I Wanna Go Home

HW Senior Apartments, Westminster, CA

I returned from Southern California yesterday, after prowling neighborhoods in Long Beach, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and Westminster, looking for my heart's desire. I found it, centrally located in Westminster, right off Beach Blvd. Yes, BEACH, as in the Pacific Ocean. It's not Belmont Shore, but it's still close enough to the sea to get an ocean breeze. You can see more of this quiet and conveniently-located apartment complex for the 62+ and better independent living crowd here:

http://www.trulia.com/rental-community/9000012468/HW-Senior-Apartments-13920-Hoover-St-Westminster-CA-92683/

Michael Buble isn't the only one who wants to go home. In recent years every time I return to where I grew up and raised my son, I begin to get homesick. No different this time around. When I was younger I wanted to get far, far away...and I did. Now I want to go back to my roots.

Here's a story I wrote a few months ago about this longing.

Right Back Where I Started From 

“And I have loved thee, ocean!” –George Gordon, Lord Byron

When I turned five, I received a copy of  The Runaway Bunny. I determined that it conveyed the message that elsewhere is better than right here.

“I’ve got to run away today,” I announced.

Mama nodded. “I understand, honey bunny,” she said. So she wrapped a peanut butter sandwich in wax paper, tucked it in the pocket of my red boucle coat, and kissed me goodbye.

“Remember, you aren’t allowed to cross the street,” she cautioned.

So I trudged to the corner, about three houses away. I peeked over my shoulder. Yep…Mama stood there watching me, so I dare not attempt to cross.  I contemplated my options and decided to set up camp right on the corner and eat my lunch there.

As I nibbled I raised my face to the noontime sun. I’d have loved to have flopped down and snoozed for a bit, but knew I was only supposed to take a nap in my bed. I took a final bite, stuffed the wrapping in my pocket and trudged home.

That night at supper when I recounted how I’d run away from home. Daddy and my first- grader sister didn’t look impressed. “Looks like you ran right back,” they chimed.

They were right, of course, at least for the time being. So for several decades I pretty much stayed put. I married, I worked, I raised a son, and took care of a variety of houses that never quite felt like home. It all was just…California. I always imagined that home was out there somewhere beyond the horizon beckoning me. It was someplace else…across the street…around the corner…across the continent…on the other side of the globe.

So at age 50 I ran away a second time, this time joining the Peace Corps. At long last I’d have the opportunity to explore those faraway places I’d always dreamed of. Now I wouldn’t have to stop at any corners. And maybe I’d find my home.

“You’ll come back in two years, and won’t ever want to venture far again,” friends warned.

“I doubt it,” I’d replied. In memory of my late mother, I packed a peanut butter sandwich to take on my first flight to Miami for a Peace Corps staging.

Though I never got to the moon, that Runaway Bunny would have envied my worldly adventures. I joined, joined again and rejoined. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I hacked open coconuts with a machete outside my house in Belize City. I clung to my counterpart as we raced on her motorcycle to get across streams before they flooded in the province of San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic. I helped paint murals on the Youth Center fence with teens on a rare dry afternoon when the monsoon winds had died down in Mont Fleuri, Seychelles. Vacationing in Singapore, I sipped Slings at Raffles and stuck a toe in the South China Sea.

Later, I continued to travel as a health programming specialist for Peace Corps. I heard gray wolves howl on the steppes outside Ulan Bator on the spring equinox in Mongolia. I thrilled to the spontaneous singing of Samoan chiefs and missionaries at a training session in Apia. I explored the corners of the earth, Guyana, Uzbekistan, Thailand, St. Vincent, Bulgaria. I still was looking for home, though I’d been to over 50 countries.

When I remarried during the millennial year, my new husband, Ken, began to talk about his vision of a dream house. “It’s got to be somewhere with four seasons,” he insisted. “I love sweater weather.” So we settled in the far northeast corner of Washington State and for a few years we shared what began to feel like home. And then Ken died.

I’ve continued to live in this huge old house, plodding through the seasons. I’ve hired handymen, gardeners, snow plowers to tend to the property, acres that I can’t handle on my own. I’ve dragged my vacuum upstairs and down. I’ve mopped, scrubbed and dusted until my aging muscles ached.

And I’ve shivered. Friends who’ve lived here all their lives perk up in the winter, wandering outside to cheer on mittened children who barrel down hills on cookie sheet sleds. Me? I huddle by the fireplace, sip hot chocolate and wish it were iced tea. I’d rather be basking somewhere on a beach.

But it’s impossible, I decided, to attempt to move. I’m too old to be starting over somewhere else. Just thinking about what moving again would take in time and energy wore me out. Hopeless, I thought. I’m stuck here, and have to make the most of it.

Then I visited family in California last fall. I rambled across the beach to the edge of the Pacific. Suddenly, as the waves washed against my toes, I realized that this was home. Always had been. I’d grown up by the ocean. I’d gone fishing in it off a pier when I was a child. I’d sailed on it as a young adult. All my life I’ve loved the salty taste of my fingers after they’ve dipped in it, the delicious shock of the water’s icy bite when I first would dive in to body surf, the distinctive scent of seaweed and sea spray.

“I never realized how much I miss being close to the Pacific,” I told my son that night.

“Have you thought of moving back to California?” he asked.

“It would be overwhelming to even think about it,” I said, shaking my head at the impossibility.

He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were the lady who at aged 50 set out on an odyssey that took her to the remote corners of the earth.”

I stared at him, ideas clicking away in my mind. Yes, and I braved my way to the corner of my block when I was only five. I took a deep breath. Have I ever been too young or too old to refuse a challenge?

I’m ready to run away again. Challenging? Sure. But I’ve made a list and I’m checking it twice. I’ve already called the real estate agent. I’ve written to senior apartment complexes in my old hometown for rental estimates. I cashed in some frequent flyer miles for a ticket for a stepson to come in late spring to help clean out my garage and shed. I’m asking friends if they know of an art dealer who might be interested in the paintings and sculptures.

Each day I sort through a drawer, a closet, or a bookcase to determine what to donate, what to trash, and what to pack. I wake up each morning humming, “California, Here I Come.”

I’m allowed to cross the street. I’m going home.