Strings, Attached

When I said goodbye to California when I was seven, I didn’t realize that I was letting the only home I’d known slip through my fingers. At seven, packing up two large moving trucks with everything you own seems like an adventure. I got into that large yellow truck and didn’t look back for a long while.

Home, for me, is the place I’ve lived most of my days since: Spokane, Washington, a medium-sized city with a small town feel, far from the rain and gloom of Seattle, on the coast. All of the bedrooms I’ve had to myself are in this city. This is where my favorite swing hangs, in my favorite park, the place I go to contemplate life, or to wait for a phone call from a boy that may or may not come. We have history, Spokane and I.

6996718094_8b649fa0a1_b

I woke up in the wee hours to catch my flight to California. The temperature hovered somewhere right around freezing. This is the October I have come to know. Once we’d made it through security, there was little difference in temperature between airports and planes as we made our way south. But when I stepped out of the airport and into the Southern California afternoon, I intuitively peeled off my cardigan. My bare shoulders recognized the October sun.

There’s a part of me that has always protected myself against loving my birthplace. I’ve told myself that it’s expensive, and that it’s smoggy. I’ve told myself that there are more drive-by shootings there than there are in Spokane. All of this is true. But I tell myself something else: San Diego doesn’t belong to me. It takes more than being born into a place or a family to make it yours. That isn’t true.

Although my skin pinkens and burns easily, I notice that my joints are less creaky in the warmth. I don’t have to take several times the recommended daily dose of vitamin D by mouth, but allow my body to synthesize it while I walk along the beach, listening to the music of the seagulls and the way the waves come in, always persistent, never stopping.

In Spokane, people frequently look bemused when I tell them that I’m not an outdoorsy person. My Tinder matches tell me that their perfect date includes a hike, or a bike ride, or a snowshoeing excursion. Though I don’t love Spokane’s brand of outdoor activity, I could walk along the beach for hours, drinking in the smell of the sea. I could drift through the streets of my birthplace endlessly, following the scent of Mexican food.

On this last trip, I sat down with my family at a restaurant I’ve visited on every trip to San Diego, and many times before we moved. As we waited for a table, I watched the hypnotic motions of the women making homemade tortillas, tossing them onto an endless pile that never seemed to dwindle as waitstaff came to wrap a handful in paper to take to one of their tables.

I like to try new food and drink wherever I go, but not here. Here, there is only one possible order, a tostada suprema (which comes with shredded beef and pork). I order fresh flour tortillas on the side and heap the contents into extemporaneous soft tacos. I close my eyes and I am transported to any one of my previous visits. It’s undeniable: I have history with San Diego, too.

photo-1477266190403-a01b87100271

But there is more to it than that, of course, more than just the food and the sunshine. We pass the hospital where I was born, and my mom points it out. Sharp Hospital. Someone in the marketing department in the 80s decided to create tiny shirts that said “I’m a Sharp baby.” My mom still has mine.

I have family in this city, and a bit further up, in Costa Mesa and neighboring places that roll off my tongue easily, although it takes me a moment to connect them with the signs on the freeway inviting me to exit. I know the names because I’ve heard people say them. Sometimes, that’s how my faraway family feels. The names are familiar, natural, but I don’t quite know if I can claim that as mine. There is so much distance, so much life lived away from each other. 

But on this most recent trip, I began to try. I shimmied into the role of cousin, niece, granddaughter. I soaked in each person and the way they blurred together with every other memory we’ve had together, indistinct, layered.

I was sorry to leave. Perhaps that is what I’ve always been protecting myself against. There is an eternal, persistent ache to belonging in more than one place. There are Cara-shaped holes that cannot all be filled at once. There are strings that pull at me no matter where I am.

* * * * *

Cara Stickland is a writer from Spokane with some warmer roots reaching south. Spokane photo by Michelle Lee; Palm Tree photo by Jesse Collins.

Whistle Stop

When I was seven, my family moved from California to Washington State. At that age, you don’t question why the palm trees are turning to evergreens, or why there is suddenly snow. You accept it. Sometimes I miss the days of taking the hand of change willingly and giving it a squeeze, already thinking about the fun in store for us together.

I’d always shared a room with my younger brother, but in the new house, we had our own rooms. Mine had red carpet and two closets. From time to time, I would rig one of them up as a cave or outer spaces, using my trusty tape recorder and a few well chosen props. Tights from the clothes bar were stalactites and I always included a flashlight for closer examination. Mostly though, I would count on my audience to picture the asteroid fields, or the underground rivers. Once ready, I would send my mom or brother into the closet, turn on the tape recorder and wait expectantly for their reactions. During the day, I loved the idea of a room all my own, with a lock on the door. Still, at night, I wanted someone to talk to, I hated being alone.

But, I was a big girl. I was old enough to have my own room. It was something prized by all of the little girls in the books I loved to read. It signaled that they were their own people, and as they grew up, more exciting things were going to start happening to them. In those days, everything was linear. I fully expected that I would go from my own room to becoming a babysitter, driving my own car, and spending evenings with a high school boyfriend who called on my landline and kissed me at the movies.

At night, I tried to focus on the plan. I needed to stay in bed, there was nothing to be scared of. The girls in my books didn’t get scared for no reason, they weren’t afraid to be alone in the dark. I couldn’t see my beautiful red carpet, or take comfort in my brother’s even breathing. The normally inaudible sound of the living room clock sounded ominous, and every creak signaled an intruder.

My fears were not helped by the fact that someone did break into that first Spokane house. We weren’t home at the time, but when we returned from the store and found the door open, the smell of cigarette smoke still hung in the air. It seemed perilously close to danger, to what I’d always feared would happen. My parents kept saying that they were thankful that the thief had only taken things, that we were all safe, but they took more than things, they took away my ability to whisper in the middle of the night: “Nothing bad will happen.” The red carpet did not stop calamity.

Whistle StopIn that house, we lived close to a set of train tracks. At first, I noticed every time they sounded their whistle, but after a while, it became part of the soundtrack of my life, so woven into the texture of my days that I would never have mentioned it. It would have been like mentioning that my eyes were green.

It was different at night. There were few sounds in our neighborhood, but I would strain to listen for an intruder or an animal. I contemplated which of my closets to hide in, should the worst happen. I wondered how expensive it would be to turn one of them into an elevator that could take me to the roof in times of trouble. Then a train would go by.

When the whistle danced into the night, it felt like a secret message for me. The blasts were long and shrill, sometimes they almost sounded hoarse. The tension in my chest would ease and I would start breathing normally again. No matter how fast my thoughts were running, they would slow, settling into a comfortable rhythm.

When we moved from that house, away from the train tracks, I worried about the quiet nights. What would I do in the new house, the new room, to combat my fear? I put on my pajamas and settled in to sleep, apprehensive. The whistle blew, more faintly, but I could still hear it. It filled my ears with an audible warmth. This whistle was lower, a closer cousin to a foghorn than my wooden train whistle. I still can’t tell you where the train tracks were near that house, but they were close enough. I fell asleep, lulled by the familiar sound in a new place.

Once I started treating my anxiety, my therapist and I quickly realized that I’m quick to jump to the worst case scenario. I wanted, I still want, to go back and comfort that little girl, but sometimes I’m not sure what I’d tell her. “I made it this far,” I could say. “I’m still scared sometimes.” I’ve learned that life isn’t linear, that the job and the boyfriend don’t follow having your own room. That sometimes the thing you feared the most happens, and you survive. I’ve learned that even if you pride yourself on being deeply logical, you can be calmed by something that has nothing to do with you, something that never promised to keep you safe. Even now, in bed with my lights out, when I hear a train whistle, the tension drains from my body. I accept that I am safe, and go to sleep.

cara YAH bio

The Rice Between Us

My mom’s dad was stationed in Okinawa during the Korean War in the 1950s. Although he never saw combat, he did see rice. When he returned from Japan after the war, he swore it off completely, exercising his power of choice as a civilian. As far as I know, he went to his death without eating another grain.

My mom’s mom honored his aversion. Recently she told me that she’d made him dinner when they were first dating: a dish that included rice. He hemmed and hawed and ultimately didn’t eat it. Only later, he told her the backstory. During their marriage, she never served rice when he was home. Sometimes, however, she would prepare it when he wasn’t. My mom doesn’t remember eating rice as a special occasion or a treat, but she remembers liking it.

My earliest memories are of eating white rice, my favorite–a foreshadowing of a palate that leans hard toward taste over health. It was only later that my mom switched to brown rice, for the higher fiber content (although she sometimes added Benefiber to white rice, which never bothered me). I knew the brown rice was supposed to be healthier, but to me it wasn’t really rice. I can’t help thinking that if my Poppa hadn’t been completely against rice, he would have agreed with me. He was never one to choose a healthy option over a more delicious one. That may have been part of what killed him at 56, before any of us were ready to say goodbye.

***

At nineteen, I signed up to take a trip to South Korea with my Tae Kwon Do school. I was months away from testing for my black belt, and I was eager to see the birthplace of my beloved martial art.

Almost immediately, I fell in love with the country. Although with my blonde hair and fair skin I looked like exactly no one who lived there, I felt completely at home. Every new experience filled me with delight. One of the first things we did when we arrived was eat. We really never stopped for long.

3161831426_780182ca28_zI had grown up eating three distinct meals every day, with breakfast containing different foods than lunch or dinner. This wasn’t always true in Korea.

My body plunged headfirst into culture shock, as I sunk my teeth into bulgogi (the most delicious Korean barbecue). At bulgogi restaurants, we would sit in groups at long tables with small domed metal grills in their centers, spaced every few feet from each other. Our server would bring us containers of marinated meats and vegetables, and we would cook them ourselves on the nearest grills. When we got close to meal times, my ears would prick up, hoping that someone would say that we were going for bulgogi again.

Another favorite for me was the classic meal-in-a-bowl, bibimbap. At one of the restaurants, our host told us that the concept is credited to members of the Mongolian army, who would put all of their leftover food into their helmets to eat like liquidless soup. Later, I discovered that this is only one of the many legends that surround this chameleon of a food. It looks different depending on where you are in the country, the time of year, the whim of the chef. If you’re making it at home, it’s a kitchen sink meal, lending itself easily to using up whatever you might have on hand. In a restaurant, it’s a little more uniform: a bowl of rice topped with veggies and (sometimes) cooked meat, with a variety of ingredients which were deliciously mysterious to me. It’s served very hot, sometimes in a heated stone bowl called a dolsot, which continues to cook the contents throughout the meal. At the last moment before serving, an egg is usually cracked over the top, the heat of the other ingredients quickly cooking it. I would mix the egg into my bowl with delight and then squeeze large dollops of spicy red pepper paste in, swirling my chopsticks to get a consistent flavor.

And at every meal, without fail, we ate rice. I loved it.

I wonder, now, if I was trying to memorize the taste of Korea. I knew I couldn’t stay, that I would need to return to a land where rice was a side dish, not the undergirding of everything I ate. I could make rice at home. I could use my tongue to transport me back to Korea.

***

It no longer surprises me when I discover that my Poppa and I share similar tastes. It’s hard to know if it is because my mother missed him and cooked his favorites for me as a child. The ways of food and family are mysterious. I’m sure that there are other ways that we differ, but I know this one well, and I think about it every time I turn on my rice maker, or order a risotto, or take a virtual journey back to Korea, where I was overwhelmed with a sense of belonging.

For my Poppa, rice was also a portal to another place, but it was one that he wanted to remain closed forever. For me, the idea of Mongolian soldiers eating out of their helmets adds color and context to a delicious dish. But I have never been a soldier. I have never worn a helmet for long hours in the heat, knowing that I would have no control over how I broke my fast at each meal, far away from home. For a long while, I wondered if my love for rice was disloyal to him. Even though he never held others to his standard, now I think he might like the fact that I think of him as I reach for a piece of sushi or add coconut to my rice. Our connection continues to be strong, our opposite tastes providing an ironic but significant bond.

cara YAH bio

(photo credit)

How to Eat a Burrito The Size of Your Head

I will never willingly choose to eat a burrito on a first date. If I ever suggest to you that we eat together at Chipotle, you should know that it either means that you are in my inner circle, or that I think that our relationship is doomed. It’s a beautiful litmus test, really. How many suitors or potential friends can continue to see me the same way after I have consumed a burrito the size of my head in front of them? It would be one thing if I could do it neatly, but I’m not sure that there is a person on earth who can eat a Chipotle burrito without dropping and dripping part of it, without guacamole oozing onto her hands, and black beans, steeped in the juice of two kinds of salsa, smearing the corners of their mouth. I know this at least, I am not that person.  If they still like me after seeing this it’s clear that they won’t run at the first sign of untidiness or disappointment, that our relationship isn’t based on my being put-together.

I grew up eating tacos at home a few times a week, first in San Diego, and then in Washington State, after we moved. My mother fried small corn tortillas and slightly larger flour ones in hot canola oil, folding them over halfway through so that they held their taco shape. I usually chose the flour ones because they got the most crispy, and I learned to pack them full of ground beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato, salsa, and avocado. On taco nights, we didn’t worry about staying free of debris. I waited until the end of the meal before I washed the salsa off my hands and cleaned off my face. Part of the enjoyment of eating tacos was the idea that there was nothing you could do to stay pristine. For a type A, list-maker who noticed when anything in her space was out of place, this was a safe way to stretch my comfort zone. This was a good place to be a little bit messy.

IMG_0710When I go out on dates, especially first dates, I think a lot about what we might eat. I blame this both on the fact that many of the men I’m dating ask me where I want to go, and also on my own tendency to overanalyze most decisions I make. Frequently, my inner dialogue revolves around what foods I can eat without making a mess. I can eat pizza with a knife and fork, but a hamburger just won’t fit in my mouth.

I know that for any kind of relationship to work, I need to be able to eat in front of the other person. I cannot hide away behind plates of pasta molded into small, bite sized shapes. Eventually, I will make my homemade red sauce in the blender, adding browned meat, and zucchini cooked soft. I will ladle it onto heaping bowls of angel hair and I will need to keep my cloth napkin close at hand.

Then, there are those sandwiches I make, more mustard than anything. I heap rounds of salami and cheddar cheese onto a croissant, sliced in half and cover it everything with plain yellow  mustard, and then the top half of the croissant. It tastes like Chicago in the summer, and also like living on my own for the first time in the late spring, finally responsible for all of my own grocery shopping. It’s messy like those days of learning to feed myself. Messy like the tubs of guacamole I bought for dinner at Trader Joe’s because I was tired and didn’t have a food processor. Messy like the sticky counter after I’ve gotten out twelve ingredients to make one cocktail.

I’m learning that good relationships are like homemade pasta sauce, overstuffed tacos, and cocktails. They are nourishing and take time and trouble, they don’t stay contained in the safe parts of your life, they can delight and intoxicate you. They’re a mess.

I can wash my blender and wipe down my countertops. I can eat the dropped parts of my taco with a fork. But I don’t stay neat, and neither do my relationships.

Like in those constant taco nights from my childhood, learning to love the juicy salsa running down my arms, I’m stretching into the edges of my relationships. I’m saying words like “I’m lonely” and listening to words like “I don’t know what to do.” I’m opening my mouth wide to welcome a bite of burrito, knowing that part of it will fall and that the person in front of me will see the mess I’ve made. I’m letting the rich red sauce of relationship spread onto the table between us, enjoying the scent of freshly crushed tomatoes as it fills the air.  

cara YAH bio

No Check, Please

I was getting ready to leave home when I got the text from my editor:

Dish will either be bacon-wrapped filet of ribeye or Parmesan encrusted halibut over Maine lobster orzo. SCORE…! I smiled, my mind already wandering to the seafood, and hoping they chose the halibut—perhaps my favorite fish. I threw my purse over my shoulder and left the house, preparing myself for the 50 minute drive to a local resort town.

When I arrived, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, the hostess, who seemed to know I was coming, seated me by a window with a spectacular view of the lake. In moments, the bartender brought me a glass of water, asking if he could get me anything else. For a moment, I considered ordering a dirty martini, but I abstained. After all, I was working.

The chef arrived, in full kitchen whites, and shook my hand before taking a seat across from me. He told me they had decided on steak. For a moment, I was disappointed. I’ve never been an avid consumer of large chunks of meat. As a child, I would sit for hours rather than finish a pork chop with even a hint of fat. I didn’t like it when the muscles got stuck between my teeth. But I couldn’t tell this chef that I’d rather not eat a steak. I would eat what they put in front of me. And then, I would write about it.

No Check PleaseWhen my dish arrived, carried wordlessly by a waiter, it was sprinkled with tiny, edible flowers and accompanied by morel mushrooms. “Have you ever had filet of ribeye?” the chef asked. I shook my head, cutting off my first bite. “You remove only the centermost, tender part of the steak, giving a similar impression to a filet mignon.”  This special cut was wrapped in bacon they made in-house. “Underneath the steak is a potato dish I created for a chef event.” He leaned forward. “What do you think?”

I had just slid my first bite into my mouth and was trying to correlate this amazing taste and texture with any other steak I’d ever had. “It’s wonderful,” I said. He smiled and then left me alone to enjoy my oddly timed meal before a tour of the extensive wine cellar.

I ate slowly, realizing that perhaps I liked steak after all, or at least this one. I made a few notes on my yellow pad (the ribeye cuts like room temperature butter and gives in to my teeth without resistance, the potato is crisp on the outside, not too much dairy on the inside, but still creamy) and picked up the menu to collect the details. As I wrote down the price, I paused, just for a moment, mid-bite. This plate of delicious meat, potatoes, and mushrooms would cost $50 for the average diner. Without the martini.

I finished eating and the chef, the young, waistcoat-clad general manager and I descended to the cool wine cellar, luxuriously filled with millions of dollars worth of bottles. The two men played off each other easily, quoting statistics and showing off double magnums of champagne so expensive I couldn’t afford even a sip.  

After I took my leave of the chef and the general manager, with handshakes all around, I took advantage of my extra hour of free resort parking with a walk down by the lake. As I walked, I thought about the people who would be reading the article that I was even now writing in my head. Spokane isn’t lavish. Most in the community are not well-to-do. For many of the people I know, eating out is a luxury, especially for something other than a burger. Restaurant dining is saved for birthdays, anniversaries and the occasional date night. Most of the people reading my article wouldn’t even consider ordering a $50 steak. I would never consider ordering a $50 steak if I was footing the bill.

Although my budget isn’t expansive, I love to try new restaurants as soon as they open, to treat friends to breakfast and lunch, dinner and drinks. Writing about food, from the expensive resort fare, to local diners, is the way I pay these bills (or submit them for reimbursement). My passion has become the means of my provision.

And because I know this is special, something that might be saved for, or noted in the budget, I feel a responsibility to those readers. When I sit down to write a review, I do my best to tell the truth about my experience. All of my visits do not include a chat with the chef. Most of the time, they don’t know I’m coming. I’m short and blonde and young, and I don’t look like a food writer. They treat me just like anyone else. It is, paradoxically, my very normalness that makes me a reliable critic. If I am dazzled by the service, or a particular dish, it’s likely that a reader will be. As I wrote the piece about the steak (which was photographed and put on the magazine cover), I did my best to weigh every word for accuracy. You never know who might be clipping the article and saving up for a special evening. I would hate for them to be disappointed.

cara YAH bio

Laughing At The Future

2015 was a hard year. Every time I say this, sitting on her lime green vinyl couch, my therapist reminds me to look at it through a lens of growth, from the perspective of someone a little further down the road from those moments that made it especially hard. When I put on her glasses, I see a woman who has traveled from full-time work without margin or a moment to breathe (or work on the book people keep asking her about) to the person I am today, who proudly calls herself a writer when people ask her what she does.

I made some important and terrifying decisions in 2015. My heart was broken. I fell back in love with my hometown. I went to a wedding on a first date. All I wanted to do in the cold heart of December was curl up and sleep until it was brighter again.

In the silence and the gloom, I began to hear a whisper of my own voice from long ago. I often wish that some parts of my religious education were different, but I am thankful for all those verses I memorized “word perfect” including these words from Proverbs 31, which speak of a woman of valor: “she can laugh at the days to come” (Proverbs 31:25b). I could still hear it echoing through the brightly-lit gym with the orangey-brown carpet.

I have wrestled with the great to-do list the church placed on my shoulders through that chapter, learning only recently that it is sung each week in Jewish homes, a way of praising the unseen acts of women who work hard, often for little reward.

As it occurs to me, I turn it over in my mind, thinking about the year that stretches before me, looking bright and new and full of possibilities, just as 2015 did, just as 2015 indeed was. Can I laugh at these days to come? I wonder.

Laughing at the FutureOnce this thought finds a home, my mind wanders back to Sarah, Abraham’s wife back in Genesis. God promised her a son in her old age and she laughed. As soon as I make the connection, I can’t believe I’ve never made it before. Sarah laughed at the days to come. She laughs because it seems impossible, and because everything is ruined. Her husband has a son already, because she took matters into her own hands, sending in her slave to further the family line. Things are in a mess. She is not laughing with confidence, but with disbelief.

“Is anything too wondrous for the Lord?” He asks.

Sometimes I sit in my therapist’s office and tell her that I feel like nothing will change. I’ll never meet someone I want to spend my life with, I’ll never measure up to my own standards of success, I’ll never beat my anxiety, or learn to forgive so it sticks. Lately, when these thoughts rise in my mind they are quickly countered with: is anything too wondrous for the Lord? And I begin to cry.

So this year, I’ve decided to practice making a home in laughter. I’m going to laugh wildly, and through tears and frustration and doubt. I’m going to laugh at silly TV comedies and British chick lit and with my friends and their kids. I want the laughter to wrap around me like a house or a cloak, a carapace to protect me from the elements. I’m going to laugh at what the days to come might bring and at what is set before me. I’m going to hope that the future will hear me coming, and will start laughing with me. I’m going to trust that even when I laugh at the promises of God because it feels like nothing will ever change, it doesn’t make the promises less true. The wondrous comes anyway.

cara YAH bio

My Town

When I was seven, my parents packed up two U-Hauls, myself and my 5-year-old brother. We drove three days from San Diego, my birthplace, to our new home in Spokane, Washington.

Spokane is on the eastern side of Washington State, the side everyone forgets is here. Around election season, the majority put up conservative signs. On this side of the Rockies, there is a desert. It rains, but not frequently.

For a long time, I thought that I would grow up and move away from Spokane. Before college I was in love with the idea of moving to Paris and writing in cafés like Hemingway. Instead, after a short stint working full time in a grocery store, I went to college in the middle of the corn fields of Indiana.

I thought that I would marry my college boyfriend and we would settle in Chicago. The city seemed larger than life to me, sticky, with hard edges. Chicago wasn’t my kind of town, but I was in love for the first time. I would have followed that love anywhere, long after he broke my heart.  

Instead, I moved back to Spokane once more. I worked at a local winery high on a hill, and at nearly every library in the county. I covered restaurants and chefs for a local magazine. I made friends and ran into people I’d known longer than a decade at the grocery store. I began to move through the city like an adult, finding my way through familiar pathways of my youth.  

From time to time, I would chat with my therapist about moving to a bigger city, hoping it might increase my chances of meeting someone I’d like to date. Twice, I contemplated moving to Portland, both times for a boy.

The second time, I almost succeeded. I had a job and a house secured. In the days and weeks before I was meant to go, I found myself craving a chicken chipotle sandwich from Rockwood Bakery, a coffee shop where my brother used to work, and a place I’ve never been to without running into someone I know. I bought one and cried as I ate it on my porch, thinking about what a long drive it might be the next time I had a craving. I wanted to buy several of their quiches and freeze them so that I could warm one up when I needed to taste home.

IMG_3586I worked toward overcoming my fear of parallel parking so that I could wander downtown. I wanted to lay eyes on places I hadn’t been for a while. I wanted to fix them firmly into my memory so that I could carry them with me when I left.

Friends hosted their annual garden party in their backyard while the chickens were shut up tightly so they didn’t mingle with the guests. I held two brand new babies, one of them for hours, even though my arms ached. I knew that even if I came home once a month as I’d planned, to write my food articles, she would still be much older the next time I saw her. I squeezed just a little tighter.

That same baby fell asleep on my shoulder at brunch next to a sunlit window the week before I was supposed to move. My anxiety was speaking to me that day, throwing everything into sharp relief. I held that baby close, not wanting to let go even as we stood next to her ready carseat. My friend kissed my cheek and hugged me tightly, tearful, her daughter squashed between us.

Maybe it’s always hard to move, even when you are doing the right thing, but in those days and moments, I wondered.

I had only to throw my clothes in the car when the relationship slipped through my fingers, leaving me to decide whether I would stay or go. After a dark, sleepless night, I wrote two emails and a text. I cancelled my move.

Not everyone understood my decision. I can’t tell you how many people asked me why I hadn’t gone through with my big adventure. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that moving wasn’t the adventure at all. Falling in love has always been where I get my thrills.

Almost moving was a strange experience.

It was several weeks after the aborted move when I told my therapist I wanted to stay in Spokane. “I’ve been afraid,” I told her. “I’ve been afraid to love this place because I thought it was a good place to grow up, to raise a family, but not to meet someone I might love.” She nodded, because we’d had this conversation many times. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to dig my feet in like roots.” Finally, I unclenched my hands and let Portland fall. Spokane reached for my hands and held them warmly.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed a historic event in Spokane. Our mayor was reelected for the first time in 42 years. He’s a friend of mine, and I love the look on people’s faces when I walk right up to him and give him a hug in social settings. He has a tagline: “This is my town.” I found myself whispering those words at the election party as I raised a glass of red in celebration.

Even now they wander through my head as I drive to the bank or the grocery store, or take an evening walk along the ridge near my house at sunset.

This is my town, I think, and I mean every word.

cara YAH bio

Visiting With Ghosts

About once a month, I wish that I could revisit a place from my past. It’s not always the same place (though some are recurring), but my terms are always the same: I want to be alone and undisturbed. I want to be able to look around to my heart’s content, and I want it to be exactly as it was when I was there.

I’m not sure what I think this would solve, exactly. I’m not sure what I would gain by sitting again at the bar of a restaurant, closed for the season, where I ate several breakfasts and dinners with a boy I once knew, who worked there when it was open. I remember the way he made coffee with a practiced, professional hand, and how we cooked together in the industrial kitchen in bare feet.

I spent one day there, alone, meeting food writing deadlines. Autumn sun flooded the floor where tables and chairs usually would have been. If I close my eyes, I can still remember how strange it was to be in a restaurant which wasn’t fulfilling its purpose, as if I were living in a post-rapture world and businesses were no longer relevant.

When that boy moved out of the country a few weeks later, he took the keys to that restaurant with him. I know that if I were to go back, it would not be to the same place where we danced to “Summertime Sadness” in the dark, or watched “You’ve Got Mail” together on Halloween. “That’s my favorite movie,” he had told me. I believed him.

Then, there’s a triplex in a small college town south of Spokane where my ex-boyfriend used to live. Floaty, grey sheers hung on his windows and the frozen early spring light filtered in during the day as I sat on the couch. Sometimes I would drive the hour and a half to spend a day off with him; we would sit together, enjoying our closeness. On those visits, I would arrive before he finished with work. He left the door unlocked for me, and I would lock it behind me immediately, the difference between my San Diego upbringing and his in rural Idaho.

From his window, I could see the local grocery store. Sometimes I would walk over and buy vegetables or salad dressing. He always had plenty of frozen things, chicken, beef, and vegetables, but I was the one who bought and roasted asparagus, quartered brussels sprouts, or sautéed mushrooms in butter.

I spent many hours in that three story house waiting for him to get home. I’m not sure why it still haunts me. In the afternoons there was a silence about it that reminded me of nap times when I used to babysit. I kept an ear out the way I listened for a child who might be stirring. I watched out the window for his return, tuning my ear to the sound of his truck.

Most often though, I find myself mentally walking the halls of my mother’s mother’s house, the one she sold quite a few years ago. Before I even get inside, there is the fragrance of gardenia along the path. There is a bush where I hid a Lindt truffle from my grandmother’s jar, hoping that it would be there for my next visit (it wasn’t). The lawn is split into two levels by a rock wall where we sat to let our sparklers burn out safely every fourth of July.

Inside, I step carefully into the marble-floored entry, remembering how hard it could be in an unexpected fall. I pause in the living room for a moment, remembering the year all of my cousins got gymnastics Barbies and we twirled them all over that floor. Upstairs, I run straight to the Tulip room, so named for my grandmother’s favorite flower and all of the tulip decor, mostly pink. This was where I slept when I visited and where she kept all the toys.

Across the way is the yellow bathroom where I steeped in oatmeal baths during my chicken pox and brushed my teeth with bright blue bath salts the color of my Crest gel.

Downstairs there is a den, beneath the kitchen where the food rested expectantly on holidays, ready to be heaped onto plates. I can’t quite remember how it worked, but I know that there was a bar. That was where my grandparents kept the biscuits for Jebby, their faithful dog, who patiently accepted one from each of the six grandchildren.

That den was where my Poppa, my mom’s dad, introduced me to Indiana Jones and Star Wars in those tender years we shared before he passed away, followed soon after by Jebby. If I pause in this section of the house and squeeze my eyes tight, I can hear the splashes from the waterslide into the pool just through the sliding glass door, and the echoes of a hollow ball meeting paddles and a table, down the hall in the garage where the coordinated are playing ping pong. Any moment now my Poppa will wrap an arm around my shoulder and ask if he can make me a drink. I guess, maybe, when I revisit a place, I don’t always want to be alone.  

The Future Syrah

I stood with the bottle in front of me, corkscrew in hand. The note on the bottle, written in my own handwriting, told me that it was “not to be opened before May 22, 2015.” I cut the foil, and slowly rotated my key into the cork.

Five years prior, I was getting ready to leave a job at a local winery as the summer waned. It was my first post-college job, the answer to the question about “what I was going to do” after graduation. I attended a small conservative Christian college, and I got quite a few raised eyebrows when I said: “I’m going into the wine business.”

The long hours and the free wine created an experience I will never forget, but not a sustainable one. My career in the wine business was short.

As I worked my way through the summer, getting more comfortable with our wine offerings and going tasting with co-workers on the weekends, I noticed that my sense of smell was heightened. On evening walks, I could smell subtle flowers and herbs. I was overwhelmed by the smell of laundry. I could sense the faintest hint of smoke in the air.

That summer, I went on a few dates with someone new. I’d always fallen into relationships somehow, skipping the first few steps of courtship. When he asked me to dinner, it was my first real first date. He came to pick me up and we walked a little ways to a restaurant not far from my parent’s home. We sat on the patio and talked and laughed without looking at the menu. I kept smiling apologetically at our server, but if he was frustrated with our indecision, it didn’t show. Finally, we ordered a bottle of wine.

It was a Washington Syrah, smooth and supple. I hadn’t yet learned then that when I drink wine, I like to eschew the hard edges. I look for something silky that touches my tongue tenderly without a trail of tannins. This was one of the wines that taught me that, one sip at a time. That Syrah is still in my top ten wine experiences.

During my summer of wine, I looked for a way to commemorate the momentous nature of that season. I decided to buy a bottle of wine to store for five years, opening it near the anniversary of college graduation. I consulted my wine stylist, a person I still keep on speed dial, a local wine whiz who occasionally chills bottles for me when I text him so that I can pick them up later. He suggested that a Syrah would hold up well over time. Washington is known for her Syrahs and it seemed the perfect choice, something that would remind me of lunch breaks in the vineyards and my swirling glass in the evening after I got off work, paired with oyster crackers.

When my wine stylist suggested that particular varietal, I knew that I would buy the same vintage as that first date. I wrote the date it was to be opened on a yellow sticky note in the shape of a star before covering it in tape.

That bottle followed me from my parents house to the light-filled one I rented with a purple-painted porch. Every time I went to find something to open, for a date or dinner with friends, I noticed that gently sloped bottle, designed for Syrah. It lay in my wine rack, surrounded by bottles of table wine, Perrier, and other special bottles, waiting for its moment. Though new jobs, publications, relationships and breakups tempted me, I never reached for my corkscrew.

This May, I brought the bottle back to my parents’ house and my mother and I made bruschetta from fresh tomatoes and basil. I opened the wine to let it breathe and immediately, I recognized the scent, my nose still sensitive to all of those stimuli. The wine had mellowed over time, but there was no mistaking it. Even though that restaurant has closed and reopened twice under different names, I was back on that patio with my cardigan draped over the back of my chair. I was hopeful about post-college relationships and jobs and life.

I poured myself a glass, a little nervous that five years was too much after all, that this wine was history. One sip was all I needed to realize that the future Syrah was not ruined, as I had feared. She had not passed her prime sometime in the midst of those years. In fact, she was smoother than I remembered.

***

caraCara Strickland is a freelance writer living in Spokane, WA. She writes about food, faith, singleness and relationships for a variety of publications in print and online.

She’s delighted that her current career allows her to drink wine (and write about it).

A Note About Aaron Housholder

One fall day in the middle of the Indiana cornfields, many years ago, I walked into a college class called “Imaginative Writing” taught by Aaron Housholder. He was clean-shaven and approachable, his head bald and smooth. His voice was not loud, but it somehow managed to get everyone to lean forward and pay attention. I always took copious notes. He hadn’t been teaching there long. Neither of us knew that it would soon be wise to plan ahead if you intended to take a class with him.

I’d intended to take a year off before attending college (if I ever went), but the thought of creative writing classes beckoned. I received glossy flyers promising author events and workshopping sessions. Between my HR job at a national grocer and those circles of workshopping bliss, I attended a local state school, catching the bus during the six am hour to make it to classes in time. I had a year and a half of college under my belt before I walked into that classroom, but it felt like everything was just beginning.

Aaron told us to call him by his first name (something I’ve only now become comfortable with, over five years past graduation). He assigned us poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction (my genre of choice in those days). He once assigned us an essay to read: A Note About Allen Tate by Kelly Cherry. I couldn’t tell you what we were supposed to glean from it, but I’ve never forgotten that winsome creative nonfiction about a student who learns about life, and about paying attention, from her Literary Criticism professor. Later, one of my writing professors mentioned that it usually takes about five years past an event before you’re ready to write about it. “So in five years you can start writing about college,” he said. When he said it, I remember thinking about that essay, and five years later, I’m still thinking about it.

A Note about Aaron HousholderMy time at that small, private university was brief. My year at the state school and my willingness to take an overload made it possible for me to be in and out in two and a half years. During that time, the English department went through a major transition, so that I started as an English major with a writing concentration, and ended as a Creative Writing major (which was what I wanted to be anyway). Now, “Imaginative Writing” is called “Intro to Creative Writing” and Reade Center, where we had all of our English classes, has been surrounded by cheerful landscaping.

Aaron taught me a great deal about writing. He taught me to think before I wrote, and after, but not at all during. He taught me to pay attention to what I wanted to write about. He taught me to accept when my writing changed. I’m sure he brought some of this in his notes, but other things he lived out in front of us.

I used to write romantic scenes to compensate for the fact that my college experience wasn’t like the movies. There were cute guys in polo shirts and Sperrys at my school, but they weren’t interested in me. I lived in the dorm rumored to be the home of girls you date, across the street from the one where you look for a wife. I lived in both of these dorms and evaded both stereotypes, much to my chagrin. In my writing classes, my classmates would sometimes refer to me as the romance writer. I did my best to defend myself against these charges at the time, saying that I was just writing about men and women talking, relating. Now, I wonder if those classes didn’t need a little romance to go along with the existential angst, and exploration of sexual identity.

Aaron would often read us pieces, or tell us stories about his son. I looked forward to those stories the way I’m told people looked forward to the next installment of a Dickens novel, delivered in serial form. What would this precocious boy do next? I wondered.

When my first long-awaited love visited me at college, I introduced him to Aaron. Though we planned to marry after graduation, and had settled on a date and begun fighting about the color of bridesmaid dresses, very few people had met him, not even my parents. His home was in Chicago and mine in Washington State. His school was in Texas, and mine in Indiana. I can count on one hand the friends I’ve had who have known me through all of my romantic relationships, hopes, and breakups. When I submitted a short story to an undergraduate conference, he was the only one who knew that it was reality thinly masked in fiction, in which I dealt with my boyfriend’s mother, who hated me.

Recently, Aaron and I caught up after too long. As usual, conversation turned to story, to writing. It was as if I was in his office again, meeting to discuss my senior project, getting feedback on a short story. In those days, I bemoaned my singleness often (not much has changed). This time, Aaron made a suggestion which has stuck in my head. “You’re always looking for a relationship which will make a good story to write,” he said in that calm voice that always made us pay attention. “Maybe instead you should be looking for a story that’s too big, too good, not filled with the dramatic elements and tensions that make a good story. Maybe the story you’re looking for is one that you don’t want to write.”

All that time, in “Imaginative Writing,” “Fiction Writing,” and in those talks about my senior project, I hadn’t just been learning about writing. I was learning about writing because it’s my most reliable way to learn about life. Sometimes, the writing is important, lauded, exceptional, but the writing pales in comparison to the actual point: a life, one that is too big for words, no matter how we rush to capture the gossamer.

{photo credit}