my map

Where you come from is gone, 

where you thought you were going to never was there,

and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

In yourself, right now is all the place you've got.

--Flannery O'Connor

I find myself again in that obscure place, approaching a major intersection of life, walking down one road that will soon diverge into another, preparing myself to part ways from those on this current path with me, reflective of past roads I've traveled before this one, all the while trying to make out the hazy horizon before me. It is familiar territory, a situation I sometimes wish I didn't know so intimately.

But I do. Hellos and goodbyes are deeply engrained in my story. Change is something that often feels more familiar to me than consistency and sameness, and I struggle between conflicting desires for both. I love a good adventure, newness, seeing new landscapes and meeting new people. And yet I hate this part of it...the gearing up to say goodbye, the wanting to detach from community as I watch people grow closer together while I prepare to part. For me, being "here and now" is difficult when so many preparations must be made for the future, when I feel like I have one foot in and one foot out.

As I drive around northern California, I look at the land, the hills that grow greener each day with the spring rain. I take note of my favorite stretches of I-80, my favorite bends of Hwy 29, and the daily drives that make me say I will miss this. As I drove to meet a dear friend for lunch in San Francisco several weeks ago, I took a photo of my favorite part of the drive, the hilly section of highway between Fairfield and Vallejo, right around American Canyon, where the pavement digs into the landscape and the view begins to open itself up to the bay.

And then there is that stretch between our home and Sacramento, where the hills subside into flat farmland. Vineyards become orchards and hills become plains, the cool marine air turns drier and warmer. I know this stretch of the road well, the part that's paved with memories of picking up and dropping off visitors at the Sacramento airport, especially during the long, hot summer of Chris's deployment. It is the route I drove to take our dossier to Sacramento, the day I put the final touches on the paperwork that would lead us to our son. It is also the stretch of road I drive to go to Dixon for therapy each week, a time when my thoughts and emotions are raw and accessible as I pass fields of sunflowers and corn, walnut orchards, and pegboards of trees meticulously planted and preened.

This is my map, the part of the earth where I have been planted, nourished, and pruned over the past three years. Parts of who I am reside in this land. Segments of my story will forever be tied to this place and the thought of leaving it feels as painful as losing an intimate part of myself. Fragments of my heart will be left here, just as they were in the many other places I have lived, and so I suppose it's no wonder that I can feel this way. Fractioned, pieced apart, a little less than whole.

My journey to this part of the country began nearly ten years ago. I have traveled and resided in all four time zones of the United States, one at a time, and this long and gradual trek of cross-country self-discovery will end here, the final destination, the opposite coast from where I came, which is ironically where I have felt most at home, most like myself. The West is full of open spaces and drier air, room to breathe and blossom into my own person. I have needed this space, and now, a decade later, I prepare myself to return, to venture back home, a far different woman than I was when I left.

So for now, I am soaking up the moments left with the people I love and the landscape I love. I want each day to celebrate with all of my senses the journey God has led me on over the past decade. This era is quickly coming to a close. Everything is about to change.

Here before me now...my map, of a place and therefore of myself, and much that can never be said adds to its reality...just as much of its reality is based on my own shadows, my own inventions.

Over the years I have taught myself, and have been taught, to be a stranger. A stranger usually has the normal five senses, perhaps especially so, ready to protect and nourish him.

--MFK Fisher, Map of Another Town