Every time I leave my grandmother, she cries. I'm used to it by now, the consistency hasn't budged since I was just a young kid. I remember watching her in the driveway of the house in Colorado, smiling and waving and blowing kisses while heavy tears streaked down her face. Watching her fade away until she was just a small speck in the distance, standing and watching us go for as long as she could, as if nothing was as valuable as that last glance.

At 19 I have recently packed up my belongings, put my little studio amount of furniture and knick-knacks into storage and flown one way to Portland, Oregon. A big part of why I did this was because of my grandmothers beckoning, my grandfathers support of alternative pathways. I was driven into the large industrial landscape, the huge steel bridges and light rain on concrete and brick. I couldnt see beyond a couple miles, something that im not used too, coming from the desert where you can see as far out as you want from almost any point on the terrain. I felt like I was going to cry, my body fell into full anxiety mode. I realized I had no idea what I was doing there, I was going to be sleeping in my friends attic bedroom, no job, no school, no relationships, no nothing. I just had two suitcases full of vintage dresses, a ukulele, and my laptop. My first couple of weeks have been full of making friends, riding bikes, drinking tea and beer, going to house shows and old photo booths. They've also been full of obsessively calling home, spending hours on facebook longing for some word from my friends back in New Mexico, crying in the attic, and sleeping through full days.

My grandmother caught wind of this and promptly bought me a ticket to visit her again. Staying at a new house in Port Townsend, Washington. Nothing is as comforting to me as these visits, the security of her presence, as though anything I need can be taken care of. Watching her lovingly look out at the docks and the bay and the mist in the forest. She tells me that the northwest makes her feel at home, the gray skies a warm blanket to sit under day after day. She walks me by the lighthouse and brings me to her favorite cafe for salmon scrambles with yams. She tells me about her days of living on military bases, dropping out of society and woodstock while her hands shake out the swiss chard she's so excited about making for dinner. Her age is starting to show more, the usual qualities of growing older; forgetfulness, pains in her hips and back. Both of my grandparents are relatively younger, closer in age to some of my friends older parents then my mother is. It's the first time i've considered the prospect of their retirement, their moving out of the southwest to a place more familiar, their settlement in Washington. It's the first time the prospect of them not being around when im 30, 40, 50 has hit me.

Im waiting out my 4 and a half hour layover in Seattle, watching two girls that must be ballerinas from Cornish College of the Arts use all the strength in their flimsy frames to carry a single suitcase. Im returning to Portland with a job interview, familiar faces, my 100 pound bicycle, and a better sense of finding my way. Remembering my grandmother's teary smiling face dampening my cheek as she tightly hugged me goodbye. Observing her standing in the Safeway parking lot, watching the bus rumble down the road until the fog had completely come between the two of us. As if that last glance was the most important moment in her whole world.

Acknowledgment, 1964

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Could have gone west. Could have packed your things,
who cares that you weren’t old enough to drive.
Could have sold yourself to truckers
and highwaymen. Could have gone down
the dark road between home and somewhere
better, the whole world watching tv and not one thinking of you.
Could’ve got lost. Could have said, “I don’t know”
when the waitress asked, “Where you live at?”
You could have lied and said, “New Jersey”
or “Mobile.” Of course, that assumes
you’d get past Mason Dixon.

You could have seen battlefields:
Gettysburg, Fredericksburg even Chicago
if you waded deep enough into summer. Could have slept
with your head on the ground like your sister,
her ear to the transistor, listening,
listening to “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
You could have said, “Fuck the Beatles”
and left them behind, shooting the lights out
of every stadium, every coliseum.

You could have made girls scream because
you were the stranger under the bleachers, that ember
of the cigarette burning in the darkness just outside their
porch lights’ glow. You could have named them;
Helen, Rachelle, Ida May, and in Texas Irene Rosenberg
a girl just as lonely as you. Imagine,

your leaving before it ever got started. Where’s that
girl you married? You don’t know. You were half way
to Billings or Provo or Bend. You watched the cities
of the Midwest burn. You threw bottles and never
cut your hair. Remember the drum kit in Schlessinger’s
Instruments? How you crawled through the broken
window and banged away in the shards of that city.
If they could have seen you then! All muscle
and heart, sweating, sweating no more stupid melody
holding you back. Just the bass line, just the gas line
hissing and your foot on the pedal.

You could have gotten away. The country was different.
A boy could walk without getting beaten beyond an inch
of his life, without getting lashed to a fence
in God forsaken Wyoming. Why, God hadn’t forsaken
Wyoming or Birmingham yet. Chaney, Goodman,
and Schwerner safe in their beds. Perhaps you passed
by them. You could have passed me by and saved yourself
the whole mess. My mother doesn’t know you yet. She’s
on her back in the grass with some other man’s son.