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.

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