Home is Where the Heart is

Several months ago my brother asked me if I would fly back to California to celebrate his 50th birthday. He was feeling the loss of our parents on this landmark occasion and wanted family present. However he was also planning on getting married and since I had just moved to the East Coast, I didn't relish two trips back west in such a short period of time.

He came up with a fantastic compromise which his fiancé fully supported: get married on his 50th birthday, made all the more unique because it was Friday the 13th. My brother was born on a Friday the 13th and he considers thirteen a lucky number. And he wanted me to be his best man, so really, how could I refuse? Not that I would, I adore my brother.

And so plans were made, and I headed west, just shy of a year that I waved goodbye as I drove east. I spent a week with my brother, niece and new sister-in-law and her two children, a happy addition to our small family. I spent a second week visiting as many friends as I could pack in.

I covered nearly 1,000 miles of driving as I headed east from San Francisco to the East Bay, up into the Gold Rush country for the wedding, around towards Sacramento, back to the East Bay then up to the North Bay where I settled in to the wine country, my old haunt. I managed a short trip to the coast and I crisscrossed Sonoma County effortlessly. I tried to do a few things that I never made time for in the 40+ years I resided in California like stopping on Treasure Island which is mid-span of the Oakland Bay Bridge as well as a brief foray on the Marin Headlands to photograph the Golden Gate bridge before I headed towards the San Francisco airport.

My time back west was too short, I couldn't see all of the friends I hold so dear, and the time with my family felt so brief. I hardly had time to take as many photos as I would have liked to. And yet, I was anxious to return home: home to the place of my heart, Stonington. A chill had begun to edge the mornings and evening just as I left, the leaves just beginning to colour. I missed the church bells, the fog horn, walking to the point, my routine of morning coffee at The Yellow House Coffee and Tea Room.

My west coast friends held silent hopes that I would return, that my trip would trigger longings I had buried. But I knew differently. I will always love California, its beauty is beyond compare and most of my life unfolded there. Around every corner is a memory, a knowing, a joy, a sorrow, a sense of peace, a life well and fully lived.

But what they don't know yet is how deeply my ancestral roots go here in New England, how Stonington has infiltrated my heart. How I have discovered a new sense of beauty, a new way of living. How home is where your heart is, and my heart belongs here.