Buffalo

“I was thinking about moving to Buffalo,” I told my father.

“No. No, you cannot move to Buffalo,” Dad said. It was unlike him to refuse me a dialogue about an idea, so I immediately knew how much he didn’t like this one.

I talked to him on my cell phone from the front porch of the small Craftsman bungalow my friends and I were renting in Pasadena, California. It was the fall of 2002 and I watched leaves of the Chinese Elm in the front yard fall as I spoke. I had dreamed of moving to the LA area since I was 14 and had left Tucson to achieve that dream a week after graduating with my English degree. I imagined sun-filled days of beaches and beers with interesting strangers while I launched the next phase of my life.

But I encountered the reality of living in Los Angeles, just as many dreamers have before. I had no plans to teach English and did not have the foresight during my years as an undergraduate to do any type of internship. I had not gotten in to the PhD programs I had applied for the fall prior and the thought of applying again seemed as effective as taking the cash required for all those applications and throwing it directly into LA traffic. My parents were insisting I sit for the LSATs and apply to law schools, as they were tired of watching me undertake endeavors which would amount to nothing.

I was not very focused on amounting to something. I had gotten a job as a barista at a local coffee shop, another romantic idea I had made a reality. Much like moving to LA, once I made this dream a reality I questioned why I had ever dreamt of it in the first place. But because of my school and job experience, I was qualified to do little else. Although I had two kind roommates and a nice landlord, I had moved to a huge place where I didn’t know anyone else. I was lonely and lost.

I contemplated moving again. I had grown up in Phoenix, but did not want to go back there, although I missed my dad and brother: I was scared of being that close to my mother and Phoenix did not entice me in the least. I had enjoyed my time in Tucson but it felt like a small town and job opportunities outside of a few fields were limited. Was there somewhere I belonged, I wondered?

Buffalo, New York seemed like the obvious answer to this question. Both sides of my family were from Buffalo: both my mother’s and father’s families had been in the Buffalo area since they emigrated from Poland, Russia, and Ireland prior to the turn of the twentieth century. I had made it a point to go back to visit as often as I could, even as my parents traveled back less and less: I loved seeing my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I loved the restaurants, the art museums, and the outdoors. The upstate New York snowy winters and mild summers were a novelty to me, a novelty which had not been ruined by my parents’ bitter complaints of the Buffalo winters they had endured in their childhoods.

“Buffalo is a dying town,” my father instructed me, “There will not be jobs there.”

“But I could see the grandparents more often, help take care of folks as people get older, see them for all the different holidays instead of once a year . . .”

“No,” Dad said.

Now I hear what my father did not say as clearly as what he did say. He was not concerned about someone being around to take care of the grandparents. He was not concerned about the opportunity for me to attend more extended family gatherings. He was concerned about my economic survival, first and foremost. He encouraged me to finish up my law school applications and get ready to go back to school.

The inertia of working a lot mixed with feeling unanchored led to time passing quickly. In the spring of 2003, I got accepted to Arizona State University’s law school. I begged for my father to let me take a one year deferment until the fall of 2004, as I was finally beginning to make friends and really starting to like Los Angeles. In the fall of 2003, my father died. I let my deferment to ASU law perish shortly thereafter.

Now few extended family members I know remain in Buffalo. My father’s parents, brother, and sister all relocated to the Carolinas in 2016. My mother’s parents and brother have passed away, leaving my Aunt Terry as the sole Buffalo relative remaining to visit. But as Basil and I have also grown very close to Aunt Terry, it is just as well: we would prefer to spend our time with her anyway. And even though few living relatives remain, I still feel a close connection with Buffalo. Basil loves it and also values the genealogical roots which remain there, which is one of the reasons we chose Canalside as our wedding venue when we got married this year.

As for Buffalo, it is experiencing a come back. One of the things I always loved about it was its palpable hometown pride, combined with the determination and the sense of humor which emanates from Buffalo’s core. It still snows a lot, as it did when we visited last week to see Aunt Terry for Christmas. But Buffalo wouldn’t be Buffalo without Lake Effect snow.

Basil has never been to Arizona. We will make the trip at some point. I am excited to show him all the things he has had to endure me reminiscing about over and over again: the mountains, the monsoons, the smell of the mesquite after it rains, the sunsets, the feeling of relaxing on a sunny porch with an adult beverage as the dry desert air blows through your hair.

But the thought of traveling in Phoenix troubles me. When I have driven through there in the past, I feel like I am retracing the route of a funeral procession which I never took part in. The profile of a skyscraper downtown, the curve of a particular freeway, an ad for a bar, restaurant, or coffee shop from my adolescence sends my mind down dark avenues I try to avoid revisiting. When I think of dying city, I think of Phoenix.

Sometimes I wonder if my father equated Buffalo with loss in this same way. I think when some people leave their home towns, they are putting some part of themselves in a shoe box, which they plan to stow away so, years later, they can dust it off and reminisce. When my father left Buffalo, I get the impression he put some part of himself in a box and buried it, hoping never to unearth it again.