The Corner Deli

I hear people talking about home, and they don't just mean their houses. They expand their definition of home to encompass their neighborhoods, their schools, their stores and post offices.

I grew up in places that were spread out. We had to get into the car to drive to the grocery store, to church, to high school. I never had, never lived in, the kind of neighborhood where you walked to the one diner, the main street with the few stores, the one post office.

I don't know if that's why I never felt like I actually belonged any one place. I love the Bay Area, but the places I loved - and still love - were too far apart to mesh into a single "place" in my brain. A place I belonged.

I still think, deep down, that some day I will live in a place with a corner deli, and the diner where I go every morning for coffee. You know, the one that's right across the street from the post office where they ask about my folks.

I blame it on watching Andy Griffiths stroll down the street in Mayberry once too often.