I Heart California

California, the place I still think of as home, with its smog, cars, people, sunsets, people, asphalt, tract homes, people and...the ocean.

Anyway, California. It's where my heart is. It's where my heart will always be. Sometimes I miss it so much, I feel it in my gut. I can smell the sage of the foothills where I grew up, feel the dry heat on my skin or the cool mist of the coastal fog. I miss hearing the spanish, korean, the broken english that only a native Californian can speak.

In my sleep, I hear the waves crashing, feel the cold sand on my skin from countless nights sleeping on the beach. In my mind's eye, I see the brilliant orange sunsets over the mountains, my mother's rose garden and the lemon tree we used to climb as children. In my speech, I still over use the words "awesome", "cool", "totally" and "like, you know". I put the word "the" in front of every highway, freeway and road when giving directions (as in, "take the 14 to the 15 and turn right to the 2 which will take you to Montpelier). No local would waste so much breath.

Three days after my grandmother's burial, I drove up the coast, stopping in Pacific Grove/Monterey, on my way to San Francisco where I would catch a plane back to Vermont. The highway, winding up the coast like the proverbial snake, was choked with travelers. Beautiful weather, folks in their cars, never stopping to get out and breathe in the air. Eventually, I found a spot to pull over, climbed over the barbed wire and scrambled down the side of a sandy embankment to the ocean. Sat there for a long while, just taking it in, sitting idly.

As a child, I believed that I was a mermaid. I'm a good swimmer, never afraid of the water and figured it was only a matter of time before I figured out how to breathe underwater. Eventually, as puberty set in and reality took hold, I let go of that fantasy, but to this day, still think of the ocean as my final destination to retire and rest and repose. I love that word. Repose.

As much as i wanted to, staying in that part of the world couldn't last forever. I needed to get back to my life. Back to sleepy and wonderful Vermont, where my old farmhouse waits, frozen pipes and empty of children and dog. In Vermont, where my children are going to sleep at night, without me to sing them songs or read them stories. In Vermont, where I live a good and full life that I love, in spite of being landlocked and snow bound a good portion of the year. In Vermont where I found my heart again, lost a bit of it...again, then realized it works just fine in spite of being a little beat up.

It's good to be home.

But I will always love California.