnant again, she moved in with the father of the new baby, Ana, born five years after her older sister. After the couple split up, Andrade sometimes stayed in hotels or her car, often with her daughters and her beloved cat, Layla, in tow.
Andrade did her best to preserve a cozy sense of normalcy for the girls. She tried to make it feel like they were camping when they slept in the car, reclining their seats to watch Jamie Lee Curtis movies on her phone. In hotel rooms, Andrade cooked cups of noodles and microwave dinners, longing to “mess up” her own kitchen making lasagna or birria tacos.
