Where I’ve Been

In some ways, I think . . . where have I been?  Besides with my head up my ass, I mean.

Well . . . the week’s been busy, what with going through the last of the frozen stuff, baking cakes every day for the hubby to take into work, making last minute arrangements in anticipation of the movers coming . . . Jesus . . . tomorrow.  A couple days’ packing and then they load the furniture up and take off NLT Thursday–and then the husband and I clean up the place and hang around an empty house with the cats, a microwave, laptops, an inflatable bed, and boxes of orchids. (God, getting them ready for the move has been a real nail-biter; I’m doing a dry run today to make sure I can actually get them all snugly packed–and wouldn’t you know that the Cattelya I’ve been babying for TWO WHOLE YEARS waiting for a bloom is finally showing not one, but two spikes?  Teeny-tiny, but they’re there, and I’m thinking . . . shoot, a nice long ride in a trailer is just what they need.  In case you didn’t see it, I just rolled my eyes.)

I was talking to one of the kids a couple weeks ago, and I was describing getting ready for the move, how I didn’t want to go, blah, blah.  She was pretty quiet, didn’t say much.  Kind of an unsatisfying conversation with a kid I don’t talk to all that often.  I puzzled about that for a little bit, replayed the conversation in my head–and I realized that I sounded/was pretty down.  Just kind of … laid low by this whole move shit.  I didn’t like the way I sounded either.  If I’d been listening to me, I’d have had nothing to say either.

It doesn’t help, I think, that people have a series of three reactions to the news that I’m leaving: dismay (boy, you should see their faces fall at “Alabama”) followed by pity (honest to God) and then, finally, this concerted effort to cheer me up, look on the bright side (interesting to see how people fumble with that one), it won’t be forever, etc.  I don’t think that I poison the well too terribly much either.  Yes, to some folks I’ve been gloomy.  Lately, though, I’ve only been neutral and just yesterday, when I told a woman I know from the gym, she began to cry.  Like…you’re leaving…and for ALABAMA?  Everyone is sad (that I’m going) and, well, sorry for me, too.  They cry, and then I go home and cry, too.

I don’t think their reactions represent a failure of imagination on their part, though it might reflect prejudice in the same way that a woman I know from Alabama complained about how the press kept harping on the fact that the guy who shot those Marines in Chattanooga was from Alabama.  I mean, they mentioned it all the time, as if coming from Alabama . . . well, what do you expect?  Honestly, where I live right now is a pretty cool place.  Yeah, it’s small; it’s provincial; people can be narrow-minded and intolerant; they gossip; some are downright incurious and so conservative, my teeth hurt.  I’ve had to be careful what I say out loud, though, this is no different than anywhere else. I have to keep reminding myself to watch my mouth when I’ve visited AL these past couple of months.  I mean, for most of the people I’ve met, this is their home and they like it.  Okay, some don’t and want to leave and said so.  But I’ve been there when East Coast or West Coast folks visit Wisconsin and bring all their preconceptions along for the ride.  Relatives have asked me how I can stand it here: But it’s the Midwest.  As if that explains everything.

Well . . . I don’t know, but I do?  Folks here can be genuinely nice, and they work hard without feeling the need to tell you about it.  (There is also a  huge difference between people who are nice and those who are polite.)  Yes, I know there are ex-pat Wisconsin folks who couldn’t wait to leave the state, and I’m not going to argue that they’re wrong.  But the point is that, if we’re lucky, we all eventually find a place where we feel at home.

I have felt more at home here than anywhere I’ve ever lived, and trust me, I’ve been around.  When I think of home, I think of Wisconsin.  Not much I can or want to do about that either. 

Earlier this week when I burst into tears about something or other, the husband finally said that he was struck about how this was so hard for me: “I’ve never seen you laid so low about anything.”  The kid I talked to earlier in the week said something similar: “Where’s my mom?”

Where, indeed.

Limbo, for one–but, really, getting ready to leave home.  Yes, it is true that I didn’t want to move here fourteen years ago.  I wasn’t exactly happy where I was, but I was in a routine and it was familiar.  I liked my house and the woods.  I didn’t have tons of friends, though, and I was in surburbia, a place that doesn’t really fit me very well.  So after I tortured the husband for several months, I eventually eased into Wisconsin.  I think it was that first big snowfall that did it–the snow, and the Great Lakes.

I was happy–and ready–to leave home when I went off to college.  Sure, I was homesick for a little while, but I liked college.  When it came time to leave there, I was both sorry but also ready to move on.  The next several years were all about medical school and training, and maybe it was because it was school, that I accepted the transient nature of it all.  The military was in my future, after all; I knew that.  Was I thrilled with my base assignments?  No.  Did I make friends and it all worked out okay?  Yes–but none of those places felt like home either.  When I was stationed in Maryland, I figured . . . okay, my folks are nearby; I’d gone to medical school at GW; the husband has a good job.  So this is as good a place as any to get a house, raise kids, etc.

This place, though, is home to me in a way that none of the places I’ve lived before have been.  Maybe that’s because here is where I also found me: that is, got brave (and had enough support from the husband) and threw over medicine for writing.  This is where I finally became the person I wanted to be.

I’ve made no secret of how tough the past year and a half have been for me, what with all the stuff with Egmont and, now, this.  There have been a few more disappointments along the way, which I won’t go into . . . but, yeah, it’s what the kid said last week: Where’s my mom?  I’ve kind of lost track of me along the way, and I also think that I’m a little worried that I won’t be able to keep hold of me.  I’ve started and abandoned three, four books and double the number of outlines, though  I finally, finally settled into a story about a week or so ago–even managed to write a few pages, which is a major accomplishment with all this other stuff.  What’s interesting is that it’s not set in Wisconsin or Alabama. . . but another planet.  Of course, that could reflect an interesting, if unconscious, association to what I think I’m getting into here ;-).

So…where have I been?  What have I been doing?

Leaving home and, I really think, for the first time.

By this time next week, we’ll be on the road and hit Alabama the day after.  Our stuff arrives a few days later, and I look forward to unpacking, settling down.  I’ve made sure to leave out the cocktail shaker because, hell, a girl has priorities and I figure that, after all that driving, the husband will appreciate a nice, strong, icy something or other.  Give me time to think on that one.  I’ll eventually bake a Sunday cake again, too.

But, most of all?

I look forward to this new book.  I look forward to diving into the hole in the page and finding me.  I’m not stupid; this will not be home, and it will feel strange and weird and awkward, and I’ll make comparisons because I’m only human.  But it’s like the daughter said: Where’s my mom?  

Getting there, kid.  Getting there.