I love it (and I mean this ironically) how once a restaurant becomes popular in Portland, people line up outside and literally around the block to wait in line for, say, a biscuit with chicken, Indian "street food," or organic handmade ice cream. I am opposed to this kind of dining, yet, because I refuse it, I end up feeling as if I am missing out on something fantastic. So instead of a Mcisley biscuit (fried chicken, pickles, mustard and honey) or a Vada Pav (potato fried in chickpea batter and served with chutneys on a roll), I am having a "three Bs" waffle (bacon, brie, basil -- only two of which I can taste) with what appears to be apricot jam on the side. There's no line but free wifi, and I am loving the thick-cut bacon and the idea that because it's full of savory things it's somehow less not-virtuous to eat this waffle at noon on a Monday.
I have been listening to The Pretenders Learning to Crawl on this trip across the country, an album of my youth which I used to blast on cassette in my VW bug as I drove through the streets of Portland. I had transcribed all the lyrics to "My City Was Gone" on my PeeChee, sensing the future days when the sentiment would become true. It's not that my city is gone now -- or even that it's simply no longer "my" city -- but that is has become somehow more of itself. And my relation to it is not so much that I don't fit in or that there isn't room for me here or that it might seem unbelievable I grew up here; rather, I have a sense of envy for those who live here while I know that I can't -- and so won't.
***
I've also been re-reading James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (slowly, as I started in Paris last month, after buying the prettiest new little Penguin edition in Cambridge). At the end of the first chapter, the narrator David describes why he went to Paris: "Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced." This is the flip side -- or perhaps the twin -- of wanting to escape oneself. I think that around about Denver, the escape became closer to being real, and then nearly completed after several days in California. At that point I started to think about this process now of "finding" myself, implying very much that I had misplaced myself. Mis-placed. I drive across the country thinking, "here? here?" And every once in a while I think of a postcard I kept from my first job -- a request for a book catalogue on the back of an abstract image of a woman, which read "Wish you were her." If I were her, perhaps I would feel more found now.
***
When I was applying for a semester away from college (a semester to be taken in my hometown), I went to the post office to have the envelope stamped and mailed. The normally cranky postal worker shouted, "You're not leaving us, are you?!" This was the one place in campus where people knew my name. The man who stuffed our boxes, Charlie, would call out to me when he saw me arrive to check my box. I had letters or postcards almost every day from friends and family. I kept a list by my bed of the letters I had sent. My personal record receipt was 21 letters, postcards and packages on one day -- but I knew it was a cheating sum, as it was my birthday (and, I confess, several postcards came from my friend Eva). Still, Charlie was very impressed.
When I arrived in Denver -- it's been, I think, three weeks, though I've lost track of time -- I loved the familiar familiarity with which everyone seemed to greet me. Breakfast at Snooze two days in a row sealed the deal, though the first day the server at the bar already seemed like he knew me. When he first checked about my order, I told him the menu made me want to weep.
http://www.snoozeeatery.com/the-food/breakfast
And the food truly did bring tears to my eyes. I couldn't make up my mind so -- as when I first went to Santa Cruz for my job interview and had both a sourdough pancake and a piece of oatmeal molasses French toast, alongside an egg for protein -- I had both granola and yogurt (a half grapefruit on the side) and a pancake flavored like a cinnamon roll (with brown sugar in the syrup and a very light sauce around it that tasted suspiciously like reduced cream cheese). No raisins. I told my server I would return the next day for the savory, and when he saw me that following morning, he shouted, "You really did come back."
This is what it means to be known lightly -- by a name, a box, a promise to return.
***
We moved my dad into a new place this week (what's called a "memory care facility"), where he knows me perhaps more deeply, but also, because the move has taken a toll, only moment by moment. It's not that he's forgotten me (my niece said, "I think you, Daddy, and Uncle Bowman will be the last ones he forgets"); he just doesn't always know I'm here now. Feeding him half a bowl of soup today, almost the entirety of his half sandwich, three grapes, and half a piece of shortbread I brought him back from England, I feel mildly victorious -- but only mildly, as he has been a long-time member of the "clean plate club," and I hate to see him return anything to the kitchen. I am watching him sleep, fitfully, wishing I could teach him how to breathe again, more deeply now.
