Gosh, it's been a while since I've written. And no wonder: between the Divas concert in June, finishing work, and moving out of our place in Cambridge, it's a miracle we'restill standing. Rather than sit around on my ass in Wellesley, however, I decided that I would take the month of July to come out to California instead and see family before I recommit myself to another 5-year stint on the East Coast.
I arrived on Thursday night and was immediately reminded why I love this part of the country: evenings in the summer, after the sun goes down, are at most 65 degrees and crisp. I walked out in a polo shirt and shorts and actually had to put on my fleece vest to stay warm. I had, of course, just come from Boston which had been consistently hot and humid for the three previous days. It was a welcomed break.
My chief concern while I'm in California is that I will get restless while I'm at home. I know myself enough to know that if I sit around too much with family I'll get frustrated because of the independence and flexibility to which I've become accustomed in Boston. To counteract this risk, I spent parts of Friday and Saturday in San Francisco and Berkeley, respectively, exploring and catching up with friends. Here is a photo of me lounging on Memorial Glade across from Butler Library while reading The Time Traveler's Wife.
It was hard while lying in such glorious sunshine not to think about the what-if's of my graduate school choice. I could play tennis 365 days of the year here! But, alas, the choice is made, and I know that Columbia is the right place for me to start my career as an historian.
But still. Look at that vast expanse of green grass.
OK. Enough of that before I go crazy.
On Sunday afternoon, my mother and I drove down to Salinas, California. Salinas, as the more literary among you may remember, is the birthplace of John Steinbeck. Nowadays, it's a little strip-mall-cum-farm-town in the Central Valley that, frankly, I would never visit if were not for my family.
My brother, his wife, and his father-in-law live with two young children in a small, gated development in Salinas. The condo is a 2-level, 3-bedroom unit with a detached garage and small, enclosed patio. Even in the short 36 hours that I've been here, I'm reminded of the vast differences between his and my life. The obvious one are the children: while I love kids, I don't imagine for a second that I could somehow shoulder the responsibility of providing for two of my own in one year's time (I'm exactly one year and three weeks younger than my brother). Instead, I'll be gallivanting around one of the most expensive cities in the world, reading day and night, eating cheap ethnic food, waiting for student-rush tickets on Broadway, and stopping in on world-class museums on their once-monthly free days. By comparison, my life seems carefree and, well, almost selfish. What's funny to me is that, when we were growing up, my brother was always the one who broke the rules, while I was the one who followed them to a T. And now, he's the faithful husband, father, and small-businessowner with a mortgage while I live in sin with another man in Manhattan.
All this is to say that one can never tell: people change; priorities change. If history were any indication, I should be the one with the kids and the wife and the mortgage.
Thankfully, for everyone's sake, I'm not.
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