Thence Home

These are the only two things I remember: It was a small, dark place. I remember people having to lower their head ever so slightly as they crossed the doorway from the dining room to the living room. Everything was made of a dark, reddish wood with intricate line patterns I used to follow with my fingers. Though I cannot remember why, the name “Santa Clara” or “Santa Rosa” come to mind when I think of this place. Somehow, I never asked my parents about that—and now I fear it might be too late.

Then there was a small, well-lighted place. Made of concrete, with plenty of windows, breezy, it was still a warm, welcoming place, the place that I should still think of as the place I am from, but it did not replace the first. I saw the war through its windows, and then when the war came inside, I saw its roof destroyed and a cloud of dust come from the kitchen as we left.

I was ten.

San Jose, San Francisco, San Bernardino, Redlands, South Gate, Lynwood—these are all places I've lived but none of them home. Home again didn't come until my daughter was born. And that was still not home. I'd made a home there, but too many bad memories came from the end of my marriage and my children and I have made many good memories away from that place.

I travel well because no place new is any less comfortable than the place I live. I've been gone for a month now and the only thing I miss is my pool friends. I like 9-ball better than 8, but it's all good. There's always a bar nearby where I can play.

Now, my sister's told me she rented out her house. They are moving up to Portland, OR. That is my favorite city. I remember the first time I went there, noticing a bumper sticker on a few cars. I asked the taxi-driver about it and he said the city had launched a campaign and was distributing that and a few others. It said “Keep Portland Weird”. That's my kind of town.

There is a little bar just up the street from the living room theater, where I play pool and listen to the karaoke singers. They are good, very good even. The city is mostly cool, sometimes rainy. And every now and then you get a wonderful, blustery day.

I think I will move with them.

But I have been in California most of my life—twice as long as I lived anywhere else, or rather all other places. I may still get lost on my way home. I may still relish the feeling of finding myself in a place I've never been, and keep a mental catalog of all the roads I've driven when I thought “this is a new place”.

Trish keeps telling me to do it afraid, to just do it, to not let the fear of the new get in the way of getting it done, whatever “it” might be. I'll probably have to change jobs, and this is not a time to be giving up a job. I'll have to give up my place, a place where I have lived six years, where I can walk with all the lights off and not run into a wall, where I know all the cracks, and all the neighbors, and all where I walk in the middle of a cold night, when I can't sleep, and smoke a cigarette and still get greeted by name by all the other insomniacs out for a smoke, too. My children still live nearby, and while I don't see them very often, I've gone over at four o'clock in the morning to greet them when they wake up. We've had some crazy adventures that started with no plan at all and now form the fabric of the memories they'll have of me when I am gone.

When I am gone.

Is this that time? Despite all the reasons to stay, I know deep inside I am leaving. I feel guilty they might think I am leaving despite them, because of them, like I have given up on them...

Am I doing this just for me?

I've told the story so many times it seems like something out of Death of a Salesman now. Like a made up story that gained reality just inside my head. My daughter, right out of the hospital, came home and my wife and I got her ready for her first bath. Everything was set so perfectly in place. The little yellow baby-bath my wife had used when she was a baby was on the sink, full of nice warm water. I put the baby on the counter, got her naked and picked her up like a new father picks up his new baby, most carefully, an arm under each end like she would break at the slightest motion. It was maybe two feet away from the little, yellow, baby-bath. By the time I set her down in the bath, she had pooped on my arm. I never knew such a little thing could make so much stinky stuff. It was black and sticky. It smelled to all the world like something that had been decomposing for nine months. Sugar and spice indeed!

When he was three years old, I noticed my son had the perfect skin tone. Perfect, that is, for California. I thought of him as a little surfer, with his honey-colored eyes and skin the color of cafe-con-leche that had just a little too much leche—just the way I liked it. But he had dark hair. It was light brown, dark sandy perhaps, not what I thought surfer hair should be. So my boyfriend and I cut his hair really short and bleached it. We got him a necklace made of shells. The effect was perfect. When his hair started growing again, there was a time he had the darker hair under a little cover of blond, and it was even better. My wife threatened me I'd never see him again if I dyed his hair before he was old enough for it.

Then, there was the time we went to Vegas for two hours, just to take pictures. Or the time we escaped to Tijuana for the weekend, just to have some steak. Or the time we went to see A Chorus Line and my daughter and an elderly lady were giggling like little girls all through Tits and Ass...

But that was when they were little kids. They are almost all grown now, with almost all full lives all for themselves, and often, I feel like I'm intruding when I go—like they have to give up something of theirs to spend some time with me. I know it is still a bit of guilt about having felt that way myself when I went to see them, or when they came to see me. Turn-around and all that.

Perhaps it will be ok. At this point, I think it is inevitable that I move again, giving up all the memories I've made thus far to make new ones in a new place. Perhaps they can come see me and spend more time, when they can, when I can, when we can. Ha ha ha... every new beginning is another beginning's end, right? Maybe we can build a whole new relationship, now as adults, unburdened by all the things that parents and children share when they stay in the same old places. We will draw new maps to new places for new adventures.

Maybe it will not be my last move, my last place—after all, avocado trees don't grow well in Portland.

Maybe, for a change, this will be home. And if it isn't, maybe it will be another dot I mark on the map on the way there.

May be.