Grow roots

One of my new new coworkers, B -- formerly of Starbucks (like myself) and a local (unlike myself) -- was asking me what it was like to be an artist in Hawaii. For the most part, I said, you're only successful if you stick to making Hawaii-related art. Which is fine, except that as the whitest girl on Oahu, it would be laughably inappropriate for me to try to work in traditional Hawaiian themes.

"I mean, I've been here five years, and I'm still haole."

He laughed as we parted in the parking garage, "Five more to go, sister, that's the rule."

I still get crippling waves of homesickness sometimes, when I smell clover or hear an owl or wet flowers slap against the windows in the rain. I think I'll always be in love with Ohio. But a clever dude said, If you ain't where you are, you're no place. And he's right.

Spend ten years anywhere and you're bound to grow roots. Mine are coming along, inch by little inch.