My entire being longs to spring like one would long for love or herion. The sky has been once again threatening us with snow and taunting me with glimpses of blue found here and there. The blue is like blood, slowly being lost in the grey of the clouds, and I sit back again to wait.
This winter has been especially hard on me, as I didn't grow up in these kinds of conditions. Up until my 15th year, winter meant rain and the finally green grass. Everything came to life in the winter; the summer scorn lifted, and the world was alive again. Splashing in puddles on 70 degree days was a pastime. There were floods on years there weren't droughts. In the winter, we were free to take long hot showers, and I didn't have to worry about cutting the grass, because it was always too wet.
I still claim California as my own. Born in the heart of the Silicon Valley in 1979, I went back and forth between the Bay Area and Placer County, living in a house or a condo, then a house and a house. Though I've been in Idaho for 9+ years, I still get extremely homesick for the Bay and Sac.
When we first moved here, we lived in a place called Emmett, a small town about 40mi. NW of Boise. Driving home from Boise every day after school was torture. Filled with expectations far grander than the landscape, my first few years of Idaho weren't happy at all. The dry hills reminded me of those that previously lead me to the ocean, and every time we climbed to the crest of one of these hills, I would anxiously await the blinding reflection of the sun off of a large body of water. This, of course, never happened.
I did try going back to California before my senior year of high school. I attended summer school in Cupertino, and even enrolled in the same school I went to for half of my freshman year. However, living with my dad was far too much of a strain, and I ended up moving back to Idaho to live with my mom right before school started. I was happy to be back with my friends until the best friend stabbed me in the back repeatedly, as it goes in high school. At that point, I would have done anything to go back to California, but I knew I had missed my chance with my father a week before.
Now when I think about moving back to my state, it is a pipedream. California has pretty much gone down the shithole. I personally don't care for Arnie as a gov, nor do I want to spend $23895075 a year to live there. She's no longer the state of my remembering, nor is she the state of my childhood. California was a wonder to behold which is no longer. I have not step foot inside her borders in over 6 years, but I still consider her my home.
yeah...what is it that they say? you can never go home? yeah, that's true.
Posted by: zach at February 3, 2004 4:01 PM