Where Am I?
In this enigmatic snapshot, dated 1962, the awkward pre-teen version of me is flanked by my two little sisters at the left holding hands. Our father—our mountain, our compass, our North Star— strides purposefully at my right, a little bit ahead of me. My sister sent me the picture a few days ago, completely out of context and with no explanation, just a question: “Where was this?”
I am the only one left who might remember, but I am at a loss. It was the year that my family moved from the city to Long Island, a momentous change for us, but in the beginning, a very hopeful one. The hexagonal sidewalk stones are vaguely reminiscent of Prospect Park, but the scene does not look like Brooklyn. It has a more Long Island feel, a flatness and openness, a newness. It is a story just beginning, a tale to be invented. But perhaps that is simply what I am reading into it; emotions are what adhere, and fragments of a narrative. I cannot fathom who took the picture, and try as I might, I am unable to conjure up even the crumb of a memory connected to it.
It also strikes me as ironic that I am being asked to identify a location. I have a terrible sense of direction and a notoriously poor awareness of my body’s position and movement in space. A physical therapist referred to it as a proprioceptive disorder, a tidy term that helps me to own it, but along with one-sided deafness and a vestibular impairment resulting from acoustic neuroma surgery a few years ago, I am perennially disoriented. This “where-am-I?” feeling was exacerbated when we moved last year from our home of thirty years into temporary quarters, and now, by traveling in a different country and time zone.
But maybe being spatially oblivious is freeing in a way. I live inside my head, which offers surprisingly vast territory for wandering. My stream of consciousness is a veritable Nile, unbound by time, with a million glittering digressions in its waters and spellbinding attractions along its banks. The slashes of sunlight on a sidewalk, the passing vignettes of youth and age, the infinite variations of mundanity, it’s a banquet for the senses, nonchalantly astonishing.
Why get attached to a specific place? I say that as if it is within our control, as if I am not still feeling the ache of our extrication from the Ranch. A few weeks ago, I received an email from a woman who was a now-and-then Ranch neighbor for many years. It was almost like a little poem, and I was surprised by how much it moved me.
“I’ve heard that you've left the Ranch,” she wrote. “I look at your house tucked in the valley below and can't imagine anybody but you and Monte nested inside. When I was little, I asked my father if a place missed a person like a person missed a place. And he said yes. Certainly that is true of you.”
She continued: “I always found some sort of cosmic comfort looking out across the hills knowing that another Italian girl from Brooklyn was my neighbor in such an unlikely place. How in the world. At night for many years, I would see what I imagined to be your bedroom light, sure that our fathers were looking after us and also wondering...how in the world.”
How in the world indeed. I ask myself this constantly, for all of it feels impossible, and yes, I am still amazed.
But concurrent with the wonder of it all, there is a growing anxiety and revulsion, and I look back on my country now from thousands of miles away with a sense of great foreboding.
“Americans?” someone asks, overhearing our accents. And I wonder what the label means to them, or even to myself.
Because a neofascist sociopath made it into the Oval Office and there is no line, ethical or legal, that he will not cross. Meanwhile, the Republicans and corrupt Supreme Court are colluding in his criminal enterprise, significant swaths of the population are fine with it, and the terrible harm to everything that matters is far-reaching and ongoing.
A friend from Colorado writes: “I just don't know how to keep carrying the weight of all this, atop of my own formidable worries and fears. It is a tough time to be alive in this culture, and my heart breaks for my kind, bright, beautiful son who is just starting out.”
I understand how she feels. It is truly awful, and we all feel overwhelmed sometimes, but we are not powerless unless we act as if we are. The golden key right now is VOTING. We must make plans, get information out, register new voters, support effective organizations such as Movement Voter Project, and VOTE. We can give a decisive message in November that will mark the beginning of the turnaround. I know people who are actively engaged in these efforts and helping in so many real ways to bolster spirits and fight back. I’m proud of them and grateful. But each of us can step outside of our comfort zones and choose to be on that side of history.
And I suggest reading and supporting sources that inform and encourage: Robert Hubbell’sToday’s Edition Newsletter is essential. But also, Joyce Vance, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Reich, Democracy Docket, Democracy Forward. Heather Cox Richardson. Timothy Snyder. There are others. Choose carefully. Ask questions. Voice concerns. Speak truth.
As Hubbell writes in today’s newsletter, “Our mission between now and November is to move forward—relentlessly, with urgency, determination, and purpose. Trump has given us a historic opportunity to jump-start the process of reclaiming our democracy. We cannot let it slip away because of doubt or half-measures. It’s up to us. It always is.”
Where am I? I am typing this in the kitchen of a house in East Oxford, which is somehow where my journey took me. The girl in the mysterious photo is a grandmother now to two little children who are growing up in England. My father, who always seemed to know where he was going or wanted to be, might turn around and look at me, bemused.
How in the world?
I became a kind of pilgrim. I move along in lofty quests and impulsive peregrinations, not knowing where I am, and not quite arriving—but never giving up.