My mom and I have forgotten how to talk to each other. My parents recently visited us, for two weeks over spring break, and I found it so difficult to connect. It felt challenging to have even simple conversations, which seemed to make the quiet pauses even quieter, longer. When I said goodbye and put them on a plane back home, I felt grief for the closeness I’d like to have with her, and relief that tomorrow we would all be back in our own spaces of comfort, and could continue to play our roles in a distant connection.
Like many things in life, it’s complicated.
I grew up in Oklahoma. After I graduated college, at the age of 22, I moved to California to attend culinary school. I didn’t know anyone here. I’d never even been to California before, but it was nine months of learning to cook in the Napa Valley and I. Was. Going. I found a room for rent in a retired couple’s home in St. Helena on Craig’s List. I rented it sight unseen. My parents insisted on driving out to California with me (much too dangerous to do on my own), so we caravanned in our Nissans out of Oklahoma, through Kansas to Colorado, up to Wyoming and across Utah, Nevada, then into California. Mountains, desert scruff, the great salt plains, more desert, golden California hillsides, then vineyards and up route 29 which is dotted with all of the wineries and restaurants that I’d only read about in magazines before this. I remember the excitement and the awe at how beautiful and picturesque the Napa Valley was. We turned off 29 in St. Helena and the road up the hill snaked steeply. Near the top of Spring Mountain Road, we took the correct forks, as directed by my new landlord and pulled up, all of my possessions crammed into the trunk of my car.
We were greeted by Bev, one of the homeowners, and she told us to wait and we’d unload in a few minutes, we can just look around first. The house was absolutely enchanted with a little vineyard on the property, a wine cellar, a little theater room and a chef’s kitchen. Beautifully carved custom wood accents decorate the doorways and the molding. Through the dining room, you step through French doors that put you on a deck that looks out over Mount St. Helena and the vineyards below. Bev follows us out with glasses of wine and a cheese plate and we sit at the dining table on the deck, which is covered by climbing vines of wisteria, and we look out over the view. The next year of my life in this place -- a place unlike anywhere I’ve been before -- fills my brain. My mom sits across from me as I take it all in and she sighs, “Oh, Katie…you’re never coming home.”