choices, and california.

I was 5 years old. My mom took me to the mall to do some shopping--just before or after the start of kindergarten. We went to a store called Lerner. Blondie's "Heart of Glass" was playing. My stomach was full of sausage on a stick I had just eaten from Hickory Farms. I remember all these details because of what happened next:

My mom held two shirts out in front of me and told me to go back to the dressing room to try them on. I did. They both fit. I liked them both. But she said...I could only pick one. I think I stood studying those shirts for a good ten minutes, fretting, before deciding.

And to this day, I don't remember what the one I picked looked like.

But I sure as heck remember the one I didn't pick...

White with a red collar and a box of crayons on it, some of them loose and trailing scribbly lines of color around the stomach area. I remember it as though I were wearing it right now.

Maybe my mother had me make choices before that--what to eat or how to wear my  hair--but that was the first one of significance I can remember making. One where my decision meant the end of the other choice. We never went back on another day and bought the other shirt. It was gone. I chose it gone.

I still don't enjoy making decisions, choices.

Though I know I would equally hate having nothing to choose from.

I want choices, but with a guarantee that I'll always make the right one.

Is that too much to ask? :)

It feels I've had too many lately--big decisions to make. Weighty choices to decide. Often made worse by having no one who has known me closely for any significant amount of time to run them by for a second opinion. But aware it could be just as bad if I did have to screen my decisions through another person.

I have access to God's brilliance, of course, and that makes all the difference; but I'll be the first to admit that my will often gets in the way of His. I've become so accustomed to the "not right now" answer I usually get, that I just assume it will be the answer from Him to everything, and sometimes I don't listen as closely as I should to what He's trying to tell me.

Tonight, amongst other big decisions I'm considering, I'm hoping I made the right decision to not take the MFA offer from CSU Long Beach. I think because in giving it up, I'm afraid I'm giving up all that California represented.

After my divorce and the terrible sadness that followed, and then the burst of hope that came when I met Haute Cakes and we began looking towards a future together--California became this magical place the boys and I would go to start over.

And even beyond things not working out with Haute Cakes and me, California was still somewhere I hoped to get to some day. *A fresh start.* A place we wouldn't even mind being poor in because the beach, and the salt air, and the Birds of Paradise in bloom were all free.

I guess what I feel tonight, mingled in the weight of choice and heaviness of alone-ness, is I miss California. I miss California a lot, and often. I miss the dream I had before I went to California, of what California would be. And I really miss the parts of that dream that came true, even though other parts didn't. The parts that were realized made California amazing, and those are the parts I am compelled to remember. I have no choice in the remembering, because what you remember of California is always what got into your blood, like anywhere else, only in California it was bigger, and shinier and prettier and always will be.

In choosing a low-residency program, I told myself that I wouldn't be "married" to a campus--I could always still move if I wanted to and continue right on in my studies, as long as I found my way to Oregon twice a year. I tried to leave the option open still. Like a crayon shirt I could go back for.

And while I feel good about choosing to stay here a little longer, and choosing to get myself even more hopelessly busy over the next three years in an MFA program... I'm hoping that I didn't choose my new beginning away, in whatever form it might take.

Because I'd really, really like it.