Sacramento

  Today I'm sitting at Cypress Grille, a few feet from my new office looking at the walkway to K Street mall and Old Sacramento. I can see the irony through the dusty window. At age eighteen, I worked for Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest and her boss Governor Ronald Reagan at The State Capitol eight blocks from this spot. 

  I couldn't wait to get out of this town. I wanted to see the world, meet great thinkers, and fall in love. I was convinced that was not possible in Sacra-Tomato. If you ask a Sac citizen why they stay here the answer generally it is that Sacramento is close to everything and a good place to raise a family. But I didn't want to be close to everything. I wanted to be in the middle of everywhere and I wanted to raise Hell.

  My feet itched from birth--always looking for the road less traveled. The one person that could relate was my brother who made his exodus six months after me. For the next several decades, he and I would tromp across the globe--me in one hemisphere and he in the other. I don't think the world could have handled the two of us in the same coordinates. 

  God, all knowing all seeing, has a warped sense of humor. My dad told me the only way to go into the military was to become a nurse. I flat refused. I faint at the sight of needles and hospitals. So I became a military recruiter among other things. My brother suffered a different home life than I and swore he would never marry. He married late in life and became the most amazing husband, father and grandfather. I spent five years as nurse and caretaker of my husband. I watched him die. 

  I sit in my past trying to understand how and why--here? Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe in some way we always return to the beginning step through the end.