You May Find Yourself In Another Part Of The World

"You may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'" - David Byrne
My wife called from my hometown last night. She left a message. She told me that she was sitting at a table outside of what used to be Swensen's. That meant that she was sitting just across Broadway from the hospital in which I was born. A few blocks away from the apartment building that my great aunt and uncle lived in before the wanderlust took them and their trailer on an odyssey that included such garden spots as Laughlin, Nevada. She was calling from the shopping center where my aunt used to work as a checker in the grocery store. It used to house Plaza Drug and a Ben Franklin's. I once stole a piece of gum from that Plaza Drug, and a day later, consumed my guilt, I went back and slipped a nickel into the big box of Dubble Bubble. Just behind the shopping center is Casey Junior High - now a middle school - where my younger brother went, and my mother, and a whole lot of other people I suppose, but it is also the spot where I won my first wrestling match. Across the street is another small shopping center where the Dairy Queen used to be. I became a Buster Bar aficionado there after a friend made me one fresh.
Sometimes when people hear that I used to live in Boulder, Colorado they ask me what I'm doing here. Fifteen years ago, on the occasion of my wife's tenth high school reunion, I packed up my things and moved west. To be with her. To be here. After a decade and a half, I still have to work hard to give visitors adequate directions to our house, or the closest movie theater. But the geography of Boulder is right there in front of me. The town where I grew up.
My wife just called back. She's having a lovely time and the aspen trees "are shimmering." I know.