I am traveling. I left home more than two weeks ago and have been visiting relatives and driving coastline, hills and the valley roads of California.
Escape from the New England winter is a privilege I permit myself as often as the chance offers itself and my pocket allows.
My current escape has been especially rich. The look and feel of California is different than my home in New Hampshire. It is exciting and in many ways it entices me to remain.
My western hosts have treated me with care and kindness and if they are experiencing discomfort at my intrusion or at witnessing the routine of their daily ways they hide it well. I feel welcomed and warm among them. Their home is a haven; their company a gift.
Whenever I arrive at vacation places, and however improbable it still seems to me, as I drive down highways, catching sight of farms, homes, sand dunes, rivers, ocean, crops in fields, small cities, or town centers, I find myself thinking, I could live in this place.
I imagine a daily routine and see me driving to the general store for a coffee and newspaper or walking along a city street in a friendly light rain to gather groceries; then brining my loot to a plant-bedecked apartment with a narrow minimalist kitchen and natural wood floors, high ceilings with painted metal ceiling borders and spare Danish or Mission living room and bedroom furniture.
I wonder at the means of public transport in places I travel. Would this town have street cars or a subway system? Do busses and trains run on time? Would I need a car here and would parking spaces be abundant or rare? I see myself racing out at 8:00am on alternate weekdays to move my SmartCar from one side of a narrow street to the other. How about the movies: are there many theaters and how easy are they to get to? Are there booksellers and are they local or national retailers? I wander aisles of books and imagine customers looking very much like the relaxed reader I consider myself.
I worry at the sense of isolation I might feel living out in the country in a house miles from neighbors.
I conjure friends and always see myself succeeding—happy—at my life wherever I look. Only in extremes do I stop these reveries with a definite “No way!”
I’m a dreamer. I’m a romantic. The practical doesn’t hold great allure for me and I love stories, especially ones that include me.
But there is a point when I am on the road that a tipping point of sorts occurs and the excitement—the sizzle—of away diminishes. A sorrowful sense of disloyalty may ensue: familiarities of home force themselves and the moment feels awkward and the dreamy state that the visited place brings on loses its luster.
When the tipping happens I see my cat on his windowsill perch, asleep in the blazing low-hanging winter sun of an afternoon, his soft orange fur warm to the touch as I scratch behind his ears and he stretches, drawing his body to a taut line, then bending his head forward with a relaxed fierceness, reminding me of a savannah lion. My cat is comfortable with me as he is with almost no one else and that comfort pleases me. He feels entitled and I feel privileged to be part of his ease.
I think of the fullness of the light in my sunroom—my work area—allowing me to read and write without a lamp for as long as the sun remains above the horizon. My Windsor chair and its partner, comfortable hassock, come to mind and I think of the years each has been part of my life, how they’ve held me through all sorts of effort and relaxation and how confident I would feel were I with them.
In New Hampshire I relish the feel of mornings in my home as they move slowly by without drama. I know when to expect the woman who delivers the mail and I have a good sense of when UPS may show up. My refrigerator and cupboards hold few mysteries and I’ve grown used to the ways of keeping energy costs down and where I’m likely to find whatever it is I put down somewhere with the thought that I will remember where it was left. I am wise to the tilt of every stair runner and I know where the soft cloths for buffing my shoes are located. There are few surprises waiting for me where I spend my days.
Most of all though, as I travel, the thought of people who are my committed relationship partners work themselves to my awareness and I realize that my need to be understood as I am is the main cause for my sense of feeling too long, too far away and has always been my only actual reason for wanting to go home.
