We all have an origin story. Or a creation myth. For me, it starts with a house on top of a hill. The hill looks out westward upon a tawny expanse of chaparral, its neighboring slopes dotted with scrub oak and toyon and manzanita. The power-lines that crest the hillside are always receding into the distant light. They look quite lovely in the late afternoon sun.
Surrounding this house are the desert foothills and flatlands of coastal California. On a pristine day (which is rare), you can see straight from the hilltop to the Pacific Ocean, a blue haze on the horizon. In between, you can see the million homes and strip malls and backyards and industrial parks and little places where you grew up. They emerge from the arid landscape, suspended above it like a mirage. They are disbelievable. They are familiar.
I spent many years explaining why I cannot go back to this place. It is a ritual, a byproduct of medical training – friends and mentors ask constantly where you are going next, and why not back. Until more recently, I would laugh, and joke about the traffic, the sprawl, the in-laws. I did not fully understand the explanation myself. But an answer for the unexplainable, repeated often enough, becomes a creation myth. And a myth is just that – partly real, partly imagined, a story to place oneself in the cosmos.
I was born in that place. We moved into the house around the time I began forming memories. My grandparents lived with us throughout my childhood, and my parents were around more than most. I slept in the same bedroom from when we moved in until I moved out. The wallpaper had a rectangular pattern of pastel pink and blue and green lines. At certain places where the blue and green paint intersected, there would be a neat square of teal or turquoise, pleasing to the eye. Feverishly sick, or awake late at night, I would lie in bed and soothe myself with these squares. I am no longer as sickly, though I am still a fitful sleeper. Nowadays, without the wallpaper to soothe me, I write.
Daytime brings the concentric circles of suburbia, warm and protective. Lying in the backseat of the family minivan, I lean into the curve of the road and watch it all go by. It is ever-expansive. It is stifling. I am sculpted by school districts, extracurriculars, traffic patterns. I become fiercely quiet, comfortably lonely. I am worse at holding onto friends than memories. I imagine the future before me. Somewhere in the ebb and flow, the memories shine through like droplets of sunlight. Lawnmowers on a Saturday morning. A pool party down the street. An Easter egg hunt with mother. A serious conversation with father. You can treasure these things, and hold them close, and still not want to go back.
I left when I was 17. For the first time in my life outside of the warm protective circle, I saw the beauty of the wider world. I experienced seasons and mountains, forests and rivers. I fell in love in a wild place. I got lost in the city and hitchhiked home. I lived above a fish market. I stopped in cathedrals to rest and listen. I held hands with the dying. I learned about loss. I learned to find solace in it, to see grief as illuminating, suffering as universal. I wore my heart on my sleeve. I kept my sleeve to myself.
In my loneliness, I wandered. With each step came the infinite, cold stream of loss, the music and language and meaning and friendship flowing past me. I found it better at times to drift with the current, at others to climb ashore and rest awhile. I called these moments home – defined not by time spent, or rent paid, but by the way they grounded me, gave me perspective, allowed me to root myself and grow – the concentric circles ever-widening. I can see them, even now, like keyframes in the record of my life. A pine-clad island. Snow falling from a clear blue sky. Sunset on red brick. Any number of dimly-lit rooms, quiet nights awake and dreaming. Mist on a lake, rising.
This is how I was created, and why I can no longer go back. I have been too affected to go back. I have seen too much worth seeing. I have become too enamored with the world, too connected with its spirit, in awe of its potential, aware of its mortality, to go back. To be small and safe again. To be warm and protected. To only imagine the future.
And so, in my thirties, I’m searching for home. I’m building a new life, and putting down roots like a hesitant sapling after a thousand-year flood. I’ve done it before, placing brick by brick atop foundations real and imagined, imbuing the rooms with memories that blend together, adorning the walls with cherished loves and landscapes. Still frames, with my heart squarely at center. I thought I’d found that place before, not so long ago, but the current never stops. Wading through the shallows, I set one foot on the grassy riverbank and peer through the trees, looking for something I hope I’ll recognize. Heart expectant, mind grateful, with no thought of turning back. I’ve found it once before. I’ll find it once again.
