My Geographic

While strolling together through the park in the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of my brother Mark, my sister Martina asked him, “What is your quintessential Brooklyn moment?”

It was the second day of our overnight “Sibs” get away. My sisters, Margaret and Martina, my brother Mark and I had just finished a taste sating Sunday brunch at Belleville in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. With the breeze picking up speed and the threat of rain upon us, we walked toward the Brooklyn Bridge to promenade the expanse to the Manhattan side.

While Mark pondered the question, Martina shared that for her, the community aspect of her tree lined, family feeling suburban neighborhood of Randolph, New Jersey held the essential element of home.

Montague, New Jersey with its sweeping farm fields dotted with red roofed barns, pockets of forest that are home to deer and black bears, and the ‘reach out and touch’ impression of nature close by, soothes my sister Margaret each time she pulls into her driveway after her 1 ½ daily commute to work.

Mark after a bit, contributed that Brooklyn for him offered the excitement of accessibility. Culture, fabulous food, green space in the middle of great aritechture, allowed for an urban mix of stimulation and security.

The question fell to me. 12 years ago I chose to make my home 3000 miles away. What was my quintessential San Diego moment?

After Jack died, many friends assumed I’d move back east. Back to traveling tree lined maze like roads where the sky is crowded with the ever changing seasonal colors of the leafy topped oaks, chestnuts and maples. I understood why they thought this, all my family lives on the east coast. The foundation of who I am is of an east coast essence. And yes, the intrinsic truth of home does hold family ties, as one ingredient of the mix.

And yet, with an hour left before driving to the airport to return west, after my week long family visit, I anticipate the powder blue expanse of sky as the doors swoosh open at the San Diego airport. I am already comforted by the remembered softness of the air and the way the outside temperature seems to balance me from the outside in.

My roots are in the east, my family in my heart but my geographic is the west.