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I love to go away. But if I’m honest, I love coming home even more.
As some very smart, creative 20-somethings recently said, I have a “bitchin’” apartment. Translation for those who speak another time frame’s language: beautiful, cool, awesome, rad, hip, rockin’, fab. And it is.
I never thought when divorce forced me to give up my home of over 25 years that I would ever have a place I loved as much, or that felt as if it were so me. Who would have thought a life of real possibility would come in less than a handful of rooms on a second floor in a building I have no ownership in?
Now, I’ve known for some time that it’s not just this apartment, but also this community that is home. But it wasn’t until last night driving back into Bangor after visiting friends in Gouldsboro that I understood how important the “coming” part of that phrase “coming home” is. Nothing says home to me like the sight of my skyline.
As I drive down State Street from Brewer and cross the railroad tracks, I catch sight of the rusty train trestle angled off to my right and zip over the Penobscot River into Bangor. Sky is everywhere, but decidedly a city sky, with lines made of granite, brick, concrete, wood, glass. I can see intersecting streets of wild inclines, flags whipping so fiercely that the visual automatically becomes a soundtrack in my head. I actually counted eight steeples, many with beautifully patinaed copper surfaces.
I’ve been fortunate to have lived in places—three, to be exact—where the skylines reflect the energy of the place and begin to tell its stories even as I cross over onto home turf. Each one has glass and brick and board, stone, all that I mentioned about my Bangor. But they are three very different places, three very different rhythms, and three very different skylines.
I always feel as if I am headed home as I cross over the bridge into Bangor, or coast down Finch Hill on Route 11 into Patten, or cross the Tobin Bridge into Boston, still. The respective populations are 31,000, 1,300, and 5.4 million. Now, that gives you a frame within which to see the differences.
According to one source, the list of the most stunning skylines in the world starts like this: Hong Kong, Chicago, New York City, Tokyo, Toronto. Whoever is creating that list would probably laugh at mine.
I can’t help but wonder how I would feel if my skyline shifted, as it did with Bangor’s Great Fire of 1911 when a spark in a hay shed on Broad Street on the west bank of the Kenduskeag decimated 55 acres, destroyed 267 buildings, wiped out over 100 businesses, and left 75 families homeless; and as New York City’s did at 9/11.
And I also think about all the New Orleanians who must now call places like Denver and Austin, Atlanta, Seattle, home, forced to create new homes, new lives, in new places.
Choosing a new place and a new skyline is one thing; having to choose a new place and a new skyline, quite another. The magnitude of that transition may be enormous, but one can fall in love more than once in a lifetime. Right now, my life’s path has taken me to a sweet skyline, en route to a bitchin’ apartment, in a city called Bangor, also known as “home.”
The forthcoming short story collection The Long Meanwhile: Stories of Arrival and Departure will include work by Annaliese Jakimides, as well as National Book Award winner Alice McDermott and many others.
As some very smart, creative 20-somethings recently said, I have a “bitchin’” apartment. Translation for those who speak another time frame’s language: beautiful, cool, awesome, rad, hip, rockin’, fab. And it is.
I never thought when divorce forced me to give up my home of over 25 years that I would ever have a place I loved as much, or that felt as if it were so me. Who would have thought a life of real possibility would come in less than a handful of rooms on a second floor in a building I have no ownership in?
Now, I’ve known for some time that it’s not just this apartment, but also this community that is home. But it wasn’t until last night driving back into Bangor after visiting friends in Gouldsboro that I understood how important the “coming” part of that phrase “coming home” is. Nothing says home to me like the sight of my skyline.
As I drive down State Street from Brewer and cross the railroad tracks, I catch sight of the rusty train trestle angled off to my right and zip over the Penobscot River into Bangor. Sky is everywhere, but decidedly a city sky, with lines made of granite, brick, concrete, wood, glass. I can see intersecting streets of wild inclines, flags whipping so fiercely that the visual automatically becomes a soundtrack in my head. I actually counted eight steeples, many with beautifully patinaed copper surfaces.
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I’ve been fortunate to have lived in places—three, to be exact—where the skylines reflect the energy of the place and begin to tell its stories even as I cross over onto home turf. Each one has glass and brick and board, stone, all that I mentioned about my Bangor. But they are three very different places, three very different rhythms, and three very different skylines.
I always feel as if I am headed home as I cross over the bridge into Bangor, or coast down Finch Hill on Route 11 into Patten, or cross the Tobin Bridge into Boston, still. The respective populations are 31,000, 1,300, and 5.4 million. Now, that gives you a frame within which to see the differences.
According to one source, the list of the most stunning skylines in the world starts like this: Hong Kong, Chicago, New York City, Tokyo, Toronto. Whoever is creating that list would probably laugh at mine.
I can’t help but wonder how I would feel if my skyline shifted, as it did with Bangor’s Great Fire of 1911 when a spark in a hay shed on Broad Street on the west bank of the Kenduskeag decimated 55 acres, destroyed 267 buildings, wiped out over 100 businesses, and left 75 families homeless; and as New York City’s did at 9/11.
And I also think about all the New Orleanians who must now call places like Denver and Austin, Atlanta, Seattle, home, forced to create new homes, new lives, in new places.
Choosing a new place and a new skyline is one thing; having to choose a new place and a new skyline, quite another. The magnitude of that transition may be enormous, but one can fall in love more than once in a lifetime. Right now, my life’s path has taken me to a sweet skyline, en route to a bitchin’ apartment, in a city called Bangor, also known as “home.”
The forthcoming short story collection The Long Meanwhile: Stories of Arrival and Departure will include work by Annaliese Jakimides, as well as National Book Award winner Alice McDermott and many others.
