Hummingbirds, succulents, redwood trees, the sea.
I was born in California, lived there all my life. As a kid I went to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, sailed on the San Francisco Bay, and later, attended college and entered the workforce.
California is cool, the people are cool, the beaches, the movies, fashion, fitness, the weather, science, business, the arts, all of it.
As a young adult I experienced an enormous urban wildfire in Oakland, and migrated to Big Sur. There I braved forest fires and tourists, carving out a life up a dirt road on a mountaintop.
In a twist of fate, I found myself in small town America: Fairfield, Iowa.
I shed my defining sense of cool pretty quickly. It was a shade of my character that, at my age, was easy to drop. Like giving up an extra bag at the airport check-in, folding some items into my carry-on luggage and ditching the rest.
My spouse was a native Minnesotan, but a Californian for most of his life. Always that winning smile, bright and joyful, even when he began to ever so gently unravel.
“Those butterflies better be worth it,” he said, when I dragged him off on our last junket, a trip to the Butterfly Festival in Kansas City. Just four hours away! I pleaded. I’ll drive. Now, I know what a major slog that must have been for him, hours in the car, a night in a hotel bed, quarreling over wine at dinner. But, oh how he smiled at the endless variety of newborn butterflies, his walking stick in hand, his face open with love.
There’s something strange about human nature, something to do with looking backwards, and the habit of longing. When you’re dreaming of a life on a different playground, sometimes you miss the beauty and possibility in your own.
For many months during a recent illness, I had visions of jewel-like acrobatic hummingbirds, succulents of all kinds, the sacred silence of redwood groves, and the crash and whisper of ocean waves.
A gentle knight came to care for me and offered to share his home beside the sea. When he holds me tight, or when I reach up to kiss the curl of his upper lip beneath his white whiskers, I feel peace.
So, in answer to my prayers, I landed back on the coast.
Yet, now, I see hardship, disaster risk, and so many new challenges.
People said, Oh, you must be very happy to be back from Ohio / Iowa, implying that the Midwest is a wasteland that everyone wants to flee. I was surprised to find elements of such provincial narcissism in my home state. But that’s another story.
What a case of homesickness! Not just for dear friends and workmates, but also for —
Peonies, fireflies, cicadas, cardinals, thunderstorms and even, God help me, snow.
Yes, the way snow crunches under your boots on a quiet winter walk. Candy-apple red cardinals wearing black masks, said to be messengers from the other side. The generously petalled peonies, sometimes growing untended, multiple blooms drooping elegantly over sidewalks.
Buzzing space alien cicadas, and daring fireflies that chase each other above green lawns on summer evenings. Crackling heat, wearing lightweight dresses and strappy heels on the town square. Symphonic thunderstorms that remind you that the gods are alive.
In my California home, the horizon of the majestic Pacific Ocean reminded me of the level Iowa landscape. How startled I was to feel comfort looking at that endless flat line. A tranquil contrast to the chaos of rolling hills, mountains, cityscapes and freeways.
I watched a documentary about farm pesticides and cancer, and found myself weeping over images of roads through Iowa’s cornfields and towering, biblical clouds.
What happened?
Home is really where your heart has suffered and grown. In Fairfield, I shed my skin, and was held throughout the process by the kindness of community. When I left, I felt a chunk of my heart drop away, a pot of gold in the black soil of my backyard, radiating warmth and love.
Everyone wants good friends, community support and care, and now I see how small-town infrastructure makes this possible. Affordable and accessible parks, pools, classes, cafés, and gatherings of all kinds help folks to thrive. There is a sense of peace here, missing from the hectic energy of the coast.
A forest fire rages to the south of my home and I feel an unwelcome Déjà vu, not just for the uncertainty and fear of the encroaching flames, but also the existential exercise (again) of evaluating which of my possessions are truly important. Yet another exercise in letting go.
Hummingbirds, succulents, redwood trees, the sound of the sea.
Peonies, fireflies, cardinals, cicadas, thunderstorms, snow.
In this new chapter, I dance in morning sunlight beside the Redwoods, and trust in the tincture of time. I take my old dog to the beach and watch the birds: Pelicans in formations soar across the cloudless turquoise blue sky, while curved-beak curlews and tiny sandpipers play on the sand together, running from wavelets of foam. The ocean crashes and whispers, just as I remembered it.
After four years in Fairfield, I’m now a re-patriated expat, not quite so bright and shiny, not quite so cool. Absorbing sunshine, growing towards the light, like the tendrils of a re-potted plant, I reach out for peace, for nurturing, for home.