flicker of panic

Years ago, a friend commented that I should be a cab driver, I knew the back roads of Boston so well. At the time, I was living in Arlington, and with friends in Belmont, Watertown, Allston, Brookline, the North End, Boston proper, Roxbury, and Somerville, I tended to drive around a lot. I hated getting stuck in traffic, and I really enjoyed knowing sneaky ways to get past it. I also, after four years of hardly leaving Cambridge during college, enjoyed knowing where I was, in a bigger picture sense. So I would often just aim my car in the right direction and get lost in the middle until I made my way out on the other end. By the end of the trip, I’d have learned a new route somewhere, and I’d be delighted when I found a reason to use it again.

San Francisco is more straightforward than the Boston area, with gridded roads and heights that provide frequent aerial views of your destination. But that hasn’t kept me from finding some pretty interesting streets tucked away in places I don’t have any good reason to be but find my way to anyhow. Tonight I drove a route that I may love best, for it winds between houses set high atop the city, wrapping around from Ashbury Heights to Corona Heights and then cutting across the side of Twin Peaks. The architecture covers the whole gamut—including the ubiquitous Victorians for which the city is known and the modern rectangular houses that strike me as very Californian but also what looks like an English country house and a Mediterranean villa and even a truly godawful little mansion, which has spikes lining its roof where there should be eaves and which is one room wide and can’t be much more than the same in depth, as the plummet from its back porch looks terrifying.

As I swerved along this route I adore in the waning evening sun, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Yesterday I looked at an apartment in Palo Alto that may be as good as it gets when it comes to affording living alone while paying grad school tuition; I might be nuts not to take it. It’s not the size of the place—half that of my current studio, at best—nor the lack of laundry machines on site nor even the rent that makes me hesitate. It’s the move-in date of July 1—just over a month from now—that sets my heart into a little panic as I think about making up my mind in two days, by which time the little old landlady I liked so much will give the place away to another applicant.

I have long understood a truth about myself, and it’s that when it comes to knowing where I should be—physically, in terms of what sort of place will make me happy in the long run—I am a commitment-phobe. It would be different if I had a real reason to be somewhere—if I worked in an industry that only existed in certain cities or if I were in a relationship with someone who needed to be in a particular place for a particular purpose. But I am free to be wherever I choose, and so I’ve often felt it to be a personal challenge to figure out which place I should choose.

There was so much about growing up in Atlanta that seemed perfect to me, and yet only a year ago did I feel the first-ever (and fleeting) twinge of thinking it might be a place I could live in my adulthood. And for all the years I stayed in the Boston area after college, I adored my life in many ways, yet I felt restless most of the time. Still, while I got job offers in Austin, Washington, DC, and even Ecaudor, I took none of them because, who knows why, they just didn’t feel right. Finally I uprooted myself; I knew it was time to stop the itching and just go somewhere else. I settled on San Francisco because it had a great reputation but I myself didn’t know it. I figured I’d get a real kick out of being here for two or three years—and I also assumed I’d get that urge to move on at some point. But something lovely happened once I got here: early on, I realized that this is a place I’d love to make my home. And from that thought I have only wavered in summer (when the cold fog sets in).

So just when I’ve resolved that I truly can find a place to settle myself down, whether or not I have a reason to be here, I’ve up and opted to remove myself. But what causes that flicker of panic to subside rather quickly is that I know why I’m doing that, and I know it’s good. Now there is something I want to do and it is only in one or two places. Sure, there are many other avenues toward my end goal, but after all these years working in the same career, I know with no hesitation that I am ready to pursue another, and I think this master’s program will be a superb way to get into it. So where I live for a year will be irrelevant. Yes, it will be in a life that involves strip malls and sleepy, one-story houses and driving at 25 miles an hour through town. Yes, it is a quiet town and yes, it will feel tiny. But I will be there knowing that as a result of my next bit of schooling, I may start that non-profit that builds those excellent after-school program I’ve been envisioning for years; I may find a way to impact the lives of not just the precious few kids I’ve grown so close to over the years (David about to apply to college, Byron settled in to his new school, Gaelle still dreaming of medical school, Benjamin oblivious to what I will tell him next week, which is that I won’t be back to tutor him next year, which will break both of our hearts) but of many more like them, who want so much and often go to schools that offer them so little. I do have a dream, and I am going after it; and no matter what comes of that, I know it’s worthy of leaving San Francisco for a little while.

I realized today that while I do have to settle my mind to this change—to letting go of last-minute get-togethers with my friends and strolls through my beautiful, hilly neighborhood and afternoons wasted deliciously in Dolores Park and all those other incredible memories I’ve been creating—I feel really good about it. It is a blessing to know what you love to do with your time and find a way to do it; and it is just as important to know the battles you fight within yourself and find that you have won one.