Boulder was home for over a decade. When home is a chosen place, it’s different. It’s not like moving here because I needed a safe escape, because I had a job. Boulder was my chosen place and I left because I needed somewhere else to go. I don’t feel like I can (or want to) go back to Boulder any more, but I made beautiful music with friends I’ll have forever, intellectual connections with so many people young and old through the University. I loved the dry air blowing hard over the mountains, hiking, cross-country skiing and camping up in them. I loved the coffeeshops and restaurants on Pearl Street. I loved rollerblading, walking and bicycling through town. I loved the deep greens and bright blues, the stark white of the snow-capped mountains. I loved the winter mornings when the Flatirons looked like chocolate cake sprinkled with powdered sugar. I feel connected to the place in ways I cannot name, even if it is no longer home. I am going there again in a few weeks. I’m so happy to have parties planned, and I’m thrilled to spend long evenings with my girlfriends. I didn’t want to leave them. I’m a little bit worried about it. A year ago, I had to turn my back, steel myself and go. I have moved on and am extremely happy with my new path, but I wonder if there is a reservoir of regret and sadness deep inside, a dam that may break when I arrive. I want to hot air balloon over Boulder when I’m there.
Around every corner in Boulder there are ghosts of moments past — whose bridal shower were we on when the guy dropped his pants on the Pearl Street Mall? How much money over the years did we make singing with a hat out there? How many students did I teach in ten years? How many different apartments did I live in?! How many pieces of that fabulous Brillig Works hazelnut and chocolate cake did I eat in the Trident? I can still hear Beth, Juliet and I laughing there late at night. And I am reminded of the quote of Karen Blixen’s in Out of Africa, “If I know a song of Africa… does it know a song of me?” (I went to her house in Denmark once. That’s a funny stupid American tourist story for later.) If I sing this song of Boulder, will it sing its song for me?
The funny thing about this is that I think I’d outgrown Boulder anyway, and it had changed from what I’d loved. Life is working out perfectly. Maybe it was time for me to go and I didn’t even know it.
You know, there’s something else I come back to again and again… nothing in my early life prepared me for all this change. Seems like in my family things always just stay the same (knock on wood out there, will you?). I still relate to change as if it’s bad. I’ve got to get my head around that it’s not wrong to adventure like I do — or to enjoy it.
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Ummmm…that was my bridal shower. And it was so EASY to get that guy to drop his pants…remember?
Hee hee…
Looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks.
–Beth