Home Again, Home Again: Austin

I've mentioned before that we used to live in Austin.  Austin is, in some ways, the first place I ever felt was my home.  I never felt that growing up in Ohio, or in my school-and post-grad stints in New York and Chicago.  I always had the sense that I was not long for those places, that there was somewhere else I was supposed to be, somewhere just over the horizon that was where I would find that indefinable something called home.  That place, for me, was Austin.

I left Austin for love, and always thought that eventually Frank and I would make our way back.  There was a time early in our marriage that Frank lived in fear that I would pack up and head back to Austin because I was so unhappy living in California.  California, with it's insanely high real estate prices and perfect weather.  California, with it's judgemental, unfriendly people (or so I thought in the beginning) and ridiculous competitiveness starting with pre-school and ending with cemetary plots.  I was not a California girl, by any stretch of the imagination. 

I missed the vast expanse of the Texas sky, the cold beer on hot nights in smoky bars hearing live music, and the warmth and familiarity of my brothers and their crazy friends, and even the loony 911 operators.  I missed Tex-Mex food and conjunto music, impromptu barbecues, and the white-blue sky on hot days that stretched as far as the eye could see.  I moved there during the height of the "Slacker" era, when rents were cheap and everything was a little grungy, a little worn and comfortable.  For a long time, I pined to go back home.

Then, Alex was born, and the world changed for me.  I began to enjoy the comfort of temperate weather and friends who were not part of the Silicon Rat Race.  I met other moms and dads who shared the same hopes and fears that I had, who opted not to be part of competi-mommy crowd.  I got involved in the community and found that people were not so much unfriendly as preoccupied much of the time. I began to appreciate the life we had built for ourselves.  I started to see California as a place that allowed us to live our dream and travel the world, child in tow, and have a comfortable place to return to and call home.

Everytime we visit Austin, I still have a pang of regret that hits me right in the heart.  I see my brother's children, so much more grown up than the last time. I feel an aching sadness that I'm not there in the in-between times, to take them to movies and celebrate their birthdays, and fill the role of imo (aunt).  I see my other brother and his wife, and miss the opportunities to just sit and talk with them over coffee or breakfast migas.  The visits are all too infrequent, and all too short.

I started to write an Austin-travelogue, but instead of talking about the great dinner we had at Chez Zee, or the super-swanky Renaissance Hotel where we stayed, I find myself in a fit of nostalgia.  I don't really want to move back; we have too much invested in California right now.  There is a small part of me, though, that is perpetually homesick for Austin.

Austin has changed dramatically since we lived there in the 1990's.  Roads that used to lead nowhere are now super-highways that fly over new businesses and developments that weren't there before.  Technology companies that were once the mainstay of the Austin economy have moved abroad or changed names or are no longer recognizable to us.  In some ways, it's like seeing an old friend after ten years time, and noticing that they're a little grayer and a little bigger, but over all, the essential spark of familiarity and character is still there.

I've been thinking about a song by Sally Fingerett since I got back, and this lyric:

Home is where the heart is
No matter how the heart lives
Inside your heart where love is
That's where you've got to make yourself
At home.   

So, we're home again.  This time, in California, where my heart lives now.