Eye Rape and Inquisitions

My yesterday was five of us plus my realtor looking for a place for the urchins and I to hang our spiffy new cowgirl hats for a while.  Being home means traveling in packs.  Such a change for the solitary hunter I have become.   I am an extrovert, a people person, but the effectiveness of ‘alone’ is appealing to me.  The utilitarian nature of solitary expeditions makes perfect sense to me now.  I grew up in groups.  We were the kool-aid house.  Driving the hour and a half to the orthodontist meant I could take a friend to the ‘city’, and so could my sister.  Vacations meant driving west to join more family and then driving off to the mountains.  I remember sneaking off to parked cars in my winter coat to find a quiet place to read when I was just starting chapter books.  I grew up in a pack.  I miss a pack.  But I now remember that ‘pack’ means 3 stops to go potty or get food in an hour and a half drive.  ‘Pack’ means 6 different opinions that all need to be heard.  ‘Pack’ means that those left behind call every 2 hours to see if we are successful in our hunt.  ‘Pack’ is not synonymous with  ‘efficiency’.

So our pack moved from place to place, filling my big SUV- so incredibly obnoxious in the frozen north- and so ho-hum every day here in the land of big trucks.  Spilling out to fill duplexes with the same square footage as my master suite up north.  My realtor, an angel, never asking why my plans had changed from paying cash for a house with lake access to a dinky little duplex with me cringing at rent prices.   The girls and I mourn the lack of trees in back yards, the thin walls, the tiny plots of land filled with more weeds than grass.  And we marvel that the bedrooms have huge closets (100 year old houses do not have huge closets).  In the first place I find my 11 year old, who has given herself the assignment of  ‘family chef’, staring- eyebrows screwed into a tight knot- at an electric stove.   The dull thud of my heals on the linoleum drawing her attention from the electric beast, she sighs deeply and murmurers that she wishes I would have an adventure for us all involving gas stoves.   We look at sculpted carpet- I had no idea that stuff was still around!?!?, mildewy bathrooms, neighbors with partially dissembled cars lining their drives. And we meet people….

And I cling to my shades even indoors.  Because people in Texas are eye rapist.   I don’t know if it is everywhere in the south, or just here.  It must not have bothered me once.  Heck, once I must have been one.  But now the constant eye contact from strangers is an intrusion of the deepest sort.  Walking through WalMart (a near daily activity for me now) involves eyes prying at me with no regard for the intimacy involved.  I have learned the yankee city way of avoiding eye contact with anyone with whom I am not involved in conversation.   Inadvertent eye contact with a stranger now feels as if I have caught a glimpse of  someone half dressed.  Having such intimacy forced upon me- having strangers searching into my eyes as if peering into my thoughts- it is so VERY disturbing to me now.  If my eyes are the gateway to my soul, then only those with whom I choose to be intimate should be allowed to gaze there.   I feel like a volatile animal- the kind with whom trainers say one should never make eye contact.  And while I feel like an aggressive animal, I look like a drug addict- but clinging to my shades keeps me from walking around with my eyes shut, so I guess the neighbors will just have to talk.

And they will talk.  I chose a small town in order to give me the bast chance at knowing what is going on with my kids, but small town Texas is going to take some getting used to.  Everyone I met in conjunction with housing had questions.  Questions of why I would leave Ohio.  Why I would need to rent.  Questions of why I am married but alone.  About why he has chosen to stay behind.  About how that will shape my children.  About how tall I am.  About why my urchins have such unusual names.  About where my furniture is. About why I didn’t bring it.  About why I wasn’t going to be living in the same small town in which I grew up.  About why the girls went to private school in their past life.  About why they will attend public now.  About why and about what and about who and about when and about where and about how.   I spent the afternoon with a bemused smile plastered onto my face, cramming back the words “Why don’t you go piss up a rope?”  But that would only induce more talking.  And probably more questioning.  So I answered as best as I could, which to be honest was fairly poorly.  How can I explain in a few short sentences what I do not understand myself?

Home

I have slipped back into the land of my birth.  So much  yet to do, but I have fallen into the pool of relatives and friends, sunsets and open spaces.  I appreciate the things that I never noticed when I lived in this place.  The smell of the fields is one that hits me.  Of course the cattle fields are remembered, but the peppery scent of the fields growing feed for the winter had completely slipped away from me.  My daughters are now old enough to look at me as if I have lost my mind when I suddenly cry out from the front seat “Girls, roll down your windows!  It smells like my grandparents ranch!”

And my daughters too have found themselves near drowning in relatives.  Having lived without family their entire lives- seeing grandparents once a year, cousins once every couple of years (if the stars aligned)- the very joyous occasion of my brother’s wedding found them surrounded by people who hold claim to them, but who had never laid eyes on them.  Uncles and aunts never met or long forgotten, a slew of ‘almost relations’- those that are related but no one quite bothers to figure out how- old family friends all hugging and laughing about how much one looks like her mama, how the other looks like her grandmother.  My little solitary creatures smiled and hugged and pretended to recognize names I am sure they have never heard.  More genteel southern ways must have laid dormant in them, waiting to be needed, and they do wear them well.

Some things fit so perfectly- like a favorite pair of jeans lost to the back of the spare closet- fitting tight in the right places and grazing gently across the other spots- the sunsets make me stop in my tracks.  The smell of rain still 20 miles off but easily spotted pouring down.  The familiar sharp crack of thunder without the never ending trees to soften the noise.  Never ending stars.  And in me I feel old traits struggling to the surface- the true art of a southern lady never arriving at an open door a second too soon or too late (OH! how I have missed doors being held open- I am able bodied and completely able to do it myself, and I think my NOW card would be destroyed for it, but OH how I have missed it!!!!).  My latent love of hot rollers has begun anew (I don’t care how many yankees tell me that I need a straightener, I love the softer look of feminine hair out here- I have not seen a single ‘porcupine cut’ as worn by Kate of John & Kate fame).  And slowly I begin to hear the coded language of my land.  Things are phrased so much more gently here- troubles are discussed, but they are wrapped in gauze and the lights are dimmed before they are brought out- we all know they are there but we don’t shine such a harsh light on them as our yankee brethren.

But some things rub against me in the way of a new pair of shoes on a 10 mile hike.  I know these things fit me once, but now they pinch at me.  While I have missed the vernacular of my home, the cadence of the language is off to me now.  The spoken word is a barrage of input for me. The more clenched jaw of my city friends- as if they are holding the words in and they escape at any rate.  My far west relative with spaces between their words stretching out so long that I find my mind wandering off in a thousand directions, popping back when the next word in the series is finally uttered.  The timing of the words so unfamiliar and uncomfy to me now.  Long lost relatives recently moved back from a lovely island with inflections that make common words sound slightly like music… a moving up and down that our language lacks.  The nieces and nephews with a true yankee step mom- gargling words as if their mouths are filled with jaw breakers- “r” being a sound that can’t be managed.  And of course the soft gentle curling sounds of Tex-Mex (and you can kiss my now crystal studded back pocket if you want me to call it “Spanglish”.) always dancing around in the back ground of life here.  Sometimes the words are lost to me as my poor brain tries to get grasp of nuances that gurgle towards me.

I am off now to the little town that I hope to call my new home.  I suppose the urchins will join me.  And my sister.  And her kids.  And perhaps my mother.  Being home means never going alone… another one of those double edged swords.  What I crave will eventually drive me to slipping Bailys into my morning coffee.  I will pack my shades, because I will spend the day being eye raped.  Another cultural difference… I will explain later.

Bag and Baggage

I sit on the front porch of a house that is over 100 years old.  When the house was built the first floor was wired for both electricity and gas (for gas lights), but the rest of the house only had gas lights.  It is over 4000 square feet of craftsmanship that is simply not reproducible today.   Buzzers to summon staff to various parts of the house are gone, but their outlines ghost walls and leave holes in hardwood floors.  Pocket doors, oval shaped rooms, hand carved adornments in rooms with Elizabethan inspired wood paneled walls and coffered ceilings greet me at my every turn.   Servants quarters were long ago converted into master suite, complete with a remote control fire place and a claw foot tub in which a 6’6″ man could easily stretch out to read.  5 other bedrooms serve 2 children and a dog.  Christmas here means setting up 9 full size Christmas trees.  In short, I- we- are spoiled.  Private schools, expensive hobbies, frequent trips.  Spoiled.  Thankfully, somehow, my girls are not brats.  They don’t expect so much as you might think.  They somehow have giving hearts.  The lessons of tending to others have somehow struck a chord with these little urchins.

And to where I will go…  I will go cross country to a place far more modern.  A place where low slung (and crass in comparison) ranch houses bake in the sun.  A town with no horse hair plaster.  No dining rooms filled with ornaments carved by hands long forgotten.  A place with no private school.  No starched looking children in their equally as starched uniforms with knee socks and mary jane shoes.  A place where town closes on Friday nights for football games.  A place where people take time to know their neighbors.  A place where a flat tire means the help of a stranger.  A place where language bubbles so much more slowly and is punctuated with “ma’am” and “sir”.  A state that is Red.  And where praying  seems to still be an accepted way to spend a few minutes.

And I sit looking at the boxes of things.  And I wonder how their contents will fit.  The andirons forged nearly 200 years ago in France.  The amazing Waterford vase that I bought right at the factory after watching the artisans blow glass and cut the facets into its surface.  The formal sofas.  3 sets of china.  2 sets of silver.  100 year old clocks.  Art shipped back from the UK.  And, perhaps the most strange, the heavy marble baptismal font rescued at an auction.  How do these things fit into the dusty sun baked land?  The simple utilitarian ranch houses with 2 car garages and eat in kitchens- how do my things fit there?  And I think of the baggage that I can’t see and I wonder… how do I fit into this sun baked land where people speak so freely to one another?  Where a big night on the town is a high school sporting event and a trip to Sonic?  How do I fit into this now strange land of my birth?  And why is it so important that somehow this place accepts me and the daughters I went off and created?

I have, until tonight, wondered at how relatively easy it has been to pack my things and stack the well marked boxes against perfectly coped paneled walls.  But now I realize that my things are foreign visitors to the red dirt lanes that I will travel.  I understand now that I walk away from these things because one can only carry so much baggage into a new place.  When this once-mine place is once again mine, then I can introduce my treasured vase to the true glory of the perfect sunset.  When the time is right the last rays of pink sunshine will reflect through its perfectly cut facets and break into a thousand diamonds.  And the dust of my homeland will dance in the perfect pink rays of light.

Where the Journey Begins

Welcome to my blog.  Strange words.  Not something that slips from my tongue, or fingers, easily.  This should be a simple account of my journey from where I am now to ‘home’.  Although to be honest ‘simple’ rarely applies to me for some reason.

My writing teachers all seemed to have agreed that the best place to start a story is at the beginning.  Strangely none of them told me where to find the beginning.   I have no idea where to find the ending of the last story and the beginning of this one.  I suppose the pragmatic approach is to start where I am, and let you poke around until you get caught up.

You should know that in 2 days I will be leaving for a cross country drive.  I am moving.  I know people do that all the time.  Usually they are smart enough to have professional movers involved- and they know to trick some employer into paying for that.  I can’t go that route because I haven’t bothered to find a job yet.  Soooo I have the house is about 70 percent packed which really isn’t the problem that you might think since I am leaving the husband here.  I figure he can finish it up, right?  He is planning to join us in January, but we will see.  Oh, yeah, I said ‘us’.  I am loading the truck with my 2 daughters (ages 9 & 11), and we are moving.  Right.  An SUV full of stuff.  2 little girls.  No job.  No plan.  What could possibly go wrong?!?!  I am calling it an adventure and taking only what I think we can’t live without- hope I guessed well!

Secretly my favorite part of the move is telling the other private school/expensive hobby mommies my ‘plan’ when they ask.  You really should see the look of horror when your ‘friends’ think you are doing something INSANE.  Your realize your REAL friends- the ones who truly care about you more than they care about pissing you off- look you dead in the eye and say something brilliant like ‘you have GOT to be kidding’ or maybe ‘ummm, so you aren’t selling the house yet, right?’  The other people, the people who don’t know you so well, break eye contact and look at the wall, the floor, their watch or phone and finally blurt out something like ‘wow!’   Apparently there is some instinctual part of us that tells us not to make eye contact with the crazy people.*

More coffee and more packing.  I should take pictures of this mess to post, but I doubt I could find a camera at this point.

* Please no nasty notes about me offending you by using completely non PC terms.  If this is offensive, you probably don’t want to come back.  I promise to do my best to use one non PC term per rambling.  Don’t worry, I am an equal opportunity offender.