I’m writing this from the nice fast computer in the basement of Carl’s house, which happens to be next door to mine. We got back from Miami yesterday and have been promptly rained on as well as seasonally affectively depressed, causing us to go out immediately for sushi at the famous Toyoda Sushi. It’s nice to be back.
Notice how I didn’t say “home” there? Yeah, me too. I was thinking about this on the plane back. The last couple of days in Miami weren’t all that great. They involved fighting with my sweetheart and missing my mom before I had even left, as well as spending a very frustrating day driving around horrid Homestead, Florida trying to go snorkeling. Have I mentioned that I grew up on an island which is surrounded by very warm water and a coral reef? No? Well, I did, and that’s where we were staying, and that’s where the snorkeling eventually took place ( I refrained from doing so in high dudgeon) after the trip to Homestead. So that was dumb. However, fantastic food was involved at all times (as well as, you know, my best friends and everything), so you know, take what you can get, right?
Anyway. So I was on the plane home, enjoying the care package of fresh pineapple and ham sandwiches on Cuban bread my mom had sent with me, thinking about Home. Wondering if I was bound for there, if I could go back again, if I was on my way so set me free. Now let me tell you that I was the kind of spoiled private school teenager who kept saying “I can’t wait to get out of this hell-hole” my senior year, as the palm trees waved overhead. I applied to five out of state schools and ended up moving out to Claremont, California, which is, as you know, really far away from Florida. And two and a half years ago I moved up here to Seattle to go to grad school, which is in fact diagonal from my hometown, if you look at the map. I did these things without a backward glance…I even went to college by myself the first time, didn’t even bring my mom with me to buy me a comforter and a shower caddy. I spent summers there during college and I always go back for Christmas, but I haven’t lived there for real for about seven years.
And the reason for this was, of course, because I Hated Miami. Ask anyone. Hated being the ugliest person everywhere I went, hated how rude people were, hated all the bugs everywhere all the time, hated that I didn’t speak Spanish very well and got made fun of in school for it, hated how frizzy my hair was all the time. Kids at my Snooty Prep School used to page through the J. Crew catalogue and dream of the time we could get “mufflers” and “lined jackets” and “wool ragg socks” and wear them all fall and winter, whatever those were. I really wanted to live Someplace Normal.
Now, of course, I realize that at the time I was convinced I was the only unhappy overweight adolescent in the world, and I thought if I left the site of my unhappiness, I would immediately change and be new and fabulous and hip. I am now aware of how deeply unoriginal both those feelings are, but whatever. I am also aware that if I wanted to move Someplace Normal, the Inland Empire Valley is a questionable choice. I still think it was good to move to California when I did, and to Seattle when I did. And I even think that in some senses I have changed with each move…not with the instant results I’d hoped for at eighteen, surely, but still, changed.
So that’s all fine and good, and I have to say I really do like living in Seattle, and I enjoyed my grad program, and I love all the natural food markets out here, and I love that I get to wear my extremely funny-looking polarfleece sweater that Carl and I made, and I love it in the summer when the sun rises at six and goes down at ten, and I like being more politically aware and (slightly) more outdoorsy, and I really like that I can feel like I’m speeding simply by going sixty-five on the 5 (that’s a California relic, by the way…in Seattle they say “I-5” when referring to the 5).
But still, being there, being in my mom’s house that no longer even looks like the place I grew up because as soon as her kids moved out she got all nice stuff, walking around in sandals and a tank top, hearing Spanish everywhere, seeing the feral parakeets perched on the telephone wires like pigeons, eating morros y maduros, which you just can’t have on the West Coast. I know I don’t want to live there full time ever again, and I know that my mom wants to move closer to me when she retires…but still. Yesterday coming home from the airport, seeing all the pine trees and the Space Needle and everything, I felt more transplanted than I did the first week I moved here. I wanted to go home, have a home, be home, in a way I just don’t or can’t right now.