A Journey to the Sea

Interesting to me, my visit from Ché last week awakened something in me. I believe it has been stirring for several months, but having a week with which to see my hometown from a visitor's perspective did two things to me.

Suddenly I have a new appreciation for the good about this fair city. Ché pointed out several positives I had never thought about, or maybe only become blind to in a lifetime of looking at it through familiar eyes.

Typically one will find me bemoaning the dreadful winters, full of gray and rain and overcast, day after day, week after week. However, as we stood on the waterfront in the summer sun, I realized how the long months of gray lead to breathtaking summers of precious green and bright that people take advantage of vigorously and in tremendous ways for three months of the year. We have this unbreakable passion for summer here, because it is so short. We will use every day to the best of our ability, never wasting a single ray.

One also might hear me arguing the negatives of such a thoroughly multicultural city. When we were children, there was an annual multicultural fair at our elementary school. My sister couldn't pronounce the word properly, and it became "moocha-coocha". The term has stuck among my family and friends, and it is fitting for a city so deeply multicultural to have it's own word for such phenomenon. However, in a culture where a person might fit well into many subcultures also produces a culture where a person never fits completely into any subculture. So one is always both an insider and outsider. While this can also cause one to feel rather lost among the moocha-coocha, it also leads to a great respect for diversity. As we walked some of my favorite stomping grounds, among the dreadlock-, hemp- and patchouli-wearing crowd, I became aware of how ridiculously normal this seems for me. And yet, not 5 miles away one will find some of the most upscale shopping in the area, for the tea-snobs and Mercedes SUV drivers.

The other thing I realized during Ché's visit -- the awakening of a dream long lay dormant...albeit only a dream...of traveling. Not the kind of travel one sees in a magazine, taking place on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, or in Rome or Paris or Moscow, but the kind of travel begotten by friendships, taking place via car or train, to places like Powell River or Montgomery or Denver. (Yes, there are those whom I love in places like Melbourne or London...but until I become rich or one can get there by car, those will have to wait.) There are so many places I have never been, so much of our nation, our continent, I have not seen, and I have seen a great deal of it over the years. I still dream, as I did when I was 12 and 17 and 25, that I might one day have opportunity to see it all.

So yesterday on the way to the coast, as I drove south on I-5, it occurred to me...I could continue on south to see my friend Margaret in Sacramento, my friend Barbara in L.A., my friend Laura in Tucson, and so on, all the way across and around the US. Alas, my children are still young and freedom to do so still escapes me. They have school and my husband has a job and we have a home and a dog and two cats...travel is a luxury we see little of. While I certainly do not wish to be free of these responsibilities which prevent me from exploring, I cannot help but wonder if that day will come, eventually.

As I pulled in last night to this place we always go, the privilege we have to come to the sea so often somehow escapes me, as if there is a boredom about it for me these days. We have come to the same place since I was 8 years old, seen the same view and the same town and the same sights...and I am trying, despite this longing in me, to know the value it is to be able to look out upon the ocean and walk the beach, even such a small and familiar slice of it, even if I wish it were lined with palm trees or eucalyptus.

I cannot deny the wanderlust that lives in my soul, waiting quietly in the dark for the moment it is given permission to come to life. Having appreciation for the familiar, even the boring, even the most ordinary of it, is a learned behavior, one I wish I had a greater gift for. But for 6 days a week or so ago, in a visit from a friend, I gained a small amount of renewed love for this place I live. One day I hope to venture out from my familiar city, valley, climate...but for now I will learn to be content where I am.

One last thought to leave you with: my friend Pam is on day four of 10 consecutive days of blogging on the power of the ordinary. The link will take you to all of these posts, which fall under the label of "Ordinary Stories". Please take a moment to read some of them.