Eastward-Bound!
Tomorrow, Andrew and I fly to New Hampshire for our annual Off the Grid week in Cornish. I am extremely excited. Cornish is one of my very favorite places in the world, and since we live in California we only get to go once a year. Unfortunately, I won’t be totally “off the grid” this year—I’ll have to check my email to keep up on a few freelance projects. I’m trying not to be resentful about this. Indeed, I’m trying to remember that it’s a good thing that I have work—a good thing that I have things to keep track of—that I’m lucky, in this economy, to still have work to do. That I’m lucky to have the kind of work where I can track things—or even do things, if need be—in Cornish, or, really, anywhere. As a freelancer, my perspective needs to be “yay, work,” not “oh no, more work.” I am not always successful at this. But I am trying.
Though I am excited about going to Cornish, and to spending a week in Connellsville afterward, I am also filled with dread. The problem is that these days on the East Coast will have to end, and I will then have to fly back to California. I can already feel myself back East—and I can already feel how awful it will be to leave. Last year, I had what many (Andrew and his parents) might call a “hysterical crying fit” when it was time to go to the airport. It was not pretty. I just couldn’t stand the idea of leaving New Hampshire, a place that just felt familiar and right, for what I kept calling “no man’s land.” Mix a departure with pregnancy hormones, and who knows what will happen this year.
Being in Cornish brings into sharp relief exactly the kind of life I want us to lead, the life I want our baby to have. Someplace where it isn’t so hot that it’s dangerous to go outside. Someplace where family is a brief plane ride or drive away. Someplace where small towns are shrouded in woods; where the sky is filled so dramatically with stars that you can see the Milky Way; where you feel rooted to something, with ghosts around every corner. I cannot think of a place that contrasts Roseville more ridiculously than Cornish. And though we are quite happy together here in our little house with the redwoods in the yard, we are still not in a place that feels pleasantly haunted. There’s no depth. That’s the only way I can describe what California feels like to me. The house in Cornish has been around for more years than California has been a state.
Being East makes me realize that there’s this whole other world existing in parallel with ours, just out of reach. Since we don’t go back East very often, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day life right here, forgetting what it’s like to not feel like a fish out of water. Hence my dread—I can already feel myself in New Hampshire, and in Pennsylvania. And I’m going to like that feeling. And then I’m going to have to leave it behind and give birth to our daughter alongside a highway, across the street from an office park. I hope what our daughter remembers about her time in California is sitting outside by the redwood—not driving past the shopping plazas to get us home.
Though I am excited about going to Cornish, and to spending a week in Connellsville afterward, I am also filled with dread. The problem is that these days on the East Coast will have to end, and I will then have to fly back to California. I can already feel myself back East—and I can already feel how awful it will be to leave. Last year, I had what many (Andrew and his parents) might call a “hysterical crying fit” when it was time to go to the airport. It was not pretty. I just couldn’t stand the idea of leaving New Hampshire, a place that just felt familiar and right, for what I kept calling “no man’s land.” Mix a departure with pregnancy hormones, and who knows what will happen this year.
Being in Cornish brings into sharp relief exactly the kind of life I want us to lead, the life I want our baby to have. Someplace where it isn’t so hot that it’s dangerous to go outside. Someplace where family is a brief plane ride or drive away. Someplace where small towns are shrouded in woods; where the sky is filled so dramatically with stars that you can see the Milky Way; where you feel rooted to something, with ghosts around every corner. I cannot think of a place that contrasts Roseville more ridiculously than Cornish. And though we are quite happy together here in our little house with the redwoods in the yard, we are still not in a place that feels pleasantly haunted. There’s no depth. That’s the only way I can describe what California feels like to me. The house in Cornish has been around for more years than California has been a state.
Being East makes me realize that there’s this whole other world existing in parallel with ours, just out of reach. Since we don’t go back East very often, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day life right here, forgetting what it’s like to not feel like a fish out of water. Hence my dread—I can already feel myself in New Hampshire, and in Pennsylvania. And I’m going to like that feeling. And then I’m going to have to leave it behind and give birth to our daughter alongside a highway, across the street from an office park. I hope what our daughter remembers about her time in California is sitting outside by the redwood—not driving past the shopping plazas to get us home.
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