issue 248

I was worried that by moving home, I would lose my edge. Moving to Oakland was like embarking on my own vision quest. In an effort to find myself, I shed everything I had once known, besides my beloved boyfriend, and moved across the country. I had no job, a little money, one relative and an adventure. It didn’t take me long to realize that my vision may have been slightly skewed when I chose to move to the Bay Area. Sitting in my boss’ office holding crystals and meditating in the middle of a marketing meeting to regain my clarity sort of opened my eyes. I’m a weird girl, just not that weird. I didn’t identify with the constant yoga, alfalfa sprouts and tarot cards, but I did grow a great deal out there. For one, I learned how much home really meant to me, and what that word meant to me. Home is not where you lay your hat; it truly is where you leave your heart. And mine was not in California. But as we said goodbye to California passing through the southeastern edge of the Mojave Desert, I worried I might be leaving behind more than just a place and some memories. Was it possible that I could be leaving behind the wisdom I had gained, this new person I had become? By moving home, was I really just moving back? Once, during a visit back to Florida before the big move, it occurred to me that my friends at home only saw the person I had left behind. This was the person they had known for years. They had seen me through my follies. They knew how to laugh at me and rarely took me seriously. Everything in California felt serious, and everyone treated me thus as well. After all, I was the big adventurer. I was the wanderer who had risked the life I had always known to find something with more grandeur. But I know now that the real grandeur comes in the smile of your mother when you’re laughing over dinner. It comes in the salty smell of the St John’s River, the breeze from the Atlantic, the beautiful Jacksonville skyline and the seven bridges we cross everyday. I just wondered if people at home would recognize this new grandeur? My cat did. After two flights in twelve hours, he walked out of his cat carrier and immediately went to the food bowl. Soon after, he was outside chewing on some grass and simply understood that we were back. The first few weeks in Jacksonville were similar to every other vacation home I had taken over the past five years: filled with visits to every friend and family member I hadn’t seen over the past year and the thrill of going to all my old favorite spots. One thing was missing, however- the anticipation of goodbye. Some things are different this time around. The initial shock of hello is wearing off and real life is settling in. I have started working. I go to the grocery store, to the doctor, to church on occasion. People have stopped wanting to hang out every day in order to squeeze in as much visit time as possible. I am becoming a local. I have even found a cute little bungalow in San Marco where I can hang my hat and even leave my heart. The other day my friend asked me, talking on the phone, if I was happy to be back. She seemed to have apprehension in her voice, and it dawned on me. I am happy. And, people can see the change. They even respect it, but I still throw it out there on occasion that I have just relocated from California. It’s like a Girl Scout badge. I want everyone to know what I’ve done. I feel different, and it’s important that everyone knows. My fear of losing the part of me that grew up inside the hard streets of Oakland is still there, but I also still check my locks every time I leave the house. I revel in the fact that there is readily available parking wherever you go, a novelty I had not even considered before. People think our strip malls are unattractive, but when it takes you half an hour to park whenever you leave your house, you start to appreciate them. A strip mall is just like a city, but with ample parking. Really, it’s just like southerners to be so polite. I still cook the recipes I learned when I was out there. And I still have my music. Now, when I drive around this driving town, I listen to the music that carried me through the Bay and back home again. My new me has melded with the old me. I realize now it’s not the place that changes you, but you that changes yourself. I made the choice, I made the move, and I made the return. I waved goodbye to the quest, but did not lose the vision.

issue 247

When I arrived back in Jacksonville a week ago, my friend’s mother, whom I had just traveled across the country with, asked me what that buzzing sound was. We were standing in my mom’s backyard, where I am sitting now. “I don’t know what it’s called,” was my response. Later, I realized it was the cicadas, a sound I had heard my entire life, but never really noticed. For the first time ever, I was fully immersed in a sharp, high-pitched buzzing that filled the air.

The gnats are bothering me now. It’s been a year since I’ve even heard the whisper of a bug. California doesn’t have many bugs in its severely dry, yet foggy climate. Down in Los Angeles they called it smog, but in the Bay Area, where I had been living for the past year, it was truly fog. I had even termed it the Fog Monster, for the way it rolled over the Pacific Ocean and up into the hilly terrain of the Bay. It seemed to swallow the entire city each day at five o’clock. I made the mistake once of getting stuck in Haight-Ashbury with only jeans and a tank top, attire I was more than comfortable in as a Florida girl, but I quickly changed my ways. The fog was cold, and even on the warmest day, it could make you feel like winter.

The warmth was one of the first things I had missed; moving out to California fresh out of college with a degree in creative writing, ready to conquer the world. I hadn’t thought to bring jackets, because it was, after all, the Golden State, which I now assume was coined after the gold rush, and not the amount of sunlight pouring over them. San Francisco does receive an absurdly large amount of sunny days, a fact I learned recently from a random newspaper read somewhere along my journey home- possibly Denver, perhaps Santa Fe, or maybe even New Orleans. But there is a stiffness and an edge to the Bay Area that the fog seemed to trap inside the hills.

Perhaps it’s a remnant from the Summer of Love, that free-flowing summer of drugs, alcohol, hippies and social/political turbulence. The stragglers of that era are easy to pinpoint as they hunker down inside the numerous parks across the city that they proudly call home. The city protects the homeless there, or as I tend to think, encourages them, but that wouldn’t be democratic of me to say. Perhaps it’s the economic gap, a broken bridge between people, like the collapse of the Bay Bridge after the quake of ’89. For a city so intent on freedom and love and equality, Silicon Valley, home to some of America’s wealthiest, live just beyond its borders, if not within. Or perhaps the stiffness is just California, a state so content with itself, with its beautiful landscapes and booming economy, that people there tend to think there is nowhere else to be. I, however, knew better.

I spent my life underestimating Florida. Sure, it is a huge tourist destination, but who cares? Sure, the weather is always warm, but “how annoying,” I thought. I wanted seasons. Sure, the beach is never far, but I rarely went. Sure, people wave to each other on the streets, but that’s normal.

In reality, Florida is a tourist destination for a reason. And the weather being always warm is a wonderful thing. Your joints don’t ache and you can go outside in the winter. California has its amazing coastline, but it is all cliffs and usually too cold for enjoyment. It doesn’t have the soft-sanded beach that goes on for miles in both directions that I remembered from home. It seems you could walk on Florida’s beaches forever and never reach the end. But the thing I ended up appreciating the most was the people. Floridians, and specifically Jacksonvillians, are nice people. Generally. Sure, everyone has their day, and maybe it’s the warmth that makes us too lazy to care, but we all generally have each other’s best interest in mind. I have been to many places in this world, and nowhere else have I met such pleasant people. I remember once, on my first visit to California, my little cousin stood at the end of her driveway waiting for her bus to pick her up. She made a game of waving to every car that passed, something I didn’t even realize to be a game until she came to me, laughing, and said, “The only person who would wave back was my nanny.” This, she thought, was funny. I found it disturbing.

And it’s not to say I didn’t meet a number of great people in California. People are people just like anywhere. You get to know them and you love them. But I do also believe in collective thought, and after getting mugged, standing on Embarcadero Street in the Jack London district of Oakland, just outside our apartment, everyone’s comment was, “Yeah, that sucks, but that happens. You shouldn’t go out alone at night.” Not even outside of my apartment, apparently.

The first thing I noticed were the cicadas and the lack of a need for my newly acquired edge. The fog had lifted off my shoulders and I could feel the Florida warmth again. Standing outside of my mother’s house, I saw a neighbor and I waved at him. He waved back. Same old, same old.