Leaving

It’s true I spent a lot of my youth leaving, fleeing, quitting. I didn’t know how to put down roots, and probably didn’t realize how much I needed them. Even at work…during one of my bouts with work…I was known as The Breeze. As cute as it was, I sensed it came with wanting more of me. My elusiveness was undoubtedly frustrating; I prolonged ambiguity without solving issues. I wish I had settled long enough to latch onto a discipline, an interest, a worthy field of study, but I didn’t understand the value of taking on a challenge, seeing it through, and staying. I spent untold hours on Greyhound buses with arbitrary destinations, and countless nights in rented furnished rooms bleak enough to break an ironclad heart. I don’t know why I did this to myself or for that matter, to the people who mattered to me most. But this was the script, and it went on for years. To this day, I still have nightmares about being lost. I miss trains and connections, encounter locked doors and deserted buildings, fumble with my phone placing calls that go unanswered, and I keep on leaving until I awake.

But I finally found a home…or more accurately, I found a place and a partner, and we made ourselves a home. We’ve been here nearly thirty years now, and it’s hard to describe how deep and layered our connection is to the land, the community, the stories it holds. During the pandemic, it has sheltered and embraced us, surprised us again and again with its beauty and complexity, and become all we need. I love my life here, and as we make preparations for a month-long trip, I find that I am loathe to leave.

We’re leaving for a special reason, though. We will finally be meeting our grandson, Felix, and seeing our daughter and son-in-law for the first time in nearly two years. Being a grandparent is an abstract notion to me, and Felix is a funny little person whose antics in video and pictures are amusing, but I cannot imagine what it will be like to see him in person. And what will he think of us? These two cartoon figures who will have stepped out from the computer screen, suddenly three-dimensional…will he be frightened?

In the meantime, I’m the one who is frightened. There’s so much risk and uncertainty about traveling now. We’re following all the protocols, everything is in place, and our wish has come true, but our joy is tempered by apprehension. I’m trying to approach it in a step-by-step fashion, checking things off a list, but not getting too far ahead of ourselves, tamping down my internal outbursts, whether of giddy excitement or anxiety.

And because we are about to embark on a long journey and be gone for more than a month, there is something all the more precious and poignant about everything right here. This foggy white morning, that red chair by the window, the books and pictures on the shelves. There are roses and oak seedlings to water, a train whistling in the distance, neighbors who express gratitude and greetings when you meet them in the canyon. I walk the dirt roads daily, my sneakers filled with sand and gravel, my skin scratched by branches, bitten by bugs, marked by too much sun. I miss my faraway daughter and everyone I’ve loved who is gone, but I have grown old in this place. So many ties connect me now. Such good, deep roots. I’ve lost my knack for leaving.