where and when

It has taken me a long time to get from one building to another. Man, the years, the years, how did I ever get so old.

My younger sister called the other day just as I was beginning a walk through the Laguna Lake open space, and the quiet conversation wound itself all the way back to New Bedford, Massachusetts, with fishing fleets and Portuguese, the hospital where Irene delivered the both of us out into this world. Pop!

Every once in a while I have the sense I have lived here all along, California’s Central Coast, which of course can’t be true, at least on the every day level, logic and paperwork. Mom and Saint Luke’s Hospital. And yet, there’s an elegance here in nearly every act I take – it breathes familiarity. How else to explain all this?

“We looked at each other in the same way then, but I can’t remember where or when.” – Dion and the Belmonts.