different this time

Some mornings, riding the bus over the bridge, I want to close my eyes and drift, but even on the tiredest mornings I force myself to open my eyes as we go over the bridge, because I want to enjoy every moment I have back here in Gone West.

It's different this time. 

Last time I moved to Gone West, I was just back from South Sudan. I think I was stunned for at least the first year. I'd been going back and forth between Africa and North America for five years, and I didn't know who I was without that. 

I felt stuck when I lived here before. I loved the city, but I was working a temporary job. I hadn't made a good group of friends. I lived alone.

Now I feel free. I have a job that I love and I do well and I could do for the rest of my life if I wanted. I have yet to have a Saturday without plans. Or a Sunday, for that matter. I live with other people, so even when I stay home, I am not alone.

All of that, yes, but also the part of me that never quite felt like it fit in here in the States has faded. I grew up a third culture kid, and that will never go away, but the brilliance of one's 30s, if lived deliberately, is that you learn to like yourself. I think I would be happier now in New York, or in South Sudan, or anywhere, than I was five years ago.

But I'm here, and I'm so happy to be here.

where?

Not long after I moved back to Gone West, I made the mistake of putting my earrings and watch into the front pocket of my sweatshirt before I went to bed, and in the morning I found one earring and my watch lying next to me on the bed, but the other earring was nowhere to be found.

I looked under the bed.

I looked through the covers.

I looked along the edge of the bed frame.

I looked through mthe sheets when I took them off to wash them.

Nothing.

On Sunday, I washed my sheets and they were not quite dry as of bedtime, so I put on my second best sheets. I don't think I've used them since I moved in, since if the favorite ones are dry I will just put them right back on.

This morning I woke up with my lost earring sticking in my back.

I just... I don't even get it. Where did this earring come from?

circles

I have never had dark circles under my eyes on a regular basis, not until I moved back to Gone West. 

It isn't Gone West itself that is causing the dark circles (this really is my favorite place ever), but it's a whole combination of things: a trip to the Mitten followed immediately by an interview and an acceptance of a new job and a month of packing and a move and a new job and another trip to the Mitten and saying yes to everything and and and...

I also have roommates now, who get up later than I do, and we tend to start a conversation right as I should be going to bed.

But! Last week I forced myself to go to bed in time to get something in the general 8 hour range (although never quite eight hours) and lo! the dark circles are not a permanent fixture. 

I'm fighting my way back to regular appearances here. It's just that sleep is pretty much my number one priority. Sleep and having a social life. 

I do so love this town.

by foot

I'm not really sure why Gone West feels so much more walkable to me than Universe City ever did. For about the same distance as my usual walk to shopping here, I could have gotten to a reasonable shopping center with some restaurants with outdoor seating in Universe City. And yet, I drove. I always drove. I think I walked there once.

It never occurred to me in Universe City to do what I did tonight: to leave my house at 7 pm, walk 45 minutes up to my usual stroll-shop district, have some ice cream, and walk 45 minutes back. 

I think it occurs to me here because I started here with no car. For the 2.6667 years that I lived here before, I just walked and walked and walked. 

 

On my way home today, I tried to walk a new route to see the pretty houses. (I love the houses. They are a whole 'nother post, the houses.)

I literally do not think there is a block that I have not walked in this neighborhood, in a rectangle about 15 blocks wide and 20 blocks long. I keep thinking I've found a street that I didn't used to walk down much, and then I remember how very much I've always liked that house, or that yard, or that fence.

The only change is that the houses are even more beautiful than before, because the housing prices continue to go up in this neighborhood. I cross the street to look at a window or the trellis over the porch, and I worry that someone is going to think I'm scoping them out for a burglary or something, but the fact is that I am white and middle class and not obviously drug addicted, and the combined privilege of those things exempts me from a lot. I get smiles instead of suspicious looks.

And 

... 

I wrote the previous paragraphs last night, before I fell asleep with the computer still on my lap.

insist

T. used to say that I was a turtle, and this is still true. Sometimes. I will absolutely stand up and insist when a thing matters, to me or someone else, but when it comes to things that don't matter much, usually food, I can't bring myself to make a scene.*

Case in point: T. and I went out to lunch once c. 2000 at a restaurant overlooking the river in her hometown near Chicago. I ordered a mint chocolate chip milkshake, but it came out as a chocolate chip milkshake. I think we got it corrected, but only because T. either flagged the waitress down herself or badgered me into doing it. I would have left it unmentioned forever so the waitress wouldn't feel bad. (Even though the waitress probably cared not one little bit. Hey, I was 20.)

Today I got a Thai iced tea from a different stand than usual because it was late and my usual stand appeared to be out of salad rolls, but when I got it, it was awful. It was undrinkably sweet and really watery. Rather than request new - what is the point, anyway, if the sweet is what she has? - I walked behind a tree, dumped out the iced tea into the tree's roots, took my reusable cup to my usual place, and paid all over again.

And then I laughed and thought how T. would call this turtle behavior. It probably is.

(Or I could blame it on the combination of growing up 1. in the Dutch-American context where you take what you get and are grateful for it, 2. in the missionary context of eating what our host feeds us so we don't embarrass anyone, and 3. in the Liberian context of that's what is available today, so eat it.)

* I stand up and insist for a living, after all. I will also do it when meat is involved.

not so

The sky looks fake tonight, like someone painted delicate little puffs onto a pale blue surface. It finally warmed up out there, and of course I have to be inside right now to get things done. 

Things. The all-important, unspecified things.

I've accepted this, because I can see the light green spring leaves waving against the sky, and because it's supposed to be beautiful and warm every day this week, and even more beautiful and warm on the weekend.

In April it feels like summer will never come, but of course I simultaneously feel like it's already come, because I'm here, in Gone West, and everything is new and lovely.

I talked to someone today who anticipated, when I said that I'd been so excited about moving back to Gone West: "Oh. I was expecting you to say that it wasn't as good as you remembered."

NOT SO.

street

On my walk from the bus to the office, there is a man who stands on the corner, smoking a cigarette, with a sign asking for money. He is there every morning, and he never makes eye contact, even when I smile and I'm ready to say hello.

I don't give money to people on the street. I feel the impulse, but I have seen too much of the damage wrought by drugs and alcohol, and the thought of my money contributing to that makes me sick to my stomach.

I do try to smile and make eye contact and say, "sorry," when someone asks me for money.

On my walk up the street from the office in the other direction, there is another man who stands on the corner, asking for money. He is there every day, and he asked me for money a few times, but I smiled and said sorry and we had a brief conversation instead. Now he just reaches out to shake my hand and say hello. 

I think I might have to buy him coffee soon and have a real chat.