Thirty Years

My ship

It looked something like this, the ship that carried me here. I do have a photo of it someplace, but until I dig it up, this image will suffice. The real one was a darker green and more banged up, with its vinyl roof in tatters, strips flapping like sails. It also had the disadvantage of a broken gas gauge, so I was never sure how much gas I had, usually less than I thought. I famously ran out of gas on the freeway one afternoon, managed to pull over onto the shoulder, and was walking along in a silk blouse, tight skirt and high heels with a gas can in my hand when Monte happened to drive by. I had met him at the office where I'd just started my new job, and he was a welcome sight indeed,  not on a white steed but in a white VW bus, and he rescued me that day. Pretty good timing.

And that's how it was for awhile. It took some guts to come here, but luck was with me. My grandfather made it from Naples to New York, my father helped spark the yearning in me, and in 1982, just shy of my thirty-first birthday, I did that last stretch to the coast. It will be thirty years on Groundhog Day. It was my life's great migration.

I'm in Orange County right now, which is where I first settled, and I'm bearing witness to some developments more difficult and sad than I could have ever imagined, but I feel steady and strong, and I am learning to do what I can without dissolving into it. I even had lunch with three old friends today...friends of nearly thirty years! I didn't expect to be laughing in the course of this particular stay down here, but we laughed. I think it's okay to carve out spaces for replenishment and comfort.

Tomorrow morning I will return my rental car, which happens to be a blue-black Camaro, an accidental "upgrade" I could have lived without, but maybe in a way it is a descendant of that '73 Buick that I first rode into town. It's an assertive muscle car, comic in its virility, and it evokes both power and folly. What could be more fitting? After I get rid of it, I'll board the train to L.A. and then, because they are doing some kind of work on the tracks, I will transfer to a bus.  I should be home before dark.

Home. I like the sound of that. I think I'll invite some neighbors over to celebrate my anniversary with me on Thursday. Oranges for dessert.

I'd come from faraway on that Groundhog Day in 1982, and all the doors unlatched for me and all the fates were kind. I think what I wanted most, though, was to find a sense of home in my heart. I'm close.