"Caution, the moving walkway is empty."

I'm sitting in an airport bar, in Chicago. Do you think it counts as visiting Chicago if I'm just in an airport bar? In that case, I could say I've been to Vegas, Atlanta, and a few other places only by airport association. Hmm. I'm drinking Bud Light drafts. I just started a tab. Why not? I have three hours until my flight. I just checked- it's on time. Snow delays are around me, sucks. People seeming irked that their flight is delayed. I'm starting to get a buzz. Hell, I only had some scraps of a nutrigrain bar hours ago. I'm at Miller's Pub. In front of me is the menu, which after more beer actually looks appealing. Chicken fingers. For $8.50? That's a lot, right? For me it is. Four travelers to my right, mother in law is coming in for the weekend, I curled my hair to fly for the day, group of delayed flight passengers are chatting, loud. About American Idol. They think the judges should have some sort of veto over who is voted off. In Sanjaya's case especially, they say. Who curls their hair to fly for the day? Really? I specifically plan comfy. Hair up, glasses, comfy shoes. Maybe she has a shorter flight. When I fly to NY I dress it up a little more. But still, curl my hair? Shit. The two next to me, they're a couple, are comfy. In clothes and in their way. He just leaned over to her, and wrestle hugged her. Cute. And I'm writing about them. Write now.

It doesn't feel like 11:35am. Shit. I woke up at 5:10 today. To my body, my Massachusetts body, it's 12:35pm. It doesn't feel like that either. It feels like it should be dark. Night. I'm several beers in, and this is what happens when you drink during the day. I remember college Saturdays, or Fridays after class getting out, starting drinking. A beer waiting for me by one of my roommates. Our neighbors already being half bombed. That seems so long ago now.

I want to call people. But all of my contact list are working. I just texted the new guy friend of mine. Yeah, I texted, and we all know my thoughts on that. But, I think what I sent, "I'm drinking a beer right now, sucks you're working," was text appropriate.

Oh wow. A really cute old man just ordered a Bloody Mary and a Gin and Tonic. His wife is over in the corner and she's adorable. I need to look away. This will induce tears.

Oh, oh no. The bartender's boyfriend broke his jaw playing hockey. She just said "snaggle tooth." He can't make out. It's been five weeks. I just saw a picture of his zoomed in grill on her Motorola camera phone. Oh, now she wants me to see a video. Wow.

I guess I should wrap this up. Order some app, or something.

And another beer.

how come?

I hate these reminders of you. There's so many freaking reminders. You know, for the longest time, I felt good that I was in a new place. A new apartment, somewhere you'd never been in, we'd never been us in. There was never an us here. No shared moments in the kitchen, cooking a meal together. Nothing shared on the couch in this place, my head in your lap as we watched a movie together. We shared my bed, but not in this new place. No shared bed memories here.

And so for a while, the no shared moments, together, here, that was all good. With the newness, there was no you, no us. I didn't have to worry about looking outside at my driveway and remembering us kissing there. Didn't have to see the upstairs shower and remember what we did there.

So the newness, it was all pretty good. Because it didn't evoke memories of you. But then, the newness, the fucking newness, reminded that it was lacking you. Devoid of you. Never once was there a memory here of us together.

And sometimes it's everywhere. Sometimes you are still everywhere. You are in the way that my body falls asleep at night. The way I still bring a glass of water to bed. It's in the way that I leave the door ajar in the bathroom while brushing my teeth. It's in the way I put my hand on the passenger seat of the car.

I used to do all of these things, in the anticipation of you being there. The bed. The water for you. Expecting you to join me to brush our teeth together. Me putting my hand on your leg when I drove us somewhere.

The thing is, you're not here. You never were. Which makes it so weird, for me to still be doing these things, as if you were. As if it's going to ever be this way again. Why still, all these memories? Why still, can I feel your presence here, when you were never here to begin with? How can you miss something that you never had?

Why must you keep turning up all over the place? In places you don't belong. That you weren't ever before?

Go away. Please?

Home

November 27, 2006

I just got in late last night from my longest stay ever in Reno. I have probably been there about 8 or 9 times now, and every single time I go, I feel like, this could be home.

It could be home for a lot of reasons. It could be home, because my dad is there. It's where he moved a little over three years ago. And C's there. He's been there even before my dad. When I think of home, I think of a lot of East Coast things, naturally; it's my familiar. But lately, I have thought of home as so many parts of the West Coast too.

It could be home because the area there is so me. It's so beautiful and I could totally picture myself moving there, finding a small one bedroom, I'd already have some people I know, so that would be a good thing, and I'd have the mountains, and Lake Tahoe. I'd have family and some friends already. I'd have no humidity and I'd have warm days on a hammock.

For a couple months at the end of my last year in grad school, I seriously considered moving out there. I'd go to see my dad, and I'd pick up apartment listings books outside grocery stores. I'd be even more observant, taking in the areas we'd drive through, look at "for rent" signs even more intently. I'd check the newspapers, google apartments when I'd get back home. I looked at the jobs out there, I found jobs I could apply for. I pictured my life there, my moving there. And so much of it was so appealing. So much of it still is.

As many aspects of it that I love and that I could picture would be so home to me, a whole huge chunk of it is just too unfamiliar to my familiar, lifelong home.

My mom is home. My home was with her for my childhood, and she's always going to be my home, even now, as an adult. We have an amazing relationship for which I am so grateful. I honestly couldn't picture being that far from her. My grandparents are home to me. All four of them, who I am so fortunate to still have in my life. I've even lived part of my childhood with my mom's parents. My home was with them. My best friends are home to me. I've lived with them too, they were my home for more than just a year, and they are still my home. They are my go to people if I need to talk it out in the middle of the night; they're the siblings I never had.

Home has always been the East Coast to me. The New England cold weather, the seasons, especially the fall, the Sox, Bruins, and Pats. York Beach, Hampton Beach, the town I grew up in. The Nor'easters, the 90 degree humid weather, they are all so very much home to me. It may not all be stuff that's amazing and desirable to others, but it's still what I know, what I'm used to, what makes up "home" if someone were to ask me to describe it.

All of these people and things have made up my home for the past almost 24 and a half years. The thought of being far away from all of that, it's freaky. It scares me and it gives me the feeling. But it excites me too. And for those few months after grad school, I was legitamately getting ready to be serious about this move. But for all these reasons of a familiar home and all things associated with it, I couldn't do it. I am still here, home with the familiar- the faces, the memories, the people. I'm home with all of that.

They say "home is where the heart is." But what if you're heart is grounded, if it is home, in two places? And the thought of leaving one place for another is really that intriguing, yet at the same time that unthinkable? I am certainly one for trying new things, and being adventurous and although sometimes have a fear of change, I'm one to embrace it. Growth comes with change. I like being comfortable, but I also like the uncertainty that comes with new, with unfamiliar, with change.

But changing my home? To that far away? Not right now. Not yet. I guess I will just know when, or if, the time is ever going to be right for that. Or if some miracle happens, and Reno switches coasts, becomes New Hampshire, or Vermont, or Maine- then I'm so there, in a heartbeat.

Until then, I will spend my vacations embracing every moment I spend there. Taking it all in, living in the moment with it all. There's not many places that you can visit and really feel like you're home. I do there. And that's a good feeling.