Recently I went out to lunch with David. We were chatting about his move from Cambridge to Sacramento and the culture shock (and seasonal allergy risk) of going back home.
I described a few of the places I might move next, holding up two hands to mime weighing the options, and asked Which one seems more me?
He laughed and said I don’t think you will ever fit in anywhere, Bee!
This is a valid observation.
There are certainly cities that offer a closer match to my extracurricular interests, other places where I enjoy the company of good friends, still others where the landscape offers consolation.
Yet, despite the affection I feel for those places, I live here on purpose.
When I make a major life choice it is always perilous and precipitous. I am sure that I will leave Cambridge the same way I arrived – all in a dash without a forwarding address – though I have no way of knowing when that will happen.
Yesterday I ran into David again near the much hyped and very odd Corpus Christi clock and he wondered if I would have time to hang out again before he leaves for the states.
The answer on reflection was no – I have film and play tickets, plus a million chores to finish before racing off to Germany before dawn tomorrow.
Walking around this ancient city after we talked I felt awful, certainly worse than turning down the invitation warranted. He will come back, and I will visit his family in California. Our friendship will continue.
Poking around in my brain I realized that while I was upset over the lack of time to accomplish everything this week, I was also deeply sad about other news.
My grandmother’s health has now deteriorated to the extent she no longer recognizes anyone except my father, based on the visual cue of his bright red hair. Another family member is struggling to recover from heart surgery. One of the only grown-ups to show any degree of compassion when I was a sick kid has just entered hospice, her fight against cancer nearly at an end.
I am intrinsically and historically rubbish at much of the work of being a daughter, niece, cousin, friend. Even my offspring will confirm that I am a strange automaton, puzzled by many elements of life that other people find easy. I don’t talk on the phone, I rarely answer email, I have walked away from every community that I call home.
The only things I can reliably offer are organizational: I am a master planner, the queen of the deadline. I am also exceptionally calm in a crisis. I’m the person who makes the trip to the emergency room, the one faithfully standing guard in the hospital ward, the individual who can make funeral arrangements and scare up the money to pay while everyone else dissolves in grief.
I was raised to believe that true love is expressed with direct action, and everything that has happened in my adult life has supported the concept. Words are just words, no matter how nicely stated.
Right now it is not possible to fly back to the states no matter how much I want to go.
I did not move here for selfish reasons, but knowing that is worse than useless when people I care about are in pain and I can’t go home to help.
Yesterday I bought cards and sat in the market square crying and writing letters to people I may never see again.