1.
I flew from California to Connecticut on Christmas day.
Met my father at a diner on route one.
We sat in a booth by the counter where short brown men cupped palms around short mugs of brown coffee.
It sounds like little Lebanon in here, Dad said.

2.
I order vegan, he orders cheese.
The waitress removes plates.
Brings my tea.

I didn’t plan to but begin anyways, talking about my feelings, the past.
Dad looks like he wants to run. Zips his jacket. Stays seated.
I keep talking and, eventually, he settles. Speaks with clarity about his childhood. about constant travel between parents and the meaning of home. About my mother.

She is wasting away, I say, and then, I don’t want to lose her.
I don’t want you to either, he says. I never wanted that.

3.
I write of her often. Put down the unutterables of illness, knowing they may sound fragile, might make me seem so as well.

But I feel them aired. Feel the lightness muscularly, in strength and straightforwardness. Because I’d never have written the past before now. Never have sat with my father and smiled and accepted without tethering my heart to his hurt.

4.
I am in school in California.
I want to be a writer.
I have wanted to write in California since freshman year of high school when you gave me Joni Mitchell.

I was so in love with this woman, you said, handing over a copy of Blue.
I looked at her photograph on the album cover. Traced the shadows of her face through the plastic sleeve.

5.
California I’m coming home

6.
We did an exercise in class one day.
Closed our eyes, looked at our palms and imagined our history.
When I did this I saw my Dad, age five in knee socks and a newsboy cap, standing by a suitcase. I saw his whitewashed expression when his stepfather spoke over him at Christmas dinner. I saw him thinking about being somewhere else.


And I feel like I’ve spent the last ten years looking for the home that slipped away the day she left. The home I had and then lost in an instant.
I have come to Connecticut this Christmas as part of an attempt to reclaim that past.

7.
Will you take me as I am?

8.
Countdown to midnight on new years eve. Watching the ball drop on tv. Heating up soup while the crowd explodes and Carson Daly flashes his white teeth.
I’ve been shuffling around, packing my bags and preparing to fly to California in the morning, but for thirty seven seconds before twelve I stop and  sit on the arm of the sofa.

This time last year I was sitting in Rays Pizza on Astor Place in Manhattan. I was wearing a new dress, new patent leather pumps. I was getting dumped by the too-young younger guy I was loving at the time.

Last year, when the ball dropped I was listening to this guy and didn’t realize the new year had rung until after the fact.

So it feels important that right now, I watch it happen.
Watch change take place.


The ball descends. Confetti flutters out and over the crowd.
Cameras pan to couples kissing. To streamers and plastic green hats that say 2010 on them in glitter. To Carson Daily’s white teeth.


I watch this and feel something lift slightly; feel happier for a moment.
Then I get up and change the channel, flipping until I find black and white - some old movie where the actors are American but sound accented somehow.

9.
Will you take me as I am? Strung out on another man?


10.
Last year on New Years, when Jacob sat across from me at Rays and said he couldn’t stop thinking about his ex-girlfriend then took a bite of pizza and answered his phone, I turned around, looked at the tv hung up in the corner of the room and realized the ball had dropped.

11.
Earlier this evening, I went to the movies with Mom and Judy. We saw It’s Complicated in which Meryl Streep sips Pino with her girlfriends who describe how going a year without sex means one’s vagina might “grow over.”
I am twenty three. It has been a year since I’ve had sex.

12.
Oh it gets so lonely, when you’re walking..

13.
In old movies when people kiss it’s for so short a time that their contact seems more a momentary hit of skin than a mutual exploration of it.

I turn off the tv. I go to bed. I wake up the next day and drive to the airport.

14.
At airports, people fling We like New Years confetti.
We love you says the man standing solo by the window, talking into his cell phone while he watches planes take off.

Thank you for calling us, my dad often says when he picks up the phone.
We appreciate you thinking of us, he says before hanging up.

My dad has lived alone for ten years. I am assuming, therefore, he is factoring in the dog to create a We.

15.
Will you take me as I am? California…

16.
The girl sitting across from me in the waiting area of gate A10 has chemotherapy hair.
She is folding paper cranes.
I want to ask her if she is trying for one thousand.
I cannot decide is this is inappropraite or not and so, say nothing.


When Mom was in the chemo ward, preparing for her first treatment, the nurse showed us around. This is where the snacks are, she said. Here are the magazines.
Then she held out a pillow and showed me how to inject a needle into it.
Pretend this is your Mother’s thigh, she said.

17.
We are making our final descent. The stewardess is on the PA asking us to please be sure.
Outside, L.A. is laid out underneath us like a motherboard; some deep blue computer chip.

18.
California I’m coming home.

19.
Language is permenent in ways life seldom can be.

I remember with such clarity things you said years ago:
Your mother’s illnesses.
When she left us.
You have no idea.
How hard I tried.

20.
But my heart cried out for you, California.

21.
It’s been two weeks since we sat face to face in the diner on route one.
And I miss you.
And I am glad to be so far away from you.

Tonight when I opened my mailbox I found a package from you. I wasn’t expecting anything and tore the envelope open, careful not to get excited, sure I’d left something mundane in your passenger seat when last we met. Instead there was a note and two weatherbeaten casette tapes just visible beneath layers of bubble wrap.
Just so you know I am paying attention too, your hand writting reads, not just asking others to do it. I am glad that you are ecstatic about being home in California. Thanks for your time.

I unravel the bubble wrap and look at the casette tapes. One is black and unmarked. One is encased in a clear sleeve. Curly Lasagna’s Terrific Present, it reads. I remember playing this tape over and again in your car on the way to school eighteen years ago. I remember losing it when we moved. I remember mentioning it in your car when I saw you two weeks ago, saying how I loved that silly kids music and had looked for it on the internet to no avail.

Tomorrow I will buy a casette player. I will listen to Curly Lasagna’s Terrific Present. Probably, I will cry. Then I’ll listen to the black tape and discover its contents. Probably, they will make me cry as well.

22.
Music is permenent in ways life seldom can be.

23.
Sitting in a park in Paris, France / Reading the news and it sure looks bad/  They won’t give peace a chance / That was just a dream some of us had / Still a lot of lands to see / But I wouldn’t want to stay here / It’s too old and cold and settled in its ways here / Oh, but California/California I’m coming home / I’m going to see the folks I dig / I’ll even kiss a Sunset pig / California I’m coming home

I met a redneck on a Grecian isle / Who did the goat dance very well / He gave me back my smile
But he kept my camera to sell / Oh the rogue, the red red rogue/He cooked good omelettes and stews
And I might have stayed on with him there/But my heart cried out for you, California / Oh California I’m coming home / Oh make me feel good rock’n roll band / I’m your biggest fan/California, I’m coming home

Oh it gets so lonely
When you’re walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
Just gives you the blues
Just gives you the blues

So I bought me a ticket / I caught a plane to Spain / Went to a party down a red dirt road / There were lots of pretty people there / Reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue / They said, “How long can you hang around?”I said “a week, maybe two,/ Just until my skin turns brown / Then I’m going home to California / California I’m coming home / Oh will you take me as I am/Strung out on another man / California I’m coming home