I remember the first day we were in the city, on the shared-ride van that drove us from the airport to the apartment—I remember looking out the van’s windows at the highways and the hills and the trees that were so California, and I held my breath and felt immediately and completely at home. I remember driving through sunny neighborhoods of stucco houses, the Spanish tile roofs, the pastel colors of the Sunset district. The day was bright and unseasonably warm and we were giddy on little sleep and little food and too many hours spent cooped up in airplane seats. Everything was beginning.

I took the same shuttle back to the airport the night I left. The sun had set, but it wasn’t fully dark. The drive was longer this time, more stops to pick people up on our way, and as we wound through the city neighborhoods, the streets I knew by now, I felt quiet and torn. I’d been alone for weeks at this point, and I couldn’t wait to see Jesse. But in the month I was there, I did not for one minute feel homesick for anything other than the people in my life back here.

The van stopped on a residential street to wait for a passenger. The light was failing, and the fog was rolling in. Inside the houses, people were switching on lamps and watching TV and running the dishwasher and doing homework. Our driver called the passenger again as we waited, shifting in our seats, tapping our feet, clutching our carry-ons.

A door opened across the street, and we watched a man walk down the stairs of his house, carrying a suitcase. He was taking his time, and at the door he paused to kiss the woman holding it open. In my mind now, they are frozen in that moment, bathed in the warm light of their home, just before he is about to walk into the weak gray dark.

When I got home, I felt half here and half somewhere else. Even the mention of San Francisco could make me cry. I’d look through the pictures I took and close my eyes and breathe deep and try to smell the eucalyptus. I’d remember the wind on my face, the gentle fog, the Western sun setting. But I was home with Jesse and my cats, in the same time zone as our families, and close to our friends.

Now, as time continues to pass, I feel myself settling back into life here. Perhaps it’s my classes, my students throwing me an anchor, giving me something to focus on. Maybe it is my friend’s new baby.

Maybe it was the wedding we attended last weekend—the reception, at an old Southern mansion. We sat drinking sweet tea with friends at a long table under sprawling oak trees, our faces gently lit by candles and soft white lights. The day had been cloudy, and now the night sky was oddly orange and felt far away. Maybe it was dancing with Jessica and Amie and Kirsten under a bright white tent, the dark Southern night surrounding us but not touching us. The air was sweet and humid and everything was lovely.

Maybe it is a hundred other things, but I am settling into a sense of comfort here, a sense of being where I am, of loving San Francisco and the memories I have there, but also loving this place for what it is, and enjoying the memories I am currently making here.

Last year, when I missed another reunion, I was sad, but this year I’m more nostalgic, happy to have the memories of past reunions, happy to imagine my parents on the lake with my father’s sisters, and I imagine the weather is perfect, and I imagine that even though the trees are falling, there is still the sunlight, and the leaves are still lovely around that house, and it’s okay–somehow–that things do not last forever.

While I was fighting with the dumpling dough, I thought, this is something I should inherently know how to do. Both of my grandmothers cooked all the time, it seemed, and neither of them used a lot of recipes. They cooked by instinct and habit. This much flour for biscuits, this much water in the pie crust. They knew exactly what things should look like, and they knew how to adjust if something was going wrong.

I cook at home a lot, mostly for budget reasons, but also because I enjoy it, and I feel better physically when I don’t eat out a lot. But I am mostly dependent on recipes, and there aren’t a lot of dishes that I cook over and over (enough to memorize). I’m much better now at improvising or adjusting recipes, but I don’t have a repertoire, if you will, as my grandmothers did.

Perhaps that happens when you reach your thirties. I have, with much practice and determination, gotten fairly good at biscuits. Maybe the rest will follow.

But the problem, really, is that I don’t want to learn to cook from recipes. I want to learn to cook from my grandmother. I don’t want to learn recipes. I want to learn her cooking.

Making chicken and dumplings last night made me nostalgic, made me wonder if my grandchildren will have any memories of my food one day, made me wonder if all this can be blamed on the fact that no one lives near anyone else anymore. I hate living in a different state from my parents and my grandmother. But, what can you do? You’ve got to stay where you have a job, especially now.

In a perfect world, then, I would drive over to my grandmother’s house and have her show me how to make chicken and dumplings. I would take notes. I would take pictures. Then, the next week, I’d go back and have her teach me pie crusts. I’d cook with her and have her correct my mistakes.

In the absence of a perfect world, however, I will call her and write down instructions and then I’ll make my own batch of chicken and dumplings, which will not be half bad, though I will not capture whatever it is that makes her version taste so good. Perhaps with practice, I tell myself. Perhaps with time. And so I will keep trying.

Now I am thinking about this time last year, when I had just gotten the job. I remember last year’s meeting, when all of this was new information. I remember furiously taking notes, absorbing. This year I could mostly sit back and review. How odd that it has been a year already. How did it pass so quickly? (Here were my thoughts after the meeting last year. I was very happy to be back on campus. I still am.) Now my syllabi need tweaking, not writing. I have the luxury of adapting assignments and changing things up, without having to start from scratch. Last year, I was freshly home from a trip to Maine (and NYC, Boston, and Philly along the way: good memories. Check out how long my hair was, esp. in the pictures on days two and six) This year, I’m still getting readjusted after my trip to San Francisco.

Tonight, we’re having dinner with the Kings (the menu: BBQ pork tacos with homemade chipotle slaw, and dessert is a nectarine compote with vanilla ice cream). I’m sure we’ll talk about the new semester, and maybe we’ll reminisce about where we were a year ago. S. would have been only two, and with no baby brother on the way. I think she’s still too young to think about the passage of time, to wonder where it is all going and at such speeds. I wonder if she even knows how much her life will change this year, with the addition of a new member of the family. The beginning of the school year means nothing to her yet, but one day it will, and one day I’m sure she’ll remark with surprise at how things have changed and how things have stayed the same, she’ll say, where has the year gone, where have the years gone? And I will say, I do not know.

Time flies.

(Suffice it to say, as soon as we got married Jesse gleefully handed over all the filing and bill paying to yours truly, and this arrangement has worked impeccably well for both of us.)

I also found some receipts from my own college days. You can learn a lot about your former self, and the time period you once inhabited, from receipts. The early 2000s don’t seem that long ago, but here’s a receipt for Hollywood Video–an actual store where I rented movies. And I’m pretty sure I rented them on VHS. On October 3rd, 2001, I rented A Knight’s Tale for $4.02 (it was due back by Monday 10/08/01). Another Wal-Mart receipt listed “developing” as an item, and it took me a moment to remember that I used to pay money to have film developed. Remember that? When you didn’t even know what the pictures looked like? And you couldn’t wait to see them?

I learned to cook in college, but I was working my way up to it and didn’t attempt much from-scratch cooking until my second and third year. Here’s a Publix receipt from June 9, 2002: Toilet paper, turkey hotdogs, hotdog buns, two Boston Market frozen meals, milk, Gatorade citrus cooler (the best flavor ever), a Velveeta mac and cheese with broccoli, and Prego mushroom sauce. I remember that summer. I was working at the Writing Center a lot for the first summer session, and all my friends had left after the spring semester ended. Jesse was back in Merritt Island, working a summer job at Lockheed Martin. We only saw one another a couple times a week. One night, he drove over to Orlando after work and we bought Publix subs for a picnic by Lake Eola. Only it started pouring rain, so we had the picnic on my apartment floor instead.

After the first summer session, I flew out to Oregon and joined my Aunt Nicki and my cousin Katie on my dad’s side for a cross-country trip back to West Virginia. That trip was a month long–a week in Oregon, two weeks across country with stops at Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, and other scenic spots along the way, and then another week in West Virginia with family.

On June 14th of that year, I went to Wal-Mart and bought supplies for that trip, including the Dramamine that didn’t work at all when I went whale watching.

The day before that, I filled up my gas tank for $18.31. I paid $1.33 a gallon, and I remember thinking that was expensive.

So, the times have changed. I pay $3.50 a gallon for gas and think that’s expensive. I rent movies from Redbox or Netflix, I shop at Harris Teeter and miss Publix, I have long given up on Dramamine, I no longer buy frozen dinners if I can help it. But some things haven’t changed. I still like citrus cooler Gatorade, though I can’t remember the last time I drank it, or if they even still make that flavor. Jesse and I are still together, though now there are no summers apart (except when I’m traipsing off to California).

I think I might save some receipts this year in a box somewhere, to discover in another decade. I wonder what I will think then of myself now, what judgments I will pass on my food choices, or what I will remember fondly, or what I’ll be paying for gas then (or will we all be driving electric cars by then?). Will I look back on now and think my life much simpler, as I do when I look back at what I had to worry about in college? Will I mentally gloss over the difficulties of today, knowing exactly how things turned out?

Next week: San Francisco…

Here’s what we looked like when we started dating:

Because no picture post would be complete without a little embarrassment, here’s a picture from fairly early on in our relationship. We were at an outdoor concert at a local country club. I had worked that morning, and appear to be sleeping. Jesse’s mother is making a hand gesture. And Becki appears to be…eating her sock?

Here’s a picture taken the night we got engaged. We ended up in the school paper because a student reporter doing a story on college relationships happened to be wandering around the dorms at about 8:00 p.m.

One day, we are going to use these pictures to prove to our kids we were ever young:

Here’s to seventy-seven more. I love you, Jesse.

Jesse was The Older Brother who was into Star Trek and whose best friend was Scott Ferguson, a dark-haired boy with a bowl cut and glasses. For the most part, we stayed out of their way, and they stayed out of ours.

When I was thirteen, though, Jesse started looking a little cute. We talked on the phone a couple times.

And then he up and moved to Texas. (Well, okay, the whole family moved.) And that was that.

But Becki and I stayed in touch, and when I was sixteen they moved back.

The three of us started hanging out, doing whatever homeschooled teenagers do (which I think was bowling and going to Dunkin Donuts for a Coffee Coolatta with rainbow sprinkles). Then, we’d talk on the phone. This is what we’ve lost by transitioning to cell phones rather than landlines–the ability to talk to your friend and her brother at the same time.

Eventually, Jesse and I were talking more than Becki and I were. We’d go to the park after I got off of work from the art studio/gift shop in the mall. We’d take pictures. We’d paint. We’d talk. When we went home, we’d just get on the phone and talk some more. (Another plus: if we’d had cell phones, we would have run up quite an impressive phone bill.)

The day after Jesse’s 18th birthday, and three months before my 17th, we made it official. We were dating.

Seven months later, during Jesse’s first semester at college, we were engaged.

His parents weren’t exactly thrilled that we were so serious so young. My parents asked that we wait until after college to get married. (We weren’t really thinking of getting married until then anyway.)

I can understand his parents’ reaction. If I had a teenager and he got engaged that young, I don’t know how I’d react. We were impossibly young and inexperienced. Jesse was my first boyfriend. He was my first kiss. What did we know?

But, regardless of how it must have seemed to everyone else, we did know one thing. That we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. And we were stubborn and bull-headed enough to somehow make it work.

Are we that old?

Other numbers of note: Jesse and I have been together for eleven years. We’ve known each other for about twenty.

Need a picture? Here I am, around the age when we met:

Before a ballet recital

And here’s what he looked like back then:

T-ball!

(This was probably about a year before we met. Close enough.) I think he had a crush on the girl in the glasses, whose name was Erin. We'll let that one slide; he had the wrong Erin but didn't know it yet.

I was in second grade when I met Jesse. He was in third grade. The setting: the Pizza Hut on US-1 in Titusville, not far from the Indian River, where you could watch shuttles launching. We were at a Book-It! pizza party with a bunch of homeschoolers. Book-It! works like this: you read books, you get stickers on a button you pin on your shirt, you get a pizza party. Since I’ve always devoured books like candy, I did land at least a few pizza parties.

This was the first year I’d been homeschooled. I’d spent a lot of first grade sick, my immune system picking up just about every germ the other kids brought with them to school. Greedy little immune system. I even spent a couple days in the hospital, but that’s another story. Long story short, my best friend’s mother was going to homeschool her, my parents figured they’d give it a try, and voila–I wind up at a Book-It! party in a tacky little Pizza Hut near the Indian River, where I met the boy I’d eventually marry.

I also met his sister. She’s an essential part of this story.

See, she was proclaiming her love for cheese. Jesse, being a typical older brother, was trying to get her to put red pepper flakes on her pizza. She ignored him and continued declaring the many merits of cheese.

I couldn’t help it. I saw the perfect solution. And even as a child I loved a good practical joke. I leaned over to the brown-haired boy with the pretty green eyes, pointed to the red pepper flakes, and whispered to him, “You should tell her it’s eleven different kinds of cheese.”

He did.

She believed him.

When I told my mom about it, she was disappointed in me. (In my defense, I didn’t realize it had made Becki sick.)

But–and here’s the key–Becki didn’t find out I suggested the deception, and we eventually became friends. So, I’d spend the next several years around her…and her older brother Jesse.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you the story of Texas and how we fell in love.

Today, I’m remembering:

Being newlyweds in Key West in the summer, the heat powerful and perfect, afternoon naps in a papaya-colored room. I remember eating Mexican food outside about an hour before sunset, music playing in a language I don’t understand, the sun winking just over a brown fence, behind a large ficus tree. Rain in Mallory Square—crouching together under a blue poncho, smelling the sweet wet air, watching car blinkers reflecting on the slick ground. Everything is good. Everything is possible. We can celebrate sunset, we can watch cats jump through flaming hula hoops, we can sit in a garden surrounded by birds and orchids, we can get on a big boat and eat cheese and fruit while the wind hits our faces and the warm light hits the tall polished mast. Everything is ours.

And—four years later—my twenty-fifth birthday. I’m in an Italian restaurant in Hong Kong, eating a blissfully good plate of pasta, laughing with friends, enjoying the city at night. I am wearing a necklace Jesse hid in my suitcase as a birthday present, and I’m missing him. But in ways the tinge of pain just heightens the experience, the otherworldly feel of being on the other side of the planet from home.

After the restaurant, or before, I can’t remember, we walk through the street markets, and we haggle and we enjoy it. We have been sharpening our bargaining skills all week, and we walk out of stalls with heads held high, intent on getting the best price. And we do.

The lights of the markets are harsh against the blackness, and it’s perfect, because we are on another planet, or we are in another state of mind, and we feel like magic. The lights buzz and I can feel it on my skin and it feels like energy and excitement. A triumph of human achievement: the electric light, the city sandwiched between water and mountain, the ability to make trinkets and argue over their price. Life is just beginning, and life is perfect.