Seeing Home

I keep seeing license plates. Only certain ones, only ones from places I’ve lived before. Who knew that Brooklyn had so many cars visiting from Virginia? The other night I saw Rhode Island. And I never see anything else—not Connecticut or Jersey, or Pennsylvania or any other. I certainly never notice New York plates.

The only explanation that makes any sense, though, is that I actually see them all. My eyes catch every plate that’s convenient to see. They send the signal to some quiet corner of their brain, some place where secrets, if necessary, will be kept. There, the images can be processed. The tri-states are filtered out, as are all others that have not been old homes. When a plate switches the nostalgia subroutine, yes, bing, pow, the plate seen becomes a plate noticed. And I’m overcome by the sense that home isn’t so far away and, hey, maybe this is home too.

My grandfather collected license plates. He’d lived in dozens of places, but by the time I came around, his were mainly from Colorado. Once he gave me one or two, and I loved them. I guess I probably got this funny little license plate brain department from him.