Three Hours West

For weeks after we arrived in Lexington, I frequently mistook the locals for people I knew back home. I saw Pam O’Brien, a science teacher I worked with in Modesto, pushing a cart outside the Kroger’s market in Versailles. I looked up at a promotional poster for perfume in Macy’s and recognized Angie Bohn, a friend from Ripon. I would see a face in a church choir or a man walking his dog and suppress the urge to walk up to the familiar face and start talking. I compared my unheard-of side effect to the phantom sensations experienced by an amputee. My brain, overloaded by masses of new information, was attempting to process more efficiently by recognizing similarities, trying to make familiar patterns out of the unfamiliar.

After about six weeks in Lexington, the flashes of false recognition went away, and I was instead overwhelmed with how different everything seemed. I was meeting new people and trying to build a new life. I don’t suppose I make friends easily, and the overwhelming hours that went to a new job and a new house didn’t make it easy to form new relationships. Even now I realize that after a six month investment in my new life my new connections aren’t fully formed. Instead, my consciousness is crowded by loads of information I’ll probably never need again: how to get a Kentucky driver’s license, what number to call for utilities, and what exactly goes in those blue recycling cans that are picked up every week. I console myself: these things take time; I can’t expect twenty years of connections to be reformed overnight.

Last Thursday our old life intruded on our new one when Craig and I boarded a plane in Lexington at 7:30 p.m. and stepped off another one at 11:30p.m. in Sacramento. The journey to California will always seem shorter than the journey back home because of the backwards jump across three time zones. A few afternoon naps and I was fully acclimated to pacific standard time again, which left me wondering if twenty-two years of living in one time zone fixed my internal clock like magnetic north, leaving me stuck “three hours off” for the rest of my life in Kentucky.

I don’t envy the job of the FAA luggage search team, who evidently spent hours going through our four bags. They must see everything in their line of work, but imagine having to unpack and inspect an entire suitcase of individually bubble wrapped bottles of Ale 8-1, a Kentucky ginger ale beverage my Mom developed a taste for when she visited in November. Our other gifts-only suitcase was jammed with sundry Christmas gifts, including a James Archambeault’s Kentucky calendar, a box of Bourbon cherries, and a brick. Craig wanted to present his mom with a brick taken from the run down family home in North Dakota, which we visited this summer shortly after arriving in Lexington. We cushioned it with layers of paper and fabric so it wouldn’t pulverize the Mint Blue Mondays, traditional local candies we bought to hand out to the relatives. The soft candy was unharmed, but we opened our suitcase in Modesto to find the brick wrapped in plastic coating and sealed with official tape marked THIS ITEM INSPECTED AND CLEARED BY THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION. Not wanting to put asunder what the feds had so painstakingly joined together, I wrapped the brick as it came with the other presents. Craig’s mom will, I am sure, be touched that one of her gifts received such special attention.

Looking over aspects of the place I spent most of my life, I notice the strangest things. I am strangely disconcerted by the wall texture at my parents’ house, and keep glancing out the corner of my eye at the river-bottom-pebbly surfaces that are a staple in California. Our old house in Ripon had even more texture, whorls and peaks like meringue cookies, and I can’t imagine how strange it would seem to me now. Coupled with the acoustic “popcorn ceilings” and the overall lack of windows typical of the 70’s-style energy efficient track home, we didn’t have a true corner or a really flat surface in the whole house. The walls of our new house are as smooth as fondant cake, a flat, pleasing surface but not very forgiving. Every nail hole, paint drip, and sticky cat hair becomes archived on our walls. Even though I am still not used to it, my home in Kentucky has reset my standard of what is normal.

My overwhelming first impression of California after six months away was “it’s still here.” The home prices are still plummeting, making us glad that we were able to sell our house last summer. Ten dollars at the pump still won’t buy enough gas to make it to Turlock and back. The neighbors overwater their winter lawns until the excess overflows over the sidewalk and runs down the gutters. When the wasted water reaches the storm drains, they are still so small and constantly plugged that an eighth of an inch of rain floods the streets with puddles large enough to stomp around in. The Costco still hands out food samples, and I still never get any because large families still swoop in and grab all the samples off the tray just as I am quietly and patiently reaching for one. Everything is just like I remember it, right down to the new housing development going in a street over from my parents’ house (unrestrained growth being the norm).

Not all that I remember is bad, though. I spent a pleasant two hours catching up with coworkers from my old school and left thinking how my new job hasn’t yet made me feel a tenth so accepted and connected. I celebrated my nephew's birthday at McDonalds, and rejoiced to find the paper seat guards that all California stores have in their public restrooms. I hadn't seen the words "provided for your protection" since we crossed the Rocky Mountains. I am taking daily walks in the above-freezing evenings, admiring the additions that the neighbors have made to their light arrangements this year. My brother Tim and I sat across from his laptop searching for funny recordings on YouTube. We hit our old favorites videos (like the Burger King employee singing “ding, fries are done” to the tune of Carol of the Bells) and found some new ones: Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager, and the house whose Christmas lights blink on and off to the music of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Last night we spent our traditional half-hour in the hot tub before bed, prompting my dad to tell the story of how I once accidentally locked them out of the house on Christmas morning, leaving them to broil in the spa for an extra fifteen minutes while I obliviously took a shower.

Craig and I knew when we moved that we were signing up for years of vacations to be taken “back home” instead of seeing new places. Looking on orbitz.com for plane rates in September, packing suitcases just as Craig is submitting his final projects and I am tabulating semester grades, and sleeping off jet-lag on Christmas Eve are all aspects of the path we have chosen. I will be forever comparing here to there, like when I look down at my bowl of peppermint stick ice cream and wish that it had sticky candy pieces in it like the Kentucky brand does. I’ve had a few months for old and new to rearrange themselves to fit into this new version of myself, and I suppose there are more new connections to make.