It says something about your neighborhood when you can hear the ice cream man going by after 11pm.
It says something about your neighborhood when you can hear the ice cream man going by after 11pm.
Sixteen years ago my brother and I crammed into the backseat of the family Ford Explorer, squishing ourselves between duffle bags and boxes, a green and yellow parakeet in a too small cage, a shopping bag of grapes and crackers to eat on the eight-hour drive, and a five-foot long stuffed tiger. The car left the curb and we started down the street away from our house at 15243 Earlham Road (an address I remembered by counting back and forth on the fingers of my hand: thumb to pinky, index to ring … as a kid I didn’t know how often I was inadvertently fipping people the bird) and began the drive up to Sonoma County, and I murmured just a little too loudly, to no one in particular, “Well, that was a nice vacation.”
Last night, as I turned the key on the dowstairs door to my sublet in Astoria for the first time, I thought to myself, “So this is home now.”
Now I’m waiting for a flight to take me back to Berkeley, where I’ll spend two weeks wasting time and packing boxes. I’ll give away books and see old friends for lunch and patch holes in the walls of my well-lit studio on Spruce Street. I’ll fill a duffel bag with whatever clothes and camera gear I haven’t already left in Astoria.
In two weeks my 24 year vacation will come to an end.
In two weeks I’ll go home to Astoria.
Sometimes: I’m a tourist.
