Almost, But Not Quite

Yesterday I left my island. In a way I feel that's all there is to say, though I'll say that it's not all I feel.

I already miss my evening walks up West Beach road past the cemetery and sprawling cow pastures. I miss the hill by the hardware store that I scaled at least once every day on bike or foot but that never got any easier to climb.

My final two days were black bean soup days--black bean soup and roasted veggies with caramelized onion dipping sauce, homemade potato gnocchi and focaccia and coconut mojitos. And that was just Friday evening.

Saturday morning: zucchini and potatoes, candle holders made from the arced staves of oak wine barrels, tie-dye skirts and grapefruit rhubarb jam from Lone Cow Farm. The extravagance of my final Farmer's Market seemed to me a plea from the island for me to stay. We'll give you tomatoes. Just don't go. It's strange to think that all of that belongs in a different life than the one I woke up living this morning. The three loaves of bread (garlic parsley walnut, chocolate cherry, and fig anise) in their paper bag on top of the refrigerator are now edible souvenirs of noon yesterday, bits of history smuggled into the present with the hopes that they'll count as something more than themselves.

I had my last lemon scone at Teezer's, and then my mom and I crossed the street to the Village Green where volunteers had roped off an enormous plot next to the market awnings for Eastsound's annual Library Fair. Thousands of books, one-dollar paperbacks (and three for $2). Though signs stated that the fair would open promptly at 10am, the lady in the blue vest holding the scissors appeared ill-prepared for the seemingly effortless job of cutting the orange tape. Despite the fact that as 10 o'clock neared the band onstage halted its music and began a countdown, and despite the fact that this countdown was echoed loudly in growing enthusiasm by the hundreds of line-waiters along the perimeter of the fair, the poor volunteer woman missed her cue by at least five seconds. Five excruciating seconds during which you could practically hear the confusion and frustration roll through the line like the aural reverberations of a gunshot over the side of a cliff. Poor thing. The pressures that came with donning the Blue Volunteer Vest must have sent her into a near-catatonic stupor.

Luckily, her paralysis was only temporary, and within seconds my mom and I were making our way toward the entrance, our empty totes in hand. We had formulated a strategy in line--upon entering my mom would take a sharp right to the first of three paperback fiction tables while I would cut left to check out the price list posted next to the registers. We would fight for our literature, clawing, tripping, head-butting. Nothing was off limits. It was strange, though: the splendor of thousands of well-loved book spines glinting in the Eastsound sunlight renewed us. We were reborn in the presence of literature. Rather than an uppercut to the jaws of our competition, we were exchanging pleasantries. "That's a great one," I said to a woman on my right who had picked up a nearly new copy of The Lovely Bones. She nodded toward the one in my hands--Fannie Flagg's Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! "Right back atcha," she said, and made her way to another table.

It doesn't need to be mentioned (though I will mention it anyway) that our bags did not stay empty for long. For $10 my mom and I each walked away with nearly twenty books! (This photo shows our spoils. The stack on the left is mine). The purchases made for quite a glorious afternoon, both of us floating in our own quiet smugness as we hauled our bags to and from the car so many times that you'd think we were doing it simply to feel the weight of words pulling at our fingers.

After a delayed ferry and way too long spent in the shade at the landing next to several loud families who insisted that a shy three-year-old boy approach a group of teenage girls, introduce himself, and learn all their names, I was finally off the island.

The day before had been my dad's birthday, and as a present my mom and I had found a hammock at the farmer's market. When we got home we immediately took down our old ratty hammock (if you could even call it a hammock anymore), hung up the new one, stacked all our books from the fair in a single pile, and set a glass of iced tea on the very top: my dad's birthday present from his girls. Well. The books aren't his. But they looked cute with iced tea (the beverage, not the rapper...although I'm sure they'd look cute with him too).

I was (and still am) so happy to be home. I'm finally around the people who know and love me, and I can finally make a phone call without having to ride my bike twenty minutes into town where I get patchy reception at most. But. True to every stage of my existence, I never really learn to love my life until it's about to change. I woke up this morning in my own bed with my cat next to me. I was so excited to be somewhere so comfortable and familiar, yet I couldn't help but feel a tinge of disappointment. No longer will I wake up in a place that I have not entirely discovered. No longer will there be a hint of unfamiliarity with my surroundings, and with that unfamiliarity the chance to establish myself as an alternate, better version of me. I have lived in my house for eighteen years; there is nothing I haven't discovered. When I am home, I am the same person I've always been. On Orcas, though, I don't have a past--not really, not the way I do here. Each summer I spend there I truly am starting over. Life on the island carries with it the perfect balance of Unknown and Well-Known, and my quest to establish a place and identity there only strengthens my resolve to make myself someone. It's that constant need to be a part of something that keeps me eating right, going on runs, sleeping the proper amount, taking my vitamins.

I care about myself more when I can entertain the notion of self-change. This is why I'll miss the feeling of not quite, but almost belonging.