There's no place like home

It’s hard to know the moment your heart breaks for home. Mine feels a little bit broken all the time. There are moments when it’s just fractures, cracks even. And then there are the days when it feels like it’s shattered and will never be put back together. I miss my friends. I miss my family. And I miss my city. 

I love D.C. I love it like a family member. I love the potholed streets that never seem to be smooth. I love the dysfunctional local government, beholden to Congress, that pretends to assert itself even when it can’t. I love the awful drivers from Maryland and Virginia who clog the streets and don’t know how to make it around Dupont Circle. And, oh, how I love Dupont Circle. 

That marble fountain (that never seems to run properly -- it’s either overflowing, or trickling out of only three spouts, or dry as a bone) is the center of the universe to me. I’ve told my husband that when I die, I want my ashes scattered in Dupont Circle. “With all the rats and the dog pee?” Yes. I’ll become one with the empty Starbucks cups, discarded after a perfect sunny weekend. One with the cracked pavement. One with the grass. One with . . . the rats. 

Before we moved, my office was located in One Dupont Circle. I had dreamed of working there for years. I didn’t even care what I did, I just wanted to sit in that building and look out the window at my favorite place. (Never mind that the window I had when I did work there looked out onto a sub-roof, and pipes and air conditioning units -- there’s something to be said for a dream realized, even if it’s slightly imperfect.)

Now, here we are, 3,000 miles away in California. In an equally dysfunctional town, with an equally inept local government. There are no circles here, and nothing like Dupont Circle. But we do have a statue of Sonny Bono. He sits perched on the edge of his own fountain, his brass knees rubbed to a shine from years of asses sitting to pose for photos. Mayor emeritus, immortalized forever in tourist kitsch. I wonder if anyone’s ever wished to be scattered at Sonny’s feet, in between the plaza that holds a Mexican restaurant and a 50-style diner chain. 

When I think of what we have here, I’m grateful for the sun and the (mostly) temperate weather. I don’t think a day has gone by where I’ve missed the rain or humidity of my beloved D.C., but I miss the promise that the awful weather brings. And, still, my heart aches for home. For the smell of an August afternoon, the heat coming off the pavement and the herds of commuters walking toward the bowels of the Metro. For the four crisp and glorious days of Thanksgiving weekend, when the town empties out and the natives stick around. When you can get a reservation anywhere in town, find a seat at any bar, and everyone knows everyone else is “from here.” For the crippling snowstorms that shut down the entire city and its suburbs for days on end and the neighborhood snowball fights and day drinking that are ways to pass the time. And for those three, maybe four, glorious days in the spring when the humidity is low, the sun is out, and, like butterflies shedding their chrysalis, everyone loses their wool and boots, bare arms and legs are as far as the eyes can see, and patio restaurants fill with people enjoying what can only be described as perfection. 

That euphoria of the perfect day hasn’t worn off. My husband and I still marvel and take advantage of as many clear, sunny, low-humidity days as we can because for 40 years, we were conditioned to enjoy every fleeting moment. In Palm Springs, 250-ish days a year are like that. And the other 115 that aren’t are still pretty fantastic. 

And now we have friends here. Wonderful, glorious, hilarious, generous friends. All of them, starting over in this weird desert oasis town. A second (or third, or fourth) life, just like ours. I wonder if they miss their old homes, their old towns, the way that I long for mine. D.C.’s not gone, but I am. It’s kept on going without me. I’ve kept going without it, too, I suppose. I don’t know if we’d recognize each other now. I’ve got a permanent tan on my feet from wearing sandals year round. My hair’s a little longer, my middle a little softer. But my cold East Coast heart still beats inside. 

Speaking of which, when we first moved here, the kindness of the people was really confusing. One time, we were standing in front of 7-11 waiting for an Uber, when an old lady and her dog pulled up. “Do you need a lift somewhere?” she asked, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Outside of small towns in the 50s and serial killer stories, I didn’t know people actually gave strangers a “lift” anymore. We declined politely, and I think she was even a little offended that her act of kindness was rebuffed.

Another disconcerting thing (which was really just basic human kindness), was how inviting people are here. It quickly became the norm to have strangers strike up a conversation at the bar, and invite us to their home for dinner, or a party, or a swim. Always skeptical, I’d ask my husband if he thought we should go, because you never know when you’re going to end up in a bathtub full of ice sans kidneys. So far, we’ve retained our kidneys, and the only thing full of ice is my heart. But it’s begun to thaw a little. I might not get into strange old ladies’ cars, but we’ve been to a lot of cookouts and parties and dinners at strangers’ houses. We’ve made those strangers into friends. 

Our first Christmas, we’d been here not six months. We hadn’t made plans, but figured we’d eventually find something to do. One night, about a week before Christmas, we were sitting in one of our favorite bars having a drink and decompressing. In walked a magnificent drag queen, so I struck up a conversation. Shantey was also new in town, and -- get this -- had recently moved from D.C. I decided then and there that we would be soul mates. We chatted all evening and exchanged phone numbers. She invited us to Christmas dinner at her house -- because she and her partner always make a cassoulet and there’s more than enough to share. I laughed in the way that you do when bar-talk-invitations happen, and figured that was the end of it. 

The next morning, I had a text from Renato, Shantey’s non-drag alter ego, saying, “I wasn’t joking, you have to come for Christmas.” Cold East Coast heart and old fashioned anxiety kicked in, and I spent the next few days in a tizzy over whether we should go or not. I didn’t even know what Renato looked like out of drag! What would we wear? Who would be there? What kind of wine should we take? Would this be the time we really did lose a kidney? My ever-pragmatic husband thought it would be fine and said we had nothing to lose. (As usual, he was right.)

That evening, we anxiously walked up to the door to ring the bell. Renato answered the door -- no wig, eyelashes, or sequins -- and honestly exclaimed how glad he was that we had come. He introduced us to his husband, Gordon, and the other two guests, Richard and Juan. As it turned out, we had all recently relocated to Palm Springs and were Christmas orphans. It was that night that a friendship was formed among us all. We ate an amazing cassoulet that Gordon prepared, drank more than anyone probably should, and laughed in that way that new friends do as they’re getting to know each other. Since then, Renato and Gordon have hosted us many times, including for every Christmas since we’ve lived here, and the circle of orphans has expanded to include more and more people transplanted to the desert. 

And just like that, my cold heart has begun to melt. Sure, it still comes out sometimes when we’re walking down a crowded sidewalk, and I’ll mutter to my husband, “Jesus Christ. Do these people really need to stop right in the middle of everything? It’s like they’ve never been in public before!” For the most part, I’ve come to accept that this is where we live now. Still, I do worry about my kidneys. You just can’t be too careful. But, at least when that eventuality occurs, you’ll know where to scatter me.