I am sitting in an airport lounge at DCA awaiting my flight to, well, what used to be home. When I left California I told my clients who decided to continue working with me remotely that I would return to California two times a year to see them in person. This is time number one this year. I am anxiously awaiting to return.
Sometimes the word anxious can mean worry and sometimes it can mean anticipation and sometimes it can mean "I am so excited that I just can't wait". I mean it in all three ways today. I lived in Palo Alto for 25 years. We moved out of our home in late February 2020 and I got very sick the day after the move. Then the house went on the market in early March. And you all remember what happened then. So I never really had a proper good-bye to the place and I hardly got to have a very proper good-bye to the people. So "home" I go to the Sheraton Palo Alto and a sublet Pilates Studio for seeing my clients.
There are many things we would like to do in our short visit to the Bay. There are a few of them we will do; we are taking some time to see a few people but unfortunately not everyone we would like to see. We made a dinner reservation at one of our favorite restaurants but unfortunately not every restaurant dear to our hearts and stomachs. We will get a small taste of what and who we loved while we spent a quarter of a decade not knowing that someday we would leave. I am imagining a bittersweet experience staying in a hotel next door to the high school where my daughter spent her turbulent years. I know that area by rote and by heart, but I will be sleeping in a strange rented room reminding me that this is no longer mine.
We are now six months and one week as Virginians. Alexandria is starting to feel like home; Thomas and I remarked that the other day. We are getting to know our neighborhood, our neighbors, the path to the pharmacy, the road to the grocery store (which I have reluctantly embraced). We recognize now that when we look at the weather app we must always check the humidity. We drive on the freeway occasionally and look over the Potomoc to see the Capital city and the Capitol building. We still feel the thrill of being so close to DC but it is a little more subdued each time. It is our city now; our city is no longer San Francisco (although a piece of my heart is still residing there).
We had our first "party" in our new home last week-end. Seven people over for dinner sitting outside in the warm evening of late spring in Northern Virginia. I served California wine but our guests brought wine from other states and countries. I made an hors d'oeuvres out of an old Sunset magazine that was always a party staple of mine. It reminded me that I need to learn about all new flowers for my garden now that I no longer need to plant drought resistant shrubs.
So, home. What is it; where is it? Last week I wrote a post about our house. It was an easier post to write. So concrete in my musings. Like gender in the 2020's the notion of home feels so less binary. I'm feeling at home in Virginia. I'm going home to California. I woke up this morning, checked the weather app, noted it was 81 degrees with mild humidity and thought "Ah, just like a summer day in California".
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