I love to reminiscence. I love to think back to good times, to replay different experiences in my head, to retell stories. I never know what the future will bring. As I don’t like change, I think this is why the past holds a particular comfort for me. I like to hang on to the past. But the more I live the more this leads to disappointment. Things don’t stay the same; they aren’t as I remembered them. I should learn to take my memories and move on with them, but I too often like to go back.
This is all spurred on by the fact that I very recently returned to Pullman. I arrived on June 8 after finishing up my first year of teaching. I have several different versions of Pullman in my memory. There is my time as a freshman, my time at the Evergreen, and my senior year. I hadn’t realized until I returned that I still think of Pullman as my home base for lack of a better word. I live and work in Oklahoma, but I will never claim Tulsa as my home. It will never be where I belong. I love going to my childhood home and it will always be where I came from, but rather than going home it became visiting home while I was in college.
And now Pullman too is just too different. I feel almost alien here, not being a student, being without a working Cougar Card. I’m always disappointed when faced with the reality that time has moved on in a place without me. I know it happens, but I don’t like being confronted with the reality of it. I don’t belong here anymore even though I think of Pullman fondly. I still have things that pull me back to this place that I did call home, but now it too is a place I only visit.
It was an unexpected realization for me that I am without a home at the moment, without a place to put down roots. The best approximation I have for home would be the Pacific Northwest. This dawning realization that my life is all about transitions and will be for the next few years is intimidating. I feel like I could be blown any which way. I’m in a transient state, waiting to see where my next home will be. I have at least another year of waiting. I am not a patient person with such things.
