The nurse beckoned us from our cold, hard chairs where, for the past three hours, we had sat with our silence and our caffeine highs, while life in the surgery waiting room buzzed around us. Headline News had been droning repeatedly on the TV about some terrorist's bombing in London, about bad weather churning over the Midwest, a near-miss on a Dallas runway.
Daddy said, "I believe she means us," as he nudged me to look up at the nurse in the doorway. Her face seemed all at once, kind yet commanding. Daddy and I rose in unison, like marionettes, and went toward her:
"This way," she said, guiding us six steps down the hallway.
She stopped at a blond oak door; smiled at us, and used a key on a chain around her waist. The door was one you would just walk right past under normal circumstances, supposing behind it was a storage room or something equally as nondescript, as you hunted your way down this corridor, eyes lifted toward the signs -- ICU, Surgery, Nurse's Station -- leading you through the starched white hospital maze.
"The doctor will be with you shortly," the nurse said. She stood with her back plastered against the heavy door, holding open the pneumatic hinges for us to pass. "Make yourselves comfy."
We stepped into a small rectangle, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, a plush cubicle of spongy off-white carpet that my sandals sank into. A chintz-covered, overstuffed love seat lined one wall, a wall papered in blue paisleys. A picture in a green frame hung there, all shades of blue, hints of lemon and lavender -- a balcony window on a Tuscany street maybe. Soft light fell from a ginger jar lamp on the end table. A pink box of Kleenex rested there, too. I chose the deep-seated wing chair of mauve and mahogany against the other wall. Daddy took the love seat, perched himself on the edge, holding himself away from its cushiony folds. Both of us sat numb and hovering for a few seconds, taking in the antiseptic air around us.
"Usually they just tell you out in the hall." Daddy teetered a little on the edge of the love seat.
"That's what I was thinking." I eyed the Kleenex box, and also Daddy's stout hands locked together. His elbows rested on his knees. "I didn't even know they had these little rooms," I added.
"Me neither."
He had a habit of sucking at his teeth, just a little popping suck you mostly ignored, something to do with adjusting his ill-fitting partial plates. But he made that noise just then and the sound of it saturated the room. His face stayed frozen on the carpet. Silence settled again between us.
When the door burst open, we both jumped. Dr. Jackson, a tall bounding man, suddenly filled up the room with his rustling white coat, his clipboard and his energy. He called me by my first name, said hello with a nod, then sat down on the love seat beside Daddy. The size of Dr. Jackson made Daddy seem small.
"I'm afraid I've got bad news this time," he said to Daddy. "It's cancer."
"Aw, heck," came Daddy's reflexive answer at that straight-forward word: cancer.
I felt a knot double in my gut. I eyed the Kleenex box again.
"It's already metastasized throughout the lymph system." Dr. Jackson pointed with two fingers at his own collarbone, the place where Mother found her lump. "I went ahead and removed the tumor, but the primary source is somewhere else."
Daddy's head kept nodding like a bobble-head doll. I reached for his hand. He clasped hold of mine tightly. We weren't the hand-clasping sort, and immediately the gesture felt awkward to me. When do you let go? How long is long enough to hold on? Ours was a good-luck family, a family of benign tumors and false alarms, and long lives. We didn't have need of soft, cushy rooms, or pink boxes of Kleenex, or prints of Tuscany -- or of tightly clasped hands.
"The next step," Dr. Jackson said, his voice pingponging around the quiet room, "will be to run more specific tests to determine the exact type of cancer it is, and the location. I'm recommending you to Dr. Barnes. He's the best oncologist around. I've already contacted his office."
"Does Mother know yet?" I asked, my voice finally finding itself, but an octave higher.
Dr. Jackson's bright eyes shifted to me. "She's still waking up in recovery."
"Will you be the one to tell her?" Daddy sounded anxious.
"If you'd like me to," Dr. Jackson answered.
Daddy grinned, an almost skeletal grin, and completely out of place. "I believe you could do it better than me. I don't think I'd know how to say it right."
"All right, then." The doctor started up from the love seat, finished with us and ready to put his energy somewhere else. Daddy and I stood, too. We shook hands, politely exchanged some empty words.
"Take your time in here," Dr. Jackson said, from the open doorway. "The room's yours for as long as you need it."
"I believe we're done. Aren't we, Sister?" Daddy looked at me, and I nodded yes. We were done. Absolutely done. Yet we both stayed still and let Dr. Jackson exit without us. The door hissed shut behind him.
A sucking pop came from inside Daddy's mouth. I stared at the blue paisley wall, trying to imagine the near future. How much Mother would hate being sick. How hard on us all she would be. Cancer: such a mean-sounding word. I wanted to hope, but somehow I couldn't. Those paisley walls, all that blue softness meant for comforting, kept hope from me.
"I knew it wasn't going to be good news," Daddy said. "As soon as they brought us in here, I knew it."
I reached for the box of Kleenex, unused, the first sheet not even threaded through the plastic slit. "I'm taking these with us," I said, an act of defiance. A way to make the hospital pay. Someone should pay. For the falseness of this room. For the changes it would bring. Had already brought. I could see the surrender in the slope of Daddy's shoulders.
We filed together, him first, holding the door for me. I wedged the pink box of Kleenex beneath my arm. We peered up and down the long corridor, like two moles freshly out from our warm digs, both of us unsure which way to go, or what to do, now.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Saturday, December 14, 2013
A Near Miss
This house came with a grand old crystal chandelier in the dining room. I figure it to have been added in the 1930s, after the big fire that burned away the upper floor. The rooms in that dining room do not match. There is one double window, and one single. The single window is longer and closer to the baseboards than the double window. I wouldn't question this except all of these windows share the same wall. So I figure the staircase that went up to the now-gone second floor must have been in this part of the house. The longer single window may have been a door to the outside. Anyway, I digress.....
The chandelier is beautiful but it is not my style, doesn't match my southwestern dining room furniture, and beside, we brought with us the chandelier that we had custom made in Albuquerque, and wanted to hang it over our southwestern slate-top dining room table. But this old chandelier is so pretty and in such good shape, that we thought it would be a shame to just throw it out, or donate it to a charity box somewhere. We had the brilliant idea to sell it and try to get enough for it to pay for the electrician who came to exchange this old chandelier for our custom-made one. However, I had no idea how I would ship it anywhere, so we put it on Craiglist.
A few years back we had an old motorhome that we listed on Craigslist and sold without a lot of bother. And with Craigslist you can stay local, which meant there would be no figuring out how to ship the chandelier, we could just lightly box it and a buyer could pick it up from us. So with pictures snapped before the chandelier was taken down, I put a listing out on Craigslist. Nothing happened for a couple of weeks.
Then, someone contacted me and said she wanted to buy it. She claimed she was an invalid and couldn't come look in person, but was happy with the pictures on the listing, would send a check and then would have someone pick up the chandelier. Her email address appeared to be a local one. So, this sounded terrific. I was going to find the pretty chandelier a good home.
But the emails started to get weird. The spelling was bad, the grammar terrible. And the details of how she wanted to do the exchange sounded screwy. She wanted to pay extra for me to have the thing boxed, and once I got the check, she would arrange for pickup, yada yada, yada. I began to have doubts.
Night before last, the check came. It was for $1500 more than the price of the chandelier. I went back to the computer and re-read the last few messages. It seemed she was wanting me to pay the "moving company" she was going to send to pick up the fixture. And the check was a company check, with no names on it that matched the one of the emailer. The return address on the postal label also was different and not a match. I fired off an email asking several questions. And yesterday took the check to my bank to have them contact the bank on the check. The vice-president I talked to scanned the check over to their fraud department, and sure enough, the check was a fake, no such account number. The bank advised me to file a police report, which I did. The woman at the bank fraud department said, "Good catch. We have these things come through all the time, and the people really get taken."
I guess the whole scam was supposed to work on greed. A person gets a BIG check and thinks OH BOY, takes the thing to the bank and the scam is on. I find it all to be very scary. I sold on eBay for 12 years and never had anything like this happen. Last year I had to cancel a credit card because the number had been stolen off a card reader in a motel we stayed in, and had been being used online to buy a lot of stuff. It seems the internet has become the plaything of scam artists and crooks, and I find I am getting gun-shy. The pretty chandelier is going in a box and will be given to charity. I don't want to run an ad in the paper and have people coming to look, so charity seems the only alternative. At least I will have a little tax write-off.
Sigh!!!
The chandelier is beautiful but it is not my style, doesn't match my southwestern dining room furniture, and beside, we brought with us the chandelier that we had custom made in Albuquerque, and wanted to hang it over our southwestern slate-top dining room table. But this old chandelier is so pretty and in such good shape, that we thought it would be a shame to just throw it out, or donate it to a charity box somewhere. We had the brilliant idea to sell it and try to get enough for it to pay for the electrician who came to exchange this old chandelier for our custom-made one. However, I had no idea how I would ship it anywhere, so we put it on Craiglist.
A few years back we had an old motorhome that we listed on Craigslist and sold without a lot of bother. And with Craigslist you can stay local, which meant there would be no figuring out how to ship the chandelier, we could just lightly box it and a buyer could pick it up from us. So with pictures snapped before the chandelier was taken down, I put a listing out on Craigslist. Nothing happened for a couple of weeks.
Then, someone contacted me and said she wanted to buy it. She claimed she was an invalid and couldn't come look in person, but was happy with the pictures on the listing, would send a check and then would have someone pick up the chandelier. Her email address appeared to be a local one. So, this sounded terrific. I was going to find the pretty chandelier a good home.
But the emails started to get weird. The spelling was bad, the grammar terrible. And the details of how she wanted to do the exchange sounded screwy. She wanted to pay extra for me to have the thing boxed, and once I got the check, she would arrange for pickup, yada yada, yada. I began to have doubts.
Night before last, the check came. It was for $1500 more than the price of the chandelier. I went back to the computer and re-read the last few messages. It seemed she was wanting me to pay the "moving company" she was going to send to pick up the fixture. And the check was a company check, with no names on it that matched the one of the emailer. The return address on the postal label also was different and not a match. I fired off an email asking several questions. And yesterday took the check to my bank to have them contact the bank on the check. The vice-president I talked to scanned the check over to their fraud department, and sure enough, the check was a fake, no such account number. The bank advised me to file a police report, which I did. The woman at the bank fraud department said, "Good catch. We have these things come through all the time, and the people really get taken."
I guess the whole scam was supposed to work on greed. A person gets a BIG check and thinks OH BOY, takes the thing to the bank and the scam is on. I find it all to be very scary. I sold on eBay for 12 years and never had anything like this happen. Last year I had to cancel a credit card because the number had been stolen off a card reader in a motel we stayed in, and had been being used online to buy a lot of stuff. It seems the internet has become the plaything of scam artists and crooks, and I find I am getting gun-shy. The pretty chandelier is going in a box and will be given to charity. I don't want to run an ad in the paper and have people coming to look, so charity seems the only alternative. At least I will have a little tax write-off.
Sigh!!!
Monday, December 9, 2013
Uprooting the Darkness
DEPRESSION - unhappiness, melancholia, misery, sorrow, sadness, gloom, low spirits, heavy heart, hopelessness, despair, tearfulness, the dumps, the doldrums, the blues, a blue funk
Everybody goes through periods of depression in their lives. What they do about it, or how they cope is where we differ. Some people let it take hold of them and they wail and moan about it but never do anything. Or they get on medication and never really work through the thing that is causing their trouble. Sometimes the hardest part is recognizing it for what it is, and then the recognition hopefully leads to a look inward to find a way to pull it out by its roots.
My dad once said to me, "It's not in my nature to be depressed." This was after his beloved old dogs had died within weeks of each other. When he said it, he was going through cataract surgery and all those endless drops involved with that. It wasn't in his nature, but nonetheless it had taken hold of him. Daddy wasn't given to a lot of self-examination, but clearly he had been thinking about it. The signs were there - sleeplessness, slovenly lifestyle, letting things go until he had no choice but to finally DO them. He stayed with us at our house for a while. He thought he might want to look for a new dog, and so we did. The new dog gave him a lot of pleasure. He had taken an active step toward the solution to his depression, even if he didn't think of it in that way. The new dog soothed him, and he became his old sunny self again.
There have been times in my life when darkness has come over me. In my early 30s I went through about a year of it, saw a psychologist for several months, came to understand a lot about myself, about being an adult, about taking charge of your own happiness. I came out of it. My marriage nearly ended -- maybe it should have right then and not lingered on for another 22 years, but hindsight, as they say, is 100%.
And that's when my next bout of it came, 22 years later, when my marriage finally did end. The wasted years were what deviled me most throughout that time. I thought I had lost so much, my whole life. I felt hopeless, useless, and old. What I didn't know then, but came to understand as time went by, was sheer determination had kept my marriage alive long after it should have been declared dead -- determination and fear of the unknown. When I took a hard look at it, I realized we had been on the brink of separation for at least half of the 34 years we spent together. There comes a time when you have to face defeat.
Then I met my darling. What a revelation he turned out to be, showing me that love doesn't have to be that difficult. We were alike at our core, held the same values, felt the same way about relationships, had the same commitment. What followed were three idyllic years before disaster struck in rapid succession: the death of his dearest friend, the death of my precious old cat, the suicide of his son. All of that in three days time. We were shellshocked. And we were in the process of moving. His work had shifted north. Our financial situation was changing. We needed to offload one of the houses. We knew the house in Texas would sell the quickest, and it did, in two weeks.
The death of a loved one is never easy to take, not even when they have been suffering with illness for a while, as was the case with the dear friend and the cat. Death by suicide leaves an empty, questioning hole in your heart that consumes your spirit. I once said that suicide was the cruelest thing someone could do to those who love them. Nothing has changed my mind about that. I watched my darling suffer, and I suffered with him. The light went out of our life for such a long time.
And then, last February, my dad died. It seemed so sudden but it wasn't really. He had been growing more and more frail, he had been falling a lot, but still, it seemed that one day he was here, watching the Super Bowl with me by his side. The next day, he gave up just as I had managed to get the attention of everyone around us that he was more critical than they believed. We were about to run tests. The nurse had finally agreed with me that he was failing. And then he was gone. Nothing I could do to save him. It hit me like a bus. My daddy, my one and only, my mentor, my North Star. Just gone. Like that.
Grief began once again.
It's not in my nature to be depressed. Nevertheless, there it was. I felt detached. Hopeless. Gloomy. I still had my darling, and my dog, but everyone else I loved was 800 miles away. I couldn't shake it off. It had been descending over me for two years, and Daddy dying closed the curtain. I loved the beauty of the summer mountains, the birds at the feeders, even the bears that occasionally showed their faces, but the thought of the impending winter, oh so long in the mountains, was something I really could not endure again. Neither of us was prepared for another long winter. We made the decision to leave. It has not been easy but it does feel right. In a perfect world we could keep both places, one for summer and one for winter. But we aren't wealthy, far from it, and it's hard for me to shift gears. I'm a homebody at my core. I get attached to a place, and it becomes part of me. An odd thing for a person who has moved as much as I have to say. I feel I have been running back and forth for two years, even longer than that, and I need to settle down, stay home, get quiet with myself. I need to write again. It has always been my solution. It's time to heal.
Everybody goes through periods of depression in their lives. What they do about it, or how they cope is where we differ. Some people let it take hold of them and they wail and moan about it but never do anything. Or they get on medication and never really work through the thing that is causing their trouble. Sometimes the hardest part is recognizing it for what it is, and then the recognition hopefully leads to a look inward to find a way to pull it out by its roots.
My dad once said to me, "It's not in my nature to be depressed." This was after his beloved old dogs had died within weeks of each other. When he said it, he was going through cataract surgery and all those endless drops involved with that. It wasn't in his nature, but nonetheless it had taken hold of him. Daddy wasn't given to a lot of self-examination, but clearly he had been thinking about it. The signs were there - sleeplessness, slovenly lifestyle, letting things go until he had no choice but to finally DO them. He stayed with us at our house for a while. He thought he might want to look for a new dog, and so we did. The new dog gave him a lot of pleasure. He had taken an active step toward the solution to his depression, even if he didn't think of it in that way. The new dog soothed him, and he became his old sunny self again.
There have been times in my life when darkness has come over me. In my early 30s I went through about a year of it, saw a psychologist for several months, came to understand a lot about myself, about being an adult, about taking charge of your own happiness. I came out of it. My marriage nearly ended -- maybe it should have right then and not lingered on for another 22 years, but hindsight, as they say, is 100%.
And that's when my next bout of it came, 22 years later, when my marriage finally did end. The wasted years were what deviled me most throughout that time. I thought I had lost so much, my whole life. I felt hopeless, useless, and old. What I didn't know then, but came to understand as time went by, was sheer determination had kept my marriage alive long after it should have been declared dead -- determination and fear of the unknown. When I took a hard look at it, I realized we had been on the brink of separation for at least half of the 34 years we spent together. There comes a time when you have to face defeat.
Then I met my darling. What a revelation he turned out to be, showing me that love doesn't have to be that difficult. We were alike at our core, held the same values, felt the same way about relationships, had the same commitment. What followed were three idyllic years before disaster struck in rapid succession: the death of his dearest friend, the death of my precious old cat, the suicide of his son. All of that in three days time. We were shellshocked. And we were in the process of moving. His work had shifted north. Our financial situation was changing. We needed to offload one of the houses. We knew the house in Texas would sell the quickest, and it did, in two weeks.
The death of a loved one is never easy to take, not even when they have been suffering with illness for a while, as was the case with the dear friend and the cat. Death by suicide leaves an empty, questioning hole in your heart that consumes your spirit. I once said that suicide was the cruelest thing someone could do to those who love them. Nothing has changed my mind about that. I watched my darling suffer, and I suffered with him. The light went out of our life for such a long time.
And then, last February, my dad died. It seemed so sudden but it wasn't really. He had been growing more and more frail, he had been falling a lot, but still, it seemed that one day he was here, watching the Super Bowl with me by his side. The next day, he gave up just as I had managed to get the attention of everyone around us that he was more critical than they believed. We were about to run tests. The nurse had finally agreed with me that he was failing. And then he was gone. Nothing I could do to save him. It hit me like a bus. My daddy, my one and only, my mentor, my North Star. Just gone. Like that.
Grief began once again.
It's not in my nature to be depressed. Nevertheless, there it was. I felt detached. Hopeless. Gloomy. I still had my darling, and my dog, but everyone else I loved was 800 miles away. I couldn't shake it off. It had been descending over me for two years, and Daddy dying closed the curtain. I loved the beauty of the summer mountains, the birds at the feeders, even the bears that occasionally showed their faces, but the thought of the impending winter, oh so long in the mountains, was something I really could not endure again. Neither of us was prepared for another long winter. We made the decision to leave. It has not been easy but it does feel right. In a perfect world we could keep both places, one for summer and one for winter. But we aren't wealthy, far from it, and it's hard for me to shift gears. I'm a homebody at my core. I get attached to a place, and it becomes part of me. An odd thing for a person who has moved as much as I have to say. I feel I have been running back and forth for two years, even longer than that, and I need to settle down, stay home, get quiet with myself. I need to write again. It has always been my solution. It's time to heal.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
The Smell of a Dog
Yesterday, while standing in line at the bank, a young fellow came in and filed in behind me. I thought the smell of the cigarette smoke on him would suffocate me. I'm always appalled at the thought that for 19 years (before I quit in 1992), I smelled just like this young man. Why did I bother with deodorant and especially with perfume? Neither one can wipe out the smell of cigarettes on your clothes, in your hair, on your skin.
Which got me to wondering -- do I smell like dog now? I take my dog everywhere with me. In fact, she was waiting in the car at the bank, wondering why we were going inside the bank rather than through the drive-up where she always gets Milkbone treats. The ladies at the bank are so religious with handing out the treats, that my dog now thinks any drive-up window will bear fruit. When we go to fast food drive-up windows, she stands on the console, tailing wagging furiously, with her sweetest "look how cute I am" face on. Same thing when we drive up to pay our electric bill at City Hall. The ladies at the bank have spoiled her, and they even sent a "bonie" with me yesterday, even though I had left her in the car. Our favorite teller, Sharon, said, "Is Lulu in the car?" When I said yes she was, out came the Milkbone box.
Two years ago, when my dear old kitty died (which I posted tearfully about on this blog, by the way), one of the immediate things that was missing from my life was something soft and furry in my lap. The dog is too big to be a lapdog, and she freaks out if you try to pick her up. She would never dream of jumping into your chair while you're in it, doesn't like sharing the backseat. In short, she can be a little standoffish. So I decided to teach her how to hug. (Did I mention that this is the smartest dog on earth?) I got in the floor, sat cross-legged, and beseeched her to come to me. "I need a hug," I said, and the only way she would allow me to put my arms around her neck was if the whole ordeal paid off with a game of "Duck."
"Duck" involves throwing one of her fuzzy toys so she can race after it, and dive at it like she's going in for the kill. She then runs by squeaking the toy with her jaws, and dodges past, inviting me to try to take it from her. Sometimes there is an intense bout of tug-o-war that follows. This game is great fun to her, and is called "Duck" because her very first squeaky toy was a stuffed mallard that honked.
So I taught her to hug with bribery. A game of duck. A lick in the face that makes me pull an imitation of the Lucy character in Peanuts -- "Aughhhh! Kissed by a dog!" My laughter makes the game of Duck so much more engaging. I believe she thinks when I laugh that it must mean I need to play "Duck."
Anyway... she learned to hug. Now, she comes to me when she needs a hug. And I must hug her tightly and linger, and sometimes when I'm ready to finish, she is not. She nudges into me, head lowered, until I take her around the neck again and squeeze. Hugs. Sometimes several, and dog kisses. I bet I smell like a dog all the time. I know I wear my dog. She's all over my clothes. Her fur falls off of me at night when I bend over to brush my teeth. That's the only explanation I can think of for why her black hair is all over the bathroom sink.
I smell like dog. I know I do.
Which got me to wondering -- do I smell like dog now? I take my dog everywhere with me. In fact, she was waiting in the car at the bank, wondering why we were going inside the bank rather than through the drive-up where she always gets Milkbone treats. The ladies at the bank are so religious with handing out the treats, that my dog now thinks any drive-up window will bear fruit. When we go to fast food drive-up windows, she stands on the console, tailing wagging furiously, with her sweetest "look how cute I am" face on. Same thing when we drive up to pay our electric bill at City Hall. The ladies at the bank have spoiled her, and they even sent a "bonie" with me yesterday, even though I had left her in the car. Our favorite teller, Sharon, said, "Is Lulu in the car?" When I said yes she was, out came the Milkbone box.
Two years ago, when my dear old kitty died (which I posted tearfully about on this blog, by the way), one of the immediate things that was missing from my life was something soft and furry in my lap. The dog is too big to be a lapdog, and she freaks out if you try to pick her up. She would never dream of jumping into your chair while you're in it, doesn't like sharing the backseat. In short, she can be a little standoffish. So I decided to teach her how to hug. (Did I mention that this is the smartest dog on earth?) I got in the floor, sat cross-legged, and beseeched her to come to me. "I need a hug," I said, and the only way she would allow me to put my arms around her neck was if the whole ordeal paid off with a game of "Duck."
"Duck" involves throwing one of her fuzzy toys so she can race after it, and dive at it like she's going in for the kill. She then runs by squeaking the toy with her jaws, and dodges past, inviting me to try to take it from her. Sometimes there is an intense bout of tug-o-war that follows. This game is great fun to her, and is called "Duck" because her very first squeaky toy was a stuffed mallard that honked.
So I taught her to hug with bribery. A game of duck. A lick in the face that makes me pull an imitation of the Lucy character in Peanuts -- "Aughhhh! Kissed by a dog!" My laughter makes the game of Duck so much more engaging. I believe she thinks when I laugh that it must mean I need to play "Duck."
Anyway... she learned to hug. Now, she comes to me when she needs a hug. And I must hug her tightly and linger, and sometimes when I'm ready to finish, she is not. She nudges into me, head lowered, until I take her around the neck again and squeeze. Hugs. Sometimes several, and dog kisses. I bet I smell like a dog all the time. I know I wear my dog. She's all over my clothes. Her fur falls off of me at night when I bend over to brush my teeth. That's the only explanation I can think of for why her black hair is all over the bathroom sink.I smell like dog. I know I do.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Return Home
It has been a long long time since I have posted here, and there are many reasons for that. After two years away, I have moved back to Texas, but that is not all that has happened in the past year. I will post about the other changes on a different day. There has been a lot of sadness but today I am feeling good about life and it's infinite possibilities, so today I just want to dwell on pleasant things.
We made the decision to come back to Texas at the beginning of last summer, and started looking, trying to determine where we should settle. We eliminated places that were unfamiliar to us, because the truth is, we were eager to get back to the familiar -- doctors we know, dentists we never quit, friends and family we missed. Grocery stores. Movie theaters. Libraries. All the things we gave up to embark on the high-altitude, mountain life of the past two years. Fact is, we just missed home.
I had a good friend say to me: "You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the girl." That kind of irked me when she said it, because it's too simplistic. Home is more than a place, it's a feeling of belonging, of familiar comforts, of being right with the world. Home is where you go to understand who you are.
One definition I found for the word home says "the place in which one's domestic affections are centered." I like that definition best. I never felt those domestic affections for the place in the mountains. I enjoyed many aspects of life there, the neighbors, the wildlife, the clean air, and the uniqueness of the place. But the winters are far too long for me. I didn't mind the cold, but the length of the season was just too much for a person with a slightly green thumb and a desire to plant things for beauty and consumption. The conveniences of a bigger city were too distant to take advantage of often enough, and the economic opportunities were too few as well.
So we are back. And we have bought an old "homey" place that I think will indeed become the object of our "domestic affections." Nothing is perfect, and the weather here -- especially in the summer -- will no doubt become a burden. But I like knowing where I am going, where to find things I need, the names of the plants, trees, and flowers, as well as how to go about growing them. I like being close enough to my grandson to see him more than three times a year, and I like having my extended family nearby, too. I like the food here, places to eat and what's best on the menus. I like not needing a map to get from point A to point B. I like feeling like I am home.
We made the decision to come back to Texas at the beginning of last summer, and started looking, trying to determine where we should settle. We eliminated places that were unfamiliar to us, because the truth is, we were eager to get back to the familiar -- doctors we know, dentists we never quit, friends and family we missed. Grocery stores. Movie theaters. Libraries. All the things we gave up to embark on the high-altitude, mountain life of the past two years. Fact is, we just missed home.
I had a good friend say to me: "You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the girl." That kind of irked me when she said it, because it's too simplistic. Home is more than a place, it's a feeling of belonging, of familiar comforts, of being right with the world. Home is where you go to understand who you are.
One definition I found for the word home says "the place in which one's domestic affections are centered." I like that definition best. I never felt those domestic affections for the place in the mountains. I enjoyed many aspects of life there, the neighbors, the wildlife, the clean air, and the uniqueness of the place. But the winters are far too long for me. I didn't mind the cold, but the length of the season was just too much for a person with a slightly green thumb and a desire to plant things for beauty and consumption. The conveniences of a bigger city were too distant to take advantage of often enough, and the economic opportunities were too few as well.
So we are back. And we have bought an old "homey" place that I think will indeed become the object of our "domestic affections." Nothing is perfect, and the weather here -- especially in the summer -- will no doubt become a burden. But I like knowing where I am going, where to find things I need, the names of the plants, trees, and flowers, as well as how to go about growing them. I like being close enough to my grandson to see him more than three times a year, and I like having my extended family nearby, too. I like the food here, places to eat and what's best on the menus. I like not needing a map to get from point A to point B. I like feeling like I am home.
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