Got distracted by ghost ships
Last week we watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, a movie that takes place in England in the 90s over the course of … four weddings and one funeral. The same people are at each event — old friends from either school or university — and their banter and familiarity with each other made me nostalgic for an experience I haven’t had: of staying in one place, with the same people, over the course of a life.
What I did instead is move to many cities and gather many friends and then either leave them or watch them leave me. It’s been a nice little romp, but the cost has been that everyone I love is all over the place. I’d need a year of long weekends to see them as often as I’d like, plus the power of teleportation, of flight.
Most Americans don’t leave home. Did you know that? I think under duress I would have guessed that most do, but even as I said it, I would have known I was wrong. Here’s some stats: Nearly 40% of Americans live in the same town they grew up in, another 20% live in the same state. I’m in that second 40%, people who have moved out of state, and so are most of my friends.
Why did I first leave home? At the time it didn’t seem like a decision. I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia and the best state school was four hours away in Charlottesville, so I moved to Charlottesville. And after graduation, I saw two options: move back to Norfolk and into my parents’ house or move into a sublet with my friends in Los Angeles. One sounded more exciting than the other, so I did that.
That was 2005. I spent the next several years moving: San Diego, L.A. again, Portland, Norfolk for a spell, New York, Oakland, back to New York. When Matt and I decided to leave Oakland, we made a spreadsheet to compare everywhere we had lived and everywhere we could live to help us decide our next move. New York won by a lot, but we tried on a lot of lives in our heads while making that spreadsheet.
We knew there were lots of places we could live and be happy, because there were lots of places we had lived and been happy. And we are happy, in New York. But I still think of those other places sometimes, especially the ones with my friends in them.
There’s an old column by Cheryl Strayed, writing as Dear Sugar, that I think about a lot. She’s responding to a person who is trying to make a big life decision. Her answer is long and nuanced, but the end is the part that is written on my brain:
"I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose … it was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore."
The ghost ship! I have so many ghost ships. I love my ghost ships. Each friend scattered across the country, and the person I am when I’m with them, is a bit of a ghost ship, to me. I have happy memories with people all over the place, and can extrapolate in my mind the very beautiful lives I could in cities across the country with them have if only I settled in for good.
There’s the ghost ship that moved back to Norfolk after graduation, with my parents across town and friends I’ve known since high school, that Four Weddings intimacy. The ghost ships of L.A., of Austin, of Portland, of Richmond, of London, each home to people I love and love to spend time with. This past weekend I was in Boston visiting my friend Meghan and had that same thrill of, “I like it here, I could live here, wouldn’t it be nice, to pop over to Meghan’s house, sit on her couch and drink tea” — another ghost ship.
New York is a very good place to have settled for two wanderers whose dearest friends are scattered all over the world — someone is always passing through. And if we ever want to get out of town to visit a ghost ship, there are direct routes everywhere, no superpowers required.
Watercolor by Matt Davis
Referenced
“Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where’s Home?,” Pew Research Trends
“Dear Sugar: The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us,” The Rumpus