"HOME"


I am returned again unto Subtropical City, into the waiting paws of C., who goes all sweet and soft-faced when I say his name. It's surprisingly cool here--you know, like, the mid-80's! And so moving around outside is tolerable.

Commencement was held at the local baseball stadium, and we processed right over home plate. All the graduates who were the first in their families to graduate from college were asked to stand, and then loudly feted. (That part I always adore.) There were air horns, and screaming, and girls in the most pernicious looking heels, and flowers, and weird men slowing down to comment on my and my colleague's regalia. ("Those are Lakers colors!!")

I have flitted from here to my natal home to Michigan to Nueva Jork to my natal home and then back again. And none of it feels entirely like "home." There was not nearly enough time in NYC, and on one hand it was like slipping into a favorite dress again. On another, it was alien and strange and I felt a bit ... frumpy. (That tends to be my bellwether of comfort in the city. Do I feel like I am stepping out? If yes, then I am at ease.) I people-watched like my life depended on it, and felt mournful when I left. As TF and I were staying in a fabulous loft in Chelsea owned by one of his old friends, I was also reminded that were I to return to the city, ain't no way we would ever be living in digs like that. A studio deep in Queens would be about all we could afford, what with our civic employee salaries.

Here in Subtropical City, between us, we could indeed afford a real, live house. With a yard, and a fireplace, and some space for flowers out front, and in a good public school district. The disjunction between that reality and what life was like--and would be like--in NYC was more than a bit heartening.

Michigan was again replete with trillium by the roadside, and hobnobbing, and redwing blackbirds. And an old colleague has just had a beautiful son, who I got to hold and coo over, and she and I discussed the vagaries of being female and academic.

My natal home was abuzz with activity, and we were descended upon by huge numbers of friends and family and Friends and neighbors and jesus fucking christ but that was a whole lotta talking. My father takes immense pleasure in introducing my degree to his extended family: "you know, she has a PhD now." As these are extremely blue collar midwesterners, they at first praise me and then laugh. One cousin said, "I gotta PhD too! It stands for 'post hole digger!'"

The queers came. (The first wedding I ever attended was a lesbian wedding, and that couple came, now elderly.) The social workers. The political radicals. The hip young neighbors. The Quakers, the Jews, the devout Catholics. The working class and the effete librarians. The black and brown and yellow and white. I was reminded anew of where and how I was raised.

And at K'zoo I met with the editrix. I now owe her a complete draft by September first. My heart starts racing just writing those damn words.