Home Town

When you're driving toward the top edge of a square state and see a small highway mileage sign that says curtly "301," it's nice that this bit of information tells you that you are exactly where you think you are. You have to take your certainties where you find them.

I've lived in Portland all my life, except for two years at a state college and five years of clenched jaw in Baltimore. It rains a lot in Portland. The Willamette Valley is breathtaking in the pictures, but since the residents don't look at the pictures, they don't usually see the spectacular views. This morning was straight out of a travel folder, or maybe an ad for a spiritual retreat. I even forgave the doctor for giving us a 7:00 a.m. appointment, because that meant that Robin and I walked out the door while Venus still shone in the East, too big to be believed, and Jupiter, only slightly less bulging, glowed in the South. Sometimes I get the blues when I think about our planet's illnesses, and it makes me happy to know that we have neighbors close by.

The city behind us was still asleep in the dark, and even Mt. St. Helens, to the north, was in shadow. But as we crossed the sky-scraping bridge, over the steel gray river lit by streetlights, the mountain showed smoky gray against a lemon sky. The picture was signed with a whimsically pink thumb print. Robin started to sing the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He's my sound track boy.

Portland isn't a big town though. Even when it's drippy, living in Portland is a little like Playing House (I guess that would be Playing City). You can get on a bus or a train and be downtown in five minutes. You can walk across the whole thing in half an hour. There's a bookstore and a coffee shop in nearly any block. Even with the down economy, it's hard to find a parking place at night. The sidewalks are full of pedestrians, bent on trysts with Thai or Vietnamese food, modern art or jazz.

I feel a little bad that I've only lived in three of the four quadrants of Portland, but then I missed the Northeast by only a half a block. You can't say I haven't tried. I've been fairly peripatetic, averaging 2.2 years in each house since I was twenty-five years old, and I have been reproved as a gypsy by my eldest child, who suffered most from these impulsive moves, but I'm settled in now. I lived in my last house for seven years, longer than I have in any since my teens, and we moved two years ago into a house that we optimistically plan to live in for the rest of our lives. Usually after six months I can see the advantages to living somewhere else, but so far the only disadvantage I can see is that this isn't Italy. I could trade in one or two neighbors. Still, out of 26 people on our street, that's not bad. It's a good neighborhood, too - people water your flowers when you have to be away, and stop by to tell you that your car lights are on.

Are the cities really to be destroyed? Even a die-hard pessimist like me, comfy with bad news, sometimes has doubts, even though E.B. White says they are. And John Steinbeck stated that all cities, without exception, are ringed with garbage. But ours isn't. Of course there is the egg white of suburbs, but even that is surrounded by farmland, and then the not-too-wild loggers' playground before you make a 90 degree turn to parallel the Pacific Ocean.

Portland is a city of optimists, even when the sun hasn't come out in so many weeks that we don't know what to make of the radioactive ball when it does finally show up. We've tried all kinds of crazy things. The Bottle Bill, Right to Die, the right of all citizens to get to a beach without buying a hotel reservation. We're not too sure, now, about whether or not somebody really is getting rich by wasting money in our public schools, crowded and in disrepair as they are, and it makes us feel bad to hear that there are 55 students in an English Lit classroom downtown. And I've seen thousands of people gather downtown to demonstrate against the last war or to run 26 miles, even though the sight of these crowds is usually cordoned off from the shopping district.

But I'm no fool. I read the papers, those that still exist. (Are they still papers when they're free and you read them on the computer screen?) I keep reading about the devastating effects of global warming and the prognosis for our future. Is it a problem if the Arctic ice cap melts? What about the dead zone off the Oregon coast? A major American city got lost four years ago, and tens of thousands of people are still living in temporary houses, in a city still unprotected by sturdy levees. Why should I care about the massive die-off of frogs and hundreds, if not thousands of other species? After all, the dinosaurs died off and after millions of years, evolution filled in all those biological niches again.

I'm not talking about undifferentiated anxiety here. As Frank McCourt said, There Are Dark Forces. Should I concern myself with the government's new right to eavesdrop on Americans without a search warrant? What about health care reform - a young, healthy friend of mine was turned down for health insurance because she has had hemorrhoids. There are so many forces bigger than I am, even though I repeat Martin Luther's mantra nearly every day: Even if I knew the that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would plant my apple tree.

So I don't know what to think. Go with the sadness that hurts so good, sink into the warm belief that there's nothing left to be done? Or get out there in the dusty argumentative cold and join the ones who are shoving their shoulders against the side? I like comfort and it's a puzzle. How much can I afford to care? I love my city. I love my home. My life is pretty close to perfect right now. How much discomfort am I willing to feel to pay attention, and maybe even lift a hand?