When the Sierra Nevadas are to the right and the ocean to my left, I know I am headed north. A few months into my PhD, what I have to my right and left are plants I named after places I love and a stack of notebooks that remind me of all the learning I have committed myself to for the next however-many years. Around me, I have no waypoints: I have a vague idea of the direction I’m going—goals I’ve made for myself, ambitions I have decided I want to achieve—but like most twenty-somethings, I have no true idea which way I am headed.
I used to wonder how people could leave everything familiar and start looking for a trail when no one they know has gone down this road before. But now that I’m here, I’m just walking, regardless of whether I’m headed north, or if I’m on the trail I should be on, or if I’m going somewhere completely new and unprecedented.
Colonization aside (which is a big ask, but hang with me), I wonder what Lewis and Clark must have felt. At their core, they were explorers, with all the excitement and fear that that title entails. Their thoughts when seeing those Purple Mountain Majesties for the first time, when all they had known before were the flat, low plains of the Midwest; their hearts pumping and lungs aching as they climbed up those beasts of the earth, only to look up and see they have more mountain left; reaching the top and seeing sunrise, high sun, sunset, and high moon across the valley and reflected on the copper, iron, and granite tapestry before them.
But as romanticized exploration is, and how infatuating the novel can be, as I type away on my laptop in my barely furnished apartment, I think about the loneliness of pursuing something new, and I find myself every so often asking, “what if things were different?” How would that change my relationships? My drive? My ideals? How would it change how I see home?
The more I’m in my head, the more I think about what home means and the reasons it grounds me, even when I’m floating out in the middle of snowy Illinois. I have seen home painted in sunrises and sunsets a thousand-and-some times, and the ebb and flow of familiarity remind me of the roots that anchor me. But the idea of home is a mist, a smell, a whisper of light, a dream, gathered and scattered, the ocean held in your hands and the it’s salty spray on your face and stuck in your hair.
Home is on the car ride after back from a day hiking, a milkshake in my cup holder, dusty socks and crusty shoes in the back, and plans for our next adventure already being formed in the passenger seat. On the ride back I ask about your family, and I wonder what it must have been like growing up like you had, with the things you were taught and the realities you decided to create for yourself. The contented, tired silence punctuates the transition between songs on the collaborative spotify playlist we made in the hours before the sunrise when we first started the day.
Home is fresh fried spam and baked tilapia with calamansi juice for breakfast. At home, there are half eaten pastries and bananas from snacks started but not finished; jackets hang from the back of the chairs around our table instead of on the empty hangers in our closet, and sheet music startles the dust that has been accumulating on our piano the past few months. Our couch, sagging from the decades of post-church naps and evening lounging, each of us on our phones but enjoying the simple fact of together, is filled with thoughts and lives that have drifted away from each other but are rooted, inexplicably, right here.
By now, one of my dogs has gone deaf and blind, but she slowly and dutifully sniffs for us and greets us the moment the garage door opens and our family of two plus three walks through. After a few days, it becomes two plus two, then two plus one, then, inevitably, just the two, as the parents settle back into the house they have not seen this empty in over 25 years. The dog has no one to hide shoes from under the table, and my parents have no one to blame for the used and empty cups littering the countertop.
My home-base is as mobile as I am, because I bring part of it with me every time I board a plane. We catch each other in between classes, and in the 15 minute walk where I wait to learn some kind of optimization and you, to model ocean dynamics, we gab, and you ask about my love life and what I’m going to do about it (although honestly I don’t know). We know I will ignore your advice eventually, but I love to hear it nonetheless. I love to hear that you’re rooting for me.
When I walk past the cafe at the edge of my block, I make a mental note to buy you some of their local coffee bean mixes, that way you also know what it tastes like to be over here. I am a crow, bringing you small knicks and knacks and shiny things, because they remind me of you, and you remind me of home.
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