I grew up in West Fargo, North Dakota. Lately, I've been thinking of my hometown a lot. I'm trying to remember what summer feels like there.
Summers were humid and the air buzzed with the sound of grasshopper and crickets. Trees, large green massive bushels, rustled in the sky. The air was warm, sometimes hot, but as the day trickled into dusk, I remember the most carefree moments in time--barefoot in the grass and the warm street--we moved through space like butterflies.
I remember the thickness of summer, how the clouds of mosquitos swirled over the grass. I remember the river, the color of mud, slowly moving under the train tracks. (The more daring of us jumped from bridge into river with a courageous yelp.) I remember the smell, that earth that dirt those thick knotty woods--a smell that reminds me of days that waft like wind through your hair.
I know this place lives in my bones, but I fear the place isn't mine anymore. I shutter my eyes so tight to feel it. I want to lay in the grass of my childhood home in the country. I want to sit alone underneath the falling branches of our weeping willow tree, that old poem. I want to look across the yard across the highway and see the straight line of the horizon. I used to try to guess how many miles away the horizon lay. The answer itself unreachable--every step toward the line of the horizon moved it one step equally away.
North Dakota is so flat you can see for miles, you can see where the wheat-colored plains hit that cauliflower blue sky. Everything is so still and quiet and understated. If Rothko painted in lighter colors, this would be his emotional landscape. Blocks of color. Farmland and sky. Silence and Thought.
I don't know what it means to be From Somewhere. I know I feel a kinship with people from the area. I know that they know what a tornado siren sounds like, what a basement smells like after a flood, and what the bulbous black silhouette of a watertower looks like at dawn. I know that lately I've been dreaming about old friends, people who make up the building blocks of my soul, people I haven't seen for the better part of a decade, people I may never see again. I know that these words fail my memories.
Fargo is not gone, it continues. But what I know of Fargo is gone. All that is left is these remnants--scraps of paper and old photographs. There is a tender grief.
I think about Dax. I think about this lush landscape that will provide the backdrop to his memories. What will it be like to grow up in San Diego? What scenes, what smells, what sounds will comfort him?
Life is so slow now. So many things are figured out; there is no yearning. I have married my greatest love. I have moved to the town we will raise our children; where we will grow old. I am living my greatest profession, as a mother to my son. Years ahead, these are the days we will be living.
In this space, I've rediscovered the way time passes without checking off days. Maybe this is why I've been thinking of my youth; the feel is so similar. I can feel the lucidity of moments during mundane things like rinsing off plates, dicing vegetables, and tucking in my baby. I notice the color of light and the coziness of a warm room.
Perhaps we are all going too fast to feel. Perhaps when we abandon expectation, we can truly experience the present. Perhaps I'm adult enough to know that each precious moment passes...And so the sadness goes...
I have minutes when I see this Southern California landscape as Dax might see it. The hills, the houses, the flowers, the sea, the sky. I look to the palm trees and the jutted cliffs. In the night I try to see like a child--the lights from the houses in the hills look like clusters of bright yellow stars. I see the beauty he will come to know as Where He's From. I don't pretend though to know how his young free mind will etch this land in his heart.
I don't know how to end this. I suppose there are never any endings. Only middles. In betweens. Until the nexts. And so we go,
Into the air
with our soaked hearts
One thub away from feeling
Everything At Once.
