Category Archives: nostalgia

Thanksgiving

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My dad decided that going to visit his friends in Corvallis, Oregon for Thanksgiving would be a fun adventure.
We were to meet at his place in Oakland, California and then drive up that Thursday morning. He figured that traffic would be light and it would be a lovely ride.
My dad got ideas in his head like this and wouldn’t be dissuaded and it sounded like fun, so I went along with it.

I’m not sure why we didn’t prepare more.
With an 8.5 hour drive one way, it would have made sense to bring snacks.
Instead, we threw a couple of overnight bags together, tossed them in the car, and got on our way.

We started early, so that we would arrive before the 3pm Thanksgiving dinner.
Driving up the coast would have been a beautiful drive, but it also would have taken almost twice as long. Instead, we shot straight up I-5 through Redding, California and Ashland, Oregon. Somewhere around 10am we started to get hungry. After stopping at a couple of closed fast food restaurants, the hunger pangs really started in on our bellies.

Now, my dad suffered from the particular type of low-blood sugar that made him cranky. Very cranky. After an unsuccessful hour of searching for an open eatery, he was getting downright unpleasant.

The closures were confounding us. We felt like some terrible luck had befallen us.
And then, as if lightning had struck the car, at the same time we yelled out, “Because it’s Thanksgiving!” Our eyes connected and we burst out laughing.
Dad almost had to pull over the car he was laughing so hard.

Soon after this realization, we managed to find a gas station that had some candy bars and snacks, so we loaded up on those and headed on to Corvallis to a wonderful Thanksgiving feast and traditional football with some of my dad’s oldest and dearest friends.

I usually spent Thanksgiving with my mom’s side of the family.
This was one of the few Turkey Days that I remember spending with my dad.
It was wonderful.

Happy Thanksgiving, Pop.
I miss you.

quiet

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This morning was our first real frost of the season.
As part of my getting ready ritual I ran to my car, turned the defrost on high, then went back into my little house to finish my warm tea. The outdoor cold brings a crisp quiet to the neighborhood, but it’s usually quiet at 6:30am anyway.

Where I work is not in town – it is out off a small highway surrounded by fields and hills. I arrive at work before anyone else. When I park my car and step out, there is usually a moment I pause and look around at the sunrise.This morning the sun was hitting the frosty grasses and trees and making them glisten. The sky was quiet with no birds chattering. I felt isolated and at peace with my surroundings.

These silent wintry mornings are times where I can imagine a post-apocalyptic world with a minimal population and survival of the fittest.
It sparks my imagination and stories run through my head.

I’ve always been an imaginer.
I suppose growing up an only child who moved often would create that as a survival skill.

When I was in my teens, a good friend of mine and I would often go to a field near our small country town and pretend that we were the last people on Earth. Some days we were a team searching for others, other days we were strangers to each other and had to figure out if the other was friendly or not, and then if we wanted to join forces or battle to the death.

Those days were usually warm spring or fall days, where being outside for long periods of time was an enjoyable adventure.
But these wintry mornings spent in solitude often remind of those care-free days running in the fields.

home

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I’ve been somewhat of a nomad most of my life. Growing up, my mom and I moved every few years for a while. We finally settled in with my grandparents where I stayed for my longest stretch of time at six years. In my adult life, the longest I lived in one city was for eight years. But during those eight years, I lived in six places.
I can’t seem to sit still for too long.

Since I visit so infrequently, the town where my mom still resides that I have always called “home” feels like it is losing its nostalgic grip on me.
When I started to realize this, it scared me a bit.
If that isn’t ‘home’, then where is?

What makes a place a “home”? Where you have friends and community? Is it where you reside? Where you have your job? Is it where your birth-family lives or the town you grew up in? Technology makes the idea of “community” much broader than it was even as recently as my childhood. I have friends all over the world with whom I’m in touch with almost daily. However, there is definitely a difference between my online communications and spending physical time with local friends.

How does one make a place their home? If a person loses their job, why do they struggle to stay in their same locale instead of seeking employment elsewhere?
Is it because moving sucks? It’s a pain in the ass. An awful lot of us have friends in many cities, so having a social outlet probably isn’t too difficult if moving becomes necessary. We usually adapt and adjust fairly quickly to new surroundings, and yet, the struggle is there to stay put. To stay at ‘home’.

I queried a friend of mine yesterday why he’s stayed in Prescott for so many years. He said because he loves that he can go out and usually run into someone he knows. He has some uniquely good friends here, the weather is great, and the countryside is beautiful and easily accessible. I asked him why he didn’t move to a place like Boulder, Colorado. Sounds similar, right? He said he might like it there, but this is where he is and it fits.

But there are a lot of places like that. I’ve lived in a few cities where I’d move back and settle in for a while if there was cause. Having the knowledge that I could go anywhere makes me feel unsettled at times – like I have no solid home base. I have some truly wonderful friends in the town where I now reside. Does one choose to make a place their home and set about creating it consciously, or does it just happen? One day you look back and realize that you’ve been in a place for so many years and have built a community of friends and have history in that location – that you have unwittingly created a home.

Is home as Robert Frost wrote in his poem “The Death of the Hired Man”?

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

(or perhaps it is more like what The Tick says:
“Interviewer: Well, can you… destroy the world?
Tick: Egad! I hope not! That’s where I keep all my stuff!”)