East or West?

East or West?

East - Backus Clan circa 2015

I grew up on the East Coast, Long Island, but I have spent most of my adult life on the West Coast. While my brother Pete did move out here for a few years everyone in my family still lives on the East Coast except me. It's just me out here and for me, the West Coast is home and I do have Kris's family.

After having quit the East Coast “Backus Clan” and joined with the West Coast “Chambers-Roth” Clan, the holidays always come with a little bit of mixed feelings. I've experienced 71 holiday seasons in my life. This past year marked the 32nd time I have spent the holidays on the West Coast with my wife's family, and those 32 would be 32 of the last 34. I spent 25 or so holiday seasons with my East Coast family with 20 of them being the 1^st 20 years of my life. That leaves 12 to 14. Two of those I spent with only my first wife, 2 with my second wife and her family and that leaves maybe 10 mostly by myself. I'm not a big family guy. I love my family both east and west but big family gatherings are not much of a draw for me. With the Christmas holidays come “traditions” and these vary some from family to family but these change some over time as families add and subtract members. So here's the thing, I've been part of my West Coast family's holiday gatherings and traditions for over 30 years and in some ways they still don't particularly feel like mine due to the differences between the way they celebrate and the way I celebrated with my East Coast family. Because I've only been back east 2 times in the last 35 or 36 years I don't really know how they celebrate the holidays but I'm sure it's not the same as I remember it was from 50 years ago. However, that “no longer in existence holiday celebration format/tradition” is the one I think of as mine, the one I think I feel a part of even though it is by now, certainly long gone while I have been celebrating with my West Coast family. The last time I was back east for the holidays was 11 years ago and I didn't feel fully connected as the evolution of their celebration didn't exactly match my memories. I was more like a visitor, even less connected than I am with my West Coast family. I do feel more connected with the East Coast family dynamics, we are a bit more in your face, talk over one another, argue, and push to do things our own way. I relate to and feel comfortable with that. But then I do not know the family stories or history for all the time I missed - only the really old stories for when I was there. I was the oldest and had once been in a sense the leader of my generation of the family but that was long ago. So while I am still the oldest, I am now a bit in the background when I am back East. Out here I know and have even been part of lots of stories from the last 30 years but not the old ones so I am also a bit in the background out here being an in-law or, as I like to call it, an out-law. Like I say I'm not a big family guy but everyone here is used to that and they seem to be fine with it. I am not sure that would be the same if I was still back on the East Coast – they would be more apt to express displeasure about my “attitude”. So really the West Coast holidays are really mine too, or at least closer to mine than anything else.

There was one tradition out here in the West that I felt fully connected with and that was with Kris's grandmothers, Alice and Max, particularly Alice, Kris' dad's mother. On Christmas Eve we would take them to church (since we were the only ones who went) and after drive them home looking at all the Christmas light displays. Once Max passed away we would spend time with Alice at her apartment after the church service. We would have some tea and partake of some candies from a box of Whitman's Sampler candies her son Bill would always get for her. That became a tradition between Alice, Kris and myself. Alice loved the cherry filled chocolates and I would always pretend I was going to eat them. After a few times Bill started getting us a Hickory Farms gift box to share as well. Alice eventually passed away but for a good number of years that was our little special Christmas Eve celebration. That was kind of a perfect situation for me as it was quiet, peaceful and we could just talk. Growing up we had quiet Christmas Eves with just the immediate family so I think those times with Alice were more similar to what I thought Christmas Eve should be like. Maybe that's part of the reason why I've liked all the holidays I spent either by myself or with just a friend or two. Since Alice's passing my wife Kris has done her best to get us home early on Christmas Eve so we can spent some quiet time around the tree before we retire. I really appreciate her doing that for me as that is the time when it truly feels like Christmas to me.

West - Chambers-Roth Clan circa 2004 - Alice front & center

So I got a little side-tracked. Where was I going with all this? Good question.

Once I moved out west to Eugene Oregon I felt like I was where I was supposed to be. I now saw myself as a West Coast guy. Sure I had a New York background and everything but still, I felt I belonged out west. I enrolled in the fall term and declared education as my major with the intent of becoming a teacher. With the other new students I attended an orientation session the evening before registration. I started up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me. After the session we walked together and he asked where I was from and I said back east. He replied he was from back east too. I inquired where. He said Montana. OK, Montana is probably something like 600 miles east of Eugene but it was still west to me. I mentioned this to a number of my friends thinking it was funny. But I started thinking, would I feel the same on the east coast? Suppose I was attending NYU and some one there told me they were from the West and when asked replied they were from Chicago would I have thought it was funny? No. I may have thought well, that's not really like being from Colorado or California but it is west. I may have thought I was now a West Coast guy but my mind was still thinking like an East Coaster, I was still coming from an East Coast perspective.

I loved living in Oregon but when I had to leave to find employment I had no qualms about going to California. I liked all my previous times in California and had always felt comfortable there. I was still on the West Coast and I was happy to be out here. I planned to stay out west. I chose to live out here. I've never had a desire to relocate back to the East Coast or to anywhere else in the country for that matter. (Well sometimes Hawaii when I've been there on vacation, but doesn't everybody?) Still, living here on the West Coast I still feel I have an East Coast sense. I still feel a bit like an East Coaster. However as soon as I get back to the East Coast, usually to visit family, it becomes very apparent to me that I am indeed not an East Coast person. My friends out here see and I feel the “New York”, east coast in me. My family sees and I feel ,when I'm with them, the “California”, west coast in me. I am a person caught in the middle. No matter which coast I go to I am at the “wrong” one, I am always a visitor. I'm west when I'm east and I'm east when I'm west. A few years ago a friend of mine asked “When you drive across the country which state do you hit first, Iowa or Nebraska?” I responded Iowa of course. He replied a West Coaster thinks its Nebraska.

Maybe being a Pisces makes me prone to being in two places at once. I think about this one foot in each world thing every now and again and I seem to notice it more when the holidays come around. I've sometimes thought that maybe I really need to move someplace out of the country for a few years to give me a more global perspective and then maybe I would not feel so split between east and west. I might then see myself as more a generic American – just a thought I've had but I don't really see that happening so.... I guess I'm doomed to forever be a victim of a kind of bi-coastal disorder – a West Coaster trapped in an East Coaster's mind....